Archive of Our Own ^beta

Stain was down.

Izuku was sure he was just tricking them.

But they had managed to defeat stain. Maybe. He wasn’t moving, and Native was so far in ambush range that it would have been a missed opportunity to not take it.

No, he was definatly unconscious. And Izuku was definatly going to go and beat up Iida. Right at that second.

Izuku raised his eyes slowly from the fallen figure of the villain onto his friend, who was standing next to him, his posture uncommonly relaxed, helping Native unhand the villain. A lighter look in his eyes twinkled in misplaced relaxation. He looked the opposite to the boy that they knew, as if the one thing he had wanted in life was accomplished, and in a way it had.

But it was something that Izuku thought was stupid, and that Iida knew Izuku thought was stupid, but something that he had done anyway.

As if sensing that Izuku was going to hobble over to Iida, and hobble would be the optimum word considering the state of his leg and the blade currently lodged in his thigh. Todoroki knelt down in front of him, slightly to the left. As if blocking off the path to Iida’s bloody, and desolate destruction. Offering his back, so that he wouldn’t have to hobble anywhere.

And like an adult Izuku acquiesced gracefully, not at all preparing and planning his revenge for the future. Still his glare did not waver, and he noticed the lines around his friend’s eye and the shifting movements of his eyes, every time he turned with more and more knives. Keeping an eye on the short green haired time bomb beside him, while not having to explicitly look at the short gremlin.

One didn’t keep trying to be friends with Kacchan to not turn into a bomb of some sorts.

He also wasn’t looking in Izuku’s direction at all, taking the time that it took Izuku to climb onto Todoroki’s back to start off and gather more rope to help tie Stain up.

And helping up Native as the effects of Stain’s quirk wore off, the man being a certain blood type which caused the paralysis to linger. What a hero. Idiot.

Iida, not Native. Native was a hero. No matter what Stain said and did, there was no justification for why he attacked Pro’s. Just look at what he had done to Ingenium.

What kind of idiot goes after the same serial killer twice, with worsening results. Result number 1, he gets put into 1-A and is essentially named a villain – his brother is then targeted and is paralysed by villain he went after. Result number 2 is his untimely murder by fellow classmate in a fit of rage. Similar to the one he was following when he was completing his own folly mission. Karma is a bitch and so is he.

It was only the blood loss and pain that was holding him back at that time, from going after him. That and the fact that Todoroki had him draped over his back. As well as native being there. Digging his nose into Todoroki’s neck and smiling at the small shiver his friend made as his cold nose dug into his warm side Izuku tried to ignore the other boy.

Who grew, once out of the eye line of Izuku, far too comfortable. Thinking he had gotten away with this whole situation.

Sharply snapping his head back up when he heard Iida laugh at something Native say, he felt Shouto quietly sigh. The laughing stopped as soon as Iida noticed. And Shouto’s sighing got heavier.

“Must we do this now?” He whispered and Izuku ignored him.

The scathing look was enough of a murder attempt at that time, and it served very well as a warning too. Izuku thought it would be rather unsportsmanlike to try to murder a friend when they were both severely injured.

Aizawa would also not want to miss out on punishing Iida, so Izuku would let him live that indignity yet. Even the scolding him and Todoroki would get for running wild and attacking indiscriminately (probably what he was going to say) would be worth it seeing the one in store for Iida. He just hoped he would get to see it.

“Izuku I can feel you seething on my back like a wet cat, do you want me to put you down so you can attack Iida? I would have to film it for Katsuki as that was out mutual agreement if we saw you try and do something foolish, but I don’t think you would mind? Would you?”

Sulking Izuku ignored the comment, he wasn’t a wet cat.

“I think it would be better to kill him after Aizawa rinses his ass.”

“Oh, agreed. I will definatly be filming that.”

“Good send it to the group chat when you have it.”

Native had turned around at that point, as if to say something, dragging the unconscious body of Stain behind him as the least injured member of the party. Pointing to the boys as they grew closer to the increasingly agitated group of pros when Izuku felt a sharp pinch around his sides, just after noticing the horrified look on Native’s face. Before suddenly being lifted off Todoroki’s back like a cat and her kitten.

He quickly detangled himself from Shouto, so not to bring him along with him and rose quickly, craning his neck to see the dark, red and altogether too familiar wine-red wings flapping higher and higher.

Dangling in its grasp, and as his strength wanes like the moon he managed to just see Endeavour tackle Todoroki to the ground and the Pro Heroes further restraining Stain, as they connect eyes.

Then his vision went black.

