Down the Rabbit Hole
Bleed for Each Other
Two weeks is a long time in his book to not see his angel. But they had been a busy two weeks, flying from Japan to America, dealing with some mob and smuggling elements there, ironically a majority of their wants were related to assurances, and increases in electronics smuggling.
Not exactly what he thought he would be doing, but he managed the trade, negotiated out the terms between the sailors and the suppliers.
Then he was back on a plan, passing through Osaka to deal with a turf war that was upsetting his information network. Two ICU patients later and a nice subtle promise he'd dismantle and disembody every member of both gangs if they so much as winked an any of his other informants, or caused that kind of trouble in his city again, and he'd strolled out with two new clients.
Clients being a loose term (read- forced partners or blackmailed).
Then he was back in Tokyo, meeting Finch.
Finch was the handler for most of his smuggling, both of exotic goods, and other support items stolen, pirated, or otherwise from hero agencies and heroes themselves.
It wasn't exactly something that made Izuku happy to be involved in, but it didn't hurt anyone if he helped direct, clear the shipments and get them through customs.
It certainly didn't hurt the heroes after all.
One grungy meeting place and two bowls of questionable ramen later, he'd talked with Finch, moved a shipment out of an impending hero investigation (Creati's been taking an interest in black market support items), and buried some of his more concerning purchases under a mound of paperwork.
Then he called a friend on the way to his dead drop in Mustafu.
"Lemillion."
"Rabbit." Mirio's voice isn't quite harsh, but it's not friendly either. "What's this call about?"
"Social. How's Eri-chan?"
There's a hesitation, there always is when Izuku asks about the child. After all, Izuku is the one that brought him to Lemillion, or at least to his attention. Without that, and some information Izuku snuck into their files, there might not have been a certain operation.
On the other hand, Sir Nighteye might not have died either but. Somethings are unpreventable.
"She's doing well. Starting grade-school, and her quirk-control is getting better and better each day."
"Does she still ask about uncle Rabbit?"
Mirio huffs on the other end of the phone. "Frequently. You should see her."
"You should not threaten to arrest me everytime I do, Mr. Number #2 Hero. Did you know you were officially nominated for most eligible bachelor hero last month?"
"You should reconsider your life choices. And yes. I have a feeling that was your doing, since it wasn't from my agency."
"You wound me." Izuku hums, rounding the corner on the street. His dead drop should be in the mailbox with the flag. "Why so cruel?"
"Why do you call?"
"You can't expect me to help facilitate the rescue of a child like Eri-chan and not check in on her then and again?"
"And send her presents every other month? On Christmas? Flowers on Valentines? Really Rabbit?"
He shrugs, humming into the phone. "Deal with it." He decides, "You didn't have to adopt her."
"You didn't have to push the paperwork through. And yes, I realize what should have taken a year took two months."
"Convenient what greasing a few palms can do." He chirps, spotting the mailbox in question, the little red flag standing up. And oddity in the nearly abandoned district. "Tell you what. I have information on a freight coming in tomorrow, some girls that are supposed to be shipped up to Osaka this evening. I'll trade you that, for an hour with Eri-chan."
"Not going to bargain with me for time with Uravity?"
He stills, slowing to a walk a pace away from his drop. "What do you know about that?" He hisses into the receiver.
"Woah woah woah Rabbit." Mirio laughs, "I was just teasing." He pauses, "are you actually interested in her? Or is she just another little pawn in one of your schemes like me?"
He scoffs, taking the next step and wrenching open the mailbox. "I'd sell your ass in a heartbeat if it meant making her happy."
"Didn't answer my question." Mirio sing-songs back. Then his voice hardens again. "Because if you hurt her…"
"If I hurt her?" Izuku snarls into the phone. "You don-'
He feels more than sees attack coming, whipping around just as the black bag is draped over his head. Then something smashes into his ribs. Distantly he hears his phone clatter to the ground, then shatter under a boot.
Shit.
A cord wraps around his neck, his fingers claw at it, pulling at the edges, but he can't be sure if the person strangling him is in front, or behind.
