A group of kids ran to catch up to the Pro Hero Lady Nagant, who had helped the arrest of a villain and was still talking with the police. A young girl with bright green eyes and matching green hair managed to get in front of all the excited children when they finally caught up to Nagant.
"Lady! We're your biggest fans!"
"Lady Nagant! Did you catch a villain!"
"You are so cool Lady! Please, shake my hand!" The green girl jumped and raised her hand to the hero as the other kids tried to also get to shake her hand by following her lead.
"Sure." Nagant sighed and smiled, turning to the kids "One special handshake, just for you."
The girl widened her green eyes as Lady Nagant's eyes fell to her and she extended her hand to meet hers. But her hand never reached the young girl, her body freezing and clutching her hand close to her, tightly.
The young girl noticed the change in the hero, how her smile seemed strained and her eyes unfocused, looking at the children with an unknown emotion to the young girl. She, much like the other children, still cheered for the hero, calling themselves her biggest fans and still wanting to shake her hand.
In the end, the hero excused herself over being called elsewhere and waved off the children, as they still cheered at her. The young girl was a bit sad over not being able to shake her favorite hero's hand, and her leaving felt strange, but still looked brightly at her hero as she walked off the scene.
One month later, Tsutsumi Kaina would be sent to maximum security prison Tartarus, following the murder of a fellow Pro Hero in the field.
1 - New Life
Beep! Beep! Beep!
Izumi slowly got up from her bed and turned off the alarm. Not that it did any good to her, she wasn't used to the new bed yet and had barely slept anything at all. She yawned and got up, going to the bathroom to wash her face.
The image of a tired 12 year old greeted her on the other side of the mirror. Her shoulder length green hair was a mess, her locks not deciding a direction to point to and ending up going into all possible directions. There were heavy bags under her eyes, above her freckles, which made her green eyes look more sickly than they were (the fact they were bloodshot from lack of sleep didn't help at all).
"Hey Deku" Izumi greeted herself, sighing to herself and pouring water into her face. It helped her look a little bit more awake, but it didn't help the look of tiredness not even an underground hero would want.
"Izumi sweetie, are you up already?" She heard the voice of her mother from somewhere in another room, Izumi didn't know from where, she hadn't memorized the new apartment yet. Not that she needed with how small and cramped it was.
"Yeah, coming"
The preteen walked off the bathroom yawning again and squeezing herself in a hall still full of boxes from the recent move into the living room and the kitchen. She looked around the small kitchen until she found the rice cooker, filled it, poured water on it and turned it on.
"Oh, you are already making breakfast? Good girl" Her mother smiled at her as she came into the kitchen.
"It's only pushing a button, not a big deal mom" Izumi dismissed her praise, too tired to deal with Inko babying her.
"Well, still, can't I praise my girl?" Izumi eyed her, arching an eyebrow, and then went back to looking straight at the rice cooker, still working.
Inko held her smile, strained a bit now, and coughed into her hand. Izumi could feel her looking into her hair, probably not liking how she didn't comb it in any way.
"H-how did you sleep in the new bed?" Changing the subject, smooth.
"Not much, didn't get used to it in one night"
"I see… are you nervous about your first day at the new school?"
School… Izumi still didn't like school one bit. Katsuki had made sure she "knew her place" in elementary school, and she wasn't excited about what a new Katsuki would do in middle school.
"Something like that" Izumi answered, her tone making her sure how disinterested she was on the subject.
"Cheer up a bit, will you? This is a new place, where no one knows about us, you can start again and make new friends!" Inko tried to sound more enthusiastic to cheer Izumi up. It didn't work.
Ding!
Izumi opened the rice cooker after the beep, the rice still hot, steam coming from inside the cooker still, and poured the rice in a bowl.
"Doesn't matter, I'm still quirkless, I'm not going to make new friends" Inko flinched at that, realizing she hit on a sour spot for her daughter.
"Well, you never know, people around here aren't as judgemental of quirks, there's plenty of people with subtle quirks, not everyone will make fun of-"
"It's still Musutafu, mom. Everyone is obsessed with quirks because UA is close by." Izumi sighed, and sat on the table after grabbing some chopsticks.
Inko fidgeted for a while, unsure what else to say. They moved away because the judgemental stares were getting on Inko, and she was concerned Izumi would get even a harder time had she gone to the local middle school of their old neighborhood, Aldera.
Izumi found her decision to move to Gaulusu to have been too little too late. It was a humble neighborhood that had been liberated from villain gangs during All Might's Golden Age, it was peaceful and calm, but with a poor economy.
In a city mainly sustained by tourists and its hero history, Gaulusu's former oppression wasn't interesting enough to bring in people, having lots of similar neighborhoods, towns and cities all over Japan, from All Might's relentless hunt of villainy 20 years ago.
