Chapter Text
One moment Izuku was walking ‘home’ from school.
The next moment he was dead. It wasn’t his fault, this time at least. A villain appeared and decided that Izuku was the perfect ‘Skin Suit’. While Izuku knew he was plain looking enough, he was also pretty short. Izuku assumed it’d be easier to keep a lookout for heroes if the ‘Skin Suit’ chosen was actually tall in some sense of the word.
Though, Izuku wasn’t sure whether it was the suffocation that had killed him or the super-powered punch All Might launched towards the villain, which had also hit Izuku in the process.
Either way, he was dead. A sigh erupted from behind him.
“What happened this tim- what the fuck is All Might doing?” Death interrupted themself, staring in horror as All Might kept slapping Izuku’s corpse.
“Well that villain All Might shoved into some random soda bottles attacked me, deciding for some bizarre reason that I’d be the perfect ‘Skin Suit’, and started suffocating me.” Izuku explained. “Then All Might appeared and aimed a super-powered punch at the villain.”
“While you were still in there?” Death asked, obviously hoping the answer would be ‘no’, and that the number one hero was in fact being smart while trying to save Izuku.
“Yup. Not sure which thing killed me, but in the end I’m dead and he’s trying to slap a corpse awake.” Izuku rolled his eyes. “I would’ve thought he’d take me to the hospital with his super-speed. Or at the very least called an ambulance.”
Izuku looked back towards his corpse. All Might still trying to slap it back to life. His eyes wandered over to where his bag had dropped.
“Death, am I seeing things or did the number one hero really sign my notebook before trying to wake me up?” Death stopped looking at All Might, their gaze also going towards Izuku’s bag.
“Honestly? I’m just going to ignore that.” Death sighed. “Ready to go back to the mortal realm?”
Izuku rolled his eyes. “I guess so. Might as well stop him from continuing to slap a literal corpse.”
It took Izuku a moment to finally wake up, as it always did whenever Death put his soul back into his body.
“Ah my boy, you’re alive!” All Might shouted, as Izuku mentally rolled his eyes. He was dead moments before, and if he didn’t have the quirk he did, he would’ve stayed dead.
All Might helped Izuku up, saying something about already signing his notebook. As Izuku was putting everything that had been knocked out of his bag back in, All Might continued talking.
“I must be off, civilian! Thank you for distracting the villain long enough for me to catch the evildoer!” Izuku silently sighed. Yeah. Distracting the villain. Not at all dying in the process.
Izuku looked over to where All Might was… to find him still there? Izuku prided himself in reading people's faces, though he was slightly questioning his ability since he swore All Might looked almost… awkward? Maybe he was expecting Izuku to be more excited at seeing him? Maybe expecting Izuku to be asking All Might to stay, which seemed pretty stupid since he’d already said he needed to leave.
Izuku let confusion show on his face, which only made All Might seem even more awkward. After a moment, All Might finally jumped off into the sky. Izuku was going to just go home, when he noticed something dropping out of All Might’s pockets. Something suspiciously bottle shaped.
He rolled his eyes, already running to the closest bathroom. Izuku always kept some form of his vigilante gear on him. It wasn’t like anyone at school would be going through his bag, and it was pretty helpful for moments like this; heroes being incompetent.
Izuku always has his cropped hoodie, gloves, cargo shorts, and mask on him. Which was the main reason he’d chosen the bright yellow bag; it was the only bag big enough to carry both his vigilante things and school-related things. He pulled his vigilante gear over his school uniform as fast as humanly possible.
The bag was left hidden behind a dumpster, near the bridge All Might had practically flown away from. Hopefully no one would come across it and decide it was now their bag. Or at the very least, they’d leave all his stuff by that dumpster. He didn’t need to be buying new textbooks.
He mounted a fire escape to the roofs, jumping as fast as possible towards where he thought the bottle had dropped, hoping the villain was still unconscious and stuck. Knowing his luck, that wouldn’t be the case.
The further he ran, the closer he got to the sound of explosions. Izuku debated for a moment, whether he should continue towards where he thought the bottle had dropped or whether he should check out the much louder situation. There had to be heroes nearby dealing with it…
Izuku rolled his eyes before sprinting off towards the explosions. Yes, there should be heroes already there but that doesn’t mean it’ll be solved before people die. Limelight heroes were statistically worse at their job than underground heroes.
It made sense, most limelights were only in it for fame. Most daylight villain attacks were handled by the top heroes like All Might and Endeavour. The rest of the limelights dealt with smaller crimes, like purse-snatchers and minor robberies.
Though it wasn’t like they were completely useless, as an idea anyway. Seeing heroes walking around the streets brought hope to civilians while also preventing some of the smaller crimes, at least during the day anyway.
