Chapter Text
~~~~~ THEN ~~~~~
‘I think I’ll do it,’ the message on his screen read. ‘Can you send me the menu?’
Izuku froze when he saw the message but a moment later he was too jittery to sit still in his chair. He had to get up and pace in his room for a bit, straighten out a few figurines, and go check what was in the fridge before he sat down at his computer and sent back, ‘I’ll email you it now.’
He’d already had the email prepped and ready to go, so he just hit send, and then he had to get up again. He tried jumping up and down on his bed a couple of times, but the ominous creak told him that thirteen was too old to still be doing ‘Mighty Leaps’ anymore. He went and checked in the fridge again, but didn’t grab anything. He went back to his computer and pulled up the monitor he had on Tanahaka’s computer. He never used screen mirroring with Tanahaka, or anyone else for that matter, everything the man did was just converted to text or code. Right now Tanahaka was just looking through the ‘menu’ it looked like. It wasn’t like Izuku didn’t already know what the man liked.
“Just do it already,” Izuku said to his computer monitor.
Realistically, Tanahaka could drag his feet for days. Izuku was too charged up to deal with that possibility. He wanted it to happen now. He was ready for it now. He didn’t want to do anymore back and forth with the man. He was so close. It was almost over. He hugged his knees to his chest as he sat at his computer and tried to will himself to just sit still, as if his own nerves were what was stopping Tanahaka from following through.
He heard the door to their apartment open and close.
Ordinarily, Izuku’s mom coming home early from work would be great. She’d been working a lot of overtime with the end of the fiscal year coming up and some big client demands, and Izuku felt like he hardly got to see the one person who was happy to see him. However, just then, he wouldn’t have minded if she’d have come home five minutes later. Five minutes was enough for Tanahaka to make up his mind, wasn’t it? Izuku normally scrubbed everything, but he just locked his computer, jumped up from his chair, and dashed out of his room.
“Mom, you’re home early!” Izuku said. “That’s great!”
He stopped about three feet away from her and wrapped his arms around himself.
“I am hugging you especially tight because it feels like I haven’t seen you in forever,” he said.
Mom put down her bag and returned the gesture, the look on her face never betraying how disappointing it must be to come home every day to a son that didn’t want to be hugged for real.
“The air-conditioning broke, and the servers started overheating,” Mom said. “So they sent us all home early.”
“Well, I’m not complaining,” Izuku said.
“Well you might,” Mom said. “It sounds like we lost some work, I’ll probably be going in tomorrow and Sunday.”
Izuku frowned. That wasn’t fair, Mom was already working so hard.
“Then we should make today count,” he said. “What should we do?”
Mom picked up her bag again. “Well, why don’t I go change while you tell me how school went today.”
“Oh, school was great.” That was a lie. “Well, for the most part. I just got so tripped up on those word questions; you know how I get when it’s an actual test.” He’d done great, but he wasn’t going to get a good grade. He had been tripped up by his classmates, though.
“We’ll work on it some more,” Mom said, walking into her bedroom. “You’re so smart, Izuku, and I know you’re trying. Your homework always looks so good.”
“I finished my homework,” Izuku hollered from the kitchen. He started heating up some water for tea. “So we’ve got the whole rest of the day.”
“Well, why don’t we go through it together, first thing,” Mom said. “And then you and I can find something to do since we have so much time.” Mom thought Izuku just had trouble concentrating, which, admittedly, he did at times. That he just skipped over some things on accident. Wasting her time on homework checks was only okay because the alternative was to tell her the truth, and the truth wasn’t something she could do something about, which would make her feel bad, so why make himself a bigger problem than he had to?
Izuku set aside a couple tea cups, and put a couple scoops of loose leaf into the pot before going back to his room to grab his school laptop.
“There’s a documentary I wanted to watch,” Izuku said. “About pre-quirk era hero stories.’
“Oh, that sounds so interesting,” Mom said. “What do you think about going out before or after that?”
Izuku set his laptop down at the dining table as Mom walked back out of her bedroom in her house clothes.
“Like, for dinner?” Izuku asked. “Or to a park or something?”
A look of something like hesitation crossed mom’s face for a moment. “Why don’t you pick something, sweetie?”
“You probably have something in mind,” Izuku said. “You’ve been working so much overtime, you should pick.”
“Well, I don’t want you to feel like you have to,” Mom said. “But I thought it would be nice to take some time to relax. We haven’t been to an Onsen in a long time. I know you get a bit self conscious, but we can go to the one downtown, that has the carnival area before the baths. You used to like that so much. You could invite Katsuki, if you want.”
“Oh,” Izuku said. “I mean, we get along fine at school, and when we go over for dinner, but we aren’t really ‘hanging out’ sort of friends.” This was a lie, and even if it wasn’t, it wasn’t like Izuku wanted to go bathing with Kacchan and show him the light burn scar he had on his right shoulder from when they’d been eight, much less be that exposed to him.
Mom looked sad, but it was only a fleeting look. “But we can go!” Izuku said. “You should get to relax. I’ll be fine. Remember the chi chi dango? It was always so good there.”
“Izuku, honey, I think the last time we went there you thought anything covered in syrup was the best thing in the world.”
“Then we’ll just have to see if it lives up to the memory,” Izuku said, smiling for her. It would probably be fine. It wasn’t like mom would know if he ‘relaxed’ or not in the boys’ side.
Mom smiled back. “Oh, we’ll have so much fun,” she said.
So they went over his homework, which went quick since it was flawless, and then they watched his documentary, which was super fun, and it almost took twice as long since they kept pausing it to talk about it. Izuku had trouble at some points trying not to think about the computer in his room. He kept pretending like he didn’t notice the hand that always reached out to him along the back of the couch when they sat at opposite sides together just out of reach.
While Mom went and got ready to go out, Izuku quickly unlocked his computer and scrolled through Tanahaka’s activity. He’d booked a hotel? He groaned. Just do it already! He locked his computer again and went out.
The onsen was actually nice at first.
“You look so handsome in your yukata,” Mom said when they met up again in the carnival area. Mom already looked more relaxed than Izuku had seen her in a while. Whatever happened, it would be worth it.
“You do too!” Izuku said, and hugged himself briefly, the gesture returned by his mom. “Come on, let’s get that dango.”
Izuku put every bit of the excitement he knew his mom wanted to see into the evening. They snacked (the dango might have been a bit too sweet), Izuku analyzed carnival games, mom showed off her dart skills, and they both got ramen for dinner. It would have been great if that had been where the evening ended, but after they ate, it was time to ‘relax.’
They split up and Izuku went to the men’s side. He shucked everything below the waist and wrapped a towel around his hips before he took off the yukata. It wasn’t so much that he was self-conscious, as that the whole thing made him feel vulnerable. It was like being in a haunted house, and you were sure a yokai was going to jump out at you at any moment, but you were also naked. It would be fine, though. He’d just go in, find a corner to shower off in, get clean, skip the soak, and then get out. He almost made it, too. He was about as relaxed as he could be in a situation like that. It was just an uncomfortable blip in an otherwise great night out with his Mom.
Except on his way back to the lockers someone said from right behind him, “Hey, Deku!” before his towel was ripped from around his waist.
Izuku recoiled from the fleeting touch at his hip and turned around, trying to cover himself while he backed away from the two boys that had come up from behind him. Tsubasa and Ichikawa were standing there, jeering smiles on their faces as they took in his panic. Tsubasa had draped Izuku’s towel over one of his wings, well out of Izuku’s reach.
He felt like he was trapped under their gaze.
“You aren’t dirtying up the water, are you Deku?” Ichikawa asked.
Izuku felt like everyone in the onsen was looking at him and he froze. He couldn’t take his eyes off of Tsubasa or Ichikawa, but he was sure someone was coming up from behind him. He wanted to look, but he couldn’t move as anxiety strangled him.
“He was!” Tsubasa said. “Hey, Deku, what are you hiding? I hear quirkless people are really small down there, is that true?” He reached out like he was going to grab Izuku’s arm to pull it away and Izuku managed to take a step back. They both just laughed at him.
“P- please just give me-“
“P- p- p uh lease,” Ichikawa mocked. “I think Deku’s going to die of embarrassment.”
“Well, if this is the motivation he needs to do it,” Tsubasa said.
Izuku felt like he just might die right then.
“Hey, this isn’t a playground!” some grownup called out to them.
Tsubasa and Ichikawa looked over their shoulders and that broke the spell. Izuku made a dash for it. He grabbed a towel at the entrance to the lockers, wrapped it around his waist as he ran and then went and hid in a toilet stall for a good twenty minutes.
It wasn’t like it was the first time he’d had to go hide in a toilet stall. It would have been nice if the towel was bigger, and he could have gotten properly dry. He tried not to think about what Ichikawa and Tsubasa would spread around about him at school on Monday.
He peeked out of the stall, opened the door, did a surreptitious look around and then went and threw on his yukata over the towel, doing his best not to feel intimidated by the man who had the locker right next to his own as he put his clothes back on. He went and found a corner of the carnival to hide in while he waited for his mom to be finished.
Why did his classmates have to be there? Why couldn’t he have just washed his face and splashed some water in his hair before it was time to meet back up with Mom?
Eventually, his phone buzzed with a text from his mom and Izuku took a few fortifying breaths. He was relaxed. Deep breath in. He was having fun. Deep breath out. This had been a good night. Deep breath in. Mom didn’t need to know any different. Deep breath out. He plastered a big grin on his face before running back to the entrances to the hot spring area.
“Mom!” Izuku said, stopping a few feet away from her. “How was it?”
“Oh, it was lovely, honey,” Mom said, before giving him an exasperated look. “Izu, why don’t you go back in there and dry your hair properly. Then we can go get some shaved ice.”
“Oh,” Izuku said, his hand going up to the top of his head. “Yeah, I’ll be right back.”
He was fine. He was relaxed. He was just too excited to take the time to dry off properly.
He went back into the mens locker room.
“Hey Deku, want to give us another show?”
Ichikawa and Tsubasa were getting dressed, but neither of them were making like they were going to stop to go up to him. Izuku just walked over to the stack of towels while the two boys laughed about him. He grabbed a towel, and threw it over his head as he hurried back out.
“Well, its dry,” Mom said, her hand halting on the path towards his head before dropping to her side. “Maybe run your fingers through it a bit.”
“Right,” Izuku said. “Hey, there’s a cupcake place on the way back, can we go there instead?”
He did not want to stay any longer than he had to, not if his two classmates were about to be back out and could call him out in a crowd, in front of his mom.
“Sure,” Mom said. “That sounds great. So you’re ready to go?”
Izuku nodded. “It’s gettin crowded here.”
“Okay, sweetie,” Mom said. “I’ll meet you out in the lobby.
“See you there!”
He dashed off. He was just a kid excited to get some cake.
“I’m so glad we could do that together,” Mom said, when they got back home.
“Me too,” Izuku said. “I had a lot of fun.”
He had, but he felt that almost dying of mortification unfortunately outweighed that.
Izuku wasn’t going to worry about class on Monday. Not when he could worry about what was happening on his computer.
“I’m going to check out what’s going on on the hero forums,” Izuku said.
“Alright, sweetie,” Mom said. “Have fun. I might fall asleep while I’m reading, so I’ll trust you to have lights out by ten, okay?”
“Okay, Mom, good night, I love you.”
“I love you, too, and I am hugging you so tight,” Mom said, wrapping her arms around herself.
Izuku wrapped his arms around himself tightly and beamed at her. That was all that mattered, though, wasn’t it? It didn’t matter that he didn’t like to be touched; they loved each other. Parts of the day had sucked, but the rest of it had been great.
Maybe it was about to become even greater.
Izuku went into his room, shut the door, and logged back into his computer. He held his breath as he scrolled through Tanahaka’s activity. He let out a long shuddering breath when he got to what he was looking for.
After booking a hotel room for tomorrow night by the coast, Tanahaka had turned on his VPN, scrubbed his identifiers, and then logged into the exchange. He ordered a small order of salmon rolls to be delivered to the same hotel he’d booked by the coast at five in the evening. He’d done it. Tanahaka had fallen into Izuku’s trap. He started shaking, wracked with sobs he tried to keep silent.
~~~~~~ NOW ~~~~~
“Library’s closing, dear.”
Izuku’s head shot up and he took in a deep breath that turned into a yawn.
“Oh, sorry,” he said. “I lost track of time. I’ll go put this back.”
“Aren’t you a bit young for that one?” the librarian asked.
Izuku just flashed a smile at her. He’d always been one of the smaller kids in class. “I’ll be studying chemistry next year when I start high school.”
The librarian eyed his book, which was well above high school level. Not bad for a middle school dropout.
“Are you sure you don’t want to check it out?”
“I’ll be back tomorrow,” Izuku assured her. “Let me just get out of your way.”
He rushed to go put the book back on the shelf and left, lest he leave any sort of impression. He checked his phone; it was eight. He’d gotten lost in his thoughts, trying to apply what he was researching to what he’d be delivering in just an hour. He normally didn’t leave it so late, but this one had been tricky, and he had a reputation to uphold.
If he wasn’t late.
Giran didn’t pay him much. He knew Izuku didn’t have many options. The room he was renting under the table was more of a walled off pantry in a rundown apartment. It was only five blocks away from the library, but he had to catch a train to meet up at the abandoned warehouse Giran was using this week to conduct business. If he hadn’t stayed up at the library so long he might have grabbed something to eat first, but as it was he barely had time to change into Deku before he was back out the door to catch the six-fifteen. He had plenty of time on the train to become Deku.
Giran grinned when he saw Deku walk in. The client was already there.
“Deku!” Giran said. “How’s my favorite analyst.”
“I’m not your anything,” Deku said. “And I’m pretty sure you don’t bother with any other analysts anymore.”
“I could still hire you on a more permanent basis,” Giran said.
“What, like I need a fucking dental plan?” Deku said. “Did he pay up?”
“Do you have an answer?” the client asked.
Giran held up Deku’s cut. Giran was keeping most of it for his finders fee, of course.
“Okay, you’re going to go look up flavescene oil,” Deku said. “Put it in an aerosol and spray the back of your throat with it at least five minutes before you use your quirk. It’s not a permanent fix, but it’ll give you resistance for about half a day.”
“That’s it?”
“What, do I look like I have a bio lab? No one’s regrowing the lining you grew up with.”
“No, this is great, I just mean, it seems so simple.”
“It’s simple when you have this,” Izuku said, tapping the side of his skull.
Actually, it had taken a whole lot of research, but he wasn’t ever going to tell anyone that.
“Wow, it must be great to have a quirk like that; I probably wouldn’t be doing this shit for a living.”
Giran, and whichever clients Deku saw, thought that he had a mind enhancement quirk. Really, lying was easy. Usually you didn’t even have to say anything. You just laid out the breadcrumbs for them and they came up with their own conclusions. If it was something you could make them think they were clever for figuring out, though, those were the best lies. Especially when you let it ‘slip.’ People felt so superior when you let the lie they already believed slip. Not that the enhancement quirk was a hard sell.
“So, this stuff’s not toxic, is it?”
“Well, you shouldn’t chug the stuff,” Deku said. “But using it a few times a week won’t cause any issues. Get a half milliliter spritzer, that’s your dose. And here,” he handed the guy a slip of paper. “You can buy it from here without any hassle.”
The client would probably be in jail soon anyways, so if he did overdo it, he wouldn’t be doing himself too much harm. There were actually a few chemicals Izuku could have suggested. The real hard part had been finding one that would suit Deku’s purposes. Flavescene oil, while not restricted, was monitored, since it was a precursor to a lot of nasty stuff. Deku could pass off the information, and when this guy made his purchase, they’d be a step closer to getting a location for him.
He turned away from the client and looked at Giran expectantly. Giran tossed him the little stack of bills.
“Got anything else for me?”
“Sure,” Giran said. He turned to the client. “I trust I have a happy customer?”
“Oh, if this works, I won’t have to take a few weeks off in between jobs anymore. Definitely worth it.”
When they were alone Giran said, “I think you’ll like this, and I think they’re just testing the waters, so I hope you can give me something here.”
He tossed Deku a file which he looked over while Giran went to meet his next appointment that had just walked in.
Izuku made note of the height, build, and obvious quirk features of the new client and then watched them try out the piece of illegal support equipment that Giran had acquired for them. When Giran came back, Izuku asked, “How much?”
Giran pulled out another stack of bills. Deku thought about it. “Two thirds that, and I want a compact grapple. I’ve had a couple of nasty situations recently, so I could use a better getaway.”
“A grapple is worth twice that,” Giran said.
“I’m sure you charge a client that, but I know you get it way cheeper,” Deku said. “Besides, my analysis on this is going to take a while and it’ll be worth it.”
“You think you can make it work?” Giran asked.
“I’d better, if I want my grapple.”
“Deal,” Giran said.
“Alright, if I’m going to go through all of this here, then I need some peace and fucking quiet; the next client that wants to test out the merchandise gets to do it on the other side of the warehouse.” Deku wasn’t allowed to take the folder with him, so he’d be memorizing it in the corner while Giran worked. He wasn’t complaining; it gave him plenty of time to make note of Giran’s other clients. Izuku turned up the gain on his hearing aid.
The grapple would make a nice birthday present to himself. No one else was going to get him anything.
~~~~~ THEN ~~~~~
Izuku really was wonderfully lucky that he had his mom. She was the best mom in the world. She hadn’t abandoned him when he was diagnosed quirkless, like his dad had. She always stuck up for him (when she knew something was wrong). She put up with his ‘learning difficulties’ and tried so hard to work with him on a problem neither of them could fix. She even learned how to make sure he knew she loved him even though he didn’t let her touch him.
The thing was, though, that for everything else, Izuku had always been worried that Tanahaka would be the thing that would make Mom realize that Izuku wasn’t worth it. If Mom ever learned about Tanahaka, she’d be glad she hadn’t hugged him in years. That was why Izuku had always been okay with just dealing with Tanahaka on his own. Deep down he knew it was something Mom could have actually put a stop to, but that would have meant letting her know what had happened.
It hadn’t even lasted that long. It had felt like forever to Izuku when he’d been six, but it had only gone on a month. When it had stopped, Izuku had been fine with leaving it in the past. He could just pretend it had never happened. By the end of that school year, he didn’t even have to see Tanahaka anymore. He’d stopped volunteering at Dago Elementary. So everything was done with. It had only ever been Izuku’s problem.
Izuku kept believing that until he was twelve, when they had their section on reproduction and puberty in his health science class. The last day of that section had been dedicated to things like staying safe online, and what to do if an adult made you uncomfortable, and other stranger danger/friend of the family type stuff. The whole class, Izuku thought that everyone had to be secretly looking at him. Like they all knew about Tanahaka.
The thing that had stood out to Izuku, though, was the bit about how child predators lied. That they tended to prey on children they had easy access to, and that they would probably keep doing that stuff until they were caught. It was supposed to just be Izuku’s problem, but what if it hadn’t been? Tanahaka had made him think that there was something about Izuku that had made him do that stuff to him. Izuku did his best to not think about Tanahaka a lot, but when he did, he’d thought that Izuku was just that one kid the man had done that to. It wasn’t like Izuku wasn’t used to being singled out his whole life. But now Izuku had to wonder if he’d done that to anyone else at the school while he’d been volunteering there. He’d only had access to Izuku for that first month of the school year, but he’d had access to other kids after that. What had he done after that year? Was he still out there? Were there just a bunch of kids in his wake as he went through life preying on whoever was convenient?
He went home that day and started doing research. He looked up crime statistics and criminal profiles. He read things written by other people who’d had that sort of thing happen to them when they’d been little. He found a whole website for helping people who went through that. There were things that people wrote about that made him feel less alone and helped put it into context.
When he went to bed that night, though, all he could think about was that Tanahaka could have molested a bunch of kids. Tanahaka had never just been Izuku’s problem, but what could Izuku have done? After reading some of that stuff, he started to think that Mom would have believed him, if he’d told her. She would have probably made sure Izuku never got near Tanahaka again (he was pretty sure she would, and that she wouldn’t just ditch him, too, Tanahaka being one thing too many), but regardless of what he’d read online, he was sure that no one else would have believed him. That stuff was written for quirked children. Izuku was the quirkless kid. Izuku was the kid who always caused problems. If Izuku wasn’t there, the other kids wouldn’t act up. No one ever believed Izuku’s side of the story, except for Mom, and eventually Izuku got good enough at hiding things that he didn’t need her to believe him because she didn’t need to know that anything was wrong at all, but everyone else?
Izuku wouldn’t have been believed when he was six, and he wouldn’t be believed now he was twelve. Tanahaka couldn’t just stay free, though. He could be hurting other kids. Before Izuku could catch Tanahaka in his trap, he first had to decide that that was something he had to do. Izuku felt stuck, unable to move left or right. The right thing to do would be to tell someone. The right thing for a quirked kid to do would be to tell someone. Izuku was quirkless, so he had to do something else. He had to. He couldn’t freeze up in indecision. After a few days of mulling it over, Izuku got to work.
~~~~~ NOW ~~~~~
Izuku tapped on the power cable connecting his small tablet to the power bank he’d had to get after accepting the tablet’s battery was shot. A few taps and a bit of jiggling and the little light turned green to show that he’d reconnected whatever was broken in the cable. Laying down on top of a roof for a few hours was no fun; the least the universe could do for him was not let his tech go on the fritz. It would probably help if all of it wasn’t second hand.
It did the job, though. Izuku looked at the tablet and then reached up just barely over the lip of the roof to adjust the camera just a smidge. The camera saw better than he could with his own two eyes, and Izuku didn’t have to have his head popping up holding a pair of binoculars or something else equally likely to get himself killed.
With one eye on his tablet, which still had a green battery indicator, and the other on the printout he’d gotten at the library for some analysis he was doing, it was gearing up to be a productive, if horribly uncomfortable night. A few hours later, and Izuku had gotten some good footage of a meeting that would hopefully link back to the next tier in the ring he was going after, and he thought he had a pretty good ‘solution’ for Giran’s client.
Izuku packed up. The tiny little webcam he’d modified folded up nice and neat in his pocket, his tablet and power bank went into his shoulder bag, along with the print out. Izuku started across a few rooftops before he had to go down to street level to get to the station. Before going down below street level, he slipped into an alleyway to take off his pads and grapple harness to stuff into his bag.
It was about three in the morning when Izuku got off the train. Once back in his little rented room, Izuku stripped down to his tee shirt and boxers, grabbed a protein bar, and got under the sheets on his futon. Not to sleep, of course, though it was well past midnight. But he wanted to get comfortable now that he didn’t have to lay down on a roof.
He got to work on the footage, highlighted a few sections, grabbed faces and license plate numbers, fed a few sections through a lipreading program, and started his writeup to send off.
“Oh cool,” a voice said right in his ear. “You’re a vigilante too, aren’t you?”
Izuku screamed, lurched about three feet away from the voice, and tried to get into something of a defensive stance while being somewhat tangled up in his bedsheets. A child’s voice laughed out loud, and then a young boy appeared out of thin air crouched down on Izuku’s Futon just inches from where Izuku had just been.
Ms. Landry banged on the wall from the next room, not caring if Izuku was about to get murdered since he’d paid the rent the day before.
“Who- who are you?” Izuku whispered.
“I’m Ghost!” the kid whisper shouted back.
“Why are you in my room?”
“We were on the same stakeout tonight, Mic Kun.”
Mic?
Izuku looked down at himself and his Hands Up Radio boxers and then grabbed his pants and put them on.
“Why are you staking out the Nakamoris?!” Izuku asked.
“Uh, because they’re butt head traffickers,” Ghost said. “What are you trying to get them for?”
“Same,” Izuku said. “But I think it’s their trigger deal that’s going to get us the search warrant.”
Ghost grinned wide. “That’s so cool Mic Kun.”
“It’s Deku,” Izuku said.
“Your vigilante name is Deku?” Ghost asked, his eyes lighting up even more.
“Okay, but really, why are you staking out the Nakamoris? They’re not people you should be messing with. Why are you staking out anyone? You’re like, ten.”
“Hey, I’m twelve,” Ghost said. Izuku had figured he’d get a more true answer if he low balled it. “And I’m the best vigilante there is for infiltration and reconnaissance. Besides, we’re like the same age, and you can’t even turn invisible.”
“I’m fourteen,” Izuku protested, falling into his own same trap.
Ghost grinned. “Are you sure? We’re like the same height.”
Izuku sighed. “Why are you here? Are you going to tell me to stay out of your territory?”
“Territory?” Ghost asked. “I don’t have any, I just go where I want. Anyway, I’m here to say hi. I’ve never met another vigilante kid, much less one my exact same age. The grownup ones are sort of dicks.”
Oh.
Izuku sighed. “Okay, well, hi,” he said. “I’d offer you a drink, but all I’ve got is tap water.”
“Don’t worry, Deku Kun, I brought snacks,” Ghost said, swinging off his backpack. “Flaming hot? Or Extra flaming hot?”
Izuku resigned himself to getting red cheese dust all over his sheets. He should probably get some chairs at some point. He’d never had anyone over, before.
“Turn around a second,” Izuku said.
“Why?” Ghost said suspiciously, but not like he thought Izuku was any sort of threat.
“Because I don’t want to wear my street pants when I’m sitting on my futon. I’m going to change into my gym shorts.”
“Bashful, Deku Kun?” Ghost asked with an excited gleam in his eye, like he’d learned something fun about Izuku. He did turn around, though.
Izuku changed and sat back down on his futon with his pillow between his back and the wall. “You can turn around,” he told Ghost and pointed to the other side of the futon. “You can sit there, I don’t like to be touched. That’s a rule.”
Ghost blinked at him for a moment. “What about my pants?”
“Um, were you lying down on top of a rooftop, or anything like that?”
Ghost shook his head. He actually looked clean. He was also in some pretty obvious vigilante gear. Black clothes, random sports pads, zip ties and a collapsible baton on his belt, some pointless goggles on his forehead that he probably thought looked cool.
“It’s fine,” Izuku said. “I’m not going to make the kid who is definitely two years younger than me, because I’m not twelve, take his pants off.”
Ghost just shrugged and sat down where Izuku had pointed.
“Can you show me what you got?” he asked. “Cameras don’t like my quirk too much.”
“What do you do with what you get?” Izuku asked.
“There’s a hero I like to tease, ‘cause he can never catch me. I tell him stuff when I can get someone arrested.”
“I’ve got something similar,” Izuku said. Though it was more like his own contact was content to let Izuku feed him info without really trying all that hard to catch him. “Tell me about yourself; why are you doing this?”
“You’re not sharing?” Ghost asked.
“Not with someone I don’t know.”
“Maybe I heard something good.”
“How long have you been doing this?” Izuku asked.
“A few months,” Ghost said. “What about you?”
“A year and a half,” Izuku said.
Ghost gasped. “You’ve been doing this since you were ten? Oh, Deku Kun, how can you get on my case about how old I am when you were just a baby vigilante.”
“I was twelve,” Izuku said in exasperation.
Ghost just grinned at him.
“Okay, look, I started with just a computer, I didn’t leave my home for anything till I was thirteen.”
“Oh, that’s so cool, Deku Kun, are you a hacker?”
Izuku shrugged. “It’s one of my skills.”
“Why’d you get started?” Ghost asked.
“I had to put someone away,” Izuku said. “Then I just didn’t stop. What about you?”
“Oh, I’m just a vigilante for fun,” Ghost said. “I don’t have much else to do, since it’s not like I go to school or have a curfew or anything.”
Well, that didn’t sound good. Izuku didn’t either, but that was because he was living on his own.
“Are you homeless?” Izuku asked. The kid didn’t look it, but Izuku had managed to keep himself relatively clean when he needed to, before he’d been able to get a place to stay.
“Welllllll,” Ghost said. “I wouldn’t say homeless, but I do not have a permanent place to stay. When you can walk through walls, there’s a lot of options that open up. There’s some new luxury apartments, completely furnished, they haven’t even started leasing yet.”
“You can walk through walls, too?” Izuku asked. “Oh, cool. Wait, how does that work with invisibility. Light refraction isn’t in any way related to permeation. Wait, can you do one but not the other? What does it feel like when you’re doing them? Can you be both invisible and permeable at the same time?”
“Uh uh, Deku Kun, show me what you’ve got first.”
