Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Toshinori Yagi knew this was the end. In his deflated form, being crushed beneath rubble, all because he ran out of time. Somehow, he wasn’t killed by All for One as he had always truly expected. He had barely arrived on scene when he started coughing blood, and then the villain had used some sort of sonic boom on the building behind him, and the entire thing came down. He could feel it press into his wound, pain wracking his body. His breaths were becoming shallower, and One for All was sand in his fingers as he tried to gain any strength to escape.

He had lived a good life, he thought. Fought a good fight. But he couldn’t die now, not while still possessing One for All. All for One was still out there, and he couldn’t be defeated without Yagi’s quirk. He needed to find someone, even just someone to get the quirk to another person, maybe that one boy Mirai had chosen…

He shook his head. He was getting off track. He needed someone and fast. But where to find people under rubble?

Yagi opened his eyes, which he hadn’t realized he hadn’t done yet. He was worse off than he thought, it seemed. Trying to keep his eyes off his probably worse for wear body, he looked around himself. Most of his surroundings were tightly packed pieces of concrete, only partially covering him. To his left was an opening, leading to the street corner he had arrived on scene from. A very small opening, but one at all. Light streamed through it, and as his eyes adjusted, he saw someone.

The boy was on the younger side, couldn’t have been older than fourteen or fifteen. He had green hair, glowing in the light, and that was just about all that Yagi could see before his vision started to go. He used all of his remaining strength to reach up an arm, and suddenly the boy was in motion, slipping through the gap in the rubble and running up to him.

“Oh no, how do I get you out, how can I help you I-”

“Shh, my boy.” Yagi interrupted. The boy was still mumbling, but quieter now, his arms held like he wanted to help but didn’t know how.

“How do I get you out? Should I call for someone?” The boy was obviously trying to calm himself, like he was trying to not make this worse for Yagi. He appreciated it, but the boy was tearing up and looked very close to sobbing.

“I fear it is too late for me, boy. However, I do need a favor from you.” Yagi met the boy’s green eyes. “I am Toshinori Yagi, but you know me as All Might. I need you to take my quirk.”

“What? You’re All Might? I did see him on scene just a moment ago, but no, you’re so small-” he started rambling again, and Yagi almost felt bad having to interrupt him once again. He was obviously smart. He stepped up for a stranger, went into an (admittedly dangerous) situation just to help someone, and chose to stay in the fighting zone with said stranger while they could both hear the fighting outside. He had the spirit of a hero, if it needed honing to a point.

A good choice to give One for All to, maybe even for the boy to keep.

“I need to you eat one of my hairs. It will pass my quirk to you.” Yagi struggled out, speaking getting harder. The boy finally stopped mumbling, the sentence about his quirk finally registering.

“You need me to what?”

“I have a quirk that can be passed on called One for All. You need to take my quirk so that it doesn’t die with me.” Yagi breathed deeply, feeling that it will be one of his last. He could feel the rubble around him wet with his blood. “It was made to defeat a great evil called All for One. My quirk must be passed on so that he can be defeated. Please, eat one of my hairs.”

The boy’s brow furrowed, but he nodded, plucking a hair from his head and putting it in his mouth, swallowing with a grimace.

Yagi smiled. “Thank you. I’m sorry I won’t be around to help you.” The darkness at the edges of his vision was closing in, the nearby sounds of battle fading out. “If you need help, go to Nighteye Agency, ask for Mirai. Tell them Toshinori Yagi sent you, he’ll know who you are,” Yagi coughed, “or at least who’s quirk you have.”

The boy nodded, openly sobbing now, hiccups and all. “I’m sorry I couldn’t save you.”

“I was not able to be saved today, boy,” Yagi coughed one last time, “but you have the heart of a hero. I believe you can save the next ones, all of them, if you choose to be one.”

The boy reached out for his hand, and the concrete around them rumbled, and Yagi was gone.

—

Midoriya Izuku’s morning had already been one of goodbyes.

“Zuku!” Inko sobbed, hugging her son tightly. He was smiling and sobbing too, both of them mildly flooding the sidewalk.

“I promise I will be okay, mom. We already got everything figured out for the cafe, and I already got my graduation certificate from my online school. Once I get the cafe up and running, I’m going to be even better.”

Izuku had pulled out of public schooling at the start of middle school due to the bullying from his classmates, and had finished a few months ahead of schedule because he could work at his own pace. He had even taken extra classes, as the online courses offered a lot of extracurricular classes, like a few business courses, some first aid, and a lot of coding. He even learned some basics on electronics. Izuku had given up on heroics, but was considering trying to go to UA still for support courses, before he realized that his bullies could still get in, and that it may just be a continuation of his previous school experiences, and decided against it.

“If you need anything for the cafe, just ask your father and I. Do you have the credit card I gave you? You can buy whatever you need for your business with it while you start up,” Inko sniffled and tried to wipe some of the tears off of her face, “or even later on, we can afford it now, and your father and I really want to support you as much as we can from America.”

Izuku nodded, sobbing too hard to reply. He had seen the cafe while walking home from a villain fight. His usual route home had been closed off for road repairs, so he was walking through a part of Musutafu he hadn’t even noticed before. It was mostly older residential buildings, but was right off of a shopping district, so a few of the buildings had a ground floor storefront. A building with what was obviously once a cafe caught his eye. It was three stories, the first being the cafe, and the other two looking from the outside like small apartments. The front window held a “For Sale” sign with a phone number scribbled below it, and Izuku had immediately taken a picture. After doing his research, he brought the idea up with Inko, who was over the moon that her son had found a new plan after giving up on UA, and especially one she could financially support with her new job.

Inko had finally gotten her dream job in America, and was moving there to be with Hisashi after a very long conversation between her, Hisashi, and Izuku. Since he was old enough to get a job and Inko and Hisashi could easily send him money from America, he was allowed to choose to move to America or stay in Japan. Izuku chose to stay, but asked for frequent calls and visits as possible.

The taxi behind Inko honked his horn, and Inko squeezed her son one more time, kissed him on the cheek, and stepped back. He had grown since she pulled him from school, standing tall and healthy, not at all the scared, thin boy she saw when he finally came to her about the bullying. She was so proud of him.

“If you need anything and you can’t get a hold of your father or me, remember to call Mitsuki, okay?” Inko had stayed friends with Bakugo Mitsuki even as their kids had grown apart. Inko wasn’t sure it was Bakugo Katsuki doing the bullying of her son as he wouldn’t say names, but the scars were telling. She had sobbed but Izuku had assured her it wasn’t a problem to be friends with Mitsuki, just that he didn’t really want to see Katsuki at all. Inko had honored this, and he hadn’t seen Katsuki in nearly three years.

“I promise I will. Call me when you land, okay? I love you,” Izuku said, wiping the tears off of his face and steadying his voice. He would miss his mom, but he knew they’d be calling near daily and she would be visiting much sooner than her promised ‘as soon as possible’.

“I will, Izuku, I love you too. Be safe!” Inko loaded her last suitcase into the taxi, still crying. As she got in, she started waving, and both Midoriyas cried and waved to each other until they couldn’t see the other anymore.

Izuku took a deep, steadying breath, and went back inside.

---

Izuku’s new apartment was on the top floor of the building the cafe was in. It was definitely a bit drafty, but was about as well as you can expect from an older building. It wasn’t as small as it once looked, just thin. The stairs were on the right side of the building, and Izuku’s front door opened to his large living room, which had windows out to the front of the building. At the back was a long hallway, with two bedrooms on the left side and the kitchen and bathroom on the right. For a fifteen year old, it was very spacious, and currently not very furnished. His main focus over the past weeks had been fixing up the building in order to get the cafe running, so couch shopping had never really been a priority. Since she was leaving for America, Inko had given him the furniture from their apartment, so despite only living in the space for a few days now it already felt homey. The apartment on the second floor had only been fixed up enough that it was a very basic apartment, without any furniture. Izuku planned to eventually rent it out, but once again, the cafe had been his focus.

The cafe was in great shape now. Underneath the dust and cobwebs of an old building sitting empty for a while, it had been in great condition. The previous owner of the building, after realizing a fifteen year old was calling him with his mom in order to start up a cafe, had given them a great deal on the building. He had previously owned a diner in the space, and saw a lot of himself in Izuku, and gave him a lot of tips on where to buy things and what he should focus on in fixing the place up to running order. Those tips paid off, with him focusing on the lights and wiring in order to make sure it was safe (the electronics and wiring elective classes were paying off!). He looking around for furniture sales in nearby towns for restaurants, and found a good amount of furniture for the cafe, along with appliances.

Ultimately, Izuku was ready to open in the next few days, and was so excited. He just needed one last grocery store run for sugar and he would be ready to go.

Who would’ve thought a run to the grocery store could go so wrong?

---

Izuku was walking down the street, grocery store in sight, when suddenly sound exploded around him. He was knocked flat to his back, arms protecting his head, and when he finally looked up from the sidewalk, he could see heroes fighting a villain down the street next to him.

“Oh no, I have to get out of here,” Izuku said, looking up at the grocery store. He could probably run past no problem, and the store was away from the direction of the fight, he really just wanted to finish grocery shopping, but the sounds of the fight were getting louder and he thought it might be getting closer–

“No worries! I am here!” said a voice suspiciously like All Might, and as Izuku whipped his head rather violently towards the voice, the sound boomed in their direction again, knocking Izuku back and crashing into the building next to him, sending it crumbling down.

The dust hit Izuku like a wall, making him cough, and as he looked up, he could just see a pile of rubble between him and the fight. He slowly stood, rubbing his eyes, trying to get the dust out. After a few blinks, he could see well enough again. The rubble seemed pretty stable as far as rubble in an active fight goes, so unless he started messing with it he was probably fine to gain his bearing there for a moment. The dust started to settle and the fight started to move further down the street, police sirens and booms and sound surrounding him but getting quieter. Izuku looked back at the rubble, and as the dust settled he could see a gap, revealing a small empty space made by the support beams of the corner of the building. Izuku squinted, it looked like inside there was something moving.

The man inside raised his hand towards Izuku, and he was through the gap in the rubble before he could even think.

Izuku wouldn’t lie, he immediately started to panic. Hands in motion but not sure where to press on the bloodied man’s body, he started to talk, not very consciously sure of what he was saying before the man interrupted him.

“Shh, my boy.”

“How do I get you out? Should I call for someone?” Izuku tried to stay calm, keep his breathing even, stop mumbling so bad. The man in front of him was pale, paler than anyone should be, and his body, or what of it wasn’t completely beneath a collapsed building, looked more like a red mess than anything else. His first aid class did not cover this! He didn’t know what to do!

“I fear it is too late for me, boy. However, I do need a favor from you. I am Toshinori Yagi, but you know me as All Might. I need you to take my quirk.”

“What? You’re All Might? I did see him on scene just a moment ago, but no, you’re so small-” Izuku looked the man over, mumbling. He supposed at he had just heard All Might on scene, but this man is so small, small in a way All Might probably could never be, though he supposed his clothes did seem to have the same pattern as All Might’s hero costume, could this really be All Might?

“I need to you eat one of my hairs. It will pass my quirk to you.” The man wheezed out, speaking obviously becoming harder.

He needs him to what?

“You need me to what?”

The man was only taking shallow breaths now. “I have a quirk that can be passed on called One for All. You need to take my quirk so that it doesn’t die with me.” He took a deep breath. “It was made to defeat a great evil called All for One. My quirk must be passed on so that he can be defeated. Please, eat one of my hairs.”

Izuku looked down at his hero, everyone’s hero, dying before him. What are the chances this is just some weird guy with a weird request before death? But also, who would be at a fight, yelling “I am here!” the same way as All Might, in his clothes? He nodded, and reached to Toshinori’s head, plucking a hair as gently as he could. He took a breath and shoved it in his mouth, swallowing it with a bit of struggle. He had never thought about how hard it would be to swallow hair.

“Thank you. I’m sorry I won’t be around to help you. If you need help, go to Nighteye Agency, ask for Mirai. Tell them Toshinori Yagi sent you, he’ll know who you are,” Toshinori coughed blood, and Izuku reached forward, as if he could help, “or at least who’s quirk you have.”

Izuku finally started to cry, the gravity of the situation finally hitting him. He was watching someone die, and there was nothing to be done, the man nearly gone in front of him. Could he have done anything in the time they talked, could he have run for paramedics, or police? Another hero? Could he have changed this at all?

“I’m sorry I couldn’t save you.” Izuku choked out.

“I was not able to be saved today, boy,” Toshinori coughed again, “but you have the heart of a hero. I believe you can save the next ones, all of them, if you choose to be one.”

The man’s eyes started to close, and Izuku reached for his hand. The fight was getting closer again, but he held it until it went limp, and then he stood, and without a second thought, ran.

Chapter Text

Izuku stumbled through his apartment door, took off his shoes, and promptly fell to the living room floor. His hands were shaking and his body felt like fire. He couldn’t think. Is this shock? Is he in shock? How do you help people in shock? He looked around the living room from the floor, spotting a blanket on the couch. You warm people in shock!

He shakily got to his feet, and nearly tripped the two steps from the couch. His muscles felt like they were being tasered and his bones hurt, but at least he had his couch blanket. He reached for the remote, turned the TV on, and laid back on the couch.

“In the clean up from the fight between B-tier villain Soundwall and various heroes this afternoon in Musutafu, casualties are still being found,” the newscaster said. Izuku sat up, staring at the TV. This was the nightly news, how long had he taken to get home? The fight happened sometime around noon. Looking at the night sky out the window, it had been a while.

Sigh. And he still didn’t have sugar. Tomorrow’s problem, now.

Izuku stood, feeling his legs strain just getting up. What had he even done this afternoon? He saw his mom off, went to get groceries, ate All Might’s hair-

He paused. Could this be due to getting All Might’s quirk, if that Toshinori Yagi guy was actually All Might and not just a guy deciding to make some kid eat his hair before he died? Should he go to the Nighteye Agency like he said to? Probably not right now, they still have to deal with All Might’s death (once again, if that actually was All Might), and he didn’t want to be a problem right now.

A tear fell down his face. Either way, he was terribly sad that someone died.

Izuku, crying, walked down the hall to his room. He changed his dusty, bloody clothes, and crawled into bed. He dreamed of eight glowing figures, all of them mourning.

—

Mirai Sasaki sat at his desk, head in his hands. Bubble Girl stood quietly across the desk, having brought the unfortunate news. Toshinori Yagi, All Might, confirmed dead.

“Did they see anyone around the scene of his death? Did anyone leave?” he asked the questions without looking up.

“Yes, we don’t have good enough footage to identify anyone because of the extensive damage to the camera, but there was a figure there at his estimated time of death.” Bubble Girl was tearing up again. She already had to take a moment before even giving Mirai the news. Where he would usually find it annoying, he found it very understandable right now.

“Call Nedzu, Gran Torino, and the president of the HPSC. Get them here as soon as possible. We need to first make a press release about the death of All Might, and then we need to find that person.” He met her eyes. “I fear they may have taken something vitally important.”

—

Izuku startled awake. His heart was racing, and had definitely been scared awake by whatever he had dreamed about, but he felt… really okay. Great, even. A little like he could take on the world and win. He stood up and stretched. Something felt different, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on what.

He wandered out of his room and down to the kitchen, grabbing leftovers from yesterday’s lunch, and walked to the couch. He liked to watch the news in the morning for the weather, plus Izuku thought knowing local events in your city was a good thing.

Instead of the weather playing as he turned the TV on, he was met with the grim sight of Pro Hero Nighteye, and across the bottom of the screen were the words “All Might Dead”.

“All Might died in a fight, just as most heroes go. He had been having health issues prior to his death, and we believe they impacted him enough that he was just too slow to get out of the line of fire.” Nighteye’s voice was clinical, practiced. “He was strong, just as we all must be now. He cared deeply for everyone in Japan, everyone in the world, and we must care for each other in this unsteady time. Heroes will be working around the clock to make sure Japan stays safe in his absence.”

Izuku zoned out. Yesterday had felt like a dream until this moment, crashing down on him all at once. He was the last person to see All Might alive, to see Toshinori Yagi alive. He held his hand as he died.

He started sobbing. The number one hero, the Symbol of Peace, is gone. He will not be back. What is everyone to do?

Nighteye’s speech had changed to reporters asking him questions. One raised her microphone, saying her name and news organization before asking “Are you worried about the power vacuum of the number one hero suddenly being gone?”

“No,” Nighteye responded, “there are many heroes willing to put in overtime, and a lot of up-and-coming heroes ready to step up in this time of need.”

Another reporter introduced themself, raising a microphone. “Do you expect to see a rise in villain and vigilante numbers?”

“Any rise in villainy is expected when a hero retires or dies,” Nighteye said, looking very serious, “but we must all remember that vigilantes are villains too. No citizen should be taking the law into their own hands. That is what the police and heroes are for.”