He woke sometime later, in the shadow of some winged beast, standing tall over him. Blinking his eyes clear of any fogginess, as blood loss and pain dims everything around him. The steady, beady eyes of the flying Nomu takes his whole vision, blocking the light and the sounds of tinkering behind it.

“Tsubasa, my boy don’t stand over him like that. He isn’t going to be going anywhere, he is only quirkless after all, and I would imagine still unconscious, that was a deep cut, and he was losing blood rapidly. Don’t make that noise at me we want him to be awake, because then how would he atone?”

There was a grunting reply over the voice which sparked a hint of recognition in Izuku’s mind. That voice was very familiar, and that name. He knew that name. It was not a name he was likely to forget any time. But to hear it now?

What had happened to the boy, had the school done anything, or had they just brushed it off again. Maybe he was here because of what Kacchan did, looking at him now – again staring at him, he thought he could see starburst scars all over the wings. Would that have affected the flight pattern…

“I know you are awake Izuku, if you want to pretend to be asleep, a little bit of friendly advice, perhaps don’t start muttering. It is a rather annoying trait after all. I am ashamed of your father for not stamping it out of you, but he wasn’t around much after that diagnosis was he. Ran off and left you the moment you were revealed as quirkless, that must have hurt. And I think Tsubasa was doing a wonderful job before -” and then he stopped, glaring at Izuku with a laser like focus, “never you mind, it was your fault anyway. All of it, the delays, the focus on rebuilding. You and yes, his flight was severely impaired, had to fix that before…”

Then he turned around and puttered around his little mini lab, the large figure of the winged beast was still stood over him. “You did that you know. If you weren’t here, he wouldn’t be like this. I wouldn’t have been forced to make him like this. But you had to have not gone and done it. Would have saved him and would have made your father focus on his work rather than his worthless son. If he had just listened to me in the first place, this wouldn’t have happened.”

He was shouting at the end, a long screaming stream of consciousness that Izuku was not aware enough to follow, nor did he have the desire too. They had been shown the effects of certain human brain sicknesses, insanity and paranoia were the two that was said to be most dangerous.

What they hadn’t really been taught was an effective way to deal with them yet. Aizawa hadn’t foreseen one of his students being held by someone of this caliber of insanity. Especially someone with what seemed like a vendetta against him. The things he was talking about his father! He didn’t know him. Didn’t know their relationship.

Izuku was ignoring the references to the Nomu and how that was his fault for now, that didn’t need thought about just yet.

“Dr Garaki? I am sorry I really don’t understand. What am I doing here? Did you take me from my UA internship?”

There was a sharp clang, as whatever hit the table, he was standing at smashed against the surface, a manic laugh followed the sound echoing around the room. The large, and echoey room, that stretched out into the darkness under the one working bulb, the Nomu’s movement freeing up other corners of the darkness, in which Izuku peered out of.

Training had covered basic steps after a kidnapping attempt. Keep an eye out for an exit, and an opportunity, keep your kidnapper on your side, and don’t let yourself fall into a panic.

“Of course, you don’t understand, young, little, small Izuku. Why would you ever look outside your own little life, your own little problems. And yes, I did. I took you from your friends, I took you from the pro’s and I will be very soon taking you away from your father, not like he deserves, he loves you and I don’t quite understand, no it is you who deserve this. He deserves to be free of you however. Not that he will ever know it was me, I quite like my job and my life. But sometimes this is just how the cookie crumbles.”

Izuku’s heartrate increase at that last sentence, he had heard that before. From a much smaller boy, younger and fiercer, angry in much the same bigoted way.

“And as grandfather says, small little Izuku, its just how the cookie crumbles, those with power push down those with less. And those without, sit firmly. At. The. Bottom.”

Taking in the large, towering form in front of him, the large wings, blood red, the small body – much smaller than it should be despite it feeling like it was towering over him – and the almost teenage face.

A small sob escaped his mouth as he recognised the boy in front of him. His bully, a Nomu. The wings, the scars, what had happened to him since he had been gone, it had only been a few months!

Oh god he could see his brain.

“Yes, it hurts taking responsibility doesn’t it. No, no don’t stand up. I didn’t patch you up for nothing. On wait, yes that kind of was the plan, but plans change. Tsubasa, please be a dear and hold him down.”

After struggling to stand, Izuku lurched away from the stumbling façade of his old school bully, sobbing quietly as the boy Nomu got closer and closer to him. Screaming out his refusal to back down to him again, even if this metamorphoses was his fault or not. His arms held out, like they were on that day on the roof, like he was herding back against that railing. Falling down again after scrambling away from Tsubasa and away from the support of the table, Izuku struck his head on the way down.

