The scent of shuffling of papers and glare of dimming and brightening spot lights brought izuku's focus in as the unmistakable heat of production lights filled studio six. Luckily everyone had been sent through the makeup department prior to even walking on set otherwise he was certain the stress and heat from the production lights would have made the room positively reek. Then again he was certain that there would never be a worse smell then the last numo they had tracked down and dealt with. Seriously why the hell would AFO even have a methane nomu in the first place.
While the aroma of the stage was leaving something missing he was certain that it helped the people here work better. It felt more normal, mundane even to smell the heat from the lamps and the freshly brewed coffee. With the war months back had taking its toll on everyone this was possibly the best they could do to fake normality. And speaking of such things this was the first program to of been green lit for the return to normalcy, if it wasn't so perfectly mundane he might of figured the broadcasters were trying for an insult which glossed over of the collective trauma the world had just suffered through, but with what he was shown and the reasons behind why it was built to be this way he couldn't help but get a little hopeful that this was the start of a new era.
He was cut from his musings as the director signaled for the beginning of the show. Right on que the lights dimmed to a comforting orange, which allowed silence to settle after he had taken his own seat in the audience. "We are going live in five, four , three , two, …."
"Good Morning Japan, it is your favorite Anchor Sasaki Hidetaka, with my co host Juiliana Shinna here. How are you holding up today Shinna-san? Morning coffee not too strong?"
The co-anchor, a blonde bob cut whose quirk was a meerkat mutant, She had chuckled at him while following her anchors led" Swell mr. Zasaki, It has been one big and eventful week as we wrap up the trails of the Paramount war and the trials of the villains that have caused so much destruction, and while the coffee wasn't too bad it did scald my tongue a bit. Now with your past as a rescue hero what are your thoughts on the clean up efforts currently taking place and how would you cure my burnt tongue, Mr. Sasaki?" he wasnt certain if it was her quirk or her natural attitude that made the cohost catty but he would assume both as it was funny either way.
The aged man's face creased slightly but, that didn't take away from his properly cleaned up appearance while in his three piece suit. After a slight pause Hidetaka let a small amount of mirth slip onto his face "Thankyou Ms Shinna, the Relief efforts underway are the best we could of possibly hoped for. The heroine Uravity is heading the efforts by using her quirk, Null, to negate the effects of gravity and inertia on the collapsed structures strung across new Musutafu, while I pray and hope for low casualties." his tone and mirth slipped into a more solemn tone, faint as it was; it carried experience and sorrow with it. " With the recent events the best I can say is that I thank the heroes that stopped this month's long tragedy with all my heart. As for the burnt tongue, much like what we have all done as of late, we just need to BEAR with it, things always get better" Izuku winced slightly at the poor attempt at humor but quickly let it pass as the broadcast continued "speaking of heroes, The one responsible for stopping the Great evil that perpetrated this whole mess was none other than the successor to Allmight. He now stands Proudly as our society's newest symbol of Peace, the hero Deku." That was his que. He had been through the simple act of standing up and waving at the camera with the crew and director many times. He personally thought that having him be a guest instead of someone in the crowd would be better but he wasn't the director nor the one who signed all the paperwork. So he was more or less here to look pretty and normal and then disappear into the crowd.
"And in regards to the heinous individual that caused all this, I have just received word that his sentencing and trial has beem concluded. He will be Segmented and locked into Radioactive waste caskettes, a total of five if I'm reading this right, and sent into outer space." there was a long pause as Izuku internally groaned at this new information. So much for making the broadcast a focus on normality but perhaps it will generate more closure then the broadcasts original plan projected.
Sure lets just throw in a cruel and unsual punishment for a master criminal. But then again. With the amount of people that were personally affected by tomoura shigiraki. Luckily he wasn't infornt of the camera and was not required to keep his terrible, i'm not lying I swear, face up. Letting a low and long breath out he straightened his back. Yeah. It was for the best that shigiraki was gone. He can't hurt anyone anymore.
