Q: Who said you could start another fic? You've already got two other longfics.

A: shiny new idea syndrome

When five-year-old Midoriya Izuku saw what his classmates had done to the caterpillar, he cried.

The caterpillar had been minding its own business and munching on a leaf when the Quirk-enhanced fingers of a small child plucked it nimbly from its twig, bringing its twisting and flailing form down to the dry, hard-packed dirt beneath the branches of a gnarled elm. Another boy, wearing the giddy grin of one drunk on their own power, reached out with a stony fist to smash it into an oozing yellow-green paste, drawing mixed oohs and aahs and ewws from the children gathered around him.

At the back of the group stood Izuku, mouth slightly open, a cocktail of emotions swirling through his little body. What cool Quirks! part of him marvelled, but another screamed how could they do that!? and a third felt almost betrayed that they'd used their Quirks for something so senselessly cruel. To Izuku, Quirks were something with which to help people, just like All Might, and for the antithesis of this ideal to unfold before his eyes was nothing short of a paradigm shift.

Mind clouded by grief, he ran forward on unsteady legs, pushing his way through the gaggle of children to the center of the commotion.

"Oh, oh, what's Deku gonna do?"

"Nothin'! Kacchan says he can't, and I never seen him do anythin'."

"Hey, hey, Kacchan! You were right, he's cryin'!"

The poor thing was nothing more than a wet heap of sand and mashed bug by the time he got to it, but that didn't stop Izuku. Still crying, half-blinded by tears, he scrabbled in the dirt, trying his best to push the caterpillar's guts back into the shredded remains of its skin, to put its shattered body back together again; it was dumb, it was childish, it was irrational, but he did it anyway, unable to believe that someone could have done such a thing.

"Eww! Look at him, he's touching it!"

"What's he gonna do? It's dead, idiot!"

Izuku ignored them.

You didn't wanna die, did you? he asked the caterpillar. You wanted to turn into a butterfly.

An unpleasant, unnatural ripple shuddered through the little pile of guts and gore that he'd scraped together.

I can still save you, right?

The remains of one stubby little proleg began to wriggle.

Come back!

The teacher didn't notice that anything was wrong until the screaming started. She looked up from her book to find a horde of five-year-olds running full-tilt for the safety of the playground, leaving a crying Izuku to kneel in the dirt before something her eyes couldn't quite make out.

With a sigh, she dog-eared the corner of her page, setting off across the schoolyard at a light jog; a couple of seconds later, she reached him, and halfway on her way to pat him on the back, she saw it: before him, the back half of its body dragging in the dust, the sludgy, torn remains of the caterpillar shambled slowly towards those who had wronged it.

The teacher screamed, too.

Deku.

The word referred to a puppet, a marionette, but in Izuku's case, it was a derogatory nickname slapped on him by one Bakugou Katsuki, his childhood friend-turned-nemesis. Bakugou's Quirk, Explosion, had been the first in their preschool class to manifest, and the boy himself had grown fat-headed on praise and adulation. By comparison, Izuku's hadn't manifested for another year after that, and in a fit of mean-spirited glee, Bakugou had seized on this and declared him to be useless - just like a puppet.

Izuku hadn't been particularly thrilled by this, but for the first year, he'd tolerated it, believing himself and Bakugou to still be close - hell, he'd almost enjoyed the nickname, for in spite of its meaning, its familiarity made him feel as if he were still part of their circle of friends.

After the doctors figured out his Quirk, however, "Deku" took on an entirely different meaning.

That day on the playground nine years ago, he'd made something dead move again, granting ephemeral life to something that absolutely shouldn't have had anything like it. True to his nickname, it was almost as if he'd been controlling a puppet, but that wasn't quite accurate. No, his Quirk was subtly different from mere puppetry or reanimation - it was something considerably worse.

"Could someone please tell me what the inverse of the matrix four-zero-zero-nine is?"

"One-quarter, zero, zero, one-ninth?"

