The day after Izuku finally slept was an off-day for him and his classmates. Thus, he slept in as long as he could before his body forced him to wake up due to simple habit. Izuku slept until about nine o'clock. He got up, trying to ignore how his body ached in mourning for the sleep Izuku was taking from it. Some members of 1-A greeted Izuku as he made his way through the dorms after getting ready and making a plan for the day. Yaoyorozu politely wished him well on his morning run as he passed her, Jiro and Kaminari talking about music, Kirishima managed to hype himself up for a workout from a state of near-sleep when he heard that Izuku was still going to exercise despite running run by such a large degree, and forced Katsuki to go with him, and Hitoshi made a joke to Ochako weighing the pros and cons of exercising on a weekend in contrast to immediate death, which had them both chuckling. Izuku returned the greetings and was on his way, jogging out of the dorms with purpose.
As he ran, Izuku went over the plan one more time. It was less a plan and more like a vague to-do list, but it was more than he'd had just a few days ago. He jogged along his regular route around UA's campus, taking in the sights so that they might ground him even more than his twelve hours of sleep had. Izuku had a slight headache, probably from disrupting his sleep schedule, but he could ignore that. He'd ignored worse pain, which probably wasn't good, but he didn't have a lot of space in his brain to examine that right now, so he was going to let that go and hope the thought occurred to him later, when he could give time to it. Pushing past that, Izuku wondered if it would really work. He was well aware that what he was doing would probably be classified as vigilantism, and if not, what he was working up to was definitely vigilantism. He had a provisional hero licence after all this time training, but that only meant that he could act as a hero if he happened to be on the scene of a villain attack. In no way did he have the legal authority to seek out villains and detain them. Not even regular heroes were allowed to actually make arrests. That was one thing that had remained solely under the domain of the police force since heroes had become the world's primary crimefighters. He would be punished severely if anybody found out what he was doing.
Part of his mind was warning him that he still had time to drop it before he dug himself in too deep. Aizawa's voice filled his head as he neared the main academic building on his jog. I was especially satisfied with your ability to control yourself. The entire reason that Aizawa had agreed to take him on for that week-long work study was to keep him on a leash. Aizawa knew he was like this, he knew that Izuku had a habit of disregarding the rules if it meant he could do more for others. The Children needed to be caught, and anyone they were allied with needed to go down as well. They were planning to free All for One, judging by how Kisei had spoken to Spinner before she'd destroyed his mind. That couldn't be allowed to happen. If they did that, Japan would be doomed. Izuku wasn't sure that he could beat All for One. All Might hadn't been able to put him down for good, so what chance did Izuku have? He needed to get to them before they did that. If that meant breaking the rules, then so be it. Izuku would gladly work outside of the rules if it meant that he had a shot at preventing the second coming of All for One.
Izuku turned into the academic building as he affirmed his resolve to follow this through to the end. He slowed his jog to a walk and strolled through the halls toward his destination. A hundred thoughts fought each other in taking form in Izuku's head as he got closer and closer to the one person who could help him. He had no idea what he could possibly say to her to get her to go along with his plan. She was such a wildcard in the sports festival, and was so erratic in general, that Izuku thought he had just as much chance of getting an ally out of this little detour as he did of her telling on him and ruining the whole thing. It wouldn't be unwarranted, but it would still sting coming from a person that Izuku considered a friend.
Arriving at the support course's development studio, Izuku took a few deep, steadying breaths. He reached for the door handle to slide it to the side, but hesitated. He had enough experience with Mei Hatsume to know that there was a good chance he was walking into an explosion here. Izuku had to go in, though. He waited a moment, wondering if Danger Sense would alert him this time, and sighed as he opened the door to the development studio. Shockingly, it took a moment this time. There was fraction of a moment between when Izuku opened the door and when the sparking gadget in Hatsume's hands exploded, in which he saw Hatsume covered in soot and grease, with dark rings under her wide eyes, and Power Loader, who was facepalming with more force than Izuku had ever seen. Then, the thing in Hatsume's hands blew up right in her face, sending her flying towards the door and filling the development studio with smoke.