Izuku glanced at the screen. All Might’s words played in his head, “you have the heart of a hero…”

The questions were ending on screen, and Nighteye was asked to say any last remarks. Nighteye looked directly into the camera, and Izuku could nearly feel him looking at him.

“Something very important was stolen yesterday during the fight, and if you know anything, please come forward with that information.” The screen showed Nighteye moving to leave the stage before the screen faded to black with the logo of the news station in the middle. The screen changed again, transitioning to the morning traffic report.

Izuku sat in silence. They had to mean him, right? If anyone would know about All Might’s transferable quirk, it would be his former sidekick. That is probably why All Might told him to go talk to Mirai. Mirai Sasaki, Nighteye, would probably be one of the (assumingly few) people to know about One for All.

Something about it just felt wrong, threatening even, and Izuku wasn’t sure why. Call it a gut feeling, like a pulling at the back of his thoughts. Don’t talk to Nighteye, don’t talk to the HPSC.

Izuku shook the thoughts from his head and stretched. It was time to finally get his sugar and open the cafe downstairs.

—

The walk to the grocery store had been easy. Not that a walk to the store was usually hard for Izuku, but it felt nearly effortless. He also had the urge to run there full tilt for no reason. The electric feeling was back in his muscles, his bones, his very being. It felt almost itchy.

On top of that, picking up the bulk sugar for the cafe was also rather effortless. Izuku knew it would be fifty pounds, which doesn’t sound like much on paper, but looks like much more in person. Upon seeing it, he was dreading having to carry it home, but when he crouched down to pick it up, it felt like warmth leached into his body, and he just stood right back up with it, like it weighed nothing.

The confusion must’ve shown on his face still when he got to check out.

“You okay? We can have that delivered for you,” the cashier asked, looking Izuku over as if she too wasn’t sure how a somewhat scrawny fifteen year old was carrying the bag completely unaffected.

“No I’m okay,” Izuku said, “I guess the gym is starting to pay off, it was just lighter than expected.” He and the cashier both laughed at that as he paid, but the entire walk home his brain raced. This had to be All Might’s quirk.

All Might was theorized to have an extremely powerful strength quirk, probably an emitter that he had to consciously activate. Considering he was one of the last limelight heroes to be secretive about his identity, woefully little was known about him beyond his hero work. Unless Izuku went to Nighteye, he was on his own in learning about the quirk.

Izuku unlocked the front door of the cafe, setting the sugar down in the kitchen behind the counter. If he started cooking and preparing the coffee machines now, he could open in an hour or two, and stay open later to catch people something home from work in the nearby shopping center and offices. He washed his hands and got to work, letting his mind theorize about his new quirk while he went through the motions of preparing to open.

Eventually, after baking and filling machines with coffee beans and stocking his fridge, Izuku flipped his sign to open right before the afternoon rush. Soon enough, commuters were coming in to order their afternoon coffee or to get a muffin, most leaving with to-go cups but a few sticking around in one of the booths or mismatched armchairs. Luckily most customers ordered off of the menu hung on the back wall above the counter, and of those who didn’t, he only had to apologetically look up two recipes.

It was now 11:30pm, and just as Izuku flipped the open sign to closed, he saw movement out the front windows. A man in all black moved across the rooftops, white scarf around his neck. Did Eraserhead patrol around this part of town?

Izuku finished cleaning up and headed up to his apartment, hands itching for a notebook now that he wasn’t busy. As soon as he grabbed a new one off of the bookshelf in his living room, he was writing furiously on code about All Might’s potential quirk and what he had noticed so far.

The quirk (or what he assumed it was) was a strength emitter. It seemed to activate whenever he tried to move something heavy, but he also hadn’t had much of an opportunity that day to do anything more than that besides bake and make coffee. It felt like a sort of heat he could move around his body, and it hurt when it was all in one place, like all in one hand or a leg. There didn’t seem to be much of it, but it was definitely more noticeable than this morning. Could it be an accumulation type? Those were becoming more common in younger people, but All Might had this quirk, and Izuku assumed there were probably people before him as well.

He paused. How would he learn about any of this? There was some kind of evil his quirk was needed to defeat, and he couldn’t do anything about it if he didn’t know anything about this quirk. Maybe he should go to Nighteye soon, see if he could learn anything.

After making himself dinner and showering, he finally got to bed, and as his head hit the pillow he woke up in what looked like an unending, dark room. Izuku tried to move but couldn’t, and started to struggle. Had he been kidnapped? He was trapped in some dark place, didn’t even know where he was, what was going on? He needed to get out of here.

He didn’t notice the glowing figure until they had a hand on his shoulder. Izuku looked up in shock at the figure in front of him. They looked blurry and unformed, but the two long hairs sticking off the front of his head were unmistakable.

“All Might?” Izuku asked, though it came out extremely muffled, like whatever was keeping from moving was trying to keep him from talking as well. The figure nodded. Izuku looked behind him, to where seven more figures stood, all looking more detailed than All Might, but not by much. The clearest of all was a woman, closer to him than the rest, with a long cape and hair in a ponytail.

All Might tightened his hand on his shoulder, and Izuku could feel a thought in his brain that didn’t feel entirely his own. He shouldn’t go to Nighteye. It could be dangerous. All for One would be looking for him, since the death of All Might was announced on the news. Izuku found himself agreeing, because just not being his thoughts didn’t make them untrue. If there was some bad guy who could only be killed by one quirk, the owner of which had just died, they’d be on the lookout in case someone new had it, to take care of them while they were still new to the quirk.

Izuku nodded. “I know what you’re trying to tell me,” he struggled out around whatever bound him, “I’m going to lay low, I won’t go to Nighteye.”

All Might nodded back, and the woman behind him stepped forward. He felt another thought in his mind, like a whisper. He would be seeing them again soon.

Chapter Text

Late the next afternoon, Izuku sipped his own coffee during a lull between customers. He had been up since early that morning, since waking up from seeing the figures in his dream. Before he woke up he swore he saw a bright flash of green light. On his morning call with his mom, he chose not to mention it, though she did talk worriedly and at length about the fight and the death of All Might, and especially about how she was worried for him.

“I know everyone on the news said not to be worried, but I am still going to be anxious about you, Izuku,” she said over the phone. Izuku could practically see her worrying her hands, her brow furrowed.

“It will be okay, mom, and if anything happens you will be the first to know. Right now I’m much more focused on the cafe.” He laughed. What a wild two days it had been, going from All Might dying next to him to making lattes. He had finally stopped crying at the thought of All Might gone, somehow comforted by the figure he saw in his dreams, that he felt he would see again soon.

“I am so happy the opening went so well! Just don’t overwork yourself, please,” Inko said. She was incredibly proud of her son for opening the cafe at all, let alone right after the death of his lifelong idol. She feared it may not have hit him yet that he was gone, but she would be there to help him when that happened.

“Actually, while I’m thinking about it, I was thinking of getting a gym membership?” Izuku has figured that if the quirk kept getting stronger like he thought it might, he would probably have to keep getting stronger to keep up with it so he wouldn’t hurt himself. He had written about it in his notebook over breakfast.

“You should! It would be a good way to keep active with working in the cafe for most of the day,” Inko said, “Look into the one near our old apartment, I used to go there and it was always quiet in the mornings.”

“Thank you, I will.” Izuku smiled, then checked the time. “Oh, it’s probably really late for you there, I’ll let you go now.”

“Okay Zuku. Have a nice day, I love you.”

“I love you too mom, sleep well.” Izuku hung up the phone. He still had some time to try out the gym before opening the cafe, so he got dressed and started the walk towards the gym.

—

The gym went very well. He was able to try out the machines and look around before getting his membership after talking to the person at the front desk, and he decided it would work for him for the foreseeable future. His mom was right about it being quiet in the mornings, there was next to no one in the building besides at the front desk. A good place for someone to train their new strength quirk without drawing too many eyes. He stayed for a while to figure out a routine and get some starting weights for how much he could lift to make a workout schedule.

Already while accessing what he could of the quirk, he could lift much more than expected of a boy as unmuscled as him, if the look on the front desk worker’s face had said anything.

Now he was walking home, deciding he had enough time to not have to take the train back. He had given himself a lot of time in case his stay at the gym went longer, but he did appreciate time to walk home in the nice weather.

He heard something fall over in the alley he was passing, and before he could react, someone slammed him to the ground. Someone was holding him down to the sidewalk, and in his panic, he activated his quirk and threw them off. The girl flew a couple yards before hitting the ground and rolling.

“Oh my god I am so sorry-” Izuku started rambling apologies and running to her, trying to check that she was okay, but before he could do anything she was back up and trying to bite him.

“Just let me have some of your blood,” she said, between biting attempts and lunges at him, “pretty please?”

“Um, hard pass,” Izuku said, dodging.

The girl was blonde, wearing a blood splattered school uniform, and had very obvious fangs. She was also extremely pale and swaying on her feet. Is the blood hers? No, it was probably someone else’s. Izuku shuddered. If his quirk really was passed by DNA like he assumed, he needed to not let her get anywhere near him.

“Have you considered eating mussels as a blood replacement?” Izuku called out as he dodged another bite attempt.

The girl paused, tilting her head, her smile falling a bit in her confusion as she swayed in place. “What?”

“Mussels have a lot of the same nutritional properties as blood. I’m assuming your quirk causes you to be deficient in some of those things, like iron or maybe vitamin A. Or can you only digest blood?”

The girl just blinked. “I… I don’t actually know.”

Izuku raised his hands in a placating gesture. “I think you’re acting like this because your body is desperate for those nutrients. Could we get you mussels instead of my blood?”

She looked to the ground for a moment, thinking, before meeting his eyes again. “Can I have your blood if you’re wrong?”

Izuku thought about how easy it was to fling her away from him by accident, and how far he probably could in self defense if this didn’t work out. “Sure. You wait here, and I am going to go to the store around the corner and grab a can of mussels. I’d bring you but you are covered in blood and probably shouldn’t be brought around a lot of people in your current state.”

“How do I know you’ll come back!” The girl whined. “What if you leave me and I don’t get food or blood?”

Izuku sighed and reached into his pocket, moved around for what he knew was in there, and pulled out a fidget cube. He lightly tossed it to her, and she caught it excitedly. “I will be back for my cube. Do not break it.”

“I won’t, I won’t,” she smiled, entirely focused on the cube, walking back to sit inside the alley.

Izuku jogged down the rest of the block, coming around the corner to see the grocery store his mom and him used to shop at at the old apartment. As quickly as he could, he went inside, settled for a bag of frozen mussels considering there weren’t any canned, paid, and jogged back. He probably looked a little crazy, running around with only a bag of frozen mussels and a receipt, but he probably looked worse wandering around the other night covered in blood and dust, so this wasn’t too bad.

He came around the corner of the alley to see the girl right where he left her, sitting on the ground by a dumpster, playing with the fidget cube. She looked up as he approached.

“Sorry, they only had frozen, I would definitely recommend canned next time,” Izuku barely had the sentence out of his mouth before she was grabbing the bag out of his hands, shoving the cube into them, and opening the bag with her teeth. Luckily the mussels had seemed to unfreeze some in the run back over (does Izuku have a higher body heat now? It wasn’t that warm out…) because she shoved a handful in her mouth, chewing with a loud crunch. Izuku hoped her teeth were strong.

After a few mussel handfuls, the girl slowed down, and when she looked up at him, Izuku thought her eyes looked clearer and more focused.

“Thank you so much, I’m sorry. When I don’t get blood for a while I get a little extra crazy,” the girl said. Izuku got the idea that she was never exactly mentally healthy, but that having a proper diet would definitely help.

“I’m sorry for throwing you, you scared me.” Izuku felt the need to apologize again, now that she would actually understand him.

She looked back at the bag of mussels in her hands. “These are kind of gross, not gonna lie.”

“They were all they store here had, I’d definitely recommend canned, or cooking them at all instead of eating them frozen and raw,” Izuku said, laughing.

The girl laughed too, a kind of crazy laugh admittedly, but a lot better than earlier.

“Do you have anywhere to go?” asked Izuku, “I can call someone to come pick you up if you need.”

Her face fell at that, and she put another half-frozen mussel in her mouth, cringing at the texture. “I don’t, really. I’m not very welcome at home, and well,” she gestured to her blood soaked clothes, “I’m not sure I’d be very welcome anywhere else either.”

Izuku grimaced, looking down at her. He did have the extra room, let alone the extra apartment, though that was currently unfurnished. He did also need some help with the cafe, already there were so many customers that the line was sometimes getting really long during the afternoon rush.

“How would you feel about being a barista?”

—

Over the next few days, Himiko (as she insisted he call her) and Izuku fell into an easy routine. Himiko, now on a diet high in mussels and not starving half to death, was actually a very fun person to be around despite her constant high energy and her admittedly not-always-the-most-sane behavior. She was also a great barista once she knew how to make all the drinks. The customers loved her as well, and with a little makeup, wearing her hair in only one bun at the back of her head, and a face mask, she was barely recognizable as the villain she had confessed to Izuku about being.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you right off the bat, but I didn’t think I would get help if I did.” She had told him on her second night sleeping in Izuku’s guest room. Himiko had been crying, and apologizing for not telling him, expecting to be kicked out. Izuku had just shaken his head and hugged her.

“I’d like us to try to find you a therapist, but other than that, I know that if you were going to do something you would have had many opportunities to do it by now.” He pulled back from the hug to meet her eyes. “You are okay to stay here, we just need to make sure no one recognizes you.”

She loved talking to customers, and was having a lot of fun making drinks. Izuku appreciated the help during the rush, and was able to actually balance being in the front and making more baked goods to serve in the back. Now that he had more time to make food, he was thinking of expanding the menu a bit once there was a more regular crowd.

He was going to the gym every morning, some days while Himiko opened the cafe an hour or two earlier just for something to do now that there were two workers. He was making noticeable progress, not much just by looking at him, but even in just a few days it showed in how much he could easily lift. The quirk was getting stronger, and Izuku suspected it was allowing him to get naturally stronger faster as well. He was definitely building muscle faster than the average person.

He also hadn’t dreamed of the eight figures since the night before he met Himiko, but he had woken up a few times to the flash of green light. Himiko had commented that he smelled like ozone those mornings. He hadn’t been able to figure out what was causing it yet, but he intended to once he found a way to.

Mostly, compared to the previous days, life was calm.

Until it wasn’t, of course.

It started the night that Izuku had given Himiko a day off to go see some of her friends. Did he know they were probably villains? Yes. But she promised they were just going to meet up for dinner since she hadn’t seen them in a while and wanted them to know she was alive and that she wouldn’t commit any crimes, which Izuku hadn’t even asked about, and well. She had been doing much better, and it’s not like she’s a prisoner here. He gave her his phone number and told her to call him if she’d be back late or staying somewhere else that night, since he still only had one key to the apartment, and sent her on her way.

She came back before Izuku had closed, looking sort of sad, and sat on a stool she brought behind the counter to talk with Izuku while he wiped down the counter.

“I was talking to my friend tonight, Dabi,” she sighed, opening a flat can of seasoned mussels and getting a few on her fork, “you know about him, probably.”

Izuku sighed and shook his head, laughing quietly. What a life he had right now, talking casually about his roommate meeting a well-known villain for dinner.

Himiko looked around the cafe making sure no one was there before leaning towards Izuku and whispering “According to him, the Shie Hassaikai are hiding something big, and he thinks it’s a kid.”

Izuku paused. “What?” Why would a yakuza group be hiding a kid?

Himiko chewed her mussels. “He was talking to an older ex-member, and they said the old boss had a grandkid that had some kind of powerful quirk, and that he thinks they’re doing experiments with her.” She poked her food around, looking sadder now. “Dabi doesn’t know what to do, or if there’s anything that can be done. He’s crazy, not a monster. But the cops don’t seem like they want to do anything about it.”

Izuku carried a few dirty mugs to the sink, brow furrowed. “Why wouldn’t they want to make a move, especially if a kid is down there?”

“Because there’s no proof besides word of mouth, and the Shie Hassaikai are really powerful, especially with their new boss.” She shudders. “He can make you disappear with a wave of his hand, literally.”

“They’ll have to do something eventually, especially with a kid down there.”

“Dabi thinks they’re scared the new boss is going to kill the kid and just be done with it.” Himiko finished her mussels, moving to wash the can out in the sink to recycle, “I think that’s dumb, but I get it. It just sucks that the kid is just stuck there hurting.”

“It does,” Izuku said.

They worked in silence until closing, and when he finally got to bed, Izuku’s mind was racing.

He needed to contact Dabi, or the ex-yakuza guy. Anyone. He was given the opportunity to help, and even if he didn’t want to be a hero anymore and was happy with just owning his cafe, he would not run away when people needed help.

Chapter Text

That night, Izuku did not dream of the eight figures. He dreamed of flying, of smoke, of arcing green lightning.

Of a child with white hair, watching him grow, watching centuries go by. The fear of him but the knowledge that One for All was safe with the next owner. Izuku saw the man faceless and broken at his feet, feeling relief for finally defeating him.

