Chapter Text
Shouta was beyond exhausted.
Oh how he now longed for his student days. At the time, he’d thought tests and practicals were the most tiring things that he would ever have to deal with. Then it was internships and licensing exams. And finally entering the field as a fully realized underground hero and becoming one of the best. Shouta had the skills; he’d always known that he would succeed, but constantly proving it to everyone else wore him down more than anything else.
But then he met Midoriya and the kid disrupted his life like a stone thrown at a calm lake. Shouta learned that the very foundation of the society he’d sworn his life to protect was built on dead bodies and bloody sand. He discovered just how limited his understanding of the world really was and the sheer scope of the fight he had somehow stumbled into. Of course, there was absolutely no training in the universe that would have prepared him for aliens.
Extraterrestrial life.
‘Interdimensional beings beyond our understanding.’
If the confirmation of their existence hadn’t been dumped directly into his brain by the coral that had covered the Jaku battlefield, Shouta wouldn’t have believed it. The gossamer threads of gold covered every inch of the city, from one destroyed building to the next, spread outwards from the hospital like a weed until the hollow bones of Jaku City glowed with starlight.
They want to live inside of us, like a disease.
Shouta had ignored a lot of inconsistencies in Midoriya’s behavior; it was either not his business or something that he’d be informed of when it became relevant. As a teacher, Shouta had the mentality that you force your help on students that weren’t ready to accept it. He had thought that Midoriya would realize that Shouta was there to support him and when he built up enough trust, the kid would clue him in on what was going on in his life.
As he stood in front of the half-destroyed remains of the kid’s apartment building, Shouta realized that, as a hero, he really should have pushed harder. Apparently ‘no more secrets’ was too loose a promise to get the kid to confide in him. Though he wasn’t sure what his reaction would have been if Midoriya had come to him the very first day and blurted out the whole ugly truth. Probably not well without proof, which he’s now seen with his own eyes.
Shouta’s journey up the decrepit stairwell was almost over before it began when the entire structure shook under an immense weight. He stopped, sighed, and turned back around to glare at his newest headache. “Stay. You can’t follow me.”
A soft whine, accompanied by the worst case of puppy eyes he’d ever seen answered him. It just might have worked if the look had been on any other creature besides a genetically modified monster that looked more like some tormented kid’s drawing than an actual dog. The glowing eyes placed directly in its visible brain was almost too much to look at. The nomu had refused to leave his side after Jaku and Shouta didn’t have the heart—or, more accurately, the knowledge—to put the thing down, so he was stuck with it. At least the cats liked the new addition for some god-awful reason.
“ Stay ,” he emphasized one more time. The nomu squatted back on its all too human haunches with another pitiful whine.
Shouta took a cautious step backwards, then another when the beast remained seated. Not wishing to push his luck, Shouta turned around and ran up the broken stairs while he could. The temperament of a monster dog could not be counted on; he didn’t trust the nomu to not come running up the moment he was out of sight.
During his first visit to the apartment building after the disaster that was Kamino, Shouta would have called the building neglected, but well-loved. Now it was just straight up abandoned. Most places were, since All For One cracked prisons across the country open like an egg and let villains free to the winds. Its sister buildings in the apartment complex had been reduced to piles of rubble last night in a fight that had no one to witness it. They needed to clear Midoriya’s old apartment before it was also wiped off the map.
After merging, or eating, or whatever his student did with the other creature discovered in the ruins of Jaku General Hospital, Typhon had gone off on his own into the chaos that was the city. He attacked any and all villains that had the unfortunate luck to wander into his sights. No one knew where the kid was sleeping or eating; if he even was considering the fact that he’s only been observed in his more monstrous forms.
Midoriya simply appeared, fought to absolute victory, and vanished before heroes could arrive on the scene.
It was easy enough to assume he was overworking himself. Midoriya needed a reminder that the best heroes worked with each other, not gallivanted across the city as a pseudo-vigilante. Human or something else, something other, he was still just a child; the weight of the world didn’t sit solely on his shoulders. He’d also clearly forgotten that despite the world-breaking revelation of his origins, Izuku was still Shouta’s responsibility.
He needed to be found as soon as possible, brought back to safety willingly or not, before someone worse than a group of worried heroes dragged him away first.