“Yeah, here,” Izuku said, pulling up his laptop. It was well worth it to pick apart such an interesting quirk.
They traded notes for a bit. Ghost was able to fill in a lot of the parts of conversations his camera hadn’t been able to catch lips on, though his recall of detail wasn’t great. They ate chips and drank soda and then finally, after discussing the Nakamoris, Izuku got to pick Ghost’s quirk apart.
“Are you going out of phase with the universe?” Izuku asked.
Ghosts eyes lit up. “It took the quirk counselors a few months to come up with that, Deku Kun. Okay, now, tell me about your quirk.”
Izuku shrugged. “Everything I need’s up here.” He tapped the side of his head.
“Hah, so cool Deku Kun.”
Izuku hadn’t really spent time with anyone besides criminals in the past few months. It was nice to talk to someone he wasn’t plotting to get arrested. Ghost was right, it was nice to talk to another vigilante. Even before, when he’d gone to school, outside of school projects, the most he ever talked to anyone remotely his age was with Kacchan during Wednesday night dinners, and that hadn’t exactly been great conversation. It was weird to so deeply miss those awkward nights spent playing video games and doing homework next to one another while their parents chatted and drank wine.
Izuku noticed that Ghost’s eyes were starting to droop a bit. He checked his watch. It was almost five in the morning.
“It’s getting pretty late,” he said.
“Yeah,” Ghost said. “I’ll let you get some sleep. You don’t go to school, do you?”
He said it like he thought it would be very weird for Izuku to do something like that.
“Nope,” Izuku said. “I just study at the library. What about you?”
“Aw, I learn stuff when I learn stuff.”
“Is anyone waiting for you at that luxury high-rise?”
“Nope,” Ghost said. “It’s just me, so I’m the boss.” He was grinning, and maybe it was just the fatigue from a long night, but Izuku didn’t think Ghost was as thrilled about that as he let on.
“Stay safe,” Izuku said as Ghost slipped some shoes on.
“I’m super safe,” Ghost said. “No one can touch me.” He turned to leave.
“Hey,” Izuku said. “Why’d you really become a vigilante?”
Ghost looked back at him. “Ah, I’m going to have to be careful. Nothing get’s past your quirk, does it?”
Izuku shrugged.
“Before I figured out that there were all these empty places to stay, I was a bit more- homeless. Saw some messed up stuff on the streets. I figured Akane would have thought I was cool if I did something about it.”
With that he disappeared.
~~~~~ THEN ~~~~~
Before Izuku could get Tanahaka to fall into a trap, Izuku had had to figure out how to set up a trap, first. He’d started doing some research and before long he’d had to branch out into several other avenues of research. He started with the basics. Sometimes, people like Tanahaka got arrested because the police did a sting operation. Izuku could just find one of those and lead Tanahaka to it.
So that had been the first part, find a trap. This, of course, had been easier said than done. Izuku wound up finding the dark web, backing far away from that for a bit, learning as much as he could about internet security as he could, and then diving back in. In the end, he never figured out how to find a trap that the police had already laid out for creeps like Tanahaka. He did find something that was not a trap, though, eventually.
It wasn’t just for child molesters. Izuku found a dark web marketplace for… all sorts of crime. It was all in jargon. No one purchased a murder for hire, they ordered a braised pork with an address for delivery. No one purchased malware, they ordered spicy rice cakes, or kimchi ramen, or- well there were a lot of different malware packages. It took him a while to find the ‘menu,’ but when he did, it became obvious that they were offering what Izuku was pretty sure Tanahaka was still interested in.
By the end of the operation to get Tanahaka into his trap, Izuku had hacked a few websites and way more than a few computers. The crime for hire website was, for some reason, the easiest to hack. He made some changes as he saw fit, to give himself a bit of lasting access, before turning a slightly lower level of access and a writeup to the police. With the backdoor access Izuku had left himself with, he was well aware when the site became hijacked and was being operated by law enforcement.
At the same time he’d been arranging for a trap to lure Tanahaka in, Izuku had been making sure he could get the man there. Unfortunately, that meant interacting with the creep. Izuku started with research.
Izuku was super glad to find that the guy hadn’t stayed in education. As far as Izuku could tell, from the guy’s resume he’d found on a job site, Tanahaka had done that as a volunteer thing during college and after he’d graduated he’d gotten a job in the Musutafu City Planner’s office. Working for his dad. Izuku stalked his socials for a while, researched malware, and eventually sent Tanahaka an email with an electronic birthday card attachment from an email address with one of his colleagues names on it. That had gotten Izuku onto Tanahaka’s computer.
The next issue was that Izuku could probably call it a day if the guy had something incriminating on his computer, but Izuku didn’t want to see that. More importantly, he figured out when he first started looking into how police went after child molesters that it would be a very bad idea to look at whatever images or videos Tanahaka might have on his computer because the only way for Izuku to look at them was to have that image on his own computer, which would be very illegal.
Really, very little that Izuku was doing was legal, but, there was vigilante hacking illegal, and then there was having child porn on your computer illegal, and that was a line Izuku wasn’t crossing. Fortunately, though, Izuku had access to Tanahaka’s computer, and it was easy enough to install a scraper that would view all of the media files and create text descriptions. Unfortunately for Izuku, the average person had a ton of media on their computers. It took Izuku a long while to figure out that if Tanahaka had any, it wasn’t on the computer Izuku had access to.
That was fine, because Tanahaka was up to other stuff. Stuff that confirmed that Izuku wasn’t just a one off fluke. Izuku was right there in the guys computer. He could see what the guy did online. There was a website for people like Tanahaka. He only ever accessed it through a VPN, but Izuku wasn’t spying on his internet feed, he was on the guy's computer, so none of that mattered. The first website Izuku became aware of through Tanahaka was semi-public facing. There wasn’t anything actually illegal there. It was just a bunch of adults who wanted to touch kids talking about their fantasies online.
The second website Tanahaka used had a lot more security and was on the dark web. Unfortunately, Tanahaka used a third factor authentication token key to access the site, which Izuku wouldn’t be able to hack until closer to the end of his operation, but he could still see (read) what Tanahaka could see. The second website had a ton of illegal material on it and there were actual child molesters talking about things they’d done to actual children.
Izuku found both websites on the same day as Tanahaka visited both. He read enough that day that he didn’t sleep for two days straight. Mom had gotten worried about him, took a day off of work to take care of his ‘cold,’ and Izuku had felt like a heel for freaking himself out and then making his mom upset.
Izuku thought he had enough on Tanahaka at that point to get him arrested. He had computer logs of him going onto those sites and looking at illegal stuff. Izuku didn’t just want him to get arrested for that, though. He wanted Tanahaka to fall into his trap. He wanted him to go down for more than just looking at stuff.
Izuku figured out he was going to need an invite to get to the second website himself, so he made an account on the first website and started stalking Tanahaka’s posts. The man posted his own fantasies, which Izuku had to read and then comment on. He didn’t start commenting for a while, at first, though. It became evident that there was a lexicon he didn’t have. They used a lot of euphemisms. They made what they did or wanted to do sound benign, or good even. Izuku wrote out his own lexicon, studied it, made up a persona, and then started commenting on everything Tanahaka posted.
And that was the third element of Izuku’s operation. He actually had to talk to the guy and convince him to fall into the trap. Izuku could tell a lot about Tanahaka from the fantasies he wrote out. After a while, Izuku came up with the angle he’d take to get the guy talking to him. Tanahaka wrote about ‘guiding’ kids, so Izuku became a younger, seventeen year old, visitor to the site, who had a lot to learn, and who looked up to Tanahaka, and thought that everything he wrote was great. He just left comments for a while before he sent his first DM.
It was easy enough to figure out what to say. It was much harder to actually write it. He’d go to his keyboard and just freeze up before retreating to pace around his room for a while. Eventually, he managed to push through.
‘Out of everyone here, I really feel like you would get me. There’s so much I need to figure out. I wish I could have been one of your young friends once upon a time.’
Tanahaka didn’t take long to respond and it became apparent pretty quickly that Tanahaka did fancy himself a mentor, and practically preened at the opportunity to take a young man under his wing.
The whole while he worked that out, he was still monitoring Tanahaka’s activity on the dark web site. It became apparent pretty quickly that the reason the man didn’t have any media stored on his computer was because he could look at as much of it as he wanted on the website. Izuku had stopped looking at descriptions of the media Tanahaka was looking at.
Eventually, though, Tanahaka officially invited his ‘protege’ to the second site on the dark web. Izuku made an account, made sure his browser wouldn’t load any images or videos, and logged in. The first thing he did was scrape through Tanahaka’s posts. He got a bunch of not quite admissions, more fantasies, comments on media other pedophiles uploaded, and some off topic forum posts.
The second thing Izuku did with the second site, was use the more secure DM function.
‘So, I’ve been dying to ask. Can you tell me about your playtime? I’ve always gotten the feeling that it isn’t just fantasy you’re writing. I can tell you’re writing from experience. I’m eager to learn more from you. I’d love my own experience someday soon.’
And Tanahaka told him. So, Izuku found himself having to actually read it. He’d molested a neighbor’s child when he was in high school. In college he’d volunteered at Dago Elementary for a year. His experience with his first victim there fit Izuku’s experience (he mentioned the PE thing), except he romanticized it, and Izuku didn’t know if he made up some stuff, or if there were things Izuku just didn’t remember. He had to stop himself from imagining those things happening to him, trying to understand if it was real or not.
Izuku wasn’t the only kid Tanahaka molested at Dago, though. After Izuku, he’d molested three other children and then, after he graduated from college, he’d stopped. He hadn’t really had access anymore.
On the one hand, Izuku had been right. He hadn’t been the only one and he hadn’t been the last, but Tanahaka had stopped. Had a younger Tanahaka been more willing to take risks? Would Izuku be able to get the man into his trap?
‘Should I volunteer at a school or something?’ Izuku asked.
‘It’s pretty risky,’ Tanahaka wrote back. ‘I was lucky, they didn’t follow the rules very well about not letting us be alone with them.’
‘I’m sorry you haven’t been able to have any fun since then,” Izuku wrote.
‘Well, another couple of years and I think my wife’s niece will be old enough to appreciate my friendship.’
Izuku threw up, but he didn’t want to wait too long to reply, so he wrote. ‘Wow, that’s bold.’
‘You can’t live a life of desire only,’ was Tanahaka’s response.
Well, he was just going to have to make sure he got Tanahaka before he molested his niece.
The next thing he did on the third website was plot to take it over. The outside security was great. At Izuku’s level, he would have never gotten in without an invite. Inside, though, it was… decent.
There were a number of forums. Izuku found one where people posted about which pro heroes would have been cutest when they were kids. Izuku made comments correcting some things people said about different heroes’s quirks, and eventually applied to be a moderator for that forum.
He was accepted. The moderator position gave him a slightly higher level of access to the website, but it also got him the email to the site administrator. The next part was easier. Izuku contacted the admin and raised a few concerns he had with security. It turned out he wasn’t too bad at passing himself off as an infosec expert. He praised the security the website had to keep people out, but raised concerns about what he’d noticed about the inner security, and more importantly, how a compromised user could cause problems.
This part was a lot easier. The admin liked talking shop with Izuku and Izuku could use his infosec lexicon rather than his pedophile lexicon. After a lot of back and forth, Izuku became the site’s security advisor, and he started ‘shoring up’ a lot of problems. This of course gave him a pretty high level of access.
Izuku didn’t just want access to the site, though, he wanted everything and everyone. With the access he had, he could see that there were over a hundred users from across Japan, and a handful more in countries around the world. All of the active ones were, at the very least, looking at child porn. He was monitoring a few who talked about ongoing crimes they were committing against children, but Izuku didn’t have enough to get IDs. So, he wanted to get all of them.
‘I still think our biggest risk is the users,’ Izuku wrote.
‘I agree,’ the admin responded. ‘We have a best practices section, everyone’s required to read it to join.’
Yeah, Izuku had read it when he joined.
‘I think it could be expanded,’ he wrote. ‘More importantly, I think we cold give them better tools. What do you think about a security package?’
‘Something they could install to secure their end?’
Izuku grinned. Now it was sort of the Admin’s idea.
‘Yes, that’s it exactly. We can give them some scripts to run, and then give them a PDF of security threats, things they should look out for, not just do.’
‘I’d want to check over the scripts.’
‘Of course.’
The scripts would be exactly what Izuku said they were. The PDF, much like the birthday card he’d originally sent Tanahaka, would be the real delivery mechanism. Izuku worked really hard on the PDF. It looked super professional. If this had been a class project he would have totally gotten an- Well, he would have gotten a C, but it would have definitely been worth an A. The following week, the admin tasked all of the moderators to strongly encourage everyone to shore up their security, and Izuku’s malware went out to almost all of the active users. At that point he had all the access he wanted. He just had to get Tanahaka into his trap.
~~~~~ NOW ~~~~~
With the Nakamoris finally wrapped up, Izuku was able to make his report. He’d gotten a lot better than he’d been in the beginning, when he’d just throw a bunch of materials at the police. Izuku felt like he was getting trained to fill out reports like a pro hero or a police detective would. Every time he got feedback there were little nudges and comments on how he could present things differently, often enough accompanied by something like ‘someone not as literate as the two of us might have been confused…’
Either way, Izuku had a properly formatted timeline, an overview brief, photos and videos stamped with time, date and location, his own notes and statements, and this time, Ghost’s recall of what Izuku hadn’t been able to catch from his rooftop. With it all wrapped up, Izuku put it in a folder with a note that said ‘estimated 25 victims on location, hurry.’
He was glad to see a response pop up almost immediately.
‘Received, glad to receive a report, it’s been a while. Expect notes or questions in one hour. ~N’
He must have been in the server when Izuku uploaded. With that done, he closed out of all of the programs he was running to keep his session secure and pulled his secondary processor stick out of the side of the library computer he was using. Every digital trace of him gone, he turned in his seat and rolled a little bit to get closer to Ghost. Or, Akihito, rather.
“No, Izu Kun, I’ve got this, I don’t need help.”
“Oh, you look like you’re doing fine,” Izuku said “I’m just checking. I got everything sent off.”
It had been a month since he’d first met Ghost. He wasn’t comfortable taking a twelve year old on a stakeout, much less on a meetup, but the kid kept showing up to trade stories, and he always brought junk food, so… Izuku was teaching him how to hack.
“You could just send him an email,” Izuku said. “You know enough about him. You could write an email he’d open.”
“That’s boring,” Ghost said. “I’m not getting him like that, Izu Kun, I’m cracking his computer like an egg.”
It was personal.
“And there might not be anything on his computer,” Izuku said.
“You got a bunch of guys like that,” Ghost said.
“Because they were doing crimes with their computers. Not everyone who hurts kids like that uses their computer.”
“Well, the police didn’t care when an actual victim said what he did to her, so what other evidence am I going to get?”
“I don’t know,” Izuku said. “If we don’t turn anything up on your uncle, we’ll brainstorm something else, okay?”
Izuku looked around. They still had the computers to themselves. It was two o’ clock on a Wednesday. The library was mostly empty. They had time.
“I want to do this on my own,” Ghost said.
“Why?”
“Because she was my sister.”
Izuku let that sit for a bit.
“You told me you wished she’d asked for help.”
“That’s different, and I did ask for help, you’re teaching me how to do this, but I want to actually do it.”
“You will,” Izuku said.
“She could have just told me, though. I would have stopped him,” Ghost said.
“You were her little brother,” Izuku said.
“And I could have pulled the bones out of his hands,” Ghost said darkly. “She didn’t need to protect me.”
Izuku wasn’t sure how he’d wound up playing therapist to a twelve year old orphan. He definitely wasn’t good at it. Should he research that?
“Did you ever ask for help?” Ghost asked.
“No, I figured out how to catch them on my own,” Izuku said. “But if I’d had someone willing to help, I think I would have let them. I’m not saying you have to, or that you should, even, but you could.”
“But did you ever tell anyone, before?”
Izuku had never told Ghost why he’d decided to go after a bunch of child molesters when he was twelve, but it wasn’t like the kid couldn’t figure it out.
“No,” Izuku said. “I didn’t.
“But you didn’t kill yourself either,” Ghost said.
“I was six,” Izuku said. “Suicide isn’t really something six year olds think about. Adolescents, on the other hand… She lost her parents; she moved in with her abuser. I’m sorry Akihito Kun, suicide isn’t supposed to make sense.”
Ghost had asked Izuku to teach him hacking before Izuku had ever gotten the actual story. After a week he’d gotten that Ghost was an orphan, and then later that his aunt was still petitioning for adoption, along with her husband, where Ghost refused to go back to, for reasons. Izuku had found out last night who Ghost was hacking and why.
“There should be a quirk for that,” Ghost said.
“For what?” Izuku asked.
“For asking the dead to explain themselves.”
Izuku had no idea what he was doing with this kid.
“Oh, hey, is that…?” Ghost asked, pointing at the computer monitor?
Izuku took a look. “Congratulations, Akihito Kun, you’re in.”
“I did it?” Ghost asked.
“You’re in,” Izuku said. “That’s the first step.”
“Yeah,” Ghost said. “Now we find stuff.”
“Now, you load the back door, and the scraping tool.”
“Right,” Ghost said.
“Akihito Kun,” Izuku said. “I just want to… There are image descriptions I wish I hadn’t read when I was twelve.”
“I’m not waiting till I’m older,” Ghost said.
“Ghost, take it from someone who doesn’t sleep much at night. Knowing that these things happen is different from reading descriptions of it actually happening to someone. You could think of me as a computer program sorting through what you found.”
“I’m not a baby,” Ghost said. “I’ve seen people get murdered before.”
Izuku took a deep breath.
“Sometimes these people take pictures and videos of the things they do to their victims. It might not just be some illegal stuff he downloaded from the internet. Do you want to read an image description of that happening to Akane?”
Ghost hesitated.
“I got the guy who molested me, but first, I had to read him reminiscing about what he did to me, and then the kids he molested after me. Do you want to read that about Akane?”
Tears prickled Ghost’s eyes and he turned away, swiping at them quickly. “Fine.” He said. He got up and walked away.
Ghost had had photos of Akane, and he’d pulled recent photos of his uncle from social media. Izuku added them to the scraper and had their target’s computer sort through media looking for faces that matched and then turning that media into a text description.
As expected, the man had plenty of pictures of himself with his niece, at a family gathering, at a park, stuff people would expect a man to have of family. Izuku kept reading.
Half an hour later, he looked around. Ghost was in the YA section pretending like he wasn’t keeping tabs on Izuku. He waved the kid over.
Ghost wouldn’t meet his eyes.
“Alright,” Izuku said. “Go ahead and sit down. There are some file names for you. Now, I’m going to teach you how to turn this into evidence you can give your hero contact without breaking any of the most serious computer crime laws.”
“Was it Akane?”
Izuku hesitated. “Some of them,” he said.
Ghost nodded. “Um, thanks. Can we… Can we go now? Can we do this tomorrow?”
“Yeah,” Izuku said. “Yeah, of course. Do you want to go somewhere, or do you want to be alone?”
Ghost was hugging himself and looking at his shoes. Izuku wished he wasn’t useless in that department.
“Um, I wrapped up the Nakimori case today,” Izuku said. “With your help. Let’s get some pizza and watch some anime.”
“Uh, yeah,” Ghost said. “But you’re coming to my place. I’ve got furniture.”
“Sure,” Izuku said.
So they went out and grabbed pizza. Ghost’s father had enjoyed anchovies on pizza so Izuku didn’t poke too much fun at the boy’s gross pizza. They ate their pizza on a park bench and Ghost seemed to switch back to good humor relatively quickly. Izuku was never sure if the boy’s demeanor was as much of a mask as his own Deku was.
“So hey, can I try out your grapple?” Ghost asked.
“You don’t need a quick getaway and you have two left feet,” Izuku said. “I’m not encouraging you to crack your head open on the side of a building. How about a bicycle?”
“I do not have two left feet!”
“I was thirteen when I got this and I already had plenty of practice with parkour and stuff.”
“Boo, Deku Kun, boo.”
“Come on, let’s go watch anime, there’s a spy show I want to check out.”
“Looking for ideas, Izu Kun?”
“Can’t hurt,” Izuku said. “Hey, on the way we can brainstorm an alias for you.”
“I don’t need an alias, I just turn invisible when I don’t want people to know who I am.”
“Aliases are fun, Akihito Kun,” Izuku said. “It’s fun to trick people.”
“It’s fun to sneak up on people,” Ghost said.
“Ah, okay, your alias’s quirk is just invisibility,” Izuku said. “Keep the rest a close secret.”
“My quirk could be called Chameleon,” Ghost said.
“That’s great, and how about a name… Oh, Ubukata, it’s perfect.”
“No, that will not be my name!”
“I’ll forge some documents tonight.”
“Do not. You take that back!”
He’d find a name Ghost would actually use, and then he’d make up some records that would pass at least an overview. It didn’t really matter for Izuku, he didn’t have a future as anything but what he was, but Ghost had potential. He could go pro some day, or maybe just get adopted by someone other than his aunt, and it was important he could operate now without his actual identity.
~~~~~ THEN ~~~~~
Everything sort of fell into place around the same time. Both the trap and the infiltration had taken months, but he’d been working on both at the same time. When he finally had all of the pieces together, he got super nervous about moving onto the next step. Because, all he had was the next step. He still needed Tanahaka to actually walk into the trap.
He had learned a lot over the seven months it all took. He’d learned to hack. He’d learned to fake a whole identity, he’d learned about police investigations and evidentiary requirements, he’d learned to manipulate… he’d learned to close his bedroom door…
Izuku cringed at the memory. Mom had popped her head into his room to tell him about dinner and Izuku had panicked, even though it was just code on the screen, and he’d slammed his laptop shut. Mom had just apologized and left the room, so he’d thought he just might have gotten away unscathed until later that evening when Izuku had gotten a talk about how it was normal to be curious but to be careful of the things he might find online. At the very least, after the whole affair, mom knocked on his door, even if it was ajar.
All in all, things had gone well. The only real roadblocks had been his own lack of knowledge. The only thing he needed to do was pull the trigger and leave it in Tanahaka’s hands. The trap site would probably only last so long before criminals caught on, and then where would Izuku be? Besides, as soon as he got Tanahaka, he could get everyone else.
Izuku loaded his programs, double and triple checked his settings, tested his connection, and then logged in. He didn’t waste time maintaining his moderator or infosec roles. He just went to the DMs and pulled up Tanahaka. The man wasn’t online, but that was fine. It would have probably been a bit too nerve-wracking if he had been.
‘I wanted to tell you first, since you’ve inspired me so much, but I had my first playdate. It was everything I wanted. Can I tell you about it?’
Tanahaka wasn’t online, so there wasn’t any point in staying. Izuku logged off, scrubbed his trail, and closed his laptop.
Half an hour later, he wound up back on. Tanahaka was going to walk into the trap, but everyone else would need a more direct approach from Izuku, so he spent a bunch of time cataloguing people and crimes and getting as many actual identities as he could from people’s personal computers. Once Tanahaka went down, Izuku would be able to dump it all on the police. He worked on it until Mom came home, and then he rushed to the kitchen, since it was so late, and she shouldn’t have to cook. Dinner was microwave stir fry rice and frozen chicken strips he threw into the air fryer.
“Did you want to play a board game?” Izuku asked, when dinner was over.
“Oh, honey, I don’t think I could focus on a game right now,” Mom said. “How about we watch something?”
“Oh, there’s a new obstacle course show!” Izuku said.
They watched people fall into mud and get launched off of foam platforms, and afterwards Mom said she was going to read a bit and go to sleep early.
“Nine, o’ clock, sweetie, okay?”
“Okay, Mom,” Izuku said.
He went back to his room and went through and logged back in.
‘That’s great, I’m so proud of you. Of course I want to hear about it.’
Izuku bounced a bit in his seat.
‘I’ll admit, I took a risk, but it wasn’t really, they were so professional, and discreet.’
‘You used a service?’
‘I did. They just brought my little friend to my home, my parents are gone for the weekend. They’re very security focused, and she was so cute.’
‘Tell me about her, what did you play?’
Izuku had planned to write something. He- He couldn’t write it out, though.
‘Now I feel self conscious. It was my first time. You’re so bold telling your stories. I think I’ll take my time and write it out to post, but I’d love it if you could read it first.’
‘I understand. Take your time. I’ll look forward to it. How did it work with this service?’
‘They have a menu, all code words, of course. You order a ‘meal’ and tell them where to deliver it. The delivery fee is the price per hour, but you work the length of time out when they deliver, cash of course. She was so happy and well behaved. I really think they take good care of our little friends. I have the cheat sheet if you want to take a look.’
‘It all went well?’
‘It did! I was worried, of course, what if it was really police on the other end? I almost passed out when they knocked on my door, but it was the real deal.’
‘I’m so happy for you. You’ve got me all excited now.’
‘Of course. I figured I’d share with the group, a lot of them are in the area, but I wanted to let you have first dibs. I’d hate for there to be a rush on their services.’
‘I appreciate it. You’ve become a good friend.’
‘You’re the whole reason I’m here. Do you think you’ll do it?’
…Nothing.
He checked what was happening on Tanahaka’s computer. He had the chat with Izuku up and his calendar, and… now he was opening his emails.
Izuku checked the clock. He had a bit of time to do some more evidence collecting.
The following morning, there hadn’t been any more activity from Tanahaka. Izuku made breakfast, mock hugged his mom, and went to school. He got shoved and tripped on his way to homeroom, where there was a news printout about a quirkless woman who’d been murdered the week prior left on his desk. Whoever had left it had written, ‘I wonder how long you’ll last, Deku.’ He’d seen the article already. At least they weren’t telling him to kill himself, today. He got marked late, even though he was on time and the rest of the day went somewhat similarly. He had planned to run home after school to check his computer, but he wound up running home to avoid some classmates, but it was all the same in the end.
Izuku got home, opened his laptop, went through the whole rigamarole, and logged in. He had a message from Tanahaka.
‘I think I’ll do it,” the message on his screen had read. ‘Can you send me the menu?’
~~~~~ NOW ~~~~~
Izuku had to admit, that the night would have probably gone better if Ghost had done it, but Izuku was never going to ask Ghost to break in somewhere for him. The mission had been a success, but he’d had to actually take some more considerable risks that night. Usually it was just hacking, observing, or meeting up with people.
Okay, so the meeting up with people was pretty dangerous, but tonight Izuku had broken into a building. He was good at hacking, but some people were too paranoid and just didn’t have openings. So, Izuku had broken in and shoved a little device into the back of a server rack. Most computers were vulnerable to devices plugged into them. He’d thought the building was empty, but then he’d been caught, and only just managed to shimmy out a window and into a dirty alleyway, ripping his pants on the way out. He cut out of there quick using his grapple.
Still, though, the mission was a success, and Izuku would be able to collect all the data he wanted at the library later.
“Hey, kid, you okay?”
A man was in the mouth of the alleyway he was currently cutting through.
“I’m fine, thank you. I just fell.”
“Hey that’s rough, do you need me to look at your leg there?” The guy was getting closer.
“Thank you, but it’s just the fabric, my leg’s fine.”
“You’re homeless, aren’t you? Hey, how about a meal, my place is close by.”
He had gone out in his street kid outfit rather than his vigilante getup so he could blend in. Maybe this guy wouldn’t try messing with him if he had his pads on and his grapple harness worn outside his pants.
Izuku started backing up, but he didn’t want to turn his back on this guy to run just yet. He tried to find evidence of what his quirk might be, or if he had any weapons. “I’m fine, thank you, please leave me alone.”
Izuku froze as the man suddenly cut the distance between them in a few quick strides. He reached out for Izuku’s arm and Deku moved to take a swing at him. It barely seemed to phase the man.
“This could have been painless for you,” the man said. He lunged again for Izuku, and Izuku took another swing, but the man caught his arm.
NO.
And suddenly, his entire arm went numb.
Izuku let out an inarticulate howl. The man laughed at him and let go. Izuku’s arm just fell limply at his side. He tried to run away, but the man grabbed him by the other arm.
“STOP!” Izuku yelled.
The man threw him to the ground. Neither of his numb arms caught him and his face crashed into the pavement.
“I was going to be so gentle with you,” the man said. “But you just had to be difficult.”
