Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Bells chime daintily as the rickety door to Old Baba’s antiques store is pushed open. A boy, young, with unruly curls of deep green and eyes to match, marches his way to old Baba’s counter, face twisted into a determined grimace.

“Old Baba,” he begins, “I have something important to tell you.”

Old Baba humours his seriousness with a curt nod. “Out with it, young Izuku.”

The child’s composure slips slightly, his small frame buzzing with poorly concealed delight. The tight line of his mouth cracks into a grin as he shouts “I turned four today!”

The woman graces him with a warm smile. “Your Quirk must be coming in soon then, Izuku. What do you hope it might be?”

The young boy ponders this with all the gravity and depth a child his age was capable of. “Kacchan’s Quirk is from both his parents, so maybe mine will be too! But, uh, I forgot what Dad’s Quirk is, so I gotta ask Mama!”

Old Baba grins at the child bouncing on his heels in front of her counter. “Well, dear boy, isn’t that quite exciting. You best show me when it develops, prove all those heroic dreams of yours can come true.”

Izuku nods exuberantly. He and Kacchan already have these dreams laid out, factoring in for whatever Izuku’s Quirk could possibly be, and Old Baba has heard each detail on numerous occasions. The child would talk for hours if she’d let him.

Eventually, Old Baba shoos the boy back home to his mother with a promise of coming back to show off his Quirk when it manifests.

The boy never returns to that old store.

***

It’s a month after Izuku’s fourth birthday.

The waiting room is bustling with life, young children clutching to their parents’ hands or playing with the small assortment of toys left on the tabletops. Izuku sits in his plastic chair, feet swinging back and forth, watching the door to the Quirk doctor’s office, waiting his turn. His mum sits beside him, shifting in her seat and chewing at her nails.

Kids stream in and out of the office, grins plastered across their little faces, chattering animatedly about their potential Quirks.

The latest grinning child exits the office and the doctor calls Izuku in. He introduces himself as Doctor Tsubasa and Izuku recognises the name as his friend’s surname.

Dr. Tsubasa carries out his usual tests, taking x-rays and prodding at Izuku. Izuku, for his part, sits as still as he can manage, questions about the doctor’s processes tumbling from his mouth. The doctor answers him in good humour.

Eventually, he sits back in his chair.

“I’ll give it to you straight, kid,” he sighs, leaning back in his chair, adjusting his thick glasses. “You’re Quirkless.”

Izuku’s heart drops, his fidgeting stills. What?

“What?” his mum asks, shock filtering into her voice. “How- are you sure?”

Dr. Tsubasa explains Izuku’s extra toe joint in a solemn but gentle tone, but it’s drowned by the static Izuku’s mind, a subtle ache in his heart as his world seems to crumble around him.

He’s Quirkless.

Mama ushers him out of the office, away from that room. He finds himself suddenly standing in front of his front door, totally unsure of how he got there.

“Inko, Izuku! How’d the appointment go?” his father calls from the kitchen.

“Hisashi, honey, we’ll talk in a minute. Izuku, could you go to your room, please?” Inko tells him. Izuku can only nod numbly.

His father evidently hadn’t taken the news well. Only a few months later, he shot off to America, claiming it was for his work and promising Izuku he’d be back, he’d call every week, and for the first few he actually does, telling Izuku about the wonders of California, but soon radio silence stretched between them, and he never heard from his father again. 

The divorce is a quiet affair. Not long after, Izuku and his mother move out of that house and into a small apartment in one of the worse sides of town, Inko picks up more work, and Izuku wonders where he’d went wrong.

***

Seven-year-old Izuku cowers. Kacchan and his friends surround Izuku in the elementary school playground.

All of Kacchan’s friends repeat the same mantras they’ve been teasing Izuku with for years, but it’s just teasing, right?

“Stupid Deku, you’ll never be a hero!” a boy with red draconic wings – Tsubasa – jokes, and all the other kids laugh. Izuku tries to laugh along, but the joke isn’t very funny anymore. It hasn’t been funny for a while. 

Kacchan sees this, and his gaze hardens, hands popping with bright explosions. “Oi, Deku,” he spits, “what makes you think it’s a joke?”

The laughter dies from Izuku’s lips. It’s only teasing, isn’t it? These are his friends, and friends make jokes all the time, even if the ones about Izuku hurt a little. It’s…Kacchan is his friend, right? They used to play together and have sleepovers and talk about becoming a hero duo together. Sure, when Izuku’s Quirklessness came to light, Kacchan became a little mean, and he and all the other kids started teasing Izuku, but…they’re still friends…right?

Kacchan’s face splits into a twisted grin. “You’re useless, Deku. You’ll never be anything but a useless, Quirkless freak! You’re the kind of thing I hate the most!”

Sparking hands slap onto Izuku, painfully hot, burning into the skin of his forearm. He yelps and tries to writhe out of the grip. Kacchan cackles and lets him shrink back.

This is the first time Kacchan hurt Izuku physically.

Kacchan is not his friend.

***

Head down and arms wrapped protectively around his school bag, fourteen-year-old Izuku weaves through swarms of students.

A quick, silent escape is always the best method of avoiding Kacchan’s wrath.

A bellow of “DEKU!” thunders down the hallway, and the crowd parts like the Red Sea at Kacchan’s crackling hand.

“Where do you think you’re going, you useless fucking wimp, hah?!” he growls.

Izuku’s feet freeze to the floor. Running now would be pointless. It would only make the boy angrier, which only ever translated to more pain for Izuku.

Kacchan barks at the crowded students to “move it, extras!” as he stalks his way toward a trembling Izuku. Apologies pour from his mouth in wobbly streams, but he’s not even sure what he did to spark Kacchan’s ire this time. A corner of his mind whispers that he deserves these beatings, being the weak, Quirkless, useless deku that he is. The universe reminds him of this quite regularly.

Kicking feet and explosive hands swing at Izuku from all angles. He crumples to the ground, wrapping his arms around his head. He takes the hits, of course he does, but he tries to avoid concussions where he can.

Kacchan and his lackies are merciless in their attack, reiterating the same mantras Izuku tried to ignore.

Do you really think you’ll amount to anything, Deku? You’ll never be a hero, you weak ass Quirkless fuck. You can’t even save yourself. Too stupid, too weak. Fucking Deku, what’s even the point of you? You’re just bringing down the rest of us.

The blows burn into his skin, but the words sear into his heart, etching starburst scars that ached devastatingly, if only because he knew them to be right.

When Kacchan and his lackies eventually stalk off, evidently deciding he’s repented enough for his uselessness for now, he picks himself off the floor and drags himself over to his bag, digging for his first aid supplies.

Applying burn cream and gauze to the worst of his wounds, he imagines, far from the first time, how different everything would be if only the universe had bestowed him with a Quirk. He’d once wished for a hero’s Quirk, something powerful and flashy so he could save the world with a smile. Now, he thinks he’d take anything, no matter how weak.

He stumbles out the school gates and walks home in a daze.

***

Izuku potters around the kitchen after dinner, clearing and cleaning dishes, careful not to aggravate his wounds further nor reveal them to his mother. She finishes drying their plates and hands him the stack to put away.

“I went to visit Old Baba at the antique store today. She asked after you,” she says to him. He jolts, wobbling his precarious tower.

“Did she?” An awkward laugh bubbles out of him. Inko shoots him a pointed look.

Realistically, he understands that Old Baba does not despise him for his Quirklessness, his mum has told him as much, but every time he thinks of visiting her, shame floods through him at the memory of an impossible promise he could not keep.

“You best show me when it develops, prove all those heroic dreams of yours can come true.”

He isn’t strong enough to face her as he is, nor is he deserving. The Quirkless lay at the bottom of the food chain in the modern day. They are weak, useless, expendable – wastes of space in Kacchan’s words. Kacchan has never been wrong before.

If he isn’t strong enough to face Old Baba, how can he be strong enough to even fathom becoming a hero?

Izuku settles on the sofa to watch the news, All Might’s steadfast grin flashing across the screen with the headline ‘No. 1 hero saves two Quirkless children from kidnapping attempt’.

Since he knew the very word ‘hero’ Izuku had wanted to become one, to save people with a smile and make Japan a safer place to call home. This dream did not die with his Quirkless diagnosis, though it died for everyone around him. Kacchan, his friends, his mother, the teachers, all the doctors he has seen. All they see are bones of glass held together by paper skin – fragile, weak.

All Might on the screen is a tower of solid muscle, lumbering through a haze of smoke carrying the young victims of the incident, long-since memorised statistics blur through Izuku’s thoughts.

Of the 20 per-cent Quirkless people in the world, the majority are the elderly, part of the transitional generation of Quirks becoming commonplace. Only about 3 per-cent make up people under 30, and most of that 3 per-cent come from Europe. The suicide rate is terrifyingly high. The trafficking is equally horrific. Not to mention the employment rates, which are utterly abysmal – in a world of the superhuman, no one wants to employ the subpar. For those few that do manage to find employment, it is disproportionately so in unskilled labour, working minimum wage in poor conditions.

There is also not a single Quirkless hero to have served, not one since the dawn of Quirks and heroes alike.

Izuku’s prospects, all in all, are not particularly favourable.

Despite it all, though, he can’t let go of his elusive dream, not fully. Its unattainability only added to his yearning for it. Heroism, saving people, is the one way he can make himself useful, and his very being urges him to pursue it. There is nothing he’d rather do, no way he’d rather live his life, than to take the path of heroism, but watching All Might’s hulking form on the television screen morphs the barricade between himself and his dream into an unclimbable wall.

Unbidden, fragments of an old memory flash in his mind. A computer screen, All Might’s laughter crackling from the speakers, strong voice calling a long-familiar catchphrase, his mum apologising to him profusely. He didn’t want her to apologise. He wanted her to tell him-

Booming laughter from the TV shakes Izuku out of it. The news channel plays a shaky phone video, capturing All Might’s rescue efforts and his signature ‘I Am Here!’. The Quirkless children he carries cling to his arms as he marches them away from a smoking, overturned van. Police and other heroes surround the vehicle.

Izuku turns the TV off.

***

Later, in the late hours of the night as he lies awake. All he can really think is that his ribs hurt, and he can’t fall asleep.

He snorts derisively. Another sleepless night, then.

Chapter Text

June 7th.

Izuku wakes up early, feeling weirdly awake for having as little sleep as he did. Rushing through his morning routine, he’s out the door and heading to school within twenty minutes.

Scrolling through Hero News to check for fights or new heroes on his way, he sees that a villain had gone on a rampage only a slight detour away from his route. Given how early he is, he figures that there’s just enough time to watch the fight for a moment.

He runs to the scene, pushing his way to the front of the crowd in time to see an enormous man rumbling through the streets, dreadlocks swinging wildly. Eyes wide and face slack in awe, he watches as Kamui Woods leaps in to entrap the villain in his Lacquered Chain Prison.

“Give us something flashy, Tree-Man!” the man standing next to him shouts.

Izuku reaches for his notebook, Hero Analysis for the Future No. 13, to add the beginnings of a sketch of the move to the hero’s dedicated page.

His attention whips back to the fight when a gigantic figure clad in a purple and white bodysuit slams into the villain, sending him sprawling.

“Today is the day of my debut, my name is Mt. Lady,” she says, voice sultry as she gather the unconscious villain off the ground. “It’s a pleasure to make your ass-quaintance.”

The crowd roars around him, snapping photos of the new hero and commenting on her dramatic debut. Izuku frantically scrawls a sketch of her in his notebook, jotting notes about her gigantification Quirk and its possible uses.

The man standing next to him glances over.

“Heh, you’re taking notes. You looking to be a hero, kid?” he asks. “That’s great! You can do it!”

Izuku spins to face him, a smile stretching his cheeks. “Ah- thank you! I’ll do my best!”

***

He runs on the high of the praise all the way to school.

He knows that the man obviously couldn’t know about his Quirklessness, but it didn’t stop him from latching onto the encouragement with fervour.

Izuku pushes open his classroom door. A flash of red catches his eye, and the warm flutter the praise gave him sinks into an icy dread.

On his desk sits a spider-lily. The death flower.

It looks almost pretty, spindling red petals resting delicately on the desk, but the connotations behind the flower leave him reeling.

He hears sniggering from the students milling about the classroom around him. Mumbles of ‘maybe he’ll take the hint!’ and ‘you reckon he’ll cry?’ reach his ears.

His heart pangs with shame, and he drags his leaden feet to his desk to pick up the flower. Tears burn his eyes. He struggles to stop them from falling, not wanting to give the other students another thing to tease about. Cry-baby Deku, can’t even take a joke.

Up close, it’s beautiful. Long, scarlet petals arranged in a loose bundle, thin red stems encircling it. He crushes it in his fist and lets it fall to the ground.

The day passes at an agonising pace, each minute stretching out and hanging over his head. Thoughts of the spider-lily crowd his mind.

He’s used to his existence being ignored. He’s used to unkind words, both whispered around him and thrown at his face. He’s used to the violence, even.

The encouragement to kill himself is new.

It stings, a little.

He knows his presence is unwanted, that everyone around him sees him as another burden to be unloaded sooner or later, but he didn’t think they’d go so far as to try and speed up the process to rid themselves of it.

His homeroom teacher, a long-faced man with a bouncy mop of blond hair, strolls to the front of the room, ignoring Izuku and the crumpled flower on the floor next to him.

“Now that you’re all third years, it’s time you start thinking about your futures,” he says, holding a stack of papers in front of him. “But, you’re all looking to go into heroics, aren’t you?”

The class erupts into cheers, each student showcasing their Quirks as they do.

“Yes, yes, you all have wonderful Quirks! I have no doubt–”

“Sensei,” Kacchan interrupts with a drawl. “Don’t lump me in with all these extras. I’m not gonna be stuck at the bottom when they’re all rejected.”

This, predictably, infuriates the students, but Kacchan forges on, utterly unperturbed.

“I’ll be going to U.A.! I’m the only one from this crap-ass school that can get in, and I’ll definitely surpass All Might to become the top hero!” he proclaims with a fierce smirk.

“Oh, yeah,” the teacher says, glancing at his notes list. “Midoriya wants to go to U.A. too, right?”

Izuku flinches, and the air around him stills, deathly silence settling for a moment. Then, raucous laughter.

“Midoriya? No way!” they cackle disbelievingly. “You can’t get into the hero course just by studying!”

Izuku glances around as they all hoot at him, a crushing devastation settling in his bones. Not one of them was on his side.

A loud growl is his only warning before a blistering explosion lands on the desk in front of him.

“OI, DEKU!” Kacchan snarls. “You’re below the rejects, you’re fucking Quirkless! How can you even stand in the same ring as me?”

“No- Kacchan, wait!” Izuku cowers back, scurrying back from popping hands. “I’m not trying to compete with you! It’s just…” He looks at the floor, face burning. “It’s been my dream since I was little. I won’t know unless I try…”

Kacchan’s face twists into a scowl, hands smoking now. “Whaddaya mean, ‘unless you try’? Don’t bullshit me, Deku, what can you do, hah?!”

The room spins as Izuku tries to suppress his quivering. His heart rabbits in his chest. Everyone’s eyes drill into him and their taunting laughter rackets in his ears. Their figures looming over him menacingly, and in that moment they seem less like normal people and more like something from his nightmares.

Their teacher, largely ignoring the commotion, calls for everyone’s attention to resume the class, half-heartedly reminding them not to use their Quirks in class.

Izuku ducks his head as he sits back at his desk, wishing desperately that he could melt into the ground.

***

The bell rings for the end of the day, and with it his classmates hurry out into the halls, eager to get home for the weekend.

Izuku stays in his seat, analysis notebook in hand, refining his earlier sketch of Mt. Lady. He’ll go home soon, he thinks.

He’s so absorbed in his sketching that he doesn’t hear the classroom door open again, and three pairs of footsteps stalking closer.

A heated hand slaps on the back of his neck, and Izuku flinches.

“Say, Deku,” Kacchan drawls, voice dangerously low. “Were you trying to embarrass me today, spewing shit about going to U.A.?”

Izuku tries hopelessly to stop trembling, unable to even turn around and face Kacchan, but his old friend shoves him harshly out of his seat.

“Answer me, you fucking loser!”

He can’t, his mouth won’t open. He shields his face with his notebook.

Kacchan lets out a feral snarl, ripping the book from his hands. “Still keeping your stalker notes, Deku? You should know by now that it’s not gonna help you.”

He slaps the book between detonating palms, scorched pages crumbling immediately, falling to the ground gentle as snowflakes.

The notebook is tossed carelessly out the window. Izuku yelps, twisting around just to watch it fall into the fish pond with a small splash.

When he whips back around, choking back tears and a plea for his old friend to just stop, Kacchan and his lackies have already walked back to the door, sniggering at the desperate look on Izuku’s face.

“If you wanna be a hero that badly, there is a quick way to do it.” Kacchan smirks, a cruel twist of his mouth paired with gleeful eyes. He takes a step toward Izuku, throwing a casual gesture toward the open window behind him. “Just pray that you’ll be born with a Quirk in your next life and take a swan dive off the roof.”

The door slams behind him. Despite the burn and sting of melted fabric in a fresh wound, Izuku only feels cold.

Staticky haze fogs his mind as he stares out the window, long after Kacchan and the others leave.

Is this the part where he's supposed to give up? Follow through on Kacchan’s words and let himself fall? Is he supposed to find some miraculous second wind and find the will to keep going? He doesn’t think he can dredge up enough energy for that sort of conviction at the moment.

He feels exhausted. Numbing coldness spread through his bones. His gaze finds his notebook, floating across the surface of the pond. Maybe he should get that.

He’s just…tired. So perpetually tired that he hadn’t even realised it until it greeted him like an old friend.

What has he done wrong in a past life to anger the universe so greatly? Has he done something to deserve this? It felt too weighty, too much like a divine consequence to simply label it as stupid bad luck. Every day he has to fight for a right to exist, every day his hopes are bludgeoned to splinters and he’s expected to pick up the pieces over and over, day after day, without complaint, without protest, place the target on his back and allow the world to use him as its doormat.

No, it’s too cruel to be as simple as back luck.

Kacchan, in any case, is right. He can’t really hope to be a hero in this life, and death would be a quick way out of this miserable existence.

He sighs, rubbing a hand over tired eyes. What will his mother think if he does that to himself? She’d miss him, wouldn’t she?

She’d be free of your burden, though, a little voice whispers in his head. She could work less, move to a nicer apartment. She’d stop having to cry over you.

She’d miss me, he shoots back, but his words sound hollow even in his own mind.

With no small amount of effort, he drags his feet away from the window, down the stairs and out the front doors.

The koi have started nibbling at the edges of the notebook’s burnt and sopping pages.

“My dreams have turned into fish food,” he mutters, grabbing it out of the water. It’s near unsalvageable at this point, the pages are ruined, his writing looks illegible.

Pretty on par with how his week has been going, really.

He begins the trudge home, afternoon sun warming his back. It’s unfairly good weather for how miserable he feels.

Heading under the bridge, a shortcut he sometimes takes, a rancid, wet smell reaches him. He wrinkles his nose, walking a little faster to get out from under the bridge quicker. What is that?

A squelch and a quiet chuckle sound from behind him. Whipping around, he’s confronted by a tall pile of oozing sludge, moving toward him rapidly. He opens his mouth to scream, a split second from sprinting away, when the sludge slams into him, filling his eyes, nose, mouth, throat. He chokes on it, clawing at the viscous muck, but it envelops him.

“Ooh, you’ll do perfectly, kid,” the slime cackles, forcing its way down his oesophagus. “Don’t worry! This’ll only take a minute.”

Izuku struggles, kicking his feet out and trying to rake the sludge out of his face, but it’s fruitless. He can’t move it. Black spots have already started to dance across his vision as his air begins to run out. Is he going to die here? This isn’t how he wants it to go-

“I AM HERE!”

An airwave hits him like a semitruck, blasting the slime off his skin. He crumples to the ground, hacking it out of his throat. A massive shadow approaches him.

“Are you alright, young man?”

Izuku looks up, slowly registering the burly build, golden hair and trademark grin.

“A- All Might?!” he yells, scrambling to his feet. “Oh my God, All Might, you’re here! I have so many questions-”

The man holds up a hand, cutting off Izuku’s rapid-fire tumble of words before it can really begin.

“Ahem, I apologise, young man, but I must be going now. This villain must be taken to the police!” he says, holding up two large bottles filled with green-brown sludge. “If you’re not hurt, I’ll be on my way. Call an ambulance and get your throat checked out.”

“Wait-” Izuku starts, but All Might is already moving to leap away. Unthinking, he darts forward and latches onto a muscular leg just as he jumps, soaring up.

All Might looks down, seeing Izuku clinging onto his pants as the wind whips tears into his eyes.

“Young ma- what are you doing?! Let go!”

“I can’t!” Izuku yells back. “I’ll fall and die- All Might, watch your landing!”

The concrete rooftop strikes them hard. They tumble across the roof in a heap, and Izuku no doubt has handfuls of new scratches all over himself now.

He springs up. “All Might, I’m so sorry! I wasn’t thinking, and I grabbed onto your leg, I’m so sorry!”

Coughs wrack the hero’s body as he gets to his feet. “Young man, that was incredibly reckless. You could have been seriously injured!”

“I know! I know, I’m sorry,” Izuku stutters.

All Might shifts in place, looking at the streets beyond the rooftop. He looks agitated, almost. “I really must be going now.”

“Wait!” Izuku shouts. “Please, I have a question before you go.”

The hero glances back at him and gestures for him to continue.

“What I, um, wanted to ask was could I…” he starts, nerves spiking. He takes a deep breath, squeezing his eyes shut to shout “Is it possible to become a hero without a Quirk?”

All Might splutters, and a poof sends a wave of smoke everywhere.

As it clears, All Might…is gone? A skeletal man stands in his place, all gawky limbs and sunken features. He’s wearing the same clothes that All Might was, his hair the same shock of golden blonde. There’s no way…

“Wha- ALL MIGHT?!” Izuku screams. There’s no way, there’s no WAY! “What…happened to you?”

“Yeah, kid, it’s me,” the brittle-looking man – All Might – says. “I’m gonna need you to keep quiet about this.”

Izuku nods, dumbfounded. It’s not like anyone would believe me anyway, he thinks. It’s a little insane. His hero, the man he’s watched countless videos of, whose merchandise fills every corner of Izuku’s room, is frail and gangly, a façade.

“This came from a fight with a villain about six years ago. It wasn’t broadcast, and it’s drastically reduced my power since,” the hero explains. “I commend you on your enthusiasm, but heroism is a dangerous career, kid. You need a lot of strength and power to be able to keep not only others, but also yourself safe. You can’t save anyone if you get yourself killed in battle.”

His hero stares Izuku in the eyes, a look of pity morphing onto his sunken features. “I’m sorry, kid, but no. You can’t be a hero without a Quirk. It’s too dangerous. You have to be realistic.”

For the millionth time in his short life, Izuku’s heart sinks, and cotton fills his ears, and the ground is pulled from beneath his feet. Be realistic.

All Might tries suggesting alternative, less dangerous careers to Izuku as he stands there, silent and unmoving, before giving him a pat on the shoulder and puffing up again, all towering muscle and fearless determination once again as he leaps from the rooftop.

For the second time that day, Izuku stares at the faraway ground. Cars bustle below him, crawling like ants along the criss-cross of roads. He leans against the railing, lets his arms dangle down, and wonders how long it would take to fall. If he’d even have time to feel scared. 

He isn’t sure why he’s only thinking all of this now. It’s been happening for years, the same cycle of violence and hatred. Did it really take 10 years for it to to sink in that no one wants him around?

For the second time that day, he drags his feet away from the edge, and down the stairs.

He ambles down the street, directionless and lost in his own head, scuffing his shoes along the pavement.

And, damn it, his shoes. They really stand out if you knew what to look for. Clunky, brilliant red, like a warning sign screaming I’m Quirkless! Come pick on me!

Most people don’t know that Quirkless people only had one option for shoes, though. Probably because they don’t care about us, Izuku thinks bitterly. Only one brand makes them anymore, and they only bothered with the one colour. Izuku hates it. If he were a cynical person, he’d wonder if they made them such an obnoxious colour to make the Quirkless stand out, to isolate them more. 

A muffled series of booms and crackles jolts him from his bitter musings. People around him looked up from their phones, eyes searching for the source.

They sound again, and a thin trail of smoke drifts up from a few streets over. Kacchan. Painful familiarity tells him those are his explosions. And he’s not so dense as to use them so freely in public, especially not big ones like that. Unease pools in the pit of his stomach.

He’s in trouble.

Izuku sprints toward the sound, whirling thoughts trying to figure out what could have happened.

He skids to a stop behind a crowd gathered at the end of a street, murmuring worriedly. Izuku shoves his way through the mass. His heart skips a beat at the scene unfolding in front of him.

Kacchan is gasping for air, clawing at the same sewer-green sludge as Izuku had not even an hour ago. The heroes are just standing around, watching as a kid chokes to death in front of them. Kacchan’s snarls of frustration are muffled, explosions dampened by the sludge.

The sludge villain…how did he escape All Might?!

When he…oh. It’s his fault, isn’t it? He grabbed All Might’s leg, distracted him, and now the villain was trying to kill the only friend he’d ever really had.

“He’s gotta stop popping those explosions if I’m going to step in, he’ll burn me otherwise,” Kamui Woods murmurs to Death Arms.

“And there’s nothing I can do since the villain hasn’t got a solid body,” Death Arms replied, and the other heroes around them nod. Izuku felt horror crawl up his throat. They weren’t even considering trying to save Kacchan. They were resigned to watching a child die.

Kacchan throws his head up in a desperate attempt to get the slime out of his face. His eyes catch on to Izuku’s from across the street, strained and wide. Kacchan’s scared, Izuku realises, his feet throwing him forward. Before he can think it through, Izuku is sprinting toward the sludge villain, slinging his backpack off his shoulders and throwing it as hard as he can at the villain’s eyes.

The villain howls as a notebook hits his eye, and Kacchan gasps, heaving in panicked breaths.

An intense rush of air bursts from behind him, taking Izuku’s feet out from under him, and the sludge clinging to Kacchan is ripped away.

All Might booms his signature laugh, stepping over Izuku’s crumpled form. He mutters something that sounds like I’ll take it from here. The crowd cheers in response; their relief is palpable. A hero, the best hero, has saved the day one again. The other pro heroes grin at All Might, seemingly just as starstruck by his presence as the civilians are.

Izuku hauls himself to the side of the street, trying to get out of sight from the pros and the crowd. He looks over at Kacchan, only to see the boy already glaring at him. His face looks murderous, and, of course. The useless, Quirkless kid tried to step in and save him. He probably feels like his strength has been insulted.

Wincing, Izuku hurries away as subtly as he can, slipping past the pros as the control the crowd and gather stray sludge. One of them sees him, though, yelling out at him to stop.

Izuku bolts before they can give chase.

Darting into an empty alleyway, he tries to fend off the incoming wave of delayed panic. How could he have been so reckless as to rush in without thinking? He didn’t help at all, he just got in the way – again. He could have died, and it would have been for nothing.

And- oh God he broke the law – what he did was vigilantism. Will the heroes try to track him down? All Might knows his face. Is he going to go to jail?

Tears prick his eyes. His breaths come in short, uneven spurts. His knees wobble under him, so he crouches on the dirty pavement. The alley smells foul. He struggles to heave in deep breaths of the dingy air.

He wonders how angry Kacchan’s going to be on Monday at school. His glare spoke volumes. Izuku could already feel the burn of explosions on his skin, the growl of useless fucking Deku ringing in his ears.

He’s so caught up in his spiralling thoughts, looping around the uncertainties of his situation like a broken record, that he doesn’t see the portal. Nor the rough, dry hands that reach out of it, yanking him in.

The throngs of people going home do not notice the sudden absence of a middle school kid crouched in an alley, continuing peacefully on their way.

Chapter Text

June 7th.

Katsuki’s in a shit mood. He’s usually in a shit mood, but he feels he has a legitimate right to it today. He slouches his way home, having shaken off the hero that tried to escort him – he’s not fucking fragile, no way.

Not even an hour ago, he was attacked by a villain, a shitty sludge villain that forced its disgusting sewer shit down his throat. He can still taste it in his throat.

The heroes on site hadn’t even tried to save him – they’d stood there uselessly, just watching as Katsuki struggled. His explosions hadn’t done anything against the villain, except maybe make it try to hurry its bodysnatching process.

And then fucking Deku had the audacity to jump forward and try to play hero, swinging his backpack like a sword at the sludge guy’s eyeballs. The worst part is that it worked, but what the hell would he have done afterwards if All Might hadn’t shown up?

Katsuki refuses to acknowledge how relieved he’d felt for a moment when he saw Deku sprinting towards him.

And what’s with that loser wanting to go to U.A.? There’s no way he could ever actually be a hero – he’ll get himself killed! And probably other people too, knowing him. He’s a Quirkless weakling that wouldn’t last a day out on the field.

Deku isn’t stupid, but he is an idiot for holding onto his delusional fantasy of Quirkless heroism. It just isn’t possible. He’s too weak and wimpy, too soft-hearted for that kind of career.

Deku’s whole spiel of trying his best really just makes Katsuki’s blood boil. The fucking loser doesn’t even try preparing for heroism – no training or diet, no physical conditioning, nothing outside of using his freaky stalker analysis brain to pick people apart. He doesn’t even have a strong Quirk to fall back on. It’s honestly insulting that he thinks he can make the cut without even doing anything to better himself.

Katsuki also refuses to acknowledge that he’s worried what would happen to Deku if he tries to become a hero, convincing himself that Deku just pisses him off.

When he arrives home, he endures the fussing and worrying of his parents over the evening, knowing they need to get it out of their system before they leave him alone, but that doesn’t mean he enjoys it.

All the screeching from his mum set his nerves on fire, and the are you oks and how are you feelings from his dad just make him feel guilty for being attacked.