For whatever reason, it wasn't Izuku's first instinct to call on One for All. Instead, he tried to catch Hatsume with his own strength. Izuku caught her in a bridal carry and was pushed off his feet, sitting down hard on the floor as Hatsume's momentum refused to be stopped, just like her. Hatsume laughed heartily at the development, and Izuku realised that she was heavier than she looked as he pushed her to her feet — not that she was overweight or anything like that, just dense. She must've had more muscle than she showed off. Izuku got to his feet as well, and wiped a bit of soot off of his face as she seemed to only then recognise who had saved her.
"Midoriya!" Hatsume cheered. She smiled brightly, and it was nice to know that she was glad to see him, but Izuku figured that he wasn't going to get an apology this time, just like the other times this exact thing had happened in the past. "Thanks for the assist, buddy. Do you need anything? My latest baby just self-destructed, so I'm free for any request you have!"
"Uh, yeah, I do have a request," Izuku said. "It's sorta personal, though."
"Personal how?" Hatsume asked, a gleam in her eye.
"Well, I already have everything I need for my hero costume. Thank you for repairing it so quickly, by the way," Izuku said. He kept an eye on Power Loader as the teacher made his way toward his little office at the back of the workshop, and that was the first time that Izuku had thanked the man for trusting Hatsume to be alone in the studio. "This thing I need now isn't really for hero work. I mean, it is, but it's not for my costume."
"Wait, so, what?" Hatsume said, her eyes losing their sharp eagerness for the first time since Izuku had known her. She looked confused, which wasn't an expression he usually saw on her face. "You want me to make something for civilian use?"
"Kind of," Izuku sighed.
"I thought that kid from 1-B would spread the word. I don't make personal items," Hatsume said with a flat expression on her face. Her stomach grumbled, and she frowned, but ignored it.
"It still is for hero stuff, it's just not for school. Please help me out," Izuku said. Hatsume's stomach rumbled again, and Izuku got an idea. She was dirty, she was tired, and she was hungry. How much did she neglect herself in order to work? "How about I tell you about my request over some breakfast and you can decide after you've eaten and after I've explained it all?"
"Sounds good to me!" Hatsume said, gathering up the remains of her ruined gadget and placing it in the trash as she made her ebay toward the door.
Izuku sighed in relief, happy to get away from Power Loader's possible interference. Once they got out of the studio, Hatsume seemed dazed, like she had to reorient herself and figure out the layout of the building all over again. The question once again posed itself in Izuku's mind — how deeply was Hatsume throwing herself into her work? It seemed unhealthy to Izuku, but he wasn't really one to talk given his tendency to ignore his own health and safety in order to help people. They were the same, in that way. Izuku waited in the cafeteria as Hatsume went and got some food, and tried to figure out his approach as she began to devour her breakfast. How could he say it all without scaring her off or making her refuse straight out of the gate?
"So, what's the request?" she asked with her mouth full, which was so much like her that Izuku didn't have it in him to be disgusted as a piece of egg white fell out of her mouth and back onto her plate. If she was forcing him to spit it out, then he might as well just say it how it was.
"I need a camera," he said, wincing as her face twisted in confusion. "I'm in a bit of a tough spot and I can't talk about it to just anyone, so I'd appreciate you keeping this quiet, but I do need a camera."
"What kind of camera?" Hatsume asked, which shocked Izuku. He was completely prepared for her to refuse or tell on him, but it looked like she was going for it.
"It needs to be small, lightweight, and capable of attaching to a solid surface, like a wall. And it needs to be able to record videos and take pictures. Also, it has to have crystal clear image quality from a distance. Is that at all possible for one camera?" Izuku said.
"Should be no problem. It'll take me about a week, and I'm sure Power Loader will want to show it off as my first personal-use item, but—" Hatsume said.
"I'd actually prefer it if you kept this quiet, like I said earlier." Izuku winced as she leaned closer to him with a grin on her face.
"What are you gonna be using this camera for? Wait, no, I don't want to know. Oh, but a mystery is no good unsolved! If it's really supposed to be secret, not even I should know, right? I wanna be in on your secret spy stuff, though! Ah, you're killing me with the suspense! Just spit it out already!" Hatsume asked, her crosshair eyes staring at him from across the table. She seemed to get more excited the more he explained and the more she speculated.
