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)

32. The Circle Closes

—
May 31st, 2020
Irusu, Japan
—

—1—

UKIYO PARK INN / 3:10 A.M.

Akiyuki Koji was having one fuck of a crazy dream. In it he was killing his father.

Part of his mind understood how crazy this was; his father had died when Akiyuki was only in grade three. Well... maybe "died" wasn't such a good word. Maybe "committed suicide" was actually the truth. Akiyuki Kunio had made himself a gin-and-lye cocktail. One for the road, you might say. Akiyuki had been put in nominal charge of his brother and sisters, and then he began to receive "whuppins" if anything went wrong with them.

So he couldn't have killed his father... except there he was, in this frightening dream, holding what looked like a harmless handle of some sort to his father's neck... only it wasn't really harmless, was it? There was a button on the end of the handle, and if he pushed it a blade would pop out and go right through his father's neck.

'I'm not going to do anything like that, Daddy, don't worry,' his dreaming mind thought just before his finger jammed down on the button and the blade popped out. His father's sleeping eyes opened and stared up at the ceiling; his father's mouth opened and a bloody gargling sound came out. 'Daddy, I didn't do it!' his mind screamed. 'Someone else-'

He struggled to wake up and couldn't. The best he could do (and it turned out to be not very good at all) was to fade into a new dream. In this one he was splashing and slogging his way down a long dark tunnel. His balls hurt and his face stung because it was crisscrossed with scratches. There were others with him, but he could only make out vague shapes. It didn't matter, anyway. What mattered were the kids somewhere up ahead. They needed to pay. They needed

(a whuppin)

to be punished.

Whatever purgatory this was, it was a smelly one. Water dripped and echoed. His shoes and pants were soaked. The little shitpots were somewhere up ahead in this maze of tunnels, and perhaps they thought-

(Tomura)

-Akiyuki and his friends would get lost, but the joke was on them-

(ha-ha all over you!)

-because he had another friend, oh yes, a special friend, and this friend had marked the path they were to take with... with...

(Moon-Balloons)

-things that were big and round and somehow lighted from within so that they shed a glow like the street lamps that lined the road he and Sho's house was situated on. One of these balloons floated and drifted at each intersection, and on the side of each was a bloody, dripping, red arrow, pointing the way into the tunnel he and-

(Kurogiri and Twice)

-his unseen friends were meant to take. And it was the right path, oh yes: he could hear all seven of the little terrors ahead, their splashing progress echoing back, the distorted murmurs of their voices. They were getting closer, catching up. And when they did... Akiyuki looked down and saw that he still had the fancy switchknife in his hand.

For a moment he was numbly terrified- this was like one of those crazy astral experiences he sometimes read about in the weekly tabloids, when your spirit left your body and entered someone else's. The shape of his body felt different to him, as if he were not Akiyuki Koji but-

(Shigaraki Tomura)

-someone else, someone younger, someone skinnier. He began to fight his way out of the dream, panicked, and then a voice was talking to him, a voice so calm and steady that Akiyuki wanted to reach down deep into his ear canal and tear his eardrums out, whispering in his ear:

"It doesn't matter when this is, and it doesn't matter who you are. What matters is that Shouto is up there, he's with them, my good friend, and do you know what? He's been doing something a hell of a lot worse than sneaking smokes. You know what? He's been in bed with his old friend Midoriya Izuku! Yes indeed! That stuttering freak has had his hands all over Shouto's whore hair-"

"-That's a lie!" Akiyuki tried to scream. "Shouto wouldn't dare!"

...But he knew it was no lie. Shouto had used a belt on his-

(kicked me in the)

-balls and run off and now he had cheated on him, the filthy-

(Whore)

-little bitch had actually cheated on him, and oh dear friends, oh good neighbors, Shouto was going to get the whuppin of all whuppins- first him and then Midoriya, Shouto's manga-writing friend. And-

(Kid's all done. Greased the sucker. Gonna grease them all. Teach them to throw rocks.)

-the other one, Kaminari, the one who'd called Shouto and sparked this act of rebellion in the first place. And anyone else who tried to get in his way, for that matter- you could count them in for a piece of the action, too. They could all buy a ticket and get in line.

He quickened his pace, although his breath was already whistling in and out of his throat. Up ahead he could see another luminous circle bobbing in the darkness-another Moon-Balloon. He could hear the voices of the group ahead of him, and the fact that they were childish voices no longer bothered him. It was as the voice said: it didn't matter where, when or who. Shouto was up there, and oh dear friends, oh good neighbors-

"Come on, you guys, move your asses," he said, and it didn't even matter that his voice came out boyish and foreign, and nothing like his own.

Then, as they approached the Moon-Balloon, he looked around and saw his companions for the first time. Both of them were dead. One was headless. The face of the other had been split open, as if by a great talon.

"We're moving as fast as we can, Tomura," the boy with the split face said, and his lips moved in two pieces, grotesquely out of sync with each other. The shorter boy with no head spurted blood out of the drippy remains of his neck in agreement. That was when Akiyuki shattered the dream to pieces with a hoarse scream and came back to himself, tottering on the brink of what felt like some great empty space.

He struggled to keep his balance, lost it, and tumbled to the floor. The floor was carpeted but the fall still sent a sickening burst of pain through his hurt knee and he plugged up another cry against his forearm.

'Where am I? Where the fuck am I?'

Akiyuki became aware of a faint but clear white light, and for a frightening moment he thought he was back in the dream again, that it was light cast by one of those crazy balloons with the bloody arrows. Then he remembered leaving the bathroom door partially open and the fluorescent light in there on. He always left the light on when staying in a strange place; it saved you from murdering your shins if you had to get up in the night to pee.

That clicked reality into place. It had been a dream, all some crazy nightmare his sleep-deprived mind had come up with. He was at the Ukiyo Park Inn. This was Irusu, on the island of Hokkaido. He had chased his husband here, and, in the middle of a crazy nightmare, he had fallen out of bed. That was all; that was the long and the short of it.

"That wasn't just a nightmare."

He jumped as if the words had been spoken beside his ear instead of inside his own mind. It didn't seem like his own interior voice at all- it was cold, shrill, alien... but somehow hypnotic and believable.