The reasoning to move to Gaulusu, even if there weren't as many options there as in the center of Musutafu, was sound, but they could have moved there three years ago, when the harassment started.
Izumi knew her mother had been worried for her the entire time, but another part of her thought that she had only considered moving out when her side of the harassment was getting on the same level as hers.
I shouldn't think that. Mom was scared, and she was only looking out for me. She also wanted me to get away from Katsuki and his friends. It's not like she knew all of the bullying…
"Aren't you going to eat anything else?" Inko said in the end, sitting on the other side of the table.
"I'm not hungry for anything else." Izumi didn't look back at her as she silently ate the bowl of rice.
Her mother finally gave up on the conversation and went back to the kitchen with a sigh.
"I'll just make your lunch for later"
"Thanks"
"And please, at least comb your hair a little Izumi, try making a good first impression" She said with a tired tone, as if thinking it a lost cause. Izumi sighed silently.
"Sure"
She finished the rice and washed the bowl, leaving it silently with the rest as she went back to her room. Izumi grinded her teeth, clenching her fists and digging her nails into her palms.
"'Try making a good impression', what's the point? Weren't you paying attention to what I was saying?" She whisper-shouted as she felt a lump form in her throat.
She panted, trying to calm herself. Mom was just trying to help her, in her own way, that didn't work at all. After a few seconds feeling her anger go down, Izumi grabbed a dart from her desk and distantly twisted her wrist. The dart flew and landed with a thud in the target hanging on the wall in her right.
Izumi turned to her right and found the dart in the center. She sighed and grabbed another one, throwing it at the target with a tired swing of her wrist. The dart flew and rubbed itself against the other dart, going straight to the center as well.
Moving her wrist in circles in a practiced motion, Izumi took the darts off the target and played with them on her hand, in a way that would make her mother worried from spinning the sharp point so close to her fingers. Her eyes landed on her brush.
"Guess I need to make myself presentable 'at least'" She made the quotation marks with her fingers in the end, putting the darts back on her desk and grabbing her brush.
Izumi packed the bento her mother had prepared into her back and prepared to leave for her new middle school.
"Wait Izumi"
"Hmm?"
"Just want to look at you all grown up"
Izumi sighed. She had combed her hair and made it presentable, and was wearing Railosu Middle School's female uniform, a traditional black sailor fuku with green ribbons, and the flap on her back ending in two long strands up till her lower back (those are totally going to annoy her), and a long loose black skirt that went below her knees, black stockings hiding the rest of her legs.
"You are so cute Izumi, be safe and have fun!" Inko forced cheerfulness into her, and Izumi couldn't care less, yawning again.
"Sure" She left the apartment.
"Lacquered Chain Prison!"
Wood shot from the arm of a hero, growing and wrapping tightly around a big man with characteristics similar to that of a bear.
"What's this?" The man grumbled as he fell over, the wooden bindings making him stumble into himself.
Izumi looked at the battle between a hero and a villain. Well, if you could call that battle. That bear quirk man wasn't expecting to encounter the rising star of Musutafu, Kamui Woods, right as he robbed the store on the other way of the street.
An overly excited crowd cheered at the hero, who waved back at them. The plant hero was raised in Gaulusu, so he was pretty popular here and patrolled often.
His patrols and some other heroes' were the reason crime didn't rise up again after the villain gangs were driven out, though Izumi thought there must be some active underground heroes to keep that from happening as well.
Izumi sighed, as the police came in and started to come into the scene, asking Kamui Woods about what happened, and closing the street.
She had been in multiple situations where a villain attack had closed a street for the police to be able to question the hero and victims, so she knew what to do. She ignored the crowd and crossed the street, taking out her phone to look up an alternate route to the school.
As much as she didn't like school, or having to go there just for a bunch of new strangers to make her day worse, she didn't want to give them a reason to on the first day.
Having checked the new route to take around her new neighborhood, she continued on her way, starting to see a bunch of students with the same uniform as her follow the same path.
There were kids of all sizes and shapes, some with mutations, others looking pretty normal with just a few elements that showed their quirks, and a bunch others that looked rather plain, much like Izumi would look, she supposed.
Some kids were walking in groups, probably knowing each other from their previous schools or from their friend groups. There were a few loners much like herself as well, most of them with heavy mutations.
A crow cawed and flew by, casting a shadow on Izumi as it circled around her. She waved back, smiling, and whistling in a low tone. The crow, satisfied, cawed again and flew away.
It seems that no matter where you were in Musutafu you were bound to find crows. Izumi felt a special connection with the birds. Much like her, they weren't often welcomed thanks to their appearance and their creepy nature.
