CHAPTER 3 – Networking
Atsushi was an intimidating man with broad shoulders, a full beard, and muscles like a lumberjack. Faded tattoos covered his bald head and extended down his arms like sleeves. Izuku could sometimes see gang signs hidden in the body art, depending on the light. It was obvious by Atsushi's skin and eye shape that not all his ancestry was Japanese but he didn't have an accent and didn't appear to understand Izuku when he started muttering in English without meaning to.
"I'm not letting you pay for that," Atsushi scoffed when Izuku brought his items to checkout.
"O-Oh. Okay, then, I guess I'll find something else?" He was always extra hungry on weekends because they were the only days he had free enough to eat three meals. His high school lunches were spent on college homework, squirreled away where no-one could try to beat him up and take his books.
He must have grabbed too much, or maybe he shouldn't have tried to buy the last of that melon bread he liked. Izuku turned to look for something else.
"Ah? Like hell you will, brat!" Atsushi snapped.
"B-but –"
From an aisle over, a water bottle went sailing through the air and would have slammed into Izuku's face if he hadn't caught it in time.
He was trying not to blue screen when Atsushi bagged up his lunch. Then he forced the bag into Izuku's hands, dragged him away from the registry, and shoved him out the door. The young quirk analyst very nearly crashed into the pavement with how hard he was pushed.
"That's for tutoring my dumb brat yesterday. Fuck off and eat your food!" the man shouted, somehow managing to intone his thanks like an insult. "Go have fun today!"
With that said Atsushi slammed the door shut and left Izuku staring after him with a plastic bag in one hand and a bottled water in the other. It was almost half a minute before he also turned and started walking away, deciding there really wasn't anything he could do about his free meal other than enjoy it and thank Atsushi later.
Atsushi's corner store was the heart of the local yakuza network and a general information hub for some of the underground's goings on. People trusted him to keep it a neutral place and he enforced a well-respected no tolerance policy for blood and/or other 'bodily fluids' in his store.
"If you want to fight or fuck, do it in that piss's bar and playpen up the road!" Atsushi would say.
Since moving to Hosu and saving Atsushi's son, Bunko-kun, Izuku'd made a few real world QA customers. He suspected that some were various yakuza affiliates because it was Atsushi who had hooked him up with them. With all these contacts it was so much harder to keep his anonymity so he'd had to adopt an alias, one he'd stupidly named 'Deku.' It was lucky that Uraraka and Iida didn't live with the same crowd or Izuku would be sorely regretting his verbal slip when he'd introduced himself.
Atsushi's propensity for swearing reminded Izuku of Kacchan a little. On his bad days, when the pressures of attending multiple schools while working fulltime had him feeling lower than normal, Atsushi's voice would sometimes make him want to bolt. Atsushi always tried to be gentler, in his own way, when Izuku was having one of those days.
On his way to the mural he'd spent the last few weekends working on, the green haired analyst made a quick pitstop into a hardware store.
The date for the USJ attack had come and gone with no news headlines, leaving Izuku to suspect the information he'd provided for the underground heroes had been taken seriously.
Because he could never mind his own business, Izuku kept up with their general messages as often as he could – both through the HeroNet and the physical codes placed around at night. He restricted all his virtual messages to short codes and didn't answer clarifying questions. Luckily such discretion was common on HeroNet so his curtness and anonymity didn't raise any flags. It was a nice break from the chaos of his rising fame on other platforms. At least Yuki-san's former followers had lost their traction.
Shaking his ruminations away Izuku looked up at the spray paints and selected the colors he needed to replenish. He'd turned to line up at a self-checkout when he spotted an extremely tall, extremely gaunt, extremely familiar figure standing in the next aisle.
Izuku froze and stared, watching his hero icon fret over some nails and screws. He recognized the look of confusion on All Might's face as one he often saw on himself and moved before he meant to.
"Nails are better for st-structural joining and screws are b-better fasteners when you need, when you need grip strength," he said as if walking up to your idol and telling them what nails and screws were for was the most natural thing to do.
