Chapter Text
Izuku stands in front of his grave.
He stares at the black characters of his name engraved on the grey granite.
The eerie smoke of the incense he just burned fills the lonely graveyard.
A few more hours of sleep wouldn’t have been denied, but he can’t seem to find sleep in this heat. Pears of sweat are running down his forehead already, and it's barely dawn.
He brings a hand close to his face. There’s no cameras, he checked three years ago when he first came, only the distant sound of shattering glass as a proof of life outside those gates.
He takes off his black ski mask and green hood.
Who even wears that many layers for god sake !
As he wipes his forehead MORE sweat drops, he curses again.
As he’s looking back at the characters Izuku feels a strange sense of hollowness, he’s mourning an empty coffin to his name, it is awkward.
He shouldn’t be here.
He’s probably putting too much thought into this, sleep deprivation goes a long way.
-his phone rings-
Well no it actually vibrates in his hoodie’s back pocket. Powerful enough to be felt but not heard.
He uses telekinesis to open the pocket in the inside of his hoodie and bring it to his hand. It's an old nokia, too old to be traced, unbreakable and modified to work with current e sims.
He picks up, he’s not gonna recognize the number anyway he’s got no contacts on it.
"Who the fuck calls this early ?" He spits out low with the voice modifier of the ski mask he put back.
"You’re awake, that's all that matters." A guy answers, a hoarse voice clearly marked by time.
No voice modifier.
“I’m the Hero Eraserhead, I need intel about someone quirk.” he continues
Silence
“Hello, you still here Emerald”
Silence
“ Don’t you have the Police database ? And I don’t work with heroes” Izuku adds quickly.
“Stay on the line.” the man sighs “I ain’t here to arrest you. We can meet, wherever you want, whenever.”
“Why ?” He answers, cold.
“Because we’re currently at a dead end.” small pause “We have been weeks” He almost sounds.. desperate ?
“So now you finally deign to ask for my work ? After weeks ? You’re all truly pathetic motherfuc-”
“I’ll pay double.” He cuts him off, blank as ever. “And for instance I would have come before if I could” The hero states.
“Now we’re talking. Alright, Yotoa towers, 10 minutes.” and he hangs up
Izuku doesn’t look back before he climbs over the cemetery walls.
—
He gave just enough time for the hero to arrive but not enough for them to set up a trap.
He lied, Izuku does work with heroes, but with the one he trusted to not put him in jail. The underground hero was… weird, to say the least. The man was not known to set up informants or vigilantes, quite the opposite actually. A few vigilantes escaped from the police because of him ; before they never resurfaced on the streets.
I don't know where he stood, Nobody does ! It’s not like those people died or ended in jail. They just slowly evaporated. A few weeks or months after their first encounter.
On the other hand when he first understood it was Eraserhead Izuku’s brain just circuited and begged to go into fanmode. Escaping from heroes and the police and seeing the vices of the system did kill the little boy fan of heroes inside of him. But Eraserhead, THE ERASERHEAD !!! Alongside some other minor heroes (and All might even though Izuku didn’t want to accept that yet). Eraserhead stayed in his mind like a gold statue in his museums of heroes.
Izuku’s jumping from rooftop to rooftop, it’s still too early for people to really notice him anyway. His green scarf floating in the wind as he does.
Because the man fought quirkless, because that means he got into UA basically quirkless, and oh gosh how cool his quirk is !
Izuku already has a wide panel of quirks, not even taking into account his MAIN quirk but how easy his life could be if he has THIS quirk.
He’s getting relatively close, so much so that he takes his small google out of the pocket and hides behind the building ledge. He looks out for cars which shouldn’t park here, undercover cops and snipers. There’s none
Yet
Anyway, but this gold statue never became real for a good reason, while he’ll never admit it out loud, he was scared of the man’s quirk. Izuku has been a vigilante for 2 years now, fought countless villains, and escaped the police many times. But the simple thought of someone messing up with his quirk, triggering the feeling of powerlessness he had he got quirk-.
