Chapter Text
“Count your blessings,” his grandmother had said to him once. The grandmother he'd met, anyway. If he remembered right, that was her answer when he’d asked why math was so important last year. Did he remember right? It was getting hard to remember… much of anything. So much was buried under a gathering haze. His past was blurry, his present was passing him by much the same way, and his future… what future?
Still. He counted.
Blessing one: the rain had let up a little. It had washed the blood off his hands, and he didn’t seem to be catching a cold. Some part of him numbly wondered why rain made people sick and not baths. Normally, he’d ask his sister if she knew, and if she made it obvious she was making up the answer, he’d ask the grandma he had met.
Blessing two: he’d found a place to rest his legs. So many hours of wandering since he left ho- his hou- his father’s house. Sitting on the concrete ground was so painfully familiar, rancidly reminiscent of the corner of the yard he’d spent so many hours confined to for time-out, but wherever there were proper benches, there would inevitably be other people.
Blessing three: he had a roof over his head, of a sort. A bridge counted as a roof for someone huddling under it, surely. He vaguely remembered a video game he’d played with a monster hiding under a bridge, a reference to some foreign fairy tale. He was alone, but… that didn’t mean there wasn’t a monster there.
Blessing four: he was alone. It was better that way. It was better for everyone that way. He deserved to be alone.
Blessing five: his father was dead. He deserved that, too; they both did. His father deserved to die, and he deserved the joy of doing it. That thought brought a smile to his face. Made the itching stop, too… briefly. As soon as he remembered the others, the itching would come back worse than before.
Five blessings. He had no problem counting that high by that age. Five years old, five deaths, five funerals, five faces burned into his brain, five bodies turned to dust, five fingers that made it happen. Well… six deaths, if he counted poor little Mon. Remembering those warm, black eyes, those cute, perky ears, and how soothing her fur was to the touch made him itch the worst, made him want to hold her again, but he knew he was cursed to never hold anyone or anything again and that he deserved it.
He didn’t know how long he sat under that bridge until blessing four went away. There was an… impact nearby, like boots hitting floor in a platformer but with more crunch and heft. Then there were footsteps rapidly approaching, faster than he’d ever heard anyone run before. The part of him that remembered his father’s fury made his legs shift, prepare to move, to hide. The part of him that remembered all those strangers on the streets, every street, hurrying past him, pointedly ignoring him, shielding their children from him, muttering things about how a hero would help him ever since… no. He stayed right where he was. Whoever it was, they’d do the same as everyone else: leave him behind because they knew that he was cursed from just one look, that he wasn’t worth a second one.
A blur of midnight blue accented with canary yellow, cherry red, and eggshell white passed him. He was right, it seemed. Either they didn’t notice him, or… or they knew, just like everyone else. There was no satisfaction in that fleeting vindication.
Then the sound of a long, grinding noise. Something skidding to a halt. He’d heard something similar when his mother had been cut off in traffic. She’d said some words that she made him swear to never repeat. He never figured out what they even meant.
Then came the footsteps again, not at a superhuman sprint like before. The steps were slow, measured… cautious? Were they scared of him?
“They should be. Everyone should be. Everyone should be scared and just stay away,” he thought. Closest he’d come to conscious clarity since he left ho- his hou- his father’s house.
Then came the shape, the silhouette, the big, bulky, burly blur slowed down to be seen. Midnight blue arms and legs, canary yellow gloves and boots, cherry red and eggshell white accents throughout… even if the costume weren’t iconic the face was unmistakable, every contour chiseled from the face of a mountain, eyes electric blue and glinting under the shadow of his deep brow, shining blond hair slicked back save for twin cowlicks that formed a letter V, teeth like twin slabs of pearl aligned into the most confident smile known to man.
All Might. Greatest hero in Japan’s history – history of the world, as far as he knew or cared.
The part of him that remembered his love of heroes, his hidden fanboy fancy, made his chest swell with excitement. The part of him that remembered what he did… all that excitement inverted in an instant, festered into fear, the warmth of joy replaced with the chill of terror like a cold snap. Yesterday he would’ve been excited, downright ecstatic, at the chance to see All Might without his father knowing. What a difference a few days and six deaths make. The dread spread until it was all he could feel. Did the hero know what he’d done? Had he not been punished enough? Did he deserve worse?
“Hello, young man!” All Might declared more than said. All Might tended to do that. His boisterous bluster was part of his persona. It was at times hard to turn off. “Are you lost?” A rote, positively trite question to buy him time while he assessed the boy sitting under a bridge with his back against the wall. Unwashed hair on the pale side of cyan, bloodshot eyes with irises as red as blood themselves – whoever his parents were, they’d probably be easy to spot. Scar over the right eye still bleeding, bit of blood leaking out of the mouth too, skin around the face and neck dry and cracking under all the grime he was covered in – whoever his parents were, they’d better have a damn good explanation.
The boy’s only response was to stare, stare and struggle to form another coherent thought. All Might was talking to him. All Might… wasn’t mad at him. All Might was smiling, with that look in his eye his grandfather got when inspecting a cut or a scrape. All Might didn’t know what he did? No, that couldn’t be right. The way everyone else looked at him, the way everyone hurried to pass him by, they all had to know!
The kid’s fingers flexed, legs shifted, breathing quickened. Agitation, anxiety, not good. All Might had to keep talking, had to keep the boy grounded. “Breathe, kid. No need to fear. I am here,” All Might said as soothingly as he could, taking the bombast down from an 11 to… well, a 7 – again, it was at times hard to turn off. “What’s your name?” All Might kneeled down, lowered so he no longer loomed, got as close to his eye level as such a giant of a man possibly could, trademark cowlicks bouncing slightly from the motion.
