Title: Luster

Series Title: In a Future's Woes

Rating: T

Fandom: BNHA

Chapter: Extra 1/?

Summary:

Midoriya Izuku does not go to UA.

So it's kind of odd that he shows up at the USJ anyway, isn't it?

This is an add-on to the first fic in this series, titled "refraction". Both can be read as standalones, but like… I'd honestly recommend reading the original fic first, for context and maximum clarity. I can write about the nuances of this particular AU forever though, so it should be fairly easy to understand why things function the way they do, what Izuku's doing with the power he has, etc.

Context is key, though. Anyway, to everyone who's come for more Refraction Content™, hi again! I said I'd probably make some additional content for both Refraction and Streamlined, and I damn well did! It may have took me the better part of a year to do it, but hey, I did say that it would take a while, yeah? Regardless, the wait is over! More content! More Drama, Izuku needs a fucking hug! He's barely a Full Fledged Teenager Why Does He Have To Deal With This? Damned inconvenient Magical Powers.

Without further ado, I present to y'all… the USJ!

Bad things happen to good people. It's a lesson Izuku has learned well.

(A lesson he will never stop learning. He'll be forever forced to watch as the downtrodden good samaritans, the kind, the selfless and golden-hearted, fall to the whims of fate, slipping through his fingers.)

He's born witness to the countless ways in which fate and chance gamble with the lives of the humans under their jurisdiction, the way they gladly tear into innocents and leave them in tatters, while a villain simultaneously gets away entirely unscathed. He watches the way those whose crimes are minimal get no chance of redemption, no matter how hard they beg and scream for mercy and forgiveness (he'll never forget the look in their eyes-) and receive none.

'Not to say that bad things don't happen to bad people,' Izuku thinks, 'it's just that it's never fair.'

Izuku wasn't one to judge, however, and neither was chance. He was equally likely to be shown the future of someone who indulged in less-than-legal activities as he was a picture perfect citizen.

But in the grand scheme of things, wealth, status, quirk, profession… none of that factored into misfortune. Either bad things happened to someone, or... they didn't. There was no real way to stack the odds in someone's favor. It's was as simple as that.

After all, being immune to heat wouldn't save someone from drowning, would it?

Still, even though Izuku knew anything could happen to anyone, why did it have to be All Might?

Izuku may have a leg up over most heroes by way of semi-precognition, but that didn't really mean anything. He did what he could, spending so much time researching and scouting, and memorizing the city from every possible angle, but...

It wouldn't be enough. It was never enough.

He was never enough. How could Izuku, someone weird and functionally quirkless, save a hero? Save someone whose entire life was dedicated to protecting others, who did nothing but fight and fight and fight for the sake of everyone else? How could Izuku save All Might?

What was Izuku to do, what even could he do?

The part of Izuku that contains all of his hope, his resolve, that clings to his aspirations with starry-eyed, steel-hearted determination rises up to answer, sure and determined - knowing, for all the rest of him is insecure and frightened, 'What you can do, because you have to.'

Right.

Do as he always did, as he always tried to do - as he always had.

He had to try. It wasn't just All Might's wellbeing at stake, after all.

At first, Izuku could have sworn he was hallucinating. It had been several days since he'd last slept, and that was bound to addle his brain somehow. He could've sworn that hallucinations started around the fourth day, though, and he was only on the third.

So, when the full body mirror in his room blinks and warps, and Izuku looks up to see not his exhausted, rumpled appearance, but a wrecked plaza and a wretched monster, he didn't exactly believe it.

It was only when the reflection twirled, and the curtain pulled itself back to reveal massive injuries and All Might spitting blood, that reality finally came into focus - and promptly clocked him in the face.

The mechanism of denial still rose up, but it was squashed under the assurance that what he was seeing was real, that it would be real.

After all, the mirrors had never lied to him before, passively showing him everything from gruesome car accidents to people stumbling on the sidewalk. Never wavering, never attempting to exaggerate the events occurring. So, if he was shown something this bad, then it really would be that bad.

Plain and simple… and never fair.

Hands clammy and trembling, Izuku fumbles for his notebook, jerking the drawer in his desk open and tearing the booklet from it, click the pen attached and nearly ripping pages out in his haste to get it open and to an empty space.

'Clear sky, dome structure, plaza? Going by background, it looks to be some sort of facility, expensive,' In lieu of describing the monster, Izuku shakily sketches out the image burned into his brain, the grotesque features and exposed brain, 'Man with bandages around his neck, possibly dead, likely a hero of some sort? People in costumes, his age, maybe a bit older? Pale blue hair, matted, hands on… face-

-Villain.'

Villain attack. There was no doubt in Izuku's mind that this was some sort of… orchestrated attack on… someplace, likely those involved? The facility itself didn't seem to be of any particular importance, not in the way a bank or a government office would be. Sure it looked expensive, going by the size and complexity of what he saw, but that paled in comparison to the events at hand.

All Might, maimed kids in colorful costumes stained blood red, the villains and… Kacchan.

Kacchan, held hostage and hurt, once again caught in the mechanisms of fate, holding on by a string.

And Izuku… Izuku was the only one who knew. The only one who could know, because he was the only one who could be told.

Briefly, when Izuku was younger, unused to the danger and utterly terrified of what he saw, he considered telling the police. However, he would quickly remember the pain that crashed upon him as he tried to warn his mom, of his spotty, ruined vision and agonizing migraines. Izuku had no doubt that if he phoned in and tipped them off - even anonymously - he'd be in the hospital before he could give them anything important. In fact, they'd only approach him in three, set ways:

They'd think he was being murdered and quickly come to his aid, only to find a blind, presumably unconscious kid in a hospital, miles away from harm and no apparent attackers.

Assume that he was insane, due to the aforementioned fact his Not-Quirk dictated he not tell anyone, and be promptly dismissed.

They'd assume he was a villain, or at least in an alliance with them since there'd be no way to explain his abilities properly. He wasn't registered as having a pre-cognitive quirk, anyway. He was, for all intents and purposes, quirkless.

The police were out of the question. Heroes were too, for that matter, as was… the entire human population. Plus, even if Izuku had the skills and the resources to lead the police where he needed them to be at the right times, it's not something he was confident he could do consistently. Somewhere, somehow, either he or someone else would make a mistake, and it'd be costly for everyone involved: he would be deemed an unreliable source that the police force couldn't determine the position of.

Furthermore, they likely had skilled enough personnel to track him down, and he'd still end up in either jail or the hospital, unable to explain or even allude to the answer without massive backlash.

Anonymity and self-reliance were the only ways to go.

It's not like there was anyone who'd believe in him, or trust him enough to go along with anything he says, anyway. The only thing that would come of involving others in more than a tangential way would be mockery and suspicion.

He had no friends, after all. And though he was good at lying, these days, he could not afford to attract too much attention, lest he risk stretching a lie so thin that it snapped, and smashed all his hard-won success and cobbled-together stability into a thousand tiny pieces.

He was alone in this, but he would make it work, somehow.

He would, for All Might's sake.

small(For the sake of being a hero.)/small

First, Izuku would have to find out where the event was taking place. Then, he'd have to find out when, or approximately when, it would occur.

It would take a lot of time and energy, but luckily for Izuku, it was summer break, so he didn't have to worry about school, or more specifically, how to justify missing it.

There were high school entrance exams to worry about, of course, but he could take a week or two to focus on spawning some sort of plan. All Might was infinitely more important than an exam!

After all, he still had a little over half a year to think about high school.

(UA's entrance exam wasn't until next February, and it was only July.)

(He wasn't confident in his chances, but he'd still try.)

Summer wouldn't last forever, but he had time, and that was what mattered.

Probably.

He still didn't know when it would be, but he'd manage to hammer out something.

...After he had a good nap. Izuku was exhausted and even hopped up on adrenaline as he was, he still couldn't think clearly.

