Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Izuku's attention is drawn to a conversation near the end of the alley he's sitting by the entrance of, causing him to look up from his meal.

"Did you hear?" A thug with blades coming out of his arms asks.

"What?" His friend responds, looking up from the cash he was counting that he got from the wallets he stole throughout the day.

"Apparently there's a new villain group that popper up recently, Giran even started working for them."

This causes a rather large amount of shock in the second thug.

"You mean the infamous 'Omniscient Informant'!? The only guy that The Green Ripper himself refuses to mess with!?"

This causes Izuku to chuckle, knowing full well that the only reason that he hasn't killed Giran is because they're friends, and not because Giran's at all dangerous. However, this brief lapse in attention causes him to miss the first thug's response to the question.

"So, why are you bringing this up now? I mean, I would've heard about it eventually anyway, and it's not like a group that managed to even get Giran himself to work for them would bother themselves with some 2-bit thugs like us anyway." The second thug asks.

"That's just the thing, apparently they're hiring. Any villain or criminal in the city is invited to join as a temporary member for some big job they're gonna do. Supposedly they're planning to attack UA and are willing to take any help they can get." The first thug explains excitedly.

Now THIS catches Izuku's attention, as one of the few heroes in the world who he views as a friend and a threat is a teacher at UA(1), a man whom he views with nothing but the utmost respect. Izuku takes one last bite of the arm he's eating before incinerating it with his fire quirk(2). Izuku then enters the alley, kills the 2 thugs, takes a bite of each, and walks off.

2 days later

Shota Aizawa was not happy in the slightest. First, a phone call had woken him up from his nap, and now he was at the scene of a murder and kidnapping case, one that had The Green Ripper's hands all over it.

The scene was a simple 2 story house, where a family of 5 previously lived. Now, the parents are dead and the children are missing, on the bright side the parents at least deserved their deaths, if the sex dungeon filled with sexual torture instruments about the right size for kids from the ages of 9(the age of the youngest child in the house)-14(the age of the oldest child in the house) said anything, that is.

What was really bothering Aizawa, however, was the message written in blood on the living room wall, where the corpse of the father was found.

Hi there! I dealt with these 2 criminals for ya! I have also taken their children until further notice. If you want to rescue them, then tell Eraserhead to come to the place where we first met, alone. If any of my sensor quirks sense anyone other than Eraserhead approaching the spot, then I'll kill all 3 kids and leave.

-Signed, your friendly neighborhood Ripper.

Was what the message said, immediately causing dread within Aizawa, as every time this happened in the past The Green Ripper's intent was to inform him of a threat to his life that was approaching. 

Aizawa simply sighs in frustration before heading off in the direction of the warehouse where he first met The Green Ripper.

Quickly reaching his destination, Aizawa calmly enters the warehouse, knowing full well that Ripper doesn't kill anyone that don't deserve it, unless they attack him first, that is. However, he also knows that Ripper will never break a promise that he's made, and that if he says that he's gonna kill someone, then they will die no matter what, and when their corpse is found it'll be missing the dominant arm and the corresponding half of the brain. If The Green Ripper doesn't decide to eat the entire body, that is.

"What is it that you want to warn me about this time, Ripper?" Aizawa questions upon reaching the main room of the warehouse, where The Green Ripper is sitting upon the unconscious bodies of the 3 kids he kidnapped, which he had piled on top of one another.

The Green Ripper just grins as he stands up from his makeshift throne of unconscious human bodies and walks over to a nearby wall.

"It would be no fun for me to simply explain it to you, so instead I've set up a riddle for you to solve." The Ripper says as he uses one of his quirks to reveal a message carved into the wall. "Oh, and by the way, if you go to Nezu for help solving this one, I'll eat Mr. Mittens."

"WHAT!?" Aizawa shouts upon hearing the threat upon the life of his favorite cat that The Green Ripper has just delivered. "You wouldn't dare!"

Ripper merely raises an eyebrow at him. "Fluffles."(3)

Aizawa grimaces. "Alright, fine, you've proven your point. I won't go to Nezu. But you know as well as I do that he'll find about about it eventually, and he'll come to me with the answer to the riddle without me doing anything to try and get his help, he's done it before."

"True enough." Ripper says with a shrug. "But the riddle's a rather simple one this time, so you should be able to figure it out before Nezu finds out about it anyway. Besides, even if you don't figure it out I plan on interfering anyway, so your life really shouldn't be in any danger anyways. Anyways, see ya later." And with that he's gone, disappearing as if he was never there in the first place. And knowing him, he probably really wasn't there, instead it was far more likely that he he had used one of his quirks to send a projection of himself there from elsewhere.(4)

Chapter Text

"In the first week of learning, you shall meet a Mighty threat at the place commonly mistaken for a land of fun." Shota repeats the riddle that The Green Ripper had left him with.

