Standing in the middle of a caved in bank was a woman. She had long dark hair too her feet, caramel skin, dark fathomless eyes, and a star on her forehead. She wore a long ebony dress decorated with stars.
As the police appeared, she spun and the dress became a one piece suit. The woman held up a hand and crushed the necks of the officers, leaving them gasping on the floor.
"She won't let me kill you." The woman sighed. "My name is Sadako. If you remember anything while you choke on your lungs, remember that."
Xxx
Kuri woke with her hands clenched at her sides. What a terrible nightmare!
Just outside her window, Izuku crawled up the side of his house, over the top of his window, then reached over, upside-down, pulled the window open, and crawled down through
it, across the ceiling of his room. He dropped onto the floor and pulled the shade.
Kuri; sensing something, whirled and looked out the window—gone!
If only she'd been looking...
Xxx
In Izuku's room, A newspaper crinkled open to a large ad in the sports section. It read:
Attention Amateur Wrestlers!
THREE THOUSAND DOLLARS
For just three minutes in the ring!
Colorful characters a must!
Izuku's hand ripped the ad from the paper.
Izuku had a sketch pad in front of him and was drawing rapidly, the outline of a human figure and various costume possibilities. He drew a pair of wings on the figure.
"A hero with wings?" Izuku muttered. "But I float just fine on my own…"
He scribbled them out. He tried antennae, hated those too, crumpled up the page and started over.
He sketches some stuck up pieces on the top of the mask—like All Might! He liked that, it looked cool! His hand fell on a scattered drawing.
It was him as a hero, wearing a green and black costume. But he didn't draw this! The caption read:
You can be a hero! Love Mom
Izuku knew his mom just meant that he was her hero; she had no way of knowing the truth but…he softened, holding the drawing to his chest, then taking the one of the mask and holding it up for comparison—perfect.
In the school library, Izuku was studying a book called "Principles of Sewing," taking copious notes. Kiana walked past, Izuku slammed the book closed. On his finger.
Later on his bed, Two Danskins spilled out of a plastic bag, one black and the other a dark green. Colors looked good together.
A razor knife cut through the black, then the green, then through a nearly-opaque white mesh he was using for the eyes. He added the metal piece he was using for the chin/face guard.
Izuku stood in an abandoned junkyard, experimenting with Blackwhip. He set up a row of targets of varying sizes about fifty feet away.
He tried to hit an old television set. Missed wildly. Tried
something larger- a '68 Plymouth Duster. Not even close.
Izuku was frustrated.
Jumping back a ways, Izuku surveyed the whole junkyard. Blackwhip covered everything, everywhere. He was going to have to figure this out. Luckily All Might had told him about all the Quirks, so he just needed to draw on their power.
He withdrew Blackwhip, then worked on the others. Float was pretty easy, just up and down and using Blackwhip to move forward. Even with his bad aim he could move pretty well.
After that he practiced with Smokescreen for a bit; then moved on to Fa Jin.
He bent his knees several times and then JUMPED! He was still shocked at how high he could get!
On to punching. That was pretty straightforward. This part of One for All was natural, just like Danger Sense. He just had to learn to control it so he didn't kill anyone.
After some practice, Izuku shot out Blackwhip—A direct hit on a Coke can fifty feet away.
Izuku grinned. He tried again, smacking into a milk container a hundred feet away, pinpoint accuracy.
He spun around like a gunslinger, shooting Blackwhip in all directions, giddy. One smacked into the side of a car that had been crushed and stacked on top of ten other cars.
Izuku pulled, forgetting his strength, and the entire tower of wrecked cars began to tip over toward him. He lunged forward, instinctively, and pushed the stack back upright.
Amazed and delighted with himself, he raised both arms, shouting in triumph.
Xxx
In midtown Manhattan, a thousand wrestling fans streamed into a smallish arena on a Saturday afternoon. An old Chevy Caprice pulled over at the curb.
All Might, in his skeleton mode, was at the wheel, Izuku beside him.