His train of thought was cut short when the man actually showed up. A disheveled man, in his late 30’s, his captured weapon and black long hair hiding most of his face, just like Izuku expected.
A quick vibration check verified that he was indeed alone. Izuku is jumping from the last building to the man.
He arrives in a thud. Loud for a reason.
They’re facing each other.
God this is awkward
They walk towards each other in a thorny silence and shake hands. The man is taller. So much so that he needs to look down to talk to the kid.
“Thank you for meeting so fast with me, Emerald.“
“What do you need?”
“Okay I’ll make it short” He brings out his phone and slide shows a few pictures. “Innocent families' homes were burned by the same person over Masfutu over the course of multiple weeks.”
Photos slides, remains of different homes, piles of black ashes and grey rubbles, and a few far pictures of houses burning in deep blue flames. “Same protocol : The whole family is home sleeping when a quirked individual with blue flames burns it. Few remains of those people's bodies, a few bones there and there but too calcined to actually analyze anything.”
“And you want me to-”
“I’m getting there.” He cuts him off. “ Intel from illegal fighting grounds says remembering a young adult with black hair in his 20’s fighting dirty with blue flames.” He repeats off like he said it a thousand times.
“ Your job is to find who they are and for who they're working for, nothing more, we don't want you to get involved.”
“It’s not like I do anyway. I might send over Dust to actually go where it’s nasty, they might contact you if necessary.” Izuku replied.
Eraserhead tensed a bit.
“It’s both of us or nothing.” Izuku cuts off before anything more can be said.
Another awkward silence great
“What’s the pay ?” he asks a bit more casually
Not that Aizawa knows this but he accepted this job entirely because he knew that pay was about to be good. And he’s kind of broke right now.
Aizawa gets out a thick stack of yens and hands it to the little informant. “15k now and 15k after, more if it’s done in a week or less.” He hands the stack to Izuku. Izuku grabs it fast, a bit too fast honestly.
And just like that it’s done, Izuku nods to the man and goes the other way without any more words, or almost.
“Don’t contact me outside of this.”
He jumps from the building onto the fire escape.
He waits, without a sound, a hand on the building to check for vibration.
Eraser leaves the building.
Izuku relaxes his shoulders and neck.
Finally.
He appreciates the moment to finally be able to take deep breaths. Izuku felt like an enormous dick to be like that to the man, and in all honesty he was, he had to. You need to be impassible, cold, mean, only for Dust to appear more like himself, different from Emerald at least.
How I wish to have normal interaction with the heroes I meet.
I wouldn’t have to do this if I had been more careful, It’s on me anyway.
But there’s bigger things at stake, he can’t leave any doubts on his identities.
He takes one final larger breath and looks up.
The sun is already up and setting its golden light on the city's buildings.
God I feel tired
He walks down the fire and escapes into an alley to find a manhole. Hopefully he quickly finds one and jumps swiftly into it. Closing the sewers plate Izuku finally takes off his suffocating mask. While he doesn't necessarily like the vivid and arid odor of untreated water he'll trade it everyday to stop sweating inside his mask.
Izuku starts to jog quietly inside the sewers, he memorized them a year ago when he was planning a risky operation. They know he might not be the only one to use it but people who were actually fans of underground labyrinth never question what you’re doing here.
A few turns right and left here and there he already was !
The Taoka's family were an old couple living in the outskirts of the city. The quiet residential one where everybody knows each other and you can hear the chimes of birds in the morning. They needed a new renter for their room since their son left for college (at least that's what they told him) and they weirdly enough were pretty open to have a youngster (who says youngster anyway ?) who barely looked like he was 18 rent with cash.
It was a no question asked and full of love kind of home situation.
Izuku got out of the manhole in the regional park behind their house.
