Chapter 15

It didn't happen all at once. There were a few seconds of calm and confusion before people began dropping what they were doing to leave in a hurried rush, the sound of fire alarms alerting everyone to evacuate the building. Had he been a normal citizen, he would have done the same. However, since he was a hero, he felt that it was his duty to help even when it wasn't warranted and took immediate action by trying to assist citizens by evacuating the building. Once he did that, he went back in for his own investigation. Since he could move at such high speeds, he had full confidence that he could locate the fire and possibly attempt minimizing the damage. Grabbing a spare respirator he kept on-hand, he slipped it over his mouth and moved at full-cowling speeds, checking multiple floors for signs of distress or signs of smoke. Nothing that would indicate a fire had been in the area appeared so far, but he couldn't rule out the possibility that it was in a place he could not reach, such as the boiler room or the air vents. It was also entirely possible that some kid had gotten handsy with the fire alarm when their parents weren't looking and that it was a false alarm.

Still... something was off about the whole affair; that was what his gut told him. For one thing, in every exhibit he had run into he had yet to encounter a fire alarm with flashing lights. He could understand if one alarm required maintenance, but every single alarm he came across was dark. What was more startling was that, upon closer inspection, the sound appeared to be coming from the PA speakers located around the museum rather than the alarms themselves. He was about to investigate further inquiries about the location of the PA system when he heard a slight moaning down the hall.

There was an entire room filled with people, most of them being security guards, that were lying on the floor. He began doing a quick health assessment of the others. All of them showed signs of dizziness, either disoriented or passed out. One man had gotten sick on the floor and had thrown up what Izuku assumed used to be breakfast. One man, a middle-aged security officer that was leaning on the wall for support, was lucid enough to talk to her.

"Are you alright?" Izuku asked the security guard, who was slumped over on the bench. Her short hair fell over one eye as she grasped at her head.

"Ugh... the whole world is... spinning."

"Just lie down. I'm going to do a quick exam. My name is Deku, I'm a pro-hero. Can you please tell me your name?"

"My name is... Hina Yamada."

"Alright Yamada-san. Can you tell me if you hit your head? How many fingers am I holding up?"

"Three, and no I didn't, though I can't say the same for Sato-san. He went down pretty hard when we all collapsed." Izuku looked over towards the unconscious man in question. He had assessed earlier that the man didn't have any visible head trauma, but he couldn't fix unconscious. Honestly, no one would until the authorities arrived. Sensing this, the guard chuckled, "Don't worry. Sato's pretty hard headed. I'd doubt he'd let something like this get to him."

"Can you tell me happened?"

"I don't know... One minute, everything was normal and then the next, there was this noise and everyone was on the ground." All of a sudden, the alarm over the PA stopped and everything went silent. In the hallway, he could hear a cheerful whistle from down the hall. The echoes it made on the empty room walls were eerie and set his nerves on edge.

"Just wait here with the others. I'm going check things out," Izuku warned before standing up to move cautiously to the next room. Utilizing his stealth, he crept down the hall, balancing on the balls of his feet in careful planned steps, using the sound of the whistle to cover his approach.

Peering around the corner, he saw someone wearing a full body suit standing in the center of the room. Izuku couldn't tell if the figure was male or female, due to how androgynous their appearance was. It was made up of plates of silver armor and navy colored mesh that worked like chain-mail, resembling the scales on a fish. Areas that were slightly bulkier were on their arms and legs. The arms had equalizers on the left and an amp on their right, while the legs were outfitted in large, form-fitting combat boots that were bulked out from some kind of support tech he couldn't identify. They wore a full helmet that obscured their head and face in one curved, massive monitor, along with a long green line that ran across where the eyes would have been. Ear indents that resembled built in headphones jutted out from the sides, only with more pronounced knobs.

Shattered glass crunched underneath the heels of their boots as they tugged the objects levitating behind them with ropes like they were walking a bunch of dogs. Izuku recognized the items in question belonging to the support section of the museum, particularly the older and more well-known heroes, but most of all he recognized the bulky, golden vest: All Might's ballistic riot vest. What were they doing with a bunch of broken down support items? Trying to sell them on the black market or an online auction of sorts? He knew that collectors would be interested in old, priceless support items held by previous heroes, but most of them were so old that it would more likely cost more to maintain than it would to sell.