He felt fear of the man somehow surviving this.

Izuku looked around him, now in total darkness. He pulled his power out of the well in his chest and allowed the green lightning to envelop him, lighting up the space, smelling of ozone and making the ground thrum.

In the shining, dancing light, he saw a man in a suit a few meters away. He wore a shining black mask that completely covered his body from the shoulders up. Izuku could feel when the man focused on him, like a hot iron into his soul.

“You.” The man’s voice echoed around the space, thundering and distant at the same time.

“You,” Izuku said, pulling at more of that well of power, feeling almost endless, exploding into light before launching himself at the man.

—

Izuku woke up sore. It felt like his every cell was bruised, every joint aching from overuse. He groaned as he sat up. He felt almost as if he had to physically hold this quirk down. It felt like it wanted to escape, making him want to run 20 miles and also never move again.

He closed his eyes and sat in bed, taking steady breaths and trying to relax, trying to calm his quirk, and stayed there until it felt like he could move without allowing it out.

Himiko was already at the dining table in the kitchen when he stumbled out of bed.

She wrinkled her nose. “You smell like ozone again.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Izuku joked, “I’m going to shower before I work, don’t worry.”

They ate breakfast in relaxed silence before Izuku broke it.

“I want to talk to Dabi about the Shie Hassaikai.”

Himiko looked up from her food. “You do?”

Izuku stared holes into his scrambled eggs. “I do.”

There was a beat of silence. “Why?” she asked.

“I can’t just sit here knowing that there is someone who needs help,” he said, “who I could try to help.”

“I could talk to him about it.” Himiko moved her food around with her fork, seeming nervous. “Not that I think you would, but you promise not to turn him in?”

“I’d never, especially not if he’s going to help.” Izuku knew from Himiko that Dabi had calmed down in recent months, and hadn’t been committing crime at all (that they knew of) since Himiko had started living with Izuku and getting better mentally.

“I can leave to go see him around seven tonight then,” she giggled “if you can hold down the cafe alone.”

Izuku laughed. “Of course. Make sure to have fun tonight too, you deserve it.”

They chatted a bit longer, mostly about the cafe, before Izuku left to go to the gym and Himiko went to change and go downstairs to open early.

—

“You called me, Naomasa?”

The detective looked up from his desk. In the doorway stood Aizawa Shouta in his hero costume, looking a little bit pissed that he was awake at this late hour of one in the afternoon.

“Sit down, close the door behind you.” He sighed.

Shouta closed the door behind him, and sat down, moving in silence with ease.

“Sorry to call you during your off-hours, but I needed to discuss this as soon as possible,” Naomasa sat up in his chair, reaching for folders across his uncharacteristically disorganized desk, “thank you for coming in anyways.”

“You sounded serious on the phone, and I know you wouldn’t call me if you didn’t have to,” AIzawa said, “so what’s going on?”

“We’ve started seeing less activity from a lot of usually active villains,” the detective handed Aizawa a folder of villain files, “and all of them are connected to this small group calling themselves the League of Villains. We fear they are planning something.”

Aizawa opened the folder and flipped through the files.

“We also have been seeing less activity from a few other villains who aren’t connected to the League and don’t have any known history with their known members.” Naomasa pushed another, slimmer folder to the edge of the desk. “Our criminal psychologists aren’t sure if they would join up, as they tend to work alone.”

Aizawa reached for that folder too. “Can I take these with me?”

“Yes, I made the copies so you could, I know it’s a lot.” Naomasa sighed, looking back at his desk. Scattered piles of papers covered it, leaving it a mess. “We’re just getting antsy here with all these villains going quiet. We just wish we somehow knew what they were doing.”

—

Himiko was having a good time, all things considered. She was no longer attacking people for blood or money, no longer trying to find sketchy places to sleep at night, and had discovered this amazing thing called a latte. Yeah she was still, like, legally a criminal, but she wasn’t doing that anymore. And neither was her friend Dabi!

Though money was getting tight for him, so she would see how long that lasted.

Currently customers were trickling in as people got to their lunch breaks, so she was spending a lot of her time watching people until Izuku came back and she could take her lunch break. She could feel her hunger like an itch under her skin, but so much easier to deal with than before, and only getting easier to ignore as time went on. People-watching helped as well, it was always fun to see people just go about their lives.

The door’s bell rang, and Himiko looked up to see pro hero Eraserhead, out of costume, and some part of her brain started to panic. She knew, logically, that he wasn’t there to arrest her, or he’d have already done it, and probably not in broad daylight. He would be wearing his hero costume for that for sure. Is he here under cover?

Oh no, had she been found out?

Izuku needed to come home now.

She tried to hide her shaking hands as Eraserhead approached the counter. It felt like her brain went on blank autopilot as she rang up his black coffee and blueberry muffin (really, just a black coffee?) and he went to sit down with his order in an armchair to the left of the door, next to a low coffee table.

She looked down, not letting herself stare. He wasn’t going to arrest her, she was going to be fine.

The bell rang again and Himiko looked up to see Izuku, freshly showered and not smelling of Stink just like he said he would, walking through the door. He waved, and she waved back, scampering off through the back door to the kitchen.

She wouldn’t tell him, but she had been worried about him lately. He kept waking up smelling like. Well she didn’t really know how to explain it the first few times. A sharp, bleach smell, but also sweet, but also a little like an electrical fire. She had ended up on ozone after an afternoon of wildly internet searching smells.

He definitely thought she was a little crazy, but it felt like the smell was getting stronger, and he looked worse whenever it happened.

They hadn’t talked about his quirk at all, so maybe it was because of that. Himiko assumed he had some sort of like… intelligence quirk? She wasn’t really sure, something with his brain, but it shouldn’t be making him smell like this. She knew she had a better than average smell due to her quirk, but this seemed excessive.

She popped open the container holding her lunch (this cucumber salad thing she had found online that went well with smoked mussels, she was always looking for new recipes to try with them) and tried not to worry about Izuku or Eraserhead or anything at all. She was going to see Dabi tonight, and she needed to focus on that.

—

Izuku came back to a very quiet afternoon, though he did walk in the door to a man who looked remarkably like Eraserhead sitting in his cafe. He didn’t say anything, as most people don’t know who Eraserhead even is and he only knew from fan forums, and he didn’t want to weird the man out. After eating her lunch, Himiko pulled him aside during a quiet moment and confirmed that it was in fact Eraserhead, and that she had been really worried he came in there to arrest her. He assured her that the disguise was working well, and that if anyone came for her they’d figure something out, not mentioning that he already had about ten plans on where they’d hide her and how he’d help her avoid arrest.

Not that he thought anything would happen. He just liked to be prepared.

Otherwise, it was a quiet day. The customers were polite and there were a lot of them, the new foods we had added to the menu for around dinner times had done great, and there was nothing big on the news.

He really should’ve expected something to go wrong.

As he was sweeping the floor after flipping the cafe’s sign to closed, his phone rang. Himiko’s name showed up on the screen.

He answered. “Hi, you okay? You don’t usually call.”

“Oh yeah we’re fine. Dabi said he can talk to you, but that he isn’t very sure about going to the cafe or anything.” Himiko then lowered her voice, her wide smile present in her whisper. “I think he thinks you’re secretly a cop.”

Izuku could hear a lower male voice reply something he couldn’t make out, and then Himiko giggled, before moving the phone closer to her face again. “I will bring him to the cafe, if you don’t mind.”

Izuku peered out the front windows, towards the other houses, towards possible cameras. “Maybe bring him through the kitchen door, there would be less possible cameras here. Dabi is a bit recognizable to the police.”

“Sounds good! Be home soon.” Himiko said, before the line went dead. Izuku let his arm fall down, phone clutched in his hand.

There was no going back from this point, it seemed. Himiko was a villain, yes, but once she had a stable source of nutrients she lacked from her quirk, it seemed all her crime had mostly been her quirk pulling her to get blood for her survival, and the cognitive dysfunction that came with long-term starvation like that. Dabi was a villain, committing crimes seemingly because he liked to, known to be extremely violent, and soon he was going to be in Izuku’s kitchen.

But without his information, Izuku couldn’t help that kid, should they exist.

Izuku took a deep breath, calming himself. It was going to be okay, and if Dabi hurt him, Himiko was definitely going to bite him. That had to be some kind of threat.

—

Half an hour later, well into the night, Himiko let herself and Dabi into the kitchen. Izuku could admit that Dabi drew an intimidating figure, but stood out like a sore thumb in the clean kitchen. His spiked, black hair, discolored and stapled skin, and entirely black clothes, most of which seemed to be covered in a fine layer of ash, make him look lost next to the stainless steel counter.

“Please, follow me,” Izuku said, smiling and gesturing to a side room. The room, probably an extra storage room, had sat empty until tonight. Izuku had dragged in a table and some chairs, making a very private but slightly claustrophobic meeting room. If this was going to become a regular thing for him, he would need a better place.

Dabi raised an eyebrow, but followed him into the room.

“Sorry about the furniture, I just wanted somewhere more private,” said Izuku as he gestured to the table. Dabi sat down closest to the door and crossed his arms, strategically so he could just leave if needed, and Himiko sat to his left. Izuku sat across from him.

“Himiko said you wanted to ask about the Shie Hassaikai.” Dabi’s voice was rough, and his expression flat.

“Yes, I was interested in trying to help get the kid out, if what you told Himiko is true,” Izuku said.

“Why are you talking to me then?” Dabi leaned forward. “Why not just talk to your cop friends? Maybe even some heroes?”

“What?” Izuku asked as Himiko squawked.

“I told you he isn’t a cop! I like to think I’d’ve noticed.” She said, angrily crossing her arms.

“No offense, but I don’t believe you,” Dabi said to her, then turned back to Izuku. “How do I know you aren’t just some cop or Shie Hassaikai guy, trying to get info on what people know?”

“Well I’m not sure how to disprove it besides saying I’m not, if I’m honest.” Izuku raised his hands in a surrendering gesture.

Dabi stood, and a small spark of flame jumped on his shoulders. Izuku’s body stood defensively, and his quirk fought to escape again. Himiko moved to try to calm Dabi. How did this get bad so fast?

As Dabi raised his arm threateningly, Izuku felt his control on his quirk snap.

—

Dabi had not thought much of Himiko’s roommate. She had totally dropped off the map one day, and then came to hang out at their usual spot a week later, more mentally stable than he’d ever known her, talking about some guy. Dabi saw the crazy girl as something like a sister, though he’d never admit it, and just about saw red when she started telling him everything but also nothing about this guy she lived with now.

The short list of things Dabi knew about Midoriya Izuku:
He liked to work out (basic teenage boy)
He was very smart (possible intelligence quirk), helped Himiko become a functional member of society, and got her a job.
He sometimes smells weird (Dabi did not think he needed to know this).

He didn’t really know how to feel about the guy. He’s glad he helped Himiko, but also mad that it meant he saw less of her.

And then the guy wants to meet him to talk about the Shie Hassaikai? Suspicious. This asshole had to be a cop or something. It didn’t help that a day before, the ex-member he knew had gone missing. This could just be a guy trying to clean up loose ends for the yakuza.

If he gets a bad feeling, he could just torch the place.

So he follows Himiko to where she lives with Midoriya. It’s almost worse when he meets him, he looks about the age of Himiko and so innocent. Big green eyes and a hesitant smile, like he’s nervous, which he should be, gesturing him into a side room as if it doesn’t look like a very obvious trap.

Dabi won’t be falling for this for a second, and he doesn’t intend to let this guy leave.

So as soon as the situation feels bad to him, and he feels that gut feeling of danger, he tries to torch the place and leave. Himiko was trying to calm him down when he raised his arm, and suddenly it seemed like Midoriya snapped.

Dabi’s ears popped as the pressure of the room seemed to get endlessly heavier, electricity cracking in the air around them. The lightbulb overhead shattered, and he felt the tiles on the floor shudder and crack. Some primal survival instinct in the back of his mind was screaming about danger, some predator nearby about to swallow him whole, but no. It was just Midoriya, Himiko’s little civilian roommate with some suspected high intelligence quirk, eyes glowing in the darkness like the lightning arcing off of him, glaring at him.

“You will not threaten me in my own house.” His voice echoed despite the small room, sounding like many voices layered at once. “You will not harm me or Himiko or this building. I just want to know how to help you rescue that kid.”

Dabi decided at that moment that if he was any less of a man, he would’ve pissed himself right then and there. Luckily, he was better than that, and honestly somewhere beyond the point in terror where that happens.

The air was getting so cold he could almost see his breath, like Midoriya pulled all of the heat in the room with whatever force was making the air press down on them all so heavily. Those glowing green eyes bore holes through him. He didn’t even know what to say, if he could even get any air in, it smelling suffocatingly of the ozone Himiko had described.

He fell to his knees, the pressure and the feeling of danger getting to be too much.

“Izuku, you need to breathe. He isn’t going to hurt us.” Himiko’s voice was quiet and worried. She had managed to keep standing, but was shivering a little as the temperature continued to plummet.

Izuku slowly turned to look at her, and Dabi felt it like a weight off his shoulders.

“Please, Izuku.” Himiko said.

Midoriya closed his eyes and took a breath, and the room immediately went back to its original state as if the last thirty seconds hadn’t happened. Dabi watched as Izuku’s hair and clothes stopped moving as if blowing in the wind, watched his shoulders relax, watched as he stopped glowing.

He blinked his eyes open to the darkened room, and smiled apologetically, shrinking in on himself as if embarrassed. “I am so sorry about that, my quirk has been on edge all day,” he looked around, “maybe we should just talk about this in the apartment.” Midoriya once again looked at Dabi, who felt the phantom weight of his attention back on his shoulders. “That is, if you plan to not burn us all to ash?”

Dabi nodded. There was no way this guy was a cop. If he wanted to save the kid, it would work best with the crazy powerful teenager on his side rather than against him.

Chapter Text

Since the previous meeting room now had lightbulb glass embedded into the walls and Dabi didn’t seem keen to try to hurt either of them, Izuku just brought Dabi to the apartment. The man seemed to eventually relax, sinking into Izuku’s couch, but he never let his guard down. They talked for a few hours about the kid, the Shie Hassaikai, and plans for how to get the kid out.

Dabi had heard a few rumors since, and recently, the ex-yakuza he knew had gone missing, assumed dead. The kid, supposedly a girl, was being experimented on by the Shie Hassaikai, supposedly to make a new drug, but Dabi was unsure. The Shie Hassaikai already dealt trigger but didn’t seem very interested in it besides the money.

Dabi’s thought? They were making weapons, and somehow the girl was involved.

Izuku took a few minutes on the computer to find the blueprints for the building the Shie Hassaikai operated out of, so they at least had a general idea of the inside of the building. They poured over it for a few hours, with plans of how to enter and where the girl might be, only moving to refill coffees and get food.

In the end, it was decided they needed more information, and Dabi said he would ask around if he could. The Shie Hassaiaki were not to be messed with and would take interest in anyone asking questions, so it would take a while and he’d need to be careful.

As Izuku showed him out, Dabi turned to look at him in the kitchen door to the alley behind the building.

“You’ve got some insane power, kid.” Dabi looked sincere. “Why aren’t you a hero student? They’d love you.”

Izuku thought back to All Might dying in front of him, to Nighteye intimidating him through the television. “I just don’t think it’s the route for me,” he laughed quietly.

Dabi considered him for a moment. “Stay safe, kid. Doing stuff like this puts you on a road you can’t come back from.”

“I will,” Izuku said.

Dabi turned and left without a wave goodbye.

As Izuku shut the door, Himiko poked her head through the door between the kitchen and cafe area. “Are you okay?”

He glanced at the room off the side of the kitchen. Glass from the lightbulb was embedded into the concrete walls, and the ozone smell had yet to air out. “I’m not really sure.”

She came through the door and looked at the room too, hand on his shoulder. “What was that, earlier?”

Izuku closed his eyes, swearing he could see the figures from his dreams in the darkness there. “I’m not really sure of that either.”

—

Aizawa Shouta would be the first to admit that he probably drank too much coffee. But as an underground hero and a teacher on two opposing shifts, he thinks he is allowed this one vice if it keeps him awake. He didn’t even have students this year, and the year was coming to a close, but Nezu made sure he was busy regardless. He thinks that it’s as close to punishment for expelling his class as the rat is willing to get. His coffee intake only went up through the year, and the break before he got new students was in sight, which meant catching up on sleep.

Regardless, he was interested when a cafe opened along his patrol route, and tended to be open until at least midnight, run by two teens. Either the owner of the cafe was absent or it was owned by one of the teens, and Shouta hoped it was the former but figured it was the latter. He thought the green-haired boy owned it, and the blonde girl was his employee, but they really acted like siblings and equals.

Shouta ended up making himself a regular there, usually stopping sometime before his shift or if they were still open when he passed by. They definitely knew who he was from the first time, looking through files in an armchair there after looking around for cameras, so he wasn’t surprised when they didn’t seem to mind when he showed up in hero costume. The blonde girl was jumpy and nervous, but the boy, Midoriya, always was calm and could make his coffee in record time.