"Correct, Sayaka-san. The formula…"

Izuku took notes in unsmiling silence, studying the chalkboard as the teacher scrawled out row after row of symbols and calculations. Rain hammered away at the windows, and the watery grey light they let in cast long shadows on the opposite wall; in the drowsy gloom, a couple of students nodded off at their desks, while a few others - Bakugou among them - were simply staring at the clock over the door, watching the last minutes of the school day tick away.

He was looking forward to going home today. Once he managed to slip away from Bakugou's inevitable attempt at taking out his frustrations on Izuku, he'd have the rest of the day and the weekend to try out the closed beta to an MMO he'd been keeping an eye on for a couple of months now. It wasn't the most socially healthy thing to do, but considering that the coolest kid in school had done his best to ostracize Izuku from an early age, he wasn't exactly swimming in friends.

When the bell rang, the whole class practically leapt from their seats, eager to escape their algebraic agony. Izuku scrambled to pack his things in time to blend in with the mass of middle-schoolers that swarmed the halls, figuring that if he could escape Bakugou's notice, he'd be able to get home on time today. Unfortunately for him, Bakugou was a step ahead, and the moment the teacher left the room, the furious blonde barred the door with two of his friends. Cronies, Izuku thought, but he didn't dare say it aloud. "What is it, Kacchan?" was what he said instead, voice dripping with resignation.

"You damn well know what, shitrag. Whaddya think you're doing telling the bitch that I cheated on the last test?"

The bitch was the student body's colloquial term for the English teacher, known for her no-nonsense attitude and colossally difficult homework assignments. Izuku himself didn't think she was all that bad - in fact, she'd been downright kind to him on his worst days - but it was common knowledge that their public middle school didn't spit out paragons of virtue and ethics so much as various types of delinquents.

"I didn't even cheat in the first place - which dumbass was I gonna cheat off of? But if that shit goes on my record, Yuuei's gonna turn me down, and then what? Someone's gotta pay for it."

As a matter of fact, Izuku had absolutely no idea what Bakugou was talking about. He'd never reported him for the numerous occasions on which he'd been beaten up, so why would he try to start trouble over a false accusation of academic dishonesty? Maybe it's one of the dozens of people you've antagonized over the years? "Kacchan, I - " he started, but Bakugou was having none of it.

"No, shitty Deku! You trying to sabotage me? You think you're gonna make it in with that Quirk? You're a fuckin' freak is what you are. What the hell kind of hero raises the fuckin' dead? How are you gonna fight if there ain't anything dead around? Gonna kill yourself and use your own body?"

Ouch. Bakugou, better than anyone, knew how much Izuku idolized heroes. In their childhood, before their Quirks, before Izuku had learned how to keep everything inside, they'd obsessed over everything remotely related to heroics, exchanging trading cards, watching television specials together and organizing games of "heroes and villains" with the other children. When Bakugou's Quirk had turned out to be the straightforward, powerful, and versatile Explosion, Izuku had been excited for his own - but he'd gotten stuck with "Necromancy", and what kind of hero desecrated the dead?

Still...I can't let go of this hope. It's the only thing I have to hold onto right now. "How did you know I applied?" Izuku asked, trying to keep his voice and gaze level.

"I'm not stupid. Do yourself a favor and stay the hell away from Yuuei unless you want me to really beat the shit out of you." For emphasis, he drove his fist into his palm with an explosive pop for emphasis, and Izuku recoiled from the noise.

To his relief, Bakugou left his threat at that, turning to leave without another word. His two friends - one of whom was the boy who'd plucked the caterpillar from its twig all those years ago - leered unpleasantly at Izuku as they followed.

He realized at the front door that he'd forgotten his umbrella, but he had no friends with whom he could share one, and his mother would be at work until later that evening. Making sure there were no onlookers, he aimed his palm at a branch that had been ripped off by the storm, spreading five fingers; before his eyes, the branch began to change, wooden ribs sprouting from the main branch at one end and leaves shifting to form a canopy over them. In a couple of seconds, the branch had formed a makeshift umbrella, and he made a dash through the rain for it.