As quickly as he had woken up, he was again back into the land of sleep, the distant sound of a phone ringing in the back ground and receding steps in the opposite direction from where he was now falling back unconscious.

“Hello? Ahh yes All for One, I am just-”

He again woke to the lab.

It was empty, no large shadow, no more aches – anything other then what he had before – and no more pain. The bandages around his thigh ached, of which he had only just noticed – but had most likely been there when he had woken the first time. And a small patch of red was slowly spreading.

Checking his arms, legs, and all other extremities he endeavoured to stand.

And after he could stand, he could run.

Izuku quickly picked his way through the largely abandoned factory, it looked like it hadn’t been used in years, only a few trails of dust disturbed in the inner sanctum where he had been held. And a large patch was very well cleared, as if a large wind had blown in that spot, or as if someone with large wings had launched themselves from that spot.

The large doors that once had been ones that large machinery had gone through were open, as he went through them there rusted and unconnected state made itself more and more apparent. It seemed as if they had just been leaned against the factory. Like some giant had ripped them off and then tried to stick them together. The image gave Izuku the shivers, and as the night was growing dark the temperature went with it.

The red stain was steadily increasing in size the more and more Izuku was forced to use his leg. But at least he was able to successfully recognise the area he was in. The large, abandoned factory area was near where Kacchan lived.

Where some villain fight or something 5 years ago had trashed the area and it had become a toxic wasteland with strewn bits of metal all over the place.

It was only supposed to be a 20-minute walk, through the very woods where Izuku and Katsuki’s relationship first started to crumble.

It took Izuku about 2 hours to get through the forest. Never having gone through it this late at night, and with his leg throbbing more and more. Getting more and more stained with blood.

Izuku’s thought spiralled, Dr Tsubasa, Tsubasa. His bully was now a nomu.

Obviously, he was upset, it was a painful situation – someone he had known when he was younger was a twisted piece of meat, a weapon for a villain to use. Dr Tsubasa, the doctor of his youth, strangely seeming to control the creature. The very same who seemed to rejoice in the pain he had given his younger self at the quirkless diagnosis.

The way he talked was as if he were made to create it, as if he were the one who made them all in the first place. The one from the USJ, the ones let loose into Hosu. Izuku couldn’t stop thinking about what else he could create.

How he could create something like that from his grandson. How he could blame Izuku for making his grandson into that creature, as if he had something to do with it.

The delusions of a villain, Izuku could not think it anything else. How would he have anything to do with that? His father was in America, how could they have anything to do with it. It struck Izuku suddenly, Dr Tsubasa was a villain. A big one, or at least connected to a big one to get the funding and space for the laboratory and dead bodies.

And he was connected to Shigaraki, connected to the league of villains. If not helping to lead them. It all seemed far too close for comfort, perhaps this was a reason why he was taken into UA in class 1-A, because of his connection to Dr Tsubasa.

But then Kacchan would also be there for that, and that isn’t true.

He was getting closer to Auntie Mitsuki and Uncle Masaru’s house now. Closer to where he used to live. Even if he knew he didn’t technically live there anymore, with his mother being moved into protective custody. That was no longer his place of residence, all of his things had been taken from there.

Which a doctor’s office would have that information.

It didn’t make sense. Nothing made sense about this whole situation. Dr Tsubasa loved his grandson, so much, especially after his parents’ death. He was the boy’s only guardian. It doesn’t make sense why he would twist the boy into a monster.

It was at that thought that he broke down. The boy was a monster, and Izuku couldn’t help but think it was his fault, couldn’t stop the threads of unease thread through him. Maybe Dr Tsubasa was right, maybe it would have been better if he had just jumped that day. If he had let Tsubasa throw him off the roof and never catch him.

Pushing through the twisted bramble, he finally made it to his old neighbourhood, but through the floods of tears he could barely recognise the place he grew up.

Nursing the cup of hot chocolate, blanket firmly tied around his shoulders and with Auntie Mitsuki talking loudly, and angrily on the phone was an seemingly old time tradition. Masaru sitting next to him on the floor and checking his wounds was something newer, with a face stretched with some emotion that Izuku could not quite pinpoint.

“How is UA? Izu-kun I understand you and Kat are at UA together? He was very distraught when you went missing.” He turned to Masaru on autopilot, scrutinising him for a few seconds,

-does he blame me for Tsubasa, is he only acting nice for the heroes to come and arrest me, will this be the end of my time at UA-

“Izuku. No one is coming to arrest you. What do you mean about Tsubasa? He’s been missing for months. Did you see him? Were you taken to the same place he was?”

