The Midday After Hosu

Sir Nighteye pinched the bridge of his nose, sighing through pursed lips, eyes boring down on the blond teen that sat in front of him. "Why did you not feel the need to tell us any of this information after the Sports Festival?" the hero frustratingly asked Mirio.

"I didn't know it was One For All then," he defended himself, recounting not only his fight in Hosu but the small incident that cost him a place in the Sports Festival weeks prior. Flanking the hero on either side of the couch was the old Gran Torino and a deflated All-Might. "I thought maybe it was just someone with a projection playing a prank. I hadn't felt anything weird with One For All then; the first time was last night."

"That's a lie."

The blond teen averted his attention from his trio of mentors to the corner of the room. The giant man made of smoke leaned against the wall, staring down at Mirio from across the way. "You've been using my quirk for weeks," the ghost only Mirio could hear continued. "It alerted you to the fight between the quirkless boy and the explosive child. Then again when All For One's men attacked your school. Tonight was the third instance. You're growing accustomed to it."

Seriously, Mirio chided in his head, he was telling him this now? He thought One For All only passed down the strength it stockpiled — raw power like All-Might showed. Since when has he had access to more quirks?

His predecessor turned his head around, loosely studying the area Mirio was staring off into. "Is he still here?" All-Might asked the teen. "Has he said something more?"

Mirio stared at the man a second longer. "Could you use any of the past users' quirks before?" he asked the number one hero.

"No." The skeletal man shook his head. "Since my master passed it to me, I've only ever had access to the super strength she inherited. All I could do was make it stronger; that and the ability to pass it on. I could never use her Float."

"And she didn't have her master's Smokescreen, either," Gran Torino added, gnawing on a takoyaki. The short old man tapped his cane on the floor. "Shimura had thought something similar, but nothing ever came of her attempts to use his quirk too. Didn't think I'd live to see a third generation to begin with, much less see him become an octopus."

"Fifth wouldn't like that comparison," the ghostly man commented idly.

All-Might leaned towards Mirio. "This man you see — are the tentacles his quirk?"

"No," the man answered aloud, and Mirio parroted his voice for the others to hear. "Blackwhip was Fifth's. You've been using my Danger Sense."

"Blackwhip and Danger Sense?" Nighteye repeated, tapping along his chin and typing away on his phone. "Tsukauchi could pull up quirk record history for us, see if he can find matching identities to their users. I've not heard of any heroes having those in the past. What of their names?"

"Well he keeps calling the other guy Fifth," Mirio noted, turning his eyes back to the past user of One For All. "I don't think he knows him."

The ghost shook his head in confirmation. "I knew Fifth for a few minutes, before I passed the power on to him," he clarified. "Never did ask for his name. Being conscious again, I've still not seen him. But I can sense him here, in the quirk. Maybe the rest will wake up like I have." His distant eyes twitched to the back of the future seer's head. "And my name will not be on any of those records, if I did my job right in wiping my history clean. I spent the better half of my life in isolation and hiding, cultivating this power. It's taken almost a century to reach you." He turned his gaze back to Mirio. "I am sorry."

Mirio sighed. "No, he doesn't," he shared with the heroes. "And he says he wiped his own history clean, so there shouldn't be any records of him either. But the quirks' names should be enough, right?"

Sir didn't look pleased. "That's if we assume they stayed in Japan. We'll only have records so far as our country's borders, and most public records and articles won't have the names of quirks penned. Having their own names outright would widen our search. Unless he could access records all over the world, somewhere should still have it."

"This means you'll probably get the others' quirks too," Gran Torino added. "Six generations of quirk users holding this power, between the oaf and the first. Unless that oral story Shimura gave us ended up as one big failure of the game of telephone, the first holder only had the passing-on quirk you lot have already made use of. That leaves two other users whose quirks we don't know about, unless we can trace back the users to find out who they were and what quirks they had before they spring up unannounced. Whatever changed in One For All to give you their quirks has now quintupled your training."

"Well that's a good thing, right?" Miro smiled and spun a finger in the air. "It's unexpected, sure, but if I can sense danger, have extra arms, and even fly around a bit like your master could" — he pointed at All-Might on that detail — "then there's that much more in my hands to help people and stop All For One. I'll have to practice with them for a while but I'll make use of them in no time, I promise! I'll even get to use your own quirk too, though we should probably make me a baggier suit so it doesn't tear when I grow big!" He laughed to punctuate his joke on the Symbol of Peace's wardrobe, but the man had looked away embarrassedly while the short old man on the other side of the couch glared at him past Nighteye still typing away on his phone.

"That's not what I meant," the nameless ghost spoke up, sliding away from the wall and hovering across the room. Mirio watched him contemplate as he rested at the other corner of the room, staring blankly at the wall instead of facing him; it reminded the teen of Amajiki, his friend aversive to attention and crowds. He wondered if they were maybe related— "One For All is killing you."

All trains of thought halted, his body running rigid as he stared at the man.

"With you," the ghost continued, head rising slowly, "One For All has proven to stockpile everything it has touched; our strength; our quirks; even our consciousness has passed on and begun to show their faces in you." He craned his neck around, eyes frowning in Mirio's direction. "So too has the curse of death that took my life. Our quirks hurt you to use, don't they?"

Yes, the teen answered in his own head, rubbing his wrists subconsciously. When he used Blackwhip, it felt like his skin had ruptured open for it to escape. And his head had rung and nauseated him even just slightly before he had run off to Hosu; the fault of Danger Sense, he guessed.

"The power will be soon to follow," the ghost informed him. "It took fifteen years for the strength I grew to retaliate against my body" — he ran a thumb down the lightning bolt scars that streaked past his right eye — "deteriorating me young. Three more before I died just before I turned forty. For how much farther it has grown in the past one hundred years, it may begin to kill you sooner. This quirk is no longer yours to cultivate, it is now your time bomb. For inheriting that from me, I am sorry."

Mirio let out panted breath as the man's words sunk into his ears, and the phantom pain in his wrists dug deeper into his skin. That couldn't be right, could it? All-Might was only in critical condition because of the wound he suffered, not because of the quirk. One For All was just supposed to be a strength stockpiler; how could it carry on a curse for a century without ever affecting another during then?

"What's wrong, my boy?" the Symbol of Peace asked softly, leaning in towards the blond teen with eyes glistening in concern. "What has he said now?"

The teenager pulsed his mouth noiselessly like a fish, eyes glazing over the three heroes and their expressions growing in concern. "He says" — he licked his lips in between breaths — "One For All is killing me. Like it killed him." Of course all three men reacted as expected, taken aback and aghast. If he could look any more regretful, the ghost in the corner managed it. "The more I use it, the faster it'll kill me. I just thought it was growing pains…"

Sir Nighteye stood up quickly, spinning around and glaring at the corner of the room. "You're lying," he hissed.

"He, um" — Mirio pointed opposite the way the hero was looking — "is in the other corner."

"I don't care where he's standing." The tall man spun slowly on his heels, fixing the fiery glare behind his glasses at every point in the room. "That's a lie. One For All is a quirk that stockpiles power; raw strength. I can understand applying the same to your quirks. I do not accept it carrying down some generation-skipping illness. Yagi has had it for decades; it never happened with him! You expect me to believe it now?"

"It does not matter what you believe," the ghost told the ears that could not hear him. "Only what happened and what will. The cruelty of reality does not hinge itself on our feelings."

"It's a shit joke, that's what it is," the old man agreed with the younger hero. "The power never bothered Shimura all her life, and she used it quite frequently for almost ten years. If it's because you can use their quirks, then I doubt the fool is telling you he could use them before. The hell kind of evidence does he have? He's been dead for how many decades and comes back just to tell you you're gonna die? Tell your ghost he can shove it where the sun don't shine, none of us are gonna believe that…Toshi?"

Mirio turned his attention around to follow Gran Torino's gaze, his eyes landing on All-Might. The gaunt hero sat stiff as a board in his seat, mouth still hanging open catching the tears that rolled out of his wide husks of eyes. His chest heaved with each breath he took, lanky fingers clutching the legs of his pants — all while his body faced the teenage boy.

His voice came out as a hush. "Why?"

Mirio rose from his seat slowly. "Why what?"

The Symbol of Peace looked up slowly to the teen's face. "Why do I feel his guilt?"

Then it hit the boy like a tidal wave, as a sensation rolled over him that chilled his body to its core. Guilt, regret, sorrow — Mirio could feel his heart tug and convulse in an overflow of emotions. Yet he knew none of them were his; it was not his guilt over withholding the truth from his teachers; it was not his regret for using the powers he had to save lives; it was not his sorrow knowing he was to die.

And the perpetrator continued to stand still in the corner of the room.

Mirio marched over without another second wasted, stomping his feet in front of the ghost and glaring up at him. "Tell me how to stop it." The past user of One For All blinked down at him. "You had three years left in your life after you knew what was happening. You must have figured out how to stop it from killing you. You have to know, so tell me!"

The nameless ghost did not flinch, even as the teen stabbed his finger through his chest of smoke.

"If you're so confident it's your fault then help me figure it out! Lemillion will not fall because of an ancient curse or whatever it is! I will not stop being a hero just because you think there's something wrong! If you thought you would scare me into giving up, then you don't know why I accepted this quirk! So tell me how to avoid it!"

"There is no avoiding it," the ghost grumbled out harshly, his head leaning forward to hang over Mirio. "I died because I could not stop it — because there was no stopping it. This power will kill you so long as you use it. You wish to survive? You want to be a hero? You want to live up to the promise you vowed to your mother when you were seven, and save one million lives? Then give it up. Give up One For All."

The Night After Hosu

The nightlife of Kyoto prefecture was beautiful from so high between the clouds and the ground, lights overlapping and streaking through the streets. Hard to appreciate it when Ochako's mind was still so focused elsewhere.

"Are you sure we should be this high up?" she asked Hawks above her, guiding them along in the night sky; or as best she could look up with her new helmet and neck piece. "How can we tell anything apart this far away?"

"It's all good," the hero reassured her through their earpieces. A red feather zipped around her head. "I've got the little guys scouting ahead for us, so they'll let me know when something comes up. Better than zipping you up and down like a rollercoaster. No good being sick on the job."

She thanked him for that silently, watching the feather that orbited her head. They could sense vibrations in the air, and he could loosely control them even separated from his wings. He used them as an example for gear she could make, little orbital devices she could fit into her theme. Spending the past few days running through ideas with the young hero had made little leeway, but practicing with the extra weight of suited gear was a good start.

But even on patrol, she could not take her mind off the attack on Hosu and her friends.

"Let's take a stop, why don't we?" Hawks suddenly suggested, and their flight descended to the rooftops. The hero lowered her atop a small building first, landing beside her and taking a quick step to the ledge overlooking the street. Ochako took the moment of pause to take off her helmet and disengage her quirk, as the extra weight to her boots and cuffs returned to pull her down.

As she found a place to sit down and take off her cuffs, the teenager looked to the blond man and asked, "Is everything all right, sir?"

