Chapter Text
“Hang on!”
Toshinori proffered a neatly wrapped pork cutlet meal to his pupil, who hadn’t eaten yet despite patrolling the city for hours. “Take this,” he said. “There’s pork cutlet in there to keep your spirits up.”
Young Midoriya accepted the meal with bright “Thank you!” and though his face was covered by his mask(it looked less like All Might, now, and more like a green, ragged rabbit) Toshinori could hear the smile in his voice. It was good to hear. Smiles were rare among them lately, ever since the end of the battle and Midoriya’s leave of absence from UA High School.
It was a very dark, chilly night, storm clouds cloaking the moon and soaking the city with unrelenting rain. This empty street they found themselves on, tending to a frightened civilian, was dimly lit with the only streetlamp still standing for blocks. There were others, buried in rubble that hadn’t been touched for weeks, and Toshinori could barely repress his desire to sift through the concrete, just in case someone needed his help, just in case someone hadn’t made it to safety before the latest tragedies struck.
Something boomed in the distance. A sudden wind blew through the alleyway, soaking him despite his jacket and chilling him to the bone. His joints already ached from the damp, and Toshinori was reminded yet again that he couldn’t be the hero anymore.
Oh, how he wished he were younger.
“It’ll spoil before long,” he told Midoriya, “so eat up.” I hope you don’t spoil like I did, he didn’t say.
Midoriya tucked the dinner into his backpack and waved goodbye to him and the poor woman, who was just now wiping away her tears as she stared at them in awe. “I’ll head to the next point,” he said, and Toshinori could still hear a hint of that smile.
“Call me when you’re there,” Toshinori said, allowing himself a smile of his own. “Please, stay safe—”
His voice was drowned out by a sudden roar of noise. He was nearly thrown across the street as another gust of wind cut through the air, catching the edges of his jacket. An umbrella flew past his face, missing his eyes by mere inches. He saw Midoriya clutch at his head, and someone screamed.
This time, the wind didn’t stop, instead picking up in intensity as the horrible sound of torn metal screeched through the air and the building above them rocked,
and swayed,
and crumbled into a landslide. The roof slid off and hit the ground with a resounding boom. The last lamp post was crushed, snuffing out their only light.
A spark of green in the darkness, and Toshinori was knocked away again by Midoriya’s power, streaming to where he last saw the civilian, and then away into the night. His knees scuffed the pavement as he went down hard, but he felt no pain—the numbing chill aside, his heart was about to burst from his feeble chest and he could feel nothing but the pounding in his ears.
It stopped cold when a terrible screeching ricocheted off the broken rubble around him.
“F-found,” an unearthly voice warbled, “you-u-u.” Thunder crashed and the world lit up in fire, outlining a dark shape against the black sky. It loomed overhead, and for a moment it was almost like the building that lay crumbled on the streets, but lightning struck again and rows of teeth flashed in the darkness.
Metal foundation groaned as the shape moved, blocks of concrete crunching underneath unseen claws, and a single huge eye, glassy as a corpse, found Toshinori’s gaze.
“Deku-u-u,” something crooned. The word was stilted and wrong and uncomfortably familiar. The unblinking eye loomed overhead, pale as death. Toshinori didn’t dare breathe. Something unnatural kept him rooted to the spot. For the first time in his hero career, his only thought was to run away, and he couldn’t even turn his head.
The eye leaned closer, still singing Deku’s name in that awful way. The thing was so close now that it blocked the rain, and now Toshinori could smell the rancid death on it. Fangs clacked and chattered mere feet from his head. Run, he urged himself, but his limbs were frozen. I need to run! I—
Green flashed again in the darkness, and the eye reeled back into the darkness with an ear-splitting shriek. Someone hit the ground hard beside him, and suddenly, Toshinori could move again, as if he were freed from a terrible quirk.
“All Might!”
Toshinori had but a moment to appreciate Midoriya’s shout before he was swept up in a strong grip. He felt Midoriya tense, green crackling along his body, and the two of them left the ground in a leap. He didn’t know how Midoriya could see in this storm, but he trusted the familiar rise and fall of bounding across rooftops, and let himself breathe again.
