Chapter Text
"You managed to clean up this much land while lifting with your back? I find myself continuously impressed with the casual disregard the youth here has for their physical self." Izuku heard someone comment from right behind him.
Jolting forward in shock, Izuku dropped the microwave he was carrying to the dumpster sitting in an alleyway across from the boardwalk on the beach. Flailing his arms and twisting in midair as he fell, Izuku was so focused on the pale woman dressed in all black looming behind him that he failed to notice a small bird jut past him and down the boardwalk.
Before he could hit the ground, Izuku felt himself halt midair as the pale woman casually reached out and grabbed one of his flailing arms, halting all his momentum as if she had just caught a falling napkin.
"You seem to be in dire need of a hand." The woman said before frowning slightly to herself. "Or at least, that's what Malkuth has taken up saying. I do not see the value in communal catch phrases, but they seem to be rather popular, no?"
Pulling Izuku up and onto his feet, the pale woman walked past him and grabbed the microwave lying on the ground. Lifting it up with a single arm, Izuku watched as she low-pitched the entire microwave the last hundred feet into the open dumpster.
"Uh, thank you? I mean, thank you! For uh, grabbing me before I hit the ground. Even if you did kinda cause it..." Izuku muttered the last bit to himself as he took in the pale woman's appearance. Pitch black cloak, pitch black pants, topped off with pitch black boots and a head of pitch black hair.
Izuku couldn't tell if the woman just really enjoyed the color black or if it was somehow related to her quirk. Before he could ask her this, the moment was broken by the sound of frustrated screaming and laughter erupting from a convenience store at the base of the boardwalk connected to the beach.
"Argh- stupid fucking bird! Get the fuc- AW GODDAMMIT!" a man shouted out as he ran out of the store, trying to cover his head and face with his arms only to run directly into a telephone pole. Falling backward, the man landed on his back and stared up at the small white bird now perched on his forehead.
Staring directly into his eyes, the bird immediately pecked him on the forehead.
"AHH- You fucking bastard!" The man screamed out, quickly scrambling to his feet and dashing back down the boardwalk, not even bothering to cover his face anymore as the bird chased after him.
"T-thief! Somebody st-stop him!" A clerk yelled out between bouts of laughter, not even attempting to chase after the would-be thief as he rested against the doorway and continued to laugh himself hoarse.
"Ah, it seems you are not the only youth in the area getting exercise in a less than practical manner. You have my thanks for at least only harming yourself with your method." The dark cloaked woman said to him, not bothering to move to intercept the screaming thief running towards them.
"I-I wasn't lifting with my legs." 'I'm just really weak' went unsaid in his head. "Are you a hero, ma'am? Because if you aren't then you should probably move aside." Izuku said as he watched the man continue to run straight towards the spot the woman was standing in.
Realizing he was also in that path, Izuku immediately moved aside.
"I am indeed a hero." The woman said, stepping aside as well.
"Then why aren't you catching that villai-" before Izuku could finish speaking the cloaked woman threw her left arm out, immediately clothes-lining the screaming robber trying to run past her, sending him flying through the air before crashing face first against the ground, letting out a low moan as the small bird chasing him landed on his head before resuming it's punishment over him.
"Or should I say I have a heroics license? It's rather self-gratifying to call oneself a hero. Especially when they haven't done anything impressive." The gothic hero said, staring at the unconscious criminal she just sent flying a dozen feet through the air with a wave of her arm.
"I suppose it is poor form to go this far in an interaction without introductions given. My name is Binah, and I am a member of Ruina Agency."
Izuku had a few questions.
"It seems fate and chance are entangled yet again, Gebura." Looking up from her desk as she finished the last of that days paperwork, Gebura stared at Binah with exasperation. Taking a final drag off of her cigarette, Gebura blew a cloud of smoke right into Binah's face before mashing it out in the already clogged ashtray sitting on the edge of her desk.
"Care to say that again, this time like a human?" Gebura said, holding her ashtray down onto her desk as Binah sent a massive gust of wind flying towards her, sending the smoke cloud and a few blank papers flying out of the office and into the hallway.
"I merely find myself surprised at how fate wears coincidence like a patchwork costume. I met Izuku while out on patrol today. You seem to have left quite the impression on him."
"And he unto you." Binah noted, eyeing the stack of completed incident reports lying in her paperwork tray.
"This world has a few thousand years worth of shitty quotes to pick from, and you still feel the need to make your own." Rolling the singular eye placed in the center of her face, Gebura slid it across her entire head like a visor to go back to looking at her computer monitor as she continued working. "What are you building up towards, anyways?"
"The child is aimless. He is a canoe floating in a still lake, drifting askew, waiting for the slightest breeze or the smallest wave to direct him."
Gebura split her large singular eye into eight smaller ones, each one topped with an identical arched eyebrow. "It ain't every day you say a sentence that's immediately understandable. What's the reason?"