Akiyuki got up slowly, fumbled a bottle of water off the circular nightstand beside the bed, and drank it down. He ran shaky hands through his light-colored hair. The digital clock on the table said it was ten past three in bright green numbers.

'Go back to sleep. This can wait until morning.'

That alien voice answered: "But there will be people around in the morning- too many people. And besides, you can beat them down there this time. This time you can be first."

'Down there?... What the hell is "Down there?"...' He thought of his not-dream: the water, the dripping dark.

The bathroom light suddenly seemed brighter. He turned his head, not wanting to but helpless to stop. A low, pian-filled, groan slipped out of his mouth. A moon-balloon was tied to the knob of the bathroom door. It floated at the end of a string about three feet long. The balloon glowed, full of a ghostly white light; it glowed like tonic water under fluorescent bar lights. An arrow was painted on the balloon's gently bulging skin, an arrow that was drippy and bloody and terrible.

It was pointing at the door leading out into the hall.

"It doesn't really matter who I am," the voice said in the silky smooth, maddening, voice of It's. It was only then that Akiyuki realized that it wasn't coming from either his own head or from beside his ear; it was coming from the balloon, from the center of that strange lovely light. He felt goosebumps cover his flesh from head to toe. "All that matters is that I am going to see that everything turns out to your satisfaction, Koji. I want to see Shouto take a whuppin; I want to see them all take a whuppin. They've crossed my path once too often... and much too late in the day for them. So listen, Koji. Listen very carefully. All together now... follow the bouncing ball..."

Akiyuki listened. The voice from the balloon explained.

It explained everything.

When it was done, it popped in one final flash of light and Akiyuki Koji began to dress.

—2—

KITSUNE COURT / 3:12 A.M.

Ochako also had nightmares.

She awoke with a start, sitting bolt-upright in bed, the sheet pulled around her waist, her heart pounding with her quick, agitated breathing.

Like Akiyuki's, her dreaming had been a jumbled, distressful experience. Like Akiyuki, she had had the sensation of being someone else- or rather, of having her own consciousness deposited (and partially submerged) in another body and another mind. She had been in a dark place with a number of others around-

(Him)

-her, and-

(He)

-she had been aware of an oppressive sensation of danger- they were going into the danger deliberately and (s)he wanted to scream at them to stop, to explain what was happening... but the person who she had merged with seemed to know, and believed it was necessary.

(S)he was also aware that they were being-

(Hunted)

-chased and that their pursuers were catching up, little by little.

Izuku had been in the dream, but his story about how he had forgotten his childhood must have been on her mind, because in her dream Izuku was only a boy, ten or twelve years old- and he looked so tired! (S)he was holding his hand, and was dimly aware that (s)he loved him very much, and that their willingness to go on was based on the rock-solid belief that Izuku would protect all of them, that Izuku would somehow bring them through this and back into the daylight again.

Oh but (s)he was so terrified.

They came to a branching of many tunnels and-

(Deku)

-Izuku stood there, looking from one to the next, and one of the others- a boy with his arm in a red cast which glowed creepily in the darkness- spoke up: "That one, Deku. The bottom one."

"Y-Y-You're s-s-sure?"

"Yes."

And so they had gone that way and then there had been a door, a small wooden door no more than three feet high, the sort of door you might see in a fairytale book, and there had been a mark on the door. She could not remember what that mark had been, what strange rune or symbol. But it had brought all of her terror to a focusing-point and she had yanked herself out of that other body, that boy's body, whoever-

(Todoroki Shouto)

-he might have been. Ochako awoke bolt-upright in a strange bed, sweaty, wide-eyed, gasping as if she had just run a race. Her hands flew to her legs, half-expecting to find them wet and cold with the water she had been walking through in her head. But she was dry.

Disorientation followed- this was not their home in Hida-Takayama or the rented downstairs apartment in Tokyo. It was noplace-limbo furnished with a creaky, mothball-smelling, bed, a rickety dresser, two stained floral chairs, and a twenty-inch TV.

"What- where am I?..."

She scrubbed her hands viciously across her face and that sickening feeling of mental vertigo receded, and then she remembered. She was in Irusu. Irusu on the island of Hokkaido, where her husband had grown up with a childhood he claimed to no longer remember. Not a familiar place to her, or a particularly good place by its feel, but at least a known place. She was here because Izuku was here, and she would see him tomorrow, at The Shajima Hotel and Sauna. Whatever terrible thing was wrong here- and she knew it must be something absolutely horrific, because as soon as she'd driven over that town-line, a chill had settled in her chest that hadn't gone away-
whatever those new scars on his hands meant, they would face it together. She would call him, tell him she was here, then join him. After that... well...

Actually, she had no idea what came after that. The vertigo, that sense of being in a place that was really noplace, was threatening again. She rubbed her chest, trying to warm the chill that wouldn't leave because-

(She was an outsider)

-she was in unfamiliar territory. Both in location and in regards to the man she'd spent nine years of her life with- seven of them married.

She sighed miserably, thinking back on the time she and Izuku had spent together. He had asked her, flushing and nervous, stumbling over his words, to get lunch after the party where the self-proclaimed palmist had made her so jealous. They were in the parking lot, it was early in the morning- around four AM- and he'd caught up to her. They were both tipsy, and she'd already fallen madly in love with him the week before. She accepted without a moment's hesitation. Two years later, while she was looking through a bridal magazine (for no reason in particular, a cousin of hers had just gotten engaged and she was curious) and Izuku had leaned over her shoulder and casually pointed to a dress.

"You'd look pretty in that one."

It was a lace, off the shoulder, champagne colored dress with a sweetheart neckline. The skirt was an A-line, with lace and Pearl flowers floating delicately on top of it. The train seemed to go on for miles behind the magazine model.

Izuku had gone back to sketching a panel for 'Black Water Ridge's next chapter (Some abandoned house with ginormous sunflowers in front of one of the bedroom windows. Ochako found the drawing to be quite creepy), and that had pretty much been it. No official proposal, just a simple comment about a dress he thought she'd looked pretty in.

She'd bought the dress that night, and they married two months later.