“And good riddance too! I saw with my own eyes what that evil little shit was doing to you Izu-kun. Stop worrying about that shit Masaru! At least we have Izuku here now. I for one am glad he’s gone, him and his creepy little grandfather too. Honestly, they gave me the shits. I wonder what your father did to them!” She exclaimed throwing herself down onto the chair on the other side of the table, her elbow trunking down onto the wood, “I called him up after I couldn’t get hold of Inko and then the next day! POOF! They were seen no more! Coincidence I know, but I get satisfaction thinking he had something to do with it. I think that was around the same time you went missing as well, but when we went to the police, they told us not to worry.”

She sat in silent for a few moments to let that sink in and then in a moment of uncharacteristic sobriety, "We did worry, very much.”

Tears pooled at the corner of his eyes, and he kept his eyes down, vision locked on the floor. There was a very adult, ‘what are we going to do now’, silence.

“Ok right, I’ve called UA. Mr Aiz-whatever his name was is coming to get you. Sounded very relieved when he picked up the phone. What the fuck have you got into now kid, he was calling you a problem child and everything. The Izuku I knew was nothing but an angel.”

“Uh yes. I don’t quite know either. I think that’s just Aizawa-Sensei. He’s our homeroom teacher.”

The pacing stopped, the soft fall of house slippers coming closer.

“Our? What the fuck do you mean by our? Cabbage are you in class 1-A too? Since when! Masaru did you know about this? Is this why Inko stopped talking to us? Fucking hell, it better have not been anything to do with that little shit of a hell spawn.”

Hunching deeper Izuku nodded, then shook his head. Allowing Masaru to answer for him, but deciding against it when the man opened his mouth.

“Mums in protective custody, but I was sent to 1-A. I’m not allowed to do any analysis either. They think I was writing for villains. Or they don’t and they just want to keep an eye on me, not too sure. Could be both.”

And wasn’t what they would think when Izuku came back with this story, wild and kind of disjointed. Izuku still wasn’t sure why Dr Tsubasa had not done anything to him, what he was even planning to do with him there.

The thought sent cold shocks down his back. What would UA think? What would the commission think? He knew he was on thin ice with the commission, he knew that. What would they think of this. It was a very unlikely story. Maybe that was what Dr Tsubasa wanted. It just didn’t make sense, and with the way he spoke about his father.

Maybe he did leave because he was quirkless.

Quirks were particularly important, afterall. And especially to his dad. It was all they would talk about sometimes, and sometimes his father would ask him – in a funny tone – what quirk he would have if he had one.

“Izuku.” Masaru said through a thick layer of white noise, “Izuku. Can you hear me?”

“Hm? Sorry? I wasn’t listening.”

There was a look of worry on Mitsuki’s face, not on Masaru’s – he was too good at keeping his own blank. Dealing with Kacchan and Mitsuki all day meant he had got the meanest poker face.

“What happened tonight? I know you were meant to be on an internship, were you close? Why do you look like you’ve been fighting a hedge?”

Izuku didn’t know how much he was allowed to say, he didn’t want to put the Bakugou’s in danger, or besmirch their name with Kacchan at UA being his fault. Just as he was formulating an answer there was a hurried knock on the door. Banging in the quiet.

“I was in Hosu.”

It was Aizawa at the door, and he was just as confused to see Izuku in Mustafa and not in Hosu as Mitsuki Masaru, and Izuku were.

Bursting in quite spectacularly and basically drinking in the sight of Izuku, Izuku thought the look on his face would be attributed to anger or frustration. A kid from the villain class not where they are supposed to be, a kid from the villain class consorting with villains. The intense fold in between his eyebrows spoke of something else, as if he were tamping down the urge to frown and worry over Izuku. Something only the people who worked with him closely would see. Worry.

Silly man, Izuku knew he would worry. Izuku knew he cared. And in that moment Izuku felt some hope and light. It would be ok if Aizawa-Sensei dealt with it. Everything would be ok.

(Everything would be ok, except his ex-bully who was now a monster.)

“Come on problem child let’s get you to the hospital. I’m sure Todoroki would like to see you alive; I know I would like him to see you, just so I can stop getting all those questions from him and Iida. It is giving me a headache, I had to put my phone on silent and turn off the vibrate.” He said in a way that suggested he too was very glad to see Izuku alive but did not want to show it, and in a way that made him sound very old and bad at technology.