For a long silent moment they both looked at each other with equal measures of surprise.
Then when he realized what he'd just done, Izuku made a sound like a singing finch crashing into a window mid-song, gibbered a terrified apology, bowed enough times to make himself dizzy, and would have fled from the store with or without his things had he not been stopped by the hero's embarrassed chuckle.
"Is it really that obvious? I'm truly terrible when it comes to these things," the man smiled. Then All Might made a sound like a drowning bird and coughed up blood.
Stellar second introductions to the both of them, then.
Idol or not, Izuku dropped his bags and closed the distance between them with an instinctive energy. He reached out to steady All Might – the man who had single handedly won over 275 hero battles alone, saved millions of lives, and curbed yakuza groups all over Japan just by being alive – like the hero needed any help from a scrawny, quirkless, orphan with heart failure and no accomplishments to speak of whatsoever.
"O-o-o-o-okay, okay, uh– shit! Sit! I think you sh-should, you should s-s-sit!"
Way to rub salt in a wound, Izuku. Why would All Might need any help from you?
"My boy– my boy!" All Might tried, raising his voice just a little to be heard over Izuku's senseless twittering. Despite the blood on his lip he sounded bright, maybe even a little amused, "it's alright! I'm alright! Remember what I told you about last time?"
Izuku's thoughts ground to a halt and he twitched back a small step, suddenly afraid of what his favorite hero might say to him this time. He berated himself for being self-centered. All Might was the one with a mangled injury and here was quirkless Izuku feeling sorry for himself about being an emotional wreck. Still, guilt was all that kept him from backing up even further when he saw the way All Might's expression fell and his mouth opened.
Whatever All Might was about to say was cut off by the bellowing snarl that emanated from Izuku's stomach. He pressed his hands against his belly with a flush so bright it hardly left any blood to circulate through the rest of him.
An amused smile lit the man's face and, with a chuckle, he proposed, "shall we get lunch?"
There was a lot to be said for the way society changed so drastically within the decades of All Might's life. Years ago he could never have imagined how difficult things would become for quirkless children.
He'd always been a big supporter of the nonprofit organizations that were created to help families afford treatment for their quirkless children. Lights of Hope was one of his favorite charities – and also the most widespread in Japan – for helping orphans find forever homes because they didn't discriminate between kids without quirks and kids who had 'useless' quirks. They were one of only a few equal opportunity adoption programs.
Looking at the way these kids had to live, at the way their society scorned them…
Plainly put; All Might would never have survived to be All Might if he'd been born into the latest generation.
Which is exactly why he wished he could have given One for All to Midoriya Izuku.
Young Mirio was coming along well and took to the quirk as easily as Toshinori had when Nana had passed it to him. He was driven and had a kind heart. There was no doubt he'd be an excellent symbol of peace for the next generation.
Yet, there was something missing in Young Mirio that he couldn't quite place. It was almost as if the aspiring hero hesitated a little before acting. Maybe it was simply that Toshinori didn't feel a connection somehow, or, maybe it was because he'd seen Young Midoriya's heroic instincts firsthand. Whatever it was, it was eating him up.
There were cases of hafu people with anidiotropia who lived otherwise long, completely normal lives with the right kind of corrective surgery. Research suggested that the severity of heart failure in quirkless Japanese people was directly connected to the prevalence of their Japanese lineage. And by the looks of him, Young Midoriya had a little more than just Japanese ancestry. Toshinori wanted to believe that would give the boy a fighting chance at a long life. Young Midoriya deserved happiness and All Might felt secure in knowing he wouldn't find it if he became a hero.
All for One might've been dead, but that didn't stop Toshinori from thinking his old nemesis had had something to do with the rise of this unique form of heart failure in Japan's quirkless populace. From what Naomasa had said–
"Y-Yagi-san?" a meek voice cut through his concentration and he realized with a jolt that he'd been staring.
"Ah! Yes?" he tried to give Young Midoriya a reassuring smile but judging from the boy's expression it didn't help much. He was skittish in a way that worried Toshinori, always covered in bruises and plasters.
