Quirks were the first disease of the new age. When evolution was a straightforward and gradual process, humanity had only followed in that forward progression; amassing civilizations, constructing advanced technology, preparing to explore the stars above. But when humankind was blindsided by the existence of quirks in their genome, progress stunted. Technology, philosophy, the sciences, the human tenacity to explore; Earth plummeted its most treasured facets of proving itself as a higher form of life to focus on the near-supernatural. Advancements in all pre-existing fields stagnated to accommodate the existence and variety of quirks within their understanding. All that chaos bred into the world a new age of people; those known as heroes. Kai Chisaki hated heroes.

Heroics took the world by storm, as people with their quirks stepped up into fights and robberies and destruction and boldly claimed themselves as the solution to all life's problems. Movie stars, famous music artists, and the ever-rising influencer were superseded by those who donned costume and cape, and society ate them up. City, state and eventually world governments were overrun by the inclusion of the Hero, representing their local towns and their countries' national pride and ego. Military and law enforcement could serve their country less as the position of a hero took on crime and threats of war. The world was in ruin as those with quirks wrought destruction to everything around them, and the solution to combat them was a caped crusader. True peace only overtook the wild mess of endless conflict when All-Might stepped onto the scene almost forty years ago. What was a rising fad suddenly became a booming business that eclipsed the rest of the world and became humanity's center of attention.

But all that could be brought to an end, Kai told himself, looking down at the small, white haired girl who sat in the car beside him. He could bring that all to an end, and fix the world back into place.

She picked at the bandage below her shoulder, whimpering and mumbling into the head of her stuffed toy. "Don't pick at it, Eri," he ordered the girl in a dull tone, and the child's hand snapped away while she tried to do the same from him. "You'll spill valuable blood. I don't want to fix you in here, understand?" The child nodded, her eyes glossy with fire and fear; pointless emotions for the child to feel, the man told himself. Her purpose was much greater than herself.

A scoff emitted from the front of the vehicle, and Kai turned his eyes on the man he had driving it. "Did we really have to come out for a five minute meeting?" his man groaned, glaring out the window. "This place is a shit show."

Hosu was a disgusting little city, Kai agreed. "Our supplier would not meet with us elsewhere, and any wired communication is too risky. In spite of the rampant homelessness and heroism, he chose the right place."

The man raised and eyebrow at him through his mirror, but as soon as Kai matched his gaze the driver composed himself. "Sorry sir. I just don't get how this is supposed to be a good idea with all these heroes about."

The black-haired man gazed out his own window, noting a patrolling duo of heroes as they passed by. "Do you know a hero's greatest weakness?" He didn't wait for his driver to respond before he continued, "Their ego. Heroes are prideful little creatures, built upon their image and how the public supports it. They are the center of the universe in their own mind, and life revolves around them. The Hero Killer wounded that pride, taking lives and hunting down heroes, and they do not take such insults lying down. So they take to the streets, gather en masse and hunt down the man who dares to challenge their position in the world. But that's all they look for.

"Any sign of conflict, of wounded or deceased heroes; anything they could link back to the Hero Killer is of the utmost importance to them. Anything that doesn't prove itself as a good lead to the man is inherently less valuable. They're looking for a man dressed in swords, hiding in the alleyways; not men in cars attending meetings. You could kick a cat right under their nose and they'd overlook it if you aren't Stain. Anywhere else in the country and the heroes on patrol would be far more alert of suspicious activities. Here? We aren't what's important."

That gave his driver a laugh, letting out a sigh of relief. Kai adjusted his mask before the air could spread. "Like holding a rock over a pig's head. These bastards don't even know we're here."

Kai would have avoided the risk in the first place, if he could. But the only man who could supply them with the necessary equipment for his plans insisted they took advantage of the mess the Hero Killer had made in Hosu to meet halfway, act as inconspicuous as possible and strike a deal. Simply being in vicinity of such filth made his skin boil, but business was business. They met; the supplier proved they had the machinery on standby to transport; he provided proof of an endless supply of blood in the form of the child it came from; progress was made. Such was the way of the yakuza these days.

He could remember when he first found home in the yakuza; the old man he came to know as a second father offering him shelter, food, and a purpose in life. When his men had a hold on the cities they populated, making money and asserting their dominance as a people, enforcing that the men who tried to dictate them around and rule with an iron fist over the country held no power over them. All that power was ruined thanks to the boom of heroes, busting and arresting large branches of their organization and network to assert their own rule over the public. They had robbed his boss and the old man's family of so much, forcing much of the yakuza into hiding. The only thing separating them from ghouls like the Hero Killer was their sense of reason, if not the roof over their heads.

Yet in their time of turmoil and ruin and humiliation, the world had blessed the yakuza with a child, granddaughter to the boss through his own daughter and the man she bedded. A child with the quirk to rewind organic matter as far back as before their own existence. While the father was gone from the picture outside of his own volition and the mother from her own, Kai saw Eri for what she truly was; the answer. Her quirk factor had the potential to be siphoned from her blood and transformed into a chemical agent capable of reverting targeted aspects of matter; another person's quirk factor, ideally. The yakuza did not see what he saw — the boss failed to see it too — but Kai saw the potential. His knowledge of biology and the medical sciences his pseudo-sister had once mocked him for was now the key to humanity's salvation — and the yakuza's return to power.

"Do you think he'll actually follow through with the deal?" the driver asked over their shoulder. "He saw the kid; couldn't he rat us out or try to take her for himself?"

"Our new friend understands the consequences of falling out of our agreement," Kai assured absentmindedly. "He will not do anything that jeopardizes our deal. We'll know if he thinks to before he even tries." And their supplier was a man of science like him. He understood the importance of Eri to the world, almost as much as Kai did. They could only gain from this arrangement, ending with a world of quirkless once more.

The idea of a quirkless population was hilariously foreign to Kai's mind. The original human race that once dominated the world had become a second-class citizen on their own planet — an invisible subset of species in a world where not all quirks were visible by nature. But it was a world he sought to return to the fray, reverting heroes and civilians alike to what their ancestors once took pride in. It would take time and convincing the general public such a 'reversion' in their genetics was good for them, but he already had a head start on that.

Or more accurately, Midoriya Izuku was pioneering that front for him.

There wasn't a man on earth who didn't know of Yuei's first quirkless hero student by now, almost two weeks removed from the boy's declared victory of the school's Sports Festival. While rage spread online and ridicule voiced itself on television, Kai could not have been happier of the boy's existence. Heroism was so frail that the presence of such a child walking into their world and declaring themselves an equal was maybe a greater blow to their pride than the man who felled them; the loud boy he faced in his final round was the perfect example of their fragility, and the lengths they would go to in order to maintain their position of power. But the boy had lived the attempt on his life, and had stood proudly as he declared his victory over his quirked classmates with but a silent, powerful stare down with the camera. He had shaken their foundations, and they scrambled to keep their perfect image together. The presence of quirkless people could no longer be ignored, and that would be the domino that aided their plan.

It was a shame the kid didn't live in any district they worked in; Kai would reward him substantially for his contribution to his efforts, even if inadvertently.

His driver's gruff fussing pulled him from his musings. "What the hell is going on now?" Kai peered past him, at the bunched up cars stopped in the road while people ran past them in droves. Notably, a metal baseball bat was waving over their heads. "Where's everybody going this late?"

A muffled roar rang through the car. Eri whimpered while the driver whipped his head around, while Kai continued to look out the window, annoyed. All these heroes around and someone was still trying to cause trouble? "Turn the radio on. News broadcast."

The man did as instructed, clicking the speakers to life and adjusting the dial until a voice came through clearly. "—to the nearest safehouse locations. Local heroes and officers will guide you. Each location is adorned with a large, neon blue cross. This is an emergency broadcast. Please, evacuate calmly to the nearest—"

"Drive," Kai ordered, as the traffic moved likewise for them to follow behind. "Heroes will let us pass, evacuate and evade the chaos. They'll prioritize people's safety over protocol." He looked back down at Eri, double-checking her seatbelt. The little girl looked out the window as they passed the light, her expression changing to something of shock..

Then the car in front of them exploded.

Kai didn't get to turn his head back around before their own vehicle was thrown on its back, slamming upside down onto the street. The yakuza leader screamed out as his head slammed into the roof beneath him, his body hanging by his seatbelt. He ran one hand through his hair while the other struggled to click off the strap, and felt the bump forming on his head; he'd overhaul that later.

Upon that thought, he snapped his attention to Eri, the girl hanging in the air from her seat, limbs hanging limp as she dangled unconscious, a small river of blood trickling down one arm. He atomized his seat's buckle, forgoing any care of salvaging the car as he scrambled to free the child. "Don't you die on me, brat" he grumbled, using his quirk to destroy her buckle and rest her on the upturned roof. The cut on her arm was small but deep, the blood seeping from it dripping quickly. Without hesitating, he placed one hand over the wound and another over her mouth, and her arm exploded into atoms before it shot back together a second later.

The little girl awoke with a muffled scream into his hand, shaking and kicking while Kai held her down. "Behave." Eri was quick to follow his cold order, staring up past his hand with teary eyes. "You got a cut. I told you not to spill blood. Get up."

He overhauled his door, crawling out of the car as he dragged Eri behind him, while he took a look at their surroundings. The pack of cars they had been trying to escape with had all been overturned or destroyed, and causing more wreckage at the intersection was the likely culprit. With dark violet skin, a rhinoceros' upper body that paired horribly with his human lower half, and an exposed brain that jiggled with his jolts, the grotesque criminal roared and reared its ugly head around, knocking one hero who jumped at it through the air and a window.

His driver was fumbling to break free from their own seat, as Kai placed a hand on his door. "Move." He atomized the door without waiting, ignoring how the man yelped and scurried out of the vehicle. "Take Eri out of the way," he instructed, shoving the girl into him. "Contact Irinaka to send another escort, and head straight back." He gripped the man by the shoulder of his shirt before he turned away. "Do not lose her". The man nodded rapidly with a whimper before Kai shoved him away, watching the two run off before he turned back to the mad man in the road.

Quirks not only bred bothersome heroes, Kai mulled as he stepped forward, but villains of nuisance. Who came first — the hero or the villain — was a pointless question in the grand scheme of things; neither proved beneficial to the world at large. It was heroes who tore down the power of the yakuza, and it was the villains who made a ruckus that got them in the heroes' sights in the first place. Just as much as he hated heroes, Kai despised villains. There was no need for a world of comic books come-to-life, just power in the hands of those who deserved it; neither side deserved it, and he aligned with neither. Not if they were a threat to Eri.

The mutant monster took notice of him, the few heroes and sidekicks who had stepped up to challenge having been quickly bested. They reared their body around head first, tossing a car through the air over Kai, who paid no mind as it crashed far behind him, peeling a glove off one hand. He waited as the mutant stomped a hole into the road, before winding up and charging at the black-haired man. But Kai was trained, and Kai was quick to step aside when the beast got close, dragging a finger along its passing body before it exploded in full behind him.

The heroes were down, so they wouldn't notice what he'd done or where he'd gone until it was already too late. It wasn't often he'd do heroes any favors, but that freak dared to threaten his key to success; its death was mutually beneficial to both parties. Kai ducked away to the sidewalk, walking hurriedly after where his driver had taken Eri, but stopped when he recognized the pair of legs beneath the upturned car the mutant had thrown earlier.

Eri.

Kai rushed to the car, digging his fingers into its undercarriage and overhauling the vehicle into the wall beside them. The upper body of his driver was flattened into the sidewalk, legs left to lie beside a connected pile of blood and tattered clothes. To his relief, and then his dismay, Kai couldn't find any sign of Eri beside him.

"Eri?" he called out as he ran, searching left and right for her. People continued to run away in the distance, roars of other beasts and explosions of other fights echoing in the background. Yet there was no sign of her white hair. The girl was gone.

"Eri!?" He chased after the fleeing civilians, shoving left and right as he tried to peer over their shoulders. Yet there was no sign of her horn peeking out. His key to fixing the world was gone!

"Eri!"


It took little time for Bang to realize the monster he was fighting was not fully sentient. They could move, they could punch, they could shout incoherent songs of noise; but his opponent did not respond to physical pain or his verbal inquiries. It was like a brick wall given mutant form was flailing in front of him; nothing more than an animal put on the loose, sent to the streets to cause havoc for the sake of havoc.

Not to mention their body's structure. Despite taking a form akin to a gorilla, their purple skin was more flesh than fur, legs more human than ape, and the exposed brain was the most unnatural detail; second maybe to the bones that protruded from their arms and shone an ugly silver when they roared. This was no normal mutation quirk, nor a possible result of questionable trigger use that could have made their mind go so blank. This was inhuman. Natural or manmade, the next question remained.