“All Might, are you okay?” Midoriya’s voice was strained. “There’s—it’s a swarm of Nomu.” One last fall, and they came to a rest on some dark roof. Toshinori was gently deposited on the ground, but Midoriya’s hands never left his shoulders. “There’s something wrong with them, they’re not like the others—”
Ah. Now that the strange haze was gone from Toshinori’s mind, he realized with clarity the familiarity of the creature. The attack on USJ flitted through his mind, when he was on the very precipice of losing to something made to oppose him. He could not dwell on this, however, as Midoriya’s hands were trembling and the poor boy was muttering under his breath.
“Young Midoriya,” Toshinori said gently, and repeated himself a few times until Midoriya’s muttering ceased. “What do you mean, not like the others?”
“Well,” Midoriya said, and the tremble was gone from his voice for a moment. “These Nomu are huge, for one thing. The one that attacked you was the biggest, but the others—there are seven or eight—are still larger than any we’ve seen before. And they all can speak! I thought one was a civilian until it attacked me. I barely got away from that one.” He paused, and as lightning briefly illuminated the sky Toshinori could see that Midoriya’s backpack was gone, and his suit was torn.
Toshinori’s heart ached for him, and he swallowed the urge to apologize. “Are you hurt?” He asked instead, resting a hand on Midoriya’s. The shaking—both Midoriya’s and his own—had mostly stopped.
“I’m fine,” Midoriya assured him. “I got the woman to a shelter, and I think everyone else in this area has already evacuated.” Another flash in the sky, and Midoriya’s hood was down, and Midoriya was looking him in the eye determinedly.
Toshinori had a bad feeling about this. “You want to fight them,” he said. It wasn’t a question.
Midoriya didn’t answer right away.
“We need to wait for backup.”
“It’s too dangerous,” Midoriya said. His voice was firm now.
“That’s my line,” Toshinori tried to joke, but it was lost in the storm. “Young Midoriya, that’s exactly why we should wait. There’s no shame in a tactical retreat.”
Midoriya didn’t sound convinced. “There’s no time for that,” he insisted as the downpour picked up, battering them both. “Besides,” he added. “They’re looking for me.”
“That’s what I’m worried about!” Toshinori’s shout caught even himself off guard, and Midoriya was stunned into silence. “All for One is dangerous, he can—” His voice caught in his throat and he coughed harshly.
“All Might!”
Toshinori wheezed, trying to catch his breath while Midoriya fussed over him in the darkness. He was too worked up, and the past ached in his chest. “He killed me,” Toshinori gasped when he could, clutching the scar on his stomach. “At least the hero I was. It’s too dangerous. Please.”
Midoriya was silent for a long time. Once in a while the Nomu would rage beneath them, sending tremors through the building they were standing on. Toshinori swayed with the building, trying to find his student in the darkness. The storm raged on, but now thunder was rare and the last lights of the city were gone. The moon was dark and not a star could be seen behind the clouds.
A fierce gust of wind blew, knocking against Toshinori, and he let himself fall to the ground rather than be blown off the roof. “Young Midoriya,” he asked, allowing himself to lay flat to avoid the wind.
No one answered him.
“Midoriya?” He tried again, but the word was swallowed by the darkness. “Deku, my boy?”
Lightning split the sky, illuminating the rooftop, and he was alone. “Shit! Deku!” Toshinori forced himself upright and scrambled to the edge, searching desperately. There—
A distant roar—
A flash of green—
Midoriya was fighting that—thing. Even here, abandoned and alone on this roof, Toshinori could feel that incredible pressure. It was too much for the boy to handle on his own, but Toshinori couldn’t do anything about it, especially up here, without his radio and no way to find help.
Which Midoriya definitely would have known. He planned this from the moment they were ambushed. The citizens were evacuated. The city was basically rubble. The only friendly person who knew Midoriya’s location was alone and quirkless on a rooftop in a relatively untouched sector, and Toshinori was sure Midoriya would be careful to avoid this place during the fight.
