Chapter Text
The first time Shouto had been thrown into a jail cell, he’d been in there alone.
Now, however…
Shouto swore as he was shoved forward, the door already sliding shut with a rattle and a clink. He rolled against a dirty, straw-covered ground—straw, like they were in a fantasy movie—and only stopped when he ran into a wall. He could already feel the uncomfortable pull of a chain on his hands, telling him not so subtly that he needed to move because he was not meant to lay like this. He heard movement beside him and lifted his head as he shifted, squinting into the darkness. One moment more of scrutiny—a moment made longer by both the fact that it was dark and Shouto had only one eye uncovered—revealed that it was a person.
And a moment more revealed that it was someone familiar.
“What the—” Phantom Thief said, as Shouto sat up, awkwardly, mindful of the chains binding his wrists together. “Who are you?”
Shouto was irritated by the question, though he shouldn’t be—everything he’d been wearing that one could consider gear and not just clothing had been stripped away from him. Beyond that, Shouto had taken a lot of measures to hide…his more distinctive features before he went out to work. He spat on the ground, frowning slightly when it came out looking darker than saliva should, as he tried to think of how he was supposed to answer that question.
“No, wait. Your eyepatch.” Phantom Thief hummed. “You’re Frostbite. The vigilante.”
“Yeah,” Shouto said, doing his best to wipe his lip on the shoulder of his jacket. “And you—”
He stopped, staring at Phantom Thief, who stared back at him.
Shouto was pretty sure he could remember heroes being involved in the process of him ending up here—heroes were always involved in the process of him ending up in any jail cell—which was why he hadn’t really questioned Phantom Thief’s presence in his cell all that much up to that point. Though slightly unconventional, it was probably a pretty decent interrogation tactic to have a hero waiting in your cell for you to play good cop, but the blood on Phantom’s face was real. The shit in his blond hair was real. The manacles digging into his wrists were real.
What kind of operation…led to a hero and a vigilante being thrown into a cell together?
Judging by the look on Phantom’s face, he was thinking something very similar. There was a noise from further in the cell, though, and his body language shifted, his eyes lighting up with a touch of fear as he squared his shoulders as much as he could square them. “We’re not alone,” he warned Shouto.
Shouto raised his eyebrows, turning his attention to the depths of the cell.
“What’s this?” a voice rasped, from deeper in the cell, darker, the part covered in the most shadows. Phantom flinched at the sound of it, and there was a rattle, a clink, and Shouto realized that the third member of their company was more heavily chained than them. A moment later, and the second realization hit—that meant something. “A new person to join us in suffering?”
Another shuffle, another clink, and the owner of the voice finally stepped into the little bit of light coming through the window on the door. The light caught the edge of his hair, so dark it almost looked black, but Shouto knew better. He knew better.
“Frostbite,” Deku said, sounding a little breathless as he leaned even further into the light. Shouto realized distantly that the villain had been chained a lot less cleverly than them, even if he had been very thoroughly contained, and also, that he’d been given a lot more room to roam. If they both leaned forward from where they were now, in fact, they would be able to rest their foreheads against one another.
It was with that, that Shouto realized Deku was actually bleeding from his forehead. Whoever had taken them had been someone they’d all fought against before they came here. Some, perhaps, more than others.
Deku suddenly shrank back, landing on his knees with his arms bound tightly to his sides. “Fuck,” he said emphatically. “Head injuries are the worst.”
Shouto released the breath he didn’t realize he was holding, relieved that the villain was out of his personal space. He had never met Deku in person before, but he’d seen his face plastered on the news enough to recognize him on sight. The media said one thing about Deku, the underground said something else entirely, and it was that disparity that made him terrifying.
Once upon a time, when Shouto was young and foolish and still trying to be a hero, he’d stood face to face with a villain in a dark alley in Hosu. That villain had lifted his head with a manic gleam in his eyes, his red scarf blowing in the night wind, and he had said, more to the world than Shouto, “The Liberator is coming for you all.”
Back then, Shouto hadn’t known who he was talking about.
“Wait a minute,” Phantom said, shifting to a more comfortable position. “A hero. A villain. A vigilante…”
Deku began to laugh, trilling and manic, as he tilted his head back. “A hero, a villain, and a vigilante walk into a bar,” he said to the ceiling.
Shouto found his whole body was filled with the urge to step back, to get away from him, but there was nowhere more back than the wall he was pressed up against already.
“Stop,” Phantom said, with just a trace of fear in his voice. “Stop that.”
“Wet blanket,” Deku said, rolling his head to the side in a distinctly disturbing way so he could look at Phantom sideways instead. “Shouldn’t you heroes appreciate a little joke? Something about laughter being the true enemy of crime? Am I quoting Lemillion? I think that I might be.” He began to laugh again, laughing and laughing and laughing, as he rolled onto his back.
Phantom ignored him, looking instead at Shouto. “Who would be an enemy to all three of us?”
“I have a lot of enemies,” Shouto said drily, trying to adjust the position of his cuffs enough to get his right hand on one to create ice, to no avail. “You probably have more. Chuckles over there probably has the most. We can sit here and list them all until we find a commonality if you want, but I don’t see that being a productive use of our time.”
“There’s no need for all of that,” Deku said, suddenly very sober as he straightened, bits of straw stuck in his hair. “I can tell you who has us. I can even tell you where we are, if you’d like.”
“Friends of yours?” Phantom asked with distaste.