Izuku yawns. 'Yes, a nap would be nice…'

Taking a nap had clearly been the right thing to do, because now that Izuku was awake and completely refreshed, the focus and attention needed to plan was back in his grasp once again.

Before, when he was running on fumes and leftover adrenaline, Izuku's mind was hazy, cloudy, utterly anxious. He couldn't think straight, and the exhaustion bit at his heels and made his head pound.

Now though, the ideas spread out before him much more easily, allowing Izuku to finally deal with the problem at hand. First, he needed to reanalyze what he'd written down in his sleep-deprived haste, organizing it into something more substantial.

(He had to be careful, he couldn't be reckless, couldn't be hasty - this wasn't a simple watch-and-wait scenario, this was villains and heroes, Kacchan in a villain's grasp, with All Might spitting blood, losing time-)

Paging through his notebook, eyes skimming over the futures of old, some prevented and others not, his eyes fall on scribbled, shaky lettering. He cracks the spine of the booklet to make sure it stays open, and won't close shut the moment Izuku's thumb lifts off the page. Briefly, he glances up at the mirror that had relayed this particular prophecy to him, peering into his own reflection. His hair is still frizzy, framing his embarrassingly rounded face in wild curls, his eyes still the same green they'd always been. He noticed that he'd freckled a little bit more, but that was it.

He was still the same.

Somehow, he'd thought that with the crumbling of all he's ever known, that he'd wake up different.

Regardless, there was work to do, and it wouldn't be good for him to dwell on anything else for too long.

(And if Izuku has to pick out a twig from the frazzled bush he calls hair… well, that's his business, isn't it?)

He looks back down, and picks through the drawers in his desk for some loose-leaf paper, humming when he finds what he needs. The itch to start a new notebook specifically for this disaster is strong, but he manages to resist the temptation on the basis that the event will pass whether he succeeds or not, and his fresh books are strictly reserved for his quirk analysis series.

It only takes fifteen minutes for Izuku to neatly transcribe what's in the booklet onto the page, filling in holes and expanding on what he saw as he does, separating things into three categories; environmental, heroic, and villainous factors. Anything he could remember about the area and its circumstances went into the first, heroes the second, and villains the third. Obvious, concise, and easy to dissect.

With that down, Izuku needed to find out where the villains were attacking, because it very clearly was an attack. He noted how unique the surroundings were, the location obviously a private area without much of the public mulling about. So, not a randomized attack with an equally random set of victims. It was a targeted attack, clearly, organized to take place when something or someone was at its most vulnerable.

From what Izuku could recall, and what he had written down, there wasn't anything in the area that looked specifically valuable. Sure, like he'd noted before, the facility looked all around expensive to run, but plenty of buildings were. That didn't make that particular establishment any different.

No, what made this place different was specifically who and what was in it. Which made sense, considering that the villains didn't seem particularly focused on the setting; usually, when villains were hoping to attain something physical in an attack, they couldn't keep their eyes off of the goal, constantly peering back towards the object of their desires. Izuku could tell that was not the case here, because the main culprit's eyes were firmly fixed upon All Might, wide and maniacal, shining with bloodthirst and a petty sort of vindication.

So, the villains being after something inanimate was the question.

Izuku's gut sinks. If they weren't after something, then they must be after someone. After all, it didn't take a highly specific location to wreak havoc and maim lots of people - plenty of villains had achieved that by simply attacking a busy intersection or a crowded street.

So, who was it? And why would they bother? What was the point? Why would they go so far, and how did they manage to get All Might in a losing position in the first place?

Well, going by what he recalled, there were a couple of things that pointed towards an answer.

Firstly, the position of the victims. In that prophesied future, he had been shown an assortment of individuals, but their positions in the environment gave away much of their importance. The hero students - obvious, now that Izuku thought about it for more than a moment - were scattered, injured, but mostly out of the way. Even if they were engaged in combat, as seen by the sparks and dust clouds forming in the distance, it was not with the leaders of the group.

They had attention on them, certainly, but not by the people whose attention really mattered.

Even with Kacchan in his grasp, the hand villain was barely paying him any attention, expending no more effort than was necessary to keep him still and tame. So, the target could not be a heroics student.

(What was he, blind? Kacchan was held hostage by villains, with a fancy mask and Grenade gauntlets on his arms. And Izuku knew, from years of experience and an equal amount of gnarled burn scars, that Kacchan also wanted to be a hero.)

(He wasn't sure how he felt about it.)

The other heroes on scene were no better. There was a man with thick bandages around his neck being ganged up on, but once again, the monster and the hand villain were focused on only one person's pain: All Might's.

Everyone else might as well have been microscopic in comparison.

It could've just been that they were focusing on All Might because he was the most powerful person there, but if that were the case, they'd be more focused on threatening All Might with the hostage's safety - or more likely, running away.

But… the villains weren't doing that. Other than All Might, everything and everyone else was just… collateral. Having been used and discarded as was advantageous to the villain's plans. There was only one conclusion the clues were pointing to, and the picture it painted wasn't pretty.

They were after All Might.

All Might was the vulnerable party in the situation, and that's why they attacked him in an isolated location nearly en masse.

Inhaling, Izuku forces himself to calm down. If his thoughts raced any faster he'd throw himself headlong into a panic attack.

He exhales, long and deep. 'Slow down,' he thinks, patting his cheeks lightly to distract himself from the ideas swirling around in his mind like a vortex of anxiety and stress.

Making sure his breathing stays deep and even, Izuku returns to sorting information, calmly sorting his observations and inferences into the appropriate categories. 'Okay. So we have a where… sort of. It's an expensive facility for hero kids, likely to train them in. That… would probably explain the crumbling buildings, mini-mountains, and the domes. The who is definitely All Might, and they plan to use Kacchan to get to him.'

Since Izuku's gathered they're not targeting All Might for something he's guarding - namely, the hero students - their objective must be to simply hurt him.

Thinking back to the mirror, a wide grin marred with red and spitting blood, slightly hunched over a wound in his side, Izuku swallows heavily.

Okay, scratch that. They weren't just trying to hurt All Might.

He'd known it all along, really, but now there was no getting around it. In reality, they were trying to kill him; not just his career, or his image, like some had tried to do, but him physically.

They were going to kill All Might, and if he didn't do something, they would succeed.

(And if they did, everyone else would die, too. Izuku wasn't sure how he felt about Kacchan but… he didn't want him to die. He really didn't.)

So… he has the what, the approximate where, and the who. What? Kill All Might. Where? Some hero student training facility. Target? Once again, All Might.

What he didn't know - what wasn't clicking - was why the number one hero was with a bunch of heroics kids in the first place. For one thing, his main patrol routes were all located in the heart of Musutafu. In the past, the area had been larger, but these days it'd been slowly shrinking. For another, All Might was known to be a bit of a mysterious figure. Yes, he was loud and always there when he was needed most, but he was noted to be evasive about personal questions and tended to make himself scarce when put in a position where he'd be probed for information about himself or his quirk.

Izuku had always figured that it was to protect himself and his privacy for villains, but he could never be sure. After all, he didn't know All Might, even with all the merchandise he owned.

He may not know All Might, but he did know Kacchan.

If Kacchan was a heroics student in the future, then there was only one place he'd find suitable.

UA, the famous hero school All Might had graduated from.

(Izuku wasn't sure if he was proud of disappointed that Kacchan got into his - no, their - dream school. It only told him what he already knew, after all: Izuku did not matter. His old, faded dreams did not matter.

He was an optimist, yes, but he wasn't a fool.)

Still, why was All Might at UA? Since graduating, All Might hadn't gone back to the school, not for visits or school events. If All Might had been asked to accompany or guard a heroics class, then surely they wouldn't have ended up so clearly disadvantaged, and the students would have been the focus of the attack.

There was something Izuku was missing, splitting his focus, but he just didn't know what it was! Obviously, Izuku didn't have all the pieces of the puzzle.

He'd expected that, honestly, but it was still aggravating and anxiety-inducing.

'Breathe,' Izuku reminds, forcing himself to set down the pencil he'd been strangling.