The boy had been told over and over again not to talk to strangers, but… All Might wasn’t a stranger, surely? Everybody knew who All Might was. All the same, he found it so hard to find his voice. It felt like a lifetime ago that he’d said anything. When he did find it, it didn’t… feel the same. It was such a small, scratchy thing, puny and parched. “Tenko,” he whispered, he whimpered in that parched, puny, peculiar voice.
All Might waited a beat for Tenko’s other name, perhaps a clue if Tenko was his given name or his family name. When it became clear the poor thing wouldn’t say another word, All Might’s eyes flitted to the direction that he had been heading, towards the armed robbery in progress he had been going to stop, but… he knew there were some talented heroes in that neighborhood. It always hurt to have to choose between emergencies, and some rational part of him knew that the villain on the loose was a threat to a greater number of lives, but there was no guarantee the boy would stay put and wait for the police even if All Might told him to do so. No, to hell with the ethical arithmetic; leaving this child alone would be… heartless. “Where are your parents, Young Tenko?”
Tenko noticed All Might glancing away, no doubt in disgust just like all the other grownups, but… he’d still stayed. All Might still stayed right there with him. Didn’t shuffle off and leave him like he deserved. Did he really not know? It took him a moment to find his parched, puny, peculiar voice again. It was an unwieldy, unfamiliar thing that he fumbled over his tongue. “At my…” He stopped and gulped, throat every bit as dry on the inside as the outside. “At my father’s house.”
Extremely specific phrasing, All Might noted. Divorced parents, perhaps? It wouldn’t be the first time he’d run into a kid that ran away from arguing guardians. At the very least Tenko hadn’t run off into traffic. That incident was one of All Might’s closer calls. “You’re bleeding, Young Tenko,” he said simply, softly, hoping his hunch was wrong. “How did you get hurt?”
Was he bleeding? That’d explain the stinging on his face. Tenko hadn’t seen his own face for what felt like forever. Did he get hurt at some point?
A sputtering flash of a memory. His father in his over starched dress clothes with his over gelled hair, eyes wide and wild with fear, mouth agape in horror as the earth itself cracked, crumbled, collapsed. “Father, please!” Tenko had screamed, the words echoing in the child’s skull. His father then picked up… picked up something, and… and…
“Stop it, Tenko!”
“Father hit me with the pruning shears.” The words rasped out without his conscious decision to say them, tumbled out of his mouth as if by gravity. The itching came back in full force, his fingers twitching as seething hatred bubbled up under his mental haze.
A lump of lead settled in All Might’s chest, fists clenched so hard he could crush coal into diamond and the diamond into dust. The disbelief in the young boy’s voice, as if he were only just then consciously registering what his father had done, his every word so limp and lifeless… All Might had heard many frightened children over the decades, children caught in natural disasters or the crossfire of a villain fight or the like. There were simple solutions to that: dig them out from the rubble, or take the villain into custody, or resolve whatever threat there was any way he could. Danger gone, child safe – child usually starstruck to see him, which tended to take some of the edge off their trauma. Abused children were not part of his every day, were so far away from his area of expertise. He was a hero, not a social worker. That someone would so viciously strike their own child… he felt the sting of acid rising in his throat, suddenly felt so sick to his stomach.
“Under a bridge is no place for a child to stay,” All Might declared, every ounce of willpower poured into keeping the enraged revulsion from his voice. He extended a hand, palm up, and added, “Come with me, Young-”
Tenko exploded into a flurry of movement. His legs scrambled to push away from All Might, pushed him up against the wall as both his hands dove for his neck and scratched into his crusted, grimy skin, eyes wide with panic as he screamed, “Don’t touch me!”
A sputtering flash of a memory, not for Tenko, but for All Might. A small, scared, scarred, scrambling creature backed into the corner of a ransacked laboratory, pitch black eyes so alien yet filled with unmistakable fear and fury, mouthful of fangs twisted into a snarl, snow white fur stained with blood while oversized paws brandished a taser.
“Don’t touch me!”
All Might recoiled his offered hand, fingers flexing closed. No sudden movements. No threatening gestures. Had to talk Tenko down, calm him down enough to allow All Might to save him. “Young man, please trust me: I won’t hurt you. I won’t let anyone hurt you,” he said as softly and sternly as he could manage, echoing his own words in that ransacked lab so many years ago.
Tenko gasped for breath as he hyperventilated, all the air in the world suddenly not enough to fill his lungs. His fingers scratched and scratched and scratched as he remembered the pained whimper Mon made before she fell apart in chunks in his arms, remembered his sister trying to run away from his cursed touch, remembered his mother trying to embrace him before collapsing into pieces - “Don’t! Touch me!” he sobbed, eyes welling with tears, mucus bubbling out of his nose. “Or you’ll die too…!”
And the last piece of the puzzle clicked into place. All Might didn’t even think any were missing, he was so sure he had a clear picture of divorce and abuse, but… good god. The lump of lead in his chest sank into his shoes and dragged his heart along with it. His trademark smile faltered, but he held it in place. He couldn’t give that kid even the slightest reason to think he was being judged for what happened. “Very well, Young Tenko. I will respect your boundaries,” he relented with a nod. “Will you please follow me, then? I can escort you somewhere safe.”
Tenko finally managed to gulp down some air, slow his breathing somewhat, but it all squeezed out of him with a pained sob. No matter how deep his fingers dug, the itching would, not, stop. “Go,” he gasped with a shudder, burying his head between his knees. “Leave me alone. Better for everyone that way!”
