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There’s a saying that it takes ten thousand hours of practice to become “world-class” in any certain discipline. Midoriya Izuku, though he hated to admit it out of a heaping of self doubt, was quickly approaching that milestone at only fourteen years old. That’s why, when All Might offered him a transferable quirk, something that even he had never encountered, Izuku knew he needed to go digging.
He’d always known, abstractly, that there was a criminal underground to be had in Japan, and that it was centered in Musutafu. Tokyo was the capital of the country, but the hero and villain scenes were ramped up to the next level in Izuku’s home city. He had never expected to find himself in this underground, and certainly not on purpose, but searching online was getting him nowhere and some of the best quirk analysts he could find met only in person, behind closed doors. So, two days after Izuku accepted a deal for a quirk, he found himself shoving all the paper yen notes he had into a wallet and slipping it beneath his clothes, then walking towards the door to meet with someone he'd talked to on a forum and then in DMs.
“I’m going on a night run as part of my new regimen, Mom,” he called.
“Alright, sweetheart,” she responded from the other room. “Stay safe!”
Izuku winced, knowing he was going to be walking into the lion’s den, but he was mainly relieved that his lie hadn’t been caught out. He had never been the best of liars. He pulled on a hoodie and red high-tops and stepped out into the evening.
After a short train ride, Izuku arrived at the building that he was given the address to. It was inconspicuous–tall with a great dearth of windows, but in a way that matched the rest of the complex around it. He ducked into the side alley and opened the door.
He found himself in a bar. He shouldn’t have been surprised that it was a bar, because he knew many gray spaces were, but it was a culture shock for him. He’d never been in a bar before.
Gray spaces were places where anyone could meet up: villain, vigilante, hero, police, informant. They were usually Yakuza, Izuku knew, but he had no clue about this specific one. There was usually a grace area around them where nobody could get arrested, and, of course, there were no fighting or arrests in the building. It was just a place to share information, in whatever direction needed. Money and intel traded hands, so this was where Izuku knew he needed to be.
He took a seat on a high stool by the bar and pulled his hood down further, trying to hide his whole face. He knew he was twitchy, fidgeting with the string of the hoodie. He was too nervous to make eye contact, too, and was just hoping the person he was meeting with would come to him. All he knew was that they would be going by the name Fukurou. This person knew even less about Izuku than Izuku knew about them, somehow. He flicked his phone on and off obsessively, checking the time. Fukurou was five minutes late.
“Hey, kid. Are you waiting for someone?” Asked a voice, and Izuku nearly jumped out of his skin. The man who had asked him was built like a tank with barrel-sized arms under a vest. His head was bald, but he couldn’t have been more than thirty.
“Ah, y-yeah,” Izuku responded.
“What’s their name? I might know of ‘em.”
“F-fukurou,” Izuku stammered out.
“Ah. No wonder you’re waiting, the old bat’s always late,” he grinned. “You can call me Hachimitsu. What do you go by?”
“My name is–”
“Oh no, kid,” Hachimitsu interrupted. “Not your name. Rule number one in the underground is that you never go by your name unless you want your family killed and your credit score fucked over. Pick something else.”
Izuku flinched. Barely fifteen minutes in a gray space and he already had a near fuckup that could cost lives.
“Uh,” Izuku stalled, looking around at the dim interior of the bar. “Yamikumo?”
Hachimitsu laughed. “I like it. Very edgy. Now, the prune-looking one over there in the pink–the one who just walked in–she’s Fukurou. Good luck, kid.”
“W-wait! Don’t you want anything in return? I, uh, don’t have much, but…”
“No problem, kid, you’ll pay me back a dozen times over if you keep coming around. I’m the owner of this place.”
“Oh!” Izuku exclaimed, then hurriedly bowed. “I’m just going to go… Thanks!”
Then he ran off to meet the woman in pink.
Hachimitsu had been correct in his description of Fukurou, if rude. Lines stretched out from her eyes and mouth, wrinkling her skin. Her hair was a rich maroon and her eyes were wide and round, the entire sclera covered by a large black pupil ringed with yellow, like an owl. He figured that’s where she got her alias. It was slightly disconcerting, but he thought it might let her see better. Did she have other animal traits? Owls with yellow eyes were the diurnal ones, right? He wondered if she had extra eyelids, like most birds–
“Ha! You’re a quick one. Might want to keep that smart mouth of yours shut before something bad happens.” Fukurou’s voice was raspy, like she hadn’t had a drink of water for years.
“Oh! I’m sorry, was I muttering? It’s a bad habit, sorry–”
“Kill that habit if you want to survive around here.”
