Izuku wolfs down his breakfast, grabs his laptop (it's charged AND the battery has terrifyingly high capacity), tells his mom that he needs to do something out of home and that he won't be there for dinner, and then he leaves.

He changes into his vigilante gear in an alleyway at the edge of the abandoned district. Then he makes his way into the Metahuman Network headquarters.

(this three words sound way more serious than they should, it's just an almost abandoned building with two permanent inhabitants, none of which are members of the Network)

His worries are successfully dispelled when he enters the building, only to immediately see Tsuyu and Uraraka sitting on the crates and talking about something excitedly. Or, to be exact, the latter seems excited, while the former is… very Tsuyu-like.

And still naked.

Baby steps, Izuku.

They are startled by his arrival for a second. Then they see that it's him and they calm down. Although Uraraka does look like she immediately becomes very conscious about Tsuyu's lack of clothes.

"Well, it seems that you two hit off with each other immediately." Izuku announces. "Great! Did I miss anything?"

"Nah, we were just getting to know each other." Uraraka stammers quickly. "So, renovations?"

"Aye." Izuku replies. "I'm going to be here for the entire day to help you with that. Phase one: entrance door."

"E… entrance door?" Uraraka asks him, clearly surprised. Tsuyu is eyeing them both, her finger by her lips.

"You do realize that whoever lived here earlier didn't leave their house keys behind?" Izuku replies and Uraraka facepalms. "Yeah, we're changing the locks. And probably reinforcing the doors from the inside at least." Not like it will help them a lot if Overhaul finds them, but it should slow down his thugs.

(***)

Uraraka really knows her way around tools. And she squealed in delight when she opened a crate marked 'tools' and saw what Mei prepared for her. Immediately proving to Izuku once again that wealthy friends are a great asset when you are building an organization.

He doesn't like that, but he can't exactly hope to spend hours doing physical work indoors (even if most of that is his meta-ability) without breaking out a sweat. Not in a hoodie. So he ends up taking his disguise down.

"Green hair?" Uraraka comments, stopping her action of nailing some boards to the entrance door.

"Looks soft, ribbit." Tsuyu adds a comment on her own, while staring at him quizzically. She had nothing better to do (or so she said - Izuku thinks that she is simply craving human interactions now that she got to taste what they feel like) so she is there to hand them the right tools when prompted. Typically with her tongue. It's extremely dexterous. Uraraka doesn't seem to be bothered by it.

(He realizes why when she almost hits her finger with a hammer and accidentally lets out such a chain of swear words that it would make Bakugou Katsuki stare at her in awe. She grew up in a construction company, she knows life.)

"My hair changed colour when my meta-ability manifested." Izuku replies with a sigh. "And please, no touching my hair. Can we continue?"

(***)

The changes to the entrance are finished within an hour. Then they move on to the main course. Izuku pulls out his laptop, puts it on one of the shelves in what once was a shop, then switches it on.

Mei keeps her appearance secret. Instead of her face, the two girls see the Metahuman Network logo.

"Let me introduce to you…" Izuku announces. "...Alchemist. The second Network member, my friend and the person who has given us all those things." He points towards the not yet opened crates.

"Hey there!" Mei's cheerful voice fills the room. "It's nice to meet you!"

"Wait, you… all of that…" Uraraka's eyes darted to the pile and then back to the laptop. "You have to be loaded." Izuku starts to suspect that living in her forest (or perhaps the times before that) made her very money-conscious.

"Very." Mei is absolutely unashamed by her answer. "Unfortunately, I can't just send you money. I'd have financed the Network without batting an eye! But my parents don't trust me with money. They are giving me everything I ask for, though, and since I'm an avid inventor, this includes lots of parts. And tools."

"Oh, I see." Uraraka nods a few times. Somehow, Izuku is almost certain that she is soon going to be a close friend of Mei. Probably almost as much as Izuku. They both have the power to realize her crazy inventor dreams, just to a different degree. And Mei leaves nothing to chance. "So, what's the plan for today?"

