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Izuku is no stranger to fear; Fear has been an underlying current, a riptide, pulling him away from the proverbial shore of safety and serenity since he was five and freshly diagnosed as quirkless. Trepidation is a childhood friend turned enemy, something that knows all there is to know about him. Knows what makes him tick and what actions will warrant reactions. Fear has haunted him like a poltergeist. Even now, especially now, it holds onto him, grip tight and unrelenting around his throat, squeezing and pressing against the trachea. He feels like he is suffocating; Breathing only carbon dioxide and slowly poisoning himself with every push and pull of his diaphragm.
Izuku is beyond terrified.
His teacher, Aizawa Shouta, and Professional Underground Hero: Eraserhead (he said he was a teacher first and Hero second but the line has already blurred and Izuku can’t tell where ‘teacher’ ends and ‘Pro Hero’ begins) throwing himself relentlessly into battle. His teacher talks of martyrdom but it seems that he’s the biggest hypocrite Izuku has ever known.
The hatchlings, because they are not heroes yet, have never been trained, and are so totally new to heroics besides hopes and pipe dreams, can only stand and watch in thigh deep water. And Midoriya has only had One For All for a few weeks, he has no control. The newly acquired quirk is a pestle and mortar, one that grinds and chips and shatters his bones to powder. He can only watch, too scared to be trembling, as the first teacher that has ever been remotely kind to him fights tooth and nail for both the student’s lives and his own.
Shigaraki Tomura for all his dry, chapped skin and immature mannerisms is a formidable foe. His attacks and defense are weak and sloppy but he has speed and a deadly, powerful quirk on his side. Eraserhead can only erase his quirk and keep adamantly not-blinking before recovery time slows and of course the hand-covered man-child’s tenacity wins out. (Izuku’s mother always said that bad things happen to good people and Aizawa is good people.)
Izuku wants to scream and he nearly does but he chokes it off part way through as the villain clutches Aizawa Sensei’s elbow with all five fingers pressing down hard into the flesh. The quirk: Decay rips through, tearing apart the sinew of the Pro-Hero’s arm. Skin, muscle, tendon and bone start to chip and flake away like a forest being burnt down by wildfire.
Izuku wants it to stop! He just wants his teacher (his hero) to be okay.
The boy, he is nothing but a child, little in the way only high class villains can make the most valiant seem small and non threatening, is hot. His blood for all intents and purposes is boiling in his veins, slowly cooking him, like frogs in a cauldron of water that is slowly heating up to boil. The change, so slight until it peaks and the frogs have already been cooked alive and were never the wiser to their untimely death.
Something whispers, an inkling, in the back of his mind but it echoes loud and clear, “You can do something. Just take it. Rip it from him. Do it, Izuku.”
The teen doesn’t need to ponder what “it” is. He knows, somehow. It’s a strange sense of knowing. It’s like this thing, whatever it is, has been right there in front of him for eternity, never acknowledged, and now that he’s aware of its existence it is so plainly obvious that it sticks out like a sore thumb. His thoughts are screaming at him, urging him to mentally pull.
He doesn’t need to think. It just happens. Unknown and unavowed tension builds so quickly and so suddenly it snaps like rope or the recurve of a bowstring as fingers let it slip and an arrow flies steadfastly towards the target.
A myriad of things happen at once or they don’t. It’s confusion, chaos.
The most notable is that Decay stops. The skin of an arm, crumbling like a roof on a deplorable house, stops. There is no movement from either party. Everything just stops. The battlefield is silent save for ragged breaths coming from a variety of heaving chests and haggard faces.
Then, things resume or rather start, Izuku is unsure.
White, hero grade durable gloves slowly, starting from the fingers, disintegrate. Midoriya’s teacher’s arm might have stopped decaying and flaking away but that doesn’t mean the quirk stopped completely. His now deteriorating gloves are evidence of that. (Maybe things never truly stopped? Maybe there was no lapse in time. Maybe, just maybe, time was continuous and Decay never skipped a beat.)
Eraserhead activates erasure. There is nothing to erase, no mortar for brick to lay. Decay belongs solely to Izuku now. It fills a space in his chest that he never knew existed until now. The gaping whole craves more to fill it.
Shigaraki pushes back, somehow nimble enough, though it’s obvious the man has been thrown for a loop and is edging the side of careless and unfocused, to slip past the expeditious and dexterous winding and striking of the white capture weapon held fast by the Hero.
Shigaraki is no longer interested in Aizawa, that much is clear; He’s disengaging and dancing away, eyes (they’re crimson like the blood caked beneath his nails and filled with malice) refocusing on a new and easier target: Midoriya Izuku.
With a flippant wave of the hand Shigaraki silently gets the nomu, a ghastly beast that is less human and more amalgamation, to watch him with rapt attention for an awaiting order. “Nomu, grab Eraserhead and make sure he’s incapable of going or doing anything to further throw off my game plan; I just encountered a Mini-Boss it seems.”
