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It was supposed to be a normal night, just another day of Class 1-A being in the dorms. The nineteen students were scattered through the common room, the television playing in the background just loud enough so the Baku-squad could study.
Honestly, it could have been turned off from the ambient noise of the rain outside, the wind blowing sheets of water against the glass windows. But while it looked like a miserably cold wet hell outside, it was warm enough on the inside, with the smell of Satuo’s stress baking flowing out into the common room.
Until the lights flicker off for a few seconds, the television shutting off from the loss of power. Everyone looks up, and conspicuously over at Denki.
He holds his hands up, shrugging. “Hey, sometimes it isn’t…”
A loud crack-ka-thoom of lightning and thunder drowns out the rest of his defense, all the lights shutting off. Kyouka covers her ears and Toru shreaks, Mashirao curling his tail around her as everyone looks around.
Shouto holds his left hand up, a small ball of fire creating thin illumination around him, Ochako, Tenya, and Asui. Asui had a thick jacket over her, her hair plastered to her face like an onryo.
Seconds later, Momo produces a lantern that fills the commons with light, into which Tokoyami and Mezou quietly rush into as Tokoyami attempts to hide his convulsions at the lack of light. “Everyone, please remain calm. The school’s backup generators should restore power momentarily.”
After a few seconds of silence, with the darkness failing to abait, Eijiro and Hanta turn on their phone’s flashlights. As they’re beaming them around, Hanta’s lands on Hitoshi’s eyes, which he quickly covers and groans as he’s jolted from his nap. “Where’s the fire?”
Mina jokingly looks over at Shouto, but the small flickering flame that was in his hand went out the instant it wasn’t needed. Katsuki just growls at her, and she deflates when she notices how crass her joke would have been.
Satou and Aoyama step out of the kitchen, quickly looking around. Aoyama had his face scrunched up in concentration, a bit of light coming from his belt without the destructive beam pouring out. “Should we go get Aizawa-sensei? He would want to do a headcount or similar, ?”
The front door opens, a cold breeze full of rain quickly flowing through the commons. It then loudly slams shut, and everyone looks over, waiting for someone to approach.
They all jump when the voice comes from the opposite direction, from the dark corner of the living room that no one had illuminated yet. “Which one of you just left?”
Everyone turns to see Aizawa, then turns to look in that direction. Ochako speaks up, flipping her phone open so Aizawa could see her face. “We… we thought that was you coming in, Sir.”
Momo makes another two lanterns, and begins setting them throughout the commons as everyone begins to whisper. Kouji moves in a little closer to Kyouka, who suddenly turns to look towards the door. She doesn’t say anything, but her jacks slowly move up to point that way.
Aizawa pulls out a flashlight, and quickly passes it over everyone to do a headcount. “Everyone, stay in here. Take whatever that is in the oven out, and put your things away. If we have an intruder on campus, we need to remain rational and keep together in groups.”
Katsuki stands, scoffing. “Whatever. It’s probably that weird extra from 1-B doing something stupid. I’m going to bed.”
Aizawa turns to him, and shakes his head. “No, you aren’t. Sit down, and just let us take care of this.”
Katsuki crosses his arms, giving an evil sort of grin to the teacher. “How about you…”
Whatever he was going to say is interrupted by a flash of metal, and a thud as something lands in the wall behind Katsuki’s head. Everyone stops, and watches as a thin line of red begins leaking down his cheek, pouring down like a stuck faucet.
There’s an immediate rush to the ground, everyone looking around with their flashlights on. Only Katsuki turns to look, seeing one of Hanta’s Geometry calipers is now embedded in the wall.
Dark Shadow slowly raises up into the air, only barely under control from the assorted light sources around him. Mezou quickly points his phone’s light directly up at it, casting a large and oppressing blackness across the ceiling… that seemed to swirl and ooze past the boundaries of the silhouette as he watched…
Katsuki tries to take a step forward, but it’s like his feet are stuck to the ground. But his upper half still moves, which means he falls onto the table where the Bakusquad was working. He curses… then cries out as his foot is dragged under the couch at an impossible angle, his toes getting bent too far in the wrong direction to accomplish the task.
People wheel their lights that way, and Momo quickly makes a series of flashlights. She hands them to the people around her, Mashirao and Toru taking one for themselves and quickly moving over with a lantern. She then goes over to Kyouka and Kouji, giving them a set as well.
Kyouka nods in thanks, turning her phone off and tapping Kouji on the shoulder. They point their lights up, and people move over towards the couch the Bakusquad was around as they watch the ceiling’s weird display of power. The shadows seem to fade and grow less distinct, but they by no means disappear.