The mircat for her part looked just as perturbed as he had felt during her response." Sounds kind of overkill for someone already dead though Mr. Sasaki. Why would they go to such extreme lengths over a dead man?" The anchor for his part kept a calm face on , while a bit harsh he understood the mans sentiments" Ms. Shinna, while I understand where your unease comes from, the amount of damage this man has caused along with his previous revival make this action one of the more sensible options I have seen in all my years as both a citizen and as a hero. With new quirks blessing this world every day, the chances of a third revival are too great a risk to take. This is the safest and surest way he can not be brought back, at the very least whole and at the very best not harm anyone ever again."
The co host looked a bit dejected at the stoney words of her Anchor she nevertheless pushed forward and continued the broadcast"I guess that does make a lot of sense. You can never be too careful with all the new and interesting quirks that people are being born with every day. Moving on to other news we have a special guest joining us later on tonight so please tune in at 19:00"
The standard programing resumed after shigiraki's sentencing had shaking things up. Two hours later the hosts closed the broadcast with "Have/live a goodday/Life New Musutafu"
After which the director called cut and left like it was the most natural thing in the world. Show business was weird.
Izuku got up and did the rounds, shaking hands and greeting people he had either saved or had become a beacon of hope to. It wasn't that it was draining to meet them, it was just that he was worried that he was beinging to forget everyone he had saved thoughout his short carreer as a hero and he still had years to go. Later after finishing the meet and greet he sat down on a couch in the lunch room of the news building that had weathered most of the destruction shigiraki had put the world through. Very few citys remained whole but that was the past and living up to the symbol of peace was going to take a lot of work. And a whole lot of food. Was getting hungier lately or was it just him.
'Its going to take more than that young man. You may have bested tomoura but there will always be more. Either better or worse than he was. And you will never have a normal life after taking a will not be easy' And a LOT of control is required to never slide into using it in every situation.' Ever since his close call with tomoura he had been having the vestiges be more directly active in speaking, mainly the second, Though it sounded slightly off, It might just be his mind coping with all the stress.
' you need to take a rest young Midoriya, you've been through a lot. Maybe find a place to you're your own and start a family. You have earned it. It will keep you grounded' the seventh vestige suggested and it actually didn't sound like a bad idea. And if he was going to be honest he already knew exactly who he was going to ask out… and who knows maybe his life will start getting better.
In the long distance future of the forty second millennium a snicking echo dies in the void.
==Three Year Later==
The sun was shining down on a young green hair young man. His forest green hair had brightened over the last few years making it more in line with a grass green instead of his natural forest green hair. The cause, a lot of stress. He was never one to fall into despair, izuku was supposed to be the pillar of society so he always kept his face held high and smile solidly placed. Not too strong and nor too faint. It was a smile fit for comforting and security. One that he had struggled the last few years to keep on. But he still pushed on. Through all the mayhem, all the signing events the rescue operations and photo ops. He kept it on, and at this point he was greatful that it was more or less bolted onto his face. Over the last two years he had lost his viriginity fallen in love deeply, married his childhood sweetheart and most lovely woman he knew. And still knows, however now, now he was broke. Physically he was fine, in fact the last two years were the best thing to happen to his physical health. No, the problem lay with his mental and emotional health.
First was the denial and refusal from his wife about being pregnant. Correction, having been pregnant. She decided that they shouldn't have a child. A one sided decision and every time he broached the subject with her it ended up as a battle. Eventually he just dropped the subject, it wasn't worth the stress and they were already way past it having any weight, at least it was in her eyes. Weight not in the she still had time to try and reverse her decision, and the weight he was referring to, the kind that was ' oh oops it doesn't affect me anymore'.
No, that decision still weighed on him heavily. His unborn child is gone before ever even being given a chance at life and meeting his/her father. Before he could right the wrongs of his own childhood. He let a low sigh exit his lungs before he inadvertently bumped into a stranger dragging him out of his thoughts. He quickly apologized and went on his way. He still had a lot of packing to do after all.