As the weeks went on, and school ended, he started going earlier in the day when he had the chance. His husband and son definitely noticed when he disappeared, but that was okay. If the work wasn’t extremely confidential, he would bring his laptop and do the work there, or sometimes he would bring a book. He even started making conversation with Midoriya, who apologized that his sister, Ko, was so jumpy. The teen was smart and relaxed, and his conversation was always a good reprieve from trying to figure out where Dabi and Toga had disappeared to.

Toga had been well on her way to becoming a high-ranking villain. It was definitely partially her parents fault, it was known that people with quirks that required ingestion of certain things would do crazy things in order to get them, not always in their control. It really shouldn’t have surprised anyone when she drank the blood of her classmate and ran. He lived, luckily, and her parents were under investigation, but there was only so much that could be done without knowing where Toga was.

Dabi, on the other hand, has been seen, and recently. He had heard through his contacts that Dabi had been laying low, still not committing crimes, just sort of living as a civilian or as close as he could get. People still saw him in known neutral places, or villain-owned bars, but he seemed to have had a change of heart since Toga disappeared. Shouta still wanted to know why. No one went from cremating people alive to normal civilian life without good reason.

On top of his normal workload of stopping people and the paperwork that came with it, he was strung out.

Shouta barely noticed when Midorya walked over to him with a refill.

“Are you okay? You’re looking more tired than usual.” Midorya asked, setting the new coffee on the low table next to the armchair.

Shouta looked up to him, seeing the bags under his eyes. “Speak for yourself, kid. Have you been sleeping lately?”

Midoriya laughed. “When I can.”

“Are you taking enough time for yourself? This place is open every day, when do you see your friends?”

Midoriya shrugged his head. “I don’t have many to see, but they come over when they can. I mostly just work here and go to the gym.”

Shouta sighed. “Make sure you don’t burn yourself out making coffees all day, Midoriya,” he said.

“I don’t think I ever could, but I’ll make sure not to,” Midoriya reassured him, walking back to the kitchen.

Shouta watched him go. Maybe he should bring his family here sometime, hopefully his son would get along with Midoriya. He knows they both need friends.

—

Izuku assumed Dabi had an apartment somewhere, but he also really seemed to like Izuku and Himiko’s. They only had two bedrooms so Dabi either eventually went home to wherever he lived or sometimes fell asleep on the couch, but Izuku found he really didn’t mind.

Plus it was making him start to get furniture for the apartment downstairs. Maybe Dabi could get out of wherever he lived and just live downstairs. It would certainly make planning for the Shie Hassaikai Raid, as they were calling it, a lot simpler if Dabi was just downstairs. And Izuku would admit he was worried about the man. He was obviously exhausted and overworked doing whatever he was doing in his free time. His burns, while not getting worse as of late, looked like an easy way to get diseases.

Dabi was his friend, he was allowed to worry.

No matter how exhausted he was, he kept coming back with good information for their rescue mission, whether it be times people patrolled the halls or computer passwords. It ended up with a fully-fledged plan on getting in, getting the girl, and getting out, hopefully with as much information and papers and evidence as they could hold. While no plan survives contact with the enemy, any plan is better than none, and they were working on back ups and meeting places and everything they thought they could possibly need.

They’d be moving soon, they needed to get her out of there.

Chapter Text

Shouta sipped the coffee he had just picked up from Midoriya’s cafe as he walked past the yellow police tape in front of the Shie Hassaikai’s compound. The sirens and lights on the police cars had long been turned off. Minus the alleged carnage he was about to walk into and the noise from the press, it seemed like a quiet residential street.

He looked up at the building. Quiet, still, the only thing out of place was the front door taken entirely off its hinges, rested with care against the wall next to it.

He sighed and entered the building.

Naomasa heard his approach and turned. “Ah, Eraserhead, thank you for joining us.”

“I’d have been sooner if I could,” Shouta said, “but I figured the evidence wasn’t really going anywhere.”

“What little of it we have,” Naomasa replied, “I’ll show you what we know.”

He was led down a series of hallways, all sparkling clean, until they got to a door left ajar.

“This is our only solid piece of evidence.”

Naomasa gestured inside, and Shouta stepped into the room carefully. The room was printine, with little to no personal items, nearly all white. The corpse in the bed matched the color so well Shouta almost missed it.

“Chisaki Kai, rumored boss of the Shie Hassaikai,” Naomasa said, “killed sometime early this morning. Whoever did it drained him of his blood.”

“Toga?” Shouta asked.

“We don’t think so. Her crimes were always messy, uncoordinated.” He stands next to Shouta, staring at the body. “This was clean, probably planned extensively. It isn’t her M.O.”

Shouta nodded. “What else?”

Naomasa led him out of the room. “I’m going to take you down the path we believe the attacker took through the building.”

Shouta followed him through the halls, watching as they got more bloody as they continued through the building, but never seeing bodies. When he asked Naomasa about it, he shrugged.

“We don’t know where they are, just that they were alive once. All of the blood splatters are from different members of the Shie Hassaikai.”

Eventually they reached the basement. It was mostly empty lab after empty lab, with fewer blood splatters here, until they turned a corner to pure destruction.

A hole gaped down into the earth, somehow not taking the entire building above them with it. Rubble lay at the bottom and dust still hadn’t completely settled from the air, layering every surface around them. From the parts of the room left standing, a larger lab had once stood here, and down what had once been a hallway, across the hole, was a room, door left open.

“We already sent an officer across to look through the room, it’s completely empty.” Naomasa said.

“I’d bet it wasn’t when this happened.” Shouta replied.

Naomasa nodded. “We suspect so as well.”

They stood in silence for a moment, both staring down into the gaping maw in front of them.

“Start looking into people with strength quirks, powerful ones,” Shouta said, mind running, “especially at hero schools, no one with a quirk like this would just run under the radar.”

“We’ve already started,” Naomasa tiredly rubbed his eyes, “but in the wake of All Might dying there have been a lot of people crawling out of the woodwork, bold now because of the hero power vacuum.”

Another beat of silence.

“Whatever this person wanted out of here, they wanted it really badly,” Shouta said.

Naomasa breathed deeply. “I’m almost scared of what they found, if they were willing to do this much to get it.”

—

Eri was the sweetest little girl ever, and if anything happened to her ever again, Izuku would kill everyone who dared hurt her and then himself for letting it happen.

Not literally. Probably.

It had been almost ridiculously easy to rescue her. The Shie Hassaikai Raid went off without a hitch, and planning had gotten much better since figuring out that Himiko could use the quirk of who she turned into (as proven by a very tired Dabi and a slightly singed Himiko when they decided to test it).

The main challenge had been getting through the door. They knew when security changes were, and that the security guard from midnight to 5AM was prone to falling asleep on the job, so at 2AM they just took the front door off its hinges and walked in. There were no cameras on the street due to the yakuza finding them and making the owners remove them, so there was no surveillance to worry about.

Once inside, they went to the room suspected to be Chisaki Kai’s, the current boss, a man in possession of a very powerful quirk that could disassemble anything he touched.

Himiko felt no remorse for draining him of his blood. He didn’t even struggle.

From there, Dabi and Izuku lead the charge, Himiko removing bodies behind them since she hadn’t used Chisaki’s quirk before. As it turns out, Izuku is very good with guns. It felt like he was pulling a long-forgotten memory to the surface, telling him exactly how to hold the suppressed pistol and where to hit, whispering in his ear when he needed to reload and when to just hit his attackers rather than shoot. Killing them was too easy, and it would definitely haunt Izuku for a very long time, but it was for the greater good.

They made a very efficient team.

As they started passing labs or computers, Dabi and Izuku would start loading hard drives or notebooks into their backpacks before Himiko would get rid of the equipment or remaining technology. They were wiping the place clean of everything. If Dabi’s thoughts on a corrupt and in-on-it police force were true, letting them get this information would just lead to another person following in the Shie Hassaikai’s footsteps.

In the basement, they were yards from the door the girl should be behind when Izuku heard footsteps behind them. All three of them turned around to see someone in a bird-like mask behind them approaching fast, hand raised as if to touch them.

Izuku didn’t have a second to think before diving into his quirk and throwing the punch. It strayed right, and the air pressure strangled them all as the ground beneath the building all but disappeared, and the person in the bird mask with it.

Dabi and Himiko back to the wall, staring at Izuku in shock. Izuku, wreathed in lightning and glowing with power, stared at the hole in the ground, then at his aching hand. Not broken, but hurting in a way it never had before. The lightning tickled, and the humming in his ears brought him back to the moment. He let go of his quirk, settling back under his skin.

He turned to Himiko and Dabi. They both just blinked back at him, Himiko’s body melting back into her own as if she lost her hold on it in her shock. He turned to the door, almost crushing the knob in his hand, and opened the door slowly.

Behind it was a small girl, no more than six, with white hair and red eyes and a small horn on her forehead. She looked a little scared but mostly confused.

“Who are you?” she asked, high pitched voice quiet.

Izuku heard Dabi and Himiko move behind him to peer in the room. “I’m Izuku. Who are you?”

“Eri.” She looked past him, to Dabi and Himiko, who was luckily no longer wearing Chisaki’s face.

He tried to smile. “Well Eri, we’re here to save you.”

She walked closer, standing like she was trying to make herself smaller. “Really?”

Izuku nodded, kneeling and holding his arms out. “Yes. We’ll need to carry you though, and you’ll need to keep your eyes closed. You won’t want to see what’s up there.”

Eri looked at the mostly empty room around her, and then walked to Izuku, taking his hands. “Okay.”

Izuku picked her up, and after helping Himiko and Dabi across the new gap in the floor, they all walked out the front door, Izuku’s black hoodie wrapped around Eri.

Now Eri sat in his living room, playing a matching game with Himiko, while Dabi sat with him in the kitchen reading through seemingly endless lab notebooks.

That weapon they were making? A drug to erase quirks permanently. They had made, if not perfected, a short-term quirk erasing drug, but were well on the way to a permanent one. And if the labeled vials they had picked up were labeled correctly, one may be the final product.

They had been making it by using Chisaki’s quirk on Eri repeatedly and harvesting her blood. Izuku just about lost it reading through the files. Dabi had made him go take a walk about it.

Dabi had taken a surprising liking to Eri. He was very gentle with her, careful to not startle her. For as short as they’d had her, Dabi had been treating her like a younger sibling, maybe even a daughter. Izuku’s suspicions of Dabi having had younger siblings was really confirmed by his treatment of Eri. It didn’t look like he was trying very hard, these were just things he had done before.

Izuku only left the kitchen table of lab notebooks to put a sign on the door downstairs that the cafe was closed for a family emergency.

—

Later that night, after sorting through the majority of the notebooks and getting Eri asleep in Himiko’s bed for the night, Dabi approached Izuku in the kitchen.

“Midoriya.” His voice was clipped, maybe even nervous.

“Dabi, I’ve told you you can call me Izuku if you want,” Izuku said, closing the notebook he was currently reading and sitting back in the dining chair.

“Izuku, I want to turn my life around.”

Izuku looked up at him, raising his eyebrows. Dabi wasn’t looking up from his hands, fingers messing with one of the staples there.

“Oh?”

“Yeah, I,” Dabi pursed his lips, “I’ve been thinking about it for a while, mostly since Himiko found you and got her shit together.”

Izuku gestured to the chair next to him, moving the stack of notebooks away from him. “Sit down, let’s talk.”

Dabi sat. “I want a job down at the cafe. I want to start making legitimate money, and I want to get a better place, and I want to figure out something with my scars so I can just try to start over.”

“Well I can help with two of those really easily,” said Izuku, “though I’m not very sure about the third one.”

“I’m not either, and unfortunately they’re pretty recognizable.”

“Well, you could work in the kitchen, baking and stuff.” Izuku started thinking. “I could teach you the recipes, and it would make sure we always have enough food. Maybe even open up the menu more, maybe sandwiches-”

“Whoa there, slow down,” Dabi said, raising his hands.

Izuku laughed quietly. “Sorry, I just think this is a really good idea. I’ve finished furnishing the apartment downstairs, if you want it.”

Dabi nodded. “Thank you, seriously.”

“No worries, Dabi,” Izuku said, “I’m just happy to help.”

Dabi stared at him for a moment, expression thoughtful. “After all of this, I still don’t get why you aren’t trying to be a hero. We all have our own reasons for stuff, I’d know, but…” he trailed off, thinking.

“The raid was possible because I’m not a hero, or a hero in training.” Izuku looked at the notebooks. “There was no red tape to cross, no one to wait on, just planning and then action. If I’m going to be a hero in any way, it’s this way.”

“I think you’re a hero no matter what after today, kid,” Dabi pointed towards where Eri was asleep in Himiko’s room, “especially to her.”

Izuku looked in that direction, as if he could see Eri, safe and rescued, here in the apartment. “I guess I am.”

Dabi nodded before getting up, probably to go crash on the couch again. He paused in the doorway, hands on the frame, before turning and nearly whispering “Touya.”

“What?” Izuku asked.

“Call me Touya. I’m starting over, new life, new name. Dabi is gone.”

Izuku blinked. “Okay, Touya.”

Touya made a face, like he wasn’t very sure about being called that, and then turned and left for the living room.

—

Dabi-(Touya?) looked at himself in the mirror.

White hair, not seen for a good few years besides at the roots between dyes, was stark in the reflection of the man in front of him. If he ignored the scars, he could see the future that could’ve been. If he found someone who could fix them, he’d be a new man.

He looked so much like his mom. The hair color, the curve of his jaw, the shape of his nose. He didn’t look like his father besides the eyes, harsh and blue.

He should really visit her, someday.

Touya wasn’t sure what about these people made him want to be better. Himiko had proven you can turn your life around, Izuku was pouring with support and care and knowledge of how to get him there. Eri he knew nothing about, but she reactivated some older brother instinct in him he didn’t know he still had.

His hands gripped either side of the sink and he kept staring at himself. He could feel the old him, Dabi, laughing at this. A Dabi from a long time ago, though. Looking back, Touya had wanted out to some effect for a while.

He took the leap. He asked for help and took the hand that reached back to him. He got a job, he got a better place to live, he was getting out.

Shit, he’d gotten new clothes. They didn’t even really smell like ashes. Touya just thought that was how he was always going to smell, like a bonfire recently gone out (according to Himiko).

His new apartment was kind of empty, but it was his first night there. He started work the next day. It helped to have Himiko so close. The girl was not much like the one he had initially become partners in crime/friends with, but he found he preferred her in her right mind.

His hands moved to the quirk-enhanced burn cream Izuku had handed him earlier, after saying that he remembered the brand from elementary and middle school (and if that didn’t make Touya worry for him) and that it worked really well even for scarring.

He put it over the burns on his hands and face, to try. It was better than nothing.

Touya (not Dabi) looked at himself in the mirror, making sure to get all the parts of his scars, careful around the staples. Hopefully, he wouldn’t need them much longer.

—

Nighteye stared at the hole in the basement of the Shie Hassaikai compound, nervous.

Tsukauchi Naomasa stood next to him. “We still haven’t found anyone with a strength enhancer quirk that could do this much damage, though trigger may be involved.”

The hero did everything in his power to not tense up, to not show any emotion. He couldn’t let the detective think he knew anything. “Just keep looking, maybe something will turn up.”

He needed to call a lot of people, now. He recognized this kind of destruction. This was a lead on All Might’s quirk. They had finally shown themself, and it was unclear if it was for the heroes’ side or against it.

“Hopefully, but with this taking care of the Shie Hassaikai and the incredible lack of evidence, I’m not sure how much work will be put into finding who did it. We basically just have this hole, the blood trail, and the corpse of Chisaki.”

Nighteye nodded. This wasn’t good.

Chapter Text

It was easy to cross police tape when you could warp, and it took only two minutes after the police left the scene for the day for a man made of black and purple smoke appeared at the hole in the basement of the Shie Hassaikai’s base.

Glowing yellow eyes observed the wreck. Power seen before by nearly everyone in Japan, but more reckless. More untrained.

He took note of the size of the hole, of the small misting of blood on the intact floor.

The League of Villains would not be able to recruit the dead men of the Shie Hassaikai, but he may have just found something his master lost.

—

Touya took to the kitchen just as well as Izuku took to vigilantism.

The kitchen in the cafe was now known to be Touya’s territory, and no one was about to contest him on it. He had mastered all of the cafe’s recipes in a week, and improved upon them all in the next, much to the joy of the customers. Even Eraserhead had complimented the new blueberry muffin recipe the first day they put the new ones out. The others were only really allowed in to watch, or when Touya wasn’t in there, besides Eri, who he let help ever since she had shown an interest in it.

