Chapter Text
"This is my design."
- Will Graham, Hannibal
Izuku watched the previously invisible girl walk away from the bar, sighing and turning back. If his estimation was correct, the heroes should be surrounding the place any moment. With that information in mind, he clasped his mask over his face and drew his hood up to cover his noticeable hair and headed in another direction. In the sweltering summer heat, Izuku rolled up the sleeves of his green hoodie, scratching at the bandages that covered every inch of the skin on his arm, minus the fingers.
He thought of some other place to go while the whole battle would be going on, going through the list of things he needed to do that he kept in his head. He hadn't visited Sawamura recently to congratulate him on the second place in the underground MMA fighting tournament. But he had no obligation to do so, so he filed that away for later. Visiting Kai (Izuku once tried to call Overhaul 'Chisaki' but he was considerably pissed to hear the name, so Izuku settled for Kai, which the yakuza accepted begrudgingly) was an option, seeing as Izuku hadn't seen him in quite a bit. Taking off a little edge with the man's quirk was an attractive offer, but Izuku still didn't think that was right.
There was one person in town that Izuku hadn't visited yet...
As if one cue, Izuku bumped into someone, immediately recognising the voice that offered a simple apology—only to cut off as the man recognised the green-haired boy.
"Izuku," he said, eyes uncertain, hands slightly twitching for the gun Izuku knew he kept in the inside of his suit jacket.
Izuku only smile, though no one couldn't see through the mask, it was noticeable in his eyes. "Hisashi."
Hisashi gathered his son into a hug, Izuku melting into the warmth that he offered. He remembered the nights that his father came back from his job overseas, the heat in his chest that became hotter every breath he took a breath and cooler every time he exhaled. It was amazing too, a little Izuku seeing his father's throat glow like a furnace every time before he sneezed, warning the other two Midoriyas of the small stream of flames that will shoot out his mouth as he sneezed.
"Let's walk," the younger offered, slipping off his mask as he decided to use the main streets instead of his usual back alleys.
Hisashi looked a great deal like Izuku. A lot of his features, including the mess of hair and the freckles came from this man. Other than that, Izuku's huge green eyes—Hisashi's was dark and narrow—and green hair—his father sported black hair—came from his mom.
"How's... work?" Hisashi asked, taking in the sight of his son.
He knew of his son's time as a villain—and he couldn't even chastise the boy or report him to the authorities. Inko didn't try either, even when Izuku visited her every holiday. After all, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
Inko killed before. She also tried to murder Hisashi when he saw her trying to dispose of the body. Instead of reporting her, he helped her clean up, giving her tips for future times.
Hisashi himself was a government employed killer, so he can't really say anything about Izuku killing.
They were a family of criminals. A murderer, a villain, and an assassin.
"Not good with the League," Izuku said nonchalantly, keeping his voice low enough so that the people they passed would not overhear. "Though I can always find a job elsewhere."
"Have you gained favours with any other group?" Hisashi asked.
"Yeah," Izuku replied. "I'm on good terms with a high-ranking yakuza. Ever heard of the Eight Precepts?"
"That's my boy." Hisashi smiled. "I used an informant from there once. Even if they fell from the height of their power after the discovery of quirks, the yakuza still hold a lot of influence over the flow of information in the underground."
Izuku hummed as he looked over to the screens displayed high on the buildings of Yokohama. "I assume you're here for a reason?"
"None I can tell you, son."
Izuku froze, still looking at the screens. It showed a UA conference with Eraserhead, Vlad King, and Principal Nedzu answering questions for the press. Izuku felt a smile on his lips as his mind ran a mile a minute. The sight of UA led him back to the thought of heroes, then leading him to Tooru's words. He pieced some things together, his eyes taking on an interested gleam. He wondered... the girl that tracked someone, as the information that Tooru had given him detailed, she was probably the one that found the Noumu and...
"I'm sorry, Hisashi, I've got to go. Maybe I'll find you before you leave?"
With that, he rushed off, leaving his confused father behind. Hundreds of scenarios and things that he could do to spice things up went through his head, the same thoughts plaguing him. What would happen if I did that? Will that still work if I do this? Can that happen if I try that?