She was pulled out of the sweet memory by the chill in her chest. It had dissipated for only a moment, while she was living in the past- but it was back once more- stronger this time. Her bad dreams had carried over into her waking and she felt a nightmarish free-floating terror. The town seemed to have wrapped itself around her like a python. She could sense it, and the feelings it produced were not good. She found herself wishing that she had heeded Fumio Aki's advice and stayed away.

Her mind fixed on Izuku once more, grasping at the thought of him the way a drowning woman would grip at a spar, a life-preserver, driftwood, anything that-

(we all float down here, Ochako)

-floats.

A chill raced through her and she crisscrossed her arms across her chest. She shivered and saw goosebumps ripple their way up her flesh. For a moment it seemed to her that a voice had spoken aloud, but inside her head. As if there was an alien presence in there.

'Am I going crazy? is that it?'

'No,' her mind responded, almost chidingly. 'It's just disorientation... exhaustion... worry over your husband. Nobody's talking inside your head. Nobody-'

"We all float down here, Ochako," a voice said from the bathroom. It was a real voice, real as she herself was. And sly. Sly and dirty and evil. "You'll float, too." The voice uttered a fruity little giggle that dropped in pitch until it sounded like a clogged drain bubbling thickly. Ochako cried out... then pressed her hands against her mouth.

'I didn't hear that.'

She said it out loud, daring the voice to contradict her. It didn't. The room was silent. Somewhere, far away, a train whistled in the night.

Suddenly she needed Izuku so badly that waiting until daylight seemed impossible. She was in a standardized motel room exactly like the other thirty-nine units in the place, but suddenly it was too much. Everything. When you started hearing voices, it was just too much. Too creepy. She seemed to be slipping into some sort of nightmare. She felt scared and terribly alone. 'It's worse than that,' she thought. 'I feel dead.' Her heart suddenly skipped two beats in her chest, making her gasp and utter a startled cough. She felt an instant of prison-panic, claustrophobia inside her own body, and wondered if all this terror didn't have a stupidly ordinary physical root after all: maybe she was going to have a heart attack. Or was already having one.

Her heart settled, but uneasily.

Ochako turned on the lamp by the bed-table and looked at her watch in the pale-yellow glow. Twelve past three. He would be sleeping, but that didn't matter to her now-nothing mattered except hearing his voice. She wanted to finish the night with him. If Izuku was beside her, her clockwork would fall in sync with his and settle down. The nightmares would stay away. He sold nightmares to others- that was his thing- but to her he had never given anything but peace. Outside that odd, cold, horror-story filled object imbedded in his imagination, peace seemed to be all he was made for or meant for. She got out her phone, found the number for The Shajima, and dialed it.

"Shajima Hotel and Sauna."

"Would you please ring Mr. Midoriya's room? Midoriya Izuku?"

"Does that guy ever get any calls in the daytime?" the clerk said, and before she could think to ask what that was supposed to mean, he had plugged her call through. The phone burred once, twice, three times. She could imagine him, sleeping with everything under the covers except the top of his head; pillow hugged up against his chest, (early on in their relationship, she'd noticed he did that every time he slept- as if he couldn't sleep without something there. Eventually the pillow had been replaced with herself.) she could imagine one hand coming out, feeling for the phone. She had seen him do it before, and a fond little smile touched her lips. It faded as the phone rang a fourth time... and a fifth, and a sixth. Halfway through the seventh ring, the connection was broken.

"That room does not answer."

"Yes, I figured that out myself," Ochako whispered, more upset and frightened than ever. "Are you sure you rang the right room?"

"Uh-huh," the clerk said. "Mr. Midoriya Izuku had an inter-room call not even five minutes ago. I know he answered that one, because the light stayed on the switchboard a minute or two. He must have gone to the person's room."

"Well, which room was it?"

"I don't remember. Second floor, I think. But-"

She dropped her cellphone heavily onto the champagne-colored hotel sheets- the same color her wedding dress had been. A queer disheartening feeling over came her- her mind immediately jumped to the idea that he had gone to see another woman. She didn't want to think of that- in fact, if you would have asked her if she could of ever fathomed sweet, kind, pure-hearted, Midoriya Izuku, was capable of cheating on her a mere thirty minutes before she would of laughed herself silly. That wasn't Izuku- until now, she hadn't thought he even had the ability to do something so vile... but... well- what other reason did one have to slink around hotel floors in the dead of night?...

She felt tears threaten. They stung her eyes and her nose; she could feel the lump of a sob in the back of her throat. No anger, at least not yet... only a sick sense of loss and abandonment.

'Ochako, get a hold of yourself. You're jumping to conclusions. It's the middle of the night and you had a bad dream and now you're imagining Izuku with some other woman. But that isn't necessarily the case. What you're going to do is sit up- you'll never get back to sleep now anyway. Turn on some lights and finish the novel you brought to read on the plane. Remember what Izuku always says? Reading is the best distraction someone could ever ask for. No more creepy feelings. No more nightmares and hearing voices. Just a good fantasy novel, Kafka on the Shore-'

The bathroom light suddenly went on; she could see it under the door. Then the latch clicked and the door juddered open. She stared at this, chocolate-brown eyes widening, arms instinctively crossing over her chest again. Her heart began to slam against her ribcage and the sour taste of adrenaline flooded her mouth.

That voice, low and dragging, said: "We all float down here, Ochako." The last word became a long, low, fading scream- Ochakooooo- that ended once again in that sick, clogged, bubbly sound that was so much like laughter.

"Who's there?" she called, backing away. 'That wasn't my imagination, no way, you're not going to tell me that-'

The TV clicked on. She whirled around and saw a clown in a silvery suit with big orange buttons capering around on the screen. There were black sockets where its eyes should have been, and when its madeup lips stretched even wider in a grin, she saw teeth like razors. It held up a dripping, severed head. Its eyes were turned up to the whites and the mouth sagged open, but she could see well enough that it was Fumio Aki's head. The clown laughed and danced. It swung the head around and drops of blood splashed against the inside of the TV screen. She could hear them sizzling in there.

Ochako tried to scream but nothing came out except for a little whine. She grabbed blindly for the grey jacket lying over the back of the chair- she didn't know why, she just knew she needed it- and for her purse. She bolted into the hall and slammed the door behind her, gasping, her face pale as a ghost. She dropped the purse between her feet and slipped on the light jacket- the chill even worst now.

