Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Toshinori wasn’t sure what he was expecting from Midoriya all those months ago when he offered him his quirk, but he certainly wasn’t expecting the issues that training him did bring. He thought that maybe he’d have to coax the boy to push a bit harder, to run another block or try lifting one more piece of trash off the beach. He thought that, perhaps, he’d have to steal a line or two from his own mentor, maybe push the kid to puking once or twice.

Instead, he is “blessed” with a workaholic.

“Young Midoriya,” he says, “please rest!” 

“Young Midoriya, have you eaten today?” 

“Young Midoriya! Are you keeping up with your studies?”

“Young Midoriya! What do you mean you didn’t sleep more than 4 hours last night?!”

Young Midoriya this, Young Midoriya that. He hadn’t realized that mentoring a child would turn him into an only somewhat effective mother hen.

And yet, when he looks at Midoriya, sweating buckets and half collapsed on a pile of old electronics, he sees his past self training his ass off. When Midoriya smiles, he catches glimpses of a grin that glows bright with confidence and assurance. And everyday, when Midoriya appears to train to death again, it’s like Toshinori can see a blooming bud of a brand new I’m Here .

“All Might!” Midoriya says, “I’m rested today! I promise!”

“All Might, I’m keeping to the meal plan!”

“All Might! I’m almost scoring at the top of my class!”

“All Might, I promise I’m sleeping just fine! It was only a little bit of extra training I swear-”

This boy is going to give him a heart attack, but quite honestly Toshinori might just deserve it. Gran Torino would probably call it an act of karma if he told him (which, of course, he isn’t going to do. Not yet anyway.)

(He definitely should but there’s a reason for his fear of short elderly people ok?! And it doesn’t matter what Naomasa says because it is a perfectly rational fear, thank you very  much! )

Of course, between sweating buckets on the beach and running miles around the city, Toshinori begins to actually get to know his successor. Toshinori learns about the beginning of his dream, inspired by his own debut, as they stretch (“ I want to smile like you, one day”) . He learns about his notetaking and transformation from fanboy to active quirk analyst online in breaks from trash collecting (“ Oh! Did you hear about Mt. Lady? I saw her debut and it was incredible!) . Midoriya even gushes to him about his mother between gulps of water (“ I know she worries over me, but she’s never once given up on me. I just want to make her proud” ) .

He learns about Midoriyas’ friends, or lack thereof, as the sun sets one summer evening. He listens to the few excuses he has for the bruises he comes with that aren’t from training. He hears all the things Midoriya says about quirklessness in this day and age, and a few he doesn’t.

(“ I know that 20% of the world is quirkless, but it doesn’t always feel like that, you know? Sometimes, it feels like I’m the only one without anything special about myself, like I have nothing to offer that the world hasn’t seen before.”)

( That’s wrong, Toshinori thinks, you are so much more than what the world has given you credit for, and I will make them see it if it’s the last thing I do.)

There is still so much left for Toshinori to tell him, to show him, to try teaching him. And he has time to do so. Midoriya has made it into his alma mater. There is no big bad All For One there to steal him away before Midoriya is ready, no whisper of a villain looking to take him out that he cannot handle. Toshinori feels so blessed , so grateful , that though he may not have forever to give his boy, he has years to watch him grow into the hero he spies in Midoriyas’ shadow.

Maybe that’s why he feels so blindsided when Midoriya disappears.

There is no warning. There were no signs. One winter day, Young Midoriya waves goodbye after a long day of recovering from the entrance exam (“Did it take you long to harness One for All? Do you think I could manage 5% before class starts?”) and the next he never shows up. Toshinori waits by the entrance to the beach for hours, first patiently, then worriedly, because Midoriya has never been more than a few minutes late, and then he receives a text from Naomasa.

Toshi , it reads. Your successor's name is Midoriya Izuku, right?

Yes, types Toshinori. His hands are shaking. Why?

His mother has just reported him missing.

His room seems perfectly normal at first glance. Sure, there is an excessive amount of hero merch on the walls, but despite that it’s a normal teenage boys room. His bed is unmade but clean, there is dirty laundry in the hamper, and the desk is organized but well used. If it weren’t for the writing on the window, his mother may not have even worried about him for hours more.

He smiles just like you , it says in red ink.

There is no other sign of anything amiss. 

Midoriya did not make it to school that day. His mother saw him off that morning with a smile and then left herself. A few classmates say they saw him on their way to class, but none can recall exactly where they saw him. One says Midoriya looked nervous, but “it’s not like that’s anything new, the nerd usually looked like that, you know?”