There was a pause, a second of simmering silence filled only by the patter of rain and the weeping of a broken child, the underside of that bridge making every splatter echo around them. Then All Might leaned back with a grunt, sitting cross-legged with his hands on his knees. “Sorry, kid, but you’re not getting rid of me until I know you’re safe. No way, no how.”
All Might had half-expected Tenko to lash out, dive for him in an effort to scare him off, but… no, the little boy just kept crying, tears and snot running down his face as his fingers dug into his own neck.
“I’m at a total impasse here,” All Might thought. “I gave my word I wouldn’t touch him, but he won’t move. I need to get through to him, but I’m not qualified to handle this sort of trauma.”
All Might wanted nothing more than to reach out to hold him, tell him everything would be okay, but… he was accustomed to feeling that way, accustomed to having that urge knowing that acting on it would only hurt the object of his empathy even worse.
…Maybe…
“Young Tenko, I’m going to call a friend of mine who I think can help you. Is that okay?” There was another moment of simmering silence, then another, leaving All Might wondering if the boy could even hear him through the mental morass of his panic attack, but he got an answer after another gasp for air.
“It’s the police, isn’t it?” Tenko murmured through ragged breaths. “I’m going to jail, aren’t I?”
All Might’s jaw set so hard it hurt. It was a miracle his super strength didn’t shatter his own teeth. “He’s a licensed hero, but I promise I am not calling the police, and that you are not going to jail. What happened was an accident.” Tenko was of course too young to stand trial anyway, but he was watching a child drown in a bottomless pit of guilt and he had to say something.
A single, sadistic laugh ripped through Tenko. “Not Father,” he rasped with a shake of his head, his lips curling into a wicked grin of their own accord. “No, no, that wasn’t an accident. Felt good. Made the itching stop. He deserved it.”
Another sputtering flash of a memory for All Might. A memory of vicious giggling, of his ears ringing with cackling laughter, of a creature that had slipped its cage and gotten its oversized paws on a taser just as its captors were in the middle of having their illegal lab raided by Japan’s #1 hero, its solid black eyes sparkling with vengeful delight and fangs flashing with joyous malice as it tried to shock them all to death.
Which is when Tenko’s sadistic smile collapsed into a grieved grimace, the tears flowing again down his cracked skin. “The others… oh, Mon, I’m so sorry…”
All Might took in a deep breath through his nose as he brought his finger up to his earpiece. The kid was clearly in no condition mentally to consent one way or another, and… he knew someone much better suited to this. Made for this very moment, he could even say. “Big Guy to base. Please forward my coordinates to pro hero ‘Nezu.’ Tell him it’s urgent, but not a combat situation, and to bring an adult-sized umbrella. Offer to pay his train fare and a bonus gift basket of exotic cheeses for bothering him on his day off.”
All Might withdrew his finger from his ear as Tenko’s sobbing slowed somewhat, brow furrowed with concentration. “I’ve… never heard of that hero,” he mumbled.
Some of the strain left All Might’s smile, but not much. “He’s relatively new, and he’s an underground hero, not a limelighter like yours truly.” He tilted his head as he dared to tug on a thread of common interest: “You a big fan of heroes, kid?”
Tenko’s gaze softened ever so slightly as he nodded numbly, but his crimson eyes were alight with thought. The sobbing had stopped, though his breathing was still ragged.
“Who’s your favorite? Don’t worry, every answer is valid; I won’t be offended!” he chuckled good-naturedly, shoulders bouncing slightly with laughter. Had to help the kid wind down, relax him to the point Nezu might actually have a chance to get through to him.
Tenko’s eyes darted about shyly as he recoiled on himself, hiding behind his knees with hunched shoulders. A few more seconds of simmering silence, save for the rain. “It’s… you, actually,” he admitted. “The other day at school, we were playing heroes and Mikkun and Tomo said I should be All Might because…” His arms hugged his knees tightly, careful not to touch anything with his fingers. Was that how his quirk worked, All Might wondered? “Because nobody else wanted to play with them. They said I was… nice. Like you.”
The urge to cry was nothing new to All Might. He’d lived a long life; he’d been through much, lost his fair share, and exposure to the miseries of mankind got to him every now and then. He had to put real, superhuman effort into keeping the tears from flowing in that moment. The time he kept the Three Gorges Dam from collapsing was a walk in the park compared to that. “I think your classmates may have been onto something, Young Tenko,” he said, careful to sound as boisterously confident as ever. “Your parents must have been proud of your compassion,” he added without thinking, immediately wishing he could take the words back.
Tenko’s eyes flitted downward, stared at the ground and yet through it at the same time. “I never told my father. If I ever talked about heroes around him, he’d put me in time out in the yard, with the bugs and the rain and my allergies. Or… or hit me…”
There was that feeling again, that enraged revulsion that seethed in All Might’s insides. What possible excuse could a man have to be so… cruel? “Your father isn’t here,” he declared. “You’re allowed to talk about heroes to me all you want.”
Tenko blinked, returning to the present. His eyes shot up to All Might’s face, wide with awe and… more than a little trepidation, like a beaten stray weighing whether to risk taking offered food or bolting.
“I mean it,” All Might said with an emphatic nod, placing his hand over his heart. “Speak freely, young man. I am here… to listen.”
Tenko gulped nervously. His throat felt dry on the inside and out again. A spark of rebellion and relief surged through him, electrifying and altogether terrifying, but he was too tired to examine or ignore it. “O…okay.”