Midoriya can only watch —Has he done anything but watch and tremble?— green eyes wild and glistening with fear fueled tears as the man stalks towards him, a hyena about to slaughter. The man’s smile is too wide. It’s unsettling. Chapped lips that split and bleed from the stretch across the expanse of equally dry cheeks and too many teeth.
The hero wannabe’s breaths are loud in his own ears, his blood is rushing through his veins, dread as well as anxiety hang heavy in his guts yet he wouldn’t describe what he feels as fear. Maybe it’s perturbation. Maybe it’s determination.
The villain is only a few feet from where he stands in the water beside Tsu and Shinsou. Izuku can’t make himself feel anything. The fear, somehow, slowly seeps out of him. He’s disconnected, watching as a member of an audience in his own show. He’s a ghost possessing his own body.
A hand, one that was equipped with a deadly quirk only minutes ago, is thrusted towards his face. All five fingers touch. Nothing happens. The fingers dig, pressing so hard that bruises, purple and blue, will surely blossom there later, into the ever present freckled baby fat. Still, nothing happens. If Izuku believed in a god he would be praying his thanks. It doesn’t matter that he knows Shigaraki no longer possesses his quirk, it's just the undeniable proof that it really is gone and it will no longer hurt anyone.
Shigaraki, eyes him from behind the gray hand on his face, calculating before he pulls his hand away and huffs, “So you really did steal my quirk Mini-Boss. You’re kinda like Sensei, quirk wise.” The villain takes a step back, hand (His actual hand not the multitude that are attached to his clothing, which is Gross with a capital G.) swinging to hang limply at his side, powerless.
“Deku.”
A quirked brow.
“My name is Deku, not Mini-Boss,” he says with the confidence of a thousand suns because he has far surpassed the shaky breaths and trembling hands and entered into the gray, hazy area where all but the flashing sirens in his head have shut off. His chill and confidence are fake. He feels like All Might, almost. Just instead of a smile that never fades he’s being a cocky smartass. So technically like Aizawa. Todoroki, he can already tell that he’s the type to be some sort of crazy conspiracy theorist, would have a field day.
The villain merely rolls his eyes, and Izuku thinks if he rolled them any harder then his eyes would roll out of the sockets, before looking over his shoulder. The man opens his mouth and cuts himself off before he can really even start to speak then closes his mouth again. A smirk tugs at his chapped lips. At the sight of the self assured smug look dread pools heavily in the hero wannabe’s stomach. It causes bile to rise and burn his throat. Ants are crawling in his bones, biting and breaking down the marrow, making a home under his skin. It’s silent for a few seconds longer as the villain, who can’t be much older than the children he is terrorizing, dwells on what he has to say. Finally, he opens his mouth to speak and his voice is filled with nothing but pure glee and venom that is almost tangible as it drips from his voice, “I might not have my quirk any longer but I came here for a reason: To End All Might. Unfortunately, it seems he has taken a rain check. Maybe if I kill a few kids and two Pro Heroes it might be enough of an incentive to get him to show. He always was a flashy Pro; The type of Hero to show for the fight but leave before the cleanup starts.”
The nomu’s grip tightens on his teacher exponentially and in kind to the ghastly creature agitating the wounds caused by Shigaraki, someof the low-on-the-totem-pole criminals that managed to get a few good attacks in, and the claws of the beast itself he lets a long drawn out groan slip past his bloodied lips, pain lacing his voice like a date rape drug in a drink at a bar.
The villain, Shigaraki, is once again looking at Izuku. Standing, at most, three feet away and staring directly at the teen. Crimson eyes, slightly squinted in what can only be elation, boring into jade.
Midoriya, for all that it’s worth, hates the man in front of him with his entire being. The pure, unadulterated loathing and anger makes his gut clench and roll with a sense of guilt. Inko never liked it and dare he say despised, ironic he knows, when the boy said he disliked something so greatly to the point of anger and contempt. The memories of before, when he hadn’t learned that hatred and anger were forbidden and must be put away like some old thing hidden in the back of a closet or attic, flood his mind. Memories of the times when his mother, sweet, kind, and soft, would hold him down and make him wash his mouth out with soap and apologize until he was hoarse and his throat ached from overuse and mouth and nose were covered in chemical burns in addition to the pus-filled blisters. Inko said that hatred was a strong word; Fury was a nasty emotion that only caused pain and suffering. Anger and hatred belong to villains and if you’re a good boy you don’t feel those wretched emotions.
“Nomu,” the man croaks, breaking Izuku out of his reverie, “Kill Eraserhead… And make it bloody.”