“I’m fine, get off me you hag! Like some shitty villain’s gonna scare me that easily,” Katsuki grumbles every time Mitsuki starts to fuss again.

Somehow, he makes it back to his room without setting anything on fire. Slamming the door behind him, he takes a second to breathe, mentally cataloguing what he needs to get done.

Homework, studying, work outs, don’t think about the sludge villain. Simple. Maybe he won’t feel the need to explode Deku’s face come Monday.

Katsuki powers through his afternoon routine, flying through his easy-ass homework and getting in some study for the U.A. entrance exam. He’s well aware that it’s still 10 months away, but he won’t settle for anything less than 100 per-cent, hence the early study.

Around half past 6, Katsuki heads back to the kitchen to cook dinner, knowing it’ll help calm his frustration. Something about the mindless chopping of vegetables and frying of meat is relaxing for him. His cooking is damn tasty, too. His hag mother can’t and won’t cook for shit. She can’t be trusted not to burn the kitchen down.

As he settles in to sleep, though, his mind rears back to the events from earlier. He tries not to let residual panic overtake him again as the phantom smell of rancid sludge etches its way into his senses.

Every time he closes his eyes, he sees Deku running toward him, face pinched with terror as he throws that stupid yellow backpack at the villain.

Don’t think about it.

***

The weekend floats by as Katsuki moves through his usual motions. He does his damnedest not let a thought of the sludge villain slip through, ignoring the cold sweat he’s woken up in each night, ignoring how he flinches a little at random shadows. He’s fucking fine.

Monday morning, and Katsuki marches toward school with thunderous intent. He can’t wait to get his hands on stupid Deku’s face, show him what’s what for running like a fucking coward after flinging his weak ass at a villain.

He waits in the classroom, Quirk thrumming under his skin in anticipation. Ten minutes until the bell. The wimp should be showing up any minute now.

But ten minutes ticks down to five, and five ticks down to one, with no sign of Deku.

The bell rings, and class starts, and he still hasn’t shown up. Katsuki fumes as he scrawls his notes down, ready to punt that scrawny motherfucker into next week when he deigns to show up.

With every minute that goes by with no sign of Deku, Katsuki’s rage grows a little hotter. Is Deku now too fucking scared to face him? He didn’t have any of that hesitation risking his life to charge a villain!

A sudden thought whispers in his head, its tone edging on poisonous. You told him to kill himself, maybe he was trying to follow your advise.

He shakes his head to silence the whisper. Deku may be utterly fucking useless, a coward, and an idiot with laughably far-fetched dreams, but he isn’t suicidal. He’s too persistent for that. The wimp had been following Katsuki around like a lost puppy since they were babies, and some little words aren’t gonna change that, much to his irritation.

On some level, Katsuki knows that his anger at Deku is a little irrational, and he doesn’t entirely understand what it is about him that makes him so mad, but he chalks it up to Deku being a Quirkless loser with no backbone for the things that matter, because, well, he is.

Katsuki’s pretty confident that he just said the shit that Deku’s needed to hear for a while now – he can’t be a hero without a Quirk, not safely at least.

He knows he’s right, yet cutting thoughts hiss at him the rest of the day anyway.

When Katsuki walks through his front door that afternoon, Mitsuki ambushes him. Her face is ashen, pinched, and she holds a phone to her ear.  

“I’ve been trying to call you all fucking day, Katsuki!” she screeches. “When was the last time you saw Izuku?”

Katsuki bristles, all his anger from before slamming back into him. “Hah?! When he tried to get himself killed in the villain attack. He wasn’t at school today.”

His mum relays the information to whoever she’s on the phone with, and Katsuki hears what sounds like a cracked sob from the other side of the line.

Mitsuki listens intently to whatever they’re saying, eyebrows furrowing further and hand creeping up to cover her mouth.

She ends the call. Her face is ashen. “Izuku never went home after the attack.”

“…Hah?” Confusion laces the question.

“I was talking with Inko. She hasn’t seen Izuku since Friday morning. She’s launched a police search. They’re preparing to gather up everyone who last saw or spoke to him, try to get information on what could have happened.”

The thought from before tugs at Katsuki again, whispering poisonously at him. He wants to swat it away.

“How come we didn’t know about this three fucking days ago?” he asks quietly.

Mitsuki rubs a hand over her eyes, looking more stressed than she had in years.

It’s his dad who answers, having quietly come into the entry way where they stand. “Because Inko’s been struggling to get the police to take her seriously. She only just got them to actually launch an investigation this morning.”

Katsuki doesn’t know what to say to that. An aborted question squirms uncomfortably somewhere at the back of his throat.

It must show on his face, because Masaru sighs. “Because Izuku’s Quirkless, son. The police are prepared to rule it off as a suicide, even though they haven’t found any trace of him.”

He feels a little numb, suddenly. Conflicted feelings stir restlessly in his stomach, making his hands clam up and his thoughts grow fuzzy at the edges.

He pushes wordlessly past Mitsuki, retreating to his room.

“Katsuki?” his dad, who’d been in the kitchen listening, calls after him, voice soft and gentle with concern.

“Let him go, Masaru. I think we just have to let him work through this himself,” his mum replies, so quiet that Katsuki almost doesn’t catch it.

It’s nine at night. Katsuki’s eyes stare unfocussed at the same patch of ceiling they’ve been watching for the last few hours. His stomach growls, but he ignores it. He’d skipped dinner, hadn’t felt hungry at the time.

His mind sprints around jagged loops – he’d let Deku get away when he’d bolted after the villain incident. It was probably the last anyone had seen of him, since he never made it home.

He feels anger simmer in his bones that Deku had just run away. That he couldn’t just fucking face Katsuki after throwing his weak ass at a villain that thoughtlessly. Where could he have gone, anyway?

The wimp wouldn’t kill himself, of that Katsuki is sure. He’s too determined to be a goddamn thorn in Katsuki’s side to do that, preaching uselessly about becoming a hero through some miracle of God despite having literally none of the necessary qualities.

Katsuki hates him, hates that he ran away like a coward.

It’s easier to think about his anger, after all, than it is to think about the quiet despair that he’d just let Deku run away and disappear.

Katsuki rolls over, forcing his eyes closed and pretending he wants sleep to come.

***

When Katsuki arrives in the classroom on Tuesday morning, his eyes drift to Deku’s empty desk. Someone’s put another spider lily on it, and some girls are giggling about it by the window. Katsuki looks away.

Halfway through homeroom, a police officer walks into their classroom, whispering a few words to the teacher, whose expression morphs into vague worry.

The police officer, a bored looking man with vaguely purple skin and close-cropped violet hair, turns to face the class.

“I come with unfortunate news,” he starts. Katsuki feels himself freeze a little. “I regret to inform you that a classmate of yours, Midoriya Izuku, has been reported missing since Friday evening. We will be conducting short interviews with you all to try gather more information. Aoi Fumiko, could you please follow me outside?”

A short girl with shaggy brown hair follows him out, looking mildly confused. She returns a few minutes later, the same expression on her face.

“Bakugou Katsuki, please follow me.”

Katsuki rises from his desk, his hands sweaty. He steps outside and follows the officer into an empty classroom, noting 2 other officers standing around. One of them, a woman with dark blue hair tied behind her head in a bun, sits in one of the empty chairs, an open file in her lap.

“Hello, Bakugou, my name in Nakamo Emi. Could you please tell me the last time you saw Midoriya?” she asks him.  

Katsuki swallows against the dryness in his throat and sits down across from her. “I was attacked by that sludge villain on Friday afternoon. De- Midoriya ran in and threw his backpack at the villain. All Might turned up and D- Midoriya ran away pretty soon after.”

“I see,” the policewoman sighs. “Did you speak to him at all during this incident, or in the lead-up to it?”

“I- uh. Not during the attack, no,” he mumbled. Eloquent, Katsuki. Great work, he thinks derisively.

The officer hums. “Before that, then?”

“Yeah, a little. My friends and I talked to him about his dreams of being a hero. We reminded him and that there’s not much hope for that since he’s, y’know. Quirkless.”

“What did you tell him?” Nakamo asks, her voice neutral.

Katsuki pauses, gathering his words together. “That it wasn’t feasible, not without a Quirk. That he’d have better luck hoping for a Quirk in his next life.”

The officer frowns a little, noting something down on the file in her lap. “I see,” she replies. “Is there anything else you know that may help us in this investigation?”

“He, uh. When he ran away from the sludge villain, I think he turned left out of the street where it happened. Other than that, no.”

Nakamo nods. “Thank you for your time, Bakugou. That’ll be all for our questions.”

Katsuki walks out of the room, escorted by the purple-skinned officer. Was that it? he thinks, feeling that the interview was a little short.

The officer calls for the next person, but Katsuki tunes it out. He heads for Fingers, whatever his name was, and hisses at him to downplay what they said to Deku on Friday. Fingers assures him he wasn’t going to tattle. Katsuki does the same for the other bastard that follows him around, then sits back down at his own desk.

He knows it’s lying by omission, but he can’t afford that kind of mark on his record if he wants to get into U.A., no matter what guilt he feels about it.

The interviews continue for another hour or so, cutting into the next class they have, but Katsuki doesn’t pay much attention.

He lets his mind drift back to what he said to Deku in the classroom on Friday afternoon. Had he taken it too far? He didn’t really think so. Maybe telling him to dive off the roof was too far, but Katsuki’s right and he knows it. Deku couldn’t become a hero. That isn’t just an insult he hurls at the boy, it’s a fucking fact.

The police officers say some bullshit final words to the class about how devastating it is that Deku has gone missing, and Katsuki can tell there’s not much authenticity to the message. It angers him a little.

The day continues without incident.

***

At the same time…

Izuku blinks his eyes open groggily, eyes struggling against blinding light. He tries to reach a hand up to shield his eyes, but realises his wrists are trapped against whatever he’s lying on. His legs and midsection are tied down, too.

He twists his head around, trying to get a look at his wrists, and pain splits across his skull. It feels like his brain is pounding at his skull.

His eyes adjust slowly to the light. He’s trapped on a metal table of some kind, surrounded by quietly beeping machinery and what looked like medical tools.

The last thing he remembers is running away from the heroes after the sludge villain, but it’s hazy. He’s not in his school uniform. Instead, he’s wrapped in a thin hospital gown.

Looking around the room, Izuku’s confusion doubles. Where is he? How long has it been since- since what? Since he was last awake?

He knows he’s forgetting something, but he’s too distracted by the headache thundering around his skull to give it much thought.

The heavy-looking door across the room groans as it opens, and Izuku’s eyes snap toward it. He ignores the stripe of pain that paints its way across his head and his rabbiting heart in his chest.

A pudgy man with a thick moustache and even thicker green-lensed goggles ambles in, wrapped in a white doctor’s coat. A stethoscope hangs from his neck.  

“Oh good, you’re awake! I was beginning to think Sensei used too much of his coma Quirk. Well, well, what to do? How do you feel, Midoriya?”

“Who are you?” he asks around quickening breathes.

The man grins at him, goggles glinting in the light of the room. “Why, Midoriya, you don’t remember me?” He taps at his chin. “I suppose it was many years ago now. Well, never mind! I was the one to diagnose your Quirklessness.”

Izuku’s brain stops for a moment, struggling with the abruptness of that revelation. Huh?

The doctor shuffles over to one of the machines against the wall, checking over something on the display screen. He hums in approval of what he sees.

“I’ve been waiting years for this! Finally, we are ready to move forward with our experiments. I must say, it was quite a challenge finding all my Quirkless patients after so many years, but no matter! We’re finding you all now. I’m quite excited for this!”

The doctor seemed to be talking to himself more than Izuku, checking over all the machinery in the room.

Izuku tugs at his restraints, desperation crawling up his throat. He has to get far, far away from this room, from this man.

Hearing his rattling, the doctor spins around. “Not much use trying to escape those! They were made for people much tougher than you.” He holds up a needle. “Now, Midoriya, what would you say your pain tolerance is like?”

Chapter Text

June 11th.

The empty office hums quietly. The air is a little stale, and bathed in soft shadows as evening takes over the room. Two men stand at its centre.

The first, a detective sighs, pulling a gloved hand from his trench coat to run through close-cropped brown hair. His eyes are ringed by sleepless nights. “Did you even get the kid’s name?”

“No,” the second replies, sheepish guilt twisting his gaunt features into a wince. “I was already out of time, and other matters called.”

“So you left him on the rooftop.” The response was clipped, tone brimming with reigned in frustration. “You told a Quirkless kid he couldn’t be a hero then left him on a rooftop. Toshinori, what the hell were you thinking?”

His guilty expression sours further. “I couldn’t lie to him, Naomasa, it would have been even crueller. He asked me for my real opinion, and I gave it.”

The detective, groans. “There’re different types of heroics out there Toshi. Not everyone needs to be a daylight heavy-hitter. If he personally wasn’t cut out for it, you could have let him discover that on his own, rather than remove it as an option entirely.” His eyes are grim, heavy with what can only be knowing. “We might have a suicide on our hands here, but it’ll be difficult to check without so much as a name.”

Here, the hero sighs, the bitter reminder of his shortcomings that day thrown yet again at his face. He hadn’t been fast enough, again.

The detective must notice his internal conflict, a reaches out with an olive branch. “I’ll see if any incidents have occurred in that area. I’ll cross-check it with the Quirk registry and see if anything pops up.”

He receives only a nod in response. Shame leaches from man, and silence envelops them.

***

June 12th.

Izuku wakes with a jolt, the world spinning shakily around him. A hazy dream, maybe a nightmare, fades to the back of his mind. He groans quietly, pressing his hands against his skull, a weak attempt to subdue the headache that rattles in there.

“Is he awake now?” someone whispers. The voice is high and anxious, like a young girl.

“I think so,” a deeper, more masculine voice replies.

Izuku pushes himself up and forces his eyes open, blinking into dim light. Four sets of eyes blink back at him.

It takes a moment to register, but Izuku is scrambling back a moment later, limbs flailing slightly until his back slams against cold concrete.

“Whoa, whoa!” a boy starts forward, and Izuku matches his voice to the one that spoke earlier. “Easy there, you’re ok. The Doctor isn’t here right now. We won’t hurt you.” His hands are out in a placating gesture, and his tone is gentle. Green eyes peer softly into his own, and he speaks to Izuku as if he’s a scared dog, which, well. That’s not too far from reality.

“The Doc- where- who are you?” Izuku’s voice shakes, his overlapping thoughts jumbling in his throat.

The boy smiles a little ruefully at that. He doesn’t look like he’s that much older than Izuku, on second glance. Long, shaggy brown hair curls around his shoulders, the remnants of a mullet whispering it. Plain clothes hang loosely from his lean frame.

“I’m Matsubara Tatsuki,” he says. “Just call me Tatsuki. We’re in the same boat as you, man.”

Izuku glances, a little bewildered, at the other three people sitting behind him, against the opposite wall of the small room. Cell?

“And, uh, what boat is that, exactly?” Izuku asks, rubbing a hand to slow the jumpy rabbit-pace of his heart.

A girl shuffles forward to sit next to Tatsuki, hands fidgeting with the ends of her long, aquamarine braid, the colour matching her eyes. She watches Izuku a little sadly.

“We were kidnapped, like you, because we’re all Quirkless. They’ve been rounding us up over the past few weeks and doing all kinds of tests on us. I have no idea what for,” she answers, grimacing. “I’m Aoki Takane, by the way, but call me Takane. Behind me is Kobashi Mao on the left and Okui Yuna on the right.”

He looks over her shoulder at the remaining two figures. On the left, a boy about Izuku’s age stares at him openly. Dark curls form a loose nest on his head, and even in the dim light his brown skin looks warm. That must be Mao. The girl on the right, Yuna, seems a little more reserved. Her small fingers rake through ratty blonde hair and she angles her face away from him. She looks only slightly younger than him.

The room they’re in is barren, four concrete walls enclosing them with a metal door at the entrance. A struggling lightbulb illuminates the space dimly. The thing looks one wrong breath away from burning out.

He turns back to Tatsuki and Takane, trying to round up the panicked streams of thoughts in his head. “You said a few weeks? Has anyone tried to come save you?”

Takane shakes her head. “Not that we know of. Not that we’re really expecting it either, given, y’know…”

And Izuku does know. It’s a bitter, ugly truth that he doesn’t like to acknowledge. They’re a bunch of Quirkless kids. As if anyone would bother saving them. Fear claws cold nails down his spine, seeing how bleak this situation is starting to look.

Izuku thinks back to his first wake up. The Doctor had injected him with something and he’d passed out right after. He’d had some weird dream, blurry scenes of a violet whirlpool, a hand reaching for his face, and a faceless man strapped to a web of tubes and wires.

“What tests have they done on you?” he asks, voice quiet. He’s not quite convinced this isn’t an elaborate nightmare yet.

Takane and Tatsuki recount the last two weeks to Izuku, and in short, it’s horrifying. They describe countless needles, incisions, serums, shocks, blood tests, questioning. They talk of the Doctor tinkering with machinery, analysing their DNA and muttering about the results. They’ve caught snippets of words they don’t understand – ‘singularity’ and ‘nomu’ and an ominous ‘Sensei’ that Izuku remembers the Doctor mentioning before injecting him. None of it paints a pretty picture.

What a mess.  

“I’m Midoriya Izuku, by the way. I don’t think I introduced myself before,” he says at the end of conversation. “You can call me Izuku.”

“I wish we could’ve met under better circumstances,” Takane tells him, a sad smile in her eyes. He doesn’t know how to respond.

In some sick way, underneath the acidic horror that this is actually happening, he feels an acute relief that he’s not alone. He hates that other people, other kids have been kidnapped with no foreseeable way out…but he’s not alone.

At that point, Mao shuffles forward toward their circle. It’s then that Izuku realises none of them have shoes on, himself included. His hospital gown from earlier has also been swapped for the same plain shirt and pants the other kids wear.

“How old are you, Izuku?” Mao asks him.

“14,” he answers, and Mao’s eyes spark a little.

“Me too!” he grins. “Takane’s the oldest here, she’s 18. Tatsuki’s 17 and Yuna in the corner is 13.”

So they really are all kids. Izuku tries to understand the reasoning behind that. Were children just easier to kidnap? Why Quirkless kids? Because their disappearances were easier to orchestrate? What is the Doctor doing with his research? Where even were they?

What about his mum? She’d been left behind with no clue as to where Izuku went. He can only hope that she’s ok, and that she’s looking for him. God, what if she thinks he’s left her, that he’s- he’s…ended it. How would she handle that pain, thinking her son is dead.

Tears stink behind Izuku’s eyes, and he can’t stop them from falling down in rivers. He doesn’t want to leave her alone. He really, really wants to go home, smell her cooking, hear her voice talking about her day. The thought only serves to make the tears flow faster.

Takane moves to sit next to him, and places a hand on his back, stroking abstract patterns as she comforts him. The others fall silent and shuffle back to give him space. Izuku appreciates it.

Their cell isn’t particularly spacious, nor equipped with anything but a stack of thin mats and blankets in the corner, a tap with a drain underneath, and a bucket. The very bare minimum.

It seems he’s going to have to get used to this.

***

Hours later, the door opens with a squeal. Five burly, heavily muscled people, lackeys of some sort, stomp in and roughly yank Izuku and his companions up by their arms, dragging them out of the room. He tries to pry off the hand clamped on his wrist, heart picking up speed rapidly, but it’s no use.

A young woman in a lab coat stands with a clipboard as Izuku is pulled into the hallway, a wide space lined by identical metal doors. He doesn’t want to even fathom what those rooms might hold. There are no windows here, leaving deep shadows from the artificial lights in the spaces they can’t reach.

The woman in the lab coat checks something off her clipboard, then motions for the lackeys to follow her. Izuku’s group are hauled down the seemingly endless hallway at a merciless pace, their grips brutal and bruising. At some point, Takane and Yuna are separated from the boys down a different corridor.

The man dragging Izuku yanks open a steel door and throws him inside, slamming it shut behind him.

Izuku rolls over, head whipping up, meeting the eyes of a bored-looking middle aged man in a white lab coat wearing a hygiene mask and gloves. The man levels him with an unimpressed look, and simply points at the hospital bed, indicating for Izuku to sit, but his feet glue to the floor. Given his less-than-stellar experience with this place’s hospital rooms so far, he knows it isn’t safe, and this man will hurt him.

The man’s expression flattens further, and he sighs quietly, stepping toward Izuku with a syringe in hand. Its contents threaten oblivion, and Izuku would rather maintain as much control of this situation as possible. He sits on the hospital bed with taut limbs, hands shaking in his lap.

The man picks up his tools, still not speaking a word, and Izuku tries so hard to control his breathing, to draw quiet, even breaths. The anticipation crawls under his skin and digs into his lungs.

When the doctor, because he must be a doctor, turns back towards him, its with a needle in hand, attached to an empty vial. He draws a few tubes of Izuku’s blood, patting on various labels that Izuku doesn’t get a chance to read. He then measures odd parts of Izuku; his neck, face, head circumference, arm and leg length.

The doctor notes this all down on his clipboard, but he glares at Izuku when he tries to peer at the writing, desperate to understand what’s going on.

Another hour of observations and measurements, all in silence, and a particularly painful jab to Izuku’s shoulder, which fogs his brain and memory of the whole ordeal, and Izuku is being manhandled back to the cell by one of the same lackeys from before. He slams the cell door shut as soon as Izuku is shoved inside.

The girls are already there, Takane holding Yuna in her arms as she cries, silent tears streaming down her face. They’re both covered in bruises, and Takane sports a painful looking lump on her temple.

“What happened to you guys?” Izuku asks gently, the words wobbling slightly.

“Pain tolerance experiments. They wanted to see how much minor blunt force we could tolerate before it became unbearable,” Takane sighs, glancing down at Yuna with an expression of pure sorrow. “They gave us some healing gummies afterwards, but it didn’t heal the more minor injuries.”

Izuku blanches a little. It terrifies him that whoever these people are, they believe they have the right to do this. Five kids plucked from their lives and thrown into some dystopic hell, and for what? Some sickening, backwards science experiment?

He offers to hold Yuna for a little while. Takane motions at Yuna with her hands, saying something in sign language. Yuna responds, then shuffles over to him. He takes the younger girl in his arms and strokes her blonde locks as soothingly as her can. Looking at her face closer now, he sees the splashes of freckles that paint her cheeks, and her mismatched irises; one a bright blue, the other a soft brown. He musters a small smile for her, and she returns it with a small hug.

A beat later, Mao and Tatsuki are thrown into the room, their limbs a mess of hastily healed burns.

“Oh, Jesus, are you two ok?!” Takane exclaims, leaping over to the boys lying on the floor. They groan and push themselves up.

“Pain experiments. Burns this time,” Tatsuki grunts.

“The gummies couldn’t heal everything, just the worst of it,” Mao adds.

Izuku’s left speechless at the sight of them. This place is ruthless, he thinks, tightening his hold on Yuna. She wraps thin arms around him in response.

After managing to sit up, Mao and Tatsuki explain how the doctors and scientists here apparently wanted to know their tolerance to fire.

“The crazy main one, the Doctor, kept muttering to himself about ‘must make them fireproof’ which I don’t think bodes well for us,” Tatsuki tells them.

“I think that what they did to us just then was them getting, like, a base to work from,” Mao adds, staring at the burns on his arms.

The quiet voice that chanted Izuku’s last desperate hopes of rescue are silent now. No hero is coming for them. Not for a bunch of Quirkless kids stranded underground in a completely unidentifiable location.

They were well and truly on their own.

***

5 police officers stand around a table. On it sits an open file; a child’s, reading the name ‘MIDORIYA IZUKU’ in bold letters.

“We’ve found no leads on the kid. It’s been over a week, I don’t think he’s showing up any time soon,” one says. Her arms are crossed over her body, and she glances down at the folder with annoyance written across her features.

“Honestly, I think we need to start considering suicide. He’s a Quirkless kid, and from our interviews with his classmates, it didn’t seem like he had any friends.”

The other officers mumble their agreement.

“Poor kid, being born Quirkless these days is just about the worst lot you can draw,” a younger man comments. “Suicide seems pretty likely.”

“Wouldn’t he have left a note or something then? What about the body?” a woman asks, eyebrows furrowed as she analyses the folder’s contents.

“Probably didn’t to be found. It’s not entirely uncommon that people take a trip up somewhere more remote to commit. That, or he’s jumped into the ocean or something. We’ll have to send a couple people to look through the waters at nearby bridges, and check recent train trips out to more quiet areas.”

The others agree. One officer grabs the open file, flipping to the notes section and scribbling ‘suspected suicide’ in looping handwriting.

A question of “who’s gonna call his mother about it?” is met with silence.

Chapter Text

June 13^th.

It’s nearly one week after the incident. Whispers have followed Katsuki constantly since the police came to school, both from classmates and his own bastard brain. Whispers of suicide, a cowardly boy taking the cowardly way out of life. Whispers that this was a long time coming, like it was an inevitable outcome that life would become too much for weak, Quirkless Deku. Whispers that maybe it was for the best.

It’s been nearly one week of whispers, and one week of doubt. A nagging voice that sounds annoyingly like Deku’s whispers its own poison at him. Suicide or not, it’s your fault, really. You let him get away that day. You told him to kill himself.

Sometimes, Katsuki tries to argue with the voice. Yeah, he told the nerd to take a dive, but he didn’t really mean it. Nor did he think he was so dumb as to actually go through with it.

Besides, the only reason he’s so determined constantly push Deku down is because he refuses to stay down, where that Quirkless weakling belongs. That’s where it’s safest for someone like him, his mind tells him. He shoves the thought away with vigour. He does not care about keeping Deku safe, he doesn’t care about him at all.

He arrives at school on Thursday morning two minutes before the bell, sitting down at his desk as Fingers and Eyeballs wander over.

“Yo, Bakugou, did you hear the rumours about Deku?” Fingers grins at him.

Katsuki bristles a little. “Which fucking ones?”

“That he ran off out of Musutafu to commit. Probably too scared of his mum’s reaction or something.”

Katsuki frowns a little at that. He hadn’t really considered that before, but it’s possible. If Deku was to commit, he’d be backwardly considerate about it and do it out of the way. Only thing is, he would leave some long-ass letter behind apologising for the inconvenience or something, so this whole radio silence didn’t really make sense.

He kind of hated that he knew the nerd so well that he knew how he’d go about killing himself.

“Whatcha bet he actually prayed to get a Quirk in his next life?” Eyeballs muses, and Fingers laughs back.

“Oh, a hundred per-cent.”

That irks something in Katsuki. He can feel anger simmering beneath his skin, though he doesn’t know why.

Fingers and Eyeballs keep trading jokes on how Deku would’ve killed himself, mocking his voice and puppy eyes and tears and mumbling. The anger bites at him.

“Where do you dickwads get off joking about how someone killed themselves?” he snarls, surprising even himself a little.

Fingers stares at him, more than a little confused. “Dude,” he starts. “You’re the one who told him to jump.”

“I know that, moron! I didn’t actually want him to do it, though!”

“Why’d you say it then?” Eyeballs frowns.

Katsuki falters a little, his reply getting stuck in his throat.

The teacher walks in and calls the class to order, saving him from having to answer.

The bell rings for the end of the day, and Katsuki stomps home.

He throws his front door open, kicking off his shoes.

“I’m home,” he calls to the hag, who comes out from the kitchen.

“Katsuki, get changed and come back down here. We’re visiting Inko,” Mitsuki tells him, waving a spatula at him.

“Hah? Why do I have to go?” he yells as she disappears back around the corner.

“Because I said so, brat!” she yells back. “Izuku’s gone missing, she probably needs the company!”

“Then you go!”

Mitsuki storms back out. “I am going! Your father would if he were home from work.” She points the spatula at him. “You’re going to come and give her your support. When’s the last time you saw her, anyway?”

Katsuki bristles. “I haven’t seen Auntie in years, and Deku and I aren’t even friends anymore. It sucks for her that her kid is gone but that doesn’t mean I need to go see her.”

“It doesn’t matter if you’re not friends, she’s still your auntie, and she needs support! Her kid’s gone missing for Christ’s sake, what’s wrong with you?”

He huffs and stomps down the hallway. The hag shouts something after him but he’s not interested in listening. “I’ll fucking come, calm the fuck down, hag!”

20 minutes later, they’ve arrived at Deku and Auntie’s apartment. His mum has brought a few meals with them, two of which Katsuki carries in his arms.

“Mitsuki, Katsuki dear,” Auntie says, ushering them in. “It’s so nice of you to come.”

Auntie sits them down at her dining table, and Katsuki glances around uncomfortably, taking in the pictures hung up on the walls, the slightly old and worn furniture. He’s never visited this apartment before. He’d never gone over to Deku’s house after the Quirkless diagnosis, and he knows they moved house within a year or so after that. This place, home to people he’s known all his life, is foreign to him. It prickles his skin.

The apartment is a bit decrepit, a bit on the small side. It’s in a slightly shady corner of Musutafu too, though not too far from school. The whole place has a tired air to it, though that may be due to Deku’s disappearance more than anything else.

“The police called this morning,” Auntie is saying when he tunes back in. Her voice is trembling, green eyes shining with tears in a manner so resemblant of Deku that Katsuki finds it hard to look at. “They’re suspecting a…they think- they think he’s killed himself…” Her voice trails off in a whisper.

His mum holds onto Auntie’s hands tightly. “Oh Inko…” she starts, but she seems lost for words.

Auntie takes a deep breath, but the tears drop in rivulets down her face. “I don’t believe them. Izuku wouldn’t- he can’t have done that. I- This life hasn’t been easy on him but…he’ll come back, won’t he?”

Katsuki feels something hot and uncomfortable writhe beneath his skin. It feels like shame. He hates it.

His mum replies with useless placations. They do little to soothe the crying woman.

“And they haven’t even properly looked! It hasn’t even been a week, they can’t just decide that he’s- he’s…” Auntie sobs into the hag’s shoulder, and she mumbles more empty reassurances to the woman. Auntie pulls some tissues over with her Quirk, wiping away the tears.