The mutant swung their arms horizontally, missing the old hero as his blue-glowing hands intercepted the strike and diverted it over his head, barely brushing the tips of his hair, and after chambering his fists by his stomach, he launched a double strike into their chest and knocked them off their feet a few meters back. The abnormality of their body's anatomy left the monster flailing to stand back up, almost uncaring for Bang as he toed outside of its reach. "Who might you be, friend?" he asked aloud, silently mourning the unintelligible gargle the monster made.

When the beast rolled onto its belly, it attempted to clap the martial arts hero between its hands, but he jumped onto its back before they even swung and gently placed a hand on their open temple. "No quirk would put their user in such precarious danger. Who did this to you?"

The mutant rolled over to get him off, and Bang bounced away on the balls of his feet while they pushed themselves back up. "Can the man inside even hear me?" he continued to question. "Is there any hope in reaching you?"

The mutant monster roared its lungs out at the old hero, silenced again only by its head being slammed into the road. Bang blinked in a second of surprise as a strong gust of wind blew past him, and the hero looked down at the old man in a yellow-and-cream-colored costume standing by his side. "Sora," he greeted the other elder cheerily and with a smile, "it's been too long. How have you been?"

The short hero grumbled back at him with a frown. "It's Gran Torino to you, ya old basket of webs," he responded. "I'm in costume."

"Last I remember, you never wore anything else." Bang ignored the other man's continued grumblings as he continued, "Until you hung up your cape. I had heard you retired. Have you grown since we last saw each other?"

"This is why Bomb moved to the Koreas." They watched the beast together as it forced itself from the ground, shaking its head and popping out its bones with a roar. "You've been struggling with this Nomu?"

"Is that his name, or his alias?" Bang asked as he began to walk aside. "I've been keeping him in place as best I can until someone with an iron maiden can arrive. He seems not to mind my strikes; they seem to ripple off his body like water."

"Heard the one who attacked the school could do something similar," Gran Torino shared, and the martial artist peaked an eyebrow; they shared a mutation and an ability? Did the two come together? "Don't toy with it. It could be hiding more tricks up its sleeves."

"Have they demoted them to 'its' now? Are the people beneath that far gone?"

The monster swung its bony arms at Bang, but the old man leapt atop its arms and crashed an elbow down on its exposed brain, squishing it slightly. The mutant stumbled back with a roar as Bang leapt back, its temple shaking and reforming back into shape before the shorter hero slammed a foot into the side of its face and tumbling it back more. Bang readied his hands, blue light trailing behind as Gran Torino stayed afloat from the bursts of air that came from his soles, both watching the mutant beast shake off their blows and roar once more.

Suddenly, the night sky above erupted into light, and Bang could barely shield his eyes before a spear of fire shot through the monster's head and impaled it into the street. A man of fire fell from the sky after it, landing in front of the monster as the fire boiled its body from the inside, popping its purple flesh and melting its head in a matter of seconds.

"Endeavor!" Bang shouted at the man, and the number two hero peered over his shoulder at the man. "That was unnecessary! We were holding him off until he could be restrained!"

"No need to bother," the man responded with a fierce gaze through his mask of flames. "A kill order has been put out for these monsters. There's no point in sparing them."

The martial arts hero squinted. An order to kill on sight, this early into the attack? "On whose authority?"

"Tartarus and Nedzu of Yuei."

The old hero could only watch as the body of the mutant monster melted away at Endeavor's feet. Since when did a school teacher get the authority to order a kill issue for heroes? Had something changed since detaining the one who had assaulted his own school?

"Ah!" A new voice shouted with cheer, and rounding the corner came a blond teen dressed in red, white and gold with a number across his chest with several other heroes running behind him. "There you are Gran! Sorry for being late."

The short hero dashed into the young man's chin, barely making him budge but eliciting a simple 'ow.' "You were the one that came here in the first place, you dolt!" Gran Torino chastised him. "What are you doing, running off at a time like this?"

The blond kid pointed a thumb at the heroes behind him. "Came across another fight. Apprehended the guy they were fighting. Should be tied up and on his way…" The kid's voice faded away as he took notice of the melting pile in front of the Flame Hero, and he looked at the man's face with a look of shock.

"They'll keep him alive for questioning," Endeavor continued for the hero kid. "There's an order put out to stop these things with lethal force. Don't let the next one you see go freely."

Bang turned his attention away from their discussion as he took a headcount of the other heroes to arrive. Not many he knew of to be big in name, so small time or recent breakouts on the scene meant their fighting experience was going to be lacking. Who knew how many more like this mutant were still out there, their wreckage being held back only by the struggle of other heroes and sidekicks on the scene.

Then his attention turned to the man dressed in a light-blue costume with fins on the side of his head; the same man who took notice of him and whose eyes widened with recognition and surprise. Bang looked at him and the empty space behind him, recalling both Midoriya's words and the names he had seen in the recent news.

"Silverfang, why are you here?"

"Where's Ingenium?"


"Don't lag behind, Tailman! Can't let the others have all the fun!"

Mashirao scoffed, chasing after Kick Back as the man hopped from rooftop to rooftop ahead of him, laughing too cheerily in contrast to the civilians on the road below running and screaming. Maybe a yoga hero wouldn't have been a bad idea to study under instead, he contemplated.

They hadn't been on patrol anywhere near the streets of Hosu, but the emergency call of chaos and wreckage broadcasted far past city limits, and apparently the hero he was interning under just had to be there. Kick Back had grabbed him by the scruff of his costume before Mashirao got a word in, hitching a ride atop a bullet train that carried them into the city so they could make the remainder of the trip on foot. It was the only assistance the tailed teen was getting, chasing behind the hero to the closest sounding conflict.

He only ever caught up with the man when he finally stopped. "Damn," the hero sighed as he looked over the building's edge. "Just missed it. Where did they all come from?"

Taking the break to catch his breath, Mashirao looked down with him at the conglomerate of heroes in the road. A strong fire burned in the center of the lanes, illuminating one Flame Hero: Endeavor as he spoke with the larger crowd of heroes and sidekicks. Off to the side were two duos, one made of a short man and the surprising-to-see blond upperclassman from Yuei that was shadowing All-Might in classes. The other consisted of a hero dressed in blue — the tailed teen took a moment to recognize him as Manual — and a much more easily recognizable old martial arts hero.

"Silverfang?" he said verbally, and the hero by his side whistled in interest.

"There's a man you don't see every day. Legend of the martial arts world. No wonder we missed out."

Why was he here, Mashirao wondered internally. And where was Midoriya? They were supposed to be on patrol in Saitama prefecture, not Hosu. They were even further away from the city than Mashirao and Kick Back were; how could they have arrived first? Did the hero just run off to the city and leave his friend behind; an unlikely story, he dismissed with a frown. But Manual was native to the city limits, so where was Iida? And what was even burning in the road beside them all?

A streak of color in the sky caught the corner of Mashirao's eye, and he turned his pupils into saucers as he focused on the winged creature flapping through the air. Skin like violet, brown ragged pants covered their legs, and a bright pink that was their exposed brain; it looked just like the monster who had attacked them at the USJ. There was more like him, the tailed boy questioned in growing worry. The muscular man who invaded their school with the other villains nearly killed Midoriya and their classmates and teacher, but another one like him roaming a city? Were there even more around? Was that what Endeavor and Silverfang were fighting?

But if they were in Hosu, then that meant…

"Well doesn't he look gnarly," Kick Back commented as he watched the winged mutant circle around in the distance. "Probably one of the guys spurring all this trouble. Think you can take him on?"

Mashirao ignored him, head snapping left and right as he surveyed all the buildings around them. That large purple man wasn't the leader of the attack on their school, he knew that much reading how the news reported it. There were two others in charge, two who had gotten away in the ending battle and were still at large. So if mutants like there were to be in the city, who's to say they weren't too?

"Are you looking for a fly or something?" Kick Back asked him, lightly kicking a foot into the teen's leg. "What's got your attention?"

"That one looks like the guy who attacked us at school," Mashirao explained, still surveying the rooftops below and above them. "He wasn't alone. His partners have to be here somewhere."

"The guy's got friends?" The hero hummed. "Then we need a better vantage point. Hop on." He gestured to his back, and the teen climbed aboard hesitantly. "Thank you for flying with Hero Airlines. Just kick back, relax, and hold on tight." The two launched into the air, wind smashing into Mashirao's face as he sputtered and closed his eyes.

When the ascension finally stopped, Mashirao took another look at Hosu from just above its tallest building, while Kick Back continued to bounce on the air at their height. "Keep and eye out for anyone who looks out of place to you, Tailman. Might be the men you know, might be someone else, but let's hope your guess is right."

Mashirao looked left and right as they spun around in the air, checking the tops of every building he could even partially see, hoping the men he was searching for wouldn't be ducking in alleyways and being impossible to find. If even one man could stand out, then…

"There!" he shouted, pointing out into the far distance at a dark figure atop a building to the south.

There was a chance.

Without warning, the two began to fall through the air. "Can't tell what he looks like from here," Kick Back commented, "so we'll have to get in close. We'll stay street level so they don't get alerted to us. Ready to kick some ass?"

"Yes sir!" Mashirao sounded off, and the two veered through the air as Kick Back began to hop down and between the buildings, bounding over the street as they headed towards their target. The tailed teen kept an eye open as they passed over running civilians and wrecked cars, mulling quietly at the absence of his two friends in the face of their choices in heroes.

He only prayed that his first guess to their whereabouts was wrong.


There was always that wonderful feeling in his chest when Garou got into a fight. Be it an accepted or proposed challenge; against an opponent larger or smaller than him; hero or not; the rush of battle brought overwhelming joy to him. Because nothing could stop him. Schools of martial arts students fell by his hands. Heroes dropped at his feet. Fools met punishment at the end of his fists.

And Hero Killers could struggle as long as they liked; the end result would be the same.

Let it not be said Stain wasn't good at fighting. The noseless madman was crafty with a sword, accurate with a throwing knife, and deceptively superhuman in his movements and his tolerance for pain. He couldn't cut him, of course, but every punch and kick Garou landed on the man's torso did little to slow his opponent down; if anything, his attacks and response time only increased the battle raged on. The silver-haired teen would have been worried if he was anyone else.

Another glistening dagger soared through the air towards his face, and Garou dodged by leaping through the air, landing on a fire escape and watching the Hero Killer climb to chase him. The martial artist swiped pottery from the window sill behind him, launching plants at the other man and watching as he curved and curled around the projectiles while bouncing off the walls and garbage bin to reach his height. Garou swerved further up the fire escape as Stain chased, veering up the stairs to dodge every swing of the man's sword. When he made it a full floor over the man's head, he leapt over the side of the rail, latching on to the bar and swinging his feet down to collide with the man's raised arm, and bounced off when a sword tried to nick him in the ankles.

"That's some nice reaction time you've got," Garou noted as he landed back on the ground, grinning up at the Hero Killer. "Like any real fighter would. Where did you learn moves like that?"

"The real world," Stain gave his answer flatly, jumping over the rail and tossing another trifecta of knives that Garou rolled out of the way from before the killer landed. "Real fights teach you real battles. Why do you hold back your strength?"

The silver-haired teen dropped into his stance again, hands balled into fists in front of him. "What makes you think I am?"

"You could best Ingenium with your bare hands," the Hero Killer explained. "Break steel and stone with your fingers. You can strike more powerful than this, likely even in your fights with heroes. Why restrain yourself from finishing the fight? Why leave these insulting fools to taint the name of real heroes? What purpose does sparing them serve?"

Garou's Cheshire smile dipped slightly. "There are no real heroes."

He darted at the Hero Killer like a cheetah, side-stepping each knife that flew at his head and smacking aside the hand that tried to strike him with a sword. He slid a foot past Stain's, bumping shoulders with the other man before striking the killer in the ribs with his fist, lifting him off the ground. He followed the strike with a flurry, juggling the man further and further off the ground before throwing a punch for the man's face. But Stain twisted his neck out of the way, while Garou's knuckles cut along his cheek. A knife barely nicked the silver-haired teen in the arm, and as he curled back the Hero Killer followed by planting the same knife in Garou's leg.

That gave Garou the time to sock him in his missing nose, putting space between them once again.

He hissed and groaned while his fingers tapped along the hilt of the embedded knife, coughing up a smile at the Hero Killer. "You take hits better than a twig like yourself should," he commented dryly, gripping the knife and yanking it from his flesh with a hiss that wouldn't break his grin. Dirty bastard was probably giving him tetanus with his ugly weapons; just his luck.

Stain managed to regain his composure, swaying lightly on his feet and dapping the blood that dripped from the hole that once was a nose. "Yet your strikes feel weak," he retorted gravely. "You're holding back. You think you can make a difference by limiting your quirk? You think putting heroes into a nap can change the world?" Garou felt his lips twitch, watching the man lick his dripping blood. "This world will not change from such weakness like yours. False heroes will only return to the scene to chase revenge and continue to taint All-Might's image. You only groom the problem."