He had much more information than he usually did. He'd worked with less and succeeded - but that was all for things like preventing accidents and finding lost dogs. He had to do his best and get all the information he could, as accurately as he could. Because if he failed, if his attempts to help fizzled out and fell through, All Might would die.

Still. All Might. Kacchan being held hostage by serious villains. Large scale villain attack. Wow.

He'd… just have to watch and wait, for now.

Izuku sighs, glad that he had time. They wouldn't graduate middle school for another six months, and the entrance exams for UA were held in February. He had time.

He couldn't investigate the situation with All Might and UA without making a lot of heavy-handed assumptions, but…

Izuku could thoroughly investigate the villains. It might be fruitless, and it was most definitely dangerous, but when had that ever stopped him before? He already has a few major leads to follow, and plenty of motivation to boot.

He had to do something.

(He does, as always.)

Izuku smiles to himself, nearly humming with satisfaction. The expression itself was a small, almost hesitant thing, his glee as tucked away as his secrets, hiding under his tongue, even as his lips spit white lies and hollow half-truths.

He's cruising down the sidewalk at a comfortable pace, giving an occasional pump of his foot to keep his skateboard from slowing to a stop. The skateboard really was a good investment, and Izuku was thankful he'd thought to get one.

Of course, money didn't grow on trees, so it'd taken three months of his allowance to save up for one, but he made it places much faster now that he had it, cutting the time needed to get somewhere in over half. It was a little more difficult to get off the skateboard than to get on it, but the sheer amount of time it saved made up for it.

Hand in one of his pockets, Izuku loosely grasps his pocket notebook, filled to the brim with loose-leaf paper and sticky notes - all containing tidbits of information on possible identities and leads. Much of it was worthless hearsay, but it was proof of his efforts.

Finally.

He'd done it. After nearly two months of constant research and vigilant snooping around, he'd finally had a breakthrough.

For the most part, the information Izuku had on the villains was on their physical descriptions - centered around their appearances and motivations. Which, frankly, was more than most investigations started off with. Izuku knew what they looked like, what grudges they held, and what they planned to do. Frankly, most of the work had already been done for him - he just had to fill in the gaps.

All he had to do was match a name to a face- er, faces.

He'd seen a lot of villains in that reflection, he could hardly remember what they all looked like. But, still, he was trying.

His methods were simple: he'd comb through the easy-access resources first, and fill in the gaps with some of the riskier, less reliable, options until he had a coherent set of information to go off of.

With that in mind, Izuku had begun researching. The easiest thing to do was pull up the National Database of Registered Villains, or NDRV, for short. From what he could figure, it was a way of categorizing and profiling villains, captured or otherwise. It was mostly for the police or particularly paranoid citizens, but anyone could access it. The database was a public resource, luckily, and Izuku definitely wasn't going to pass up the opportunity to compare the villains in the database to the ones he saw.

Truthfully, it'd felt a bit invasive. Izuku knew that many of the people society called "villains" were simply low-level criminals trying to get by. Navigating life was tough, and just a few wrong turns could land someone with being conflated with actual villains, like Toxic Chainsaw. It wasn't right, and it certainly wasn't fair: but that's how it was, and Izuku was not egotistical enough to think he could do anything about it.

Unfortunately, searching the database turned out to be a bust. He couldn't find a single entry on a villain with a misty-gas type quirk, a villain covered in a bunch of disembodied hands, or the monster-villain from before.

He'd kind of expected that the monster-villain wouldn't show up in the database. There was something about it, about the way it moved and looked, that wasn't… human. There were many quirks that heavily morphed someone's appearance to something monster-like, but at the end of the day, there were always little tics that gave away their humanity, their awareness.

If Izuku's hunch was right, the monster wasn't human at all - or at least, not anymore.

Izuku had seen a lot. He knew what it looked like when someone wasn't there anymore, leaving behind an empty husk halfway through shutting down. He'd been too late enough times that the look of glazed emptiness, of dead flesh that just hadn't yet withered, was embedded in his mind, haunting his dreams during the night and chased his heels during the day.

He was particularly disappointed that he couldn't find anything out about the hand villain, though. He seemed to be in charge of the operation and exuded some pretty high-profile villainy, at that.

Izuku can't dwell on it for too long though, and even though his disappointment was fierce and heavy, he quickly moved on to the next step.

Initially, Izuku had hoped he wouldn't have to make the leap, that the database and other compiled resources would be enough. But it wasn't, and there was nothing to do now but grit his teeth and jump, so… he did.

It was dangerous, iffy at best. One wrong move would garner Izuku a lot of extremely unwanted attention, but… ultimately, it was an effective method. It toed the line of "legal" but he, himself, had been toeing that line for years, so what was one more iffy thing to add to the pile?

With that thought in mind, Izuku skips school and stays out later. With that, Izuku began to lurk. The city was his domain, familiar to him in all the ways that mattered, and that meant he knew all the best spots for the underground to gather and bargain.

The grapevine of villain intercommunication was vast and wide. Loose tongues spat gossip and hearsay down convoluted, gnarled lines. Information was freely spoken, but rarely accurate. All Izuku had to do was make himself at home in places where crime grew like black mold and villains gathered to deal and waste away the evenings. Back-alley bars, forgotten shortcuts, deserted parks in the dead of night, when the streets were sleepy and most of the top-ranked heroes went to bed.

Izuku, sequestered in outfits as dark as the night sky, fit right in. He couldn't enter the bars, his height and voice and all-around baby face gave him away, but there were no laws saying he couldn't lurk outside of the establishments, hidden around corners and leaning on trash cans.

From the heaps of falsified, worthless garbage, Izuku was able to glean only small nuggets of truth. He knew there was something drumming up talk within the underground, making small ripples in already choppy waters. Some talk of radical organizations, secret societies, lone wolves acting in some sort of selfish vindication, each vein of gossip more outlandish than the last.

The stirrings of some league or organization dipping their toes into acrid waters. It was something, but it wasn't reliable, and it wasn't enough. Izuku had grown tired and decided that he wasn't going to lose any more sleep for pointless, unreliable villain gossip.

Instead, he turned to familiar territory: hero chasing.

Sort of.

He didn't pursue it in the same way he had before, when he was seven and bright-eyed and filled to the brim with hope. He couldn't, not anymore, not after he had gotten so tangled up in the destinies of others that he forgot he had his own. Nonetheless, it did involve standing around, gawking at flashy battles between larger-than-life heroes and scarier-than-death villains.

Only, this time, the heroes weren't what Izuku was there for. Instead, he came to lurk near yellow tape, near the red-blue flashing of police vehicles and ambulances, straining his ears for murmurs of villains made of mist or wearing hands.

It was due to that that Izuku snagged his breakthrough. It wasn't much, and he still didn't have a name, but what he got was telling.

That day, Izuku had been hero hunting, following a line of police cars to what he thought would be another run of the mill battle. It was a bit difficult to keep up with them, seeing as Izuku's mode of transportation was a skateboard, only managing due to the mid-afternoon traffic.

He did not arrive at a hero fight, but rather, an old-fashioned crime scene.

Heroes were important parts of the justice system, mitigating the influence of villains on their surroundings and keeping the peace while also apprehending criminals, but they were not detectives, (Even if they sometimes acted like they were). Most of the time, investigations were held and scoped out by the police force, and this one was no different.

Yellow tape, plenty of flashing police cars, scurrying officers, and gawkers come to see evidence of an accident.

Perfect for him, baby faced and quiet. Blending in with the crowd was something he'd practically been born to do, as he had an extremely plain face and no unique features to speak of. Being average had its perks, he guessed. He was lucky that he no longer wanted to garner attention. Izuku's appearance, at least, could no longer hurt him.

Following after the police cars that had arrived on scene, Izuku slowed to a stop, cautiously stepping off of his skateboard and plucking it from the ground. To keep it out of the way and minimize his presence, he tucked the board under one arm, slowly pushing through the crowd.