“The policeman that called me said they haven’t found any leads, but they believe it’s a suicide just because Izuku is Quirkless. If they don’t find anything within the next few weeks they’re going to deprioritise his case.”

It doesn’t sound like it’s been a priority in the first place, Katsuki thinks bitterly.

Auntie Inko goes on to fret about how difficult it was to open the investigation in the first place. Apparently, the officer she first spoke to had flippantly told her that Deku probably ran away and would be back in a few hours. The next one she talked with had intently listened until she mentioned his Quirklessness, becoming as dismissive as the first within seconds. It was only on the third that she managed to launch an investigation.

Katsuki is well aware of the general disregard for Quirkless people. He knows they’re treated lowly. Hell, he treats Deku lowly, but he doesn’t want to believe that it’s out of hatred for Quirklessness. It’s because Deku is weak and will die trying to pursue his impossible dream of heroism.

It’s still appalling to hear how insouciantly Deku’s disappearance was taken by the police force.

That hot, crawling feeling burns under his skin now. It feels like guilt.

***

June 27^th, two weeks later.

To put it lightly, the cell is boring. It’s a small, square room, maybe five or six metres each way. The air holds a constant chill to it, just cold enough to be mildly uncomfortable. There’s a distinct lack of natural light in the complex, lit only by dim fluorescents that buzz quietly.

He’s been here for a few weeks now, though he’s not exactly sure how long. The days bleed into each other here, with no sunlight to guide his sense of time, and no calendar to mark the passing days. It must be late June by now.

In the time he’s been there, he’s tried to get used to the routine they set. Each night, or what Izuku assumes must be night, he and his cell mates arrange the thin and ragged looking futons into a clump in the middle of the room to sleep, and the fluorescents are switched off. They’re given tasteless, formless gruel for breakfast, some form of cheap protein for lunch and rice with bland vegetables for dinner. The food is the bare minimum, but Izuku finds himself grateful they’re at least getting fed. They get water from the tap in the corner of the cell. There’s a toilet in another corner, with a flimsy curtain for privacy. Every few days, they’re taken to showers to wash up – rusty, dirty showers with only cold water and a bar of cheap soap.

Twice each day, once after breakfast and then again after lunch, they’re dragged from the cell and into different parts of the complex.

Some days, it’s been simple fitness tests – reflexes, grip strength, jump height, and other forms of standard fitness assessment.

Other days…Izuku faces the silent doctor, in his plain room. The man injects him with syringes, leaving Izuku feeling faint or ill or like his nerves have been set on fire.

Sometimes he shocks Izuku, or hits him, or holds him underwater, or in extreme heat, writing notes on whatever results he’s garnering from the veritable torture.

He hasn’t said a single word to Izuku the whole time.

Sometimes, when he’s injecting Izuku with some kind of antidote and giving him basic healing gummies, Izuku catches a glance at his notes.

He sees scribbles of ‘nomu’ and ‘possible enhancements’ and ‘All For One’. He doesn’t know what any of it means, but the possibilities settle like lead in his bones, and a fear of inevitable doom seems to ooze from them.

None of the others know what the words mean either.

Now, in the time between lunch and the afternoon tests, Izuku and the rest of his group sit around various corners of the cell, relaying what they were each made to do that time.

Izuku leans against the room’s concrete wall, sitting between Tatsuki and Mao. Yuna is curled in Takane’s lap in a corner. The older girl whispers to Yuna, who motions back with her hands. He watches them interact curiously.

“Where’d you learn sign language, Takane?” Izuku asks when their conversation seems to fade.

Takane looks up at him at the question, brushing an aquamarine strand of hair from her eyes.

“I had a deaf older brother.” She smiles, but it’s twinged with melancholy.

“Had…?” Tatsuki asks.

“He was Quirkless, like us. That, coupled with his deafness, became too much for him, eventually,” Takane sighs. “It happened about three years ago.”

Yuna reaches out a hand and clutches onto Takane’s, burying her head in the older girl’s shoulder.

“I’m so sorry,” Izuku mumbles. He doesn’t want to think about how close he was to meeting a similar end. The thoughts he was having that day, struggling to know whether his own mother would feel sad over his death…He pushes the thought away.

He hates it, but her brother’s fate was not uncommon for Quirkless people. It makes his heart ache, thinking of how all the others in the cell with him must have gone through similar struggles, and he can only imagine how much worse it all would’ve been with the added complication of deafness.

Silence wraps its cold arms around the group for a moment, none of them sure how to continue the conversation after that.

Eventually, Takane speaks up again. “Do any of you have siblings?” she asks.

Tatsuki and Izuku both shake their heads. Yuna nods, holding up one finger.

“I’m the youngest of four. I’m the only Quirkless one," Mao says, looking down at his feet. “They didn’t like me all that much.”

A sombre beat of quiet passes between them before Izuku forces himself to carry the conversation on.

“It’s just my mum and I at home. She’s great. She’s a nurse at one of the hospitals in our prefecture. She always found time for me though. I think you’d all love her cooking.”

The others perk up a bit at the lighter conversation.

“God, yeah, I miss my dad’s cooking. He’s a chef, pretty much anything he makes is beyond delicious,” Tatsuki says, eyes crinkling as he smiles.

They talk back and forth about their favourite foods, all of them determined to stick to lighter, easier, less melancholic topics, until the guards come to drag them to the afternoon tests.

Izuku forces back a cry as the silent doctor fills his syringe, trying to will away his trembling. The liquid inside it is a toxic shade of orange, and Izuku just knows that it’ll burn when he’s jabbed with it.

He wants so badly to stop the doctor’s advance, to run out of the room, but he can’t move. He’s been strapped into a chair, wrists and ankles bound by leather.

The syringe is plunged into his shoulder, and almost immediately his veins burn. His skin itches with phantom heat, an imaginary fire consuming his body. He screams, unable to keep quiet with the agony coursing through him.

This pain is the worst of anything in the whole time he’s been here – he’d take the shocks or the near-drowning if it would just stop the fire burning at his insides. He struggles in his constraints, jerky movements fuelled by desperation.

A minute later, or maybe several, the burning fades to a dull ache. Izuku heaves in air, exhaustion flooding him once his panicked adrenaline fades.

He chances a glance at the silent doctor’s face, only his eyes visible above the medical mask he wears. The doctors eyebrows are scrunched together, eyes intense with an unnamed frustration. He scrawls in his notes, pen rushing across the page.

Izuku slumps in his chair. His nerves are shot, he aches all over. The doctor distractedly hands him a healing gummy.

“What was that for?” he groans, daring for the first time to ask the doctor a direct question. Maybe he’s delirious from the pain. He’s too tired now to care.

The doctor huffs, not dignifying him with a response. Instead, he presses a buzzer on his desk for the guards to come and collect Izuku, and he’s carted back to his cell. He’s the first one back.

Once he’s gathered his head back together, lying on the cell floor, he wonders what the hell the doctors here are testing for.

It has to be something to do with Quirks, considering they’ve rounded up a bunch of Quirkless kids. The serums all feel terrible, but each so far has had a slightly different effect. Some have had cooling feeling, some itchy, some fogging his brain over, and now this burning one. They’ve been experimenting with pain tolerance and physical abilities too. It seems like they’re trying to measure for improvements of some kind.

Izuku remembers the silent doctor taking his measurements as well. Are they checking for growth? He hasn’t been measured since that day, though.

He rubs his temples, trying to think back to how the various serums affected him, and the doctor’s earlier frustration. The injections seemed to have a physical effect on him, like someone was using an ice or fire Quirk or something, but that obviously wasn’t the result the doctor was after.

Izuku hunches over himself, completely immersed in his own thoughts now. What if the injections are trying to give him a pseudo-Quirk? That’s impossible, though, isn’t it?

He doesn’t have a Quirk factor. It’s just missing from his physiology. Quirks are theorised to be made possible by a mutation of genes that somehow gave humans the ability to wield superhuman powers, giving them physical or mental enhancements to accommodate for their individual ability.

Quirkless people lack that gene mutation, called the Quirk factor. For some reason their physiology is the same as humans from before Quirks, like they’ve gone backwards in the physical evolutionary process. It’s why they have the extra toe-joint.

It’s where insults like neandertoe come from.

“You look ready to kill a man.” Mao’s voice shakes him from his thoughts.

The boy looks as exhausted as Izuku feels. No bruises or physical marks mar his skin from what Izuku can see – it must have been an injection experiment, like with Izuku.

Mao sits down right next to Izuku, collapsing against the cell wall as the door is slammed shut.

“What’d they do to you today?” he asks the boy.

“Weird injection. I had some crazy vertigo even though I was strapped to a chair,” he replies, running a hand through limp black curls. His skin, before a warm brown, seems to be slowly growing more sallow as the days go on.

“I got an injection too. Felt like my veins were being set on fire.”

Mao only grimaces in reply.

“I think I’m close to figuring out what they’re doing with us here,” Izuku tells the other boy.

Mao whips his gaze to him, trepidation painted over his expression. “Really? What?”

Now it’s Izuku’s turn to grimace, mood souring further. “They might be trying to artificially replicate Quirks.” Mao’s eyes widen at that, and Izuku continues. “All the serums feel like someone using a Quirk on you, right? But the doctors here seem frustrated with that, so maybe they’re trying to make it possible for us to use Quirks.”

“That’s impossible, though! And anyway, if they’re trying to make it possible for Quirkless people to use Quirks, why did they have to kidnap and basically torture us? Wouldn’t it be a good thing if Quirkless people could use artificial Quirks?” Mao asks.

It’s a valid point, and a worrying one at that.

“I don’t know. I highly doubt they’re doing all this for the benefit of greater society,” Izuku answers, scratching his head. The whole idea of artificial Quirks made his head spin a bit. “Plus, being able to create pseudo-Quirks could be really dangerous in the hands of villains, if they gave themselves extra powers and such.”

Mao turns his gaze toward the wall opposite them, letting the words sink in. The whole concept is dangerous on so many levels, and the acute sense of foreboding in Izuku rears its ugly head. No matter what these people are trying to achieve, it can’t end well.

***

Later that night…

A hero clad in dark grey leaps from the rooftops, landing silently in an empty alley, eyes covered by yellow goggles and hands wrapped in a looping white scarf.

A man, twitching and jumpy, passes by on the sidewalk outside. The hero pads after him, following him down the street and into a different alley.

The hero keeps close to the walls, melting himself into the shadows of the sleeping city. The skittish man ahead finds a third person in this alley.

“Hey! Hey, it’s me, we agreed to meet,” he says, wringing his hands and shifting from foot to foot. “Do you go the stuff?”

The third person only nods, face concealed by a mask, then reaches into their bag to grab a small case. They hold it in one hand, reaching the other out in an asking motion.

The man jolts a little, reaching into the pocket of his ratty trackpants and pulling out a wad of cash and handing to the other.

Counting the cash quickly, the person hands over the case to the man, then pockets the money. From the hero’s line of sight, it looks like a fairly large sum.

The twitchy man opens the case, frowning as he looks in. The seller goes to leave, taking a few swift strides toward the mouth of the alley.

“He- hey!” the man calls. “We agreed on more than this! I missing a dose of Trigger, this isn’t what you said-”

“That is all you paid for,” comes the reply, a smooth voice, the tone dismissive and final.

The man looks agitated at this but doesn’t move to stop the seller this time.

The hero lurking in the shadows makes a quiet exit, unnoticed by all.

Once he’s away from the alley, he takes out his phone. It rings three times before it’s picked up.

“Eraserhead, to what do I owe the pleasure at this hour of night?”

“Tsukauchi. Trigger deals confirmed to be happening again. We’re gonna have to reopen the investigation and operation,” he replies.

The detective sighs over the line. “The Quirk enhancement drug? How big do you think the drug ring is?”

“I’m not sure yet. I’ll have to observe a little more and try get information from a seller. It’s not looking good though, since the drugs being peddled on the streets now.”

“Of course. I’ll send the files over tomorrow morning.”

The hero hums in acknowledgement, hanging up. He leaps back to the rooftops, watching over the quiet city once more.

Chapter Text

July 3^rd.

When Izuku wakes up, it’s to the cell’s door squealing on its hinges as it’s yanked open. Scowling guards enter and dump trays of the usual greyish, tasteless gruel that they’ve been surviving on for weeks now.

Izuku brain wanders as he eats. He questions, far from the first time, if there’s anyone out there looking for them anymore. Out of everyone in his own life, he knows only his mum would care, but he doubts it’s enough to spur any law enforcement into a genuine search for him.

He’s pretty sure Kacchan wouldn’t care. He told Izuku to dive off a roof in their last interaction, and Izuku had very nearly done it – Izuku hasn’t allowed himself a moment to actually process that. The situation at hand is taking up every inkling of his emotional capacity.

Even if there was anyone looking, he has a feeling the complex is too well-hidden. The lack of natural light has begun to wear noticeably on himself and the others. Wan skin, tired eyes and limp hair are a common feature amongst them all. The days drag on, and the cloud of exhaustion looming above them grows heavier. The weight will soon be crushing.

Mao shuffles up to him just as he’s finishing his meal.

“Hey Izu, about what you said about the whole pseudo-Quirk thing last week,” he whispers, pressing close to Izuku. “When do you think it’s gonna be ready? And what’s gonna happen after that?”

“I don’t know,” he replies, frowning. “I’m scared that they’re coming closer to it, though. The other day my hand felt burned after they injected some firey thing in me, like I was almost able to use it. I don’t know what they’ll do with us once they’re finished with us.”

He looks over at Yuna as he says it, who’s curled into Takane’s side, signing something to her. He can’t think of many possibilities for what’ll happen to them after this whole ordeal, but none of them are good.

When it’s time for the morning experiment session, the guards come back to drag them out the cell and through the endless hallways of the complex.

Instead of his usual twist of hallways, though, he’s led down deeper through the maze of corridors, ending up outside an imposingly large door. The gold plaque fixed to its surface reads ‘DR GARAKI KYUDAI’.

The guard yanks the door open and throws him in unceremoniously, pulling it closed behind them.

Izuku scowls at the door before turning to face the new room and- oh.

The Doctor from his first day is there, the same green-tinted goggles, the same broom of a moustache, and the same bone-chilling grin.

“Midoriya Izuku! It’s been a few weeks now! It seems Doctor Kioshi has made some good progress with you, though.” The Doctor, named Garaki as it seems, keeps mumbling to himself as he shuffles around his room. Izuku waits, pressed up against the side of the hospital bed in a tense state of anticipation.

The Doctor muttering is barely audible, and Izuku can only catch snippets of his monologue.

“…if I can create one though, ho-ho! All For One will be well pleased…” the man chuckles to himself as he taps against a glass tank Izuku hadn’t noticed before. An orb of…something bobbles in a viscous green liquid. It’s fleshy, yet at the same time appears vaporous, wisps of indigo smoke drifting effortlessly through the substance. It looks disgusting.

The Doctor taps against the glass. “If we can keep them alive, it’ll be even better,” he murmurs, turning back to the pile of notes and open books on his desk.

He cranes his neck to glimpse at Dr Garaki notes, but it’s difficult to decipher much from his distance. He does see the date, July 3^rd, and it startles him.

It’s been nearly a month, he realises.

A longing for home crashes over him in a tidal wave. He misses his mum. He misses the outside world. Hell, at this point he even misses Kacchan. The wounds he inflicted hurt, but it’s nothing to how the past 3 and a half weeks have carved into him. He’d give just about anything to get it back.

Metal clinking snaps him back to the room. Dr Garaki spins back to him with a scalpel and an…oxygen mask? Izuku’s chest pangs with a flash of panic.

“Nitrous oxide!” the Doctor grins, a little too much glee in his voice. “As entertaining as it would be, I won’t have you awake for this particular operation.”

Izuku reels back at that. Nothing good can come from that. He tries to step back, but he’s already backed up against the hospital bed. The only exit to this room is the door, and Dr Garaki solidly obstructs that. There’s no escaping this.

The Doctor closes in on him, forcing the mask over his head. Izuku’s breaths are coming in short, gasping bursts.

In the moments before he falls into oblivion, a thought floats across his head.

I kind of wish I’d taken the swan dive after all.

***

At the same time…

Katsuki is on his way out the door to head to school when the hag yells for him. He rolls his eyes, wondering what the hell she wants this time.

When he enters the kitchen, he’s not quite prepared for the misery in his mother’s eyes.

“Katsuki,” she starts, taking an abortive step towards him. “Inko just called.”

That’s never a good sign, these days. The hag’s face is strained, her voice warbled just the slightest bit, her eyes are tinged with red.

He goes to ask what the fuck Aunty wanted, but he hesitates. There’s pretty few things it could’ve been about that would have the hag in this state.

“What’d she say?” he settles on.

His mum forces some of the tension out of her posture, even as more tears well in her eyes. Katsuki felt on edge, waiting for her words.

“The police are declaring Izuku dead by suicide.”

He’s almost been expecting that. Hell, it’s been nearly four weeks since Deku’s disappearance. Deku is – was? – Quirkless, and a constant target of cruel jokes and crueller actions. Katsuki was one of many that pushed him down. He’d hurt Deku all the time, he’d stomped on his aspirations and screamed his burning hatred at him. He’d told him to kill himself.

Now though, hearing that from the hag’s mouth, he doesn’t want to believe it. He hates that the thought of never seeing the fucking nerd’s face or hearing that annoying ass mumbling of his again makes his chest constrict. He hates that how much he’s though of Deku over the last month. He hates the lost sleep and shitty worry and the fucking tears he hears Aunty crying over the phone. He hates Deku, he’s sure of it.

So why does it feel so painful?

Katsuki armours himself with familiar anger, snarling and snapping and storming past his mother out the door, yelling that he has to get to school when she asks him where he thinks he’s going.

He needed to be told to give up, he reasons with himself. Someone had to put shitty Deku in his place, make him realise how stupid it was to think he could become a hero with no power. He is- was weak and so utterly useless. Hell, he trembled like a fucking baby deer whenever Katsuki so much as sparked a palm in his general direction.

It’s not my fault, he tells himself.

He slouches at his desk as he waits for homeroom to start. Extras mill around, whispering the same rumours that fly around week in, week out.

The teacher bobbles up to the front of the class, quieting the chatter as he goes.

“Before we start class, I have unfortunate news to share with you all,” he drawls, an impossibly bored expression on his long face. “As you all know, around a month ago your classmate, Midoriya Izuku, went missing.”

Katsuki hates that he knows where this is headed.

“Yesterday, police officially declared Midoriya as having passed away by means of suicide,” the teacher drones and Katsuki really doesn’t know how he’s managing to look as uninterested as he is. Some scattered mumbles of oh are heard around the room. “Counselling services are available through the school for those that feel they might need them. Moving on, today’s homeroom will…”

The teacher continues on with the class as if nothing happened, whilst Katsuki feels his chest cave in on itself a little. He tries to listen, but it falls on unhearing ears.

The reality that Deku might really be dead is slowly creeping under his skin. It’s an uncomfortable, crawling feeling, like an itch.

It’s not my fault, he tells himself. It’s the shitty nerd’s problem, not mine. Don’t think about it.

He’s aiming to be the best, the top hero. Number one hero don’t think about the shitty personal problems of Quirkless nerds. It’s not his problem, it’s not his fault.

The itch doesn’t dissipate, though.

Class is dismissed for lunch, and Katsuki lets himself be drifted toward the cafeteria alongside Fingers and Eyeballs as they talk uselessly about the day.

“Man, looks like we were right about Deku,” Eyeballs muses. “Seems he took the swan dive joke a little too seriously.”

Fingers nods in reply, humming. “I mean, it was kinda inevitable, wasn’t it?”

Katsuki stiffens at that. Why the hell should Deku dying be inevitable?

Fingers shoots him a weird look…oh. He’d said that out loud.

“I mean, he was Quirkless. They don’t tend to last long. It was kinda just a matter of time until he bit the bullet,” Eyeballs says, glancing at him quizzically.

“I thought you hated him, Bakugou. You’ve been acting sorta weird about this whole thing,” Fingers adds.

“I don’t give a shit about that fucking nerd,” Katsuki grouches at them. The two goons exchange a glance, but shrug it off, moving on with their stupid conversation.

Katsuki forcefully shoulders his bag and trudges on ahead of them. Don’t think about it.

***

The air in front of him wobbles like a mirage. Through the distortion he sees two figures, their backs turned to him. Their voices ring out an echo. He can’t make out the words.

He reaches out a hand to one of them, a soft looking woman with green hair. Her voice, distorted as it is, sounds kind and warm.

“Mum!” he tries to scream, but it’s like he’s underwater. The sound can’t reach her.

She reaches for the figure next to her, a boy dressed in school uniform, a shock of blonde hair crowning his head. Kacchan…

Kacchan turns around, a sneer evident on his face even through the distortion.

“Take a swan dive, Deku. Be realistic.”

Izuku wakes with a jolt, throwing himself upright. His lungs feel too tight, and he heaves in gasps of air. Head spinning and stomach roiling a little, he attempts to manoeuvre himself off the hospital bed he’s on.

“Now, now, settle down, Midoriya.” Dr Garaki’s exuberant tone sounds from his right, and he startles further. “You’ll wouldn’t want to disconnect your IV, would you?”

Izuku freezes, not daring to reply to the Doctor. He notices the IV drip connected to his arm, and the electrode patches plastered onto his temples.

The Doctor busies himself taking all manner of measurements from Izuku. His temperature, his eyesight, his reflexes and hearing are all measured, accompanied by random mumbles. He wonders what Garaki is trying to test, because he really doesn’t feel all that different from before he was put under, albeit a little woozy.

Izuku hears “next, input a different kind of factor” and “have to wait and see if it took hold” as the Doctor trundles around the room, tapping at the screens of various machines. He, meanwhile, sits stock-still on the patient bed.

The grotesque tank that Izuku remembers from before going under is still sitting front and centre on the Doctor’s main desk. The ugly, toxic looking liquid bubbles away around its smokey purple core. Izuku cringes at it, directing his gaze anywhere but there. He doesn’t want to imagine what it could be.

When he looks over, the Doctor is fiddling with a TV screen in the corner of the room that Izuku hadn’t noticed before. It sits high on a shelf, like it’s overlooking the whole room.

Since the Doctor is preoccupies, Izuku takes his chance to examine the machines he’s hooked up to. There’s a number of them, some looking like fairly standard hospital machines like the patient monitor and the electrocardiogram. He remembers them from his last hospital trip, from the time Kacchan accidentally broke his arm when cornering him after school when they were twelve. Something about ‘getting in his way’ and ‘learning his place’ or whatever the phrase of the week had been at the time.

Anyway. Some of the other machines…seem a little more sinister. One has high voltage warning signs plastered in bright yellow triangles. He feels phantom shocks twinge his skin as he remembers the other week, when the silent doctor had shocked him for an hour, and Izuku still can’t fathom why.

Another machine is flashing what looked like genetic information at him, and another is little more than an IV attached to an unidentifiable, sick-looking liquid. A liquid that is going into his veins. He feels bile in the back of his throat, not wanting to think about what it could be that he’s being injected with.

A high pitched zap noise shocks him out of his reverie, sounding from the TV in the corner. He whips his head around to face it.

The screen is blank, staticky white, save for a small symbol in the middle that looks like a futuristic knight’s helmet. What the-

“I trust you’ve called for a reason, Garaki?” a deep voice rumbles from the screen. Izuku’s blood freezes in his veins, heart stopping for a fraction of a second. The voice holds power, an authority so innate and omnipotent. It sounds like inevitable doom.

“All For One,” the Doctor responds, a strong undercurrent of respect in his tone. “I wish to show you my progress with the nomu. I believe it’ll interest you.”

The voice, All For One, hums. “Go on, then.”

Garaki turns back to him, green goggles flashing under the room’s fluorescents, a syringe in hand. Izuku wants to scramble away, but All For One’s aura of control is palpable even through the screen, and it locks his limbs in place.

The Doctor pricks his skin with the needle and his mind screams at him to move, but then fire is scorching his insides, hot and molten as spreads through his veins, and he could swear he smells smoke. He can’t even scream. It lodges in his throat as the pain intensifies. He can’t see the room in front of him, black spots dancing across his vision.

He barely notices the Doctor pricking him with a different needle, but then the pain dissipates in an instant, leaving him reeling.

“We’re getting close, Sensei,” Garaki says. Pride oozes from him as he faces the screen, and Izuku can practically hear the manic grin that must be on his face. “The fabricated genetics need tweaking, and of course physical modifications must be made if this is to be of any use to us, but the formula is close to replicating Quirk factors, if only temporarily.”

Hearing his suspicions confirmed fills him with cold devastation. For as long as he can remember, he’s wanted a Quirk. Every wish he’s ever made, on dandelions and eyelashes and shooting stars and birthday candles, was for a Quirk. He just needed something, no matter how useless or weak, to show the world that he wasn’t defective, that he was just as competent and worthy of life as the rest of them.

Now, knowing the world is giving him what he’d wanted, he wants to undo every wish and whispered prayer to Gods he knows never listened. He doesn’t want it, not like this. His only desire, the one thing he’s ever wanted, is bringing him more suffering than a life without it ever had.

He’s not sure if he wants to laugh or cry at the irony of it all.

“Myself and my team are yet unsure on how to make it permanent, but it won’t be long before we overcome that particular barrier,” Garaki continues, the cheer in his tone setting Izuku on edge.

All For One makes a pleased sound. “You’ve made excellent progress, Garaki. Do you have an estimate on the length of time you’ll need?”

The Doctor shakes his head. “Not anything accurate. A while still, I believe.”

All For One acknowledges this, then the line for the TV is cut and the screen goes blank. The Doctor calls for one of the guards, and Izuku is escorted back to the cell, where Takane and Tatsuki are sat on some of the shabby mats they usually sleep on. Takane is inspecting an angry looking bruise on Tatsuki’s leg.

“Hey, Izuku. You alright?” Tatsuki asks when he’s shoved inside. “You’ve been gone since they took us this morning. I couldn’t save your lunch though, sorry.”

He needs to tell them about what they’re doing, he knows. He needs to warn them about what’s happening to them, about the Doctor’s plans, about All For One, about what ‘nomu’ actually means. He knows, but he can’t get the words out, and ends up just staring at them with desperate eyes.

Takane frowns at his expression. “Izuku? What did they do? Are you hurt?” She stands up, crossing the room and taking his face in her hands. The touch is so gentle, and the tears forming in Izuku’s eyes sting.

“They- I- I know-” he tries, making a frustrated sound when he can’t just spit it out, staring at the floor. He takes a deep breath, trying to stop the tears from leaking out. “I was with the main doctor, Garaki. I was put under anaesthetic, I don’t know what he did to me, but when I woke up he- he contacted this person…He called him All For One, and Sensei too. It was- even just his voice was scary, and they were talking about the experiments, and- and they confirmed my suspicions, they’re trying to make artificial Quirks-”

Tatsuki takes in a sharp breath, and he looks up, pausing as he sees the dawning horror in both his and Takane’s faces.

“He mentioned the ‘nomu’ too. I think…I think we’re the nomu.”

“…And they’re trying to make it so we can use Quirks,” Tatsuki adds. He’s gone a little pale, limp brown curls framing his face awkwardly. Izuku nods.

Takane’s face is pinched. “That’s horrifying,” she breathes, dragging a hand over her eyes. “So All For One is a person, then? I’ve heard the doctors mumble that before, but I thought it was like one of their Quirks, or some weird phrase they’d come up with.”

“Yeah, it’s a person,” he replies. “A terrifying one too, if his voice alone is anything to go off.”

“We need to tell Mao and Yuna about this, too,” Tatsuki says. “It’s scary as hell, but we need to know what the hell these people are doing to us.” Both Izuku and Takane agree.

“We need to get out of here, somehow,” Izuku tells them. He can’t think of a single way that this situation could turn out okay if they stay. The only way for them to survive is through escape.

The others nod, and they go to decide how to break the news to their two other friends.

***

July 4^th.

Some fucker’s put flowers on Deku’s old desk. They’re bright and mocking, a pile of chrysanthemums wrapped in brown paper.

It’s ironic and a little irritating that some dipshit put flowers that symbolise mourning on Deku’s desk, as if any of the class ever actually cared about him.

Katsuki’s not even sure why he finds it so irritating. Sure, it’s a fake-ass gesture of grief that he’s completely certain none of the extras in the class even remotely feel, given how they’ve all whispered rumours of suicide around when Deku first disappeared, snickering behind their hands. But Katsuki isn’t supposed to care about Deku. He hates the fucker, dead or alive.

He stands and stares at the flowers, rage simmering beneath his skin, for so long that the girls behind him start whispering. It grates on his last nerves.

With a quick, jolting sweep, Katsuki grabs the pile of aggravating flowers off the desk and stomps to the window, yanking it open. He throws the flowers out, sending them flying with a blast of his Quirk.

When he turns around, the class is deathly silent, a few gaping at him disbelievingly.

“The fuck are you staring at, extras?” he growls.

“Dude…” Fingers approaches him tentatively. “Don’t you think that’s a little disrespectful?”

“Hah?!” Katsuki snarls. As if he’s gonna take that from someone who said his death was inevitable just yesterday. “Don’t you think it’s disrespectful to give out shitty flowers to people you don’t care about?!”

The extras mutter amongst themselves at that.

Some girl with carrot coloured hair stands from her desk. “He might’ve been Quirkless, but it’s still kinda sad that he died!”

The gall of these morons is unbelievable. “As if you think it’s sad,” Katsuki snarks back, stalking back to his own desk. “None of you extras knew him, or cared about him. Where the fuck do you get off leaving flowers on his desk?”

“You didn’t need to explode them, though!” Carrot Hair insists. “It was just a gesture!”

Yeah, a fake-ass gesture, Katsuki thinks to himself, plonking down in his seat and getting ready for homeroom.