He waved a hand lazily over his wings, still watching the traffic below. "I told you, just Hawks works!" he shouted over his shoulder. "And nothing's wrong! You were just muttering."

Ochako paused half-way through removing her other cuff. A little feather flittered over her head. "I thought they couldn't hear sounds," she repeated embarrassedly.

He spun around, flashing her a big smile. "They can't. But I can. You get used to the wind after a time and it stops being so deafening."

"Really?"

"No. Your earpiece is still broadcasting."

She blushed, immediately fiddling with the device as the hero laughed away. "I'm sorry for distracting you—"

"It's fine," he waved off her worry, stepping in to stand over her. He stretched out one of his wings, covering over her head as the feather shot back into place. "I'm usually thinking about what I'll have for dinner on the job. The mind focuses on what matters to us. Right now, that's your friends' safety. Nothing to apologize for."

"Thank you sir," she offered earnestly, ignoring the click of his tongue attempting to correct her. "It's…are we unable to see them?"

"Well, two of them are already gone by now; I did ask the hospital. Only the Ingenium kid is still in the doctors' care, and apparently they don't have visiting hours open yet. There isn't much for you to go see. At the very least, you know they all made it out relatively okay." Good news as it was, it did little to settle her stomach. She and the rest of their group chat had been pinged by Midoriya late on patrols or at their agencies with his location, and she was confused as to why he was in Hosu when his work study was supposed to be in Saitama. Hawks decided they weren't to answer it, as those messages were supposed to be through an official channel agencies put in to call for help, so since it was just a text and in a town Iida was studying in, maybe he sent it to them all accidentally.

When the news hit her the next morning along with Ojiro's text assuring their class the three of them were fine, it stuck with her for the rest of the day. Through only unofficial news coverage online did she learn how they had encountered the Hero Killer, fought monsters like the one that attacked their school, and how all three of her friends were rushed away with wounds. Their teacher had to step in and explain to them all in email how their friends were recovering and the plan going forward for them, as Midoriya went home, Ojiro returned to his agency and Iida would stay in the hospital. And it was on his orders that they were not to go and see their friends unless it was on official hero work under their supervising heroes.

"I feel bad not being there for them," she admitted softly. "Midoriya texted us where they were and I didn't go to help them."

"That's on me," Hawks shifted the blame with a shrug. "Misunderstood the message and advised you against it. We aren't close enough to get the calls in for aid in Hosu. Had I known, I would have taken you right away to help."

"And I can't even go to see them now. Aren't friends supposed to be there for each other when they need them?"

"Sounds like it's time for your next lesson." Hawks dropped down on his butt beside her, leaning back on his arms. "Heroics is a dangerous line of work, for us and the people we protect. We split ourselves up around the country — sometimes around the globe — and we don't always get to talk with each other every day. That's life, adulthood, bullshit; whatever works for ya. We don't always work beside the people we know and care about, so you'll always hear after-the-fact about what troubles they get into and how hurt they get. When that time comes, you're always given a choice; be with them or stay out in the field. Should you be there by their side while they recover, or do you continue to patrol and fight in their place so they don't have to worry about their own absence?"

Ochako pondered for a moment, gently gnawing on her thumbnail. "Stay out on patrol?" she answered hesitantly.

"I'm not giving you a right-or-wrong question. This is a choice that's up to you, in the end, even if you graduate as a sidekick instead of a pro. You're all aiming to be heroes together; to be out on these streets and defend the innocent, right? Do you think your friends are so egotistical that they expect everyone they know to drop their plans and be by their side?" The brunette shook her head feverishly. "Then know they're proud of you for doing the good work when you can. Reaching out with a call or a text might seem like it's too little, but heroes appreciate each other for sticking together to keep our country safe, and I don't think your friends are any different. Besides, it's how I reach out to Mirko every time she has to go in for the cuts and bruises she accumulates on the job. I go see her in person and I run the risk of getting my head Lunar Arc'ed. Different circumstances, I know, but still. You do what you think is right for them."

Ochako giggled along with exaggerated movements of getting kicked in the neck, kicking her feet across the rooftop as weight lifted itself away. "'What I think is right for them?'" she muttered softly. "Midoriya gets himself into trouble all the time, Iida nearly lost his brother, and Ojiro is usually who I'd be leaning on when things like this happened. They've both been through a lot and he's been there to help pick them up before. I want to be helpful to them too. I just don't think I know how…"

The young man beside her eyed her wordlessly for a few seconds, before cranking his neck around the other way to look over his shoulder, and then back around to peer over the other. "Not to plant any ideas leaning one way or another," he whispered to her, leaning in closer, "but a little birdie told me someone else was in Hosu last night. Someone your friends might have seen. Someone else causing trouble. Someone who got away. Not big enough to be mentioned in the press, I guess, but enough that people are looking for him. Best guess is that he ran from the city for as much distance as he could make. He could be anywhere — he could be here."

Ochako's eyes widened with realization at his words, Hawk's coy smile egging on her conviction.

"What say you and I help your friends in finding our guy?"

Two Mornings After Hosu

Rikiya Yotsubashi thought himself as a respectable man. He was the president of his company, leader of his movement, and all-around the public face of his message and dream for quirk freedom. Of course, his business life and political life were well disconnected enough that no outsider would know of his connection to the Meta Liberation Movement, but he treated both parties with complete interest of equal measure. Detnerat would advance through its connections with heroes and development agencies designing gear to compliment all meta abilities it could contract with, while the Movement would continue to bear down in protest and petition for the everyday man to have legal approval of quirk use with the appropriate gear — provided by his company, of course. The only way forward on both fronts was to hold his head high and approach the system in the most legal manner that he could get by without ever stirring conflict. Proper men were respected, and he would not lose that respect.

But to prove to Japan that quirk freedom mattered, he would have to push his hand in silencing another avenue.

As he entered his meeting room, his five commanders shot up from their chairs in attention, bowing their heads in greeting as he did the same and walked up to the head of the table. "Yosai, Kizuki, Chikazoku, Hanabata, and Himura, " he greeted them each, flanking to his left and right, motioning for them to sit again as he remained on his feet. "A pleasure you all could join me today. We will have a guest join us shortly, Yo Kenshin; Hanabata, you've met him before." The black haired man to his right nodded, the loose strand of hair bobbing with the motion. "Before we begin, is anyone unaware of why we are here today? Anyone who would like to remind the others of why I've called this meeting?"

The blue-skinned woman on his left spun her chair around, propping an arm against the table and pointing a coy smile at Rikiya. "Anyone here would be foolish to forget about the Hero Killer's arrest so suddenly," Kizuki Chitose answered. "The highest-profile arrest of the last three years. A serial killer with a larger body count than that crazy Moonfish, brought in by one of our own. A shame we're only playing second fiddle to the story Corellia Times published first."

Chikazoku Tomoyasu beside her huffed, blowing at the line of hair bangs hanging over his eyes while he lightly tapped away at his laptop. "Our leader couldn't care less about a meta user causing unwanted havoc," he grumbled. "Men like Stain are worthless examples to argue against, not for, and his situation in Hosu doesn't help our leader's message spread any further. He isn't even the problem with it."

"On the right track, you two are," Rikiya congratulated them, gently clapping his hands together. "You are right, Kizuki; the story of the Hero Killer's detainment is what brings us here today. But Chikazoku is correct in acknowledging that Stain is not of our concern, at least not today. That honor—" He was cut off by the phone sitting in front of him ringing to life, and he quickly silenced it with a button. "Yes, Amaya?"

"Yo Kenshin is here to see you, sir," the young woman's voice informed him from the other end of the line. "He's brought his trainee with him."

"Splendid!" he cheered. "Please send our hero friend right up, and escort his student to the waiting room on the second floor; there should still be leftovers from last night, they're free to treat themselves." He hung up with another button, cleared his throat, and gazed over the room again. "As I was saying, the Hero Killer is not of our interest. Midoriya Izuku is."

The commanders of his table balked at the name, all eclipsed by the scoff Himura Geten puffed out, glaring at the blue-skinned woman across from him. "The press is eating up that blank's image, Curious. Your Hero Killer piece is going to be drowned out by mediocrity."

"Yuei's quirkless student will fade away into obscurity by the end of the year," Kizuki waved off the white-haired man. "His story has no legs to stand on; the attention is being carried by the presence of greater news stories around him that the kid involves himself in by happenstance. The attack on the school wasn't for him, the monsters in Hosu were on the other side of the city and the kid ran into the Hero Killer on his own will just because he was in the area. Even the Hosu police's report glazes over his involvement. The kid will be old news before the hero chart updates."

"Regardless" — Rikiya interrupted, snapping their mouths shut in an instant — "of our opinions, the fact of the matter is that the official report calls him by his hero name, civilians bore witness to the child in costume on patrol and have put two-and-two together that a quirkless child, in some manner, stood down the Hero Killer. That notion alone" — the door to the room opened with a squeak, and in walked a red-and-white spandex-wearing hero — "was a detail meant to be avoided from the very beginning. Thank you for joining us today, Kick Back."

The martial arts hero plopped down in the chair at the opposite end of the long table, reclining against the thin cushions. "Sorry I'm late," he shouted across the room with a smile. "Was tryna plan out a surprise for the kid to celebrate bringing down Stain. Caught me in the middle of a shower. What did I miss?"

Yosai Shirukami adjusted his glasses, twitched his mustache, and informed the hero, "We were just talking about the official police report regarding the events in Hosu two nights ago. A story you were entrusted to oversee. Could you not have dressed formally before you arrived? And not bring your student when we are discussing such matters?"

"As if everyone doesn't know you're where I get my gear from," Yo answered cheekily. "I'm a valued customer, and you're my valued supplier; no reason to hide it. And the kid's my trainee for his work study; got no one back at the agency to watch over him in my place. As far as he knows, this is just a boring meeting about my contract; I've never seen a boy get uninterested faster in my life."

Hanabata Koku leaned over the table. "Have you considered approaching him?" he asked Yo. "For Detnerat and the Meta Liberation Movement. Another connection in Yuei would benefit our leader's growth and our influence into the school. Especially after the incident that cost us a contract with one of the first-year students."

"Eh, his mutation isn't much, just a large tail and some extra strength and flexibility. Wears the most boring gi you could ever draw with a crayon. And I don't think he'd be much interested in the Movement." Yo met Rikiya's eyes across the table, his smile flatlining. "The boy thinks the blank is his friend."

The room bristled at his words, none more than Rikiya himself, eyes hardening as his forehead grew tense. He could feel his Stress flare up, wrapping around the sockets of his eyes like his many-generations-removed predecessor Destro would wear his meta ability. The fight for equal rights for quirks started with him, before decades later it would evolve into the normalization of quirks in every aspect of life outside of heroics. And the quirkless continued to pester, generations on.

"Alright, alright," Yo waved them off, throwing his hands around. "Don't wave off the kid because he has some misplaced pity on the quirkless brat. The kid knows how to throw his weight around; he'd be an excellent fighter when he's older. He's not some lost cause."