He kicks, flails, struggles against the binding, mouth sucking in air, but none of it reaching his lungs.
Consciousness returns to him, but the only reason he can be sure of that is because of the blistering headache that accompanies it. The black canvas bag is still draped over his head, but it's accented by the weight of chains around his chest, the not-so-unfamiliar tightness on his wrists.
Bound to a chair.
He rolls his eyes.
One of his favorite past times.
Great.
He shifts, cracking his neck as his fingers flex, feeling and searching for information about his captivity.
Zip ties, arms behind his back. They're near the lock on the chain. Chain around his body.
He shifts his feet, feels the gentle tug of zip ties at his ankles.
He cocks an eyebrow. Who uses zip ties for his limbs but a chain to keep him to the chair?
Someone that only plans to use it temporarily. It's a stalling, impermanent and set there because the captor is either dead or will soon be released.
"Figured out your situation yet Rabbit?"
The voice is hard and rough, like gravel smoothed over with shards of glass. But he recognizes it, because it's the man he deals with, and one that's a little more than familiar with him.
"Papa Damajio." He greets, "interesting meeting you've called me here for." He flexes his wrists, listening to the room.
"Just like the first one eh?" The man laughs, though it sounds more like a sputtering steam engine than something human. "Jokes aside. You know why you're here."
"Do I though?" He quips, unable to help himself.
The pipe (it rings when it hits him) tells him that either Dimajio or one of his henchmen didn't find that as amusing as he did.
He coughs, swallowing with some difficulty. He cracks his neck again after, straightening up in the chair with some difficulty.
"Uravity." He concludes.
"Glad to see that knocked some sense into your thick skull." Dimajio growls, but the position of the voice hasn't shifted. Which means there was at least one other goon in the room. "What are you doing hanging out with her like?"
"Good for business." He replies, smooth and steady.
The pipe hits his gut again, and he grimaces.
"I doubt you'd buy I'm trying to get laid."
The pipe taps the side of the chair threateningly.
He rolls his eyes. "How about I'm interested in her. Sound fair?"
"Depends on what interesting does for our business. We noticed you tagged along to her drug bust recently. You cracking down on our gig?"
He can hear Dimajio move, leather shoes crunching the dirt on the floor as he walks around. Slowly making his way around from the right to the left.
Was there a door on his right, or just a chair that Dimajio had been waiting in?
"We both know those hits had nothing to do with you. If anything, they were competition. I tipped her off to that shipment. They were smuggling in drugs and girls from India, and you know how I feel about that kind of business."
"Adamantly opposed." Dimajio agreed. "Alright. Still doesn't explain why you're hanging around the broad." He stops, feet shifting sharply as he turns to face him.
Izuku grits his teeth, letting a mask of calm bleed into his expression. Broad. He'd fucking rip the man limb from limb if he called Uraraka anything dirty. He'd repaint Main Street red dragging him from one end to the other. He'd hang him up from the Tokyo tower by his own intestines. He'd-
"Don't call her that." His voice is smooth, but icy this time. "She's respectable. Which is more than a lot of heroes can say these days."
The shift is noticeable. From mild tension to animosity.
Blood lust scenting the air like a putrid fish dumped into a shark tank.
"You siding with the heroes now?"
"Depends, you cutting me out?" Izuku replies.
"You're the one in the chair, I'm the one with the five other thugs and a gun pointed at your head."
"That would almost be threatening if you weren't too much of a bitch to import guns."
The charging of a handgun, the semi-familiar raking of the slide and the cool feel of a barrel make Izuku reevaluate his snark.
"Those are new. Didn't get them through me."
There were other less reputable supplier however…
"Didn't have to." Dimajio snarls. "You wouldn't sell what we wanted anyway."
He flexes, feeling the zipties on his wrists, wracking his brain. Dimajio had mentioned expanding territory, increasing firepower in two of his earlier meetings in the year. Izuku had countered by saying he could negotiate something with the rival gangs, to keep it nice and bloodless.