"Is it r-really-really ok t-to be here like this?" Young Midoriya asked, referring to the open picnic table they'd found at a nearby park, "and wh-why are-are-are you–"
With an irritated huff the boy slapped both palms against his cheeks and restarted while All Might waited patiently. "Wh-why are you all the way out, out here? There are better dep-department stores in Musutafu."
"A-ah, well, yes, there is," Toshinori chuckled nervously and scratched the back of his head, "but I happened to be exploring the area and I like little stores like that because they're usually much quieter. I'm trying to fix a shelf in my new home, you see. Aah, but I am a little uneducated when it comes to such things. Embarrassing, isn't it?" Toshinori definitely owed Gran Torino a drink or two. He must have said something that caught his old mentor's interest when he'd called with news about Mirio.
Either way Toshinori had been wanting to find Young Midoriya since the second incident with the sludge villain. He'd thought he'd finally get his chance when he saw him during the entrance exam – which had been baffling but no less impressive – but the kid was surprisingly slippery. If not for Gran Torino's love of scaring neighborhood children he might even have had to work up the courage to ask Eraserhead for help.
"Is it?" Young Midoriya asked, "s-shouldn't it be fine to be a little bad at th-th– be a little bad at things sometimes?" The boy looked down, one hand picking at the bandages on the other, "it's good that-that– it's good that there are, there are those kinds of p-p-people too. Keeps the w-world different."
"You're right," Toshinori couldn't help the smile on his face when Young Midoriya finished. What an amazing boy he is! "Your positivity is inspiring even to this old man," he praised and pointed at himself. But the shaky smile he got in return told him the boy didn't believe him.
There wasn't much in Izuku's life to look forward to sometimes, but he managed to make do with what he had.
People were generally accepting of him until they found out he was quirkless and unless he went around shoving his ID in their faces he could keep a low profile. Naturally, because he needed to use the debit card the Usoro's gave him and often had to show his ID as a result of that, there were some stores he couldn't enter. And that meant he was a little limited when it came to hanging out with Iida and Uraraka.
It probably made Izuku boring.
But, that was fine, he supposed. Interesting things still seemed to happen to him.
"Are you alright?" he asked the short mouse-man wearing yellow sneakers and a fitted suit. There was a large scar over one of his beady eyes and he looked at Izuku like he was almost surprised to see him there.
Izuku was well familiar with animal quirk experimentation and all the laws put into place to prevent it. The ethics of it was a hot debate around the world and restrictions were such that it was easier to perform tests on people than any other animal alive, with the exception of Drosophila flies.
Quirk research was still something that was desperately needed for humanity. In this modern age volunteers could offer their bodies for tightly regulated experimentation in exchange for money and lodging. A lot of low income and homeless people ended up in places like those.
Being quirkless, Izuku had never been qualified. His only similar option would be the black market because apparently 'genuine' quirklessness– as if such a thing as artificial quirklessness was possible– was highly sought after. Anidiotropic people went missing all the time and only superficial searches were ever entertained. There weren't exactly many of them left to look for.
And yet human trafficking was still on the rise in Tokyo lately.
"I am very well, thank you!" the little mouse-man answered brightly. "What about yourself? I see you've been drawing."
Izuku cringed, shuffling his feet around the crowd of spray cans and fiddled a little with the black and green respirator dangling around his neck. He sat down on the curb to take a break and eat when Mouse-man suddenly appeared. "S-sorry," he said into his soda can, "I know it is-isn't, it isn't very good but…"
"I hardly think so," Mouse-man squeaked and appraised the sunflowers Izuku had started detailing, "human art comes in many abstract forms so that everyone may enjoy it. Did one of the Sally House survivors ask you to do this? Why aren't you in school?"
A red flag went up in Izuku's head, his protective instincts flaring.
Today was a PE festival day that happened to overlap with a college exam he needed to be on university campus for so he'd gotten permission to pass his PE participation requirement.
