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It’s hard to believe anyone can trust the lying words spilling from his mouth. Even as he speaks and spouts them–little white petals of half-truths and full-on-untruths and things even he can believe in–the sights before him send a shiver down his spine. Wide eyes, mouths persistently agape, and hands clenched in tight fists betray the cold and uncaring ambience of the interrogation room. Tripping over words and dipping lies headfirst into vats of “believe me” ink, he speaks. He becomes a storyteller. He becomes a teller of lies.
In this room, his words are the truth, and in this room, there is no one left to disprove them.
“It all started last Saturday when I was walking home from school,” Izuku says, and although eyebrows have already lifted courtesy of Tsukauchi, no lies have been detected. “A man bumped into me,” he continues, “and his eyes lit up. He must have activated his quirk on accident–it was probably my fault; I was probably the one who bumped into him, actually, but it’s almost difficult to recall now–and a flash of bright light blinded me long enough for him to… walk away or make his escape or what have you.”
Tsukauchi nods and writes his own thoughts on the matter on a legal notepad resting innocently on the metal table. There is an audio recorder going to his left, and there are cameras honed onto Izuku’s shaking form from all corners of the ceiling.
“Make it sound convincing–actually, make it look convincing–and no one will question your logic nor your motives, not even that meddling detective,” his father had said just a few nights ago, sitting in his chair and leaning his chin on his palm. “Hear me, son”–and he had leaned forward ever so slightly as he spoke– “I love you.”
Something swells up in the boy’s chest, ugly and overbearing. He catches himself in a stumble–a shift of weight, really–and looks up at his father with traitorous, dazzled eyes.
“You see?” His father says after leaning back into his perfectly relaxed posture, “With the right tools, you can make anyone believe just about anything you say.”
Izuku spots Eraserhead–his homeroom teacher and one of the most influential underground heroes of his time–across the room as he unfolds his leg and bends the other one across it. There are a few habits to analyze in his posture and his movements, from the way his right arm is crossed against his chest atop his left one–scarred skin, decaying skin, blood and muscle–to the way he sits far enough from the table to jump into action without bumping his knees on the way up to the way he had subtly surveyed the structural integrity of the interrogation room the moment he stepped foot in it.
The boy doesn’t comment on any of the weakness he perceives nor the quirks his teacher has tried so hard to just conceal as he was once trained to. He doesn’t prepare rebuttals and argumentative pieces and evidence for his cause like a well-formed, mental essay outline in his head like he’s waiting for his father to say the word or toss him a blank notebook and a baggie of pens with little tubes of muddy liquid nearly invisible against the finger grips.
He just opens his mouth again and lies like his life depends on it. “So, after the flash, I opened my eyes and the man was gone. In fact, most of the other people who were on the sidewalk that day were gone, too. I guess I didn’t really catalogue that information because of the shock that bright light put my retinas through. I was just trying to focus on where that guy could have gone–so I could apologize for bumping into him–and to figure out or ask him if he knew where that light came from.”
He pauses to rub the back of his head and let his brain rest for a moment and listen to the absent scratching and scribbling of the detective’s pen on department-sanctioned paper. He hears Eraser’s boots clatter lightly against the concrete when he rests his heels on the ground and leans backwards in his metal chair. Tsukauchi looks up at Izuku, and with a subtle wave of his hand for the boy to continue, noting–officially and on the paper and everything–that his quirk hasn’t once alerted him that the boy was lying.
“I wasn’t sure where to start looking,” the boy says and twiddles his thumbs round and round as he sits there, “so I walked into a small grocery store on the left of the road. I hadn’t really been planning on stopping at the store on the way home, but I figured I could afford to get home a little later than usual, especially since I basically just got flashbombed by a stranger on the sidewalk. So, I walked into the store to mull around the aisles for a little while. I passed by the produce and saw a really good sale on daikon radishes. I just knew I had to grab some because mom really loves making side dishes with it and putting it in soups and such, and we haven’t been able to spend as much time together since I started classes at UA.” He trails off, a far-off, longing look overtaking his features with lightly pinched brows, crinkled eyes, and a soft frown. “I just thought… maybe if I picked up one of her favorite ingredients to cook with that we could make dinner together.”
Tsukauchi nods and taps his pen on the edge of the table to get the boy’s attention. Izuku startles, jumping slightly at the sudden noise, and shakes his head as if to shake off long-winded conversations with his mother; memories of warm nights he wouldn’t trade for anything in the world. The detective smiles softly at the boy’s reminiscing.
“Midoriya, is there anything you can tell me about the man working the register at the grocery store? I’m sorry to cut short your reminiscing, but I need to start looking for that man on the street as soon as possible. Any minute detail could assist us in our search and allow us to start questioning possible witnesses.” He pauses to clear his throat and straighten his tie. “Excuse my interruption. Please, continue.”
Izuku opens his mouth to do just that, when Eraserhead speaks as well.