"Surveillance. On villains, specifically. It's surveillance that I'm not really supposed to be doing, though, so if you can, I kind of need you to work on this thing in private," Izuku said. He was painfully aware of how suspicious he sounded, but he had no other way to communicate his problem.
"Fine. I have no problem with that!" Hatsume said, fixing her sharp eyes back on her breakfast. "I just need to know that you're not going to do anything bad with it. One kid from gen-ed keeps trying to make me build x-ray glasses for him for some reason, but I don't trust it. Something about his eagerness to use it on people, for whatever reason. I don't know."
"So why not refuse me? You had no idea what I wanted to use this item for before you agreed," Izuku said.
"I can tell you're going to do something good with whatever I make for you. Some people in my class are only there because they failed to get into the hero course. They think they missed their shot at helping people and being heroes. I don't think that's right. I think those of us in the support course also help people, just in a less direct way. It's the transitive property, you know?" Hatsume explained.
"Like in math?" Izuku asked. Pure mathematics had never been his strongest subject, even though he was good enough at it to score within the top five on every midterm exam. Izuku's area of expertise was physics, specifically improvised physics to do with calculating how to move and attack using One for All, Blackwhip, and Float.
"Yeah, that! We help heroes, heroes save lives, so we saved those people, too, if you think about it. The reason I turned that little guy from gen-ed away was because I didn't know what he'd do with what I made for him. I know you want to help people, so I know you'll use my camera baby well!" Hatsume said. "That's why I like you, Midoriya! On top of the certainty that you'll make my babies well known for the future, I know you're going to use them to save people, too."
"Right," Izuku said, and smiled. It was the first time he'd smiled for a couple of days, and that felt wrong. Was this really a good idea? He'd promised he'd keep smiling, but he hadn't been able to do that lately. Every time he smiled, it felt like something was hanging off of his shoulders, like a presence that wouldn't go away. He knew whose presence it was. Spinner hadn't left his mind ever since Izuku had seen his limp body fall to the ground, helpless and lifeless. Izuku had to tell himself that Spinner was still technically alive, but knew that he was only technically alive. He realised that he hadn't replied to Hatsume's explanation, and sighed. "Thank you, Hatsume. I really appreciate it."
"Of course! Can't let my favourite client down, can I?" Hatsume cheered. "So, if I'm supposed to be working on this secretly, then I won't be able to help you. That's just because Power Loader has to approve all projects before they start. I can tell him it's a personal project for me, though! Keeping this a secret from everyone else, though, I'll have to work on it almost entirely after-hours, and that'll add a few weeks to the time it'll take to complete this camera baby. I should have it done in about three weeks, then."
"That's great, thanks!" Izuku said with a smile.
"Really, though. What are you doing that requires this kind of surveillance? Can't you get one of your friends from the hero course to do it for you? What's her name, Earphone Jacks? And the other guy, the one with the arms?" Hatsume asked, her excited curiosity returning in full force. "Are you doing super secret spy stuff for the government, hunting down villains in secret? Do you need any other babies? Smoke bombs, grappling hooks, hover soles?"
"No, I don't need anything else. I can already do all of that with my Quirk," Izuku said. He'd almost said Quirks, plural, and forced a laugh to cover up the brief flash of panic that streaked through him. "Remember?"
"Right, right. Oh, or are you some kind of vigilante? That's technically a crime, you know! I guess you could explain it to the cops as a right-place-right-time kinda thing though, huh?" Hatsume guessed. "In that case, you'd need a portable radio that can tap into police and hero frequencies, and I'd have just the thing for you! And smoke bombs to evade capture!"
"I can already sense the presence of people with my Quirk. And I definitely don't need any smoke bombs. I've shown you my Smokescreen power, right?" Izuku said, creating a little puff of purple smoke from the tip of his finger, as if it were smoking after an explosion.
"Ah, now I remember!" Hatsume laughed. "Well, I'm done, which means I've gotta get back to the studio. Swing by in a week or so and we can talk more then!"
"Got it!" Izuku said, getting up and waving at Hatsume behind him as he took off toward the dorms.
