"Are you sure you want to do this?" Tokoyami asked, glancing at the group in his room. Kirishima, Sero and Jirou looked at each other, smirking.
"Absolutely," Sero answered, rubbing his hands together like a villain. "I've always wanted to see the Dark Web."
"There can be some pretty messed up stuff on there," Tokoyami warned, although he was already typing in the password to his computer. "I'm just warning you."
"We're fine," Jirou said. "I heard that people can find information on themselves if they google their names that they wouldn't normally find. I really wanna see that."
"Me too!" Kirishima pumped his fist. "It sounds awesome!"
"Whatever you say," Tokoyami muttered. He pulled up a special browser that had no protection on it. "Jirou, you want to go first?"
"Yes, please," the girl said, leaning over the back of her friend's chair. She and Tokoyami hung out a lot to talk about their favorite bands, so she would confidently say they were pretty close. When Dark Shadow poked his head out of his master's shoulder, she gave him a loving pat on the head. Tokoyami typed in her name, along with her age, and pressed send. Hundreds of results appeared, the first one being a chat forum about the USJ incident and speculation on what people believed could have happened. Jirou hungrily read through until she found her name amongst the message bubbles.
"This is so weird," she whispered. "We're only in our second year, and people already know who we are."
"It's not that weird," Kirishima said. "I mean, we went through the USJ and summer camp, not to mention how instrumental we were to the Final Battle at the end of first year."
"Still," she replied. "Look, they're talking about you here!"
"Where?" Kirishima asked, leaning in closer. "Whoa, they totally are! How manly!"
"You know what I want to look for?" Sero asked, hovering over Tokoyami's other side. "You should search up Todoroki. I wanna see everyone talking shit about Endeavour."
By the beginning of their second year, Todoroki had sat their class down to talk about his traumatic past. Everyone in Class 2-A had a burning hatred for Endeavour ever since then, even those of them who had loved him beforehand. He had hurt their friend, emotionally and physically. A person couldn't come back from that, no matter how hard he tried to make it up.
"Good idea," Jirou cooed. "Do it, do it!"
"Alright," Tokoyami said, going back to the browser. He typed in Todoroki's name, and unsurprisingly, thousands of results appeared as opposed to Jirou's hundreds. Kirishima whistled low, blinking at the screen.
"Holy shit," he said. "Being a pro-hero's son really means you're in the public eye, huh?"
"We already knew that, dumbass," Sero snickered. "But you're right, this is crazy. Oh, click on the one that says 'Proof that Endeavour is a Piece of Shit!'"
They scanned that article too, laughing at the bashing of their most hated hero. When they clicked back to the search results, something farther down caught Jirou's eye. "Wait, hold on! That one's about the Stain Incident!"
Tokoyami didn't hesitate to click the link this time. It led them to a video website, in which this video was simply titled with Todoroki, Midoriya and Iida's names, along with the words "The Truth about Stain's Takedown." To the teenager's shock and surprise, as they clicked on the video, they found it to have come from a security camera in the alley where the attack had taken place.
Stain was hovering over Iida, his sword high in the air, already ready to plunge down into their friend's back. All four of them gasped, fear striking their hearts. Just as Stain was about to connect with armor and skin, a flash of green lightning appeared, knocking him back. Midoriya now stood on screen, poised in a fighting position only inches away from Iida's fallen body. The video was put on mute, so although the boy's lips were moving, they couldn't tell what he was saying.
"Holy shit!" Sero gaped. "Midoriya just totally fought Stain!"
"Oh shit, here he comes!" Kirishima cried. The four of them watched in wrapt horror as Stain moved to attack Izuku, only for the green-eyed boy to dodge and block his attacks. After a few minutes of the intense battle, Midoriya slipped up. Stain's quirk only became public knowledge after this incident, so there was no way the greenet could have known what was about to happen when Stain's sword sliced into his arm, but the rest of them did. Izuku froze only moments later as the quirk took effect.
"That looked like it hurt," Sero clucked. "That guy's pain tolerance is insane ."
"I know I'd be crying," Jirou agreed. Stain approached Izuku's frozen form, his lips moving as he brandished a blade. Before he could get too close, a blast of fire jetted from the mouth of the alley. The teenagers all gasped when Todoroki appeared, his left arm outstretched from his attack. The boy said something, then held up his illuminated phone screen. The camera was too far away to pick up on what it was, but even so, Sero remembered that night.
"Holy shit!" He called. "That was when Midoriya randomly sent us all his location!"
"Oh my god," Jirou breathed. "He was fighting the Hero Killer ?"
"What a mad banquet of darkness," Tokoyami muttered. Dark Shadow nodded solemnly, eyes wide.
"He never said anything," Kirishima whispered. A new battle between Todoroki and Stain began, blasts of fire and pires of ice appearing out of thin air. Stain dodged each attack, but so did Todoroki. Iida's muscles were twitching like crazy now, enough that he could lift his head and yell something. Todoroki made the mistake of looking over at him, only to receive two knives in his arm.
"Eep!" Sero yelped. When everyone looked at him, he blushed. "I was startled, okay?"