Nemuri hums. "'The first week of learning' is obviously referring to the first week of school, AKA next week, but there are a lot of places that the second half could be referring to."

Hizashi nods. "Yeah, you're right. I'm telling you though, he's saying that the USJ will be attacked."

Shota and Nemuri wave him off. "That's impossible. The only place in all of Japan that has a better security system than UA is Tartarus." Nemuri says.

Shota scoffs. "We have the second best security system when it comes to software alone, countless places have better security hardware than us. I do agree with you though, it's almost impossible for the USJ to be attacked while we're there. We almost never have any classes there, which is common knowledge. There's no way that an actual threat would attack the USJ without knowing our schedule, which we do not keep physical copies of."

"I'm inclined to agree with Hizashi, actually." Nezu's says as he enters the room, much to the shock of everyone within it.

Shota stares at Nezu in dread, hoping that Mr. Mittens is still alive when he gets home.

"Seriously? Villains attacking the USJ is ridiculous. Villains attacking UA at all is ridiculous. There's no way that they would be able to get away afterward, even if they do succeed in their goal, whatever it may be." Nemuri says, not understanding Nezu's logic.

Nezu shakes his head. "Ah, that would normally be the case, true, but you must pay close attention to the wording and capitalization of his riddle." He says while hopping onto the table and pointing at Shota's phone, which is currently displaying a picture of the riddle. "'you shall meet a Mighty threat'. The 'M' in Mighty is capitalized. He's saying that you're going to meet an All Might level threat at 'the place commonly mistaken for a land of fun.' Which clearly refers to the USJ, which is commonly mistaken Universal Studios Japan, which is a theme park, and therefore fits the description of 'a land of fun'." He concludes, causing Shota and Nemuri to gain shocked expressions, and causing Hizashi to gain a smug one.

Suddenly, The Green Ripper's astral projection appears, sitting on the table.

"Congratulations, you've solved my riddle!" He says cheerfully, before his expression turns sour and he turns to look Nezu in the eye. "Unfortunately, you were forced to intervene and solve it for them."

Nezu simply smiles at him, not even a speck of fear or worry on his face or in his eyes.

Ripper then turns to Shota. "Don't worry, I won't eat Mr. Mittens. I would have if you intentionally sought out Nezu's help, but seeing as he took it upon himself to solve it for you, I'll spare him this time."

Upon finishing his statement, Ripper vanishes.

Izuku opens his eyes after deactivating Astral Projection with a frown on his face. 

"Fucking Nezu. Always solving my riddles for them. If he wasn't a hero, I'd have eaten him by now." He growls out.

"No you wouldn't have." Himiko says as she enters the room and deactivates her transformation, the elderly woman that she was impersonating turning into mud and falling off of her, leaving her completely bare. "You hate animal meat."

Izuku chuckles. “True. He is part human thanks to the experiments done on him, though, so his meat might be passable.”

Himiko giggles and flops down onto the couch chest-up with her head resting on his lap. “Maybe. You’re never gonna find out unless one of you goes full-on villain, though.”

“That’s why I’m not putting much thought into it.” Izuku says with a smile as he rubs her head, causing her to sigh happily. “Now then, let’s talk about how your day went, shall we?”

Chapter Text

Izuku chews on the arm of a random villain he killed earlier while sitting upside down in the top of the USJ, completely invisible, watching Eraserhead lead his students into the building. And then, portals open all over, releasing villains into the different zones.

With a sigh, he throws what’s left of the arm down at the plaza before activating one of his many flight quirks and moving down to the air just above the crowd of villains.

Everyone, hero and villain, stares at the arm that had just fallen from the sky. It’s missing chunks of flesh, as if someone has been eating it.

Slowly, they all turn their attention upward, fear in the hearts of the villains and students as they realize who it is.

“RUN!!!” A random villain yells. “IT’S THE GREEN RIPPER!!”

He doesn’t even get the chance to move, as The Ripper appears before him, having grown to giant size, and bites him in half. He then slaughters dozens more with a simple wave of his hand, sending out lasers that pierce their hearts.

The Ripper then returns to normal size and casually walks up the steps to Eraserhead, Thirteen, and the students, as all but 3 of the villains run around like chickens with their heads cut off, attempting to get as far away as possible.

“Ripper.” Eraserhead says, crossing his arms. “What are you doing here?”