“Oh.” Silence hung in the air between them for a few minutes, before Izuku remembered what he was there for. “I contacted you online to talk about an interesting quirk I came across. It’s a transferable quirk, and I couldn’t find anything about it when I looked…”
Izuku trailed off, because Fukurou had stood up from her seat, and turned towards Hachimitsu. “Brat! We need a back room. You’re gonna want to hear this.”
“Fine, you old bat,” Hachimitsu muttered half-heartedly, but walked down a hallway leading further into the bar. He unlocked a nondescript door and the three of them filed in, moving to sit around a low table.
“He wants to hear about One for All,” the older woman said, with sadistic glee filling her voice.
“Oh, God, kid, what have you gotten yourself into?” Hachimitsu’s voice, in comparison, was horror-stricken.
Izuku sat in silence and listened to the two adults weave a tale of two brothers, an epic of mythical proportions filled with betrayal and gore. He learned about the quirk’s history, passing through the hands of people like the pro hero Lariat. He learned that the two had suspicions that the current holder was All Might, but had no proof. And he also learned that All for One was still alive, acting as a silent puppet master with all the underground as his stage. He had barely finished reeling when Fukurou’s hoarse voice spoke up again.
“How are you paying?”
Izuku pulled his wallet out of his hoodie pocket. “I have some yen in here…”
“Ha!” The owl-woman cackled, and Hachimitsu grinned beside her.
“Nah, kid. Buying this info in yen would be way over your allowance. She means something that you can do better than most other people. If you can’t offer goods, you have to figure out some service or information that you have and other people don’t. I’d trade you to learn how you learned about One for All, but I try to keep kids safe.”
“Oh,” Izuku responded, feeling deeply in over his head and not for the first time that evening. “I can analyze, I guess? I like quirks, and I’ve been picking them apart for a while.”
“Analysis, hah? Hit me. What’s my quirk?” Asked Fukurou, and Izuku let his stream of consciousness flow out through his mouth.
“Your quirk is enhanced hearing, based on an owl. Likely you have a lot of other owl mutations, like enhanced sight in the dark, but it’s not the main focus. You don’t have extra eyelids, or you would’ve been blinking less often, and that means that you don’t have any flight capabilities. Originally I thought your hair was another mutation, but I can tell it’s dyed. Your roots are starting to show. As for how I know it’s hearing that’s most affected… You were never worried about anyone overhearing our conversation. Even Hachimitsu looked a little off-put, and he’s the one who owns these rooms, but you seemed confident that nobody would hear. Your ears are also flattened, like they have an interior component like an owl’s would. I’m not sure about much else, but it would be great for surveillance and avoidance measures!”
Hachimitsu was the first one to speak, because Fukurou was too busy cackling like a madwoman. “How about you pay us back by coming here every Friday night? I’ll even help set you up with some customers. You’d be like a private contractor, because I could use a house analyst. I’d take 20% commission, but you’d still be making bank.”
Izuku agreed, because he didn’t know what else to do.
For the next several months, Izuku’s Friday nights were spent at the bar, meeting customers in back rooms and analyzing quirks. After the first time he’d freaked out when someone had asked him to analyze Pro Hero Platitude’s quirk, Hachimitsu hadn’t made him do any commissions that passed his moral boundaries. It was really benevolent of him, Izuku found, as he met more and more people on the darker gray side of the law. He’d met at least two Yakuza bosses and quite a few minor criminals, and some had been kind while others… hadn’t. The long scar running down Izuku’s right forearm when a villain had thought he was being tricked–that surely the analyst Yamikumo couldn’t be a kid–proved the point.
After a certain point, he’d given up on the hoodie disguise. Even if people spent the time and effort to connect Yamikumo to quirkless student Midoriya Izuku, they would get absolutely fucked if they came after him. He’d become enough of a commodity in the underground that people were willing to fight for him.
Eight months later, he had left his “shift” early for the first time so that he could wake up early to finish cleaning the beach and take the Entrance Exam for UA.
Eight months and one day later, he had a new quirk, but was absolutely convinced he had failed the Entrance Exam. He’d gotten zero points. He sat at the bar–to which Hachimitsu was tending–and attempted to get the elder to serve him a drink.
“It’s just one drink, Hachimitsu. Like, a little fruity cocktail or something. It’s not like it would do anything to me, and I’m sad.”
“That ‘little fruity cocktail’ is enough to knock you clean on your ass, kid. If you think I’d give you one of those after refusing you a beer, you don’t know enough about alcohol to be drinking.”
“But I’m sad,” Izuku whined once more. Hachimitsu only rolled his eyes.
“No.”
“I’ll pay you,” Izuku offered, because him being rich was a thing, now. Analysts were paid a lot above ground, and that was nothing compared to what someone made in his position selling to the other side of the law. He was running out of plausible excuses for giving money to his mother. He’d already “won” five “analysis competitions” and was “tutoring” three or so “super-rich kids”. He only felt a little guilty when his mom told him how proud she was of these accomplishments.