Dimajio hadn't look impressed, but tabled the matter for another time.
Their last meeting, it hadn't been brought up at all.
Now he knew why.
"Didn't tell me you wanted handguns. I figured you wanted automatics. And I prefer not to sell those to the mob and yakuza." Izuku replies, humming softly at the end of his sentence.
He flexed his wrist, feeling the file slide down his forearm and into his palm.
"Boss." A voice behind him.
Shit.
He slashes through the zip tie on his wrists, reaching around and jamming it into his feet, frantic for the tie there.
Four sets of hands clasp over his arms, heaving him back up. Another pair rips the bag off his head, letting his consider Papa Dimajio glowering at him over a mostly finished cigar.
The room is a derelict warehouse. They've done meetings before here, but it's been cleared out of both the table, and the usual crates of good that occupy it. Not a good sign. Dimajio is front and center, a foot away from him, and looking completely in control.
Izuku glances around the room, absorbing as much as he can. Filing it away.
Pipes on the wall. Steam lines. Gauges are empty. Useless. Chain around his body. Lock in the back. Hands restrained. Useless. Four thugs in the room, one bruiser with a pipe. Dimajio with the pistol- still leveled at him- training with said weapon is unknown. Door is indeed on the right. Dimajio must have been waiting there.
"Understand your situation now?" Dimajio.
He focuses on the mob boss, on the pristine suit that looks freshly laundered and pressed. On the slight stretch it has around the stomach, at the leisurely plumpness appearing in the man's limbs. Not quite in shape, not quite out of it either.
"Do you understand how to operate that thing?" Izuku growls back.
Dimajio shifts, all smug satisfaction as he angles the gun up to the roof. He squeezes the trigger. It's thunder in a contained space, and the noise startles all of them.
Well.
Nearly all of them.
Izuku heaves as the thugs flinch, throwing his body out of their grip and across the room.
The chair comes with him, given that it's lashed to his body, but at the moment, it's what he can get. The zip tie on his right leg snaps free, the file dropping to the floor, but his hands close around Dimajio's throat instead of it.
They topple over in a heap, and Izuku rolls, pinning Dimajio's hands down, prying the gun from his hands. Then he's up, staggering for the door.
He doesn't make it. He wasn't planning to.
A hand wraps around the chair, slamming it back down to the ground, and Izuku with it. His left leg pops free, momentum tearing it away from the chair. Finally.
But his plans were distraction. Sleight of hand.
He thumbs the side button, drops the magazine a hair and rakes the slide. A bullet tumbles out before he has it torn from his hands. Back to Dimajio's.
With the chamber empty, and all signs pointing to it not being.
The mob boss is seething, hissing out angry breathes between his teeth as he glares at him.
"You pissed me off for the last time you stupid fucking Rabbit."
Izuku grins, hands falling into his lap, thumbing over the chain. "Don't get cocky. A gun isn't everything in a fight."
Dimajio levels the weapon at him, even as Izuku bundles up the chains, moves his feet slightly.
He really hopes no one thought to wrap the chain around the base of the chair.
Dimajio squeezes the trigger.
The firing pin clicks, a soft plink where there should have been thunder and death. Dimajio jerks, frowning as he examines the weapon.
"Shouldn't have bought cheap shit." Izuku snarks, "I mean, you don't skimp on what you need to work. Example," he tugs at the chain around his chest. "You need this to restrain me, so you made sure to get a heavy duty industrial chain. Nice thick steel, no defects." He wraps his hands around the coils and heaves, and the chains sweep over his head, freeing him from their confines.
Thank god someone is an idiot.
The chains pile up in Izuku's lap, but his hands are already on the lock, playing with it as he sits, calm and collected as Dimajio fumbles with the gun.
The thugs are stuck between wanting to beat him up, and watching their boss fumble with the gun.
"Here here here." Izuku cautions. "In America they have a method for fixing jams.."
Dimajio freezes, glancing at the five other men in the room. Then back to Rabbit. Then to the chains in his lap that Izuku is freely playing with.