And so, they talked about heroes. Tenko talked, and talked, and talked about heroes, every sentence more comfortable and relaxed and enthusiastic than the last by the slightest of degrees. He talked about who his favorite pro heroes were and why, which pro heroes he thought deserved more popularity to bump them to the Top Ten, which pro heroes he thought were overrated. At most, All Might would provide anecdotes of pro heroes Tenko brought up that he’d worked with personally. For the rest of the conversation, All Might would nod, grunt thoughtfully, and ask for elaboration. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed. An hour? Two? He didn’t dare look at his watch, lest Tenko think he was bored, and truth be told he was far from. He hadn’t sat down to have an hours-long, one-on-one talk with anyone, let alone a fan, in… a decade, at least.
Every now and then a pedestrian would pass, gasp in surprise, and fumble with their phone, but All Might would hold his hand up and say, “No photos or autographs, please, I’m talking with a friend here! Please contact my agency to arrange for photos and autographs at a later date, though. I don’t want you to leave disappointed.” And every time All Might called him a friend, Tenko would pause and get… so tantalizingly close to smiling, but never quite did. The little boy would look the other way whenever such rubberneckers showed up, but All Might doubted the kid missed every nervous, spooked, or alarmed glance sent his way. Tenko would forget every look of sympathy, pity, or compassion he got, given the mountain of self-loathing he was buried under, but the thoughtless ones kept setting All Might’s progress five steps back. It was times like that he wished he had a sidekick that could cordon off the area when needed.
There was a screech of tires on wet pavement as a taxi finally pulled up, the door flung open before the vehicle even came to a complete stop, and All Might knew the cavalry had arrived.
Tenko jumped in his skin at the sound, eyes snapping to the road to see a… large, white mouse in a trench coat, or a small man in a trench coat that looked like a white mouse, clamber backwards out of the car, having to climb out of his seat like a highchair due to his short stature. Or… maybe not a mouse. The tail was long and wiry like a mouse’s, but he’d never seen a mouse with a tail covered in fur like a cat’s.
“I came as fast as I could, All Might!” a high-pitched yet wispy voice blurted as the little mouse man popped open his far-too-large-for-him umbrella. “What’s the emergen-”
Nezu’s question died in his throat when he turned on his heel, obsidian gaze meeting with blood red.
Tenko saw warm, black eyes, round, perky ears, and the luxurious fur of a cute critter that walked and dressed like a man, shoes and slacks and all, marred only by a single, long scar over its right eye.
Nezu saw a child covered in grime on his cracked skin, huddled under a bridge for shelter, dried blood around his scarred mouth and dried tears around the scar over his right eye.
“Glad you could make it, old friend!” All Might graciously greeted, ushering him over with a waving hand. “Come, have a seat! Tenko and I were just talking about the state of the hero chart.”
Nezu’s gaze flitted to All Might, then Tenko, then back again as he stood in the rain. Outwardly, he nodded with a little smile, following his friend’s lead as he casually strolled to the bigger man’s side, pulling his umbrella closed again as he entered the bridge’s shadow. “Worried your new friend here might threaten your place at the top someday?” he quipped, flicking his tail like a whip.
Inwardly, a single thought burned in Nezu’s brain like the glare of an angry sun god, hissing like scalding steam in his skull: “Who the hell is responsible for this?!” Already its light was growing a garden of vicious little inklings in Nezu’s head, ideas of how to ruin the culprit’s life with the full force of the law fresh off the vine. Oh, how he dearly looked forward to bringing them to fruition.
“I’ll be safe from him taking my spot for another ten years, at least!” All Might laughed, patting a spot next to him on the concrete. He glanced Tenko’s way to see the boy tense up, avoid eye contact, hug and hide behind his knees again. Not ideal, but expected in the face of a new face, given the state the kid was in. “Young Tenko, I’d like you to meet Nezu, a teacher at U.A. and my longtime best friend!”
“The pleasure’s all mine,” Nezu said with a flourishing bow, bending at the waist before sitting himself down next to All Might and analyzing Tenko’s state. Faint bruise across the face; struck with a long object. A cane maybe? And the scars… they were done with something sharp, but not particularly so. They were more like rip marks than actual cuts. They were vertical, the positioning was a bit awkward for it to have been a downward strike with a weapon, and what kind of weapon would leave such a wide, shallow, scooping wound?
Nezu’s heart squirmed with fury, paws wringed each other as if clasped around the culprit’s neck, when he’d weeded the improbabilities until a single possibility remained. “Those were done with someone’s fingernails, weren’t they?”
“You teach at U.A.?” Like sunlight piercing the clouds, the sound of childlike wonder in the air scattered Nezu’s grimmer thoughts. Tenko’s voice was full of trepidation and hesitation, his eyes both nervous yet sparkling with awe.
Nezu cleared his throat as he adjusted his tie, ears flicking as they turned a bashful pink. “It’s only my second year, but yes, I’m a homeroom teacher for the hero course.”
Tenko paused, tilting his head, his filthy hair shifting over his face. “What’s your quirk called? ‘Mouse,’ or something?”
Nezu sensed All Might tense next to him. Once upon a time, Nezu would have had little patience for such an invasive question. It certainly exasperated him at first, upon introduction to human society proper. Hi, what’s your name, what do you do for a living, why’re you a freak? It was just… galling to pry so casually, fishing for what amounted to personal medical information, but it was socially acceptable and even expected. He’d adapted, grown accustomed, and overcome. “My quirk is called High Specs,” he cheerily explained, pointing a single digit to his noggin. “My brain thinks faster, remembers better, and overall operates at a far higher level than a human’s. I’m an animal with a quirk, you see.”