"Electricity." Mei replies. "The crates should include everything you need to puzzle up a pico-hydro energy generator. It is optimized to fit the sewer canal connected to the basement. Uraraka-san, I'm going to start listing the crates numbers for you to put aside. Defiant-kun, my drone's carrying capacity is limited so I only sent you what you couldn't get on your own. I need you to go out and buy three… no, two pairs of rubber boots. We don't want to have anyone accidentally electrocuted, even if the voltage would be quite low. And cables. And some other stuff. I'll send you the list in an SMS."

He has some money. He might have stolen some money from some of the thugs he tripped. But he is certain that this one expenditure is going to send him back to being financially broken.

Joy.

(***)

He also ends up delivering food to the hideout, too. Everyone's too busy to get dinner the normal way. Except for Tsuyu who admits that she planned to just nom a fish she caught earlier.

She settles for the food that Izuku brought instead. The concept of warm food seems to be a great positive side of getting tamed and brought back to civilization in the frog girl eyes.

By the end of the day, they have the generator installed. It's a bit upstream to the hole in the basement wall, so that Tsuyu can freely enter and leave the hideout at night. Of course, installing it where it belongs and making sure that it's running is one thing, figuring out how to make the building's electrical installation work is another thing altogether.

Uraraka is certain that she'll have it working in a day or two. The first thing she does is to go through the entire building, making sure that everything's shut down properly. The last thing they want is flipping the switch on only for something to start the fire. And for the suddenly activated kitchen appliances to overwhelm the generator.

The rest is fixing the cables in the basement, especially the ones that ended up submerged.

Mei promises to send some pipes and a hand pump with her next drone delivery. Something to let them draw water from the now-clean (they weren't used in years AND she ran some water analysis on them) sewers up, without bothering Tsuyu too much. She will also send some water filtration systems.

Once again, it's going to be installed upstream from the sewer entrance. Within a few more days, the hideout should be ready. At least to a minimum degree of ability to sustain human life in theoretical comfort.

Uraraka thinks that with some more pipes, she should make the toilets work too. She'll just have to run the pipes outside of the sewer exit, because otherwise Tsuyu might have been seriously inconvenienced.

Izuku has no idea how this is going to work. Then again, he feels completely out of the loop when he hears Uraraka and Mei talk with each other about their plans. It will be somewhat costly, but it will work. He trusts them.

(***)

Alchemist: Baby #2 ready for some field testing!

Defiant: Really?

Alchemist: Yep yep.

Alchemist: It should arrive at the parcel locker the day after tomorrow.

Defiant: I'll store it in the hideout for now, there are limits to what I can bullshit my way out from if my mom catches the wind.

Alchemist: Also tell Uraraka that the next drone will bring her some ammunition.

Defiant: Truly the power of being a zaibatsu heiress is great.

Alchemist: ?

Defiant: I have some ideas for Uraraka's equipment, BUT I need her to agree to join us first.

Alchemist: That shouldn't be hard.

Defiant: ?

(***)

Uraraka flips the switch. Suddenly, there is light.

Izuku never felt this happy and proud from seeing a light bulb produce light.

They quickly ran through all the rooms in the building to make sure that they didn't overlook anything while they were switching everything off a few days earlier. Then, they are ready to celebrate.

Izuku connects his laptop to the socket. And it starts getting charged. Truly, a great victory for the metahuman community.

They don't have an awful lot of energy, but it should suffice for now.

"Uhm, Defiant-kun?" Uraraka said once they stopped expressing their joy (Uraraka by floating, Izuku by smiling and Tsuyu by looking at them quizzically). "I have a question."

"Hmm?"

"Can I join the Network, like, officially?" She asks, scratching her head. "I mean, like, a superhero?"

Izuku almost flies towards the ceiling in joy. But before that he has to ask.

"What changed your mind?" He was pretty certain that she was only in for the protection part. Okay, maybe not 'certain', but that's what he suspected.

