Akari Ito, who went by the hero name Holo, was still working on processing everything that had happened lately.

Seriously, a month ago, she'd still been in UA! And since then, she'd graduated, failed to get a job at the agency she'd interned with (stupid fucking cheesecake accident…) and then…well.

And then she'd gotten hired by Aegis Heroics. Somehow, she, the middle-of-the-pack, relatively unimpressive (for a UA grad) hero hopeful, had managed to impress the most prestigious hero agency in Japan enough to make them take her on as a sidekick.

And that had led to the absolute madness that was happening today. She, Akari, was on patrol with the Number One Hero. I mean, sure, it made sense that she would meet him-he'd founded Aegis, after all-but…still. It wasn't every day you got to work alongside one of your idols.

Said Number One Hero gently nudged her in the side as they turned a corner. In a voice that seemed to fill the world, he said, "Hello? Earth to Holo?"

Akari blinked in surprise, realizing that she'd managed to completely zone out in the middle of a patrol. She yelped in embarrassment, saying, "Oh, um, sorry, Atlas, sir!"

Izuku Midoriya, the hero Atlas, the youngest man ever to hold the number one spot at twenty-four, just chuckled at her. "Zoned out there, I assume," he said lightly, waving away Akari's frantic apologies, "don't worry about it, kid. It happens to everyone. Just keep your head up, okay?"

Akari nodded, her bright red cheeks slowly fading. She managed to catch herself before she apologized again, but couldn't help but reply, "It won't happen again, sir."

"Good," Izuku said approvingly, before adding, "and you don't have to call me sir. Just call me Atlas."

"Okay, sir," Akari automatically replied, before realizing what she'd just said. Her blush returned, but all Izuku did was laugh.

It wasn't that Akari was starstruck, exactly. Okay, maybe she was, just a tiny bit…but even though this was the first time she'd been on patrol with Atlas, it was far from the first time she'd met him. When she'd first gotten hired, Atlas had greeted her personally, and it had been just a tad bit overwhelming to see him just…hanging out with the other heroes in the agency. Her fellow sidekicks had all watched her with sympathetic eyes those first few days; in the end, they'd taken her aside and explained that, yeah, Izuku was just…like that. Out of the costume, the Number One Hero was an easygoing endless fountain of bright optimism, jokes, and really bad puns. It was almost possible to forget that, under the jeans and stupid t-shirts he wore off-duty, the man was built like a brick shithouse, and had been spotted casually bench-pressing train cars. But when he put on that already-iconic green and white and red costume…

That was why Akari was so off her game. It was one thing to see pictures of Atlas in action, or watch videos of him online. It was a completely different thing to see him in person. Beyond even things like how no picture could ever truly capture the way his costume stretched across his ridiculous physique, or how the brightness of his smile seemed to grow and grow until it was as powerful as the sun…there was just something about his presence that intensified when he wore the costume, about how it rolled over you in waves, dragging the whole world into his orbit like he was a star himself. Akari was struggling just to keep her footing.

Izuku opened his mouth, maybe to make another joke, but at that moment both heroes' earpieces activated in a crackle of static that brought both of them to instant alertness.

"Bank robbery reported on Abe Street, Sixth Level," came the voice of the hero dispatch, "any heroes nearby, please respond with confirmation that you are headed that way."

Akari had barely finished processing the information when she and her boss locked eyes. They were on the Sixth Level of the Underground, and Abe Street was only a few blocks away. That meant one thing and one thing only.

Izuku's eyes hardened; in an instant, he went from the friendly, easygoing boss Akari had become familiar with, to the Number One Hero. He tapped a finger to the side of his earpiece.

"This is Atlas and Holo," he said clearly, green lightning already rising from his arms and legs, power radiating off of him like dropping pressure before a storm, "we're on our way."

Just a few minutes later, Izuku was racing through the tangled, erratic streets of the Underground, One For All roaring through his veins. He was moving so fast, he was little more than a green blur, blitzing past pedestrians and buildings like a runaway train. Only long years of experience kept him from crashing into anything and obliterating it.

Leaping above the buildings would certainly have been faster, he mused, but down this low, the vast, soaring ceilings of the uppermost levels of the Underground were replaced with rough-hewn roofs that barely left any space between the tops of the carved buildings and solid stone. Izuku would have banged his head into solid bedrock at a significant fraction of the speed of sound if he tried taking that route.