"He might as well be if he's protecting that husk," Geten leered back, the glare he fixed on the hero visible under his light-blue bangs. "So long as there are quirkless in this country, the Hero Commission has its ammunition for an establishment that protects people for them. Until the weak are weeded out, that won't change. Had you done as you were told, our leader's goal would be within arm's reach! We would be one step closer to freeing the people from the hero's control! You have a responsibility—"

"Let us address the problem child, for now," Rikiya interrupted, silencing the white-haired man and pointing a finger at the hero across the room. "You were instructed to remove the boy from the story; ensure his name never made it to the paper, hero alias and all."

"I did," Yo defended himself, hands raised into the air on either side of his serious-turned expression. "Or…tried. Brought the story to the chief of police first thing in the morning, would have written the kid as a footnote, unnamed and escorting some lost child in the mess from the rest of the city's chaos. Got Native and Manual to agree to it, too. But the little runt was studying under Silverfang. Old hero? Greatest martial artist alive today? He rewrote the story and got the chief to side with him; argued the blank should have been mentioned for fighting the Hero Killer. I was lucky the mutt agreed to cut that at the very least. And I still got the credit for my kid getting in the final blow."

Kizuki twisted in her seat, drumming fingers along her chin. "Isn't that the old hero who retired?" she questioned the hero. "Are you letting your respect for your elders get in the way of your job, Yo Kenshin?"

"Last I checked I was the one out there doing yours, princess," he challenged back with a scoff. "I push any harder on shit like this and it hurts my career; rough intolerance isn't exactly a crowd pleaser, despite what everyone on Twitter would get you to think, and especially not from a hero like me. But I got to walk away with my own ammunition, against the school and that old fart." He crossed his arms over the table, beaming a snarl of a smile Rikiya's way. "Did you know Silverfang was under direct orders from the police — endorsed by the Commission — to stay out of Hosu for the rest of the week? Yuei contracts with a man willing to act against the Public Safety Commission's orders and drags a quirkless kid with him into a city housing a serial killer and under siege from a bunch of mutant villains. That's a bit incompetent, isn't it? Even one of their other kids went after the Hero Killer of his own volition; my kid wouldn't listen to me, either. How are we supposed to entrust the safety of the general public when Yuei can't train their kids properly and hand off the weakest of humankind to an old man willing to throw him in with the sharks? That would be a damning piece of information for the people to hear, I would think."

Not untrue, Rikiya noted as he took a deep breath, his quirk receding beneath his skin. He turned to his blue-skinned reporter. Beside her, Chikazoku popped in one of his earbuds and focused intently on his computer. "Would a story like that have any grounds to make progress?"

Kizuki glared at the pro hero across the room for another moment before turning to her boss. "It's possible. I couldn't be direct about it with his information without alerting the Commission of a mole willing to share secrets, but I can implicate enough about the blank's presence in town, and the Ingenium kid with him being entrusted to tackle the Hero Killer without the supervision of a licensed hero. Would throw hot water under the school for letting their students partake in studies under agencies without proper training or vetting of their enrollment. Same for the heroes pushing kids to do their job; what stops them from enlisting a civilian with the right meta ability but no formal training or gear to help them? Theoretically, it would give Detnerat leeway in providing gear on a school contract than a selection of students; I've heard of other support industries wavering their support for the school if it means attaching their gear to a kid who dies on the job, bad image of their work. And it would help the Movement in branching the company out with civilian equipment attuned to their meta abilities, if we continue to push on public safety via appropriate gear. Theoretically, of course."

"The people must simply hear the words of our leader and the hero system's inability to protect and serve in times of dire crisis, no?" Hanabata suggested. "Japan has seen a decline in villain attacks and the tragedies one can cause since All-Might returned from his debut in America, and we've not had an incident on the scale of the disaster six years ago in Toshima-ku since. But in the span of a month, criminals with manpower in the hundreds break into the most revered school in the country, and are seen again in Hosu bringing destruction and bloodshed on an even greater scale with those purple mutants under their control. The people are growing too reliant on the heroes to protect them, and the general public is put at risk at the government's decision to not require proper training and mastery of one's meta ability for their own protection. This would create the perfect opening for the Movement to step in and voice itself once more. It would substantially help our leader's message." He tapped a thumb to his forehead, pointing his index finger to the ceiling. "For All Meta Kind."

The other commanders and the hero in the room copied his chant, while Rikiya closed his eyes and rolled his head back in thought. Yuei and the heroes had put themselves in a dangerous position to allow such incompetence to commence under their watch, even under their own choices. The biggest enemy to the Meta Liberation Movement was the Hero Commission and every feather under its wings, but he had just the information to begin plucking it from the sky, piece by piece. He could use this.

He clapped his hands together suddenly, beaming a large smile at the table of his employees. "What a wonderful workshop this has become! Kizuki, you have the rest of the day to write this; I want your report posted and printed first thing in the morning. Ensure it circulates online quickly. And begin drafting an immediate response if the Commission releases a statement pushing back. Hanabata, I need a script for a public address under Detnerat's name; we are connected with the school enough to be heard on the matter. Oversee Kizuki's story to transform it. We will record it first thing in the morning and share it later in the afternoon—"

"Might I suggest a live conference, sir?" Yosai spoke up, rising from his chair respectfully. "A prerecorded message would imply a staged and controlled image posted too soon alongside Kizuki's story; it could feel premeditated. A live address in the evening would reach our intended audience at the appropriate time, and would paint you more professionally in the eyes of those new to you. At the very least we can stir public support outside the Movement to back your words."

"Push for a television station," Rikiya insisted with a snap of his fingers. "You're right; an older audience of voters for such propositions would be more likely to hear us out. Avoid a studio audience, behind me or the camera; I want this formal and clean. Himura, Yo; spread the word of my address tomorrow morning. Word of mouth from our supporters will cement ourselves in the public's schedule for their evening television time. Chikazoku…" His voice trailed away as he looked to his board member distracted from him, staring agape at his computer screen. Kizuki leaned in to view with him, and her curious demeanor immediately shifted into shock as she plucked the man's other earbud for herself. "Skeptic. What is it?"

The dark-haired man fell back in his chair with an uneasy sigh, the purple-haired woman beside him pulling the laptop closer to her while her lips curled into a smile. "Sorry, leader," the lanky man addressed him. "But it seems the story's changed."

Two Nights After Hosu

"Because we're quirkless!" the silver-haired man shouted, facing down the fallen green-haired teen. "We stick up for each other. Have each other's backs. That's how we get by."

Denki watched the same man walk circles around Midoriya, arguing with the Hero Killer who barely snuck in from the corner of the screen. He hadn't planned to watch it — he had just finished helping the Pussycats organize paperwork for their office's reconstruction and was really looking forward to being in bed — but it was hard to scroll past it on social media when everyone was talking about it. Harder to leave it be when so many mentioned 'the quirkless.' Even harder to stop it from replaying a seventh time.

"I don't expect shit from you!" The silver-haired man silenced Stain's incoherent voice with a roar, jabbing a thumb into his own chest. "I know what I am! I know what the tests said when I was five, I know what they said when I was sixteen! I…am a goddamn miracle!" A laugh broke free from his lips, arms thrown into the air like he scored a goal. "Not a quirk factor in my bones and I can wipe the floor with you bastards like no tomorrow! Don't think it's real? Well guess what? I'm not the only one anymore!"

It was a hard video to stomach yet hard to turn away from; captivating as much as it was distressing. He still struggled to believe Midoriya's story — being super strong but also genetically quirkless — even if all his other friends were going along with it. It was logically impossible to the blond teen, after everything he had learned about the quirkless years of humanity in middle school. He even remembered how the population had shifted from quirkless dominance to quirked dominance for nearly the past two centuries, and how Japan today was split eighty to twenty in favor of the quirked populous. Midoriya was the first person he ever met to admit they were quirkless verbally. Mathematically, it checked out there would be a second quirkless person he'd know about somewhere in his life.

Iida, from the opposite corner of the screen from the Hero Killer, had moved and spoke but most of his words were ineligible to the camera that captured the argument from above. What it did pick up, however, was the silver-haired man shouting back at him. "And how far does that protection go, huh? Does it extend its hand to the kid with no quirk when a car's on top of him? Does it stand up for him when he gets cornered in an alley for being what he is? Does it punish the bastards who tell him to kill himself for simply existing? Where's your goddamn heroism, kid?! All I see is a bunch of color-coded pansies laughing it up on the news, eating all the praise people give them for slapping some guy around on T.V.!"

The video continued to play on his phone, as Midoriya spoke up and began to argue with the other quirkless man. Believe the green-teen's tale, Denki could not; but understand why he looked so worried and spoke so honestly and hid his truth for so long, he could. Because Denki remembered how the other boys in middle school made fun of people like that; what names they came up with and discovered online for people without quirks; what they thought their lives were worth; and his own shame for keeping his head down and walking away without even reporting them. If Midoriya really did believe he was quirkless, he had every good reason to hide it — if Bakugou was anything like Denki's old classmates, that would be the only reason Midoriya ever needed.

Yet when push came to shove — when the nameless man shares that he and Midoriya have met before, when both men put their foot down against each other's argument, when they revealed it was him and not Stain who put Iida's brother in the hospital, and when the man listed each and every way the green-haired boy had been harassed for who he was — Midoriya defended them. Midoriya defended Iida, Yaoyorozu, their friends, their classmates, their school; even Denki, wherever he fit in that list. Midoriya had come to trust them all to share it, even if it made no sense and he had been lying about it for weeks and had shown the strongest raw strength out of anyone in their class. He trusted them because he thought they were good enough people not to hate him for it.

And that pissed off the man in front of him

"I am the only person who cares about you!" he shouted in Midoriya's face, jabbing a finger in the teenager's chest. "You think Yuei isn't studying your every move? You think the heroes will step in to protect you when you need it? You think they'd let you into their ranks freely? You think Bang brought you to Hosu because of Stain? You think us being here is a fucking coincidence?!"

That was where the video ended, sitting idly on the screen with the replay button blinking as if to entice Denki to do it again. He couldn't bring himself to let it play out a ninth time, but left the faintly glowing screen alone to illuminate the darkness of the guest room. He didn't need to go back through scrolling the posts to know people were still talking about it, as they had been all afternoon and into the evening. Of course the official report Ojiro had directed the class to about the night had been a lie proven by the video's existence; of course people were trying to argue it was all staged and was some attempt to gain attention for a boy the report hadn't mentioned much of in the end; of course there were going to be people throwing the blame on Midoriya for the lies, and Denki didn't trust himself not to reply to them with something crass and rude, no matter if he thought they deserved it.

Instead, after much deliberation, he slid through his apps until he was in his contacts. He skipped the class's group chat lighting up with alerts, focused only on Midoriya's name, and opened up their empty text history. He sent the video first by itself, watching the little preview bubble up on his phone above the link; then he sent the following message, "Are you alright?"

It took minutes for him to wait, putting down his phone and leaving his hands to drum nervously in his lap. Denki didn't trust himself not to blabber about it to the class group chat about it; for a recorded argument that sounded so personal, his brain was at least smart enough to tell him that was a bad idea. He almost forgot why his phone pinged at him, until the name on the message

- Doing better.