"You didn't have to drive me, All Might," Izuku said, feeling guilty. "The train stops right across from the Library."
"I thought this'd give us a chance to talk, Young Midoriya." All Might said conversationally.
"We hardly said a word!" Izuku exclaimed.
"Who needs words?" All Might attempted a joke.
Izuku laughed and shook his head. All Might grabbed a brown paper bag from the back seat and started to hand it to Izuku, who snatched it away from him anxiously.
"Thanks. I got it." Izuku said nervously.
"Pick you up on this corner at six o'clock!" All Might smiled.
Izuku waved and headed off down the street, walking against the tide of wrestling fans as his mentor pulled back into traffic.
Izuku watched till the Chevy was gone, then turned around and joined the crowd headed into the arena, just as a deafening roar came over and- a costumed amateur wrestler slammed into the wall of a cage match ring in the middle of a small, hot, dusty arena. The Wrestler groaned in agony, a referee jumped in to stop the match as Muscular, six feet nine if he's an inch, three hundred pounds of pure muscle, roared at the crowd, standing over the broken body of his fallen challenger.
This place was nasty.
A guard hurried to a gate in the wall of the cage, unlocked it, and paramedics rushed in to help the helpless amateur.
Present Mic stepped forward, grabbing a dangling microphone."Seventeen seconds?! Seventeen seconds, ladies and gentlemen! Is there no one who can last three minutes in the cage with Muscular?"
Muscular roared again, through a mouthful of bad teeth. Might even be a few words in English in there.
As the Paramedics carried the amateur wrestler from the ring on a stretcher Present Mic continued:
"Will the next victim please enter the ring at this time! If he can withstand just three minutes in the cage with Muscular the sum of three thousand dollars will be paid to..."
He turned and gestured to ringside. A spotlight flicked on. Two guards opened the cage doors wide and Izuku climbed to the top of the stairs, into the spotlight, clad in his homemade costume. It looked pretty good.
Present Mic checked him out, leaned over, covered the microphone. "What does that mean, man, "Dekiru?"
"It means I always do my best!" Izuku said proudly.
"I think we can do better than that!" Present Mic leaned into the microphone. "Three thousand dollars will be paid to DEKU!"
Izuku groaned.
"Will the guards please lock the cage doors!"
SLAM! SLAM! Two huge barred doors clanged shut right behind Deku, startling him.
CLICK! CLICK! Keys turned ceremoniously in the locks.
A bell rang—
And the fight began. Muscular did his usual roaring thing.
Deku swallowed, floating at the edge of the ring. This guy was terrifying.
Muscular roared again, louder, expecting Deku to lunge at him. Deku trembled in the corner. He was wrong; he wasn't ready for this!
The Crowd cheered wildly, called for Deku's immediate destruction. Muscular roared, happy to oblige, and hurled himself across the ring, three hundred pounds of brute force.
Deku's wide white eyes popped even wider and whiter. At the last second, he bent his legs three times and jumped, straight up into the air. Muscular passed under him, rebounded off the ropes, and Deku landed neatly on his shoulders. He grinned, confidence growing, fast.
"Not a bad costume, what is that, Spandex?" Deku asked conversationally. "I used Lycra for mine and it itches like crazy."
Muscular attempted to back fall, to crush Deku under him, but the hero was too quick for that. He shot Blackwhip straight above him, to the bars at the top of the cage, twenty feet up. Blackwhip stuck there there, and when Muscular dropped to the canvas, he was alone.
He blinked, the wind knocked out of him. Directly above him he was Deku, floating, miming checking his watch.
"Gee, a minute already. Can I get a magazine?" Deku grinned.
Muscular screamed in anger and leapt to his feet. Deku flipped over, climbed up Blackwhip until he's twenty feet above it all. He yelled down.
"Hey, Muscles! Does that count as staying in the ring?"
"COME DOWN HERE!" Muscular yelled
"Okey-dokey!" Deku smirked.
