CROSSING

Having banked on the beach clean-up lasting a few months, Toshinori scrambled for other training methods. He settled for the tried-and-true method of wandering aimlessly and hoping to come up with a good idea somewhere. At a busy intersection, he found inspiration in the old woman waiting patiently for a crossing signal.

"Alright, Midoriya, this will be a nice, simple warm-up. See that old lady there? Help her cross the street."

"Instructions confirmed."

Izuku hoisted the elderly woman onto his shoulders. Toshinori cringed at the rough handling, but the woman only seemed intrigued by her new vantage point. While traffic still passed through the intersection, Izuku ran towards the crosswalk and cleared the street in one leap. Concrete buckled beneath the force of his landing, and other pedestrians scrambled out of the way.

The woman whooped with delight. Pointing across another street, she shouted, "That way!"

Before Toshinori could stop him, Izuku leapt across the other street. Toshinori ran after him, but with only half a lung to work with, he could only watch as Izuku shrank into a green speck down the street.

One police car raced by him, sirens blaring, then another. A whole squad of cars barreled down the road after Izuku, and a horde of news vans trailed after them. When Toshinori finally caught up, he found a blockade set up around Izuku. Half a dozen news teams had cameras trained on Izuku.

"Put down the old lady and keep your hands in the air," one officer shouted through a megaphone.

Izuku tried getting the woman off his shoulders, but between the fact she clung to him and he couldn't lower his hands, he soon abandoned the effort. "Unable to comply," Izuku told the officer.

"You'll never take me alive!" the elderly woman shouted. As she happened to be a voice actor for multiple Shonen protagonists, the officers mistook her voice for Izuku's and trained pistols on him.

"He's resisting arrest! Take him down!"

Panicking, Toshinori buffed up mid-stride and raced in front of the officers. After a long conversation with Tsukauchi over the phone, he managed to talk the officers out of arresting Izuku.

The old woman grinned ear to ear as she stepped off Izuku's shoulders. "My, I haven't felt that alive since my husband ran off with some skank. If only I was fifty years younger…"

Izuku looked her up and down. "Indeed, you are alive. Have a nice day."

As they looked for the next place Izuku could practice being a hero, Toshinori pointedly ignored the cracked sidewalks in their wake and told himself that Izuku just needed some time to adjust to his new Quirk.


A/N: thought I'd give a shout-out to the story that inspired me to take a crack at this. Sweat and Ginseng, by Tailax, over in the Avatar the Last Airbender fandom. It's a slice of life drama about Zuko's lower-class struggles in Ba Sing Se. If that sounds like your cup of tea, go check it out. This chapter's at 444 words btw.