"Odd choice of words from the man fighting a kid," the silver-haired teen shot back with snark. "Can't believe you're just a big ol' fanboy for the mighty number one. God, you continue to disappoint." He twirled the knife Stain had 'gifted' him, watching the man's eyes take interest in the weapon. "What, you want this back?" He tossed the knife into the wall, embedding the blade in the stone wall. "Tough shit. It's what you get for having exceptions to this rule of yours. You think that American woman who dresses like him is a 'Star' standout too?"

"That wench appropriates his image for her own fame and glory. There are none like All-Might, none worthy of the respect he is owed. And no fool like yourself who will get away with insulting him. My crusade will not come to a stop at the hands of a lesser."

Garou twisted his grin upside down, pairing his frown with a piercing glare. "I ain't your goddamn lesser, freak."

Stain took his words as a challenge, stepping forward with his sword dragging along the ground with a scathing scratch that bounced off the walls. Garou cursed under his breath, pressing a hand into the gushing wound in his leg while the other rolled through the air, a faint blue hue following.

"Hey!"

The Hero Killer stopped his advance at the shout, turning his body around to the culprit before swinging his blade and intercepting something Garou didn't see with a clang. Flying over the man's head, spinning wildly in the air between the two men, was a little metal baseball bat.

He let the grin overtake his face once more. "Neither of us are!" He leapt off the ground with his good foot, catching the bat in midair and descending on the Hero Killer, his smile growing ever so stronger at the sight of the green-haired teen who charged in from the other side.

Stain jumped out of the way before either he or Midoriya could land their strikes, bats swinging past one another and kicking up a strong wind between them. Garou beamed his fangs at the kid when their eyes met, receiving the younger teen's shocked expression back at him. He barked a short laugh, bumping the kid in the shoulder while he rose. "There's my show stopper," he greeted the quirkless kid. "Even fixed your shitty hair."

"What are you doing, Hunter?" The kid was quick to the point, his eyes only glancing upwards for a second before focusing on the taller teen. "I thought you weren't a hero. Fighting a villain is vigilantism, you know that."

"Glad to see you too."

Midoriya settled on an unimpressed look as Garou handed him the smaller bat, shrinking it in his palm with the click of a button. He brushed past the silver-haired teen, crouching down beside the armored kid as his expression turned to worry. "Iida, can you hear me? Are you still with us?" Ah damn, of course he had to know the kid, Garou noted with a frown.

A croak came from the helmet as it twitched. "Midoriya?" the teen inside gasped weakly. "This…Hosu…When?"

"Silverfang brought us here for patrol." Garou's frown only sneered behind the green-haired teen's back while he wrapped up the cut on his friend's arm. The old fart had sought him out for an internship or something? No wonder the kid just happened to be in town, too. That bastard. "I saw you run off earlier. I'm sorry I couldn't get here sooner. Can you move?"

"Can't," the teen gasped again, "feel my body…"

"It's probably his quirk," Garou offered, Midoriya only turning his head to look at the hero downed in another corner of the alley. "Neither of them have gotten up since I've been here, but it's not like they're dead. The fuck else do you need a tongue that long for with a profession like this?"

The green-haired teen bowed his head for a second, while his friend gasped his name, "Midoriya, don't…help…"

"I can't leave you here," the quirkless kid cut off the other teen, pushing off his knee to stand and walking away to face the Hero Killer standing at the other end of the alley. Though only from the side, Garou could see intensity in the kid's eyes. "But I'll get you out as soon as I can. Just hold out for me."

Garou walked up behind him, stopping just short of his side. "You know I can't ask you to fight," Midoriya told him, not looking back over his shoulder. "You're a civilian. You could get arrested for this."

"And leave you alone with this creep?" Garou argued back, cracking his knuckles and neck. "Can't have this guy anywhere around children. And I want to beat his ass too."

"Silverfang gave me the okay for combat; I can't give it to you." The corner of his eye peeked over, looking down at the cut in Garou's leg. "And you're injured. Can you get Iida and Native out of here first for me?"

"It ain't the worst I've had, brat. And if I turn away for a second, this man's gonna kill ya." He bent his knees into a fighting stance, grunting at the tensing of his leg but powering through with a smile. With Midoriya by his side, this fraud would go down in no time. "I ain't going anywhere without you, kid."

Midoriya mirrored his stance, chambering his bat beside his head, pointed in Stain's direction. "I'll do my best to defend you. Thank you for having my back."

"Any time."

Stain exhaled slowly, eyes dragging between Garou and the teen beside him before landing on the latter. "You're the kid from the Sports Festival. The boy without a quirk. Is it true?"

Garou smiled viciously, while Midoriya's bat curled with his grip. "Find out for yourself."

The Hero Killer sighed, drawing a small sword from his back. "How disappointing."


Tenya had to move — he wanted so badly to just move — yet his body would not listen. No matter how hard he pleaded and begged and demanded, he was now a spectator on the ground, unable to do anything but watch; to watch as Midoriya fought shoulder-to-shoulder with the man who tried to kill Tensei.

His eyes picked up the fight as it bled into his vision, and his ears worked to fill in the blanks when they stepped beyond where he could see. The villain who had put Tensei in a coma and likely had brought harm and pain to many more heroes before him was finally within Tenya's reach, and he worried for his green-haired friend when he arrived at the scene. A Hero Killer and a Hero Hunter would out him for sure, leaving his friend on death's door once more in his unapologetic life. Yet that danger never came to be, when friend met foe and acted like they knew each other. Because Midoriya did know Garou, and Garou knew him.

"Ingenium? I know of him…" The green-haired teen he'd just met on the beach brought a hand under his chin, his mouth bouncing as he muttered, "He's the hero with engines in his arm to keep him slightly above the ground and move at pretty fast speeds. He's pretty cool as a hero. His armor is similar to a knight's, isn't it?"

Was this betrayal? Had Midoriya known all along that Garou was the one responsible for his brother's coma, when Tenya had shared the news with him at school? Had he known he was hunting for Silverfang when he accepted the invitation to study under the hero? Had his words of comfort and assurance and friendship poured out to reassure the blue-haired teen all been a lie?

A spell of grunts and curses rolled through the air. "Hunter!" Midoriya yelled. "You okay?"

"Just dandy, twerp," Garou called back in response. "Don't take your eyes off the bastard! Keep giving 'im hell!"

He knew Garou by his title, referring to him by it like a nickname, with a tone of worry and concern and care for a monster who nearly killed heroes. There was a longstanding friendship in the background of their voices, Tenya could hear it. Not too dissimilar from how Midoriya spoke to him; how Midoriya spoke to his 'friends.'

"But I'll just say you got my back…and I got yours." The green-haired teen held out a hand to Tenya. "Friend for a friend. Sound fair?"

None of it made sense, Tenya cried internally, feeling the confusion attempt to push out through his eyes. They had known each other for almost a year; bonded over a likeness and appreciation for heroes; trained to pass Yuei's entrance exam; fought by each other's side in class and in contest; had a year of friendship all been a lie? Had Midoriya only ever asked about Tensei so Garou could hunt him down and take his life?

"I think we can trust them," Midoriya spoke softly, gazing after their friends disappearing in the mall's crowd. "Everyone, maybe not, but them? I want to keep them around. I am sorry you're having to deal with my shit and my problems. I want to tell them, but…not yet."

The fighting carried on over his head, sounds of muffled slams, slashes and shouts barely registering in Tenya's festering mind. Why did Midoriya have to show up now? Why did he have to complicate things? Why couldn't Tenya just get up and put down the man who tried to do the same to his brother? Why did Midoriya have to fight by that monster's side?

"Thank you," Midoriya told him and their friends circled around the green teen, sitting on the bench and presenting his new scar. "That means more than I'm comfortable with sharing right now, but thank you. And I'll tell everyone in class about this later. It still doesn't make sense to me, but after all this" — the quirkless teen rubbed at his scar with a thumb — "I don't want to lie to anyone anymore. I owe you guys for my life; I owe them the truth too."

It couldn't have been a ruse, the blue-haired teen tried to argue. Midoriya was impulsive, but he had always tried to put his heart first. Fascination with Tenya, enjoyment with Mashirao, passion with Yaoyorozu, comfort with Uraraka, jest with Kaminari; he treated his friends as their own people, offering something unique for Tenya to notice. And his decisions always changed with everyone else — getting accepted to Yuei, surviving the attack at the USJ, announcing the truth at the Sports Festival — and how he tried to be the good man he kept vowing to be. What would be the point in putting up a front only to drop it all in an alleyway fight like this?

"Stop," the green-haired teen cut off Tenya's rant, gently slapping his hand into the taller boy's face before putting it down to look at him. "Tenya. You're not a bother. You're not a disturbance. You're not going to be. You're my friend, and I and everyone is your friend, and we are here for you okay? I understand if any of that does happen, and everyone else will too, and no one is going to mind. We're here for you. I promise you everything will be fine."

No, he wouldn't do that. He wouldn't have taken a bullet, fought until his arms were blown off, and nearly had his head split in two just trying to keep up a face. The Midoriya he knew risked his life for friend and stranger, threw his body into the fold and fray just so someone else could be safe; just as he was doing now. That had to be true.

Then Tenya needed to know what role Garou played in this puzzle.

He needed to get up, he cried, straining for his body to listen. He had to get up, while his body was only beginning to twitch. He needed answers. Midoriya needed help. Stain and Garou needed to be stopped.

When Tenya could finally press his hand on the ground, he knew he just had to do something.


Izuku accepted long ago that his life was never going to be ideal. He probably could have called it a downward trend since his diagnosis as quirkless when he was little, but he knew things had gotten better. Real friend, admission to the school of his dreams, acknowledgement and praise from the heroes he admired; contrasted by the vitriol spat at him in online forums and Bakugou's lips paired with the constant danger he found himself up, it had become more of a rollercoaster between good and bad. It wasn't like life was his control; what could he do about it but stand up and meet it halfway, attempt to piece together some silver lining when shit hit the fan?

He wasn't actually looking to get into a fight with the infamous Hero Killer: Stain, but at least Iida was alive and Hunter could help him even the fight, so the events of the night were still a coin flipping through the air.

It wasn't as though he had many options to begin with. Iida was down and unresponsive, Native — if he had guessed the hero right from his first glimpses when he arrived — was also incapacitated for the time being, and Hunter was already duking it out with the Hero Killer before he ever arrived. He couldn't leave his friend or the hero to die by Stain's blade, and he couldn't leave someone classified as a civilian to fight a criminal in his stead; the only choice Izuku had was to hold off the man himself until another hero could arrive, Iida or the hero could move again to help, or he would be able to restrain Stain himself.

Hunter led the fight on the Hero Killer, chasing after the bladed man as they bounced and swerved around each other's swings and strikes. Izuku jumped in as soon as Stain's back was to him, swinging at the man's legs and only coming up against the flat of the man's blade back by the sole of his metal-based shoe. Stain looked back over his shoulder with a seething gaze directed at the quirkless teen, and Izuku returned the eye contact as Hunter rushed in again and socked the man in the stomach, launching him down the alley.

"Try aiming for his head," the silver-haired young man offered. "Could knock a few teeth loose and turn out his lights."

"I'm trying not to kill him," Izuku argued back, turning his back to his friend once more as they faced down the recovering killer. "And be more cautious. I still don't know what his quirk is."

Hunter shifted his feet around until he donned a new fighting stance. "Any guesses?"

The green-haired teen took a quick glance at the man's leaking tongue before gazing down on his friend's wounded leg. "If you think his tongue is needed, probably contact with an open wound. His saliva could have a paralysis toxin mixed in with the mucus. Though maybe it doesn't explain why he's unaffected."

"Don't quirks usually have a self-defense mechanism? Probably got some stomach acid thing that can process it." Izuku humored the thought, but really did not want to think about the Hero Killer drinking a mix of saliva and blood like it was water, instead resuming his stare down with Stain.

For all his promise to end the fight quickly, knocking out the Hero Killer was taking more time than he could spare. His friends and the hero desperately needed medical attention sooner than later, no other heroes had shown up to the scene despite the distress alert he tried to send on his phone, and of course his almighty superpowers were coming up short. For someone with thinner arms than his own, and a weapon like a twig compared to his bat, Stain could block and parry Izuku's swings with annoying ease. The oddity that was his strength was answering his calls, yet its build up to the power he knew he should have was annoyingly slow at the worst of times. What was he still missing to solve this riddle?

"You two are quite perceptive," Stain's voice bounced down the alley, drawing Izuku's attention to him fully. "But, mislead." The Hero Killer raised his sword, pointing its chipped edge at the green-haired teen. "Quirkless child. What is your name?"

His brows furrowed at the question. "Metal Bat," he shared his hero alias, ignoring the snort Hunter gave beside him.

"You've followed the path of a hero to the school that churns out the most slop this country sees," Stain continued. "Do you believe yourself worthy of walking that path, when you fight beside men like him?"

"I'd rather he not be here too." Izuku ignored Hunter's indignant shout behind his head. "I don't want him getting in trouble for my sake. But if his help means you can't kill my friend? Then I'm thankful for him."