The handle is soaked through, but a wet hand is better than getting rained on, he mused. He didn't particularly enjoy using his Quirk, but he couldn't deny it was useful on occasion. Other times, it was a little traumatizing, such as the caterpillar incident (which had left one girl with a crippling fear of anything that crawled) or the time a very young Izuku had accidentally used it on a bowl of his then-favourite katsudon. To this day, he was fairly certain it had squealed like a stuck pig, and he couldn't bring himself to eat it again.

This ability, the power to manipulate dead cells as freely as putty, was the essence of the Necromancy Quirk. As far as he knew, the cells retained their original properties; muscle could not become bone, bark could not become leaves, and their strength and integrity depended largely on how decayed they were. What he could do was modify the arrangement of those cells, as he'd just done, and thus repurpose them for his own ends. The branch was testament to this - as it was now, it wouldn't look at all out of place in a modern art exhibit.

Maybe I'll use my Quirk to become a sheltered modern artist, he joked to himself. I'll put out a statue comprised of dead mice, sculpted into a way bigger mouse. Then I'll put a thousand yen in its mouth and say it's 'representative of the way the rich are built on the backs of the poor' or something.

Chuckling a little, he made for the school's front gate, hiking his sunshine-yellow backpack further up his shoulders and hooking his thumbs under the straps.

He supposed he should feel lonely, walking home by himself in the rain, but there was something cozy about the solitude of an empty world. Working adults hadn't yet begun their commute home, and most students had already made their way to bus stops or train stations, leaving the streets largely deserted.

Art didn't sound like a bad career, if he was honest, but it wasn't the kind of thing that would give him a purpose. For some people, expressing themselves was purpose enough, but Izuku wasn't satisfied with that sort of thing. He wanted to make something of himself, to make a difference in the lives of the people he met on the street, and as far as he was concerned, the only way he'd be able to do that was to become a hero.

This conflicted directly with his own understanding that his Quirk wasn't particularly heroic, but if someone whose Quirk turned them into a washing machine could hit the number-ten spot, why couldn't Izuku at least try? Isn't the whole point of school to learn? he reasoned. I shouldn't expect to go in there as a hero already.

Still, he couldn't help but compare himself to Bakugou - Bakugou Katsuki, who not only possessed a powerful Quirk but the skill and intelligence to develop a wide range of practical and combat applications for it. He, if anyone, was an obvious shoo-in; Yuuei only admitted thirty-six students a year into the hero course from general applications, with an additional four spots reserved for recommendations, and he was sure Bakugou would be a strong contender for one of those spots come the entrance exams in April.

What if I'd turned out to be Quirkless after all? he had to wonder. I don't know what I'd have done. Probably turned into a Quirk otaku or something. After getting one himself, he'd lost some interest in studying the Quirks of others in favour of developing a more thorough understanding of his own, and the insecurity he'd started to feel every time another classmate's Quirk manifested evaporated as soon as his showed its face. Not to mention I've never heard of a Quirkless hero.

Lost in thought, he wandered home, barely paying attention to the way the sky churned overhead.

Knowing he'd absolutely lose track of time and forget about his homework if he did anything else first, he pulled his notebooks out of his bag the moment he got in the front door, slipping off his shoes and getting right to work. It didn't take him particularly long to complete the first assignment, but the second was incredibly tedious, and to make matters worse, the power cut out with a deafening crack about halfway through. A split second later, there was a little pop as his monitor went dark, and with a deep sigh, he leaned back in his chair, burying his face in his hands.

Great. Now what am I gonna do? He'd been working online, so he wasn't concerned about losing progress, but that didn't change the fact that he wasn't able to do the rest of the assignment.

His phone rang just then - "Watashi ga kita!" - and with a start, he leapt to answer it before he'd even seen the caller's name. "Hello?"

"Izuku? Are you home?"

Oh, it's kaa-san. "Yeah, I'm home. What's up?" he asked, reclining again. The chair creaked audibly.

"I just thought I'd let you know that I'm on my way home now, but I'll be stopping at the bank for a couple of minutes to sort out some business with my account. Have you eaten yet?"