“No, no, no, don’t touch me, don’t touch me!”
The man knelt on Izuku’s legs and reached under to undo his belt. Izuku froze up, his mind going fuzzy, disbelief that this was happening. He had to move. He had to move, but he couldn’t, and it didn’t have anything to do with his numb arms.
Suddenly, there wasn’t any weight on him, and there were a few thuds.
Izuku stayed frozen, and he hated himself for it. Move, Izuku told himself. Move!
Izuku took a moment to crane his neck, but he couldn’t see what was happening. He tried to get his feet under him so he could get up, but without his arms it took him a bit. He had to leverage himself by digging his shoulder into the ground. Finally on his feet, he looked over and saw the man wrapped up in long white strips of cloth, and another man with wild floating hair.
It was a pro-hero. It was him!
Izuku ran away.
“Touch based paralysis quirk!” Izuku yelled over his shoulder. He couldn’t even use his grapple to get to a rooftop.
Running with limp arms, was difficult, but it was better than not running. He eventually got to his place, but realized he couldn’t even open the door. He collapsed. Choking on a rough throat that had been sucking in too much air for too long. He tried to catch his breath, but even though his arms were numb, he could still feel the man’s touch.
“Deku Kun!”
Izuku looked up and shrunk in on himself.
“Don’t touch me!” Izuku said.
“I’m- I’m not,” Ghost said. “What’s wrong?”
“Um, quirk, can’t move my arms.”
“Just a second,” Ghost said.
He phased through the door and opened it from the other side.
“Can you get up?”
He was going to have to, since he couldn’t let Ghost help him.
He made it to his room and kicked his futon to the corner where he sat and tried not to cry. Ghost closed his door and sat on the floor a couple of feet away from him. He should really get some furniture if Ghost was going to drop by near every day.
“Are you hurt anywhere besides your face?” Ghost asked.
Izuku shook his head. His jaw hurt horribly, but he didn’t think anything was broken.
“Do you want me to do anything?” Ghost asked.
“No,” Izuku said. “Um, thanks, for helping. You can go, I’ll be fine.”
“When you can’t move your arms? Yeah right. It’s okay to ask for help, Deku Kun.”
Izuku sighed.
“What happened?” Ghost asked.
“This guy attacked me, a pro stopped him, I ran away before the pro could pass me off to the police.”
“Was he trying to rob you?” Ghost asked.
“Yes,” Izuku said instantly hoping that Ghost hadn’t noticed that Izuku’s belt was undone.
“That sucks,” Ghost said. “You sort of look like you’re going to puke.”
“I just didn’t like him grabbing me,” Izuku said.
“Yeah,” Ghost said. “Hey, so let me tell you about my totally awesome reconnaissance mission.”
~~~~~ THEN ~~~~~
Tanahaka had set a time and place. Mom was working all day. It was a Saturday.
Izuku finished up everything on his computer and set it to send everything he’d gathered to the police about the same time he figured Tanahaka would be getting arrested. Then he hopped on a train and spent a half hour nervously keeping an eye on the stops while he watched some recent hero fights on his phone. He was so far behind on his hero analysis. Tanahaka had sort of hijacked the past several months of his life. He’d brought a journal, though, and took notes during the trip.
The hotel Tanahaka had booked wasn’t some dingy love motel, but it wasn’t too fancy either. He supposed it was the sort of place you might arrange a meeting you didn’t want anyone paying attention to. Izuku checked his watch. He still had some time. He got a soda and a sandwich at a cafe across the street and just ate while he watched the entrance. After he ate, he got bold and actually went into the hotel. He took the elevator to the third floor and found the room Tanahaka had booked.
Tanahaka should be in there by now. Izuku shouldn’t be there. He’d just planned to watch him get marched out from across the street. He was there, though.
Izuku looked around and found the alcove just by the elevator where there was a vending machine. He tried to look like he was just trying to make up his mind. It probably looked weird that he kept looking at his watch, but no one was actually around.
A few minutes after the appointed time, though, the elevator doors opened and a woman and a little pink haired girl stepped out of the elevator.
Izuku tried not to look at them. He was just looking at the vending machine. He put in a few coins, just to keep up the act. Did the police actually use little kids in sting operations?
There was a knock on a door. Izuku turned his head for just a moment. They were at Tanahaka’s door. He looked back at the vending machine. He heard the door open. He didn’t look back.
“Oh, hello.” The voice was only vaguely familiar. He sounded nervous, but also, sort of relieved.
“Good evening sir, I have your delivery right here,” the woman said.
“Wonderful, just wonderful, thank you. I believe this should cover the time. I’ll have her all ready when you come back.”
“This seems to cover it, sir, I’m officer Sato, and this is officer Ito, you’re under arrest for solicitation for sex with a minor child.”
Izuku’s breath caught.
There was an odd noise. He didn’t turn around.
“No, wait, there’s been a misunderstanding.”
“Turn around and place your hands behind your back.”
“This is entrapment!”
There were a couple of thuds and then the ratcheting of cuffs.
“You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to an attorney at trial.”
The elevator dinged and a couple of uniformed officers got off. Izuku was still just frozen there, still choosing something to snack on.
“I- I wasn’t going to hurt her; not at all.”
“Bag it and tag it,” another woman’s voice said.
“You’ve got it,” one of the officers said.
“I’ve really never done anything like this before.”
That was a lie, but Izuku didn’t say anything.
“The first one isn’t free, pal.”
The voices were getting closer.
Izuku had to look, he had to. He forced himself to move. He turned around.
Tanahaka didn’t look at him.
Izuku stared at him. Willed him to look over and see him, but the two women just walked him to the elevators. That was what Izuku had heard. That little girl was a woman with some sort of shape shifting quirk. She still had the pink hair and she had her hand on Tanahaka’s shoulder as they passed him.
Izuku had committed way too many crimes getting Tanahaka. He could not say anything. It suddenly burned inside of him. He wanted to say it. He wanted to shout it. ‘You molested me.’ ‘I brought you here.’ ‘This was my trap.’ ‘I’m the one you’ve been talking to this whole time.’ ‘Do you remember me?’
But he didn’t say anything, and the three of them just walked past him.
Tears pricked at his eyes, and when the elevator doors closed, Izuku went to the stairs and took them as quickly as he could down. He just caught them walking him out the door and he raced after them. Out on the street he watched them put Tanahaka into the back of an unmarked car.
Tanahaka was barefoot, Izuku noted. He was wearing mid calf khakis and a loose button up shirt. And he was in a police car. His vision got too blurry, and Izuku realized that people on the sidewalk were starting to look at him. He ran all the way back to the train station and found a bathroom stall to calm down in.
On the train trip home he felt numb and just sat there watching out the window.
It was done.
The emails had already gone out.
There wasn’t really anything much left to do. Tanahaka had been arrested. Soon, a bunch of other creeps were going to get arrested. He wondered how many would actually get locked up, and how many would weasel out somehow.
Izuku pulled out his journal and stared at it for a while. He flipped to the very last page and wrote ‘ME’ and below that he wrote ‘Arrest Statistics’ and below that he wrote ‘Investigation Related’ and below that he put a single tally.
He was pretty sure a bunch of people had probably been arrested when he’d flipped the trap site for the police, but he didn’t have a single name of anyone who had been, so for now it was just the one tally.
When he got home he put a pot on the stove and threw in some frozen vegetables, a couple cups of water, and a brick of curry, before he got the rice cooker going. When the water started bubbling, he stirred the curry in well enough and left it to simmer.
His night actually timed out pretty well. Mom got home just when the rice cooker ticked off. It was half past eight.
He blinked at her a moment before he smiled and hugged himself at her. She returned the gesture.
“Are you okay, Izu?”
Izuku nodded. “It’s been a long day,” he said. “But, I’m sure it was longer for you. Dinner just got ready. Um, go change, and I’ll start serving.”
He put dinner on the table.
“How was work?” Izuku asked, when Mom came back in.
“Project’s been canceled.”
“What?” Izuku asked.
“So how about we go to the coast, tomorrow?”
“Really?” Izuku asked.
“Our client got bought out. They’re restructuring, and they’re going to want something else soon, I’m sure, but for now…”
“That’s great,” Izuku said.
“You sound tired, honey,” Mom said.
“Yeah,” Izuku said. “I was running all around town today trying to find a limited release All Might poster, but it was sold out already everywhere I went.”
“Oh, I’m sorry; that must have been frustrating,” Mom said. “Do you want to keep trying to find one tomorrow, or…”
“No, at this point they’re definitely all gone,” Izuku said, and smiled at her. “Let’s go to the coast.”
“Great,” Mom said. “And I should be getting out on time all next week, so we should be able to do Wednesday night dinner with the Bakugous.”
A part of Izuku wanted to blurt everything out to his mom right there. He thought he might be tempted to blurt it out to Kacchan, too. ‘I solved my own problem, Mom, you don’t have to worry about me.’ ‘I caught a whole bunch of criminals, Kacchan, I did that, I’m not useless.’
Izuku just started telling Mom made up things he did that day while running around town.
Izuku could take the day off tomorrow. He’d dumped a whole lot of evidence on the police’s laps. They wouldn’t be arresting anyone tomorrow. But Izuku wanted to be there, on the site, as people started disappearing. He hoped some of them realized what was going on. He wanted to see what they would post when they started to wonder if someone was coming for them.
~~~~~ NOW ~~~~~
Izuku’s cases were stalling. Or rather, Izuku was stalling. He hadn’t really gone out since he’d been attacked.
“My eyes are closed, Izu Kun,” Ghost announced, popping into visibility in Izuku’s room. “You’re not naked, are you?” His voice cracked on the word naked.
“You can open your eyes,” Izuku said.
“That’s not a no-oh,” Ghost sing songed, but he did open his eyes. “Okay, this place is looking even worse, and you smell. You can’t come to my party if you smell.”
“You’re having a party?” Izuku asked.
Ghost nodded and produced a piece of paper that he presented to Izuku. It was an invite for a party that evening, but all the letters had been cut out of a magazine.
‘YoU arE iNviTED to Th3 mY-Uncls-BEeN-arRested ice CReaM ParTY!!!’
“Aki Kun, that’s great!” Izuku said.
Ghost bounced on his heels with a wide grin on his face.
“So are you coming, or are you going to be a shut in? I’ve got a penthouse suite for the next couple of days.”
“Of course I’ll come,” Izuku said. Izuku hadn’t had anyone to celebrate with when Tanahaka had been sentenced. Baker had been sentenced only a couple of weeks before he’d met Ghost.
“Great,” Ghost said. “So, go stop smelling, pack up your things, and come on.”
“What am I packing?” Izuku asked.
“Um, whatever you want,” Ghost said. “This is dumb, we should just stick together. Come live with me, or something. This place sucks.”
“Um, let’s sit down,” Izuku said.
“Whyyyyy?” Ghost asked with an upward inflection.
Izuku sat down on his futon with his back agains the wall.
“You’re not dying or something, are you?” Ghost asked, sitting down. “Is the stench terminal?”
“I just want to figure out what your plans are now,” Izuku said.
“Um, go get a bunch of ice cream, whipped cream, hot fudge, and sprinkles.” Ghost said. “We can get those dumb red cherries too, if you want, or peanuts and bananas too. I’m paying.” Ghost stole money from crime bosses at every opportunity.
“I mean after the party,” Izuku said. “Your uncle’s been arrested. Your aunt might not insist on custody anymore, you could have a real chance in foster care.”
“Uh, why would I? This is better,” Ghost said. “Besides, it’s not like they don’t know I’ve been doing vigilante stuff. I’d be lucky to get foster care.”
“Make a deal. We can figure something big to dangle in front of them, so you could do the program at Shiketsu in a couple of years.”
“Wait, are you quitting?” Ghost asked. “You got away from that creep. We’ll do some martial arts or something. They’re not going to put us in foster care together.”
“I’m not quitting,” Izuku said. “But I think it’s an option for you. You could go to school and not be wanted by the police for the rest of your life.”
“What about you?” Ghost asked. “Why is it something I need to do.”
“It’s an option for you,” Izuku said. “Things have changed, so you can consider your options. Nothing’s changed for me. Quirkless kids like me don’t do well in foster care.”
“You’re not quirkless,” Ghost said.
“Yeah,” Izuku said. “I am. I just made up the thing about the brain quirk.”
“Why would that even matter?”
“It just does,” Izuku said. “This is going to be my life, but it doesn’t have to be yours.”
“Why are you trying to get rid of me?” Ghost asked.
“I’m not,” Izuku said. “I just- I don’t want to be selfish. I want to look out for you. I wouldn’t be doing that if I didn’t try to make sure you have options.”
“Will you stay with me if I don’t do it?” Ghost asked, his voice thick.
“Aki Kun?”
“I don’t want to stop,” Ghost said. “Why should I? I’m good at this. I’ve gotten people rescued. I don’t want to stop, but, I don’t want to be- I mean, I want to watch your back. We should stick together, Izu Kun.”
Ghost was twelve. He should be in a home. He should be in school. He should have a future. He wasn’t going to go for it, though. Izuku hadn’t stopped when he’d had the opportunity. This was addictive. Why would Ghost stop when he was so good at it?
Ghost was twelve and he was living alone. He’d offered for Izuku to stay with him before, but Izuku had always refused. This little room was his, he paid for it, he worked for it. But he’d always seen it as Ghost trying to take care of him. But Ghost was an orphan who’d lost his big sister. Ghost hadn’t kept in touch with any of his friends from before, as far as Izuku could tell. Ghost didn’t want Izuku to leave him, too. Ghost didn’t want to live alone.
“Okay,” Izuku said. “We’ll stick together, Aki Kun.”
Ghost beamed at him.
“But I’m not going to let this destroy you,” Izuku said. “If things get too dangerous, you’re going to have options.”
“What about you?” Ghost asked.
“My options dried up a while ago,” Izuku said.
“Because you’re quirkless?” Ghost asked.
Izuku shrugged. “And I’m a criminal.”
“The world sort of sucks, Izu Kun.”
“Then I guess it’s good we’re sticking together.”
Ghost nodded. “It’s pretty cool you do all this with just a normal brain.”
“You’re pretty cool, too,” Izuku said.
“And you still stink,” Ghost said. “So I’m going to go get some ice cream, and you’re going to get ready to go.”
“Okay, Aki Kun,” Izuku said. “I’m getting up.”
He didn’t really smell that bad, did he? He just hadn’t felt like doing anything for the past few days. Had he taken a shower since he’d first washed away the alley grime after his arms had started working again? He had to have, though it wasn’t like he’d run around working up a sweat. He’d pretty much just stayed at his place since then.
He sniffed his armpit just a bit and made a face.
“See!” Ghost said.
“Yeah yeah,” Izuku said, a bit embarrassed. “Do you even need deodorant yet? Just you wait.”
“Na na, teens are gross, don’t get too close,” Ghost said on his way out.
So Izuku gathered his shower stuff, found his cleanest clothes, and went to the little bathroom he shared with his landlord and turned the water on hot. He just didn’t want to take his clothes off. He looked at himself in the mirror. The bruise was still dark blue and covered most of the left side of his face. He worked his jaw around. Eating was still painful, so it was a good thing they were having an ice cream party.
He didn’t want Ghost to rag on him when he got back, so Izuku bit the bullet and got in the shower. He washed his face and his hair, hit his hot spots, made sure every part of him was at least wet and then dried himself off enough to get his clothes back on.
Back in his room, Izuku checked a bit of research he’d done when Ghost first told him about his uncle, wrote his notes down in his notebook, and looked up some routes and timetables. That all copied down, he stuffed his laptop, and tech into his shoulder bag, and his clothes and gear into a few shopping bags.
Izuku thought about telling his landlord he wouldn’t be back, but his rent was paid for the next two weeks, and if something happened, at least he’d have something to come back to.
Ghost came back laden down with a lot more ice cream than the two of them could eat together, so Izuku traded him his laundry bags and took the ice cream and they got on a train together to a much nicer part of Musutafu.
Ghost’s penthouse was pretty fancy. Pre-furnished, running electricity, wifi, a washer/dryer. Izuku figured he should probably wash his clothes.
“Do you need to wash anything?” Izuku called out?
“This is a party, Izu Kun.”
“I’ll just throw it in real quick,” Izuku said. He found some clothes spread around one of the bedrooms and gathered them up.
“It’s a bit early for a party,” Izuku said coming back from the utility closet. “Why don’t you put that in the freezer, and we can do something real quick.”
“Are you trying to get me to eat vegetables again?” Ghost asked.
Izuku shook his head. “We should get something to eat, but first, I thought you should tell Akane that he was arrested. She said what he did to her in her note, so she’d probably want to hear what you did.”
“Oh.”
“It’s a twenty minute ride,” Izuku said.
“What if I just start yelling at her?”
Izuku swallowed. “Then yell at her.”
Ghost nodded. “So we should get flowers?”
“Whatever you want.”
So they went back down. Izuku felt horribly self conscious being in such a fancy place dressed as he was and with his bruised face. Ghost got to be invisible.
Ghost got flowers, and Izuku decided he should, too, and, pulling out his notebook, he got them on the right train.
“Do you have anyone to visit?” Ghost asked.
Izuku shook his head. “The family grave is a couple hours away by Shinkansen. My grandparents got a pretty nice plot. I doubt anyone’s going to bother to bury me there, though.”
“Did you know them?” Ghost asked.
Izuku shook is head. “When I was a baby, I guess; there was a horrible tsunami when I was a toddler; they were right on the coast.”
“What about your other grandparents?”
Izuku shrugged. “Never saw them again after my dad left.”
“Wait, you have a dad somewhere?”
Izuku nodded. “Didn’t want a quirkless kid. Moved to the US, somewhere, or, that’s what Mom said.”
“Oh, well, he sucks.”
“Yeah,” Izuku said. “I’m sure he’s been glad for the excuse to stop paying child support.”
“I didn’t realize that was, like, a big deal.”
“Did you have any quirkless kids at your elementary school?” Izuku asked.
“Yeah, a few,” Ghost said. “I think there was some teasing. Akane got teased for having a barely there quirk. I tore a fistful of a guys hair out once for being mean to her.”
“What was her quirk?” Izuku asked.
“Something about atomic spin? You could never really notice anything change, though. There was a guy from some university who kept bugging our parents about it, though.”
“Are you serious?” Izuku asked. “Atomic spin? I mean, I can see how that links to your quirk, but if she had more conscious control, as opposed to your intuitive use, that could have been huge.”
“Really?” Ghost asked.
“Oh my gosh,” Izuku said. “I can think of so many things she-“ He stopped himself from saying something insensitive. “It’s an interesting quirk.”
“Did kids tease you?” Ghost asked.
“Yeah,” Izuku said. “Sort of a lot.”
“But you’re so cool, though,” Ghost said.
“You tease me all the time,” Izuku said.
“Not like that.”
“Well, I’m pretty sure you’re the first person who ever thought I was cool,” Izuku said.
“Where are your arrest and rescue tallies at?”
“I’m pretty sure all my old classmates would say that those don’t count if I don’t physically do it myself.”
“Well that’s dumb, Izu Kun.”
“You’re pretty cool, too,” Izuku said.
“Of course I am, I’m awesome, I’m the best vigilante in town, my hero secretly thinks I’m awesome.”
Eventually, they got to the cemetery, and Izuku grabbed a plot map up front and guided them to Ghost’s family.
“What do I say?” Ghost asked.
“Tell them the news,” Izuku said. “Then tell them whatever you want to say. Should I give you some space?”
Ghost shook his head and stepped up to the family plot.
“Hey, sorry I haven’t visited lately, you’re probably worried about me, but this is Izuku, we’re watching out for each other now.”
Izuku felt the weight of some presence on him.
“We’re vigilantes, we met doing the same reconnaissance mission as each other. Pretty cool huh? We get villains arrested, and we get victims rescued, and we’re really good at it. I haven’t even gotten hurt at all.”
“Anyway, I bet you probably don’t think that’s cool, but it is. No one can touch me.”
Ghost went up and put the flowers he’d brought down.
“Um, so, I got Uncle Daiki,” Ghost said. “I got him for what he did to you, Akane. He’s going to go to jail. So- You were always smiling, even though you were hurting. You were smiling for me, but I didn’t need that, I just needed you. I would have stopped him. We could have run away together. You didn’t have to kill yourself. I wish you were still here. I wish you were all still here. Even if I’d have to go to school and stuff. I’m sorry I didn’t realize you were hurting, Akane, I’m sorry it took me so long to get him, but you abandoned me.”
“I don’t know if I can forgive you, but I hope you’re with Mom and Dad. I hope you’re all at peace, or happy, or… I hope I’ll get to see you all again, someday.”
“Mom, Dad, I wish I’d been there. I could have pulled you out of the car in time with my quirk. You wouldn’t have died like that, and Akane wouldn’t have had to go live with him. I wish I’d been there. So, um, I’m going to be there for other people. I’m going to rescue other people. You probably want me to stop, but I hope you’re still proud of me. Akane, I hope you think I’m cool, because I am.”
He looked back at Izuku and Izuku gave him a thumbs up.
Izuku walked up next to him and put down the flowers he’d gotten. “You’ve got a good kid,” Izuku said. “I’ll do my best.”
“Okay,” Ghost said. “We’re going to go get some dinner, and then we’re partying, so, I’ll come back some time. Okay?”
Ghost started walking back.
“Aki Kun,” Izuku said.
Ghost turned back to him.
“I don’t like to be touched, but.” Izuku wrapped his arms around himself. “I’m hugging you right now.”
It took a moment for Ghost to get it, but then his eyes lit up and he laughed. He wrapped his arms around himself at Izuku. Then he ran back up to his family plot, looked at the graven images of his family, and hugged himself again. Then they walked back to the station.
They got stir fry from one of the little quick service restaurants at the station and ate it on a bench, waiting for their train. It wasn’t great for Izuku’s jaw, but he was glad the kid was eating more than just junkfood. Ghost grumbled about vegetables, but Izuku didn’t think he actually disliked anything in the meal. Back on the train they sat opposite each other.
“You okay?” Izuku asked.
“Yeah,” Ghost said. “Thanks.”
“What do you want to do for your party?” Izuku asked.
“It’s an ice cream party,” Ghost said.
“Games, movies, quiet sustained reading?”
“Is that last one your favorite, Izu Kun?”
“I saw a television there, I could hook up my laptop, and then use my tablet as a second controller. I’ve got some games. I’ve also got movies. Have you ever seen The Might After the Storm? You wouldn’t think an All Might movie without villains would be so compelling, but I’ve watched it five times now.”
“Huh, I guess games,” Ghost said.
Izuku had gotten the impression that Ghost didn’t spend much time on screens when they weren’t at the library doing various hacking activities.
“Did you ever have family game night?” Izuku asked.
“Yeah,” Ghost said. “We had a ton of board games, and stuff. And charades and stuff. But I bet I could kick your butt at mortal combat.”
“That would be an accomplishment since I’ve memorized every power and combination in the game,” Izuku said. “I want to see you play charades now.”
Ghost blushed. “Akane was better.”
“You’re older now. You’d probably surprise yourself.”
“What do you want to do?” Ghost asked.
“As long as I don’t end the night puking up ice cream, I expect I’ll have fun,” Izuku said. “Hey, tell me something fun you used to do.”
“With my family?”
“Yeah,” Izuku said.
“Um, beach trips. Akane and I would always have sand castle contests. They always looked like crap, though. It was more about how much detail was in there. Mom called it abstract castle building. Akane used to read to me, with a flashlight under the covers, after bedtime.”
Izuku nodded.
“I liked helping my mom in the kitchen.”
“Did your mom make a lot of ice cream and snacks?” Izuku asked. Poking fun at Ghost’s diet.
“I wish,” Ghost said. “But it was more about spending time with her, and helping. We built things together, too, like robot kits, or model planes and stuff. Akane and I shared a room when we were little, but we moved when we were older, and they decided we should have our own rooms. Mom complained that we could have turned one of the rooms into a craft room if she’d had two boys or two girls.”
“What about your dad?”
Ghost smiled. “He’d take me on ‘urban hikes’ but we were just running errands, but he’d carry me on his shoulders when I got tired, and he’d point at statues or buildings and talk about their history. He’d take us to get milkshakes, and he’d always say he was going to get us nato milkshakes, which wasn’t a thing, but we always took him super seriously, and then he’d relent when we got there and get us what we wanted. And there was an onsen we went to, with a carnival.”
“I think I went there last year with my mom,” Izuku said.
“Yeah, it was fun,” Ghost said. “We’d do carnival games, and stuff. Then dad would take me to the boy’s side, and I remember him washing my hair. Like, even when I was old enough to do it myself. He’d really dig his fingers in, and then when there was a lather, he’d always shape it like a mohawk or something.”
“That sounds really nice.”
“I had a good family,” Ghost said. “Do you have any happy memories of your dad before he left? Or was he always a jerk?”
Izuku shrugged. “I was four. The only thing I remember is the day he left and him telling me to learn to take care of myself or mom would abandon me too. Which was completely wrong, by the way, but… there were times I should have gone to her with stuff and I didn’t. I wish I had.”
“What about your mom?” Ghost asked.
“Oh, where to start? We were- We’d take these spontaneous mini vacations. Mom would get time off, or a bonus from work or something, and it would be like, grab your backpack, we’re going to Tokyo. It was never anything fancy. Heck, sometimes lodging was just the train trip back. Usually the most expensive thing we’d do would be to go to a museum or out to eat somewhere. I loved those trips.”
“We should do that, sometime,” Ghost said.
“Yeah,” Izuku agreed. “Hey, I want to talk to you about something. If we ever get caught or something…”
“Can I touch you to get you out of there? Or make you invisible?”
The obvious answer was yes, but Izuku stumbled over saying it.
“But Aki Kun, if trying to get me out of something is dangerous or something, I just want you to go.”
“We’re looking after each other,” Ghost said.
“I mean it,” Izuku said.
“So do I,” Ghost said.
“I’m giving you permission to save yourself,” Izuku tried. “Just-“
Ghost covered his ears. “La la la, I can’t hear you ouuuuu.” His voice cracked on the last part.
Izuku sighed.
They had their ice cream party. Izuku beat Ghost at Mortal Combat, and then he convinced the kid to play charades with him. He wasn’t great, but if there was something the kid had going for him, it was that he could go all out without being abashed.
Then Izuku went to catch up on some work. Ghost tagged along for no reason at all.
Things got into a bit of something normal. They didn’t usually team up, besides discussing missions and targets together. Ghost was too confident in his abilities, and Izuku didn’t want to ask Ghost to be his backup, and neither of them saw a point in halving the projects they could work on at one time.
Izuku kept teaching Ghost hacking, and found ways to sneak math problems in there. It was easy enough to work in reading comprehension and grammar on research and report writing. Izuku tried to figure out whatever science Ghost had missed and started playing short infotainment videos when Ghost was around.
Ghost’s diet was a work in progress. Izuku wasn’t Ghost’s parent, and he definitely wasn’t in charge, so there weren’t any standoffs about asparagus, but a lot more meals started to look like meals instead of a pile of junk food. It helped that Ghost liked to help in the kitchen. Izuku’s sleep habits weren’t great, but he wound up trying to work on that so that Ghost would maybe do so as well.
Some things weren’t so easy, though.
“Why are we doing this?” Ghost asked.
It had taken a week to convince Ghost to do this.
“You need to socialize,” Izuku said.
“We socialize all the time,” Ghost said.
“You need to socialize with people outside your home environment,” Izuku said. The parenting books had said so. Izuku had done research and everything.
“What about you?” Ghost asked.
“I’m going, too,” Izuku said.
“But you’re not taking a class,” Ghost said.
“I don’t need one,” Izuku said. “I’m sure I’ll talk to someone. Have fun with the beginners.”
They were at a parkour gym. Not the one Izuku had used before.
“You can just teach me on the street,” Ghost said.
“Not the point,” Izuku said. “It’s this or martial arts.” And Izuku didn’t want to do an activity that involved people grappling with him or something. “If you get good I’ll start teaching you how to use a grapple.” When Ghost was very very good.
Ghost perked up but still eyed the other kids warily. Eventually, he went to join the group that was about to start.
“Have fun, Kaito Kun,” Izuku called after him. Kaito was from the alias Izuku had set up for Ghost. It wasn’t like the gym was going to do a background check or anything, but it was good to actually use the alias.”
