Chapter Text
Hitoshi hated everything about this.
But what was he going to do? Aizawa Sensei was off with All Might on some incredibly secret Guild business, which was apparently so important that even emergency communication channels had been disabled. He couldn’t go to any of the Master Adventurers for a number of complicated reasons (because why would anything in his life be normal—or worse, easy). He knew few of the other Apprentices, and fewer who would be helpful in this situation. And on that already reduced list, there was only one who really cared about Eri.
Coincidentally, it was the same person he had been avoiding ever since Aizawa Sensei had made him an Apprentice.
But this mattered more than whatever feelings of shame and resentment lingered from their last encounter. And so here he was, waiting awkwardly in an attempt to put off the inevitable before his fellow Apprentice’s door.
Gritting his teeth, he steeled himself and knocked firmly, as loud as possible over the persistent dull melody of the rain. He hoped Midoriya would still be up despite how late it was, but there was no way he was going to wait until tomorrow for more reasonable visiting hours. If necessary, he could always pick the lock. Maybe he’d check to see if there were any open windows first, but one way or another he would—
The door swung wide. Midoriya stood there, holding it open and blinking in surprise. He looked fully awake. Good.
“Oh. Hello, Shins—”
Hitoshi shouldered past him into the cottage, ignoring the small portraits and stone sculptures of All Might that were the sparsely-furnished room’s only decorations. He took a spot by the table in the middle of the room as the green-haired boy turned towards him in confusion.
“Um, is something going on?” Midoriya rubbed the back of his neck as he closed the door. He looked concerned more than anything, an unsure smile on his freckled face.
If it had been another occasion, Hitoshi probably would have felt an (admittedly irrational) surge of annoyance about how calm and kind the other apprentice was being after a virtual stranger barged into his living quarters in the middle of the night, but he didn’t have time to be petty quite yet.
“Have you seen Eri?” He asked, just in case, even though he already knew the answer.
Midoriya straightened. “No, I haven’t. Why? Is she okay?”
Hitoshi handed him the letter that had been waiting for him when he got home this evening. Midoriya took it with a frown. The roughly written runes were smudged and runny from the rain, giving the words a sinister cast.
“A sister by heart and father, not by any blood—come find me, and no blood needs be spilled.”
Midoriya’s fingers tightened on the parchment.
Underneath the words was a rough sketch. Hitoshi had deciphered that it was a location, one that he was struggling to match to a map. Details like that could be worked out along the way. Whoever had done the sketch was no artist; still, through the ink blotches, he saw waves—must be somewhere near the ocean. That gave a direction, at least. The only other thing on the parchment was a number scribbled in the corner: 1/2. He didn’t know what it meant. But again, minor details didn’t matter right now.
“I can’t find Eri anywhere,” Hitoshi said. “I was training, but when it started to rain I went inside. That’s when I found this. That was about an hour ago, and I’ve looked everywhere on the compound that I can think of.”
He didn’t say that he had known the attempt would be futile from the beginning. It wasn’t worth bringing up that it had been solely out of some desperate optimism that his little sister had successfully hidden herself, that the villain who had sent this had jumped the gun and acted without Eri really being in his custody. Whatever hope that effort sprang from was long since dead, and he knew it showed on him. He was still bad at shielding cantrips of any kind—at least those related to Realitarity—so he hadn’t bothered to keep off the rain when rushing from place to place. Consequently, he imagined he looked rather like a drowned rat. His usually spiky hair hung limply around his face as a nice frame to the depths of his eye-bags, and raindrops were running in rivulets down his clothes to form a puddle on Midoriya’s floor. He didn’t care.
All Might’s Apprentice nodded, eyes still scanning the parchment, brows lowered. Without saying a word, he walked past Hitoshi and picked something up from the table, holding it out. Hitoshi took it, staring from it to Midoriya for a second before unfolding it. It was the same kind of cheap parchment his letter had been written on, with the same shapeless wax blob for a seal, and inside was the same scratchy ink.
“We all like a well-told story. Let’s not let a little girl’s end on a cliffhanger.”
The word “cliff” was underlined twice. There was another sketch. It looked like some kind of tree.
“Have you been able to contact either Aizawa Sensei or All Might?” Midoriya asked. He had turned to a dresser by the neatly made cot in the corner, and was rummaging through the drawers.