Hence Shouta’s visit to Midoriya’s childhood apartment. The door was, surprisingly, the only one not kicked in and looted in the chaos of the recent weeks. It unlocked easily, opened on silent hinges, and no sound came from within. So why was it so hard for him to take that first step over the threshold? Maybe if Shouta never confirmed it was empty, then he could just assume the kid was coming here every night, sleeping in his own bed, surrounded by good memories of home instead of out on the street.
Shouta squashed the illogical hope in his chest with a solid step into the apartment. It was dusty, yet well-maintained since Inko Midoriya’s continued disappearance. The mail was neatly stacked on the counter, the furniture was all whole and looked the same as his last visit. He tried the first door he came to and was incredibly surprised when the lights worked. One, because obviously there’d been no one to pay the bill for months. And two, that the lines were maintained enough to even carry power. Rolling blackouts had been a problem since Gigantomachia’s rampage.
The room in front of him was obviously once, or perhaps still, Izuku’s bedroom. Hero posters and knickknacks littered most surfaces, only missing the ones that Shouta knew were currently hanging in his dorm room. Instead of a bed, a large hammock split the room in two, to hang underneath a fairly accurate mural of stars that had been meticulously painted on the ceiling. Shouta flicked the light off and was unsurprised when it glowed through the darkness.
This was a child’s room. A child fighting alone in a war that many adults had run from.
Shouta shut the door before his chest could hurt anymore than it already did. A faint, almost scratching or skittering sound came from the living room. He immediately ran for the room and stopped dead in the middle. Despite holding his breath and straining his ears to listen, all Shouta heard was the pounding of his own heart in his chest. The room was empty, because of course it was; the entire apartment building and neighborhood was empty!
Midoriya wasn’t here.
Shouta flopped himself back onto the couch with a sigh. Searching for his student was constantly chasing crumbs of information and flinching at shadows. Night recon was the worst, when any and all movement in the dark could be Midoriya. That stupid glimmer of hope in his chest always sparked, every single time, only to be extinguished by reality.
Midoriya was never there.
He sighed again and checked the time on his phone—Endeavor’s press conference should have just started now. Shouta looked down to the low table, where two identical remotes sat side by side, neither of which had anything to indicate which one worked. With a lazy shrug, he reached forward and grabbed the one closest to him. The television turned on the moment he hit the button, bathing the room in the bright light of a local news station.
It was shocking just how less gloomy the living room appeared with some kind of light source. The apartment had been pitch dark after Kamino, too. At the time, Shouta had figured that his student had been suffering a migraine from the effects of quirk exhaustion, but maybe the Midoriya family just preferred the dark.
The announcement came moments later: Number One Hero Endeavor was to speak to the nation, on all channels currently still in operation. Shouta leaned back and tossed the remote on the empty table as the man took the stage.
It was of course important to keep the public informed, comfort them in the wake of Jaku and the wave of heroic retirement that followed, but Shouta was more than happy that it wasn’t him up there. Endeavor was walking a tightrope where the slightest slip could spell the real end to a society that was already crumbling under their feet. Complete social upheaval had been dodged thanks to the turn-coat villain Gentle Criminal, but the threat of Dabi was still out there somewhere with his damning video.
Now, Endeavor would be the one releasing that information himself in an effort to soften the blow, to show the public that he was taking responsibility for his son’s actions, to be transparent. Shouta agreed that it wasn’t logical to cover it up; it’d just make it worse when the League of Villains showed back up out of whatever hole they’d squirreled themselves away in. But it still felt like swinging a hammer at a cracked mirror.
The public wanted assurance, not accountability. Not yet; not when villains still roamed the streets and heroes couldn’t even stem the tide.
______________________________________
‘With so much of the workforce injured or retiring, how are heroes responding to the waves of villains running rampant through the streets?’
‘The full weight of the Endeavor Agency has been deployed across the country. We are strategically spreading resources as needed. The most experienced heroes are being stationed in the most damaged areas of Jaku City and—’
‘And everyone else just gets students?! Do we not deserve actual heroes?!’
“Ouch,” Yo said to himself as he watched the press conference from his phone. “What are we, chopped liver?”
Tatami dropped the broken sign that she’d been dragging out of the road with a sign of her own. “It’s nothing we ain’t heard before.” She kicked the plastic to get it fully out of the way, missed, and fell backwards to end up on the sidewalk herself. “This whole city suuuucks!”
“Yeah,” Yo agreed. He knew attitudes towards heroes had soured drastically and should have expected some pushback from civilians that had been forced to defend themselves from villains. But it still sucked to be met with sneers when he just wanted to help people!