The Hero Killer's persistent frown never wavered, his sword staying where his arm rose while it twisted with his grip. "Then you are more misguided than first thought. I have made my choice. None of you shall be leaving here alive."

Hunter finally interrupted their conversation by darting forward, hands chambered at his side. "Who said you got a say in that?!" he barked with a laugh, somersaulting over the killer's head to dodge the swing of his sword. "You haven't been managing to do that since we got here!"

The fight wasn't getting any better as time went on, Izuku lamented. Even as Hunter made to advance, he still fought on the backfoot. For all the blows Stain took to the body and head from the silver-haired teen's strong punches and kicks, none seemed to slow him down enough to find a window of opportunity. They needed something to shift the tide of the battle, or he and Hunter could find themselves on the wrong end of his sword, and soon.

"Midoriya!"

Like a light shining down from above, came Iida's voice behind him. Donning a smile, Izuku turned around to find his friend once more on his own two feet. "Iida—"

The taller teen raised his head slowly, ruby eyes glistening wildly under his helmet, while light exploded through the alley from his legs. "Move."

Izuku did; not to the side but in place, pivoting the hold on his bat as Iida crashed into him at sonic speeds. His block did next to nothing to stop him, as the green-haired teen suddenly felt himself pushed back and collided with not one, but two bodies as Hunter and Stain were wrapped into the blue-haired teen's tackle as well. Izuku didn't see solid colors again until they came from a lamp post's light pulled into a streak of light, and the rest of the world went spinning.

The four of them went tumbling across the road as they burst out of the alley, Izuku coming to a stop on his head against the pavement and his ass in the air. He rolled over with a groan, seething at the new cut in his arm while blinking solid shapes back into his vision as he looked around. Hunter wasn't too far away in the road from him, stumbling as he picked himself up to his feet. Stain was further off to the side, equally as dazed as he helped himself up against a lamp post.

With a frustrated grunt, Izuku turned his attention around to the last of them, as Iida struggled to push himself to his feet from the other side of the road. "Iida, what the hell was that?" he shouted at his friend harshly. "We're trying to help you! Be more careful!"

The fast teen ripped off his helmet as he got to his feet, and with his face no longer obscured, Izuku could clearly see the rage that colored him red, paired with a vengeful glare — pointed at him? "I need to know the truth, Midoriya," he shouted in a pant. "Did you know about Tensei before I told you?"

What was he on about? "Of course I didn't! You told me before the news broke about it!"

"And did you care?! When you told me we'd bring his assailant to justice, were you lying to my face?!"

"What do you think I'm trying to do?!" Izuku shouted back. "If we can bring in Stain then the heroes can learn where his partner is and stop them too!" From the corner of his eye he could see his silver-haired had made it to his feet, pivoting around to the rising Hero Killer. "Hunter, are you alright?"

"Goddamnit Midoriya!" Tenya cursed at him. "If you care at all, then why are you helping Garou?!"

"I'm not…helping…" Izuku's roaring voice petered out quickly in his throat, catching the name the blue-haired teen mentioned. His head swiveled around slowly, redirecting his gaze to the silver-haired teen who stood motionless in the road with him. The mild wind blew past them, as his voice failed to say another word. When the silver-haired teen looked over his shoulder to Izuku, all prior fire in his eyes for battle evaporated in place of a stoic frown, he stopped trying to talk altogether.

His body did the same, his arms and legs locking up while he was still on his knees, now unable to push himself any higher. Izuku's eyes widened with surprise, vision darting away to Stain to find the man licking along one of his bloodied blades. So it wasn't the wound he needed contact with, the green-haired teen realized sourly, just the blood.

"I'm sorry for that, Midoriya." Iida's voice went soft, as the teen moved his glare from the quirkless boy to the silver-haired man. "But I needed to know who was lying to who. Thank you."

The blue-haired teen's legs erupted to life again, shooting him at Hunter with a glass-shattering boom. The silver-haired teen sidestepped the attack, and Iida instead slammed Stain into the corner of the store building behind him. Undeterred from missing his target, Iida carried on his energy, pivoting his legs and darting at the young man once more. This time Hunter intercepted him, spinning the teen off his own feet and punching him in the chest, rocketing him through the air until he crashed his back into a light post.

"Tenya!" Izuku shouted after him. "Hunter! Stop! He's my friend! What are you doing!?"

The silver-haired teen stood still, half-turned to Izuku as he pointed his glare at the speedster, fists shaking by his side. "That's not my name, kid."

"You told me it was your name!" Frustration bit at his tongue, his body unresponsive to his pleas to let him move. "You told me you were Hunter!"

"I told you a lie!" he barked back at the green-haired teen, turning his body in full to stomp over to him. "My name isn't Hunter, it's Garou! Didn't the old bastard tell you that?!"

"He told me you left before him! That you were gone before he attacked your school!"

"Then he lied to your face too! I didn't leave that hellhole, I tore down the only foundation keeping Bang's sorry ass afloat! That was all me!"

"Why?!" Izuku cried at him, fighting down the questions that bubbled in his throat. "Why attack them? Why attack Ingenium? You told me I could be a hero! You helped me learn how to fight - helped me get into Yuei! You knew I wanted to be a hero! Why did you help me?!"

"Because we're quirkless!"

Izuku's voice caught in his throat. Garou's face shifted from its anger, his snarl forming into a frown while his glare only looked to him with pity.

"We stick up for each other. Have each other's backs. That's how we get by."


Mirio knew something was wrong, because he knew something was wrong before something wrong even happened.

He was supposed to be at Might Tower training with Gran Torino under All-Might and Sir Nighteye's supervision, as they had been since the study week began, but something was nagging him as they sparred. His attention was divided elsewhere, and his teachers could tell when they called for a recess. The blond teen could only explain the feeling of worry in his gut before the pain erupted in his head, and he was phasing out the wall before he heard another word. He followed his heart across town, passing through the entire district until he arrived at the outskirts of Hosu city, finding chaos had begun before he even arrived.

He didn't know how to explain it when Gran Torino caught up to him alone, and the sight of rising smoke and echoed screams beckoned the old hero into the lead as they both ran into the city. Mirio did his best to follow the man who was once All-Might's own teacher, but as they leapt over the chaotic crowds and directed themselves towards the plume of fire and smoke, the Yuei student found his body redirecting course before he had a chance to apologize to his teacher. The nagging sense of worry in his ear rung loudly as he arrive to a fight between Manual, a few other heroes and a mutant man who looked eerily similar to the Nomu mutant from the attack on the school, and he did not hesitate to knock all three of the mutant's heads around until it fell unconscious; lucky him, they didn't have the same ability of shock absorption as their USJ counterpart.

After restraining the mutant and leading the group of heroes to Gran, who himself had formed a team with Endeavor and another old man Mirio didn't recognize, the blond teen found himself tasked with the responsibility of evacuation and rescue while the pros took to handling the rest of the criminals wrecking havoc. It wasn't a choice he particularly liked — the chance all of their foes were mutants like Nomu and the three-headed dog man meant the possibility of their strength matching the former's wasn't completely zero — but he also wasn't a fan of the order to kill them on sight. If the man from the USJ could be restrained, then anyone like him could be too; he'd have no part in tallying another man's life as a stain against all he stood for, against the whole point of the number on his costume's chest.

The hero he was sent with casted him a curious glance. "You're one of those kids from Yuei, right?" she asked him.

"Yep!" he answered with a bright smile. "I hope you're recognizing me from this year's Sports Festival and not the last! It's a pleasure to be working with you, Flashbang!"

"You've been on rescue missions before?" The blond teen nodded. "Keep an ear open for anyone shouting or struggling to move. Evacuation orders should have filtered out most of the civilians. Anyone still around is probably trapped in by damaged infrastructure or faulty machinery, so double check any mess you see before we move on."

"Right!"

Despite how optimistic and aware he tried to be, Mirio could not shake the nagging worry that pulled in the back of his head. The fighting between the heroes and those villains was but a faint sound in his ears, yet every step his body took was though his own legs were trying to turn around and join the fray. He wasn't some battle-hungry hero, far from it. So why did his body tell him he needed to face the danger?

Suddenly the feeling shifted, flipping around in his body and pulling his attention upwards along one of the buildings they passed. It took a few seconds of glazing over the structure with his eyes, but soon Mirio found one figure standing in an open window. "Sir!" he shouted up to the individual. "There's an evacuation order in progress! Are you stuck in your room?" The man did not answer him, turning away and disappearing into the room.

That wasn't right, Mirio noted worriedly. For all the strange mutant men causing havoc in the city, they were the only ones anyone had spotted and reported. All-Might and his crew had caught him up to speed on All For One, the man behind the attack on the school and probable creator of the Nomu, and he had been on alert for any sign of him or his men from the USJ since he got to Hosu. The one he fought before followed orders like a lap dog; someone had to be around to control these as well, right?

"Lemillion!" Flashbang shouted back at him. "Have you found someone?"

Right, he couldn't let his assumptions get ahead of himself. "There's someone on the sixth floor!" he reported. "Saw them through the window, fourth room on the left! I can jump in and check to make sure he's alright!"

"It'll be faster," the heroine agreed. "I'll go through the lobby, see if something is obscuring the way down. Keep an eye out for anyone else who might be stuck!" Mirio nodded, infusing One For All into his legs, leaping towards the room and phasing through the window on guard.

Yet the room he found himself in was empty. No sign of the man hiding away in the closets or adjacent rooms; neatly folded bedsheets and empty tables; even the door to the hotel room was shut. Not a sound of fiddling or walking reached his ears, only the continued echo of the fighting outside remained. He infused a small amount of his bestowed quirk into his arm, opening the door to the hallway; maybe this wasn't a civilian in need. As he walked out, surveying the hall, he caught the man just as he entered another room — so tall that he crouched to walk through the door frame — at the opposite end and chased.

The door Mirio came to was like the first, shut tight and locked, a detail that brought a frown to Mirio's face. Someone with a phasing ability like his, in Hosu while the Nomu were on a rampage, just for him to find alone? His senses had stopped dragging his attention around yet his nerves bristled with danger. If this was a trap he was walking into, he thought as power surged up his arm, then he was going to have to break the news to the men trying to capture him; he wasn't going down easy.

He punched the door handle out of the frame with a swift blow, knocking the door open with his other shoulder and barging into the dark room. There was no man waiting for him — no small army stood by to take him on — but instead one small, auburn-haired child, curled in the corner of the room who squeaked at his entrance. The energy in his arm dissipated, and he walked forward slowly and looked left and right.

"Hey buddy," he greeted the kid slowly, raising his arms to signal he meant no harm. "Are you alright? I thought I saw a pretty big guy walk in here. Did you happen to see him?" The kid shook his head rapidly, and Mirio hid his worry with a smile. Where had that man gone?

He stopped just a good foot away from the kid, crouching down to be more at his level. "Alright, well, here's the plan. I'm a hero" — the word alone brought a little glimmer to the kid's eye — "and you shouldn't still be here. Your parents are probably worried about you; they're probably at one of the safehouses by now. I take it they left you here before all the big noises outside?" The kid nodded in confirmation. "Then let's go find them, how about that?"

The kid was quick to accept his offered hand, only stopped as Mirio checked him over; no wounds or signs of bruises, he was happy to say. At least their mystery man hadn't done anything to the kid. He scooped the boy into his arms, eliciting a wordless giggle as he carried him back into the hallway and found the heroine he was working with just running in from the stairwell. So there was no damage, he had concluded after sharing his findings Flashbang and introducing her to the kid he found, just a kid too afraid to move. Was there a trap somewhere else in the building?

He checked the other rooms of the building to be sure, handing off the kid to Flashbang before phasing up and down the hotel's floor plan, but his search fell short of finding any answers: the kid was the only other person in the building. Leaping back out to the road as the hero walked out with the kid, he shared his findings and lack thereof, mentioning the man he saw.

"Blond, green-ish suit, maybe fifty or so centimeters taller than me," he described the man he saw upon her request, accepting the kid into his arms as she passed him back. "Can phase through solid objects like I can."

"You get the kid to the nearest safehouse," she instructed. "You know where that is?" He nodded. "I'll stay here and see if I can find him or anyone else, put out a warning with his description. If we're lucky, then it's some civilian leading us to people in need we might not have found otherwise. Stay alert."

"Yes ma'am!" he saluted with a beaming smile, and the mute child in his arm mirrored his actions. He turned that bright grin to the kid. "It'll be faster if we go up high. Want to go for a ride?" The boy nodded vigorously, wrapping his arms around Mirio's. Infusing One For All into his legs once more, he launched into the air, leaping over the same hotel with a single bound and arching over its rooftop. The kid in his arms giggled excitedly as he kept them afloat, kicking off the air like All-Might and Gran Torino taught him as they headed for a building with a blue neon sign atop its roof. Waiting in front of the building's door were two other heroes the successor to All-Might landed in front of.