Luckily, Holo didn't have the same problem. Izuku looked up to see the slim, short girl leap from one rooftop to another, across a road more than thirty feet wide. It was a gap that someone without an enhancement quirk should never have been able to make; luckily, Holo didn't have to make a thirty-foot jump.

Instead, Izuku watched as Akari leaped from a rooftop, her head passing just a foot or so below a stalactite hanging down from the ceiling above; she soared more than a dozen feet, an impressive jump, but still far short. But then, just as she began to fall below the apex of her jump, Akari's hands flashed with blue light. Beneath her feet, a glowing rectangular plate appeared with perfect precision. Akari landed on it lightly, then immediately leaped off it again, heading out into thin air once more; just as before, she summoned a solid landing spot literally out of thin air. Akari zigzagged through the air, keeping time with Izuku as she moved, leaving a trail of shimmering platforms behind her like ethereal stepping-stones; after about ten seconds, each platform began to fade. But by then, the heroine had long since left.

This was why Izuku had hired her; he'd seen the potential of her ability to project temporary solid objects in the confined, mobility-limited spaces of the Underground immediately. She had, too, which was why she'd come to Aegis in the first place; they operated mostly underground, after all. Izuku grinned with approval, then put his head down; they were close to the bank, and he had some robbers to deal with.

When the heroes arrived, they found a group of gangsters in the middle of transferring their ill-gotten gains from the bank vault. Akari landed lightly next to Izuku as he came to a stop, surveying the scene.

"Villains!" he yelled, his voice powerful and authoritative, "You are under arrest! Surrender, or face the consequences!"

As if emphasizing those consequences, the lightning surrounding him intensified until it seemed to darken the very air around him; it only highlighted the way his smile seemed sharp, as though he was very much hoping that the villains wouldn't surrender

Upon seeing the Number One Hero crashing their party, the villains reacted predictably. Most of them decided to cut their losses, swiftly piling into the two getaway vehicles conveniently parked outside. A few, though, were far enough away that Izuku managed to swiftly get between them and the vans, appearing in a blur of lightning.

"Not so fast, friends," Izuku said with eager eyes. Turning his head ever so slightly as the squeal of tires on packed rock and earth hinted at the fleeing villains, he called out, "Holo! Chase them down. Don't engage if you can avoid it, but keep your eyes on where they go!"

"Got it!" Akari called, her voice already growing distant as she sprinted up a glowing staircase that built itself upwards as she ran. At last, she leaped from the front of it, and swiftly began leapfrogging from appearing platform to appearing platform, chasing after the retreating vans.

Nodding to himself, Izuku turned back to the three villains he'd successfully cut off.

"You three," he said with relish, his grin turning savage and eager, "are mine."

Two of the villains, a bald man with tattoos covering his arms all the way to the shoulder and brass knuckle-type spikes emerging from his fists and one whose mouth began to morph into a crocodile snout, teeth and all, chose to attack. Izuku made short work of them, ducking under the bald one's sloppy punch, twisting as he leaped into the air to slam a leg against the side of the villain's head, and then whirling on the crocodile-toothed one just in time to dodge his lunge and bring a fist down on his face.

The two men crumpled to the ground, groaning, put down with just two blows; Izuku had barely been using a third of One For All. Easy and routine.

But wait, weren't there three villains?

Izuku instantly went on high alert, scanning for the last robber, preparing to react at the slightest hint of an ambush. But finally, he caught the barest glimpse of movement as someone dashed into the bank, a blur of brown and black, like the flapping edge of a cloak.

Izuku was after them immediately; kicking in the doors to avoid getting blindsided as he entered, he strode into the bank, which was eerily silent. Dust and debris from the villains' attack hung in the still, quiet air, and there was no sign of life.

"Where did they go?" Izuku wondered. "There's no way they got out of the lobby in the time they had-"

"S-stop right there!" a terrified, shaky voice demanded.

Instantly, Izuku spun to face the sound. He came face-to-face with the missing villain, who was shaking like a leaf. In one hand, they held a gun, an ugly, snub-nosed thing that glinted angrily as it pressed into the head of the terrified woman they held in their other hand. She was trembling, too; dressed like one of the tellers, she had clearly been hiding behind the booth that the villain now stood behind, keeping them separate from Izuku and out of his reach.

Izuku ground his teeth as he froze in place. Great, now this was a hostage situation. Slowly, keeping his voice even, he replied, "Alright, I'm stopping. Don't shoot."

The green lightning around Izuku dissipated as he relaxed his grip on One For All. The villain, if anything, seemed to become even more scared. They insisted, "D-don't come any closer! I'll shoot, I mean it!"