"No. I'm doing it for fun. And I have permission to be here." Law enforcement didn't care about vandals in this part of town – especially vandalism on this specific building. Izuku met the creature's calculative gaze with one of his own. It was obvious that the large, amateur drawings of sunflowers and koi fish were specifically obscuring the infamous marker underneath. Not to mention Mouse-man was clearly fishing for personal information.
The Sally House on 8th street was known for its bloody history and had become the subject of many urban legends in the area. Some of its survivors still lived close enough to see the roof-side marker over the other buildings and children regularly walked by it on their way to school. In the decades since it'd been revealed as a rape house, the locals had repeatedly appealed to the city to have it demolished but were denied every time.
The four story brick townhouse had been left to rot and fall apart so Izuku had taken up fixing all the locks and barricades himself after learning about the situation from a commissioner. Now, he was working on making it look less like the kind of place you'd use to test your courage.
And as far as anyone sans a select few, none of the house's victims had survived. For the safety and privacy of those survivors, police on the case had deliberately lied to the public about it when the rape house was discovered.
Whether intentional or not, Mouse-man had just admitted to knowing something that made alarm bells ring in Izuku's head.
There were many things he could be wrong about in this situation, however, Mouse-man's quirk not the least of which. What if he was some kind of fanatic? A relative of the former owner? Or a reporter? It would hardly be the first time he saw one of those loitering around here. He couldn't have been a hero, he didn't hold himself like one.
"Hmm," Mouse-man's cheerful expression didn't change. The way he looked at Izuku made him feel like a test subject, which might have been ironic to someone else. He tightened his laces and checked his peripheries, running through groups who might affiliate themselves with a mouse-person.
Izuku tried not to go too crazy with his theories but it was a little hard, considering the circumstances. He wanted to ask if he was with the League but the risk of trying to make connections like that out loud could be bad if this person was with any kind of law enforcement.
He needed more information. No, wait. What did he know for certain about the person in front of him?
(1) White fur, small eyes, long tail (also furred). Prehensile? — better balance. Increased agility around sharp turns. (2) Scar over one eye. Possibly effects vision. Uncertain. (3) Short body. Bipedal — limited running capabilities. (4) Tetradactyl paws. Or would it be pentradactyl? (5) No thumb — must grip with claws (retracted). (6) Small eyes, nose, and ears…No whiskers? That makes no sense. Mouse? Bear? Cat? Wait. What? This guy has no physical prowess whatsoever!
"Well!" the little mouse-man suddenly said, popping up on the tips of his toes and raising a paw into the air like a little kid eager to be called on by the teacher, "it was a pleasure meeting you. Take care now!"
And then, just like that, the stranger left.
What was that about? Izuku wondered as he watched him go.
Aizawa Shota had a very strong feeling that Principal Nedzu knew more than he was letting on. It was partly because he usually knew more than he was letting on but also because of the way his patrol route had been changed to include the same area he kept seeing that quirkless kid.
Officially, Eraserhead was on the lookout for the undercover pro who'd tipped them off about the League of Villains' invasion plans. It was because of this person that the confrontation had been so subtly avoided. They weren't likely to stop there, however, and he had no intention of letting his class become All Might's collateral. According to Detective Tsukauchi, the League was not a new group but had been quiet after a certain event twenty years ago. They'd only recently begun to mobilize.
Unofficially, Eraserhead was keeping a close eye on Midoriya Izuku.
At first he'd suspected the kid was somehow involved with their mysterious informant. In the weeks since meeting him Shota had noticed the boy often used subterranean tunnels and secret passageways, ones not even a practiced underground pro like himself knew about, just to get home at night. The kid clearly knew he was being followed. Whether he knew Eraserhead was following him, however, was up for debate. He seemed a little too good at escaping his watch to have just started, though. Not to mention he'd known who Eraserhead was. In Shota's professional experience there were only two kinds of people who could identify him like that: fanboys and criminals.