"Float," a low, chuckling voice said from behind her, and she felt a cold finger caress her bare ankle.

She uttered another high out-of-breath scream and danced away from the door. White corpse-fingers were seeking back and forth under it, the nails peeled away to show purplish-white bloodless quicks. They made hoarse whispering noises on the rough nap of the hall carpet.

Ochako snagged the strap of her purse and ran barefooted for the door at the end of the corridor. She was in a blind panic now, her only thought that she had to find The Shajima, and Izuku. It didn't matter if he was in bed with enough other women to make up a harem. She would find him and get him to take her away from whatever unspeakable thing there was in this town.

Ochako fled down the walkway and into the parking-lot, looking around wildly for her car. For a moment her mind froze and she couldn't even remember what she had been driving. Then it came: Hyundai, silver. She spotted it standing hubcapdeep in the still, curdled groundmist, and hurried over to it. She couldn't find the keys in her purse. She swept through it with steadily increasing panic, shuffling Kleenex, cosmetics, change, sun-glasses, and sticks of gum into a meaningless jumble. She didn't notice the battered LTD wagon parked nose-to-nose with her rented car, or the man sitting behind the wheel. She didn't notice when the LTD's door opened and the man got out; she was trying to cope with the growing certainty that she had left the Hyundai's keys in the room. She couldn't go back in there; she couldn't.

Her fingers touched hard serrated metal under a box of Altoid mints and she seized at it with a little cry of triumph. For a terrible moment she thought it might be the key to their Rover, now sitting in a train station in a Tokyo garage-park a couple hundred miles away, and then she felt the plastic rental-car tab. She fumbled the key into the door-lock, breathing in harsh little gasps, and turned it. That was when a hand fell on her shoulder, and she screamed... screamed loudly this time. Somewhere a dog barked in answer, but that was all.

The hand, as hard as steel, bit cruelly in and forced her around. The face she saw looming over hers was puffed and lumpy. The eyes glittered. When the swelled lips spread in a grotesque smile, she saw that some of the man's front teeth had been broken. The stumps looked jagged and savage.

She tried to speak and could not. The hand squeezed tighter, digging in.

"Haven't I heard that scream before?" Akiyuki Koji asked in a whisper.

—3—

THE SHAJIMA HOTEL AND SAUNA / ROOM 13 / 3:15 A.M

Deku and Todoroki got up quickly and went up to Kirishima's room. On their way to the elevator they heard a phone begin ringing somewhere behind them. It was muffled, a somewhere-else sound.

"Deku, was that yours?"

"C-Could have b-b-been," he said. "One of the uh-others c-calling, muh-haybe." He punched the UP button.

Kirishima opened the door for them, his face sweaty and strained. His left arm was at an angle both peculiar and weirdly reminiscent of the year 2005.

"I'm okay," Kirishima said, he sounded tired, stressed. "I took two Darvon. Pain's not bad right now." But it was clearly not good, either. His lips, pressed so tightly together they had almost disappeared, were purple with shock.

Deku looked past him and saw the body on the floor. One look was enough to satisfy him of two things- it was Shigaraki Tomura, and he was dead. He moved past Kirishima and knelt by the body. The neck of a Perrier bottle had been driven into Shigaraki's midsection, pulling the tatters of his midnight-black hoodie in after it. Shigaraki's eyes were half-open, glazed. His mouth, filled with coagulating blood, snarled. His hands were claws.

A shadow fell over him and Deku looked up sharply. It was Todoroki. He looked down at Shigaraki with no expression at all.

"All the times he ch-ch-chased us," Deku mumbled.

Todoroki nodded. "He doesn't look old." Abruptly he looked back at Kirishima, who was sitting on the bed. Kirishima looked old; old and haggard- liked he'd lived a thousand lifetimes. His arm lay in his lap, useless. "We've got to call the doctor for Ejirou."

"No," Deku and Kirishima said in unison.

"He's hurt-"

"-It's the same as luh-luh-last t-t-time," Deku cut him off. He got to his feet and held Todoroki by the arms, looking into his face. "Once we g-go outside... once w-w-we ih-inv-v-holve the t-t-town-"

"They'll arrest me for murder," Kirishima said dully, rubbing an eye with his good arm. "...Or they'll arrest all of us. Or they'll detain us. Or something. Then there'll be an accident. One of the special accidents that only happen in Irusu. Maybe they'll stick us in jail and a deputy sheriff will go berserk and shoot us all. Maybe we'll all die of prison-brand food poisoning, or decide to hang ourselves in our cells."

"Ejirou, that's abusrd- That's-"

"-Is it?" Kirishima asked, rolling his eyes over to him. "remember, this is Irusu. I let myself forget for a moment, and I almost paid for it with my life."

"But we're adults now- Surely you don't think... I mean, he came here in the middle of the night... attacked you..."

"W-With what?" Deku asked. "Where's the nuh-nuh-knife?"

Todoroki looked around, didn't see it, and dropped to his knees to look under the bed.

"Don't bother," Kirishima said in that same faint, whistly voice. "I slammed the door on his arm when he tried to stick me with it. He dropped it and I kicked it under the TV. It's gone now. I already looked."

"Shuh-Shuh-Shouto, c-call the others," Deku said. "I can spuh-splint E-E-Ejirou's arm, I th-hink."

Todoroki looked at him for a long moment, then he looked down at the body on the floor again. He thought that the picture this room presented should tell a perfectly clear story to any policeman with half a brain. The place was a mess. Kirishima's arm was broken. This man was dead. It was a clear case of self-defense against a night-prowler- But then he remembered Chief Okumura's son. Mr. Okumura getting up and looking right at him and then simply folding his newspaper and going back into the house.

'Once we go outside... once we involve the town...'

That made him remember Deku as a kid, his face pale and tired and half-crazy, Deku saying 'Irusu is It. Do you understand me?... Any place we go... when It gets us, they won't see, they won't hear, they won't know. Don't you see how it is? All we can do is to try and finish what we started.'

Standing here now, looking down at Shigaraki's corpse, Todoroki thought: 'They're both saying we've all become ghosts again. That it's started to repeat. All of it. As a kid I could accept that, because kids almost are ghosts. But-'

"Are you sure?" He asked softly. "Deku, are you sure?"