Katsuki is able to pull his leg, which had been swallowed up to the midcalf, out into the light of a dozen people’s phones. The table is pushed aside, and everyone hisses at the dark purple color starting to form at his toes. Eijiro hardens his hand, and reaches down for Katsuki. He of course slaps it away, a too loud pop and hiss of smoke causing everyone to pull back and scan around.
Aizawa seems to notice the ceiling shadows, and quickly begins scanning his flashlight around, trying to see if he can’t force a shadow to appear on the wall. “Who’s there? Show yourself, and the punishment might be less than if you…”
Before Aizawa can finish his threat, the light in the room begins to flicker and shake. Aizawa ducks, and one of Momo’s now unattended lanterns smashes into the wall, plastic breaking and shadow quickly engulfing a corner of the room.
Everyone begins to panic, and lights quickly shift around the room in a chaotic, almost seizure inducing lack of pattern. Hitoshi actually has to cover his eyes, sinking into the chair where he’d been lulling the evening away.
Denki looks around, then slowly eases to another side of the group. “Okay… is anyone else noticing how Baku-bro is getting bashed? Like, except for it literally just attacking Aizawa, but before that!”
Everyone nods, and Dark Shadow quickly eases down to just be around Tokoyami. It whispers something in the bird boy’s ear, and he looks up to notice the ceiling phenomenon. He and Mezou back towards the group, and Tokoyami points his phone light at the ground as they walk over. “Why would a malevolent spirit want vengeance on Bakugou?”
“Why wouldn’t one want…” Hanta quickly takes a step away from Katsuki as he growls, who quickly settles up on the couch to check his injured foot.
“Shut up! This isn’t some stupid ghost!”
Everyone turns to look at Katsuki, but they’ve turned their lights to scan the area around them. Meaning whatever is causing the darkness to become volatile has the perfect chance to play under the couch again, and a visible dark tentacle whips out to slice at the backs of people’s legs.
Denki and Hanta are both thrown to the ground, and Mina stumbles a few steps forward into the approaching Mezou. He catches her, and Toru quickly points her light at the shadow appendage. “What the hell is that?”
Everyone turns to look, and are too slow to turn their lights towards before Katsuki grabs it. A small explosion goes off in his hand, and the thing creates an audible pop before fading… leaving behind a smell of cooked pork…
Everyone covers their nose at the smell, and Katsuki pulls his hands back… and the remains of whatever was attacking them drips from his hands, chunks slowly falling to his hands in a very disturbing way… only to disappear when lights are turned his way.
Kyouka quickly points both her lights and jacks towards the dark doorway near the stairs, slowly moving closer to the second lantern. “Hey… what are you saying?”
Everyone gives her an odd look, and then Mashirao and Toru wheel lights in that direction. And for the faintest second, there is a visible shape to be observed.
Ochako looks around, and both Satou and Aoyama join the circle now that they’re done in the kitchen. “Hello? If someone’s here, just tell us what you want. We can help you…”
There’s a moment of silence, then Kyouka takes a careful step back. “Hey, don’t… yeah I can hear you. Now what…”
Aizawa looks towards the stares, and tries to activate his quirk. And while his hair stands up, and a red glow becomes visible, the shadows on the ceiling continue their dance, though it’s gotten much slower now.
Everyone waits, trying to hear anything. But no one can hear anything as Kyouka slowly tilts her head, a confused look on her head.
“I… we don’t know any ‘Kacchan’. Who are you talking about?”
Everyone looks at each other, and Eijiro notices how Katsuki immediately goes stiff as a board, his face going pale. He looks up at the blond’s eyes, but they seem to stare off into the distance, unaware of anything else around.
Aizawa blinks, then slowly tries to get a better angle of the stairwell. But the table with notes suddenly slides towards him, the loud scraping of wood against wood and whoosh of papers falling to the ground before the slam of multiple textbooks getting throws from the sudden stop it makes. They tumble harmlessly to the ground, but the ceiling shadows seem to grow visibly agitated at his attempt.
Everyone turns to look… then notice the room grows darker. Tenya tries to turn his phone’s light towards the teacher, only to notice his phone has turned off. While he is the first to notice, he is not the last to become aware of it, as everyone begins checking their phones as their lights go out.
Not just darker, but colder. Everyone’s breaths begin to visibly fog up, shudders running up their spines. Shouto quickly allows some flames and heat to fill the air around him, but that was barely enough for the adjacent Tsu to not collapse from the sudden temperature shock.
Momo looks around, and produces another flashlight. Aizawa aims his light at the feet of the students, and quickly grabs at the second lantern in the room before it can be thrown at him.
Kyouka goes still for a moment, then looks over at Katsuki. “Okay… but why come after all of us? If you just wanted to talk to him, being declared a villain really isn’t necessary…”
Mina follows her gaze, then folds her hands and looks around. “Do you want us to sacrifice Bakugo? Whatever you want to do to him, I can melt his body to hide the evidence!”