"Well, I was still kinda worried about this whole idea when we started." She replies, clearly nervous. "But now I think you are a nice person, and I like working with you. I don't think that I'm a superhero material, but if I can help other people, especially others like me... I don't know how much I can be of help, but I'd like to do what I can."

Mei. It was almost certainly Mei's work. She knew something, at least judging from her messages to Izuku. Did she have a talk with Uraraka about Izuku's past exploits? Probably while omitting the 'lightly peed himself in shock' part?

"I want to join too, ribbit." They are both surprised by Tsuyu sneaking up on them. She is surprisingly sneaky when she wants to.

"Why?" Izuku is taken aback by that. It was one more thing that he really didn't expect when he was heading to the hideout today.

"You are my friends." She replies with a shrug. It's her whole answer. It makes sense.

Uraraka gives her a heartfelt smile. Tsuyu responds with her equivalent of that.

"Alright." Izuku replies. "I'm going to need your hero names. Ideas?"

"I want to be Singularity!" Uraraka perks up. She is a hard-worker and Izuku has a lot of ideas on how to improve on her meta-ability. Her gravity manipulation improved by a lot recently - not in weight, but in the scope of things that she could do. Her name fits the theme.

"Kappa." Tsuyu replies. That earns her some worried looks. "That's how people called me back then, ribbit."

"... I don't think that it was a positive term for them, Tsuyu." Izuku replies. He really has to dig into her past at least somewhat. Then again, she was apparently alone ever since she was eight years old. And even earlier, her life wasn't easy. She didn't remember much. Which is why she had to relearn how to read properly.

"I know." Tsuyu replies. "So I'm going to change that into a positive term, ribbit."

Well, that's quite the unexpected degree of emotional maturity.

Too bad she was still walking around naked.

(***)

Izuku took his new suit for a test drive.

It felt almost the same as his old hoodie, but was knife-proof, and… well, almost bulletproof. Enough to stop a bullet if it wasn't from an assault rifle, and was slowed down a bit by his barriers. And even then, it would still hurt like hell and probably damage something underneath it.

It also had a helmet. From the outside, it looked like he was wearing a hoodie with some admittedly rather thick face mask - one without any visible visor. Just a smooth, black surface.

It was a helmet. The mask part was transparent from the inside, had some basic HUD on it, and had a built-in communicator and voice alteration feature. The hood around it? Part of the helmet.

Strong enough to resist at least some attacks. Punches and probably a crowbar yes, bullets no. And Mei couldn't help him a lot when it came to resisting meta-ability attacks. She probably could account for some of them, but certainly not for what Overhaul had. And not for the meta-abilities that she didn't even know about.

There were also reinforced gloves, pants and boots. All from similar materials, though gloves and boots offered better protection.

All - save for the pitch black facemask - in dark green colour.

Izuku absolutely loved his first superhero suit.

(***)

With Uraraka focused on rearranging the hideout's plumbing (and Tsuyu having someone else to help civilize her a bit), Izuku could go back to his recruitment efforts. Overhaul still didn't seem to make any moves.

That alone was worrying.

"I found some new leads for you." Mei tells him through the videochat one evening. "One is local, but rather… faint."

"Well, I could at least check it out, right?" He replies. He is in his home - he has no idea how to explain to his mom that he is moving out, at least without her wanting to see his new lodgings. And not before he is an adult (he had his seventeen birthday a week ago, not like he told anyone). So he is still around. "What is it about?"

"There is a girl working in a dance school in your city." Mei tells him. "There is a picture of her that someone snapped of her during a lesson. I think that she has something resembling a pair of very short and mostly cut off horns on her forehead."

Huh?

"Can you find me her house address?" It could as well be an overly successful cosplay effort, or a prank. But it wouldn't hurt to have that checked, right?

(***)

He waited until the evening - he wasn't ready to fly during the day, and you could never know when you needed to fly away in a hurry. He wasn't super afraid of people noticing him - superheroes and supervillains were apparently out there, and the general populace still didn't take a note of that. But there was the risk of someone (namely, Overhaul) noticing him, and that was way less nice.