Once he made it to the very front of the congregation, nearly jammed against the police tape, he focused his attention on the scene at hand.

Honestly? Izuku had expected to see a mangled corpse. With the rise of quirks, unnatural deaths tended to be a lot more grotesque than they were in the pre-quirk era.

What he saw, however, was not a violent death. In the very middle of the scene, slightly obscured by the sheer number of police officers milling around, was a pile of dust. At first, Izuku thought that maybe the crime was an arsonist's doing, but they wouldn't break out the yellow tape for anything less than a contaminated area.

Plus, Izuku's pretty sure he would've heard about a fire taking place directly in the heart of Musutafu, anyway.

The surrounding buildings weren't even scorched! So, not the work of an arsonist. And it couldn't be contamination, Izuku notes, because none of the officers on scene were wearing protective gear - outside of the standard gloves.

So, a homicide, probably. That pile of ash must be human remains, judging by the way they were picking at it - probably looking for bones or teeth. This notion was only confirmed by the words of the officers themselves.

A pair of men in uniform were speaking lowly to each other, close enough to Izuku that he could overhear some of the conversation, but not all of it.

He had to get closer. Izuku huffs a breath and prepares to face the crowd once again, painstakingly inching to the side, closer and closer to the officers. He makes sure to keep his eyes and posture geared towards the pile, and desperately hopes neither of the officers have mind reading quirks.

The entirety conversation meets his ears, and Izuku stops.

"-Another victim of that news serial killer, huh?"

"Seems so. This case has all the hallmarks of 'em. Pile of dust, no rhyme or reason to it, no sign of struggle or quirk use - other than the pill of ash - nothing. Same as usual."

"This is the third time this month… the killer is growing bold."

"Honestly, I thought the perpetrator was a hardcore vigilante at first. All the victims were thugs and low-rank villains. But lately… It's been anyone and everyone."

"Ah, we're lucky this time, though-"

"Oh, really? Why's that?"

"-if you'd let me finish you'd know-"

(Izuku struggles to stifle a snort.)

"-we've got a witness this time. That's why I asked! Having a witness breaks the pattern."

"I know that, but what'd the witness say?! I don't wanna wait a couple days for the report, so hurry up!"

"Ah, well, they didn't see much. They just saw some scrawny guy with baby blue hair and pasty skin. The culprit had dark clothes too, apparently, but the witness can't remember the specifics."

"Well, it's more than we had before, that's for sure."

'True that!' Izuku silently cheers, 'this is what I've been waiting for!'

Blue hair, pasty skin, kills and disappears without a trace…

'The gaseous villain - the getaway. They must have some sort of transportation quirk. That's probably how the villains got into the facility in the first place: they didn't break in, so much as use the getaway villain's quirk to warp in! Either way, it connects the serial killer to the villains targeting All Might.'

Their physical attributes were similar. The lack of care for human life and the level of bloodthirst were nearly identical, too. With just a little bit of thought, bits and pieces of information about the villains began to fit together quite neatly.

It was useful. So, with his newest morsel of information copied into his notebook, Izuku rides home, a small, secretive smile on his face.

'I'll have to look around a bit more, but if I can find out who that serial killer is, then maybe I can find out when they'll attack…!'

Izuku stands over his desk, palms pressed to his desk as he looks over a sheet of paper, nearly blank except for a single word:

Shigaraki.

He has a name. He's put a name to the face.

It's enough to make him dizzy with relief, with anxiety, with trepidation, nuanced feelings mixing into something Izuku's unable to parse through.

It's probably just some kind of weird anxiety, though. Probably.

He kind of wants to throw up.

But- still. Shigaraki. One word. Four characters.

But that's not all.

He's connected to that organization, the one that's been stirring up gossip on the streets. It seems they've gone from dipping their toes in the underworld to diving in, beginning to try and attract as many villains as they can.

Why Izuku doesn't know, but all that matters, at the moment, is that with the change brought him a name.

It's only October, but he's gotten so much farther than he thought he would.

(And if Izuku falls into his desk chair and sobs, then, well, it's his secret, isn't it?)

(...Grief is such a strange thing.)

He's at school when another piece of the puzzle clicks into place.

It was his lunch period, and with no friends and no accidents to prevent, Izuku had taken sanctuary upon the school's roof, sitting out of the way to eat quietly.

There were no leads to chase that day, and the roof was deserted due to the frigid winter air, dry and biting, so there was little chance he'd have to make a quick escape from Kacchan or any of his cronies.

It was cold out, but it was quiet. The sky was clouded and grew, shrouding the city in a dreary sort of stillness. Regardless, he was content to pick at his food and browse the news.

The news app feeds him nothing of importance, throwing headline after headline of unimportant gossip and sports news at him until he refreshes the page, as if reloading it will change the content entirely.

Except, the trending article isn't about a minor celebrity injuring their arm, but about All Might.

The piece slots into place as he furiously taps at his screen, opening a link to the article.

"#1 Hero, All Might, to Begin Teaching at UA" the headline reads, big and bold and-

Oh. So that was why All Might was with those hero kids. He wasn't guarding them, he was teaching them.

The article isn't very detailed, but seeing as the information was leaked due to the careless words of one of the teachers there, apparently, Izuku isn't inclined to doubt it.

Not with what he knows, not with how perfectly it slots into his base knowledge of the future.

He couldn't afford to.

(It only took one small misstep, one wrong turn, and Izuku would be buried under his guilt, crushed by it.)

His chopsticks are set down, and not picked back up. Izuku frantically pulls out his notebook and writes what he knows.

Slowly, surely, the gaps in his knowledge are being filled in.

Winter break passes by at a snail's pace, Izuku impatient but on strict bedrest after a run-in with Kacchan had gotten out of hand.

His ankle was sprained, he had second-degree burns on his chest and arms, and enough bruises to last him a lifetime.

His mom had tittered and cried over his sorry state.

Izuku told her that he had gotten caught in a villain attack.

(He knows his mom doesn't believe him. That she looks at him with teary, worried, suspicious eyes. She thinks he's skipping school to get into fights - that he's becoming a delinquent.

She was wrong, but the truth wasn't any better, was it?)

Just a few more months until he graduates. Just a few more, and then, no matter where he went, Kacchan would not be there.

(It hurts, and he's just so alone.)

As the months went by, getting into UA and following his - hollow, withered - dreams had become something of an afterthought. Sure, he kept his grades in great shape and his record clean (other than the black spots of truancy that marred their cleanliness - but, ah, it just couldn't be helped), but he hadn't actively thought about far off dreams since… since before Kacchan was almost killed by that sludge villain, all those months ago.

It was a bit uncomfortable, having to acknowledge that something was slipping - that he was slipping. That the dreams and hopes he had once clung to so dearly had become pale and faded.

It was a bit like losing a limb, something once there and integral to his very being now gone, leaving a gap, disconcertingly empty.

So, in a fit of desperation, of acrid fear that bit at the back of his throat and made him want to vomit up his lunch, Izuku takes the entrance exam for UA - for the heroics course. As he said he'd do but didn't quite believe.

Or, well, he did believe that he'd do it, he always at least tried, but Izuku didn't exactly believe he'd ever get there - that he'd spend the rest of his days in middle school, chasing far off dreams like a northern star.

But he did get there. He'd finally graduated middle school. Time ushers him ever forward, never ceasing, and Izuku had to get on with things one way or another.

He tells himself that his chances of getting into UA are about as good as everyone else's, that he might just be in some other class (despite the fact that for all of Izuku's schooling he and Kacchan have been in the same class), that his fate isn't predetermined.

That this time, the future was wrong.

So Izuku tries.

And, of course, he fails.

The exam went terribly.

He didn't get a single point.

(He knew, already. He knew. He was never shown futures he was in, as always. And that meant Izuku did not go to UA, he knew that! But he had hoped, that for once, that everyone was wrong about him, just a little.)

