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(I’m the Bad Guy)
Tanaka Akira, newly minted as the Hot Head Hero: Incinerate, follows his mentor the Explosive Hero: Havoc through the ruins of the city. After weeks of people turning up, going from Quirked to Quirkless, the villain has finally been cornered. He feels a vicious sort of pleasure at the sight because this will show the world that he’s even better than Havoc when he was his age.
“Stay fucking close and do everything I fucking say,” his mentor barks. Akira nods, though he plans on making his mark.
“Status report,” barks Havoc to the purple-haired, tired-eyed detective.
“The villains have barricaded themselves inside. Tentative IDs are male and female with the female being younger. They have the weapon that’ll permanently erase quirks, Phantom Thief has been hit with it.”
“Tch,” Havoc says. “That’s it?”
Tanaka thinks the detective wants to punch Havoc in the face, which is crazy. Havoc is going to be next Symbol of Power, following the celebrated career of the first Symbol, Endeavor.
“Yes,” he says instead, unclenching his fist.
“The stand back and let me work.”
“AH GOOD,” a cheerful voice says throughout the different comms and radios and frequencies. “KACCHAN’S HERE. AND SO IS HIS LITTLE PROTÉGÉ! HOW FANTASTIC!”
That’s when they see the man on the roof, dressed in a well-appointed pinstripe suit with his long curly green hair tied back. Akira has no clue who Kacchan is, but his mentor turns a strange shade of purple-white.
“DEKU?!” he explodes. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
It clicks. The Mastermind of the League of Villains, the world’s most wanted criminal, Deku, some fucking quirkless piece of shit. Who is so jealous about the quirks around him that he rather destroy society itself.
“LOVELY AS ALWAYS KACCHAN. MY DARLING LITTLE PROTÉGÉ IS READY FOR HER BIG DEBUT! AFTER ALL, YOUR DEAR INCINERATE SHOULD BE QUITE FAMILIAR WITH HER. SHE WANTED TO BEGIN BIG!”
Another figure joins Deku on the roof, the slight figure of the female. She jumps into the air and flips, landing on her feet and twirling what looks like a scythe made of red light. Her black painted lips are pulled into a grin.
But Tanaka is drawn to her legs, scarred in a familiar way. QUIRKLESS burned into the skin of her thigh. He put in there.
“Watashi,” he growls. Of fucking course his own quirkless piece of shit would ruin this for him.
“Morrigan,” she counters and bows. “I am the Morrigan, named for the goddess of death, because I will end your life as you know it. One swipe of this scythe and you’re done for.”
Deku’s laughter echoes in the air, “WINNER TAKE ALL, KACCHAN! LET’S BEGIN!”
Watash-Morrigan spins her scythe and darts forward, “Let’s see who's worthless now, Tanaka!!!!”
(Vigilance)
Aizawa Shouta feels too old for this shit, chasing down wayward vigilantes across rooftops. Of course, this particular wayward vigilante is different. One that Shouta has known for years, who he has an uneasy truce with, one that works for an underground hero who works more in shades of gray.
“Eraser,” sings the voice of his constant headache. “Glad you could join us!”
Deku appears from the shadows dressed head to toe in his black and green suit that only gives away his dark, curly hair. His staffs are strapped on his back and there’s a bright, bouncy quality to his modulated voice.
Us?
“Us?” Shouta questions, keeping his face carefully blank. Deku is a vigilante who always works alone, has for the near decade that Shouta’s known him.
Behind the full-face mask, he can nearly here the pout in the vigilante’s voice, “What you get a protégé and not little old me?”
“Leave Psyren out of this,” Hitoshi was way too interested in the vigilante for Shouta’s liking, both him and Todoroki.
“You are no fun, Eraserhead! Fine. I’d like to introduce you to Circe! She’s fantastic.”
Another figure appears next to Deku, shorter and slimmer, piped with purple where Deku has green. She has escrima sticks within easy reach of her gloves and what looks like a collapsible crossbow as well.
“Eraserhead,” her modulated voice speaks evenly, reminding Shouta viscerally of Deku when they first met. The flat affect, like there is no emotion to be found within them, it took years for that to return to the kid’s voice.
“Circe,” he returns. “Do I even want to know how old she is, Deku?”
“About as old as I was when I first started,” the vigilante answers scratching his chin thoughtfully. “I’ll get her up to speed in no time at all. Remember what I told you Circe?”
“If it all goes to shit, then go see Eraserhead,” the girl parrots back. Deku reaches out to ruffle her fuzzy head of hair. Circe drifts toward him at that.
Great, fantastic, Shouta has two vigilantes to take care of now.
(Hacker)
Ochako has been working with the resistance since the Fall of UA in her first year, after the new beloved leader of Japan All For One killed All Might and took the country in one fell swoop. She sighs, fingers of her Hatsume prosthetic hand drumming against the countertop. She’ll need to go in for maintenance soon, fun.
“You look like you need some tea,” Deku says, green eye warm and fond. The cybnertic blue of the other as strangely bright and emotionless as ever. His smile sweet as the summer sky that Ochako can only sort of remember. Not for the first time, she wonders what it would have been like if they met at the hero course of UA. The resistance leader places a cup of tea by her elbow with a smile.
“So I heard you found a new recruit,” she says as she takes the tea and sighs in pleasure at the warmth seeping into her bones. Heating in the underground resistance was a precious commodity at times. Deku grins.