Toshinori doesn’t know. Not really. Young Midoriya is skittish, true, but he doesn’t think he’s actually seen him full blown nervous since that first day they met. And even then, it was tinged with excitement or admiration or determination or relief and-

He let his guard down. Toshinori let his guard down, let himself relax, and now his boy is gone.

He smiles just like you, the note had read. I wonder how long it will last?

Long enough , Toshinori thinks. Please, god, let it last long enough for me to save him.

Toshinori tries not to wonder what his smile looks like now, tries not to linger on what it must be twisting into instead of the grin he helped to grow each day. He doesn’t have time for that.

(They were supposed to have time . )

Izuku is a terrible person .

In all fairness, he tries not to be! He tries to help his mother with meals (especially now that he’s on a diet), he tries his best in school (even though it seems like even the teachers are pitted against him), and he even tries to do little things around the neighborhood to help out his neighbors (like feed Watanabe-sans cat when she runs away bi-monthly or help Adachi-obasan across the street or-). And for the most part, it seems to have paid off! (The cat will let him pet her now, and Adachi-obasan will sneak him sweets, and All Might said he had the makings of a hero and- .) Izuku tries to do what’s right, as much as he can.

Which is probably why, when the stranger in his bedroom wakes him up at some ungodly hour in the morning with a panicked whisper of “Please don’t scream Icanexplain-!”, he tenses up and flails around but he doesn’t scream.

It’s a close one though.

The stranger has a hand over his mouth, but when Izuku continues not screaming, he switches on the lamp by his bed and-. If Izuku wasn’t so sure that he got his coloring from his mother, he’d probably ask himself if he was about to be murdered by some clone of his dad. He’s got Izuku’s wild green hair and eyes and even his freckles, all on a slightly thinner version of his dad’s face. The jawline, the nose, it’s all unquestionably his dad’s. And that’s so freaking weird .

He has scars though, this stranger. A weird crisscross, like an X, over the bridge of his nose. Silvered lines and pockmarks over his hands and up his wrists until they disappear under his hoodie. All old and healed over, seemingly as much as they ever will be. The stranger glances nervously towards the door and back to Izuku.

“I can explain,” he repeats. Izuku stops flailing long enough to look at him incredulously. He winces. “Uh. I’m. You from the future?”

Sure he is, and Izuku is actually All Might's secret love child. 

The stranger fidgets, then cautiously takes his hand off of Izuku's mouth to rub the back of his neck and looks away. 

“You can’t actually expect me to believe that.” Izuku says as he sits up. He doesn’t whisper, because quite honestly he’s hoping maybe his mom might hear something, but he doesn’t push his luck and scream either. The stranger stops rubbing his neck (a nervous habit, maybe?) and looks Izuku dead in the eyes. 

“Hero Analysis for the Future notebook number 3, page 26.” Izuku pales. 

“That-that was a joke -”

“Does it look like I’m joking-”

“- because I was seven and obsessed with sci-fi novels-”

“-I look just like Dad how the heck do you explain that-?!”

“-and not to be taken seriously and Idon’tmaybeyouranevilcloneheretomURDERME-”

“-OK!” The stranger says. He smacks his hand back over Izuku’s mouth. “First of all, if I wanted to murder you, you’d be dead.”  

To be fair, that does seem incredibly valid. 

“Second of all, if I tell you the secret time travel passcode, will you believe me?” He looks dead inside as he says it. Izuku nods, because there’s no way-

“All Might Boy Junior to the rescue,” his future self says before taking his hand off his mouth again to smack it over his own face.

Izuku is horrified all over again, but in a different kind of way than the holy shit I’m about to die way he woke up. Is this regular embarrassment? Second hand embarrassment? Oh god he almost wishes his future self was actually here to kill him now. 

Wait a second.

“How- uh, how are you not, like, dead? Or something? Isn’t time supposed to prevent us from meeting o-or do you remember meeting me already and this is a closed loop or-”

“I have no idea why the space time continuum hasn’t ejected me from existence,” his future self (Future self? Izuku 2.0?? Midoriya, the update??? What the f-) says. “I thought that the thing I used to send me back would, like, just be a mental thing? Like I would wake up as you but we would combine or something or you would have my memories, you know? I honestly have no clue how long I’m going to be here.” 

“Huh,” says Izuku, in lieu of literally anything else. 

“Considering that, I wanted to tell you as much as possible about the upcoming couple years now that I’m pretty sure I can’t mess up your UA entry.”