When the nomu smashes Aizawa’s head into the concrete Izuku is uncertain of who screams. He’s unsure of who lets loose the guttural yowl of pain or the wail of panic. The only thing that he knows is that blood splatters or more accurately sprays onto him. It covers the front of his green costume and makes his face and hands uncomfortably hot and sticky, the spray of blood automatically causes some of the green ringlets to mat together and turn brown. It, the blood, somehow manages to get in his mouth and he has to fight the urge to gag and heave until his stomach has emptied and there is nothing but bile. The boy is certain that the slick feel of his hero’s blood dripping, slowly slipping down his face, will cause nightmares for months to come.
The nomu is relentless in its attacks, dragging out murdering the hero torturously slow. The nomu is practically sitting on top of the hero; It’s clear the weight of the beast is crushing from how the bones grind and audibly crack though the noise is more akin to bone shattering. Now, Midoriya is no expert in the area of anything medical but he is an analyst. He’s an analyst that spent his entire middle school career, so three years in total, fixating, obsessing, and being infatuated with anything remotely related to human anatomy and physiology. His hobby —which was really just a form of escapism that cost him hours of sleep— ranged anywhere from psychology to orthopedics. Basically, in terms of medical jargon and terminology he is essentially a walking encyclopedia that can apply its knowledge in real-time in the real world.
This is why the hero in training can safely say that his teacher is out of commission and even with help of various healing quirks will be incapacitated for quite a while. You don’t just get your skull pounded into concrete and be okay. No. You break (or at the very least fracture) several bones in your face. And with how hard the Pro Hero’s face collided with the ground? It promises a broken nose, zygomatic maxillary fracture, blowout fractures, a mild to severe concussion, the latter the more likely of the two, and lacerations.
Head wounds bleed a lot; The skin wrapping the skull is thick and full of veins, capillaries, and blood vessels. So, under normal circumstances one wouldn’t worry too much about something as extreme as bleeding to death. Most cases would require some gauze to stop the bleeding, Neosporin, and a Steristrip. Unfortunately, nothing about the entire situation the two professional heroes and hero course students are in is normal. The deep gash on the Underground Hero’s forehead is a cause for concern. It needs staples. Soon. That added to the wound on Aizawa’s arm doesn’t make for a good outcome.
The next issue was the very obvious broken bones in the Erasure Quirk user’s upper body. The clavicle on the black haired man’s right, and Izuku’s left, is fractured, possibly oblique. From the rattling breath there’s broken ribs. The left arm is what can best be described as entirely fucked.
All of this brings the hero course student to one grim conclusion: His homeroom and heroics teacher will die if he doesn’t act immediately. There is no time to wait for All Might or any other teachers to arrive and save them. Shigaraki gave the order to kill him and the thing that should be mythical is going to make good on it. With the rest of the class fighting the low tier criminals and thugs and Kurogiri almost fatally injuring Thirteen there is no one left to take up the role of Hero.
Izuku spares a glance at the two other students beside him. From where the green haired boy stands he can see how Tsuyu’s hands shake with the force of the tremors ripping through them. Yet, the girl holds onto the back of Shinsou’s training outfit as the insomniac stares with wide eyes. Horror is written, etched and branded into his pale features. Both of them hold onto each other with such force that it’s like one will be ripped away if they don’t. Few of the students have known any of their classmates for more than a few days but it's as if they’ve known their peers for years. The sparks that have only just begun to be fanned into a flame cannot go out. They are both so totally terrified and it’s up to Izuku to protect them. Izuku has to sacrifice himself to save everyone. It’s for the greater good.
The beast moves to slash its talons across the nape of the teacher’s neck, an attack that would be lethal. It would snap and splinter the cervical vertebrae, cut through the spinal cord, and slice clean through the vertebral arteries. Izuku moves without thinking, no plan in mind, just a desperate need to save that sets fire in his veins. All Might says moving without thinking and selflessness are the makings of a hero. Eraserhead says it’s reckless and makes one a liability in the field. Midoriya thinks it’s a bit of both. After all, nothing is black and white. Izuku is nothing if not a martyr with a hero complex. He is but a mosaic of every person, every hero, he has had the pleasure of knowing even for just a heartbeat. That’s why he must save.
The teen launches himself at Shigaraki. The man child’s startled shout is enough to catch the attention of the nomu. The boy has bought some time. Fluorescent sparks of neon green crackling around his body as he rears back a fist in one hand and Decay in the other. The moment he’s in the air it feels as if time slows while simultaneously speeds up impossibly fast. He can feel every centimeter, every inch of his body with a startling clarity yet he feels numb to it all.
The punch is sloppy but when it makes contact with the villain’s cheek and the satisfying crunching of bone reverberates up the student’s arm and the hand-fetish-freak’s body flies from the force of impact he decides that the punch accomplished what wanted it to. The hatchling hero gives the other no time to fight back. Just grabs the front of the shirt with all five fingers, uncaring that Decay is practically cremating the shirt and is starting to eat away at the flesh, and raises a fist, “Call off your birdbrained monster. Do not even think about denying me what I want; I have no qualms about killing you.”