‘Hero students in their last year are as well-trained as first year sidekicks. They are being deployed as escorts to protected shelters.’
Definitely not the ringing endorsement Yo was looking for, but hey, he’ll take what he could get at this point. Better than the boot to the ass he got from the regular idiots that thought they were safe huddled under some broken overpass.
‘How do you respond to the viral claim that this is a land-grab scheme by international investment developers?’
‘I will not dignify that idiocy with a response.’
Yo snorted as Beast Jeanist stood from the table and began to outline the security improvements implemented throughout the country. Conspiracy theories had exploded in popularity and it was right of Endeavor to squash that kind of talk instead of potentially validating it. Still, Yo couldn’t help but wish that he’d said something rousing and heroic, something Yo could have parroted back to civilians.
Maybe he should go back after nightfall, collapse the building right out from under their feet. Then they might realize just how stupid—
A blade shot out from nowhere, slicing Yo’s arm from elbow to wrist before it bounced off his armor and knocked the phone right out of his hand. “Blood!” a crazed voice yelled, from seemingly out of the sky, “Show me your blood!”
Grand lept backwards as more blades appeared to stab deep into the ground. He hit a crumbling wall hard enough to knock the breath from his lungs and was subsequently surrounded on all sides by metal. Somewhere outside of the cage of knives he now found himself in, Tatami screamed, but Grand trusted her to be quick enough with her quirk to avoid decapitation.
Hopefully.
“Our town’s already torn apart!”
“No more!!”
“We will defend ourselves!”
Grand cursed as the sound of running feet and civilian battlecries reached his ears. They were completely willing to give it their all to protect their shitty little town with unlicensed tech that they barely knew how to use. Reckless, foolish, idiots. Didn’t they realize that their ‘all’ included their lives?
“Flesh…a bounty of meat!”
Grand slammed his hand down on the wall next to him and activated his quirk. The weakened mortar instantly collapsed from the vibrations, bringing the entire overpass crashing down across the street. The blades shattered instantly to throw shards of metal through the thick cloud of dust that swirled all around him. It was only the movement of said debris that allowed Grand to duck underneath the blade that shot right for his head.
“Yo!” Tatami’s voice was clear but farther away than it should have been. Good, at least she wouldn’t be caught up in this fight.
“I’m fine!” Another blade appeared out of the clearing dust, but Grand saw it in time to jump left. Unfortunately for him, it suddenly bent at a sharp angle and sliced a thin line of red across his back. “Evacuate the civilians! I’ll hold him off!”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course! If there’s anything heroes oughta have at this point, it's a rock hard spirit that refuses to bend or break!”
Finally the air cleared enough to expose the villain that stood at the far end of the street. Intelligence had been distributed on every single villain that had escaped in the recent series of jailbreaks. It was a lot, almost too many to remember without reference, but Moonfish stood out above the rest. He was especially dangerous, both for his unpredictable psychosis and his deadly quirk. But his knives were just metal, not bone, which meant Tremoring Earth would be enough to shatter them completely.
Lucky for him, the death-row inmate wasn’t known to work well with others; Moonfish was far more likely to kill any villain that actually tried to help him. It shouldn’t be a problem for him to go all out to take Moonfish down, even if it paralyzed him, since there wouldn’t be any allies that might come crawling out of the woodwork to take Grand down. He just needed to time it right, to shatter the blades before they turned him into Swiss Cheese.
Simple.
Stupid.
“Who’s ready for a root canal?” The line was even dumber than his plan and Yo really hoped that they weren’t his last words.
“Blood…FREAZY!” A solid wall of blades shot out of the villain’s mouth at an extreme speed and Grand’s fingers twitched in preparation. He needed to wait until they almost killed him to act, else—
Yo took a step back and stumbled over his dropped phone, where Endeavor’s press release was still playing. He fell, cursing his luck to die in this shithole of a town his entire way to the ground.
‘Is there any validity to the reports of a monster fighting alongside the heroes?’
The ground shook under the force of the roar that echoed through the air. Fear, true, unadulterated fear froze Yo in place on his knees. A massive shape, vaguely humanoid, but covered in dark static that swirled and flesh that writhed landed between the hero and villain. Yo slid across the ground from the force and only barely managed to protect his face from the wave of shattered blades that swept over him.
‘Typhon is a hero student with a work-study attachment to the Endeavor Agency.’