“Um,” says Izuku.

“For instance, you’re going to need to need to keep a closer eye on your friends-” (they make friends?!) “-because holy crap they get into so much trouble and that will be something they think will only be applicable to you but they can take that hypocritical thought process and shove it up their ass, Tenya, you literally tried to murder a mADMAN-” (his friends try to mURDER PEOPLE?!) “-AND I DON’T CARE HOW JUSTIFIED YOU FELT IT WAS AT THE TIME AND DON’T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON KACCHAN-”

“WOAH WAIT A SEC-” Izuku says, only to instantly be shushed by his older self (which, rude , he was being much louder, thank you very much), “-wait a sec,” he whispers, “we’re friends with Kacchan?!” 

“ Yes ,” his future self stage whispers back, looking exasperated. “Keep up. He’s gonna get kidnapped later but we can fix that.”

Izuku takes a deep breath holding his hands together in front of his mouth, and stares at his other self (other self? Alternate self?? Oh God this is confusing-). It’s only now that he can see just how deep the circles under his eyes are. Going off what he knows about himself, older him probably hasn’t slept well for days, and considering that he assumed older people just straight up need less sleep than teens, maybe even longer than that. Which is probably not great (especially since the last time Izuku was severely sleep deprived ended with him both comatose and in possession of several questionable emails that he has since deleted. He doesn’t know who ItsNotAPhaseDad37 is, and considering the content of the emails he doesn’t want to know). Izuku himself is pretty exhausted, what with it being like two in the morning and all, and the combination of the two of them like this can’t be a good thing. 

But. Time travel. With unknown paradox factors that could kick in at any moment. Izuku can work with this. But first-

“I’m so sorry but I can’t keep looking at you and thinking of alternative ways of saying older me, do you have like a nickname I can call you or-?”

“Deku,” his older self deadpans. “I go by Deku.”

Izuku couldn’t stop himself from cringing and tilting his head in a “ like, for real?” way if he tried.

“To be fair, one of our new friends said our Deku meant Dekiru, and I. We? I thought that sounded a lot better than worthless so uh. I kept it?” Deku whispers, gradually losing confidence in the face of what Izuku is sure is an increasingly more incredulous look on his face. “It made Kacchan mad too.” 

“...right. Ok. Well, it doesn’t mean that to me , so you can keep it.”

“Great.”

“Next point, we should write all of this down-”

“ Absolutely we should, that is an excellent idea, are our extra notebooks still-?”

“Under the desk, yes, also did you almost admit to thinking that you were just gonna body snatch me?”

“ -it’s not body snatching if I’m not an alien anyways Kacchan gets kidnapped after- ”

It’s the start of a long night. 

Nearly an entire heavily coded notebook, several pens, and half a mental breakdown later, dawn begins to peek through Izuku’s curtains. He and Deku (which is still such a weird choice of name) are half collapsed against his bed and the floor. Izuku stares at the ceiling cocooned in one of his All Might blankets, back on the floor and legs swung over to rest on his bed, and Deku carefully spins a dead pen across the knuckles of his hand with the most scarring, his own blanket draped over his legs. The notebook lies discarded on the floor between them. 

(They had argued over the title. Izuku wanted it named for the future, and Deku for his past. The argument had stalled out when they had realized it was the last thing to write. 

The plain notebook is still blank.)

Izuku blinks hazily up at the ceiling, then turns to Deku.

“Why did you tell me all this?” He breathes. The sunlight sneaking past his curtains casts Deku’s face into one big shadow. “Wouldn’t it have been better to wait? To change things a little as they come up? Won’t telling me all this change things somehow?” Deku stops spinning the pen.

“Maybe,” Deku says. His face is still shaded. “But I don’t want to wait and see what little changes I could make. I just want to fix things now .” His voice breaks. Deku turns enough that the sunlight hits his face, and Izuku can see his anguish. The remains of horror and shame and desperation (“Don’t go too close to that cat Izuku!” his mother says, rushing towards him. “Cornered animals will do anything to get away”). “I want to make a change so big that things can’t ever be like that again.”

Izuku thinks back to all his blog forums, to his training with All Might, to his dream. He thinks of people who could one day bring him joy, bright faces and brighter futures tossed aside for some stupid villians idea of prosperity. Izuku thinks, and he looks at Deku, his older self, strong and stumbling and wishing, so hard , but this time it’s not for a quirk but for a chance at a better future and. Izuku has always wanted to be a hero, to do the right thing, to be like someone who would look at him (quirkless , worthless, good for nothing Deku) and offer a helping hand. 