"Good evening gentlemen!" he greeted the two. "Found a kid hiding in his room from all the noise. This is the nearest safehouse, so we think his parents might be inside. Room for one more?"

The wolf-headed hero in white drapes nodded at him. "Good work, kid," he thanked him, taking the boy's hand as Mirio put him on his feet. "Got a few parents separated from their kids filing their worries inside. Are you heading back out?"

"Flashbang is still out there looking for more. It'd be rude of me not to help while I still can." He ruffled the little kid's hair and shared with him another smile. "You be safe now, alright?"

He turned away to head back into the hunt once more, before his left eye erupted with the feeling of danger and a body flew into view at the closest corner of the road. Flashbang rolled across the street like a ragdoll, small spikes sticking from her body while she screamed. Following her from the crossing road was another of the purple Nomu, with a body like a tiger's and a neck like a giraffe's, with thorns trailing from its chest all the way up to its panther-like chin.

"Get inside!" Mirio insisted at the hero behind him, who rushed into the safehouse with the kid in hand. The other man dressed in blue robes scoffed at the sight of the villain, pulling out a baton that sparked with electricity. "Get Flashbang to safety! I'll distract the Nomu!"

"I'm the hero, kid! Leave the fighting to me!" the man argued. "I am your superior and that's an order! Now get her inside!"

He wanted to argue, but the monster's bloating neck left little room for debate. Mirio blitzed forward, scooping the wounded hero off the ground as a rain of spikes dug into the road. He darted around the nearest intersection, gently lowering Flashbang down as he assessed her wounds. Still alive, with ragged breathing and about twelve puncture wounds that weren't spilling a lot of blood only because the spikes were still lodged in her body. Not a good sign, he cursed, picking her up gently as he snuck back around to the safehouse.

"Kid?" she groaned weakly in his arms, and Mirio offered his least impressive smile yet.

"I'm getting you to safety, ma'am," he assured her, running through the alley beside the safehouse towards its front entrance. "There should be medical teams inside, right? They'll take care of you. Everything is going to be okay—"

It was an assurance that died in his throat as he made it back to the road, sparing but a glance at the other hero fighting the Nomu. The briefest of bouts had already taken a turn for the worst, as he watched the man fold into a car's roof and the monster loomed over him, its neck ballooning once again.

"No!" He couldn't intervene in time, not with another hero already in his grasp that needed medical attention and fast. His arms were stuck holding the woman up, leaving him only able to stretch out a hand towards the hero, his body sparking as One For All came to life. He couldn't aim his body to leap at the hero or the Nomu, to move the hero out of harm's way or stop the monster as thorns shot from its neck.

So black tendrils shot out of Mirio's own hands instead.

Two whips of glowing energy erupted from Mirio's palm, slamming into the car with the hero atop it and shoving it aside, just as the thorns shot between them. They evaporated into thin air just as quickly as they had appeared, his hand tensing with pain and numbness as they did. The Nomu turned its head to look at him, but before it could charge a ball of fire came from behind, slamming into the back of its head and swinging downwards to suplex its face into the road.

Mirio winced as pain shot up his arm, crouching down as the weight of a hero on it felt like it was crushing the bone beneath. Yet as he examined his arm, he found no visible wounds or scars in his costume; not even in his glove where the tentacles had come from. The shouting of heroes approaching took his attention up once more, and up it continued to go to look at the large man who stood before him.

His guess about the man's height was close to correct. His blond hair was nearly bleached white, and his green costume torn and faded and worn. A pair of jagged scars fell over left, but the oddest detail was the smoke that came from his body, as though his skin and his costume were fading away into the air.

As the sparks of One For All danced off Mirio's body and onto the other man, the mystery of who he was ended.

The past user of One For All frowned. "We're sorry."


The street had gone silent from all parties. Izuku didn't speak, frozen on his knees with his mouth agape at the silver-haired man in front of him. Iida didn't speak, stood wavering on his feet to the side as he held himself up on a railing. Garou didn't speak, offering some oddly-prideful smile at the green-haired teen, following his announcement.

Stain spoke.

"Quirkless?" the Hero Killer repeated, trudging into the street, half-broken sword swaying by his side. "You? Is this meant to be a joke?"

Izuku watched Garou's frown melt away into a sneer, his golden eyes glaring off into the distance before he turned on Stain. "You think it takes a quirk to kick your ass? Here I thought you had some 'moral ground' that prevented you from having an ego. 'Course I was fuckin' wrong."

"You aren't quirkless," Stain persisted. "The standard human strength isn't capable of punching through stone or steel. You expect me to believe you fought heroes-"

"I don't expect shit from you!" Garou silenced him with a roar, jabbing a thumb into his own chest. "I know what I am! I know what the tests said when I was five, I know what they said when I was sixteen! I…am a goddamn miracle!" A laugh broke free from his lips, arms thrown into the air with victory. "Not a quirk factor in my bones and I can wipe the floor with you bastards like no tomorrow! Don't think it's real? Well guess what? I'm not the only one anymore!"

Izuku felt his chest tighten, stuck to watch as Garou howled at the moon with uproarious laughter. He had seen the older teen break through stone with his bare hands, bend metal with just a punch, run laps around him in a spar and go toe-to-toe with the Hero Killer in a fight. He had seen the same trailing blue light behind his hands from time to time, just as Silverfang's quirk could perform, and Izuku always assumed he just had a quirk.

Yet he had never asked about it, and the older teen had never once told him about it.

"Man, you really had me going there for a second." Garou brought his arms down to his sides once more, hands tensing into fists. "Thinking villains like you didn't have that same quirkist elitism shoved up your ass like the heroes. Must be genetic with you quirked freaks, thinking you're something special; controlling the world like it's some inherited responsibility only men like you could ever do. You really are all the goddamn same."

Pieces of shit question a kid's worth off their quirk. You'll find less people who think you can be someone in the world than you will other people without quirks.

How had he not seen it sooner? How Garou defended him and his quirklessness; how he insulted his friends and the hero dream; how he always referred to them as quirked instead of people? Had he himself been the quirkless person he told so little to Izuku about? Why dodge around it? Why not tell him up front?

"The lives I take make a difference," Stain continued on. "We agree, heroes and villains are fools. I am not a villain as they call themselves; I am the necessary evil. I understand my place in the world, to rid the names of fools and cowards in this hero industry until only true heroism remains, so true heroes like All-Might can uphold righteousness as it was always meant to be. I have the power to bring about that change. That 'strength' of yours can't even put a hero down for good. You are naïve to think you could bring about any difference."

"You haven't changed shit!" Garou shouted back at him. "All the heroes I beat get filed under your name, and your ugly image only inspires them to stand up and keep fighting! You breed more heroes than you put down! What fantasy world are you living in?" The Hero Killer grumbled at him. "You're no better than any other baddies in the papers! You all exist because some quirked dumbass puts on a mask and goes out fighting crime, and you just step up to be their challenge, and then more heroes rise up to fight you! You're just two sides of the same coin, stirring up trouble and getting people killed!"

"Heroes don't get people killed," Iida piped up, pulling himself to his feet with the lamppost his back had dented, glaring through the pain at Garou. "We serve to protect the people from villains like you."

"And how far does that protection go, huh? Does it extend its hand to the kid with no quirk when a car's on top of him? Does it stand up for him when he gets cornered in an alley for being what he is? Does it punish the bastards who tell him to kill himself for simply existing? Where's your goddamn heroism, kid?! All I see is a bunch of color-coded pansies laughing it up on the news, eating all the praise people give them for slapping some guy around on T.V.!"

I've seen what happens to quirkless, Izuku remembered Hunter telling him. I know how low they go and how they don't come back. I've seen it once before and I'll be damned if I see it happen again.

"You said I could be a hero," Izuku also remembered, finally voicing himself as he looked at the silver-haired teen. "You told me I could be; that I deserved to be. What was the point in that? Why tell me that?"

Garou let out a sigh, throwing his head back to look up at the starry sky above before he turned his eyes to him. "Because it ain't you who's the problem, kid. A quirk can get into anyone's head, bloat up their ego and turn them sour. They all end up as bastards in the end; don't you get that? You're not the enemy. I'm not the enemy. They are, each and every one of them."

His fingers tensed, unable to grip his bat any tighter in frustration. "Quirks don't make a hero. Their quirks don't define them. They are people beyond that."

"Why did you have to go and fraternize with the enemy?" the silver-haired teen asked him exasperatedly, brows curling in visible frustration. "Why did you bother trying to make friends out of these kids? They're not gonna give a shit about you. They'll graduate, become big name heroes of the industry, find out the 'quirkless runt' of the group is hurting their reputation and drop you as soon as possible. They don't care about you now, and they won't care about you then. They're not your real friends!"

"I've known Tenya longer than you!" Izuku shouted at him. "He has been my friend before I met you! You nearly killed his brother! Were you planning on me never finding that out? Did you think I was going to be okay with that?"

"I thought you would understand!" Garou roared back at him, sliding in to crouch just in front of his face. "When I found you, these quirked bastards were beating your face in on a public road! They cussed you out for saving a kid's life! They mock you on television for the world to see, just because you went and had the balls to stand up to them! You think these are your fucking friends? You think they care about your life? I thought getting you into this school would give you the final push you needed to see who these people really are; that they cannot be trusted and they will not protect you. You nearly lost half your goddamn face inside their own school! How do you not see it?!"

"They're not the same people! Yuei, my friends, my class — they have been standing up for me! They have been defending me, and fighting for me when and without me asking for it! I didn't nearly die because of them! They saved my life! They care about me! I care about them! I cared about you!" He gripped Garou by the front of his shirt, pushing his face closer to the other teen. "I thought you supported me because you cared!"

Garou stabbed a finger into Izuku's chest. "I am the only person who cares about you! You think Yuei isn't studying your every move? You think the heroes will step in to protect you when you need it? You think they'd let you into their ranks freely? You think Bang brought you to Hosu because of Stain? You think us being here is a fucking coincidence?!"

His hold on the other boy's shirt weakened, pulling back his head as he looked into the silver-haired teen's eyes and shook his head. "He brought us to Hosu because he was asked to," he insisted, cursing his own voice for breaking. "He got a call in to help, just to patrol and…" His voice faded away when he looked to his armored friend, who looked back at him remorsefully.

"Silverfang was told not to come to Hosu," Iida shared slowly through long breaths. "The police thought he was being hunted, that he had to stay out…and stay safe." He turned his gaze to the silver-haired teen. "That was your hideout, wasn't it?"

Garou stood back up, Izuku's grip releasing him as his hand fell to his lap. "Thanks for the warning. I'll steer clear from going back there." He jabbed a thumb towards the Hero Killer. "Really thought that was his place? Does that look like the kind of guy who isn't living under a bridge?"

Izuku balled his hand into a fist, remembering Silverfang's look of longing at the picture with Garou in it. How he had noticed Izuku fighting with his style; animalistic, as he had called it. He hadn't sent him an invitation to train him, just to find out what he could about Garou?

"Of course your teachers let you go with Bang," the silver-haired teen continued, stuffing his hands into his pockets. "Of course they don't have any moral code or the decency to check the people they partner with; they'll let anyone be a hero, no matter the shit they do. Ain't that right, Ingenium? That bastard's old students have been hunting me down for months, just to cry about their booboos to the news and cover up where they got them from, too afraid to admit a quirkless could beat the shit out of them. Can't have them thinking they can be strong too, am I right?" He scoffed mockingly.

"That orange-haired hero," the blue-haired teen mentioned, and Izuku tensed at the image his mind brought to him, "beat half to death. Was he one of them?"

"Charanko isn't any different from the bastards who left Bang with their tails between their legs. Hell, he was the guy's weakest student. He's the one who came looking for me, just like everyone else did. Right up your alley, ain't it?" Garou shook his head. "None of you quirked bastards deserve this freedom to do as you want. You're not deserving of the praise or the acclaim or the honor. Hero and villain alike; you're all pathetic."

"You plan to stop us?" the Hero Killer spoke up again. "I know you quirkless are a fleeting people. Your days are numbered to even exist in this world anymore. You aren't meant for anything greater than the death that awaits you. There's no point in putting up a fight you can't win."

Garou snorted, spinning on his heels to face him. "Nah, you're wrong about that. We're tired of your kind walking all over us; done with you pushing us into the dirt just so you can keep your feet clean. Fed up with you taking this world from us like you're owed it. And now we've got the strength to take it back. Consider this your call to action!" He punched a fist to the sky, pointing above with one finger. "The one time you will ever be on the same side, heroes and villains. All you quirked freaks can now relish in the common enemy! The helpless you've been putting down for decades; men, women and children alike you've turned your back on. We are going to take the fight to you."

Izuku bowed his head with a frown, looking at his own hand as his knuckles turned white around the hilt of his bat. Then a hand slid into his own view, and he looked back up to Garou's prideful smile. "Together. This is how we get by."