“Now wait just a second.” Mitsuki said from her place at the door, her hands on her hips and her feet spread wide. Izuku heard the groan, even if the Bakugou’s did not. It seemed he already knew he would get a lecture from the woman Kacchan took most after. “What in all fucks name is going on!”

“I am not at liberty to discuss this with you at the moment. Or ever. Midoriya, car.”

Throwing himself onto Auntie and Uncle Bakugou and wiping his tears as he went Izuku moved to the door.

“I’ll let Kacchan know how you guys are. Are there any messages you want me to pass on?”

The angry, demented, entirely Kacchan look on Mitsuki’s faded with his acceptance, and was replaced by another recognisably Kacchan ‘I will find out whether it kills me face.’

“Yeah, tell him, to fix his fucking attitude or get lost!”

“We love him very much and can’t wait to see them. Is what she means. I am sorry Mr Aizawa, Katsuki gets his allergy to emotions from his mother.”

“HAH. IN FRONT OF THE TEACHER?”

Aizawa made a noise in between an impatient huff and something resembling fond, “Don’t worry, Katsuki Bakugou is not the only punk I have had to deal with in either of my jobs. Just as long as he doesn’t try to kill any students again then he is almost a pleasure to have in my class. It's this one that makes him a problem child isn’t that right problem child.” Under his breath he whisperers, but Izuku heard, walking to the door, and gesturing Izuku out, “And now your corrupting Todoroki too.”

As he walked out the door he hear Mitsuki grumble under her breath, “Punk, who the fuck are you calling punk, lanky-haired freak.”

Waving them off as they got into the car and drove off the silence was oppressive and heavy.

“Ok kid you are going to have to give me the most detailed run down you possibly could. What in all manner of the gods happened at Hosu. Where did you go, who did you see, and who bandaged up your legs.”

And so Izuku told him.

Aizawa did not know how to take it, he had to park for a few moments during the retelling and didn’t start driving again after Izuku told him about the hero killer. His knuckles tightening around the steering wheel happened when he told him about the lab and Tsubasa and stayed white for the rest of the story.

Breathing out three deep sighs Aizawa told him exactly what they were going to do, go to the police station where Detective Tsukauchi was stationed, get him to verify the story and update the missing person’s cases on the Tsubasa’s and then get him to the hospital.

Hopefully, Aizawa was sceptical he could achieve this, Tsukauchi would be at home and would be able to meet them at the hospital. But with the Nomu attacks in Hosu, it seemed both unlikely that he would be at home relaxing.

Getting the story out was the easy part, it was easier having done it before, and he almost felt like he had fallen into a dissociative state once he started telling it. Barely remembering talking at all, and only tuning in at the end. With a joint concerned, but not brought up look from Aizawa and Tsukauchi.

Aizawa was definitely sending him to someone to have a look at that later. Not even considering the ordeal itself.

When he got to the hospital, he was wheeled straight into surgery, not missing Shouto’s phone out and recording the cut off lecture Aizawa was giving Iida.

“I think we can all agree that out patience has rewarded us with a major headache. Not to discredit the plan, but I would have preferred that I didn’t know the man was alive, let alone has disobedient loyalists – as contradictory that statement was.”

“It was like jumping over two diagonally opposed opponents.”

The horned woman hissed at the man.

“Was that a fucking checker's joke.”

The man with the mental quirk sighed in defeat, “You told me no more Chess references, so I had to get creative – Hana-san already banned Monopoly references when I asked how the bond street agent was, and if she had claimed 200 for passing go.”

The man with bright red hair and even brighter yellow eyes cut a look at him, “that’s because chess metaphors are the only ones that make sense. And I for one know that if I hear another chess reference, I’ll deliver myself to All for One in a pretty pink bow. Understood?”

“I would hope to think that that statement was a joke?” Madam president said as she entered, flanked by shadows. “I too hate chess metaphors but wouldn’t go that far. Now, let's talk about Izuku Midoriya, Stain, and this Dr Tsubasa. I hear something is stirring in the underworld.”

The pale man sitting at the table smiled as the story was relayed back to him from the other members of the commission high table.

This was going exactly to plan. His long white, lanky hair giving away to piercing eyes. His height fully unfolded from underneath him as he and the rest of the high agents were disbanded. His height, as well as his hair, was something he shared with his brother, as well as the quirk that had let him stay in power for all these years.

He hoped Izuku did come into the Commission fold, shunning his father. The pale man laughed quietly to himself; family was everything after all.