Deku laughed, but this laugh was a lot less manic. Instead it was bitter and dry, dripping blood from a wound that never healed right. “Hardly. They might be friends of yours, though, hero.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Knowledge comes with a price, Phantom Thief,” Deku said, before snapping his teeth at the hero. He laughed about it afterwards, though, and laughed, and laughed, until he ran out of laughter. “Cheers, do-gooders. I sense we’ll be stuck together for quite some time.”
He shuffled away, disappearing back into the darkness he’d come from, and Shouto found he didn’t have any words that could fill the space the villain had been left behind.
Izuku awoke groggily.
He’d fallen asleep slumped against the wall, his arms still bound tightly around himself. It was difficult to tell without touching, but it felt like the bleeding might have stopped, which was good. He was definitely still concussed, but it would be a lot harder to fight his way out of here while concussed and bleeding out.
Though that begged the question of how he was going to fight his way out of here. Especially now that he had two witnesses to worry about.
Izuku flexed against the rope binding his arms to his side. His feet had been chained together with a trailing chain linking them to the far wall, and his wrists were manacled as well. It was certainly enough to contain him, if all their information about him was correct. Of course, their information wasn’t correct, and normally getting out of this would have been child’s play for him, but once again. Witnesses.
Speaking of.
Izuku blinked blearily at them, taking advantage of the fact that they couldn’t see him well. They’d formed something of an alliance early on—he was the outsider, after all, as the villain of the crew; they both had moral compasses that still pointed north, his needle switched often depending on what time of day it was and who he was talking to.
It was almost funny, looking back on his life. If he could meet his four-year-old self now, he doubted the younger him would be able to believe what he had become. What he had seen. What he had done.
Izuku tilted his head back, listening to the murmured conversation happening not too far away from him.
“—they didn’t seem to know what they wanted,” Monoma Neito was saying. His lips barely moved, though this was more of a testament to how difficult it was for him to talk than it was to him trying to conceal what he said from Izuku. “They were asking about him, mostly.”
“Deku?”
“Yeah.”
“…Why not interrogate him themselves if they need information from him?”
“Don’t ask stupid questions.”
“…Right. Still, don’t know why they’d think he would talk to us.”
“So,” Monoma said, “I know you vigilante types tend to bridge the gap between heroes and villains a bit, but I’m guessing you’ve never met him before?”
“No. I haven’t.”
“Good for you,” Monoma said, almost managing to sound as sarcastic as he intended to. “I’ve met him a few times. And by met, I really just mean fought. He’s…chatty. Honestly, it’s weird that he’s only spoken to us twice.”
“Once.”
“Twice,” Monoma corrected. “We had a conversation before you joined us, Frostbite.”
“Ah.”
They hadn’t figured it out yet, what numerous things the three of them had in common.
Half of him wanted to protect them—true ignorance was oftentimes the best defense—but the rest of him wondered if it was too late for that.
They were already in a holding cell together, after all.
“…You don’t think he’s dead, do you?” Todoroki Shouto asked.
Izuku couldn’t help it—he laughed.
“Shit,” Monoma breathed. “He was listening.”
Izuku, having accidentally made his decision for himself, began the arduous process of moving himself away from the wall—he was superhuman, perhaps, but he’d spent a good deal of his evening fighting Takami Keigo Quirkless, and that did a number on a person, any person—and then shuffled until he was enough in the light from the tiny window on their door that they could see him and he could see them.
It had been years, and Izuku still wasn’t used to people looking at him with fear in their eyes. “Don’t worry,” he said, as he carefully settled onto his knees, mindful of the bruised ribs he was sporting. “I missed the love confessions, at least. Your torrid affair may continue in secret.”
“That’s an unusual way to use the word torrid,” Todoroki commented dryly.
Izuku shot him his winning smile—the smile that was once meant to be cast to people in need and now was used for this —and said, “I adore that you didn’t even bother denying the existence of a love affair.”
“We don’t have time for your jokes,” Monoma said, with an air of bravado that Izuku could tell he wasn’t feeling. “We’re trying to plan a way to get out of here.”
“Aren’t we all,” Izuku agreed, now shifting his gaze to Monoma instead. He looked somewhat taken aback, his expression shifting into one of both surprise and frustration, and Izuku smiled at him too before adjusting his position. “So, tell me, tell me. What is it the Hero Public Safety Commission would like to know about me this time?”
“The what?” Monoma asked, his frustration and surprise now shifting to indignation.
Todoroki, who knew better, who knew best, perhaps, sighed, leaning his head back against the wall. “That’s it. Of course that’s where we are.”
“Mhm,” Izuku agreed, with a lazy tilt of his head. “Contained in an old bomb shelter, too. No one will hear our screams. Ah! AHHHH! See?”
Monoma shushed him frantically, but Todoroki, for his part, didn’t seem to have the energy to react. Worrisome, that was worrisome… Izuku wondered how much time he had to think of a way to save them.
Izuku wondered why saving was still the first thing he always thought about.
“So,” he said, turning towards Monoma. “What is it? What did they ask you?”
“Hold on! I can understand why the HPSC would contain you two, but I’m a hero,” Monoma insisted. “I haven’t broken any laws. I’m Number Nine on the Japanese Hero Billboard Charts. It can’t be them holding us, you have it wrong—”
Izuku shuffled until he could point his shoulders towards Monoma as well as his face, leaning forward as much as his bindings would allow. Monoma, in turn, leaned back, the fear now back in full force, triggered by Izuku’s sudden invasion of his personal space. Izuku smiled at him, saccharine more than anything, which probably didn’t help. “How old are you, Phantom Thief? Twenty-four? Twenty-five? Ignorance is best left at the door. What are you to the Hero Public Safety Commission, when you are alive, when you thrive? You are a threat, hero, a threat, as all those that don’t want to listen are. You have done nothing wrong now, but you will, you will, and so you must be put away, while they can still put you away.”
