Chapter 24

Chapter Text

Shota had read the file four times and was no closer to having any idea where Midoriya Inko might be hiding. Yes, she was suspected of being involved in the assassination of at least seven people, but none of the information they'd collected suggested she'd worked within any type of criminal organization. If she'd truly been an assassin, the report suggested she'd worked as an independent contractor.

But that didn't feel right to Shota.

Maybe he was imagining things were different because he'd spoken with the woman and had grown to know her son. There was no way a child as sweet and generous and heroic as Midoriya Izuku had been raised by a cold-blooded killer.

Something else was going on here. There was a different explanation. There had to be.

He grabbed the file again, booted up his computer, and started researching the victims.

~*~

Hitoshi smiled when blackwhip appeared in front of him and quickly made the connection between them. "Hmm… Distance doesn't seem to be a problem then?"

"Not sure," Izuku said, sounding happy enough. "I suspect distance may be a problem with people I don't know as well as you and your family,"

"Your family too, you know."

"Maybe," Izuku said, sounding a little uncomfortable. "It was always just me and my mom. I don't think I'm ready to replace that, you know."

"Don't think of it as a replacement," Hitoshi suggested. "Think of it as an expansion. That's how Katsuki views it. His mom and dad are still his parents, but Dad and Papa have a place in his life now too."

"I'm glad for him," Izuku said, sounding quite genuine. "Don't get me wrong. I love Aunt Mitsuki but she is nearly as volatile as Kacchan, so it's good for him to know not all parents are like her. And Mic and Aizawa really are amazing dads."

"I'm not complaining," Hitoshi said casually, even knowing that their connection showed Izuku just how deeply he loved his dads. He still suffered the occasional nightmare about the day his bio-parents had dumped him on child services—and the ensuing years of abuse in the foster system—but therapy and a whole lot of love and support from his dads had helped him to understand the problem had been with them and not with Hitoshi. "You know, even if your mom isn't quite who you thought she was that doesn't make her any less your mom. You're still allowed to love her regardless of what she's done."

"I guess," Izuku said, not sounding very enthusiastic. "How is your internship going?"

Hitoshi let Izuku change the subject, but they both knew they'd talk about it again soon.

"Miss Joke is a riot," Hitoshi said, trying to keep his internal thoughts as deadpan as his usual tone of voice.

Izuku giggled. "I bet you're learning a lot."

"I am," he admitted. "I'm not comfortable at all with her jokes about marrying my dad—she knows about Papa—but her suggestions on how to get a response from anyone in any situation are really helping. We discovered that a response does not have to be words. I'm not sure making people snort with laugher is something I'll use often, but it's good to know it's an option. Dad was pretty spot on when he said she'd be the best hero to help refine my technique."

Izuku laughed at the memories that Hitoshi willingly shared.

"What about you, Izuku? How are your mini-internships going?"

"Mic and I are still trying to figure out what a couple of my quirks can do, but patrolling with Aizawa—er, Eraserhead—has been fun but pretty uneventful. I probably shouldn't be surprised that the area around Japan's best hero school is pretty much crime free."

"Unless you want to count the press."

"They have been using the 'freedom of the press' excuse pretty hard lately."

That was kind of an understatement. A couple of the journalists who'd been threatened with arrest had taken UA to court, twisting the argument to make it sound like it was perfectly reasonable to trespass when someone disintegrates the door that was keeping them out.

Nedzu had their best people working on it but they were dancing a fine line. Any suggestion that UA supported restricting the press—even when they actually didn't and had been quite vocal on that fact—would lead to all sorts of nasty accusations against UA, the principal, the teachers, and probably everyone else involved. But defending their actions as protecting their students simply gave their haters a chance to question their competence because of what happened to Izuku.

It was rather ironic that none of the school's press releases regarding ghost-Midoriya had been taken seriously. Reporters pretty much scoffed at and ignored anything regarding Midoriya still being alive. Providing proof—short of showcasing the quirks they were trying to keep quiet—was causing everyone a headache.

Thanks to the unusual nature of the connection between them, Hitoshi pretty much "heard" all of Izuku's inner ramblings.

"Too bad we can't clone a body for you or something."