Everyone else takes a moment to react to that statement, and Katsuki actually seems to have the smallest moment of respect for her immediate and ruthless response. But he looks towards the dark corner, letting his palms pop as he does. “I already had to fight a bunch of villains, you fucking coward! They had the balls to show their faces!”
The roiling shadows seem to slow, then slowly start to move towards the mouth of the hallway. They start to form a wriggling mass, then form a perfectly humanoid shape that looks like it was carved from solid obsidian.
Mashirao and Toru turn their lights on, and Momo hesitates before producing a few more for everyone. Aoyama turns to face the figure, naval laser pointed and ready. Shouto steps to be just behind him, letting a small ball of fire form in his hand.
The figure slowly gains features, it’s body revealing a tarnished and damaged middle school uniform. There seems to be a level of unsteadiness, with all the lights being pointed at it, but it managed to continue to maintain its shape.
Eijiro looks back at Katsuki, as do Denki and Hanta. “Bakubro, isn’t that your middle school’s uniform?”
Aizawa tries to cancel the figure’s quirk, and feels a mounting sense of unease at how that doesn’t work. He shifts the lantern so it and the flashlight are being held in one hand, and tries activating one of the codes on his phone. But now he notices the technology deadzone, and realizes that the twenty of them are effectively trapped with whoever this was.
The figure, whose face was a blank black void, points at Katsuki. It speaks softly, and Kyouka has to repeat it where everyone can hear.
“You were wrong, Kacchan.” She listens for another moment, and gags at the next words she has to say. “I did what you said, and my next life didn’t have a Quirk. There was nothing… but pain. Pain, misery… darkness…”
Everyone starts looking between the shocked Kyouka, the stunned Katsuki, and the figure. But Katsuki is completely enraptured by the creature, both the uniform and the words making him silently mouth something.
“Bakubro, what… what did you do?” Hanta is the first to voice the incredulous words, but everyone was certainly thinking it.
Katsuki looks at him, and quickly notices everyone looking at him. “I… this can’t be real… It’s some stupid prank…”
The figure turns it’s head, and holds up a hand. And the shadows seem to grow and stretch, forming a long tendril from it’s arm.
Kyouka opens her mouth to speak, but Aoyama lets a blast from the Naval Laser out. It strikes the creature, causing it to scream in pain as it rears back and lashes out. It intentionally seems to turn, the swing cleaving through the windows in a highly destructive fashion that was still pretty far from everyone
A blast of cold water covers everyone, luckily bereft of broken glass. But everyone is now chilled to the bone, the little fire Shouto was comfortable producing, unable to withstand the cold before now completely smothered.
Everyone tries to find the creature, but it seems to have disappeared… but now they have the issue of the dorm’s ground floor flooding, and Momo and Hanta run over, making tarps and tape to at least stem the problem.
Eijiro watches Katsuki, and now that everyone is moving over to help, Katsuki allows a moment for doubt and pain to flash across his face. He even looks directly at the redhead, but allows that vulnerability to remain…
Until the two of them jump at a quiet whisper, soft enough that they were the only ones to hear. “Everyone was wrong, when we were kids. You don’t deserve to be a hero; you failed to save the one person you should have. Someone defenseless, someone who desperately needed your protection…”
Eijiro listens to the words… and it feels like screws are being driven into his head. He brings his hands up to his ears, a sudden wave of tears joining the rainwater as pain suddenly starts running through every nerve in his body.
For a split second, just as Katsuki starts to similarly recoil, there’s this brief moment of clarity. And he can see a small, thin boy just about their age. He had matted, greasy green hair that looked half burned, like broccoli that had been stuck to the bottom of a cooking pot. He was very pale, and he had a cruel grin as he reached long claws towards Katsuki…
Then everything goes black, and Eijiro feels himself slump to the side as everything hurts so much his brain shuts itself down to protect him.
---
Izuku quietly moves away from the red haired boy, quietly bowing his head in apology that the Dementation accidentally caught him as well. But he’d accomplished his task for now, so it was about seeing what the others did with the information he’d given them.
He jumps over the debris and rubble on his way out, only stopping as the girl with the long earbuds looks over at the pieces that fall out of place and tumble to the ground.
As he flees into the forest surrounding the school, she begins to chase after him. He hears the others calling her back, but she manages to reach the treeline mere seconds after him.
He stops, knowing there’s no point in trying to hide from her here. He doesn’t allow himself to be seen, but she does end up looking in his general direction despite his chest failing to contract in heavy breaths from the run. “Stop! Who the hell are you?”