He was sitting on the bed with Kirishima, gently touching his arm. "A-A-Aren't y-you?" he asked. "After a-a-all that's huh-happened t-today?"

Yes. All that had happened. The gruesome mess at the end of their reunion. The beautiful old woman who had turned into a crone before his eyes-

(my fodder was also my mudder)

-the round of stories at Kaminari's shop tonight with the accompanying phenomena. All of those things. And still... his mind shouted at him desperately to stop this now, to spike it with sanity, because if he did not they were surely going to finish up this night by going down to the Barrens and finding a certain pumping-station and-'

"I don't know," he said. "I just... I don't know. Even after everything that's happened, Deku, it seems to me that we could call the police. Maybe."

"C-C-Call the uh-others," he said again. "We'll s-s-see what they th-think"

"Okay."

Todoroki called Bakugo first, then Sero. Both agreed to come right away. Neither asked what had happened. He found Kaminari's cell number in a phone book and dialed it. There was no answer; after a dozen rings he hung up.

"T-T-Try h-h-his sh-shoh-hop," Deku said. He had taken the short curtain rods down from the small window over the desk and was binding them firmly to Kirishima's arm with the belt of a white hotel bathrobe and the drawstring from his pyjamas.

Before Todoroki could find the number there was a knock at the door. Sero and Bakugo had arrived together, Sero still in his grey-wash Levi's and black T-shirt, cigarette hanging loosely out of his mouth. Bakugo in a pair of smart gray cotton trousers and his Osaka radio top. Bakugo's eyes looked warily around the room he had left only ten minutes before.

"Fucking hell, shitty hair- I just left-"

Sero's eyes fell immediately to the bloody corpse on the ground, he raised his eyebrows in surprised. "Oh," he blew out a puff of greyish-blue smoke, "shit."

"B-B-Be quh-hiet-" Deku said sharply. "And close th-the d-door-"

Bakugo did it, his eyes fixed on the body. "...Shit- is that Tomura?"

Sero took three steps toward the body and then stopped, as if afraid it might bite him. He looked up at Deku for an explanation.

Y-Y-You t-tell," he said to Kirishima. "Muh-muh-my stuh-huh-hutter is g-getting wuh-wuh-worse all the t-t-time." Kirishima sketched in what had happened while Todoroki hunted for the number for Chargebolt: auto body & repair and called it. He supposed that Kaminari had fallen asleep there- on the couch maybe, hanging half-way off, drool running down the side of his face, his long blonde hair coming out of his ponytail. The mental imagine made Todoroki smile weakly.

The smile dropped immediately when the phone was picked up on the second ring and a voice he had never heard before said hello.

"...Hello," Todoroki answered slowly, looking toward the others and making a shushing gesture with one hand. "...Is Denki there?..."

"Who's this?" the voice asked.

Todoroki wet his lips with his tongue. Sero was looking at him piercingly, as if sensing something the rest of them could not. Deku and Bakugo had looked around at him as well. The beginnings of real alarm stirred inside him.

"Who are you?" Todoroki countered stubbornly. "You're not Denki."

"I'm the Irusu Chief of Police, Ishihara." the voice said. "Kaminari Denki is at the Irusu Home Hospital right now. He was attacked and badly wounded a short time ago. Now who are you, please? I want your name."

But Todoroki barely heard this last part. Waves of shock rode through him, lifting him dizzily up and up, outside of himself. The muscles in his stomach and legs all went loose and numb, and he thought in a detached way: 'This must be how it happens, when people get so scared they wet their pants. Sure. You just lose control of those muscles-'

"...How badly has he been hurt?" He heard himself asking in a papery voice, and then Sero was beside him, pulling his cellphone a little way's away from his ear so he could hear too, and Deku was there with a comforting hand on his shoulder, and Bakugo- then even Kirishima limped his way over. Todoroki felt such a rush of gratitude for them. He held his free hand out and Deku took it. Kirishima placed his good hand over Deku's. Bakugo hesitated, and eventually put his over Kirishima's. Sero put his free hand over Bakugo's.

"I want your name, please," Ishihara said briskly, and for a moment the skittering little craven inside of him, the one that had been bred by his father and cared for by his husband, almost answered: 'I'm Akiyuki Shouto and I'm at the Shajima Hotel and Sauna. Please send Mr. Torino over. There's a dead man here who's still half a boy and we're all very frightened.'

Instead, he said: "I can't tell you that."

"What do you know about this?"

"Nothing," Todoroki said, calm, but internally shocked. "What makes you think I do?"

"You just make a habit of calling mechanic shop's every morning about three-thirty," Ishihara said, "is that it? Cut the bullshit. This is assault, and the way the guy looks, it could be murder by the time the sun comes up. I'll ask you again: who are you and how much do you know about this?"

Closing his eyes, gripping Deku's hand with all his strength, he asked again: "He might die?... You're not just saying that to scare me?... He really might die?... Tell me, please."

"He's very badly hurt. And if that doesn't scare you, sir, it ought to. Now I want to know who you are and why-"

As if in a dream Todoroki watched his hand float through space and drop his cellphone onto the floor. It thump'd harshly on the ground, bounced once, and settled. Todoroki looked over at Shigaraki and felt shock as keen as a slap from a cold hand. One of Shigaraki's eyes had closed. The other one, the shattered one, oozed as nakedly as before.

Shigaraki seemed to be winking at him.

—4—

Bakugo called the hospital. Deku led Todoroki over to the bed, where he sat numbly with Kirishima, looking off into space. Todoroki thought he would cry, but no tears came. The only feeling he was strongly and immediately aware of was a wish that someone would cover Shigaraki Tomura. That winky look was really not cool at all.

Bakugo was using his radio connections as an advantage. He understood that Kaminari Denki, owner of Chargebolt: auto body & repair, genuinely beloved by everyone in town, had been assaulted while working late. Did the hospital have any word on Mr. Kaminari's condition?

Bakugo listened, nodding.

"I understand, Mr. Nakajima- do you spell that with two k's? You don't. Okay. And you are-"

Bakugo listened, growing impatient with the man on the other line. He looked towards the others, rolled his eyes, and mimed blowing his brains out. Kirishima and Sero offered up a few weak chuckles.