With the last of his stuff packed into boxes izuku looked to his ex-wife with an almost pleading look, she had started the proceedings a while back and only recently had informed him that things weren't working out between them. It tore his heart apart but it wasn't something he was able to fix, she didn't want kids: he did, he was willing to wait but apparently what she had meant was she never wanted kids. And his asking every couple of months for the last two years had been the straw that divided them.
She would keep the house and a monthly alimony check equaling to 35% of what he made. He wasn't even truly upset at that, what really upset him and something he still didn't understand was why. Why divorce, why not just stay together, wasn't that what married couples were supposed to do. The whole, " Through sickness and health and thick n' thin. The good times and the bad." But all she said was that she loved him just not LOVED him. He still didn't understand that. But with the current house being also his to pay off and her parents moving in he needed to find somewhere else to stay. She helped move his things onto the driveway. He had looked to Uraraka Once more, trying and failing to get her attention. She had already reentered the house and closed the door with a soft click of the dead bolt.
Next to his suitcases and small stack of boxes, the lean and toned young man took out his phone and made a call. He needed reassurance and affection and the only other living person in the world that could give the number one hero that right now was his beloved mother.
The door to his childhood apartment opened as he and his mother conversed about this and that and catching up with goings on in the last few months. He regaled his mother with tales of heroism and victory like that of when he was a child only now they were real and he had actually saved people other than his hardworking mother. He made sure she was situated and that his heroics didn't spill out of his room nor his work shop next door. When he was here, all that matter was him and her.
He and his mother spent a lot of their time together after that. They were never really far from one another. Even when he went on foreign aide missions he continued to keep in contact with her. Days turned into weeks which turned into months and eventually years. On the month of her 55th birthday they were informed she had terminal cancer. He spared no expense to help her get through it and come out on top. And it seemed like she'd pull through. But she didn't. One day out of the blue she just collapsed. He was there in a heart beat to catch her and stop her from cracking her head on the concrete.
One would think with all his strength and resources he'd be able to save her, but time continued on and took one more someone special from him. The doctors he brought her to did their duty but after a few minutes pronounced her dead. She had died earlier than that though. He could tell the moment he looked into her eyes at the end when he had caught her in the midst of the fall. She had already started to fade from his world. At the very least he was there for her when she passed.
Life does that terrible thing it does and it went on, he had hopes for the future some sort of plans but he has since come to realize things can always get worse. During the service of his mothers burial everyone had attened, everyone except the one and only person who he thought he could count on to comfort him in the midst of all this pain and suffering.
She wasn't there at the funeral. She didn't even send condolences. In her stead was a stranger of a woman in a business suit. She had waited patiently until the service was over and izuku was alone before walking up to him to hand him an envelope of papers. She seemed more remorsefully that she was there then anything else. Still He accepted the papers and sent the woman on her way with a signature for her own children. Though he thought it was strange that she was apologetic.
Later that night he sat down at his desk in his workshop with his reading glasses on. As he went through all the letters and mourning shrine offerings he was drawn to the packet of papers he was handed earlier in the day. Sighing, he opened the packet and was astonished and if he was being honest disbelieving at what he read. The one thing his ex-wife, and at the time what he assumed to have been good friend, sent him on this most depressing of days wasn't a gift or a long winded apology that he still never received noooo OF COURSE NOT. Instead his dearest ex had sent a restraining order.
Izuku liked to think he was a rational person. He liked to think he was good at keeping his emotions under control but after everything in the last six years of at best lukewarm birthday cards, and at worst half hearted apologies saying she forgot or had something come up, a court Issued restraining order was just unthinkable. So unthinkable that he huffed a laugh. It was funny if you gave it a cursory glance.
Then a string of disbelieving remarks and finally after rereading and double checking that it was indeed intended for him. He let out a strained breath and leaned back in his leather office chair. He felt numb and a dull aching need to close his eyes. When he opened them again he calmly stood up, backed away from his desk pushed in his chair, relaxed for a second and the wall separating the two conjoined apartments shattered into a pile of rubble. So his quirks had flared and subsequently snapped his own forearm. So what if he was on the verge of starting another civil war over the insult he had just received. So what if the gold digging ex-wife of his was a heartless banshee that felt nothing of all the time they had spent together.