- Where did you find this?

"Twitter," the blond teen muttered as he typed. "Saw it in my feed." His thumbs tapped idly on the side of the screen, his tongue pressing against his teeth; he reached out but didn't know what he wanted to say? "They didn't mention him in the news."

- No

- They didn't

- I'm sorry we lied to you again, but I was hoping to tell you and Uraraka and Yaoyorozu about it when we saw each other at school. I can't talk about the story or what happened, but I wanted to tell you guys about him.

- Has anyone else seen this?

"Sero follows the same people I do. He's probably seen it by now. I haven't checked the class chat to see if they're talking about it yet."

"Yuei needs to be held accountable!"

A voice Denki did not recognize echoed faintly on the other side of his bedroom door, drawing his attention away from his phone. He stuffed the device in the pocket of his pajamas, creaking the door open to access the dark hallway, and tip-toeing quietly across the hall to where light peaked out from another room. Ragdoll and Tiger were sitting on the sofa in their agency's breakroom, their back to the door and Denki curled around its corner so the television in front of them could blast his face with light too. The teenager did not recognize the man displayed on screen by his striped suit, pointed nose, or massive forehead split by his widow's peak. He didn't recognize the name, Yotsubashi Rikiya, as it flashed on the bottom of the screen either, or the title of president to some company he had never heard of before.

It wasn't the best introduction Denki could have to the man.

"Many of us are still confused and exhausted from this year's Sports Festival ceremony," the man blabbered on, the crowd behind him ad-libbing incoherent shouts of support and agreement. "And once more Yuei has given us nothing but confusion, wondering what they have been teaching their students. This new Ingenium did not take one step forward in apprehending either of the criminals before him; one, the mass serial killer known as Stain, and the other the man truly responsible for the near-death experience the prior Ingenium went through! Both standing in front of a child with no quirk! Does Yuei not teach their students to defend the weak and protect those who cannot protect themselves? Not to mention the decision to permit guardianship of said child to the care of a washed-up hero willing to drag him into the fray of battle prefectures away from his agency! Does this school not know who it entrusts children to with their lives? But, what is most concerning — it is not the unnamed man in this video being hidden by the police. It is not this man's claim that he, too, is quirkless. It is that Midoriya Izuku knows this man! This was not the first meeting of two men sharing the same genome; they may have known each other for years! Yuei's first enrolled, quirkless, hero-course student is friends with a villain!"

The volume of the angry, roaring crowd behind the man covered up what the two rescue heroes in front of Denki were muttering to each other, still unaware of his presence behind them. He didn't stand around long enough until they did, turning heel back to his guest room as he fished out his phone, a message from Ashido lighting his screen with, "Have you guys seen the news?"

"I think they know," he texted Midoriya back directly.

- I know

Three Mornings After Hosu

The room the boss slept in was neat and tidy, as Kai meticulously kept it. Dusted shelves, a swept and mopped floor, and space around the bed his boss lay comatose in. The machine beside Kai pumped air through the man's lungs as he slept, while the other on the opposite side pinged softly as his beating heart. It was not a somber sight, nor a sorrowful display, but a simple reminder to the young man.

A reminder of the purpose of his life.

"The gift your daughter bore bears great fruit to us," he whispered quietly to the unconscious man he sat beside, his surgical mask pulled down for his voice to reach his ears. "Eri's quirk is hard to control, but easy to study; her factor can be syphoned and is simple to reconstruct. Our new alliance with the mutants of Alderaan Warf will provide us with the technology to mass-produce the cure her quirk can become. It's by no means perfect — its effects are not permanent — but time is on our side. Glory awaits on the horizon. I will bring an end to the terrorist-reign of heroes to an end with your granddaughter's quirk. I will return the yakuza to its rightful place of power over Japan." He set his gloved hand gently atop the old man's. "When you wake, it will be to the dawn of a reformed society under your thumb, as it had belonged to your great-grandfather before you, and his father before him, and on through the generations. Japan will be yours, as you deserve. Rest well, and dream of your prosperity."

He locked the door behind him as he left, protected by a code only he had access too. As he walked down the short hall leading away from the boss' room, he placed his fingertips against the opposite wall and overhauled the stone into an opening several meters long, one that led into a much larger hallway. With a hand placed on the wall as he passed through, the hole closed behind him, sealing the pathway naturally until it was a smooth wall of stone once more. He followed the larger hallway to its own dead end, opening its face to a hallway of metal he reconstructed with his quirk after stepping in. The boss deserved his privacy from the workings of the yakuza as he slept; a means of keeping him safe from any foolish mistakes or the illnesses of their subordinates. Kai would awake the man when it was his time to reclaim control.

He followed the well-ventilated and polished walkway to a door at its end, opening it up to a rustic yet tidy office study. A small plague doctor doll sat atop the desk, kicking its stubby feet over the edge and tapping its hands on its knees. "How's the old man holding up?" it asked in a high-pitched, nasally voice.

Instead of replying, Kai grabbed the doll by the scruff of its neck, plucked it off the table, ignored its indignant cries, and carried it like a sack of rocks as he walked through the door on the other side of the office. "Why are you in costume, Irinaka?" he asked the doll. "We aren't expecting visitors."

"I ain't a real toy, ya know!" the doll shouted at him, pounding its cloth fists into the side of his leg harmlessly. "You could talk to me like a normal person! Normal people don't carry others around like luggage!"

Kai lifted the doll to his eye-level, staring at the holes in its mask with an unbothered expression. "And it's also not your turn to watch Eri today. Why are you in this body?"

The doll crossed its arms and huffed. "I was going to tell you before you oh so rudely interrupted me and forgot there's a person inside here!" It emphasized its words by jabbing a thumb into its chest. "But our new partner decided to run the risk of calling us while you were checking up on the old man. I didn't have the time to put him through our answering machine so I could alter my voice, so I went with Plan B. Apparently some of their friends nearly got killed in the mess with those freaks in Hosu, so it put his manpower down and he can't deliver his side of the deal for another two weeks." Kai sighed, releasing the doll from his grip and letting it fall to the ground with a soft impact but a sharp yelp. "I can't feel pain but I can still get motion sickness, jackass!"

"Has he been compromised?" the dark-haired man asked over the doll's shout, continuing through the hall while the toy rushed to keep up with him. "If the police find word of his shipments and our connection, he'll lose his value to us."

"Heroes haven't bothered him worth a damn," the doll reported. "They're still handling the fallout and the news about the mess, so no one's focused on his business and supplies. He can still deliver to us, but he says he needs the time to do it with what hands he has remaining. Even offered not to charge us extra for the round trips. Still our cheapest option for business."

"Ensure that he isn't a day late beyond that," Kai ordered the doll. "Send him a message: first day of next month, we'll send him the location of the exchange and we'll meet the day after. No more telecommunication. We'll use personnel to talk."

"Got it, boss. Also, Kurono mentioned it to me; it seems the quirkless kid is making headlines again."

Kai nodded, opening a door that led to a staircase. "Yes, I saw. Supposedly Midoriya met another quirkless that night in Hosu. The vultures circle their prey once more, hit pieces in their talons. The man may be of interest to us, given he is on the side opposed to heroics. Our cure may entice him."

"Heard the people are calling for Yuei to expel the kid for knowing him," Irinaka continued over the man's words. The leader of the yakuza took his ascension up the steps slowly, as the small doll hopped each step alongside him. "Think they'll go through with it?"

"It's unlikely. As far as that video shows, he and Midoriya aren't on good terms; they're opposed to one-another's way of thinking. He knows the man but he has no allegiance with him. There is little for the school to punish him for." He pushed open the hatch at the top of the staircase, blasting himself in the eyes with sun rays and climbing out into the backyard of his estate. "Even for the official report's lies, they included Midoriya as a beneficial figure to their heroes for protecting Eri. The school is likely to continue supporting his endeavor. It will play to our benefit."

So long as the kid continued to be a hero, Kai mused, the world would continue to trifle itself with his presence. After enough tiring weeks into months of scathing words and harassment, support for the teen's cause would eventually rise to challenge it. The boy would prove his worth enough in people's hearts to be warranted and worth their time. And the man who claimed himself quirkless that night in Hosu would spur on people with his own words — people bandwagoning onto the injustices of society and its class system built on the back of quirks. Both parties would be useful to him and his cure for the quirked, seeping into both with his serum to push words into actions and bring about the change they demanded and he sought.

"A bonus that it will stifle Eri's incessant whining," Kai added, opening the back door into the house, allowing the doll to hobble in around his feet. "The boy stays a hero, the girl stays muted, and our cure continues production smoothly. It is in our best interest the school continues to inhabit Midoriya, even if convincing is necessary."

Awaiting him and the doll in the kitchenette was a pretty-faced man with gray hair molded into an arrow pointing downwards on the right side of his face, stirring coffee into cups. The man took notice of their presence quickly, setting the cups gently on the table as Kai took a seat and hoisted the doll onto the table. "Good morning, sir," the man greeted him with a bow. "I hear our new associates are making a mess of things already."

Kai scoffed, lowering his mask again to sip his light roast. "Irinaka handled it, it seems. Am I ensured those fools kept it short enough not to be traced to us?" He directed his eyes pointily at the doll.

"The man at least knew to use a burner," the doll explained. "Kept the call short enough since the bastard decided to dial us off schedule. Everything is clean, just as you like it, boss."

"Good," he agreed with a nod. The silver-haired man sat down at the table opposite of him, nursing his own steaming cup. "Kurono, make a list of all reporters who have lobbied doubts and harassed Midoriya since the Sports Festival, and who have again after Hosu. When the first batch is ready, I want to make an example. By then, the public should stir enough to threaten tipping over at the inclusion of a few new quirkless showing their face."

The other man nodded. "Of course, boss. I'll have it for you this afternoon."

"Splendid." He raised his cup to the other man, the motion returned though their cups never touched. "To power."

Three Middays After Hosu

Momo was embarrassed by her punctuality sometimes. She may have gotten up a few times (read: every time) during her work study, while Gunhead slept in another hour or two longer. A few times here and there she made it to class earlier than most, beating out Iida in that race was starting to feel like a non-verbally agreed upon challenge between the two. It was ingrained into her by her parents — professionalism she had been taught to maintain over the past decade of their teachings. She thought it was a good trait.

It meant she was standing alone at the train station for everyone, even her teacher, to arrive, but still!

Aizawa seemed to value that punctuality as part of their education; Momo had noticed a stopwatch in his hands more times than she could count in heroics training and even when they arrived for homeroom. He taught with urgency, but she could hear the teachings of urgency underlining and blunt advice given to her and her classmates over the few weeks. It wasn't like she was trying to impress him, as he judged them as a whole instead of individually, but she tried her best to be a good student. Be in her seat and in class on time, be attentive when her teachers spoke, maintain good grades that would put her at the top of the class without needing the school to confirm it; there was a figure their homeroom teacher was looking to mold her into, and she wanted to meet those expectations. If he was a hero, then surely he knew best what to teach them, even if it came in a harsh deliver—

"You're early."

