Chapter Text
Izuku considers himself a pretty smart guy. If you give him a task, there’s a pretty good chance he’ll figure it out. But he doesn’t know how do everything. For instance: this camera is being a pain in the ass.
Why they keep forcing him to be the cameraman, Izuku has no idea. He’s comfortable in front of it if they need him. Izuku knows he can ditch the stutter when he’s on camera, no problem. He’s got thirty thousand people who seem to agree with him, he’d insisted with exasperation, double clicking to highlight the subscriber count on his YouTube page.
Boss wasn’t moved. “Anyone can talk in front of a camera at home, Midoriya,” she’d said. “Field work is different.”
“Literally h-how. Genuinely, like, e-e-explain that to me.”
Ikeda gave an exasperated sigh, the same kind she gives whenever her four-year-old is running wild in the office while she’s trying to work. “It just is, Midoriya. You’re on camera duty.”
So that’s how we’ve ended up with Soda, the most excitably off-putting person Izuku’s ever met, trying and failing to act normal on live television, while Izuku’s scrawny 5’7” ass — 5’6.5”, but we’ll call it 5’7” — barely manages to keep a grip on a camera rig worth more than his yearly salary, let alone get the focus right on the damn thing.
Izuku gets one syllable into cursing Ikeda under his breath but stops himself when he remembers that they’re live. He knows his mom tries to watch every broadcast he works on, but he hopes she’s already turned this one off. If she got motion sickness from the jellyfish scene in Finding Nemo, god knows what this would do to her.
He wishes he was writing right now. That was supposed to be his job. But all the competent field reporters were out reporting live from things that actually mattered. The network had already sent more than half the staff to cover the Prime Minister’s press conference on passing a law to crack down on villainy rates, and the rest of the staff had scrambled to cover various spontaneous skirmishes across the city.
All the big names were out in the streets today. Obviously All Might was standing behind the PM, but the active high ranking heroes were on patrol. Edgeshot made quick work of slipping through a locked back door and taking down a hostage-taker. Hawks was at a playground scolding a kid for misusing his Quirk, making sure to dap all the kids up and casually pose for selfies before taking off. Mirko was scrapping with a tenacious but clearly outmatched goose heteromorph, with Wash bubbling bystanders out of the area. It was admittedly pretty funny to see Endeavor out patrolling in Shibuya, very clearly itching to give the cameras a fight of his own and seething over no one giving him one.
The only one Izuku really cares about is Lemillion stopping a stickup at Izuku’s neighborhood convenience store. Izuku knows the cashier who’d been on the clock at the time. She’s one of the nice ones. So Izuku’s grateful for that. Even if the surge of hero exposure was pretty blatantly manufactured to coincide with the PM’s announcement, at least the heroes were doing their jobs a little bit.
Hell, they’d gone as far as pulling some of the fresh graduates out of the U.A. commencement ceremony that Izuku’s been forced to attend. There was a tip about a small-time Trigger dealer in a nearby alley, and I guess they figured they might as well get some new blood in on the action. The top ones, too, leaving Izuku with even less to work with in terms of getting any good footage as the sun beats down on him. It was already a nothing-burger of a story to cover, made even less interesting now with the absence of the two highest profile members of the class.
At least that part is over. The post-graduation interviews just needed a steady camera. Izuku isn’t doing a fantastic job with that, but at least it isn’t shaky and swinging around wildly looking for anything worth filming. As long as he keeps Soda and Uravity in shot, Izuku’s fine.
“Uravity!” Soda says, speaking too loud for someone standing three feet away from his interviewee. “What are your plans for your first day as a Pro Hero?”
“Um,” she flinches as the microphone is shoved into to her face. “I’ll probably just go home and watch Netflix, to be honest.” She gives a bubbly smile that seems to fill Izuku’s viewfinder with sunshine. “But I’m excited to start working full-time under Gunhead and put the things U.A.’s taught me to work!”
“Is this your official costume? I enjoy it a lot!”
Uravity grins and shifts a bit, crossing her arms and making the more skin-tight parts of her costume less visible in the shot. “Uh, yeah, I’m pretty sure! There might be a few modifications, y’know. But I’m glad you like it!”