The final bell sounds and Katsuki slings his schoolbag over his shoulder, shaking off the losers that follow him around as soon as he can.

As he’s walking home, his phone buzzes in his pocket. He takes it out and sees the hag’s caller ID on the screen. Begrudgingly, he picks up, knowing she’ll nag incessantly if he doesn’t.

“What do you want?” he grouses.

“Don’t give me that tone, brat,” his mother barks back. “We’re going to visit Inko again as soon-”

“Fuck no!” he yells, cutting her off. “I did that shit once already. What the fuck do I need to go again for?!”

“To support her, Katsuki! Her son is dead,” she tells him, as if he could be unaware of that. “She needs us to be there.”

Fuck that noise. “You go, then! You’re her friend, not me.”

“Katsuki…” There’s a warning in her tone, but he doesn’t really want to hear it.

“No. I’m not going. I’ll see you when you get back,” he clips, hanging up. His phone starts buzzing with another call from her not even a second later. He’s determined to ignore it.

Something propels him to take a different route home, and takes a left at the next street. Walking down the street, with soft clouds drifting overhead and the occasional car driving by, Katsuki feels the rage that’s boiled under his skin the whole day ease off a little.

He takes a few more random turns, until eventually he finds himself at a park.

It’s nothing special, at first glance, but something pangs in his chest as he recognises the playground area. The swings, the climbing walls, the slide, the sandpit; it’s all the same from when he was a kid.

He used to come here all the time with Deku. At least, before his Quirk came in and Deku’s didn’t. They’d run around until their energy was gone, playing heroes or hide ‘n’ seek or whatever else.

He looks across the street, and spots what looks like a small antique shop. It looks familiar, but he can’t quite place why.

Whatever, he thinks as he moves toward it. I don’t wanna go home yet, might as well go in.

Bells chime daintily as he pushes the rickety door open. The inside of the shop is cluttered, but there seems to be some underlying order to the chaos.

Rows of old-looking, painted china sit atop intricately carved wooden tables. Adorned mirrors and clocks and picture frames line the walls. Stands of shining jewellery are interspersed on the tabletops and on the shelves of assorted cabinets, alongside other random knick-knacks.

It’s definitely not his usual scene, but he can’t shake the feeling of comforting familiarity this place has, and it weirds him out.

He spots an ancient-looking woman among the hordes of trinkets, dusting off a delicate, painted vase. Her hair is greyed, pulled back in a bun behind her head. She wears a deep green cardigan and long, white skirt. Much like the shop around him, she has an aura of familiarity that he has no idea what to do with.

She spots him a second later, standing up. She’s taller than he expected. She squints at him, and immediately he feels scrutinised. He recognises the confused ‘where do I know you from’ look on her face.

“Katsuki?” she asks, and how the ever-loving fuck does she know his name? He says as much out loud.

She huffs at him. “It’s been many years, boy. Izuku brought you here a few times when you were still very young.”

At the mention of Deku, his heart drops a little, but he resolutely ignores it. That explains the familiarity, at least.

“You must be Old Baba, then. Deku used to talk my ear off about you,” he grumbles back.

The old woman titters, something between a laugh and a wheeze. “He was like that.”

So she’s heard the news. Aunty Inko must’ve kept in contact with her.

“You know, Izuku never came back to visit me after his fourth birthday,” she comments, raising an appraising eyebrow at him. “He’d been very excited about the possibility of a Quirk.”

Katsuki crosses his arms over his chest defensively. “What’s your point?”

“Simply commenting,” she replies. He doesn’t like the knowing gleam in her eyes.

“Whatever, you old bat,” he mutters. He’s surprised when she just huffs another laugh and doesn’t nag at him about showing respect to his elders.

She goes back to dusting her vase, and Katsuki takes it as the end od the conversation, walking off to browse the shelves of the store. He’s apparently wrong, though, as Old Baba strikes it up again after a few minutes.

“I’ve only ever heard how Izuku was doing from Inko, over the years,” she starts. “You’ve been his friend for many years now. I’d like to know how he was, what he was like, from you, if you please. I’ve missed his presence in this old store.”

“Shitty Deku was never my friend. He just followed me around like a goddamn puppy.”

Old Baba only sighs. “I see. So that’s how it turned out.”

“The fuck does that mean?” he gripes, turning to face the old bat.

“I had hoped, after his Quirk never came, that the world would be kind to him. I fear that hope was in vain.” She grabs one of the hand mirrors from the table in front of her, gazing into it with a soft frown. “The generations before me were unkind to the Quirked, in the time before they were commonplace. By the time I was born, Quirked people outnumbered the Quirkless by a small margin, and the outright hatred had changed to a stalemate kind of peace.

“As I grew older, Quirked people became an undeniable majority, and the sentiments flipped on their heads. Suddenly, it was the Quirkless that were treated with cruelty. For a long time now, the world has been hostile to Quirkless people. I hoped, foolishly, that it would be easier for Izuku. He was so kind to a world that refused to be kind to him over simple biology.”

Her words carve a cavity into Katsuki’s heart. Deku had always been so unerringly nice, even with the whole fucking universe spitting venom at him. It had annoyed Katsuki to no end, grating his nerves every time Deku directed that incessant, naïve kindness at him. He’d though he hated it.

Maybe, though, it had just scared him how kind Deku had remained despite everything.

“He wanted to be a hero,” he finds himself saying before he can stop it. “Ever since we were snot-nosed brats, he wanted to be just like All Might. He was Quirkless, though, and I knew even then that it’d kill him. He was too nice for his own good, and too weak to be of any use to anyone. As we got older, it made me angry, the way he held on to that dream even though I’d told him so many times that it was impossible. Deku was never stupid, so it was so aggravating that he kept thinking he could be a hero.”

Old Baba takes in his monologue for a moment, then looks at him with quiet contemplation. “Would it have been impossible, though?”

“Hah? Duh, he was a little wimp. Probably couldn’t fight his way out of a wet paper bag.”

Old Baba sighs again, pinching the bridge of her nose. “No, Katsuki. I mean that, if he’d been given the same treatment you’ve received throughout your life, the same encouragement and respect, would his dreams have seemed so impossible?”

“He was Quirkless, though. It would’ve only spurred him on even more if anyone encouraged his stupid dreams.”

“Or it would’ve saved his life.”

Katsuki bristles. The comment catches him off guard, and it stabs at something in his heart.

“No it wouldn’t have,” he shoots back, more by instinct than anything else. His stupid traitor brain thinks back to the day Deku disappeared, when the class had been laughing at him for wanting to try for U.A.

“I won’t know if I don’t try” Deku had said. At the time, Katsuki had been so sure that the nerd had been trying to embarrass him by attempting to compete with him. Someone useless, Quirkless, weak; a nobody, trying to reach the same goal as Katsuki, who had everything he needed to become a hero. It had seemed so impossible that it was laughable.

Would it have seemed less impossible, though, if someone had believed in Deku the same way everyone believed in him? If Deku hadn’t been pushed so forcefully into defeat?

When he snaps out of his thinking, he finds Old Baba watching him with sad eyes.

“In any case,” she says with morose quietness, “it’s too late now. Izuku is gone.” She gives him a small, gentle smile. “Maybe, though, you could carry on the dream he never got to.”

Katsuki leaves Old Baba’s antique store with thoughts overlapping in his head. The conversation had struck a chord in him, somewhere.

He walks down the street toward home, when he passes by a house he recognises. Deku’s old house.

Its’ paint has been refreshed, and the garden has more flowers than Katsuki recalls from vague memories of playdates and sleepovers he used to have with Deku, but it’s so achingly familiar nonetheless.

Deku and Aunty had moved, when the divorce with Deku’s dad had been finalised. Katsuki’s mum had told him about it, even though he hadn’t really understood it at the time. It was only in later years that he’d realised it was because Deku’s dad didn’t want to be the father of a Quirkless child.

Inside the house, he sees a mother holding a young child in her arms, smiling. Katsuki quickly turns away and continues walking toward his own home, not wanting to seem creepy.

Fingers had said, just yesterday, that Deku’s death was inevitable. Katsuki wondered now, if things had been even a little different, if the world hadn’t pushed Deku down, if he hadn’t pushed him down, whether it would have ever come to that.

He realises, standing at his front door, as he’d reaching for his house keys, that even if Deku’s suicide isn’t entirely his fault, he is at least partly to blame, and he feels guilty about it.

Katsuki’s never really understood feeling sorry about things. He’s done everything unapologetically, with intent and with purpose. The greatest heroes don’t make mistakes, nor do they have time to feel sorry over stupid things.

Standing here now, with Deku’s death looming over his head, he wishes he could go back and apologise. At the very least, he wishes he could undo telling him to take the dive.

He can’t apologise anymore, though. Old Baba had said it, it was too late now, and Deku is gone.

Carry on the dream he never got to, huh? he thinks, unlocks his door. I guess I have to.

He vows it to himself, in that moment. He’ll become the hero that De- Izuku never got to be.

Chapter Text

July 15^th.

It’s raining heavily on the day of the funeral, which feels both mocking and appropriate to Katsuki. He’s dressed in all black, waiting in the front row of seats for the service to begin whilst his parents help Inko greet the small inflow of guests.

Not many people decided to come.

Katsuki stares at a wall, decidedly not looking at the rows of pictures set up on a table at the front of the room, but he can feel them staring at him. They sit in the place of a coffin. With no body to bury, Auntie had to make-do. 

Once everyone has shuffled in and taken their seats, a woman stands at the front to start the service, telling the room how the whole procedure will take place, gives the room her pointless condolences, then asks Auntie to speak.

“I remember the day Izuku was born,” she starts, voice already shaking and tear tracks staining her cheeks. “Years later, I still recall it as one of the happiest days of my life. My son, my beautiful boy, brought an immeasurable amount of joy into my life. He had the brightest smile, and he was- he was always so thoughtful, and kind-” She has to pause to take a deep breathe, wiping the tears from her eyes before she continues.

“Life was never so kind to Izuku. So many times, he was pushed down and told ‘no’, but he never gave up, and I’ve always seen that as one of his greatest strengths.” Auntie lifts her head up, giving the room a shaky smile. “My boy was the strongest person I knew. He had dreams to become a hero one day, despite every obstacle the world set for him. I remember when he was seven, running around the house in an All Might onesie, calling himself Mighty Boy and telling me all about how he’d save everyone he could when he grew up. It’s my biggest regret that he never got to see that through, as he never got to grow up. It’s- I failed to…If he were still here, Izuku would have turned fifteen today. There are so many things he never got to do…” She trails off into sobs; loud, heaving, ugly sobs that wrack her entire frame. She tries to choke the rest of her words out, but the grief won’t let her.

Katsuki can only watch as his mother gets up to help Inko back to her seat. Mitsuki then goes up the podium to give a short speech herself, but the words don’t reach Katsuki’s ears. His stomach churns, and something poisonous and vile is resting in the back of his throat. It takes everything in him not to just get up and walk out of the service, but he keeps his feet firmly on the floor, and his eyes on the ugly carpeted floor, and lets the world drift by him until it’s time for the wake.

Everyone shuffles into a separate room for the wake. Inside, cheap fold-out tables are covered with refreshments, too much food for the dismally small group of people. There must only be fifteen in attendance, half of which Katsuki doesn’t recognise. He spies Old Baba in the corner of the room as she watches the people around her passively. His mum and Inko are huddled in another corner, comforting each other.

It's suffocating.

Katsuki turns on his heel, shoving his hands in his pockets and trudging out of the room. He doesn’t think anyone notices him go.

Outside, the rain continues hurtling down in torrents, an almost comforting backdrop of sound against Katsuki’s thoughts. It splatters on the ground, already forming deep puddles in the dips of the path. Katsuki watches them ripple and grow from underneath a small awning on the veranda outside the wake room.

The sight tugs at something in him, a flash of nostalgia for a time he hasn’t cared to think about in years.

Katsuki had always been one of those kids that slams their feet down into puddles as hard as possible, making the biggest splash possible. He’d wear his stupid little gumboots and go running at any puddle he could find and laugh when he managed to splatter water onto everyone around him.

Izuku had been the opposite. He’d avoided puddles, and cried every time Katsuki splashed him, and apologised to the strangers that Katsuki splashed, because that way just his way. He’d always preferred basking in the sun like a lizard, something Katsuki had teased him about relentlessly before he’d grown to hate the boy.

Now, Izuku is dead, and Katsuki grew out of jumping in puddles.  

Now, Izuku is dead, and he’ll never get to turn fifteen.

Now, Izuku is dead, and the rain keeps plunging down, uncaring that Katsuki feels something dangerously close to grief claw itself a little nook in his heart.

Now, Izuku is dead, and Katsuki knows he only has himself to blame.

“Happy birthday, nerd,” he whispers, letting the words get swallowed in the drumming of the rain

Unbidden, a tear slips from his eyes. He lets it fall – a single tear of grief for a boy he wishes he’d have thought to be kinder to.

He just hopes the rain stops soon. Izuku had always liked the sun more.

***

Izuku stares at a wall.

He and Mao are alone in the cell, sitting shoulder to shoulder as they wait for the others to be sent back from the afternoon rounds.

He’s pretty sure he can hear the distant hammer of rain somewhere above him, which confirms to him that the complex is deep underground. It’s the first rain they’ve had in a while, which is rare for this time of year. The wet season must have started late.

“I miss the rain,” he murmurs, chewing absently on an already bitten-down nail. He’d never appreciated it enough when he’d had the chance, always shielding himself from it and doing his best not to get wet.

“Me too,” Mao sighs in reply.

He thinks if he had the chance now, he’d lie flat on his back and let the rain wipe him clean. He’d jump wildly in every puddle he could, and he’d savour in the wild joy and comes with freedom.

But he’d can’t do that. He’ll probably never get to.

“Tell me a secret,” Mao asks, leaning his head on Izuku’s shoulder. “Anything. I want to think about something nice, for a moment.”

Izuku thinks for a moment before settling on an answer.

“I turned fifteen today,” he admits. It isn’t much, but he doesn’t think he can muster up the courage right now to reveal anything deeper.

“Happy birthday,” Mao whispers, squeezing Izuku’s hand. Izuku squeezes back. He lets his eyes fall shut and imagines phantom rain pattering against his skin.

***

August 24^th.

Katsuki glares out the train window as it speeds toward the city centre, squinting against the bright sun that decided to blast down on the world. He’s on his way to try out a specialty Quirk gym that’s just opened up, getting his parents to sign the waiver and whatever the fuck. He thinks it’ll be good for his training for U.A.

It’s a shame that it’s such an effort to get to; he’s limited to weekends during school time. There’s about seven months left before the entrance exam; he’s determined to do all the training he can so he can pound every extra into the fucking ground.

The doors to the gym are huge, thick glass panels emblazoned with the gym’s name – Musutafu Quirk and Fitness Centre – and logo.

The inside is just as overwhelmingly big as the doors. It’s the size of a small department store, for fuck’s sake.

He reaches the reception desk, and an assistant there gives him his membership card, then offers him a tour of the place. He accepts, but only because the gym is so large that he might otherwise waste time trying to find everything later.

There’s a large floor space just behind the main desk dedicated to all the usual gym equipment; bodybuilding and cardio mostly, but there’s also some stuff for gymnastics in one corner.

Upstairs, there’s an area littered with ‘Quirk-proof’ equipment and training shit, like targets, obstacle courses (both on the ground and in the air), and training dummies. To the right, there’s rooms that people can book to do Quirk sparring. The rooms have reinforced walls for both sound- and Quirk-proofing.

In short, the place is a haven for people looking to exercise their Quirks a little. Katsuki finds himself grinning just thinking of blazing his way through one of the obstacle courses.

With the short tour finished, he heads to the main area to warm up. As he stretches, he mentally maps out the coming months of training he wants to do before the U.A. entrance exam.

He knows there’s areas he needs to improve. He’s not so full of himself that he can’t see that – he’s fifteen, first of all, and he hasn’t had any proper hero training yet. He’s not fucking stupid.

His Quirk could do with strengthening and refining, but considering how destructive it has the capacity to be, he can’t really do that without U.A.’s fancy-ass facilities. In the meantime, he’ll keep up with training his body, increasing his strength and bettering his reflexes.

Once warmed up, he heads for the first obstacle course, joining the short queue of people waiting to do it. He tries to tune out the annoying bickering of the little group of people ahead of him, but it’s hard when they’re being so loud about it.

“You’ll be eating my fucking dust when it’s our go,” one of them proclaims, a big guy with obvious muscle.

“Dude, you can’t just muscle your way through everything. Obstacle courses usually call for speed and precision,” a lanky looking fucker replies, pushing pale blue hair out of his face.

Muscle guy rolls his eyes. “Yeah, ‘cus your Quirk’s really gonna help with that.”

Lanky guy visibly shrinks in on himself a little at that. “Hey, that’s…My Quirk has nothing to do with this.”

“Just saying,” muscle guy shrugs. “You can’t really talk about speed and precision when your Quirk helps make plants grow.”

“That shit doesn’t require a Quirk, moron,” lanky guy snaps. Muscle guy just kind of shrugs at him again, and their conversation moves on.

Katsuki frowns a bit. The exchange gave him a weird déjà vu, but he had no idea why. In any case, it kind of annoys him that the musclehead had jumped straight to assuming that you couldn’t be fast or have good reflexes without a Quirk for it. It certainly helps, but it’s not like- whatever. He’s getting too caught up in a 30 second conversation between two fucking strangers.

The line moves fairly quickly, as people go through the course in pairs. When he’s near the front, he gets a tap on the shoulder. Turning around, there’s a girl that seems about his age with the biggest fucking ponytail he’s ever seen in just about his whole life.

“What?” he grits out.

“Ah, sorry, just- You don’t have a partner, do you? I think we’ll be racing each other. My name is Yaoyorozu Momo,” she tells him.

Katsuki rolls his eyes. “Yeah, whatever, I don’t care. You’ll be eating dirt, anyway.”

Ponytail frowns at him. “That’s unkind of you. You don’t know who I am, or what I’m capable of.”

“I just know I’m better,” he replies, turning back around. He really can’t be bothered keeping up this stupid conversation anymore.

Annoyingly enough, this extra is persistent. “You really shouldn’t be so quick to judge people.”

He heaves an aggrieved sigh, twisting back to face her. “I. Don’t. Care,” he snaps.

She just frowns at him, relenting in her attempts at wrangling him into a conversation. No thank you, he’s not fucking interested.

When it’s his turn, Katsuki steps up to the starting line of the obstacle course, and Ponytail takes her place next to him.

The buzzer on the side of the course lights up. 3…2…1.

The moment the buzzer flashes green, Katsuki blasts off, propelling himself to the first obstacle. It’s a wall climb about 3 metres in height, with limited hand and footholds, not that that’s much of an issue for him. He blasts upwards, using the momentum from his previous explosions to launch to the top.

From his periphery, he sees Ponytail launching herself up the wall with- is that a fucking grappling hook? Where the hell did she get that?!

Next up is the monkey bars, spaced nearly two metres apart. Katsuki jumps onto the first one and swings, popping a small explosion to up his momentum. Ponytail leaps up next to him, now equipped with a pair of large hooks, giving her enough arm length to easily swing between the bars. Again, where the fuck did she get those from?! Does her Quirk let her spout out random fucking objects?

He grins, and it edges on feral. Damn, maybe he underestimated Ponytail.

He powers through the monkey bars, beating her by a couple seconds, and launches himself straight into the next obstacle. Ponytail isn’t far to follow.

They go through the rest of the race practically neck and neck. Katsuki barely manages to maintain his lead, and he’s puffing for air by the time he leaps across the finish line – again, barely before Ponytail does the same.

A staff member ushers them to the side to recollect themselves as the next pair of people start their turn.

“So, I ate dirt, did I?” Ponytail huffs next to him, a slight smile on her stupid face. She looks a little winded, strands of hair falling out of their place atop her head.

“I won, didn’t I?” Katsuki bites back.

Ponytail just giggles a little. “Yes, I suppose you did. Congratulations, erm…”

“Bakugou Katsuki,” he fills in, rolling his eyes. “You weren’t too bad, I guess.”

She smiles gracefully, taking it as the compliment it was. “How old are you, if you don’t mind me asking? You look about the same age I am.”

“Fifteen,” he answers.

“We are the same age, then!” Ponytail looks fucking delighted about this. “I’m hoping to go to U.A. next year, what about you?”

“Obviously I’m getting into U.A.’s hero course,” he smirks. “I’m gonna be the best damn hero there is.”

“Would you like to train together?” she asks. “I’d love to be about to train with more people, and we seem to be at a similar physical level!”

His immediate reaction is to totally shut her down. Fuck no, there’s no one even near his league, fuck off and die, thanks. But…she was close to beating him in the obstacle race. And he does need people to train with. And she seems not completely annoying.

“Fine,” he grits out. Ponytail lights up like a goddamn Christmas tree, clapping her hands.

“Excellent! Here, put in your contact details,” she beams, handing him her phone, and he taps his number in. “I must get going now, but I’ll message you later and we can organise a time to train together!”

“Yeah, sure, whatever.”

After Ponytail leaves, he heads to a different section of the gym, throwing himself into a thorough workout. Within an hour and a half, he’s deems himself done, and heads out, walking back toward the train station.

The sun is just beginning to dip down toward the horizon, filling the sky with a variety of oranges and pinks. He thinks briefly that his old man loves these kinds of sunsets – soft but bright. Katsuki himself prefers sunsets that set the sky on fire, all burning oranges and harsh shadows.

“Watch where you put your legs! Ugh!” someone ahead of him barks, bringing Katsuki’s attention back toward the ground.

A ragged man, thin and dirty, is sitting on the ground, trying shuffle away from a person dressed in prim business attire. Immediately, Katsuki clocks the guy’s shoes; filthy and falling apart as they are, they’re still that shade of painfully recognisable red. The exact same as Izuku had.

“I’m- I’m sorry, I wasn’t- I- I wasn’t trying to get in your way,” the Quirkless man stammers, staring at the ground.

“Then don’t stretch your legs out all over the sidewalk, you dimwit,” the businessperson snaps back. “Fucking good-for-nothing neandertoes, can’t even keep your feet out of the way when you’re on the streets.”

They storm off, brushing past Katsuki with a huff. The Quirkless man slumps against the wall, where it’s clear his meagre belongings lie. A torn and scruffy blanket, a half-empty backpack, and a crate to sit on. A sign, propped up against wall, reads homeless – any spare change appreciated. Next to it, an empty cup.

Katsuki isn’t quite sure what to do here. The people around him keep walking as if nothing had happened, as if a poor guy who’s already having a rough time of it wasn’t just verbally attacked for doing nothing more than just sitting there.

“Are you, uh…ok?” Katsuki asks, and fuck, it sounds so fucking awkward.

The Quirkless man looks up, surprised. “Oh. It’s, uh, not a big deal. Happens all the time.”

“Oh.” Yeah, real eloquent. Good one, Katsuki. 

The man huffs a meek laugh. “Yeah. Don’t worry about it, I’m fine.”

Katsuki frowns. It doesn’t feel right to just walk away, but he doesn’t really know what else he can realistically do. He reaches into his bag, pulling out his wallet.

“Um…Here. I think you might need this a bit more than I do,” he mumbles, grabbing the few notes of money that lie in there – 6000-yen total. He offers them to the guy.

The Quirkless man’s jaw drops open a little. “Seriously?”

Katsuki nods, and the man tentatively takes the money.

“I- thank you. This’ll help me a lot.”

Katsuki just nods again, feeling incredibly awkward, and continues his march toward the train station. He’s probably going to miss the train he planned to catch, but he can’t really find it in him to let that bother him.

As he walks, he notes how many homeless people hide in the shadows of the bustling city street, and just how many have those same damning red shoes.

***

August 27^th.

Izuku is exhausted from another long day of experiments. He runs fingers through his limp and dirty hair, hands shaking. His hands shake all the time now. Just a minor tremor, but still noticeable. He can’t really remember exactly when it started happening.

There’s little things like that going on with all of them. Mao struggles to sit still, Tatsuki gets tics in his shoulders and neck, Yuna’s teeth chatter sometimes, Takane’s skin feels itchy a lot. They’re all well aware it’s because of whatever drugs and serums are getting pumped into them, and they’re equally aware that there’s very little they can do about it.

As the last clutches of summer pass, and autumn rolls in, the complex grows damper and colder. It’s the kind of cold that digs its way into their bones with greedy claws, feasting on the little warmth they have left to give. There’s seldom a time when Izuku isn’t shivering at least a little.

He and Mao huddle together for warmth fairly often now, as do the others. It’s a comfort too, just having someone to lean on. They need all the comfort they can get in this place.

Right now, they’re waiting for their usual plain and tasteless dinner to arrive, sitting in fatigued silence. Sometimes, most days really, they talk at least a little, exchanging stories from before the complex, or reminiscing on the things they never realised they would miss, or sharing the titbits of information they managed to glean from the scientists that experiment on them.

Some days, like today, they’re just tired, too drained by it all to talk to each other. On those days, like they're doing now, they lean on each other in silence, letting time slip through their fingers. The next day will come, painful and unforgiving, and the cycle will continue.

Izuku has started to get a sense for the schedule the complex operates on, getting a feel for how long the hours feel between experiments and meals and sleep, which is why it startles him when the cell’s door crashes open earlier than he’d anticipated.

Two bodies are pushed through the doorway, and the figures stumble in, landing hard on the concrete floor with matching oofs. Izuku and all his cellmates look up, frowns of confusion and concern on all their faces.

The door is pulled closed again with a clang that reverberates through the complex. To Izuku, the sound is like a war drum; its echoes sing their collective doom.

The figures rise up off the floor, and Izuku’s heart drops to his feet. They’re so small. Two girls, so young, so small. Izuku can’t move, too horrified by the girls before him.

How could they take people this young? The girls can’t be more than eight or nine, with raven-black hair and wide, purple eyes that blink owlishly at them, just as shocked as they all are.

Takane recovers first, assuming the kind, warm demeanour that Izuku is tempted to call parental.

“Hey sweethearts,” she says, her voice so soft, almost whispering to the visibly terrified girls. “My name is Aoki Takane. What’re your names?”

“Ito Saori,” the girl with long, sleek hair answers. “This is my sister, Emi.” She gestures to the girl next to her, who’s pushes her short, bobbed hair behind her ears, still staring at them wide-eyed.

Oh, fuck. They’re sisters. The bastards running this place must be absolutely fucking sick, putting sisters together in this hellhole of a complex. Not to mention how young they clearly are.

“I wish we could have met under better circumstances Saori-chan, Emi-chan.” Takane smiles at them, and its pained at the edges. She’s clearly trying to hide it, though.

Izuku wants to cry, but he forces himself out of his shocked silence, knowing the slack-jawed look of disbelief won’t help Emi or Saori in the slightest. “I’m Midoriya Izuku, and next to me here is Kobashi Mao.”

Mao gives them a small wave. “You can just call us all by our first names.”

“I’m Matsubara Tatsuki, and our resident blonde is Okui Yuna,” Tatsuki tells the girls, and they nod in unison.

The girls introduce themselves a little more. Emi is 7, and Saori is 8. They’re, predictably, also Quirkless, which is apparently a trait that runs in quite a few people in their family.

Everyone else shares little facts about themselves in return, maybe just to help the girls feel a little less alien in the cold unfamiliarity of the complex. No one can quite bring themselves to tell them about the cruelty they’re set to undergo from tomorrow onwards. It breaks Izuku’s heart just thinking about it. He can’t get over how young they are. Surges of protectiveness rise up in him, and sudden anger against all the people running this place – the Doctor, all the lab-coated scientists, All For One. He’s never been this angry in his life, and he’s at a complete loss for what to do with it.

All they can do for now is wait for tomorrow, and just hope they can find the courage to warn Emi and Saori about everything when morning comes.

Chapter Text

August 30^th.

The flowers from the funeral died weeks ago, and her son’s room has been collecting dust since the day he went miss- the day he died. He’s dead. Inko can’t afford to think as if he’s still alive. She’s not strong enough to hold onto such hope.

The funeral had given Inko a sense of closure, even if it wasn’t complete. She’d decided to hold it on his birthday to remind herself of how much joy his existence had brought into her life. The day he was born is among her happiest memories. She’s still unsure of whether or not that was the right choice to make. Would Izuku have liked to be commemorated that way? She doesn’t know.

Inko now stares at the dead flowers on the windowsill, and she does know that she should throw them out. The shrivelled brown petals have already started to dry out and fall off the receptacles. But, just as she can’t quite bring herself to step foot into Izuku’s room, she can’t quite bring herself to get rid of the dead flowers either.

Sometimes, when she’s feeling brave, she opens the door to Izuku’s room and stares at the reminder that he had once existed. All his belongings, his hero merchandise and memorabilia, his old schoolwork, his clothes; it helps her, seeing the proof that he had once lived. It makes her feel grateful for the handful of moments she got to hold on to him for, the memories she collected and now gets to treasure.

Most days, though, the mere thought of it makes her ache. It reminds her that she’ll never see her baby boy again, and there are no more memories left to make.

She also feels so unendingly guilty for her part in his death. She failed in protecting her son from the cruelty of the world, and it clearly became too much for him. He couldn’t even bear to leave a note behind.

She’s forced herself to continue on with her life, but everything feels dimmer without Izuku around. Like a star that has collapsed, and now Inko is no longer entirely sure what orbit she’s supposed to follow now. Izuku was her gravitational pull, the very thing that kept her going.

She goes to work, she meets with Mitsuki every now and again, she sees Old Baba at the antique store. She goes home, and she doesn’t throw out the funeral flowers, and she doesn’t step foot in her son’s room. She goes to sleep, and she dreams of Izuku coming home to her, happy and laughing and alive. She wakes up, and the cycle repeats.

She looks for closure in everything. She knows she’ll never quite find it, but she tries regardless. She sees a young child with red shoes laughing as they run down the street, or a fondly exasperated mother trying to steer their child away from a hero merchandise display at the shops, and inside her something breaks at the same time that it heals.