“But—”
“He’s not wrong,” Todoroki chimed in quietly. “If the Commission feels threatened by you, then…”
“Mhm,” Izuku agreed, as he sat back. “And what is more threatening than someone that could be anyone?”
Neither of them responded, both silently chewing on this revelation.
Izuku wondered if he made the right choice, throwing them a bone like this.
“They asked what your name is,” Monoma said hesitantly, after the silence stretched and stretched so long Izuku had started to think it would never stop stretching. “Not your villain name. Your civilian one.”
“And what did you tell them?”
“What do you think I told them?” Monoma said, his expression twisting sourly. “I don’t know that.”
“Would you like to?”
“What?”
“Would you like to know it?” Izuku asked, tilting his head. “I know yours, after all, and Frostbite’s…fair is fair, I think, so I’m willing to loan you mine. It’s not like it matters, anyway—the name means nothing, not anymore.”
Neither of them responded, just continued to stare at him like they couldn’t believe it. He supposed it was quite the ask—civilian identities were precious commodities in all of their fields of work, and neither of them would have any reason to suspect he was offering his without an ulterior motive.
Well, he was offering his with an ulterior motive, but it wasn’t a nefarious one.
“Midoriya,” he said slowly, to make sure they both heard it as clearly as they possibly could. “Izuku. That is my civilian name.”
“Why are you telling us this?” Monoma asked, ever suspicious.
“Think about it some,” Izuku advised him, with a grin, as he stepped back into the shadows. “You seem smart in combat, at least. You should be able to figure it out.”
But maybe that was asking too much. They still hadn’t figured out each other, after all.
Shouto wasn’t sure if Deku was even awake. The villain tended to keep somewhat to himself—something that Phantom tended to comment on as being odd whenever he was led away from their joint cell and then brought back. If he slept he didn’t snore when he did, and for this reason, and many others…it was always difficult to tell if he was listening or not.
Maybe that was the intention, honestly.
But Shouto needed to talk to him all the same. He didn’t have a lot to do right now, for obvious reasons, which meant he had plenty to think about, including the name that he had been given.
Midoriya Izuku.
Midoriya Izuku.
Midoriya Izuku.
It came to him on what Shouto thought was their fourth day of captivity together, and then, despite knowing it would be best to not talk to him, despite knowing it would be best to let villains be villains and continue working with the guy that would at least only throw him in a different jail cell when they got out instead of in an early grave, but the curiosity burned him alive.
So, when he heard the soft, fretful snores that meant the hero had fallen asleep, Shouto said, “Deku.”
There was a hum of curiosity, and then a rattle as he moved like he always did when they spoke to him, shuffling until he was out of the shadows and able to look into their faces. Or maybe, maybe, it was so that they could see his face, to see whatever expressions he carved out with his lips and hid behind.
Today, those lips carved out a smile, coy and bright. Shouto hated to admit it, but he could see why people had always called him charming. “You called?” Deku asked, his voice breathless. Shouto knew it was meant to be seductive as well as quiet, to avoid disturbing Phantom.
Part of him hated that it did indeed manage to be both.
“You said,” Shouto said with a thick swallow, “that you know both of our civilian names.”
“Oh?” he asked, with his lips curling even more. “Trying to worm the hero’s identity out of me too, are you?”
It was a test. And an irrelevant one, since Shouto already knew this hero’s civilian name. But that was the point, he supposed. “No. I’m trying to worm mine out of you.”
“Are you sure you want me to say it out loud?” Deku whispered conspiratorially. “Our friend is a light sleeper.”
He was, and it was entirely possible that Deku—inexplicably given more room to roam than either of them—would wake him up just to fuck with Shouto’s life. He was a villain, after all, and that’s what villains did. But if Deku was right, he could have told Phantom at any time, and that would be all the proof Phantom needed.
It was dark in this jail cell, but Shouto had already been behind on his root treatment when he came here. Give it another week and Shouto’s blood red roots would show despite the bleached, bleached white of the rest of his incriminating left side.
Ice Quirks were common, sure, but not that common.
“Say it.”
Deku leaned closer, almost precariously so, and Shouto swallowed once again. He missed the first day, when he still knew to cower in fear whenever Deku did this. As it was, he only managed a shudder as Deku’s breath ghosted across his cheek. “Todoroki Shouto,” he whispered. “Son of Endeavor.”
Shouto swallowed, trying to compose himself as Deku leaned back again, back to where his shackles didn’t pull so hard on his wrists and his breath didn’t ruffle Shouto’s hair.
So, he really did know.
“Midoriya Izuku,” Shouto said, and Deku tilted his head at him quizzically, his smile sharpening. “That’s the name of the student that was supposed to sit in seat number 18 in UA’s Class 1A. The same year—” Shouto took a deep breath. “The same year that both myself and Monoma Neito also started as hero students.”
Deku hummed, but he didn’t say anything, not yet.
“That seat was always empty,” Shouto continued. “Always. Our homeroom teacher always took attendance for that first week of class, and every day he would say that name like the person it belonged to was just…invisible. They were invisible and they were going to say they were there and they’d been playing a practical joke on everyone the whole time even though the seat was obviously empty.”
“Do you remember anything else?”
“The first time that the teacher called that name, a student in class said something like, ‘He must have learned what was good for him and chickened.’ He didn’t elaborate, though, and eventually people stopped asking. By the time I left…everyone had forgotten about that empty seat.”