Izuku chuckles. “It’s nice to finally meet you in person, too, Aizawa.” He says with a grin.

Eraserhead scoffs. “We’ve met in person before, exactly once.”

Izuku laughs. “You were trying to capture me then, Aizawa! It hardly counts.”

Eraserhead raises an eyebrow. “Give me 1 good reason not to do it now.”

Izuku grins. “Because your quirk won’t work on me anymore. I recently obtained a quirk that makes it so that anyone who attempts to use an optical quirk on me, like yours, is temporarily blinded.”

Eraserhead sighs. “That is, indeed, a good reason.”

Izuku laughs, before turning to Thirteen. “It’s nice to meet you, too, Kurose!”

“Don’t call me by my name.” Thirteen says, crossing her arms. “Use my hero name, instead.”

Izuku hums, putting his hand to his chin as if considering something. “Hmmm, no, I think your name works just fine.”

Thirteen scowls beneath her helmet, which Izuku somehow sees regardless.

“Come now, Kurose, you act like you hate me for some reason!” Izuku says, feigning offense.

“You ate my brother.” Thirteen says, angered. “Do you even remember his name?”

Izuku raises an eyebrow. “I’ve eaten a lot of people’s brothers. Also, of course I don’t. You don’t remember every piece of beef you’ve ever eaten, do you?”

“I’m a vegetarian, I don’t eat beef.”

Izuku gags. “Vegetarians taste disgusting. Was your brother, perhaps, one as well? ‘Cause if he was, then I most likely do remember him. I remember every vegetarian and vegan I’ve ever eaten.”

“Are you done ignoring us?” A voice asks from behind him, causing him to turn towards the source, finding the portal villain standing there.

Izuku scowls at him, before sending him flying with a flick of the wrist, using several quirks simultaneously to do so. “Yes, yes I am.” He growls, annoyed at his conversation having been interrupted. He then turns back to Thirteen and Eraserhead, “Anyway, you can stand back. I’ve got another army to slaughter.”

The Ripper moves faster than anyone can see, appearing in the downpour zone as if he teleported, and immediately devours ten villains whole with a single bite of his enlarged mouth, causing the rest to panic, terror filling their beings, as he moves once more, ripping the skin off of several villains with the sheer windforce generated by his movements.

Slowly, he begins to laugh, massacring the villains with pure glee written on his face. Apparently having decided to take his time and have fun, he begins systematically hunting down and killing the remaining villains in the zone, who had started trying to hide from him, slaughtering them one by one.

“Aizawa-sensei, you have to stop him!” Momo says, her heroic nature overcoming her fear as the sound of The Green Ripper’s laugh and the screams of his victims echo throughout the USJ.

Eraserhead sighs. “I would if I could, Yaoyorozu. Unfortunately, I am entirely useless when it comes to stopping his killing sprees. He respects me, but not enough to let me stop him from doing what he wants. The most I can honestly say I can do against him is ‘not die, solely due to him not wanting me dead’.” He explains.

Momo frowns. “So, there’s nothing anyone can do to try and save those lives?”

Thirteen crosses her arms. “It has been repeatedly proven that the only thing that can make The Green Ripper back off is All Might, but he is not here at the moment, so we have our hands tied.”

Eraserhead turns toward her with a frown. “Thirteen, take the students and leave. I’ll stay here to try and distract him when he’s done, to buy some time for All Might to arrive and capture him.” He orders, prompting her to nod and follow instructions.

“Tomura Shigaraki, I suggest that we leave.” Kurogiri says as he reappears beside him, heavily wounded from the attack that sent him flying. “The Green Ripper is not a foe that we can defeat, not without Sensei here.”

Tomura scoffs. “Nomu’s strong enough to kill All Might, if he comes after us before All Might gets here, I’ll just have it take care of him.”

Kurogiri sighs. “I doubt that it will succeed, but if you insist on remaining here, then I am barred from forcing you to retreat unless the Nomu is defeated or your life falls under threat while it is preoccupied.” He says before falling silent.

Chapter Text

The Green Ripper laughs sinisterly as he stalks through the streets of the Conflagration Zone, which he has transformed into the Blizzard Zone through generous usage of his ice and wind quirks.

“I know you’re there, Mikey!” He calls out, taunting the last surviving villain in any of the zones not including Shipwreck and the Plaza, who he can already see with his infrared vision. “Come on out! I promise it’ll be painless if you do!”

The villain, meanwhile, shivers in fear and cold as he sobs into his hands. “How does he know my name!?” He asks nobody, but he gets a response anyway, at the same time as glowing red eyes appear in the billowing snow.