The hero's suspicion that Midoriya was working with an undercover informant had been derailed after a bit of research, however, confirming Midoriya was indeed anidiotropic. No undercover hero would have any use for a quirkless kid, even if their intelligence was above average for their age group, and villains hardly ever used them for anything more than expendable cannon fodder. The boy was too skittish, too traumatized. Whatever he was doing, assuming he was doing anything at all, he was doing it alone.
Looking at the records of negligence and abuse Midoriya Izuku had suffered whilst he was bounced around the system angered Aizawa because he knew no-one could take any preventative action against it – not so long as Yoshihide Abe, a tyrannical anti-quirkless conservative, was Japan's prime minister. To realize there were no better resources for this kid was completely and utterly frustrating. This was why so many anidiotropic teens in Tokyo turned to petty crime and substance abuse to support themselves.
Speaking of, Midoriya was oddly healthy for someone with his condition. The more Aizawa followed him the more he suspected the kid was a user. Even if his biological parents had outfitted him with one of the newest pacemakers he would still need some medication. There was no way someone with a failing heart could move as freely as Midoriya without taking drugs.
That's what he'd thought until another chance encounter made Shota change his mind. It was well past the hour he'd usually see Midoriya in the streets when he spotted a familiar head of green curls parked in the lowlight of a dirty alleyway. After a quick periphery scan he dropped down in front of the boy to check on him.
"Heh, h-hey," Midoriya greeted breathlessly, back to the wall and legs splayed out in front of him. He was sweating and shaking, body slumped like he couldn't hold his own weight. "I'll. Guh. Go s-soon. J-juss'. Need. A min. Ow," he whined and grabbed his head. Did he really think he was in the way?
With a heavy sigh, Aizawa once more checked his surroundings before deciding to crouch down in front of the exhausted kid.
"What happened."
For a long while Midoriya didn't reply. He just looked at the pro dazedly and tried to regain control of his breathing. Shota was about to repeat himself when the boy finally responded.
"Ss-sorry. My ears. Ringing. Can't hear. You well."
Furrowing his brow in concern, Aizawa turned towards the boy's yellow backpack and grabbed a clear water bottle from a side-pouch. But, before he could hand it over he noticed a familiar name scratched into its surface. His already present frown deepened.
"A-ah. 's Kacchan's." Midoriya panted weakly, a wistful smile on his face. "G-gave it. 't me. Borrowing."
Aizawa could only blink in surprise at the childish nickname just given to his most explosive and bratty student. A wheeze from the quirkless orphan brought his focus back and, uncapping the bottle, he handed it to him.
Midoriya drank from it shakily, taking slow sips.
"Are you having an episode?" Aizawa asked carefully and inclined his head at Midoriya's hand. He'd been pawing at his chest since shortly after the hero's arrival. Keenly aware that further stress would worsen his condition, Eraserhead had kept quiet about it until it looked like he was improving.
"Mm," he answered after a long while, blinking slowly.
"How are your ears?"
"B-better."
"Good. Look at me, kid…" No visual signs to indicate use of opioids or methamphetamines, he thought after a quick scrutiny of Midoriya's eyes and face. Just to be sure he asked, "did you take anything?"
"No. 'm broke. Sorry."
"That's ok. Tell me your name."
"M-midoriya." The boy sagged against the wall like a wet scarecrow. Poor kid looked like he'd been struggling for a while. His hooded eyes fluttered as he fought to stay awake. Up close it was obvious he hadn't been getting enough sleep. Midoriya looked a little thinner than he'd last seen him, too.
"Don't fall asleep," Aizawa told him. He took Midoriya's hand and pressed his fingers into his wrist. "Easy," he soothed when the boy flinched at the contact.
Too fast, he concluded and sighed, wishing he could do more. Better keep him awake until it stabilizes. "Midoriya, what is 2 x 2?"
Thankfully, the boy already seemed familiar with this line of questioning and answered correctly. As his condition improved, Aizawa gave him more and more difficult equations until he was strong enough to lean forward and rub the exhaustion away from his eyes.
"Th-thank you, sensei," he said, "I'm sorry to, to have troubled you again." When Aizawa didn't respond Midoriya looked up at him with weary green eyes.