"No. I was doing my homework, but the power went out. Why are you off so early?" he countered, brow creased with concern.

"The power went out at the office, too, so they let anyone non-essential go home. There's some stir fry left over in the fridge from last night if you're hungry."

"They let people go home early?" he repeated, incredulous. They'd leaned closer to Western values in the past two centuries, after the development of Quirks essentially enforced evolutionary individualism, but it was still uncommon for a business to let its employees go home early rather than wait out something like a power outage. "That's weird, kaa-san."

"Well...they did tell us to telecommute this evening after the power gets fixed."

There's the catch. "Well, if that's the case, I guess it makes sense," he shrugged, unable to resist the gesture even knowing she couldn't see him. "Are you okay?"

On the other end, there was a faint jingling sound as - he assumed - his mother pulled open the door to the bank. He could almost feel the dusty, air-conditioned lobby around him, its grey-beige carpet worn and rough where thousands of pairs of feet had trodden across it on their way to the counter, and Midoriya Inko actually chuckled. "Oh, sweetie, I'm fine. I was worried about you since you left your umbrella at home today, though…"

"I figured something out." He knew he sounded evasive, but he'd developed a bad habit of hiding his Quirk usage from even his own mother - the only person in the world who had an idea of what his Quirk was capable of, and the only one who'd accepted him anyway, in the way only a mother could. "Do you know when you'll be home?"

"I'll probably be home in an hour or so - just look at this line! Did I mention that there's stir fry in the - "

Crash.

A sound like breaking glass screamed out of the phone, from his mother's end, and Izuku jumped back, holding the phone a foot from his face. "Kaa-san!?" he cried out, anxiety levels spiking. "Kaa-san, what's going on?"

Shouting, indistinct but definitely not his mother's, came through the earpiece, followed by the heavy thump of a phone being dropped. Izuku immediately assumed the worst, leaping to his feet and yelling: "Kaa-san, are you okay!?"

He could only assume that he'd been heard, because the next words he could make out were "who're you on the phone with?" It was a man's voice, gruff, aggressive, and Izuku could feel ice creeping through his veins just listening to it.

"It's just my son, I promise, he's in middle school - " His mother's voice, terrified but familiar, responded, and in spite of himself, Izuku felt just a little relieved that she was okay for the time being -

Click.

- then the line died, and that relief went out the window, quick as it came.

For a few minutes, Izuku sat there, staring at his phone - at the "Call Dropped" next to "Midoriya Inko" - then he ran for the door, putting on his shoes as fast as he could manage and pelting out into the rain with his makeshift umbrella.

The bank was maybe half an hour's walk away, but he was running full-tilt now, sprinting like the devil himself was at his heels, and the rain sure as hell wasn't going to stop him - the branch umbrella shifted again, dead yellow leaves rippling unnaturally, and the canopy stretched straight out, forming something closer to a shield than an umbrella; he covered his face with it, splashing through puddles up to his ankles, ignoring the way the water drenched his socks.

In twelve minutes flat, he'd run into the city and now stood on a street lined with glass-walled high-rises, squinting through the rain to try and spot the bank's logo. By the time he did, a crowd had started to gather, and he could already hear sirens, but he couldn't just sit by and wait while whoever was in there threatened his mother's life for - for what? What's worth ruining your life and hurting people for?

A surge of frustration shot through him as he reached the back of the meagre crowd, standing on tiptoe to try and see above the gaggle of heads and into the tinted glass windows. He couldn't see what was going on inside, but as it turned out, he wouldn't need to.

The moment the police arrived, officers on foot manually forced the crowd to the other side of the street while those in cruisers used their vehicles to block off the road, quickly setting up an impromptu roadblock and hunkering down for what they evidently expected to be a protracted stalemate - only for someone to step out of the bank not five minutes later, brandishing a handgun.

Izuku was baffled. What kind of person goes to rob a bank, then immediately comes out to confront the police when they're outnumbered like this? His best guess was that the man's Quirk gave him some sort of advantage in a firefight, and judging from the way the responding officers assumed a defensive position, they'd either guessed the same or been trained to respond as such for the sake of safety.