“I know everything about you, Mikey.” The… the monster, for whatever The Green Ripper is cannot possibly be human, says. “You have a powerful quirk, which could’ve allowed you to breach the top 100 Heroes if you trained properly and tried to become a Hero, even without branching out into other forms of combat. You heat up anything you touch with all 5 fingers, limited in heat only by your own stamina, the fuel for your heat, with your body being immune to all but the most extreme of heats, meaning anything colder than Blue Fire. But you were led down the path of villainy when you accidentally murdered your own mother in self defense when she drunkenly attacked you, killing her by boiling her very blood with your quirk. That was the day when you first discovered the thrill of killing, and became hooked. You’ve killed 100 people, innocent or not, with your quirk, all for the thrill of the kill.” The monster continues, the glow of his, no, its eyes intensifying. 

“You’re quite similar to myself, in a way. We both love the thrill of the kill, though I can occasionally lose myself in the fun of a good hunt. We both killed our own mothers, though I did it intentionally, to spare her the pain of a slow death rather than on accident and in self defense. We’ve both killed a lot of people, too, though I have killed and eaten far more people than those that you have boiled the blood of. But do you want to know the main difference between us, Mikey?” The monster asks, its strikingly human face emerging from the blizzard and becoming visible as more than just its glowing red eyes.

Mikey sobs in terror, before nodding.

The Green Ripper’s shark-toothed smile becomes somehow both comforting and horrifying at the same time, before a hand reaches out of the blizzard and gently rests on Mikey’s cheek, the thumb wiping away his tears. “I’ve never killed an innocent person aside from my mother.” It says, before suddenly unhinging its jaw and tearing Mikey’s head off in a single bite.

As Izuku returns to the Plaza, the satisfied smile on his face turns into one of apoplectic rage. The cause of this being the fact that Eraserhead, a hero that he genuinely likes and respects, is currently pinned under the bird-headed villain(actually, now that he can smell it, he has realized that that thing’s not even human, not anymore at least), and is heavily wounded, with one arm broken and the other half-decayed. Utilizing his diagnostic quirk that he had acquired from a villain that was masquerading as a doctor, he discovers that Eraserhead is in critical condition, but there is currently a low risk of him dying from anything but bloodloss.

The discovery that Eraserhead is unlikely to die from his current wounds does little to stifle his rage, largely because he is still likely to suffer permanent brain damage from having his head repeatedly slammed into the ground if he doesn’t receive immediate help. Instantly, the creature goes flying, caused by a quirk that he has named Directional Movement that allows him to choose a direction and cause anything he touches to move in that direction, and Izuku is kneeling over Eraserhead with his hands glowing as he uses the most powerful healing quirk he has to repair Eraserhead’s wounds. As he does so, he glances around the Plaza, and discovers why Eraserhead was pinned under the Nomu in the first place: he had decided to capture the villains in the Plaza on his own in order to remove them as Izuku’s targets, thus saving their lives.

“You really are one of the best heroes, Aizawa.” He says under his breath before standing up and catching the creature’s fist with one hand.

“WHAT!? HOW!? NOMU IS SUPPOSED TO BE AS STRONG AS ALL MIGHT, HOW DID YOU CATCH ITS FIST!?!?” The blue-haired villain, who Izuku assumes to be the leader, yells.

“Did you think that this thing had the only Shock Absorption quirk in the world?” Izuku asks, his voice being entirely serious for once, with not a hint of his usual jovialness. “I have 5, 2 of which are stronger than this thing’s.” He elaborates before, without giving it a chance to react, he shoves his other hand down the creature’s throat and kicks the bottom its beak, forcing it to bite his arm off and fill its mouth and throat with his blood.

The Nomu, despite being programmed to defend itself against any attacks, doesn’t move after this, prompting shocked reactions from Kurogiri and his boss.

“Now, you may be wondering why the creature here isn’t moving anymore.” Izuku says as his arm regenerates. “Well, that’s simple. My quirk is the strongest blood-type quirk in the world, and it directly counters all other blood quirks with different abilities that exist even without all of my other quirks. One of those abilities, designed to counter blood quirks that involve the ingestion of blood, makes it so that anyone who drinks my blood is paralyzed until my blood leaves their system. And that means…” he stops, allowing both villains to come to the conclusion on their own.

“Nomu is out of commission until further notice.” The blue-haired villain growls out, realizing that his invasion has just become a historic failure, because he can’t kill All Might without Nomu, and Nomu is no longer functional. He then nods at Kurogiri, who warps both of them away, just in time for All Might himself to arrive and watch them disappear.