Chapter Text
It was a normal day in the class 1-A dorm.
Until people noticed Izuku and Mei fiddling with an old VHS player and connecting it to the TV screen with a jury rigged contraption.
“Uh, Deku?” Uraraka asked as more and more people were entering the common room and watched the two fiddled with the wires.
“And done! Thanks for the help Midoriya. Who would have thought you were good with electronics?” Mei said with a grin.
“It’s nothing really. You did most of the work with all the stuff I ended up bringing here from the attic. All to actually learn what’s in these old VHS tapes. I’m still surprised they still in good condition despite being some two hundred year old format by now…” Izuku said as he grabbed a random tape and placed it in the player drive.
The video began to play…
It happened when he was nine years old.
“Wait, is that Bakugou as a kid?” Mina exclaimed at the sight.
One day, Midoriya Izuku, one he disparagingly called Deku, didn’t show up for class. He told himself that the quirkless idiot was sick.
“I don’t recall getting sick when I was at that age…” Izuku mumbled out.
He didn’t shown up the following days either.
“Is this a home movie your family made Deku?” Ochako asked as they started to take a seat to watch the screen.
It was Friday when he decided to go to the Midoriya apartment, partly by curiosity, partly by his mother’s worried nagging when she didn’t get a reply from Inko in their usual chat group for days.
“This is turning into a horror movie…” Jiro commented.
Bakugou knocked on the door.
Silence.
The door was unlocked when he checked.
“Definitely a horror movie.” Sero added.
When he opened it, he was shocked.
The apartment was a mess.
Furniture broken. Plates shattered. An abandoned toppled dinner covered in ants.
“What the fuck!? This didn’t happen at all!” Bakugou shouted but entranced at what he’s seeing.
Bakugou ran around the apartment for anything.
He feared for the worst.
Yet, no signs of blood nor a body or two. He called the police.
“Aww, Bakubro does care!” Kirishima said, to Bakugou’s fury.
In the end, it was a cold case. Robbery and kidnapping, the Midoriya family’s personal belongings were taken in the struggle. There was no noise that the neighbors heard, no sign of anything wrong.
“That… doesn’t make any sense.” Shoji commented.
But it was what Bakugou overheard from some random police officers that got to him.
“So… another quirkless kid got kidnapped.” the officer said as the two leaned on their car while taking a break.
“Another?” Izuku mumbled.
“Eh, it’s a close shut case, robbery, kidnapping, probably murder, like all the other missing quirkless children.” the older officer said as he took a puff from his cigarette.
“’All the other quirkless children?’ W-what?” he continued.
“It is worrying at how all the missing children are quirkless.”
“It’s their dang fault for not having a quirk. Besides, who cares about some declining demographic anyway? It’s just gonna be added to the database, one missing quirkless kid to the statistics. The world’s better off with one less useless brat anyway.”
Uraraka had to stop Iida from making a speech about the police should be serving people in need without prejudice.
He wanted to scream, to shout, to do anything at the officer’s remarks. But he knew he needed a spotless record to go to his dream school and become a pro hero.
“What sort of twisted logic is that!?” Mina shouted at the screen while Bakugou watched in worrying silence.
Only a few people attended the makeshift funeral weeks later.
The police never found the bodies and any leads went cold.
Only the Bakugou family, Inko’s parents, and a few of her friends came to the funeral. Bakugou Katsuki was the only friend of Izuku that attended, and even then, he knew they weren’t friends for a long time.
“Wait, what?” Kirishima exclaimed before glancing at Bakugou.
“It’s not fucking me, Shitty Hair.” Bakugou said.
He tried to distance himself. That Izuku was a pebble, a stepping stone to his story of greatness, an extra like all the others. But he couldn’t shake it. The strange feeling of failing at being a hero when needed be.
Despite what he told to himself, Izuku and Inko followed him like a ghost.
He tried to refocused to his studies and training, using the energy to make himself better at being a hero.
“So he does have a heart, underneath the dynamite.” Hagakure said.
“That’s not me! Deku wasn’t kidnapped when we were kids!” Bakugou shouted.
“We know that. We’re not blind.” Mineta muttered in a deadpan before he ended up cowering by Asui, just in case.
As he entered middle school, a new name would dominated the media.
The mysterious gentleman thief, called by the media with the code name of Lupin. A masked vigilante or villain, depending on one’s opinion, became a thorn on the side of everyone, heroes and villains alike.
“A Harima Oji copycat?” Izuku mumbled out.
He didn’t work alone. Nor did he work silently.
Two, in Bakugou’s opinion, criminal lackeys of Lupin are Gentle Criminal, a man after fame than anything actually villainous, and La Brava, an infamous hacker and Gentle’s number one fan.
“Alright, who the fuck decided to make this thing?” Bakugou said in annoyance.