She lives on whilst her son does not, and life continues.

***

September 2^nd.

Izuku is dragged roughly down the complex’s maze of hallway by a guard, stumbling over his own feet. They’ve grabbed him by the arm, gripping tight enough to be painful.

Dread spikes under his skin. These aren’t the usual twists they take to get to the silent doctor’s room which- which means-

The guard throws him through an open doorway, slamming it shut behind him. Dr Garaki stands ahead, green goggles over his eyes, glinting in the harsh fluorescents.

Shit, Izuku thinks. Shit, shit, it’s the Doctor.

Every time it’s been Garaki for the experiments, it’s been worse. More pain, more fear, more changes, more-

“Izuku Midoriya!” the Doctor exclaims, wide grin peeking out from beneath his moustache. He points to one of the patient beds by the far wall. “Sit up there for me, I won’t be a moment.”

He picks himself up off the floor with trembling hands and heads for the bed. He tries to take a deep breath, but his lungs feel tight, they won’t expand. He makes it to the bed, stumbling onto it as his legs all but give out from under him.

The Doctor busies himself with all the various instruments on his desk. Arrays of needles and scalpels and vials upon vials of serums, all neatly labelled with fine print Izuku can’t make out from where he sits. Stacks of paper and scattered notes and that…thing…that sits in its cylindrical glass tank, swimming in revolting green liquid.

The…the thing, whatever it is, looks strangely shrivelled compared to how Izuku remembers it from last time he sat in the Doctor’s lab room. He can’t quite recall it. His memory of that day was hazed by a fog of panic with the appearance of All For One, whose terrifying aura, even just though a screen, stopped Izuku from processing much of anything.

The Doctor starts murmuring to himself, jerking Izuku forcefully back to the present. He holds a little recorder in his hand, which Izuku hasn’t seem him with before.

“September 2^nd, 2XXX. Garaki Kyudai with Subject 84, experiment 115, recording one,” he mutters to it, flipping through pages of notes at his desk. “Excellent progress shown in Project Delta on all current subjects. Incremental changes of behavioural patterns and physicality. Less resistance to injections now, either as the body adapts to it or due to it begins to break through natural defences...”

Izuku has frozen in place, listening to Dr Garaki speak. He was…the 84^th? Just how many people had the man before him gotten to?! How many lives has this doctor ruined?

…Where are the other 84 people? Some must be his cellmates, but that’s close to 80 people left unaccounted for. Are they kept in a different part of the complex? Are they also Quirkless? Are they alive?

Izuku blinks, stopping that thought before it can go much further. There’s nothing he can do about it, in any case. How have this many disappearances been kept quiet, though? That’s far too many to go unnoticed, he wonders, eyebrows furrowing. The Doctor continues to talk into the recording device, and Izuku tunes back in. Some of it might be useful to know.

“Quirk factors seem irreplicable through chemical injection, perhaps more drastic measures are necessary.” The Doctor drums his fingers along the edge of the desk. “I have an idea for a new formula to be trialled involving additions of Trigger once subjects have been granted artificial Quirk factors through surgical insertion…”

Izuku’s brain halts, again, tyring to understand what he’s hearing. He feels sick, suddenly. Nauseous, like he’s on the verge of throwing up.

Surgery? Artificial Quirk factors? He- they can’t-

The Doctor forges on with his monologue, either not noticing or not caring for Izuku’s panic. “As for this moment, I will commence experiment 115 with Subject 84. I am trialling a formula to stimulate the body’s electrons through a redox reaction, in hopes that the difference between these charges and the body’s protons will create an electrical charge.”

The Doctor now moves towards him, a syringe filled with yellow serum in his hand. Izuku flinches, but he knows fighting it will only result in the guards being called and holding him down. Tatsuki tried it once.

The syringe is plunged into his shoulder, and the reaction is immediate. Something surges through him, a wave of uncomfortable heat. His blood seems to boil in his veins, his skin breaks out in a fine sweat. His limbs spasm and jolt with the surges.

He can feel something like electricity inside him, but it’s burning his organs, and he can’t breathe. He feels a scream building in his throat, a pressure pushing at his skull, he can’t think, his eyes won’t focus.

The scream forces its way out of his mouth, agonising. The pain is agonising. His nerves are fraying and sizzling with it, his head is about to split open with the pressure, he’s going to die, he can’t-

A small prick in his arm, another surge, and the pain washes away. He’s left heaving for breath, closing his eyes against the torrents of pressure still pushing against his brain. He has no idea how long that went for, only that it was beyond painful.

When he opens his eyes, the world blurs, sending waves of nausea at him in full force.

“…Experiment 115 was unsuccessful,” Dr Garaki hums, seemingly unperturbed. “Subject appeared to be in pain, though no outward charges of electricity were created. Formula to be modified with…”

Izuku tunes out the scientific jargon, trying his level best not to throw up the measly amount of lunch they were given. He makes a weak attempt at breathing deep, calming breaths, but nothing about him is calm.

That was the worst pain he’s ever felt. Of all the experiments he’s undergone so far, this was the worst. His very bones were set on fire, and he was so sure he wouldn’t live to see the other end of it.

Not to mention everything the Doctor revealed before all of that. Surgery. Quirk factors. And- what was it that he said he’d put in the formula? Trip-something?

The Doctor takes Izuku’s measurements, which they do intermittently, and hands him a healing gummy. He feels untethered from his body, despite being overtly aware of the residual pain of the injection.

“Experiment 116, recording one,” the Doctor begins, and Izuku immediately tenses. He’s not off the hook yet. “I want to test Subject 84’s electrical and magnetic conductivity following the injection from experiment 115.”

They tend to test for reactions or changes in physiology after the serums, looking for an indication that it had an affect on their ability to use or conduct Quirks. It’s never worked in the past.

Dr Garaki calls in the guards, and Izuku is manhandled into a room a few doors down the hallway. Inside it sits a gigantic, alien-looking metal contraption with a display screen attached. Two claw-like rods cage around a rubber standing pad, resembling lightning rods that have been bent out of shape.

Oh. Oh. Shit.

Izuku is ushered onto the standing pad, his hands strapped to the ends of each rod so that his arms are stretched out, and it clicks what’s about to happen. Oh, shit. He really might die.

“Commencing experiment 116!” Garaki calls gleefully, switching the metal contraption on and placing his hand on a large, red button. “First, we’ll begin with a charge of 25 milliamperes!”

Izuku braces himself as much as he can. From what he can vaguely recall, 25 milliamperes isn’t enough to be lethal, but it would be painful.

The Doctor pushes the button. Not even a second later, a bolt of crackling electricity shoots down from one rod and wraps around his arm. It burns through the skin, and his muscles jolt with the shock, but it passes after a moment. The hairs on his arms stand on end.  

The machine beeps, lights flashing. The Doctor squints at whatever the screen is showing him, then scribbles it into his notes.

“Test with 25 milliamperes was a success!” he says into his recording device. “Subject 84 shows increased efficiency of electrical conductivity to that the normal human body, with little physical or neural damage. Now for 50 milliamps!”

The Doctor looks far too happy about this all. Izuku knows that this is where shocks start becoming painful, even dangerous.

He tries, subtly, to pull against the restraints around his wrists, praying desperately that they’re loose enough to slip his wrist out of.

They’re not.

The Doctor punches the button again, and electricity bolts down the rod. It hits Izuku’s arm, running through his bones and filling his veins with static charge. He yelps, jerking again at the restraints as his limbs seize. He can feel the bolt passing through him, crackling up the other side of the rod in mere seconds.

The Doctor cackles with clear delight. “Experiment 116 with 50 milliamps was a tremendous success – the charge even came through to the other rod! We’ll make good soldiers out of these Quirkless youth yet!”

Izuku slumps as much as he can, trying to catch his breath. His whole body aches now, skin buzzing uncomfortably with the leftover electricity.

“75 milliamps now!” Garaki declares blithely.

The shocks only increase from there, growing more excruciating each time, and Izuku’s given no time in between to recover. A cottony fog takes over his mind, and his vision goes hazy, black spots dancing in the corners of his eyes.

“Subject 84 showing incredible conduction of electricity with little impact on neural functions. He’s able to withstand more charge than the regular human body can handle, and conducts it with excellent efficiency!” Garaki prates into his voice recorder. “Time to test with 200 milliamps!”

The risk of lethality is so high now. Fuck what the Doctor says about little neural impact, Izuku can barely see. His arms ache fiercely, his legs won’t tolerate his weight. It hurts so bad. So, so bad. He feels tears well up, stinging his eyes but he clamps them shut.

The button clicks, and the shock cracks down the rod, and Izuku’s vision goes black.

***

At the same time…

Katsuki sits at his desk, diligently taking notes as his teacher drones on about algebra. It’s basic shit, and Katsuki knows how to do it already, but he takes notes anyway to fill the time.

The final bell rings, and he’s out as soon as he can be, shaking off he extras that try to cling to him. Instead of heading home, though, he heads to the train station, hopping on a connection toward Hamamatsu. He and Ponytail agreed to meet for a sparring session at a halfway point between each of their houses. He’s in the outer Shizuoka prefecture, whilst she’s in Aichi.

It’s the first time he’s had a sparring partner that can keep up with him, and he’d rather die than admit he’s excited, but…fuck, well, he’s excited.

An hour or so later, the train arrives at Hamamatsu Station, where he finds Ponytail already waiting for him, a blue and white middle school uniform on and hair done up in that huge black ponytail as usual.

“Ah, Bakugou-kun! Thank you for agreeing to meet me here!” she says when he walks over to her.

“Yeah, whatever.”

They get changed into their workout gear at the station’s bathrooms, then head off towards a nearby park that seems relatively quiet, setting their school stuff by a tree.

It’s a little overcast, and a nice breeze floats through the trees. Perfect for doing a little exercise.

Katsuki heads for an empty patch of grass near their bags. “Alright, Ponytail, how’re we doing this?”

Ponytail giggles. “I do have a name, you know?”

He rolls his eyes. “Don’t care. Now, are we doing this in rounds? Best of three?”

“I think best of three is good. We can aim for immobilisation. No Quirk use, obviously, since we’re in public,” she replies. “No aiming for the head or really trying to hurt each other, either.”

Katsuki nods back, and they get in position. They circle each other for a few moments before Katsuki lunges forward, swinging a right hook at her side. She dodges fairly easily, but he’s already there, aiming a kick at her thigh.

She leaps backwards, taking only a moment to regain her footing before coming at him with a powerful roundhouse kick. Katsuki avoids the worst of it, but she still clips him on the arm. She immediately uses that opening to throw a jab at his sternum, but he bends to the side and it misses.

“Nice fucking try, Ponytail,” he taunts. She meets it with a grin, lunging at him again. She leaves her side open, and he gets her with a solid kick to the side. She’s sent off balance, stumbling a little. He goes to pin her to the ground, but she spins out of the way just in time, regaining her balance and coming at him again.

They go back and forth, matching pace easily. He lands about as many hits on her and she does on him. After a few minutes, he slips on a fallen leaf, of all fucking things, and she immediately dives in to immobilise him.

“I win,” she grins, triumphant.

“Yeah, ‘cause I slipped on a fucking leaf!” he spits back, utterly indignant. “I woulda fucking got you otherwise.”

“Sure, sure, Bakugou-kun,” she laughs, offering a hand to help him up. He bats it away, but he’s grinning right along with her.

“Good match, Ponytail,” he concedes. She nods, and suggests a short break before the next round.

 They plonk themselves down on the grass, catching their breaths.

“I’m curious, Bakugou-kun,” she pipes up. “How does your Quirk work?”

Katsuki grunts. “I make nitroglycerin-like sweat from my palms. I can ignite it on command.” He demonstrates with a tiny explosion, which makes a small pop!

“Ah, that’s incredibly interesting! How similar is it to actual nitroglycerin? Do you know?”

“Huh. I don’t, actually. I just know it’s not actual nitroglycerin,” he replies. “I have fine control over the output, so I can either make tiny explosions or really large-scale ones.”

“That’s very versatile. It seems quite well-suited for the heroics industry!” she beams.

“You fucking bet it is,” Katsuki grins back. He thinks back to the day at the gym, when she produced grappling hooks out of thin air. He finds he is actually pretty curious about how her Quirk works. “What about you? You make objects with your Quirk?”

“Ah, sort of! My Quirk is called Creation. It allows me to convert my lipid cells into my desired molecular structure, so long as it’s inorganic. So, to create objects, I need to know their full structure and also have enough lipid stores.”

“How do you go with creating bigger objects then, if it converts from lipid cells?” he asks.

“My body condenses the cells very densely, so there’s more to work with. And, though I’m not entirely sure, I don’t believe the conversion rate is exactly one to one, so I can create larger objects without completely overdoing it.”

Katsuki hums, mulling over that. It’s a ridiculously versatile and powerful ability. She can pretty easily create some crazy destructive things with that, like weaponry of poisonous gasses. She can also easily change her combat range from short to long based on what she creates, or make first-aid supplies if needed.

“Isn’t it just fascinating how interesting and complex Quirks are?” Ponytail muses.

“Hm, yeah, I guess so.”

“If you think about it, it wasn’t so long ago that Quirklessness was the norm. Only a handful of generations. Nowadays, Quirkless people are, what, 20 per-cent of the population? Most of them older, too. I don’t think I’ve met any Quirkless people before,” Ponytail ponders, tapping her cheek in thought.

“Huh,” Katsuki says, turning around to rummage through his schoolbag to find his water bottle. “I used to be friends with a Quirkless person.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry.”

Katsuki jerks his gaze up to Ponytail, frowning in confusion. “Why?”

“Oh, just- you know, they’re Quirkless. It’s- it must be hard, accommodating for that difference between you two.” She waves her hands placatingly, hurrying to explain.

“I mean, yeah, but-” he starts, but cuts himself off. What the fuck, is he gonna explain to her that he’s the reason Izuku’s dead? Hell fucking no, that’s not her business. He's not entirely sure what urged him to bring it up in the first place. 

Besides, he understands what she’s trying to get at. It’s difficult for Quirked people to understand all the bullshit Quirkless have to endure, and it creates a disconnect. Quirkless people lack something that’s become entirely fundamental to modern society, which has led to their ostracism and a hell of a lot of stereotypes. Katsuki himself fell for those, and Izuku’s gone because of it.

“It was a difficult thing to accommodate for. I royally fucked it up, actually,” Katsuki eventually grits out, unwilling to explain further than that. Thankfully, Ponytail doesn’t pry, and they go in for another round of sparring after a few more minutes.

***

A few hours later…

When Izuku wakes up again, it’s to a pounding headache and tender limbs. He’s lying on his stomach on one of the ragged mattresses of the cell, and he can feel the eyes of all the others on him. He’s reminded sourly of when he first arrived here.

He tries to push himself up, but pain shoots down his arms. With a groan, he flops back down onto the futon.

“Hey, Izuku, are you okay?” comes the voice of Tatsuki somewhere to his left. He manages a grunt in reply.

Tiny arms encircle his shoulders. He cracks open his eyes to see Saori in front of him, Emi hovering close behind.

“Mama always holds us like this when we get hurt to make us feel better. I don’t want you to be hurt, Izuku,” she tells him, tightening her hold on his shoulders.

He rolls over onto his back, sitting up a little bit to hug her properly. He ushers Emi into the embrace, too, wrapping his trembling arms around the two girls.

It continually breaks his heart how young they are. They’ve settled in remarkably well – or, really, as well as they can in a place like this. The two girls hold on tight to each other, and like Yuna, they’ve taken to treating Takane and Tatsuki like pseudo-parents, and Izuku and Mao like older brothers. They’ve become a family of sorts, trapped in the dank confines of the complex.

Emi and Saori, Izuku reckons, are so strong. They’ve held it together as much as possible, crying when they need to, laughing when they can, just going through it all with matching brave faces. It’s as upsetting as it is inspiring.

“Thanks, Saori-chan, that helped a lot.” He lets go, offering her a small but genuine smile before turning to face the group. “And you guys, too. I know it sucks that we’re trapped here, but I’m still grateful to have met all of you.”

Mao pulls him into a hug next, which makes Izuku’s heart flutter a little. He hugs back fiercely. Mao's skin is cold, and Izuku knows his isn't any better, but the hug warms him either way.

Takane and Tatsuki sit with their shoulders pressed together, Yuna leaning into Takane’s side. She lifts her hands up to sign something to him, trying to quell their trembling. They shake as constantly as Izuku’s own hands, now. 

What happened? she asks.

“I was with Dr Garaki," he tells her, before turning to face the whole group. "I found out a lot of things that I think you guys need to know.”

Yuna signs to him, telling him to go on. 

Taking in a deep breath, he begins his recount. He tells them about the recording device, how he’s named ‘Subject 84’, how this whole shitshow is named Project Delta, how they’re recording all the weird changes the group is going through. He then tells them about that day’s experiments, toning it down as much as he can for Emi and Saori’s sakes. Mao grabs his hand to support him as he stutters his way through that.

“He- he mentioned surgery, as well? Surgical insertion of artificial Quirk factors, and a new formula with, um…tripper? Tri-something,” he recalls to the group, who are all listening with various faces of disgust and horror.

“Trigger, you mean?” Tatsuki asks.

“Yeah, I think so. What is it?”

Tatsuki signs, rubbing at his face tiredly. “It’s a drug that boosts people’s Quirk abilities like crazy. It came from the U.S. a few years ago and it’s been running rampant on the undersides of Japan ever since. Crazy addictive shit from what I’ve heard.”

Izuku nods. His thoughts are already whirling with the possibilities and implications. Would the people here use Trigger to strengthen whatever artificial formulas they’re creating? Would that even work, though? If the drug is used to enhance Quirks, then surely the drug would have to latch onto people’s existing Quirk factors – would it then work with artificial factors, like what they’re apparently planning to force into Izuku and his friends?

“It’s really only going to get worse from here, isn’t it?” Mao says, a note of resignation in his tone.

The rest of them can only nod in reply. It really is about to get worse. There’s no one out there trying to save them, no way for them to get out. There’s no light of hope at the end of the tunnel for them to gaze wistfully at. It’s been walled off, and now despair sets in, thriving in the darkness.

The cell grows darker as night falls, shadows falling across the weary faces of seven kids, and they watch as the last lights of hope fade from sight.

***

Schrödinger’s Cat is a thought experiment originating from quantum mechanics as a means of explaining superposition.

A cat is placed in a sealed box with a radioactive material. As it decays, a Geiger counter will be triggered, releasing a poison that will kill the cat – however, the observer standing on the outside, cannot know when this happens, and thus whether the cat is dead or alive. From their perspective, there is an equal chance of both – the cat is both dead and alive. This is the Observer’s Paradox.

What happens when you are both the cat and the observer? Are you dead? Are you alive? How can you know?

Chapter Text

September 15^th.  

The experiments are getting worse. There’s been a noticeable shift in their intensity and aims since the time Izuku was electrocuted. The session times have lengthened, and the tests have gotten more painful, leaving Izuku and his friends feeling increasingly more drained. Pain has settled permanently into Izuku’s bones, now. His arms quiver all the time, he has migraines more often than not. The others aren’t faring much better.

There’s been physical changes too.

The first change they’d noticed was Takane’s eyes. They used to be a brilliant shade of turquoise, with flecks of deep blue buried in the mix. About a week ago, when she’d gotten back from her afternoon round of experimentation, they’d dulled to a weird, unnaturally pale green. Tatsuki had been the one to realise, his expression immediately dipping into despair. Takane had freaked out.

The next significant change they’d clocked was in Emi. The girl had been shorter than her sister by a good 7 or 8 centimetres, given that she was the younger of the two. A few days ago, when she’d come back from that morning’s experiments, she’d been a few centimetres taller than Saori. The girls couldn’t grasp the gravity of such a change, and Emi had flaunted the new height to a pouting Saori, whilst Izuku and his other cellmates cringed. It had reminded Izuku once again just how tragically young the sisters are – how young they all are, really.

Little changes have been showing in Izuku and his friends for a while, if he really thinks about it. The headaches and aching joints, the tics they sometimes all got, the itching skin. They’d all just attributed them to the consequences of no sunlight, bad food and bad sleep and bad days upon bad days, though they could’ve been at least partially due to the experiments. Now though, with noticeable physical changes…

They know that something’s different. The researchers must have made a breakthrough in whatever they’re trying to achieve. It doesn’t sit well with any of them, and alarm bells have been ringing in Izuku’s mind for days.

Now, he sits on the cold concrete floor of the cell, knees pulled up to his chest, the ache of the latest experiments still rattling through him. He can feel a migraine starting to form behind his eyes, a growing, uncomfortable pressure that throbs in his skull. He lays his head on his knees and closes his eyes, trying to ease the pain.

Everyone but Mao is back from their sessions, slumped around the cell in exhaustion. Emi cries into Takane’s shoulder, aftershocks of pain from her session shuddering through her little frame. Takane whispers empty comforts to her as Saori holds her sister’s hand.

After a while, not long after Emi eventually calms down, slamming footsteps start to echo through the cell, rapidly growing louder. Izuku lifts his head up, a frown deepening on his face at the muffled sounds of struggle coming from the other side of the cell door.

Guards yank the door open, and Izuku’s heart falls at the sight of Mao in the entrance, pale and battered, teeth grit as he fights against the guard trying to manoeuvre him into the cell.

The guards all but throw him in, and he trips onto the concrete floor, scraping his hands as he lands.

“Mao!” Takane frets, rushing across the cell to his side as the boy pushes himself up with a grimace. “Jesus, are you okay?”

“What happened?” Izuku asks. He frets alongside Takane, migraine be damned, grabbing Mao’s hands and inspecting the damaged skin there. His complexion looks ashen, close up.

“Bad experiments. Really painful,” he grits out. “That’s not the worst of it, though. He- I was with Dr Garaki, and- and he called All For One, and it was horrible. They talked about what’s going to happen to us. It’s so, so bad. We’re…” He looks at Izuku, then, something haunted in his eyes. Something about their colour looks different to Izuku, duller. Like they’ve lost the life they once held. “We’re going to die, here.”

Izuku exchanges glances with the rest of the group. Their expressions reflect his same fear back to him.

Tatsuki asks what he means with a shaking voice, and Mao’s expression crumples. Izuku hates that expression on him. Mao is meant for happiness; he’s meant to laugh and smile and live forever.

“They talked about the nomu, and I found out what they are, and it’s so awful,” he tells them. “They- they described them as these, like, mindless super-soldiers that can hold lots of Quirks. They’ve managed to make one already. It was sitting in the room while I was there. It just stood there. It was lifeless. It only moved when the Doctor commanded it to.”

The dread in Izuku’s lungs becomes sharp, spiking through him. They already knew that they’re going to be made into nomu, but they hadn’t known what that meant until now.

“Garaki mentioned all the past attempts at this, too. 78 failures, all of them dead. We’re numbers 80 to 86,” Mao continues.

“What about number 79?” Tatsuki asks, his trepidation clear in the question.

Mao takes a long, shuddering breath before answering. “Their first success. They called it Kurogiri.”

Izuku moves over to hug Mao by the shoulders, trying to give him some small comfort, and the boy leans into it with a tired sigh.

“They haven’t managed to successfully make a living nomu yet. They twist a person so far to make these multi-Quirked soldiers that unquestioningly follow orders that they die in the process.”

He gives them a moment to process it. Emi has started crying again, and Yuna has moved over to try provide silent comfort, but she looks equally distressed. Izuku tries to wrap his head around it, his migraine sharpening to an extreme.

They’re hurtling towards a fate worse than death. There is no light at the end of the tunnel – there was never any tunnel to begin with. They’re trapped within four concrete walls, and it appears that they’ll die before they get to see sunlight again.

Undead super-soldiers. That’s what they’ll be. Izuku hates himself for ever wishing for a Quirk. He doesn’t want it now. Not like this.

“There’s more,” Mao whispers. Izuku almost wants to cover his ears. He doesn’t want to hear more. It can’t get worse than it already is. “They’re not trying to make artificial Quirks. They’ve just been testing how Quirkless people react to Quirk-like effects before they make us into nomu. It was just out of fucking curiosity, according to the Doctor. They’ve had a way of giving us Quirks this whole time.”

 “How?” Izuku asks. He’s not sure he even wants to know, though.  

“All For One’s Quirk, “Mao replies, his voice cracking slightly. “He can take people’s Quirks. Permanently. And- and he can force Quirks onto other people, regardless of whether they have a Quirk factor or not.”

Izuku can’t quite believe it. He’s never heard of anything like it, and the possibilities of such a power are honestly terrifying. He can’t even begin to fathom the incomprehensible amount of power that he must possess, or how many Quirks he has at his disposal. His alias, ‘All For One’ makes a startling amount of sense, suddenly. And to be doing this, to be taking children from their homes and turning them into weapons, to subject them to veritable torture for the sake of…of what? Science? War? All For One’s own twisted curiosity? Izuku feels sick.

“Wait, hang on,” Tatsuki pipes up. “Regardless of Quirk factors? Why are they trying to create artificial Quirk factors then?”

Mao rubs at his eyes, another tired sigh escaping him. “I could be wrong, but from the way they were talking about it, it seems like all the past people they tried this on were Quirked, but their bodies couldn’t handle all too many Quirks being forced on them, so they’re trying to artificially create super strong Quirk factors.”

“That must be why they’ve taken us then,” Izuku adds, thinking over everything he’s been told. When he glances back up at the group, they all look back at him with confused expressions.

“We’re Quirkless. We don’t have Quirk factors. It must be easier to insert an artificial Quirk factor into a person that doesn’t have one rather than try to alter a preexisting one or try to take it out and put a new one in,” he explains. “Plus…not many people care when we go missing.”

The group goes quiet at that. As much as they hate to think about it, they all know the statistics on discrimination. They’ve lived them. They know how hard it is to get employment, they’ve all been bullied or harassed, and they understand all too well that they are not the priorities of heroes and police. Quirked lives are worth more.

That’s just how it is, and they know that. Right now, though, Izuku has never hated it more.

“We need to get ourselves out, then,” Tatsuki says. “If no one’s going to come save us, then we’ll have to escape on our own.”

***

Later that night…

Aizawa Shouta creeps through the shadows, capture weapon secure in his grip. He heads toward the location he’s been narrowing down for weeks – an abandoned portside warehouse nestled amongst a graveyard of shipping containers.

A small cargo ship rocks silently in the still midnight water of the port, tied to the jetty with a thin, fraying rope. Piles of crates sit on the back of the boat, though it appears that half the load has already been moved.

They must already be here, then.

The hero spies a broken window near the roof of the warehouse. Snapping his capture scarf at the light pole nearest to the window, hauling himself up and then swinging himself onto the window ledge. Noiselessly, he crawls through the window and onto the building’s rafters.

Inside, surrounded by piles of the same crates he’d seen on the ship, a group of three talk quietly to each other.

The first, a burly, middle-aged European man sporting a buzz cut, seems put off about something. He speaks gruffly, voice thick with an accent Shouta can’t place. His eyes are pitch black, likely a mutation for his Quirk.

“What the fuck are we s’posed to do with all this before the boss comes and gets it?”

The Japanese woman next to him rolls her eyes, moving to sit on top of one of the crates. “We keep them here. It’s unlikely anyone’s going to check inside the warehouse.”

“And how long’s that gonna take?” the man asks, annoyance clear.

“Calm it, Alexei. Shouldn’t be too long. Boss said he has some upcoming plans that need a lot of this,” the third speaks up, an African person by the looks of it. Their thick dreads are pulled up in a tangle behind their head.

Shouta frowns, staying motionless in the rafters as he listens.

“Shit, that’s a lot of Trigger for one person,” the man grunts, confirming Shouta’s suspicion of this being an illicit shipment of the drug. He’d been tracking it down for a while after hearing whispers of it in the underground.  

“Yeah, well, it’s not our job to ask questions,” the Japanese woman sighs. “We’re just selling the stuff.”

The man only huffs in reply, marching out of the warehouse. Shouta presumes he’s getting more of the boxes.

The two others turn to each other once the man leaves.

“Did the boss tell you anything more about his plans?” the Japanese woman asks.

“Just that it was for some science project of his,” the African person replies, a hint of mirth in their voice. “Whisper on the street, though, is that he’s making an army. Biological Quirk weapons or something.”

“Huh. Is he connected to all those kidnappings that have been happening recently?” the woman asks, cocking her head.

“Not sure. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s pulling the strings behind that, though. Hell knows what he needs them all for.”

Shouta feels an ominous dread as he listens to the two speak. If it’s true, if this villain overlord is looking to make weapons using Trigger, then it could mean war against heroes. It also spells out a lot of trouble for the people he’s supposedly kidnapped. He needs to intercept the shipment, find out where it’s going.

The burly man re-enters carrying a few crates, dumping them on top of the existing pile. He chats for a second with the others in his group before heading back out.

This is the best time for Shouta to make his move.

He leaps down from the rafters, whipping his capture weapon towards the African person first. They struggle against its hold, but Shouta caught the two by surprise. They’re entirely unprepared for an attack.

Shouta makes quick work of knocking the person unconscious, latching on a pair of Quirk suppressant handcuffs to prevent further issues. He leaves them slumped against some of the crates, turning to face the Japanese woman, whose face is slack with shock. Shouta snaps his weapon at her, the scarf wrapping tightly around her arms. He quickly moves to render her unconscious, but she calls out to their third before he can.

The man barrels in with a box still in his arms. He drops it upon seeing Shouta in the middle of the room, stance shifting into one of aggression. Shouta trains his Erasure on him, revelling a little in the look of confusion on the man’s face as his Quirk doesn’t work.

With a roar, the man charges at Shouta. He rolls out of the way, but he loses grip of his Erasure in that second. The man immediately activates his Quirk, eyes glowing white-hot.

He shoots at Shouta with a laser-like ray from his eyes. Shouta can hear it cutting through the crates behind him, the room filling with the sound of cracking wood as he rolls out of the way.