This was usually the point where whoever he was talking to would go “oh right, I remember the news saying All Might endorsed your personhood court case back in the day,” and Nezu half-braced for it, but it never came. Come to think of it, there was no way the boy had even been born yet. “Has it really been that long already?” Nezu wondered, internally taking a headcount of the years, recalling every arduous achievement and wretched woe of each with crystal clarity in the space of a single breath. It had indeed been fifteen years since he legally challenged Japan’s government for his right to citizenship, ten years since he’d won it, so… no, Tenko probably never heard of that time in Nezu and All Might’s lives.
Instead Tenko… reached out. Hand extended, fingers spread, just enough for Nezu’s heart to stop dead in a fit of fight-or-flight, but before either he or All Might could tell him otherwise, he wrenched his hand back himself with a gasp. He cradled it to his chest as he recoiled in on himself, tears welling up in his eyes.
“Yes, Tenko?” All Might said patiently. Nezu glanced his way, wondering what the hell he was playing at, but kept his thoughts to himself… for the time being.
There was another beat of simmering silence, save for the rain; the first for Nezu, but All Might had grown accustomed to them by then. “I was going to ask if I could pet you, Nezu-san,” he mumbled, staring at his own hand yet at the same time nothing in particular, “but I can’t touch anyone ever again. I don’t… I don’t want to kill you.” A sob shuddered out of him, tears dripping onto his hand he held like a deadly weapon. “You’re All Might’s friend. You don’t deserve it.”
All Might glanced Nezu’s way. He wasn’t sure what he expected to see; despite knowing the brainiac rat for so long, he still found reading his facial expressions incredibly difficult. But he could see his tail flicking back and forth in thought, no doubt already putting several pieces together.
“Killed someone with his quirk, or at least thinks he did,” Nezu mentally assessed. “Activated by touch, almost certainly. His talk about ‘deserving it’ implies he killed someone who did – the person who attacked him? His distress further implies he killed someone who didn’t ‘deserve it,’ but that’s not necessarily a given; he could just be scared of the consequences.”
“What’s your quirk, Tenko?” Nezu asked, voice as gentle as the question clearly warranted.
Another moment of simmering silence. Then another. Then another. Tenko’s tears flowed down his face anew, chest wracked with pained sobs, before he could finally find the words with that parched, puny, peculiar voice. “I don’t know,” he whispered at last, barely louder than the rain. “I just… everything I touch turns grey and falls apart in chunks.” He spat the word out as if it made him sick, voice trembling as his breathing quickened once more, escalating to hyperventilation as his hands scratched at his neck, the itching stirring under his skin again. “One second I was hugging Mon, a-and the next I’m covered in dust and blood! I thought a villain was trying to k-kill me, so I reached out to Hana, and… and…!”
Nezu wrung his paws again, digits tightly interlocked, eyes and ears drooping in sympathy. The fact that children accidentally killing people with their quirks was on the rise had been a popular topic in scholarly circles for years, so he knew it happened, but… what could he even say to a survivor? What could anyone say? “I’m so sorry, Tenko. Don’t blame yourself. It was an accident, one you’re clearly sorry f-”
“Sorry?” The word shot out of Tenko like a bullet from a gun barrel, drenched in a volatile blend of disbelief and hysteria. “I’m not sorry! I hate them! Hana, mom, grandma, grandpa – all of them! My father would hurt me, over and over again, and they didn’t stop him! They just told me not to cry!” His hands wandered across his face, the itching reaching a fever pitch, forcing him to scratch and scratch and scratch without even an inkling of relief. “They deserved it! I deserve it! They deserved to die, and so do I!”
As pained, and desperate, and brimming with self-loathing as Tenko’s words were… his lips had warped into a blissfully wicked grin as he laughed a cackling laugh, descended into vicious giggles, a frenzied look in his blood red eyes. That was the moment Nezu understood why All Might called him, his gaze fixed on the scar on Tenko’s right eye. “Is this what I looked like that day?” he thought, ears flattened self-consciously. “Is this what I look like whenever I get into a fight?”
Nezu closed his eyes and sighed. “You don’t deserve to die, Tenko.”
“Yes, yes I do,” Tenko rasped out between ragged gasps for air. “Everyone knows it! I can tell by the way they look at me, when they hurry past and leave me alone again!"
“You’re not alone anymore,” All Might said, slightly bowing his head in penance, struggling again not to cry. “We’re here. I’m sorry it took us so long to get here, but we are here and we are not leaving.”
“Are you here,” Tenko spat with a manic laugh, “or am I dreaming?” His wicked grin collapsed at the thought, buckled into an agonized grimace. He shook his head, filthy hair tossed about, his voice lowering into shaky mutters as his gaze hazed over, looking past the heroes in front of him. “No, no, this can’t be real; I’d never be lucky enough to meet All Might.” A ragged sigh through his gritted teeth. “I-I just fell asleep in the yard, that’s it. I’m not a monster, only dreaming I am. Mon’s alive, everyone’s alive, I’m still quirkless – I just need to wake up!” A grunt of pain, a sob of frustration. “But then… then why am I so hungry, why do I hurt so bad?” A ghastly scraping sound, his fingernails across his neck threatening to tear what was left of his skin off. “Unless, u-unless I fell asleep under the bridge. Unless they’re all dead, unless I really killed them, unless I’m just dreaming while I starve to death alone like any monster deserv-”
Tenko’s rambling died in his dried throat when Nezu rose to his feet. As short as the teacher was, it should not have carried the intensity it did. Were Tenko to rise to his feet too, he’d have considerable extra height on the hero. Yet there was something in the rodent’s pitch-black eyes, something in the way he carried himself in that moment, that bore great gravity his entrance had lacked.