An officer with a megaphone barked orders, the cherry-red metal a splash of color against the drab cityscape. "Hands in the air! Get on the ground! Drop your weapon!"

"What's the matter? Aren't you better than me?" the man shouted back, raising the handgun as if to take aim. "Can't take me out yourself?"

Without any sort of warning, he fired, the bullet whizzing through the air to strike the side of a police cruiser; as if awoken from a trance, the crowd began to scream and scatter, making for the safety of buildings and alleys. Izuku himself took shelter behind a parked car on the opposite sidewalk, his heart pounding out of his chest; the danger here was real, he was terrified, but there was no flight response.

He didn't want to run away.

The police returned fire, hailing the robber with bullets - but as Izuku had guessed, this was no ordinary person, and when the man didn't so much as flinch under the onslaught, he knew the police most likely didn't stand a chance against him. They were most likely going to need a hero, but they couldn't put in a specific request until they knew what the man's Quirk did, and who knew how many people could get hurt before then?

They'll probably issue a general SOS and the closest hero to the scene will respond, but it's not like being a hero makes you immune to bullets. He could recall with vivid clarity the case of a low-ranked hero who'd been shot to death in an alley around a year ago (lured in by one villain and ambushed by three more) and he grit his teeth, fists clenched with fear and frustration. Can't I do something?

It wasn't wise to act as a civilian, even if you had a powerful Quirk capable of resolving the situation while posing no danger to property or bystanders. Vigilantism was a criminal act, and in the eyes of the law, you would be just as much in the wrong as the villain you'd sought to apprehend. However, with his Quirk, would he even be detected…? It's not as if they can even tie it back to me, right? I won't be acting at all, just pulling the strings from back here.

In a city, death was everywhere. Generally, the dead weren't human; the rotting carcasses of rats and mice littered the spaces in-between, the insides of walls, basements, sewers, cellars; old and sick strays sought the refuge of dumpsters and alleys in which to take their last, foul breaths; limp, decaying pigeons lay still and silent on rooftops and in ceilings, feathers stirred only by passing breezes; insects abound, slender legs curled over stiff bodies light as paper. Reaching out, Izuku could feel them, feel what was left of them as some kind of essence in the periphery of his consciousness, and all he had to do was grasp at the threads connecting them to breathe one last breath of life into their broken-down bodies. He could sense them, slowly but surely creeping up on him, no doubt reeking of rot and muck and filth and dropping bits of flesh and fur as they went - and as horrifying as it was when the first rat shambled into view across the street, pulling itself up through a storm drain and missing the front of its face, he felt a surge of relief that he wasn't alone.

The screams started not too long after, echoing off the glass and concrete around him, but he didn't care. He was used to them, and the people screaming were in no danger of anything except an unplanned loss of lunch.

Come to me. Breathe your true last.

The police, always on the lookout, had noticed the rats gathering around the edges of the crime scene, though they hadn't seemed to realize that every single one was dead. Here and there, cats peeked out from the alleys; one was most definitely alive, an expression of terror crossing its narrow face just long enough for Izuku to see before it withdrew into the shadows behind it.

The dead were, as always, unnaturally still in a way that sent chills down the human spine. Izuku had grown used to this over the years, but as his - army? he'd never reanimated this much at once before - grew, it inevitably struck fear into even the man holding the gun at the front of the bank, who'd been shouting between shots for the past couple of minutes. Struggling to bring his focus back into the here and now, Izuku surveyed the situation from behind the car, squinting across the asphalt at the bank.

One officer cradled a bloodied arm, and Izuku could only guess that he'd been unfortunate enough to take a bullet. Most continued to hide behind their cruisers, occasionally leaning out to try and assess their chances of either survival or landing a shot of their own; the man was effectively immune to bullets, and Izuku couldn't see any kind of -

Wait.