Izuku nodded, spreading his arms wide and keeping his palms visible to keep the villain from getting spooked. "I believe you," he said, staying calm, "I'm not coming any closer."

For a few moments, the villain seemed to waver, as though not sure what they wanted to do next. Izuku took the moment to get his first good look at the criminal.

Suddenly, his eyes went wide as he realized why he hadn't been able to tell where the villain's head ended and the dark booth they'd blended into began.

"Wait a second. You're a mutant," Izuku said, his expression getting grimmer.

The villain laughed; it sounded more like a bleat than anything. "So what if I am?" they snarled mockingly, "am I too scary for you to look at, you big bad hero?"

Izuku studied the villain closer; while the villain's hands seemed mostly human, the vast majority of everything else visible was…elk? The villain's face was covered in short, coarse brown fur, with a narrow snout instead of a normal human face. His cheeks were heavy and sagging like pouches, and his eyes had the yellow irises and u-shaped pupils of a large herbivore. And of course, there was the pair of magnificent antlers that sprouted from the villain's head, their many points branching and spreading in all directions, changing the shape of his outline, and, Izuku imagined, making going through doors into an unpleasant experience.

For a moment, Izuku wasn't sure how to respond; he'd run into mutants before, of course, they were more common here in the Underground than anywhere else in the world…but he'd never seen one like this. Izuku remembered a few of them; they were like raging animals, lashing out at whatever they could reach, all too often terrifyingly powerful. Sure, there were some that weren't as bad…but most people were afraid of them, claiming that mutation quirks altered their users' brains, made them inclined to kill and destroy and lash out as they pleased.

And now, one of those mutants was aiming a gun at an innocent woman Izuku had sworn to protect. The world seemed to shrink down, everything outside this destroyed bank disappearing into the fog. There was only this tiny room; the only people in all of creation were Izuku, the woman in front of him, and the man-or less-who wanted to kill them both.

The villain seemed to find something about this whole situation hilarious; he kept chortling to himself, making those enormous antlers swing from side to side. "Mutant," he muttered as if to himself, the hiss as his mouth formed the word turning it into some sort of oath, some sort of curse, "yeah, that's what I fucking am, I guess. Just a freak everyone should be scared of. A monster."

"You don't have to be," Izuku tried, his voice somewhere between worried and earnest, "you could put the gun down. It doesn't have to go this way."

The villain snorted, shaking his head. "You don't get it," he said, "you don't understand a goddamn thing."

The villain raised his head again, and Izuku recognized the look in his eye even through a face that couldn't make a single human expression. The villain lifted the gun's muzzle away from his hostage's head, extending his arm out and pointing the weapon directly at Izuku.

Calmly, the tremble gone now, the villain said, "If everyone says I'm a monster…might as well lean into it, right? Nothing I could ever do could change their minds. So fuck it. It ain't my job to fix a world this broken. But maybe I'll try anyway. So…goodbye, you fucking hero."

The villain's finger tightened as he began to press the trigger. It was the moment Izuku had been waiting for.

Faster than the human eye could move, a swirl of black energy at his fingertip took form, and moved with the slightest twitch of Izuku's finger. It shot forward, a long strand like a whip that coiled around the gun's barrel and handle and the villain's finger. Izuku tugged, and the gun came loose from the villain's grip. It flew from his shocked fingers, landing uselessly on the once-gleaming tile of the bank floor, skittering away into a corner.

Before the gun had even hit the ground, Izuku surged forwards, One For All responding to his call like always. Green lightning wreathed his fist as it slammed home into the villain's face. The sheer force behind the impact sent the villain crashing into the wall behind him; he dropped to the ground like a sack of rocks, leaving an impressive crater behind.

Once the villain was confirmed to be out for the count, Izuku swiftly rushed to the woman's side. "Are you hurt?" he asked, smiling widely.

The woman shook her head; she was shaking too hard to speak. Izuku patted her back soothingly; although he wished he could stay and make sure she would be okay, he still had more villains to catch. So he told her, "Sit tight, okay? The police will be here any minute."

With that taken care of, Izuku stood, leaving the unconscious villain handcuffed for good measure. He stepped out into the (comparatively) bright outdoors, one hand already raised towards his earpiece.

Pressing the button on the side, he began, "Holo, report. Have you been keeping tabs on the rest of the villains?"

A few moments later, the crackle of static signaled the beginning of her reply. "Yeah, I have, Atlas," she responded, sounding a little tired and stressed, but otherwise okay, "only…there's a bit of a problem."