"Don't fret, my reasons are purely self-serving. My heart is the same size it has always been." Binah said, watching Gebura start to try as hard as possible to break the brute-graded keyboard as she sped up her typing.
Binah wasn't sure if four small hands was more effective than two average sized ones.
"What the hell would your heart have to do wi- nevermind. What the hell's so self-serving about helping a kid fulfill his dreams?" Gebura asked, giving up on finishing up her paperwork for the time being as she turned to fully look at Binah.
"You see a child trying to satiate his ambitions, I see a resource being squandered. Despite what local propaganda has led the population to believe, criminals are still numerous and are not afraid to act upon their surroundings."
Gebura stared at Binah.
"So you want to help a kid achieve his dreams... so he'll do your job for you?"
"Oh, not at all. He would merely be lessening our combined workload. And I have no aspirations to train him. I know well enough that my talents are better placed elsewhere."
Gebura bit back several comments on where she thought those talents would better be placed.
"If I wasn't currently neck deep in cases I'd probably be willing to give him some pointers a few times a week. I'm kinda screwed on time though. Too many expies trying to imitate that guy I embedded in a wall." Gebura said as she got up and started walking away from her private office.
"Good luck trying to find someone idealistic enough to train a complete stranger and with enough free time that they'd be able to do it at a moments notice though. Kid at least deserves some help." And with those parting words Gebura flicked off the lights and closed the door to her office, pretending Binah wasn't still standing in the middle of it.
If Gebura gave the conversation her undivided attention she would've realized how easily those criteria would be to fill.
"Hello? Are you Izuku by any chance?" Izuku heard someone softly call out behind him, both far enough away and quiet enough that he had enough sense of self to not drop the mini-fridge he was carrying to the dumpster onto his feet.
Carefully putting down the oversized brick of a fridge on the ground, Izuku turned around to see who was interrupting him this time. On the short list of people he was expecting to interrupt his community service workout, a plain woman dressed in even plainer workout clothing wasn't on it.
If Izuku was a judgemental person, he would say the woman standing behind him looked like she was from before the dawn of quirks. With perfectly proportioned limbs, a perfectly normal height, plain brown hair and eyes, and a perfectly normal amount of limbs, the woman looked more quirkless than even he did.
There was probably something he could say about someone being the most unique looking person in the entire city on virtue of having absolutely nothing unique about her appearance.
"Uh, yeah? I mean yeah! Yeah, I'm Izuku. Izuku Midoriya. And you are...?" Izuku hoped nobody else on the boardwalk was paying attention to him right now, or else he would die of embarrassment at managing to fumble giving a woman his name.
Izuku tried to not think about the fact that said woman was currently giving him her undivided attention.
"Ah, I forgot to introduce myself. My name is Hod. I'm a 'desk jockey' at Ruina Agency. At least that's what Netzach calls it..." Hod muttered under her breath, lightly bouncing on the balls of her feet.
Snapping back to attention, Hod lightly clapped her hands together before leaning forward slightly, smiling down at Izuku. "As for why I am here, it's by special request. Your aspirations have managed to pique quite a few heroes interests, so I was asked if I was available to assist you in training to enter U.A."
Izuku felt his vision start to tilt after her words finally sunk in. "Heroes have been noticing me?" Izuku asked, his voice a decibel above a whisper. Quickly looking at his surroundings, Izuku couldn't help but feel like everything was starting to look distant and out of focus, like a blurry camera.
Hod nodded, still smiling. "They have! Why, both Binah and Gebura have expressed a belief that you are more than capable of entering U.A... with some guidance. I mean, Binah didn't explicitly say it, but I assume that was her intent when she asked me to come here so it's kind of implied."
Izuku couldn't even bring himself to pay enough attention to her to listen to the last of her sentence. Looking around at his surroundings, everything except Hod and himself was almost completely indiscernible, as if he had just jumped into a pool with his eyes wide open.
"And you're gonna help train me to enter U.A? A hero agency sidekick is gonna personally train me....?" Izuku could barely hear himself speak, his voice sounding completely muffled to his own ears.
Hod pretended to pout, frowning at him in faux-anger. "Hey now, I might not leave the office much but I'll have you know I'm a fully fledged hero, same as everyone else in the agency." Despite sounding like she was whispering across a canyon during a wind storm Izuku somehow managed to clearly hear every word she said, her every word managing to echo through his head on a loop.
Realizing Izuku wasn't taking this as well as she expected, Hod reached up and patted Izuku on the shoulder. "Are you alright? I'm sorry if I overwhelmed you, this is a bit much to just get dumped on you, huh? If you want I could probably get Gebura to train you instead. She's been kinda busy lately but I'm sure she'd put some stuff on hold to help train you."
"Gotta support the next generation of great heroes, after all." Hod added as an afterthought before Izuku could fully process her previous sentence.
Izuku fainted on the spot.