Only when Black whip decided to activate and restrain his movements did he realize he was hyperventilating. The realization of this only made him struggle against them more. Up and into him cracking a rib which left him teary eyed and wheezing. But the pain brought clarity and after what felt like ages of staring down at the paperwork which was littered all over the floor he came to a middle ground option. He decided to give an old retired private eye a visit. If rampaging wasn't going to solve his issues he was going to at least find out why this had been granted. He was going to get closure at the least.
It had been a few more weeks since his impromptu remodeling eri had decided to pay him a visit and they caught up on her goings on. She was about to enter her third year at UA. He was proud of his little sister. Adoptive In all but the legal sense, she always made sure to make them proud. She had been staying with eraserhead after the man retired. The war had left him mostly blind in both eyes and needing a cane to walk. He was given a generous stipend and granted the title of a national hero. He had spent his days ensuring Eri was raised in a loving home. Or as loving as the old grouch could get these days.
Eri for her part was always caring and made sure to live up to what was expected of her, and he made sure to shower her with earnest praise and sweets whenever he could. She informed him that she was going to be stopping by more often for her sanity and his. They hadnt kept much in touch after she started her journy to become a hero and he was ashamed to admit that he had been more than preoccupied. So after a deadly pouting and insurance that he'd die a thousand thousand times if he did that again he accepted her "offer" to spend more time together. And to ensure this he gave her his key to the apartment while he kept his mother's key.
Later that week with the help of Naomasa and a spiked mead with quirk suppressants he was given the reason why the judge had granted it the she bitches request. In any other circumstance it wouldn't of been nearly so thorough nor indefinite. At most a thrity day period . But she had somehow used his clinical insanity while skipping over Uraraka's. Sure with being the top ranked rescue heroine, he might of understood some bias on the judges part. But the Sheer blatant nature of the ruling was a choice that neither he nor the detective could agree with. The reason the judge granted Uraraka the restraining order was due to what was said during the procedures. She had played up his instability, insinuating that his quirk, which involved super strength black whip and many others, could lash out in a fit of anger at any time and kill her and her elderly parents that weren't even living in the house at the time.
Had he lost control arouind her? Yes but he only ever injured himself. Or had gone for a very very long run. He cared too much for others to do something as vile as assault them… unless they were villains but they, as he had come to realize, were something slightly less than people. So when he says he wasn't mad. He meant it. No, he was in the essence of despair. Not angry no matter how many strange rocks ended up being mistaken for a meteor shower on the other side of the planet as he vented his unending frustration, nor the numerous spontaneously clean beaches that popped, no these were all coincidences while he stewed in his frustration at uraraka's inability to fucking communicate. And to make things even worse, he knew that he could never hate her. He didn't love her like he used to. By the gods no, love was the farthest thing he felt towards her; he wasn't that insane, but he couldn't bring himself to hate her. She was his first friend aside from katsuki. She had been there for him when he needed it, up until recently that is.
Izuku did what he always did when life had kicked him in the shins, elbows, face and groin. He buckled his boots and lost himself in the work of Saving hundreds if not thousands of people. Though, in the following months with the dawn of a new year. He still found himself night after night doing the same thing when he was left alone, attempting to end it all. It was what he had done for the last four weeks straight, he thought of ending it.
Not in some spectacular way by going out with a bang or a final farewell before seeing if his quirks could allow him to survive on the moon, but in the cold darkness of his old child home surrounded by the judging images of allmight and the turned down photo of his mother. She didn't deserve to see it happen If/when it finally does happen.
He had been saved from the abyss each time he tiptoed towards the edge and threatened to go over it. The song and dance of dispair and entropy was intoxicating. With each and every time he looked down into the abyss, its inky bleak blackness seemed to move and stare back with unblinking uneyes.