"Twice. Fuck, why did I not think of him before?"

"Twice?" Hitoshi asked, unintentionally setting off a series of memories Izuku had apparently been trying to piece together. "Izuku?"

"Ah, I don't suppose I can convince you to forget you saw that?"

"Would Eraserhead let you convince him?"

Midoriya huffed. "Like father, like son."

"Now you're learning," Hitoshi said, trying to lighten the mood a little bit, but determined to understand what it was that he'd seen in Izuku's memories. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"Not really," Izuku said, even as the memories of a collapsed city and a discussion with a shiny, person-like shape appeared in their minds. Izuku took what seemed to be a shaky breath—despite not actually needing to breathe as a ghost—and whispered, "Or um…shit, maybe I do."

"Where was that?" Hitoshi asked, not sure where to start. "Was that like a nightmare or something?"

"To be completely honest, I'm not sure." This was usually the part where Izuku started to ramble uncontrollably, but it was obvious he was hesitant to share what was clearly traumatic for him. "I have these…I guess you could call them memories, but I'm older and more experienced and well, not dead. And in them Shigaraki has started a war that has devastated most of Japan. There are nomu everywhere and they kill anyone, not just heroes. Anyone they find." He took another of those strange, not-really breaths and tried to stifle a small sob of distress. "I don't know if they're real, or if they're maybe a side-effect of being dead, a 'past lives' sort of thing, but I sure as hell don't want to live in that world."

"The conversation I saw?" Hitoshi prompted.

"Maybe wishful thinking," Izuku said sadly. "The person is young, like eight or nine years old, and she said she could take me back to the point in the past that changes everything."

"Time travel?"

"Yeah, and then she dropped me into the fight against Kacchan and told me not to dodge."

"So she's the reason you died?"

"I don't know," Izuku whispered, his distress very clear through their connection. "She could just be a figment of my imagination; my brain making up excuses to explain why I was too slow to get out of the way of Kacchan's blast."

"Or it could all be true."

"Yeah," Izuku agreed. "Or it could all be true."

"Okay, we need to figure out if you have any dates. Is there any event that you can link to a date? What about the USJ attack? Did that happen in the other timeline? Let's try to be logical about this."

"Like father, like son," Izuku said again, this time with a soft smile in his tone.

~*~

There were nomu everywhere!

"Todoroki," Manual called, running toward him. "You need to evacuate. Collect as many civilians as you can find on your way out, but get out of the area." He glanced around the street frantically. "Where's Iida?"

Shit. "I thought he was with you."

Manual cursed almost too quietly for Shoto to hear. "I need to find him. Endeavour is on scene, so he'll take care of the monsters, but I'm also going to be needed to put out the damn fires."

"I can help," Shoto said, already regretting the need to work with his father. "I've had plenty of practice putting out Dad's fires."

Manual regarded him for a moment, perhaps trying to parse the bitter tone that had leaked into his words, but nodded and said, "You have my permission to use your quirk," and then turned away. That's when Shoto remembered the conclusion he'd come to the first day of his internship.

"Manual, I think Iida came to Hosu to find the hero killer."

Manual cursed in what may have been a different language—it was too soft to hear clearly over the roar of the attacking nomu—nodded in acknowledgement and then turned and ran toward the nearest alley.

~*~

"Fuck," Hitoshi said, swallowing hard. "Is that a memory of an attack by multiple nomu?"

"I think so," Izuku admitted. "I don't recognize the city."

"That's Hosu," Hitoshi said. "I recognized a couple of the buildings from a report on the hero killer's attack on Ingenium."

"Iida's brother?" Izuku asked, sounding confused for a moment before startling. "Internships, Hosu, nomu, the hero killer." The memories played through both their minds and it was not pretty. "Fuck, I have to go."

"Zuku?" Hitoshi asked, frantic to hold onto the boy and keep him safe, despite him already being dead and an apparently undamageable ghost.

"Toshi," Izuku whispered, "I'll come back. I promise."

"I'll hold you to that." Hitoshi reluctantly released Izuku from his quirk and reached for his phone to call his dads. Even if Midoriya's 'memories' were all just part of a delusion, they needed to know.