Then Nezu took a step forward.
“Don’t… don’t come any closer,” Tenko stuttered, scrambling to push himself against the wall, get to his feet. “Don’t touch me. If you touch me, you’ll-”
Next thing Tenko knew, a pair of short, stubby arms were wrapped tightly around him, oversized paws braced against his back, his face buried in the shoulder of a soaked trench coat. His brain shorted out, his horror at having someone so close to him sparking against a wave of… of relief, of warmth and pressure and connection. Nezu’s fur was shorter than Mon’s, less fluffy and more bristly, tickled a little, smelled faintly of tea and strongly of peppermint. He was about to resist, about to pull away, but when he felt a gentle nuzzle to his cheek, their scars brushing together… Tenko collapsed into the embrace, eyes screwed shut, hands limp at his sides for fear of what damage they might do but weeping freely into the teacher’s shoulder.
“You don’t deserve to die because I’ve been where you are,” Nezu whispered in his ear, his voice sinking down past all the tension and terror into the boy’s brain underneath. “So full of hate and rage that it controlled me, defined me, made me think hate and rage were all I was and all I could ever be.” One of his paws rubbed Tenko’s back in what he hoped was a soothing motion; this was… all a rather new experience for him. “I became so much more thanks to the compassion and patience of others. I know you can, too.”
All Might couldn’t look Nezu in the eye as the former lab rat cast a thankful look his way. He couldn’t hold it back anymore. The most he could do was squeeze his own eyes shut so he could wring the tears out before Tenko noticed.
“Forget what your family told you,” Nezu muttered gently, patting Tenko on the back in, again, what he could only hope was a calming gesture. “You’re allowed to cry. Don’t let anyone tell you differently.”
And so Tenko did. He cried, and cried, and cried until the tears slowed to a trickle, the searing heat of loathing drained out of him, and an… altogether more comfortable warmth filled the void in his chest. It felt like freedom. It felt like safety. It felt like joy. It was all three yet something else altogether, something he’d never truly felt before.
Only Nezu knew for sure how long that hug lasted; one of the many perks of his quirk was a hyper-accurate internal clock. It didn’t help that all that physical contact was sending his own fight-or-flight into overdrive, heart pounding in his ears and breathing shallow, but he could handle it. It’d be no harm done in the long run. The mucus on his shoulder was of course unsanitary, but his trench coat was due for dry cleaning anyway. He may not have been the school counselor, but this… this was his job. This was his calling. In that moment, he never felt more vindicated in his career path.
When Tenko’s tears ran dry at last, Nezu pulled back slightly, oversized paws on his narrow shoulders and looking him in the eye with an inviting smile. “Let’s get you out of the rain, Tenko. Somewhere safe. Your choice.” His ears twitched as he tilted his head, asking, “When was the last time you ate?”
Tenko sniffled, blood red eyes glancing all around Nezu’s face but unable to meet his gaze. "D… dinner. I don't know how many days ago," he mumbled, eyes glazing over as he struggled to remember, failed to remember, how long ago he’d left the blood and chunks of his father and family in the yard. In the absence of an answer a thought crossed his mind, shimmered in his eyes, a thought of childish want that he hesitated to express. “Can we… go get ice cream? Grandpa would sneak me ice cream when I was sad…”
All Might shot to his feet with a vigorous nod or five himself, able to quit his crying in time but not quite getting the tear streaks off his face. “Ice cream is lovely on any summer day, even the rainy ones!”
Nezu nodded and stepped out of Tenko’s way as he pulled his phone from his pocket, deftly stepping around the mention of the family Tenko killed while he was at it. “Do you have any ice cream places you particularly like? I can pull up directions.”
Tenko opened his mouth, started to respond, before closing it again to think it over some more, looking to the side and almost twiddling his fingers before thinking better of it. When he tried again, he said, “There’s one I really like, yeah. I think my father’s house is… o-on the way, though.”
In through the snout. Out through the muzzle. Yeah. That’d be a hurdle. But Nezu had an idea. Nezu always had an idea. “Luckily for us, we have a mutual friend who can leap tall buildings in a single bound, don’t we?” he asked coyly, tilting his head All Might’s way. “Skip the traffic, skip the sights, go straight to dessert. That is, if you’re not afraid of heights, Tenko.”
Tenko emphatically shook his head, dirty hair flopping all over, eyes alight once more with something resembling childlike excitement.
All Might hesitated on reflex, every fiber of his being opposed to further delays or detours – who knew who else might need his help at any given moment? – but one look at Tenko kicked his busybody instincts off the bridge they were sheltered under. He could do this much, at least. Five minutes, tops. “Allow me to welcome you aboard All Might Airlines!” he announced, striking a pose with his fists on his hips while he looked off into the middle distance. “Limited time only, get your tickets while supplies last.”
A shadow of a smile flickered onto Tenko’s face before he gave Nezu the name of the ice cream place. Cheesy as such humor was, the knowledge it still made children smile on their darkest days made All Might’s heart jump and click its heels. Or… at least, almost smile.
All things said and done, the three were out from under the bridge a minute later, the storm fizzled out into a drizzle by then. Nezu’s arms were wrapped around All Might’s neck, and All Might’s arms were wrapped around Tenko’s middle. Thankfully Tenko didn’t question it, presumed it was so there was no risk of him accidentally touching either of them. If the boy had asked for justification, All Might wasn’t confident he’d be clever enough to cover for Nezu’s own condition – though he trusted that the manic mammal himself likely would have. Nezu was quick on his paws like that.
