Chapter 33

Chapter Text

The mission went like clockwork.

Izuku drew a map to show them exactly where Eri was being held, Cementoss opened the concrete with his quirk, and Shota and Mic raced in to grab her. Even when the alarm sounded they somehow escaped the compound without encountering resistance. Eri even managed to sleep through it all.

It felt way too easy.

It wasn't until they were nearly back to their rendezvous point that they understood exactly why. Somehow Chisaki and every single one of his precepts and a good portion of his henchmen had woken to find that their quirks weren't working. The entire compound was in chaos.

"Problem child," Shota whispered as he climbed into the back of the van they'd borrowed from UA, "I expect a full report by the time we get home."

Blackwhip briefly appeared, bobbed up and down a couple times and then disappeared. Shota couldn't help but smile when the tiny girl in his arms continued to sleep all the way back to UA where Recovery Girl was waiting for their return.

~*~

"He's back?" Katsuki asked the moment blackwhip appeared in the room.

"No," Hitoshi said, being a smartass because he was nervous, "his quirk returned without him."

Katsuki huffed but ignored his snark.

"Did they find the kid? Do we have a little sister or what?"

"We do," Hitoshi said with a grin. "They're on their way here."

Hitoshi, Katsuki, and Todoroki had stayed at UA, preferring to do homework in a conference room not far from the infirmary than wait anxiously at home. Dad and Papa had told the three of them that they were on a rescue mission, but the moment they'd left the room Katsuki and Todoroki had asked if Izuku had the details.

He did of course, and he hadn't really tried all that hard to hide them from Hitoshi, especially since he already knew about Eri.

"Is she okay?" Hitoshi asked inside his own mind.

"Better than she was the first time I rescued her, but she's unconscious this time and we don't know why. We're hoping that they gave her something to make her sleep and that's why she won't wake up, but Chisaki Kai was such an abusive asshole it's also possible it's something he did with his quirk."

"Was?' Hitoshi asked, not sure he wanted the details. He knew the reality of hero missions and that his Papa's quirk was lethal—hell, Dad was extremely dangerous too—but Hitoshi didn't really want a front row seat to one of his dads accidentally killing someone.

"Oh, no, he is an asshole still," Izuku said, quick to disabuse him of that thought. There was a smirk in his voice when he added, "Now he's just a quirkless asshole."

Everything Izuku had done while he was supposed to be on reconnaissance flitted through their shared space. Hitoshi couldn't help but giggle.

"Oi," Katsuki said, "time for you to share, eyebags."

Before Izuku left to check on Eri he gave Hitoshi permission to share the story. Hitoshi grinned and launched into a description of the chaos Izuku had caused. By the end Katsuki was laughing hard and even Todoroki had a wide smile on his face.

~*~

"Problem child," Shota said as blackwhip appeared in front of him. "She's going to be fine. Recovery Girl found a sedative in her blood. Eri just needs to sleep it off."

"That's a relief," Izuku wrote on the notepad beside Shota. "I was worried that Chisaki had hurt her with his quirk, and with him now being quirkless it might not have been possible to fix."

"He's quirkless now?"

Izuku contorted blackwhip into a shape that resembled a human head, shoulders, and arms and then made it shrug. Seriously that was impressive control, especially when they factored in that it had only been a few weeks since the first time he'd used it at the USJ. Although being able to remember another timeline probably meant he'd had more practice than that.

"What did you do, problem child?" he asked, tapping his finger on the notepad in an order for more details.

"I came across their lab," Izuku wrote, "and I found the quirk destroying serums, and I used them to dose Chisaki and his precepts with the permanent stuff while they were sleeping before using blackwhip to dose the rest of the people in the compound with the temporary quirk destroying drugs."

"That's why we met no resistance?"

Blackwhip bobbed up and down.

"You might be dead in an official sense, problem child, but I can still expel you."

It took a few moments of blackwhip swaying anxiously before Izuku finally wrote, "Why?"

"Because what you did tonight crossed a line. A very important one."

Blackwhip disappeared for a moment and Shota feared he'd approached this all wrong. Izuku wasn't just another overenthusiastic student. He was a time traveler and a veteran of a war he was trying to stop from happening, and he'd known exactly what the Precepts and Chisaki could do. It was probably grossly unfair to expect him to not react to that threat.

"I don't understand," Izuku finally wrote, his penmanship shaky with his emotions.

"Kid, I'm not mad." It wasn't really fair to give Izuku this lecture now—it wasn't even in the curriculum until they were preparing for their provisional license in second year—but Shota hadn't even imagined needing it when he'd agreed to let Izuku locate Eri so that they could minimize the danger they all faced. "But what you did—with the permanent quirk suppressants—was not right."

"Dangerous men," Izuku wrote shakily, underlining the word "dangerous" several times.

"I know," Shota said, keeping his voice low and calm, trying not to spook the kid any more than he already had. He'd handled this badly by starting the lecture he would have given to any other student. "Zuku, I'm not mad, but I need you to understand that choosing to take their quirks permanently—even if it was by using their own weapon against them—was wrong. You're a hero, kid. A hero helps people. It's not our job to punish them."

He let that sink in for a moment, grateful to still have eyes on blackwhip.

"I didn't think of that when I found the serums," Izuku finally wrote. "I just saw an opportunity."

"I get it, kid. I really do, and I'm sorry you had to face that choice without the proper training or education to temper your decisions. Do you understand what line you crossed?"

"I used the permanent serum and I used it deliberately on men I decided were too dangerous to keep their quirks," Izuku wrote, his penmanship not quite so shaky. "I really wish I'd given it more thought."

"That's what school is for, Zuku." Shota wanted to cringe when he remembered the pages and pages of information Izuku had given him earlier that morning. The kid had been thrust into a war before he'd even finished his first year of high school, and had been forced to make decisions way beyond his age and education.

And today it had pretty much happened again in this timeline.

"I really am sorry, sensei. I'll make better choices from now on."

"I know you will, kid."

~*~

"I hadn't thought of that," Izuku's vestige admitted as he turned to Nana. "We should have tried to stop him."

"That's the thing, kid," Banjo said with a shrug. "A lot of ethical questions aren't clear until a mission is done."

"How do you mean?"

"Well let's say Midoriya chose to dose everyone with the temporary serum. We already know from the kid's memories of the future that Chisaki and his men had access to quirk enhancers as well. It's possible that using them would have reversed the temporary serum and made the mission to rescue Eri so much more dangerous."

"I only caught snippets in Midoriya's memory," Nana admitted, "but I'm pretty sure Sir Nighteye and several police officers were killed on the rescue mission in the old timeline."

"I saw that too," En agreed. "The permanent dose was the safest option."

"Safest," Izuku said, trying to understand the moral dilemma, "but not the right choice."

"Not the wrong choice either though," Nana said with a shrug.

"So he made the right choice for the wrong reasons?"

"Now you're getting it, kid."

"Wow, being a hero is so confusing."

"No argument there," Banjo said with a laugh.

"The point is," Nana added quietly, "that it's a slippery slope. One bad choice can lead to another and another and another and eventually into trying to justify actions that are absolutely not heroic."

"That's right," Yoichi said, "a hero always strives to do the right thing, always holds themselves accountable for their choices, and never deliberately crosses the line into vigilantism or villainy."

"Plus ultra," En agreed, maybe just a little sarcastically.

Holy shit, being an adult was fucking complicated.