The man turned, and both he and the wall behind him seemed to ripple, like the air above the road on a hot and sunny day. When he spoke again, he raised his hands as if gesturing, and it happened again - the air shuddered, and suddenly Izuku had an idea of what his Quirk might be.

It's almost like I'm watching a mime...that would explain why bullets aren't working. He's creating walls in the air in front of him, and he knows where they are, so he can shoot from between them. The fact that he had to make another one when he turned tells me they either have a time limit or…do they obey his miming? If he decides to walk through them, do they break? That, Izuku realized, would explain why the man hadn't actually advanced on the police yet. If his Quirk actually made him bulletproof or enabled him to manipulate the surrounding space on the move, he'd have wiped them out already - but if he was vulnerable while moving, he would have to choose between playing defense and offense, unable to do both at once.

It was, Izuku reflected, a lot like one of the bosses in an MMORPG he'd played. The boss was only vulnerable when moving, and if it was allowed to stop, it would set up a network of indestructible crystals, forming an impenetrable barrier while using long-ranged magic to attack. Putting aside the obvious ramifications of comparing real life to a game, he knew then that he held the upper hand. Either the man would break his own barriers and flee, or he'd attempt to stand his ground and be overwhelmed.

Go, he murmured in his mind, and as one, the dead shambled towards the gesturing man.

Predictably, the police were not pleased with this arrangement, one even going so far as to aim his weapon into the mass of decaying animals before another officer stopped him. Those closest retched as the putrid horde passed between their cruisers, making a beeline for the robber, and Izuku got to watch the blood drain from his face as the more intact rats reached him first.

The man fired, and even though the bullet was obviously nowhere near him, Izuku could still feel an echo of phantom pain from the long-dead nerve endings of a cat, shooting up the "strings" connecting his mind to its body. The cat in question didn't so much as flinch, rearing up on its hind legs to paw fruitlessly at the invisible wall before it as rats scurried past, seeking an opening. Panicked now, he put one more shot into the cat (dead as it already was, this did nothing) before frantically turning to continue his miming act from all angles without breaking the walls he'd already put up. It didn't work - the rats swarmed, higher and higher, and within seconds they'd climbed up and over one another, over the cats clawing at the base of the invisible walls until they completely blocked the man from view, a roughly rectangular mass of cold, wet, slimy bodies dripping fur and gore and letting out raspy, dead squeaks drawn from rotting lungs.

Now!

He clenched his fist, and instantly, the rats began to melt, their flesh giving way and forming a semi-solid slurry that spread like plague across the surface of the air-walls; Izuku, still behind the parked car, breathed deeply, committing all of his focus to feeling out any gaps or cracks in the barrier until a tendril only a millimeter wide was able to slip through. The rotting sludge oozed on through, wrapping itself around the robber's body - the man attempted to run, immediately dropping his Quirk's barriers, but he hadn't realized that Izuku's control over these dead things was not limited to soft tissue, and a cage of bones and claws welded together as if by some twisted smith burst forth from the putrid flesh-mass.

His job done, Izuku released his Quirk's hold, and very suddenly, the roiling, seething thing that had trapped the robber went still as death. The robber, trapped, had no further options, and as the police cautiously stepped out from behind their cruisers, weapons raised, Izuku slipped away. His mother would be fine now, he was sure, and she would undoubtedly put two and two together once any footage or eyewitness reports about the incident came out.

Might as well go home and pretend I was never here, he figured. Kaa-san doesn't need any more stress than she's already got.

Izuku was thoroughly drenched by that point, having dropped his umbrella in favour of using his Quirk. Picking it up, he took pointless shelter beneath it and heaved a deep sigh. His plans for the day were ruined; there was no way he could simply go home, reheat a very late meal, and do his homework now, not when he knew he'd be replaying these events over and over again in his mind for at least the rest of the evening.

As a matter of fact, it didn't even occur to him just then that what he'd done was something heroic - no, it wasn't until long after he got home that the idea even came into his head, and it wasn't of his own volition.

His mother called him from the phone at the police station, and even though he'd been the one to shut the robber down, he was still relieved to hear her voice again, and Midoriya Inko was just as relieved (if not more so) to hear her son's.