“Whether you want vanilla, chocolate, or cookie dough – clench your butt cheeks, passengers, here we go!” All Might laughed before launching the three of them in the air, laughing harder when Nezu gave him a swat on the ear with his tail for such a bad joke.
The pair were the last thing on Tenko’s mind as they ascended, his brain blanking as the bridge that had been his only shelter for hours shrank from sight like he’d zoomed out of a satellite image. The rooftops were suddenly board game pieces, the cars were toys he could hold in the palm of his hand, the roads just a grid of lines drawn in the dirt with a discarded branch. He felt… tall. Important. Significant. For the first time ever.
Meanwhile, Nezu had his eyes squarely on Tenko, scrutinizing the child for any signs of fright or unease. Thankfully he found none, the little boy gasping in awe and wonder at sight of the city below. Nezu naturally remembered the first time All Might took him “flying” as vividly as every other moment of his life. Running late for his personhood court case, All Might’s offer to ride his private airline… the feeling of bile burning his throat, concrete against his knees, and the sound of his own heartbeat and hyperventilation as soon as they landed… and the joyous rush of the wind in his fur once he got used to it, the weightlessness of the moment up became down, the thrill of the world of man so small at his feet. Going flying again after so long felt… wonderful. All Might’s sponsored scent was even pleasant that day in the present: cinnamon and… myrrh? Interesting combination. Nezu far preferred it to some colognes and perfumes All Might had been paid to promote in the past, especially the rancid reek of certain hypermasculine lifestyle brands.
As Nezu glanced at the ground rushing to meet them, Tenko tensing with a sharp inhale but clearly enjoying the thrill on some level, an ache in Nezu’s chest he’d never consciously acknowledged made up for the past seven years of lost time.
It took a grand total of three hops to reach their destination. Nezu found himself wishing for more – and so did Tenko, who asked meekly to “go again” as children so often did – though Nezu didn’t dare express it. All Might was a busy, busy man with a very important job. Instead, Nezu tittered warmly as he hopped off All Might’s shoulders, the big man himself greeting the mightily bewildered vendor at that hole-in-the-wall ice cream shop and asking for no photography. “Go ahead, Tenko,” Nezu urged, jerking his head to the counter. “Anything you want; I’ll pay for it.”
Tenko’s lips twitched, a smile once again threatening to form, but… it still felt wrong, getting showered with so much generosity after what he’d done. So much to smile about, but every drop of charity watered his growing garden of guilt. All the same, his body craved something to keep him going, so he was too hungry to say no. He bowed at the waist, low as he could go, in silent thanks before scurrying off to ogle the menu. He glanced over his shoulder the whole time to make sure the pair were still there, make sure they didn’t leave him behind like all the other grownups.
Left alone at last, the two heroes watched on with satisfied smiles, watched the latest victim of life’s deepest cruelties pick out something nice for himself, All Might’s arms crossed over his chest and Nezu’s paws in his pockets. Companionable quiet settled over the two before All Might snapped it over his knee. “That was mighty brave of you, Nezu, going in for a hug like that,” he said, his voice low but gilded with pride.
Nezu paused. He knew what All Might meant, but… “It was a calculated risk. As terrified as he was of hurting me, the chances he wouldn’t hug back were in my favor. As much as he warned us away, his desperate loneliness was obvious, so I took the natural first step.”
“If I’d pulled that on you back in the day, you’d make me look like I got into a fight with a cat and lost,” All Might snorted fondly, leaning his head slightly Nezu’s way.
“And that’s before I would even have the chance to plan proper payback,” Nezu snickered, shaking his head with a flick of his tail. “You took the right approach with me, please don’t doubt that. Tenko’s case is similar to mine, but not the same. He feels guilt, while I did not. He killed his abuser, while you stopped me from killing any of mine. He’s a young child craving love, belonging, and understanding, while I was, for all intents and purposes, a three-year-old adult who had no idea what love, belonging, or understanding even were.”
All Might nodded with a grunt, conceding the point. There was a beat before he brought the subtext into the text, outright asked what he really meant by “brave”: “How’s your haphephobia?”
Nezu’s shoulders hunched, tail lashed, fangs grinded together. Ever so slightly. “The fact he was too afraid to hug back helped a lot,” he admitted. “My heart rate is already falling, and my composure is becoming less and less of an act. I’ll be fine.”
All Might flashed his smile Nezu’s way with another nod and a far more satisfied grunt of affirmation, his question at last actually answered. Companionable quiet settled back in between the two before it was Nezu’s turn to dunk its head underwater. “It’s been a long time since we’ve worked together,” he said simply, tilting his head to side-eye the giant.
All Might breathed in through his nose and sighed through his smile. “I know. Sorry, my friend. We haven’t needed a gumshoe for a while; cases have been refreshingly straightforward these days.”
Nezu gave a little hum of acknowledgement. “You also haven’t called in a long time, so Suspect #1 must still be at large.”
A little snarl escaped All Might, his jaw setting and teeth cleching. Suspect #1. Their cutesy little codename for the big one. “When we back him into a corner and we need a battleplan, you’ll be at the head of the table in the war room,” he assured.
“Weekly phone calls like the old days would also be nice. Bringing back monthly teatime would be even better,” Nezu thought but dared not say. All Might was a busy, busy man with a very important job. That job was to fight evil in all its forms as far as the public at large was concerned, but… Suspect #1 took priority. Over everything. Over everyone. Over Nezu. Over even All Might.
“Just try to make the arrest on a weekend,” Nezu sighed wryly with a sly smile and half-lidded eyes. “I can pencil you in between grading mid-terms and writing letters to parents that their sons drilling a hole between the locker rooms does, indeed, count as sexual harassment.”