He released Blackwhip, dropping twenty feet, straight down. He landed right on top of Muscular, who dropped to the canvas beneath him, pinned. The Crowd freaked out. Flashbulbs pop. Deku raised his arms, triumphant.
"Ahh... show biz." Deku smiled behind his mask.
Xxx
Deku was in The administrative offices, upstairs at the arena. The promoter put a single hundred dollar bill into Deku's palm (Izuku was still wearing the costume).
"Now get outta here." The promoter barked.
"A hundred bucks? The ad said three thousand!" Deku protested.
"Check it again, freak." The promoter snarled. "It said three grand for three minutes. You pinned him in two. For that I'll give you a hundred, and you're lucky to get it, wise ass. You made my best fighter look like a girl out there."
Behind them, a squirrelly-looking guy slipped into the office, hair dyed platinum blonde.
"You don't understand, it's not for me, it's for my mom, she needs this medicine, see, and-" Deku attempted.
"A sick mommy? Are you for real?" The promoter laughed derisively. "I missed the part where this is my problem."
Deku stared at him for a long moment, burning with rage, he wanted to bust this guy right in the nose, he trembled, his hands curled into fists, he could put him right through the wall if he wanted to-but he turned and left instead.
Deku walked away down the corridor, clutching the lousy hundred dollar bill, muttering under his breath. He was nearly to the elevator when he heard a shout from behind him.
"Hey! What the hell do you-"
He turned. Silhouettes moved violently in the frosted glass window in the door to the administrative offices. The Promoter's shadow was thrown violently to the floor, the door banged open hard, shattering the glass, and the squirrelly-looking guy raced out, clutching a canvas bag. He was a thief.
"Help! Police!" The promoter cried. "That guy stole the gate, he's got my money!"
A cop approached from one end of the corridor. The elevator dinged, its doors started to open, and the Thief took off down the hallway toward it. The Cop gave chase, calling ahead to Deku.
"Hey, you! Stop that guy!"
Deku looked up, at the Thief racing straight at him, at the Cop giving chase, at the opening elevator behind him. He thought, debated-and took a step back. The Thief raced right past him and into the elevator.
"Thanks, freak."
The doors closed and he got away. The Cop arrived, slammed his fist on the elevator doors. "What the hell's the matter with you?! You just had to knock him down!"
The Promoter came rushing up out of the office, a large red welt growing on his cheek. "You coulda taken that guy apart! Now he's gonna get away with my money!"
Deku smirked, returning his line. "I missed the part where that's my problem."
He turned and walked away down the corridor.
Xxx
As night fell, Izuku came out of the arena, dressed in street clothes again. On the far corner, there were flashing lights and a small crowd gathered, but he didn't notice, just started looking around for All Might's car.
Izuku stood on the corner where All Might said he'd pick him up. Looked to the left, to the right. Not there yet.
Another police car raced by him, siren wailing, and headed for the far corner. Izuku ignored that too. Checked his watch. Looked up the block. Still no All Might.
An ambulance screamed past him, also headed for the far corner. Izuku turned, watched it pull up, paramedics jumped out.
Now he took a mild interest. He wandered across the street. As he walked, his brow furrowed, two and two coming together in his mind in a bad way. He walked faster. Couldn't be.
He walked faster. And faster. He elbowed his way through the back of the swelling crowd. Then the middle. As a desperate conviction grew in his mind, he thrashed, breaking through the front of the crowd and looking down at the ground-where a young woman, Miko, was bent over a body, working.
Xxx
Kuri was on her first job with the police. She had had a vision that a man would be shot in front of the wrestling dome and she knew who it was: Izuku's mentor, All Might.
Kuri sighed and realized she couldn't let Izuku or anyone know about her true power. To that end, she had convinced the police to allow her to wear a strange get up. She wore a hakama, red traditional Japanese pants that came to her knees and white kimono dress top. She wore a Mardi Gras mask and a gold Pentacle necklace. Behind her, her wings, her greatest secret, floofed and flapped.