Izuku did a few circuits, keeping an eye on Ghost every time he passed. Izuku did talk, briefly, with a boy with a massive tail, who was doing free running, rather than parkour, but then Ghost’s class let out and Izuku rushed over to see how he was doing.
“How’d it go?” Izuku asked.
“Good,” Ghost said. “I only fell on my face a few times.” Izuku had seen one of those times, but didn’t say so. “Also, I got invited to a birthday party?”
“Wow, that was fast. Why are you saying that like it’s a question?”
“Do you want me to go?”
“Do you want to go?”
“I don’t know, we don’t have anything in common.”
“How do you know?”
“I doubt he’s a vigilante,” Ghost said.
“Probably not, but there’s more to your personality than that.”
That weekend they made a trip to a department store to get a small gift and Izuku played the role of the big brother dropping off Ghost at a park in a little suburban neighborhood.
“Have fun,” Izuku said. “Don’t talk about human trafficking or Trigger deaths.”
“Well, then, what’s even left?” Ghost asked, his voice cracking a bit on the word ‘what.’
Ghost got invited to a sleepover next. Izuku drilled him on what to do if one of the parents was a creep. When he’d had the idea to socialize Ghost he hadn’t considered that it would mean leaving him with adults outside of Izuku’s supervision.
“Okay, when the other kids want to go to sleep, you can’t keep them up just because we’re up most of the night. Just read under the covers or something.”
Of course, Ghost was growing up, which brought its own issues.
“Hey, Izuku?”
Izuku woke up. It was barely the afternoon. They were nocturnal creatures!
“You okay?” Izuku asked.
“Would it be difficult to see a doctor, since we’re- on the run.”
That woke Izuku up quick.
“What’s wrong? Does something hurt? Do you have a fever? Any dizziness?”
“I’m just asking,” Ghost said. His face was beet red.
Izuku girded himself. “I’m going to check your forehead, okay?”
“I don’t have a fever,” Ghost said, backing up. He looked very uncomfortable. Izuku realized that Ghost’s face was red because he was blushing.
“Hey, it’s okay. You can tell me, whatever it is.”
“Um- Okay, first of all, I definitely did not wet the bed, but there was some stuff-“ He didn’t seem to want to finish the sentence.
His hair was wet. He’d just taken a shower.
Oh.
“Aki, did you maybe have a weird dream last night?” Izuku asked.
“No!” Ghost protested, his voice cracking. It had been doing that lately. “What would that even have to do with- stuff down there?”
Izuku took a deep breath and let it out.
“Aki Kun, do you know what puberty is?”
“Like, when teens get growth spurts and smell and stuff?”
“Yeah,” Izuku said. “But did anyone ever sit you down and have a talk with you about it?”
Ghost’s parents had died not long before a talk like that would be expected, and he’d dropped out of school before he would have taken middle school health. Ghost understood on a basic level what sex was, how couldn’t he after what happened to his sister, or when he went after traffickers like that. However, for all that, it was entirely possible that he didn’t really understand what was going with his own body at all.
“No,” Ghost said. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“You’re not sick, this is normal.”
“Normal?!”
“I’ll explain it to you,” Izuku said. He got out of bed. “Later. Later, today. Come on, gather up your laundry. We’ll wash it now. We’ll go to the library later.”
They’d have books that would hopefully make this easier.
Izuku still vividly remembered going over to the Bakugous one day when he was eleven. Mom and Auntie Mitsuki had gone out, while Izuku and Kacchan got sat down at the kitchen table while Uncle Masaru had given them the talk. He’d had a white board for diagrams. Kacchan hadn’t said a word to him for a whole week after that.
At the library, Izuku just walked up to the librarian and asked for a book about puberty for his little brother. The book she suggested was called, “It’s perfectly Normal.”
“See, Aki Kun, It’s all normal.”
“Normal sucks.”
They found a corner of the library and they read it together. Izuku was starting to feel way too much like he was some sort of responsible party in Ghost’s life. Some days made that more apparent than others.
“Hey, are you okay?” Izuku asked. Ghost had just come in from a reconnaissance mission. Much like his name, he was white as a sheet. “Is that blood?!”
“It’s not mine.” Ghost said. “I was invisible, but still solid. It must have spattered a bit.”
“What happened?”
“They were- um, they were cutting up a body.”
“Did you-“
“I called it in,” Ghost said.
“Okay,” Izuku said. “Okay, let’s get you cleaned up.”
Ghost didn’t move. Izuku pinched at his sleeve and tried to guide him to the shower. Ghost started crying.
If Izuku wasn’t useless he’d hug the kid. “It’s okay, you’re okay,” Izuku said.
Cleaning up could wait. Was Ghost in shock? He tugged Ghost by the sleeve to the kitchen table. Sat him down. Grabbed a blanket to drape over his shoulders. They didn’t have any tea bags, but Izuku poured some bottled tea from the fridge into a cup and stuck that in the microwave. They were in a vacant extended stay hotel, so they had plates and utensils and stuff.
“I’m sorry you had to see that,” Izuku said.
“I don’t know why I got scared. They couldn’t have hurt me.”
“We’re not supposed to see stuff like that without getting scared,” Izuku said.
The microwave dinged, and Izuku took a sip to make sure microwaved tea wasn’t some sort of sin against nature, and handed it to Ghost.
Eventually, he got the boy into the shower and called through the door a couple of times to encourage him to wash his hair and his face, which were the main parts of him that hadn’t been covered by his vigilante gear. Izuku threw the clothes in with the rest of their dirty laundry and started scrubbing the pads in the kitchen sink. He was probably breaking some sort of rule about dealing with blood, but he needed something to do.
Later that night, Ghost crawled in on the other side of Izuku’s bed and Izuku pretended that he didn’t notice. Ghost was back in his own bed when Izuku woke up, and Ghost pretended like nothing had happened the night before. Izuku started researching trauma in adolescents, which a good… older vigilante figure, would have done ages ago for Ghost.
~~~~~ THEN ~~~~~
Nezu was known for quite a few skills. He was a master tactician. He could dig up people’s pasts that they thought they’d buried. He could predict an opponents next move almost as well as Sir Nighteye. He was also a pretty decent hacker.
“This is Principal Nezu speaking. How can I help you, today?”
“Ah, hello, Mr. Principal, this is inspector Trent, with the International Missing and Exploited Children Taskforce. I don’t suppose I could trouble you to have this conversation in German or English.”
“No trouble at all, I am perfectly fluent,” Nezu said, switching over to German. “I think congratulations are in order. I believe I heard your organization has had a couple of large busts recently.”
“We have, thank you, that’s actually why I’m calling. Most of the arrests were in Japan. The operations were based around domains that were operated over there. The thing is, we’re pretty sure the two are heavily linked. A hacker seems to have been involved in both cases, and we think they might be the same person. No one’s taken credit, though, and I’m pretty sure that no matter the jurisdiction, the judge will want to know that we at least looked into it. I’m certain no one has been framed, but we want to be absolutely certain that nothing interrupts prosecution.”
“Oh, of course,” Nezu said. “You didn’t find anything on your end?”
“Our Japanese partners had a network operator who was able to flip one of the sites, once we got access to the servers, but they don’t have a white hat on their team, and I thought it might avoid international agreements if someone in Japan could do the forensic analysis.”
“Well, I hope it provides a bit of a challenge,” Nezu said.
They traded details, Nezu received what they had and access to both sites, which had been taken over by the group.
It wasn’t terribly challenging, but it was a bit fun. Nezu’s forensic sweep showed a new hacker who was growing in skill under Nezu’s eyes. It was easy enough to identify who they were on the forum site, and it didn’t take long for Nezu to match them to the hacker who had infiltrated and still had a back door into both sites. There wasn’t any evidence of anyone being framed, though, so the detective's concerns could be put to rest.
Nezu chuckled when he found the malware that had been distributed to most everyone on the forum. The most fun hacks were socially engineered. It did seem that their hacker had targeted one member in particular. That was interesting. Sometimes parents decided to take justice into their own hands.
Their fingerprints were all over both sites, but, they did, at least, have good security to keep themselves from being backtracked. Nezu could make the attempt, but it might not lead to anything. What’s more, the main concern had been taken care of. The criminal prosecutions could proceed as they were. Nezu was curious, though, especially since their hacker was at that moment monitoring the forum. There were a few stragglers still using it who hadn’t been arrested yet.
Nezu reviewed the materials that had originally been sent to the police. Very thorough, especially considering that most of the materials sent had nothing to do with the apparent target of the hack. Nezu got a bit of a feeling for whoever it was. He didn’t think they would be satisfied leaving it with the target in prison.
Nezu decided to have some actual fun. He DM’d the hacker on the site.
`Having fun watching the fruits of your labor, are you?’
The hacker logged off. Nezu smiled, and started typing up a report for the detective.
He smiled again when his hacker logged back in.
‘You’re not Admin’
‘No, I’m not. You’re not a professional infosec specialist.’
‘Are you police?’
‘Hero’
‘How’d you know it was me?’
‘You’re not bad, but you have a ways to go.’
‘Do you know who I am?’
‘I could find out.’
‘Why are you talking to me?’
‘Just curious. Is this the last we’ll be seeing of you?’
‘I accomplished what I set out to do.’
‘I believe you accomplished quite a bit more than what you set out to do.’
That was why Nezu was bothering to message them.
‘It was right there; I wasn’t going to ignore it.’
‘So you’re done going after criminals online?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’ve committed a lot of crimes, yourself.’
‘I know. I can’t regret it though.’
‘I’m sure you wouldn’t admit an intent to continue hacking. Let’s say for the sake of argument, though, that you weren’t done.’
‘Why?’
‘Because if you weren’t, I should like to be the one you report to. For efficiency sake.’
‘I don’t understand. You said you were a hero. You said I committed crimes.’
‘I’m not asking you to commit crimes. Do you know what a criminal informant is?’
‘Sort of.’
‘I’m not asking you to do anything, but if you do happen to go after someone again in such a fashion, a bit of a heads up could help make sure that things run smoothly.’
‘Does that mean you’re not going to arrest me?’
‘We have no such agreement.’
‘How do I know you’re really a hero?’
‘I’m doing a press conference tomorrow. How about you tell me what sort of tie to wear.’
‘Batman.’
‘Interesting. I should be easy enough for you to find tomorrow.’
‘I never said I was going to keep doing this.’
Nezu didn’t respond. His hacker messaged him again fairly quickly.
‘I assume there are limits.’
‘I’m not asking you to do anything. I should also tell you that I think it would be good for you to turn yourself in.’
‘Statistics are against me.’
What an interesting thing to say.
‘The only suggestion I have is that you should not give me a reason to come for you. I also cannot protect you.’
‘I’ll watch for your tie.’
‘Is there anything I can call you?’
There was a bit of a delay.
‘Deku’
Nezu was interested to see where this went.
~~~~~ NOW ~~~~~
Izuku liked running along rooftops because he rarely ran into anyone up there. It also gave him an excuse to practice with his grapple, which he definitely wasn’t using just for the fun of it. Oddly enough, he felt like he had more capacity to think than he did when he was on street level. He’d been dealing with some disappearances that had some of the hallmarks of a trafficking operation, but in the end it was like they were just vanishing off the face of the earth. Izuku wasn’t sure how to track any of it, after they disappeared, but he had a couple of leads on people who might be involved.
Izuku stopped running when he saw ahead of him a figure on a rooftop. It took him a moment to recognize the hero who had saved him a couple of months prior. Then he noticed that the man was talking to someone much shorter. It was Ghost. The thing was, that that was Eraserhead, probably the only hero capable of easily catching Ghost if he could see him.
Izuku grappled to the alleyway below, took a deep breath, and yelled, “HELP!”
He tried to make a run for it after that, but he didn’t expect the pro to get down into the alleyway so quickly. Izuku was quickly cut off, and that was when Izuku considered that he was very much dressed like a vigilante, and clearly helping another vigilante get away.
The pro’s eyes started glowing red and Izuku flinched before freezing under the man’s gaze. Nothing happened, of course, since Izuku didn’t have a quirk to cancel.
“Another one,” the pro said.
“Deku Kun, did you just try to save me?”
“Be my guest if you want to escape,” Izuku said, not taking his eyes off of the pro. The goggles and red eyes were a tell. His quirk probably worked with eye-contact or something. If he lunged at the man, he could make him break eye contact with Ghost if he turned his attention back to the kid.
“And what are you doing out here?” Eraserhead asked.
He could hear Ghost making his way down the fire escape.
“Parkour?”
“How long have you been a vigilante?”
“I’m not,” Izuku said.
“Is that a grapple?”
“Parkour gear.”
“How old are you?”
“Eighteen.”
Ghost made his way to street level. “Eraser Kun, you weren’t going to arrest my friend here, were you?”
“At the very least, he’s coming in for questioning,” the pro said.
“You’re Ghost’s contact?” Izuku asked, realizing he had interrupted a meet between Ghost and the pro he’d been reporting to.
The pro nodded, but didn’t take his eyes off of Izuku. Ghost walked up to them, and for some reason his arm was going through his stomach.
“Deku Kun, this is Eraserhead, Eraser Kun, this is my bestie Deku.”
“How did you two find each other?” Eraserhead asked.
Izuku shook his head, but Ghost just said, “Oh, I found him doing a stakeout as I was leaving a stakeout a few months ago. He’s super smart. You’re too late, though, he already has his own hero.”
“And who’s that?” Eraserhead asked.
“No comment,” Izuku said.
“Maybe you’ll have more to say at the station,” Eraserhead said.
“Boo, Eraserhead, boo, you’re no fun.”
“I’m not in the habit of leaving children to get themselves killed on the streets,” Eraserhead. “The only reason we have an arrangement is because I can’t take you in.”
Ghost just grinned. “Eraser Kun, it’s funny you think you can take him away from me.”
“Ghost,” Izuku said. “His quirk lets him cancel quirks.”
“And he doesn’t want to find out what would happen to me if he canceled it when I’m phased into something, like myself. Or… you.”
Ghost started hovering his hand over Izuku’s shoulder, and suddenly that was the only thing Izuku could look at.
Eraserhead sighed. Ghost let his hand fall to his side.
“You’re young,” Eraserhead said. “There are options.”
“You two should compare notes,” Ghost said. “Deku said the same thing.”
“He’s not taking his own advice.” Eraserhead said.
“There are no options for me,” Izuku said. “And I’m not leaving him to do this on his own.”
“Why do you think those options don’t apply to you?” Eraserhead asked.
“No comment.” Izuku said.
“Illogical,” Eraserhead said. “Stay safe. Take care of yourselves. I’ll see you two around.”
And then he actually left. Izuku was under no delusion that Eraserhead would let him go again if Ghost wasn’t with him.
Izuku let out a sigh of relief. “Not how I wanted to meet Eraserhead.”
“How did you want to meet him?” Ghost asked.
“Well, an autograph would have been involved, and he wouldn’t have been trying to bring me in for vigilantism.”
“I’ll see about an autograph,” Ghost said. He looked up at the rooftop where Eraserhead had ascended. “I normally go invisible to make sure he doesn’t follow me,” Ghost said.
Izuku closed his eyes for a moment.
“We could chance it.”
Izuku shook his head. “Just give me a moment.” Could they just go underground? No, he wasn’t dragging Ghost through a sewer or a storm drain.
Izuku rubbed his face with his hands. “Can I just hold onto your shoulder?” Izuku asked.
Ghost shrugged. “We could try.”
Izuku took in a deep shuddering breath and reached out to take Ghost’s shoulder. It had been a long time since he’d voluntarily touched anyone. It felt wrong. It felt like something horrible was going to happen.
“Are you okay?” Ghost asked.
Izuku nodded.
For the first time, Izuku experienced invisibility with Ghost. He barely had the wherewithal to appreciate it. Ghost started walking and Izuku followed. He tried to think about the implications of the color shift and the warped edges of his vision.
It was a few more blocks to the station and once they were there Izuku let go of Ghost’s shoulder and went to lock himself in a bathroom stall for a good ten minutes while he tried to get a handle on himself.
~~~~~ THEN ~~~~~
A few days after Izuku watched Tanahaka get arrested, he found the first report of someone else getting arrested. It was one of the guys who had been talking about having continuing access to a kid he was molesting. Izuku had flagged all of those when he’d sent everything to the police. After that, more and more started popping up, and Izuku got to watch the chaos unfold on the forums as people started to realize that something was up. It was sort of intoxicating.
Izuku and Mom went to dinner at the Bakugou’s place a couple nights later. Izuku sat at the dinner table with them and made up things that had happened at school that both he and Kacchan knew were lies. He talked about the day trip he’d taken with Mom. Mom, in turn, quizzed Kacchan about how he was doing, and how he was getting ready for hero school. After dinner he and Kacchan went to play video games. Kacchan didn’t say anything, since he didn’t curse in front of Izuku’s mom and they battled it out in Mortal Combat for a while until Uncle Masaru suggested they work on some of their homework together.
They went to Kacchan’s room. Izuku always brought his backpack, because this was a pretty normal way to spend a Wednesday evening when Mom wasn’t working overtime. They worked in silence, except for the sound of Kacchan occasionally growling at some homework problem. Izuku kept opening his mouth. He couldn’t tell his mom. He knew he couldn’t tell Kacchan.
“Just fucking spill, Deku, or stop opening your shitty mouth.”
“Do you remember Tanahaka?” Izuku asked.
“Hah? Some extra at school?”
“He volunteered at Dago, when we were six.”
“So?”
“He got arrested for trying to buy sex with a little kid,” Izuku said. “I saw it on the news.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“I don’t know.”
Kacchan stared at him. “They kept you out of PE for like half the year when we were in first grade.”
Izuku was an idiot.
“It was more like a month.”
“Is that what this is fucking about?”
Kacchan had always had a pull to him. Izuku could never get out of it, and he could never lie to him when he had that intense look on his face. “Yes,” he said.
“I would have beat the shit out of him,” Kacchan said.
Izuku looked up at him. “When we were six?”
“I’d have managed it.”
Izuku shrugged. “You never cared when people hurt me before.”
“This is different,” Kacchan said.
“Would you have beat him up because he did it, or because he did it to me?”
“What difference does it make?”
Izuku took in a deep breath and let it out.
“Is this why you don’t let people touch you?”
“I don’t know Kacchan, maybe it has something to do with the burn scars on my shoulder.”
Kacchan glared at him. “Did you tell Auntie?”
Izuku shook his head. “Why bother her with something she can’t do anything about anymore.”
Kacchan nodded.
Mom had challenged the school’s decision to keep the quirkless kid out of PE. That was the only thing he’d needed.
“You’re the only person I’ve told.”
“Why?”
“I had to tell someone.”
Kacchan narrowed his eyes. “You’re not telling me something.”
He should have kept his mouth shut. “I found a sting operation the police were doing. I tricked him into it.”
“Hah?”
“And a bunch of his pedophile friends.”
Kacchan looked angry. “Yeah, and I’m the only one you wanted to tell.”
“What does that mean?”
“You got your first arrests,” Kacchan said.
“I- what?”
“Don’t play that game,” Kacchan said.
“What game?”
Kacchan rolled his eyes and looked back at his homework.
“What game, Kacchan?”
“Oh, you want me to say it out loud, is that it?”
Izuku was always a bit bolder with Kacchan when their parents were just outside in the dining room.
“Well, you’re not making any sense, so it would help if you spelled it out.”
“You got your first arrest,” Kacchan said.
“You already said that.”
“Before me.”
“This isn’t about you,” Izuku said, confused.
“You always make it about me.”
“Literally, since when?”
“Telling me how to use my quirk.”
“You’ve told me I was useless since I was four years old, Kacchan. Are you upset that I tried to be useful?”
“And telling me I’m not being heroic, and trying to help me. I don’t need your help.”
“I’m not trying to-“
“You look at everyone and you know you’d be so much better than them if you had their quirk.”
“I don’t think that,” Izuku said.
“Like you aren’t always thinking that you could be so much of a better hero than me if you had my quirk.”
“What are you- I’ve literally looked up to you since forever, I’ve always thought you were- Kacchan, you’re a force of nature. I’ve always thought you were going to be an incredible hero.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me? If you really think of me like that why didn’t you tell me so I could stop it?”
“He messed with my head! I didn’t tell anyone. Do I need to tell you that he molested other kids after me, and maybe he wouldn’t have if I had said something? Do you need me to tell you how pathetic I was? Will that make you feel better? I told you something bad happened to me and you made it about you.”
“Whatever,” Kacchan said. “Can I finish my homework now?”
Izuku nodded and got back to his work.
School still sucked, but Izuku got to come home every day and see reports on more and more of the people he was tracking getting arrested. It was great, right up until the point where a pro hero messaged him to say they were onto him.
The following day, Izuku watched a press conference. There were only so many heroes that would be liable to get involved in tracking a hacker, and only one of them was having a press conference that day.
Principal Nezu, of UA, had gone up on stage wearing a batman tie.
Did Mr. Principal actually want Izuku to be a CI for him? Or was he trying to draw Izuku out?
Izuku shook his head. Nezu was leagues better than Izuku on a computer. He didn’t need to draw Izuku out if he wanted to find him. The real question was, would Izuku keep doing the same stuff. He hadn’t set out to make a thing of this. He’d wanted to get Tanahaka arrested. Tanahaka had been arrested. A bunch of other people had been arrested, also. Izuku didn’t have to do anything else.
There’d also been some children who were being abused, and now their abusers were going to jail. Izuku’s notebook had five tally marks for rescues now. He was sure the actual number was higher than that, though.
It wasn’t like there weren’t other people preying on kids out there. Nezu wasn’t saying it, but he clearly wanted Izuku to search for leads. Izuku could stop, but why should he? He was relatively safe, doing this from home. The only guy likely to catch him had put on a batman tie in order to recruit him. A pro hero thought it was better for Izuku to keep on hacking than actually arrest him for hacking.
Izuku could catch more child abusers.
Izuku could rescue more kids.
Izuku could stop kids from getting molested in the first place.
It would be awful if he stopped. It would practically be criminal not to do something.
Izuku was exceptionally careful logging in. He triple checked everything.
‘I’m in’
‘Excellent. Though, I must clarify, that you’re not ‘in’ anything. Should you so choose, you may occasionally let me know if any of your criminal activity has led to a more urgent criminal activity.’
‘I understand’
Wink wink, nod nod.
‘Everything relevant has been gathered from this site, I’ll be scrubbing it and repurposing it to my needs. You may continue to update me here.’
‘Okay, but I’m changing my username.’
‘That would make conversations a bit less disturbing, yes.’
‘I’m going to go look for areas to expand my hobby.’
‘Have fun.’
So Izuku did. Once the stress of going after Tanahaka was removed from the situation, he found the whole thing engrossing. He was a hunter, looking for clues to where his quarry lay. A lot of it was individual people, though. It took him a while to find another big dark web site. This one was mostly Americans, and there was a bit of a language barrier, but Izuku managed, eventually, and he passed it on to Nezu.
Nezu started sending his reports back with markups.
Really, Izuku should be going after the suppliers. He kept searching for creeps online, but he started focusing more on traffickers, and he found them. His first big trafficker case after the trap website turned out to be big, but, eventually he hit a bit of a roadblock. He might have reached the limit of what he could do online. There were some places he could check out, but he’d actually have to go there.
He could just pass it off to Nezu, but he’d hate to report on guesses, and wait for someone to go check it out, and then never hear what they found, and integrate that into his own investigation to keep going.
It wasn’t like Izuku had to go fight a villain. He just had to go look at some ships in port. From a good safe distance. A couple of months after he told Nezu to call him Deku, Izuku left home for the first time to gather intel for a case. It was just a train ride and some sight seeing, and it helped his investigation so much. He was able to finish the rest online and send it to Nezu wrapped up in a bow.
Sightseeing sort of turned into going out at night sometimes to do a stakeout. This wasn’t really a big deal. Izuku stuck to rooftops, and wore black clothes to stay hidden. After a couple of very minor falls, he got some pads and started learning parkour. Mom got him a membership at a gym for it, even. It wasn’t even a problem sneaking out. Since Izuku had always been a light sleeper, Mom never checked in on him at night because opening his door would wake him up. It was sort of the perfect setup. Most everything happened online, but sometimes Izuku just did a quick check of things IRL.
He did feel like he was taking a major departure from this simple setup when, a month after his first stakeout, he did his first undercover mission in the brief break between his first and second year at Aldera. It wasn’t a big deal, though. It wasn’t like Izuku was joining some criminal organization so he could gather intel. He just went out pretending to be a runaway willing to do quirk analysis for cash. Lots of criminals and villains used their quirks for crime. It just got Izuku an in, and then Izuku could include a good quirk analysis for whichever hero wound up going after them.
It was just minor stuff. Izuku wouldn’t even really call himself a vigilante.
~~~~~ NOW ~~~~~
Deku reviewed his ‘Anti-Hero Society’ lexicon on his way to the meeting.
He’d always played the part of a homeless kid disgusted by society pretty well, but he’d started peppering in specific comments about hero society. He’d been working on some disappearances for a while, and one of the only leads he had was that a couple of the people involved had made similar comments.
“Out in the middle of nowhere,” Deku commented when Giran popped up. “It took me twice as long to get here as the place you had last week.
Giran shrugged unapologetically. “There’s been more hero activity lately. You want me to keep you safe, don’t you?”
Deku shook his head in disgust. “The damn peacocks. They’ve made everything they fight against, you know. Of course they’d only care about a kid like me once I challenge their superiority.”
Giran laughed. “Oh, is that what you’re doing? Here I thought you were just here to make a few yen.”
“Well, my prices sure haven’t gone down,” Deku said. “And I sure can’t charge the HPSC for my travel expenses. I’ll just have to hope that my work gives them some expensive trouble.”
“Speaking of work, I have someone for you to meet.”
Giran led him inside the little office on the work floor of the warehouse he was using. Inside was a woman who looked at him speculatively. She was dressed as a villain.
“Well, look at you,” she said. “When Giran said he had a specialist for me, I wasn’t expecting someone who had to break curfew to get here.”
“No curfew for me,” Izuku said. “You’re not paying for my age, you’re paying for what I’ve got here.” He tapped the side of his head. “So, how can I help you get one over on the thugs with licenses.”
“‘Thugs with licenses?’ Giran, where did you find this kid?”
Giran laughed. “He was consulting in an underground fight ring.”
“Heroes should’t have a monopoly on quirk violence,” Izuku said.
“You’re right,” she said. “So how about you help me get back into the game.”
Izuku smiled. “It’s going to cost you.”
“We’ve already discussed fees,” Giran said. “Lady Shadows was hit with a flashbang recently; it’s affected her quirk output.”
“How long since you were hit?” Izuku asked.
“Two weeks.”
“Any improvement whatsoever?”
“None.”
“Tell me about your quirk, do you have any documentation from your early quirk counseling?”
Luckily she did and Izuku didn’t have to do too much guessing to get started.
“I’ll do more research, but I suspect the intense light caused a ‘photosythetic’ reaction in the organelles you have in your skin cells that make your quirk work. I think a high dose of B-12 should get things back on path for you, but I’ll do some more research. The B-12 can’t hurt, so I expect you to get an injection ASAP so we can see if there’s any improvement next week.”
Lady Shadow’s eyes lit up. “Not bad. I’ll try it. I know someone who would probably want to get you on staff.”
“Are you poaching right in front of me?” Giran asked.
Lady shadows laughed. “Does he pay you well?”
“Not at all,” Deku said. “But I don’t do ‘staff.’ Which hero was it, by the way?”
“Star Burst.”
“Ugh, he’s got that afterschool program that’s brainwashing kids.”
“Why don’t I show you out?” Giran said.
Deku did a couple more ‘fix me’ consultations, helped someone pick out some support gear, and reviewed some fight footage. Only Lady Shadow seemed to respond to his anti-hero society lexicon, but even she had mostly just reacted with amusement.
Deku left. Took a circuitous route to the station, and got on an express train that overshot his actual stop, before getting on a regular train that went back a couple of stations.
By the time he made it to the high-rise they were staying at, it was four in the morning. Ghost was already back from his mission, and the two of them traded intel for a bit while they wrote up everything. Izuku checked over Ghost’s work before fixing them both a late night snack.