A single, boisterous laugh shot out of All Might at that, shaking his head with a palm to his temple. “Ah, damn kids. No elaborate traps to teach them a lesson, I hope?”
“I was thinking of keeping it simple this time: a gift basket of exotic cheeses as bait and a brass bar to the back of the neck,” Nezu said, his smile turning sardonically sadistic. “Tell me it’s not inspired!”
All Might laughed behind his fist – really laughed, not his polite, rehearsed laugh meant for an audience. “Just because gift baskets of exotic cheeses work on you doesn’t mean they’ll work on your average Japanese teenager!”
“No accounting for taste,” Nezu playfully pouted, tail flexing behind him. “Maybe if we ever get a French exchange student – though I suspect if we did, I’d be too busy getting bribed with French cheeses to discipline them.”
All Might snickered as he shook his head, his cowlicks flouncing about with the motion. There was a beat, companionable quiet threatening to settle in again before he stomped it underfoot once and for all. “Look, I’d love to catch up more, but-”
“But the good fight never ends,” Nezu cut him off with a nod, tail taking a sweeping swing of repressed agitation. “I can handle Tenko from here. I’ll make him understand that we need to go to the police station, and that he won’t be in trouble.”
All Might’s smile faltered ever so slightly as he shifted his gaze to the boy in question. Tenko was waiting for the elaborate sundae he ordered, patient but antsy, looking nervously around at passersby and still glancing over his shoulder to check the pair was still there. All Might’s heart ached for him all over again. “I… don’t think he’ll do well in the system,” he mumbled. “I can’t imagine how hard it’d be to find a family willing to adopt a child that killed his first one with his quirk. He’s happy now, but that emotional instability didn’t magically disappear. It’s going to linger and make it even harder for him to find a home. We did our part, but… it’s out of our hands now, and I don’t see it ending happily.”
The words felt so unbearably bitter to say, and yet… a relief to get out of his own head. When was the last time All Might had even come close to admitting anything resembling pessimism to anyone? When was the last time All Might was around someone he felt comfortable voicing negativity to? Since the last time he’d had tea with Nezu, at least, and… damn, how many years had passed since then? Nezu no doubt knew off the top of his head, but All Might didn’t dare ask. He didn’t have the time; bringing it up would just… rub salt in an awfully old wound.
Nezu hummed again, letting the sound linger in the air a mite longer. “I am well aware, and I’ve been thinking about that.”
All Might’s eyebrows shot up, head snapping to the side to look at Nezu fully. “You… have a plan, don’t you?”
Nezu tittered as he cocked his hip one way and flicked his tail the other, fangs flashing in the rain as he coyly tilted his head. “My dearest All Might, when don’t I have a plan?”
Normally, All Might would not even begin to try to unravel one of Nezu’s plots. They were often labyrinthine and involved legal maneuvering planned months ahead of time to keep his manipulation and intimidation from running afoul of the law. That time? That time it was obvious. “You’re not thinking of…?”
“Less ‘thinking’ and more ‘already decided,’” Nezu corrected with a nod, grin shifting into a thoughtful little smile.
All Might’s heart swelled with pride in his friend as his brow furrowed in concern. “You’d need to quit smoking.”
“I’ve been meaning to anyway,” Nezu said with a casual shrug.
“Didn’t you also turn the second bedroom in your apartment into a study?” All Might asked.
“I’ll turn it back. The things in my study won’t be in storage forever. I’ll get the hang of market manipulation sooner or later, and once I do, I’ll be upgrading to someplace much nicer,” Nezu explained, like stock brokering was an everyday skill like riding a bike.
All Might’s eyes narrowed. “And your haphephobia?”
Nezu looked Tenko’s way meaningfully, sizing him up and once more lingering on the scar over his right eye. “It seems to me he’s developed haphephobia that mirrors my own. He’s deathly afraid of touching others, while I’m deathly afraid of others touching me. In all likelihood, our dysfunctions will mesh quite nicely.” He looked to All Might again with a small nod and added, “Please, you get going. I know what I’m doing.”
All Might… felt a twinge of doubt. “Been a while since I’ve felt that way, at least about you,” he mulled over in his mind, returning Nezu’s hopeful stare. “How many years has it been since you needed anyone's help, anyone's advice, let alone mine? You’ve come a long way since that day,” he knew before he consciously admitted it, his mind’s eye wandering to how they met, remembering how Nezu was once a terrified, blood-soaked, naked lab rat who’d never tasted kindness, who’d hated the human race with all the fervor in his little rodent heart. “Honestly, who you were and who you’ve become… it’s hard to imagine they’re both the same person.” It wasn’t a sputtering flash so much as a stream, those memories of the process that brought Nezu to the point he enjoyed now. The snarling scowls over teatime when either of them had been wronged, the wicked glee when an investigation was going right… the way he became in a fight, the way the light in his eyes faded from pure animal adrenaline while malevolent intelligence remained. “Is who you were still in there? Could this bring him back?” The smallest of pauses, the slightest split second of hesitation. “Maybe. But if anyone, absolutely anyone, knows the roads to take from the darkest past to a bright future, it’s you.”
So, All Might simply nodded. “I’ll have faith that you do; you’ve more than earned my trust. Please take care – of yourself and him.”
All Might leapt away to his next caper while Nezu, pro hero, newest and youngest-ever teacher at U.A., sole non-human citizen of Japan, approached the ice cream stand to pay for Tenko’s decadent post-trauma treat, wondering the whole time how the title “single father” might feel next to all the others.