"Uh-huh... uh-huh... yes. Yes, I understand. Well, what we usually do in cases like this is to quote you as "a source." Then, later on, we can... uh-huh... right! Just right!" Bakugo forced a hearty laugh and rubbed at his temples- hating the sound he'd just allowed to escapes his throat. He listened again. "Okay, Mr Nakajima. Yes. I'll... yes, I got it, N-A-K-A-J-I-M-A, right! It mean's Middle island?... Really?... That's... that's nice... Yes, I will. Goodnig- what? Well- my show is branching out a little- just a new segment- uh huh... yes... I'll be sure to mention you when I can- uh-huh- bye-"

Bakugo hung up and flung his cellphone onto the bed with unnecessary force. "Fucking hell!" he cried. "Didn't think the loud-mouth fuck would ever shut up!" He made as if to kick the night table over and then simply let his foot fall. He ran a hand through his messy hair.

"He's alive, but in grave condition," he told the others. "Chappie sliced him up like a goddamn turkey. One of the cuts chopped into his femoral artery and he's lost all the blood a man can and still stay alive. Denki managed to get some kind of tourniquet on it, he would have been dead when they found him otherwise."

"Shit..." Sero breathed, and slumped a little against the wall.

Todoroki stared numbly down at his hands, clasped together on his lap, shaking like a leaf. He was briefly aware that he was shutting down again- beginning to dissociate from the world around him. Everything felt grey, empty... humorless.

('Your hair is like winter fire, January embers.')

Todoroki dug his nails into his own flesh. Drawing blood. For a little while the rapid whistle of Kirishima's breathing was the only sound in the room.

"...Denki wasn't the only one who got sliced up like a turkey," Kirishima said after a quick blast on the ole lung sucker. "Tomura looked like he just went twelve rounds with a ravening, blood-thirsty, tiger."

"D-Do you still w-w-want to g-g-go to the p-p-police, Sho?"

Todoroki was walking toward the bathroom, making a wide circle around Shigaraki, grabbing a wash-cloth, and running cool water on it. It felt delicious against his hot, grief-ridden, face. He felt that he could think clearly again- not rationally but clearly. Todoroki was suddenly sure that rationality would kill them if they tried to use it now. That cop. Ishihara. She had been suspicious. Why not? People didn't call mechanic shops at three-thirty in the morning. She had assumed some guilty knowledge. What would she assume if she found out that Todoroki had called her from a room where there was a dead man on the floor with a jagged bottle-neck planted in his guts? That he and four other strangers had just come into town the day before for a little reunion and this guy just happened to drop by? Would Todoroki himself buy the tale if the shoe were on the other foot? Would anyone? Of course, they could fatten up their story by adding that they had come back to finish the monster that lived and hunted and fed in the sewers underneath the city. That would certainly add a convincing note of gritty realism.

Todoroki came out of the attached bathroom and looked at Deku. "No," he said dully. "I don't want to go to the police. I think Ejirou's right- something might happen to us. Something final. But that isn't the real reason." He looked at the four of them. "We swore it," he said. "We swore. Izuku's sister... Tenya... all the others... and now-" he took a deep breath, re-clasping his hand in front of his lap, trying to steady his crazily beating heart "...and now Denki. I'm ready, Deku."

Deku looked at the others.

Bakugo sighed, nodded. "Yeah... goddammit- fine."

Sero, putting out his cigarette in the mess of sparkling water said, "...The odds look worse than ever. We're two short now."

Deku said nothing, just looked at him.

"Okay." Sero nodded finally. "Sho's right. We swore... for Eri... for Tenya... the other's... the missing..." he smiled painfully "...and for Denki."

"E-E-Ejirou?"

Kirishima smiled wanly. "I guess I get another piggy-back down that ladder, huh? If the ladder's still there- and if you can still do it, Deku..."

"I-I cuh-can." Deku said. "I-I huh-huh-have t-too... b-because thuh-that's h-how it wuh-was th-the f-fuh-hirst tuh-time."

"No one throwing rocks this time, though," Todoroki said bluntly. "They're dead. All three of them."

"Well-" Bakugo started, slapping his hands down onto his thighs, "It's now or fucking never, huh?"

"Y-Y-Yes," Deku agreed. "I th-think this is the t-t-time."

"Can I say something?" Sero asked abruptly.

Deku looked at him and grinned a little. "A-A-Any time, Han-Hanta."

"You guys are still the best friends I ever had," Sero said, he had another cigarette in his mouth. "No matter how this turns out. I just... you know, wanted to tell you that."

Sero looked around at them, and they looked solemnly back at him.

"I'm glad I remembered you," Sero added simply. Bakugo snorted. Todoroki smiled amusedly. Then Deku, Sero, Bakugo, and Kirishima were laughing, Todoroki with a hand cupped over his mouth, hiding his grin. They were looking at each other in the old way, in spite of the fact that Kaminari was in the hospital, perhaps dying or already dead, in spite of the fact that Kirishima's arm was broken (again), in spite of the fact that it was the deepest ditch of the morning.

"Skelly, you have such a way with words," Bakugo said, shaking his head and slipping back on his jacket. "You should have been the writer- forget Deku's stupid ass manga."

Still smiling a little, kicking Bakugo in the shin as he walked past him towards the door, Deku said: "And on that nuh-nuh-note..."

—5—

LOSER'S ON THE MOVE / 3:22 A.M

They took Kirishima's borrowed limo. Bakugo drove. The groundfog was thicker now, drifting through the streets like cigarette smoke, not quite reaching the hooded streetlamps. The stars overhead were bright chips of ice, spring stars. but by cocking his head to the half-open window in the back, Deku thought he could hear summer thunder in the distance. Rain was being ordered up somewhere over the horizon.

Bakugo, secretly unnerved by the silence, turned on the radio and there were The Beatles singing "I'm Fine." He hit one of the other buttons and got X Japan singing "Voiceless Screaming." A third punch brought The Gazette singing "THE SUICIDE CIRCUS"

"Here is a hell on earth. I felt a chill. The disappointment that increases. Nobody can rewind time. Don't look away. Suicide circus." The lead singer, Ruki, sang through the radio's speakers.