She knelt in front of All Might's body.
"Ashes to Ashes. Spirit to Spirit. I release you to the afterlife. Blessed Be." Miko said in Japanese.
Unseen to onlookers, his soul left his body and flew up and away. Miko paused. Izuku was standing in front of her, fury on his face.
"What have you done to him?!" He demanded.
"It was a carjacking. He was shot." Miko said. "I was preforming last rites."
A struggle on his face, then belief registered. He turned as he heard the cops talk about where the carjacker was, and he was gone.
Miko sighed. Meddling with destiny was never something she made a practice. But she could not let Izuku start on this path toward heroism, with a vengeful murder.
She raised her wings, and followed him into the night.
Xxx
An exaggerated shadow fell on the brick wall of an alley. A man tore off his clothes, violently. The shadow grows rapidly bigger as the man started to run, suddenly the shadow leapt, high into the air, and landed on the side of the building right in front.
THE AMAZING DEKU began to float, straight up the side of the building. Izuku may have been in the Deku suit when he climbed into the ring, but now he truly was Deku. He rose higher and higher until he burst out over the roof's edge.
On the roof, he scanned the horizon. Off to the west, he saw a cluster of police lights at the edge of the Hudson River. His right arm rose, almost instinctively, releasing Blackwhip.
Deku wrapped his hands around it and leapt, swinging out over the city, held aloft by the tensile strength of Blackwhip alone. He plummeted down, in a graceful, terrifying arc, and as the ground raced up toward him, Deku's left hand rose-
Blackwhip rocketed out into the night, the hero shifted his weight to the second strand, abandoning the first, pulling himself back up in a graceful arc that rose toward a glass-front building right in front.
The glass-front building raced up, impossibly fast, but instead of crashing through it, he stopped, floated.
Deku pivoted, looking for another tall building. He spotted one, his gloved wrist rising up into frame, throwing out Blackwhip, and he leapt from the building, swinging off into space again.
So that's what it's like to be Deku.
Down in the street, a child, holding his mother's hand, had seen the whole thing. He dropped his ice cream cone, it splat on the pavement at his feet.
At the Hudson River, a ring of police cars surrounded an abandoned factory. All Might's Chevy was crashed into a dumpster in front, the driver's door hanging open. Radios squawked, cops clustered around the barricades, planning how to go in and who had to do it.
Behind and above them, a glistening dark figure swung through the night, right past them. Unseen.
On the side of the factory, Deku landed silently and floated. His movements were flawless, graceful, economical now, as if he had become his perfected self in the last five minutes. He floated sideways, but fast. He slithered through a blown-out window near the roof line.
Deku floated across the roof of the factory.
His eyes scanned the abandoned factory floor below.
Over in the far corner, the Carjacker huddled, a dark figure trying to hide in the middle of the rusted-out equipment.
Deku crept close, fast and silent, until he was directly above the Carjacker, looking down at him.
The Carjacker cowered, muttering to himself, obsessively checking his weapon to make sure it's loaded. Can't make out a word he's saying, but he was terrified. Red police lights reflected off him, bouncing around the empty factory as they strobe through the dirty, leaded windows, revealing only his outline.
Behind him, Deku descended slowly, floating. He landed softly on his feet, looming behind the Carjacker.
The Carjacker sensed something and whirled around. Blasting a shot at Deku. Sensing it, Deku leapt up using Fa Jin. The Carjacker, whom Deku saw only as a red silhouette, started blasting at him, one shot after another, as Deku leapt from wall to ceiling to wall to floor, just inches ahead of the bullets.
In the street, The Cops heard the shots, pressed forward. Weapons were drawn, rifles steadied. They could see figures moving inside the factory.
In the factory, Deku did one particularly acrobatic leap and landed on top of the Carjacker's arm, kicking the gun free. It skittered across the cement floor as Deku held the guy up, curled a fist-
"This is for the man you killed. Dakota SMASH!"