"It's three in the morning. Why are you out here, kid?" Shota asked. For a tense moment Midoriya scanned his face as if he was searching for something, as if he doubted the pro hero in front of him actually cared.
His expression was tight when he answered; "The neighbors below me were sm-smoking weed again. I needed some fresh air. Guess I didn't w-wake up fast enough."
Eraserhead's eyes narrowed and he almost grinned.
That was something he could do about.
Izuku did not come programmed to handle situations like these.
He was a background character at best.
Sure, weird and stressful shit happened to him but that didn't make him important enough for things like this.
And, yeah, ok, heroes were literally paid to help people but that didn't mean anything to him specifically? Not usually. Like, the best heroes were the ones that generally ignored him.
No, ok, wait. What he meant by that was that heroes could be bad people too – not that Eraserhead was a bad person, just that –
"–Kid."
"Yes!" Izuku flinched at the volume of his own voice and stopped trying to make his messy apartment somehow more presentable. "I was mumbling, wasn't I," he hardly needed to ask at this point. His propensity for it was always worse after one of his arrythmia episodes.
The pro hero didn't reply, instead looking down past his capture weapon at the short boy with an unimpressed expression. It was obvious what he wanted to know the moment he helped Izuku back into his apartment.
Izuku ducked his head into the little cove formed by his hunched shoulders, "my parents are on a long business trip in America so they're not here. But they send me money every month." The UA teacher had probably already done some research on him so if he didn't see any dishonesty then that meant the Usoro's never reported their abandonment. They were probably still receiving a stipend, too.
"What exactly are you spending the money on, kid?" Eraserhead sounded exasperated, appearing to assume they were giving him enough as he looked around Izuku's apartment. It wasn't much. He couldn't really afford proper furniture so all he had was a lumpy futon, a wobbly table, creaky chair, and some thin cushions to sit on. Thank god the apartment had come with its own refrigerator.
Still, the question confused him so he couldn't help but respond with one of his own; "U-utility bills? A-and tuition." What else, other than food, would he spend his money on? Games? He didn't have a console. The best thing he had was an outdated laptop.
Eraserhead hummed and glanced around the shoddy apartment again, "anyone else with weed in the complex that you know of?"
"I don't, don't think so."
"Good. Tell someone if you–" the man ground to a halt with an irritated scowl when he remembered that Izuku was quirkless and therefore rather cut-off from the usual resources. The reminder that he couldn't just make a simple police report like everyone else made him feel a little sad and lost on the pro's behalf.
It was frustrating when you couldn't do anything to help someone, after all, and Eraserhead was probably just trying to get on with his job.
"I will," the analyst lied with the most convincing smile he could muster, "you don't need to worry about me. I'll be ok. I've–I've got people who can look af-after me."
For a very long time all Eraserhead did was look at him with the same deadpan expression as always. Eventually he grabbed a pen and wrote something in the open notebook on Izuku's kitchen counter.
"If you give this number to anyone I will hunt you down myself, got it?" he warned and handed it to the analyst.
"O-ok?" Izuku agreed and took the notebook.
"Do not text or call for help unless it's an emergency. If you need advice, ask someone else. Stay out of trouble." That said, the man turned to the door and saw himself out before Izuku could do anything but promise him he would.
When the analyst added Eraserhead's phone number to his list of contacts he left it unlabeled and flushed the paper it had been written on, just in case the LOV really did still have their eyes on him.
Lately, he got the feeling that it wasn't just the League watching him anymore. The letter he'd received from the Usoro's with this month's funds slid out of the notebook and landed face up, seeming to stare back at him.
Maybe it was simply paranoia but Izuku thought their handwriting had changed recently…
Once, a year or two after Deku's mom had died, the upperclassmen had decided to play a cruel prank on him.
Katsuki had known about it, of course. He'd been friends with some of them.
Hell, he had helped them.
There hadn't been anything wrong with it at the time. Not at first.
All they'd done was put a pigeon in a box and left it on Deku's desk.