After the first week of Touya taking over the kitchen, Izuku had asked Touya to teach him how to fight, and Touya agreed. Izuku learned incredibly fast, and it helped that Touya wasn’t too bad a teacher. Izuku was decently closed-lip about what was motivating him to go into vigilantism, but Touya and Himiko both knew it had to have been rescuing Eri. Izuku had given up on heroics, but after saving Eri, he had proof he could get out and help people, even if vigilantism was the only way. They both knew he was smart enough for it, getting into security cameras and databases. But with knowing how to fight? He could be unstoppable.

—

Izuku found that there was a lot of power in simply knowing things about people. Typically, vigilantism looked like running around roofs at night arresting people without the liscense to do so. For him, it was starting to look like staring at screens of cameras, eavesdropping for hours.

People really need to find better places to talk about really illegal things. It was starting to feel like he knew everything about Musutafu, but then he always finds something more to learn.

What he was really concerned about right now, however, was the fact that trigger, even without the Shie Hassaikai, was still managing to get worse in the city. It had gotten so bad one night that Izuku had nervously hacked his way into the hero comms of a nearby hero to tell them about a durg deal going on.

His hands had shaken as he adjusted the mic on his headset and typed in the last command.

“Mrs. Joke?” His voice came through, mechanical and cold.

Her voice showed her surprise. “Who is this? This is a private frequency.”

“Two blocks to the north of you is a trigger deal,” Izuku tried to keep his voice level, even though his voice changer would erase any emotion from his words, “if you don’t move fast you’ll miss it.”

“Who is this? You need to give me your name.”

“You need to run, time is ticking.” He felt a little bad being rude, but he needed to hide all parts of his identity possible. He needed to act unlike himself, and he needed her to go stop the deal.

He heard Mrs. Joke start running, and watched her on the cameras as she started running to the trigger deal. “This better not be a trap.”

“I would never,” Izuku said, “I just want to help.”

“Who are you? You can’t just hijack hero comms like this.” She now stood over the alleyway where the deal was taking place, about to jump down.

“Nobody important.” Izuku then disconnected, and watched on screen as Mrs. Joke announced herself and ultimately arrested them, stopping the deal.

As he overheard conversation about a vigilante on the comms, he smiled, and started typing away to find more crimes. This worked, so he’ll have to keep it up, especially in the short break until the new school year starts up while more heroes are out.

—

As the mystery of the Shie Hassaikai Raid faded into the background, a new mystery arrived: Nobody, a voice over the comms guiding heroes to crime. While not yet a true vigilante, he was high risk.

—

Shouta sat in his car outside UA, sipping his coffee. School only started yesterday and he already knew this would be a bad school year, and not even just because of his students.

With the loud and violent fall of the Shie Hassaikai, and the seeming disappearance of villains Toga and Dabi, came the near silent rise of a new vigilante, and this guy was a pain in Shouta’s ass. The heroes had been calling him Nobody. A voice, robotic and cold, speaking over the hero comms whenever he wished, telling them of crimes happening just outside their vision for them to stop. He knew all of their schedules and routes, and seemed to live on the cameras of the city. He knew more about them than they did of him, and that was dangerous, but he hadn’t done much yet to warrant action beyond hacking hero comms. His only interactions with heroes so far were to direct them to crime nearby, mostly drug deals.

Fortunately, he was only helpful, if a bit unsettling the first few times. Unfortunately, Shouta had to deal with this on top of the new school year beginning.

All of the kids in this year’s class have potential, or they wouldn’t be there. However, they are kids, and they’re going to mess around and stuff. It all comes down to if the potential outweighs any negatives of keeping them in the class.

Bakugou Katsuki is loud and overuses his quirk wildly, but with control and a few PR classes (and probably therapy of some kind, there is no reason to be yelling at everyone around you like that) he would be fine.

Yoarashi Inasa is hyperactive and does not get along with Todoroki Shouto, but give it time and he will calm down, honestly the hyperactivity shows his enthusiasm to get better.

Mineta Minoru… well he’ll really need to prove himself to stay, if Shouta is honest. He’s a creep who has enough potential to not be that he’s worth keeping around for now. Shouta is just going to keep a close eye on him, and the second he becomes not worth it he’s gone. He isn’t going to make anyone deal with him more than he has to, but he’d like to be sure about his decision and he’s only seen the kid half a day now.

He looked at the clock, grabbed his bag, and got out of his car. Class starts soon, unfortunately. Hopefully the year wouldn’t be too bad. It helps that he didn’t expel the entire class, he won’t be stuck doing Nezu’s busywork all year.

Chapter Text

The TV in the dark bar crackled to life. A static screen shone, reflecting off the barstools and counter, dimly lighting the figures in front of it.

“Any news?” the deep, crackling voice asked through the speakers.

The TV had no microphone, but the taller figure answered, body a whisper of purple smoke. “I found evidence at the Shie Hassaikai’s old base of massive damage, but no leads since.”

The voice made a noise of acknowledgement. “Keep looking. Whoever did that must be found.”

The shorter figure felt the TV voice’s attention move to him like a weight pressing his body to the floor.

The speakers crackled, distorting the voice for a moment. “Shigaraki, I have something to ask of you too.”

“Yes, Sensei?” Shigaraki asked.

“You need to create something that will draw that person out of hiding. We must find him.”

A moment of silence as both Shigaraki and Kurogiri thought for a moment. Kurogiri’s glowing eyes flickered a bit before he spoke.

“We could reuse one of our previous plans for All-Might, sir.”

—

Izuku had to wait a few months to take his motorbike license test, and until then, he didn’t mind taking the train out of the city. It didn’t take too long to get out to the wilderness from one of the train stops, and out there he could train his quirk.

In the short few months he has had it, Izuku’s (All Might’s) quirk had gotten strong enough that Izuku didn’t feel it was safe to train around others. Going to the gym was one thing, even if he was now running out of heavier weights to use, but quirk training? Let alone that he shouldn’t train his top-secret quirk in public, he didn’t think anywhere could really contain him anymore. There were gyms that had specialized rooms for different types of quirk training, even for particularly destructive ones, but Izuku didn’t think they had much on him.

From his own training and tests, Izuku was currently at maybe 20% of All Might’s theorized power. If he tried to go past that point, his bones started hurting in a worrying way. He had also found that he does need to use it a little each day, or he gets this electric feeling under his skin, as if the quirk itself is trying to escape and use itself. It had taken a lot of trial and error to figure out to spread it over his whole body and keep it contained.

Training has been helping to raise this current ‘maximum’ use, because so far it seems like having more muscle helps his bones not simply disintegrate when he uses his quirk. Izuku has been on a strict gym routine to keep gaining muscle so he can get that maximum higher, and it showed. The quirk also seemed to speed up muscle growth and healing (probably a good thing, considering the whole bone-disintegration situation).

Once he got to the forest clearing that he had made himself, Izuku let his tight hold on his quirk release.

The tall grass of the clearing lowered under the weight of the air and mist started to collect along the ground as a low hum started up. Izuku stood in the middle of it, body relaxed, green light starting to crackle around him as he let loose more of his power. His breath let off steam, and as he looked to his arms, his veins glowed a faint green.

All Might’s quirk had changed for him. The hero had never been seen wreathed in green lightning while fighting, nor had his quirk been theorized to be activated all the time. Did it change for every new user? All Might couldn’t have been the first, maybe the rest of the people he saw in his dreams were other users, all who came before All Might, before Izuku.

He started his exercises, all with his quirk held at that 20% mark. It was a lot of different types of workouts, all sort of melded into something that was ultimately just to get Izuku used to moving with his quirk activated. It had been hard at first. So much power ran through him that initially he was having trouble controlling his movements. Now, it was all so easy.

If Izuku was going to possibly fight criminals and villains by himself someday, he needed to be able to have control over his movements. He didn’t want to hurt anyone else, at least unintentionally.

Plus, fine control would make it easier to keep his vigilante activities separate from his normal life. Though, at this point, he wasn’t sure which life he preferred.

His vigilante work was starting to make him restless. He was content just talking over comms and directing heroes around. They were used to him as Nobody, a voice on the comms who lead them to stop drug deals and smaller crime that usually goes unnoticed. But he had also let himself stay far too close to his dream of becoming a hero.

He’d like to say it started with saving Eri, the want to be a hero growing back from nothing, but he’d be a liar. It had never truly left him.

Izuku Midoriya was going to be a hero, one way or another.

As Izuku ended his exercises for the day and powered down his quirk, he heard a woman’s familiar laugh, far far away.

—

There were whispers around the underground that night, of a plan to break into UA. Arranged by the League of Villains, a break in to attack a class of students, to really show them who was boss.

A plan to drag something out of hiding, and no one knew what.

Rumors growing, of a man who had lived all powerful for a hundred years, two hundred even, scared of finally meeting death. Crazed at the idea there was someone loose with the power to do it. The same man who had killed Chisaki Kai, the man who stole what they hid in that basement, a man who they all said got rid of all the evidence and bodies, as if nothing ever existed.

Of a man who would look at the spot All Might left vacant and reach for something greater.

Of another man, who stole and gifted quirks, who was scared and enraged. Who was trying to kill the other before he could come into the power that he was assured to get.

As all the criminals who answered the call for the attack met up, these rumors spread between them. A war in the underground that would someday break out, a fight to end all fights between the two men.

Shigaraki called for their attention, and laid out the plan.

—

With school starting up nearby at UA, Himiko and Izuku were always busy during the added morning hours in order to attract new customers (and money) from the commuting high schoolers. It was good money, for sure, but all the fancy orders had Himiko’s head hurting. She was lucky they didn’t allow fully customized drinks or anything, or she would be incredibly lost.

Izuku and her moved like a well-oiled machine around each other, used to working together through the rushes. Even with the unending drinks and breakfast foods, Himiko’s keen eyes didn’t miss Izuku’s longing looks at the UA students.

She didn’t quite understand why Izuku wasn’t going to school with them. He had the quirk, the brains, and the personality of a top hero. Well besides Endeavor, that guy sucks. Himiko gets why Touya had wanted to kill him.

She wondered why he gave that up, actually. She should ask him about that.

Himiko shook her head and focused again on the task at hand, finishing some hero student’s latte while Izuku got his cinnamon muffin. She got the muffin from Izuku and walked to the pick-up area at the counter.

“Latte and muffin for,” she squinted at Izuku’s chicken scratch handwriting, “Kaminari?”

“Ah, thank you!” A blonde hero student ran up, smiling. Himiko recognized him a bit as a regular, someone who Izuku sometimes talked to over the counter while making his order. He started running for the door, mumbling something about being able to get to class early.

Kaminari had been the last of the morning rush for the day, so Himiko got a moment to stand behind the counter and not immediately make a drink.

The front wall, entirely glass besides the metal outline for the door in the middle, had bar seating on both sides. On the back wall was the counter where Himiko and Izuku served people, with a door behind the counter to the kitchen. The wall to the left of the back wall had a bookshelf and some framed photographs on it, with a few tables with chairs at them. The wall to the right had an unused fireplace in the middle, a low coffee table, and a few plush armchairs with side tables. Overall it felt very cozy, in Himiko’s humble opinion.

There were only a few people in the cafe right now, most working quietly on laptops. Eri was in an armchair near the fireplace, curled up and working on a reading workbook. Izuku was pretty sure she had never been taught, and had her doing kindergarten workbooks. She was having a lot of fun with them so far, possibly because Touya told her that for every lesson she finished correctly she would get a mini muffin.

Himiko knew he would give her the mini muffin anyways.

She looked to Izuku, who was watching Eri and smiling. He didn’t regret what he did, even a little. Himiko didn’t either. The three of them were extremely inexperienced parents, but she liked to believe the three of them combined are better than Chisaki Kai ever was.

Izuku noticed her watching him, and smiled, laughing a little. “You caught me.”

“I did,” Himiko said, smiling back. A surgical mask covered her smile, but he knew it was there.

“You can head into the back if you want,” Izuku said, moving to start cleaning the counter, “I shouldn’t need you up front until the lunch rush.”

Himiko nodded and walked into the kitchen to get a snack and talk to Touya for a while. Those new canned mussels were absolutely calling her name, and the smell of the new cranberry-orange scones he was trying out was divine.

—

As the students of 1-A bickered and joked in the seats of the bus on the way to the USJ, Aizawa Shouta brushed off the burst of anxiety that came out of seemingly nowhere. It was just a class trip, what was there to worry about?

Chapter Text

When the HPSC told Hawks it may be hard to track down Dabi and Toga, he had originally rolled his eyes. They were prone to underestimating his investigative ability, and it’s not like two well-known villains could run far from him. He doubted they would stop their criminal ways for long, especially with them both being borderline insane, or at least coming across that way.

It had been a week since Dabi had disappeared, a few more since Toga had last been seen, when he was tasked with finding them. He told the HPSC it shouldn’t take more than a few days to find them both. A couple days to follow leads each, another handful to make the arrests, easy peasy.

It has since been around a month since he was asked to find them, and he hadn’t seen even a suggestion of either being alive.

They had truly dropped off the face of the Earth. No evidence of people being drained of all their blood or burnt to death, no vague threats towards Endeavor, not even bloodless birds found in any parks. He had listened in to the underground, exhausted all his leads, and the HPSC was even entertaining the idea of having him join the League of Villains somehow, an up and coming villain group they hadn’t been able to find much on yet, just to try to see of Toga and Dabi had joined them to lay low.

Sightings of Toga had stopped all at once, which was unusual for her with no increase in attacks from her. Dabi’s crimes had slowly declined to a stop, incredibly unlike him, considering his drive to continue doing “worse” things until he can finally take down Endeavor.

There were two options as far as Hawks saw it.

Option 1, they had both turned their lives around, gotten their shit together, and moved on to live normal lives, or as normal of one as they could considering their reputations and Dabi’s perma-crispy skin. They both would get apartments and jobs and just try to move on from what happened, probably with extensive therapy and a lot of help. Hawks reasoned this could happen, maybe in an alternate universe, where things were better and more optimistic.

Option 2, they both died. Hawks believed this one, but the HPSC wanted proof.

He couldn’t tell his handlers that the lack of activity was proof enough, so now he was sitting on a roof, listening in to conversations using a few of his feathers. He had stationed himself on the roof of a cafe, a few neighborhoods over from where Dabi was last rumored to be, and not far by train from Toga’s last reported sighting. It was a nice day, the weather getting warmer and less rainy, so he was in his street clothes with his wings spread to let the sun warm them.

His few missing feathers were off in strategic locations, listening in to conversations that he was sorting through mentally, hoping something useful was chatted about so he at least had something to show for today’s work.

One thing that no one would ever say about Hawks is that his attention span is unending. Three hours of sitting on a roof, listening to people’s unhelpful small talk, would make anyone get bored. It got to the point that Hawks started playing solitaire on his phone, the conversations an eternally uninteresting background drone. Cool, some guy is redoing his back patio this weekend, whatever.

Hawks sat up. He needed something to do, a break from listening to a lot of stuff he doesn’t care too much about. He’d keep listening, of course, just in case he picked up conversations from the known villain meetup spots he sent feathers to. But he needed some food at least.

His keen ears heard the bell ring in the cafe a few floors below him. Bingo, he’d get some insanely sugared iced coffee situation and that would keep him going until he moved locations to try somewhere new.

A quick jump off the roof and he was in front of a very cozy cafe, the large sign on the front calling it Midoriya Coffee. Family name maybe? Hawks pulled his wings tight to him and pushed through the front door, letting the warm, coffee-scented air brush over him. Thankfully there weren’t too many people inside, so he wasn’t too worried any fans would ambush him for signatures.

At the counter to order, there was nothing but a sign that read “Be back soon! Out for groceries”.

Oh well, Hawks can wait. Gave him more time to listen in for leads. He walked to one of the soft looking armchairs, sat down, and closed his eyes to focus better on the conversations.

“-this quarter is going better than expected-” nah.

“-leaving lettuce in the fridge until it goes bad and moldy-” ew, but it happens to the best of us.

“-you need to meet up with the guy at 21:00, it should be trigger-” he should probably message someone about this one, actually.

“-the wife and I plan to do a herringbone pattern with the bricks, maybe leave space for a pool-” Hawks pinched the bridge of his nose, fending off a headache. This guy again? He really had to move that feather.”

A small commotion in the room behind the counter made him open his eyes, and the door opened. A small child ran out from behind the counter, holding what smelled to be a cranberry-orange scone. She looked around the cafe before zeroing in on him. The child ran up with the scone in hand.

She stood before him, held the scone out, and then started talking in a very quiet voice.

“Touya said he wanted another person to taste-test the scones because I always say they’re good and they are always good but he said he wanted someone with different taste to try it so I brought it out here to find someone and you’re the only person with no headphones on.”

Hawks blinked. That was a very long, quiet sentence.

Hawks, much like most birds, couldn’t digest many things besides raw meat. How does he explain that to a random child? Especially since that wasn’t public information?

Just as he was about to start politely refusing the scone, the door behind the counter opened slowly. Both Hawks and the child turned to look at the man who poked his head into the main room of the cafe.