Izuku looks at her for a second. He worries about the inside of his lip, sharpened teeth threatening to fill his mouth with stolen blood.
He quickly steps behind a tree, allowing himself to become visible as he holds a hand out to shout for her to easily hear. “It was a personal matter. I’m sorry for bringing you all into it.”
He knows Kyouka is looking at him, and her teeth chatter from the cold as she shouts over the screaming winds and rain reaching through the trees. “What did he do to you? Why didn’t you tell someone instead of breaking the law like this?”
Izuku stops, and a laugh bubbles up from the depths of the Abyss. He lets it escape from his empty lungs, and echo through the night in a lunatic fit. He steps out from the hiding place, and lets the girl see his body, wracked with burns old and new. Covered in bruises now enshrined upon pale flesh, and a gaunt white face with inhuman hollow eyes. He even slides the Alderia uniform jacket off his shoulders and down to his elbows, revealing a tattered gray shirt hiding more wounds that were barely healed… and a large burn on his side, which only barely stung because of how fresh it was.
“Because he did nothing wrong. Quirkless people aren’t even protected under animal cruelty laws. And now that I’m dead, no one cares about what happened to Deku.”
She takes a few steps back, and Izuku slides the jacket back on. She puts her back to a tree, arms coming up in a defensive measure. “You… I’m so sorry…”
Izuku glares at her, and raises a hand. His long nails weave through the air, wisps of darkness forming around them as Oblivion answers his call. “Don’t be sorry for what I am; I finally have something no one can take from me. If you want to be sorry for someone, be sorry for that Deku All Might left on a roof that Kacchan told him to jump off… I guess we both look like walking corpses now.”
He turns and walks into the night, the shadows swirling around him, protecting him. If he tried hard enough, it was almost like he was being hugged by his mom again.
---
Kyouka listens as the boy’s footsteps go off into the night, only the faintest snap of a twig every once and a while telling her he was still on the grounds.
She slowly turns around, and begins walking back towards the dorm, shivering from the rain whipping against her skin like thousands of tiny glass shards. But that person… Deku maybe?...
She shakes her head as she sees beams of light starting to pass around her, her classmate’s voices calling out for her. ‘Whatever his name is, it wasn’t Deku. the hatred he had for that word… and he knew Bakugo from when they were kids.”
Denki runs up to her, his jacket sticking to his arms. “Hey… you okay? That guy didn’t try anything, did he?”
She shakes her head, quickly walking back towards the dorms with him. She can’t bring herself to speak, just quietly shivering and trying to preserve what little warmth she had left.
They got through the treeline, and All Might was standing there with Aizawa, in all his muscular glory. Aizawa immediately catches sight of them, and pulls out a silver whistle before blowing it twice. Denki gives her a quick pat on the shoulder, and goes off to keep people from wandering too far.
All Might immediately walks towards her and Denki, that smile looking completely forced. “Young Jiro, Aizawa told me you seemed to be able to communicate with the villain. You also ran after them; while that bravery is commendable, I have to ask you not to put yourself at risk like that.”
Kyouka stares at the Number One hero, and nods with a furrow in her brow. “Sure… they said something interesting, though. Maybe enough for you to know who they are… did you ever meet a middle school boy on the roof of a building?”
There’s a very obvious shock on his face, the smile fading almost immediately. “I… that does sound familiar. But I fail to see what that incident has to do with this. The boy was Quirkless, and sadly passed away last year soon after our encounter.”
Kyouka gives the pro hero a look, the mystique of him being the best hero in Japan slowly dying on the vine. “Well, whoever that was… they took it personally. They had a big problem with Bakugo, and they mentioned you by name. And… something about walking corpses?”
’All Might has a terrible poker face’ She thinks to herself, watching his face morph through several clear emotions. He tries to come up with something to say… but Aizawa steps in. “Jiro, did you ever see who it was? If we have a villain running around the campus while the power’s out…”
“He’s not a villain!” She doesn’t know what came over her, but the words force themselves from Kyouka before she can stop herself. “He said he didn’t want anyone else involved! Just Bakugou… and it sounds like he had a damn good reason.”
Aizawa crosses his arms, giving her a discerning look. “Kyouka, what that villain did to your classmates is a crime. You shouldn’t…”
“What, feel empathy for someone who was hurt? I should force them to carry that pain until they die?” Kyouka can feel other people looking at her, but she refuses to back down on this. Even as the two teachers trade a side glance, then immediately start scanning her… like she did something wrong.
“Young Jiro, it’s commendable to feel empathy for a villain. But they, by definition, are…” All Might stops, almost seeming to consider his words.
Kyouka shakes her head in disgust, and walks back towards the dorms. Aizawa reaches for her shoulder, but she intentionally steps around him, only sending him a glare in warning as she goes back into the building.