He and Deku had been on cleaning duty that afternoon so, like anyone else who had to share cleaning duty with the creepy idiot, he'd ditched. Deku was pretty good at cleaning by himself, even if it took him longer.
Katsuki had realized he'd left something behind when he was halfway home so he'd had to go back.
The classroom had hardly looked cleaner when he'd returned. If not for the sight that met him when he'd kicked open the sliding door he might've blown up about it. He couldn't have Deku's negligence ruining his spotless reputation, after all.
What Katsuki hadn't realized when he'd put the box on Deku's desk was that the pigeon inside it wasn't dead yet. He also hadn't realized what had been done to it.
In the blazing orange light of the setting sun Izuku had sat at his desk with a bird bleeding to death on his desk. The animal had fluttered it's wings, head swiveling around to see Katsuki. It's beak had been gaping open as it gasped in silent pain and fear, eyes wide and wild. Something about it had struck him as uncomfortably human.
Deku hadn't said anything to him. He'd just looked at Katsuki, who stood there staring back in disgust.
The idiot upperclassmen hadn't told him they'd intended to cut off the birds legs.
In that moment, the infuriatingly impervious Deku — the idiot that could smile when he cried and laugh at things that weren't funny; the idiot who kept getting up no matter how many times he was pushed to the ground; the insufferable idiot who wouldn't get out of Katsuki's life no matter what he did to him —
Fr/ac/tu\r/ed.
.
This suddenly didn't feel like a memory anymore. In fact, none of it did, not even from the beginning.
.
Deku did nothing.
Deku said nothing.
But when the bird was dead and he spoke for the first time his voice echoed and his body caught the light like it was made of mist as he stood.
"Don't worry, Kacchan. I'll go home now, too."
And then, before the words could process, a large black shape sped past the window behind Deku. A dark, cloying sense of dread gripped Katsuki's heart in the split femtosecond he spent blinking. It came with a kind of fear, the kind that said something bad was happening right in front of you while you weren't looking.
When he'd opened his eyes Deku was gone and Katsuki needed to get to the window. He was slowed down by the suddenly overwhelming amount of desks in his path. There were more in that classroom than in the whole school and he wondered, irritated, how Deku had managed to get so many inside. Suddenly, he could hear their classmates talking, see them moving around like it was an average day and nothing out of the ordinary was happening.
As his anger mounted, Katsuki's movements became more restricted, the obstacles in his path heavier. He couldn't physically lift himself over and walk across the desks. It felt like his limbs were being restrained to a certain height and motion.
Sensory overload bore down on him as the voices around him escalated into uproarious laughter, his old friends – and even some of the heroes who had watched a slime villain try to suffocate him – clapping him on the back and jeering at Deku and praising Katsuki for a job well-done.
"You've finally done it! That annoying freak is finally gone! You're a real fucking hero now, aren't you, Katsuki-sama!"
Katsuki was pushed by an urgency that overcame everything else. The moment he crashed into the windowsill, whiplashed like he'd run full speed without slowing down, everything went silent and all the desks disappeared.
The pressure on Katsuki's chest remained, only popping off to be replaced with something else when he saw Izuku's body bleeding out on the ground below. Both of his legs were gone. And his skull was smashed in. Even though he was dead, he just kept bleeding.
"If you wanna be a hero so bad, there's actually a really good way," a disturbingly familiar voice whispered directly above him. Snapping his attention upwards he found a copy of his middle-school-self hovering over him with a victorious smile.
ʇlɘƨɿυoγ lliʞ
"If you believe they're holding your quirk over in the next world…" Katsuki jerked his head back down to the graphic corpse of his once childhood friend, a silent scream building in his throat.
ʇlɘƨɿυoγ lliʞ
"You should just dive off the rooftop!"
Katsuki woke with a broken gasp, surging into a sitting position and shaking in a cold sweat. It took a few glances around his room and several breathless seconds to realize it'd been a dream.
It'd all been a dream.
Just a dream.
A really fucked up dream.