Toshinori wondered, idly, whether he had gotten to eat the pork cutlet.
He was torn between an odd sense of pride and the horrifying knowledge that Midoriya, this child, was now in mortal danger. He flinched with every quake, every roar, not knowing if his student was okay.
Something hit the edge of his building like a cannonball. Bits of roof tumbled down and the ground shook beneath him. Inhuman shrieking sliced the air, and a huge creature clung to the edge of the roof before jumping into the storm, giant wing-flaps pushing away the rain.
Enough was enough. Being on a roof in a thunderstorm aside, his boy was in trouble, and Toshinori was not going to stand here and twiddle his thumbs while Deku was thrown around by Nomu. He needed to get down, now.
The sole door to the inside of the building was busted, twisted metal blocking the exit, but Toshinori grabbed a chunk of concrete and went to work, striking the hinges and ignoring the sharp pain in his bloodied fingers until the last hinge snapped off and the door fell away. He stepped over it and hurried downstairs, through floors, hardly pausing to breathe, forcing himself to move faster every time something boomed outside.
He was maybe halfway down when particularly violent lightning lit up every window on that floor, illuminating the city outside. Toshinori just happened to look out the right window, just happened to see the silhouette of a vicious battle. Two horrible beings just a hair smaller than the cyclops, both battering at his student, who was chasing the winged Nomu that'd hit the building earlier. All were headed this way. Midoriya raced on spider's legs made of his blackwhip, gripping buildings and swatting away the advances of other Nomu, but the winged one evaded his capture. Then, the city was dark again.
An eternity later, he made it to the ground floor. He stepped gingerly outside the shattered double doors and was again pelted by the rain.
He only had a heartbeat to wonder which way to go when the building shuddered and crumbled behind him with a resounding boom. Not the first time he'd almost been crushed on the job, but a few seconds too slow and it would have been the last.
Movement flashed at the edge of his vision, and Toshinori threw his fists up on pure instinct, but a familiar glove grabbed his wrist and held tightly, shaking as its owner coughed and spat.
“Sorry, All Might,” Midoriya panted, and the grip on his wrist was released. “I didn’t mean to bring them to you.” He didn’t ask how Toshinori had made it down.
I’m never letting you outside again, Toshinori didn’t say. “You should have waited,” he chided gently, wishing he could see whether Midoriya was hurt. “What happened?”
“I tried to get them down one at a time,” Midoriya explained, “but they're—they're too bulky. And now one of them is going berserk.”
“What about the cyclops?”
“The...? Oh, him. I haven't seen him—well, I can't really see, I'm just relying on Danger Sense and Blackwhip—but I'm still looking. His presence hurts the worst.”
Toshinori didn't know quite what that meant, but it didn't matter. What was important now was getting reinforcements before something worse showed up. His hand went to his belt for his radio, but that was long gone. “My boy, do you have your radio?”
“No,” Midoriya confirmed his worries. “I lost mine when we were ambushed.”
“That's fine,” Toshinori said automatically. “I know you don't want to, but—”
“We can't,” Midoriya interrupted, “ it's too dangerous. I've already fought them, and I think one of them has a tracking quirk. We can't risk leading them to innocent people. Just trust me,” he added, as if he could tell Toshinori was about to argue. “You can go find help and I'll keep them contained.”
Toshinori sighed. Even if he said no, he had a very strong feeling Midoriya wouldn't listen. “Fine,” he said. “You're a capable hero, just please stay safe.”
“When haven't I been safe, All Might?” He followed that with a noise that wasn't quite a laugh.
They parted quickly after that, a lingering worry nestled deep in Toshinori's chest drove through the ruined city. Midoriya had found his car and carried it back to him. Miraculously, the car was unharmed, though Toshinori would feel better if Midoriya had agreed to come with him.
A light flickered into view, just at the edge of the horizon, and Toshinori dismissed it as lightning at first, but it didn't leave. It grew brighter as he drove closer, and then he could make out shapes. People, heroes, waiting.
The help he and Midoriya needed.
I'll be there soon, my boy.