The same one Izuku went with Kacchan when they were kids, with the river still running its steady flow in the background. Nature was just waking up and Izuku was invading it quietly. He pulled himself out of the sewer and put back the plate with the agility of a cat. He scared off a few birds but not enough for the deer staring at him to flee.
He leaves the sweet nature for the hot pavement to his home. Nobody's awake, even less the retired couples and occasional new families living there so he takes off the security of his hood and hides the mask in his back pocket.
Finally, sliding the wood front door Izuku really wanted to have a stealth quirk. Actually maybe he should take one.
God I need to figure out what’s going on with my quirk. I can't keep having these weird ass thoughts.
Izuku walks the stairs to the main door. A red torii arch set in front of them made them impossible to miss. It almost looked like the entrance of a sanctuary.(truth to be told Izuku was suspicious that the elderly couple stole it from a pre quirk sanctuary).
SCREECH
Oops… Fucking old stairs!!
It's not really like the Taoka didn't see him in that outfit before, he told them it was his " work outfit "
they really gotta think I’m some kind of drug dealer, God.
But he knows that they're likely sleeping really lightly even though they snore like CRAZY. Izuku still thinks that they started becoming more aware of sounds when he came home one night and was bleeding all over their wooden floor. The carpet had to be burned.
Izuku makes his way so slowly in the long alley it becomes boring. He tries to avoid the multiple chimes decorating the corridor. Izuku smiled with nostalgia as he remembered the first time he heard them, he thought someone had broken in in the middle of the night. He got into a fighting stance just to be met with mister Taoka drinking milk. He hadn’t slept well that night.
The wood is old and a few SCREECHH makes Izuku wince. Before he remembers he has a quirk which helps him float.
Concentrate Izuku. What if that was a stealth mission?
Way more graciously and relaxed, Izuku heads to his room in the long alley, passing by the Taoka's room, their door is still open. The snoring is loud like usual but that means they're alive so that's good.
Finally back to his heavenly room Izuku took off every layer of clothing. His room wasn't much. A dark wooden desk (everything was wood in his room anyway), a futon which was already there, a wooden (who could have guessed it) dresser and that's it ! Izuku floats to his dresser and goes into his pocket to pull a small magnet. He crawls to the floor and extends his arm to feel the bottom of the commode with the magnet.
CLICK
He opens the two mirror doors and lifts a few leggings to open the little door to his secret drawer.
The Taoka's didn't go into his room but if someone broke in he wanted to be assured.
He slides in the small hole in his commode, his phone, the USB Eraserhead gave him and his mask, done ! Putting everything into place, Izuku was finally relieved. Or almost.
Was it Agamemnon? who got murder in the comfort of his own home just after the war ?
Izuku knows he's relatively safe, but he’s also more paranoid than the norm. There's always been some hair bristles at the back of his hair, at all times since he was a kid. This probably goes with the constant feeling that something bad is going to happen.
Izuku, who was staring blankly at his dresser finally decides to take off his clothes, still ruminating.
Like when you always think the screeching of the car is going to turn into a crash
He takes off his hoodie
Or when your parents don't come back and you imagine to yourself that they died
he delicately takes off his cargo
Or when you think that the villain you’re chasing is going to be run over by a truck
he takes off his compression shirt, stretching a hand to his shoulder blade to see if the scar is still here. Gently trailing with his fingers some elongate scars starting from the middle of his elbow all the way to the other one, crossing his thorax just above his pecs, following an invisible line where the scar didn’t show, where a giant star-like scar absorbed most of his right shoulder.
Or when he's bouncing from rooftops to rooftops and thinks a bullet is about to shoot him.
Izuku folds his clothes, slowly one by one.
He has had these thoughts over and over, everyday since he was 5. It doesn't keep him at night, it keeps him safe, or he thinks. He just likes to be prepared.
To put a stop to the conversation he had with himself a thousand times, he goes to sleep, slides into his bed, pulls the covers and waits for the sand merchant to collect his dreams.