Izumi could probably fix that on herself, be cheerful, worry about looking alive, not mention her likes…but she much preferred relating to crows than to people. They treated her better.
Izumi noticed a few students looking relieved about the crow flying away and a few others looking at her as if she had just stepped on shit.
Crows were never a popular topic of discussion in her experience, her mother outright despising them and telling Izumi countless times to get away from them, but the reaction of the people around her to them (even a few adults) was odd.
It was as if they truly believed in all the pre-quirk stories and folklore about them as fact. Normally people used those stories to mess around with her, but this time it seemed as if people here really believed all those stories of them being the carriers of death and whatnot.
"Hey, dark and gloomy!"
Izumi almost yelped as a girl with sharp teeth suddenly got in her personal space. She was a bit unnerved by how that seemed to widen the girl's grin.
"Are you friends with that crow because you look dead inside or is that just your quirk?"
Two other girls snickered behind them.
Oh great, funny girls. Just don't give them the satisfaction of an answer and keep going.
"Pffff! Come onnnn~ I was just joking, don't take it seriously gloomy~!" Shark girl kept the same pace as her.
"Yeah, yeah, it's just that it's pretty rare to see a flying menace act like that~" One of the girls behind them said, the one with pink hair, who was literally skipping on air, roller skating a few centimeters off the ground.
"Flying menace?" Izumi's brow twitched, she had fallen for their trap. Shark girl's eyes narrowed smugly.
"You ain't from here, gloomy?" The third girl said, catching up to them. She wore a definitely out of uniform orange choker, matching with her pupils and hair, but other than that, her looks were perfectly normal. "Flying menaces used to work for a villain group 'round 'ere"
"Oh! Oh! Are you the daughter of a villain, gloomy~?" Shark girl grinned at her smugly, as if she figured out a secret.
Izumi stared daggers at her.
"Woah! Sour spot? Bwahahaha~! Sorry sorry~ just messing with you~"
Izumi resisted the urge to show her annoyance. She had dealt with people like them in the past. If she didn't give them the attention they wanted they'd leave her be. They tried to rile her up for a while, with the pink haired girl even hovering in front of her to not let her see in front of her.
Izumi felt a knot in her chest get heavier. She really wanted to deck the three girls, but didn't want to make a scene. She was also quirkless and they all seemed to have quirks, so they'd use the opportunity to beat her in return. She had dealt with people like them in the past.
Eventually, the pink girl got fed up and got closer to the other girls, hovering out of Izumi's view but bumping into her on her way.
"Oh, so sorry, that wasn't on purpose~"
"Pffff, Amai you are so mean, bwahaha!"
"Whatever" The pink haired girl (Amai) rolled her eyes. "Dark and gloomy is like a zombie, bet she didn't even feel it"
"Pfffff! A zombie? Bwahaha!"
Izumi gripped the straps of her backpack, containing her embarrassment and anger. She tried to remain neutral but she could feel the corners of her mouth dipping down and her brow furrowing.
Her throat ached as she restrained herself from breaking down. She wasn't paying attention to the other groups of students, just the three girls continuing trying to rile her up.
She hated how easily they managed to make her upset. Izumi didn't expect to make friends, but she didn't expect to be singled out and teased like this. This was supposed to be a fresh start where no one knew about her. This wasn't supposed to happen so soon.
A sigh of relief escaped her as they arrived at the building of Railosu Middle School, and the girls finally left her alone and went to their classes, waving at her with fake cheerfulness saying they hoped to get in the same class.
Izumi just shivered at the thought and did some breathing exercises to calm herself down. She looked up at the school. It was a tall building, nothing special or remarkable really. It had enough space on its property for students to be able to stay and roam around the building during class breaks, but apart from that, nothing about it stood out.
Just when she was about to enter the building, she felt a presence behind her get close. She was calm now, without the nuisance of the three girls from before, and she strangely didn't feel as if she had to put her guard up.
She looked to her left as a blonde girl just stood next to her. She had the same uniform as Izumi, but with an additional stripe on the flap, marking her as a second year. Her eyes were circled by deep and long eyelashes that mixed with her skin in a way she couldn't exactly tell if they were really eyelashes or eyebags.
Her slit yellow pupils turned to her, and met Izumi's green pupils.
"Good job keeping your cool"
Izumi didn't exactly know how to react. She started feeling a bit uneasy at the second year that had seemingly read her completely, but wasn't making fun of her.
"Toga-chan! Come on, we are going to be late!"
"Coming!"
Her shift was perfect, a transition from her neutral expression, barely looking at Izumi, blinking away and shifting her facial features into cheerfulness. Izumi looked at the second year as she met with some friends at the doors of the school and entered, looking like a completely different person.
Blinking her surprise away, Izumi followed along and took her first step inside Railosu High, but she couldn't help but think, "She looked like she was hurting, putting on that smile".
