Instinct

Izuku Midoriya was a damaged individual. He was entirely aware of this, of course. His classmates and peers would never let him forget it. Every Thursday afternoon he went to spend an hour with a counsellor who would spend approximately an hour reassuring him that he was in fact still damaged, and every time he looked in the mirror he could see himself in all his damaged glory. Hell, every time he spoke he could hear the damage in his persistent third-person perspective and slower cadence. He couldn't process thoughts in the first-person any more, his mind had dissociated so much from his body at that point he wasn't even sure he was still fully in control.

Sometimes something else would take over, in situations of extreme stress. He didn't know if it was his Quirk, or maybe just some form of a natural fight or flight reaction taken to an extreme by his past. All he knew was that it was unstoppable when triggered until it deemed him safe, which thanks to his aforementioned brokenness was a very flexibly defined state. He had only ever triggered this 'other' three times since his escape from Sensei. The first was the escape itself, the second his fight with the criminals after being found by Naachan. The third was a fight with bullies, where one attempted to use him as a test dummy for his Quirk.

Izuku Midoriya had two friends, Natsuki Bakugou and Tetsutetsu Tetsutetsu. Or, as Naachan (Natsuki) was wont to call him, Metalhead, since 'the same word four times is a stupid flipping name'. She hadn't said flipping, but she also hadn't known Izuku was standing right behind her and therefore had no clue that she wasn't supposed to swear. Izuku wasn't sure why exactly Naachan wouldn't swear in front of him; she seemed fine with it when it was just Tetsutetsu, who was himself averse to swearing as it 'wasn't what a hero would do'.

The fact that several high-profile heroes, among whom numbered Endeavour himself, were almost infamous for their occasional outbursts of withering language was one Tetsutetsu seemed ignorant of, and Izuku was very much okay with allowing that to remain. Tetsutetsu was a good person, he had decided. Kind hearted, if rough around the edges and somewhat dense. Perhaps it was due to his Quirk; being able to turn to steel was undoubtedly useful, but also somewhat taxing on the body. Izuku remembered once hearing that iron was important to brain growth and development. Perhaps by training with his Quirk, Tetsutetsu was depriving his brain of that valuable mineral?

Izuku would have to look into it further, or suggest the idea to Naachan. She would likely know what to do with such a situation. He knew meat was good for iron, but she would likely know the right meats. Izuku hoped for Tetsutetsu's sake chicken was on that list. Izuku couldn't imagine life without chicken.

Izuku was considering all of this while rocking back and forth, perched atop a tree branch some twenty feet from the ground. The tree was a lovely tree, an old maple covered in the new growths of spring. The branches were still mostly barren, but the buds of potential leaves were sprouting all over, giving Izuku a nice surface to squat on. The branch he had chosen was long and thick, unlikely to give under his weight. In spite of his size Naachan was not wrong to label him 'muscle and bone', his physique less that of a trained bodybuilder and more-so of a wiry street urchin, all whipcord muscle and sharp, defined lines.

He wasn't wearing a shirt. Izuku rarely wore shirts if he didn't need to, and for now his shirt was hanging from his shorts, where he had hung them, stuffing a few inches of fabric past his waistband. Perhaps it looked silly to others, but Izuku didn't mind. Making people laugh was a way of making them smile, and All-Might said a true hero was one who made the people smile. Izuku smiled himself at that thought. Some people said his smile was scary, thanks to his bizarre skin and glowing eyes. Izuku was far less sure about that; scaring people was a bad thing in the hero business. At least, scaring innocents. Villains being just a little afraid of you was probably a good thing; Izuku had learned that lesson from Endeavour.

Izuku let his keen eyes wander across the terrain beneath him; he was on the outskirts of a small forest by the old park where he and Naachan had spent their childhoods, before Sensei took him and made him whole by breaking him. He could see the jungle gym he and Naachan had constantly fallen from, the swings they had pushed each other on, the merry-go-round that they had spun until they'd flown off, and started puking from the motion sickness. Izuku smiled again, this time in longing nostalgia. He had been silly then, young and foolish, full of star-crossed dreams and fantasies. He had wanted to be All-Might's apprentice and sidekick, fighting crime and saving lives.

He still wanted to fight crime, and he especially wanted to save lives. But All-Might was a distant dream; it wouldn't do for the Symbol of Peace to become friends with a monster. Izuku was okay with that now. He didn't mind being a monster. A gentle breeze stirred the smaller branches of his maple as he looked to the sky.