“Remember, as the detective said, anything could help,” the hero reminds–quite illogically–from his seat. “Even a clue of the man’s tone of voice could help us, so try and recall as much detail as you can. Take your time, kid.”
Izuku sighs and smiles at the hero. While it had been annoyingly illogical of the man to remind him of something the detective just instructed him to do, it gave him a clarity and a will to come up with as much detail as humanly possible. It was a challenge. It was a test, so to speak–at least, it had been a test many years ago–and he was going to ace it.
“Let’s see… he didn’t stick out to me much, at least, until I got a closer look at him. He was balding with white hair and a rosy face. His shirt was light blue and had a polo collar, and his nametag was pinned into his breast pocket on the left. His eyebrows were pretty bushy, which made his eyes hard to describe without getting closer. When I got to the checkout with my radish, I looked up at him and to check what price the radish rang up to.” He pauses–purely for dramatic effect–and thickly swallows his spit as though he’s nervous to recount what he had seen. “The man’s eyes were like no eyes I had ever seen before, even with all the mutations stemming from the dawn of quirks, neither in real life nor textbooks or online resources. They were purely white, and he didn’t have any iris. His pupil was a pinprick of darkness in his eye, and somewhere deep within them, I could have sworn a hand reached out and grabbed me.”
Eraserhead grunts as the boy finishes his sentence. “You ‘could have sworn a hand reached out and grabbed you’ or a hand did reach out and grab you?”
Izuku huffs a breath out of his nose and looks over at the hero. “I thought I felt a hand grab my neck,” he says before continuing, laughing a little, “When I looked away from the man, the pressure went away and there was no hand there at all. I really thought he–or someone else–had grabbed me. I mean, I literally couldn’t breathe for a moment. I looked down at my neck as best as I could without a mirror and didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. I didn’t even see the bruises until I got back home and checked if something was wrong when the skin on my neck felt tender to the touch and hurt to pull when I turned to the side.”
Tsukauchi sighs shakily and places his paper and pen onto the table. “I’m very sorry that happened to you, Izuku,” he says, looking directly into the boy’s eyes. His entire being seems to scream of pride and protectiveness and Izuku has to break their staring contest before he starts dry heaving.
“Thank you, detective.”
“Is there anything else you can tell us about the man?” Aizawa asks, still across the room, but with a twinge of pity or concern or something even lighter in his voice.
Izuku smiles softly and tries to appear as thankful as he can. “No, nothing,” he says. “His eyes were the main… uh, the main thing. So…”
Tsukauchi says some things required of him by law and the contract he signed when he accepted his position as a detective to the recording device on the table before clicking a button on its top and leaning back in his chair. “Alright, kid, that’s all we need from you. On behalf of the Musutafu Police Department, I swear we will do everything within our power to find and apprehend these men for their illegal public quirk usage and endangerment of a minor. Please contact me immediately if you remember anything you were unable to recall today.”
Izuku stands and the two of them shake hands across the table. He then turns to his teacher and bows in thanks for the man’s unshakable presence in the interrogation room. Aizawa nods and stands to lead the boy to the exit. Detective Tsukauchi collects his audio-recording gear and treks back to the monitoring room presumably to review the video recordings of the witness’ statement.
Izuku smiles to himself, already knowing the detective won’t find anything damning in the videos even if he examines them for a whole week straight. Aizawa raises an eyebrow as the boy passes him and his outstretched hand holding the door for him and into the main corridor of the police station.
“What’re you smiling about, problem child?”
Izuku smiles just a bit wider. “I’m just happy to be heading home. Long day, y’know?”
Aizawa huffs and seems to deflate a bit. “Heard,” he agrees. Then, he says for a whole extra level of agreement, “Don’t I know it.”
Izuku laughs at the illogicalness and waves to his teacher before heading down the sidewalk and towards his home about ten blocks north. When he arrives home, he drops his backpack to the floor and pulls out his phone before even removing his sneakers or putting on his slippers. He taps a few keys on the screen and holds the device up to his ear.
“Hey, dad.” He pauses. “Yeah, I’m back from the precinct. Sorry to keep you waiting.” He pauses again. “Oh, yeah! Now would be great. Alright. See you in a sec. Alright. Uh-huh. Bye-bye.”
A purple portal swirls beneath his feet and Izuku gasps in a lungful of air as he plummets, smiling all the way. He reappears into the physical plane in a large and open warehouse, furnished only by a partially caved-in wall, a mammoth throne of couch pieces and old, boxy televisions and the dust flying around in the air.
“Ah, Izuku.” His father asks, “Please tell me; I’ve been dying to know. What really happened with the man on the sidewalk and the cashier at the grocery store?”
Izuku smiles. He reaches towards the roof of the warehouse and the skin on his face crinkles with success and with pride. “Why, I killed them, of course!”
All for One smiles a twin smile with his son, and the scar on his face almost seems to lighten and begin to fade away in the light of his accomplishments. “I thought so. You’re such a quick study. Good boy.”