Izuku wonders if Uraraka ended up following through on adding more core support to help counter the nausea caused by her Quirk. The smaller and looser belt suggests otherwise, which is a shame. Or maybe the material of the suit itself was tightened around the waist? Or some firmer material was woven into the fabric? He doesn’t really know if that’s how that works, but U.A. could do it if it was. Her visor is gone too, which is interesting. He really hopes that wasn’t just an aesthetic choice, because that would be stupid. Her Quirk didn’t really have a use for a visor, but eye protection and a heads-up display would always be nice to have. But her fighting style is more instinctual and assertive than methodical or analytical, so maybe having more information in her face ended up being counterintuitive and not worth the slightly reduced field of vision.
Izuku notices that the figures in the viewfinder aren’t moving anymore. They’re both looking at him, actually. He feels his mouth’s movement slow to a stop.
Ah shit. This is why you don’t put him on camera duty.
Ochaco manages to get through the rest of the interview. She hates this but she’s good at it, so she supposes it’s fine. The interviewer guy finally backs off and Ochaco lets out a deep exhale, savoring the breathing room that she didn’t realize she was missing.
Her gaze shifts over to the green-haired mumbling guy, who’s now lowering the camera. ‘Fumbling it and almost dropping and breaking it’ would be a more accurate description of what he does, but she mentally affords him some dignity.
He looks familiar. “You look familiar,” Ochaco says.
The mumble guy manages to get some kind of grasp on the camera and glances up at her. He has one of those faces that it feels like you’ve seen a thousand times. Maybe she’s wrong. She tries to place him anyway. “Do you… did you work at Crag’s?” She gestures behind her with her thumb. “The rock climbing place down the street?”
He gives a half-smile, doing his best to set the camera down gently — although, by the looks of things, ‘gently’ might be too high of a bar. “N-n-no, s-sorry.”
It’s remarkable how tall Ochaco feels every day now. Stature wise she’s still real short, don’t get me wrong. She’s always been short. But she’s learned how to project her voice, how to stand up straight, how to express her personality in the most agreeable ways. She has the costume, the training, the status. The boots do add a couple inches, but the point remains. She stands tall.
The green-haired guy isn’t a giant by any means, but he does have Ochaco beat by about half a head. That’s not how it feels. It’s as if this dude has learned how to do the exact opposite stuff as she has. Muffle himself when he speaks, slouch like he’s trying to hide, show as little about himself as possible. The camera debacle probably adds to the general pathetic aura he’s got going on, but the aura only lessens a little when he finally gets the thing to the ground. She hasn’t felt such an intensely pitiable energy from a person since, like, first year. When that Quirkless Gen Ed kid made the knockout stage of the Sports Festival and instantly got his ass kicked.
Oh shit.
“Oh shit,” Ochaco says. “You’re that Quirkless Gen Ed kid who made the knockout stage of the Sports Festival and got y- uh, got into the knockout stage.” Bad start. Smile through it. “I am so so so sorry I didn’t recognize you at first! How’ve you been?”
The guy gives a meek grin. “Um, I-I’ve been… fine. I’m a j-j-journalist now.” The corners of his mouth move the slightest bit further up. “F-figured that, after the Festival, the hero dream was c-c-cooked.”
That gets a genuine laugh out of Ochaco. “Hey, at least you took it in stride, man. Picking your battles and stuff, y’know.”
His smile somehow falters and grows at the same time. Not sure how he did that. “Y-yeah. I like what b-battles I’ve got now. M-more practical s-s-stuff. Like the s-stutter.”
His stutter does seem different from how Ochaco remembers. It used to be more staccato, and his face would scrunch up as he fought to get the next syllable out. He seems to have gotten past that part. Something about the way it comes out seems, I don't know, less involuntary somehow. More controlled. She bets that that took a lot of work. Good for him.
“P-plus U.A. didn’t really have a good j-j-journalism curriculum, anyway,” he shrugs.
“Did you end up dropping out? That’s what I’d assumed but I never knew for sure.” Ochaco scratches the back of her head. “All I knew is that I would walk by you in the cafeteria and say hi for about a week, and then you were gone.” She smiles. The memory is bittersweet. “It was sad not seeing you there.”