The man was on the taller side, with short, white hair, blue eyes, and what seemed to be some sort of healed scar on parts of his face. Most of his body was hidden behind the door, besides a large, pale hand holding it open.

Damn, if Hawks wasn’t so recognizable he’d try for his number. This guy was kind of cute.

The man looked very worried, and kept avoiding Hawk’s eyes, mouthing something to the effect of “please come back here” to the child. Hawks looked at the child. Pale hair, pale skin. Maybe related?

“You said you needed someone else to try the scone,” said the child, her voice quiet.

The man sighed. “I know what I said, please don’t run to random strangers, though.” His voice was deep, a little rough. Why did Hawks have to be famous?

“I’m sorry kid, I can’t try your scone anyways. I’m…” Hawks paused, “allergic… to scones.”

The child frowned. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“It’s okay, I promise.” Hawks smiled. “Now why don’t you go back to your, uh-”

“Uncle,” the man by the door choked out, louder than before. “I’m her uncle, come back here please Eri.”

Hawks turned to the white-haired man again, who was still looking very stressed, not meeting his eyes. He smelled of smoke and pastries, probably from the kitchen. His hand had small burns on it, just like any baker’s would, and seemed to be scared to be seen. Could he be hiding from someone? Or something? Maybe a bad past or something, it looked like some of the scars Hawks could see could’ve been from fights. Regardless, he was definitely the baker of the cafe, and he was definitely good looking (at least by Hawks’ humble opinion).

The child nodded, perking back up. “I’ll just have to find someone else, someone who isn’t allergic to scones!” She ran off to one of the customers working on their laptop. The man reached out like he was going to try to stop her, but then just sighed, closing his eyes and resting his head against the door.

Hawks laughed a little, watching the girl tap on the shoulder of the customer and giving them the same speech as she did him, holding out the scone the whole time.

He turned to the baker hiding behind the door. “Kids can be a handful, huh?”

The baker opened his eyes, looking very tired. “They sure can.” He then looked Hawks over, brow furrowing. “Do you want a drink or something? I can serve you quickly.”

“I can wait if you need me to, it seems like you’re more comfortable in the back,” Hawks said, smiling and laughing a little, so the man knew it was a joke.

The baker looked more stressed for a moment, before taking a deep breath and coming through the door. “No, I can make your order. Just nothing too complicated, please, I am not usually making the drinks.”

Hawks nodded. “Just a black coffee to go, then. Nothing too crazy.”

The baker sighed in what seemed like relief and started working. It was obvious he was usually in the back, as he had to keep looking around for cups, and then lids, but it only took as long for the coffee to brew for him to get it set up. He wore a long-sleeved shirt and dark jeans with a white apron, and those small burn-like scars were on his other hand too.

Hawks watched as the child ran back behind the counter, scone-less, with a note in her hand from the person she handed the scone to. It seemed to be a review of the scone, mentioning that it was delicious and that the cafe should definitely start stocking them. The baker’s niece seemed happy about this, with a very small smile on her face, holding the note in both hands, waiting for him to finish the coffee.

As Hawks took his finished coffee, he brushed hands with the baker. They met eyes, and Hawks definitely held that eye contact a little too long, but oh well, they guy was cute. Hawks decided that he absolutely needed to come back someday, maybe do another bout of listening through his feathers from the roof.

Just to find Toga and Dabi, of course. No other reason.

—

Three hours later in the HPSC breakroom, Hawks facepalmed. He hadn’t even asked the cute guy’s name.

Well, shit.

Chapter Text

Todoroki Shouto is willing to admit he’s had better days. This short morning had sped by, straight for disaster. Waking up had been alright, and he almost went to that cafe his friend(?) Uraraka had been trying to take him to. He didn’t, but he did think about it, and he thought that counted. Then the morning started speeding up, him going through the motions of getting his costume on and getting on the bus and staring up at the bright, shining dome of the USJ.

All that was well and fine. He figured it would be pretty routine for how this school worked: he would be put into some rescue situation, probably the fire area to counter his ice, and made to work in a team with one of the louder members of the class. It would be a little boring, but productive. He would leave afterwards for lunch with Uraraka and the class president, Iida, do some more classwork, and then head to his house to have dinner with Fuyumi and Natsuo if he was home.

All of that came to a screeching halt when a dark, misty shape took form by the central plaza. As the teachers started barking orders, Shouto couldn’t help but stare as a man covered in hands emerged from the fog.

—

Beep.

Izuku’s attention shifted from the latte he was pouring to the radio he had behind the counter. He had put it there in case of emergencies, just a simple radio made to beep if anything was picked up on the local distress and emergency frequencies used by heroes in danger.

Beep.

Izuku finished the latte quickly, passing it to the person across the counter. It was the middle of the day, there must be a mistake. The distress signals would end once a hero responded over the comms, usually only a second or two after the first beep.

Beep.

Izuku turned to Himiko, who nodded for the door. Izuku thanked her quietly and left, heading upstairs with the radio under his arm to check the cameras.

The radio kept beeping, and Izuku found a whole load of nothing.

Thirty seconds later, he was deciding if he should try triangulating radio signals, when he spotted something odd. A camera in a warehouse across the city had caught a man stepping into what looked like a cloud of smoke, which then disappeared. Could this be related? Where did he go?

Izuku’s stomach was in knots. He put his headset on and started listening to the hero comms.

Static, crackling and hurting his ears. Either no one was patrolling right now (impossible) or something was incredibly wrong.

The beeps got faster and then went dead silent too. Izuku’s hands would’ve been shaking if he wasn’t so focused. Where would the most heroes be right now to call?

Looking at his map of cameras, he looked to the empty spot of UA’s high security system. He connected himself to Eraserhead’s comms, finding them crackling, slivers of noise peaking through what seemed to be some kind of frequency jammer.

Something was wrong at UA, and he couldn’t even call for help, the hero comms all down due to what seems to be the nearest tower they’re sent through on UA’s main campus.

His bedroom door opened behind him. He whipped around, but all that was there was Himiko, silhouetted in the hallway light, worry lines creasing her brow.

“Go, Izuku.” Her voice was soft and low.

“What?” He stuttered out.

“Go,” she said, “you want to be a hero, right?”

Izuku made a noise like he was tripping over himself mentally.

“Izuku, you can’t fix this through the comms,” she was wringing her hands. “I don’t want you to throw yourself into danger, but if no one else knows what is going on, you need to go there. I know you’ve been training hard, I know you can fight well enough.” She laughed a little. “Just don’t turn anyone into mist again, okay?”

Izuku didn’t know whether to laugh or cry about the joke about accidental murder. He decided that was to be unpacked later.

“I’d need something to wear, what if they recognize me? My hair is bright green, there’s not too many people running around like that. They’d trace it back to me immediately, especially if I have no alibi-”

“Izuku, you will be fine. Wear a beanie or something to cover your hair, a mask too. Generic clothes that anyone could have. As for an alibi,” she walked over to him and grabbed his hand gently. Himiko held it up and smiled, showing off her extended canines, “we could make it so you never even left the cafe.”

—

Touya had noticed that Himiko and Izuku must’ve left to go get groceries or something, and mostly because he had to make a fucking pro hero his coffee, after Eri tried to force scones upon him. Hawks had tracked him down to his own house, he was so fucked. Did he have to leave now?

And Hawks was making eyes at him the whole time? Not sure what kind of spy tactic that was.

Please, he mentally pleaded to the powers that be, he was done with crime, he realized there was more to living and turned his life around and whatever. He just wanted to be left alone to make his damn scones.

While standing at the counter contemplating how he was going to be running from heroes for the entire rest of his life, Izuku walked back in the door. Touya relaxed, thank god. They needed to make a game plan and figure out how to get him another new identity and-

That is not Izuku. He’s not sure what is wrong here, but something about this Izuku is deeply uncanny.

Izuku’s signature smile and green hair and large red shoes. His dirty apron. His large eyes that peered directly into one’s soul at a mere glance.

Izuku looked at him, and something flashed in his eyes when the light hit them at the right angle. He had only seen that animal-like eyeshine in one other person: Himiko.

This day was becoming entirely too stressful for Touya.

If Himiko is here pretending to be him, where was Izuku?

—

Izuku ran around his room as Himiko, now wearing his face and clothes, walked back downstairs. He had very quickly warned her about his quirk’s power, and promised to explain it more later, before shoving her out the door so he could get going.

His vigilante costume came out to a sweatshirt, jeans, and shoes, all black, and a mask he’d been working on in his free time. It had been a project he made half to start figuring out support devices in his free time, and the other half on the hope of doing hero work someday.

It looked like a half-face respirator, but a little bulkier, so that inside there was the space for a voice changer and some small speakers to project his voice, while also keeping space for all the normal parts of a respirator.

Heroes only knew him for his voice over the comms, he’d need to keep that changed voice if he did need to call on them while outside his bedroom. It may come in handy today.

Near the ear were controls for the comms, which connected to an earpiece he had already put on and a burner phone in his pocket. His stomach dropped when he realized comms were still down, and the distress signal was still silent.

He also managed to dig up some reinforced black gloves, probably Touya’s. It would be better protection than nothing on his hands. He shoved a red beanie on his head and took a peak in the mirror. Better than nothing, his hair was too recognizable. Curse of fluffy, bright green hair.

Izuku popped his window open and stuck his head out. After figuring out how far the jump to the top of the next roof was, he stepped onto the thin ledge outside his window, ramped his quirk to 5%, and made the leap.

Air rushed past him, and he shot past the roof, weightless for a moment, before coming to a hard landing. A small dust cloud kicked up around him. He definitely didn’t need all that to get to the roof, but at least he knew now. His fingers itched for a notebook, this would be his first real-world experience with his quirk, and he’d be writing down everything he learned after this. Izuku set his eyes on UA, let his quirk as loose as he was sure wouldn’t hurt him, and jumped.

Izuku shot above Musutafu, using about 20% of his power, he estimated. The wind tore at his clothes but he’d never felt so free. He’d never flown but this had to be close to the feeling. His smile, hidden behind his mask, was massive. To anyone below, he would’ve maybe looked like a speck in the sky, if they even noticed him.

It took a minute or two before he was touching down on UA’s lawn, near the comms tower disguised in the trees of the forest on campus. Stuck to the side of the tower in the trees was a small box with a small, blinking light on it. Probably the culprit of the comms outage. Izuku took it off and found the switch to deactivate it, flicking it off.

The static over the comms stopped, but it was just silence now. He had to keep moving, he couldn’t restart the distress signal. Whatever was happening had to be around here somewhere, if someone would go as far as to sabotage hero communication in the area.

Izuku jumped back into the air, just as intruder alarms started going off at UA. He was probably finally sensed on campus, they’d be going off for him. Just then, he spotted a bus next to a massive domed building further from campus. He made his way over, just a few steps with his quirk and he was standing next to the empty bus.

There were massive metal doors covering the entrance of the building next to him, but at the very top of the building was a glass dome he could look through. He jumped again and landed on the ledge around the glass dome. He peaked through.

Inside were a ton of disaster zones, which seemed to be the purpose of the building. Must be for training. There were a ton of villains in the central plaza, with Eraserhead fighting them. Near the fountain were three figures standing and not moving. One made of mist, a lot like the security footage, one covered in disembodied hands, and the third was a massive creature with a sort of beak and an exposed brain.

Izuku kept scanning and couldn’t find any students at first, but then spotted one near the entrance, near the hero Thirteen, who seemed to be laying in a puddle of blood. They looked to both still be moving, trying to get closer to the entrance doors slowly. Comms were still silent, neither hero was transmitting a distress signal.

Well, shit. That isn’t good.

The way Izuku saw it, he had a couple options. He could try to sneak in, find and help students, and hope Eraserhead can keep holding his own long enough to either get out safely or apprehend everyone. But he didn’t know how long the visibly tired man had been fighting, Eraserhead could probably appreciate the help of literally anyone else to fight with him.

Plus it would free Eraserhead to go help Thirteen and get on the comms for help.

The choice was obvious.

—

Aizawa Shouta’s movements were almost mindless as he fought off more villains than he could count right now. His eyes stung, like they would for days after this mess, but he could barely feel bad considering how Thirteen was faring. He tried not to think about his students, gone from those tall stairs. How were they doing?

The USJ was so big, he knew he wouldn’t find them if he tried looking right now.

The villain wearing all the disembodied hands in the middle of the room kept muttering to himself, but Shouta couldn’t focus on it. He had to find a way to get out a message to other heroes, this was too many people for him to fight and arrest alone. He didn’t have the time to try to fix his earpiece, it had fallen out of his ear a while ago, and the comms hadn’t been working anyway.

He shouldn’t have brought his students here, but Nedzu had decided they should go anyway while the comms issue was fixed. It was a set up, but for what?

Shouta was only able to catch some conversation above the noises of fighting. He listened as he dodged punches, quirk activated the whole time, throwing his capture weapon to take down villains.

The villain covered in hands was obviously getting restless. “This isn’t working, this isn’t working! We need to do something more to draw them in, Kurogiri-”

“Patience, Shigaraki,” said the man made of smoke, Kurigiri. “We can’t assume they’ll show up immediately.”

Dodge a hit to the head. Disarm a villain with a knife, trip him with his capture weapon and cringe a little as the villain’s head slams the ground.

“No!” yelled Shigaraki, hands balled into fists, “We need to do something more. What if they’re here and just watching? We need to raise the stakes.”

Shouta wishes he had the energy to wonder who they’re talking about. He jumped back, dodging a swing from someone with claws, and wrapped his weapon around their wrist to throw them to the ground.

Kurogiri’s form rippled, and he sighed. “I still don’t think it is the best idea, we need to give them time to show up.”

Shigaraki obviously wasn’t listening. “Nomu!”

The beaked creature next to them both moved, and Shouta tried not to worry about what the wall of muscle would do. It wasn’t nearly as bad as some of the crime scenes Shouta had seen over the years, except that this thing was in some way alive and breathing. Eyes bugged, brain exposed, mouth a weird beak with teeth. He was almost glad he didn’t have the chance to look at it.

“Nomu, kill E-” a loud thump on the metal security door interrupted him. Shigaraki and Kurogiri turned to look up the stairs to the front entrance, along with most of the other villains. Eraserhead took down another villain next to him. Hopefully it is backup. Hopefully, something fixed the comms, and it is a hero breaking down the door now to save the kids and help him do his job.

There was a large dent in the door now, assumingly where the person on the other side hit it. Shouta almost doubted it was a person, considering how much strength would be needed to break through that door. It had to have been a hero with some kind of strength enhancer.

The only sounds were breathing and the far off cracking of the fire in one of the disaster zones before a thunderous noise shook the building and the door burst open, cracks extending up towards the glass ceiling, shattering it.

A dust cloud poured in from the door, something green and crackling buried in the middle.

A cold, robotic voice echoed through the massive building. “Sorry I’m so late. Comms were down.”

The glass started raining from the ceiling, shining like diamonds in the light, tinkling on the ground.

Shouta couldn’t decide if he was happy for the help or absolutely doomed. It wasn’t a hero, it was the vigilante Nobody, the voice over the comms. The man no one had seen in person before, no reports of actual vigilantism beyond directing heroes over private channels and chats (and always being right).

Either way, if Shouta survived this mess, he wasn’t going to live this down.

The green light disappeared, and after a few moments, a short figure in all black appeared at the top of the stairs.

Shigaraki smiled and chuckled. “A second player. You’re who we were told to wait for.”

The figure stood motionless. The silence grew awkward.

“Our Sensei wants us to capture you,” Shigaraki tried again, “he wants to meet you.”

“I feel like there are easier ways to grab my attention than attacking defenseless children,” Nobody said, voice echoing around the building.

Shigaraki stuttered. “It was to get your attention-”

“You knocked out comms, that’s kind of my whole thing.” The figure started down the stairs, slowly. “How was I supposed to know about it if you blocked communications?”

The villains all were looking around at each other. Shouta wondered if he could use this as an opportunity to apprehend more villains. Skigaraki blinked dumbly.

“This was kind of a stupid plan.” Nobody’s robotic voice almost sounded like multiple voices layered. It was obviously put through the same sort of filter as it was over comms, crackling at the edges.

“No it wasn’t,” Shigaraki said, defensive, “because the only big fighters here are Eraserhead and Thirteen, and Thirteen is KOed. You don’t even fight.”

“More heroes are on the way,” Nobody said, continuing closer and closer, “especially since I sent the hero student by the door to go get them.”

Shouta’s eyebrows shot up.

“They’ll be too late! No one can save you or Eraserhead now.” Shigaraki stepped forward, yelling now.

“The boy had engines in his legs, they’ll be here sooner than you’d like.” Nobody’s cold indifference would be funny if the situation was any different.

Shigaraki screamed some unintelligible noise, and then yelled “Nomu! Kill Eraserhead!”

Shouta’s head was through the concrete tiles before he could even think to defend himself. All he knew after was blood and pain.