It was Izuku's birthday. He had celebrated with Naachan and Tetsutetsu and his beloved mother, and even his father had tuned in via video-chat. That had been an experience; Hisashi Midoriya rarely had the time to contact his family, thanks to the differing time zones while he worked his job in Europe. Izuku didn't really know what his father did; apparently he was an agent for some company, travelling the world and selling their services far and wide. Izuku thought that sounded quite neat indeed. Izuku loved his father, even if he had only met the man in person a few times.

The first was shortly after he had been rescued by Naachan, when the man had managed to make time to come back to Japan to see his son in the hospital. Hisashi Midoriya was built like his son; tall and lean. He had dark brown hair, almost black, and cool green eyes like Izuku and his mother that purportedly gave Naachan the creeps. He had embraced his son, and when Izuku had asked his father if monsters could be heroes, his father had smiled a strange, knowing smile.

"Anybody can save people." Hisashi Midoriya had said, before kissing his son on the cheek. "Even monsters."

Izuku hoped his father could come home again soon. He wanted to show him how he had progressed, how strong he was becoming in body and in mind. He was getting better, Naachan and Tetsutetsu could both clearly see it, as could his own mother. He rarely had his flashbacks any more, and had learned how to fend them off himself. His nightmares ended now in cold sweats rather than screams, and his broken speech was as clear as it could ever be. He just couldn't drop the third-person; it was as natural to him as breathing, even inside his own mind. Speaking in the first person felt strange, off-putting. There was no separation in that, and that was odd.

Izuku looked at the sky again, drinking in the brilliant blue. Whenever he thought about Sensei, about the dark place, he just had to look at the sky. The sky was open and bright and beautiful, in day or in night. It was free, like he was free, and the sky meant he could go anywhere and do anything. He could be more than Nine, the monster and weapon and dog. He could be Izuku Midoriya. He could be a hero.

"Anybody can save people." Izuku spoke into the wind, letting it steal his words away and carry them into the forest. "Even monsters."

He scented the air, noting a familiar smell. Tetsutetsu; the smell of metal and sweat. The boy smelled permanently of a gym, not that this was a bad thing. He could also smell the sugary sweet scent of nitroglycerin, of Naachan. Naachan was his favourite smell, but whenever he told her that she always turned a funny shade of red and refused to look at him.

Izuku Midoriya was not stupid. He knew what this meant, and why it was important. He also knew that he would not say anything. It was up to Naachan to tell him how she felt. Agency was important to her, and he couldn't force her into a decision by revealing that he knew. Forcing people to do things, whether by force or by cunning, was a villainous action. And Izuku was no villain. Just a monster.

But even monsters could be heroes.

"Yo!" Izuku could hear Tetsutetsu calling, seeing him in the park, one arm raised. "Izo-bro! Whatcha doin' up there?"

Izuku leapt from his branch and landed lightly on all fours, catlike in his posture. He was quite good at falling and not getting hurt, almost amazing at it. He stood up, feeling the slight pain in his arms and legs fading almost immediately as his Quirk fixed whatever minor damage was present. He raised a hand as well.

"Izuku is coming!" he declared, jogging toward the two. He could see Naachan turning red a little, realizing he wasn't wearing a shirt. He fumbled for it and began pulling it back over his head.

Izuku Midoriya was a damaged person. He had been broken once before. He was a monster.

But Izuku Midoriya didn't care. Because anybody could save people.

Even monsters.

[X][X][X][X][X]

Detective Komori Tetsuru was having a good day. He had been invited to dinner by an extremely excited Izuku Midoriya, and was looking forward to attending. He had been working at young Midoriya's case for years now, and while he wasn't having quite as much luck as he had hoped in hunting down clues as to the boys whereabouts in his three years of disappearance, he had recently stumbled upon his first real big breakthrough.

Officially, the Izuku Midoriya case was closed. The boy had been found. Case ended. But Komori had been watching for any clues on the side, little details that might reveal what had happened to the boy and perhaps even a hint as to the identity of the boy's kidnapper. But he had found nothing for six long years. Until yesterday, when a friend of his in Homicide had called his cellphone and told him that there was something.

A dead body. Suicide was the ruling, but the corpse didn't matter. What mattered was his identity. A Doctor Kakure Hakuda had shot himself in the head, and his suicide note had been little more than a list of names. At first it had seemed random, until closer examination revealed that those names were all the names of missing children from the last ten years. Further examination revealed that every single child had disappeared around age five, after going to a Quirk doctor for an examination and official registration.