The memory’s obviously bittersweet for him, too. “Yeah, th-that’s what happened. Best for e-e-everyone, probably,” he says with a rueful expression. Ochaco nods. She can understand that.
“Hey, little listeners!” They both turn their heads as Present Mic’s voice booms over the din of the crowd. “Get over here, let’s get some group photos!”
“We’re not little anymore, teach!” Kirishima yells back heartily.
“You always will be to me, little listener!”
Ochaco rolls her eyes and turns back to the guy. “Well, it was super cool to see you again! Glad to see you landed on your feet!” She starts to half-turn away. “Hope to see you again sometime, yeah?”
He gives his biggest smile yet, which makes Ochaco feel good. “Yeah, h-hopefully! Stay s-s-safe, Uraraka.”
“Aw, thank you! You too…”
Dammit. She’s a bad person.
“Midoriya,” Midoriya helpfully supplies. Ochaco remembers now.
“Right! Right. Sorry. Yes. Midoriya. Deku.” She winks as she says the last one. She always liked that nickname. It added to his whole cute sad puppy vibe.
Deku’s smile stays fixed. “Right.”
“Well, see you around, Deku!” She waves and turns to leave.
“S-see you.”
That was a nice interaction, Ochaco thinks to herself. She enjoyed that. He seems like a real good guy.
Izuku collapses into his desk chair and takes a second to decompress from the events of the day, finally free from the noise for just a moment. The moment is promptly cut short when Ikeda walks over to his desk. “Hey. Police called, they want you over at their headquarters again. They said it’s not urgent, so wrap up your article before you go,” she says, patting him on the shoulder as she walks away.
Izuku pretends to focus on the document on his laptop screen until Ikeda’s out of the room and then immediately packs up his things in a rush, suddenly raring to go like he’s on an intravenous drug cocktail of Monster Energy and pure amphetamine. The universe was testing him with the camera stuff earlier, apparently. Now he gets to do the good shit.
Izuku’s pushing through the double doors of the police headquarters building within ten minutes, wiping sweat off his brow as he recovers from half-sprinting the whole way there. Before Izuku can even ask the receptionist where to go, Tsukauchi comes around the corner with a smile. “Hello again, Midoriya. This way,” he beckons as he turns back down the hallway he came from.
It’s just Tsukauchi and Tamakawa in the conference room when Izuku walks in. Tsukauchi hands Izuku a paper cup, which Izuku gratefully seizes as he moves towards the water cooler and surveys the room. The pictures and documents they’d had spread out on a table last time Izuku was here have been pinned to a bonafide evidence board, with the red string and everything. The sight of it makes Izuku almost giddy. He never thought his work would get to this level this soon, even if he’s here as a witness and not a journalist. He already can’t wait to add this to his article, he thinks as he finishes what’s in the cup and goes for a refill. The other article, the magnum opus that consumes all his time when he’s not reporting on whatever horseshit he has to write in order to pay rent. He smiles into the rim of the cup as he slows down to sips.
“Alright, here’s what we’ve got since you were last here,” Tsukauchi says as he walks toward the board and points to a print-out of an email. “The electrical company got back to us and said they didn’t have any evidence of a malfunction on their end. So that’s the power surge theory gone.” Tsukauchi follows a string to the picture of the scorched wall socket, and the scorched wall around it. “This was already way more damage than could plausibly be caused by a simple shortage, but now we have confirmation. That was the last above-board explanation for the blaze that had any chance of being the truth, so we’re officially counting the fire as a facet of the murder.”
This is so rad, Izuku thinks. Eighteen years old and already right in the center of a genuine homicide investigation. “I mean, yeah,” he says. “That’s what I told you guys from the start, and you knew I wasn’t lying.”
The one lie that Tsukauchi’s Quirk had caught was about Izuku’s stutter, so he doesn’t bother using it around them anymore. Fair enough, Izuku thinks. Gives him one less thing to worry about.
“I know, Midoriya,” Tsukauchi sighs, “But you know we had to cover our bases.”