“Hey,” Ghost said. “I’ve been reading some stuff.”
“Yeah?”
“I was curious, about how you don’t like to be touched.”
“Oh, yeah, it’s called touch aversion,” Izuku said. “It’s sort of an everyone thing, it’s not directed at you or anything.”
“Yeah,” Ghost said. “I was just reading about exposure therapy.”
Mom had taken Izuku to a therapist for a few sessions, but the guy just kept bringing things back to Izuku being quirkless, and quirk envy, and Izuku sure wasn’t going to tell him about Tanahaka, so after a while Mom was willing to accept that Izuku just didn’t want to touch anyone.
“I’ve sort of avoided looking into that sort of stuff,” Izuku said.
“I just thought, for emergencies, you know, if I have to touch you to make you invisible or something.”
Besides that time when he’d met Aizawa a few months ago, it had never been an issue. Though, he wouldn’t mind being able to go invisible with Ghost to get into the hotel rooms and luxury apartments they usually stayed in.
“Okay,” Izuku said. “That makes sense, but neither of us can just go see a therapist.”
He knew it made sense to address it, but just the name, exposure therapy, sounded awful.
“Well, it sounds like we just do little micro doses of touch in a safe environment.”
“Microdose?”
“We could play chopsticks,” Ghost said, holding up his index fingers. It was an addition game kids played. “We could start with me just pointing, and then you could tap my fingers if you feel like it.”
Izuku swallowed.
“We can try it,” he said.
Ghost beamed at him. They played for about five minutes. Izuku voluntarily touched Ghost’s fingers three times.
“Good work,” Ghost said. “Have some chocolate.” He produced a mini candy bar from his pocket.
Well, Izuku wasn’t going to complain about that. They talked about their plans for the next day and then Izuku suggested it was time to go to bed. Despite the hour, Ghost actually insisted that they could play video games as he rubbed at one of his eyes and started yawning in the middle of ‘video games.’ Usually, though, if Izuku went to bed, Ghost would give up on staying up soon after.
Ghost convinced him to practice every night and eventually Izuku graduated to not feeling like crap holding onto Ghost’s shoulder to get into the places they stayed at without drawing a ton of stares as the street kid who didn’t belong.
~~~~~ THEN ~~~~~
So, playing a street kid who did quirk analysis for a fee was actually working out great, and Izuku had already expanded to working other sorts of cases that came up. Izuku found himself, one night, giving advice to fighters in an illegal underground quirked fighting ring when he was approached by a man who said he could get Izuku some more consistent work. Izuku quickly realized that the guy was something of a criminal broker, and suddenly Izuku had access to all sorts of people looking for his services. Nezu was probably getting confused on how his hacking projects were bringing up so many different cases.
The parkour classes made surveillance so much easier, too. A lot of areas with criminal activity had densely packed buildings that Izuku could jump between, and it was easier to sneak up on people if he came from up above. Izuku was getting super good at parkour and he was getting super good at surveillance and he was getting super good at going undercover.
He wasn’t quite so good at balancing everything, though. He still had to go to school, and Mom would get suspicious if he took long naps in the evening before he went to bed. So Izuku tried to focus on his hacking and used the activities that required sneaking out at night to a minimum. Still, as Izuku got back home at a time approaching actual morning, Izuku found he could barely keep his eyes open. He should probably take a break from going out, maybe even fake sick tomorrow.
Izuku kicked off his shoes and dropped his shoulder bag next to his bed and all but passed out as soon as he laid down.
“Izuku, wake up.”
“Hm.”
“Izuku!”
Izuku jolted awake. Mom was in his room.
“Oh, Mom, I overslept. I don’t feel too good, do you think I could stay home from school today?”
Mom burst into tears.
“What? I mean, I can go to school, I-“
Izuku realized he was still dressed in his vigilante getup. Black long sleeves and pants, gloves, knee and elbow pads.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have. I snuck out to do some parkour.”
“Izuku, why are there zip ties on your belt?”
The zip ties were dumb. Izuku wasn’t going to catch anyone, but he’d seen a few clips of vigilantes, and they had zipties on their belts. Not that he was really a vigilante.
“Why is there a camera in your bag, why are there pictures of people unloading a truck on the camera in your bag?”
“You went through my stuff?!”
“My son became a vigilante behind my back,” Mom said.
“I- I’m not really a vigilante. I’m not fighting villains or anything. I’m just gathering information. I don’t even get close to anyone. The- um, the zipties were dumb, I just thought they look cool. Really, though, I do most of my stuff from my computer?”
“Okay, well you’re loosing that, now,” Mom said.
“No, wait, Mom-“
“What were you thinking? How could you do this? Do you have any idea what it would do to me if something happened to you? You could be killed, you could be arrested, you could just disappear.”
“I’m not, though,” Izuku said. “I promise, I’m not even getting close to villains or ordinary criminals.” That was a lie.
“You’re taking pictures of them,” Mom said.
“Mom, no one’s ever even seen me.”
“How long have you been doing this?”
“I mean, I’ve been doing online stuff for about a year, and very occasional reconnaissance since about the time I asked for parkour lessons.”
“Well, you’re stopping that too,” Mom said. “Why would you do this? Did you think this would get you into hero school?”
“I- no it wasn’t about hero school, Mom, it just sort of happened, and then I was good at it.”
“Oh, you’re good at it.”
“I am,” Izuku said. “I’m working with a pro hero even.”
“What?! Who?”
“Okay, well they don’t know who I am, or how old I am, I just pass them information I gather and they do arrests.”
Mom buried her face in her hands.
“What did you mean it just sort of happened?”
“I- well, I knew there was this criminal, so I gathered up some stuff and gave it to the police.”
“Izuku, if you know about a crime, you just tell the police, you don’t investigate it yourself. That doesn’t ‘just happen.’”
“Well, no one believes the quirkless kid,” Izuku said. “It was my word against his.”
“Sometimes bad people get away with their crimes,” Mom said. “You can’t go putting yourself at risk just because you witnessed something.”
“I couldn’t let him get away,” Izuku said. “It was important.”
“What could have been so important?” Mom asked. “What made you think you needed to put yourself at risk?”
“He was a child molester, Mom, it was important. Was I just supposed to let some other kid get molested?”
“Some other kid?” Mom asked.
They both lost a bit of steam.
“Izuku, was this- personal?”
Izuku shook his head.
“You stopped letting me touch you when you were six.”
“I’m sorry.”
Mom sat down at Izuku’s desk.
“Why are you sorry?”
“I made my problems your problems,” Izuku said. “You didn’t ask for a kid who wouldn’t hug you. I couldn’t handle it and I let that hurt you.”
“You hug me all the time,” Mom said.
“Not real hugs,” Izuku said.
“They’re real to me. You don’t owe me touch, Izu, I’m sorry I didn’t realize… I should have realized. It wasn’t your responsibility to just deal with it. It was my responsibility to make it stop and help you.”
“You did make it stop, you did help me.”
“How did I make it stop?”
“It was- when I couldn’t do PE. He volunteered at the school. They had him supervise me when the rest of the class was doing PE. You made them let me do PE, and that was when it stopped. So, you did stop it, and you did help me, because you still loved me even though I couldn’t touch you.”
“I’m sorry that happened to you, Izu, but you have to know, that isn’t a reason to do this.” She gestured to him and the gear he was wearing.
“I rescued people, Mom,” Izuku said. “I mean, the police and heroes did, but they knew who to rescue, and who to stop because I told them. I wasn’t exaggerating when I said I was good. When I got- the guy, I’d infiltrated an online group full of people like him, and I took them all down at the same time. It took me a while to track down all the arrests and public data about their trials, but that was over a hundred arrests, and ten children, at least, whose abusers went away. At the same time I was doing that, I infiltrated an online black market where they were literally renting out kids, and other stuff, like murder for hire. I took that down, and I’ve never tracked down all the arrests and rescues from that, but it had to be a lot.
“Since then, I’ve stopped a variety of child molesters and traffickers, and- well a variety of other sorts of criminals, but I’ve done-“
He went and grabbed his notebook and opened it to the last page where he had his own stats.
“These are the arrests and rescues that I’m responsible for, that I know of. I’m good at this. There are people out there right now who are being hurt every day, and no one knows where they are, or even that they need rescuing, and I’m looking for them. I can help them. How can I stop?”
“It’s so dangerous, baby,” Mom said. “Who’s going to rescue you? This hero you say doesn’t even know who you are?”
“He doesn’t know who I am because I’m good. He’s literally known for being a hacker, and didn’t figure out who I am, and really, I don’t get close to the surveillance stuff, and I don’t do that too often, and the zip ties really were just because I thought they looked cool, I’ve seriously never tried to arrest anyone myself. I know that would be dumb.”
She had no idea he was doing undercover work, and he was pretty sure she’d put him on house arrest herself if she did.
“Are you actually asking me to let you keep doing this?”
“Um, yes,” Izuku said.
“And what if you get hurt?”
“I was always going to try to be a hero, Mom,” Izuku said.
“When you were older,” Mom said.
“People need rescuing now,” Izuku said. “And I’m good at it, now.”
“You’re still my baby boy,” Mom said.
“I- I grew up, Mom. I sort of had to, if I wanted justice.”
“You could have told me he hurt you.”
“I thought you would be upset with me,” Izuku said. “And later when I realized you wouldn’t have been, it wasn’t anything you could have done anything about. The police were just going to see a quirkless kid.”
“Not everyone is like that, Izu. I know a lot of people are, but-“
“The therapist thought I didn’t want to touch anyone because of quirk envy, the GI doctor thought my stomach problems were because I was unevolved, you had to do your own research for me. Why would I expect the police to believe me instead of a quirked man?”
Mom cried a bit.
“Mom, it’s okay,” Izuku said.
“It’s not okay, it’s never okay for people to treat you like that.”
“I know that,” Izuku said. “But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t expect it, and if I expect it then I can’t get too upset about it.”
Mom wiped at her tears. “What’s happening with this man. What’s his name?”
“Tanahaka Itoma. He was arrested. There’s a lot of evidence against him. They charged him for what I could pin him with, but if I understand how these sorts of cases work, they’re trying to track down his victims, since, he wrote about me and other kids he molested. No names, but… I am sort of worried one day some detective is going to knock on the door and ask me about him.”
“Wouldn’t that be an opportunity to get justice for yourself? They would believe you.”
“I got justice for myself. He was arrested because of me. It isn’t about what he’s charged with as long as he goes away. It was always about stopping him from hurting someone else. I never cared about getting him arrested until I realized I probably wasn’t the only one. I really don’t want to be attached to this.”
“You could see him answer for his crimes. You could confront him in court.”
Izuku shrugged. “So when I said I never got close to anyone? I knew when he was going to be arrested, I went there so I could watch. I didn’t talk to anyone. I just- I saw him, he was in cuffs. I thought it would feel good, but it didn’t.”
“We could try therapy again, we could find a therapist who isn’t-“
“Quirkist? I’ve been happy doing this. When I know that I impacted the world, that feels good. I’ve helped people.”
“That doesn’t mean you don’t need help, too.”
“I think I’m doing alright.”
“You’re a vigilante.”
“Well, technically-“
“Izuku.”
“I’m providing a free public service that makes the community safer.”
“You could get hurt.”
“Quirkless kids are at a higher risk for getting trafficked, and I’ve actively stopped traffickers in our community. So, actually, I’ve made myself safer.”
His mom did not look impressed with his very sound argument.
“Does this hero really not know you’re a child?”
“I don’t think so.”
“How late were you out last night?”
“Um, four thirty? Which, I normally don’t go out so late, but the truck was late, and then I got on the wrong train.”
“You’re not cutting school today,” Mom said.
“That’s fair.”
“I need to think about all of this. So, go get ready for school.”
“Okay,” Izuku said. “Um, it’s really been good for my self esteem?”
“Izu.”
“Gonna go wash my face and stuff.”
~~~~~ NOW ~~~~~
Deku entered Giran’s warehouse and immediately realized tonight was going to be big. He could recognize the telltale mask.
“Surely the Shie Hassaikai don’t need the likes of me to do a quirk analysis.”
“You’ve got a lot of satisfied customers,” Giran said. “And a bit of a reputation now. Deku, this is Shin. He has something of a proposal for you. There’s quite a bit of money attached to it.”
“Oh yeah, and how much of that am I going to see?”
“We can talk details later,” Giran said. “Shin?”
The man in the plague mask looked Izuku up and down.
“Do you work for the heroes or the police?”
Nezu constantly reminded him he wasn’t.
“Those peacocks stagnating our-“ he felt something overtake him. “No.” The word was forced out of him.
“Do you work for any organization that is targeting the Shie Hassaikai?”
“No.”
“Do you have plans to betray the Shie Hassaikai?”
“No.”
The compulsion wore off of him.
“Very well. We may do business.”
Deku didn’t need to fake being angry. Well, now he was definitely targeting them.
“What the hell was that? I didn’t come here to have a quirk used on me. No different than the hero obsessed sheep when I went to school.”
“I cannot bring in anyone who might harm our organization. If you expect trust on a first meeting then you are naive, and I see little gain in seeking wisdom from you.”
“Now hold on,” Giran said. “Let’s not get off on the wrong foot.”
A bit late for that.
“A bit of warning would have been nice, but Deku, come on, I know you’ve been looking for some upgrades.”
“Hell, how much is this deal worth?”
“Nine in-depth quirk analysis, performed at their compound.”
“You want me to go to a secondary location?”
“We are a respected organization with a long history. It is not in our interest to offer a business arrangement as a pretext to harm you.”
“Do you have quirk documentation?”
“For five of the analyses.”
“You want this all tonight?”
“It is understandable that this may creep into tomorrow.”
Izuku looked at Giran. “These are in depth, come on, don’t beat around the bush, what are you offering.
“Twelve times what you’d normally expect for a night’s work,” Giran said. “Though if you’d like a new toy…”
“Two sets of light torso armor, adjustable, one size up for me, and a new grapple, with a better line. Do you have that in stock?”
He was going to have to give Ghost something for worrying him with how late he’d be getting back.
“You can take it home with you.” Giran said. “Plus… four times your normal.”
“Six,” Izuku said.
“Five,” Giran said.
“Six,” Izuku insisted.
Giran held up his hands in surrender, but with a big smile on his face. Gosh, how much was this deal worth?
Izuku turned to Shin. “Anyone else wants to use their quirk on me I’m bailing.”
Realistically, Izuku would be leaving when they wanted him to. If they wanted him to.
Shin nodded. “It will not be an issue.”
“Okay,” Izuku said. “Deal.” He could get a new tablet and maybe upgrade his camera. “How are we getting there?
“I have a car waiting out back,” Shin said.
“Well now I’m in the big leagues,” Izuku said. “Are you one of the nine?”
“I am,” Shin said.
“Great, we can work on the way there.”
The cars windows were tinted, but Izuku had a general idea of where they were going. They didn’t take him to some back entrance, either. He got driven through some gates that led up to an impressive compound. Once inside it was a bit of a maze of twisting corridors, but Izuku was cataloguing as much as he could.
Eventually he was led into a conference room where he was introduced to the boss of the Shie Hassaikai, and his “Eight Bullets.”
Kai Chisaki was an intimidating man, though he was dwarfed by some of his lieutenants. The introductions gave him plenty of opportunity to work on his anti-hero society rhetoric, but he felt like it was a different brand, and he was absolutely certain the group he was looking for weren’t yakuza.
“So why me?” Izuku asked.
“Answers do not come from one person,” Kai said. “Consider this a second opinion. I think you might have a different perspective than the professional who was too deluded by how centered his profession is around societies illness.”
“Oh, believe me, I’ve had my fair share of professionals who suffered the same thing,” Izuku said. “Hero society turns even intelligent people useless.”
Kai went first. Izuku asked him to describe his quirk in detail before he read through the quirk documentation. He then spent a few hours cycling through each of the lieutenants. His watch told him it was pretty early in the morning, and Izuku was starting to feel very guilty about Ghost. With the last interview done, Izuku was given a laptop to write up his reports.
They weren’t dumb, the laptop was locked down, but it had an extensive encyclopedia Izuku made use of. While he worked, though, he surreptitiously turned up the gain on his hearing aid. He could barely hear Kai in the office next to the conference room attending to the mundane tasks of running a large organization. He heard snippets of conversations in the hall outside.
Izuku was honestly having fun with the quirk analysis, though. All of them had fascinating quirks. Someday, Heroes were going to raid this place, and when they did, they were going to have every weakness and warning Izuku could give them. He worked late enough that someone actually brought him breakfast. It had been a long time since Izuku had had breakfast in the morning.
Then he heard a little girls voices. She sounded like she was upset. Izuku strained to listen, but didn’t give any indication that he’d noticed anything. Realistically it probably wasn’t anything. Yakuza were sort of family organizations; it wasn’t unusual for a kid to be here, young children got upset easily. Still though, when you were always looking for exploited children, finding a kid in the middle of a mob base sets you on edge.
Someone knocked on the office next door.
“Boss, there was a bit of an incident with Eri’s minder. It’s under control.”
There was the scrape of a chair and then the voices were slightly closer, likely out in the hall.
“What do we have here?”
“He brought her outside.”
“I thought she could use some sun. She’s pretty pale.”
“Do you think my rules mean nothing? She is vital to my plans.”
“I know, but- but you’re torturing her in that lab, she should get to see daylight.”
There was the sound of a large splatter and then a silence in which Izuku heard the word torture over and over again.
That was probably Overhaul’s quirk. Eri’s ‘minder’ was almost certainly dead.
“Eri will need a new minder.” Kai said.
“Our guest is next door.” Izuku felt a spike of dread.
“Take him out the back exit when he is done,” Kai said. Then, “this was your fault, you know. You made him feel sorry for you. You made him forget that you are cursed.”
“I’m sorry,” a tiny and scared voice said.
“Take her downstairs.”
Izuku should… Izuku couldn’t do anything. Izuku would just get himself killed. He had no way to fight any of them. They were just going to take her down to some lab and torture her.
And then Izuku just kept working. It took him long enough to finish that he had time to collect himself.
It was fine. Deku didn’t care about other people’s problems. Deku hadn’t heard anything. Deku was doing his job and then Deku was getting out of there.
Kai Chisaki and the Eight Bullets came back to the conference room and Deku was confident and nonchalant as he presented his findings and suggestions. He was told that Giran would receive the payment, but Kai slid an envelope across the table for him as a bonus. Deku thought that they must have liked his work. This was confirmed when Shin tried to recruit him on the drive back.
“The boss may have need of someone with an intrinsic understanding of quirks soon.”
“I don’t work for anyone but myself,” Deku said. “But if you ever need any more consulting done, feel free to hit me up. Always happy to offer my services to those who have as much disdain for hero society as I do.”
Shin dropped Deku off at Giran’s warehouse where Shin paid Giran and Giran gave Deku his cut plus the gear he’d asked for.
Izuku made his way to the station, checked the money and the gear for trackers and bugs in a bathroom stall, and made his way to the vacant apartment they were using.
It was past ten when Izuku got back. In the nine months since they’d started living together, Izuku had never gotten back so late.
“Where were you?!” Ghost screamed at him, panic in his voice when Izuku got in.
“I’m fine,” Izuku said. “Ghost, I’m fine. Giran had a big job for me. Nothing happened.”
“I thought you were gone forever!” Ghost yelled. “I thought you weren’t coming home!”
Ghost looked a mess.
They had a protocol. No one was supposed to assume anything terrible had happened until noon. Sometimes missions ran long, or transportation got delayed. They didn’t keep phones on them.
Ghost’s parents hadn’t come home.
Ghost’s sister hadn’t come home.
They’d died.
Izuku dropped everything and approached Ghost. He put a shaking hand on the boy’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“Where were you?”
“A yakuza boss wanted me to do in-depth analysis for his lieutenants. At their compound. Aki, I’m sorry. It felt like something Deku would say ‘yes’ to.”
“I can’t loose you, too,” Ghost said.
Izuku tried to force himself to hug him, but he just couldn’t. The exposure therapy had been helping, but he wasn’t there yet.
“I’m right here. Aki, I’m right here.”
“What if you just didn’t come home?” Ghost asked. “What if something happened to you?”
“Then I want you to tell Eraserhead and let him help you,” Izuku said.
Ghost shook his head.
“If something happened to me, I want to know you’ll be alright.”
“I won’t be!”
“Okay,” Izuku said, feeling horrible. “I’m sorry. I’ll come home, okay?”
“You’d better.”
Izuku squeezed Ghost’s shoulder and wrapped his arms around himself. Ghost wrapped his arms around himself too.
“Did you eat anything? Did you sleep at all?”
Ghost shook his head.
“Alright,” Izuku said. “Why don’t you go take a shower. I’ll make you something, and then you can go get some rest.”
“Don’t go anywhere.”
“I won’t.”
He should have hugged him, but in the few months since they’d started ‘exposure therapy’ the best they’d gotten was a hand on the shoulder or a ruffled head of hair.
Ghost walked out and Izuku covered his face with his hands. He was just glad he hadn’t told Ghost where Giran’s warehouse was this week. The last thing he needed was the kid trying to track him down to do some rescue.
Izuku went and scrambled some eggs and heated up some miso broth and put them on the table. Then he went and grabbed the things he’d gotten. He put one set of armor next to Ghost’s food and then put the grapple on top of it. Then he tried on his own armor. It took some adjusting to get it snug, but it felt good. It was flexible and light.
“What’s this?” Ghost asked.
“It was a big job,” Izuku said. “I got some gear from Giran out of it. So, um, late birthday present? You can try it on before you go to bed. Absolutely do not try out that grapple indoors, I will size it for you in a bit, okay?”
Ghost had announced a few days earlier that he was thirteen, and had been for a week. Izuku had then announced that he’d turned fifteen two months prior. Izuku just hadn’t noticed that the day had passed until later. He didn’t know if the same had happened to Ghost or if he’d just decided not to make a big deal about it. They partied when they had big cases end, birthday parties weren’t really something they worried about. Body armor was a good birthday gift for a thirteen year old, right?
Ghost nodded and sleepily started drinking his broth.
When he was done, Izuku guided him through adjusting the armor so it fit well and then adjusted the grapple so it was sized properly. You held onto the grapple, but you couldn’t really swing like that with just grip strength. The grapple itself was attached to a cable that went to a harness. It needed to be just short enough that it was taut when you were swinging. Izuku had started training ghost on his own grapple, but he supposed it was time for him to have his own.
“You know, bullets and knives go right through me,” Ghost said.
“If you’re intangible at the time,” Izuku said.
Ghost rolled his eyes.
“Hey, I expect you to come home, too,” Izuku said. “That is a part of your standard gear now.”
“Yeah, okay,” Ghost said. “Um, can I stay in your room?”
Izuku blinked at him a moment. “Oh, um, I’m going to be working for a bit. I guess I could work in there if it’s not going to bother you.”
“It’s super late,” Ghost said. “You worked all night.”
“I- there’s something super messed up going on there, Aki, I can’t leave this till tomorrow.”
Ghost huffed and then went to the kitchen.
“What are you doing?” Izuku asked.
“Coffee,” Ghost said.
“You’re not supposed to have coffee,” Izuku said. All of the parenting books agreed on that.
“If we work on it together it’ll be done faster,” Ghost said. “So what’re they doing?”
Izuku grimaced. “Medical torture of a little girl. Probably quirk related.”
Ghost looked angry. “Okay, yeah, let’s wreck their shit and get a rescue started.”
Izuku mapped out, to the best of his ability, the route to Kai’s office, while Ghost pulled up recent reporting on the organization. Then he reproduced the quirk analysis he’d just done, along with as many of the defeats as he’d been able to come up with.
“Is it going to be enough for you to say you heard something terrible?” Ghost asked. “It looks like the police know the Yakuza do terrible stuff all the time, but they hardly ever do raids.”
“Well, it has to be,” Izuku said.
Nezu would mobilize something if he said a little girl was being tortured, wouldn’t he?
“We should just rescue her,” Ghost said. “Leave the rest up to the heroes.”
“What?”
“I turn invisible and walk through walls,” Ghost said. “Let’s go rescue her and let the heroes pick up the pieces.”
“Without evidence, that’s just kidnapping,” Izuku said.
“So?” Ghost asked. “Besides, I bet we could find evidence.”
“It would be super dangerous.”
Ghost thumped his new armor to punctuate, “I - Walk - Through - Walls.”
Izuku thought about it. He thought about that splat and the terrified ‘I’m sorry.’ Even if they did do a raid on Deku’s say so, it would still be days if not weeks before they felt ready to do a raid on such a large compound.
“Do you have any way to contact Eraserhead during the day?” Izuku asked.
Ghost grinned. “Technically no, but also yes.”
Izuku nodded. “Okay, split up for now. Go tell him to meet us tonight for a victim drop off. Tell him we’ll have a bunch of intel on the Shie Hassaikai. Tell him we’re taking them down.”
“What about you?”
“I’m going to write some malware. Oh, also, message your friends, tell them you can’t have a play date this afternoon.”
“Going free running together isn’t a playdate,” Ghost protested as he made his way towards the door.
“It is when you have a crush on one of them,” Izuku teased.
“I just said she’s nice!”
It was more the way he’d said it.
“Uh huh,” Izuku said. “Get going, we’ve got a rescue to orchestrate.
“I’m pranking you later,” Ghost said.
All of his rescues had only ever been assists. Izuku found people, the heroes went and rescued them. He was going to need a new category for his notebook, if they pulled it off.
“Aaaand the next item on the agenda,” Hizashi said. “What should Shota do with all of his free time, now that he’s expelled his entire class?
Shota glared at his husband. Suddenly the staff meeting was interrupted by childish laughter. The rest of the staff looked around in alarm. Shota groaned.
“You expelled your whole class, Eraser Kun? Was it so you could spend more time patrolling? It was so we could work together more, wasn’t it?”
“What are you doing here, Ghost?”
“You wouldn’t cut me in half, right now, would you Eraser Kun? I am standing in the middle of your conference table.”
“Show yourself,” Eraserhead said.
Ghost appeared, standing in the middle of the table, and then hoisted himself up so he was sitting on the table, with his calves dangling down through it.
“It is tempting to cut off your legs, though,” Shota said. “It would be easier to keep you in one spot. Where’d you get the new gear? That better not be a grapple.”
“It is a grapple! My bestie got it for me for my birthday. He’s going to show me how to use it later. But now, you and I need to talk. It’s super urgent.”
Shota glared at him. “I need the room, please.”
“Shota didn’t want to let us offload work onto him so he got himself a new student,” Nemuri said.
“I didn’t realize vigilantes came that small these days,” Cementos commented.
“Eraser Kun?” Ectoplasm commented.
“We should get Lemillion in here,” Snipe said.
“Do you and your bestie listen to hands up radio?” Hizashi asked.
“All the time!” Ghost said, “He’s got Hands Up Radio boxers and he’d love an autograph.” He was basking in the attention of the teachers who were leaving the room.
Ghost got the autograph, and then they had the room.
“Talk,” Shota said.
“Deku got an invite to the Shie Hassaikai base last night to do quirk analysis for their lieutenants. He found out while he was there that they’re doing experiments on a little girl for her quirk. We’re going to go rescue her tonight! And we’ll get a bunch of evidence besides. So be ready for a victim drop off at our spot, and then you and a bunch of heroes can go kick their asses with all the intel we give you, and Deku’s super good quirk analysis.”
“You are not doing a rescue tonight,” Shota said. “You will give us what information you have, and pro heroes will do a rescue.”
“Uh, yeah, like that won’t take forever,” Ghost said. “Little kid’s getting tortured right now, we’re rescuing her right now.”
“That’s too big of a risk, this-“
“What’s that? Eraser Kun, you’re breaking up, I’m going through a tunnel,” Ghost said, disappearing from sight.
~~~~~ THEN ~~~~~
Izuku had- a day, at school. He was a bit bruised up, but even if he didn’t wear long sleeves, he could just say it was from parkour, or something. His day went from stressful to anxiety inducing when Kacchan just started walking next to him as Izuku made his way to the parkour gym. They just walked in silence for a while.
Kacchan had been weird since he’d found out about Tanahaka and the creeps Izuku had gotten arrested. Izuku certainly hadn’t told him about all the rest that he’d been doing since. For about a couple months, Izuku had kept catching Kacchan staring at him, like Kacchan was trying to figure something out. After that Kacchan had spent another month being incredibly competitive during gym class (he was always competitive, but it was aimed entirely at Izuku now). And then he started ignoring him completely for two months outside their near weekly Wednesday night dinners with their parents.