The source of his salvation each time had come from the outside. Someone, maybe one of the vestiges, was able to talk him out of it. Buying just enough time that the emotions faltered and he stepped back. But, it only worked for a time. With each subsequent dance leading him closer forcing them to drag him back from the brink even harder. Each time it got a little bit less effective and the numbness never truly fading after a while. They had tried Bringing up his friends and family, always knowing just what to say in order to distract him but even invoking their names and images were losing their touch.
It had Been a few days since his last dance and he was starting to feel better, even hopeful. The people he saved looked more vivid and the community service he did filled him with purpose.
Aizawa was an old crotchety man that enjoyed yelling at kids that didn't know any better while doting heavily on his adopted daughter. He had been in retirement for the last six years and was honestly starting to enjoy it. He had seen his little girl go from an elementary school superstar to the face of the second year's UA Sports festival winner all without having a quirk flare up. She had been doing her best and he made sure that she understood that he loved her each and every day.
On this day though, he wished he had died during the war. Soemthing each and every hero teacher fears had just landed in his lap. A Hero Commissions report on one of his prior students. Menetta, a small-time hormonally driven creep, had finally crossed the line and became an outright villain. The report was thorough and disturbing in equal measure. Menetta had somehow gotten his hands on a drug ring and became the leader of it a few years back. Afterwards he was dabbling in human transmutation effects of a new drug. TRANSMORPHINE, its addiction rates were next to null likely due to the pain induced by using it. However while the user of the drug was never addicted to it, those who participated in sexual intercourse with those altered by it were. At first the drug was used as a way to get rid of competition but once Menetta took over it had turned into an underground sex trafficking's operation. With it affecting both men and women the amount of kidnappings had skyrocketed over the last couple of months. Everyone had assumed the grapelord was killed that night. It seemed that they were wrong.
Along with the order to hunt down and terminate his old student he was also ordered to be brought back to full strength. Which ment that he needed to involve his daughter. He really really didn't need this. He just wanted to see his little girl grow up and prosper as he wished she would. But the unmentioned threat that the hero commission held was too great. Ever since Eri was found she had been his sword of Damocles. And he would be damned if he was ever going to hand her over to the commission. He was still spry enough to take out one little shit without involving his daughter. A simple in and out mission. Destroy the drug manufacturing process and kill Menetta. Or die trying.
He wished he had died instead.
News About the national hero's death and the use of TransMorphine had spread like a wild fire and those that used or participated in its production were hunted down and butchered like rabbid dogs. But it was too underground and too decentralized and as such the ring leader was never found
Izuku was falling into the bleak void now. He had failed himself, his ex-wife, his mother and now his father figure. So many had lost their previous ways of life after meeting him and he had blamed himself for it all. Exhausted beyond belief and staring down at the end of a curled knuckle on his left arm he waited for the end. A peaceful force of instant death and destruction ready and waiting for it to flick all his pain and sorrow away. It was all he could think about for the last who knows how long now, and this time he took measures to ensure it would happen. For the last few hours he had been charging his finger to the point of it steaming and bloating. All the while reflecting on his past failures and fuck ups to the point that now, the only thing stopping his final act, was the OFA vestiges struggling and pleading with him not to do it. Their strength was all used up on previous attempts to stop him, some had given up and the only one who still fought against him was the battered and broken vestige of allmight the straining with his merger strength and the assistance of black whip to hold back his promised peaceful end.
He knew they only wanted the best for him but at the end of the day, he really was deku, the useless nobody that was allowed to play pretend for a while. Helps some and defending others, all the while he thought he would get the girl save the day and make everyone smile.
He exhaled through his nose with a tired ease. It had been nice while it lasted at. The whips were taut but they were frying, it meant that it wouldn't take much longer till it they would snap and end this game of tug of war, and he was patient, he had been the essence of patient and he was willing to wait out this game till he will finally know peace.
The fraying tendrils snapped as the door to his apartment swung open.
A life was lost and a death undone.