“Delphi,” he agrees. “She freed herself from a testing facility and brought us some valuable intel. Shouto’s with her right now.”
Delphi is a slip of a girl with a shaved head and a thick scar peeking out of the sweater that she’s drowning in. Shouto, who has become their chief medic and Deku’s left hand to Ochako’s right, looks over her with Hastume.
Ochako is a little terrified if only because the girl doesn’t look like she hails from the testing facilities like others they have freed or found over the years. She looks human and not some kind of amalgamation of man, metal, and quirk.
“And?”
“And you ever heard of those old pre-quirk comics? About a man with no quirk and a lot of money?”
Vaguely, she remembers a fuzzy movie night with Tsu and Tenya in Tsu’s hospital room after the USJ.
“There was a character called Oracle,” Deku answers, bright fondness in his voice. “Who was very, very good at hacking.”
The lights flicker for a moment and Hatsume cackles. Shouto smiles.
The girl’s eyes are a black now with flecks of blue running across it.
Deku grins at Ochako happily, “And, in many ways, I’d say that Oracle was even more badass than Batman.”
(----)
The statistics for quirkless committing suicide are quite high, Tenya notes as he works on a presentation for his charity. Part of him hates folding in quirkless advocacy under the Ingenium Charitable Foundation, which focuses primarily on disabilities instead. Because being quirkless is not a disability, despite what many people believe otherwise.
Either way, however, it’s not like that they would have a voice unless someone helped give them a voice. So he folds it into his charity, tries his best to speak on behalf of people whose experiences he doesn’t understand, and makes plans to migrate the quirkless rights charity into its own entity. He’s a hero and one that wants people to live safe lives. No one can do that if the rules only apply to some and not all.
Midoriya Izuku was the case that directed him to such research. It was such a scandal right before Tenya entered UA. And all the boy wrote was, apparently, “I’m sorry. But this is me being realistic.”
It was eclipsed by All Might’s retirement shortly after, but the story stuck with Tenya, stuck with others of his class. He’s redoubling his efforts now after the suicide of another quirkless teenager, Watashi Kiyomi. She copied Midoriya’s suicide note verbatim and jumped off a bridge.
Tenya’s stomach churns and he rubs his eyes before focusing.
He’ll do his best.
(Ghost Story)
“So that’s why you mentored me,” Ki says to Bo-Ground Zero, feeling as exhausted as she sounds. “You killed someone like me and you felt guilty.”
Her mentor’s face spasm, red eyes flashing. He doesn’t deny it though, not entirely.
“I didn’t kill him,” Ground Zero says.
“You told him to jump off a roof and he did,” Ki snaps back, her hands curling into fists. “He was like me and you told him that.”
“I was an asshole teenager!” he growls, red eyes bright. Ki pushes forward because she has become a hero. Now that her mentor is having a PR crisis because one of his former lackeys told the truth…
“That excuses jack shit! Did you even believe that I could do it?! That I could become a hero? Or was it just your own haunted conscience doing that for you?!” her voice wavers. “I’m not a chance for you to fix your past mistakes.”
“Ki,” Ground Zero sighs.
“Watashi,” she growls out, voice like a whip. “I’m not your protégé anymore. I won’t be paraded about to show how you changed. I am my own person and not a second chance for you to do things right.”
She leaves and he doesn’t follow.
(Ki goes to see Aizawa the next day about changing her hero name. She picks The Deku Hero: Persephone. Just because she hates that Ground Zero and the way she feels used by him, Midoriya Izuku wanted to be a hero more than anything.
And as one quirkless kid to another, she gets that. And, in some small way, she’ll make sure that he will be.)
(Reality)
Izuku holds Ki’s hand and watches her chest rise and fall. His protégé sleeps as she has for the past day since she was hit by the quirk while out on patrol with Shinsou to get a feel for underground work. His boyfriend was taking it hard, but no one could blame him. You don’t know what’ll happen when a civilian works himself into a panic after almost getting in a fight.
Luckily for them, the quirk lasts about a day.
(“It’s like a snapshot,” the college aged guy tells them later. “Of what your life could have been like under different circumstances. I don’t know if it’s peering into other timelines or alternate dimensions or just one long hallucination. No one ever sees the same thing. She’ll be fine when she wakes up though. I’m so sorry.”)
Ki wakes violently and suddenly, shooting up in bed with her eyes glowing gold for a moment before clearing back to the normal dark brown as the quirk finally fades. Her head whips around wildly. Izuku leans forward. His hand on her arm stills her rapid movements.
He smiles, a soft and reassuring thing as he breathes for the first time in a day.
“Hey.”
Ki's voice shakes, but she responds.
“Hey.”
She swallows, touching her face, and looking around the room.
“What’s my name?” she asks as she grips his hand in her own. He doesn't say anything about the fine tremor in it. “My hero name.”
“Hestia,” Izuku replies without hesitation and Ki’s shoulders slump forward. “You okay?”
She nods, running her hand through her buzz cut. “Fuck.”
“Do you want a hug?” Izuku asks, even though he should get a doctor. But the knot that had been in the stomach for the past day lessens considerably. He compartmentalizes because right now, it looks like Ki really needs a hug.
She nods and he sits on her bed and letting her hug him, burying her face into his shirt.
“I’m really glad I found you,” she whispers.
He pulls her close and doesn’t ask what it was that she had seen. There's time for that later.
“Me too,” he replies and ignores the wetness in his shirt.
She’s here. She’s safe. He’s here. He’s safe.
This is what matters.