"Izuku, I'm so glad you're okay. I'm so sorry you had to go through that…"

"Kaa-san, you were the one involved in a bank robbery," he had to remind her. "I'm glad you're okay."

When his mother arrived home - she'd been given a checkup by emergency personnel on-site and questioned about the incident at the police station afterward - he found out something else: the bank robbery hadn't really been a robbery at all, but a staged crime with the purpose of drawing out the police. The man responsible, Tsurubaba Guraikuso, had failed the police academy's entrance exam and, in a fit of mental instability and rage, decided that he was "better than" the entire Shizuoka prefecture's police department, resolving to "prove himself" by winning a many-on-one firefight with his Quirk.

It's a good Quirk for that line of work, Izuku admitted to himself, but taking up a vendetta against the police isn't how you join them.

The big story on the news that night was, predictably, the robbery. They didn't normally have the television on during dinner, but considering Inko's direct involvement (and, unbeknownst to his mother, Izuku's), both of them agreed that tonight could be an exception.

Izuku didn't know what he'd been expecting, but in the moment, he'd completely forgotten about how incredibly distinct his Quirk was, and now that he'd been removed from the situation, it was glaringly obvious that his mother of all people would recognize it. Sure enough, the moment the news displayed photographs of the aftermath, Inko's worried gaze had shifted into a terrifying glare and snapped directly onto Izuku, who pretended not to notice. The cage of bones had been broken, while the carcasses hadn't yet been cleaned up and anything resembling blood or an animal had been blurred, but anyone who knew what the Necromancy Quirk's effects looked like would be able to tell in a heartbeat what had happened.

"Izuku."

"Yes, okaa-san?" he replied, still unable to look directly at her but giving himself away with an overly-formal address. Fortunately for him, there was a knock at the door just then, and before Inko could react, he sprung out of his seat, eager for any way out of the inevitable punishment to come.

"Izuku - "

Too late. He pulled the door open without checking the peephole first, and on the other side of the threshold, there stood a truly bizarre man with the head of a gigantic centipede. The eyes were human, however, and to the man's credit, he merely bowed a greeting even as Izuku recoiled in shock. "Is this the Midoriya household?" he rumbled, meeting Izuku's gaze with his own, and an antenna flicked.

"Yeah, it...that's this, um, us. Did you, uh, did you need anything?" Unbothered as he was by death and rot, Izuku wasn't particularly fond of insects, and this man's Quirk was giving him the creeps.

"Yes. I'm looking for Midoriya Izuku. I don't suppose that would be you?"

...Also, he's really tall. He's gotta have forty centimeters on me. "I'm Midoriya Izuku," he confirmed, clamping his jaw shut to stop his teeth from clattering together.

"Well, then." Without a single wasted motion, the centipede-man withdrew his wallet, unfolding it to display what was unmistakably a hero license. "I'm from the offices of Sir Nighteye. We're requesting your cooperation in our ongoing investigation of the vigilante responsible for the resolution of the bank robbery in which your mother was taken hostage."

"Vigilante?" he repeated, before he could stop himself. "Wait, what?"

"You haven't seen the news?" the other countered, quirking one antenna like an eyebrow. "An armed man engaged with prefecture police and was incapacitated by a Quirk not on the hero registry."

Shit. "That...we were just watching the news," Izuku finished lamely. "What investigation are you doing?"

Belatedly, it occurred to him that the office requesting his cooperation belonged to none other than Sir Nighteye, All Might's most famous former sidekick, but before his inner hero fanboy could kick in, the man spoke again, and his words turned Izuku's blood to ice.

"The Quirk used at the scene doesn't match any on the hero registry, but it does match up very closely with the Quirk defined in your civilian registration."

"I - " Izuku started, but the hero at his doorstep wasn't done.

"I'm also afraid it's not exactly a request - we don't have the authority to arrest you, but I would prefer not to have to involve the police."

pretty much just wrote this to get through some writer's block and toss out an idea I'd been stewing on for a while