"Tap the magazine." Isuku instructs, jerking his head at Dimajio.
The mob boss does so, and Izuku's picks slide into his hand with the sound.
"Now rack the magazine." He instructs, tilting his hands as the teeth of his two pick find the key hole.
He only has a couple seconds.
But it's a simple padlock.
It's a rough movement, but it's done, the magazine slide raked back, scraping the next bullet off the top of the magazine and into the chamber. The lock clicks open and Izuku shifts it, clicking it back over one chain and not the other.
"And bang." Izuku finishes.
He launches himself from the seat, chain sweeping out behind him as Dimajio fires.
The bullet pings off the metal chair, and the chain sweeps around, coiling around the man's hands as Izuku jerks it tight.
He fumbles it, dropping it to the floor as Izuku steps forward. The chain is forgotten, left to dangle for a moment as he swings his legs around, a left roundhouse that topples Dimajio to the floor, holding his stomach as his back slaps against the concrete.
"Boss!"
The chain snaps back out, skating along the ground to clear a path behind him as he dances back, away from Dimajio, the gun, and more importantly, the goons.
None of them go for the weapon, either deciding that they don't need it (lucky him) or it's too cumbersome for their quirks.
He recognizes them though. Knows their Quirks, their hobbies.
"Ken, you like living with your daughter, right?" He tries, and the red head with scales covering his arms hesitates. "I'd hate to take that away."
"Otsuka, I know you're real happy sampling Dimajio's stash. If I break this up, you'll have to find a new supply." He knows Otsuka is a pain, being able to turn his bones into swords, he's not someone Izuku wants to fight.
Dimajio coughs and jerks.
Izuku takes a step back. Towards the wall.
The door is over Dimajio's shoulder. The right wall. He needs to get there.
"Get him. And nothing will ever happen to you idiots!" Dimajio coughs.
Fire springs free from the third man, Kazzi's mouth, painting the floor between him and the door in orange flames. Izuku swings the chain, and the man ducks, letting it miss and circle back to him.
"Let's settle down, have a nice chat about this." Izuku reasons. "No need for this to end in me braining you all."
"Lot of talk from a kid whose fucking Quirk is analysis." Dimajio staggers to his feet, winching as he rubs his stomach.
"Fuck you," Izuku replies. "Potency isn't exactly an effective Quirk either."
Fantastic in the drug business where he can refine drugs. But not so much in combat.
Dimajio laughs, cold and cruel as he staggers back to the door. He rests against the wall, jerking his head towards him. "Get him boys." And then he's out, ducking out the door like the spoiled coward he is.
"Fuck." Izuku curses, glancing between the flames and the door.
"Come on Rabbit." Kazzi crows. "Make it easy for us. Put the chain down."
He pauses, glancing between all of them.
They're punks. Young and gullible, taken in by Dimajio's bluster and the thought of a mafia family. It's understandable. It even tempted him for a bit, but underneath all the sheen and shine are bad intentions, gunpowder and blood.
Izuku swings the chain, jerking it back as Kazzi and the other two advance.
He's running short on tricks. He's running short on time.
He glances at the wall behind him. Rusted sheet metal, nothing he can break through. But…
"Hey Ken, you fat fuck." Izuku snarls. "You going to loiter in the back like the little bitch you are? You want to keep your daughter safe but can't even kill a near Quirkless informant? I thought you had thick skin as a quirk!"
The man jerks, blinks owlishly before roaring out in rage, rushing forward into a charge.
Izuku sidesteps, chain going slack as he lets it slide to the ground. He waits a half beat, letting Ken cover the distance before he flicks the chain, wrapping it around the man's ankle and jerking it tight.
He stumbles and falls. Momentum and size give potency to mass, and the man slams into the wall, and the rusted steel groans and protests the damage.
"Careful!" He laughs.
Ken groans, staggering away as Izuku rips the chain free from his leg, sweeping it back at Kazzi.