The creature of smoke and static roared again. The air was heavy with the smell of petrichor and Yo found it hard to breathe under the sudden pressure on his chest. What the fuck was this thing? Moonfish, seemingly unaffected by the fear that kept Yo pinned to the floor, sent his blades out again, but the creature’s meaty fist struck first. The villain flew comically far in the air, only to slam into the side of a building with a sickening crunch.
‘He is operating within the regulations of his provisional license.’
The monster grabbed a fist full of rubble and villain in a tightly closed fist. A branching web of sharp metal exploded from its flesh, which rained a thick black ichor onto the street. It roared again, but it sounded more like rage than pain as it echoed through the broken city. Yo could only watch in stunned silence as the human-like hand slammed down flat hard enough to crack the cement in several feet.
When it raised back up, Moonfish was nothing more than a red smear on the ground.
The creature, monster, thing that seemed straight out of a nightmare suddenly folded in on itself, again and again, contorting in space and shrinking until a bright golden light blinded Yo. When it faded, the Nightmare was gone.
‘Typhon is a hero.’
______________________________________
‘Will you be applying for international aid?’
‘Yes.’
“Impertent man,” All For One mused as he relaxed in his chair, “All Might would never allow himself to be so rude.”
‘While we could reassure the public that Japan is strong enough to face this threat alone, it is in the best interest of the people to seek aid. This is a necessary patch to maintain the integrity of the entire weave.’
Best Jeanist, a grand hero if it wasn’t for his attachment to such a threadbare gimmick. All For One almost regretted not finishing him off at Kamino. An unwavering smile in the face of an uncertain future, that was what the nation needed, not bad puns.
‘We want to end this quickly, to minimize both damage and loss of life. I’m used to working alone, but I’m even more well known for my speed.’
Hawks, the man so desperate to escape his villainous roots that he danced along the edges of society to a dark song. Such a shame that the Hero Public Safety Commission got to him first. The poor little canary covered in soot; his reputation was more than just damaged, it was downright ruined. He was a far call from the shining pillar of hope the world needed as the times grew hard.
“Is that my target?”
“No, my dear, that is your replacement.” All For One didn’t bother turning his head. Her emotions bloomed as vivid as a painting across his otherwise empty vision. Bright anger, with undertones of grief, and resignation that dotted the canvas like blood. “This is your target.”
All of her emotions were instantly smothered under a heavy weight; she was ‘locked-in’ as Tomura would say. “Young.” There was not a ripple to be found in either her voice or mind.
“So were you.”
A shuffle of clothing and barely audible footsteps were her acceptance. She was a professional of course, there was no doubt in All For One’s mind that she would accomplish her task. With that thorn in his side otherwise occupied, he could turn his attention to more… personal matters.
Like forcing his wayward student to heel.
______________________________________
‘Before we dismiss, I have one more personal topic to share.’
On the edge of a city long destroyed and abandoned, in the hollow shell of an apartment that Geten swore he’d never return to, the paltry remains of the Paranormal Liberation Front watched the conference on a cracked television. His leaders deserved better than this absolute shithole, but with their bank accounts frozen and their safe houses exposed, this was all the iceman had to offer: his own childhood home.
The well of meritocracy and filth that Re-Destro had lifted him up from, too ignored to even have an address. The Himura only cared about blood when it was thick and strong. Geten’s was diluted with weakness; no one had ever wanted him, not even his parents. Especially his parents.
The arm around his shoulder squeezed almost too tight as a woman took the stage. Her tiny form should have looked ridiculous next to Endeavor’s bulk, but her eyes were cold steel.
‘The Todoroki family stands together against our eldest son Touya, the villain known as Dabi.’
Flames sparked blindingly bright in the darkness of the apartment and pain ignited as the hand in his own clenched tight. Every instinct beaten into his skin screamed at him to pull away, but Geten knew well that love often burned. He held Dabi just as tight; perhaps their skin would fuse together into one, never to be separated again.
“Why is she taking his side?”
The reporters on screen pushed in as close to the stage as the police would allow, each of them yelling out questions until it was just one wall of noise. Both the hero and the housewife raised their hands for peace as an official statement began to scroll on the side of the screen. It detailed quirk notes, doctor’s visits, incident reports, and finally the evidence that led them to believe that their eldest had died by his own quirk years ago.
They assured the public that they were not aware of his survival and subsequent turn to villainy. They took responsibility for his actions. They promised that he would be caught and would not be shielded from the consequences of his crimes.
Geten burned as he stared into the hard grey eyes that were so similar to his own.
“Why do they always take his side?!”