“Why do you let those extras do that to you?” Kacchan asked.
Izuku didn’t say anything for a moment.
“Hah, you think I’m walking with you for fun?” Kacchan asked.
“I don’t know what you want, Kacchan, what do you think would happen if I did something?”
“You’d get the snot beat out of you,” Kacchan said. “But maybe they’d lay off a bit after.”
“What do you think the teachers would do?”
“What?”
“Do you know how many teachers saw me get knocked around, today? What do you think they’d do if I shoved back? I’d get written up for fighting, for starting a fight, for bullying. Do you think I have a shot at hero school like that?”
“You don’t have a shot period?”
Izuku didn’t say anything.
Kacchan growled. “So, what, Mr. High and Mighty can get pedos arrested, but he can’t handle some punk extras?”
“Kacchan, do you remember when I stood up to you, when we were kids on the playground?”
“You never even took a swing at me.”
“Of course not, you’re a force of nature, what would that have done? I didn’t need to hit you to get what I wanted.”
“What, bossing me around, or an ass whooping?”
“I didn’t go after Tanahaka because he molested me, I went after him because I figured he’d been doing it to other kids, too. And I didn’t stand up to you when you were bullying me, I stood up to you when you were bullying other kids. What happened when I stood up to you?”
“That’s weak shit,” Kacchan said.
“I accomplished what I set out to do,” Izuku said.
Kacchan narrowed his eyes. “We should fight,” he said.
“Why would we do that?” Izuku asked. “Is this because I got some people arrested?”
“You say you want to be a hero,” Kacchan said. “You act like you know everything. So prove it.”
“I don’t like touching people,” Izuku said.
“Hah?!” Kacchan sneered. “And you think you can be a hero without touching people?”
“It’ll be different,” Izuku said.
“Exactly, so come fight me if you’re not a coward.”
“Are you going to use your quirk on me?”
“You going to ask a villain to go easy on you too?”
He should just tell Kacchan where to find the underground fight club. That would get him the enrichment he needed in his habitat. Actually, this time of day, it should be abandoned, and Izuku could use the terrain better.
“I get to pick the location,” Izuku said.
“Whatever.”
Izuku took them to the station. They didn’t talk on the way. A few stops later, instead of taking Kacchan to the surface, he took them to an abandoned part of the underground complex and into a closed tunnel. Eventually they got to the sinkhole that had shut down the route.
“The hell did you find this place?” Kacchan asked.
Izuku didn’t say anything.
Kacchan took off his uniform, and put his shoes back on, standing there in boxers and a white t-shirt. Izuku sighed, he didn’t want to explain to mom either how he ruined another uniform. He did the same and shoved his uniform in his backpack so it wouldn’t get grimy. Kacchan pulled out his hearing aids and put in the special earplugs he had that let low level sound through, but not his explosions. Izuku took the hearing aid out of his right ear and was sort of surprised when Kacchan tossed him a regular pair of foam earplugs. He put them in, though if his plan worked, he wouldn’t need them.
The arena was a bowl, with concrete chunks all over the place. Izuku pulled a plastic baggie out of his backpack and picked up a piece of rebar.
“The fuck is that?” Kacchan yelled. Izuku was operating with one good ear that was plugged up.
“Support gear,” Izuku yelled back. “Sports festival rules.”
“I’m not going to disfigure you,” Kacchan hollered, rolling his eyes.
“Call it,” Izuku said.
“Go.” Kacchan said.
Izuku flung the contents of the baggie across Kacchan’s chest coating it in the white powder.
It brought Kacchan up short, and Izuku ducked around a large chunk of concrete.
“Hah?” Kacchan asked. Izuku could just hear the thumps of him beating the stuff off of his chest.
“Was that some sort of shitty distraction, or were you just trying to piss me off?”
“Third option,” Izuku said, jumping up on the concrete and off to leap at Kacchan, the rebar swinging in his hand. Kacchan snarled and held up his hand to let out an explosion. His palm glowed for a fraction of a second and crackled, but nothing else happened. Izuku had leapt to the side of Kacchan, and as he passed him the rebar connected with Kacchan’s forearm, making sure to hit the meaty part. Izuku rolled through the fall and darted off again.
“You fucking coward,” Kacchan howled. “The fuck did you do to my quirk?”
“Blocked your pores, it’s temporary. If this is about me being a hero someday, Kacchan, then I’m never going to fight in a way that makes it less likely I rescue someone. People got rescued because of me, and I didn’t stop to think that it would be more brave to go bust down doors myself. That wouldn’t have accomplished anything.”
Izuku rushed at Kacchan, slid on the gravel, ducking down to take a swing at Kacchan’s thigh. He ran off again.
“Fucknugget!”
“I hope when you become a hero you’ll prioritize rescuing people and not looking cool while you do it.”
“Stop telling me how to be a fucking hero.”
“Then act like one!”
Izuku kept using the terrain and agility to his advantage, but pretty quickly, Kacchan adapted. First he took the rebar, which he whipped Izuku with in the side before tossing it aside. From there it turned into an all out brawl. Izuku had watched a lot of fights here. He’d coached a fair number of fights here. Kacchan had training, and he was bigger, and he was stronger. Izuku got some good hits in, but eventually he got the snot beat out of him. He’d taken a beating before, though. When they stopped...when Kacchan was done, he couldn’t let the energy of the moment distract him anymore. He started bucking to get Kacchan off of him. Kacchan rolled over and Izuku scrambled away from him.
They didn’t say anything as they both caught their breath, got dressed, and left.
Izuku skipped the parkour gym. He stayed in the tunnel just before it let out into the still used part for a bit until his skin stopped crawling. It took a while before he got on a train back to his home stop. Somewhere from the station and his apartment, though, Izuku started feeling like he’d done something important. He was sort of also aching all over.
When he got home, there was a strange man in their apartment, and Izuku froze.
“Well heck, kid, what happened to you?” He had some sort of foreign accent.
“Mom?!”
“Izuku, honey, you’re home early,” Mom said, coming into the room. “Izuku! What happened to you?”
“You should see the other guy? Don’t worry, this isn’t from my… extracurriculars.”
Extracurriculars was the euphemism they’d started using for his surveillance work. It had been almost a month since she’d found out and things were still weird, but she hadn’t stopped him. Knowing she was staying up late worrying about him did make him cut a lot of missions short, though. The most awkward bit was dressing in his street kid clothes, then hiding those under his vigilante clothes when he had to do undercover work so mom wouldn’t cotton on to that bit.
“What the hell sort of extracurriculars are you into?” The stranger asked.
“Parkour,” Izuku said.
“You got into a fight?!”
“It was just sparring, with Kacchan, it got a bit out of hand,” Izuku said.
“What were you thinking?”
“Hero training? Mom, who is this. What happened with work?”
“This is Travis, he’s a friend, he works for a client my company works with. The air-conditioning gave out, again, so we decided to spend some time together.”
“A friend?”
“Izuku, why don’t you go get yourself cleaned up, please.”
Izuku eyed the man. He looked friendly enough, and he had a glint in his eye like he thought the whole thing was amusing. He didn’t like the idea of taking a shower with a strange man in his home, though.
Izuku did what he was told.
He grabbed a clean pair of clothes and went to the bathroom, which he locked. He washed a ton of grime off of himself, letting the water sting at his split lip and roughed up skin, and then, after drying off, bandaged himself up a bit.
“So,” Izuku asked when he got out of the bathroom. “Was Travis going to be here if I’d gotten here at the normal time?”
“Izu, well, no. We’ve only been on a couple of dates.”
“You didn’t tell me,” Izuku said.
“It’s new,” Mom said.
As long as Izuku could remember, Mom had never been on a date with anyone. He should probably be happy for her or something. He definitely didn’t want to think about it, though.
“Why don’t you sit down,” Travis said. “How’d this ‘sparring’ go.”
It was a couple of dates, why did this guy want to get to know him? What if he was dating Mom to get access to Izuku? Some creeps did stuff like that. Did Mom have a picture of him at her desk or something?
“It was good. It went better than I thought it would go.”
“The two of you shouldn’t be fighting with each other,” Mom said, putting an ibuprofen, a glass of water, and an ice pack in front of him. “Or sparring. Sparring doesn’t look like that.”
“Oh," said Travis, "you should have seen what I got up to when I was-“
He looked at Izuku expectantly. Why did he want to know how old Izuku was?
“He’s thirteen,” Mom said. “And I expect better of him than to get into fights since he wants me to treat him like he’s responsible and rational.”
“We really did just agree to go fight somewhere, Mom, it’s not like we blew up at each other or something.”
“Were you using quirks?” Travis asked.
Izuku looked at Mom, who suddenly looked guilty.
“No,” Izuku said. “So, Travis. What do you do for a living?”
As invasive as Travis was, he also liked to talk about himself.
Eventually, the worst possible thing happened. Mom invited Travis to stay for dinner.
Izuku went to go help her in the kitchen.
“You didn’t tell him,” Izuku said quietly.
“Honey, it’s new. It hasn’t come up. It also isn’t a terribly serious relationship yet.”
“It’s serious enough that he’s here,” Izuku said.
Mom blushed.
“I’m not upset that you’re seeing someone.”
At least he didn’t have a right to be upset. He’d already ruined his mom’s marriage.
“Izuku, honey, I’ve been single for a long time, but I wasn’t going to let him meet you until he knew about… This is just, testing the waters.”
Well it was testing the waters in his home. Did Mom even know how many people were trafficked by intimate partners? Did Mom even run a background check on the guy? Izuku could probably manage that later. If the guy stuck around…
So they had dinner, and the guy was sort of okay. Not okay like Izuku wasn’t hella suspicious of him, but okay in that he wasn’t annoying, and didn’t treat him like a little kid, and he seemed to like Izuku’s mom. Still, Izuku had passed up the opportunity to hack different government organizations before, it shouldn’t be hard to get the low down on this guy.
“So, Travis, have you moved to Japan, or is this the sort of job where you get moved around a lot?”
“Oh, I spent my early years globetrotting,” Travis said. “I think I’m ready to take a more permanent position with the company. Maybe here.” He gave a meaningful look to Mom.
Ugh.
“Do you have any homework, Izuku?” Mom asked.
“Um, it’s Friday?”
“Right,” Mom said.
“What do kids in Japan do on the weekends these days?” Travis asked.
“Um-” Hack stuff? Stalk criminals?
“What are your hobbies, sweetie?”
“Oh, well I’ve gotten pretty good at parkour, and there’s some good routes down town. I also like hero stuff. I do quirk analysis.”
“Quirk analysis?”
Izuku shrugged. “I watch hero fights and stuff and then pull their quirks apart. Try to figure out how they work, or what they could maybe do different.”
“Oh that’s interesting,” Travis said. “I’m sure there are people out there making a career out of that. Hey, how about a consultation?”
“What’s your quirk?” Izuku asked.
“Fire Bolt,” Travis said.
Izuku blinked at him and then turned towards Mom. “A fire quirk, wow.”
“Sort of like your number two hero here,” Travis said.
“Can I see it? Or is it not something you could do inside?”
“Oh, I could summon one, but I’d have to let it dissipate, there’s no mini version I could pop off into a cast iron pan or something.”
“I’d love to see it,” Izuku said.
“Well, here,” Travis said, holding out his hand, like he was holding a thick rod. A moment later, his fist was holding a short rod of fire. It wasn’t just a flame, though, it was like the flame from an acetylene torch.
“Wow,” Izuku said. Okay, it was weird that Mom was dating another guy with a fire quirk, but at least it was a guy with a cooler fire quirk than his dad’s.
“Now, your mom would be pretty upset with me if I let this loose in here,” Travis said. “So, now I can just wait a bit for it to dissipate.”
“So you can shoot it?” Izuku asked.
“Yes,” Travis said. “Once I release it, it shoots where it’s pointing.”
“You’ve got to be generating some sort of magnetic confinement. What about attenuation?”
Travis shook his head. “It’s got one setting and one speed. Believe me, I would have loved to get it to a, uh, more friendly setting. Can’t be a pro hero if the only thing your quirk does is burn a hole in someone’s chest.”
“I mean, I can think of a couple of possibilities for support equipment, maybe some slight modulation of the magnetic field, or if it’s magnetically confined gas getting super heated, we could swap in different gases from a tank and a hose at your wrist.”
“Ah, if only I could have afforded that sort of quirk counseling when I was a kid,” Travis said. “Maybe I would have gone into heroics.” The bolt was starting to fade and dissipate.
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, it’s free for kids here, isn’t it,” Travis said. “Quirk counseling’s pretty expensive in the UK.”
“That’s- a way to do things,” Izuku said.
“But hey, you could charge people real money for a consultation like that,” Travis said.
Izuku did charge people real money for consultations, but Mom didn’t know about that.
The bolt started to flicker and die.
“So what about you?” Travis asked. “Did you get your mom’s telekinesis?”
“Oh, no, don’t have one,” Izuku said.
Travis laughed, like Izuku had made a joke. Izuku just stared at him till he stopped. Travis looked at Mom who looked worried but just nodded.
Travis sat up straighter. “Oh, you’re quirkless.”
“Yep,” Izuku said.
Travis was getting a sour look on his face.
“So this quirk analysis stuff is quirk envy, or something.”
“What?” Mom asked.
“You don’t think a guy should know he’s with a woman who puts out duds?”
“Izuku,” Mom said, looking more upset than he’d ever seen her. “It’s a Friday night. Why don’t you go see if Katsuki wants to go to the arcade or something.”
Izuku never went to the arcade. Mom wanted to- Were they going to have an argument about him? Izuku grimaced and got out up from his chair.
“I guess he’s getting rewarded for getting into a fight now,” Travis said.
Izuku tried not to slam the door behind him, but on the way out, he heard his Mom saying, “How could you talk to my son like that?”
Mom always seemed surprised when people treated him like that. His own dad had treated him like that. At least Travis should be gone when he got back, and he wouldn’t have to worry about Mom having some potentially-a-creep boyfriend… for now. He’d have a talk with her about it. If she went on a date with someone, she should let Izuku run a background check first. Maybe some light hacking, too.
~~~~~ NOW ~~~~~
Izuku did buy a new camera and a new tablet with the money he’d gotten. He broke them in staking out the Shie Hassaikai’s headquarters. It was a Saturday night. The Eight Bullets had stayed up the night before doing quirk analysis, and from what Izuku was able to gather, a lot of their operations were daytime. He had a feeling that a lot of people were going to be enjoying a night on the town, and from what he was picking up, that seemed to be the case. There were way more people leaving than entering. What’s more, he’d spotted four of the lieutenants leaving, including the three Izuku was worried might be able to affect Ghost even when he was intangible, Deidoro, Rikiya, and Hekiji.
Izuku pulled his camera and stored his gear. The two of them went down the back of the building they were surveilling from and then Izuku took a deep breath and held onto Ghost’s shoulder. They went invisible and then they just walked in the front door. Izuku managed to guide them to where he’d met with Kai and his lieutenants, because if he wasn’t mistaken, that was the man’s office next door. Izuku squeezed Ghost’s shoulder, in what he hoped was a reminder to stay silent.
Ghost took them through the door, and there was Kai sitting behind a desk doing some work. He had a three screen setup that seemed to be connected to a laptop off to the side. That worked for Izuku. With his free hand, Izuku pulled out his little data dongle and handed it to Ghost. Computers loved their users. Plug something into a computer that was unlocked and it was basically instant access, because the computer assumed the user put it there.
Izuku had put together a scraper and harvester. He’d grab what he could transfer to the dongle and then leave behind a script that would continue the process by uploading to an external server. Well, that latter part was dependent on the computer being connected to the internet and not being on a closed network, but that’s why he was pulling what he could from the computer with the dongle first.
Ghost plugged the dongle into the back of the laptop, where Kai would hopefully not notice it and then they waited. Or, Izuku was fine to just wait like that, but Ghost started moving around Kai’s desk, and Izuku was sort of tethered to him. Standing behind Kai now, they could see what he was working on.
Blood slides and lab results. Izuku wouldn’t have guessed that Kai was the one actually doing the science in whatever twisted experiments they were doing on Eri. They watched him make notes for a while and then he pulled up a video. There was Eri on an exam chair that dwarfed her. Kai’s voice could be heard on the speakers narrating the experiment and the Kai in the room with them started taking notes. Eri was tiny, smaller than Izuku had expected. She had silver hair and a horn on the side of her forehead. She wore a nightgown and had bandages wrapped around her arms and legs. Was this a video from after Izuku had decided not to do anything earlier?
Eri was injected with something and started to look like she was in pain.
Izuku turned them so his body was blocking Ghost’s view, but turned to look over his own shoulder. Eri started shaking and gasping for breath. Ghost was tense under Izuku’s hand that clutched at his shoulder.
“Experiment One-One-Five-B is a failure. Subject will be reset.”
“N- No,” a tiny voice says, and then, splat.
The Eri on the screen disappeared in a splash of red under Overhauls hands only to reappear a moment later, crying.
“Return her to her room,” Overhaul said, before continuing with his narration.
Suddenly, the Overhaul sitting in front of them leapt up.
Izuku squeezed Ghost’s shoulder.
Overhaul’s hand went right through Izuku’s face.
Then they just stood there. Izuku trying not to make a sound. Overhaul looking around trying to find whatever had tipped him off that he wasn’t alone. Next he knelt down and put his hand to the floor. Spikes filled the room, skewering both Izuku and Ghost, but Izuku didn’t feel anything. The spikes disappeared.
After what felt like an hour of Overhaul just looking around for something, the man shook his head and sat back down. He rewound the video to where he’d been and kept taking notes.
Izuku tugged Ghost back around to the other side of the desk. Ghost pulled the dongle and they got out of there.
“You did good,” Izuku whispered.
“What was that sound?” Ghost asked. “What did he mean, 'reset?'”
“Just keep moving,” Izuku said.
They found a stairwell down. That part was nerve-wracking in its own way. Their steps echoed and every time someone else entered the stairwell, they paused in their tracks.
The floor below seemed to be offices and storage and the sort of kitchen used to feed a bunch of people.
The next floor down was where they found the lab that they’d seen in the video. They went in. He could see the camera setup to record procedures, but it wasn’t running.
There were some file folders that Izuku shoved into his shoulder bag. There were some vials of blood in a refrigerator that he wasn’t sure what to do with until Ghost pointed out the autoclave. Lastly, there was a desktop computer that Izuku opened up real quick and ripped out the hard drive. That went into his shoulder bag, too.
“Her room’s probably nearby,” Izuku said.
They didn’t bother with doors that were ajar. Actually, the door with the keypad outside of it was the clear winner. There was a camera pointing at the door to boot. They went through and it was a room about the size of Izuku’s pantry bedroom, from before he’d moved in with Ghost. It was setup like a prison cell. A bed, a small table, a toilet, and a sink. There were crayons on the table and drawings on the wall that they could make out from the dim nightlight. Some of them were pictures of red splatters on the wall.
Eri was asleep.
“Keep us invisible,” Izuku murmured. He didn’t see any cameras but there wasn’t any point in taking chances. “Can you nudge her awake?”
Ghost reached out and lightly shook her shoulder. “Eri Chan, can you wake up for us?”
Eri tensed up.
“Eri Chan,” Izuku said. “It’s okay, we’re not going to hurt you.”
“Who’s there?” Eri asked. “I don’t see you. Are you a ghost?”
“What do you know about ghosts?” Ghost asked.
“Shin says they haunt people,” Eri said. “I don’t want to be haunted.”
“It’s okay,” Ghost said. “Ghosts only haunt bad people.”
“But I’m cursed.”
“Who said that?”
“Overhaul,” Eri said.
“Oh, well Overhaul is a very bad person,” Izuku said. “We were haunting him just a bit ago. He’s a big meanie who lies to little girls like you. Bad people like Overhaul like to hurt people, but then they lie so the people they hurt feels bad about themselves. Does Overhaul hurt you?”
Eri nodded.
“Well,” Ghost said. “See, only bad guys hurt little kids, he’s a bad guy, which means he was probably telling lies about you being cursed.”
“But my curse hurts people.”
“That’s not a curse, Eri,” Izuku said. “That’s your quirk. If Overhaul was good he would have helped you control your quirk so it couldn’t hurt anyone, but instead he just hurt you and made you feel bad about yourself. Does that make sense?”
Eri bit her lip and shook her head.
“It means,” Ghost said. “That it’s all Overhaul’s fault. Now, like we were saying, we were haunting Overhaul just a bit ago, and we though, hey, the best way to haunt this guy is to make sure he can’t ever hurt Eri again, so we thought we’d take you some place where Overhaul can’t ever hurt you ever again.”
“Never again?” Eri asked.
“Never ever,” Ghost said.
“Eri Chan, can you tell me what your quirk does?”
“My curse?”
“What does it do?” Izuku asked.
Eri cringed. “If I tell you, you’ll haunt me.”
“No we won’t,” Ghost said. “We don’t haunt little kids. Never ever. Not even if they have the biggest curses in the world. We just want to know so we can make sure everyone’s safe later.”
Eri frowned and worried her hands. “Well, sometimes, if I get upset, people disappear,” she said. “Overhaul said I disappeared my daddy.”
Well, crap.
“Okay Eri,” Izuku said. “Did Overhaul ever teach you how to avoid getting upset? So your quirk can’t hurt anyone?”
Eri shook her head.
“See? It was his job to teach you, but he didn’t,” Izuku said. “So he’s the bad guy. I know some people who can make sure your quirk never hurts anyone ever again, but I have to take you to them. We can take you to them and then you’d never have to see Overhaul or worry about your quirk ever again.”
“But the door’s locked.”
“That’s okay,” Ghost said. “Ghosts can walk through walls, and if we’re carrying you, you can go through walls, too.”
“You mean it?”
“Of course, Eri Chan,” Ghost said.
“Eri, we’re going to step out into the hall real quick to make sure it’s safe, we’ll be right back,” Izuku said. He had to tug on Ghost a few times to get the boy to get them out of the room.
“We are not leaving her behind,” Ghost hissed at him. “I don’t care what her quirk is.’
“Of course not,” Izuku said. “But if something happens, I need you to run away.”
“So you can be the one who disappears?” Ghost asked scathingly.
“You have a future.”
“So do you.”
“I just want to make sure you step away,” Izuku said. “While I try to calm her down.”
“And leave you exposed?”
“If it’s a choice between you and me…”
“I’m going back in,” Ghost said. “Are you coming with me?”
Izuku just squeezed his shoulder.
“Eri Chan,” Izuku said. “We’re back, okay? We’re going to make you invisible and you’ll go through walls with us.”
“But I won’t become a ghost?”
“No, Eri,” Izuku said. “I promise. And we’re going to do everything we can to get you out of here. But Eri, there’s just one thing I need you to do for me, okay? If you feel like you’re getting upset, and your curse might hurt someone, I want you to tell me, okay?”
Eri nodded her head.
“Okay,” Izuku said. “We’re going to take you out of here. Do you want to walk, or do you want to be carried? If you’re walking you have to hold our hand so we can make you walk through walls, okay?”
“Can you carry me?” Eri asked.
Izuku squeezed Ghost’s shoulder. The kid might struggle to carry her too far, but they could take breaks if they needed to.
“Okay, Eri,” Ghost said. “I’m going to pick you up, now.”
Eri lifted up her arms for Ghost to lift her up. Ghost settled her on his hip. She gasped.
“I can see you.”
Izuku made sure to smile for her.
“But no one else can,” Ghost said, he was always grinning, especially if he wanted to hide how he was feeling. “And no one’s going to see you as long as you hold on to me. That’s how we’ll get out of here.”
“Eri, is there anything here you want to take with you?” Izuku asked.
Eri shook her head.
She was in a thin nightgown. The late September nights weren’t exactly cold, but she shouldn’t just be running around outside like that. Izuku picked up the blanket from her bed and draped it over her shoulders. He didn’t see any shoes.
“Okay Eri,” Izuku said. “No one can see us, but they can still hear us, so we’re going to be very quiet. We won’t say anything if we can help it, and if we do it’ll be in a tiny little whisper.”
Eri nodded her head solemnly, and they took her from her cell.
They got upstairs okay, Eri gave a tiny little gasp every time they walked through a wall or a doorway. Then she started whispering “no, no, no,” when they got to the floor with Kai’s office on it, because there coming down the hall was the man himself. Ghost covered Eri’s mouth with his hand and pulled the both of them through a wall. They were in an empty office.
“Uh, oh,” Ghost said. The horn on Eri’s head had started to crackle with energy.
Izuku didn’t think about it, he pulled Eri out of Ghost’s arms and moved across the office.
“It’s okay Eri,” Izuku said, as calmly as he could. “He didn’t see you, you were invisible.”
“He’s going to mush you!” Eri cried.
“He can’t, because I’m a ghost, so I’m going to hug you right now, Eri, I’m going to hug you and everything’s going to be okay.” He pulled her tightly into his arms and smoothed his hand over her back.
“My curse,” Eri said. The crackling energy grew.
“It’s okay,” Izuku said. “It’s okay, take a deep breath in, Eri, can you hold your breath for me? Listen to me breathe in Eri, can you do that, too?”
The energy started to dissipate.
“That’s so good, Eri,” Izuku said. “That’s so good, see? You’re already learning to control it. Okay, breathe out, deep breath out, just listen to my voice. It’s okay, and another deep breath in.”
The energy stoped, and he was just left with a crying girl in his arms. His face hurt for some reason, but he didn’t seem to have disappeared.
“You didn’t hurt me Eri,” Izuku said. He backed away from her. The crisis over, it was too much. He couldn’t look at Ghost, but the boy came over and hugged Eri for him.
“You did good, Eri,” Ghost said. “What did we tell you?”
Eri looked over at Izuku. He plastered another big smile on his face that he hoped she didn’t see was strained. That hurt his face even more.
“Your face!” she said.
Izuku had to think a moment, he touched his face. Ouch, it felt like it had when…
“It’s fine, Eri, sometimes ghosts look different, like this. I’m not hurt at all.”
“It looks the same as when we moved in together,” Ghost murmured.
That was it. He’d think of the implications of that later, but for now…
“Eri, you’re not cursed, you didn’t hurt me, but I think I know what your quirk is, it isn’t a curse. Eri, I think someday you’ll be able to control it, and you’ll be able to help a lot of people. It isn’t a curse, Eri.”
Moving around, he could tell his shoes were just a bit too big, and his clothes were looser. Had his body lost over eight months of time?! Internally, Izuku mourned his growth spurt.
Suddenly, an alarm went off.
“What’s that?” Eri asked.
“That’s the sound that tells us it’s getting late, so we should go meet our friends,” Izuku said. “We’re going to take you out of here now.”
Ghost picked up Eri and Izuku held onto Ghost and they walked back into the hall. Then, the doors that they could see all covered with cement.
Huh, well that was cool.
“Ghost, I don’t want to see how much they can change, can you run with her?”
“Um.”
Izuku pulled Eri from Ghost’s arms again. “Hold onto me,” he said.
They started running and they didn’t stop until they got out, but they did get out.
Izuku handed off Eri and fell to the ground, choking for breath that had nothing to do with the run.
“Is he okay?”
“Ghosts hate running,” Ghost said. “But he’ll be fine.”
He was still holding onto Izuku, and Izuku wanted him to stop, but they were too close.
Eventually, he got up, and they started walking. Eri started looking around in interest now that they were outside. Eri was barefoot, so once outside the compound it really wasn’t an option to have her walk, but they were all able to sit down when they got on the train that would take them to Ghost’s usual meetup spot for Eraserhead. Ghost held Eri in his lap and Izuku held onto Ghost’s shoulder. They were staying invisible. The Yakuza had plenty of resources, and Izuku didn’t want to find out later that they had access to the transit security feeds.
Once in at the station, though, Izuku had plenty of time before the train to drag them to a toilet stall and stop touching Ghost long enough in the opposite corner to feel less like he was dying or something.
Eri was fascinated by the whole experience of public transportation. They only had to scramble to the side once to avoid getting sat on. It was late at night, though, and she was a very small child. Curled up in Ghost’s lap, Eri fell asleep.