There were several moments of silence, long, pregnant, waiting to burst.
Then, Deku finally dropped his smile. He dropped it all, actually, every bit of posturing he’d been doing up to that point, and then stared at a point beside Shouto’s head, looking at something in his past instead of his present. “Yes,” he said eventually. “I guess you could say that I chickened out.”
“It doesn’t seem to me like that’s all that happened,” Shouto said, as he took in the tired slope to Deku’s brows.
He laughed, soft and rolling, breathless and so unlike all of the laughs that he’d laughed before now. “I took the regular entrance exam, not the recommended one,” he said. “We were supposed to fight robots. I did not do this. Well, not really. There was one exception—I took down one robot, just one. It was worth no points. It was worth nothing, really, except another person’s life. Do you know…the hero Uravity?”
“Yes,” Shouto said, blinking at the strange shift in subject. “Yes, she was in my class too, back then.”
“I see.” Deku trailed off, before shifting, rolling his hips and his shoulders and lifting his head until he finally looked at Shouto again. “She offered me her points in exchange for saving her life. I didn’t need them, though, as I had apparently gotten plenty of them on my own. They were called Rescue Points. Rescue… Did you know, in some parts of the underground, that I’m called the Liberator?”
Shouto blinked again. “Yes. The Hero Killer calls you that.”
He declined to mention that he’s known that since he was fifteen years old.
“Stain is the one that gave me the name,” Deku said, scowling. “I never did like it.”
“I’m sorry, but…what does this have to do with Urar—Uravity?”
“I think about it, sometimes,” Deku said contemplatively. “What exactly the word ‘liberator’ means, that is. By definition, it means ‘one who frees another.’ Did I free her because I saved her life? If I had let her die would I still be a liberator? Would I have been a liberator if I accepted her payment, silly points in exchange for her life? If I am a liberator, why do I so often find myself in chains?”
“…I’m not sure I follow,” Shouto said, when Deku had trailed off for long enough that it had become clear he wasn’t going to continue.
“I’m not sure I do, either,” Deku said. “If I had judged myself, instead of being judged by Stain, I would have said that I’ve never really saved anyone, and therefore probably should not be called a liberator, let alone the Liberator. But then again, there are some that would say I’m being too hard on myself, I think.”
Shouto felt very confused still, but he didn’t know how to ask Deku what he meant, so he stayed quiet.
“I got an envelope in the mail,” Deku said, once again jumping to a different point in the story seemingly at random. “My mom tripped over her own feet in her haste to bring it to me. At the time, I’d been convinced I’d failed the UA entrance exam, so I was dreading opening it. A holographic projection of All Might told me I’d gotten in though. ‘Welcome,’ he said, ‘to your hero academia!’ This was after I was shown Uravity offering up her points for me and being told I got sixty rescue points for saving her, of course. Naturally, the next day I went to the beach and I found All Might’s corpse.”
Shouto, despite years of training his face to do absolutely nothing unless he was very, very pissed off, felt his eyes widening in surprise. “…What?”
“It’s a shame I got kidnapped,” Deku continued, completely nonsensically. “They got blood on my nicest shirt. Now, who knows what I’ll wear to my meeting with the lord of the underworld…”
“What are you—” Shouto cut himself off, frustrated, and made a strangled sound. “Just stay on one topic for one moment of your life. Are you seriously telling me that you —number one villain in the country— you are the person that found All Might’s body?”
“Mhm,” Deku said, and then, like a bastard, climbed to his knees. “Well, this was fun. You’ll have to tell me your tragic backstory next time. Not that any of it will be a surprise to me, of course, but I do still love a good story. Try to keep your voice down, by the way—Monoma sleeps so rarely, I can’t help but worry about him.”
He disappeared into the darkness he’d come from.
“Deku!” Shouto hissed, because he might be done, but Shouto wasn’t.
“Deku!”
No matter what he tried, the villain didn’t respond again that night.
It wasn’t like Neito had anything better to do, so he thought.
He’d been given more than one thing to think about, in recent history. Not just Deku’s civilian name, but the possibility that he was being held by a branch of the Hero Public Safety Commission as well.
So, he thought. First about the latter problem, and then about the former, when he wasn’t able to reach a clear conclusion.
He’d had less than pleasant interactions with the HPSC before. In fact, most interactions with the HPSC were less than pleasant. It was an outdated organization, devoted to upholding order no matter the cost, which meant there was a lot of stonewalling and bureaucracy and legal hoops to jump through, but this was the way the HPSC had always been. And this was also the way it was for everyone else Neito knew, so either this fact made them all enemies of the HPSC or, more likely, made the HPSC an organization of asshats.
But…was it possible? It was always possible. There were moments of hostility, beyond aggravation. Moments when he wondered, he really wondered, as he struggled to find where some of his publicity commissions were going. There was hostility when he moved sometimes, the eyes of other heroes out on their patrols watching with a sort of ferocity that spoke of a need to overthrow, to take, to be.
But then again, heroics had always been cutthroat. Or at least, it had always been cutthroat ever since first the death of the nation’s Number One Pro Hero and next the death of their Number Two, both within one year of one another, both when Neito had been fifteen.
And then, he’d hit a wall with his thinking. Every piece of evidence against the HPSC was also evidence that this was just how the HPSC was. Everything was a crime against him and nothing was, so he was left with nothing else to contemplate.
The second question posed to him was more exhausting, if only because it was so specific.
But he got there eventually.
It helped, he supposed, that he’d always found something curious…
“You were the person that got sixth place on the entrance exam,” Neito said.
