my day job consists of environmental testing, so i come across a lot of asbestos in my workplace. i tried to incorporate that into this fic, but instead wrote about rotting flesh. whoops.

After their introduction into their official second year at UA, Kacchan and Izuku have taken rekindling One for All as a full time job when they aren't helping with the rebuilding efforts.

Well, that was somewhat of an over exaggeration. Clearing rubble and debris was their full time job. Proper schooling was their after-work hobby, and recreational training was reserved for their break days from both society and school. Izuku didn't mind too much, as the rebuilding efforts were good and hard work.

Honestly, the rebuilding efforts itself are sort of similar to the training ground that Izuku carved his body into. The rubble filled streets that needed to be disposed of and cleaned to perfection were just like his days of racing to the beach after school and cleaning the beach as fast and as efficiently as possible. His friends made it fun, sure, but the burn in his muscles that he went to bed with every single night made the efforts he made seem real.

Pushing aside rubble and clearing hazardous areas were fun. It was routine, menial and meaningful work, and it kept Izuku's hands and mind busy. Each day of long hard work was a drop in the bucket. Even with volunteers and heroes from other nations pitching in, the work was endless and would take months, maybe years. The best part of it by far was the end of the day, coming home to UA to a good meal and enjoying his classmates' conversations as they joked and laughed. Hot work under the blazing sun and laughing with his classmates made the days go by slowly but surely. That was the best part.

The worst part was the bodies.

When the mass evacuations happened, a lot of people got left behind in the fray. Not everyone chose to evacuate right away, or could do so safely. With the low number of active heroes at the time, it was even more difficult to make sure everyone was accounted for.

Izuku had seen dead bodies before. He's seen the limp freshly dead corpses of Chisaki's own men being used like pawns to make Overhaul more powerful. He's seen the color in Nighteye's face go pale as he grasped Mirio's hand and smiled. When he was acting as a stand-alone hero, he found many bodies of people who had gotten into fights with each other and lost. Technically, the Nomu that they all encountered were also the bioengineered bodies of the deceased. The poor and desolate, the ones who no one would notice that their graves weren't filled with their ashes.

He's never seen bodies in a state of active decay, however.

The smell was awful. Something about the sickening-sweet stench of decay that hits your nose first like gummy candy. A reminder that the body is made out of the same meat that you (should) eat every day. It smelled almost good, sweet even, if it wasn't for the active rotting smell that ruined the whole effect. Then, as soon as you realized that it wasn't some melted sugar or industrial runoff, the smell would persist into every breath you took.

The first body he came across was buried under a particularly dangerous pile of rubble, with active asbestos suspected. He and everyone else in their group had their respirators on, and they didn't smell the corpse until much, much too late.

Izuku had lifted a particularly large panel of sheet metal and there she was.

For a fearful and heart stopping moment, he thought she was his mother. The gentle rolls of fat and long hair and round face added to the illusion. Her dark hair was done in a ponytail and she was wearing mom jeans and a cardigan and one sandal. Then he blinked, and the woman wasn't his mother, but still had blood around her mouth and her head was bent at an awkward angle. Her belly was bloated, common in bodies left out in the elements to decay. Flies buzzed around her, and the skin around her wounds had been eaten away to show the dried ligaments and meat under. Upon closer inspection, there was something moving in the exposed flesh. Izuku didn't want to look, but he knew what it was.

"Uh!" He whispered. He was so surprised that he almost dropped the panel of sheet metal. His hands were sweaty under his gloves. "Uh, Aizawa!"

Something in Izuku's tone made Eraserhead head over immediately, cutting off his conversation with Shinsou on proper asbestos disposal and removal.

"Oh." Is all Eraserhead said. Then, "Drop that metal over in the recyclables. Then go take a break. Don't take off your mask until you're well clear of this area."

"Right," Izuku said, faintly. He walked as if in a daze over to the recyclables area where Kirishima and Satou were mashing and cutting the metal into smaller pieces. There must have been some look on his face, because Kirishima took one look at him and grew worried.

"What's wrong, man?"

"A woman," He said. His mouth was dry. "There's a woman under the rubble."

"Is she okay?" Kirishima asked. He looked around at the mountain of drywall and bent rebar and concrete where Izuku had walked from. He seemed to realize that was a stupid question. "Are they getting her out?"

"Yeah," Izuku swallowed. "Yeah, they're getting her out. She's dead, though."

Satou made some sort of high pitched gasp and Izuku said something like "If you don't mind, I'm going to sit down over there," and aimlessly wandered towards the little canopy that they had set up with drinks in coolers and fans hooked up to Momo-made batteries to help beat the blazing sun overhead. Izuku sank down in one of the camping chairs and felt cold.

Later, when the body was packed away neatly into a black bag and carried away by an ambulance to the hospital, Eraserhead sat down next to Izuku. Neither of them had removed their respirators. Eraserhead wordlessly passed him a sports drink, and Izuku just held it in his hands.

"You doing alright, kiddo?" Izuku would rarely describe Aizawa-sensei as gentle. Aizawa-sensei being gentle did not fit under the many categories Izuku knew him as. Kind, yes, and careful, but rarely gentle. Izuku would not describe this tone that Aizawa-sensei was using as gentle, but it was perhaps the closest equivalent. Gentleness he used on children, like Eri-chan. This was a tone he used on adults, understanding their maturity and their perspective of the world and acknowledging it as equal.

"Yeah," He said. "Yeah, I'm fine."

"Her neck was broken, so it was a quick end." Eraserhead said after a moment.

"That's good. I wouldn't have wanted her to suffer." Izuku felt his lips move around the words, but it was distant. Far away. As if someone else was using his body. Or he was on autopilot.

"There's thousands of people missing. Hopefully, many of them got lost in the chaos and are fine, just unaccounted for," Eraserhead said. "But many of them are not."

"I understand."

"You will see many more of them as we continue."

"Yes."

"And whenever this happens, I always, always, want you to come to me." Aizawa put a hand on Izuku's shoulder. "When it gets to be too much, students should always go to their teachers for help. I will show you the proper procedures for calling in a body. I will show you the way to treat their bodies with respect that they may have not gotten in life. I will show you how to find their records later, so you can visit their grave if you wish. But before anything else, I want you to come to me when you need help. Just like today."

Tears welled up in Izuku's eyes. "I thought she was my mom at first," he whispered. "I know she's fine, I saw her just yesterday. But for a moment…"

"Oh, kiddo." Aizawa pulled Izuku from the chair and wrapped his arms around him. Izuku shoved his face into his shoulder and tried not to cry.