When he turns back to the villain, capture weapon at the ready, the villain has a syringe of murky red liquid plunged into the side of his neck and a sick grin on his face. His muscles bulge unnaturally, a side effect of the Trigger.

Shouta dives to the side to escape the villain’s lasers. The beam comes quicker than he anticipates, and it’s more powerful than the previous by tenfold. He grabs a crate and throws it at the villain, who jerks back on instinct, turning off his Quirk. Shouta shoots his capture scarf at the rafters, swinging himself up and out of the villain’s line of sight.

The moment he has his balance, he activates his Erasure against the villain, who bumbles around the ground floor, clearly looking for Shouta.

Leaping down from the rafters, Erasure still firmly activated, he traps the villain’s arms against his torso with the capture weapon. The man twists in its hold, glaring at Shouta. Immediately, the villain’s face scrunches up in rage as his Quirk fails him. He curses at Shouta, straining more against the loops of fabric trapping him in place. In turn, the hero tightens his hold, locking the villain’s wrists in Quirk suppressant cuffs.

With the villain secured, he calls the nearest police station to request they send police to the scene, as well as a few people Shouta had been cooperating with for this case. The man spits at him the entire wait, and the hero quickly tunes it out. It’s been too long a day to pay much mind to the villain’s enraged ramblings.

In less than ten minutes, police are entering the warehouse, collecting the villains Shouta has captured and driving them to the station for interrogation.

Nagasaki Kaya, the head of the Musutafu drug crimes unit, approaches him swiftly. Between her determined pace and her height, she poses an intimidating figure.

“Eraserhead,” she starts. “Good work tonight.”

He nods in return.

“Did the trio say anything about the reason for the shipment?” she asks.

“They mentioned a ‘boss’ of theirs that was going to collect a large portion of the shipment from this warehouse, but they didn’t know exactly when. Apparently for a science project of his, and one of the villains alleged it was to create biological Quirk weapons. Another mentioned that it could be related to the numerous missing persons cases we’ve had popping up recently,” he reports, watching as she notes it down on a clipboard.

“That spells trouble,” she comments.

He nods again. “We need to find out where the shipment is going.”

Nagasaki hums in agreement. “I think we’ve got two main options then. One, let the shipment go through and track where it ends up, and follow it to this ‘boss’, though this puts a hell of a lot of Trigger on the streets. Two, we could replace the Trigger in these with a placebo and do the same, though we run the risk of getting caught and not being able to track the shipment,” she tells him, crossing her arms.

“The safer option would be to replace these with a placebo, though we’d need to act fast, considering we don’t know when they’re coming to collect the drugs. We’d also need to account for the fact that they’d likely want to verify that what they’re collecting is actual Trigger, so a portion of it needs to be the real deal.”

“So if we have a few crates of actual Trigger, then replace the rest?” Nagasaki asks, and Shouta nods in confirmation. “We can have some officers go undercover to act as the villains then. They’ll be interrogated soon. I’ll get as much information as I can about the deal and let you know. Thank you for your cooperation on this case, Eraserhead.”

“Of course,” he replies.

Soon after, Shouta heads out, ready to go home to his husband and cats after an exhausting patrol.

Chapter Text

 September 18^th.

Izuku is all too aware that they’re running out of time. He, Tatsuki and Mao are being marched to the boys’ shower block, guards surrounding them for the trip, the clink of guns and stomping footfalls echoing off the walls. They subtly glance about, minute tilts of the heads and flicks of the eyes, in an attempt to catch a glimpse of a possible exit, but it’s impossible. The complex is a maze of dull, grey hallways. Not a hint of natural light to be seen.

Before this, Izuku had never realised how much he relied on sunlight for a sense of time. Their daily rhythm of greyish, tasteless meals and horrible lab sessions is a painfully familiar routine at this point, and the only thing separating day from night is when they turn off the lights.

Izuku glances to his left as they pass another intersection of hallways. Nothing. Mao taps his arm once from his right. He got nothing, too, it seems. Tatsuki huffs a quiet sigh, meaning nothing for him, too. Maybe in the next intersection.

The girls, Izuku knows, are doing this exact same surveillance a few hallways over, wherever it is that the girls’ shower block is.

Half-formed ideas for escape had been thrown around their little cell the past couple of days. No one’s coming to save them, that much is clear, so they’ve dedicated any spare moment they can to developing a plan. Between stealing weapons and making a break for it, turning the scientists own formulas against them, playing cat and mouse in the complex’s endless halls, and many other discarded ideas, they haven’t quite managed to put anything sound together yet. If they were in a cell with bars rather than the big, heavy door they’re stuck with, Izuku thinks this would be at least marginally easier.

Thus, they’ve decided they need information. With each trip out of the cell, Izuku’s been creating a mental map of the complex as best as he can, memorising which hallways lead to which rooms, how many floors there are, the locations of even vaguely identifiable landmarks (difficult in such a monotonously structured place, but Izuku has been trying to leave nail marks on the walls and scuffs on the floors like a fucked up breadcrumb trail). The whole group has been gleaning information from the scientists and guards and reporting back – things like schedules or upcoming plans, or really anything about the world outside the complex.

Izuku, Mao and Tatsuki trudge onwards, bare feet dragging over cold concrete. They keep up their system of taps and sighs, each set of hallways proving just as useless as the last, as they near the shower block. From the outside, it’s just another door amongst the numerous that line the hallways. It’s the same as all the others; a password-protected chunk of silver metal with a heavily tinted viewing panel that reflects weakly back at them. One-way glass, Izuku’s learned.

At the final intersection before they reach the block, Izuku again glances to his left, hoping for something, anything, that could help them. The hallway he sees is long and narrow, sloping upwards. At the end rests a large, black metal door, unlike all the other doors they’ve passed so far. There’s no viewing panel, no signage next to it. Possibilities whirl through Izuku’s head in a flash before he has to glance away and continue walking. Mao taps his arm once, and Tatsuki sighs again, but Izuku gives them a new signal – a stretch, pointing out his arm in the direction of the door. The other two boys make subtle looks of their own toward the hallway, laying eyes upon the door. Izuku can feel Mao’s excitement next to him.

He knows it’s foolish to get excited too quickly – the risks are still high, and there’s the unignorable possibility of failure still looming. They don’t know if that door even leads anywhere, but even the idea that it might, that they could escape…Izuku can’t blame Mao for his eagerness.

They arrive at the block, now. The guards punch in a code, covering the keypad from view. At a glance, the inside of the room is reminiscent of a school gym shower room, with rows of shower cubicles and a few benches for putting their dry clothes. Looking closer, it’s a little more brutal. The cubicles don’t have curtains – they aren’t afforded the privilege of privacy here. The showers themselves are rusted and dirty, with only two minutes’ worth of cold water and cheap soap to clean up with.

At least they get to shower at all. A small mercy.

Izuku strips quickly, trying not to look at his body. He knows it can’t look good, not with how little they’ve been eating and the horrific trials the scientists have forced him to endure. Scars litter his skin in an ugly patchwork, both from before and the past…months? However long it’s been. It’s hard to tell. There are no mirrors in the room, or the complex as a whole as it seems, which makes it a bit easier. He doesn’t want to know what he looks like, now.

One of the guards raps their weapon, a bulky shotgun, against the wall. The metallic clink spells out a warning; hurry it up, or else. Izuku steps under the weak, cold spray of water, and tries to ignore the presence of the guards behind him.

Once they’re done, shivering from the icy water, they’re trooped back to the cell. The girls are there already. Takane looks vaguely worried, arm wrapped around a quiet Yuna, whilst the sisters are dragging everyone’s futons into the middle of the room, readying for night.

When the guards are gone, footsteps echoing away, Tatsuki whips around to Izuku, a question of “did you find something?” spilling from his mouth in a rushed jumble.

“Yes!” he quietly exclaims, keenly aware that they need to keep their voices down. “At the last intersection before the shower blocks, on the left, there’s a door that looks different from the rest. It was painted black, bulkier than the rest, no signage or window or- point is, it looked like it led somewhere.”

Yuna taps Takane’s shoulder, signing a message for her to pass on.

“She said that we don’t know that it actually leads outside, which is a good point,” Takane relays.

“No, we don’t,” he agrees, “but it’s the best shot we’ve got so far.”

“We found out something, too!” Saori whisper-shouts, a toothy grin lighting up her face.

Takane smiles at her, fondness in her eyes, and reaches over to ruffle her long, dark locks. The girl leans into her touch.

“Not an escape route,” she clarifies, face rapidly turning grim. “Two of our guards were talking whilst we were showering, about switching rosters. One of them complained about the length of their shifts, mentioning a few area codes they apparently patrol. The other said they shouldn’t complain, as they usually got ‘the good lot’, and kind of waved their hand in our direction…”

Izuku’s stomach sinks, knowing what Takane is getting at. “There might be other people trapped here,” he finishes for her, and she nods, milky green eyes grave.

Mao recoils, horrified. To even consider other trapped here in this paralysing maze of endless concrete and darkness kills something in Izuku. A brightness, a final, clinging innocence snuffed out as the oppressive walls of the complex close around him. Others, suffering the way they suffer. Others, trapped the way they are trapped. Others, doomed to become mindless soldiers in a war they did not choose.

Tatsuki shares a glance with Takane, something deep and indecipherable communicated in a few short seconds. It’s a whole conversation Izuku and the others aren’t privy to.

Tatsuki straightens up. “We can’t think about them right now, if they exist.”

“What?!” Izuku nearly yells, whipping around to face the older boy. “How could we just leave them here? We have to save them!”

“Izuku, sweetheart, we can’t afford to be selfless here. We can’t save them if we don’t get ourselves out of here,” Takane tries, voice gentle. She looks again to Tatsuki, another infuriatingly cryptic silent conversation passing between them. It felt awfully parental, something he’d seen his mum and Auntie Mitsuki do many times.

A rare burst of anger flares in him. “But they’re suffering just as much as we are! This place is horrible, and we all know that the heroes either can’t find us or don’t care enough to try, maybe both.”

“We know, Izu, but it’ll be hard enough to save ourselves. We don’t have the resources or skills to go looking for other people – we don’t even know where they’d be,” Tatsuki sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose.

Izuku huffs in disbelief. They don’t want to save these people? Despite knowing they must be suffering? Head shaking, he turns away from them, retreating to a far corner of the cell.

Their space is too small to get any form of privacy, but he folds himself onto his mat in the corner furthest from them, staring at wall and trying not to listen to their continued whispering.

Later, when the whispering has stopped and the others have settled in for sleep, Mao shuffles over to him, sitting cross-legged just centimetres away.

Izuku stays staring at the wall, but he relaxes slightly, dropping his shoulders from ears.

“Hey,” the boy says. “I know you’re mad at Tats and Taka, but they’re not wrong, y’know?”

“Not you too,” Izuku groans quietly.

“No, hey, that’s not fair. I want to get them out too,” Mao replies, a sad look in his eyes. “No one deserves to be trapped here.”

“Exactly!” Izuku hisses. “So we-”

“But,” Mao interrupts, “we’re stuck here too. It’ll be hard enough managing our own escape, but if we make it out then we can tell the heroes, and they can take this place down!”

Izuku frowns. “If we make it out? You mean when.”

Mao slumps a little. “You know we might not make it out. This place is a prison.”

“You can’t think like that, Mao. We’re gonna make it out. We have to.”

“I know, it’s just-”

“I know.” Izuku offers him a small smile, which Mao tries to return. The other boy flops his head onto Izuku’s shoulder, dark curls tickling his nose. His heart stutters at the proximity, and a small grin tugs at his lips as he wraps an arm around Mao.

They’ll be alright, he thinks.

They settle down for sleep side by side. The proximity helps to ward of some of Izuku’s darker thoughts, but he still falls asleep that night with a heavy feeling in his heart.

***

Garaki Kyuudai watches as his employees unloaded his crates of Trigger into the main storeroom, forming pile upon pile. He grins viciously. These will do nicely for his plans, he thinks.

He and his team have made significant headway on this latest project, and Sensei is well pleased. The current lot of subjects he has going at the moment have been showing good signs of being able to take on Quirks without too much damage occurring, likely a genetic disposition from their parents. If he were to try this on a Quirkless human 200 years ago, the damage would be significant.

All in all, the project is due to finish quite soon, if all goes according to plan.

“Sir!” One of his underlings, a fresh-faced young man with wide eyes hidden behind thick glasses, comes running up to him with a worried face. “Sir, we’ve got some bad news.”

Kyuudai huffs. “What?”

“The main Trigger shipment was intercepted. Heroes caught onto it and have the dock under surveillance.”

He inhales sharply. Now this is just the sort of thing he did not want to happen.

Kyuudai paces the floor, muttering under his breath as he thinks. A delay is inevitable, now, until the necessary Trigger can be sourced elsewhere. However, if the heroes have caught wind of his plans, he will need to be more subtle in his movements. He cannot allow this operation to crumble right before it succeeds.

The underling watches his pacing nervously, awaiting either reprimand or orders.

“Find me Kurogiri. I must speak with All For One,” he decides, shooing away the underling. The young man goes at a pace just short of a run, and Kyuudai laughs a little. So eager to please, like a puppy.

He turns back to the piles of Trigger, mentally calculating how much he now has. He can make a start on his plans, though the initial experimentation stage will likely take up most of his supply as he goes through the motions of trial and error.

As he’s thinking, Kurogiri warps into existence in front of him, dressed in an immaculate vest and suit pants. He grins at his latest success; a sentient Nomu! “Kurogiri, take me to All For One.”

“Of course,” the misty man replies, opening a portal in front of him. Stepping through, he’s transported to a dim room, most of which is taken up by tubes and wires that snake up to a bed.

The figure in the bed shifts to face Kyuudai, and offers him a chilling grin.

“Doctor,” All For One’s rumbling voice speaks. “What brings you to me?”

Kyuudai explains the issue, sparing no detail, even as the displeased aura emanating from the man before him continues to grow.

“Contact Giran,” All For One instructs, tone sharp. “Find a new supplier from him. In the meantime, continue your efforts on our little project.”

Kyuudai nods, the orders being as he expected. “I believe the final phase will soon be ready to begin.”

A smile cracks across All For One’s disfigured face. He nods slightly, gesturing for the doctor to elaborate.

“Those remaining in test groups A and B show some promise in regard to a successful operation, though it seems highly dependant on the individual,” he continues. “Group C holds the most promise. They passed our examinations with flying colours. I believe their physiology is the most apt to achieve our goals.

“Once I have the Trigger I need, I can begin experimentation on the subjects’ various reactions to the substance. I have gathered most of the resources I need to synthesise the factors, and soon my team will begin fusing Trigger into them. If we are delicate about it, and the operations are successful, the subjects should, theoretically, remain alive.”

Sensei lets out a pleased hum, turning his eyeless gaze away from Kyuudai. “Very well. I have faith in your capabilities, Doctor. Do not let me down.”

“I would not dream of it.”

***

September 19^th.

The first two weeks back from holidays have been boring as shit, in Katsuki’s opinion. He kicks at a stray rock on the footpath as he meanders home in the afternoon light.

Something fundamental has shifted in him, his perspective, in the last few months. He can’t help noticing ever slight that the people around him make towards Quirkless people, or useless Quirks, or mutant Quirks, or whatever the hell else. He notices how they coo over his flashy explosions, then make fun of the chick with a pig snout for a nose, and shoot insults at the guy with extra eyes, and avoid the girl that can read people’s thoughts if she touches them.

It makes him uncomfortable, a vague feeling of disappointment pulling at his gut, like a voice telling him to do something about it. It sounds suspiciously like Izuku.

More than that, though, it makes him angry. He gets so fucking pissed that the extras around him can’t see past their own bigotry, and he really hates how hypocritical it is for him to think that, after everything. Izuku died because he couldn’t pull his head out of his own ass fast enough.

He will do something. He promised himself, promised Izuku, that he’d be a true hero. Katsuki doesn’t fucking break promises.

He looks up, breaking out of his swirling thoughts, and finds himself standing in front of Old Baba’s shop. He wonders idly why his feet carried him here as he pushes open the door, the bell tinkering lightly above him.

He hadn’t seen Old Baba again since the funeral, and tried not to spare her much thought. Her words echoed in continuous loops in his head, though. Whispers of carry on the dream he never got to, or it would’ve saved his life crowd his thoughts and itch at his skin. He hates it.

He hates that he’s been forced to see the world for what it really is, in all its ugly colours. He sees what it did to Izuku, he sees how easy it could’ve been to avoid it. Katsuki is not a kind person, he knows this – he’s prideful and arrogant at the best of times, disdainful of others and their egos – but he was cruel to Izuku. That isn’t how a hero behaves. Cruelty has never been heroic.

The shop looks the same as it did the last time he was here, if marginally less cluttered. Trinkets and knickknacks and antiques still pile around him precariously. He winds through them, slow and unhurried in his search for the old woman.

He finds her amongst the clutter, humming a quiet tune he doesn’t recognise. She’s organising the piles, back turned to him.

“Katsuki,” she says, midnight blue eyes finding his. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

He opens his mouth, but shuts it after a second. Shifts a little, not sure what to say. Why the hell is he here?

The old woman tuts softly. “I see.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You didn’t have to. You look lost, boy.” She says it softly, tone edged with kindness. It cuts into Katsuki anyway.

A denial rises rapid to his tongue, but it dies away before the words can take shape. They leave a bitter taste in his mouth. He is lost, otherwise he wouldn’t be here.

Old Baba smiles. It has an edge of melancholy.

“What do you understand of probability?” she asks.

“Uhh…like maths?” he offers, brow wrinkling.

The woman chuckles, light as bells. “Essentially. My Quirk, I call it Catalogue. It affords me excellent memory, and heightened sensitivity to connections, patterns, and from that I can extrapolate – make an educated, probable guess as to what will occur.

Izuku’s father, even before his Quirkless diagnosis, was a distant man. He was disconnected from his family, looking for excuses to leave, and the diagnosis gave him the perfect reason. He left, fled to start a new life in another country.”

“Yeah, okay, I know all this already,” Katsuki huffs, a little petulantly.

“I know. I’m providing context for my point, boy.” The woman takes a die, rolls it between her fingers. “As I told you, I see patterns, and I extrapolate from them. Izuku’s father imprinted a pattern of flight in Izuku, as opposed to fight. It also imprinted a sense of abandonment, made him cling to the things he loved with iron claws. He was bereft of an authority figure that was both strong and positive. He had an absent father and his mother, whilst kind, has never been known for her strength.”

She gives him a pointed look. He shakes his head a little, eyebrows raised. So what? He asks silently.

Old Baba sighs. “Izuku was never taught to stand up for himself the way you were, Katsuki. Your stubborn strength of will is learned. You learned to stand your ground, and he learned to give his up.”

“So he had the backbone of a piece of wet cardboard. Cool, whatever.”

“Indeed he did.” Katsuki snorts, not expecting her easy agreement. “You hated him for it.”

“…Yeah? What’s your point?”

“You were a strong figure in his life, and someone he loved. He gave you his ground, with his backbone of wet cardboard, but at the same time, he could never let you go.”

Oh. “And I hated him for it.”

“A vicious pattern.”

Katsuki heads home with a lot on his mind. Like with his last visit, he’s left reeling with realisations sparking in him like fireworks. Relentless, burning, spreading shame and guilt and anger through him. Over what, toward whom, he isn’t entirely sure.

Another spark rises in him, tentatively at first, but as he acknowledges it, he gives it life, power.

Be the hero he never got to be.

There’s more behind it now. Meaning or conviction or whatever. It feels stronger, steadier, more tangible than it did before.

Izuku couldn’t be a hero because he never got a chance to learn what that meant. It was in his nature, but not his nurture. Innate, but never cultivated. That, and he’s…gone. Dead. The dream died with him, but Katsuki can take up the mantle. He can represent what Izuku could have been, if he’d had the opportunity.

Katsuki has the opportunity.

He’ll become something Izuku would’ve been proud of.

Chapter Text

September 24^th.

He wakes to the sound of a soft cry. Night has settled in the complex, leaving them blind in the darkness. No light reaches their room. Izuku lies cold on his mat on the concrete floor of a prison cell, the last dregs of some nightmare slipping from his mind.

Sitting up, he listens to the sound from across the cell. It sounds older than the sisters or Yuna, and more feminine than Tatsuki. He’s grown accustomed to all their cries by now. Even without light, he knows. He’s pretty sure he’ll never forget it.

“Taka…?” he whispers out. “That you?”

A small gasp, little more than a breath. She looks up, and he’s struck by the dim glow of her eyes, piercing through the pitch black of the cell. They’d discovered that particular side effect a while ago, but it still stuns him to see it. She’d undergone an experiment with gamma radiation and serums, and it left her with milky eyes that glowed faintly, granting her low-level night vision. It’d be cool if it wasn’t under such dire circumstances.  

“Izuku?”

He stands. Pins and needles shoot up his legs after lying on the hard floor for so long. The concrete floor is unforgiving; their mats do little to alleviate it. Izuku treads carefully over the sleeping bodies of his friends to reach her, ragged blanket wrapped around his shoulders. He settles against the wall beside her, leaning his head against her shoulder.

“Can’t sleep?” he murmurs.

“Never can, really,” she chuckles humorously, before letting out a sigh. “Just another nightmare. I have…a really bad feeling. Like something awful will happen soon.”

Isn’t that just every day here? He doesn’t voice the thought. It wouldn’t help either of them. He scratches absently at his skin. He feels it reopen an old scab, blood beading to the surface; he presses a finger to it to plug the bleeding.

“Do you wanna tell me what happened in the nightmare?” he asks instead.

Takane shifts a little, scooting lower against the wall. “It kinda combined a few different memories. My brother was still alive in the dream, and we were at the arcade. It was similar to one of my last memories of him. We were at one of the pinball machines, but then the ground opened up beneath us, but instead of me falling through, it was him, and…and he screamed, but it sounded like Tatsuki’s screams, and then my grandparents came out of nowhere and starting yelling at me, and it was like the argument we had the day I got taken.” She pauses for a second, trying to clear her choked voice.

“That sounds awful.” It’s all Izuku can think to say.

“That wasn’t all. The Doctor showed up as well, and he had this nomu behind him, but the nomu was my brother. It was horrifying, and it gave me this weird feeling about tomorrow.” She turns her head to him, glowing eyes shining with tears. “I’m scared, Izu. They’re making their move soon. We’ve got to get out before it kills us.”

“We will,” he answers, all false confidence. He almost never sees Takane break like this. For the near four months he’s known her, she’s spent all her energy looking after everyone else, especially the younger girls. She’s kept them all going, held them through nightmares and tears and pain and pain and pain. Like a mother, almost, so gentle and patient with them all. He doesn’t think he’d be half as sane as he is now if she wasn’t there to hold together all his fragile, breaking parts. Seeing her now, tears rolling down gaunt cheeks, hands wringing themselves in her lap, brittle bones and thin limbs that cry with hunger…it puts an ache in his chest. She deserves a better life than this. “We’ll make it out of here.”

 “Together?”

“Together.”

She links their hands, and he rests his head back on her shoulder, before letting out a snort. “What would Tatsuki think if he saw us now?”

“Oh you cheeky little thing,” Takane laughs, shoving at him lightly. “You’re like a baby in my eyes, and there’s nothing going on between me and him.”

“Bullshit.” He’s seen the way they look at each other, the conversations they have with just their eyes, the softness in her gaze and the longing in his.

“Oh yeah? How about I ask you about Mao then?” she retorts.

“Hey!” he cries, before clapping a hand over his mouth. It’s the dead of night, and he doesn’t want to wake the others. “There’s nothing between us,” he hisses, much quieter.  

She just giggles at him, giving him a sarcastic suuuure, whatever you say. As indignant as he feels, he can’t help but laugh a little too.

“I think you and Tatsuki would be good together, he tells her. “Just for the record.”

“You and Mao, too,” she smiles.

It feels nice, talking about something normal for once. He likes being able to pretend, just for a moment, that they’re not withering away in a concrete cell, too deep down for the sun to reach. To feel, just for a second, like the fifteen-year-old he really is. He lets the feeling nestle in his chest and warm him.

After their giggles die down, the two drag their mats together, and settle in for sleep with fingers interlinked. He feels at once lighter and heavier than before.

***

September 28^th.

There’s a new energy in the air. Izuku can feel the buzz of it on his skin as he’s marched into the silent doctor’s office for their morning experiments.

The silent doctor is smiling, twisted and vaguely manic. Izuku’s skin crawls at the sight of it. He’s not sure he wants to know what it could possibly mean.

He’s sitting, waiting for some shoe to drop, on the hospital bed in the office. The doctor moves around him, filling a tray with needles and small tools of all sorts. It looks like surgery equipment, cold and gleaming under the bright fluorescents of the room.

A knock sounds on the door, and a woman, dressed in the same crisp white coat and latex gloves as the silent doctor, enters. Without a word, the tray of equipment exchanges hands, and she leaves. The quiet click of the closing door feels ominous, like a sealing of fate.

Izuku shakes his head, slightly. He’s made it this far. He will not die here today.

The silent doctor wheels around to face him, a new needle in hand. It’s filled with a clear liquid, shimmering with the faintest tinge of purple. The doctor steps forward, grabbing Izuku’s arm with a gloved hand, tapping at the veins of his inner elbow.

He tenses, waits, closing his eyes as the needle pricks his skin, the liquid swimming into his blood. Ice-hot pain shoots through him immediately, and he feels like he’s growing out of his skin. His muscles strain, but he bites back his cry with clenched teeth.

The doctor drags him to a stand, then places a target in front of him, a small punching bag akin to the retro games he used to see at the arcade. Strength-testing, his aching brain supplies.

The doctor steps back, clearly waiting. Izuku pushes past the agony, knowing that the sooner he fulfils this task, the sooner the pain will stop. He draws back his arm and throws his fist at the target with all the might he can muster. Numbers rack up on a nearby screen, but Izuku cannot focus on them. He watches as the doctor scribbles notes onto his page with a thoughtful hum, then pulls out a boxing glove, slipping it onto his own fist.

Well, Izuku thinks wryly. This is new.

The doctor’s fist comes flying at him before he has a chance to think, landing squarely on his chest and punching the breath out of his lungs. His ribs ache something terrible, immediately tender. The silent doctor only stares, dead eyed and indifferent as Izuku gulps in mouthfuls of air.

After a moment of scribbling on his clipboard, he ushers Izuku back to his feet and gestures at the punching bag, stepping back. Again, his pointed stare seems to say.

Izuku heaves in a final breath, rearing his arm back again and punching the target with all he can. The numbers tally up again, climbing higher and higher. His brows scrunch up, mouth twisting in confusion. His punch hadn’t felt that much harder. If anything, it should’ve been weaker.

The silent doctor hums, a rare display of vocality. It’s one of three noises Izuku’s ever heard the man make, and it’s never meant anything good.

The numbers land on a final score, almost double of what his first score had been. He squints his eyes, like the numbers are just an illusion, like they might change if he looks at them a little differently.

He doesn’t understand, how could…oh. The answer slams into him with the force of a freight train, almost taking his breath away again.

Shock absorption. The serum had caused shock absorption.

The doctor, finished with his notes, motions for him to take a seat. Izuku collapses back onto the bed, numb to the way the doctor injects another serum into him until the pain subsides, clearing him of the lingering effects of the previous drug. He’s left tender, residual aches shooting up his arms in the aftermath.

The doctor finishes his writings, then pulls out the next syringe. Izuku sighs, feeling utterly defeated.

The needle plunges into his arm, and pain rockets through him, again.

***

Takane hasn’t come back from her experiments.  

They’ve been waiting for close to six hours now, the afternoon hurtling rapidly towards evening. Tatsuki paces the cell and pulls at his shaggy hair, overgrown strands of brown hanging limp around his face, as he fervently trying to rationalise her delay.

Prayers of they’re just doing some longer experiments, she’ll be back soon and she’s alive, she’s alive, she’s alive tumble from his lips, his patrol around the cell growing more agitated with each step. His arms twitch and tremor, tics picking up in his agitation.

None of them had afternoon experiments. Lunch had come and gone, a measly excuse of a meal that could never satisfy the constant hunger that now constantly gnawed at them. No one came to collect them for the day’s second round, and Takane never returned.

Worry claws at Izuku’s stomach. He picks absently at his brittle nails as his thoughts run in circles. Sure, sometimes the experiments took a while, but they’ve never taken this long. Something has happened, and he hates assuming the worst, but this complex has ripped him of all his fragile hope.

He comes close to voicing his thoughts, but Mao beats him to it.

“What if she’s not coming back?”

Tatsuki stops in his tracks and stares at Mao. His face scrunches up, a mix of devastation and anger contorting his features. “Don’t say that!” he snarls, taking a threatening step toward Mao.

“Woah!” Izuku cries, quickly rising to his feet. “Tats, stop. We’re on your side here.”

Tatsuki pauses. He shakes his head, the tension in his shoulders deflating, but only slightly. “I just- I don’t want to think like that. I can’t think like that.”

“We know,” Mao says quietly. “I hate to think like that too, but…things have been weird, lately. The doctors are up to something, and maybe they’ve done something to her.”

Saori lets out a distressed sound at that. The girls have been watching the exchange, eyes swinging back and forth between the three of them. Yuna watches them with a guarded expression. Takane was the one she was closest to, probably because she was the best at sign language.

Izuku purses his lips. He doesn’t want to stress the girls out any further, and Tatsuki needs a distraction. “Let’s start planning our escape while we wait. We can tell Takane what we’re thinking once she’s back.”

The others nod, hesitantly, looking at Tatsuki as if for permission. The older boy drops his shoulders, heaving a sigh. “Fine, okay.”

They gather in a loose circle at the centre of their cell. Izuku looks at the grim set of his friends’ faces. Even the twins, usually brimming with energy even in the bleakest of circumstances, look nervous now.