Frostbite lulled his head to the side lazily, squinting at Neito, but it wasn’t him that Neito was addressing.
It was him.
“Oh?” Deku asked, soft in a way that villains should not be soft. He hadn’t deemed this conversation good enough to come into the light, though, not yet.
“Yes,” Neito said. “Midoriya Izuku. That’s the name. We were all shown the scoreboards, when we were sent our acceptance videos. I remember rewinding and rewatching the thing over and over again, studying all of those names in the top forty slots, memorizing them. And yours was weird, because you…you only had rescue points.”
A villain, who had taken the UA entrance exam, and had only gotten points from helping others, from saving them.
It was only just now dawning on Neito how ironic this fact was.
The second realization dawned on him not even a moment later. “You were supposed to be in Class A. That’s why they only had nineteen at the beginning of the year. You dropped out. To be a villain.”
“Dropping out implies intentionality,” Deku said, at last shuffling forward enough to be in the light, but only barely. “Of which, I did not have any.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Dropping out implies I submitted papers. I talked to the school board, I apologized, I called everyone together and I said, ‘I’m sorry, I just realized I can’t do this.’ That’s not what happened.”
“So what happened?”
“I disappeared,” he said, with a little shrug. “That’s all.”
There was silence.
“Bullshit,” Frostbite said, breaking into the conversation for the first time.
Neito found he had to agree.
“Bullshit?” Deku echoed, with a faint smile. “Why?”
“You mean to tell me that you, a student in the hero course at UA, destroyed a zero pointer in the entrance exam, found All Might’s body, and then was able to disappear?”
“What?” Neito asked, shooting an alarmed glance between them. He finally settled on looking at Frostbite as he asked, “He did what?”
“It’s not as hard as you might think,” Deku said evenly. “Disappearing, I mean.”
“How did you do it then?” Frostbite asked, jerking his chin towards Deku.
“I called the police to tell them where All Might was,” he said. “Though I didn’t mention who shot him. The operator told me to stay there—so I took the battery out of my phone and left it in the sand. I went home, but only so I could pack a bag—the key, I think, is not leaving a note. Or maybe the key is just being Quirkless when you go—they’re less motivated to look for you, that way, and it’s easier to be forgotten.”
Neito inhaled sharply, unnoticed by Frostbite, but Deku shot him a knowing look, a smile, and a tilt of the head.
“Well, I best be off,” he said, and then disappeared into his shadows.
Eventually, the legitimate torturing started. It happened to Deku first—he was taken away for his typical interrogation. Shouto had taken the time to lean closer to Phantom, discussing possible ways of escape in a low voice. They kept coming back to the same answer. Phantom was bound with rope, if exceedingly tight rope. Shouto didn’t like it because he knew what it would reveal, but if he could just find a way to touch Phantom…he could use Shouto’s Quirk. He could destroy his bindings, and then from there, he could work out a way to destroy Shouto’s with the same Quirk.
Infinitely harder, considering Shouto was bound with metal and it was significantly sturdier than rope. But it could be done, he thought, as long as someone else was shaping it since his fingers were rather cleverly braided together where self-harm was imminent if he tried using his own Quirk.
The only thing they weren’t in agreement about, though, was Deku, which was why they only talked about it when he was gone. On the one hand, Shouto wanted to save him. On the other, Phantom insisted they were best left letting him save himself.
And then the door had opened, and Deku had been shoved inside.
He was laughing—breathy, quiet chuckles, a touch mad. He laughed and laughed, but softly, his shoulders shaking. The cut he’d had on his forehead had healed a while ago, but new blood had joined his face. When he turned just so slightly, the little bit of light from the door reached him, and Shouto noticed that three of his fingernails were gone.
They needed to get out of there. And yet, no solution came. As much agreement as Phantom and Shouto were in about finding a way to get Shouto’s Quirk in Neito’s hands, they couldn’t touch. They couldn’t even reach each other stretching out their legs as far as they could with their toes pointed. There was only one person in this cell that had a little license to roam, and the only reason he’d been given that license to roam was yet another problem.
Deku was the link between Phantom and Shouto. He could pass DNA from Shouto to Phantom potentially, if they could find a substantial form of DNA that Deku could hold in his teeth, since he couldn’t move his arms and legs well enough to pass it with anything else. But asking him to do that meant requesting a favor from Deku… and though Shouto had never met him before this incarceration, he knew favors from him came at a supposedly steep price.
And moreover…
Deku himself was Quirkless and unarmed. Whatever it was that made him so formidable in combat, he didn’t have it right now.
So, even if they asked, even if they tried to involve him…what were the chances he would agree, when agreeing meant relying on them to get him out afterwards?
At some point, Izuku had to acknowledge that the resolution to this situation was a giant red button labeled ‘FUCK IT’ in all caps, and if he wanted to get out of this prison cell, he had to press it with all of the gusto of a dying man.
Which shouldn’t be too hard to manage, considering he was. Dying, he meant.
In front of him, Monoma and Todoroki were doing that thing that they did when they had exhausted all reasonable courses of action and were reduced to merely stretching and stretching and hoping their toes would eventually touch. This was not the first time that Izuku had watched them do this—it was incredible, how sitting silent and still in the absolute darkness could almost always convince people that you were no longer there—and if he did not interrupt this time, it likely would not be the last, either. Furthermore, it wasn’t like he didn’t know why they were doing this either. If they could pass Todoroki’s Quirk to Monoma, Monoma could most likely use that Quirk to help them escape.
They were never going to accomplish that by touching their toed boots together, though, not even if they could actually touch their toes together.