He shook his head. It wasn’t the time to think about how useless most heroes were. He’d check out what the explosions were about, hopefully see heroes doing their jobs right, and go back to trying to find that sludge-type villain.
Izuku was closing in when he saw Mount Lady use her quirk, enlarging herself before she started running through the city towards the explosions. He was half-tempted to leave the work to her, she had only debuted that day so she would certainly be focused on trying to make as good of an impression as possible. That included working as long of a shift as possible.
Plus her quirk could be a pretty bad matchup for Izuku. She could either accidentally kill him, he was sure the increase in size would most definitely increase her strength, and with how new she was he wasn’t exactly confident in her ability to regulate the increased strength, or she could easily capture him if he wasn’t careful enough.
Just as Izuku slowed down to figure out the best buildings to jump over to get to the sludge-type villain faster, now that he was potentially way off course, he noticed how Mount Lady seemed to stop.
It took a minute for him to realise why the pro hero had stopped in her tracks. She was busy trying to get over a particularly tall bridge. Why she didn’t just shrink back down to get past it, Izuku had no idea. There was the potential of her being unable to use her quirk again for a period of time, he’d have to do some not-so-legal research into it. Either way, she most definitely wouldn’t be able to get to the villain attack in time, so Izuku started to run towards the explosions yet again.
He finally got there a minute or so later, to see five heroes just standing around watching as the sludge villain Izuku had been trying to find was suffocating another person. A very familiar person.
Izuku made sure his hood was truly secured before he ran down the fire escape that’d get him to Kacchan faster. They were in no way nearly as close anymore, though it wasn’t due to anything bad. They were both aiming for UA, which took up a good chunk of their time. Plus Izuku always took an afternoon nap after studying to help him have the energy for his patrols, and Kacchan had a strict sleeping schedule - there was practically no time for either of them to actually spend time together outside of school.
They’d see each other at school of course, even sit with each other during lunch, but even then they were both studying. If they didn’t have the best grades possible and the cleanest records, there’s no where either would be able to get into UA.
Izuku ignored his thoughts for the time-being. He was in his vigilante gear and there was a villain attack literally right in front of him. Him being distracted could either get people killed or get him captured.
He briefly looked towards the heroes, debating whether they’d actually listen and help him. He’d never worked with any of them of course, most limelight heroes only took day shifts and Izuku tried to keep his vigilante work to a night time only activity.
From what he’d overheard in grayspaces, Death Arms would be an instant nope. Similar to Endeavour, where if you run into either of them fighting a villain, it’s better to just run away and hope they do their job right. Half the time said heroes stop fighting the villains to chase after the vigilantes. Unfortunately for Izuku, he cared far too much about people while also not trusting heroes to actually do their jobs properly. He’d have to just deal with the sludge villain quickly.
He mentally amended his previous statement of five heroes just standing around when Kamui Woods used his quirk to create a barrier, preventing civilians from going any closer to the villain attack. It was the only thing said hero could do, considering how his entire being seemed to be made out of wood.
Backdraft was also helpful, using his quirk to extinguish the fires left behind by Kacchan’s quirk. Izuku had no idea if the buildings currently on fire had people in them, though he wished that he knew they didn’t. From what he’d heard, Backdraft didn’t seem all too opposed to working with vigilantes. If Izuku could, he’d get the hero to use his quirk on the sludge villain. Maybe the additional water would dilute the villain to the point of allowing Kacchan to escape himself.
Izuku wasn’t all too sure about the remaining two heroes. He didn’t even know their names, if they weren’t recently debuted heroes then they mustn’t be all too well known. One looked like they played baseball while the other… Izuku honestly had no idea what to call that person’s costume. It was primarily a white spandex with a yellow cape. Not very memorable, nor seemingly very practical.
Finishing his mental analysis of the heroes present, Izuku looked back towards the sludge villain himself. Kacchan’s mouth hadn’t been covered yet, though Izuku had already known that. Even with the explosions going off and the roaring fires, his yelling was still distinct enough for Izuku to single out. He didn’t pay much attention to what Kacchan was saying though, he didn’t have the time for it.
The sludge was far too fluid to grab ahold of, and pulling at it wouldn’t help much either. Izuku would have to distract the villain while also finding something for Kacchan to hold onto so they could both pull him out.
He pulled at the rubble closest to him, trying to find some sort of pole. There were a couple smaller pieces of rubble that would be good for distracting the villain - big enough to be annoying to the villain while still being small enough to not actually harm the villain, or Kacchan, if Izuku aimed wrong.
After a moment of rummaging through the rubble, Izuku finally found a pole that was both long and wide enough for Kacchan to grab ahold of. All Izuku had to do now was hope that his plan worked and that the heroes themselves don’t mess up the plan by trying to catch him. Simple.