He looked the older teen in his eyes, golden pupils brimming with confidence and fury mixed into a welcoming challenge. Not for him, but for the blue-haired teen and black-haired man who stood on opposite sides of the road from them. For those who weren't even around to hear him; who Izuku knew he would charge into battle against the second they stepped foot near him. He pressed his fist into the pavement, and pushed to stand.

From the sky dropped a winged monster of violent skin, dropping its talons on Garou's shoulders and digging its grip into the teen's skin, before taking off into the air with the silver-haired quirkless teen in its grip.


"Keep your head low, kid," Kick Back instructed as they climbed a business' fire escape. "And no talking unless I say so, got it?" Mashirao nodded with sealed lips, controlling his steps to make as little noise as possible. The hero had carried him across town barely above street level until they reached the building they had spotted the men on from their original distance, and instead of launching them to the top right away, the martial arts hero decided their ascension would be slow. It wasn't a choice the tailed teen was happy with, but he understood the caution — especially if one of those purple-skinned villains were by their side.

When they reached the final ladder, the pro hero stopped them short of ascending the ledge, handing to one side of the bar as Mashirao hung from the other. He could hear faint voices and the sounds of a clash echoing between the buildings, but definitely not from above them. "Peek over for a few seconds," the hero told him in a hushed tone. "Make sure you know if it's them or not. Duck down before you're spotted, alright?"

The tailed teen nodded, climbing one more bar up the ladder before peering over the building's ledge. Dead in his sights, at the other end of the rooftop, stood two men shoulder-to-shoulder. One was dressed in all dark clothing, little to make out of his figure beyond his bright red shoes and a silver belt. The figure beside him was taller, made of smoke the color of deep purple, with only the hints of silver that wrapped around the neck of his form; Mashirao recognized him with a grimace.

A tug on his sleeve brought the teen back down, frowning at the martial arts hero. "It's them," the teen confirmed. "They're the ones who attacked the USJ. One of them can teleport — it's how they got in and out of the school."

"Which one?" Mashirao couldn't stop himself from giving the hero a sarcastic look. "That obvious? Duly noted." Despite the news, a smile still formed across the man's lips. "There's a big bounty on both their heads for their arrest. Anyone would make headlines for turning them in. Let me do the talking, kid, and just stay behind me."

Kick Back kicked off the air to leap onto the building, and Mashirao vaulted after him. The pro hero walked slowly, hands placed confidently on his hips as he flicked his head upwards. "Good evening, gentlemen," he greeted loudly, immediately gaining the attention of the two men with a startle. "Hate to tell you this, but there is an emergency broadcast in this area. Fighting might be a bit more upstate but all of Hosu is under alert. It's best we get you two to a shelter; need any directions?" The blond teen eyed the hero with disbelief. These two were already public enemies with calls out for their arrest; was the professional courtesy really necessary?

Turning his attention to the two villains instead, Mashirao took quick note of the slimmer man; a disembodied hand covering his face that churned his stomach and the brick of a camera in his hands that made him squint. What was he recording with that? Were the sounds of a fight coming from just below them? The man of smoke flickered in his form for a moment, his bolt yellow eyes squinting at him and the hero before his form began to grow. Kick Back immediately shifted his shoulders from casual to combat, and Mashirao brought up his own fists as he returned the villain's glare.

"Kurogiri."

The purple smoke man paused, swiping his attention to the smaller man beside him, holding the camera out to him. "Take this back to Sensei," he ordered the purple man. "I'll stay."

"We should not be wasting our time," the taller man warned, but he was waved off by his partner. The smaller man turned his head ever so slightly, and Mashirao could tell the attention was directed at him.

"I want to talk."

The four men stood still in their standoff, until the smoky man shrunk his form and bowed. A tendril of his form plucked the camera in the offered hand, and his body collapsed on itself until he had disappeared completely.

Kick Back let out a low whistle. "A teleportation quirk?" he questioned, his tone still holding up a farce. "Those are quite rare to see. But you best remind your friend public quirk usage is illegal if you don't have a license. Wouldn't want to mistake him for a criminal, would we?"

The handy man ignored the hero, attention still focused on the tailed teen as he took a few steps forward. "You're one of Yuei's students," he said, matter-of-factly. "A friend of that 'quirkless' kid." Mashirao hardened his glare at the man. "How well do you know him?"

He ignored Kick Back's order not to respond, replying, "I know what you did to him."

"So does everyone else," the villain waved off his response, and Mashirao noticed a black box still in one of his hands as he waved it around. "I meant personally. Has he always worked with villains?"

"Shigaraki," the martial arts hero butted in with a loud tone, cutting Mashirao shorts of responding to the villain's new question. "You are under arrest for your attacks on Yuei and Hosu. I suggest you come quietly." The hero changed his stance again, fists raised in front of his face as he smiled. "Orders are very clear to bring you in however I have to."

The white-haired villain let out something akin to a grumble, stopped his progress and threw his head back. His free hand twitched by his side, a single finger tapping against his leg. The other brought the device closer to his head, pressing a button on its side. "Nomu. Grab the kid."

A whistle cut through the air like a knife, and Mashirao spun around to find the flying mutant plummeting towards them. Kick Back cursed, pushing on the teen's shoulder with a hand before he launched into the air, aiming to meet the mutant halfway. Instead, the mutant veered past the kick for his head, curving right over the tailed teen and Shigaraki before diving to the street below.

"Nomu!" the villain called after him in a raspy voice, barely louder than he already was. "Not him, you worthless summon! The other kid!"

Mashirao took that moment of distraction to charge forward, twisting his body as he closed in on the villain and slamming his tail into the man's stomach as he only began to turn around. "You're not getting away this time!" he shouted in the man's face, throwing him across the rooftop with his strike and chasing after as the man rolled away. "Not for what you did to Izuku!" He spun forward in his chase, spinning his tail rapidly before slamming it down towards the white-haired villain.

And missing as his tail struck the rooftop instead.

The villain had jumped to his feet, skipping just slightly to the side as Mashirao fell with his tail and catching the boy's descent with a hand to his chest. The tailed teen could barely see his blood-red eyes peering between the fingers of his hand mask, and in an eerily cheery tone asked, "Shall I do the same to you?" His fingers laid themselves on his bare chest, his pinky the last to make contact, and Mashirao's chest erupted in pain where his skin tore apart.

He was yanked away by the collar of his costume not two seconds later, finding himself on his back and staring up at Kick Back from the man's lap. "Damnit, kid, I told you to wait." The hero pressed something against the teen's chest, and Mashirao barked in pain when he applied pressure. "Hold that there, kid. I'll take care of him. Don't even think about moving."

The man hopped away before the blond teen could get out a word, and he watched him jump across the rooftop to where they'd left the villain, now in his own chase as Shigaraki darted left and right from the man's rapid strikes. Despite the hero having run laps around Mashirao in training, Kick Back struggled to keep up with the much lankier man.

Somewhere, in the distance, he could hear voices, loud and unclear. From the road below, he determined, and against the hero's orders he pushed himself towards the building's ledge with his elbows and tail. He watched hero and villain dance around each other atop the roof, following the voices he was only barely able to make out as three different men. Soon enough, a swirl of purple clouds appeared behind the white-haired villain, and he disappeared through the smoke before the hero could chase after him.

With the fight in front of him resolved, and bumping against the rooftop's ledge, he pushed himself up with a grunt of pain just enough to peer over the edge. In the streets below, he saw the collection of four individuals. He recognized Iida, in costume without his helmet and lying in a pool of blood; Midoriya, down one one knee; Stain, stood in front of the green-haired teen with his sword pointed at his friend.

And the little, white-haired girl who stood between the latter two men.


Izuku could do nothing but watch as the winged mutant flew off with Garou in his clutches, the silver-haired teen shouting and flailing as he was whisked away into the air and around the corner, out of vision. There was still so much he didn't understand, so many questions he didn't ask, fading away on the tip of his tongue. The only other quirkless person Izuku had ever met, ripped away from him before he had a chance to know him; to know Garou.

"You did not reject his offer."

The hairs on the back of his neck tickled at the grating voice of the Hero Killer, and Izuku turned around to watch the man limp into the road. Stain dragged his jagged sword along the pavement, each step he took slowly making his way to stand where Garou had been snatched from. While one problem left, another remained.

Izuku frowned at the man. "I wasn't going to accept it."

"Excuses," the noseless man waved him off. "You could have interrupted him at any time, struck at him while he rattled on, proven yourself a hero who could not be swayed. Instead you did nothing but gawk."

"You froze me with your quirk," the green-haired teen argued back, pushing off the road with his feet to stand. "You stood there, too; argued with him."

"This was not a test of my character, Metal Bat. I had no right to interrupt until I was certain you were compromised. You have no right to be a hero, if you cannot strike down a villain before you without doubt or remorse. Quirkless people like you were never meant to be heroes."

Izuku tightened the grip on his bat. "Maybe I wouldn't have accepted his offer, but he wasn't wrong about everything. You do keep underestimating us. He could keep up with Iida's speed. I can handle stronger men than you. Still think we're weak?"

"Of course," Stain insisted lazily. "Quirks themselves are not the only evolutionary factor we have gone through to separate the weak from the strong. Our bodies acclimate to our powers and those around us, gradual evolutionary changes to our bones; our muscles; our senses. We are not just given power, we are reshaped to handle it. Your body has nothing. Struggle all you want but you are brittle in a world of stone. You need to think realistically. Your death is all but assured.

"Though your death is also an insult to heroism," the Hero Killer moved on, sight glazing over towards the blue-haired teen still breathing raggedly. "I weed out the weak to send a message, that heroes of their kind serve no purpose - that they all share the same fate as their fallen. False heroes will see the similarities between themselves and those I cut down, and they will know they are next, and hang up their costumes for good. But your death? The death of a quirkless playing hero dress-up? It's a mixed signal. That All-Might made the mistake not to stop you sooner, only to watch you die as expected, would be a stain on his image." Stain rolled his shoulders with a sigh, drawing the last of his knives from his hip. "But it will not last forever. The world will move on from you. And All-Might will remember what he has to do."

Izuku grit his teeth, his mind relaying the voices of All-Might and Bakugou relaying nearly some of the same words. Neither of them were anything like this man, though; even Bakugou was smart enough to know the limit. And here was a man wrapping both those sour ideas into one bloodied knife. False heroes? A twisted respect for the number one hero? The Hero Killer really was insane.

His knowledge on quirk biology was spot on, though. Of course Izuku knew how everyone else's body grew to accumulate to their quirks, after years of studies driven by his fascination. He hadn't thought about it until it was screaming in his face; that gradual, personalized evolution of the human body. He could bend metal, break stone, clash with men whose strength should have eclipsed his own. Had his own body been doing the same? Without a quirk, what would have made it possible?

His attention could go to that later. "I think the message I send is pretty clear," Izuku countered, digging from his pocket one of his extendable bats. "I made it clear at the festival. I am going to be a hero. You're not going to stop me. Because I'm not brittle. I'm not weak. And I'm not All-Might." He twirled the bats in his hands as he let his feet slide apart, crouching slightly at the knee. "I'm something better."

That got the first real emotion out of Stain that night, his ever-stable frown pulling into an angry sneer, moving his blades out in front of him.

"Midoriya!" Iida shouted from the side, managing his name with a few coughs.

"Just sit tight, Ingenium," the green-haired teen shouted back to his friend. "Help will be here soon."

"No one is coming to save you," the Hero Killer told him gravely, taking the first steps towards Izuku. "Not while the fools have them saving those who are worth saving." With unprompted speed did the man dart the rest of the distance at the teen, who quickly held up his bats to block both blades descending on him.

Stain pushed through their stalemate, shoving Izuku back as his feet slipped along the pavement. With a quick flick of his arms, the green-haired teen knocked the blades back, and Stain continued to slash while he continued to defend. Sparks flew as steel met steel, while his brain racked option after option to find his opening. The voices of his two teachers came to his mind first.

Punch back harder. As though pushed by the roaring current.

Instead of blocking the oncoming strikes, Izuku moved to knock them aside, his bats following the blades as the approached to push them along and past him before they could reach. He rolled his body with the motion as best he could — as best as he could remember the two men doing for themselves — before spinning around with one of the strikes and following through the motion to whack the villain across the face with the smaller bat.

Stain stumbled from the strike, and Izuku allowed pride to swell up for just a moment. Not much longer than that, as the Hero Killer struck back with a swing he was only barely able to fall away from, rolling back on the road as the killer chased him. He didn't have time to rise as Stain stomped a foot on his larger bat, pinning it to the road; and as Izuku refused to let go, he stayed crouched with it. The man jabbed at him with the knife which Izuku blocked with the smaller bat just inches from his face.

"Your friend had the right idea," Stain informed him. "This world will never accept quirkless people like you two. They're smart for that. The only way he or you will ever find attention is by kicking and screaming as you die, like the children you are."

Izuku scoffed with a smile, pushing back in their interlocked stalemate. "You're not the first to try and kill me. You're not gonna be the last."