Izuku shuffled into the light, and all of the stretching and grunting came to an abrupt halt. The hero and vigilante both turned to stare at him, looking like a pair of kids caught with their hand in the cookie jar. It was a ridiculous notion—what was Izuku going to do to them that had not already been done? Tell the guards? Likely story. The guards probably already knew.
“Having fun, boys?” Izuku asked, with a winning smile on his face. They stared back at him despondently. “Please. Go on. Don’t stop on my account or anything.”
“What do you want?” Monoma asked, jerking his chin towards Izuku in that brusque, rude way he had.
Izuku smiled wider. “Do I always have to want something, or can’t I just come out to look you in your beautiful eyes? Eye,” he amended, with a knowing nod thrown in Todoroki’s direction.
“Fuck off,” Todoroki told him.
“Alright, alright,” Izuku said, and merely settled onto his knees to continue watching them.
They must have had a bit of stage fright, though, since they no longer seemed keen on playing footsie with one another now that they knew they had an audience. Izuku sighed. If they were going to be that way, then they were going to be that way.
“So,” he said, still smiling, always smiling. “After you manage to make contact and pass Quirks, what’s the next step to your plan?”
“That’s none of your business,” Monoma immediately snapped.
“Break our bindings,” Todoroki said, narrowing his eyes at Izuku suspiciously.
It would never work. “I see,” Izuku said, nodding like he couldn’t agree more with this half-baked plan. “And then?”
“Break that window,” Frostbite said, nodding towards the single window on their prison door that let the light in.
Izuku looked towards it too. “I see,” he said again.
They lapsed into an awkward silence. During which there was a lot of staring, an exchanging of meaningful glances, and at least one silent argument between hero and vigilante. It was all very irritating, but at least it offered Izuku a moment to think through his own plan.
The time to act was now. He couldn’t leave them here if he didn’t want to condemn them to an untimely death or expose any of his own deepest and darkest secrets. That certainly didn’t mean they were going to cooperate with him, though, so no part of this was going to be easy. He didn’t want to give himself away, but, well. This situation wasn’t exactly good for any of them. He could blackmail them later if he had to. Probably.
That didn’t mean he wasn’t going to have a little fun before he broke them out, though.
“Alright,” Izuku said, managing to sound very put-upon. “Since you won’t ask me to help, I suppose I’ll just have to do it on my own.”
“What do you—”
“We don’t want you to—”
Izuku moved, fast for a man that had his ankles chained together and his hands bound. If the other two weren’t in a similar state, he likely wouldn’t have been able to get anywhere close enough to do what he was about to do, but as it was, Todoroki only managed to flinch backwards in the time it took Izuku to end up in his face. Monoma only jerked once against his bindings in an aborted attempt to protect his ally.
Izuku leaned and leaned, at the edge of his chain, settling on his knees in between Todoroki’s legs and trying to make it the rest of the way with his torso. Even still, he wasn’t going to be able to reach Todoroki on his own—if Todoroki wanted Izuku’s help with his foolish plan, he was going to have to take it himself. Still, though, Todoroki didn’t move, his gray eye blown wide where he met Izuku’s gaze.
Izuku raised an eyebrow. “Come on, Frost. Lean a little, here.”
“Why?” Todoroki asked, in a breathless voice.
“Lean a little and find out,” Izuku said, grinning crookedly at him. “Trust is a two-way street, isn’t it?”
For a moment, he thought that Todoroki wasn’t going to indulge him. It was no skin off Izuku’s back if he didn’t, of course, but at least this way he could test what these two were made of. Desperation was an important first step to cooperation, after all.
Todoroki leaned forward.
Izuku wasted no time. Whatever Todoroki had been expecting, it obviously wasn’t that Izuku was going to kiss him, based on the way he went wooden at the press of Izuku’s lips to his. A flat, lip only kiss simply would not do for what they wanted, though, so Izuku took the liberty to bite the vigilante on his bottom lip. Hard.
“What the fuck—” Todoroki started to say, before Izuku interrupted him with a second invasion. He was a little more receptive this time, and though he was a somewhat bad kisser, he was at least doing it. Izuku coaxed him into a rhythm, deliberately making it as messy as possible, and Todoroki eventually responded like he was actually enjoying what they were doing. Izuku almost regretted breaking away once that milestone was reached, but only almost.
Izuku slipped backwards, giving Todoroki a small smirk as he went. Todoroki looked dazed in turn, eyes blown wide and breaths coming shortly. He looked like that might have been his first kiss. Or at least like that might have been his first kiss that was also an attack and an escape plan all at once.
Izuku turned to look at Monoma, very carefully avoiding either swallowing or licking any of Todoroki’s blood off his lip.
The hero was watching the proceedings with a flint sharp, guarded look in his eye. He grew even more defensive when he noticed Izuku looking at him, and his eyes hardened with realization and wariness alike when Izuku took his first shuffling step towards him in turn. Those eyes hardened more and more with every step Izuku took, until they were directly in front of each other, and Izuku was leaning once more, and watching and waiting for someone else to lean back.
“No,” Monoma said, like the thought horrified him.
Izuku smiled wider, but didn’t risk talking.
To the left of them, Todoroki inhaled sharply. “Saliva. Saliva is DNA.”
Izuku wagged his eyebrows suggestively at Monoma, who let out a very resigned sigh, and closed his eyes. “And it’s just about the only thing he could pass between us, with all of our hands tied up.”