(Izuku is a terrible person.)

“Ok,” he says, sitting up. “Then let’s do something big.”

Chapter Text

He wakes up on the beach. There’s grit in his eyes, but he doesn’t know if it's from his unplanned nap or the sand. 

It doesn’t matter either way.

The sound of waves is unbroken by anything else. They lick at the soles of his shoes. The beach is empty. The only light he has is the low hanging moon and the few stars that peak through the light pollution of Musutafu. It’s quiet. He’s alone. ( He knew he would be. There are no surprises here.)

He pushes away a crushed soda can and heaves himself up. It’s time to bite the bullet and figure out where, no, when he is. He looks down. His hero suit, torn and bloodied to hell, looks back.

( ...uh oh.)  

Step One, access yourself. He is in possession of his hero suit, his half empty first aid kit, and his wallet. He does not have enough cash to buy anything more substantial than a soda. His cards were probably already obsolete in his time, and probably doubly so now that those accounts don’t exist in the first place. He does have a regular ID, but it isn’t updated, and it’s not like he can go waving his hero ID everywhere instead. He could maybe scare off some two-bit thugs with it. (And that is a big maybe, considering his side is still bleeding and he looks like he just survived a garbage disposal. Or an office shredder. His hero suit is fucked.)  

This is fine. He can work with this. 

(This is nOT FINE)

Step Two, access your surroundings. It’s the beach. (Of fucking course it’s the beach.) The one that he cleaned. Except there’s maybe a day or two's worth of trash still here, and it’s night time. He’s alone. The city is behind him, and if he’s lucky it’s late enough that most places are closed. He should be able to sneak his suspicious self past any CCTV successfully enough to hide his uniform. 

Step Three, make a plan. He needs street clothes. He needs to stop his wound from getting any worse. He needs all this sand to stop sticking to him. He needs to figure out the date. Easy. (Did he just break time? Is he about to snap into his current self at any second? Is he about to disappear because of some stupid time paradox?) 

“I can’t just disappear,” Izuku says, eyes blurry but serious. “For one, it would kill mom, but if they catch us-”

“-they’d think you were a villain for sure.” Deku huffed and shoves his bangs out of his face. He takes a quick sip from the cup of coffee Izuku snagged from the kitchen. “Besides, All Might won’t give up looking for you. And while we need him on his guard so he’s more careful about his time limit, we don’t need him hopeless.” Deku pauses. “But what if you were kidnapped? ”

The nerd stumbles into him that morning a couple blocks from school. It’s annoying as hell.

“Watch it, Deku!” Katsuki yelled, shoving him away. God, couldn’t the nerd stick to their usual routine and stay the hell out of his way? 

“S-sorry, Kacchan!” Deku cringes back and wrings his hands. His eyes darted behind them. “I-I, uh, didn’t mean to-”

“I don’t give a fuck about what you meant to do, Deku. Just stay out of my way. In fact, stay where you belong, behind me .” He lets his hands steam and pop, holding them out in front of him. Deku flinches but holds his ground, glancing behind them again. 

“B-but-”

“But nothing . Get lost, Deku!” Katsuki steps forward, shoving him to the ground with his still steaming hands, and stomps away. He doesn’t bother to look back. 

(He regrets that, later on. His actions, his words, but that most of all.

Katsuki should’ve looked back .)

Class that day is slow, and Deku stays out of his sight for the rest of it. All the extras gossip about the high school exams, either bemoaning how hard the private school testing was or frantically studying for the upcoming public school ones. The teachers either help answer last minute questions or help students fill out last minute applications. Katsuki doesn’t bother. His acceptance letter from UA came as no surprise, and all that’s left to do here is graduate then get the hell out of dodge. When school is let out, he trudges home, greets his mother, then heads to his room to change and work out. It’s one of the last normal days he has to suffer through before his backstory ends, before his future begins. He shoves his headphones on with a feral grin.

(He misses the phone ringing downstairs. He misses his mother answering. He missed a lot of things that day.

Izuku seems to slip through his fingers like sand.)

Step four is probably to follow the plan he made in step three, but to be completely honest he hasn’t thought of any specifics. (Goals are plans, right? Plans without any ideas of how to get there?? He’s 70% sure he heard that from somewhere.) So, clothes. He can probably pull off his pants being some dirty sweats if he finds a hoodie or something to cover the incredibly more suspicious top of his jumpsuit. And if he loses the knee pads. And the gloves. And his faceguard. (Oh god, he’s gonna get arrested for vigilantism before he even attempts it, isn’t he?) He’s not losing the shoes though, it’s hard to find a good pair that fit no matter how obviously un-sporty they look.