He headed towards the apartment block that Mei directed him to, flying just a bit above the buildings to save time. He wasn't in a hurry, after all. It was just some casual observation slash interview.

"Izuku." He suddenly heard Mei's worried voice in his helmet. "A group of people just left a car in front of the bu… oh, shit, they are heading inside. And they are armed. They look like yakuza thugs."

Well, that's just brilliant.

He abandons moderation and flies forward with top speed.

(***)

"Uhm, Tsukauchi?" Tsukauchi Naomasa of the Musutafu Prefecture Police Department is about done dealing with the apparent case of family fight (loud enough for the neighbours to call in the police) when Sansa suddenly calls to him. "I think we have a problem."

(he shouldn't be here, he is of much too high rank, but he had some questions to one of the family members concerning one of his cases and he decided to tag along with Sansa)

The other policeman is standing right next to the window in the room, looking through it with an expression of dawning horror on his face. Tsukauchi lunges towards him and…

Oh, crap.

Ten people. Armed with pistols and one Chinese assault rifle (People's Liberation Army might have left Japan, but it certainly didn't take its junk with it). All of them walk towards the building where Naomasa and Tamakawa are in. Considering their ragged outfits, tattoos and piercings, they are almost certainly thugs.

"Call for backup." He tells Sansa immediately. He has no idea what the thugs are here for, but it's certainly nothing nice.

There are only two of them. Three if you include Sansa's standard partner, but considering what's going on, Monika will probably NOT leave the car. And has probably called for backup, but it's better to do this twice than accidentally don't do it at all.

This is going to be messy.

They leave the apartment in a hurry, telling the owners to barricade the door.

(***)

Hari Kurono chuckles when he sees the familiar figure of Defiant emerging from the alleyway next to the building, running towards the entrance to the apartment block. Oh, this is just a brilliant coincidence.

"Well, kid." He pokes the person sitting in the car right next to him, and then points to the superhero. "Your mission just got some additional objective."

"So that's the Defiant that Overhaul told me about?" The kid - about to make a semi-official debut as a supervillain - closes his mask and pulls up the MP5 he got from the Shie Hasseikai. "Time to earn my place, I guess.."

Oh, this will be fun. And a good occasion to field-test Chisaki's new supervillain initiative.

(***)

The thugs stop at the second floor. Tsukauchi observes them from the end of the corridor with a creative use of a hand mirror. Sansa is right behind him. Both have their pistols drawn - and both are praying for the backup to get here as fast as possible.

Tsukauchi is also praying that this is just a kidnapping attempt. They'll not intervene in it, and will simply follow the thugs to their hideout in secret. Two pistols to nine pistols and an assault rifle, and if Tsukauchi is seeing it correctly, half of them have some scarce bits of bulletproof vests. Probably salvaged from whatever wartime battlefield.

They can't win.

The thugs stop by one of the apartment doors. Double-check the number on it. Tsukauchi is about to lean away from his hiding spot and open fire, when the assault rifle thug speaks.

"Remember." He says loudly. "We need the girl alive. Don't shoot her."

It's a kidnapping then? (unfortunately the thug doesn't mention that there is also a boy inside). Tsukauchi stays in his hideout.

Then one of the goons kicks the apartment door in.

(***)

Mina had a fairly nice evening. Kirishima finished his daily home exercise routine - it wasn't a very exhausting one, he left that for the gym, but he simply refused to stay put for long.

His roommate wasn't complaining. He was very focused when training, and completely didn't notice Mina staring at him while he was doing this. With an almost hungry look on her face.

(she was slowly getting used to the fact that yes, she does have a crush the size of Mt. Everest on him, though he seemed too dense to notice)

Then someone kicked the entrance door in. She saw guns. She screamed, falling back from her chair.

(so much about fixing her trauma)

Kirishima had enough time to turn his head towards the entrance before the first thug shot him.