Fire engulfs the space in between, blinding him. He doesn't need his sight for his next attack though, and so he soldiers through it, putting his back to the blaze as he whips the chain up and back down.
The fire cuts off abruptly as the chain- the lock attached at the end- smashes into Kazzi's head. The man drops to the floor with a thump. Izuku jerks the chain back, frantically coiling it around one arm as he skirts around the other four.
Ken is starting to recover, shaking his head and staggering away from the wall.
His eyes flicker to the gun.
Someone gets wise.
Sort of.
They go for the gun, and in a flash, the chain is lashing out, knocking it away. They chase after it without a thought, and Izuku uses that break in focus, dashing to the door as he flings the chain back at the other two.
He makes it this time.
He bursts through the door and out into the fading sunlight. He recognizes the buildings, recognizes the layout, knows he's in trouble.
Izuku feels it before he hears it.
A burning shard of solid heat lancing through his shoulder, and muffled bang as the bullet hits the wall behind him and goes through.
He can't help it.
He drops to the ground, mouth open, lips gasping for air, lungs unable to do more than seizure through the pain.
Shit.
Shit.
Damn.
He's been shot.
He can feel it, through the blinding pain in his shoulder, the muted heat as blood seeps into his shirt, pouring out the back and soaking into the concrete.
He forces his body to move, forces it to start moving. Because if not he's really a dead man. Dead in so many ways that don't matter but so many other ways that do.
He rolls, wedging his arms under his body and shoving himself up to his feet.
Another bullet, pings off the concrete to his left.
He can hear shouting inside the building.
Ah. So those goods didn't know about the sniper.
That at least kept them out of the mix.
He rushes to his feet, adrenaline lending his body speed where pain muddles it. Another shot, it pings off the build edge as he slides around it. He's behind cover now. But he still can't rest.
Izuku shakes his head. "Gunshot wound. Needs pressure. Stop the bleeding. No massive spurts, so not an artery. Low pressure." He shakes his head. "Houses."
He flips through his memory but comes up blank.
He stays in hotel rooms or just on the move when he's in Mustafu. He never has a singular residence in the area. Only reason he started hanging around was Uravity.
Uravity.
Her agency.
But the sun is setting. She'd be going home, and there's no guarantee anyone would be working.
He'd be dead by the time someone got to him.
Which means the other option.
He bites his tongue, shoves the thought of getting flowers out of his head because, flowers aren't going to help your bleeding heart if your dead from blood loss.
He eases his shaking knees to a walk.
And then when he's cleared the edge of the building, a run.
He's down the street, lungs burning up, barely stable in his rhythm. But he can do it.
He can make it.
He hears it this time.
The crack of a gun, the rolling thunder a rifle of that caliber creates.
Then he feels it, like a fist slammed into his side.
He takes it, feels it punch through just above his hip, spins instead of falls as it rips out the back.
He staggers, flailing hands to keep him steady.
And God does it hurt. But he has to keep moving.
He ducks into an alley. Runs through it and forces himself to climb the chain link fence, all the while biting his lip because it's so painful to move his legs.
Painful like Kacchan leaving burns on his arm.
Painful like the fall.
Painful like broken bones and ICU's.
Painful like hospital bills piling up, one after the other.
Painful like a funeral that shouldn't have happened but did anyway.
Painful like moving on.
Painful like wondering if his mom was proud of him, instead of knowing.
Painful like hoping he'd have a shot with a woman that was so much better than he would ever be.
Painful like running and running and running down street after street, down alley after alley hoping he had gotten away.
Painful like staggering to a stop in front of a door number he'd seen on paper but never really knew if it existed in person.
He drops to his knees, the heat, the cold, the feeling bleeding out of his limbs. He didn't realize it until now, but his fingers are numb.
His feet are fuzzy, a pulsing pain in his ankle.
He slumps against the door, closes his eyes against it as his vision shakes and snaps closed and open again.
He hopes she's home.
He hopes she'll help.
He hopes she knows he wanted to do this with flowers and wine and just different all together.
He hopes.
He hopes.
God he hopes this will work out.