“Ghost,” Izuku said. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t ask me to leave you behind,” Ghost said.
“I, yeah, okay,” Izuku said. “Um, I held her. It’s- I know you probably want a hug, now and then.”
“It was an emergency,” Ghost said. “I’m not jealous or anything.”
“I really wanted to hug you this morning, when I got home.”
“You did,” Ghost said.
Eri woke up when they got off the train and she sleepily looked around at everything they passed as they walked to the building they’d be meeting Eraserhead at. Ordinarily, they’d use the fire escape to get to the top of a building, but with Eri they wound up just going inside and using the elevator. Eraserhead was waiting for them with a man in a business suit and an older boy in a bright shiny hero costume.
“Wait here,” Izuku said.
He walked up to the two men.
“Where’s Ghost?” Eraserhead said.
“He’s with the girl we rescued,” Izuku said. “Who’s this,” he asked a moment before recognition hit him. “You’re Sir Nighteye!” What the heck was All Might’s former sidekick doing there? He looked back. “Ghost you can turn visible, but wait there for a minute.”
He turned back. “Um, it’s good to see you again Eraserhead,” Izuku said. “And Sir Nighteye, wow. Okay. Um, so, I’ve seen direct evidence that they were torturing her. So if I give her to you, there’s absolutely no possibility that she’s going back, right?”
“We will protect her,” Eraserhead said. “I assume you have evidence.”
Izuku pulled out the dongle, opened it up and removed the storage chip. He wasn’t going to give Eraserhead something to plug into his computer that was going to hijack it.
“Sir Nighteye will be taking point,” Eraserhead said. “The Shie Hassaikai are his case.”
“Oh, cool,” Izuku said. “Well, here’s what I just got off of Kai Chisaki’s computer.” He handed over the chip and then opened up his shoulder bag. “Here’s some medical files they were keeping on her and the hard drive of a computer that was in the room they were torturing her in. And here’s the quirk analysis I did on Kai and his lieutenants. Those sort of link directly to me, so please be careful with that. I installed a back door on Kai’s computer, but we’ll see if it has internet access.”
Sir Nighteye accepted the items from Izuku. “Are the back door instructions on this chip?”
Izuku shook his head. “I’ll pass stuff on if I get a connection.”
“I have no intention of allowing a vigilante to continue interfering in this case,” Nighteye said. “Much less a little boy.”
Izuku grimaced, but tossed him the dongle. “You’ll have to reverse engineer access from that, then.”
“You should turn yourself in,” Nighteye said. “If you want to ensure that this case ends successfully and you and your partner are protected.”
“Not doing that,” Izuku said.
“This isn’t a game,” Nighteye said. “Your involvement jeopardizes cases. You put yourself and others in danger.”
“Okay, I’ve got over three hundred arrests and two hundred and fifty rescues under my belt,” Izuku said.
“That is not the point,” Nighteye said. “If something had gone wrong tonight, we’d have two dead children and a third still in the hands of her abusers and us with no actual information.”
Eraserhead held up a hand. “Let’s secure the child. Why is Ghost waiting back there?”
“I didn’t want her to hear us discussing her quirk.” Izuku said. “It’s probably in those files, but she said it’s dangerous and she has no control. She said when she gets upset that people disappear. Kai told her that that’s what happened to her father. Kai never tried to help her control it, though. The jackass told her she’s cursed. I think I figured out what it is, though. Um, it’s-“
He trusted Eraserhead. And Sir Nighteye used to be All Might’s sidekick.
“I’m sure you trust your work study student, but-“
“I do trust Lemillion,” Nighteye said. “I trust him implicitly.”
“Okay, well, it’s important this doesn’t get out.” He gestured to his own face. “This bruise is from months ago, back when Eraserhead and I first met-”
“You did not have that bruise on your face,” Eraserhead said.
“Oh, um before that, the guy with the paralysis quirk?” Izuku said, seeing recognition in Eraserhead’s eyes. “Thanks for that by the way. But anyway, um, Eri got scared while we were escaping, I was able to calm her down with breathing exercises, but when she calmed down, this bruise was back. I think it’s time based. I think she rewound time on my body.”
“Oh wow,” Lemillion said.
“I’ll accompany her, in case her quirk needs to be canceled,” Eraserhead said. “We’ll keep her quirk under wraps. I’m sure there are those out there who would do just about anything to get their hands on a quirk like that.” He sighed. “You shouldn’t have done this, but we’ll take care of her. The Shie Hassaikai won’t hurt her again.”
Izuku nodded. “You’ll want to ask her what happened to her last minder. Spoiler alert, he’s dead. Also, it should be on that chip, one of the things it was supposed to grab was whatever was open at the time, but you might ask Eri to tell you what happened when Kai ‘reset’ her.”
“Ghost said you were over there last night to do quirk analysis,” Eraserhead said. “What makes you so sure they won’t connect you to this? This is a good time to get out of this, kid.”
“There’s a lot of people in and out of there. Eri’s minder took her topside so she could get some sun, because that was something she wasn’t allowed, apparently. Kai killed him for that. I didn’t actually see that, though, or Eri. I heard it, but they think I have a mental enhancement quirk, so as far as they know, I have no idea that Eri exists. Although, if you could raid them soon and lock them all up, that would probably be a load off my mind.”
“Ghost looks like he’s struggling to hold onto her,” Eraserhead commented.
Izuku looked back and waved Ghost over. Ghost still had Eri on his hip and his opposite arm was stuck through his stomach.
“Eri,” Izuku said. “These are Eraserhead, Sir Nighteye, and Lemillion”
Lemillion perked up under her curious gaze. “We’re heroes, Eri Chan, that means we protect children like you from villains.”
Eri just nodded.
Suddenly Ghost gasped. “You’re the guy who lost his pants at the sports festival!”
Izuku realized that he was right. He’d lost a lot more than his pants, as Izuku recalled. Lemillion blushed a bit but kept a big smile on his face for Eri.
“Did you find them again?” Eri asked.
Ghost laughed uproariously. Eri looked a bit confused.
They’d had a viewing party back in April, and Ghost had proclaimed the second year his favorite, though he’d managed to keep his pants this time around. Izuku would love an opportunity to ask him about his quirk and compare the two.
“I did; they weren’t lost for long,” Lemillion said. “Looks like we’ve got pretty similar quirks,” he said, looking at the arm Ghost had through his stomach.
“We do!” Ghost said. “But I haven’t lost my pants since I was five. Can’t shoot out of the ground though, that’s really neat Pants Kun.”
“Eri,” Izuku said. “This is as far as we can go, we have to go back to haunting bad people, but we’re very happy to have been able to help you. The heroes are going to take really good care of you, and Eraserhead can make sure your quirk can’t hurt anyone, and they’ll help you control it for yourself.”
“Can’t you come with me?” Eri asked.
“Sorry, Eri Chan,” Ghost said. “We can’t get too far away from our haunt. You’ll be safe with these guys, though. They’ll give you ice cream, and toys, and let you watch cartoons, too.”
Eri let Lemillion take her from Ghost and Ghost stood next to Izuku so Izuku could put his hand on Ghost’s shoulder.
“Say goodbye, Eri,” Lemillion said.
“Bye. Thank you for taking me away from him,” Eri said.
“Good bye, Eri,” Ghost said. “You’re going to be alright.”
“Eri, Eraserhead’s, like, my favorite hero, after All Might. He’s going to make sure you’re okay.”
“Follow me,” Eraserhead said and walked off to the other side of the rooftop. They could still see Eri, in case she needed her quirk canceled.
“Deku Kun, did you get shorter?”
“I’ll explain later,” Izuku said, turning towards Eraserhead, who was definitely going to lecture them.
“What are your plans now?” Eraserhead asked.
“Successful rescue and belated birthday ice cream cake party?” Ghost asked, looking at Izuku.
“Tomorrow,” Izuku said firmly, but nodding his head. “We literally didn’t sleep.”
“What are your plans as vigilantes? I’ve seen a lot of vigilantes get themselves killed,” Eraserhead said. “Do you know what often happens first?”
“They do something dumb?” Ghost asked.
“They start taking bigger and bigger risks. You just infiltrated a yakuza family. You need to take a step back and look at what you’re doing. There’s only so many times you can take risks like this before your luck runs out.”
“Eraser Kun, I’m a lot harder to kill than most vigilantes,” Ghost said.
“You’re not invincible kid,” Eraserhead said. He turned to Izuku. “You do quirk analysis. How many vulnerabilities does Ghost’s quirk have?”
“Um, a few? I’m not telling you, even if you are really cool.”
“Cool? You said he was your favorite hero,” Ghost said. “You can’t tell your favorite hero? That wasn’t a fib for little Eri Chan, was it?”
Izuku shrugged and squeezed Ghost’s shoulder. His vision took on the hue of invisibility.
“He roundhouse kicked the guy who murdered my mom in the face,” Izuku said. “It’s not really a contest.”
~~~~~ THEN ~~~~~
Izuku didn’t go to an arcade, but he did have a bit of cash burning a hole in his pocket. Quirk analysis did pay enough to help with his hero merch addiction, and he thought that something new might make the day feel less shitty. Plus he needed to start looking for things he might ask Mom to get him for his birthday. He only had a month left. He didn’t want to go all the way to the mall, but there was a comics shop just one stop away.
He got a few looks for his split lip and black eye, but Izuku was used to getting looks. He peeked into the comics shop first and had to go next door for a little bit to get an iced matcha because a couple of his classmates were in there. Eventually, though, he was able to go in. There wasn’t any new All Might merch; he might go to the mall the next day. He started looking through the comics, and oh, that was new. There was a graphic novelization of All Might’s early adventures in America. Izuku picked that up and flipped through it. There was some good line art, and some really good color pages. He perused a bit more and picked up something about underground heroes. Maybe he’d get some ideas.
Izuku paid for his purchases and hopped on the train to get home. He had a bit of time to start on his new All Might book and just kept reading it as he walked back home. He didn’t notice the small crowd at first, but the flashing lights tipped him off that something was up. There wasn’t a hero fight going on, was there? It had been a while since Izuku had seen one in person.
There was a firetruck, an ambulance, and five cop cars outside his apartment complex.
Izuku ran up, but was stopped by a police officer. “Um, excuse me, I live here,” Izuku said.
“What floor do you live on?”
“Third,” Izuku said.
“We’re not letting anyone go past the second floor; you’re going to have to wait,” the cop said. “What apartment are you in?
“Three C,” Izuku said.
The cop grimaced. “Hey, kid, why don’t you come over here real quick.”
Izuku looked at the ambulance. The doors were open but there wasn’t anyone in there. The cop was trying to guide him towards someone in a cheap suit standing next to a cop car. Izuku ducked under his arm and ran for the stairs. Someone tried to grab him but he slid under their outstretched arm and bounded up.
There was water in the hallway. The door to his apartment was open. He ran in. There was a scorch mark on the ceiling, and below it, lying on the floor in a puddle of water, was his mom, a charred hole in her chest.
Izuku started screaming. He tried to rush towards her, but he couldn’t. His legs moved pointlessly. His arms were pinned to his side. He yelled for someone to help her. He begged for her to get up. Someone had their arms around him, but that didn’t matter. He screamed, because they were holding him and stopping him from helping his mom. No one was helping his mom. Where were the paramedics? The ambulance was right down stairs. Why wouldn’t they let him near her? He needed to do something.
It didn’t make sense. Everything hurt. Izuku passed out.
He woke up in the back of the ambulance.
“Hey, kid, you with us?”
There was a hand on his shoulder.
“Don’t touch me,” Izuku yelled.
They let him get out of the ambulance. People kept trying to touch him, to make sure he got out okay, or guide him somewhere. He got in a car, and then someone touched his arm as he went into a room.
“Kid, you’re name’s Midoriya, right? Can you help us out?”
Izuku blinked a few times. He was sitting in a chair in an office. There was a a guy sitting a couple feet from him who was talking to him, and another guy standing in the doorway, leaning up against the frame.
“You with us kid?”
“Where’s my mom?”
The man in front of him grimaced. “She’s with the medical examiner right now. Can you tell me what happened tonight, Midoriya?”
“Um, I came home and- There was a guy there, I didn’t know him, Mom said they’d gone on a couple dates. Mom told me to go out. They were arguing, he had a fire quire. I thought they were breaking up.”
“Can you tell me how you got that black eye and split lip?” The man asked. He was a detective. Izuku could see the badge on his hip.
“I was sparing with a classmate earlier.”
“Can you tell me about your father, Midoria?”
“My- he lives in America.”
The detective frowned at him.
“When was the last time you saw him?”
“Um, I was four.”
“Your father has a fire quirk, doesn’t he?” the detective said.
“Yeah,” Izuku said. “Why are you asking about my dad? He didn’t hurt my mom.”
“Are you sure?” the detective asked. “When I look him up in the registry it shows him living out in the suburbs of Musutafu. Has your dad been coming around, Midoria?”
What?
Izuku shook his head. “Stop asking about my dad, he didn’t hurt my mom. I haven’t seen him since I was four. He signed away all custody. He’s pretty much not even my dad anymore.”
The detective gave him a look dripping in sympathy. “Has he hurt you before?”
“No,” Izuku said. “The guy, her- the guy she was seeing. He hurt her. He has a fire quirk.”
“Like your father?”
“Stop asking about my father,” Izuku said. “His name is Travis. He works for Baylor Holdings. He’s, um, a regional subsidiary director in their Japan branch. His quirk is Fire Bolt. He’s not from Japan. Stop asking about my dad and find him; he hurt my mom.”
“Midoria, I’ve seen kids cover for their parents before. I know it’s hard when someone you love hurts someone else you love.”
“I don’t love my dad; he abandoned us when I was four. I’ve never seen him since. He didn’t beat me up and burn my mom.”
“Your mom was killed with a fire quirk.”
“It was Travis, he- he-“ Izuku took a gasping breath. “He killed her. He killed her.”
“Did you see this Travis kill her?”
“No,” Izuku said, thoroughly frustrated. “I told you she sent me out when they started fighting.”
“It just seems odd that there’s this guy you’ve never met before who has a fire quirk like your dad.”
“My dad’s quirk is Fire Breathing. It- My mom’s chest was- It doesn’t look anything like that. It’s like the difference between a flame thrower and a plasma torch. You need to look for him.”
“What’s your quirk?” the guy at the door asked. “Did you inherit your dad’s? Maybe something similar?”
“I’m quirkless,” Izuku said.
The detective held up his hand to the other guy and nodded. The guy in the doorway sneered at Izuku.
“Okay,” the detective said. “Let’s say there’s this guy Travis-”
“There is. It was him.”
“Okay,” the detective said. “What did he look like?”
“Um, caucasian, dark blond, maybe a hundred seventy seven centimeters, late thirties? He had a blue polo and grey slacks. Can’t you just look him up? His name’s Travis, he works for Baylor Holdings, they’re a client from my mom’s work, his quirk’s called Fire Bolt.”
“We’ll definitely put in a request to check visas,” the detective said.
“You could call his company,” Izuku said.
“Sure,” the detective said. “But it’s after business hours on a Friday. We’ll definitely check, though.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“Listen kid,” the guy in the doorway said. “We’re processing the scene right now. We’re not going to find your dad’s fingerprints anywhere, are we? Do you know what happens if you lie to the police to help someone get away with murder? That makes you an accessory.”
“I’m not lying,” Izuku said. “If my dad killed her, I’d tell you. It was that guy, Travis.”
“Okay,” the detective said. “Officers will be visiting your father soon. If he has an alibi, we’ll look into this Travis guy.”
“My dad needs to have an alibi so you can catch my mom’s killer?”
“Listen kid-“
The detective held up his hand again. “Do you have any living relatives in the area, Midoria?”
Izuku shook his head. “None that have talked to me since I got diagnosed quirkless.”
“Okay,” the detective said. “I’m going to give you my card. If you remember things differently later, you can call me. I want to get justice for your mom. For now, we’re going to have to let the social workers figure out where you’ll be staying. Officer Sato will take you back to your apartment. I want you to pack some clothes and toiletries, and anything you’ll need for school on Monday. Then he’ll drop you off with some people who will get you sorted out.”
Izuku nodded.
“Is there anyone you need to call who can make arrangements for your mom?”
Auntie Mitsuki would want to know.
Izuku nodded.
“Alright, we’ll let you make that call and then Officer Sato will take you to get your things.”
The detective patted Izuku’s knee and Izuku flinched. He walked out the door, and Officer Sato got out of the doorway, but stayed in the hall.
Izuku pulled out his phone. Why hadn’t they believed him?
He dialed Auntie Mitsuki’s number.
“Hey kiddo,” Auntie said. “I’ve got to say, I didn’t think you had it in you. The twerp said it was sparring, but if you two need to make up or something I can go yell at him a bit.”
“It’s Mom,” Izuku said. He didn’t want to tell her.
“Zuku, is everything alright?”
“Mom’s been- Her- She had a guy over.”
“Oh, the new friend, you met him?”
“He killed her.”
“Izuku, what? Wait, what are you talking about?”
“He killed her. He killed her with his quirk. They were arguing. It was because of me. They were arguing because he found out I’m- I’m quirkless.”
“Oh, fuck, Izuku, where are you right now?”
“The police station. They aren’t listening to me. I told them Travis killed her, but they keep talking like they think I’m covering for Dad since he has a fire quirk, too. They won’t do their job!”
“Okay, Izuku, I want you to tell the police that your mom made us-“
The phone was ripped out of his hand and Izuku flinched back at the contact.
Officer Sato hung up the phone and tossed it into Izuku’s lap.
“I’m not wasting my time to listen to a quirkless kid complain about how we do our jobs. You told her what she needs to know, so let’s go, I don’t have all night to coddle you.”
Izuku shook, with rage, or fear, or- he didn’t know what. He stood up just so he could back up a step away from the guy.
“Come on.”
Izuku followed him out of the station and to a patrol car. The guy had him sit in the back. They started driving. His phone was buzzing, but Izuku silenced it. He didn’t want to have to explain it in more detail.
“You know you’re in for a rude awakening,” Officer Sato said. “Do you know what happens to mouthy kids like you in foster care? Time to grow up, kid.”
“I know,” Izuku said.
“Then act like it.”
The guy didn’t seem inclined to talk to the quirkless kid anymore.
Izuku did know. There was a growing trend of checking kids when they were born. It was easy enough to do a foot x-ray of a newborn. There were plenty of quirkless kids in foster care. There were plenty of statistics for what happened to quirkless kids in foster care. It wasn’t like his dad or his dad’s parent’s were going to take him in. And what the hell was dad doing in Musutafu? When had that happened? It didn’t matter. He wasn’t really Izuku’s dad, so why did Izuku need to know where the man was.
Would he be at the funeral? He didn’t have the right.
There was going to be a funeral. There was going to be a funeral for his Mom. Would it be where her parents were buried? Would the Bakugous be there? That’s what the detective had meant about making arrangements. Would Izuku be able to go if it wasn’t in Musutafu?
Increased odds for quirkless kids of rape, murder, suicide, and trafficking. Would Izuku make it that long?
Were the police going to catch his mom’s killer? They weren’t even looking for him. Izuku could probably find him before they would, but would his laptop go ‘missing’ in foster care?
They pulled up to the apartment complex. There was only one cop car there. Officer Sato walked him up.
“You’re only grabbing stuff from your bedroom,” Officer Sato said. “If you touch anything in the crime scene I’ll arrest you for tampering with evidence.”
“Sure,” Izuku said.
His mom’s body was gone. There was still a scorch mark on the ceiling. Everything in the room was wet, the sprinklers had gone off. The floor in Izuku’s room was wet, but it was just the water that had seeped in under the door.
He started loading up his backpack. He didn’t know why. He wouldn’t make it in foster care. He looked at his laptop. That was all he really needed. That was all he needed to find Travis. He didn’t need the police to find him. Izuku would find him, but he wasn’t doing that from some foster home.
Izuku took his school uniform out of his backpack and replaced it with his vigilante getups. He put his laptop in and then looked around the room. There wasn’t really any point in taking any of it. He only really had to find Travis, and he didn’t need any of this stuff to do it. He pulled out his phone. They could track him with it. Though, they probably wouldn’t bother. Still, though, no point in risking it. He wouldn’t need it to find Travis, and he wouldn’t need it after. He tossed it onto his bed and crawled out the window to the fire escape.
~~~~~ NOW ~~~~~
“Next order of business,” Nezu said. “It is less than six months until the entrance exam. We have a record number of applicants and applications are still open. How do we feel about adding another testing ground?”
They went around about it. It came up every year, but the general consensus was that the applicants who could handle the chaos were the ones they wanted. It made sense, but Nezu wouldn’t have minded designing a new testing grounds.
“Any other business?”
“I was just wondering if Eraserhead’s little vigilante’s old enough to apply,” Cementos said. "He’s got to be good if he’s so familiar with you and you haven’t managed to bring him in.”
Nezu smiled. He’d enjoyed observing the ‘ribbing’ Shota had been receiving since the rest of the staff had found out about his young vigilante problem.
“Ghost will be old enough for the program at Shiketsu in a couple of years, if he lives long enough,” Shota said. “He can be their problem. Though his friend Deku might be old enough now, if I’ve got the age right.”
Deku?
“They’re multiplying.”
“Did you say Deku?” Nezu asked. He may have miscalculated.
Shota narrowed his eyes at him. “He’s been reporting to you, hasn’t he?” he said.
“Perhaps it is a coincidence,” Nezu said. Unlikely that two vigilantes would call themselves Deku.
“The reports he provided Nighteye were formatted the way you like them,” Shota said. “And he’s clearly a hacker.”
“It is perhaps not a coincidence,” Nezu said. “He is very good as a hacker, and as an investigator. Due to the nature of his first case, I’d made some assumptions about who he could be, I felt the potential child suspects to be too young for the level of skill and patience his investigation showed.”
“How long have you known him?”
“Almost two years, now,” Nezu said. “New point of order. Should UA start investigating having our own vigilante rehabilitation program?”
There was general laughter, but Nezu was already plotting.
“I think if I can get one of them to crack, we’ll get the other one to come along,” Shota said. “But neither one is going to leave the other behind. They’re practically codependent.”
“Can you describe him?” Nezu asked
“Maybe fourteen, at the oldest, green hair and eyes, freckles.”
Perhaps Nezu could nab two birds with one stone.
“What were they up to that had one of them bold enough to break into UA?”
“A rescue. It was reckless, but it was successful, so they’re riding high off of it, for sure, and then they’ll become more daring.”
“Have you tried offering them candy?” Nemuri asked.
Later, Nezu went through the original case that had led him to Deku. Takahana Itoma had volunteered at Dago Elementary, and the man had described abusing children there. The only other child was a neighbor from when Tanahaka had been in high school. Nezu pulled school records from the time period. Only one boy fit the description that Shota had for Deku. Midoria Izuku.
Nezu looked up records for the boy.
Midoria had a police record, suspicion of hacking government computers (the most likely explanation; they had no forensic evidence) to find his mother’s killer. He was currently a runaway. He had a father who had signed over all custody when Midoria was four years old and who lived in Musutafu with another wife and two children.
From near the beginning, Nezu had suspected Deku had a mental enhancement quirk, but Midoria’s records listed him as quirkless. It shouldn’t be unexpected. There had been gifted humans long before quirks. It might make things more difficult in dealing with the HPSC, though.
Nezu logged into the server that he maintained to communicate with Deku. It looked like he had dumped a lot of files onto Nezu’s lap. There was also a message waiting for him. Deku was still uploading files.
‘Nighteye will probably be upset I’m giving this to another hero, but I figured I’d share.’
‘Sir Nighteye will survive,’ Nezu said. ‘I don’t believe he gets offended for having someone take a second look. Especially since there appears to be a great deal here to sort through.’
‘Yeah, well, Nighteye doesn’t want me going through any of it.”
‘It is quite the haul,’ Nezu said. ‘Though I’m worried for your young friend, Ghost.’
‘The general worry about his situation, or is there something else?’
‘There’s plenty to worry about his situation, and yours.’
‘I suppose the cat’s out of the bag.’
‘Midoriya, I presume.’
‘I guess it doesn’t matter if you know who I am now.’
‘You’re old enough to attend school for heroics. Perhaps at Shiketsu.’
‘I thought you read my file.’
‘You are competent and skilled. It would be a shame to let that go to waste.’
‘Now that you know I’m younger than you initially thought?’
‘I confess, it was more agreeable using you as a CI when I thought you were an adult.’
‘There’s no place for a kid like me in your world. You can’t dangle some vague promise of a heroics program at another school. The best I can hope for is getting some big haul that I can use as a bargaining chip to get a deal that gets me out of prison. There’s no hero school for the quirkless kid. I don’t think I’ll last long after that.’
‘I disagree. Though, perhaps you will give me time to pull some strings. I’ve seen your work. More importantly, though, we have the situation of young Daguchi Akihito.’
‘What about him?’
‘I think you would be happy to see him in a hero program. I think you want him to stop being a vigilante. I think he would follow you, if you stopped.’
‘Maybe he would.’
‘Would that be worth it to you?’
He waited a few minutes for a response.
‘We stay together.’
‘I can work on that.’
‘Okay.’
‘Give me some time to find you some options.’
‘I’m working on something big, maybe big enough for a good deal. Either way, I don’t want to stop until I find these people. We can talk about this later.’
‘Do not take greater risks to get a deal. I am working on that angle for you.’
‘I want to find these people. Someone should be looking for them. They can’t just disappear.’
The files that Deku was uploading finished and the boy logged off.
Deku was excited leaving a meeting with Giran. This was the second week in a row that one of Giran’s clients had matched his anti-hero society lexicon. Neither one of them were the ones he’d already identified, so he might be expanding his known associates. They’d also both come with great challenges for him, so that was fun.
It was fun right up until the one he’d just met with approached him as he was making his way to the transit station.
“Hella,” Deku said. “Giran’s my broker for a reason. If there’s something else you wanted, you can go through him.”
“I think you’re bored of Giran,” Hella said. “I think you’re looking for something more.”
“I’m a free agent,” Deku said. “I’m not looking for some full time gig. I’m not beholden to anyone.”
“You’re smart,” Hella said. She was keeping a respectful distance, but he felt like she was pacing around him, inspecting him. “But it’s more than picking apart quirks, isn’t it? You see our society for what it is. You recognize the rot. You’ve identified the root.”
“It doesn’t take a genius to see that,” Izuku said. “It’s the heroes, it’s the HPSC, it’s the leader board, and it’s the media fawning over all the bullshit. It’s quirk determinism. It’s hero quirks and villain quirks. It’s quirk restrictions and the state monopoly on quirk use, on quirk violence.”
“And don’t you want to do something about it?”
“What, you want the street kid to join your political campaign? I don’t knock on doors.”
“You know full well this isn’t a problem that’s going to be solved with politics. What do you think it will take?”
“Nothing I think you can do.”
“What will it take, Deku San?”
“Bring it all down and build it back up,” Izuku said. “You’ve got to destroy hero society, destroy the foundation, but again, I’m not hitching my wagon to some dreamer who thinks a ragtag bunch of underworld villains are going to topple the system that dominates the world.”
Hella smiled. “We’re not a ragtag bunch. We have more than you can possibly imagine. You’re smart Deku San. You can come and see for yourself. You can judge us for yourself. Then you can decide for yourself if you want to be a part of something that will change the world, or if you’ll keep giving quirk analysis to two bit villains, sitting in the corner of a warehouse, and waiting for whatever scraps Giran has for you.”
“You’re so confident I’ll visit your clubhouse and want to join in?”
“I think you’re smart enough to make that decision when you see what we have to offer.”
“Yeah, well speaking of offering, I’m sure hoping you aren’t planning to pay me in promises of glory or some bullshit.”
“Payment will not be an issue,” Hella said. “I will be coming back for the rest of your analysis next week. Perhaps you’ll join me for a quick visit afterwards.”
“Your group got a name?”
“Nothing we’re sharing with a street kid, just yet,” Hella said. “But I don’t think you’ll be a street kid for long.”
“I guess we’ll see, then,” Deku said. “But I hope you won’t be too disappointed when I laugh in your face.”
Hella smiled. “We will see, then.”
“Whatever,” Deku said. “It’s been a long night. I’m gonna get lost. I’ll see you next week.”