"Turn it off, Katsuki," Todoroki said softly. He had his own cigarette now- one last puff for old times sake. He leaned against Sero, who put a comforting arm around his shoulder. Todoroki was glad he remembered him too.

Bakugo huffed and reached for the stainless steel knob, and then his hand froze. "Stay tuned for more of the Bakugo Katsuki All-Dead Rock Show!" the clown's laughing, screaming voice cried over the glitch effects and guitar riffs of The Gazette song. "Don't touch that dial, keep it tuned to the rockpile, they're gone from the charts but not from our hearts and you keep coming, come right along, come on everybody! We play aaaalll the hits down here! Aaallllll the hits! And if you don't believe me, just listen to this morning's graveyard-shift guest deejay, Toshinori Eri! Tell em, Eri!"

And suddenly Deku's sister was wailing out of the radio.

"You sent me out and It killed me! I thought It was in the cellar, Izuku, I thought It was in the cellar but It was in the drain, It was in the drain and It killed me, you let It kill me, Izuku, you let It-"

Bakugo snapped the radio off so hard the knob spun away and hit the floormat.

"Signal out here's shit" Bakugo said. His voice was not quite steady, and he was tapping his fingers anxiously on the wheel. "Half and half's right, we'll leave it off, what do you say?"

No one replied. Deku's face was pale and still and thoughtful under the glow of the passing streetlamps, and when the thunder muttered again in the west they all heard it.

—6—

IN THE BARRENS / 3:30 A.M.

Same old bridge.

Bakugo parked beside it and they got out and moved to the railing- same old railing- and looked down.

Same old Barrens.

It seemed untouched by the last fifteen years; to Deku the turnpike overpass, which was the only new feature, looked unreal, something as ephemeral as a matte painting or a rear-screen projection effect in a movie. Cruddy little trees and scrub bushes glimmered in the twining fog and Deku thought: 'I guess this is what we mean when we talk about the persistence of memory, this or something like this, something you see at the right time and from the right angle, an image that kicks off emotion like a jet engine. You see it so clear that all the things which happened in between are gone. If desire is what closes the circle between world and want, then the circle has closed.'

"Cuh-Cuh-Come on," he said, and climbed over the railing. They followed him down the embankment in a scatter of scree and pebbles. When they reached the bottom Deku checked automatically for Silver and then laughed at himself. Silver was leaning against the wall of Kaminari's at-home garage. It seemed Silver had no part to play in this after all, although that was strange, after the way it had turned up.

"Tuh-Take us there," Deku told Sero softly.

Sero looked at him and Deku read the thought in his dusky-grey eyes- 'It's been fifteen years, Deku, dream on-' but then he nodded and headed into the undergrowth.

The path- their path- had long since grown over, and they had to force themselves through tangles of thornbushes, prickers, and wild hydrangea so fragrant it was cloying. Crickets sang somnolently all around them, and a few lightning-bugs, early arrivals at summer's luscious party, poked at the dark. Deku supposed kids still played down here, but they had made their own runs and secret ways through the thick vegetation.

They came to the clearing where the clubhouse had been, but now there was no clearing here at all. Bushes and lackluster scrub pines had reclaimed it all.

"Look," Sero breathed wispily, and crossed the clearing (in their memories it was still here, simply overlaid with another of those matte paintings). He yanked at something. It was the mahogany door they had found on the edge of the dump, the one they had used to finish off the clubhouse roof. It had been cast aside here and looked as if it hadn't been touched in a dozen years or more. Creepers were firmly entrenched across its dirty surface.

"Leave it alone, Skeletor," Bakugo murmured, tone surprisingly soft. "It's old."

"Tuh-Tuh-Take us th-there, Huh-Huh-Hanta," Deku repeated from behind them.

So they went down to the Shibui following him, bearing left away from the clearing that didn't exist anymore. The sound of running water grew steadily louder, but they still almost fell into the Shibui before any of them saw it: the foliage had grown up in a tangled wall on the edge of the embankment. The edge broke off under the heels of Sero's charcoal engineer boots and Deku yanked him back by the collar of his shirt.

"Thanks," Sero said, coughing a little and rubbing at his neck.

"N-no pruh-problem. Luh-luh-last tuh-time that h-happened y-you eh-eh-ended up with a bluh-bloody arm a-and I-I fuh-flipped o-over you and b-b-busted m-my chuh-chin."

Sero nodded, remembering, and led them along the overgrown bank, fighting through the tangles of bushes and brambles, thinking how much easier this was when you were only five feet tall and able to go under most tangles (those in your mind as well as those in your path, he supposed) in one nonchalant duck. Well, everything changed. Our lesson for today, boys and girls, is the more things change, the more things change. Whoever said the more things change the more things stay the same was obviously suffering from a severe case of idiocy. Because-

The steel-toe of his boot hooked under something and he fell over with a thud, nearly striking his head on the pumping-station's concrete cylinder. It was almost completely buried in a wallow of blackberry bushes. As he got to his feet again he realized that his face and arms and hands had been striped by blackberry thorns in two dozen places.

"Make that three dozen," he said, feeling thin blood running down his cheeks. It seemed the pattern of constantly having drying blood clinging to his skin was starting to happen again too.

"What?" Kirishima asked.

"Nothing." He bent down to see what he had tripped over. A root, probably.

But it wasn't a root. It was the iron manhole cover. Someone had pushed it off.

'Of course,' Sero thought. 'We did. Fifteen years ago.'

But he realized that was crazy even before he saw fresh metal twinkling through the rust in parallel scrape-marks. The pump hadn't been working that day. Sooner or later someone would have come down to fix it, and would have replaced the cover where it belonged.

He stood up and the five of them gathered around the cylinder and looked in. They could hear the faint sound of dripping water. That was all. Todoroki had brought all the matches from Kirishima's room. Now he lit an entire book of them and tossed it in. For a moment they could see the cylinder's damp inner sleeve and the silent bulk of the pumping machinery. That was all.