And gave her a near heart attack.

"Good morning, sensei!" Momo greeted him as she spun wildly on her feet, body locking up to face the man who approached behind her. "I know you said to be here by midday, so I wanted to make sure I took a train route that would stop here early enough to ensure I knew where the appropriate meeting place would be!—"

"You could have slept in," her teacher told her bluntly, taking a loud sip from his juice pouch as he walked up beside her. "Instead of taking the eleven, you could have taken the eleven-thirty-five and gotten here with time to spare still. Better to stick around with your agency and supervisor to confirm a stable relationship that could be a future option for an internship or job once you graduate." The ravenette blinked at him, surprised. "I checked the time tables for all of your trains, both on time and the expected tardiness of a few. Best to come prepared."

"Right," she agreed hesitantly, adjusting her uniform and fixing her enclosed costume by her feet as she stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the underground hero in wait for their classmates. While her teacher sipped away, she considered pulling out her phone; but she could feel his stare from the corner of his eyes. Was there something he wanted to tell her? Was he expecting her to speak?

Initiating the latter, she asked him, "Sensei, do you know how Iida is doing?"

The raggedly shaved man smacked his lips. "Recovering. The doctors are still tending to his arms, so he will remain at the hospital until late next week. His arms won't be fully healed by then, though, so don't expect him back in class for another week. You should be able to see him in person next weekend when he's returned home; I doubt his parents would forbid his friends from visiting. And I will ensure he is forwarded the homework he is missing in class, no neither you nor Midoriya need to think about it with your class presidential duties."

"Thank you," she offered with a bowed head. "That's pleasant to hear. We'll make plans to do that."

Her teacher nodded back. "I take it, then, that he and Ojiro have been communicating with the rest of your classmates?" he inquired. "Given as you have not asked about their well-being. And before you ask, no, I cannot talk to you about the events that took place in Hosu. Neither should they have."

They hadn't, Momo confirmed internally. Frankly, she didn't want to talk about it either. She saw their class' group chat explode in messages hounding her two friends for answers and explanations when the video circulated online, while a few people like Sero and Kaminari asked them to leave them alone, and she had to step in to effectively silence them and stop the discussion from delving further. Only afterwards had Midoriya sent his own message, not denying or confirming any of the questions their classmates posed and vowing he would answer anything they asked when they saw each other in class next Monday. She had messaged him privately afterwards on how he had no obligation to do as such because their classmates pressured him about it, but he insisted he wanted to.

Of course he then had to follow his insistence up with how much he appreciated what she did for him and looking out for his well-being, and that just made her stomach flutter too much to argue back so she conceded.

"Yes they have been responsive," she answered her teacher verbally. "But Midoriya tells me he hasn't been back in class?"

"Nedzu allowed him sick leave for the remainder of the week," Aizawa clarified. "The piranhas with their cameras have been festering outside of the school since the day after the incident in Hosu; he does not want Midoriya in their crosshairs to be harassed and followed home, smartest decision he's made all year. We should have them distanced from campus for the rest of you not to be bothered by them either when classes resume." He turned his head slightly, eyes pointed her way over the brim of his scarf. "How are you feeling?"

Momo furrowed her brows. "Pardon?"

Her teacher held up his fingers as he spoke. "Three of your classmates were hospitalized after being entangled in a violent mess with dangerous villains; one is still in intensive care to ensure his arms can be restored while another is once again being hounded by the media for answers he is in no position to give. The other returned to his work study once he was given clearance to leave from the hospital staff, and he and Midoriya have only been within a phone call's reach to you, as you watch the news report of their danger and condition while the world targets them again over some stupid video. I can at least confirm the physical well-being of your friends. How are you faring in this?"

Her friends were in danger once more and he wanted to know how she felt? She mulled the question over a moment, before answering, "Terrified," with a heavy sigh. "It doesn't matter how often I find myself in this position, making it through unscathed while my friends find themselves wounded so badly. It's been Midoriya so many times, now Ojiro and Iida have found themselves in worse conditions? I know the work of a hero is supposed to be tough, but this frequently? This life-threatening?"

"Here I was expecting 'angry' to be your answer," her teacher lamented. "You kids are facing unfortunate times. The world was worse before I was even born, as catastrophe and catastrophe hit city after city for decades. With All-Might, they say he spurred on an era of heroes by his side that completely reformed the country, enough that we could clean up and rebuild this much stability in our society as though there wasn't a time when whole prefectures would be evacuated one after another." He scoffed under his breath. "That lumbering oaf can barely write his own name correctly on paperwork, much less conduct an army. But the fact of the matter is I did grow up as villain attacks and disasters died down in frequency. I only ever dealt with one dangerous villain when I was a student — a year older than you kids." Even as he turned away to lament, Momo could see the sobering flash in his eyes.

"I never dealt with anything that dangerous again until last month," he carried on, "when the villains attacked us on campus. The men who orchestrated that attack carried numbers larger than any organized criminal group for the last three decades. Then they attack again alongside a serial killer on a night that avoided the worst just barely; too close for comfort. You children should be dealing with petty theft during the holidays after you get your provisional license next year — even pettier than what you and Midoriya faced last Winter. None of you should be involved in fighting villains like this. They shouldn't even still exist. You kids have every right to be angry."

Momo's hands fiddled together in her lap, eyes turned down to focus on the floor. "I've seen the documentaries about the state of Japan over the last century; how prominent villainy once was when heroes were still forming the Commission in its infancy. It and my parents assured me that our generation would never face anything of the like for our whole lives, even if someone attempted to rise to power. That my time as a hero would be spent fortifying the world for a future beyond me, maintaining the peace you've made for us. Of course I'm angry that all this happens to my friends instead."

Her gaze rolled aside to the case by her feet, and the green-haired keychain doll hung on its handle.

"But I've been angry enough," she concluded peacefully. "I've spent this last week learning how to best be there for them; when I am by their side or apart like I am now, that there is something I can do to support them. If things like this are to keep happening — if they are to find themselves in danger again and again — I want to be there to save them. We're going to be heroes together, and I won't let anything get in their way."

This was the vow she made to Gunhead, that which had molded the training of her past week as his understudy. Pushing the speed at which her quirk worked past its previous limits, learning extensively the medical training ahead of when Yuei planned to educate them, practicing in spars with the hero on how she could best compliment their styles; all reinforced after the night in Hosu challenged her with the very thought. No matter how afraid or frustrated she was, she could not afford to fester on those feelings if they would only hinder her efforts.

She heard her teacher shuffle on his feet, and turned her head to find him staring at her again. "This stays between us," he ordered, wagging a finger between themselves. Though confused, she nodded along and his expression softened in its seriousness. "I lost a friend in that villain attack, when I was a student. I managed to defeat the villain on my own, but he didn't make it to the end. Your worry, your anger? I get it. I know it. It's why I took this job; to stop you from knowing where it goes next. For all of you."

His demeanor shifted before Momo's eyes once more, shoulders squaring as they noticed the first of her classmates pop into view — Sato and Sero chatting together as they approached.

"You are my first batch of students with but a single blemish in your roster," he continued in a whisper. "I see the potential in you all to do better than me. Trust in me that I will prevent all of you from having to go through that."

Four Mornings After Hosu

He remembered watching the news when he was young; not cartoons or the movie channels, but the late-night news. Well after his mother had given up putting him to bed, after a day spent with the other kids who made fun of him and called him names, he would sit on the couch and turn on the one channel he cared about.

He remembered watching the reports on heroes, drowning out as their promotional adverts and sexual scandals droned on. Too many nights watching people in costumes eat up their time on camera trying to pander to people, playing up their personas for attention and praise. How the other boys in school could find the same three sentences enjoyable, he would never understand; those morons ate up anything a hero did.

He remembered watching the reports and hit pieces on villains and criminals, detailing a drug bust or a sidewalk fight or just updates on current manhunts and missions heroes were publicly announcing. They were much more interesting to watch when the program finally showed the criminals they mentioned, playing it up not too dissimilar to a hero yet so often more unique than whoever the news showed the night before.

But he remembered vividly when the news mentioned someone like him. Not a hero, or a villain, or even a civilian with their own quirk: a quirkless person, like him.

They were a man around his mom's age, who fought off a low-life criminal attempting to rob their family bakery, when the heroes were too slow to act. A man who succeeded in protecting his family and performing a citizen's arrest before police got to the scene. A man who defeated a quirk with nothing but a pizza spatula. The news reported on it quickly, brushing through the story in under three minutes, but he remembered enough of the details about the man; enough to look up the address of their business and visit the next day. Only to find the place foreclosed and abandoned, because he forgot the news mentioned he was arrested for vigilantism before the police even took the robber to jail.

Garou never met another quirkless person for ten years.

His eyes snapped open from his slumber, greeting him to the slow, creaking fan overhead. It's one working light flickered weakly, drowned out by the sunlight that peeked through the giant windows to his right. The sofa cushions beneath him squeaked as he pushed himself up, groaning and rolling his shoulders, blanket slipping lifelessly to the floor. He hadn't intended to crash the night in an art studio, but it was the first quiet building he could trust to let his guard down in.

He had spent the last three days running from Hosu after that night, nothing but running. Spending the day hiding and hopping through alleyways and hunkering down during the night in the most isolated, unsuspicious spot he could find; he was always good at that. But it came with the price of not knowing where he was. He was certain he was far away from Hosu, but he had no idea what prefecture he had spent a new night in. He knew, however, that someone was following him; that nagging feeling in the back of his head had been there since that masked bastard dropped him off. Maybe it was nothing but his imagination planted into his head, or maybe he knew there was someone in the shadows behind him, but either way he wasn't going to stop until he felt it no more.

His body hisses as he stood up, the cut on his leg pinching in pain as it opened again. He hobbled across the room, defacing drawers and cabinets until he found a first-aid kit shoved away beneath the skin. Garou hadn't kept up with the news, either, to know what people were saying about that night. What damage those purple monsters did uptown, what happened to Midoriya still left in Stain's presence, if anyone knew he was even there or who he was; until he could stop again, he was out of the loop on information. To be dragged away from Midoriya and leave him alone in the presence of the Hero Killer with a kid who couldn't protect him…

"No," he muttered out in panted breaths, scoffing as he pulled the needle through his skin. "Midoriya could kick his ass on his own. He's fine. He's fine." He pushed his worry aside, as teeth pulled string and shut his wound. Midoriya was stronger than all those bastards, Garou knew that. No need to doubt his skill.

Instead his mind recalled the masked man who had pulled him away from the kid he was trying to save, and the mind-numbing drawl of his voice offering an allegiance. He still didn't believe him; to have faith that a quirked person would fight with him, yet refusing to save the boy being made a lab rat by that damned hero school. Someone with a quirk wouldn't understand them — wouldn't fight against the system that would parade his kind around. The man already had power and a small army as shown with those creatures who attacked Hosu. He had a plan to underhand their deal, were he to agree, Garou was sure of it. Until Midoriya was on his side, he could not partner himself with anyone else he didn't know.