The air erupted with a sonic boom, as Stain raised his sword and Iida ran into it, the upright blade digging into the speedster's raised arms to block it from his face, blood splattering between them. "Tenya!"

The Hero Killer grunted from the blue-haired teen's force of impact, the arm with his sword being pushed back slowly but surely. "This is no longer your fight to intervene in, child!"

"Any fight my friend is in is mine to intervene!" Iida shouted back at him. "He has done so for us more times than I have thanked him for! He's stepped up to save the lives of my friends time and time again! I owe him nothing less than the respect he deserves!"

"Then you can die together." Stain yanked his sword downwards, ripping out of Iida's arms. The blue-haired teen fell to the ground with a pained cry, blood freely pouring from his limbs, and Izuku cried out his name only briefly before Stain kicked him in the chest, a spike on the rim of his shoe stabbing through his chest before he rolled away.

Izuku gasped and groaned, pressing a hand over the hold in his chest as blood gushed between his fingers. He was still breathing — his lung had succeeded in not being punctured. But the Hero Killer did not wait for him to rise, kicking away the larger bat that had stayed trapped under his foot, the clacking of his iron-soled shoes booming against the road. "Neither of you children understand what is needed to be a hero. I will permit this game no longer."

He couldn't give up now, Izuku grunted, rolling over and taking his small bat in hand and pushing himself to his knees. Someone would come eventually, he couldn't give up on that hope. He needed to fight for as long as he could, until help could arrive; until someone could stop Stain.

And stop him someone did, as the sounds of his boots paused and beckoned Izuku to glance and learn why. What he came face-to-face with was a wall of long, white hair attached to a short, little body, standing with her arms outstretched as she faced down the Hero Killer.

As the child he hadn't seen in months stood with her back to him.

Izuku felt his body lock up, not from Stain's quirk. "Eri?" he whispered out her name, but the young girl didn't turn around or react to his voice, still staring up at the Hero Killer towering over them with his sword.

The masked, noseless man squinted down at her. "Move, child. Do not interrupt my work."

Eri's body shivered visibly, wild and tense as her hands balled into fists that stayed outstretched with the rest of her arms. "No," she spoke back at the man, her voice stuttering and wet.

"And why not?"

Izuku could hear her sniffle; even her legs quaked to keep her up with the sword in her face. "Big brother is a hero. I won't let you hurt him."

Izuku moved his body slowly, hand tracing along the ground behind the little girl as he looked up past her and at the Hero Killer, gaging his expressions. His frown had softened back to its emotionless form, eyes staring analytically at the little girl between them. And he sighed.

"The falsehoods of heroism are ingrained into the minds of our youth from the very beginning," he decided, flipping the sword and raising it above his head. "To weed out the foolishness, I must cut it all down. No exceptions."

Izuku latched on to Eri's arm as Stain swung down, pulling her to his chest and throwing all of his own strength into his swing, shattering the sword like glass as his bat cleaved through it. The Hero Killer twirled the knife in his other hand, stabbing it once more at Izuku's face—

"Cratering Cleave!"

A large tail slammed into the Hero Killer's head and arm, curling through as the momentum continued past him, and Ojiro landed on his feet beside the man. Stain's head bobbed a few seconds, his arm broken by his side as the blow sent the knife shattering into the road. Izuku stared up at the man's cold red eyes, the expression on the man's face a captured moment of surprise, before his eyes rolled back and he fell face first into the pavement.

Izuku hugged Eri close to his chest, dropping his bat to embrace her with both arms as the girl shivered and cried silently against him. His eyes trailed aside to Iida, lying on his back and breathing heavily as his arms spilled blood over his costume. Then they moved to Ojiro, standing with his hands on both knees as he breathed heavily, his angled chest giving Izuku sight of the five bleeding dots on his friend's chest surrounded by cracked skin.

When his tailed friend offered him a hand, he accepted it.


Nedzu had never entered Tartarus since its conception. A prison island built below sea level, with but a single bridge to connect it to the mainland, filled to the brim with criminals and villains of recent history deemed too dangerous to retain in civilization or awaiting trial by death, was a very recent advancement in human history. Tartarus hadn't been functional much longer than he had been Yuei's headmaster, and since earning that position he'd never stepped foot into the prison. He had hoped, the first day he did, that it would be to interrogate a new convict. His own quirk, High Specs, jumped his brain into overdrive enough to challenge what the normal human brain was capable of, much less a brain of his size and species. To pick at the mind of a criminal, hear life from their own words and dissect their view of the world enough to fill a rapport would have brought the dean's dream of being a detective to life.

The day he was finally called into Tartarus was disappointing in more ways than one.

Paper was strewn about on the little desk given to his side of the room, each page chalk full of personal and assumed information regarding the beast restrained on the opposite side of the room. Between him and the one they called Nomu was nothing more than a thin wall of glass, but the Iron Maiden and web of chains that connected the mutant creature to every panel on the walls, floor and ceiling were enough to restrain the beast. When Nedzu looked up to face it, the beast made no gesture of acknowledging him back; not a word, not a gesture, not a change in its breathing. Not even their eyes blinked. Oxygen simply passed into its lungs and returned to the air around it through exhales.

The sad reality wasn't that the monster was unresponsive, but why it was no longer being considered a man.

A guff old man draped in a dark uniform lined with string as red as blood shared in his frown. "No person can have multiple quirks," he grumbled.

"Not naturally, no," Nedzu agreed, pawing at the nearest paper before him. "Regeneration, shock absorption, strength augmentation, mutant features, minor gigantification; and beneath the surface, diluted nervous system, reinforced internal organs, increased blood pressure. At most you would be pressed into aligning the body's reinforcement to its single quirk as nothing more than a natural self-defense mechanism to withstand the powers they're born with and grow up to have. Yet they came up as their own identifiable quirks, like the crew aboard a train each managing their stations as to the betterment of their coworkers. But like a crew, their formation does not come naturally, but at the hands of someone in charge."

"The Quirk Boogeyman," the old man muttered below his breath.

Nedzu only nodded silently. He had heard of the nickname back when the man was still in power — before he himself became dean of Yuei. It was but one of the many nicknames that floated around, all referring to the same man with the ability to take and give quirks. But like all the rest, it fell into the whispers of rumors and speculation after All-Might had assumedly killed the man in battle. It did not disappear for good, and he had followed every mention of the nickname with the police when it arose in conversation, but every trail came up to the same dead end.

Though it worried the headmaster to think how far back creatures like the Nomu dated to.

"So that monster is still alive," the chief confirmed, gazing down at Nedzu. "Did you know?"

"Only since the attack," he confirmed. "But this reeks of his handiwork. 'Nomu' is only a confirmation of his survival the past six years. What troubles me is how long our friend here has been in this state, under our noses. The same question extends to those currently in the attack on Hosu. Any update on the situation?"

"Not that my men have reported. I'll send for an update." While the man clicked away on the tablet on his belt, Nedzu read over the information from the autopsy. The main body of their culprit had been identified and traced back to their last known whereabouts, provided with a missing poster for the victim from said past absence. The identified quirks, however, were not traced back to any identities; nameless victims no one would know to mourn. "Four Nomu have been exterminated on site. One has escaped and gone missing, and another has been restrained and placed in an iron maiden. I'll send order to have it exterminated on route to Tartarus—"

"Leave it alive, please," Nedzu interrupted with his request. "A second specimen would provide us ample cross-examination data, to identify the source of its body and confirm a second person's identity. And for the quirks it too retains, if there is any overlap or similarities. It could give us a lead on missing families as well, if we can cross-examine their quirks with public and medical records of a missing persons list, too. Any more knowledge we can gain on our enemy will be vital to our success." And if they could find the names related to each quirk, maybe they could string together a common denominator to figure out their friend's location and his means of 'income.' The man could frown at him all he liked, that wouldn't stop Nedzu from being right.

As the chief passed along the order, Nedzu questioned, "Is Lady Nagant still in your custody? As I recall, she was one of the association's lead investigators on the manhunt for our old friend. If push comes to shove, she may be of some help to us in putting him down for good, this time."

The chief sneered at him. "She's a hero killer; she doesn't get the joys of freedom. Those who come in here, stay in here, until it's their time. You think she'd be of any help to us now? Or do you think sharing the status of her son would swoon her back into our good graces? Unless, of course, her work is needed to save the skin off the kid's back."

Nedzu met the man's growing smirk with a frown. "My hero students are all exemplary individuals. They would not still be in their classes and costumes if there was any suspicion of their intent. I do not want you meddling in their affairs. Lady Nagant would simply work in isolation, or in the presence of someone we know can contain her if need be."

The tablet on the chief's hip blipped to life, and he tapped the screen until it turned blue. "Come in."

"Chief!" a voice shouted through the device. "A call has come in that the Hero Killer: Stain has been neutralized and detained! Orders for his transfer to Tartarus have been issued!"

"Good work," the man applauded, his sick smirk shining. "We have a cell with his name on it on Level 4. Let's get his room nice and tidy before his arrival."

"Have any names come through as to which heroes have apprehended the Hero Killer?" Nedzu directed his question at the device. "Graduates of mine have fallen victim to his attacks over the past months. If possible, I would like to extend my gratitude to the few or many who have succeeded in bringing him to justice."

The voice on the other end went quiet, and Nedzu moved his kind gaze upwards to the chief in the room with him. "Go ahead, private. Any names come through the lines?"

After another moment of hesitation, the young man on the other line continued, "Kick Back had placed the call on the line for a police escort for him in the southern districts of Hosu, with Native on the scene as well. And a few hero students were on the scene as well, with injuries. The…" The voice trailed off for a second, before continuing, "The quirkless student was among the names listed."

Nedzu ignored the tall man's pointed stare, turning his stout away to face the Nomu across the room once more. The living corpse of a creature stared back at him, beady eyes showing no sign of even acknowledging that it looked at him or past him. Still no sign if the quirkless man loaded with the quirk factor of a dozen other men was alive under it all. His mission was still not done.

Evil never slept, and neither would he.


Garou beat his fists into the ankles, shouting up at the flying mutant holding him, "Let go, you quirk freak! I ain't some damn dog toy!" The winged mutant ignored him, continuing their trek through the air over the rooftops of Hosu. Bastard came out of nowhere, digging his talons into Garou's shoulders only a shallow depth yet with a hold stronger than steel that the quirkless man struggled to break through.

The silver-haired teen glanced down at the ground below, maybe ten, twenty stories removed from his own feet. A drop from that high could probably kill a person.

He'd take the risk over being someone else's toy.

Garou swung his feet back and forth, latching onto the mutant's talons with his hands. "I said" — he brought his legs to his chest with one big swing, and with a powerful thrust slammed the soles of his shoes into the mutant's chin — "fuck off!" The blow managed to stunt the mutant, his grip tensing up and ripping from Garou's shoulders, and the quirkless man let go to begin his fall.

He twisted his body in his descent, aiming himself head-first towards the pavement. He could land this just fine, if he twisted his body at the right time. He paced his breathing through mashed teeth, braced his body for the moment.

And fell through a swirling purple cloud that popped into his path.

He didn't have the time to react before the colors of his world shifted and gravity threw him sideways instead of down. He collided with a wall with his shoulder, then to the ground with his chest, grasping and groaning from the impact. Light flickered in and out above him, illuminating his new gray surroundings. Stone surfaces did little to soften his impact, he notes as he pushed himself up through the pain, even if the speed had decreased with his sudden change of pace.

Suddenly, a hand fell gently upon his shoulder. "My apologies for the sudden invitation, Garou."

The quirkless man spun around in an instant, launching a punch at the figure behind him. His fist landed in a palm, and behind that hand faced a black steel helmet attached to the same body. "Oh my," the mask noted in a metallic-textured voice. "That is quite the strength."

A strong gust of wind blew into Garou, shooting him across the room and into the adjacent wall. The man he had tried to hit shook his other hand, and flexed the fingers that caught his attack. "It appears the story is true. I've never met a quirkless like yourself in the flesh. Allow me to give my compliments."

"Who the fuck are you?" Garou spat with a wad of blood. His arms creaked to push himself up, and his bleeding leg flared as he tried to put down his weight; fuck, those wounds were catching up to him. Not now, you little shits.

"My apologies but I don't know if you would recognize me by any of the names I go by," the man curtly responded, the flickering light above and Garou's shotty sight only making clear the dark suit he wore that paired with his obsidian helmet. "However, you may call me your ally. I've brought you here with an offer I don't believe you can refuse."

The silver-haired teen did his best to push himself up to one knee, glaring at the strange man. "That cloud… that was yours?"

"The powers of an associate of mine, but yes. So was my Nomu. I was hoping he could carry you the full yards to my original intended spot, but your stunt for freedom displays you still have strength to spare." The man's helmet tilted slightly. "Or are the Hero Killer's wounds taking their toll?"

Against the taunt and the pain, Garou pushed himself to his feet. "That bitch…couldn't finish the job…sure as hell…ain't letting you…" His breath was running ragged, but he steeled himself as best he could. If this night wasn't going to give up, neither was he.