-and punches the Carjacker in the jaw. The blow lifted the man right off his feet and sent him sailing into one of the unbroken windows, which shattered. Deku leapt into the window frame, grabbed the Carjacker, pulled him to his feet.
In the street, The Cops heard the breaking glass.
"In the window!"
They turned their spotlights toward the factory.
In the factory:
"Don't hurt me!" The Carjacker pleaded. "Give me a chance, man, give me a chance!"
"DID YOU GIVE HIM A CHANCE!?" Deku cried. "THE MAN YOU KILLED?! DID YOU?! ANSWER ME!"
One by one, the spotlights from outside swung around to frame the pair of combatants in the window. Suddenly, the Carjacker's face was revealed, brightly lit. A police helicopter is overhead, the prop wash blew the Carjacker's hair around wildly.
His platinum blonde hair...
Deku's eyes opened wide in horror as he recognized the Carjacker. It was, God help him, the Thief who stole the money at the arena. The one Deku stepped aside for.
"No! No, not YOU!"
Yes. Yes him. Deku trembled in horror as he realized the ghastly truth:
He failed to stop the very man who murdered his mentor.
Images flooded back at him, fast:
The Cop, yelling at him:
"Stop that guy!"
The Thief, standing in the elevator, looking at him evilly as the doors closed on his escape.
All Might's body, lying in the street.
Outside the factory, the Cops stared in wonder at the strange pair, framed by the brilliant lights now shining into the broken-out second floor windows of the factory.
"What the hell is that!?"
"OPEN FIRE!"
The Cops opened up on the figures in the window.
In the window, More glass broke, wood splinters, the Thief screamed as bullets flew everywhere. Deku screamed right back, in rage and pain-and hurled the Thief off the building!
Miko flew in and appeared in the shadows of the warehouse.
She was on him in an instant. "Catch him! Be the Hero you promised your All Might you would be!"
Deku snarled at her, and shot out Blackwhip and caught the thief then put him down in front of the police. He then whirled on her.
"Who are you? How do you know all of this about me? What do you want?!" Deku demanded.
Miko smiled. "You know who I am."
"What?" Deku was confused.
"I'm Miko!" Miko flapped her wings.
Deku shot Blackwhip out to catch her, but only caught air.
Deku looked down at the police watching him from below. Surprised, he saw Kuri, in her plain clothes, talking to an officer. After a moment she turned and met his eyes.
Why was she crying? What had she seen?
No time for that!
The cops unleashed a hail of gunfire as Deku leapt up, onto the factory wall and floated all the way up the roof, six stories above them.
As Kuri watched, she seemed to mutter something, and a cry came from cop next to her.
"Don't shoot, don't shoot! He's on our side, can't you see it, HE'S ON OUR SIDE!"
But the gunfire continued, just the first salvo in Deku's long and misunderstood career to come.
For some reason though, the bullets never seemed to reach him. In the darkness, Deku was able to meet the eyes of Kuri, who looked curiously back at him.
Still, no time for that!
Deku made it to the roof and collapsed to his knees, in the whipping wind of the helicopter, arms thrown up in anguish as he faced the dramatic skyline of the unforgiving city.
"NOOOOO!" He screamed, but it was lost in the sound of the helicopters buzzing around.
Another image came to him, this one billowing right out of the black-bottomed clouds above him, a gigantic image of All Might's face:
"Always remember, Young Midoriya."
Lightning flashed in the sky, outlining All Might's face, turning it into a skeleton's head for a split-second before wiping it out completely. As Deku dissolved into SCREAMS of anguish, Deku's voice resonated over the booming thunder of the coming summer storm.
"With great power..."
Deku began to scream.
"OH GOD, PLEASE NO, I'M SORRY, ALL MIGHT, FORGIVE ME...!"
"...great responsibility."
Lightning flashed, gunfire echoed in the distance, sounding like the dull cannon booms of a faraway funeral.