The criminal’s eyes widen comically and Izuku keeps his fist raised threateningly. The words pour from Shigaraki’s lips almost immediately, “Nomu, stop. Leave Eraserhead alone.”
The words leave his mouth but Izuku is still so angry, so fuming pissed, and he has to pay. The teen throws a punch. It connects with man’s nose this time and while it doesn’t break blood does gush from it. The sight of the blood only pushes Midoriya further over the edge. From the straddled point on the man’s chest Izuku lays onto him. He throws punches and doesn’t care where they land, just that they do and it promises pain.
Time becomes hazy in the midst of the anger fueled beat down. It’s only when the feeling of stress fractures and split cut through the rage that he stops. Shigaraki is covered in his own blood and is littered in black and blue hues. There’s expanses of flesh that have been disintegrated away where muscle is visible. The guilt that pulled at his skin earlier is gone and in its place is justice and righteousness.
The man despite the bloodied teeth has the gall to smile up at him smugly and whisper sickeningly sweet, “All you hero types are the same: claim to be above villains but really you’re the same. You’re just as violent and evil as the rest of us… Why do you get to decide that you’re good?” The pale haired fucker leans up just enough to spit blood and saliva into Izuku’s eyes and on instinct he lets go and falls backwards off of his sitting spot and tries to wipe his face clear of the substance.
Shigaraki scrambles away just as Izuku has cleared his vision enough to see just in the slightest bit he shouts, voice full of vitriol, “Nomu! Kill that brat! Rip him apart!”
There’s no time to process what happens next. Before Izuku can even try to run the beast has charged him and hovers menacingly above him fist about to swing down to crush him. Izuku allows himself to briefly dart his gaze to where his classmates stood in the water only to see nothing. The hero wannabe can only hope that they got out and away. That what he did was enough. At the very least he’ll die knowing he saved them and that they could go on to become Heroes of their own making.
The thing above him shrieks, the sound ear piercing. The noise alone is enough to make him clap his hands over his ears and scrunch his eyes up harshly. He can only wait curled into himself for the blow to come.
Seconds tick by though they could have very well been an eternity.
“You really are so cool, Eraserhead.”
Green eyes snap open in time to see the nomu standing above him shaking violently with its mouth open like a fish out of water before the thing‘s legs buckle and it falls to the side with a thump, lifeless.
Behind the deceased body of the amalgamation blazing carnation red eyes — these do not flash with insanity, these hold nothing but warmth and the desire to protect — meet wide jade eyes that swim with a plethora of emotions. The distress, jubilation, and hope swirl together, a mishmash of messy emotions. Izuku can’t help it as hot tears bubble up and roll down his cheeks leaving his skin burning in their wake. Aizawa is alive and being supported by Shinsou and Tsuyu.
A thundering slam of doors and a booming shout of, “Have no fear! For I am here!” have Izuku slumping forward. Adrenaline wearing thin and leaving him exhausted. In the safety of All Might he is unafraid of resting.
Only when the child is being picked up and cradled close to a meaty chest does he realize that he passed out. His mentor looks down at him, a fond smile and worried eyes.
He opens his mouth but All Might cuts him off, “Your peers are fine, my boy, please go back to sleep.”
“W-what about ‘Zawa?” His tongue is dry and the saliva is thick in his mouth.
The Symbol of Peace chuckles warmly and tells him that he’ll be fine and is already in an ambulance. Izuku can rest calmly now. He lets himself slip into the darkness that’s been tugging relentlessly at his eyes since the start of this interaction.
Two days after Izuku is discharged from the hospital and Eraserhead is awake and on enough narcotics to kill a man, they’ll have a heart to heart. Aizawa will call him reckless and a martyr with no sense of self preservation but will ultimately be thankful. Izuku will cry and thank him for saving him despite being severely injured. Then, Izuku will fall asleep next to a flustered Shouta that just acquired a son as his husband Hizashi coos softly and takes plenty of pictures.
Izuku and All Might will discuss sharing the secret of One for All with the Underground Hero. Aizawa will learn of the quirk and help all he can and set up control classes with Present Mic. Then, they’ll discuss his manifestation of a new quirk that allows him to take quirks and incite the Erasure Quirk user to help find its limits and capabilities. The quirk will be revealed to be able to take and give and use quirks from a distance.
All Might will let him know of All for One. Will tell him the tale of two brothers then the story of all the other holders.
The boy would go on to compete in the sports festival and get the pleasure of second place. Aizawa’s and Toshinori’s chest will swell with pride. Todoroki will ask about Izuku being a secret love child and then ask if he has an “Accidental Dad Acquisition Quirk” and if he can share. But that’s neither here nor there. Right now, he just needs to nap.