Though the man in front of him did, waving a hand dismissively. "I've no intention of fighting you, Garou. I wouldn't have brought you to the Coffin otherwise." The quirkless teen gazed around through his hazy vision, only finding empty gray walls, nothing but the light about being the room's only possession. "As I said, I have an offer to you. I was hoping you would hear me out."

"Shove it…up your ass."

"I will do most of the talking then," he waved off the threat. "Catch your breath, you need only listen until the end. I've spent quite some time searching for you. Would you be appreciative to know my Nomu were meant as your distraction? I had a few resources to spare in hoping to draw you out into the fray, though I assumed you would take easy pickings off the heroes my Nomu wounded. Color me surprised to find the bug I left on the Hero Killer reported your presence. A colleague of mine recorded your fight for me to watch live, so rest assured I'm caught up on your story thus far.

"You see," he continued to drawl, and Garou wished his hearing had suffered with his sight, "your hatred and despise of the world quirks have created — this colorful world of heroes and villains straight out of comic books — resonated with me. I can admit I've played along with this playground humor from time to time, but the world of caped crusaders was always of greater interest to my brother. I simply involve myself as to use their toys to my benefit. But I want to bring this false sense of peace to an end; not quite unlike you, my quirkless friend."

The man had stepped in close before Garou realized the feet in front of him. "People born without quirks are being weeded out of the population through time and breeding. The new age of evolution has commandeered the greater society at large from their ancestors, a natural process of the survival of the fittest. Yet you break the assumption of that rule. Quirkless was just another term for powerlessness when it was added to the dictionary, a means of distinguishing those with extraordinary abilities from those with what was once considered the norm. Yet you announce that moniker with pride, and display feats of impressive strength someone like yourself shouldn't be capable of. You're conscious through your wounds, taking on the Hero Killer with your bare fists, breaking stone with your knuckles. All without a quirk factor to call your own. You and Midoriya are exceptions to the rule."

The green-haired teen's name in his ear threw something in Garou, picking up his head to glare through the man's obsidian mask. "What do you want with Midoriya?"

"Nothing at the moment," the man waved away the threat in his voice. "There is no one in the world who doesn't know the boy's name by now, and his similarities and connection to you have fallen under my radar. But in due time, I would like to offer him the same I offer you." He set a hand out between them, displaying the hole in his palm. "I offer you an alliance, one aimed for the same goal; tearing apart the system."

Blinking away the sweat that dripped down his eyes, Garou reached out for the offered hand, setting his own hand in the man's. The other man's posture creaked upwards, as though pride was swirling through him. Garou shot it down by squeezing the man's hand as rough as he could.

"You can do what I told your ugly pet," the quirkless teen spat at the helmet, "with the rest of you quirked freaks, and fuck off."

The man stood unmoved — unbothered by the iron grip his hand was locked in. The fingers in Garou's grip twitched a moment, only to relax. "Fair enough," the man resigned calmly. "There is much conflict you have faced that I simply do not know. Such a festering hatred for all things quirks clouding your vision. You are an exception to the rule of quirkless people, Garou. Humor that we may have exceptions of our own."

The man had no trouble ripping his hand from Garou's grip, the muscle and flesh popping and twitching the appendage back into shape. "I will return you to your place of rest, though I believe the police have commandeered many of your possessions. You may want to relocate somewhere out of the way. We will see each other again."

"I ain't humoring your offer," Garou explained with a sneer. "If I see your ugly mug again, I'll be breaking it for my enjoyment."

"Oh please, everything takes time. I am a man of patience; I've waited years just to be here. The weeks and months of your consideration will be like a spec of sand in an hourglass to me. Kurogiri."

The floor beneath the silver-haired teen's feet exploded into a swirling cloud of purple, and Garou fell through once more, landing this time on a dusty couch when proper colors returned to his vision. He watched the portal above his head evaporate with a grimace; it having the same color as the skin of the winged mutant was no coincidence, probably one of its quirks or some other freak in league with that bastard. But if that man knew he had been hiding here, then he had to move much farther away.

Police tape and white chalk painted the old apartment around him, covering the basic utilities and marking where he knew the T.V. he had should have been. He forced himself from the cushions with a groan, gripping at the edges of the cut on his leg and hobbling across to the kitchenette. He ripped open one of the drawers, revealing his stash of first aid supplies left untouched. Maybe it was a trap, if the police thought he would be desperate enough to come back for them, but his need for them overrode his care for tact.

Garou mulled over the masked man's words, and his brief mention of Midoriya, which only reminded the teen of his own offer made to the kid. Maybe it was his mistake to push the kid towards that fever dream of heroism, but experience was the only way to learn. The kid just didn't get it yet, and that quirked bastard didn't either. No way in hell was that offer made in good faith; Garou had shattered that same mask countless times before. Quirked people would never intend to help him or Midoriya without pulling the rug out from under them in the end. He wasn't going to fall for that trick.

With each of his cuts wrapped tight, exhaustion and pain rolling through his body like waves, Garou rippled the drawer of supplies from its hole and carried out the door of his room, hobbling through the abandoned complex on route to the fire escape.

He'd save Midoriya from falling to that fate before it was too late. Then he'd understand.


Izuku sat at the edge of the sidewalk, Eri secured in his lap as she fiddled with one of his retractable bats, while heroes and sidekicks alike made work of the fallout of the fight.

Iida was alive, arms wrapped hastily with the jacket of Izuku's costume cut up with one of Stain's knives until the heroes finally arrived. A single emergency vehicle came with them, and his blue-haired friend was quickly loaded on and escorted to the nearest medical center, unconscious and squirming in his sleep uncomfortably.

Izuku and Ojiro were patched up on the spot, a few patches and pads wrapped over the green-haired teen's wounds while more extensive work was done for his tailed friend and the five spots of cracked skin that stained his gi red. After giving the girl a quick check for the bandages up her arm and luckily nothing else, the quirkless teen moved off the road with her in hand and sat off to the side as Kick Back, a rejuvenated Native and the other heroes got to restraining Stain.

His hand rubbed Eri's back gently, while the little girl's attention had been captured by the bat she bounced up and down in her hands with a blank look. Treating their wounds had been tough only because the instant Stain was down, the young girl refused to let Izuku let her go — she had become a koala to his tree trunk of a torso. But with some help from his best friend and a string of assurances she was okay now, the child had eased up; though, her next-to-emotionless expressions worried him.

"A friend of mine made this for me," he tried to move a conversation along, referring to the bat in her hands. "Got a second one just like it in my pocket, in case this guy ever gets separated from me." He weighed the school-issued bat in his hands, momentarily admiring its lack of scrapes and dents for the first fight in some time — helped by not having to fight another overly strong villain.

Eri looked up at him wordlessly, then at the bat in her hands, then at one of his legs and then up at him again with a questioning glance. Right, he had passed it on to her while it was already extended. "Look." He pressed the hidden button on its base, retracting the bat into the hilt with a swift motion that made the little girl jump in his lap. "Makes it a good travel size. She's a very smart person, made two in just a few days."

She examined the small metal rod that replaced the bat in her hands a few seconds longer, before looking up and above Izuku. "Your hair is weird." Her first words since the heroes arrived, the quirkless teen noted and lamented.

"Had to get a haircut," he explained, as it wasn't inaccurate. "Thought I'd try some new things while it grows out." One of her hands reached up to him, dainty fingers rubbing along where his scar curled under his chin. "Got into some fights, too. But it doesn't hurt all that much, most of the time."

"Like the one on the computer?"

On the computer? "You watched the Sports Festival?" She answered him with a nod. "Yeah, like that. But this was a different fight than those." Out of nowhere, Eri had gone from her calm, placid stare to her eyes watering up and nose sniffling, and Izuku quickly embraced her close; if she watched the festival, then she probably saw how badly it ended. "Hey, it's alright. I'm okay now, I promise. Everything's okay now."

Izuku rubbed circles on her back slowly as she calmed down, and moved the conversation elsewhere. "How did you know I was here, Eri?"

The white-haired girl rubbed her nose with his shirt — the heroes cut it open around the hole in his chest to bandage it properly, the cloth was a lost cause anyways — and answered, "I saw you running. I followed you."

Since he left the fights with the villains up north? "Did you get separated by the villains again?" She nodded slowly, head buried against his tattered shirt. "And followed me all the way here? That was a long run, Eri. Everyone was trying to get to safety. Why didn't you go with them?" Why didn't anyone stop to take her?

"I didn't want to lose you too…"

Izuku snapped his mouth shut before he spoke again, the little girl's words taking a second to sink in. What had happened since he last saw Eri? Who else had she lost, he wondered as the vague image of her father resurfaced in his mind.

Her shaky voice as she defended her 'big brother' replayed with it.

Instead of prodding further, he wrapped one of his hands to eclipse one of hers.

"I'll always be here for you, Eri," he promised, blinking his eyes rapidly. The waterworks phase was really trying to make a comeback, huh? "I promise you. I'll protect you" — his eyes scrolled over to the unconscious Hero Killer — "like you did me. Just, leave that part to me from now on, okay? Here." He brought her hand back to the retracted bat. "You can have this, so even if I'm not around, there'll still be a part of me around to protect you when you need me, okay? My friend would like you to have it. It'd mean a lot to her too." It was breaking a silent promise from her note, but Hatsume would understand, he was sure of that.

"Already making a new best friend?" Izuku lifted his head to find Ojiro standing in front of him and Eri, his chest now wearing a large pad that reached to both his shoulders. "Should I be jealous?"

Izuku let out a wet huff as he leaned back and relaxed. "Eri, this is my friend Mashi. Mashi, this is Eri." As the tailed teen came to sit down beside him, he continued in a more hush tone, "Remember when I went to the mall at Christmas?"

The blond boy gave a curt nod. "When you and Yaoyorozu met, yeah. And you did mention a kid, too. Hey." He greeted the little girl with a wave, as she stared back at him over Izuku's arm. "I'm Tailman. Nice to meet you, Eri."

The white-haired girl looked back up at Izuku as though looking for permission, and Izuku nodded assuredly. Instead of returning Ojiro's greeting, she asked the green-haired teen, "Do you have a hero name too?"

Izuku nodded. "Metal Bat. Same friend's idea. Smart, isn't she?"

Eri nodded along, before her eyes became droopy and a yawn broke her face into droopiness. The girl curled up in Izuku's lap as he helped her settle in and allowed the comfortable silence to fall over them for a few seconds.

He waited until he was sure she'd passed out, before his smile began to fade, turning to his tailed friend and gazing at the bandaged wound on his chest. "So they were here too," he recalled from the brief explanation Ojiro gave when they were wrapping up Iida's arms.

The tailed teen nodded with a pained expression, tilting his head back. "Up there," he gestured with his eyes to the building behind them. "Recording your fight with Stain. Got a lick in of my own before they left, but we didn't get anything from them. Don't even know why they were here." Izuku wondered that too; their mutant monsters were tearing up the town further north, why come south to record this fight away from it all? "Speaking of being here, hi. I thought you were supposed to be in Saitama."

Izuku let his chest fall with a sigh. "So did I, until we left." His mind lingered on the old hero he was supposed to be studying under, but he pushed him aside for the moment. "Tenya was looking for Stain. It's the reason he chose Hosu." Ojiro cursed under his breath in understanding. "I didn't even realize the connection until it was too late. I was almost too late to save him, had…" Garou. "I guess this is what you mean by your side of the pond, huh?"

"Watching my idiot friend run into danger headstrong? Yeah, I don't think Tenya learned the best things from you. Doesn't mean I'm not angry at him for that. Are you?"

"Mashi, I ran at a guy with guns for hands with a baseball bat. You all know what I'm about." He smiled at his friend's brief snicker. "I'm more worried than angry. I hope he's okay."

The tailed teen bumped his extra appendage into Izuku's shoulder gently. "He will be," he assured with a sigh. "He'll pull through. I have faith." Izuku did too, thanking the other teen for his reassurance. Then the tailed boy bounced where he sat. "Right, also, one of those mutant guys dove down to you guys while I was up there. I was wondering what happened there. Did it just fly off?"

Images of the silver-haired teen flashed in Izuku's eyes, curling down his smile. As he turned to his friend to answer, his voice died in his throat, eyes looking off to the distance as a cavalcade of other heroes approached the scene. Ojiro craned his neck around to see them too, gazing along with Izuku as their eyes passed over Endeavor, Manual, and even their upperclassman from Yuei before landing on the same person. The blond boy's posture lit up like the sun in recognition, his tail wagging like a dogs as he turned to the quirkless teen with wonder in his eyes.

Izuku could only use his eyes to convey apologies to his friend, his sour mood slowly draining the light in Ojiro's eyes as he took notice of his worsening frown. The figure was upon them in just a few seconds and Izuku slowly followed up the legs and body until he came to face Silverfang's frown of disappointment.

"You knew Garou was quirkless."