An alliance with the boy would take more time, sadly. Garou could tell the kid still wasn't convinced, just before they were ripped apart. Those quirked monsters were still pulling him around, controlling him and goading him into their plans to risk his safety and his life for their amusement and gain. Bang was proof enough of that, and the school with him for agreeing to let Midoriya go with the old man. He still needed more proof that everything holding him down was a lie, and Garou would prove it to him one way or another; he would prove the safest place for the kid was by his side.

The bump of an engine caught his ear, passing along the building slowly. It came to a quick stop, clicking silent not a moment later; following it was a small gaggle of voices laughing just outside. "Shit."

He fastened the bandage over his sewn cut, fixed the leg of his pants and chucked everything back into the kit. He couldn't take the windows out, pointed towards the street in waking daylight, bound to greet a hero he wasn't in the mood to fight. The fire exit would only alert people to his location, and have whoever was hunting him in return find him faster. So first-aid kit tucked under his arm, he beelined across the room to its only entrance, hand stopping short from the handle as it began to turn.

A trio of college students strolled in, mingling and laughing with each other as they entered unawares of Garou hanging on the ceiling above. His feet pressed into the wall, and his one available arm wrapped around a pipe, he held himself against the ceiling and watched the trio pass by and idle into the studio, leaving the door unlocked. He waited for the moment all their backs were turned before he dropped back down, landing softly and dashing out as quietly as possible. With no sound of shouts following him out, he turned and ran off between the buildings without looking back.

This was life, he remorsed. On the run with no one place to stay. Midoriya didn't know this life; his mother had done one thing right, though for how long she remained waited to be seen. He had been bullied, he had been wounded, he had been harassed and put down for who he was, but he was lucky enough the woman who brought him up continued to keep him. Their lives so alike, yet still so different, Garou mused sourly. He came to stop against the backside of a building to slide down on his but, throwing the kit open once more and returning to his sloppy work on his leg.

But those 'friends' wouldn't last; they never did. Kids were cruel, and cruel kids all grew up into cruel adults. No one cared for someone lesser than themselves; not civilians, not criminals, and definitely not heroes. A divide would grow between him and them at their own behest, and he would be separated from them for good if they could help it. He needed to be there for Midoriya, Garou told himself, because he was just as likely to lose everything and everyone else around him. But he wouldn't leave him. Never again.

With his handiwork the best it could be, he clicked the kid closed once more and pushed to his feet. Several meters away was the exit that led to the road, and he watched as adults and children strolled by none the wiser to his presence. No one was worried about their surroundings — about a man in the shadows who hunted heroes taking in their features as they passed. If he was still anonymous — if that old bastard had kept Garou's name to his chest — he could use that to his advantage. If Bang was the only hero looking for him, the old fool would make a big enough scene to warn him of his approach, enough to prepare for a fight or to flee if Bang caught up before his wounds healed.

The sound of a slamming door and a stumbling grunt turned Garou's attention around. A man with zebra-stripped skin stumbled out of the building beside him, tripping down the stairs and crashing into the trash bin in front of him. He watched the clearly drunk man fumble to pick himself up, grumbling under his breath and wiping the dirt from his white shirt before he noticed Garou staring. "What?" he slurred out. "Can I help you? Do I know you?"

"No," he plainly stated, turning his back and walking away.

The man gargled and stumbled on his feet, his fingers snapping poorly. "Wait, wait…oh yeah, I do know you! You're the quirkless freak." Garou stopped with a stomp, gaze leveling ahead to the alley across the street he was headed for. "From that Hosu video on the web." Video, he questioned in his head.

Garou set the kit down slowly by his foot, stretching his back and rolling his shoulders as he turned back to the mutant. "Really?" he asked in a hushed growl. "Do tell."

Four Middays After Hosu

Danjuro Tobita wanted to be a hero, once upon a time — what child didn't dream the same? But his grades were average, his ambitions half-hearted, and his efforts could only reach so far. He didn't go to a hero school after graduating junior high, nor to a hero college after his high school years, but the dream persisted in the back of his mind even when he got a nine-to-five behind a desk.

The dreaming stopped when he failed to save a man's life.

It turned out Danjuro wasn't cut out for heroics. He was a fool, a moron, a dumbass — the words of his old coworkers before he was even let go from his first job or expelled his first year into college. He got in the way of a hero's work and it cost a man his life. He wasn't good enough to be a better person, and the world showed him that.

So he decided that if he could not be a hero, he would instead be a Gentle Criminal.

He did not want to kill people again — turn face on his old dream and become a monster of a man. And he did not have the faith in his quirk, Elasticity, to handle villains in a fight like a vigilante. But Japan was still brimming with underhanded mistreatment of society at every corner, from petty theft to corporate greed, and he was confident enough in himself to face that. He involved himself where he saw fit, entangling purse snatchers and roughing up businesses he found to commit wrongdoing; he even vlogged a few of his escapades to share his deeds and assure the names of his victims would be ever stained with the reminder of what their crimes got them. Soon enough they had drawn in a partner in crime, a short lady called Aiba Manami, who helped him in turning his footage professional, scripting his messages to the camera and sharing his message on the worldwide web to be remembered in history as the criminal duo who protected the people from the underhanded crime of Japan.

Well, if anyone cared to watch them to begin with.

"Gentle!" Danjuro heard Aiba call him from the kitchenette of their hideout (really the apartment they shared rent for), the clattering of cups echoing after her voice. "Tea is ready! Black with no cream, just as you—Gentle!" The sudden shriek of her voice made the man jump slightly, snapping around in his seat to find her standing in the doorway glaring at him. "You're watching that video?! Again?!"

The white-haired man turned back to his laptop, the screen playing the video from Hosu taking the country by storm, then looked back to his partner. "Ha, ha, of course I am," he told her. "This is important research for our business, La Brava."

"It's insulting!" she whined, managing to place the tea set down gently on the tray beside Danjuro before attempting to jump on the table for his computer. "We shouldn't be giving them any more of our views! They're competition!"

"This is the version I had you download since they keep removing it from the websites," he reminded her with a chuckle, plucking his laptop and holding it out of her reach. "They gain no more views from us. This is valuable material to study."

The short woman pounded her fists against the side of his thigh for weaponizing their height difference, but as he made no move to resign she sighed off and poured two cups of tea. "You would tell me if you thought my editing skills were subpar, wouldn't you, Gentle?" she asked meekly.

The taller man blinked at her, gazing again at the footage that played in his earbud, and barked a sudden laugh. "No, my dear, that is not what this is about! Your skills with technology bury this mediocrity in the dirt without question! To hold this amateur video in any regard to your work would be insulting to you. I am sorry I made you think that of my words for even a second." He placed a hand atop her shoulder as he plucked his cup from her hands. "I value the work you do for me. Believe me that I have never doubted you for a second."

His words of praise were quickly watering her eyes, and the kiss he placed atop her head solidified her waterworks and an accompanying embrace. It was an odd sight finding a woman younger than him outside his door, pledging to support his venture in stamping his name in history, proclaiming her love for him, and overhauling his presentation on and off camera all within a few months. But Aiba's advances and knowledge of cinematography and video editing made him proud to continue his journey as Gentle Criminal.

And after a few video editing dates, he found the love between them to be shared.

The video of Hosu continued to play in his ear as his lover took the seat beside him, his computer repeating the nameless man's mantra for Danjuro to listen to once more. The video had taken the media by the throat, even as the government and social media organizations attempted to deplatform the video from site after site. It wasn't too dissimilar to the process of uploading, living with the takedown and propping up their video elsewhere that he and Aiba had done countless times for his acts of villainy; the biggest difference was how much more attention this one video got than his last ten combined.

"Aiba, dear," he addressed the short woman, angling his computer to her and disconnecting his earpiece. "Let me explain my rails of thought to you. You've watched this video enough times before. Tell me, what do you notice?"

Begrudgingly, the pink-haired woman let the video play out again, audio playing low through the speakers. "Um…the video was shot at night, and the street lamps aren't doing a good job at lighting the scene."

"Completely abysmal, I agree. What else?"

She looked at him, unamused. "Is this supposed to be a test?"

He leaned in. "Pop quiz."

"Ugh, fine. The camera is held at an odd angle to get everyone in the frame, so the armored guy and the knife guy are barely in focus. And the focus keeps blinking in and out, adjusting for the zoom distance being changed in the middle of his speech."

"Atrocious work, that. Anything else?" He gave her a few seconds to ponder, and when it was clear she was struggling to find more, he carried on. "Whose video is this?"

She looked at him again, perplexed.

Danjuro pointed at the screen. "The main focus of this video is our inconveniently unnamed friend in the middle of the video ranting on about hero society and the class disparity between the quirked and the quirkless. Featuring in as ad-libbing hosts are the Hero Killer: Stain, a relative of the Ingenium family of heroes, and the quirkless boy from Yuei. A fifth or more party is shooting this exchange from above, say from a window or atop a building, yet the voices echo off the buildings loud enough to be picked up by the camera. Yet our cameraman or camerawoman never provide the name of the man preaching to the others, nor do they name themselves for the camera to hear. So, whose video is this?"

Aiba watched the screen on loop before her eyes widened. "They don't know they're being filmed."

"Right on the money," the white-haired man praised her. "There is also the chance this crew is far more amateurish than us, but the passion in that man's voice is tangible. He wants to be heard — he wants to be known — yet he remains invisible. A voice with no face attached. Listen to his speech about fame and recognition; he plays into it just as much as he condemns it. Why create this film and distribute it to the world if you were to go unknown?"

"Of course it's a noob's work," the little woman focuses on, wiggling a finger at his computer. "The only editing of the footage is at the start and end, cutting out whatever happens before and after."

"There was more to that encounter than our filmographer shared. A preamble to this moment they could have included, yet abstained from, likely containing the identity of this man. The aftermath, stricken from the record, leaving the fate of this debate to speculation. And its existence, a slap in the face to the police and the trust of the people." He clicked away from the video, opening a tab of text to fill his screen. "'In the midst of the chaos and conflict disrupting the uptown estates of Hosu prefecture, a distress signal beaconed from the southern district. At the order of his superiors, the student Ingenium responded to the call post haste and intervened in saving the hero Native from a deadly blow at the hands of the Hero Killer: Stain. Moments later the student Metal Bat arrived on the scene to aid in recovery, and shortly after pro hero Kick Back and his student Tailman approached, as the hero took on the Hero Killer in combat and the student aided Metal Bat in escorting Ingenium, Native, and a civilian away from the conflict. The Hero Killer was defeated in combat and apprehended, and is in arrest awaiting his sentence.'"

He vigorously clicked back to the video, nearly slamming his finger where the silver-haired man stood. "Not a single mention of this man's existence in the police's official story of events. Native is nowhere to be found on screen, and from the looks of these boys they've been engaged in combat with a villain against legal hero code. Even the heroes attempted to sweep this man's existence under the rug. Why not identify this man on either front? Why would both parties hide him?"

Aiba tapped a finger on her chin, looking over to Danjuro slowly. "Because they're the same person?"