"Could have been off for a long time," Kirishima said uneasily. "didn't necessarily have to happen t-"

"It's happened fairly recently," Sero said. "since the last rain, anyway." He took a zippo lighter from his back pocket, highly polished chrome with a a beautiful woman surrounded by roses engraved into the lighter's body. He'd bought it while waiting for the train in Kyoto to take him home to hell. He lit it, and pointed out the fresh scratches.

"There's suh-suh-something uh-under it," Deku said as Sero extinguished the flame.

"What?" Sero asked.

"C-C-Couldn't tuh-tuh-tell. Looked like a struh-struh-strap. You and Kuh-Kacchan help me t-t-turn it o-over."

They grabbed the cover and flipped it like a giant coin. This time Todoroki flicked on his own zippo (an obsidian black piece with an ornate design engraved on the side) and Sero cautiously picked up the purse which had been under the manhole cover. He held it up wearily by the strap. Todoroki was about to let the flame die when he saw Deku's face. He froze, letting the flame flicker in the light breeze. "Deku?... What is it? What's wrong?"

Deku's eyes felt too heavy. They couldn't leave that scuffed leather bag with its long leather strap. Suddenly he could remember the name of the song which had been playing on the radio in the back room of luxury-brand retailer when he had bought it for her. "I Want to Break Free." It was surpassing weirdism. All the spit was gone out of his mouth, leaving his tongue and inner cheeks as smooth and dry as chrome. He could hear the crickets and see the lightning-bugs and smell big green growing dark out of control all around him and he thought 'It's another trick another illusion she's in Tokyo and this is just a cheap shot because It's scared, oh yes, It's maybe not as sure as It was when It called us all back, and really, Izuku, get serious- how many scuffed leather purses with long straps do you think there are in the world? A million? Ten million?'

Probably more. But only one like this. He had bought it for Ochako in a Roko Shira while "I Want to Break Free" drifted softly through the store over the loud speakers.

"Deku?" Todoroki's hand on his shoulder, shaking him. Far away. Seven leagues under the sea. 'What was the name of the group that sang 'I Want to Break Free'?... Kacchan would know.'

("But life still goes on... I can't get used to living without, living without, living without you by my side...")

"I know," Deku said calmly, looking directly into Bakugo's wide-eyed face, and smiling. "It was Queen."

("...So baby can't you see, I've got to break free...")

"What's wrong, freckles?" Bakugo whispered. That madness was back in Deku's eyes- the same one he'd had when they were kids- but there was something different about it this time... in 2005, Midoriya Izuku had still been underneath the madness- he had been angry and scarily determined- but he had been there... but this time, in the present day... the only thing that swam in those green irises was pure, unbridled, chaos.

Deku's smile widened, his left eye twitched. He snatched the lighter out of Todoroki's hand, lit it again, and then yanked the purse away from Sero with so much force Sero stumbled a few feet forward. The strap snapped in Sero's hands.

"Ah!- Deku- what-" Sero stared, eyes wide, holding the broken strap limply.

Deku unzipped the purse and turned it over. What fell out was so much Ochako that for a moment he thought he would keel over and die right then and there. Amid the Kleenex, sticks of chewing gum, and items of make-up, he saw a tin of Altoid mints... and the compact with two kittens playing with yarn Fumio Aki had given her when they had signed for 'Wilting Flower's.'

"My wuh-wuh-wife's down there," he whispered, his voice calm, steady, poised. He fell on his knees and began pushing her things back into the purse. He cut his hand on something sharp sticking out of the ground. Blood beaded and slid down his finger tips, staining Ochako's stuff with his rust-colored fingerprints. He didn't even notice.

"Your wife?... Ochako?..." Todoroki's eyes were huge, his face pale.

"Her p-p-purse. Her th-things."

"Shit, Deku," Bakugo muttered. "That's- you know th-"

Deku had found her wallet. A cartoon kitten's face was printed on the front, face a light, fluffy, strawberry milkshake pink, sort of in the shape of a very round heart, surrounded by a bubble gum pink head. There were two, leather, blueish-black triangle flaps on the top poising as cat ears. He opened it and held it up. Todoroki lit his lighter. The other four loser's huddled around the wallet, looking at a face they'd seen a dozen times on ads and in interviews. The picture on Ochako's driver's license was less glamorous but completely conclusive.

"But Tuh-Tuh-Tomura's dead, and K-Kur-Kurogiri, and Twuh-Twuh-Twice... so who's got her?" He stood up, staring around at them with febrile intensity. "Who's got her?"

Sero put a hand on Deku's shoulder, holding out the leather strap to him. "I guess we better go down and find out, huh?"

Deku looked at him with unfocused eyes, as if unsure of who Sero might be, and then his eyes cleared. "Y-Yeah," he said. "Eh-Eh-Ejirou?"

"Deku, I'm sorry."

"Can you cluh-climb on?"

"I did once."

Deku crouched down, Kirishima hooked his arm around Deku's neck. Sero and Bakugo boosted him up until he could hook his legs around Deku's midsection.

As Deku swung one leg clumsily over the lip of the cylinder, Sero saw that Kirishima's eyes were tightly shut... and for a moment he thought he heard the world's ugliest cavalry charge bashing its way through the bushes. He turned, expecting to see the three of them come out of the fog and the brambles, but all he had heard was the rising breeze rattling the bamboo a quarter of a mile or so from here. Their old enemies were all gone now.

Deku gripped the rough concrete lip of the cylinder and felt his way down, step by step and rung by rung. Kirishima had him in a deathgrip and Deku could barely breathe. 'Her purse- how did her purse get here?... Doesn't matter. But if there is a God, and if You're taking requests, let her be all right, don't let her suffer for what I did one summer when I was a kid... and was it the clown? Was it Bob Gray who got her? If it was, I don't know if even God can help her.'

"I'm scared, Deku," Kirishima said in a thin voice.

Deku's foot touched cold standing water. He lowered himself into it, remembering the feel and the dank smell, remembering the claustrophobic way this place had made him feel... and, just by the way, what had happened to them? How had they fared down in these drains and tunnels? Where exactly had they gone, and how exactly had they gotten out again? He still couldn't remember any of that; all he could think of was Ochako.

"I am t-t-too." He half-squatted, wincing as the cold water ran into over his slacks and soaked into his skin, and let Kirishima off. They stood shindeep in the water and watched the others descend the ladder.