Maybe he can just tell people he’s cosplaying an original character or something. Surely that will work on someone.

He stumbles over an abandoned backpack half tucked behind a dumpster, half open and spilling out onto the ground. It is incredibly suspicious and well timed of the universe to put that there... but if he questions all the random lucky breaks he gets the entire world would jinx him eventually. Besides, this way he isn’t stealing something. It isn’t stealing if the bag’s abandoned. 

The blue bag is pretty empty, but he scores a change of clothes, a reusable water bottle, another first aid kit, and an almost full box of granola bars. He shucks off his torn up uniform and then shakes off a good amount of sand from it then slips into a pair of black pants and a white t-shirt, shoving the black zip up hoodie to the side and all of his things back into the backpack. He doesn’t want to stay here long, god knows who else is awake right now.

He ties the hoodie around his waist and heads to the fire escape. (“Remember,” Aizawa-sensei says, “few people think to look up. Which means all of you better not forget to.”) He climbs, then finds a rooftop a few buildings away he could probably hop to without horrifically messing up his side more that features a massive air conditioning unit he can duck behind. It’s an awkward little bunny hop, but one-for-all makes it easy enough to launch himself to his target and shuffle over behind the unit. From there, autopilot kicks in a little as he checks himself over. 

He’s a mess of scratches, minor lacerations all over and the hero equivalent to road rash up his arms and down his shins. Most have clotted over, thankfully, but the worst of his wounds is a deep slash on his side. He’s in no danger of bleeding out and can get away without needing stitches but losing adrenaline means it stings like hell. He shuffles through the first aid kits, snagging some antibacterial cream from one and a long piece of gauze from the other, and turns to lift his shirt.

“You aren’t even gonna wash it out first?” says a voice.

He freezes, slowly turning his head to look above him. Eraserhead is crouched on top of the air conditioning unit, goggles on and capture weapon wound loosely in his hand. Aizawa scoffs. “Looks like you forgot to look up.”

(... mother f- )

Inko Midoriya stares into Izukus room. After all the interviews, and the pictures, and police slowly taking down the tape they used to block off bits and pieces of the apartment, all that remains is what Izuku left behind. 

She has been left behind.

It’s not quite the same, this time. There was no fight, no harsh exchange of words, no quiet understanding that things will never be the same. Hisashi is not there to stare at her defiantly turned head, to grasp her clenched fists with gentle callused hands and slip his emergency number between bitter fingers. This time, there is no whispered apology nor hesitant steps towards the front door, no final look back before he leaves forever. Before he leaves her forever.

She had tried to call it, between panicked breathing and frantic searching. Had reached out to the one lifeline he left her while praying and sobbing and waiting to be proven wrong with a simple text from her wayward son. Had given him one last chance to do things right. To prove her wrong. 

When she hit his voicemail, all she could leave there was a minute of helpless crying and a hitched “ he’s gone” into the receiver. She should’ve known. Men like him don’t change. Not for the better.

Inko takes an unsteady step into Izukus room, dragging a hand across the wall as she goes. She touches his posters and shelves of knick-knacks, selected with excited care and arranged to near perfection. She slowly grasps the blankets that have fallen to the floor sometime between Izuku going to bed and the police half-heartedly searching for clues and folds it just for something to do. She had counted, unconsciously, the amount of clicks the camera made as they documented the scene while asking her for a statement. They had slowed to a stop at the inadequate amount of eight as soon as she mentioned her son's quirklessness. 

She hadn’t wanted to, but the paperwork to change his quirk status needed a few more details before they could file it, and Izuku could not prove it to people who could not see him. The sick relief of her Izuku fitting in better had washed away in a wave of cold fear as she watched something shutter shut behind the officers eyes. The questions he asked her quickly changed in tone, went from “ does he have any known enemies?”  to “ does he have any friends?” . 

(“ Has he disappeared before? Has he ever hurt himself? Do you know where he would go if he wanted to be alone?”)

She nearly shakes him as she points to his window, to the sick message written in red about her babys’ smile. To the UA acceptance letter. To the calendar marked with his work out schedule and his study schedule and his pre-planned meetings at the beach with someone labeled simply “AM”. To the obvious pieces of proof that Izuku did not, would not , leave her behind. Not willingly. Not when he, at last, had so much more to lose. 