Izuku risked talking anyway. At the very least, Todoroki’s blood was still on his lip, even if he accidentally swallowed whatever saliva of his he had. “There are worse fates than kissing me.” Monoma didn’t seem swayed, so he lowered his voice even more and smiled wickedly. “You know you want to, Neito. Even if it wasn’t already essential to your escape plan.”
“Don’t call me—” Monoma cut himself off with a shudder. He closed his eyes, made a soft noise of resignation instead of continuing to argue, and then kissed Izuku. He didn’t waste any time with getting to the important part of the mission, despite how much he’d argued about it before. He lingered after that, though. For just a second or two. Long enough to be telling.
He really did want to kiss me, Izuku thought, with smug satisfaction.
We should have been passing the time like this since we arrived here, he thought next.
Neito pulled away, gasping strangely, and Izuku shuffled a few paces backwards. It was time for the show, he supposed.
“Your Quirk,” Neito said, looking over at Shouto. “You—you’re—”
“It doesn’t matter,” Shouto said, his voice short. “Just use it.”
It was apparently enough of a discussion for Neito, because the next second he went up in flames. Izuku fell backwards, laughing and laughing and laughing, because they were all on equal footing now in regards to the sharing of sensitive information—or at least they were about to be. He stretched the reaching, desperate tendrils of Blackwhip out and away, and let them hook inside of the locks on his chains.
All that was left after he picked the locks on his chains was the brute force aspect of the escape, and, well. Brute force had always been the easiest part of One for All.
Deku did most of the driving, once the initial steps of the escape plan had finally been put into motion. Neito was able to free himself once Deku had transferred Frostbite’s— Todoroki Shouto’s— Quirk to him (he was not thinking about the how of it, because making out with villains did not seem like a hobby he should keep up with, no matter how much his traitorous body wanted him to). It was Deku that freed Frostbite, though, with a strange Quirk made of erratic black tendrils. Then, it was Deku that tore their prison door off its hinges easily like it wasn’t supposed to only open from the outside and it wasn’t made of solid metal. Then, it was Deku that launched himself into the hall with quick, wild laughter, the manic green light of yet another Quirk arcing around him like lightning.
Neito and Frostbite followed behind, supporting one another as they hobbled through bunker hallways together. They hardly needed to do anything else, since Deku, when fighting with the Quirks he shouldn’t have, was proving to be lethal in a nauseatingly efficient way. And that was before he also obtained firearms from some of the felled guards.
Neito had to look away.
“What a day to be me,” Deku breathed, spreading his arms wide. There was a semi-automatic strapped to his back, and a pistol held loosely in his right hand. He was blood splattered, covered in prison grime, and wearing a white dress shirt with a denim patch covering a tear. Neito was fairly sure that he’d left no survivors, other than them.
He didn’t know what that meant for their immediate future.
Deku turned back to look at them, a strangely infectious grin on his face. “Freedom never felt as good as it does now. Normally, I’m out of there in less than an hour.”
“Why weren’t you this time?” Frostbite asked.
Deku gestured lazily with the hand that held the pistol still. He pointed it first at Frostbite, and then at Neito. Neito had to fight the urge to tense up. “You, of course. I was trying to think of a way out where I wouldn’t have to give myself away.” He tapped the barrel of the gun he was holding against his temple. “I’ve become complacent, I think. I used to be cleverer when I wasn’t quite so good at forcing my way through everything.”
Neito swallowed. If Deku was going to kill them, or take them hostage, or something, he might as well hash it out now instead of letting it drag on. “What’s going to happen to us now?”
“Whatever do you mean?” Deku asked vaguely, as he deftly used his thumb to drop the magazine from his pistol to check his bullet count. He tsked in disappointment at what he found there, but he didn’t feel the need to share with the class.
“I mean,” Neito said, knowing it was a bad idea to get snarky with this particular villain and not being able to stop himself anyway, “we can’t possibly be of use to you anymore. We’re law enforcement, legal and otherwise. We’re injured on top of that, while you’re still perfectly operational and in possession of multiple firearms. In other words, we’re a couple of loose threads, so you’re either going to take us to your evil overlord or kill us so you can travel easier.”
In front of him, Deku suddenly went very still.
The first time that Neito met Deku, it had been by accident. He had recently graduated from UA and was still a bit wet behind the ears. He’d heard Deku’s name—in one form or another—in the news and around the school for the last three years. But Deku was around his age—or exactly his age, given some recent revelations—so he was just as much of an up and comer as Neito himself was. So, when he’d stumbled into a territorial brawl by accident, he hadn’t realized who exactly was shooting at him until after the fact.
Deku was a little different back then. Still strangely charming, though his then untamed curls and his wide eyes pushed him closer to ‘endearing’ than ‘rakish,’ as was the case now. He’d shot at Neito’s feet, and the bang followed by the loud ricochet of an errant bullet had startled Neito so much it had taken him a few seconds to find the source. Deku stood on the roof of a building nearby, and though it wasn’t a particularly tall one, it was high enough to give him a good vantage point. He’d smiled lazily at Neito, his pistol flopping loosely in his right hand just like it had been a moment ago.
“Hey,” he had said, like they were old friends instead of recent enemies. “Phantom Thief, right? You’re pretty cool.”
Neito hadn’t been sure if it was a threat or not, and so was stupidly slow to react.
“Listen,” Deku said, still smiling that boyish smile. “Now’s a bad time, alright? You need to clear out before things get ugly.”
Neito barely had time to process his indignation over the request and the patronizing tone both before things did indeed get ugly. Deku had gone stiff shortly after he finished speaking, green eyes trained on a point beyond Neito’s head. He snapped his pistol up so quickly that Neito felt his heart stop beating for at least five seconds. Deku fired into the darkness behind Neito, and a moment later, a body dropped. Neito turned to look at her—the dead woman—noticing the bullet hole that rested right between her eyes. When he turned back, Deku was gone.
