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Some days, Izuku is so tired it’s all he can do to keep his eyes open during class.
It’s the closest he ever comes to regretting his nightly activities.
Stifling a yawn behind one hand, Izuku squeezes his eyes shut before opening them as wide as they can go, hoping and praying that they’ll obey him and actually stay open this time.
The words on the board swim before his exhaustion-blurred vision, and it’s with a sigh of defeat that Izuku lets his pencil slip from his fingers. He’ll just have to make up the work later.
A folded piece of paper impacts the side of his hand.
He tiredly glances down at it before slowly looking up in the direction it had come from.
His friend Shinsou is smirking at him from two seats down. When he sees that he has Izuku’s attention, he pointedly lifts his iced water bottle into view before tucking it back into the wide expanse of his sleeve.
Izuku sits up straighter, all thoughts of exhaustion suddenly gone. His fingers grab for his pencil, and he flips through his notebook to the page he’d made for Shinsou. Next to the large block letters “HOW DOES HE STAY AWAKE??”, Izuku frantically pencils in, “BY FREEZING HIS ARM OFF LIKE A SADIST!!!”
When he looks back over, Shinsou is raising an eyebrow at him, that smirk still tugging playfully at his lips. He pointedly flicks his gaze at his previously ignored note and then rapidly flicks it back up at Izuku.
Izuku frowns before snatching at the folded slip and smoothing out the creases to reveal only two words in Shinsou’s neat, yet casual scrawl.
Want one?
Izuku’s mouth opens and then he’s clasping his hands together and bowing his head in a silent please and thank you almost before he fully processes it.
Turns out, freezing your arm off like a sadist truly is the only way to stay awake by day when you’re a vigilante at night.
Classes remain brutal, if manageable, after that. All too soon, Izuku is flying home, flying through his homework, and flying through dinner so he can catch a quick nap before his patrol.
One day, he’ll be old enough to truly make a difference in people’s lives. Maybe he’ll be a firefighter or a paramedic; he hasn’t fully decided which one saves more people yet.
For now though, the only thing a seventeen-year-old high schooler like him can do is put his parkour skills, his steel toed boots, and his homemade gauntlets to good use.
Even if he does need to lie to his mom to do it.
The moon is high in the sky when he eases his window open as soundlessly as he can. His boots make it hard to climb down, so he doesn’t put them on yet, clutching them tight with the fingers of one hand while the other finishes with the window. He takes one last look at himself in the mirror over his shoulder and nods. His hair is pulled back by a dark headband, and the matching domino mask over his eyes obscures most of his freckled face and nose.
Izuku knows that Voice tends to wear his own mask over the lower half of his face instead. But Voice’s most impressive feature is the dead-eyed glare he shoots criminals before scaring the shit out of them with that godawful voice his artificial vocal cords produce.
While Izuku… Izuku’s eyes are way too expressive and prone to crying if left unchecked. A domino mask of absorbent material is the perfect thing to hide his tears.
And damn, but Izuku would never be able to save people without a smile.
His patrol starts off predictable. A couple of muggings, a couple of fights, a couple of near misses with the law.
It’s almost comfortable at this point, the push and pull of kicking, dodging, punching the other guy’s lights out. He doesn’t see Voice anywhere, but that’s nothing new. They orbit each other like coworkers in separate departments, after all. Izuku might have coined his own moniker and aesthetic to compliment Voice’s, but they’ve never so much as run a patrol together, much less coordinated attacks.
Izuku doesn’t even have his number.
A sniffle followed by a barely-audible sob breaks through his ruminations, and Izuku quickly looks around in hopes of pinpointing the source.
A head of white hair stiffens as Izuku’s eyes fall on it, and he immediately hops a fence, two garbage cans, and a crate of recycling to get to it.
The small child startles, shrinking back against the wall at his sudden appearance.
Izuku quickly crouches down to make himself seem smaller.
“Hey there,” he says softly, his ever-present smile lighting up his face as he holds out his empty hands non-threateningly. “Are you lost?”
The girl shakes her head, staring up at him with wide red eyes that are somehow filled as equally with hope as they are with fear.
“Are you a hero?” she asks tremulously, in a voice that sounds raspy with disuse.
“Uhhhh,” Izuku hedges, scratching the back of his neck sheepishly. “I mean, kinda, yeah.”
If you don’t count the multiple calls for his arrest and define “hero” solely by its definition of helping people, then sure, he’s a hero.
“Wow,” the girl whispers, her eyes lighting up as she slowly uncurls from her previous position. “Like in the comics?”
“Uhhh,” Izuku falters again, this time because he’s unsure exactly which comics she’s referring to. If it’s All Might of the Truth, Justice, and Smiling through the Pain comic run, then yeah. Definitely. If it’s Hawks of the Shackled Hero run, or even the oft hated Stain on Society bonus comics, then… maybe not so much?
“I’m uh. Reason,” he says instead, holding out his hand as he introduces himself.
Instead of introducing herself back, the little girl cocks her head to one side. “A reason for what?”
Izuku can’t help but think of those nights when he was first starting out and a thug with a knife or something would bellow, “Just give me a reason!” at his would-be victims, only for Izuku to drop down from the fire escape to deliver a devastating kick to the face with a dramatic, “here’s one!”—and he has to resist the urge to groan into his hands. Man, he was so fucking cringe as a fifteen year old.
“No,” he starts to explain. “My vig—I mean, my hero name. It’s—“
“There you are, Eri.”
The voice is quiet yet powerful, those four words alone somehow sucking all the previous energy from the alleyway and little Eri both.
She flinches back against the wall, and Izuku slowly turns around to see who he’s dealing with.
A tall man. A magenta plague mask over the lower half of his face. White surgical gloves on both hands.
“Overhaul,” Izuku whispers, his eyes widening in fear at the sight of the self-proclaimed villain even the police haven’t managed to take down yet.
“Uncle,” Eri whimpers, her fingers reaching out to clutch fearfully at the back of Izuku’s sweatshirt.
And, well.
As much as he’d first chosen his vigilante name to match somewhat with Voice…
The truth is that sometimes… all Izuku needs is a Reason.
“Climb on, Eri. I’m gonna get you out of here.”
The little girl flinches back, her grip faltering like she’s trying to release him, but a part of her is refusing to fully let go. “N-No!” she sniffles. “H-He’ll hurt you!”
Izuku doesn’t doubt that. He’s heard enough stories about Overhaul to be all but quaking in his steel-toed boots.
But he’s got someone else to be strong for right now.
So all he says is a mock cheery and incredulous, “hurt me? I’m a hero, remember?”
And somehow that’s enough for Eri.
She all but clambers onto his back, and Izuku quickly settles her in place before carefully getting to his feet.
The responsibility on his shoulders weighs more than the weight of the child on his back.
It’s a sobering reality, but one that Izuku faces head-on with determination and grit.
Overhaul pulls out a gun. “If you think—“
A very familiar capture scarf loops around Overhaul’s waist from behind, and with a single harsh tug from Voice, the villain is sent crashing backwards headfirst into a brick wall.
The silence that follows hits instantly, zero to fucking one hundred, and on the heels of all that previous chaos Izuku’s heart rabbits in his chest as his breath catches in his lungs.
“So I’ve been thinking,” his good friend Shinsou Hitoshi says in that eldritch abomination of a Voice that his artificial vocal cords produce. “It’s about time you had my number.”
And Izuku hefts little Eri a bit higher on his back and somehow manages an emotionally choked, and wobbly, “y-yeah,” in response.