Chapter 2

"A fifteen year old boy has vanished tracelessly yesterday afternoon. He didn't come home from school. The name of the boy is Izuku Midoriya. The police suspects kidnapping or even murder. If you see this boy, please immediately inform authorities."

That had been on the news the night Deku vanished. It had been three and a half years ago, when we were still in middle school and I hadn't seen him since. Now he was standing right in front of me. But he had changed. A lot.

He wore his messy, now completely black hair longer, to a bit below his ears. His eyes were no longer a bright forest green, but greyish, darkened and lifeless. One of his main features, his freckles, had completely vanished and he was paler than I had ever seen him, making the dark shadows around his eyes even more prominent.

Deku had grown quite a bit and was now almost as tall as I was. He also didn't seem scrawny anymore, more like he actually filled the clothes he was wearing. Which were a black sweatjacket, black pants and a pair of heavy army boots. I was seriously asking myself how the fuck he moved so lightly in those. Another thing I noticed were his pierced ears, which had now three black earrings in them on either side.

Deku saw my gaze shifting up and down his body and gave me a smug grin. "Like what you see?" I narrowed my eyes and let a slight growl out. He pulled his hands out of his pockets, which were in black, fingerless gloves, and waved them around in front of his body. "I was just kidding! You don't look too bad yourself either. So, how's life as a soon-to-be Pro Hero? I saw you on the news a couple of times. Your first year was pretty rough, huh?"

"None of your business." I didn't trust his smalltalk. Officially, Deku was dead and I never wished for him to suddenly be alive again. Yet here he was. "Why the hell are you stalking me?!" Deku sighed. "Still straight forward, I see. You haven't changed at all, at least not for the better."

Then he gave me a teeth-baring grin, showing off his slightly sharp canine teeth. "To make it easy for you, I'll just tell you the whole story. You see, when you told me to kill myself back in middle school, I couldn't get those words out of my head anymore. The day I vanished, I was actually pretty close to do so, but I didn't have the guts to jump."

Deku shook his head, seeming a bit embarrassed. "Well, I ran away. Got picked up by some old man who fed me a couple of years. Got around a bit and had some people on the streets teach me things-" He stressed that word and accentuated it with a slightly vicious grin. "However, the old idiot died on me last week. I got bored after getting rid of his corpse and thought: "Why not go see how your old friend has been keeping up?" And here I am, back from the dead!"

He finished with a laugh, but I couldn't identify whether it was supposed to threaten me or he was simply happy. Either way, it was fucking terrifying. I growled. "So you're telling me I had to wear a fucking suit with a tie to a funeral with an empty coffin without any damn reason?! Way to fucking go if you wanna piss me off." Deku dropped his head to the side and looked at me as if he was trying to explain something complicated to a little child.

"Well, you're kinda right, since it's not really possible to bury minds or souls or shit like that, but something definitely died of me." His eyes suddenly flopped to the ceiling with an empty expression in them. "But, I'm not dead-" He squeezed his eyes shut. "Shut up idiot, you ARE dead." I gave him a weirded out look, trying to figure out what had just happened. Deku was about to say something, when his eyes flopped to the ceiling again and he waved at me weirdly.

"Hi Kacchan! Nice to see you again! Sorry for the-" Deku switched his eyes back to me. "Sorry, I have to take care of something for a moment." He looked to the side. "Listen here, little shit, I told you to stay put while I talk to Mr. Smug-as-fuck here. If I'd let you talk, and I won't make that mistake ever again, you'd just jump into his arms like a stray puppy returning to its mother. And now bite your dirty tongue!"

His eyes flopped to the ceiling. "I just want to say hello! We haven't seen him in almost four years!" Back to the side. "Shut the fuck up." Up. "But-" Side. "Do you remember what happened last time you didn't listen?" Deku suddenly took a butterfly knife out of his pocket and flicked it open. Then his eyes flopped back up. "Y-You wouldn't do that in front of Kacchan! A-And you feel the pain aswell!"

Side. "I don't feel pain anymore. You're the only weak idiot here. And… when have I ever avoided public violence? Don't challenge me, rugrat." Up. "But-" Side. "I said to SHUT THE FUCK UP!" A spark of insanity ignited in Dekus eyes and he shook his right sleeve up. Then, in one swift movement, he dragged the knife over this lower arm. The skin teared with a terrifying noise and blood started flowing down his arm just a moment later.

Deku didn't even wince. He just pulled his sleeve back down and cleaned the knife on his pants quietly murmuring to himself. "That's gonna be a nasty scar…" Then he flicked the knife shut and put it back into his pocket, smiling at me widely. "Good, now that that bastard is gone… Where were we?"

I had watched the freakshow without making noise, and now I didn't know what to say although I had several fucking questions. I opened and closed my mouth a few times, then I cleared my throat. "What the fuck?!" Deku giggled, clearly amused about my reaction. "I know I'm fucked up, but that's alright. Now, let's talk about you! That's what you like the most, right?"

I couldn't talk about my life right now. I wasn't the one who vanished for four fucking years, then turned up at a foe's house, had a fight with some kind of second personality and started fucking cutting themselves. I just asked the first damn question that came to my mind. "Do you not hold a grudge against me or something? Seems pretty much like I got you into this situation…"

Dekus eyes ignited. "Not holding a grudge? Kacchan, I've held a grudge on you for so long, I don't even know how to keep going without my daily fuel of hatred that overcomes me when I picture you!" That was a threat on another damn level. He pulled his butterfly knife back out and flicked it a few times around in some kinda intimidating moves I had once seen online. "This brings me to the actual reason I'm here."

He grinned at me and blindly continued playing with the knife. "You owe me big time. Twelve years of pain, to be exact, since I pretty much stopped doing 'pain' a year ago. I am here…" His expression dropped to pure hatred.

"To collect your debt."