Izuku still held mirrors in his pockets and made sure to buy glass bottles of soda from the store. He was still weird, and still quirkless, and he did as he had always done, but...

Something had changed.

(He did not get into hero school, and the advent of his far off dreams would never come.)

It's almost ironic, then, that Izuku passes the entrance exam to a different school with flying colors.

It's not a hero school, though, and that… that hurts.

He would never be a hero.

But that was okay. It'd have to be. Most people weren't cut out to become heroes. So he weathers his mom's congratulations and the little comments about how glad she was that he was safe, and tells himself, ah, well, that's life.

(The double meanings are not lost on him. His mouth tastes like ash and shattered dreams, and he swallows down the despair that clings to the back of his throat.)

Izuku was fifteen, quirkless, and he helped people nearly every day.

He was fifteen, quirkless, and he was drowning.

The day before high school starts, Izuku saves a lady with poisonous quills. He'd been lurking around the area around midday for days and had finally been able to save her from having her head taken off by a twisted ball of stainless steel - ripped from the nearest skyscraper.

Villains were not careful with human lives, and if someone died due to their negligence, then that was just how it was, wasn't it?

(The heroes had done their best, he tells himself, you're just bitter because you're not a hero.)

Unfortunately, Izuku hadn't exactly known the quills were poisonous, not until he'd tackled her from behind and ended up paralyzed.

It was heartwarming, the way she'd profusely apologized and even moved him somewhere out of the way, sticking with him until the paralysis wore off.

'This could work!' Izuku had thought, elated at the prospect of further filling out his plan, but unable to do more than twitch his fingers.

The surprise on the woman's face when he asked her for a few of her quills was priceless, even if he felt kind of bad for lying to her about why he needed them.

But- ah, how was she supposed to know that he didn't have a minor poison immunity quirk, one that required he be exposed to the poison multiple times to work?

Highschool kicks off without drama or fanfare. His mom fixes the collar as he leaves, teary-eyed and so proud, and he takes the bus to school with no interruptions. He enjoys passing by the sakura trees planted in parks and along busy roads and attends that day's orientation.

Settling in is easy, peaceful. No one really bothers to talk to him, but he's fine with that.

He didn't have to say he was quirkless, either, so he takes that as a win. Sure, it'd come to light eventually, and the people - unfamiliar to him for the first time in his life - in his class would no longer be able to reason away his eccentricities as part of his quirk, but it was fine.

It was all fine. He had bigger fish to fry, anyway, and there was no point in chasing lost causes.

It was the new school year and he had to be extra vigilant. There was no time for him to get distracted by petty prejudices and old, bitter truths. So he went home, and he prepared, spent late nights up and awake, running over scenarios and perfecting his plans.

He had almost everything he needed, and now all that was left was to wait. Because when had eluded him for months, as he'd thought it would.

Three days into high school, the class finds out that Izuku's quirkless. The easy, casual ways people interacted with him swiftly disappeared, replaced only with discomfort and avoidance. No one made fun of him, they didn't taunt or beat him up, but the silence they gave him instead was frigid and choking.

It was fine. He didn't have time to worry about it. The villains were acting up, and things were changing, villains were moving and something was going on.

So, it was back to haunting the streets, lurking in places he shouldn't during school hours. He kept his eyes on the prize, and school was put on the back burner with any indication of strange activity - those ripples he'd seen all those months ago had become waves.

A storm was brewing, and Izuku needed to be prepared for when it thundered.

The crash didn't take as long as he'd expected, honestly. Only two weeks into the term, UA's front gates - notoriously thick and imposing - were reduced to rubble.

Reduced to ash.

It was said that it was a break in by the media, a crowd of unruly news reporters had broken in trying to get the latest scoop on All Might, but Izuku knew better.

Something was going to happen, and soon. The wait for it was agony, but he was braving through it: he'd done all of this before, time and time again. He could be patient.

First, though, he had to check up on Kacchan.

They hadn't spoken a word to each other since middle school ended - for the best, really - but as soon as the news had broken that the gate had been destroyed, his mother had panicked, worry guiding her decision making. It only took a single call to Bakugou Mitsuki to arrange a dinner visit.

There was no way Izuku could, or would, say no. He still cared about Kacchan, wished the best for him, and though UA had reported no injuries, Izuku couldn't be sure he was alright.

So, to the Bakugou's it was.

Standing at the front door, waiting for someone to answer the door, Izuku second guesses himself. 'Maybe this was a bad idea,' he thinks, 'I should tell mom I'm feeling sick and go home. She'd be a bit disappointed in me but it'd be better than this-'

The door swings open. The face of Bakugou Masaru peeks out. It was too late. For him to turn back now would be cowardice.

Izuku laments the state of his life.

"Ah, you're here!" the elder Bakugou says, a warm smile on his face as he invites them in. The difference between him and his family is almost jarring, but Izuku can't help but be grateful it was him who answered the door, rather than Kacchan.

Izuku swallows as he passes the threshold of the door and steps into the foyer, but pushes forward. His mother smiles and titters, chatting with Bakugou Masaru and soon Bakugou Mitsuki, with the addition taking the conversation up several decibels.

Kacchan is nowhere to be seen and doesn't come to join them in the foyer.

But that's fine, he's not sure he wanted to be greeted. And anyway, he was much more content to watch the conversation than to be in it.

He's glad that the Bakugou's seem to be in a good mood, despite the scare.

-He thinks of the Bakugou's faces at the news of their son held hostage, scarred and traumatized and injured-

"Well, why don't we sit the hell down, then? I'm sure Izuku here'll want to gush about his school, hm?"

Izuku flinches, unwittingly coming back to reality. "O-oh, it's um, not all that impressive-"

"Ha! Sure it isn't, Inko-chan tells me you got into a school with a pretty good rep, kid! You must've worked hard."

He's trying to let them know it's not that big of a deal, really. It isn't a big deal. The school's not that well known in any particular area, he only attended because apparently, it boasts a pretty good course on journalism. "Well, um-"

"Deku."

He blinks, looking away from the adults to where Kacchan lurks at the entrance to the kitchen, hands tucked into his pockets.

"...Kacchan."

God. He shouldn't have come, because Kacchan doesn't even acknowledge him after that. Izuku nearly cringes as he watches his childhood friend's face contort, irritation flashing, before turning and stalking away without a word.

There's a lull in the adult's conversation, but Mr. Bakugou quickly breaks the ice.

"Ah, well, you know Katsuki. Let's eat, shall we?"

Dinner is spent much like that, the adults chatting aimlessly, only dipping their toes into deeper topics before yanking them out again. Izuku and Kacchan are mostly silent, and they don't talk to each other.

His mother looks happy, though. She's aware of the tension in the room, they all are, but she doesn't acknolwedge it, choosing instead to indulge in less murky waters.

Izuku wishes he could compartmentalize like she did, a bit.

Instead, Izuku keeps his head down and his face placid. He eats his food and doesn't stir up trouble.

Kacchan is fine, there are no injuries to be found on him. He'd managed to make the adults forget about him and his boring life, if only barely. He'd done what he came to do.

The dinner was over, and they were in those last minutes of conversation before they left. Izuku was so close. It was so close to being over.

That's when, of course, Kacchan chooses to break his silence.

"Hey, nerd."

Izuku gulps. "Yes, Kacchan?"

"What school'd you get into?"

He flinches as if struck. "Oh, um, you probably haven't heard of it-"

"So it's some lame school no one's heard of? Heh, it's the perfect place for an extra like you, Deku."

Mrs. Bakugou rears back in horror. "Katsuki!"

Izuku swallows, peering down at the ground. There's a thick sludge compressing his lungs, so similar to the sludge villain's, the one that had choked and stifled his screams, his agony. He ignores it. He exhales, small and sharp.

It's familiar territory to him, to pull up that plastic smile and slip it over his face. It stretches his face weirdly, tight and uncomfortable. His hand comes up to rub at the back of his neck, grazing over the baby hairs at the nape of his neck. "Ah," he starts, appearing perfectly sheepish, "I guess you're right, Kacchan."