Izuku thought of the villain and the people in the other room. He needed to call in for back-up. Making sure to silence his phone, Izuku checked it for a signal and frowned to see the familiar red X through the data bars. Because of the museum's dense walls and the sheer amount of people with cellular devices in one area, the bars on his phone were non-existent. He'd always had terrible reception in the hero museum before, sure, but never to this extent. It had to be because of the event this weekend. It made the museum much more popular than it was on any given day. Using his element of surprise, he activated Blackwhip and cautiously stretched it across the room to latch onto the closest fire alarm handle and with precision, pull it down. Due to how suspicious the fire alarms were and how the villain did little hurrying with their task, something that had bothered him immensely upon seeing them, he suspected the authorities had never been called and decided to take initiative. Nothing happened.

"Were you expecting that to work?" the figure said in mock sympathy much to Izuku's horror. Blips of light fluttered onto the screen they had for a face, showing sound-waves that matched in time and frequency with the figure's voice as it warbled, stuck between two voices pitched high and low in a way that made it sound like two separate people were talking."Too bad for you, I disabled all of the fire alarms. I do hate to disappoint you though. Was this what you were expecting?" they asked before twisting a knob on their arm, and all of a sudden the shrill sirens of the fire alarms shot into his eardrums. In the split second he went to cover his ears, the villain fired off another sound-wave, cracking nearby glass with its physical tidal wave of sound as it slammed into him, throwing him through the wall into the other room.

His body felt numb, temporarily stunned by the sudden impact, but he found he could still move as he countered with a quick leap to the side, using the adjacent display case as cover as he fired off a Delaware Smash towards the villain in question, trying to avoid hitting the artifacts and the people lying around him. So that was it. They had recorded or stored the sounds of a fire alarm and alerted the rest of the building so that they could work in private without having to worry about the authorities posing a threat.

"No one is coming to save you... or these people," the villain said after leaping out of the way of one of his Smashes, a smug smirk evident in their voice before adopting a jovial tone. "Don't worry, Deku. I'm not after them. Just let me borrow these babies and I'll be right out of your hair-"

"That's not going to happen!" Izuku said before sending Blackwhip their way. The figure leapt out of the way, blasting sonic waves from their feet that launched them into the air.

"Like they're getting so much use gathering dust in a museum with the rest of the antiquated fossils? Why let that happen when then can be put to better use?" The instant Blackwhip touched them and bound the villain in mid-air, Izuku thought they were caught. Then there was a sound, growing louder in pitch that it was practically ringing in his ears, until there was an abrupt popping noise like a miniature explosion. It was like he had been hit by a military stun grenade. Blackwhip evaporated off of the villain, causing Izuku to reel back in pain from his arms like he had actually felt the explosion.

"Love the shirt, by the way. It's the limited edition All Might Bronze Age t-shirt, right?" they said, their shared, mutual admiration of All Might somehow unnerving to him and reminding him vaguely of the hero-killer, Stain. "As much as I'd love to stick around and pick your brain on all things All Might, I still have a job to do." What followed with an intense high pitched whine that made his ears ring but didn't hurt like the last few sound attacks. The room was still- of that he was certain -but it felt like it was spinning, like the entire world had been flipped on its axis. Having developed so many moves that involved spin kicks, he was used to the dizziness that came with losing equilibrium. However, this was on a different level. Was this vertigo?

Using Blackwhip to reestablish his equilibrium, he tried to keep from toppling over, emulating Tentacole by creating a second set of 'arms' to balance, but somehow being in the air made him feel worse and even more off kilter now that he no longer had the steadiness of the ground underneath his feet. Closing his eyes also did nothing and Float would probably make him nauseous. Not giving him a chance to react, the villain grabbed a few canisters they had latched onto their belt and casually tossed them at him. With only seconds to react, Izuku instead used Blackwhip to shield him as he was thrown against a cardboard standee of All Might posing with the latest actor playing him on the TV show, the shrapnel of the objects scattering around him as he crumpled towards the ground.

Lying on his stomach, he stared ahead at his target and caused Blackwhip to latch onto two poles out to pull him forward across the ground while charging up a Detroit Smash. Sound blasted from the bottoms of the villain's boots, causing them to fly up into the air and hit him once he was underneath them. His entire right arm felt paralyzed from the vibration of the sound wave.

"I admire your work ethic. Despite not having the ability to stand, you fight so hard for these people you barely know while trying to take me down. You're a true hero," the villain said with genuine admiration and respect in their voice, rather than general mocking most villains seemed to have. "Too bad. Things could have been so easy for you. Had you stayed out of the way, I would have gotten what I wanted and no one would be the wiser."