“I literally saw the guy who did it.”
“You saw a guy. Actually, you saw a person. You couldn't even tell if it was a guy or not.”
“I can’t even tell if I’m a guy or not,” Izuku says. “You know what I meant.”
“Yeah, yeah. Alright, next. On the topic of identity,” Tsukauchi’s finger moves over to a plastic bag with hair in it. “Nothing identifiable was left within Takeyama’s house besides her remains, but we did sniff out some strands of singed hair from the alley.” Tamakawa’s feline nose twitches in subconscious self-congratulation. “Given the low amount of foot traffic and the intensity of the blaze’s ignition, we can be pretty sure that one or more of these hairs belong to the person you saw in the alley at the time of the event. Our DNA analysis guy should be here sometime tonight, but there’s millions of people in this city so I’m not expecting it to be super useful unless we already have the culprit’s DNA on file from a previous arrest.”
Tsukauchi moves his finger across the board, where a sheet of paper has been pinned on top of another. “Also, we’ve got an updated autopsy report.” Edgeworth moment, Izuku’s brain compulsively supplies. “In addition to the elbow and knee fractures, we did find fractures of the metatarsals in all four of her hands and feet as well. So you were right on that one.”
Izuku crosses his arms with a socially-acceptable amount of smugness. “So do you believe my growth plates theory now?”
Tsukauchi hums noncommittally. “It’s a possibility. It’s hard to imagine that this many specific Quirk-targeting injuries would happen by coincidence, but it’s also hard to imagine that anyone so familiar with the intricacies of her Quirk would want her dead. We’ve already gotten confirmed alibis for almost everyone close to her in her hero and personal lives, and the few we haven’t gotten to yet are scheduled for questioning tomorrow or the next day.”
Izuku nods, content with that response. “Alright.”
Silence. Tsukauchi continues looking at him.
“…is that it?”
“Yeah, that’s it,” Tsukauchi sighs as he lowers his arm. A big sigher, this guy. Izuku figures he probably would sigh a lot too if he was a detective on a case this cold. “We’re at a bit of an impasse. And since your theory about her growth plates being targeted at least seems like it could hold water, we thought maybe you’d be able to see something we’re not.”
Despite the macabre situation, Izuku takes some grim pride in himself as he sips his water. He’d had that theory about the Gigantification Quirk since his second profile on Mount Lady back in Analysis for the Future, No. 15. A little casual flex of his Quirk analysis skills. He’s allowed to pump up his own ego from time to time. Beyond that, he doesn’t have much to say to the cops. Izuku takes a second to think over his next words carefully.
“Honestly, I’m not really getting anything new from what you’re telling me. I can think on it, but you’ve got my witness testimony and my theory about the actus reus. That’s all I’ve really got for you,” he says with a shrug.
Izuku’s glad to see this sigh in particular, which Tsukauchi does with resignation. “Okay. Thank you, Midoriya. You have my number if anything comes to mind.”
“Yes, sir,” Izuku says with a smile. “Thank you, sir.” He drops his cup into the trash and closes the door behind him.
Izuku’s heart only starts racing when he steps through the double glass doors and into the open air. God, what a rush. He lives for this. He lives for this exact feeling. For the opportunity to be involved in a story.
As he grew up and learned more about himself, Izuku realized that it was never just about heroes for him. It was about analyses, narratives, stories. Thinking critically about every aspect of a situation. Deriving a through line that connects disparate pieces. Painting a picture that pulls everything he’s accumulated together to make a statement even greater than the sum of its many, many parts. And this story is easily the best one Izuku’s had the privilege of being involved in yet.
He takes in a deep breath of the outdoors. He processes how fast 40 km/h really is as the cars whiz past in front of him; how the ebbing and flowing of countless pedestrians congeals into a gelatinous mass of humanity that bubbles up in the gaps between buildings and streets; and, when he’s bumped into, how he probably is being a weirdo and a nuisance by just standing here in the middle of the sidewalk.
Izuku slips in some earbuds and heads east. He’ll walk home today. He feels like he’s earned a nice stroll.
Izuku feels as alive as he’s ever been.
He can’t wait to keep this going.