Kacchan, for his part, snorts. "Damn right I am."

It was disappointing. He'd been expecting this. This confrontation - if it could even be called that - was going to happen eventually, and it went just like this. Resignation pulls at his ears and threatens the small smile plastered over his - guilty, broken - face.

He hikes his plastic smile up high, his eyes falling shut. "Mhm. Congratulations on making it into UA, Kacchan. You'll be as great as All Might one day."

"Tch."

"No, really. You'll make a great hero."

The very next day, things go to hell.

He'd skipped school entirely, foregoing the event to track down the latest victim of fate's whims, when things clicked into place.

He'd spent approximately an hour lurking around the alley of a few hole-in-the-wall restaurants, rolling about on his skateboard and trying to look like he belonged there. In the spirit of believability, he'd had to make a route of it, as watching the area for too long would be suspicious.

The supplies required to make his plan (dubbed "Operation: Saving All Might") work had replaced his analysis notebooks weeks ago, as Izuku needed to be prepared for things to go wrong at all times. It would be an absolute disaster if he forgot his supplies at home when he needed them most, so he made sure to keep everything on him.

He was glad he did.

It started with a flying skateboard, funnily enough. He was making his sixteenth skate past the alley when he saw his victim being attacked, the thugs had him pinned to the ground, a long, knife-like weapon positioned to strike and kill. Small flashes of light flare around the man on the ground, weak and pulsing - like dying fireflies.

So, Izuku did the only thing he could think of: he had the board go as fast as it could and jumped off before he lost control, sending it careening straight into the backs of the man's attackers.

Their groaning was music to his ears, but his heart sunk at the sorry state of his skateboard. Several of the wheels were broken, and there was a large crack right down the middle.

It was tragic, but at least the guy those thugs were trying to kill was okay.

...And looking at him with absolute awe, as if Izuku had commanded the earth to stop for him, and it'd listened.

It was weird. The guy was still staring. Even weirder was the annoying sensation that he'd seen this man before. He just didn't know where.

Izuku waves a hand near the man's face. "Are- are you okay?"

"...You saved my life."

"Um."

"Ah, I suppose this means I owe ya my life now, or somethin'."

What?

"What?"

"You heard me, I'm in your debt."

"Oh. Um, okay? I mean, that's cool and all but, are you alright? Those guys seemed pretty intent on, uh, stabbing you."

The guy gets to his feet, grunting. He moves out of the shade of the alley, allowing Izuku to get a better look at his face.

Oh. So that's where Izuku had seen him from. "You-you're Flashbang! The villain that robbed the bank on sixth street last month!"

The villain blinks scoffing and tucking his hands into his faded jeans. It's an action eerily similar to ones Kacchan has taken before. "Yea, that was me, what about it?"

That has Izuku thinking. Why would villain's try to murder a bank robber? It didn't make sense - the underground had a "finder's keepers" attitude to theft. They wouldn't go out of their way to steal from those who had stolen first - the easier targets were notably regular citizens, but if they just so happened to find a stash of cash, well, then it was fair game, wasn't it?

So, why?

Izuku narrows his eyes. "You tell me. Why would several villains stab a murder attempt on another villain? And don't tell me it was by chance, I'll know if you're lying. I know your quirk - but you don't know mine."

A bluff, but he's sure Flashbang won't call him on it.

"Tch, fine. I owe ya, anyway."

"So…?" Izuku urges when the criminal goes silent, chewing on his lip.

He sighs. "I didn't expect anyone would be out for my blood, honestly. I thought they'd all be taken up with their so-called grand plan to worry about some small-time defector. Guess not."

Grand plan?

"Is that why the streets have been so quiet today? Some sort of," Izuku makes a fluttery gesture, "plan is being enacted? What does that have to do with you - from what I know, you work alone."

"Slow down, kid, but yeah. Usually, I go-it-alone, but for the right price, well- it seemed like a good deal at the time."

"What do you mean?"

"Why do you wanna know?"

Izuku huffs, growing impatient. "Just- tell me. It might be important."

"Fine. Those guys? They were probably the League's clean-up crew. They're some new organization that've been recruiting villains for some sort of revenge plan - they've got some sorta grudge against the heroes. I mean, not that I don't get hating the heroes and all that, being a villain means you've gotta dislike heroes on some level."

Izuku raises an eyebrow and crosses his arms.

"What? It's true, you brat! Anyway, it got everyone's attention, especially when they claimed credit for destroyin' UA's big ass gate. That takes guts. They were also offering a quite a pretty penny for participating in their plots, almost went through with it, too. But, in the end, eh. You've gotta know somethin' about plans."

"What?"

"Y'see, when you make a plot, you've gotta have a way in and a way out, and those guys the League? There was no way out, no good ideas for a getaway. No one else brought it up, thinking the leader was gonna kill 'em or because they didn't have the good sense to know when they were about'ta get scammed but, I could just tell they weren't planning on payin' anyone."

Izuku thinks he knows what this is, who the league is and what they're after, but just to be safe…

"This league, do you know what they're after specifically?"

The villain scowls at him. "What, you plannin' on playing hero or some shit?"

Izuku's cheeks redden. He says nothing.

"Holy shit, kid, you're fuckin' crazy."

"...I get that a lot."

"I don't doubt it. Yeah, I do. I went to every meeting but the last - it was this morning. This was when they were putting their plot int'a action. 'S why I didn't expect the attempt just yet, thought they all would be off gettin' themselves killed trying to kill All Might."

Jackpot.

His stomach sinks nevertheless, and Izuku doesn't have to feign his surprise, even after all this time. "Kill All Might?! Are they delusional?!"

Flashbang raises his eyebrows, chuckling lightly. "Heh, it's actually kinda'a clever plan."

Izuku says nothing for a long moment. The ice between them solidifies, but Izuku could care less: there were more important things to think about. The gears in his head were churning, running near on overtime.

"When was it supposed to be?" Izuku asks at last, just as the man turns to walk away.

"Does it matter? You can't seriously be thinkin' of chasing after 'em, can you?"

"When was it?!" Izuku demands, done with this circular method of conversation.

"Jeez. Sometime around noon or whenever."

…it was 12:16 pm.

He had to go. He had to go now.

But-

His skateboard was broken, unusable. It wouldn't be fast enough. Izuku looks to Flashbang, considering.

"How does your quirk work, specifically."

The man narrows his eyes at him. It seems asking after the man's quirk was a risky thing to say. "Why d'ya wanna know?"

"Does it really matter?" Izuku says, calm, trying to speak over the fierce thumping of his heart.

"Fuck yeah it does, I wanna know what's in it for me!"

Bemusement falls over Izuku, nipping at his extremities. "...What's in it for you? I don't report you to the police for robbery and conspiring with terrorists, that's what!"

Both of them fall silent, Flashbang exhales. "You drive a hard bargain. Okay, I'll bite."

"Good."

"Don't push it."

"The number for the police is only three numbers. Hurry up."

"Fine. My quirk's called Light Beam. I can fuck with light from the sun. It's a photokinetic quirk - whatever the hell that means. It's only useful for creating distractions. It's aggravating - I've gotta create my flashbangs before a heist because it takes too much concentration to fight with."

Did this guy really… wow. He didn't realize just how much power he had. "Wait. In order to create a flashbang, you've gotta compress that light really small, right? Otherwise, it'd just be a blob of light."

"I guess so. I just sorta pack it real small until I know that it'll pop if I let it go."

"Huh?"

"Shit, I dunno- I just use a little bit'a energy to keep it from scattering in all fuckin' directions. It's a pain in the ass."

Oh, yes. That would work. That would work very well. If he's right in his thinking then that would fix the problem of transportation right up.

"Energy, like, food energy or…?"

Flashbang is looking increasingly weirded out by Izuku's questions.

That's fine with him, honestly. "Nah, it's that- uh. Quirk energy stuff, you know?"

"...Quirk factor?"