"Oh hey~ dark and gloomy~ don't tell me you are also in class C~" Shark girl greeted Izumi with a sharp grin.
Izumi contained a sigh. She'd stopped at the door of the class when she heard that voice. She checked the student list on the door again. She resigned herself when she found her name again, and went to her assigned seat.
It was as if destiny was messing around with her, because it was the seat just in front of shark girl's.
"Samehada-san, do you know her?" Another student asked shark girl, Samehada, apparently.
"Nah, just met her on the way, she was whistling to a flying menace, she's kind of a weirdo"
Izumi ignored the strange glances she was getting from the rest of the class. She definitely didn't like getting singled out so soon, but she didn't want to antagonize the girl that could as well spend all her time in class kicking her seat.
Izumi overheard some greetings from the other students. Apparently a few of them came from the same elementary school, including Samehada.
That explains their familiarity with each other at least.
She tapped the desk with her fingers, and the floor with her foot. The nervousness of the moment was getting to her. She wished the teacher would just show up, get the orientation over with so she could leave.
Izumi took a pencil out, and started fiddling with it with her fingers. Fiddling around darts gave her quick fingers, so she could twist the pencil around her fingers seamlessly, twisting it from her index to her ring finger almost instantly.
A boy got close to Izumi's desk, so she stopped fiddling with the pencil and looked up to him. She looked at him, moving her eyes up and down, trying to o figure out what he wanted.
"Hey, how are you doing that with the pencil?"
Izumi arched an eyebrow. She was genuinely surprised someone had approached her to ask how she was doing the trick. She was just getting used to being treated the same as in elementary thanks to that Samehada girl and her friends earlier, but maybe this was different.
"It's not that complicated really, it's just trapping the pencil between two fingers, then applying a bit of force in one direction, and letting it go, so it twists around. The next step is just catching it and keep it spinning, using the momentum to keep twisting and spinning it around your hand"
Izumi blurted out the information as she demonstrated it for him, spinning the pencil around her hand. The boy stared almost dumbly at her, brushing his hair with one hand and with a weird grin on his face.
He also had a light blush. Izumi immediately felt bad about embarrassing him with her word vomit even after he had approached her. It was a new feeling for her.
"Wow, that's pretty cool"
Izumi blushed a bit, not used to the compliment. She was going to reply when the bell chimed in. He waved at her and went back to his seat, smiling at her.
Everyone else got to their seats, as a middle-aged man Izumi could assume was the teacher walked in.
He had a very particular appearance. A deep tan, hair combed into dreadlocks and a yellow line going horizontally across his face below his eyes, over his nose.
"Hello everyone, I'm Lanbosu Kin-sensei, and I'll be your homeroom teacher for the next three years here in Railosu Middle School, it's a pleasure to have you.
The teacher explained, somewhat bored, how the school year was going to go. Izumi shared his boredom, resuming spinning her pencil on her hand, and trying to not flinch from Samehada's kicks on her chair.
Izumi decided to do breathing exercises, forcing herself to calm down, in spite of the kicks, and the absurd boredom the teacher was spreading through the class.
She took a deep breath like she'd done a lot of times before. Her lungs emptied themselves of all air. After a moment, she slowly took in air, feeling her chest again, slower than before.
Her heartbeat slowed down, the kicks from Samehada turning into distant thuds. Izumi looked around. Everyone seemed bored out of their minds, a few of them looking at her pencil trick, including the boy from before. She looked to the front again, ignoring being the center of attention in a way she wasn't used to.
Time seemed to slow down for Izumi. It wasn't boredom that caused it, she purposefully did it by slowing her heartbeat.
She was perfectly calm, not bothered by anything. The newfound attention from the students was a surprise, but it didn't bring her unease. The boring explanation from the teacher didn't seem like a chore to get through either. She barely felt a numb thud on her seat from behind. Her pencil danced on her fingers with a fluidity that only she could truly perceive, but was observed by many.
Izumi kept herself in this state for as long as she could, as slowing down her heartbeat and breathing wasn't something that she could keep up for more than a few minutes.
She ended up in that zen-like state for long enough for Lanbosu to finish his explanation of the school year and start to call for each student to do a short introduction of themselves for the class, telling the rest their name, quirk (how fun) and an aspiration for the future.
After a few seconds of awkward silence, no student wanting to start, Lanbosu sighed.
"Alright, I'll start, I'm Lanbosu Kin, my quirk is Psychometry, it lets me look into the history of objects I touch, and I hope to see you all pass the course by the end of the year. Anyone else?" He boredly said.
Izumi felt kinda interested on his quirk, but having resumed her normal breathing, his boredom had spread back to her, and didn't feel like exposing her quirklessness yet.