“Go home, kid. Do your homework.”
“Fine,” Izuku grumbled, and shrugged his sweater back on. “But you suck.”
“What would people think of the great analyst Yamikumo if they knew this is what he’s really like?”
Izuku flipped him off on his way out the door.
Hachimitsu made fun of him when he got his acceptance letter.
Despite it being only three days into the school year, Izuku’s class was under attack. He had realized there was something fishy going on in the villain circles over the past few weeks, but he had never assumed they were going to attack a class at UA. Most of the villains Izuku had met were morally against hurting children, but it seemed the mob here hadn’t gotten that memo. Before he could process a plan that went any further than getting Iida out, he was being sent headfirst through the swirling obsidian portal.
He landed on a boat, and immediately scanned his surroundings. Asui–Tsuyu, he corrected himself, the underground had taught him to respect people’s preferred names–and Mineta were on the ship with him, and the water was filled with at least a dozen villains. He made eye contact with a villain, one with a shark-head mutation, and watched as he flinched. The shark-man immediately turned away and whispered something, lisping, to another villain. That one turned to another, and soon a quiet murmur covered the lake. Only one word was clearly audible: “Yamikumo.”
“Shit, man, our bad. Uh, we’ll let you out,” one loud villain spoke.
Izuku smiled, an unnerving grin that Fukurou had taught him after hours of him nagging. “Don’t worry about it.”
The villain shivered as much as he could while swimming, and the boat was propelled to shore. A water manipulation quirk, Izuku thought. Affecting currents, maybe?
Shaking his head to clear his thoughts, Izuku turned to Tsuyu. She was looking at him with a strange expression, caught halfway between concern and fear.
“Don’t worry about it,” he repeated. He didn’t know if she would listen, but there were bigger issues to be dealing with. Besides, she seemed smarter than to go digging into shit.
Izuku didn’t recognize any of the three lead villains in the plaza, but he snuck closer to see them, especially the hulking figure with the exposed brain. They seemed to have a mutation quirk of some sort, but he couldn’t think of one that would affect the body so much but leave such a big, obvious Achilles’ heel.
Tsuyu gasped next to him, and his attention was drawn to Aizawa, who was confronting the most humanoid of the villains, the one with the silver hair. The man had grabbed Aizawa’s elbow, and skin began to flake off, turning into gray matter and falling slowly to the ground like ashes. Sinew and blood shone red in contrast to the soft black fabric of his hero costume, and students began to rush into the plaza from every direction. The fight turned into a haze of pain and ice, screaming and bones shattering, and All Might in the middle of it. The villain had monologued–Shigaraki Tomura was his name, and Izuku would remember that–and Izuku was sure he had called out something to help All Might fight the Nomu–multiple quirks, seriously? Past that point, everything was a haze of ambulances and Recovery Girl’s office and then he was home.
As soon as he could, he convinced his mom he was going to bed, and then slipped out his bedroom window.
“Who the fuck is Shigaraki Tomura?” Izuku asked, storming into the gray space, which stood empty except for one person. Hachimitsu was nursing a cup of tea at a table against the wall, but stood up at Izuku’s words, and only partially because of the swear.
“Where’d you hear that name, kid?”
“Well, isn’t this nostalgic,” Izuku smiled, bitterly. “He attacked me and my entire class today. I’m surprised you haven’t heard. It’s all over the news.”
“Damn,” Hachimitsu swore. “Some people told me to stay out of anything going on today. That must’ve been what they meant. Anyway, Shigaraki is connected to All for One, somehow, that’s all I know.”
Izuku resisted the urge to slam his head into the wall, but not by much. “Is that still a ‘no’ for the alcohol?”
“I can tell you’re on pain meds, kid. I’m not going to kill you just because you ask politely.”
Izuku despaired.
Izuku’s year continued. He participated in the Sports Festival, lost to Todoroki, and learned that Endeavor is an even bigger piece of shit than he thought. He trained. He fought Stain, who hadn’t recognized him. He studied. He went to the bar on Friday nights and tried to learn all he could about Shigaraki Tomura. There wasn’t much. He had finals, which sucked ass, but he passed.
Then the summer camp happened.
It was draining, physically and mentally, and Izuku felt like shit almost constantly throughout the camp. But then came the Test of Courage, and Kouta and Muscular, and Kacchan. They took Kacchan, and Izuku didn’t know how to get him back. As soon as he’d woken up in the hospital, he’d reached for his phone to contact some people he knew and send out a general message asking for info. He would find Kacchan.