That doctor had been, in all but two cases, Kakure Hakuda. This was a breakthrough; Kakure knew something. Something big. His assets had been seized, and in his personal records and journal he had recorded a series of passages of particular interest to Komori Tetsuru.

It mentioned a boy. Izuku Midoriya. Furthermore, it mentioned regret, great and horrible regret, as well as a note that Kakure had 'consigned the boy to something like death, though perhaps death would be a greater mercy than what he will do'. 'He' was never named but it was still something important. Izuku had mentioned a 'Sensei', a man who had apparently been a central figure during Izuku's missing years. Perhaps Sensei was the 'he' mentioned in the note? Komori believed so.

Komori had received a digital transcript of the journal, and was feverishly reading it on his phone while walking toward the restaurant he was supposed to meet the Midoriya family at. He stared at the screen as he made his way down the sidewalk, occasionally sidestepping other travellers with a muttered apology. He slipped between two women, before dodging a large man with a horn sticking out of his head, bowing his head slightly lower. A girl with bright pink skin and a pair of curly horns pricking out from under equally pink hair, the man's daughter most likely, just smiled and waved.

Komori looked up quickly, checking a street sign and wincing. Dinner in ten minutes, and he was at least twenty minutes from the restaurant. Not that big of a deal, Izuku and Inko Midoriya were both extremely polite, understanding people, but Komori couldn't bare the thought of being late to Izuku's birthday dinner and therefore potentially causing the boy some measure of distress. A quick glance about revealed a convenient alley, swimming in deep, dusky shadow thanks to the slowly setting sun. Komori smiled, lit up one of his hands, and entered the alley.

The alley was large, and slightly windy, due to its placement between a large outlet store and some sort of apartment complex of suspicious size. Komori made his way through it with a glowing hand raised, moving past dumpsters, garbage cans and piles of discarded trash. It was a stinking, dirty place, a forgotten little corner of the city where garbage men clearly came rarely, and sanitation workers even less often.

Komori heard something behind him, something like metal scraping on stone, but when he turned he saw nothing in the shadows. He narrowed his eyes, suspecting some mugger perhaps, or a vagrant desperate for cash. He saw naught but trash however, and blinked before turning.

Something hard crashed into his temple as he turned, and he hit the ground dazed as his legs turned to rubber. His hand's glow faded, but just before it disappeared, he saw someone standing over him, someone wearing a black suit that looked quite out of place in an alley such as this one. It was a man, with long hair that was a bright neon pink, a strange contrast to his sombre black suit. In his hand was a long black rod that looked suspiciously like a cane. The man had a grim expression on his face, almost dour, perhaps even angry.

It turned to a look of shock in the moment when Komori raised a hand and cranked his Quirk up to the max, a veritable beacon of light exploding from his raised arm, blinding the man. Komori scrambled to his feet, swinging at the man with a right hook while letting the light from his left fade so he too could see. The man's eyes opened, blinking away spots, before Komori's fist crashed into his jaw. The man staggered backwards, and Komori lunged with another punch. The man's eyes flashed a deep red colour, glowing in the low light of the alleyway.

Then Komori felt a splitting pain in his back, and he realized the man was behind him now. The pain grew worse when the man moved, something sticking out of Komori's back twisting painfully. Komori dropped to his knees, a wet, sticky heat slowly leaking down his back. The pink-haired man tore whatever it was in his back out, and the leak turned to a stream, before the man stepped over his crumpled form. The end of his cane had ejected some sort of metal blade, at least six inches long, most of its length covered in sticky red gore. Komori's sticky red gore, he suspected.

The man stared down at Komori with those dark eyes for a moment, before smashing the detective in the face with the blunt end of his cane-spear. Komori's world spun for a moment, and when everything went still again he realized the man was crouched in front of him now, one hand under his chin, propping his head up.

"I apologize for this, Detective Tetsuru." the pink-haired man said, voice low. "But Sensei has requested you die. And I will do as my Sensei commands."

Komori didn't even feel the blade slip into his throat, laying open his throat for all the world to see. He passed out from blood loss a moment sooner, eyes closing.

He was found a day later, after failing to show up to work on time. His phone had disappeared, as had his wallet, leaving many to suspect a mugging gone wrong. Komori Tetsuru was buried in a small cemetery to the east of Tokyo, beside his family.

Of his killer there was no sign, and no evidence.