A chair behind her scratched against the floor. Samehada stood, grinning and showing everyone a toothy grin.
"I'm Samehada Usoha! My quirk is Bullshark, I can bite with a force of 10000 Newtons and breathe underwater! Not in public pools though, chlorine makes me sick. Also, as a cool fact about myself, my teeth grow back after a single hour of losing them!"
Izumi imagined Samehada getting her face caved in on itself and all her teeth fall off. The image almost made a chuckle escape out of her.
Control yourself, fantasies of tearing Samehada's stupid grin off her face can wait for later.
"Very interesting, Samehada-san, thank you for starting us off." Lanbosu didn't hide how little he cared from his voice.
"That's not all! I'm going to become a hero by getting into UA after this school!"
Samehada puffed her chest proudly. Izumi noticed a few students nod to themselves as if this wasn't the first time they heard that, probably the ones that went to the same school as her and knew her from before.
"Hmm, good luck with that, you certainly have a good quirk for that"
The teacher seemed to get a bit more enthusiastic after hearing that. Maybe he really thought she'd had a chance. Izumi wasn't interested in finding out either way.
"Well, does anyone else want to go?"
A few students enthusiastically presented themselves, similar to Samehada, some with the same dreams of becoming a hero like her, others not making their dreams known because of their unremarkable quirks or whatnot.
Izumi paid attention to them, even though she didn't care much, if only to know what to expect if they decided to mess around with her and teach her a lesson like Katsuki.
In the end, only she was left to do the presentation. She stopped spinning her pencil on her hand and got up, making sure to not make any sound with her chair while doing so.
She took a deep breath to calm her nerves, not enough to put her in the zen-like state, and shared the information she'd rather not disclose.
"I'm Midoriya Izumi, I'm quirkless. I don't have a clear…aspiration for the future, though I like arts and crafts."
She caught herself from adding "and crows", not wanting to add to the fuel Samehada had created earlier if crows really weren't liked around here because of their past villain relations.
The silence felt deafening, her heartbeat loud in her head. Everyone's stares felt judgemental, pitying her or looking at her as if she didn't sprout another head.
Even the boy from before avoided her gaze when she looked at him. She felt the knot of her throat get tighter, feeling disappointed in herself over thinking this'd go any other way.
Lanbosu tried to recover from the tense sensation by coughing into his hand and diverting the attention back to him.
"Ehm, I see, good look finding an aspiration. Moving on…"
Izumi tried to ground herself again, breathing slowly, managing to keep her heart stable. She couldn't get completely calm again, Samehada making sure of it this time, and the nervousness of how they'll react once the teacher leaves.
The ring of the bell almost made her jump from her seat. She barely managed to catch herself, and sighed to herself.
"Well, that'd be all for orientation. Tomorrow we'll start with normal classes, so make sure to be on time. You can have lunch here at school or go home, you are dismissed for the rest of the day."
Izumi got up, ready to get away to really feel at ease, but felt someone grab her shoulder and not let her go.
"Hey, Midori-chan~" The sickly sweet tone of Samehada didn't convince Izumi she wanted anything sweet.
She kept her cool but felt her heart beat faster, wanting nothing but to get away from her.
"It's Midoriya"
"Oh come on, I was only giving you a nickname~ nothing wrong with that, right~?"
"I…prefer you call me by my nam-"
"Anyway Midori-chan! Wanna come eat with me and my friends? Don't worry, they won't think less of you because you're quirkless~"
Izumi shifted her shoulder trying to avoid Samehada's hand, and grabbed her backpack, preparing to leave.
"Sorry, but I was going to leave-"
"Abd be on your own? Oh no, Midori-chan! I'm sure you've had it bad being quirkless and all, but don't worry, really, no one is going to mess with you here, I'll make sure of it!"
She said it with so much certainty and confidence Izumi couldn't tell if she was faking being nice to her or whether she truly believed her words.
Samehada didn't give her a chance to answer her again, grabbing her hand and pulling her out of the classroom.
Izumi tried to pull herself off, but the other girl was surprisingly strong and her grip was much stronger now.
Her heart was drumming in her chest, as Samehada dragged her through the halls and met with the other two girls from before, hovering pink girl (Amai) and the orange haired girl.
"Hey girls!"
"Oh, Usoha, and dark and gloomy, you friends already?" Amai teased, floating a few centimeters above the ground, gliding next to Izumi, far too close to her personal space.
"Oh, totally, you won't believe it, Midori-chan here is quirkless!"
Izumi cringed at the gasp the other two girls made, and suddenly felt self conscious when the other students in the hall turned to look at them. Samehada couldn't have screamed that louder.
This idiot! Why do you have to yell it out loud!