He looked down at the calluses on his sweaty palms, trying not to think about the disturbingly vivid image of Deku's crumpled body or the way Katsuki's insides burned with something that felt like guilt.
"That fucking shit-nerd."
In the darkness of Katsuki Bakugou's bedroom the sparks squeezed from his fists were blinding.
"Oy! What the fuck are you doing up there, brat?!"
Izuku jerked awake, knocking his foot against the broken AC generator he'd apparently fallen asleep on. He'd gone a little too hard on his evening work out, judging by how late it'd gotten. With a huge yawn he stretched, satisfied by the sound of popping and momentary pain relief when he cracked the scarred knuckles on his bad hand. Abandoned construction sites formed perfect parkour jungle gyms for the compact little analyst, and favored secret meetings by villains and criminals.
"You listening, you piece of shit?! Haah?! You one of Uncle's boys?"
Peering over the edge of the unit, Izuku blinked owlishly at a pair of villains on the ground, looking directly at him. One muttered something about a 'fucking coward' and started to climb, leaping quickly from beam to beam like a jumping spider.
"Uwah, what a neat quirk!" Izuku said, unaware he'd spoken out loud, and stood with a little wobble.
"You can tell that bastard– " buzzing insect wings burst out of the short person's back and they shot off the ground towards him, "–the deal is off!"
"Oop!" Izuku squeaked and sprung from the AC unit to a cantilever overhang, swinging himself up and over onto the structural steel netting of the weathered platform. It poked out from crumbling concrete and the uneven surface made the spider-like villain slip and fall. The villain recovered quickly by grabbing onto a bit of vertical bracing while his winged teammate lunged for Izuku.
Moving quickly he scuttled across an unstable ladder, bridging the gap between the degraded platform behind him and a series of high-strength cables. The ladder slipped before he could close the distance and the flying villain flew into the cables at high speed, delicate wings tangling and ripping.
It was the nature of parkour to adapt to your surroundings as they changed and drive the momentum of your failure into the success of the next jump. Twisting away from the second villain's oncoming strike like a cat, Izuku landed with a shoulder roll across a slanted metal sheet, sliding down it and into the cleft it formed with another. He was dropped into an old stairwell and he didn't stop to look for his chasers before he continued.
Wind rushed through the well, buffeting his face and making his eyes water when he braced a hand on the concrete rail and leapt over it at an angle that sent him sailing over to the opposite side of the stairs a flight down from him. His descent was fast and controlled and he reached the bottom six stories later with another shoulder roll, slapping his hands against the ground to distribute his kinetic force more evenly and save himself from injury.
By the time the two villains reached the top of the stairwell, Izuku had already slipped into a chute and disappeared underground.
Still, he didn't look back and didn't stop until his lungs cried for mercy and his heart threatened to beat him to death with the belt of his own diaphragm. Izuku tucked himself away under a platform of billets, crawling through a narrow gap in the tubes of a hull core structure and onto the cardboard bed he'd laid down years ago. Gulping for air and sweating in the humid little box space he calmed his racing heart.
Izuku's cheeks ached but he couldn't quite stop the smile. There was nothing quite like the liberating freedom of running around in his own element after dark, with or without being chased by villains.
Few laws protected him from the quirkist extremists that prowled the streets when the sun was up. Sure, Izuku would drop everything at a moment's notice if it meant he could protect someone but it was sometimes at the cost of a huge social risk. Witnesses could be around to film and point fingers at the quirkless kid 'starting' fights –even though Izuku never threw the first punch and almost never hit back. When Izuku did fight back it was with his dad's spirit and when he ran it was with his mother's love.
The analyst didn't think of himself as a talented person by any means, but parkour was the one real thing he could admit to being good at. He liked running. He loved running. But–
A groan dragged itself out of his throat and he tossed his head back in pain. He fisted the shirt over his heart and focused on breathing.
–But he may have to stop soon if he wanted to live long enough to get his degree and make mom happy.
Chapter triggers: Animal cruelty, suicide, blood, drug mention.
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