He just wanted to see what would happen.
Izuku came to the warehouse just as Mount Lady broke in, grabbing at the various Noumus in disgust. Izuku snuck past them to get to where he knew Sensei would be.
"You knew, didn't you?" The man standing in the shadows said as the green-haired villain smiled a sickly sweet and toothless grin.
"Did I? Trust me to a spy and I make use of her, Sensei." Izuku took his mask to of his pocket before deciding against clasping it on and dropping it to the ground.
Sensei sighed. "You don't like masks, do you?"
"What you gonna do?" Izuku held out his hand in a mock imitation of an offer of a handshake. "Need the quirk to take them down?"
Sensei eyed (as much as he can without eyes) Izuku warily, giving him a command. "Get rid of them. Be creative." Black liquid appeared to take away the Noumus, causing the heroes great distress at their futile attempts to keep the monsters here.
Izuku's smile grew wider, thinner, more sinister under his mask. He turned towards the heroes, stepping into light. Ideas were already rushing through his head, about what could happen, how he could utilise this great gift of a quirk in unique ways and make them think he had some different quirk—or maybe not at all. The heroes spotted him, Best Jeanist already using his quirk to try and subdue him. Izuku let his immense power rest on the world, grabbing hold of every atom in the kilometre radius.
His eyes shone with a childish wonder that made the heroes let their guard down for one second—the one second that cost them their life.
Shouto, along with the others, turned to leave, silently shuffling out of the narrow alleyway once they checked that the pro-heroes have gotten the situation under control. During the training camp, he'd warmed up to a lot of his classmates and gained some semblance of friendship with them after Iida... That was what led him to team up with his classmates to find Bakugou and get out.
They were leaving peacefully when the warehouse disappeared. No, it didn't disappear; it was something much worse. The whole warehouse and the space in front of it where heroes and policemen were standing were ripped apart into molecular pieces.
The three, Kirishima, Yaoyorozu, and Shouto were paralysed in fear as they held their hands tight over their mouths to stop from screaming in terror. The figure Shouto recognised as Bonaparte stood with his arms wide open, head tilted towards the sky and laughing. It was that soft sound that froze the heroes-in-training to the spot, a terrible thing that mocked a human voice. The position he took—it was like he was laughing at the heavens where the gods stood, saying, what's a god to me?
Thousands, millions, billions of tiny barely visible particles that would've otherwise been invisible floated in the air, still as the dead. It was hard not to see them, considering the sheer amount of them that split—it was probably parts of everything from stone to blood to bones and anything solid or liquid. It was just plain terrifying.
"That's enough, my boy." A voice that, instead of snapping the students that were currently thanking the gods that they survived that one-sided onslaught out of their paralysis, only pushed them further down into the fear.
Bonaparte tilted his head in the older man's direction, eyes wide in a mad curiosity. "Did I, do I, should I, will I take orders from you, King of Spades?"
"It would be a most polite thing to do, seeing as you work under me."
"Have I ever?" All the particles that seemed to be still in the air moved as one, becoming a wave of colourless mass the flowed like water, flowing around Bonaparte. Shouto suspected that either the villain didn't take all or compressed them together so densely, because the flowing mass seemed a lot less big than the things that Bonaparte destroyed. "I'm the Joker, the wild card. Maybe I'm on your side. Maybe I never was. Maybe I've always helped the heroes. Or maybe I'm just here, dancing in the middle while all of you try to catch me." He stuck out his tongue and laughed in manic glee. "I'm free, Sensei. I'm a bird you can only watch from afar, my wings slipping from your grasp."
As he said the last word, the colourless mass divided into hundreds, all shaped like a bird. The whole flapped its wings in a random and natural order, moving exactly like a normal bird should save for the stone-like skin. Then, all the buildings around the warehouse lifted—all in pieces. They divided more, turning into birds again and flying to gather with the same flock above the two villains.
Yaoyorozu whimpered. The other two students snapped their heads round to face her, eyes wide in horror.
The birds, the people being torn apart, the buildings turning to pieces—everything stopped. The world went eerily quiet.
A curious pair of eyes landed on them.