Izuku waited patiently for the explanation, but it was interrupted by the sound of a yelp and a grunt from the other end of the comm line. Worried, he demanded, "Holo, is everything okay?"

The moment of silence that followed had Izuku ready to say "damn the property damage" and leap across the whole damn level to get to his sidekick.

Luckily, Akari's voice came back a moment later when she replied, "Yep, everything is fine. One of them had a projectile quirk, he kept shooting at me while I was chasing them. He decided to give me one last parting shot."

"Parting shot?" Izuku repeated.

"Uh, yeah," Akari confirmed, sounding sheepish and slightly embarrassed, "see, uh, Atlas, that's the problem. They're gone."

"How?" Izuku demanded.

Akari, to her credit, didn't immediately tremble when the Number One demanded something of her. Instead, she explained, "One of the gangsters has an earth control quirk. He opened up some hidden entrance to a tunnel network. Judging from where it was, though, I think it might be one of the maintenance tunnels."

Izuku nodded at that; much like aboveground sewers, the areas beneath and around the official levels of the Underground were filled with small maintenance and access tunnels for vital infrastructure. Unfortunately, they were also the perfect basis for webs of illicit, largely unmapped tunnels dug by villains and criminals over the years, which made catching villains even trickier than it usually was.

"Damn," he muttered, "we'll never find them in there. This is the third bank robbery in two months, it's gotta be this same gang. We were so close."

There was silence from over the comms; clearly, Akari was a bit occupied catching her breath from running halfway across the city while dodging projectiles.

Izuku reached up to turn off the comm to focus on cleaning up the aftermath at the bank, but just before he could, there was the sudden hiss of static that indicated someone was about to speak.

"I heard something about maintenance tunnels?" came the voice on the other end. It was warm, but blunt, as though the speaker's attention was currently elsewhere.

Izuku's eyes went wide as he recognized the speaker. His voice suddenly perking up, he confirmed, "Yeah. Holo just tracked a group of bank robbers into them. Did a damn good job, too."

Akari's voice returned to the comms, sounding surprised as she said, "Oh, uh, thank you, Atlas."

The third voice chuckled. In the background of whatever location they were calling from, there was a loud series of rustling sounds, accompanied by loud, rhythmic scraping and the occasional thud. "Oi, show the Number One the proper respect, kid!" the voice rebuked when it cleared up again, "you should always call him "sir."

Izuku had to fight to suppress his own chuckle as Akari stuttered helplessly. Deeply confused but unwilling to disobey, she replied, "Um…okay. Sorry, Atlas…I mean sir! Sorry, sir. Sir Atlas?"

"Okay, enough messing with the sidekick," Izuku decided as his childhood friend laughed over the comms, "Ejiro, I hope to God those sounds in the background are because you're in the maintenance tunnels already, and you're moving to intercept our fleeing gangsters."

Ejiro Kirishima, better known as Red Riot, the fifth-ranked hero in Japan, laughed loudly and cheerfully. "Got it in one, buddy," he said cheerfully, "I figured you could use some backup."

"Just don't get stuck in the tunnels again," Izuku said equally cheerfully, "I won't come dig you out this time."

Ejiro snorted. "I wasn't stuck!" he insisted, "I was…resting!"

"Uh huh," Izuku said, smirking even though Ejiro was nowhere close to being able to see him.

There was silence over the comms for a while. Then, at last, Ejiro said, "I'm getting close. See you guys in a bit once I've stolen the Number One's glory."

Izuku couldn't help the chuckle that escaped his lips at the scandalized noise Akari made over the comms. He said simply, "See you on the other side, man."

"See you on the other side," Ejiro echoed cheerfully before the click-hiss of static filled the line as he disconnected.

When he was gone, Akari asked timidly, "So…should I call you "Atlas" or "sir?"

Izuku rolled his eyes. "Just…on the job, just call me Atlas, okay?" he sighed, "and stop listening to Ejiro. He enjoys messing with our sidekicks way too much."

In the warren of cramped tunnels under the Sixth Level of the Musutafu Underground, the group of fleeing criminals hastily ran along a secret path, marked with hidden signs only their gang knew. The gang moved rapidly, fleeing from the oncoming heroes like mice fleeing from a cat. Behind them, one of their members sealed the tunnel with stone and dirt, concealing it perfectly and ensuring they wouldn't be pursued. The gangsters snickered to themselves as they slipped through the labyrinth, convinced they'd escaped the heroes yet again.