“We’ll start with what we know. We’ve been gathering information for the past…week and a half?” he starts. “We’ve got a pretty good idea of the guards and their shifts.”

“We know the paths between here, the labs and the bathroom block,” Mao tacks on.

“We know meal times!” Saori chimes. “And lights-out time!”

Izuku nods, throwing a smile to the girl as she leans back next to her sister. “We know there’s a black door that might be an exit of sorts. And we know there might be other people stuck here, too.”

Tatsuki sits up. “Two days ago we saw someone go through that door. Through it was a hallway, and at the end of that was a pair of metal doors that could’ve been an elevator. If we can get through to there and into the elevator…”

“Then we can get out of here,” Mao finishes.

Yuna waves a small hand to get their attention, and starts to sign to them with tremoring hands. Because we’re…ground…go for…get above…out. Izuku’s sign knowledge has improved significantly in the past few months, but he still struggles to put signs together quickly and keep up with the fast pace Yuna tends to sign at. Takane had been giving him little lessons here and there, when the exhaustion wasn’t too bad and their shaky hands would allow them.

Thankfully Tatsuki can translate a little better. “Yuna’s right. We’re probably deep underground, so if we take the elevator, we’ll go for one of the top floors and that should lead us out to the ground floor.”

“But there might be floors above ground,” Mao points out.  

“We’ll have to see what the buttons in the elevator say. Most of the time, underground floors have a B or something in front of them,” Tatsuki replies.

“What does the B mean?” Emi asks with a tilt of her head.

“Basement, I think?” Izuku tell her. “I can’t quite remember.”

Tatsuki taps at the concrete floor in thought, leaning back on his arms. “Okay, so if we go for the ground floor, we should get to street level. We’ll need a key card to get through the black door and probably into the elevator too. How are we gonna get that?”

Get one from the guards, Yuna signs. We’ll have to distract them somehow.

“I’ll do it,” Izuku says immediately. Five pairs of eyes whip towards him, varying degrees of rebuttal in each.

“Izuku–” Mao starts.

“No, just listen. We need as many people as we can to get out. Tatsuki is most suited to lead the group out, and he’s the strongest. He can carry someone if need be.”

“What about you, though?” Mao cries. “You need to get out, too!”

“I’m fast.” His tone is gentle, but there’s a determined edge to it. “I’ve been running from bullies and explosions my whole life, I can outrun a couple burly old guards weighed down by their gear.”

None of them look happy with his assessment.

“I’ll go with you,” Mao tell him. “It’ll be hard to distract them and get away by yourself, and Tatsuki and the girls can make a break for the black door.”

Izuku scrunches up his face in thought. He’s hesitant to involve anyone else in staying behind as a distraction. They’re all weakened from hunger and experiments. The girls, being the youngest of their ragtag group, will need support to escape. And, given how huge the complex is, they’ll all need each other to find the way out. The guards are bound to come swarming as soon as they start to run; they’ll need as many people as they can get to fight them off. And even beyond that, if the elevator doesn’t work-

A hand lands softly on his shoulder, cutting off his spiralling thoughts. Tatsuki gives him a soft, worried look. “Izuku, stop. Mao’s right, you’ll need someone with you. I’ll go with the girls and we’ll fight off whatever guards we have to up that way. If you and Mao stick together, it’ll be easier for you to tag-team with both distraction and getting away.”

Mao and the girls all nod along, still eyeing Izuku down. He sags under their stares, relenting. “Okay.”

Tatsuki straightens up. Steely determination washes over the grief in his eyes. “Okay. Let’s figure this shit out, then.”

They spend the next hour talking through their plan, going over the details, over all the things that could happen, all the obstacles they’ll meet.

One guard, sometimes two, brings their meals each day at 7am sharp. Izuku and Mao were to burst through the doors as their food is being brought in. They were to yell and scream about how one from their group had gone missing, kidnapped and dragged away. They were to point down one end of the hall, get the guards to turn their heads, get a keycard for the elevator and let the others run out from behind them to go down the other end. The others would make a break for the elevator. They were to then wrestle the guns and batons off the guards and knock them unconscious. The guards didn’t wear any headgear, so it’d be doable. They were to run after that, down the maze of halls and to the elevator, and get above ground. They’d take the first left, then the next right, and continue that zigzag until they found each other, or a hero, or a police station. Whatever came first.

If Izuku and Mao can’t distract the guards, they’ll have to kick and scratch and bite instead. They’ll buy the others as much time as they can before turning heel and running themselves.

They know the plan isn’t great. They see the holes, all the places where things can go wrong. They know, but it’s the only plan they’ve got. It’ll have to do.

***

Let’s, for a moment, go back to Schrödinger’s Cat. There is a cat in a box, dead and alive in the observer’s eyes – the Observer’s Paradox.

Observing a phenomenon, or perhaps person, can alter its actions and outcomes, simply by watching it. This is seen in social sciences, in ethnography and sociolinguistics, where the known presence of a researcher may result in the natural state of the observed being shattered. The sanctity of the self, even as an illusion, is lost when it is actively perceived.

So, there is a cat in the box, awaiting its fate. The cat will die ether way; the experiment only means to understand how the observer should know when this happens if it cannot be directly observed.

The cat is dead, the cat is alive. This is the conflict of two seemingly incontrovertible facts. Only perception will unveil which triumphs.

What do you do if you are both the cat and the observer, both trapped in the box and staring at its exterior?

How do you perceive yourself?

Chapter Text

September 25^th, earlier that day.

The crowd roars. Boards and signs shoot up amongst shaking hands, inscribed with pleas and demands alike.

OUR EXISTENCE IS NOT A MISTAKE.

WE WILL NOT BE ERASED.

NO JUSTICE WITHOUT EQUALITY.

QUIRKLESS RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS.

END THE DISCRIMINATION.

Voices shout over each other in a chorus of anger, feet march a drumbeat down the streets of Tokyo. Thousands have gathered, many of them so young, many of them dirty from years without a roof. Their rage is palpable.

Years of oppression have spilled over, years of being pushed aside, kicked down. They are tired of trying to survive in the shadows, tired of their peace being shattered again, and again, and again. This march stands as the most recent of a string that have been occurring across the nation.

Others watch from the sidelines, sneers twisting their mouths. These people shout back, vitriol spilling like oil. Dirty neadertoes, they call, get the fuck off our streets!

Heroes and police swarm, barricading around the march with shields up and Quirks ready. The crowd grows angrier. Their shouts grow louder, their drumbeat grows restless.

No one knows who throws the first punch.

In a flash, there are fist flying left and right. The heroes close in tighter. The crowd pushes back.

Even above the shouting, the gunshot rings so clearly. Silence descends for a second, before the roar of the crowd crashes back in twice as loud. They shove their way forward, hands itching for violence, to hit back for once. Their anger will be known. Their suffering will not be ignored.

Bullets and Quirks rain against the crowd. Bodies fall, voices cry out in pain. Still, the horde pushes on. They throw themselves against the heroes and police, against the people that shouted slurs. They trample over the cars that line the streets. Windows shatter. People are running everywhere. Black riot gear and colourful hero costumes blur with the everyday clothes of the crowd.

The protest turns into a riot.

Helicopters hover above, cameras rolling the footage to people’s screens at home.

These people sneer at the scene. Look at them, they say, they’re just as uncivilised as we thought.

They need to be put down, come the replies. They’re no better than rabid dogs.

Reporters spew a stream of words. Quirkless protesters swarm the streets, demanding equal freedoms and respect as Quirked people, they drone. The protest quickly turned violent. Heroes and police are working quickly to calm things down, arresting looters and violent rioters. The head of government, Prime Minister Ichigo Yamamoto urges people to avoid areas where these riots are occurring, and to travel safely as authorities handle the situation.

God, they want respect? comes their laugh. Do they really think this is how they’ll get it?

They watch on from the sanctity of their living rooms, shaking their heads as the scenes on the screen flash on. After a while, they change the channel, moving on so quickly to more interesting things.

***

Katsuki stares at the TV, at the noise and crowds that dominate the screen. The protest turned violent.

He’s almost shaking with outrage. There’s no way that protest was never going to stay peaceful, not with the way heroes and police were pressing in on the crowd from all sides. Not with the way bystanders were throwing insults and provocations.

Disgust builds like bile in his throat.

***

September 26^th.

They huddle together on the cell floor, waiting as the minutes crawl towards 7am. They each barely slept last night. Izuku’s pretty sure he heard Tatsuki run to the toilet in the corner of the cell to throw up at some point.

It’s hard to say exactly what time it is, but it must be close to breakfast time. They’re crouched in the middle of their small cell, waiting.

He doesn’t know how many minutes, but suddenly footsteps start sounding down the hall, accompanied by the squeak of the food trolley and a pair of chattering voices. There must be two guards this time, then.

The footfalls grow louder, closer, until they stop right outside the door. There comes the jingling of keys in the lock, and then the heavy steel door is being opened.

That’s their cue.

“Hey! Guards!” Izuku yells. He and Mao spring up from their position. “You have to help us! Please, you have to help us!”  

The pair of guards, a man and a woman, pause in the doorway, their expressions taken aback.

“What’s…happened?” man asks.

“One of our group has gone missing! She’s gone, please, you have to help us find her!” Mao begs, desperation in his tone.

The two boys crowd the door and the others move toward the wall, just out of sight of the guards.

The guards glance at each other, brows furrowed in question.

“How? What happened?” Their incredulity is obvious.

“This big man opened the door, and- and her took her and ran off with her! It was so scary!” Izuku lets the fear he feels bleed into his tone. His heart hammers in his chest, playing a frantic staccato that leaves him jittery.

“When was this?” the man asks.

“I don’t know what time, maybe 20 minutes ago?” Mao replies. “She can’t be far, though. Please, help us. We’re so worried.”

“Where did he lead her?” asks the woman. She shifts her stance, as if readying to take off.

Izuku steps forward, almost out in the hallway now. The guards back up, and Izuku takes the opportunity to step out into the hallway, Mao following behind.

He points to the left, down the long, straight corridor. “Down there.”

The guards turn their heads and the boys take their chance to strike.

Mao tears the keycard off the man’s belt loop and throws it down the hall for the others to pick up, whilst Izuku dives for the baton on the woman’s belt holster as she starts to turn back around, managing to clasp its tip. He wrenches, fumbling his grip, but catches it before it can fall to the floor.

“Go! Run!” he yells to the others, hearing them tumble through the doorway, scraping the keycard off the floor as they go, and begin sprinting toward the other end.

Behind him, he hears Saori cry “Tatsuki, no!” and his eyes flick away. He blanches at the sight.

Tatsuki is sprinting back toward them.

The older boy leaps toward the guard Mao is grappling with, sending a punch into the man’s gut.

“This is for Takane!” he roars, aiming another hit to the guard’s face.

“Tatsuki, what are you doing?!” Mao yells, stumbling back.

The guard in front of Izuku swings her arm and he hastily dodges out of the way, tearing his eyes from Tatsuki. She reaches for the baton. He dives to the right, and swings the weapon down with all his strength, cracking it over her outstretched arm. She cries out, reeling back.

“Oh, you little bastard!” she hisses. She grabs at her belt, grabbing a walkie talkie. Izuku panics. He can’t have them call reinforcements. They’ll lose for sure.

He swings the baton again, aiming for her hand. He misses, and she brings the device to her mouth, shouting “emergency at Cell 20!” into it.

Next to him, Tatsuki is kicking at the male guard, wrestling with him for that baton. Mao is pressed against the wall. Down the hall, the girls are frozen, confusion and panic overtaking them.

They need to move. Every second they lose could cost them.

“Mao!” Izuku shouts. “Go to the girls, Tatsuki and I will handle this!”

He turns back to his own fight but sees the boy move out of his periphery.

“Let’s go!” he hears him shout.

From the other end, a horde of footsteps come pounding in their direction.

“More guards incoming!” Izuku screams to the group. The woman clips his shoulder and he twists away before swinging back with his baton.

Over the woman’s shoulder he sees the swarm of backup. There must be ten of them. The first few are getting close.

He has to end this, fast.

He dodges a punch, but takes a heavy boot to his shoulder. The pain is almost blinding but he can’t afford to stop.

Izuku aims his baton at the woman again, smashing it into the side of her head with a sickening crunch. He cringes as she goes limp, crumpling to the ground. The violence sickens him, but he has no other choice. He rips her keycard off her belt and turns around.

“Tatsuki, we gotta go!” he yells. The reinforcements are almost upon them now.

He sees the other boy finally wrench the baton away from the male guard, immediately swinging it at the man’s head. He misses by a hair’s breadth.

Izuku goes to help him when a deafening crack! sounds, and a bullet whizzes between the two boys.

The new guards are armed with guns.

The nearest one cocks a handgun, pointing the barrel at Izuku. “Stop!” the guard shouts.

Izuku’s mind goes blank. He turns and runs.

Another shot rings out behind him but he keeps sprinting. He darts around a corner. A second later, he realises Tatsuki isn’t with him.

He skids to a halt, racing back to peek around the corner.

Tatsuki is struggling against three guards now, kicking and biting and punching with all his strength. A fourth guard is fast approaching.

“Tatsuki!” he screams, and the older boy turns his head, pine-green eyes meeting Izuku’s. His divided attention earns him a hit to the ribs. Izuku takes a step, ready to run back and help.

“Izuku, run! Go!” Tatsuki yells back. “You have to find the others!”

“But–”

“Go!”

Izuku hesitates, watching on as Tatsuki raises the baton and swings it down against a guard’s collarbone.

Just as he does, another shot rings out, and Tatsuki’s body jolts. Izuku watches in horror as the boy falls to the ground.

“No…” he whispers. He steps back from the corner. A scream builds in his throat. He takes another step back. His heart sinks to his feet. He takes another step back.

He turns around, and he runs.

***

“Did you see that recent Quirkless riot on the news?”

Katsuki’s attention is caught by the question, coming from a boy across the classroom as he chats idly with the person next to him in the time before homeroom begins.

“Yeah, it was crazy,” the girl next to him replies, twirling a strand of her hair. “So violent. It’s really irresponsible.”

“Right?” the boy laughs. “Trying to fight heroes and police, too. Did they really think they’d win with no Quirks? So stupid.”

Katsuki twitches. He gears himself up to interrupt the discussion, give those dumb fucking extras a piece of his mind.

They were provoked, you idiots, he wants to bark at them. Did we see the same fucking protest?

But he doesn’t, and soon the two move on, all thought of the protest forgotten, in favour of lighter topics.

***

Izuku sprints until he has no air in his lungs. Hot tears run down his cheeks, sweat runs down his brow. He slows his pace a little, but he doesn’t stop.

He winds through the corridors, taking the turns toward the elevator as best as he can remember, trying to follow the minute landmarks he scratched into the walls. A long scratch here, a shorter one there, like a fucked up breadcrumb trail.  

The guards aren’t far. He can hear their pounding footfalls echo through the halls.

He takes a sharp left. Before him is a wide, straight corridor, the one that leads to the shower blocks. At the last intersection, to the left, is the hallway that leads to the black door.

He runs. The guards show up behind him. He hears the clink of their guns for a split second before the bullets come. They ping off the walls around him, leaving dents and holes as they go. The noise is deafening.

He runs.

A bullet narrowly misses him, embedding itself in the floor ahead of him.

He reaches the hall, swerving hard to the left and sprinting down the short hallway. He reaches the black door and yanks at the handle, stumbling through and slamming it behind him. The guards haven’t yet gotten to the intersection, but their footsteps pound closer every second.

Izuku takes only a second to breathe before he races toward the metal doors of the elevator at the end of the hallway.

Just as he’s reaching the door he hears the black door being hauled open. He slams a hand on the elevator button, panic rushing through his blood with every millisecond he’s stuck waiting.

With a quiet ping, the doors open and he darts inside, slapping the keycard against the sensor immediately and fumbling with the button to close the doors. He hides around the corner of the doors, praying it’s enough to stay safe from the bullets.

The guards come rushing through the black door, running down the hall toward him as the elevator doors begin to close. Ammunition flies toward him, ripping into the floor, into the lower half of the elevator’s back wall.

He only takes a split second to look at the various buttons before smashing the one for the ground floor. He’s on the third basement level.

It feels like an eternity before the doors close. Izuku can hear how close the guards are now, so close to reaching him.

The doors click shut, and the elevator starts to move upward. He nearly wilts.

Tatsuki is dead. Over and over, Izuku’s mind replays the moment the bullet struck him. How he fell to the ground, shaggy brown hair splaying out beneath him. The awkward angle of his arm, bone probably broken. Not that it matters, now.

Izuku’s grief threatens to drown him, but he can’t collapse yet. Not here.

He snaps out of it as the doors slide open. Laid out before him is a single, narrow hallway lined with closed doors, with a plain black door at the far end. Around him, the air is still, quiet. He takes a hesitant step out of the elevator before breaking into a quick jog, wary of the guards that must still be coming behind him.  

He tries the handle, finding it locked. Looking closer, he sees a small, discrete button thing attached to the handle. A sensor of sorts? Izuku glances down at the stolen keycard still gripped in his fist. It has no name, no picture, just a long string of numbers printed at the bottom alongside a barcode. That must have been the woman’s identification number.

Tapping the card against the sensor, he tries the handle again. It gives this time. The door creaks open, revealing another room beyond it. It clicks shut behind him, re-locking.

It’s cold in there, and the only light comes from the emergency exit sign above the far door, painting everything in a sickly green glow. Goosebumps run down his arms almost immediately, his thin shirt and pants doing nothing to keep the chill out.

It’s not a large room by any means. He pads across the vinyl flooring, eyeing the rows of lockers that line one of the walls. At least, he assumes they’re lockers. Various cabinets hang over the bench space on the other side, interspersed with sinks. At the centre of the room are a few metal table-like things and-

Oh. They’re autopsy tables. He’s inside a morgue.

Okay, morbid. He suddenly has no desire to stay in the room any longer, and just as well. He hears the familiar scrape of the elevator doors opening down the end of the hall he just came from. The chase is still on.

He leaps for the exit door, flinging it open and slipping out into what looks like an empty hospital, and he books it down the first corridor he sees. With no better plan presenting itself to him, he follows their plan of zigzagging left and right until he finds something that can help him.

Izuku flits through the halls in this pattern, hearing the guards burst through the doors of the morgue, shouting to each other. A smaller number of footsteps taking his same path. They must have split up to look for him.

Eventually he reaches a larger intersection of hallways and skids to a halt to read the signs above him. The leftmost hall leads to the exit. Bingo.

He bolts, praying with every scrap of hope that the others have found their way to the exit too.

The final exit comes into view. Frosted glass doors that stand between him and freedom. His lungs are screaming at him, his heart hammers a frantic beat, but he keeps running. The guards can’t be far off him now.

He barely takes in the hospital lobby as he races through it, only vaguely registering the lined up couches and circular reception area. Like the rest of the hospital, its inexplicably empty. The automatic doors slide open as he approaches, and for the first time since June he feels sunlight on his skin.

His happiness vanishes as soon as it appeared.

“No…” he whispers, taking a halted step forward, heart shattering in his chest. His world is collapsing in on itself. His breaths come in short, panicked bursts. “No, no, no, what are you doing here?”

Long raven hair drapes itself over the petite figure of a girl. She lies face down, an arm outstretched before her.

“Saori.” His whisper is hoarse, voice choking on his horror. He stumbles to her side, takes a small hand in his own. It’s so, so cold. He feels for a pulse he knows he won’t find.

Loud footsteps approach from inside the hospital, and Izuku knows he has to go. He gently rolls her over and closes Saori’s unseeing eyes.

Tears blur his vision. A scream threatens to rip from his lungs. He picks himself off the ground and runs away.

To his right is a carpark, sitting totally empty. Ahead of him, the path heads toward a road that he assumes leads out of here. To his left is forestland. If he has any hope of losing the guards on his tail, it’s through the trees. He bolts left.

Guards burst through the doors behind him in a flurry out shouts and stomps. There’s maybe four of them behind him, with more likely on the way.

Izuku throws himself over the short retaining wall at the edge of the hospital grounds, sprinting across the short stretch of lawn that borders the tree line as the sounds of gunshots echo around him.

Now at the edge of the forest, he dodges trees, sinking further and further in as the sight of the hospital disappears behind him. Maybe he can lose the guards, too. He can hear their boots stomping through the forest behind him, but when he braves a glance over his shoulder, he’s lost sight of them.

He runs for as long as his body can take it, twisting around trees, curving to the left and right, but exhaustion is start to gnaw at him. He seems to have lost the guards chasing after him, but he can distantly hear their shouts still.

He takes another curve to the right, almost tripping on some underbrush, when he hears a gunshot go off, but it’s not from the guards behind him. It came from up ahead.

It must be the others, he thinks, pulse spiking. The shot didn’t sound too far off, coming from a diagonally right direction. He runs toward it, hoping, praying, that his friends are safe.

There’s a gap in the trees up ahead. Izuku sees Mao, Emi and Yuna through the foliage and almost cries in relief. They’re alive.

He slows as he reaches them, quietly approaching. There are two guards there, backs turned to him. Their guns are raised, the barrels pointed as the faces of his friends. They stay deathly still, not daring to move.

Their faces are pale, sweat dripping from their skin as they catch their breaths, eyes wide and wild. Emi is shaking. Yuna’s terrified gaze goes back and forth between the guards and the tree line. She balances her weight on her right foot, the left one awkwardly hovering off the ground. Mao is clutching at his arm, blood dripping between his fingers.

Izuku peeks above the foliage. If he can get their attention, show them that he’s here, he could attack the guards from behind and give them a chance to run, get back into the safety of the trees. They can meet up deeper in the forest, maybe find their way back to that road and get out of this place.

Yuna spots him first. Her eyes widen slightly, her only visible reaction. He can see the question in her eyes – where’s Tatsuki? He shakes his head. He didn’t make it. Something like heartbreak flashes over her features.

Izuku points to the guards, makes a motion of jumping on them, then points toward them. I’ll distract them, you run, he signs to her. She gives an almost imperceptible nod to him before turning her gaze back to Mao and Emi, hands flashing quick signs to them.

Their eyes go wide with understanding, gazes flicking to where Izuku is crouched at the clearing’s edge. He nods to them.

“What’re you doing?” one of the guards yells. “Speak up if you got something to say!”

His friends say nothing. For one second, everything is still. Then Izuku jumps forward.

He latches onto the shoulders of the nearest guard, screaming into their ear. The guard flinches in shock, reaching hands behind their head to try pull him off.

The other guard raises her gun at Izuku but hesitates to shoot with Izuku grappling on her partner’s back. In his periphery, he sees his friends run away, but the movement catches the guard’s eye too.

She swings her gun around, pulling the trigger. The shot echoes through the clearing.

“EMI!” Mao screams. He sees the small girl falls to the ground, crying and clutching at her leg. Terror stabs through Izuku’s heart at the thought of losing another friend, but he can’t help her, not when he’s still hanging off a guard’s back.

He leaps off and aims a kick to the back of their knees. The guard loses their balance, tumbling to the ground and Izuku uses the distraction to wrench the handgun off them and slam the butt of the weapon to their head. They cry out, clutching at their skull.

Izuku looks up to see Mao stuck in a headlock with the other guard. Yuna is at Emi’s side, trying desperately to stop the flow of blood from her leg as the girl sobs. The bullet seems to have grazed her. The wound doesn’t seem fatal, but she won’t be able to walk on it.

Izuku dashes over to Mao, using his stolen gun like a baton against her side. Her body armour takes most of the impact, but it distracts her for long enough that Mao can escape her grip and run away. He goes to the girls, getting Emi on his back to carry her.

“Izuku, come on! We’ve gotta go!” he calls, already running for the tree line.

Izuku slams the butt of his gun against the woman’s temple. She folds in on herself, clutching at her head as Izuku turns tail and runs to his friends.

“Go, go, go!” he yells, grabbing at Mao and Yuna as they sprint off into the trees.

They race through the forest, dodging trees. Izuku can’t hear anyone behind them but he’s not willing to trust that they’re not being followed just yet. He can’t bear to lose anyone else.

“Let’s go for the road,” he pants. “Maybe we can get someone driving by to help us.”

“I think the clearing we were just at was near the road. Pretty sure I heard a car driving by,” Mao replies. The boy looks exhausted, but he keeps running, somehow keeping pace with Izuku and Yuna. Emi whimpers quietly with every accidental movement of her leg. Her face has gone pale, eyes scrunched up. She looks on the verge of fainting.

They take a short break, only long enough to swap Emi from Mao’s back to Izuku’s. He’s careful not to jostle the girl too much, aware of how much pain she must be in. The blood has stopped flowing, now crusting on the side of her leg.

Eventually, after what feels like a lifetime of running, the road comes into view. They walk just inside the tree line, careful to stay out of view. Mao and Yuna walk ahead, flattening the underbrush as best as they can to make the path smoother for Izuku and Emi.

The adrenaline of it all is wearing off now. The exhaustion and pain of running so far is settling into Izuku’s bones, but he tries not to slow down too much. Emi seems to be struggling to stay awake; her head rests against his shoulder.

“Hey, Izuku,” Mao starts, waiting up a little. “What happened to Tatsuki?”

Izuku feels a pang in his chest. His eyes sting, but he refuses to let the tears fall. “The guards got him, back at the cell. Backup came faster than we were prepared for, and they were armed with guns. I ran, but he was stuck. I didn’t realise he wasn’t following me until it was too late. They shot him before I could go back to help.”

The others are quiet for a long moment, processing.

“There were two guards waiting for us outside the morgue,” Mao says, quietly. “We fought them off by some miracle, and booked it to the hospital’s exit, but the guards weren’t far off. We started running for the trees, but…Saori wasn’t fast enough.”

Emi sniffles a little. Izuku tries to give her uninjured leg a little pat in comfort.

They walk in silence for a little while, each getting lost in their own worlds. The world around them sits in silence too, only broken by the rustle of underbrush beneath their feet. The morning sun filters through the tree leaves, a dapple of light decorating the path ahead of them.

Izuku, for his part, tries hard to think of nothing at all. He focusses his whole mind on putting one foot in front of the other. If he thinks of anything else he might break.

He’s broken out of his empty reverie by the crunch of gravel under tires.

A car. A car!

“Guys, someone’s coming!” Mao exclaims. The boy laughs, breaking through the trees to run to the road.

Yuna and Izuku, with Emi on his back, follow behind him. Izuku lets out a laugh of relief. Someone’s here. They can get out of here. They can get help. He grins so wide his face might split.

Mao and Yuna start waving their arms frantically at the approaching car, a large black SUV. Even Emi raises her hands to wave, the other still clinging to Izuku’s shoulders.

“Hey! Over here!” Mao calls to the vehicle. “Help us, please!”

The car stops just short of where they stand on the roadside. Izuku squints at the windscreen, trying to see through, but he can only vaguely make out the figures inside.

The passenger side door opens, and a man steps out. He’s…

Oh, shit.

It’s not civilians.

The car is full of guards.

***

Eyeballs and Fingers approach Katsuki’s desk after homeroom. He’s got his feet up, giving off his usual air of I’ll explode you if you talk to me. Not that his so-called friends have ever tuned into that.

“Yo, Bakugou, did ya catch that riot on the news last night?” Fingers calls. “Crazy shit, right?”

Eyeballs snickers. “Those useless morons, can’t even protest right, huh?”

Katsuki’s eyes twitches, and he levels a glare at the pair. “Shut the fuck up,” he grouches.

“Woahhh, what’s up your ass this morning?” Eyeballs puts his hands up in mock surrender. “Touchy subject? Thinking of poor little Izu-chan?”

Katsuki damn-near sees red, but Fingers only cackles. “Bro, as if! Deku’s old news. Besides, the little wimp wouldn’t have the balls to riot the way those idiots did. He was always too much of a coward.”

“Shut the fuck up!” Katsuki explodes, rising in his seat. His palms crackle threateningly.   

“Hey man, cool it, we’re just jokin’ around,” Eyeballs replies, eyeing him quizzically. “No need to go all blasty on us.”

Katsuki reigns in his anger, rolling his eyes with huff as he slumps back in his seat. “Whatever.”

“Anyway,” Eyeballs continues, “the riot was crazy. They–”

“–were provoked,” Katsuki finishes. “They heroes and police provoked it into a riot.”

The pair just look at him blankly.

“Did we watch the same fucking shit?” Katsuki barks. “Those people were being fenced in on all sides, of course they were gonna bite back.”

“I don’t know, dude. They were behaving like animals,” Fingers replies dubiously. “No civil human acts like that.”

“Well duh, they’re Quirkless,” Eyeballs laughs, and Fingers cracks up like it’s the greatest punchline he’s ever heard.

Katsuki almost can’t believe his ears. Are Quirkless people not…human to them?

It must show on his face, because the two morons just cackle harder when they look at him.

“Ohh, Bakugou, your face is like, priceless right now,” Fingers hoots, wiping a tear from his eye. “Anyway, dude, did you see that new game that came out last week…”

And just like that, the conversation moves on. Katsuki just scoffs, tuning out their useless chatter.

***

“Run, run, go! They’re guards!” Izuku yells at the others, turning around and sprinting back into the forest. Mao and Yuna turn around and run with him.

The first gunshot goes off; the bullet embeds in a tree. Izuku twists around tree trunks, veering left as he hurtles deeper into the forest. Emi clutches at him. All the movement must be hurting her leg, but Izuku can’t afford to slow down and go smoother. They can’t get captured now, not when they’re so close to escape.

Another shot goes off. A scream rips through the air. Izuku skids to a stop, trying to find where the scream came from.

To his right, Yuna has collapsed to the ground, clutching at her abdomen. Blood seeps from between her fingers, her face goes rapidly pale.

“Yuna,” he breathes. Mao is already running to her. She waves a hand frantically at him, shaking her head. The guards, three in total, are closing in on them now. One has a gun, two have batons.

“Come on, you’re okay,” Mao says, kneeling beside her, grabbing her hands. His voice sounds choked. “We need to keep going. You just have to run a little longer.”