Gentle may acted like he’s the leader of the gang with Lupin as the lackey for the spectacle, the performance, but Bakugou knew there’s more than meets the eye to Lupin.
“I-I don’t know Kacchan. I just found them in the attic.” Izuku said but Bakugou looked at him with a raised eyebrow.
It was when he was analyzing the latest robbery of a painting that was later discovered to be a fake, with the original returned in its place, that Bakugou realized that Gentle wouldn’t come up with a plan that complicated and detailed.
“What ya mean ‘attic’? You lived in an apartment building!”
The man’s a self professed celebrity, one who would hog the spotlight. He played the role of a stereotypical evil mastermind well, because society thought that was normal. But Gentle’s the clown, the presenter than the ringleader.
“Shush! TV Bakugou’s thinking!” Mina exclaimed to Bakugou’s annoyance.
La Brava’s the tech support, the hacker and tinker.
Which only left the masked thief Lupin. The more he thought of it, the more it made sense. The robberies appeared randomly chosen, only to reveal more behind them.
“Had to be a Harima Oji copycat.” Izuku mumbled.
A robbery of an orphanage revealed a child pornography ring.
“Wait what!?” Mineta exclaimed in disgust.
A robbery of a museum revealed that the curator attempting to replace the originals with fakes and selling them on the black market.
A robbery of a major corporation revealed the CEO’s villainous connections and money laundering scheme.
“Those are interesting targets, like a modern day Robin Hood.” Kaminari commented.
“Except instead of giving money to the poor it’s revealing the hidden crimes.” Momo said.
The more Bakugou looked up at Lupin’s blurry photos, the more they seemed familiar, like someone he knew.
“Wanna bet it’s Izuku?” Dark Shadow said in a mischievous tone.
“There shall be no such bet. We know this is building up to a grand reveal, if it’s following a tale of suspense.” Tokoyami countered.
The realization only hit him at the end of his middle school education. Months after he got first place on the entrance exam, making him a shoe in for UA.
One summer night, Lupin announced robbery of a large diamond during some rich guy’s gala.
“Bet the diamond’s illegal or something then.” Dark Shadow added.
No matter how many heroes they tried to bring to stop him, Lupin stole the diamond from under their nose.
It was a media spectacle.
Shouto found himself getting annoyed at the media circus around the robbery.
“Yup, a Harima Oji copycat thief.” Izuku mumbled, nodding to himself.
The chase lead to the bridge as media helicopters and drones followed for the best angle for their story.
The whole family watched the news during dinner, enraptured like everyone else watching. Mitsuki gasped at the sight of the diamond being revealed as a hollow fake on the detective’s hands when Lupin thrown it back at him and the ticking time bomb was on Lupin’s hand.
“The fuck, why is it focused on the old hag like that.” Bakugou growled.
Then it happened.
A gust of wind by a hero’s quirk resulted in Lupin’s scarf and domino mask to blow into the river as he used a rope on a helicopter to rise up to the top of the bridge.
“The grand reveal. The truth shall be revealed in the light.” Tokoyami stated.
“Annoying at how it’s prolonging the suspense though.” Jiro commented.
The Bakugou family looked at the screen in wide eyed shock.
As Lupin threw the bomb into the air before it detonated, they knew who the master thief was.
The fifteen year old Midoriya Izuku, missing and presumed dead, was captured that night.
Bakugou Katsuki sat there in utter shock, struggling to understand what he just saw, while his mother practically ran to the police station where Lupin would be temporarily placed in.
“What the actual fuck.”
The screen then went into static and the jury rigged player released the VHS tape.
“That… was something.” Izuku said as he returned it to its box. “Do you have an idea what that was about Mei?” he asked, only to see Mei’s look of utter shock on her face.
“Midoriya. What are those VHS tapes exactly?” she asked in a near whisper. “I’m trying to figure it out. It can’t be normal VHS tapes. I has to be a quirk or something. Maybe they’re looking at events in other realities? Since I doubt an AI nor someone with a lot of free time could create whole realistic scenes that didn’t happen in a computer then put them in an ancient format like a VHS. Also, that’s too high quality for a VHS tape to have.”
“She… does have a point.” Momo said. “The video and audio quality is too high for something from a VHS tape.”
“While I too am curious about this, may I remind everyone that we have class for the day and so we should get ready for the day!” Iida said with his usual chopping gesture. That resulted in everyone in the common room hurrying up to get ready for the day.
They all forgot about the security cameras stationed in the common room and hallways of the dorm. They weren’t hidden but it became part of the background for the students.
The security AI did, however, noted a discrepancy and alerted Nedzu.
He looked at his screens showing multiple cameras, all muted, and watched the ones in the dorm before comparing the time stamps of every camera in the school. All accurate and in time except for one thing.
The ones in the dorm showed more time passing than it should be, enough time to watch the video within the span of a minute. It was as if time itself was paused during the viewing.
The mouse grinned and began making plans and calls.