He'd been gone for far longer than he ever was on a normal morning run, as it was already about ten o'clock, so he had to get back quick or else he'd look suspicious. Izuku knew that level of caution was likely unwarranted given that his friends and classmates would probably just accept that he got really into his morning workout and couldn't bring himself to stop — which, being completely honest with himself, was something he had done in the past during All Might's training from hell before UA. He kept that thought, as well as his success, in mind as he broke out into a jog toward the dorms once he got out of the academic building. Izuku managed to not sprint all the way there, and stuck to the pace he usually kept during light workouts on the weekend. He entered the dorms and went right up to his room, wanting to carry his momentum after just having completed part of the plan so easily. He all but ran up the stairs, and got a half-hearted admonishment from Yaoyorozu as he passed her about running in the hallway. Izuku apologised quickly and got up to his room in record time, leaving Yaoyorozu and Ashido to continue their conversation about how exciting it was that Valentine's Day was in two weeks. He sat himself at his desk and started searching.
Step three of the plan, which fell between the beginning and the end of step two, was to lock down a specific location. That location was where he'd put the camera when the time came, but that was to do with step four, which was finding an excuse to get off campus. That could be left until much later, though. For now, Izuku opened the map of Musutafu and honed in on the area around the warehouse. He went onto street-view for a better angle, and started mapping out buildings where he could set up the camera for the best view of the warehouse that the Children were meeting the plague doctor guy and his buddies at. He wrote the addresses of the surrounding buildings, noting the apartment building where Yushuna — the young man who ran the blog Izuku had gotten the pictures of the warehouse from — lived as he went. Could he maybe try and meet up with Yushuna? No, that was a terrible idea, an even worse idea than all this already was in the first place. Bringing a civilian into this would just be stupid. Izuku didn't have any effort or time to spare for stupid decisions if he wanted to do this right. Everyone always said he was smart. He had to use those smarts to do this in the quickest way possible, otherwise it would all be for nothing.
Unfortunately, the street-view map didn't really have a great view of the warehouse, which was the other reason he was checking it. It didn't have a front door. They must have met up out the front of the warehouse and then gone back to the actual entrance behind it. That was one aspect of the street-view that was a bust, so Izuku pivoted and began to check out the surrounding buildings and the angles at which he could place a camera to watch the warehouse. It seemed like a few of them would be suitable, so he narrowed it down. He wanted the camera to be someplace up high, so it couldn't be taken out from the ground, it needed to be far away so that the Children and Plague Doctor's people couldn't just spot it right away and destroy it, and it needed to have a clear line of sight to the warehouse's front. That ruled out three of the five buildings Izuku had marked immediately. It left two buildings a street over from the warehouse, right next to each other and both significantly taller than the buildings between those two and the warehouse, meaning that they had a clear bird's eye view of the warehouse and the street in front of it. Those two were perfect, and it didn't matter which, since they were right next to each other. It looked like they were apartment buildings, so Izuku figured he'd have to be sneaky to not alert the people that lived there, but other than that, they were perfect. Step three — determine the positioning of the camera — was complete.
Now all Izuku needed to figure out in order to get out there and place the camera was a reason to actually leave UA, since it was part of the dormitory system that students were required to get permission before leaving the campus as a security measure. The whole reason the school moved to a dorm system was because it allowed them to keep the students safer after so many attacks. That was the part that stumped Izuku. Could he just say that he wanted to spend some time alone in town? No, All Might would see through that. Izuku had never been the type of kid to go to the arcade or go shopping for fun. Once upon a time, he'd chased hero fights and villain attacks to take notes about the Quirks that were used, but that had really been his only hobby. He hadn't done that since he'd started training for UA, and that habit hadn't re-established itself after he'd gotten in. This step was probably the hardest yet, which came as a shock to Izuku. While Hatsume worked on the camera over the next week, Izuku threw himself into that part of the plan and found himself lost on how to explain his need to exit school grounds on a random weekend. How was that the hardest thing to come up with? Izuku thought and thought, and retreated further into himself than ever before. He had to have a foolproof plan.