“Go.” The reply is quiet, but it rings in Izuku’s ears so clearly. Yuna’s voice. It’s light, high, a little raspy from disuse.

“No, no, no, Yuna, you can do this.” Tears are streaming down Mao’s face now. “Just a little further, come on.”

“Mao,” she says, her voice like the wind. “Go.”

The guards reach Mao and Yuna. One of them takes the baton out of its holder and swings it toward Mao. He only just manages to roll out the way.

Mao scrambles to his feet, about a metre from Yuna now.

“GO!” she screams.

Izuku watches as one guard grabs Yuna’s arm and begins picking her up, all rough and jerking movements. She’s crying silently, eyes squeezed shut.

The other two guards step toward Mao. “I’m sorry,” he cries. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry–”

The boy has no choice but to back away and run. He bolts toward Izuku and Emi, the guards hot on his heels.

“We’ll get help!” he calls back to Yuna. “I promise!”

Tears are blurring Izuku’s vision now, but he adjusts his grip on Emi and starts to run anyway, ignoring the screaming of his muscles. He doesn’t want to leave Yuna behind, it’s killing him to do so, but it’s no use if they’re all captured. If they get away, they can get help. They can still save her.

They will save her.

Izuku sprints through the trees even as sobs wrack his frame, Mao right beside him. He’s slowing with Emi on his back, even with adrenaline pumping through his veins. He’s tiring.

Mao grips onto his arm, drags him forward. Together, they run as fast as they can, praying that the trees will give them enough cover to avoid the spray of bullets flying at them, but he’s struggling to see them through a tear-streaked haze.

He’s lost track of where they are in the forest; he doesn’t know where they’re running to, where the road is, where the hospital is. He just runs.

His foot tangles in the underbrush, and he falls. He falls and Emi and Mao fall with him.

The guards are on them in seconds. Izuku looks frantically toward his friends. Their panicked faces are the last things he sees before the world fades to nothing.

Chapter Text

September 26^th, at the same time…

Garaki Kyuudai watches on from his monitors as the children run through the complex. A heavy sigh escapes him as he reaches for his radio.

“Horyo. Clear the bottom floor of patients and staff, and please use Sakkaku’s Quirk to conceal any stairwell entries or elevators. I believe my subjects are attempting to breach the hospital main and escape to the outside.”

“Very well, sir,” comes the grainy reply of his head of security, their tone cool, near cold.  “What should be the cause of evacuation?”

Kyuudai thinks for a moment. “A chemical spill. Hydrofluoric acid, perhaps.”

He places the radio back on the table after the acknowledgment, returning his full attention back to the monitors.

“Foolish children,” he mutters.

A lack of visible cameras does not mean the rooms are not monitored. Kyuudai’s surveillance of his complex is panoptic, and it was foolish of the children to believe otherwise, and ever more foolish to believe they could truly get away.

On the screen, Subject 84 tears through the halls of the complex with a mass of guards on his heels, running with a desperation that can only mean the boy truly thinks he can escape. Kyuudai is, however, somewhat impressed by the child’s dodging abilities. He’s avoiding every single bullet.

The eldest boy, Subject 81, is already being taken to one of the labs to heal his injuries and prepare him for transformation. The tranquilisers Kyuudai’s security team used on the children are extremely potent, enough to give the illusion of death to those that do not know better. Kyuudai is rather proud of that, actually; it took him a few months to develop the correct formula for that. When he saw the reactions of the other subjects to it, he could not help but laugh. Foolish, foolish children.

His guards don’t catch the children quite as easily as he thought they would, however. 84 is still evading the bullets, and the small group are doing rather well for themselves, too.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” he murmurs to himself. “Desperation is quite the motivator.”

He grins in sheer delight as some of his subjects burst through the hospital doors and he loses visuals on them as they enter the forest. Things haven’t been this exciting at the complex in a while; it’s a nice change of pace getting to hunt his subjects down like rabbits.

Kyuudai reaches once more for his radio. “Horyo. Begin patrolling the roads and forest. Find the subjects and escort them to the laboratories. Tranquilise them if you must.”

“Of course, sir.”

He sits back, confident in Horyo’s ability to find the children. They’re Quirkless, and weak, and escaping on foot. It would be rather concerning if they did manage to actually escape, really.

Horyo gives succinct reports as they work, keeping Kyuudai updated on the situation. It’s not long before his subjects are back in his hands, their tranquilised bodies being escorted back to the complex.

Subject 83, the blonde girl, is in the same situation as 81, though the tranquiliser has been active in her system for far longer than the boy. The same goes for 85. The bullet was shot far closer to that girl’s heart, however, which concerns Kyuudai. She’s a frail thing, which could cause complications. He does not like complications.

82, 84 and 86 are taken to a different laboratory for recovery. Their tranquiliser dose was smaller, just enough to knock them unconscious for a few hours. He watches on as one of his team hooks the subjects on IV drips and monitors. The adrenaline of the situation has taken its toll on their bodies, it seems.

The radio on his desk gives a sharp hiss of static before the voice of his second in command comes through.

“Sir, Subject 80 is ready to go,” the woman says, primly. “Room 101.”

“Excellent, thank you Surudoi,” he replies, plucking himself up from his desk. He pockets the radio and ambles out the door.

Kyuudai navigates the halls of the complex with practiced ease, heading down toward the operation room. If all goes well, he’ll be able to perfect his techniques for his creations, further his science. This project has been in the works for years, and he is now reaching the final stretch. He’s rather delighted. All For One will also be well pleased, he thinks.

The man wants a powerful army to gift to his little successor. Kyuudai personally thinks the boy is a waste of time, showing little of the maturity All For One has worked to cultivate. Every conversation he’s had with the boy has devolved into video game language, for crying out loud!

Of course, he says none of this to All For One. He values his life, and would rather not waste it to air his complaints about the immaturity of his master’s choice of successor. He’s also rather fond of how generously the man has sponsored his research. However, he has little doubt that he already knows his thoughts on the matter, what with the multitudes of mental Quirks he’s collected over the years.

Kyuudai arrives at the main laboratory, where he finds Subject 80 set up on the operating table, under sedation. He grabs his tool cart, pulling it toward the cabinets lining the edge of the room so that he can gather his equipment.

Tanks of red, hazy liquid sit upon the countertops, alongside beakers of liquids containing Kyuudai’s specially developed genetic material, ready at long last to be tested.

The operation will be finnicky, but Kyuudai is beyond excited to be able to put his refined methods to the rest. And with such a blank slate of genetics, too! Oh, he cannot not wait to see how this lot of subjects would react to his formula.

He turns to the body on his operating table. It’s time to begin.

***

October 2^nd.

Katsuki isn’t entirely sure what he’s doing at the beach. Before him is mounds of scrap and garbage, teetering precariously over plains of sand. The whole place is coated in the murky dregs of early evening, the air beginning to cool with the first whispers of winter.

It’s quiet. No one ever goes near this place.

He leans on the railing of the sidewalk that hugs the beach. If you could even call this shithole a beach, he thinks, wrinkling his nose at the smell.

There’d been another Quirkless protest yesterday, bigger and more violent than the last. Law enforcement had descended on the protesters like vultures. His parents had watched it too, frowns on their faces and lips pursed. When he’d left the room, he could swear he’d heard his mum mutter some shit to his dad about how quiet he’d been.

At school the next day, his classmates had been spewing all their usual bullshit about Quirkless people. They’d run their fucking mouths about how uncivilised the whole thing was, how violent. Fingers and Eyeballs had joined in on all of it, of course, cracking cruel jokes and laughing it up with the class. Katsuki, for his part, had rolled his eyes and barked at them all to shut the fuck up, because he wasn’t about to let their stupid yammering get in the way of his studies. Entrance exams are only a handful of months away.

And, really, he just didn’t want to think about the empty space where a desk used to be, about the boy who’d once sat there. He’s sick of thinking about it.

Yet, somehow, it’s all Katsuki can ever seem to think about. Visions of stupid freckles and green hair and a terrified expression play on loop in his mind. A yellow backpack swinging towards his cage of sludge. A boy who’d once smiled wider than anyone Katsuki had ever met. A boy, bullied and beaten down for a decade, who could only find peace in death. A boy he might have driven to death.

He looks out at the garbage, deep in thought. The beach is wedged on the border between the poorer and wealthier parts of Musutafu. Izuku lived kind of near here. He and his mum had moved to the worse side of town after his dad left because it was cheaper rent. There were only so many extra shifts Auntie could pick up before money started running tight again.

They used to be neighbours, apparently. He and Izuku. He doesn’t remember much of it. Just brief flashes of wide grins and tromping through the forest and playing heroes vs villains in the time before Katsuki’s temper had set in and his Quirk came and Izuku’s didn’t.

He doesn’t remember ever letting Izuku play the part of a hero, even in those stupid games.

He leans against the railing, lost in his memories, listening distantly to the wash of the waves on the shore.

“Ah, hello there young man,” a voice sounds from his left.

Katsuki doesn’t startle, he doesn’t, but he still whips around, hands sparking ever so slightly.

The stranger, a tall, straw-thin man with straw-blonde hair, immediately waves his hands in surrender, blathering apologies for surprising him.

He looks like a fucking scarecrow come to life. Katsuki squints at his gaunt face, his weird sunken eyes and the near-luminescent blue irises in them, the fragile build of his limbs, the way his clothes hang so loose on his frame.

What the fuck? he thinks.

“What the fuck?” he says. “Who the fuck are you?”

“Ah, my apologies!” Scarecrow exclaims, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. “My name is Yagi. I frequent this area; I was surprised to see someone else here. It’s usually deserted by this time of day.”

Katsuki gives the man another judgemental once-over. “Right…”

The man could very well be a total creep, but somehow, he doesn’t strike Katsuki as one.

“Apologies if this is invasive, but were you the boy involved with the Sludge Villain incident a few months ago?” Scarecrow asks placidly.

Katsuki bristles. “The fuck is it to you if I was?”

“Ah, I…witnessed the tail-end of the incident. A little before All Might arrived.”

So not someone that just fucking stood there the whole time and watched Katsuki choke on slime. He lets his shoulders drop a fraction with an aggrieved huff, looking away with a frown. “Yeah, that was me.”

“There was a boy that ran in to help you–”

“Fucking Dek–” he spits automatically before pausing, reigning in that instinctual anger with a deep breath. “Izuku. Yeah.”

“Do you know, ah, know what happened to him? I’d seen him a little earlier in the day, we’d, erm, had a conversation–”

***

In a brief glimpse, all he knows is pain. It smothers him in its unyielding grip. He can’t breathe. He can’t-

***

“He killed himself.” The Scarecrow’s eyes widen, and his face seems to pale a little.

“Oh…” he breathes. “I’m very sorry to hear that.”

Katsuki scuffs at the pavement with his shoe. “Fucking whatever,” he mutters. “We never really got along anyway.”

Scarecrow sighs, and it sounds sad somehow. He turns back toward the beach. “I remember the days when this beach used to be popular for swimming. It’s a shame how junk has piled up on the shores now.”

Katsuki frowns at the switch in topics. “Uh, sure?”

“Did you ever come here?”

“When I was little, I guess.” He thinks he remembers coming here occasionally in summer, back before the trash piled up. In his earliest memories, Izuku is there, building sandcastles or some other kiddie shit on the shore as Katsuki raced into the water. He can’t remember those days too clearly anymore.

“You’re in middle school now, right?”

“What’s it to you, old man?”

Scarecrow lets out a boisterous laugh, and Katsuki scrunches his nose. It can’t have been that funny, it wasn’t even a joke.

“Oh dear, I’m not that old yet! Anyway, just curiosity, I suppose. I’m acquainted with some of the teaching staff at U.A. through my work, they’ve told me a little about their preparations for the entrance exam in a few months.”

Katsuki perks up at the mention of the school. “I’m going for U.A. next year.”

“Is that so? Hero course?”

“Fucking duh. I’m gonna be the best hero there is,” he gloats, a grin stretching over his teeth.

“A bold claim, indeed. The path of a hero is not an easy one,” Scarecrow says. A shadow passes over his face, so quick that Katsuki almost misses it. “Especially at the top.”

“Yeah, well, I owe it someone I used to know.”

***

“Shit, Subject 84 is awake! How the fuck is it awake?!”

He wrestles against the hands gripping him, he tries wrenching himself up but pain snaps through his body. His vision blackens in the corners, and he can’t-

***

“Is that why you want to be a hero?”

Immediately, a correction of to be the best rises to his lips, but he bites it back. No, that’s not quite right anymore.

He wants to be the best, sure, he also wants to make things right, even though it’s too late. He wants to become the hero Izuku would have needed.

“Yeah,” he answers, after a pause. “I want to be a hero that everyone can rely on. I don’t have the most sparkling personality or whatever, but I want to be a hero for those that society lets down and pushes to the edges.”

Scarecrow nods, and again there’s something weirdly sad about it. “That’s a noble reason indeed, Young…?”

“Bakugou,” he says. “Bakugou Katsuki.”

Scarecrow nods. “You have good reasons, Young Bakugou. I think you’ll make a fine hero one day.”

Katsuki just nods in response.

Scarecrow hums, a smile ghosting across his thin face. “I assume you’re training hard, then?”

Katsuki huffs. “Yeah, but I need to up the intensity if I really wanna get stronger. The Musutafu Quirk Gym is alright but it’s hard to really push my limits there.”

“In terms of your Quirk?”

“Nah, my Quirk’s strong. Need to build muscle better.”

Scarecrow looks off toward the trash piles in contemplation.

“Strength training, huh?” Scarecrow mutters to himself, before turning back to Katsuki. “How about a beach cleanup?”

Katsuki looks out at the garbage heap that calls itself a beach. Most of the junk looks fairly heavy. Car parts, washing machines, entire fucking fridges are scattered throughout the garbage, all collected into enormous piles over the years.

“Hm. Wouldn’t have anywhere to put it. Can’t transport it either.”

Scarecrow smiles. “I’d be willing to help you out, if you’d like. Provided your parents allow it.”

“Maybe,” Katsuki replies, raising an eyebrow. “How do I know I can trust you?”

“I appreciate the vigilance,” Scarecrow chuckles. “I can meet with yourself and your parents to discuss things. I work alongside All Might–”

“Bullshit,” he interrupts with narrowed eyes, but the man only laughs.

“No, it’s true. I have credentials that attest to that. Either way, it’s given me some insight into the hero world. I could impart some of my knowledge to aid in your training.”

He considers for a second, curiosity nipping at him. “Okay, old man, I’ll bite.”

***

A sharp prick in his arm. Suddenly, the pain stops, and his world fades back into nothing.

Chapter Text

February 2^nd.

Katsuki is fucking tired. And sweaty. And pissed the fuck off.

It’s late Sunday afternoon, a little over a week before U.A.’s entrance exam. He’s been hauling garbage for fucking hours now, dragging it up to where Scarecrow’s pickup truck sits. It’s made all the more difficult by the frost lingering in the air.

Only dwindling piles of garbage remain on the shores of the beach, now. Months of hard fucking work are finally paying off, and Katsuki can see how it’s shaped his body. Katsuki has made damn sure he does all this shit Quirkless, because what the fuck is the point if he blasts the junk into smaller pieces?

Ponytail has joined him at the beach from time to time, Scarecrow watching over the two as they drag garbage through the sand. They’re not fucking friends, though. He just knows that she wants to build muscle too, and she’s tolerable. And strong, fucking hell. She’s not here today, though.

His current grievance is the entire fucking car that some idiot’s left amongst the trash. He’ll have to tear it apart a little because there’s no fucking way he can pick it up in one piece, even if that feels like cheating. He’s strong, but even he knows he has limits.

He takes a machete and some protective gloves from Scarecrow. With a grunt, he hacks off one door after another, gathering them in his arms to heave over to the pickup truck. Scarecrow is leaning against the railing overlooking the beach with a grin on his face, rugged up in a winter jacket and scarf while Katsuki sweats in his trackpants and thermal top.

“My boy, you’re doing excellently!” he exclaims.

“I know, old man,” Katsuki grunts back, dumping the car doors down.

He goes back to the car, continuing to take apart its pieces until just the metal husk is left. Before long, he’s split the shell in half and tied a piece of rope around each side, heaving them toward the truck.

Scarecrow steps toward him. “Alright, Young Bakugou, I believe that’s enough training for today. The rest of the garbage will probably only take one or two more sessions to finish cleaning, especially if you invite Young Yaoyorozu along again.”

Katsuki just nods, catching his breath a little. Scarecrow shifts a little as silence stretches between them, enough to start rubbing at Katsuki’s nerves.

“If you’ve got something to say, old man, just spit it out.”

Scarecrow looks a little sheepish. “Ah…If you have some time still, there is something I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Uh huh.”

“I must impress upon you that this is extremely confidential information, however. What I tell you must not be told to anyone else. Do you understand?”

Katsuki frowns at the gravity in his voice, but still nods. Scarecrow isn’t usually this serious.

The man guides them to the sand below, near the wall to bring them out of view of the street.

“It’s, erm, easier if I show you, I suppose. Please don’t be alarmed.” This is all the warning Katsuki gets before a poof sounds, and the gaunt man before him disappears.

“HAH?!” Katsuki stumbles back a little, because holy shit, that’s fucking All Might.

“I apologise for having kept it from you for so long, but I promise it was not without reason,” Scarecr- All Might tells him, but the words barely register in Katsuki’s mind. He stares at the hero he’s looked up to his whole fucking life. There’s probably stars in his eyes or some shit but he can’t bring himself to school the awestruck expression off his face.

“You- so this whole time–” Katsuki tries to choke out.

“My power is dwindling, my boy. These days, I can only maintain this muscled form for about three hours. My days of being a hero are coming to a close.” A small poof, and All Might’s disappeared, shrunk once more into his gnarled, skeletal form.

Katsuki doesn’t know what to say. He can’t imagine a world where All Might isn’t an active hero, saving people with a smile.

“A few years ago, I was severely injured in a fight against a villain. It left me crippled, and in turn, made my power more difficult to use. Ever since, I knew I’d need a successor who could take my place as the Symbol of Peace, and my boy, I am confident you can do it.”

“Me?!” Katsuki yells, confused. “I’m not peaceful at all!”

All Might chuckles a little. “That’s not quite what the title means. It’s about maintaining balance and peace in our society, making people know that they will be saved no matter what. Months ago, on the night we first met, you told me you want to be a hero everyone can rely on. That is what being the Symbol of Peace means.”

“So you want me to take up your mantle. Be the number one, be a symbol for society, all that shit,” Katsuki surmises.

“Yes, but there’s a little more to it,” All Might replies. “My power, Young Bakugou, is a not like a normal Quirk.”

“You’ve never actually explained what it is in interviews, or whatever.”

“Exactly. Its true nature is a long guarded secret. Allow me to tell you its story.” All Might takes a deep breath, looking out toward the ocean. “At the dawn of Quirks, there were two brothers. One was born with a terrifying ability; the power to steal Quirks for himself, and to force them upon other people. The other, a sickly boy, was born Quirkless.”

Katsuki sucks in a sharp breath at that.

“The elder brother quickly rose to power in that society, taking control amongst the confusion and chaos that came with the rise of Quirks. He became known as All For One.

“Amongst the many that opposed his rule was his younger brother, which made All For One furious. He forced a Quirk onto his brother, one that would stockpile power within his body. However, unbeknownst to both of them, the younger brother already had a Quirk; the ability to give his Quirk to another. This power melded with the stockpiling one to create a Quirk that was the antithesis of his brother’s – a Quirk called One For All.

This Quirk has been passed down through several holders, and I am its eighth. I want you, Bakugou Katsuki, to be the ninth.”

Katsuki stares up at All Might in awed silence. His mind races with everything the hero just told him, questions upon questions bubbling up.

“What happened to All For One?” he asks. “He was the villain that injured you, wasn’t he?”

No one else could’ve done so much damage to an invincible hero like All Might.

“Indeed, my boy. We presume him dead, after that battle, although his body was never recovered. We have not seen him since.”

“And One For All…what does the power actually do?”

All Might hums in consideration. “It’s a little different for each holder. For me, it was a massive boost in energy and raw power. For my master, Shimura Nana, it combined with her original Quirk and boosted her powers.”

“It didn’t boost your original Quirk?” Katsuki asks, cocking his head.

“I…didn’t have an original Quirk,” All Might sighs. “I was born Quirkless.”

Something pangs in Katsuki’s heart, a painful spike of realisation. The hero that he looked up to all his life, and Izuku looked up to, was born Quirkless. A man born Quirkless that went on to become Japan’s top hero. With a Quirk to lean on now, yes, but still.

“So, One For All. How is it passed on?” he asks, breaking the small silence that’s formed between them.

All Might perks up at the change in topic. “Through the will of the holder, and DNA transfer!”

“Like blood and shit?”

“Well, that’s one option. But it could also be a piece of hair or something.”

Katsuki nods, falling back into thought. If he takes on One For All, it’ll likely provide some kind of strength enhancement, as well as boosting Explosion. He’ll need time to get his abilities under control, as it’ll probably be a pretty significant change, so probably not a good idea to accept it right before the entrance exam. He’ll need a good grip on it before he uses it in combat, and he won’t know how long that’ll take until he’s got the damn Quirk. So if he waits until after…

“If you need more time to consider my offer, that’s okay, my boy. But I need to impress upon you that you really cannot tell anyone about this–”

“I don’t need more time, old man,” Katsuki interrupts. “I accept One For All.”

***

At the same time…

Haze perches on a rooftop, ragged green scarf flapping in the wind. People wander like ants in the street below. It’s almost funny how unaware they are of him, given how heightened his own senses are right now. It’d be so easy to kill them, if he wanted to. The thought makes him a little sad.

He sighs. No use dwelling on it. He’s overdue back at base already.

Leaping from his spot, he flings himself across the skyline of Kamino with his web tendrils, the silvery vines sticking to whatever he aims them at. He hazes over himself to stop anyone from seeing him, ignoring the beginnings of a headache behind his eyes. All they’d see if they looked up was empty skyline.

Soon enough, he’s landing softly against the pavement outside the bar they call base. He gently pushes the front door open, the outside wind following him inside. His eyes sweep over the now-familiar wooden interior, bathed in the soft, orange glow of candles. The bar is stacked with glasses and bottles, the counter lined with circular stools.

Behind the bar counter, a man of purple mist polishes glasses, his fluorescent yellow eyes glancing toward him only briefly. Haze gives the man, Kurogiri, a nod as he passes, pushing his hooded mask back.

“You’re late, Haze,” comes the annoying drawl of Shigaraki from the other room. Haze supresses an eyeroll, calling back a half-hearted apology.

“The targets took longer to take care of than I anticipated,” he explains, moving toward the doorway between the rooms.

Shigaraki is sprawled across one of the dingy sofas, eyes transfixed to whatever video game is flashing across the television screen, hands flying across his controller. Pinky fingers lifted, of course. Haze wonders how he’s managed to make his pale blue hair look even rattier than it did than before he left for his mission. It’s a miracle it’s not totally matted yet.

“We should really get you some gloves so you don’t dust everything,” Haze observes. He leans against the door frame briefly, but a twinge in his hip tells him he’s not entirely recovered from the fight, yet. Surprising, given how fast he heals normally.

“Shut up,” Shigaraki snaps. “What took you so long?”

“As I said,” Haze sighs, “the targets put up more of a fight than I thought they would. They seemed to anticipate my arrival.”

Shigaraki grumbles something about Haze’s stupidity and not being able to do anything right, but he isn’t really listening. He leaves the overgrown toddler to his games.

Kurogiri looks up from his spot behind the bar as he passes, yellow eyes surely honing in on the slight limp he’s trying to hide. Whatever.

He trudges up the stairs, avoiding the one that creaks loudly with the slightest pressure, turning right toward his room, not bothering to flick the hallway lights on.

As soon as he gets in, he collapses on his mattress. It squeaks in protest as he rolls onto his back, blinking up at the water stains in his ceiling. He wouldn’t dare show how tired he is to Kurogiri or Shigaraki. Especially not Shigaraki; the idiot would report straight to Sensei that he’s defective, and who knows what would happen then?

 It takes a minute, but eventually he musters the energy to haul himself off the bed and pick up the gear he dumped on the floor. He takes the dirty knives and throwing stars to his tiny ensuite to clean them up, crusted with blood as they are. He grimaces, trying not to remember how he’d had to use them on his mission today. His targets had known all his tricks, somehow, which poses a problem for future missions. He’ll have to talk to Sensei about it, which is definitely not a conversation he’s looking forward to. He hates talking to Sensei.

The bathroom is cramped, barely fitting a toilet, sink and shower in the same space. Fluorescent lights tint the room in an eerie, greenish glow, the weak light bouncing off the ceramic tiles that line the floor and walls.

Slowly, he cleans the blood off his weapons, then moves to remove his gloves, knee guards and scarf and unzip his suit to rinse the blood from those, too. The black and grey material is stiff, and it takes some manoeuvring to get out of it.

He runs a thumb over the dark green strips that line the seams on his costume. He’d been allowed to choose one highlight colour for the outfit, and he couldn’t imagine going with anything other than the green. It felt familiar, somehow, but he really couldn’t place where he knew it from.

A scrawny kid in a black uniform, all bushy hair and limbs, being pushed to the ground by another kid, a blonde with crackling palms–

He shakes the stray thought away. As he’s shuffling out of it, he catches a glimpse of his reflection in the cracked mirror above the sink.

He pauses, taking in the white hair, the void-like eyes and white pupils, the wan skin littered with little scars and freckles alike. He doesn’t like the image he sees. It looks like a dead thing, trying to be alive. He hates how the sight of himself puts something on the tip of his tongue, but he can’t quite form it in his mouth. It tastes like a memory, long forgotten. It tastes like a name.

A spike of pain shoots between his eyes, brain suddenly pounding against his skull. He squeezes his eyes shut, a hand coming up to cover his mouth at the wave of nausea he gets. He fights the dizzy feeling.

Stupid. He looked for too long, again.

He refuses to look again for the rest of the time he spends in the bathroom.

Eventually, he retreats out of there to hang up his stuff to dry. His bedroom is plain. No decorations in place to hide the boring, grey paint, just a cupboard and a bookshelf to house all his meagre belongings. He supposes he should be grateful for the little autonomy he’s been granted, illusory as it is. Nothing goes unseen by Sensei, not really.

Changing into soft, clean clothes, he makes his way back downstairs. Kurogiri is drifting around their tiny kitchen, putting something together for dinner. Shigaraki is still playing games. Haze sighs, deciding he should probably help Kurogiri.

“Hey,” he says as he approaches. “What’s on the menu?”

Kurogiri’s reply comes in the same monotone he tends to say everything in; “Chicken stir-fry.”

Haze sets about chopping vegetables, purple mist wisping in the edges of his vision as Kurogiri moves around him. They work in silence, though it’s not uncomfortable. They just…don’t really have anything to talk about, usually.  

Neither he nor Kurogiri really eat much. They don’t have to, for some reason. Haze doesn’t really question it. Meals are mostly for Shigaraki’s benefit, not that the manchild is ever grateful for them.

He’s just moved to dump the vegetables in the frypan when Shigaraki’s grating voice comes echoing from across the other room. “Haze! Come here!”

Haze feels his body jolt at the command. He grumbles, but it’s not like he can avoid going, so he follows the pull of the command to bar area, where the TV is switched on.

“Haze,” a deep, cruel voice drawls through the speakers. Sensei. “I believe we need to talk. Get Kurogiri to warp you.”

“Yes, Sensei,” he mumbles, feeling the tug of the command again.

Kurogiri already has a portal open when he gets to the kitchen. He steps through, shutting his eyes against the sensation. All his senses go mute inside the portal, and brief as it is, the total lack of feeling never fails to make his skin prickle. He’s grown used to knowing all the intimate details of the world with his Quirk in the month or so he’s been awake.  

Opening his eyes, he sees Sensei half-propped up on his bed, wires and tubes protruding all over his body.

“Haze,” the man greets. The grin on his eyeless face is unsettling, as it always is.

“Sensei,” he returns. He straightens his back, preparing to report. “The mission today was a success, but there was a problem.”

A nod of acknowledgement. “They knew of your Quirks beforehand, correct?”

“Yes sir. The illusions I created didn’t phase them. They seemed to see through them, if anything. Web Flinger was more successful, but they came prepared with knives that could cut through it. In the end, I had to rely on my weapons to incapacitate them.”

Sensei hums, a displeased sound. “How do you believe they knew of your Quirks?”

“I- I don’t know, sir.”

“Yes, you do. Think a little harder, Haze.” His voice sounds almost kind, but its sharp edge tells Haze that he needs to come up with an answer, fast.

“I think…” An answer clicks in him, suddenly. “Those people we’ve been gathering, for the upcoming infiltration. Word must’ve gotten around after Shigaraki blabbed my Quirks to them to show off.”

“Now, now, blaming Tomura won’t help you here,” Sensei says with infuriating calmness, the grin on his face growing sharper. “He was simply telling our allies what to expect from you.”

Yeah, well, there goes my element of surprise, Haze thinks bitterly. He lets none of his irritation show on his face. He needs to tread carefully, here.

“I’ll make sure I’m better prepared for this kind of situation in the future,” he says, instead. “I don’t think this information would’ve spread very far, but I’ll talk to Giran and make sure it’s contained.”

Sensei simply nods. “Very well. You’re dismissed.”

He snaps his fingers, and a portal opens behind Haze immediately. He steps through, letting this uncomfortable nothingness warp him back to the bar.

It’s only when he’s back up in his room that he lets his shoulders drop, collapsing back onto his mattress. Conversations with Sensei are always exhausting. It feels like a dangerous game that Haze is constantly on the losing side of, walking on a paper-thin tightrope.

He shuts his eyes. He’ll skip dinner to get some sleep. He’s lost what little appetite he had, anyway.

(Izuku/Haze recolour I did of what I THINK is an official art)