The second group of officers were not comforting either. The first at least bothered to introduce himself (“ I’m Officer Naomasa” he says, fedora held to his chest. “I’m so sorry this has happened to you”) but the second couldn’t seem to keep himself together. He took in the scene as though he was already mourning.

(She didn’t want Naomasa to be sorry. She didn’t want his partner to grieve. She wanted her son back.)

Inko places the blanket on Izukus’ bed. At last, she turns to the window with its damning message, scrawled in a bastardization of her Izukus’ handwriting. They had tried to tell her that Izuku had written it, had glanced at the papers strewn across his desk and hadn’t bothered to check further. Only Naomasa and his partner had tried comforting her, had listened to her furious refusal, but even they had suggested that her baby had written it out himself, perhaps under duress. And that was impossible. 

( “Kaa-san! Can we make a secret code?” “What for, little bunny?” “For when I’m a hero, kaa-san!”)

(Not a single word had been misspelled. Not a single pen stroke had reached up or down to the frame. Not a single drop of ink had been anywhere but within the confines of Izukus’ letters, and that was wrong, because if her baby had written that message he would know to leave her that clue.)

But by then the officers had stopped listening to her. Naomasa and his partner had stepped out, but did not step back into her apartment. And slowly, everyone else left too. They gave her business cards and hollow promises and left her behind to clean that damned window and the mess they made shuffling through Izukus’ things. 

Inko faces the window now, staring at the sharp lines and steady swoops of the characters. She shakes, then reaches out her hand to swipe through the ugly red letters. It snags on the glass and drops to the sill as Inko chokes on a sob, breaking and bending over. (How long will it last? Her poor Izukuns’ smile. Is he hurt? Is he scared?) Her tears blur her eyes, obscure the ink left behind, and she lifts her hand to wipe her eyes only to tear up at the gritty feeling her fingers leave on her cheeks. Inko hums in confusion, then looks at her hand.

“Sand?” she says, rubbing the grains between her fingers. “What-?”

Inko looks at the window sill and sighs. Somehow, Izuku had gotten sand of all things all over the bottom of the sill. She knows that he’s been cleaning up Musutafu Beach (he hasn’t exactly ever been subtle about it) and lord knows how much sand she has cleaned from their poor floors and his poor clothes. Izuku is usually pretty good at shaking most of it off before getting to his room, but she can’t blame him too much. It sticks to everything after all.

She wipes her cheeks with her clean hand before reaching for the bottom of the window. She’ll just have to brush it out herself. Inko shoves the window up and freezes. There, on the outside of the window, is more sand . But now it is clumped together in what looks to be a footprint. 

Her heart begins to race. Inko scrambles for her phone, snapping a picture as quickly as she can before this miracle falls away in the evening breeze. This is better then her Izukuns acceptance letter and packed calendar and even that fucking note , handwriting be damned. This footprint is much too big to be anyones in their apartments and a hopefully unique tread and (- and his pre-planned meetings at the beach with someone labeled simply “AM”-). 

Inko can’t breathe. She can’t remember ever meeting “AM”. She can’t remember ever hearing more than a quick sentence or two about him before Izuku changed the subject. And she can’t imagine why anyone who wasn’t trying to avoid her would come through her sons window. Would enter her home, Izuku’s room, like a thief in the night. 

Her cell phone begins to ring.

It’s been a pretty good night for petty villainy, Dabi muses. He managed to scare the shit out of the couple of stupid kids he sold some weed to, palmed a stack of 7/11 onigiri out of sight of some sleep deprived cashier, and led whoever was following him in circles for 15 minutes before finally losing them.

Ha. What a chump.

He pulls down his face mask, a necessary inconvenience if he wants to avoid outright staring, and bites into one of his stolen snacks. It’s no Michelin star worthy meal, but something about making- wait no- getting it all on his own makes it taste a bit like victory. It’s probably the element of crime that makes it taste better, in all honesty. Alcohol hasn’t tasted nearly as good as it did before he was legal, so he just assumes that the same principle applies to everything else too.

He swallows the last bit of rice before crumpling the plastic packaging and tossing it over his shoulder (it’s not like littering is gonna be the thing to send him to hell after all he’s done), stopping in front of the dumpster he stashed his backpack behind. Admittedly he did it in a bit of a hurry after catching his stalker out the corner of his eye, but eh. If a couple of granola bars touched the grimy alley ground they can be replaced by cleaner, freshly stolen granola bars on his next 7/11 run. Dabi shoves at the dumpster a bit before peering behind it.

“...where the hell is my backpack?”