"Then why rob the place in broad daylight?" Izuku asked, desperate to buy himself some time. He didn't have a ton of experience fighting people with sound Quirks, and he still couldn't figure out what theirs was. Something with vibrations maybe or sound waves? It was hard to tell with all that support gear they were wearing and there was the fact that all of the support gear, items that all together should have weighed a ton, were floating in the air. Did that mean his opponent had multiple Quirks? Memories of his fights against All For One's legacy- Shigaraki, his Nomus, and Nine -all came back to him, noticing the body suit was very reminiscent of Nine's. He needed time to formulate a plan, and this villain seemed particularly chatty. If he could just somehow break one of the devices powering the suit... "Wouldn't it make more sense to come at night where there's less of a chance of someone seeing you?"

"Why would I do that? I'm not a villain or some common criminal. I'm merely borrowing these items for a time. You'll get them back, save for the All Might one. I might just keep that all to myself." The figure paused in thought almost theatrically before tilting their head to the side. "I mean, had this item been for sale to the public, you probably would have done the same and snapped this puppy right up, wouldn't you, Izuku?" The way they switched from calling him his hero name to his first name in a way that was so personal unnerved him in a way that he almost felt violated. Then again, that also could be the vertigo.

"Who are you?"

"Now now, I'm not going to make it that easy for you. What's the point in wearing a mask if not to hide your secret identity? You're going to have to guess that like everyone else. However, since we seem to be so close already, I will tell you that I go by the name of Psyren," the villain known as Psyren said playfully before sighing, "It's a shame that this was how things went down. No one would have gotten hurt and we all could have been home by dinnertime."

"You call a concussion and dozens of innocent people getting vertigo not getting hurt?"

"A temporary situation. Nothing that a little bed-rest and some pills can't fix. I was merely acting in self-defense when those security guards swarmed me for simply walking into a room, trying to eject me from the museum and then assaulting me just because of the way I was dressed. I didn't go out of my way to kill any of them, if that's what you're implying. I'm not a monster, but accidents happen. There's no avoiding it," Psyren shrugged before placing a hand on their chest, "Like you, Izuku, I genuinely care about people, just like All Might."

Izuku ground his teeth and gave the villain an actual glare, hating how they twisted their words and declared their actions to be just and similar with his late mentor's. "Don't you dare use his name to justify this! All Might would never hurt innocent people like you did or put them in danger!"

"Accidents happen. Heroism is not a perfect science. Where there is conflict, someone always gets hurt in the end. Everything that I do, I do for All Might and for his path to justice. The Symbol of Peace will live on," the villain praised in an almost zealot way before their tone abruptly switched to bitter and acidic as they looked over towards the crumbled standee and spat out, "even if others forget how he used to be by making a shoddy, cheap knock-off that desecrates his name-!"

Izuku took this opportunity to pull himself forward with Blackwhip again, only so he could be in closer range without missing. Then he opened his mouth. A dark tendril of Blackwhip's energy shot out of his mouth like a chameleon's tongue catching its prey, but instead of capture, he used the Froppy Style Blackwhip move to break the villain's boot while the Blackwhip in his left arm finally caught up and latched onto the other boot. With as much force as he could muster without causing the building to come down on him, he threw the villain into the opposing wall, but not before he felt the villain blasted an amped up sound wave from the amp in their arm into his back. This time his whole body felt paralyzed, unable to do anything but breathe and move his eyes. They flitted over towards where the villain layed crumpled in a heap of limbs in the rubble and sighed with relief. Kaminari was right. A lot of villains seemed to love doing monologues.

Everything that happened after that was a blur. Suddenly, a swarm of fire fighters flooded the building, including Backdraft, who having assessed the situation, took immediate action and began directing his assistants to helping the victims. When one of the sidekicks came over to assess how he was doing, Izuku made the mistake of taking his eyes off of his opponent. The instant Izuku looked back towards where the villain had been tossed, Psyren was gone along with the rest of the support gear they had stolen.


Author's Note: Phew! This chapter was actually kinda hard to dish out of me. It's difficult to make Deku 'lose' fights when he's so proficient. Also his Froppy Style Blackwhip is so weird and a creative application of Izuku's power that I didn't know was possible. I love it.

Also, I finally got around to posting the one-shot for Izuku and Alyssa I've had stashed in my documents forever ago, "Late Night Muse," for those who are craving the actual relationship fluff a little earlier than expected. It takes place in an universe largely inspired by the videos Yagami Yato established with her ASMR My Hero Academia series on YouTube, so it's a bit of an AU from this story, but I hope you enjoy it all the same. I love her works and they largely inspired my love of the My Hero Academia series (my love of Deku as a character in particular), so please do check her out. Without her, this story would have not existed.

References today include Genji Shimada from Overwatch, Daft Punk, Kill Bill Vol. 1, Scaramouche from Samurai Jack, Count Vertigo and Black Canary from DC Comics, and I guess Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed (due to my sister pointing out the hilarious, unintentional similarities).