"Yeah, that stuff."

Izuku wants to cheer, and euphoria rips through him, nearly disrupting his firm, lightly irritated demeanor.

Because Izuku was quirkless. He had no quirk to speak of, he couldn't fly or move things with his mind.

His parents, however, did have quirks.

And that made all the difference.

A couple years ago, when Izuku was desperate enough to try and find a way to somehow develop a quirk, to see if it was possible, he'd stumbled upon an interesting little factoid. It was disappointing at the time, but… now it was a boon.

It was a boon because while Izuku hadn't inherited any quirk, he did inherit quirk factor, a form of energy unique to the quirk phenomenon, existing in all human's born after the emergence of quirks.

Well, everyone born from a line of quirk users. Quirk factor sat in dormant stores under his skin, useless to him for the most part. Izuku had the extra toe joint, there was no quirk for him to need quirk factor for.

But if the light was powered by energy, by quirk factor, then Izuku could probably use it, too.

After all, light had no mass - not in a conventional way. It wouldn't take up as much energy as, say, the heat it gave off would.

It was sustainable.

"Kid? If you're just gonna stare off into space, I'm gonna go."

He blinks, "Oh, um, sorry. Say, there's something I want to try, but I'm gonna need your help to do it."

Flashbang actually groans this time. It seems both of them were at the end of their respective ropes. "What is it? You still planning on going and getting yourself killed? That's fine by me, by the way, less of a chance of you rattin' me out."

Izuku sighs, but ignores the jab.

"Okay, could you try compressing light like you do for your flashbangs, but like... flat?"

Kirishima Ejirou was having a bad day.

Oh, it hadn't started off that way! It really hadn't. In fact, it'd seemed like it'd be a really good, really cool day!

Really, he'd been so excited - they were going on a school trip for Foundational Heroics! The ride there had been great. It was really nice seeing all of his classmates chat so nicely with each other on the way there - things were so tense most of the time - and meeting pro hero Thirteen was really cool!

The rescue hero was very manly, and the speech they gave on the dangers of their quirks had really hit home.

As much as Ejirou's quirk could guard, it was hard enough to pierce, too. His quirk left him full of sharp edges - and that was dangerous.

It made him dangerous, to some extent.

And then- and then everything fell apart.

Watching as All Might falls to his knees, deflating and spitting blood, god, and with Bakugou in a very dangerous villain's grasp, Ejirou can't help but wonder-

-Why did everything go so wrong?

One moment, things had been fine. The next- the next things were not. In the blink of an eye, pools of purple mist had formed, and in the next, villains were pouring out, countless amounts of them.

Honestly? He'd thought it was a joke, or a logical ruse, as Aizawa-sensei had put it.

But it wasn't.

That sank in the moment the mist spat Thirteen's quirk back at them, ripping their costume to shreds and injuring the hero badly.

Bad enough for them to completely collapse.

He'd thought it'd be fine, even with one hero down, because All Might was there. Even though he'd been caught off guard, he could handle it. Things would be alright. Surely, he'd thought, All Might will handle it. He's Manly, and Thirteen was only a rescue hero.

But- that thing. The Noumu. It met All Might blow for blow.

And then, when he and Bakugou had tried to knock out the mist guy, his fist had sunk through the villain, and swirling purple had swallowed them both whole.

One moment, everything was dark. The next, Ejirou was spat out, into a building on fire and teeming with villains.

But, he'd had Bakugou on his side, so of course, taking out the villains was easy. It took nary a moment for Bakugou to shake off his surprise and pounce, his eyes nearly glinting with bloodthirst.

It was manly, frankly. It was cool.

He was quick to join his classmate, hardening his arms and clocking a woman with fangs right across the face. They made quick work of the rest, punching and blocking and taking out villain after villain.

For a second, Ejirou thought to himself, everything would be fine.

He thought that all the way up to the plaza, all the way up the point where Bakugou had jumped at the weird hand villain, yelling for him to die while his hands flared and popped. All Might had been doing fine then, caught blow for blow with the monster, but fine.

And then, Bakugou yelled in pain. Because - the villain had Bakugou in his grasp, one hand around Bakugou's throat and the other gripped on his arm. The hand around his classmate's throat was using only four fingers, the pinky flicked up, but the one on his arm used all five.

Ejirou could only watch, frozen in horror, as the skin on Bakugou's arm flaked away, revealing corded muscle and so much blood.

It was horrifying. It distracted All Might.

So, now they were here, with All Might hunched and broken, Bakugou spitting insults through the pain, and Aizawa-sensei out cold, blood pooling below him.

They were screwed.

Or… not?

Ejirou watches in bewilderment as a boy riding a beam of light zips by him and kicks the hand villain right in the face.

He didn't look like a hero. Ejirou didn't know him, but… watching the hand villain go flying backward, surprise and pain causing his grip on Bakugou to loosen just enough to where his classmate could wrench himself away, he thinks he could cheer for him all the same.

"Deku?!" Bakugou cries, jumping away from the hand villain as fast as possible.

Well, Ejirou didn't know him, but it seems Bakugou did.

"Hi, Kacchan." the boy, baby faced and wearing a faded green hoodie calls, a wobbly smile on his face, even as the beam of light he was surfing on waves and dissolves, light particles scattering and refracting. "I'm sorry I'm late! I didn't mean to let things get this bad."

Ejirou watches, now wholly confused, as he kid neatly lands on his feet, stumbling only slightly - likely due to the weight of his sunny yellow backpack. Right away, Ejirou notices that he slotted himself between the villains and the rest of them, putting himself right in the spotlight.

This kid that Bakugou knew, that called him Kacchan, he knew this attack was going to happen?

Was Deku a villain too?

"You were lying about not having a quirk, you shitty nerd!" Bakugou screeches, looking more like he wanted to attack Deku instead of the villains.

Deku only looks at Bakugou, nonplussed. "Kacchan… it's not. You know me!"

"Not well enough, apparently! When this all over, you're going to explain everything- including all the weird shit you've been up to!"

Deku sighs, tucks his hands into the pockets of what's obviously a school uniform and smiles. "No I won't, Kacchan."

"You." the hand villain rasps, the frothing rage and bloodlust in his voice nearly palpable.

Deku, in the face of a murderer, of a real-life villain, merely blinks.

"Me?"

"Yeah, you. You're that shitty green-haired brat that's been snooping around for months. I thought you were just some rat NPC trying to be a runner- but instead, you're a bug I need to crush."

Unwittingly, Ejirou takes a step back. Deku does not, just slips his hands into his hoodie, entirely casual.

It's weird, watching a villain threaten to murder someone, only for the someone in question to relax at the statement, rather than panic.

He's not sure if that counts as manly or stupid.

"I really was that obvious, huh? Well, I wasn't trying to hide too hard, so… I guess I should've expected you to recognize me, Shigaraki."

Ejirou wants to scream. Ejirou's not really paying attention, and he's almost sure he's hallucinating, but he thinks he hears All Might gasp, too.

Deku is a villain!

"How do you know that?!" The hand villain, Shigaraki, screams. He actually stomps his foot, like a child. "You're compromising my raid, my plan was perfect, and you're ruining it!"

Deku scoffs, actually scoffs. He's still standing there, relaxed and comfortable. What the fuck. "What? Like it's hard? You're a serial killer! You leave an obvious trail behind you! It wasn't hard to put two and two together."

Shigaraki's flex. "No, I'm sure I did everything right. It was perfect! The plan was perfect. You did something, didn't you?!"

Deku shrugs, and this point, Ejirou thinks he's watching a horror movie in slow motion. "Maybe you're just not as good of a villain as you think you are."

Shigaraki screams, raging and blood-curdling in its intensity, raw and so, so angry.

"Noumu!" Shigaraki barks, "Kill this annoying brat, kill him now!"

And Ejirou's heart stops, stuttering in his chest because- because even All Might couldn't take that thing down.

How was a plain-faced kid with some sort of suicidal streak supposed to take down Noumu, that thing that could punch as fast All Might and just as hard?