Hitoshi shook his head, droplets of water spraying to the ground. “That was the first thing I tried. But whatever mission the Guild tasked them with must be something crazy—Aizawa Sensei disabled the emergency communication line. Or at least, it wasn’t working.”
“Hmm.” Midoriya turned around, holding a notebook and a folded map. He opened the latter and spread it on the table. “It did seem to be top-secret. All Might wasn’t allowed to tell me anything about it, not even where they’d be going.”
Hitoshi leaned over the table and paid no mind to the water dripping on the parchment. He tucked away a twinge of resentment that arose, hearing the Guild’s perfect Apprentice so casually imply how normally he was in the confidences of the highest-ranking Adventurer in the Guild—his mentor. Personal issues would need to be ignored until they had found Eri.
That resolution was instantly challenged when he felt a rush of warm wind and looked down to find himself completely dry.
“Sorry, I should have done that sooner,” Midoriya said with a smile, returning his attention to map. “That didn’t look very comfortable.”
Of course. Not only did Golden Boy have an incredible strength-based Formbuild and Elementarity, but he already had excellent command over mid-level cantrips. Sure, this particular cantrip was elemental and therefore easier for someone with an elemental Singularity; but to Hitoshi, who still struggled with the vast majority of cantrips, it felt like overkill. Especially when his own Singularity was—well, never mind. Hitoshi shoved this gripe to the growing pile of reasons that the other Apprentice vexed him, and looked down to where Midoriya was pointing. Midoriya was helping and that's what mattered most.
“The drawing from your letter appeared to be a coastline, and the one from mine was a tree. From that and the emphasis put on the word cliff, I think wherever we’re supposed to go is right around here.”
Moncala Cove. Past the Kachirho, an enormous, ancient tree whose roots were said to spread throughout the entire island. The Cove was the lowest point in a long stretch of sheer precipices overlooking a perpetually stormy sea.
“Whoever is doing this certainly has a flair for the dramatic,” Hitoshi muttered. Midoriya’s theory made sense from what little clues they had.
I should have guessed that. The drawing on his letter was sloppy, but it did match the coastline closely. He told himself he didn’t have the other two-thirds of the clue, but it didn’t stop him from cursing his own perceived stupidity.
“Do you have any idea who is doing this?” Midoriya asked.
Hitoshi shook his head. “The first I knew about anything was finding the letter.” There had certainly been no sign this morning when he’d left the house. Eri had been her usual cheerful self, trying to sneak Nico treats at the breakfast table, chattering about school while he clumsily braided her hair, rushing up to give him an enthusiastic hug before he went through the front door. It had been a good morning. One of the ones where there were no shadows behind her eyes from nightmares she still didn’t like talking about—one of the ones that had—only recently—become the rule instead of the exception.
It had taken her months to smile regularly, much less trust him enough to comfortably ramble around him, and now that this had happened—
Hitoshi couldn’t afford to think about that.
Midoriya scanned the letters, flipping them over but finding nothing else. “These don’t give us any clues, either. This is the type of parchment, wax, and ink you can find in any marketplace.”
“What about the numbers in the corner?” Hitoshi asked. His had 1/2, and on Midoriya’s he had seen 2/2. “Or do you think those are just meant to tell us that we were the only ones to get letters? Not to look for any other messages?”
“That’s what I was thinking, too,” Midoriya said, nodding. His normally bright expression was creased, eyes distant; it felt like storm clouds were gathering, and not the ones outside.
“So.” Hitoshi turned to face Midoriya fully. “Are you coming with me?”
There was one thing Hitoshi could respect about Midoriya, one thing that he could rely on. He knew the story, knew how hard the other boy had fought to rescue Eri, knew that Midoriya cared for Eri as much as Eri looked up to Midoriya. And so it no longer mattered that the green-haired Apprentice pushed every one of Hitoshi’s buttons, simply by existing as the gods’ apparent favorite. He could and would do anything to get Eri back, just like Hitoshi, and that’s why Hitoshi needed him. Because Hitoshi didn’t know what he was doing, he doubted he could do it alone, and he’d be a fool to ignore the help of one of the most powerful and prominent Apprentices living today because of some immature personal gripe.
Midoriya’s eyes refocused, green lightning sparking in them. He nodded. “I’ll get my sword.”