"Creative, but unlikely. The police may be foolish but they aren't stupid. Record this sequence of events and so woefully fib about it to the people knowing this could be seen, copied and leaked online? It's not even a sensible angle for the cops to film it at." He took a long sip of his tea, humming as it slid down his tongue. "No, these are two separate parties, hiding a man from the world in their own ways, yet for the exact same reason."

As the video restarted he clicked on his keyboard, increasing the volume as the man shouted, "Not a quirk factor in my bones and I can wipe the floor with you bastards like no tomorrow! Don't think it's real? Well guess what? I'm not the only one anymore!"

"Quirkless," his lover summarized.

"Indeed," Danjuro sighed. "A quirkless man shouts at the top of his lungs the inequality of the world, denounces the way of society and claims to challenge the world all at once to prove his superiority. His audience is only four men yet he provokes conflict like the world is watching. Another man aiming to etch himself into history." Truly, the similarities he saw hit close to home. "A shame it is over such nonsense.

"Quirklessness is a dying genetic flaw," he explained, plucking himself from his seat to refill his cup. "Humanity halted at an even fifty-fifty split across the recorded world between individuals with quirks compared to those without for sixty years before the quirked population boomed, and the quirkless being born declined. Today, it's what, ninety-ten? They say in the next ten to twenty years, the last quirkless child will be born, and the human race will have fully transitioned into a quirked species; well, until the current quirkless pass away." He raised the teapot to his head level, watching tea pour down like a waterfall into his cup, just long enough to fill it to the brim. "Before the turn of the new century, there would be no proof of his kind ever existing. He stakes the memory of his life on fragile work."

It was foolish, Danjuro chided. Society had already moved its mindset onto the way of quirked life — heroes and villains the household norm. One had to look no further than the quirkless boy he didn't bother to remember the name of, as many of the news sites attempted to downplay him and force the boy away from their perfect image. He would have extended his heart to the boy in sympathy, watching as his own work was ignored and stricken from websites to deter his own efforts in being remembered by future generations. But Danjuro looked to make his name in the society that existed and would continue to exist for centuries to come, and the two quirkless individuals were fighting to be remembered through a generation that only knew their kind as history. They were men displaced in time, born too late to be relevant; to that, he extended his sympathy.

"Hold on," Aiba piped up again as he sat back down, "I'm still confused. Why is any of this important?"

He hummed through his next sip. "Good question. You know how popular this video has become. Barely a day on the internet and it has taken Japan by the neck. Social media and online forums discuss, debate and defame the nameless man in the video. Whether he wanted to not, his voice had earned him gratuitous attention." He smirked slyly over the rim of his cup. "Which means we have competition."

"What?" His compatriot looked at him quizzically. "This isn't even their video. How would they be our rivals?"

The criminal waved his mustache. "Not rivals, in the sense. The quirkless boy has been turning heads since the Sports Festival. This debauchery in Hosu will only increase the attention on his head, and this mystery man will incur further. One day this will all be old news, but right now their attitude is drawing more attention than we are. The longer this continues, the longer we will continue to underperform. We have the unfortunate luck of existing at the same time as these men do. If we wish to be remembered, we can't allow this to carry on much longer."

Aiba caught his words quickly, eyes lighting up as a camera appeared in her hands. "You mean—"

"But of course!" Danjuro shot to his feet, slamming his cup onto the table and smiling for the lens that focused on him. His chair scraped across the tile, and he may have cracked the china upon impacting the wood, but he had a performance to deliver. "Document our efforts from here on out; it is time we prepare for our biggest show yet! The Gentle End of the Quirkless!"

Four Middays After Hosu

It had been almost three weeks since Izuku was last at Dagobah Beach. He remembered his last days training before the Sports Festival before putting his attention into addressing his class with the truth of his quirklessness and the upcoming-now-passed work study, only jumping between the school and home. Trash still piled half the sandy shore; litter sprinkled throughout that which he had succeeded in cleaning the past twelve months. He hadn't meant to stop in his efforts to be a good Samaritan, he just needed…time to breathe every now and again.

When Sunday rolled around, he decided to return, red wheelbarrow trailing in tow to find use once again. His friends had reached out to him in a desire to see him again in person, but he turned them down with his uncommitted excuse of plans he didn't divulge on. He knew Ojiro, Uraraka, Yaoyorozu and Kaminari wanted answers, but he still needed his story straight and he wanted to at least give it to the ears of his whole class at the same time instead of the intervals he had made his past mistakes in. Iida would miss out still in the hospital, but that left seventeen pairs of ears, plus his homeroom teacher's, to set the record straight after the video of Hosu found its way around online.

That video ruined the rest of Izuku's week at home. The news had found his mother the night after he had been back, blasting the speech Garou had blared in his face for her to hear. He spent the better part of two hours consoling her about it — that he didn't accept the offer and he didn't believe Garou's words about his friends or where he was in life — and convincing her that he was okay. The next morning, the familiar detective Tsukauchi showed up at their doorstep; with Garou's words implicating a relationship between them, the police now needed to know the position of his loyalty.

He gave the detective the whole truth at the dinner table; he didn't know Garou was quirkless until that night; he only met the man coincidentally from time to time and had no means of directly communicating with him; he assumed the film came from the people in charge of the monsters attacking the rest of Hosu, standing above him where Ojiro had fallen from to help in their fight with Stain; he had no plans or commitment to aligning himself with Garou's ways; and he didn't know where the man was currently. The detective believed him thanks to an admittedly fascinating quirk that could decipher the truth and falsehoods behind someone's voice that Izuku didn't get to inquire about more before the man gave leave; but for all the detective's conviction, Izuku knew it would not be a universal agreement for everyone he told it to.

So with his mind thoroughly rattled and his energy strangling itself in the back of his throat, Izuku returned to the beach-dump once more to distract himself, hauling toasters and televisions and broken toys several blocks to the proper disposal space until night would fall. It was something he could do in peace, without placing himself in danger, and could be done alone. The only other person who frequented the place as much as him was, well; if Garou did suddenly show up, there was a reason Izuku left out the specifics of where they met up most frequently. If the police were searching the place looking for him, then Izuku wouldn't get the chance to ask back the questions that grew in his mind the previous nights left festering and reliving their argument.

Garou could be arrested after Izuku got his answers.

Instead of finding him or any of the police at the beach, on one return from the junkyard he was dumping at, Izuku returned to the beach greeted by the sound of screeching fire; its source was the pink-haired girl in the sand cutting a fridge in half with a blowtorch. He stood at the top of the stairs, watching Hatsume burn through the appliance with her back to him, and sighed.

"Hey Mei," he greeted her as he descended.

The pink-haired girl snapped her head around and beamed him a smile through the smudge on her face. The roar of her torch continued while she wasn't looking. "Metal Bat! How's my best customer doing?"

"I hope I'm not the only one," he muttered under his breath before he shouted, "Doing better. How was the rest of your week? You haven't been responding to my texts again."

"Lost my phone."

Izuku threw his hands in disbelief, while Hatsume turned back to her task. "Mei, you know you can call me from your house phone and I can help you find it. It's why I had you install Find My. Where did you lose it this time?"

"I dunno," she answered nonchalantly, eliciting another sigh from him. "Forgot it somewhere at home. And I installed that app so I can watch you on patrols and missions, so I knew where you would be, so I could install marketing fixtures in the proper districts to promote the babies I made you, where people know you are! But then it showed you at home for like five minutes so I stopped watching."

Izuku stopped halfway from opening the app on his phone and leveled his eyes at the back of his friend's head. "Mei, are you stalking me?"

"Of course I am!" She spun around to flash him another beaming smile, clicking off her torch and slamming it into the sand. "You're my lead personnel for promoting my craftsmanship! So long as I know where you are, it means I can promote my babies in a community of other agencies who recognize them! Everyone who sees how well you perform with my babies will instantly contract with me to get a piece of my genius! Brilliant, isn't it?"

Izuku matched Hatsume's glistening eyes with his unblinking, before he sighed defeated and looked to his phone again. "Yeah, that's definitely what you would do. And your phone is at your house. I think." He pointed his screen to her. "That is your house, right?"

Her eyes twirled and dilated with her quirk. "Yeah. I think. Pretty sure." She turned back to her work, lifted the crowbar by her side and dug it in the splinter she drove through the refrigerator. With a grunt and a twist, she forced its upper half apart from the rest and rolled it over in the sand. "Sixty percent sure. The shape looks kinda right. But that doesn't matter—"

"It kind of does, Mei."

"So!" Like a strike of lightning, she bolted from her spot on the shore and darted at Izuku, stopping inches short of him with her crowbar gripped tightly under her massive smile; threatening, if not slightly endearing. "How did my pocket babies treat you? Did they get sent back to Yuei with the rest of your costume?"

His eyes lowered slowly to the blunt object in his friend's hands, and then scrolled back up to her face. "They worked really well," he answered carefully. "Withstood a lot of work, being so light and all. They really helped me when I needed them—"

"I knew they would!" she interrupted him with a cheer, hopping back to her work and lifting the lower half of the fridge to stand upright. "I double-layered the material to bind under the gaps of the upper layer to balance out their durability. I would have made you four but just making the first baby took longer than expected, so I only had time to make a second. Besides, you don't have enough hands to wield four at a time anyways." She opened the appliance's door, stepping inside the fridge and spinning around. "I'm currently drafting a baby that works like a matryoshka doll but for bats and other little babies I can make in the same mold that you could swap between for whatever you need, like what Girl God makes with her quirk. I just can't make it too big or it'd be a hassle to carry around for most clients…"

Izuku listened to her rant on, taking in the features of her smile more than her words. The contrast of her now to the girl he saw shying away during the Sports Festival and meekly talking to him over the phone in the week before warmed him to see, happy that problem was put behind them. He worried too much about his friendships, he chided himself, making a mess of things and not being forwards with those he was so lucky to know and have. The girl's animated style of expression was reassuring to that worry, even if it meant her disappointment would be over-the-top in its execution.

Her features suddenly shifted when she looked his way, the light on her skin dimming into seriousness. "What?" her inquiring voice pulled his attention back, stuttering in his stationary stance and blinking himself away.

"What, what?" he responded intelligently.

"You said my babies were good," she repeated in a strained voice, stepping towards him slowly. "You said you liked them. Why do you look like that, all" — she gestured wildly at his face — "not that and stuff?"

"Oh, sorry." He waved his hands embarrassedly. "I was thinking about something else. I do like them, I promise." His memory caught up with him, and he could not hold back the nervous laugh that escaped him. "Well, actually, now that you reminded me." She looked at him with intense worry. "You know how you said…to bring them both back?"

Hatsume's expression steeled flat, arms dropping to hang by her side. "You didn't."

"I didn't lose either of them and neither of them broke!" He paused for a moment, taking a step back involuntarily. "But I might have given one of them away."

The distance he tried to make helped him for naught, as the pink-haired girl pounced on him and shook him by the shoulders. "Are you serious?! I left you clear instructions to bring back both of my babies! With both of them back, I could analyze and compare them with one another to study your patterns and upgrade them accordingly to your needs! All I can do with one is make lousy fixes and upgrades that would pale in comparison to the understanding I would have otherwise! Do you know how boring that is?! My babies will be a laughing stock in the industry!"