The monster explodes into action, scarily blank eyes rolling forward to lock onto Deku before it's off like a shot.

Ejirou's limbs lock up, and he's frozen in place once again. He wants to shout, to tell Deku to just run away, but his lips are glued together, and he can only watch in utter despair as he and Noumu collide.

It's got Deku by one of his arms, and Ejirou flinches when Deku grunts in agony, only- Deku's brought some sorta tube up to his lips, and without fanfare, he shoots some sort of dart out of it.

It hits Noumu right between the eyes.

Deku actually cries out when Noumu's grip tightens on his arm, as his bones are crushed and his hoodie is stained blood red, just like All Might's-

But, then, Noumu goes slack, and promptly falls over, boneless.

Wait- what?

Deku grunts, teary-eyed and clearly in pain, but a pleased grin forms on his lips. "It worked."

There's a note of relief in his voice, but then Shigaraki is talking again before Ejirou can question it.

"What did you do?!"

Deku's grin grows fierce and wide, cutting and vindictive, even as he clutches his ruined arm. "I dunno, wasn't it obvious?"

"You cheated! You cheated! You're a cheater. I'll kill you!"

"Ah, but- can you do it before the other heroes arrive? They're surely almost here by now."

Shigaraki freezes. "You brat. Coward! You called them?! Called those NPC heroes?!"

"Yup! Are you willing to get caught, just to kill me?" Deku chirps, and for a guy who's probably bleeding out, he sure does look nonchalant. "I mean, you said it yourself, right? I'm an NPC. I'm not all that important."

Surely, surely Deku isn't goading Shigaraki into killing him, just to buy time? Surely, he isn't.

"What are you doing, Deku?! Are you trying to get your weak ass killed?!" Bakugou hisses, stalking forward.

The villain, the instigator of this disaster, Shigaraki, releases a strangled scream. He flails in place, hands clenching and flexing as he stomps his heels and throws a tantrum.

"Damn it! You ruined everything. You ruined it!"

Deku raises an eyebrow. "You deserve it, though. You basically did it to yourself."

"Noumu-!" Shigaraki screams.

The monster doesn't even twitch, but the mist villain starts to speak. "Mister Shigaraki, you tried your best, but it would be wise if we retreated now."

Shigaraki, breathing heavily, growls. "Fine."

The mist villain narrows his eyes, cautious, and then the mist spreads wider, wider and wider.

"You, Deku. I'll remember this." Shigaraki threatens, even as he backs up, sinking into the murky mist.

Mist that swallows up the Noumu, too.

Deku actually has the audacity to send the villain a thumbs up. "Fine with me!"

God, he really was suicidal. Holy crap.

And the villains are gone, all of them sinking back into purple mist.

In a moment, all is silent.

Then, Deku is swaying on his feet, hissing. "Jeez, that hurts."

It's only then that Ejirou finds his voice. "Uh, dude, are you good?"

Deku's looking up, blinking. "Oh, um, yeah. I'm fine!"

Astounded, he looks at Deku's arm, at its awkward shape and the long, jagged cuts that are still bleeding, and he doubts.

But Deku isn't focused on him anymore. He peers around, and at the sorry state of All Might, he pales.

And, even though it should be All Might checking up on Deku, should be them checking up on Deku (and asking what the hell just happened), the boy uses his good arm to reach into his backpack and pull out a first aid kit.

The next few minutes are a kaleidoscope whirlwind of motion, and shock sets in as he watches Deku rush to All Might's aid and patch him up-

-"Are you alright, All Might? I'm so sorry- I'm so sorry I was late." "It's… it's fine, my boy."-

Before moving to both Bakugou and Aizawa-sensei's sides and wrapping their wounds, moving Aizawa-sensei with one arm onto his back, and applying bandages to Bakugou's.

It's weird how easily Deku directed everything, Ejirou thinks, having somehow ended up at Aizawa-sensei's side, putting pressure on the worst of his wounds.

"Um," he hears himself start, "you said there were reinforcements coming?"

Deku blinks. "Oh, that. Um, it was a bluff. I was kinda just working on getting here - I wasn't really thinking about anything else."

He feels like he's listening to him from underwater, sunk and fuzzy-headed.

"Deku, what the hell was that?" Bakugou growls, on his knees by All Might's side, helping All Might staunch the blood gushing from his side.

God, it was such a terrible day.

Deku flutters faux-innocent eyes at him. "What was what, Kacchan?"

"Don't." Bakugou's voice cracks, "Don't play games with me, nerd."

He's almost baffled as he watches the green haired boy - their savior - sigh.

"Well-"

And then there's a crash, followed up by shouting and yelling, along with more crashes.

Ejirou flinches so hard the bloodied cloth he'd been pressing to Aizawa-sensei's wound nearly slips.

"Sensei! We're here to rescue you! Wait- All Might are you okay?!" a voice - Kaminari? - cries, and along with him, the majority of the class appears.

"All Might?!"

"Sensei!"

"Hey, who's that?!"

Ejirou's hands shake, and his eyes water, but there's too much blood on his hands for him to wipe the tears away. They blot out his vision, and he tries to not to feel pathetic as they fall.

When he looks up again, his classmates are there, quirks flaring, shouting, some pulling out their phones - calling the teachers and an ambulance, probably.

There's a hand on his shoulder, but-

Deku is gone.

Izuku sits on the couch, aimlessly flipping through TV channels, and sighs.

Operation: Saving All Might had been an all-around success, but it wasn't without casualty.

His arm, for example, is one. He'd hoped that he'd be able to escape nearly unscathed but it wasn't to be.

That monster, Noumu, had been fast. Faster than he'd thought.

But, well, it was over. And even though his arm was messed up (he'd had to undergo emergency surgery!), no one had died.

All around, Izuku was happy. He was pleased that things were okay.

From the news reports he'd seen, only a few of the students and all three teachers on scene had to go to the hospital, and all of them were expected to make a full recovery.

Well, except All Might, but he could see why they wouldn't want All Might's injuries to come to light.

Izuku could feel nothing but a sickening mixture of relief and fear, despite the happy ending.

Because- because he'd provoked a set of highly dangerous villains. Because Kacchan knew but hadn't yet approached him, even though it'd been several days.

Because, even though Izuku's arm had been mangled, things were still the same.

It was slightly comforting, to be fair, but it shot his frayed nerves through the roof. Izuku wanted to be glad that things had ultimately turned out okay, that things seemed to be fine, but he couldn't.

He just couldn't.

So, Izuku flinched whenever his mother got too close, when doors opened and when they closed, at the random noises his apartment made.

Which, he supposed, only helped make his newest lie more convincing.

When Izuku had come home dead on his feet, dizzy and bloody and swaying in place, his mother had been frantic, desperate.

He told her he'd been mugged, that he'd only barely gotten away.

And, when asked, he gave a description of a mugger suspiciously similar in appearance to Flashbang, that notorious bank robber the police had yet to catch.

(Honor among thieves? That didn't actually exist.)

Luckily, his mother was at work for most of the day, so even though he was couped up at home, he actually had time to himself.

Time to do nothing but watch TV and lurk on the internet.

It was boring but… it was what he needed, honestly. There were no stakes, no pressure involved in aimlessly watching a fight breakdown on vidtube, or the newscasters speculate about the economy.

Izuku sighs again. Still boring.

There's a knock on the door, and Izuku jerks up, immediately alert. His fingers twitch and shake.

"I'm coming!" Izuku calls, and ignores the way his voice crackles, rough.

His muscles are sore, but it's not difficult to get to his feet and shuffle to the door, cautiously opening it.

He'd thought Kacchan would be at the door, or at best, the mailman.

It's not Kacchan, but two police officers, the scraggly haired teacher from the villain attack, and a… rat-mole-cat person - he didn't know- as well as All Might, in that deflated form he'd seen at the facility.

Izuku pales.

"Midoriya Izuku?"

Shit.