Todoroki reached out and yanked the blades out of his arm emotionlessly, freezing them to the ground before he iced over the wounds to conceal his blood. Tokoyami shuddered. "Hardcore," he nodded.
The battle began again, this time with Stain clearly getting the upper hand. They were all biting their nails at this point in anticipation, although clearly, their friends hadn't been killed during this battle. Just as it looked like all hope would be lost, Izuku moved , breaking out of the quirk's hold. "How did he do that?" Jirou asked incredulously. "Is it like what he did with Shinsou?"
"I don't think so," Kirishima said, narrowing his eyes at the screen. "Look, Iida's starting to move more too. Didn't his quirk have to do with blood types?"
"Right," Tokoyami said. "They must all have different blood types."
As the group watched, Iida forced himself to his feet. Together, the three of them attacked Stain at once. It was all over moments later. "Holy crap," Jirou breathed. " Those three took down Stain, not Endeavour!"
"Why wouldn't they just say that then?" Kirishima demanded to know. Sero shook his head.
"Remember, this was before the license exam," he explained. "They could have gotten in big trouble." The video ended with the boys dragging Stain's body out of the alleyway, along with Pro Hero: Native's.
"That's so wild," Jirou commented. "I have an idea. Search Midoriya's name next."
"Oh, totally!" Kirishima nodded. "We all know he's fought villains more than the rest of us, the trouble magnet that he is."
"Agreed," Tokoyami said, fingers flying over the keyboard. Sure enough, Midoriya's name had just as many hits as Todoroki's. Scrolling through the links led them to multiple forums and articles about his various villain fights over the years, some with video evidence, and some with nothing more than eye-witness accounts that may or may not have been true. Then, something none of them had considered happened.
"Whoa, wait," Kirishima said, halting Tokoyami's scrolling. "Look, that link is from twelve years ago!"
"Huh?" Tokoyami peered at his screen. "You're right. That's odd…"
"Maybe it's a different guy?" Jirou asked.
"Have you ever met another Midoriya?" Sero snorted. "Just click on it, we'll see for ourselves."
Tokoyami shrugged and clicked the link. It brought them to a nondescript website with nothing but a plain black background. It was another video link, without a preview. Jirou suddenly got a bad feeling, although she didn't voice is out loud. Tokoyami hovered his mouse over the play button, hesitating. Kirishima, always one to steamroll through things, waved him on. "Come on dude, what are you waiting for?"
Tokoyami clicked the link.
The video began with an adult man setting up a camera in what appeared to be a child's bedroom. There was an All Might poster on one of the visible walls, and a few action figues on the nearby dresser. The man adjusted the shaky camera into a position he clearly liked before he stepped back and peered into the lens. The students gasped at the sight of him. He was nearly the spitting image of Izuku, except this man had black curly hair instead of green, and less freckles than Izuku did. He appeared tall, and had a bit darker skin. He didn't look totally japanese- perhaps mixed with another race with darker skin- and had smaller, yellow eyes. Besides those things, his face was definitely that of one of Izuku's relatives.
"Oh man," Kirishima whispered, dislike prickling at the back of his neck. "Is that Midoriya's dad ?"
"His dad…" Jirou whispered, her mind trying to process it. Earlier in the year, during a Sex Ed class, the entirety of 2-A found out something terrible about Midoriya Izuku's father. He had used to make Midoriya and his best friend, Bakugou Katsuki, have sex with each other at a young age. Although neither boy spoke about it, Jirou also knew that Midoriya had gone through the assaults alone for a long time before Bakugou was brought into the mix. Her bad feeling worsened, but she was frozen in shock.
The man crept over to the child's bed, where a sleeping toddler could barely be seen in the low light. It was obviously the middle of the night if the dark sky outside of the window said anything, but an All Might nightlight showcased enough of the room for them to be able to see what was going on. The man sat down on the bed and touched his son's shoulder, causing the boy to wake up sleepily.
"Daddy?" The toddler- Izuku - said, sitting up in bed. "Wha's goin' on?"
"Shhh," the man purred, petting his son's mop of green curls. "Be good for daddy, alright?"
"Turn it off," Jirou whispered, her voice cracking. When nobody moved, she said it louder. "I said turn it off!"
But it was too late. The video glitched out into darkness, and a second later, a different scene came on. Izuku wasn't wearing any clothes, and neither was his father. The toddler was crying now, blubbering something about not wanting to do "it." The man was getting angrier, smoke curling out of his mouth. Tokoyami hit the button to close the browser, his hands shaking. They had seen too much.
(x)
Aizawa Shouta's phone was ringing. He grumbled to himself, putting down the paper he was grading to pick the device up. To his surprise, he found it to not be any of his colleagues or friends, but rather Kirishima Eijirou's cell number. Getting a bad feeling, he answered quickly and put it to his ear. "Hello? Kirishima, is everything alright?"
The silence on the other end was deafening. Finally, the redheaded boy cleared his throat, and when he spoke, it was clear that he had been crying. "N-no," he whimpered into the receiver. "Sensei… you need to see this."