Izumi finally managed to pull her wrist free from Samehada's grip and rubbed it.
"Oh, you poor thing, you must have had it rough~" Orange girl said, trying to hug Izumi in what she assumed was fake sympathy.
Izumi was faster this time, getting out of the way and starting to walk away.
"Oh, come on, Midori-chan, right? Don't go! Come eat with us!" Amai said, roller-skating through the air to catch up to her.
"We don't really care about you being quirkless! Honest! I'm Kyosei Nose, by the way~!" Orange girl presented herself, trying to shake Izumi's hand. Izumi kept walking.
"Hey now, don't need to be rude! Name's Anshin Amai! What's yours, Midori-chan~?"
"Midoriya Izumi, please don't call me Midori"
Izumi walked around Anshin, who had hovered right in front of her and kept going.
She managed to get to the front door, but just when she was about to go through and get outside, a bunch of hands grabbed her arms and pulled her inside.
"Come onnn~ don't be all by yourself~ come with us Midori-chan~" Samehada said in a low tone somewhere on Izumi's right as Anshin put herself in between the door and Izumi.
"Please let go" Izumi felt a knot in her throat, remembering lots of situations like this from her previous school.
"Don't be like that Midori-chan~ we just want to be friends~ don't you want to come with us~ we'll let you be our friend dearest~" Kyosei whispered to her left ear.
Izumi noticed a bunch of orange arms sprouting from Kyosei's elbows, grabbing her tightly.
"Come on Midori-chan~ you can help us out and we'll take good care of you~ everyone wins, right~? Don't you wanna be useful~?"
Izumi closed her eyes and slowed her breathing again, calming herself down and silencing her anger by sheer force of will.
"Please let go. I don't want to eat with you"
"Whatever did we do to you? Are you scared because we teased you a bit earlier? Don't be so melodramatic, Midori-chan~" Anshin purred, leaning her face as close as she could to Izumi's without touching her.
It was only because of having already started her breathing to slow her heartbeat that Izumi didn't straight up headbutt Anshin and try to get away.
As calm and collected as she could keep herself in, Izumi turned to her left, swallowing the lump on her throat and forcing her words out, putting on a fake stoic front.
"Kyosei-san, please stop, what you are doing could be considered assault by quirk in public"
Her orange eyes widened as she suddenly released all her hands from Izumi, as they disappeared in small orange particles.
Samehada was stunned for a moment, so Izumi pulled her right arm and got free from her, pushing Anshin away on her way to the door, making her glide above the floor.
Izumi managed to get away from them, but they wouldn't be stunned for long, so she quickened her pase.
She pressed her teeth on her lower lip and whistled, a high pitched sound that made a few heads turn at her, confused.
"Wait! Are you threatening us?!" Anshin skated through the air, catching up quickly to Izumi. She had calmed enough to keep a poker face and kept looking straight.
"After I told you I'd take good care of you! How dare you! Hey, don't ignore me!" Samehada shouted behind her.
"You think you're so tough, huh? You can't do anything on your own! What were you even implying, that I was assaulting you! You victimizing bitch!"
"Caw! Caw!"
Everyone froze as a crow flew right over the heads of the students on the school grounds. Some screamed as it barely hit them as it flew by. Anshin hovered in the air, getting back to her two friends.
Izumi stopped, her heartbeat stabilized and got into the zone, feeling calm and collected. The crow flew past her, gracing her face with the tip of his feathers and went straight for the three girls.
Kyosei screamed as the crow went for her face, making her fall on her butt, with Samehada trying to get it away from her by waving her arms around. Anshin cowered and hid herself behind the shark girl.
"Get it away! Get the flying menace away from me!"
"Uso-chan! Make it go away!"
The two girls cried as Samehada tried to hit the crow, waving her backpack around to keep it from scratching her with his claws.
Without turning around, Izumi could tell everything going on, completely on the zone, not feeling bothered at all anymore.
"Fiiu, fiiu!" Izumi let two short whistles come out from her by pursing her lips together.
The crow cawed and flew away, leaving the three girls alone and going straight to Izumi, landing on her left shoulder. He was almost a third the size of Izumi, with it being barely half a meter and Izumi being 140cm tall, making for an imposing figure as she didn't even flinch or tilt over his weight.
She slowly turned around, her gaze ice cold, the crow turning his head to the right to look at the girls with his only eye, a pure black ball that judged the girls.
They squirmed and got behind Samehada, who still held her backpack in front of her defensively.
"Thank you for getting worried for me, but I don't need to be looked after. We'll see each other tomorrow, Samehada-san. Bye"
And with that, she left them, walking away from the school grounds as the students got out of her way.
"This isn't over Midoriya! You are a creep! You hear me! You sent that flying menace over to us!" Anshin shouted.