—

Izuku was so happy he’d already sent engine legs off with the unconscious body of Thirteen to go get help. He had to hold off the villains alone for only a few minutes before someone came to save them all.

Or at least all of the students and Eraserhead. Izuku would be out of here by then, ideally.

He reached into his quirk and was immediately bounding into the nomu. As he repeatedly punched it, jumping back after each one, his brain was running trying to find weakness. Exposed brain and bulging eyes of course, but it was extremely resilient. He wasn’t sure what it was, but maybe it had some sort of absorption quirk?

He developed a method of testing as fast as he could, with the ultimate idea of “hey look at me, I’m annoying, put down that poor man in your hand”. Jumping from a bit away, striking the nomu as close to the head as he could, dodging fists, and jumping back. Rinse and repeat. A few times he was struck, flung in a new direction, ribs hurting every time he breathed. But the nomu kept its hold on Eraserhead, though no longer hurting him due to Izuku’s distraction. A win is a win.

Even if he couldn’t defeat it, he needed to keep it occupied at least until backup arrived. It could be any minute. Unfortunately he felt like he was getting nowhere.

“You won’t defeat it this way, idiot!” Shigaraki cackled almost happily, “The nomu was made to kill All Might, it has shock absorption and strength quirks! Some rando like yourself will never get through it! Once you’re down for the count we’ll take you to our Sensei.”

Made to kill All Might, huh? Izuku would just have to be better than his predecessor, then. Like a whisper in his ear, he heard a far off voice say “That’s our first lead to finding him.”

Izuku would unpack that all later. He got his quirk to 20%. He was going to defeat this damn thing.

He jumped towards the nomu, arm pulled back for a punch, and then swung, getting a solid hit to the side of the head before the nomu swung it’s arm and flung Izuku back, skidding him across the the glass-covered floor and next to a planter at the edge of the plaza.

He quickly met eyes with a few students there, hiding behind the planter to his right. A girl with a frog quirk, a guy with purple balls on his head, and a large guy with short black hair. All looked scared. He had to save them.

Suddenly, ice crawled around the ground, encasing the nomu from the waist down. Izuku got himself to standing, ribs keeping him from breathing fully and bones in his arms aching, and looked to see who it was.

It was someone in arguably the worst hero costume he’s ever seen, and Wash was literally an appliance. It looked like ice encased half their body, and they had a hand outstretched as if they were directing the ice on the floor. Izuku tried not to dwell on their costume, he’d take any help he could get.

He could hear explosions off in the distance as well. His skin was crawling at the thought of Bakugou being here. He definitely was, hero school had been all his hopes and dreams, but damn. Not right now.

“Can you help me free Eraserhead?” Izuku yelled.

The ice student turned to him, confused, but nodded. “I will get Eraserhead if you can get the-” he paused, “whatever that thing is.”

“Sounds good. Watch out for me, I won’t hit you if I can help it.” The student looked like he was going to ask a question before Izuku released all of his quirk that he felt safe releasing and jumped to the nomu again.

It was hard to also keep an eye on the student, and while Izuku would rather he run for safety, someone needed to save Eraserhead. The first punch the nomu brushed off, but Izuku reached for more, felt the bones of his arm fracture during the second, which got the damn thing to finally turn to him. Eraserhead was left crumpled in the pavement but still breathing, a terrible rattling noise.

Shigaraki screamed again, scratching at his neck. “Get the nobody!”

The nomu followed the order with alarming speed. It broke out of the ice on its bottom half and started running for Izuku, who admittedly screeched at the change before leading it further from all the students he knew of. What started was a terrible game of cat and mouse, Izuku running from the nomu, it always on his heels but never quite fast enough.

And then he tripped.

It was as if time slowed down, his shoe skidding on the glass on the floor, sending him sprawling, letting the nomu catch back up with him. As he fell, he looked towards the stairs. A trail of blood led up them to where the student dragged Eraserhead, with the villains all totally focused on Izuku.

Well shit, at least if Izuku dies he had reason to believe Eraserhead and that student lived. Two is more than zero.

This sucked.

His head had barely hit the ground when the nomu grabbed his right arm and squeezed. It started to feel like an out of body experience. His body, far below him somewhere, screamed. It came out of the speakers as this nightmare of a noise, the layered voices sounding like some otherworldly howl.

The student on the stairs looked back over his shoulder. Izuku felt like pleading with him, no, keep going, get out of here.

And then it was all black.

Chapter Text

Blackness. It felt like Izuku was floating in nothingness. He was weightless, and warm, and comfortable. All his worries slipped away and he was left adrift in the void.

Eventually he felt himself move, and his feet touched down on a floor beneath him.

Izuku opened his eyes to the room full of spirits again. He started panicking. No, he couldn’t be here, there were people he had to save.

Just as his breathing started speeding up, a glowing golden hand appeared on his shoulder. He looked up to the face of Toshinori Yagi, younger and healthier than Izuku last saw him.

“You're doing well, my boy,” Toshinori said, smiling. The man still looked thin and lanky, but his smile was wide, his hair wasn’t stained with blood.

Izuku couldn’t talk, the smoke still covered his mouth. He had to leave! They needed him!

“It will be alright, don’t worry. You’re going back soon.” The man turned, gesturing towards a woman behind him. It was the woman from before, with the dark ponytail and cape. Izuku could almost recognize her face, like he’d seen it before in a book or picture.

She stepped forward. “Hello, Nine,” she said, “we’ll get to talk later, but I think I have a gift for you now.”

She reached out, and her hand glowed brighter, and just as her fingers touched his face, he blinked his eyes open to the real world.

—

Todoroki Shouto is sick of this shit. That is a phrase he learned from Kaminari, and he finds it fitting right now.

He could hear him somewhere else in the landslide area, and had started to run for him, when the building shook. He turned towards the noise at the front of the building, near the door. Villains kept running for him and he froze them all to the ground without a second thought, watching the now dented door.

A second boom, the door burst open with a cloud of dust, and the wall cracked up to the ceiling. Glass shattered over their heads. Shouto started running towards the central plaza.

To his left somewhere, he heard fighting again. He threw ice out, freezing the feet of a mass of villains, and saw Jirou and Kaminari. He helped to free them from the frozen villains, told them what he had seen, and they decided to follow him.

After a minute or two of running and feeling the floor shake underneath their feet from the fight happening, they all slid behind a planter in the plaza.

In the middle stood the villains from earlier. Off to the side, closer to the stairs, stood a massive creature with a beak and exposed brain. Hitting it repeatedly was a person in all black, almost moving too fast to see clearly.

It wasn’t any hero Shouto recognized, but they definitely weren’t a villain. And they seemed to be losing, or at least not winning.

Underneath it all, in the fist of the creature, was a mess he believed was Aizawa, his homeroom teacher. If the teachers were down, there was no one besides the figure in all black to protect them all.

The ice was encasing the creature before he could even really think about it. Shouto’s eyes were stuck on Aizawa.

“Can you help me free Eraserhead?” Their robotic voice asked, urgent.

Shouto turned. “I will get Eraserhead if you can get the-” what the hell was that thing “whatever that thing is.”

“Sounds good. Watch out for me, I won’t hit you if I can help it.” Shouto was about to ask, but then the air grew into a physical weight and it crackled on his skin and they were gone, hitting the creature, moving around.

Dodging hits and swings from the nomu, Shouto waited for the person in all black to get the full attention of the creature. Their attacks felt like a physical weight on the space around them, air getting heavier as the second punch hit. The nomu turned, eyes on it’s new target. At the first opportunity, he ran in, grabbed Aizawa in the best but fastest way he could, and lugged him towards the stairs.

The villain in the middle yelled something, and the nomu was gone, running after the person in all black. Shouto got Aizawa into a better hold and started nearly dragging him up the stairs. The rattling of the man’s breathing sent a chill down his spine.

Then screeching, robotic scream from behind him, and Shouto peaked over his shoulder.

The person in all black was limb, their arm held above their head in the creature's hand. It started walking towards the other two villains by the fountain. The swirling purple mist came back, looking a lot like one of the two waiting for the creature.

Shouto had to do something, but he wasn't sure if there was anything to be done. Were those villains only there for the person in black?

He kept struggling up the stairs. Regardless, he had to save Aizawa. That was his job right now, get him up the stairs.

And then, a low rumble in his ears.

Having gotten about halfway up the stairs, he turned again, looking to the plaza. From here he could see a few of his classmates running over, some hiding behind planters or standing at a distance.

The person in all black, still in the grip of the creature, crackled with green lightning, arching off of them and to the floor. Even from this distance, Shouto could see when their eyes opened again, glowing like stars.

They pulled back their free hand, sleeve tearing as they did, and swung.

It happened so fast Shouto barely saw it connect, but he felt the wind from the hit blow against him on the stairs. More glass fell from the ceiling, a new hole in the unbroken part from where he saw the creature streak through.

The ground around the figure was a little pink. Most of the creature, then.

Shouto needs a therapist.

He compartmentalized that, turned, and kept trekking up the stairs, just as he heard police sirens and heroes started flooding in the broken front door.

“Where'd he go?” Someone asked.

Shouto turned. The figure was gone.

—

Agony.

Floating somewhere in the sky, all Izuku could feel was pain. His arms were shattered, and his sped up healing was trying to mend them, but even Izuku knew that not enough of his arms was in the right place for that to do much right now.

The worst part is, he couldn't even do anything about it. His quirk was acting like a wild animal, staying in some percentage Izuku couldn't really move much in, especially in this much pain. He didn't want to risk it getting worse, so he floated high above Musutafu, curled in a ball, trying to calm down.

The adrenaline didn't help. He'd only know the real outcome later, when he got down, but he did it. He saved people. He was a hero!

Well not quite. But sort of!

At least he's hoping he saved them. He at least got rid of the nomu, whatever that was. The way the villain was talking, it seemed like it may have not been quite human. Something with multiple quirks? It was unheard of.

Well, Izuku thought, flying in the sky. Maybe less unheard of than he thought.

The woman in his weird quirk visions gave him something, it seems like the ability to fly. If these were past holders, were these spirits and visions the quirk's way of storing past holders? It did seem to accumulate power. What if it did more than that?

What if it accumulated people? Kept them, even when they were gone, or a copy of them? Or even just their quirks, absorbing them to pass on?

Izuku had so much research to do!

He tried to control his breathing, reining his quirk back in slowly. It had always seemed to have a mind of its own, but right now it surely did. It fought him, but he won, putting it back like it belonged, deep inside where a sneeze wouldn't take out a wall.

Now, how to get down.

It took him a few minutes, especially when he couldn't put out his arms for balance, but he started lowering himself. Luckily it was getting to be night at this point, so it was less suspicious that a figure in all black was descending from the sky. Sightings would make the local news, maybe.

Would the USJ be on the news? In a world of hero fights on the regular, plus UA probably trying to cover it up, it may end up that no one knows anything about what happened.

He lowered himself to his window, which he had luckily left open, and crawled through. After a few tries with his foot and then his hip, he used his forehead to turn his doorknob, walking into the main apartment.

The scene he was met with in the living room would've been heartwarming in any other situation. Himiko was sitting on the couch, comfy pajamas on, dinner on the coffee table next to her. Nail polish sat next to it, and only one of her hands was painted, as if he paused in the middle of it. Touya was sitting next to her, both hands painted, a blue popcorn bowl abandoned in his lap. Both turned to him almost in sync, mouths open.

Eri was asleep in the armchair, curled up in her favorite blanket.

On the TV was the prefecture-wide news station, big white headline rolling across the bottom of the screen: UP AND COMING VIGILANTE SAVES UA FROM CERTAIN DISASTER. Playing was security footage of him fighting the nomu.

Huh. Guess it did make the news.

Touya noticed his arms before Himiko, jumping up and rushing to him. “I don’t know what happened today, but both of you are never leaving me out of the loop again. Once we get your arms fixed, you’re explaining everything.”

Izuku nodded and let himself be led by Touya to the dining table as Himiko took Eri to bed. Touya ended up cutting him out of the torn sweatshirt and for a moment just stared down at Izuku’s misshapen arms.

“My quirk is trying to speed up their healing, we just need to get everything into place.”

Touya shook his head. “You’re lucky I’m used to seeing injuries. This is terrible. I don’t even know that it will heal fully.”

“I feared it might not. Nothing I can really do about that now.” Izuku looked sadly down at his arms and hands. “Is it bad that I can’t feel them very well?”

“Yes, that is very bad.” Touya looked very tired.

“Ah,” Izuku said, “well that’s not good.”

Himiko came back out from the hallway. “Oh my god Izuku, that is bad.”

Touya sighed. “We’ve established that. Help me squish his arms around so we can try to wrap them with the bones lined up.”

“Could we just take him to the hospital? This isn’t something we should be doing alone.”

Izuku sighed. “Not worth the risk. There was security footage of my arm getting crushed, any hospital would be keeping an eye out right now.”

Himiko’s jaw tightened. “I’ll go get gauze and stuff. We’ll get you fixed up.”

It was a long night. Touya holding what was there of Izuku’s arms in place, Himiko wrapping his arms under Touya’s careful instruction, and Izuku gritting his teeth through the pain and staring at a laptop they set up with the news report playing.

No casualties. Low injuries besides Eraserhead. He wasn’t mentioned by name, but some of the footage showed him, as well as bodycam footage from the police on scene after Izuku had left.

They hadn’t recovered the nomu yet. Izuku was unsure they ever would.

The heroes hadn’t arrested the main two villains, even if they had gotten all others in the building.

As Himiko finished the last bandage, making Izuku’s arms truly immobile, Touya stood up straight and crossed his arms. “Now that we’re done, start talking.”

Izuku sighed. “What I tell you tonight cannot leave this room. You must swear to me that you will not tell anyone about any of this.”

Both Himiko and Touya nodded.

Izuku looked down at the table. “Then I’ll start from the beginning.”

—

Touya stared at the wall, resting his head on his hands. “So you were born quirkless, bullied about it for years, and then happened to be in the right place at the right time to inherit All Might’s quirk, and decided to go full vigilante with it?”

Izuku nodded.

“And you,” Touya turned to Himiko, “pretended to be him today so he would have an alibi and so I would, ideally, not worry about it?”

“Mhm!” Himiko nodded. “Sorry about that, I just didn’t want you to worry about it.”

Touya sighed. The kids, because that is what they were, had tried to hide Izuku’s activities from him because he ‘had his own stuff going on’. And yeah he did, but that wouldn’t be helped if one of his roommates and pseudo-family members turned up dead after punching something that could punch back harder.

“No more hiding stuff from me, okay? I know I have stuff going on, but I worry about you guys. You can’t just turn up half dead at the apartment, we have to at least be prepared from now on.”

“In my defense,” Himiko pointed out, “I didn’t know about the quirk stuff either.”

“That is not helping right now,” Touya said. It did make him laugh a little internally at least.

Izuku’s arms made a quiet popping noise. He had explained that his quirk had some sort of fast healing factor to it, and that the popping and crackling noises were probably his bones reconnecting. He was lucky to heal like that too, it probably would stop a lot of the damage that would permanently affect him from all of this.

He peaked at Izuku’s bandaged arms. They would never function the same again, at the very least. The look on Izuku’s face, even as he laughed and joked with Himiko, told Touya that he knew too.

It was a conversation for the morning, Touya decided. They all needed sleep. He peaked at the clock. They had to open the cafe in about 7 hours, and Touya was willing to take that opening shift so Himiko and Izuku could sleep.

Eventually, they fed Izuku dinner, and Touya persuaded both of them to bed. After he knew they were out, he climbed up the stairs to their apartments and through the door that led to the roof.

Neither Izuku or Himiko ever took much interest in the roof, but Touya did enjoy it as a place to hide out from everything sometimes, when he burned himself on the oven or his face looked too much like his father. He had dragged up a table and chairs to hang out on, and was debating getting an outdoor couch too. The fresh air helped him think.

Despite the events earlier that day, Musutafu was quiet tonight. Probably because just about every small-time villain or criminal was just arrested for attacking some kids. The lights of tall buildings closer to the city center sparkled, and out towards the suburbs were the warmer lights of homes. Despite the light, you could still see quite a few stars over the city.

He thought he needed to talk to Izuku’s parents. Touya knew of them as the happy voices on the other end of the phone when Izuku called them every other day or so, and they knew of him as they guy working in the cafe and renting out the other apartment from Izuku. But shit, if Izuku had just permanently disabled himself, they needed to know, and Touya wasn’t sure he trusted Izuku to tell them.

And what would they even tell his parents? He knew that Izuku’s parents would care deeply, and would probably fly back here to check on him and make sure he’s okay. Would Izuku confess his vigilantism to his parents? Would they believe him if he lied?

Would they look at Touya with those same smart eyes and know exactly who he is, who Himiko is, and turn them in?

His worries almost covered the sound of feet touching down on the roof. Only a lifetime of training and experience made him immediately turn.