Izuku flailed against her grip, trying to bat off her hands and wiggle free. "I know you said to bring them back! But I gave one to a friend, because it comforted her!" He finally broke free, reversing their position to slam his hands on her shoulders. "She got separated from her family in the mess in Hosu, she's just lost her dad not even a month or so ago; and she's just a kid! It was the only thing I could give her to distract her and it worked to help her calm down. I had to do something. Just, think of it as a free promotion, right? You engraved your logo onto the handle so they'll see it and remember it, and when they see you promoting your other work they'll put it together and know it was you!"

Hatsume went quiet, and Izuku assumed she was contemplating his suggestion until she responded, "What happened in Hosu?"

He blinked back at her. "Mei" — his voice stuttered as he let her go — "have you not seen the news?"

She shrugged. "You guys just kinda text me all about it anyways, so I don't see the point in it. But you guys hadn't said anything when you were going home so I put my phone aside until I heard back from you—oh." A thumb tapped against her chin. "Now I know where I put it! Probably."

"Right," Izuku sighed in resignation. "We have a lot to go over then. Quite a bit happened, actually." Here he was, escaping to the beach to leave thoughts of Hosu behind, only for it to find its excuse to be discussed. Even disconnected from her phone, he was surprised her parents or the school hadn't reached her ears about Stain or the monsters or Garou or his quirklessness…

He blinked at Hatsume again, the girl having already moved back to her work and hauled the upper half of the fridge to its other half, and counted on his fingers under his breath; he had forgotten about that himself. "Actually, Mei, there's something I've been meaning to talk to you about. I should have talked to you about this sooner, I'm sorry."

The pink-haired girl looked at him quizzically for a second before her brows shot up. "You mean about your superhuman strength?"

"No, it's about…my superhuman strength." He slid forward in the sand, stopping before her work as she stepped inside the fridge again and measured its interior. "You knew?"

"Duh." The bluntness of her response recoiled the green-haired teen. "You broke some of my test babies before we were enrolled, and I snuck out the footage of your entrance exam to see what you did against the robots. It was pretty obvious."

Izuku sputtered. "Then why didn't you bring it up sooner?"

"Because you told me you were quirkless." She lifted the head of the fridge atop the side of its base, measuring the interior of its small freezer. "You probably had a reason about that but my babies needed my attention so I thought you'd tell me more about it when you wanted to. Are you about to?" She reclined over the edge of the fridge, her eyes Zooming in on him with probably-still-divided attention. "If I know what your quirk can actually do, I can better suit my babies to your needs."

He hummed, crossing his hands together and taking his breath. "Let's start with that, then. It's not actually a quirk," he explained, waiting for her eccentricity to mull over before he continued, "and our teachers have helped me in understanding that. I don't have a quirk factor, it can't be affected by my teacher the same way he can affect our friends. I do have some weird strength and I think durability — like high pain tolerance or something — but I don't have full control over it. I do not have a quirk. The principal thinks it's something else."

Hatsume simply stared at him silently, her face changed from excitement and wonder to a mute and emotionless attentiveness. It was only like the twentieth face he had to explain this too that it wasn't as discouraging for Izuku to stare back at for a long moment with no words between them. He waited patiently as the seconds ticked on, passed into a minute, and then neared another, before the pink-haired girl finally piped, "So it isn't a quirk."

He shook his head and repeated, "No."

"But you have super strength and highly dense skin, muscle and bone tissue capable of withstanding high thresholds of pain and damage and dishing back equal to if not exceeding similar levels of power." He nodded, and watched as her smile returned wildly, while she leaned towards him and nearly toppled the fridge she was in. "That's the best news ever! Why hadn't you told me sooner?"

Ah, Izuku blinked. That's new.

"If the principal thinks you're a branch of a new evolutionary gene that can grant power without conforming to the biological structure of the commonplace quirk, then you'd be the hottest new item!" she cheered with joy. "Having you as the face of my company will topple who any competitor signs themselves with! Your name with my babies will draw in customers at a rate higher than I'll be able to handle alone! I'll have to make a few clones of myself to ramp up supply to meet demand! The enticement of a new step of human evolution would make me the most famous designer in the world! I just need to put my logo front and center on your uniform so people know you're already taken! I'll need to see if I can adjust your current designer's settings on my computer tonight…" Her muttering became incoherent to Izuku as she crouched into the fridge, disappearing from sight under its ledge and echoing her words together off its walls.

On one hand, Izuku thought he should have felt insulted — suggesting to use his likeness and status for attention wasn't something he wanted from this situation of his. But the other ninety-nine percent of him knew this was Hatsume, and how she rationalized his situation as a benefit that would continue this little partnership of hero and support they agreed upon months ago? It still brought the smile back to his face; a real smile he liked having.

He scooted up to the fridge, lounging over the edge to peer down at his pink-haired friend muttering away into her own notebook. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you about it sooner," he apologized through her mumbles and scratchy handwriting. "I still don't know how to control it though—"

Hatsume waved a hand to shut him up. "We can run by all the times we know you've shown superhuman capabilities and extrapolate an overarching factor that's triggering your control and volumes later. How do you feel about an H.M. logo design? No, you're right, copies Yuei's too closely. We'll need something more distinct from that."

He snickered as she rambled on. "Thanks," he muttered again, nodding away under the sun while she continued to draft company designs.

"You said you had news to catch me up on?" Hatsume finally addressed him, face still absorbed in her notes. "Was that it?"

"No," he shook his head calmly. "Iida, Ojiro and I fought the Hero Killer and another quirkless guy like me."

"Neat," she commented distractedly, flipping pages around to cross out notes and rewrite words. Then her pencil snapped as she jolted up, staring still at the fridge interior in front of her before her head slowly twisted around to look up at him with dead eyes.

Izuku winced. "Bad segway?"

Four Evenings After Hosu

It took a few days, several meetings, and a dozen or so bodies for Dabi to find his way around Japan, eventually finding himself in front of the building he had been searching for. It was unassumingly old and decrepit; it blended right in with the strip of establishments on either end of it that at least managed to draw in a few stumbling customers. He was pretty sure he actually passed it once or twice in his search, but that last fellow he charred provided the clarity he was looking for.

He strolled on through its front doors, greeted by the dim purple hue that encompassed the vacant bar. One lone man occupied the space behind the counter, his scaly skin glistening off the headlamps while he absentmindedly wiped an empty glass. Dabi paid him no mind, strolling past and through the room to its further hallway, and passing by the dingy doors labeled as restrooms to the iron wall that ended the hall. He read the crisp paper in his pocket once more before knocking rhythmically on the steel door as it instructed, and waited in the following silence for a response.

Soft taps echoed behind him, and Dabi peered back over his shoulder to see the serpentine bartender standing at the hallway's entrance, his thin tail swaying slowly. The metal door clinked, and he looked back to it through the eye hole that opened, a pair of ruby red eyes boring holes into him. "Reservation?" it asked in a growl.

He hummed. "Table for Natsu," he replied.

The predator peered. "You're late."

"And your directions were shit," Dabi snarked back with a smirk. "Last guy in town took me to another guy out of town just to tell me to come back here. Bit of an ass-backwards approach to business. I hope you didn't like them; I can be a bit temperamental sometimes."

The barman behind him hissed and rattled his tail, while the beast on the other side of the door grumbled and glared, but Dabi didn't budge an inch. Not burning the place down for what he wanted was less a formality and more not wanting the police on his ass for the corpses he left behind on his little adventure. So he waited for them to clear their systems, close the little hatch in the door, and crank open the room for him to enter. The wolf-mutant who greeted him on the other side led him down the intricate staircase, bringing them into a crimson-lit room dressed in matching velvet décor and housing a lot more characters than the front of their business upstairs.

They ignored the huddled couples and lone strangers sitting in the booths that adorned the walls and matched on through the sea of tables in the room's center to the one that served a dirty man in a disgusting purple suit and flesh-colored scarf. The greasy man greeted the mutant and Dabi with a smile. "I'm glad you could finally join us," he drawled out with a false cover of glee, as Dabi took the chair opposite the man and the wolf left them alone. "Sorry for dragging you around on a leash, but I can't do business with someone I don't trust."

His voice was as grating to listen to as his clothes were to look at in the red lighting, Dabi critiqued. "You know cars have sat-nav shit and whatnot that give better directions than those idiots, right?"

"It's a debugging process," the man waved him off dismissively. "Means you can be trusted not to rat us out of business to some 'higher-morality' individuals. Still deciding whether or not you're just looking to smoke us out yourself."

Dabi shrugged. "Those morons were pathetic. Don't have a backbone combined to save face. Probably would have ratted you out sooner than I would. 'Sides, I'm looking for business and heard a man was hiring, so I've got more to gain than them trapped in their dead-end jobs."

The gray-haired man chuckled through a whiff of his cigar. Dabi let the smoke curl around his face gracefully. "Before I lost contact with my disappointments, I got your resume made." His fingers fiddled with the papers strewn about the table. "Dabi, was it? Does it stand for something?"

"I like how it sounds. "The black-haired man smirked back. "Does Giran?"

The man waved his eyebrows. "Professionalism; it's what I stand for. Can't make a dent worth shit in the world if you don't know how to be an adult. Start a business, hire some employees, take care of your work and the little fish swimming under you before they go sleeping with anyone in the street." He slid around another page. "They didn't tell me what kind of job you were looking for. Looking to get into the skin care business?"

Dabi followed his joking jab to the purple patches of dead skin that made up plenty of his visible arms, chin and eyebags, held to that which still held life through a few haphazard staples. "Well, us ugly bastards don't have many career opportunities in life, do we?" He took the other man's laugh to follow up with, "I'm actually looking for someone. I take it you heard what happened in Hosu."

"Yeah, and so has everyone." Giran snapped his fingers, and the wolf man returned with an unmarked laptop that gray-haired man got to clicking away on. Within seconds, the screen was playing the overhead video that displayed the Hero Killer, two hero children and one unidentified young man. "The video comes and goes, much to the Public Safety's chagrin. I've had dozens come in already talking about the video, wanting some of that fame for themselves like they've got half as interesting a case as the quirkless man. They don't understand the first thing about protest or how to change the world; just rats scrambling for scraps, unable to cook their own three-course meals to gorge on luxuriously."

"Really fuckin' poetic," Dabi dismissed him, pointing at the screen. "I'm looking for him. Want to chat."

"Garou?" Giran peered at the screen, shuffling around papers once more before pulling out a blue slip. "Only one other has been interested in the man himself. Sadly, I don't have a direct connection to him, but I do have a contact who-let's say works with him, looking for some hands to do some dirty work. Stuff that's right up your alley. He and Garou should be in touch again soon—"

"Not him," Dabi interrupted. He leaned forward in his seat, jabbing a finger against the screen so it pressed right under the head of the green-haired boy. "Him."

The dirty broker looked at the screen with a small expression of surprise, before a disgusting smile broke through his teeth. "You're hired."