(NOOOO)

(***)

"Fuck." Tsukauchi curses himself for his dumb decision. As if on cue, he and Sansa lean out of their hiding spot and open fire. Each of them manages to shoot one of the thugs before the one carrying an assault rifle turns towards them and showers them with bullets.

(***)

Ejirou Kirishima is a simple man. Sure, some might say that he has outdated beliefs, but he doesn't care. He is a man. Dependable, protective (but not smothering) and strong. What surprises him is that he is apparently strong enough to feel a gunshot as only a slight pinch to his stomach.

That, or it's adrenaline speaking. It's possible as well. But if so, then it gives him time. The time to act like a man standing between a frightened girl and her assailants (he knows they are for her, why would they go after him?) should.

Then again, he doesn't really think about it. His body moves on its own.

He charges forward (why does he feel so heavy, why does he feel like the floor is getting crushed under his weight?), ignoring the few more panicked gunshots and a sudden expression of horror on the thug's face. Then he tackles him through the entrance door, into the corridor - and other thugs - behind him.

"What the…" One of them (is that a rifle in his hand?) shouts, startled by the attack. Kirishima reacts on instinct and delivers a right hook punch to his face.

The thug must have been weaker than Kirishima thought, because there is no way that he is strong enough to send that man flying into the wall on the opposite side of the corridor.

(***)

The gunfire directed at them stops, and the two policemen lean away from behind the corner, ready to fire.

Then the world stops making sense.

Why is there some sort of... humanoid monster in the corridor? Why is he fighting the thugs, shrugging the gunfire of the panicked gangsters off like it's not there? His clothes (short pants and a tank top) are shredded, but there are no wounds, no bleeding on his skin, just… cracks?

The ricochets seem to hurt the thugs more than he does, really. And he sets the bar rather high.

Second later another figure emerges from the stairwell on the opposite end of the corridor. Dark green hoodie with a black facemask. He (or she) freezes for a second, as shocked as the policemen were, only to make a simple gesture.

In a second, the guns in the remaining thugs' hands are thrown in the air. Then the thugs themselves start being thrown into the walls by an invisible force, one by one.

Tsukauchi suddenly realizes that there is a grain of truth to the gossip he heard at the precinct about some vengeful ghost tripping and disarming thugs at random in the city. Except the ghost looks awfully corporeal.

(***)

His life was crazy. He expected to recruit a new metahuman (hopefully), instead he came upon two policemen and another metahuman fighting some thugs. All while Mei was warning him that someone just entered the building behind him, and if he wasn't a villain, then she was going to eat her favourite wrench.

The red-haired monster (is he some sort of golem? his skin resembles rock) turns his head towards Izuku. He is panting heavily, with multiple cracks on his skin.

"It's alright, I'm on your side." He says, raising his hands in an universal gesture of not wanting to kill you. He is slowly walking towards them. "But there are more of them coming, and you really shouldn't stay here." He is ignoring the shocked policemen at the other end of the corridor for now.

The monster doesn't spend a lot of time thinking. He turns his head back towards the ruined entrance to the apartment behind him.

"Mina." He extended his hand. "We have to go." His voice is… hoarse. Are his vocal cords made from rock as well?

The girl that ran out of the apartment and hugged him (while crying all over him) was way more inhuman-looking than the Ashido Mina from the picture. Pink skin, the eyes… two metahumans for the price of one.

"Hey, what the hell are…" One of the policemen decided to speak up finally.

Izuku heard a ding. An elevator arrived on the floor behind him. He turns his head right in time to see someone emerging from it.

Their build is similar to Izuku's. Teenager, most likely. But no normal teenager is wearing a green gas mask with intimidating red visors, a pair of oxygen tanks on his bank, a bulletproof vest… and a submachine gun in his hands.

"My name is Mustard." He announces loudly, before turning his head towards Izuku. "Overhaul sends his regards."

Purple mist erupts from him. It's him. The supervillain who gassed an entire school in Shizuoka, killing almost thirty students. This is a poison gas, in a closed space. And no one is wearing a gas mask.

(***)

You thought that Defiant is the only one who is recruiting people?