Izuku was so lost in his own mind that it came as a surprise when Ashido knocked on his door one night about a week later. He'd just gotten back from a check-in with Hatsume a few minutes prior, which had lasted longer than he'd intended due to her pathological need to at least try selling him on one of her babies before he left the studio, so he went and opened the door to find a seething Mina Ashido glaring at him through the doorway, which was not a sight Izuku could say he'd ever seen before. He was still wearing his school uniform, since he'd gone straight after school had ended for the day, but Ashido wore her classic style of comfortable-looking casual clothes that were nonetheless crazily colourful and covered in clashing patterns that ended up a loud mess of lines. She immediately started berating him.
"What are you doing, Midoriya? We've been waiting for you for, like, fifteen minutes!" Ashido said, stepping closer and pointing an accusatory finger at him.
"What do you mean? What are you …?" Izuku asked, but he paused as he realised what she was talking about. "Oh."
He'd been a regular at game night ever since he'd gotten the invite from Kirishima at the beginning of the school year. After moving to the dorms, it had become a more regular, weekly event that more people had joined in on. They played all sorts of games, but Izuku's favourite was still Jenga, since it was just Fine Motor Skills: The Game, which was something he excelled at given his training to master Air Force, which was coming along nicely. He realised that it was Friday. It was game night. He had to have missed it last week, too, but nobody had said anything. Why didn't they say anything? Maybe they thought something was wrong, and they'd wanted to give him space. That made sense, and was also very nice of them, but he would've preferred if they had said something so that he could keep up with all of his promises.
"That's right, oh. What's up with you, man?" Ashido asked, squinting her eyes at him.
"Nothing's up, I'm just — I was — I'm sorry. I'll be down in a minute. Just let me get changed," Izuku said with a sigh.
"Hey, are you alright?" Ashido asked with a confused look on her face. That confusion quickly melted away and was replaced by a kind of understanding. "You don't have to if you don't want to. We just thought it was weird when you didn't come down, and we wanted to make sure you were okay. Are you okay?"
"Yeah, I am," Izuku said, but saying that almost hurt, like he was betraying someone. Was he really okay, or was he trying to ignore that he wasn't? "I'm fine. There's just some stuff that I've been working on. Thank you for making sure. I know we're not really close or anything, but—"
"That doesn't matter to me!" Ashido said with a smile. "You're my friend and that's that! So, will you come down and hang with us? We're fine either way, as long as you're fine."
Izuku thought about that for a moment. Was he okay? "Yeah, I'm fine. I'll come down." He smiled, and Ashido stepped back to let him close his door.
That night, Izuku managed to tear himself away from the case and deviate from the plan to make room for some fun with his friends. That night they were playing some game Izuku had never heard of from France, which Aoyama had picked. Tsu sat next to him and they ended up on a team together for the game, and they didn't get close to winning — that honour went to Aoyama himself, since he knew the rules of the game the best — but Izuku had fun simply spending time with and talking to Tsu, which he didn't think he did enough. Hitoshi and Ochako were nowhere to be seen, and Katsuki was already up in his room after dinner studying for the mid-term they had coming up in a few weeks, but Izuku had a good time. He was able to take his mind off of the depressing events of his work study. He was able to ignore the burning desire to act that flared in his chest whenever he thought about the Children of All for One. Izuku found some peace that night, and he was grateful that Ashido and Tsu and even Aoyama had given it to him. It meant more than they could ever know that he had them in his life.
Izuku wished that peace would last forever, even if he knew it wouldn't. He thought it was good to put that sort of energy out into the universe. Logically, he knew the universe itself didn't actively wish to make his life worse. Izuku's luck was just bad, and he stumbled into trouble by complete accident, even though he tried his best to stay out of trouble most of the time. Things simply seemed to line up most of the time to make his day harder, independent of conscious decision. Case in point — Valentine's Day. That day would end up being one massive mess, and Izuku would find himself scrambling to clean up his own mistakes and the consequences of his actions, despite his thought that it should be one of the easiest days of the year, given his lack of attention to romance and dating. He would find out exactly how wrong he was in the days to come, and would come to regret his past actions even more than he already did. Because, naturally, Izuku Midoriya could never go a week without having to overcome a challenge thrown at him by whatever cruel God existed out there in the cosmos. That was a law of the universe, in his eyes.