Hawks stood at the other end of the roof, wings still spread from landing. He was in full hero costume, and looked something beyond tired. It took everything for Touya to not panic. Was this the end? How could he tell Himiko to run, to take Izuku and Eri?

“Back so soon?” Touya asked, thankful his voice didn’t crack. He felt very small, very exposed without that kinda gross leather overcoat he used to run around in. He felt armorless and defenseless.

“Sorry it’s not during business hours,” Hawks joked, but his voice was a little flat from exhaustion. His smile, ever present for cameras and fans, was small and a bit forced.

“That’s alright.” Touya turned back towards the city. Far off, he could hear more sounds of people, but at this time on a weeknight there wasn’t much happening near the cafe.

Hawks walked closer, the thunk of his boots quietly echoing off the buildings around them. He stopped next to Touya and they watched the night go by for a few moments together. Touya hoped the darkness covered the remains of his scars, the new skin there still rough. Up close he thought Dabi was still recognizable in his face, on the back of his hands, everywhere that burnt skin used to be.

Hawks turned to him, sharp eyes probably seeing through it all anyways. “You happen to see a vigilante come through here earlier?”

“I don’t think so,” Touya hoped the lie held under Hawks’ scrutiny. “The one from the news earlier?”

“Yeah, green electricity shooting off them, jumping really fast, gives a sort of sense of foreboding?” Hawks said, joking a little more convincingly now.

“No, sorry,” Touya said, “I like to think I’d notice all that running past my apartment.”

“Ah well, figured I’d ask,” Hawks sighed. “I was sent out looking for him as soon as we knew what was going on.”

They stood in silence for a moment. If Touya wasn’t so scared he’d call it comfortable. The breeze whistled softly, and the far off cars honked, but it was all so quiet.

“When does the cafe open in the morning?” Hawks asked.

“We usually aim for 7 o’clock to catch the rush to UA and work in the morning.” Touya looked at Hawks. His gold eyes had massive bags under them.

Hawks nodded. “I will see you then.”

The man easily stepped off the roof and took flight before Touya could reply. The ex-villain watched the hero fly away, until he was a speck in the sky, and then until he was out of sight entirely.

Hawks would’ve done something by now if he knew. Hawks wasn’t a stupid man, there was a reason the Hero Commission sent him out to do their dirty work. Maybe Hawks just, legitimately, didn’t know.

Maybe Himiko and Touya were safe.

Touya felt his shoulders relax fully for the first time in ages.

Chapter Text

Izuku lay awake in bed for a while after being helped there by Touya.

He didn’t mean to, really, but between the worries crowded in his head and the weird noises of his bones moving back into place, it wasn’t very easy to sleep.

Eventually he just closed his eyes and tried to focus on his breathing. He stayed still in the darkness like that for a while, breathing calm and thoughts silent.

When he opened his eyes again, he was back in that void. Standing in front of him was Yagi Toshinori and the woman. Six other figures stood behind them, all in differing levels of clarity. Some completely shrouded by smoke, and some with parts of their faces and bodies clear of it. None completely clear besides Yagi and the woman.

“I’m so sorry this happened, Nine,” she said, “but at least it looks like One for All is taking care of it for you.”

Izuku looked down at his smoke-covered form. His arms were not looking nearly as bad as they had earlier.

“I think we were right, Nana. One for All is definitely more powerful for him.” Yagi Toshinori was looking at his arms.

Izuku tried to ask about that, but still couldn’t make a clear sound. The smoke over his mouth hadn’t cleared.

“Oh! I never did introduce myself to you,” she said, smiling, “I’m Shimura Nana, but you can just call me Nana. I am the seventh holder of One for All.”

“And I am the eighth,” Yagi Toshinori said, “you know who I am. You can just call me Toshinori.”

“We’ve been talking a lot about how One for All is working for you. It’s definitely more of a power ramp from user to user than we’ve seen before, plus extra healing ability.” Nana’s eyes were far off, as if she was thinking back to memories. “We think the healing is actually just your body speeding up its natural processes so you seemingly heal faster. This may also be how you were gaining muscle so fast.”

Izuku wasn’t sure how she knew all of this about him, but would never say no to quirk theory. A lot of these things were stuff he had been thinking of too.

“We aren’t sure why there was such a power difference between you and I, we think One for All may be preparing for something big. It is, at its core, connected to its other half,” Toshinori said, looking a little sad, “which we need to talk about too, if you stay here long enough.”

“We are kind of bombarding you, huh?” Nana smiled apologetically. “Sorry, you’re usually only here in short bursts, we wanted to get our ideas out while we knew we’d have you.”

Izuku nodded and gave a thumb’s up. He’s sure he’d do the same.

“So, All for One is the opposing force to One for All. All for One has a quirk that can take other quirks.” Toshinori said.

Izuku’s eyebrows rose. A quirk, taking other quirks?

“It can definitely be a little unbelievable. All for One has been around since the dawn of quirks, staying alive by taking other quirks, and ultimately wants to take back One for All and destroy hero society and possibly the world, and take it all over.” Nana said, gesturing a lot with her hands.

Her energy matched Toshinori’s quite well. He sees why they must’ve gotten along in life.

“That’s why I wanted you to keep it secret, and I’m sorry I asked that of you, Izuku,” Toshinori looked to Nana, “We knew that after it was announced on the news that All for One would be looking for you, especially with how Mirai worded his speech about my… my death.”

“Plus, Night had been looking for a successor for One for All. We thought he may try to get you to give the quirk over to whoever he wanted,” Nana said, with a sort of disdain, “and with how the quirk is acting with you, I think it quite likes you, and it is ramping up for something big.”

Just as Izuku was going to open his mouth to try to talk at all, one of the smokey figures stepped forward. Izuku could just see part of their face through the smoke, light green eyes and white hair.

Nana watched them for a moment and then turned to Izuku. “The first holder of One for All thinks that the quirk wants you to be the last holder.”

“He says that you’ve felt different from the beginning,” Toshinori said, “you are the only one of us who has been able to come here before dying.”

“One for All is acting completely different for you than for any of us.” Nana added.

Izuku looked at all of the figures behind them. Eight users before him, and none of them knew about this?

“All for One has tracked down and killed all of us, usually far younger than Toshi here.” Nana pointed a thumb at him, smiling, “we think that him being quirkless originally got him a longer time with it, since there was no previous quirk to fit into a person around.”

That would make a lot of sense, Izuku thought. It wouldn’t do good things to a person to have a quirk gifted to them if they didn’t have the metaphorical ‘space’ for it.

“We also think that you may have access to the quirks that One for All has picked up through being passed down. It was originally a quirk that could be passed down, and then All for One gave the first holder an additional stockpile quirk. We’re thinking it saved all the quirks it existed with as well.” Toshinori said, smiling.

Nana nodded. “It’s why I tried to let you use my quirk when you came here during the fight. We didn’t know if it would help much, but there wasn’t much else to do.”

Izuku nodded back. It did help him escape, even if he had issues getting back down. He’d have to test if he could still use it when he woke up.

“We really are sorry about your arms, Izuku. You’re going to have to give them a break for a long time.” Toshinori frowned, eyes fixed on Izuku’s arms.

Izuku looked too. They looked scarred and bruised still. Luckily, most of his arm injuries had stayed internal. Unluckily, that meant there was a ton of damage inside no one could see. He was a little scared of what his life would be looking like from now on, even with the faster healing of One for All.

“You’re starting to fade some on our end, my boy, I think you’re leaving soon.” Yagi said. Izuku looked down at himself, noticing now that he was a little transparent.

Nana smiled. “We’ll tell you more later, Izuku. We’ll help you as much as we can.”

Izuku opened his eyes to his ceiling, lit by the morning sun, much earlier than he meant to be up.

He managed to sit up even with his arms still rather immobile. They felt much better, still aching some, but not shattered. Aching was good though, it meant he could feel them at all. He moved them slightly, as much as the wraps would allow without pain. It seemed like they were somewhat healed, maybe not completely, but in a way that he could move them now. He’d have to ask Touya to get his wraps off later if he couldn’t get it himself.

Or maybe sooner. He needed to write so much down in his journals. So much information! He wanted to make a whole new code to write his journals in. There was so much to look over, to research. Maybe he could even look through records to try to find the previous holders of One for All…

He looked down at his wrapped arms and immobile hands. Maybe a voice recording of the notes, for now.

The dread about his arms and hands creeped back in from last night. There was no way he could go to a hospital without them knowing who he was. The pain from the initial injury was still fresh in his mind: the crushing of his arm in the nomu’s grip, the shattering from his full-powered punch to its head.

He took a deep breath. He was in his room, not in that building on UA’s campus. He was okay, a bit worse for wear, but alive. He would go to Touya on his break, get him to remove the bandages or at least loosen them enough for the damage to be reassessed, and then maybe make some drink orders or relax and read in a chair downstairs.

He left his room, heading to his kitchen. Himiko and Eri seemed to still be asleep. The clock read 7 in the morning. Touya was probably downstairs opening already, like he said he would last night.

The arm wraps were honestly just starting to feel itchy, and not knowing how his arms were doing was making Izuku pretty anxious at this point. He needed to know.

He ended up pulling one end of them loose with his teeth, and let it slowly unwrap from his arm.

Honestly, they looked much better than he expected. His arms had healed perfectly fine, as far as he could tell. Definitely still sore, but not broken anymore.

His hands, however, were a different story.

Izuku thought that they probably looked alright to the unsuspecting individual, but Izuku had grown up every day of his life with his hands, and they just looked, well, different. His fingers were slightly crooked at the joints, especially on the one he threw the final punch against the Nomu with. They, much like his arms, ached, but in a way he feared might not leave them after they’re done healing.

He closed and opened his hands slowly a few times. It seemed like all the muscles and tendons were in about the right places, but something just felt wrong, and Izuku wasn’t sure what.

He set his coffee maker to brew and sat down at the dining table. He needed to not think for a bit.

—

Eri opened her eyes. She was laying in her bed in Himiko’s room. Eri could see the rise and fall on her breathing from where she lay on the other side of the room.

She had heard Izuku and Himiko talking with Touya about moving her bed down to the extra room in Touya’s apartment. Touya had been unsure about it, wanting Eri to get her own room but also worried?

Izuku told her once that he thinks Touya maybe had siblings once, and that maybe they were gone now, so he was worried about having someone that reminded him of them around. Eri doesn’t quite understand, but Izuku seemed sure he didn’t hate her, so she was okay.

Eri liked Touya. He was so nice, and he let her pour in ingredients when he made scones and muffins. She still felt a bit bad about yesterday. Touya didn’t like coming out of the back of the cafe, liking staying in the back, but he’d come out to make sure she was okay.

He’d said it was okay and let her pick the next scone flavors, but she was still worried. She wanted him to like her so they’d all keep her. They all reassured her she’d never have to go back to where she came from, but she was still worried.

Even if Izuku told her that the people who hurt her could never come back for her. She wasn’t sure why they couldn’t, but she wanted to believe him.

Touya had changed a lot in Eri’s time with him, Himiko, and Izuku. She had met him in the basement that night. He had picked her up and held her under his coat to keep her out of the cold. He had been covered in this purpley skin and smelled like smoke, and had been so warm.

Now he seemed different. He definitely looked different. The purpley skin had been replaced by pale skin the same color as the rest of his arms and face. The skin was rough and looked a bit odd, but Touya seemed happier with the change. His hair was white now, and his eyes were happier. Less cold at least.

Izuku said it was from his “quirk”. His curse hurt him, his body wasn’t made for it.

She had never seen his curse, but she thought it must’ve been like hers, made to make people disappear. They seemed to know, but hadn’t asked her about it yet. She thought there must be something written about it in the papers she catches them all reading sometimes. They never treated her any different, though. They never asked her to use her quirk or seemed very scared of her using it.

Touya was her favorite, she thought. Himiko had called him her “big brother”, and when Himiko explained it, she agreed. He hung out with her and helped her make scones, and turned on her cartoons, and helped her with her school books.

He had come to get her when she had bothered the man with bird wings.

Eri got up from bed. She wanted to go find Touya.

As she wandered out to the kitchen, she noticed Izuku. He was sitting at the table, arms on it in front of him, staring at the wall. His hands looked odd, his arms in some places too. A different shape, the wrong color in some places.

Eri walked over to him, and reached out a hand to touch his arm. Izuku startled a little, turning to her, surprised. “Sorry Eri, did I wake you?”

“No,” Eri said, “I was looking for Touya. Have you seen him?”

“I think he opened the cafe today.” Izuku smiled, moving to get up. “Want to get dressed and head down to see him?”

“Yes, please.” Eri ran back to her room, grabbed her outfit for the day, and went to the bathroom to change. When she got back out in her favorite red dress, Izuku was already standing there.

He had changed out his pajama pants for jeans, and was wearing a shirt that said “pants”.

“You ready?” He asked.

She nodded, and they headed downstairs.

—

Touya found himself wringing his hands behind the counter. They’d been open for a half hour and he found himself wondering where Hawks was.

Not that it mattered. It was just that the hero said he’d be here. Touya really should be more worried about the fact that the hero has now visited multiple times and has yet to arrest him or Himiko. Hawks hadn’t seen Himiko yet to his knowledge, but the girl was basically his little sister, and he was fucking terrified for her.

She’d been unhappy lately, jittery. He thinks she probably wanted to run around doing vigilante stuff with Izuku, if her mildly prodding questions to him about it meant anything. Himiko wanted to help people. She hadn’t ever really gotten a chance to try.

Touya’s mind strayed to his training growing up. He knew the feeling rather well. Ultimately, he liked not walking around looking like someone left him in the oven too long, so his quirk would not be playing a part in his life again.

But damn, he was the best fighter he knew at hand-to-hand.

The bell rang for the front door. Touya looked up, heart skipping a beat, but it was a morning regular. He took their order and made it almost mildlessly, looking at the recipes on his phone.

The morning rush started up. At some point, Izuku and Eri came downstairs. Izuku’s arms were unbandaged and looking somewhat whole, but he had this funny look on his face that Touya would pry about later. Eri hugged his leg when she got behind the counter and then sat in a stool next to the cash register, chatting with customers with her quiet voice. Since getting comfortable with them, Eri had started to become quite the social butterfly. Touya thought it was because she really knew now that Chisaki Kai wasn’t coming back for her.

He did find it funny that his last act as Dabi was to save a child. Him a year ago wouldn’t recognize him now. Definitely for the best.

The day seemingly sped by. Himiko woke up and took over making drinks. Touya baked a lot and kept moving back and forth between the counter and the kitchen. He chatted with a few customers, tried out a new recipe or two (all successes), pre-made everything he would need for the next day. He thought he looked like a chicken with no head, running all over the place.

The anxiety seemed to claw at him.

Hawks never appeared.

—

Izuku sat on the couch and stared at his hands, resting on his legs. Himiko stood in the hallway leading to their rooms, leaning against the wall. She could tell they had healed wonky. Crooked fingers and scars where they didn’t used to be. Touya said earlier he could barely tell, but to her it was all very clear. The fingers probably wouldn’t even bend the same, let alone how much it must ache.

She wanted to join Izuku in being a vigilante, but she’d be the first to admit that this made her nervous. What if she got injured to his extent? What would she do? She didn’t even have Izuku’s rapid healing.

Eri walked into the room from behind her. She looked small, worried, her face all scrunched up and wringing her hands. She sat on the couch next to Izuku.

Izuku turned slightly to look at her.

“I can fix it.” Eri’s voice was quiet, like it had been right when they’d brought her here. Like it had been when they’d taken her from that room in the basement of the Shie Hassaikai’s place.

“You don’t need to do that, Eri,” Izuku said quickly, “you don’t need to ever do that again.”

“But I can, I want to.” She put her hand on top of one of his. “My curse can fix things like this, if I get better at it. I want to help you.”

Izuku sat for a moment. “You’re not going to take a no, huh?”

Eri shook her head. “I was talking to Touya about it. He said we can work on not making people disappear.”

Izuku laughed, which made Eri relax a bit.

“Do you know how to stop your quirk?” Izuku asked.

Eri raised a brow. “Stop it?”

“Like stop using it once you start,” Izuku explained, “only use it partway.”

Himiko was a little scared of where this was going. Touya’s hand came to rest on her shoulder as he stood behind her, finally pulled from the kitchen by their conversation. She could tell he was tense too, breathing controlled and shoulders tight.

Eri looked down. “Sort of? I know to let go of people once it starts and to wait until it is done. That’s what I was told to do if I started using it.”

Himiko could practically see the gears turning in Izuku’s mind. She knew what Eri’s quirk could do, she’d read all the same papers and journals and files as Touya and Izuku. She just hoped Izuku didn’t try to get her to use it right now, because what would they even do if something went wrong?

“We’ll train then. Get you a good sense of control with it before you ever use it on someone or something you don’t mean to, so you know how to stop it.” Izuku smiled.

Eri smiled back, nodding. “And then we’ll fix your hands.”

“Sure,” Izuku looked back to his hands, “we’ll fix them.”