He was a wicked shot. When he missed, he did it on purpose.
For the life of him, Neito had never figured out why he hadn’t killed Neito when he had the chance. He was certainly not known for hesitating to put down other heroes.
In the present time, Deku spun around, pistol snapping up. He pointed the barrel directly at Neito’s head, barely giving him a moment to react before he pulled the trigger.
The bullet sailed neatly past Neito’s ear.
“Whoops,” Deku said, gesturing broadly with a lightness that didn’t match the burning anger in his eyes. “That was my last bullet. Too bad. It looks like I won’t be able to kill you after all.”
Beside him, Frost let out a long, weary exhale. “You crazy motherfucker.”
“Crazy?” Deku repeated incredulously, with an odd, barking laugh. “I’m crazy? Sorry, no. I guess it’s perfectly sane to ask the guy that just went to great lengths to rescue you if he’s going to kill you now in your circles.”
Now that he said it like that, Neito had to admit he had a fair point. Even if his delivery was a tad…dramatic.
“Kami,” Frost swore softly.
Deku flipped him off.
“Forgive me for being a bit concerned for our lives here,” Neito said. “You’re obviously in league with All for One and the League of Villains, considering you suddenly have multiple Quirks when everyone knows you’re supposed to be Quirkless . And didn’t you say something about missing a meeting with the lord of the underworld due to our incarceration? You know as well as I that there is nothing he’d like more than to see a hero delivered to his doorstep.”
“Not you,” Deku said dismissively.
“Excuse me?”
“He wouldn’t want you,” Deku said, in that same bored tone. “Shouto, maybe, but not you.”
“Shouto?” Frost repeated blankly.
Deku didn’t acknowledge him. “Honestly, Neito. What would someone that can steal Quirks permanently want with someone that can only copy them temporarily? Besides, you aren’t a hero anymore, are you?”
“Of course I am,” Neito said immediately, scoffing. “I’m—”
“A recently freed prisoner of the Hero Public Safety Commission,” Deku supplied, crossing his arms. “Last seen with a known fugitive and S-class villain, the Liberator. You can’t just go back to your old life.”
Neito stilled as it sank in. He was right—it was all over. Everything he was, everyone he knew, had all been compromised. Some story would likely be leaked to the public soon following his escape where he was accused of defection or being a traitor or something of the like, and even if it wasn’t…what was he going to do? Go back to working for the HPSC like nothing had happened?
“We’re all compromised,” Frostbite contributed, his voice soft. “I was taken from my apartment right after a patrol, for instance. If I return to that address, I’ll be taken again.”
Neito had not been taken from an apartment or home, but he didn’t doubt that any address he had ever lived at was bound to be on record with the HPSC. And if they were serious about eradicating him, everyone they knew he talked to was likely being watched or they were about to be when word got out that he had escaped.
“Bingo,” Deku said, holstering his pistol in the back of his dress pants despite his earlier claims that it was now empty. “You’re both compromised.”
“Not you?” Neito asked, raising his eyebrow.
“Sweetheart,” Deu said, mockingly. “I stopped doing anything the legal way a long time ago. Of course I’m not compromised. I’ve got somewhere I can still go, and I always will. This is your problem to work out, not mine.”
Neito glanced at Frost, who glanced back at him.
“The AR-15 is a bit ostentatious, isn’t it?” Deku asked rhetorically, dragging it off his back. “I suppose that it is. The gods weep. Oh well. I suppose I’ll still be alright.” He tossed it away in the rice field they were standing beside, and strode off in a random direction. The message was clear—unless they asked him for his help, he had every intention of leaving them here to figure their lives out on their own. The secondary message was also clear—escaping was something he was going to do anyway, so it made sense that he wasn’t going to exact a toll for that, in a way. His help here was different. It was going to come at a cost.
“Phantom, listen,” Frostbite said under his breath. “We can—we can probably fight him later. If we have to. If we let him leave now, though…we’re probably as good as dead.”
Neito closed his eyes. They weren’t going to be able to fight him and they both knew it, but Frost was right on the second count.
When he followed Deku, it was his own choice, if a grim one.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“There’s a city this way,” Deku said, glancing over his shoulder. “Or at least a large gathering of people. We’ll be able to get some disguises and a map there.” He ran fingers through his hair, slicking it back with his blood before it fell forward again, and grinned his devilish grin at them. “Ditch the eyepatch, Shouto. It’s a bit ostentatious, too. It’s not like you need it, anyway.”
“I have a—”
“Scar, I know,” Deku said, looking back ahead of him. “But half the population is marked in some weirder way than that. The eyepatch says you have something to hide. Also, part your hair on the right. Your roots are showing.”
Frostbite reached a hand up tentatively and combed it through his stark white hair.
“Any notes for me?” Neito asked, a bit bitterly.
Deku placed his hands in his pockets. “Get out of the habit of thinking of us by anything other than our first names,” he said. “And ditch the tuxedo jacket. I can’t help but wonder why you haven’t already.”
Neito opened his mouth to retort, but before he could, Frostbite—Shouto, he supposed—asked, “And after we get to this alleged city and steal disguises? What then?”
“We find out where exactly we are,” Izuku said, “and we visit an old friend of ours.”
“Ours?” Neito asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Ours,” Izuku confirmed. Only the corner of his smile was visible when he turned his face to the side, but it was smug.
The bastard.