Then, the lights went out.

The thin lighting strips above their heads flickered, once, twice, a third time; then they were gone. Now, there was only the red glow of emergency lights, marking exits that were too far away.

The tunnel was narrow; men jostled and shoved as they forged onwards, jumpy and on edge. Far away, they could hear sirens, and shouts, and-

"Gotta say, this is a nice escape route you've got here."

The men froze. Who had said that? Where was it coming from?

Slowly, a new sound drowned out the sirens and unnerved whispers of the gangsters. It was a high, harsh scraping, like a million nails on chalkboard. It ground against the men's ears, wore down their nerves.

Then, the source of the sound turned a corner, and the tunnel behind it disappeared.

Men shoved themselves backwards as a hulking, terrifying form suddenly appeared from an intersecting tunnel. Gangsters cursed and shoved in their desperation to get away from the figure. He was immensely muscular, inhuman-looking in the tiny space of the tunnel, with spiky red hair that almost scraped the roof. Every inch of his body was diamond-hard, crystallized, unbreakable. One arm was thrust against the rough-hewn wall of the tunnel, pushing into the rock. A steady shower of sparks poured from his jagged knuckles as they ground against the stone, producing that horrible, overpowering sound. The sparks illuminated his face, his razor-sharp teeth glinting in the dancing flickers like a shark's. In the tiny amount of red light that washed over the terrified men, the hero Red Riot looked like a demon from Hell itself, and he was grinning.

He filled the tunnel utterly, and the men knew there was no getting around him; the way behind them was nothing more than a dead end. They were trapped.

Ejiro, knowing exactly how terrifying he looked in the claustrophobic space and loving every bit of it, began, "Alright, boys. We can do this the easy way, or we can do this-"

One of the gangsters, terrified out of his mind by the sound and the light and the menacing hero trapping them in such a claustrophobic space, leaped at Ejiro. His hand-shaped like the paw of a grizzly bear, with claws and strength to match-slammed into the side of Ejiro's head. It was a blow that could have ripped a normal man's head from his shoulders.

Ejiro's grin only sharpened as it struck the side of his head and bounced off harmlessly. The bear-man's eyes widened as he wound up for a second mighty blow, which had similarly minimal effect. He went to try a third time, and Ejiro simply grabbed his arm by the wrist and squeezed. The gangster heard a crack, and felt agonizing pain shoot up his arm. He dropped to the ground sobbing, out of the fight before it had even begun.

Ejiro sighed, evidently annoyed at having his speech interrupted. Pulling his arm away from the wall, he slammed his fists together with a grin as the rest of the gangsters charged him in desperation.

Just before they struck, he muttered, "The hard way it is, then."

The next time Izuku and Akari heard from Ejiro, it was approximately an hour later, and he was posing for pictures in front of a pile of defeated gangsters, who lay unconscious and groaning, waiting for the police to show up.

Ejiro was grinning and talking to the few reporters who bothered to stray down this deep when Izuku strode up behind him.
"So," he said conversationally, "what's this about stealing my glory?"

Ejiro seemed to jump several feet into the air. Giving a very unmanly scream, he finally saw who it was once he came back down. Instantly, his grin returned.

"There you are, man!" he said happily, offering his hand for Izuku to seize in a bone-crushing grip as they pulled each other close for a back-slapping embrace.

Cameras flashed, but both top heroes successfully ignored them in favor of busting out laughing.
"So, you didn't get stuck?" Izuku teased.

Ejirou snorted, "Please, I slipped through those tunnels like a-"

Izuku coughed into his fist, nodding at the reporters nearby, as well as Akari, who looked a little like she was having a religious experience for whatever reason. Getting the hint, Ejiro fell silent, weakly finished, "Like…like a very slippery thing."

Izuku nodded in approval, though he still looked mildly unimpressed. "Why am I friends with you again?" he asked, though they both knew the answer already.

Ejiro's sharp-toothed grin flashed even brighter. "Simple," he replied casually, "I can't get rid of you."
Izuku raised his eyebrow. Ejiro responded by raising his own. After a stare-off lasting a few seconds, both men dropped the act and burst out laughing. Soon, they were back to good-natured joking so natural, they seemed like brothers.

The next day, Izuku and Ejiro's iron-gripped embrace was on the front page of every heroics section of every newspaper in the country, as usual. One or both of them showed up on that front page every day-and most of the pictures that weren't of them were of their friends and classmates.

It was just another day in the Underground.