Kyosei waved multiple orange fists in the air.
"You were lying about being quirkless! You talk with flying menaces! You are a menace yourself! Creepy! Gross!"
Izumi ignored them, noticing how Samehada didn't say anything. She left school without any other issue thanks to that stunt. Once she was far enough, she stopped and sat on a bench in a nearby park.
She sighed and breathed heavily, catching her breath from being in the zone for so long. She wrapped her arms around herself, and turned to the crow, standing beside her.
"Thanks for the save, Wuji"
No problem.
He cawed. She felt slightly better now, and pet Wuji on his right side, around the scar of his missing eye. She knew she'd just made things the worst on the first day, and that she'd come to regret it, especially since she put on a show about telling a crow what to do.
But in all honesty, Izumi had just called for help, Wuji decided himself to teach them a lesson, but they wouldn't believe that. No one did.
Izumi put her hands on her face, and whined to herself. She felt a lump on her chest as Wuji purred and rubbed himself against her.
It's fine.
"No it's not, I, I fought back! Now they are going to be worse than before to teach me a lesson!"
Don't let them. Wuji rubbed the feathers below his wings. Izumi petted him.
"It's not that easy"
If wronged, natural to "gauge eyes out."
Izumi sighed, and started to unpack her bento from her backpack. She gave Wuji a piece of meat from it, gently grabbing it with his beak after turning his head to the right to look at Izumi as she also ate.
"If only it was as easy as that."
They ate together, Izumi giving him pieces from the meal her mother had prepared for her. If she found out she was sharing it with a crow, Izumi would get a scolding, but she didn't care much.
The people in the park walking away after seeing Wuji unnerved her. Izumi had been teased a lot because of talking with Wuji before, adults feeling weirded out by it, but with all the quirks, the ones that didn't know about Izumi just ignored her, probably thinking it was thanks to an animal speaking quirk.
The ones that knew, eyed her with disgust, shaking their heads and judging her. But here, in Gaulusu, mistrust and fear of crows seemed abnormal. She may have to ask him about it next job. If it was villain business, he was bound to know about it.
Speaking of him…
"Wuji, you were here even before I got to school" She pointed at the direction of the building. Wuji turned his head in the direction she pointed, then turned his only eye to look at her. "Do you have a message?"
"Caw!" Yes.
Izumi sighed and rolled her head back, resting it against the bench, and let out a groan.
"The first day of the new course? After moving out? He is shameless…As always"
She sighed to herself, finishing up what was left of her bento and giving Wuji one last treat before grabbing her backpack, and looking for the location of the train station of Gaulusu on her phone.
Once she found it, she texted her mom she was going to come home late, saying she wanted to check the neighborhood around.
She whistled one and Wuji flew up, heading out on his own. Izumi followed along, going to the Shinkanshen station.
Izumi used the Tokaido railway monthly ticket to get into the Gaulusu-Musutafu station. There weren't as many people on the station as the one near her previous home, not as many people from outside having business to do in Gaulusu, she figured. The station wasn't anything special either. It was smaller than the other stations she'd been in, and there was graffiti on the walls.
The technology of the Shinkanshen railway may have improved a lot since the pre-quirk era, but in that era they'd never have imagined seeing a station vandalized. Then again, a city like Musutafu wouldn't even have dreamt of having four stations for the Shinkanshen, so technology really had progressed, or maybe that was more of Japan's infrastructure getting better.
Izumi ignored her thoughts of the progress of the Shinkanshen and looked up the lines of the train to check the route from Gaulusu's station to her destination. After snapping a picture with her phone to remember it, and ignoring her mother's text to be safe and come home soon, she waited for the train.
Izumi didn't particularly feel guilty of lying to her mother about this. She wasn't as stupid as to not know what she really does when she says she was going sightseeing. Her mother doesn't like it, and makes it clear to her all the time, but she always disapproves about the crows, so Izumi ignores her as much as she can.
"They aren't a good influence for you" and "They make us look bad" are some of the things she usually says, but they weren't the reason they looked bad. Izumi knew it, Inko knew it. The crows just added to their bad image.
Izumi got up as the screech of the bullet train got closer. She prepared her destination ticket and got in when the train stopped. She was lucky and no one tried to get out of the train, so she immediately got inside.
The doors closed with a hiss, and after a few seconds, the train started to hum and speed up, quickly reaching maximum velocity.
Izumi browsed on her phone the latest news, checking if there was anything interesting, but only saw a report on the bear villain that Kamui Woods had stopped earlier today.
Bored, she checked for any new posts in the MakeshiftGo forums. She browsed in the odd invention forums from time to time, ever since she looked up tips on how to build a birdhouse.
Since then, she exchanged tips with new users about anything she was able to explain to newbies. A really strange post brought attention to her.