Deku did not jump up and down in excitement. Hella was probably exaggerating a lot, but this probably was a big find. Still, though, Izuku couldn’t figure out what an extremist group had to do with all of these disappearances. If it was just a revenue stream to fund their operations, Izuku hadn’t been able to find where they were being sold or any commonality that would suggest a type of buyer.
“You guys wouldn’t believe who I saw out looking like a street kid in the middle of the night?” Long Fingers had said.
The extra had been out for some dumbass reason in the warehouse district at ass o’ clock in the morning when he’d seen Deku. Katsuki had gotten as many details as he could out of Long Fingers and then started trolling the area at night looking for him.
Katsuki stayed up most all night for a week looking for the dumb fuck, and then he fucking slept through his alarm clock and ruined his perfect attendance record for it. So he was kicking Deku’s ass extra hard when he found him. He’d been starting to think the shitty nerd was dead. So if he wasn’t, then Katsuki was definitely digging the grave for him.
It was getting late. Another wasted night. Katsuki headed to the nearest station, ready to go home empty handed, and there he was on the platform. Deku was just standing there, waiting for a train. Katsuki charged forward.
“Deku!”
The nerd looked up and over at him. A train started pulling in, but it was late and Katsuki wasn’t worried about dealing with some crowd getting off. He walked right up to Deku and grabbed his arm.
“Where the fuck have you been? Why the fuck did you run away? How the hell could you miss your own mom’s funeral? What the hell is wrong with you you shitty nerd? Do you have any idea what my parents have been going through? You’d rather live on the fucking street?”
“K- Kachan, let go.”
“So you can run away again? You’re coming home with me, I’m gonna kick your ass and then you can explain yourself to the old hag.”
“Kacchan, I mean it, let go.”
There was a chime on the platform.
“Fucking make me,” Katsuki said.
Deku rabbit punched him in the throat and Katsuki took a step back.
“Fucking shitstick,” Katsuki choked out.
The doors to the train closed behind Deku and the train left.
~~~~~ THEN ~~~~~
His first stop was a cafe, where he sat himself in the corner, opened up his laptop and pulled out the mobile chip so it wouldn’t connect to any cell towers. The police couldn’t be bothered to track down his mom’s killer, but he wasn’t taking chances. Next he hopped on a train, and went to the library where he connected to the wifi. It was late, of course. He just sat right outside where he could get a connection.
The detective had said that they would have to wait for the company to be open, or for someone to pull a visa. Izuku just went on the company website and found the directory. It was an international company. Izuku doubted that their offices were closed.
Travis Baker. The man’s name was Travis Baker.
A social media search for people in Musutafu gave him accounts on three different platforms. Unsurprisingly, there was only one Travis Baker in Musutafu.
There was a video of Travis at a quirk range, showing off Fire Bolt.
Currently, Travis’ location wasn’t being shown, but it wasn’t difficult for Izuku to find the guy’s address from the photos he’d uploaded. Chances were good, though, that after committing a murder, with Izuku as a witness, the man hadn’t just gone home.
Izuku had his image scrubber search for bank logos in the photos and videos uploaded. There were three separate photos taken from inside his home with mail in view that had bank and credit card companies. Plenty of Izuku’s investigations had involved banking information, but Travis hadn’t made any purchases since he’d killed Izuku’s mom.
Travis didn’t seem to have a car.
Izuku started exploiting Travis’s social network. The man had worked around the world. He had friends around the world. Several of them worked for Baylor, also, and one of them had followed Travis on his past three assignments. They had the most interactions. A lot of photos that Travis posted were with the man or in his house.
Gary Sattler.
Gary was in his home at the moment.
Gary had rented a car one hour after Izuku’s mom had been murdered. If Travis was trying to get around without getting picked up on transit cameras, a rental car under somebody else’s name would be ideal. The question was, where was Travis going?
Nezu, had warned him early on to not do anything that would make it worth his time to track Izuku down. He’d passed up opportunities to hack into government systems before, even though it would have made some of his investigations easier, but.. What did it matter? Nezu could track him down. He wouldn’t last in juvenile detention, but he had no illusions that he would last long in foster care, either.
Izuku still took his time. He didn’t want to get found and booted from the system.
Traffic cameras showed Travis’ rental car heading to the port.
Was the guy going to flee the country on a boat? He’d need to go through customs, though, the same as if he got on a plane. Izuku pulled up Travis’ visa. He hadn’t gone through any customs office in the past few hours. His visa application did have something he wished his mom had known about. In the part where he was supposed to declare prior criminal complaints, it showed that Travis had a prior for domestic violence.
Izuku checked through Baylor Holdings again. They owned a bunch of subsidiaries, in part or in whole. They owned Queens Shipping. The port authority showed ten vessels owned by Queens Shipping, one of them was departing late that night to Bolivia, and the other was departing the next morning to Malaysia.
A bit of research showed that, of the two, Malaysia didn’t have an extradition treaty with Japan. Travis was most likely to try and get on the Victoria.
Izuku did a search through Travis’s social media network. Javier Gonzales was friends with Travis, and the man worked for Queens Shipping. Travis’s location services was off, but his friend’s wasn’t. The man was in the port, where the Victoria was docked.
Izuku saved everything he’d pulled and got the detective’s card out of his pocket. He emailed everything to the man, and then made a VOIP call to the man’s cell phone.
“Detective Akamura speaking.”
“This is Midoriya. I just emailed you all the evidence you need to get a warrant. I’ve got Travis Baker’s visa, and employment at Baylor Holdings. I’ve got his social network. His friend Garry Sattler rented him a car an hour after my mom was murdered. That car travelled to the port. Baylor Holdings owns the Victoria, leaving in the morning to Malasia, with no extradition. Travis’s friend Javier Gonzales works for their shipping company and is at the Victoria right now.”
“Midoriya, where are you getting this?”
“Check your email,” Midoria said. “Will you investigate it? I gave you everything.”
“I’ll look it over, Midoria, look-“
“There’s a video in there of Travis using his quirk,” Izuku said. “It’ll be obvious if you look at it that that’s the quirk that killed my mom. It’ll also make it clear that you’re going to need a pro hero to take this guy in.”
“Okay, Midoria, I’m looking at it right now. Can you tell me where you are?”
“Are you going to go get him?”
“Yes, Midoria, we’ll go check the ship. Now, you accomplished what you wanted to do, somehow, I need you to come in now. Your mom wanted-“
Izuku hung up. He was sure Mom would have wanted him to go into some home. He was sure Mom wouldn’t have wanted him to run away. Mom had read the statistics, but she’d also always been optimistic about Izuku’s chances. Izuku couldn’t do what Mom wanted.
He closed up, got up, and stretched. He’d taken a bit of a beating earlier and sitting outside the library on the concrete at night hadn’t been great. He got on a train.
“Hey, sweetie, are you alright?”
Izuku looked up. He’d been crying in his seat. A middle aged woman had approached him.
“Um, yeah,” Izuku said.
“It’s pretty late,” she said. “Is someone meeting you when you get off?”
Izuku nodded. “Yeah, my dad.”
She sat down across from him. “What’s got you out so late?”
“I need to- I needed to take care of something for my mom.”
“What’s wrong?”
“She’s dead.”
“Oh, honey, I’m sorry.”
“It hurts.”
“Of course it does.”
“I want it to stop. I-“
“It won’t stop,” she said. “But it will get better.”
Izuku nodded. It would be better when he saw Travis get arrested.
“I lost my mother years ago,” she said. “It still hurts, but it’s bearable now.”
“What do I do?”
“You keep going, honey. You’ll remember what you love about her. You’ll live a life she would be proud of.”
He’d found her killer, he hoped. She would be proud of that, wouldn’t she?
“Everything’s changing.”
“That’s hard, but you can let the people who love you help you through this.”
Izuku shook his head. The person who loved him was gone.
“You’ll see. Someday, you’ll look back and realize you were always strong enough to move through this.”
He didn’t know if he wanted to move through it. What future was there for him? The future his mom had wanted for him wasn’t in the cards for a quirkless boy.
“This is my stop, okay? You’re going to be okay?”
Izuku nodded. “My dad will be there when I get off.”
She left at the next stop and Izuku was alone in the car. He got off at the port. It was a stop he’d gotten off at before. He’d done surveillance at the port before, of course. He bypassed the customs check points that were there to make sure big shipments weren’t coming into the country illegally and made his way to where the Victoria was docked. He found himself a place high up on some stacked shipping containers where he could watch both of the embarkation points for the ship and sat down in a shadowed corner.
Then he waited.
He didn’t know what he was going to do. He supposed he was homeless. He was homeless when he found Travis, just sitting outside of a library. He thought of the notebook in his backpack, and all of the tally marks that were in it. He could take more risks now. Mom wasn’t expecting him to come home. She wouldn’t want him to do that, but what were his odds regardless? Mom could be proud of him if he used whatever was left of his life for some good.
Izuku saw the first two cop cars roll up. They blocked off vehicles coming from both directions. He pulled out the binoculars he had for stakeouts which showed that they were actually port authority. Next, some actual police cars showed up. They looked like they were just waiting. Some more cars showed up and they surrounded both embarkation points to the ship. He could see some sort of speed boat approaching the ship from the other side.
Some people got off of the ship. The police just had them stand off to the side.
A helicopter showed up and swept a light across the deck.
Someone got on a loud speaker.
“Travis Baker, we know you are on the Victoria. Come out with your hands up.”
Did they know he was on there? Just on Izuku’s research? Or, had they questioned Gonzales.
They waited a while. The police made more calls on the loud speaker.
A second helicopter showed up adding another spotlight to the ship’s deck.
Police in heavy body armor started going up the embarkation points. There was a pro hero leading both groups. Izuku recognized Titanium. A great choice, but the other pro wasn’t dressed like a daytime hero. Definitely underground.
A man appeared on the deck. Izuku refocused. It was Travis. He saw the police coming for him and he shot off with his quirk. Izuku watched it streak across the deck and splash across Titanium’s chest. Travis started running the other way. A bolt of plasma started forming in his hand as he rushed at the other pro-hero, but it then just fizzled out. Two white ribbons shot from the pro’s neck as the pro ran at him and wrapped around Travis. The pro then leapt up, and did a roundhouse across Travis’ jaw. Travis went down. Travis was surrounded by police and Izuku couldn’t see him anymore.
Izuku felt numb. He put the binoculars down. He just sat there as Travis was taken off the ship with his hands behind his back. He could go down there. He could confront him. He could tell him that he was a piece of shit. He could tell Travis that it had been Izuku that had found him.
Izuku sat there as Travis was taken away. He sat there as the police questioned the crew of the Victoria. He sat there as everyone left to go on with their lives.
Mom was still dead.
He considered how high up he was.
He wanted Mom to be proud of him. He shouldn’t stop until someone stopped him. Maybe it wouldn’t take too long.
Izuku pulled off his shirt and trousers and pulled out his street kid outfit and changed. He supposed the street kid part wasn’t an act anymore.
~~~~~ NOW ~~~~~
Izuku had sort of been buzzing with energy all afternoon. He had a big meeting later, and it might break the case open for him. He didn’t really think that Nezu could do anything for him, but he wanted to give Ghost a chance. This case could be that for them. If Izuku could ‘get out’ then Ghost could actually get out.
They left the library to head back to the penthouse suite they were staying in for next couple of days. It was time to get ready for a couple of missions.
“Hey, Aki Kun,” Izuku said. “I wanted to give you a heads up for tonight.”
“You’re just meeting your usual, aren’t you?”
“Afterwards, I’ll be going to another meeting. I don’t know how long I’ll be. I don’t want you to worry if I’m not back before dawn.”
“Well, when should I start worrying?”
“Well, if I’m not back by noon, tomorrow, you can go ahead and start worrying.”
“I could come with you, invisible.”
“I’ve got no idea what quirks we’re dealing with,” Izuku said. “This is just a recruitment meeting. If they’re too out there, I’ll just tell them I’ll think about it and bail.”
“Just be careful,” Ghost said.
Izuku thought about bringing up Nezu’s offer.
“You’re getting worried about me more,” Izuku said.
“You are, too,” Ghost said.
“Yeah, well, you’ve become really important to me,” Izuku said.
“Yeah,” Ghost said.
“If I made a deal with prosecutors, would you come with me?” Izuku asked.
Ghost went quiet.
“Are you going to?”
“I don’t know. I’m just considering the option.
“We’re doing really well, though, Ghost said.
What if Ghost had just been invisible when Kai had attacked them?
“We’re just talking about it,” Izuku said.
“I don’t want to quit,” Ghost said. “We’re good at this, Izu Kun, we’ve helped a lot of people. We’re pretty awesome, actually.”
“We are,” Izuku agreed. “You could be awesome in the future, with some more training.”
“You’re talking about Shiketsu?”
“They’d be lucky to have you,” Izuku said.
“No duh, they’d be lucky to have me. What about you?”
“We’d tell them the deal’s contingent on them keeping us together,” Izuku said. He had no idea if that was even on the table. Right now, he wanted Ghost thinking about doing a hero program.
“You wouldn’t do this if it wasn’t for me,” Ghost said. “Would you?”
Izuku hesitated, but said, “No, I wouldn’t even consider it, but- I’ve started to think of you like a brother. We said we’d look out for each other. I want you to have this option. I love you, and that means not being selfish.”
He hoped he wasn’t pushing things too much.
“So you want me to be selfish?” Ghost asked.
“If we stay together, it’ll be worth it to me,” Izuku said.
“You’re, um, you’re like a brother to me too,” Ghost said.
“Just, there’s some cool videos online about what hero training’s like. We’re good, Aki Kun, but you could be so incredible.”
“I’ll think about it,” Ghost said.
They got pizza and went home. Izuku quizzed Ghost for a bit on the key details of his current case. Izuku made sure Ghost had his armor and pads on securely, checked his grapple, patted him on the shoulder, and sent the boy off for his mission. Izuku went and made sure he had everything he needed for his meeting, threw his armor on under his sweater, checked his own grapple, and went out into the night.
It was a normal night. Izuku consulted with a few small time villains, did some work in the corner while Giran made deals and sold equipment, and then Hella came. She didn’t mention their meeting later and she just smiled at him in amusement as Izuku gave her his report on her quirk. He was pretty sure at this point that she’d already had everything he was giving her, and this had been a test. She took off, but Izuku was pretty sure he would see her again when he left.
Izuku collected his pay at the end of the night and walked out into the night. It was two in the morning. With any luck this meeting would be quick, and close by, and Izuku wouldn’t have to get home too late.
Just as he expected, Hella met him before he got to the end of the block.
“Will you be joining us tonight?” Hella asked.
“I’ll go meet your boss,” Izuku said. “But I doubt he’s going to impress. How are we getting there? The last group that tried to recruit me had a nice town car.”
Hella just smiled at him and she pulled out a transmitter and pressed a clicker. A black misty portal opened up behind her.
Okay, that was impressive. That was also bad. That portal could take him anywhere. This was very much the time to ditch.
He could get Ghost into a home.
“You all need to work on your approaches. Someone with more self preservation instincts would be getting out of here right now.”
“We want you to know that our organization takes secrecy and security seriously. The only way anyone enters the place we will be going is by portal.”
Great.
“Well, what are we waiting for?”
Izuku walked forward into the swirling black mist and exited out the other side in a bare concrete room. There was only one person in the room. He looked like he was made out of the same mist as the portal. He wore an oddly formal server getup and a metal neck guard.
Hella came through after him and the portal closed. “Deku, this is Kurogiri. He will escort you to Sensei.”
“Here was me thinking you’d be giving me a grand tour first.”
“Welcome, Deku,” Kurogiri said. “I’m glad you could join us today. Hella will be happy to show you around, should you agree to Sensei’s terms.”
“And if I don’t, you’ll be sure to send me home,” Deku said.
“Of course,” Kurogiri said. “If you’ll follow me.”
He walked through the only door which led into a concrete hallway. Izuku followed him. There were doors with numbers on them but no other indication of what was behind them. They walked all the way down the hall and into what was essentially a wide open hospital room. A man lay back in a hospital bed, with numerous tubes coming out of him. His face looked deformed, and Izuku thought that the man was likely blind.
“Ah, is that our young guest?” The man asked.
It was primal. The moment the man’s attention was on him, Deku felt a sense of power. It took him a moment to think past it. That was probably a quirk. It could just be the extent of the quirk. A great thing for the leader of an organization. A quirk that made people think you were powerful.
“You must be ‘Sensei,'” Izuku said.
He noticed another man standing in the corner. He wore a villains getup that was styled after a viper.
“Yes, Deku, it is good to have you here. I’ve been hearing a lot about you.”
“I’ve heard some hype about you,” Deku said. He couldn’t be eager. He was a street kid. They were expecting a street kid. “I’m guessing you’ve heard I prefer to be a free agent. I’m happy to do some odd jobs, for a fee, but I sure hope you don’t expect me to be signing any membership roster.”
“Ah, yes, I’ve heard. I think I have something that will tempt you, though.”
“So Hella was a test, right, and Gumgum before.”
“Yes,” Sensei said. “Yes, they have interesting quirks, don’t they? They didn’t give you much. You don’t have any labs to support you, but you did an excellent job. You’re incredibly insightful and thorough.”
“Well, I sure hope you don’t expect the street kid to get misty eyed the moment an adult praises him. If you’re looking for a discount on my services, flattery isn’t going to get you anywhere.”
Sensei laughed. “I would hope not. Tell me, Deku, what has Hella told you about my organization?”
“She said you’ve got some pretty lofty goals to topple the hero oligarchy.”
“You sound skeptical,” Sensei said.
“Sure,” Deku said. “I mean, I sure agree that it has to go, hero society has been holding us back for generations. Hero society has destroyed so much in my life. That doesn’t mean you have what it takes to do it, and I’m not getting on a leaky tugboat that’s heading to sink an aircraft carrier.”
“We’ll get to that,” Sensei said. “I’m glad to hear a young man like you considering the reality of the world he lives in. Not many do. Tell me, Deku, when did you first start doubting hero society.”
“School, of course, I saw how they stratified everyone. I saw how they judged everyone. It was all about heroic quirks. We were there to learn, but they cared more about who had hero potential. They thought the only potential someone has is based off of their quirk.
“It just kept compounding, the older I got, people make assumptions about me based on what a piece of paper says about me. Hero society doesn’t want me to succeed in life, because my success is a threat to their hegemony.”
“Yes,” Sensei said. “And you have so much potential, don’t you. I’ve seen that in the work you do. Society doesn’t want a quirkless boy like you to succeed. Society won’t let a quirkless boy like you succeed. I can give you that chance.”
Izuku froze.
“Quirkless?”
“Oh, you’re certainly intelligent enough to fake a mental enhancement quirk,” Sensei said. “But I have been in this game a very very long time Midoriya.”
Nonchalance. It was fine. Midoriya wasn’t a vigilante. He was just a kid who became homeless and got into a bit of light crime.
“Well, congratulations,” Izuku said. “I didn’t think anyone would be digging that up. I’ll admit, I’m impressed. Not impressed enough to join up, of course.”
“Of course,” Sensei said. “I’m curious, though. Deku appeared some time before the tragic death of your mother.”
Izuku shrugged. “Deku helped get me a bit of pocket money in the beginning. I couldn’t go certain places dressed like Midoriya Izuku without getting mugged, so- Deku.”
“The name is very telling. It’s what hero society gave you,” Sensei said.
“Yes,” Izuku said. “I thought it amusing that a little deku was giving advice to villains so they could fuck with heroes some more.”
“Ah, but the pocket money was the important part.”
“Of course,” Izuku said. “But it’s nice to love what you do for work.”
“Tell me, Deku,” Sensei said. “Let us say, that I convinced you that my organization had what it takes to topple hero society. Let us say, just as a hypothetical, that I can convince you that I have a plan, that you could be instrumental in, that would let you reshape the world you want to see. You are here, Deku. I think you want to be convinced. So let’s say I convince you. Would you join us?”
“In an instant,” Izuku said.
“Why?”
He needed more. So why not?
“Because hero society killed my mother,” Deku said. “That man was a product of hero society. That man was raised by hero society to think that his quirk made him better than the people around him. Hero society treated that man like he was all that, because he had a powerful quirk. Hero society taught him that I was something to be ashamed of. When he found out about me, he got angry. He was angry that my mom didn’t warn him that she had a quirkless son. He got mad that my mom wasn’t ashamed to have a quirkless son. He got mad that my mom would defend her quirkless son, that she would love a quirkless son. He got mad so he killed her, because hero society taught him that the ability to wield a powerful quirk is all that matters.
“If you could do something about that, if you could change that, if I though I could change that, I’d do it, I’d make the world a better place for the kids like me who are never going to be given a chance. For the kids with ‘villainous quirks.’ For the kids with ‘weak’ quirks. For all the kids that hero society is going to shoehorn into the life they think they should have. For all the kids that hero society is going to crush under their boot. For all the mothers who love their children regardless of their quirk. For all the kids tossed into a system at birth because they got the wrong number of bones into their foot.
“But you don’t have what it takes, do you? Your quirk’s nice, ‘Sensei.’ I can see how it helps you lead a group like this. But, a feeling of power isn’t actual power. Just because I want to change the world, it doesn’t mean I’m going to throw my life away recklessly.”
“I see I’ve chosen well,” Sensei said.
“I think I’ve chosen, too,” Deku said. “You haven’t given me any reason to join up. You’ve given me nothing but flattery.”
“Yes, perhaps I should show my hand.”
“I seem to be at the mercy of a portal to get out of here, so I suppose you have my time.”
“Tell me, Deku. Do you pay attention to All Might?”
“Of course, he’s the most powerful hero in the world. I spend my days analyzing quirks. Heroes’ too.”
“Have you noticed anything different about him lately?”
Izuku hesitated. It wasn’t like the man probably didn’t already know the answer.
“He’s slowing down,” Deku said. “He has a powerful quirk, but it's not one that makes him immune to the ravages of time.”
“Do you think that’s it? He’s getting old.”
Slowly, Izuku shook his head. “The decline is too rapid. He’s hiding it well, but there’s something wrong with him. Or something happened to him.”
“I happened to him,” Sensei said. He pressed a button on his bedside and the hospital bed he was in started adjusting itself so he was more upright. “And unfortunately, he happened to me. I was so close, then. You made an interesting guess about my quirk, it was perhaps the most likely answer, but I can assure you, there is much more to my power than just a feeling.”
A portal opened up just above Sensei and in an instant Sensei’s arm bulked up to several times its original size. A large steel weight fell from the portal and into his hand and in another instant, Sensei had thrown the weight across the room where it hit the concrete wall and shook the entire room with a thundering crash.
Izuku stood there in shock for a moment. Sensei’s arm returned to normal, and he reclined his bed a bit.
“The good doctor is seeing me on the mend, but All Might only continues to decline.”
“It was you,” Izuku breathed out.
Awe. He wants Awe. He brought the misanthrope Deku in because he thought Deku wanted to be convinced.
“That’s incredible. You hurt All Might. No one’s ever seriously hurt him. The pillar of the hegemony is crumbling.” He looked up at Sensei. “He is the pillar, isn’t he. He’s holding the whole damned thing up, but he’s also its greatest weakness. That was you. You’ve- There’s a chance, isn’t there? So, what, you’re just going to wait for him to fall and then you’ll sweep in to replace him?”
“Do you think that would be sufficient.”
Izuku thought about it. “It would be something, but it wouldn’t be enough. They don’t know the pillar is crumbling. It still looks strong. So if you destroy it-“
“When I destroy him, it will shift the entire world.”
He wanted Izuku vulnerable. Because Deku was the facade that kept the street kid going.
“But- But what could you possibly want from me? You have to have a lot of people. If you need more quirk analysis, I can help make sure every one of your fighters and operatives are using their quirks to their fullest extent. I- Would you let me be useful like that? Do you really think I could be a part of this?”
“I do think you could be a part of this, Deku. I think you could be a big part of this. I have operatives around the world. I have plenty of fighters. I have loyal men and women who believe in what I’m doing. Yet, I have something special for you. I need an operative somewhere that has so far been out of my grasp. A place, I will admit, I covet. I think you have what it takes to succeed. I think you have what it takes to thrive there. I think you have the commitment to survive the indoctrination they will try to push upon you.
“Deku, I want you to infiltrate UA, the center and future of heroics, as a hero student.”
Deku was rather shocked. Deku was supposed to be shocked.
“Sensei,” he filled the word with a respect now that had been mocking earlier. “I think- No, I know I have what it takes to keep up with those deluded children. The problem isn’t that I’m not capable, the problem is that they’ll never let a quirkless kid in through the front doors. Not until we break them down.”
“Sadly, you’re right. You understand the tragedy of hero society so well. They would never give you a chance. They don’t care what you’re capable of. So I’ll just have to give you a quirk.”
Izuku swallowed.
“Give me a quirk?”
“Yes,” Sensei said. “My power and reach is vast. It is within my power to do so. Tell me Deku, if I gave you a quirk, would you join me? Would you become a part of the solution to this world’s horrors?”
“You don’t have to give me anything,” Izuku said. “I will join you.”
He did not want to wind up in some lab getting experimented on. If that was all this was, why hadn’t they just kidnapped him? It was best if they thought he was a willing victim, though. It would give him a better chance to get away.
“But if you gave me a quirk, and I could serve you by infiltrating UA, if I could be a part of this, and be as useful to the cause as possible. Then yes, whatever it takes.”
Izuku might be in over his head. He’d promised Ghost he’d come home.
“I’m so glad,” Sensei said. “From the moment I heard about you, I felt that you would be important to my life’s work. Now, do not panic, this will be quick, but it will not be painless.”
Izuku flinched as a black tendril emerged from Sensei’s outstretched hand and pierced him in the chest. It froze him in place. It sent rivers of fire through his veins. His vision whited out, and he collapsed to the floor, gasping for breath.
“Take all the time you need,” Sensei said.
On trembling arms, Deku pushed himself up. The best he could do was to sit upright, leaning on one arm.
“I don’t understand, Sensei. You have an incredibly powerful muscle augmentation quirk. What did you do to me?”
“That was one of my quirks you saw earlier. It was not my original quirk. I have given you one of the quirks that I had stored. Do you think you could rise now?”
Izuku’s muscles were still shaking, but he managed to get up.
“For real?” Izuku asked. “You gave me a quirk?”
“That is Takeshi San, in the corner. I’d like for you to look at him, and think about switching places with him, and then I’d like for you to clap your hands together.”
There was no way that this could be real.
“I- will I hurt him if I do something wrong?”
“Not at all,” Sensei said. “I think I will let you discover the limits of your new quirk, but for now, I’d like to hear you experience it for the first time.”
Izuku turned to the man standing in the corner. He thought about swapping places with him. He clapped his hands together. Suddenly, he was standing in the corner of the room, and Takeshi was standing by Sensei’s bed. He clapped his hands again and they swapped again. He let his hands fall to his side, and then as fast as he could, he clapped them again. They still swapped places.
Sensei laughed. “I have not tricked you, Deku, though you may test it on Takeshi San as many times as you feel necessary.”
“No,” Izuku said. “I believe you. I- This is incredible. I feel like I’m dreaming. Sensei, thank you. Thank you, I will- I will infiltrate UA. I will do whatever it takes. If you will let me, I will help you topple hero society. Your quirk is incredible. How do you create quirks?”
Sensei laughed again. “I am glad to hear it, Deku, I look forward to working with you. We have much to discuss now. First, though, I should answer your question. Perhaps a demonstration is in order.” He turned his sightless gaze to Takeshi.
“Takeshi San, you swore to serve me faithfully.”
“Yes, Sensei. I have served you loyally, always.”
“You have been embezzling from me,” Sensei said. “The resources that we rely upon became your slush fund.”
“Please, my lord.”
Another black tendril shot out and pierced Takeshi. Takeshi convulsed and fell to the ground, senseless.
“What I give can also be taken away,” Sensei said.
“Is he-”
“He is not dead,” Sensei said. “Kurogiri, send this traitor to the good doctor.”
A portal opened up and Takeshi disappeared.
“Your quirk also came from a traitor, Deku, but I can see that you understand the weight of our mission.”
“I do, Sensei,” Izuku said. An icy pit was forming in his stomach. He’d been given someone else’s quirk somehow.
He was deeply in over his head.