Only a few minutes later, he had a message in his inbox from a guest user, User32579. I’ve heard of your work, Yamikumo. It’s in our common interest to get this child back. You meet at the gray space bar in West Musutafu, yes?
Izuku responded an affirmative, got a time, and convinced his mom to spring him from the hospital early. On the way out, he met with his friends. Apparently Yaoyorozu had put a tracker on the Nomu, but it had either shattered or been disabled by the portal. Izuku fought the urge to slam his fist into the wall, and left as his friends continued to bicker in the hallway. He had a meeting to get to.
“And you’re sure you haven’t heard anything about Ka–Bakugou? Nothing?" Izuku was sitting on a barstool waiting for the guest user that had contacted him, and anxiety was rising in him like a flood.
“Kid, you’re going to give yourself a panic attack if you keep this up. You’re going to find him.”
“The only tracker we had to go off of was shattered, of course I’m freaking out. I just–fuck–hope this guy online knows something. He seemed as stressed as I was.”
“Alright, kid,” said Hachimitsu. “I’m needed in the back, but if you get news just holler and I’ll be there.”
“Okay,” Izuku acquiesced, and watched as the owner disappeared down the hallway. He flicked his phone on again, refreshing his messages despite knowing that nothing new would appear. Nothing did.
Despite it still being before the agreed upon time, Izuku was impatient. He swung his feet back and forth where they hung below him, and looked up at every screeching chair or clattering drink in the bar. Finally the door swung open, creaking loudly like it always did for newcomers who hadn't learned to pull up so the hinges went silent. When Izuku looked up, though, he looked straight into familiar dark eyes, with bags even more prominent than usual. He nearly fell off his stool.
Aizawa blinked at him, as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing, but his brain rebooted once he was sure Izuku wasn’t a hallucination. “Mi–”
“Eraserhead-san! ” Izuku broke in with a tight smile. “How funny to see you here. Remember, it’s aliases only.”
“Okay, whatever, just tell me what, exactly, you think you’re doing here.”
“I,” Izuku said, “am meeting with someone. Probably just the same as you, but my guy hasn’t arrived yet.”
“You are getting two weeks of detention after summer break, problem child.”
“I think that violates the rules of the gray space. Nothing underground transfers to above ground and all that.”
“How are you being even more of a problem child here than at school?”
“Thanks,” Izuku quipped. “It takes practice.”
Aizawa perched himself on the barstool next to Izuku, and the two sat in silence for several long, awkward moments. Izuku refreshed his phone again.
He startled when Aizawa spoke. “They let you drink alcohol here?”
“Nope,” Izuku said, “Hachimitsu is strict about that. He can’t check IDs, obviously, but his quirk tells him people’s ages if they look into his eyes. It’s really interesting when he comes into contact with someone who’s experienced time travel or dilation, actually, because he gets two resp–”
“Yeah, yeah. You seem to know this place well, problem child. Do you know if Yamikumo is here?”
Izuku stilled. “You’re looking for Yamikumo.”
“Yes, and it’s quite obvious that you know who h—”
“You’re User32579,” Izuku continued, and paused until the light dawned in Aizawa’s eyes.
“You’re Yamikumo,” Aizawa breathed.
“I’m Yamikumo,” Izuku confirmed, and burst out laughing.
“It’s really not that funny, problem child,” Aizawa drawled, as they entered the third minute of Izuku’s laughing fit.
“But–ahaha–we’ve just been sitting here! For fifteen minutes! ”
“Yes, and I'm sure there's a long story about how you became one of Japan's most prolific underground analysts, but now we need to get talking. About Bakugou.”
Izuku sobered at that. “Yeah. I know Yaomomo’s tracker broke when it went through the portal, but I have someone with a tracking quirk on the case. Thing is, he has to be high off his ass for his quirk to work, so he’s a little unreliable, but he owes me."
“That’s good news. The Commission has already set up a plan–they’re going to hold a press conference at the same time we’re doing a raid, whenever and wherever that ends up being. We’ll have mostly heavy hitters on that team, like All Might.”
“Does All Might have enough time left?”
“Of course you know about the time limit,” Aizawa muttered. “He should, hopefully. I’ll be one of the people doing the press conference, along with Nedzu–”
“No, you need to be on the raid team.”
“What?”
“Have you ever heard of a villain called All for One?”
“No…” Aizawa trailed off. “It couldn’t be. He’s a myth.”
“Shigaraki is his successor. If they have a hidden base somewhere, All for One would be there. And we need your quirk to get rid of all of his, or everyone is going to die.”
“God fucking damnit.”
“Pretty much,” Izuku agreed, then felt his phone buzz. He straightened when he read the message. “My guy has a location. In Kamino Ward. Let’s go tell the heroes.”