What do babies have to do with anything?
The post said "NEED HELP FIGURING OUT HOW TO BUILD BABY". She had never seen a post with a title like this. It must be a troll, but Izumi was curious, so she checked it anyway. She was surprised to find someone genuinely asking for tips for how to properly weld together a motherboard to a metal base without damaging either and keeping the base still durable.
BirdKeeper: You can use an adhesive to stick the motherboard to the base, then add a soft material below it to cushion any impact the base could get, and not make the motherbase shake too much. If you are adamant in welding though, try adding a layer of aluminum over the base and the motherboard, it can be messy and difficult to do, but there's already some tutorial posts you can check [1] [2]
zoomCEO: oH, I SEE, IVE HEARD ABOUT THE TIG PROCESSAND ALWAYS WANTED TO CHECK IT. tHANKS!
Izumi was stunned over receiving a response from the OG of the post in just about 10 seconds after posting her answer. They seemed to be rushing while writing, which made sense considering the quick response.
Izumi looked at her phone for a few seconds. She added a reply "please watch out to not burn yourself". She had burnt herself once welding, she didn't want that on anyone. Except maybe on Katsuki and Samehada.
The engineer of the line checked for her destination ticket and then left her, going to check for other passengers. Izumi decided to watch the background zoom in through the window the rest of the way.
After an hour, she arrived at Konukoru. She whistled lowly as she went to the lockers of the station. A crow flew by and dropped something shiny in front of her. The station of Konukoru was open, so birds often flew by. It wasn't seen as strange, unlike Gaulusu in Musutafu, people of Konukoru City didn't have much of an opinion on crows.
Izumi bent her knees and grabbed the key from the floor, the one the crow had dropped. A teen with blue light hair, blood red eyes and a dry face looked at her as she did so. Izumi made her best "what are you looking at?" face she could muster.
It seemed to annoy the teen, who looked away and tsked, scratching his neck. Izumi in other situations wouldn't have even dared to do that. But she was called. She was on the job. Izumi wouldn't let herself slip up.
She was a professional. This job needed discretion, and she didn't like being watched. She didn't feel stressed over people watching her at this point, she was in a public space after all, but she didn't let them keep eye contact. She knew when she was being watched, and knew how to use her unnerving face to her advantage.
If all this didn't work, Hatori could always sweep by again and distract any observer enough time for Izumi to go away. People tend to get distracted when a crow flies to their faces.
Izumi used the key to open her locker. Inside, she found a bag and a note. She read the note and then put it inside the bag. She put on a black sweater that was also inside over her uniform and left her backpack on the locker.
She locked it and hung the bag on her shoulder.
Wordlessly, Izumi left the station and made her way towards the outskirts of Konukoru, towards Tia forest as she's done a bunch of times. She put on a facemask and ignored the useless fence that divided the forest and the city.
She saw Hatori fly and caw from the tree tops. Izumi wordlessly threw her a piece of meat she'd saved from her bento just for her.
"Good girl"
Hatori cawed again and flew over ahead. Izumi followed her
After she'd walked for 20 minutes, Izumi stopped, putting her facemask down and whistling. The wingbeats of birds could be heard as crows and ravens cawed. Izumi stepped hard on the ground a few times. On her third try, her foot hit the ground harder with a thud.
Izumi crouched and started peeling the dirt off a rusty metal door from a safe buried in the ground.
A big raven covered in deep black metallic feathers landed next to Izumi, followed by an albino crow, with white feathers and red eyes.
The raven was bigger than Wuji, standing at 65 centimeters, her feathers chiming as they rubbed against each other.
The albino crow was slightly smaller than Wuji, the same size as Hatori, his read eyes piercing at Izumi.
Welcome.
Izumi nodded to them and put the bag down. She opened it and started to put on the fingerless gloves stored inside, switching her skirt from the school uniform for more comfortable pants.
The crows looked at her prepare herself, taking off her shoes and putting on proper mountain gear. She always did this in front of them, letting them guard her and making sure no one else was looking. She could put on the gear much earlier, making the 20 minute walk through the forest faster, but she preferred it this way.
Nothing escaped her, she'd be able to tell any prying eyes, but she felt safer in the company of crows.
Finally, after storing in the bag the clothes she'd taken off, Hatori hopped next to Izumi, a different key on her beak. Izumi thanked her again, petting her head, prompting the other two birds to caw, annoyed, hopping next to her.
Izumi smiled and petted them as well, being careful to not cut herself from the metallic feathers, and feeling the warmth of the white ones.
She turned to the safe, putting the key on the lock and opening it with a clack. The safe opened without issue, pushing away the dirt that Izumi hadn't pulled away.
Inside, she found her rifle.