Chapter 3

Self-imposed community service is surprisingly difficult with all the screaming.

Izuku's not the one screaming – well, he does yell a little, like when he barks his shin on the corner of a discarded oven or accidentally drops a microwave oven on his foot. But he's not getting distracted by the sound of his own voice.

The first time it happens is on the very first day, and Izuku is so exhausted from waking up at the crack of dawn that he's sure he's just having a vivid auditory hallucination.

But no, that's not the case, because the sound of it sends Rei spider-crawling down from her perch on the trash heap, and it makes the ghost woman at All-Might's side hover closer and look around in alarm. With the woman's back turned, Rei tugs on his hand and points. He follows the direction of her finger, bleary-eyed, but all he sees are rolling hills of garbage.

Rolling, screaming hills of garbage.

He's already tired and sore from the heavy lifting he's done since he got started, but now there's a buzzing in his nerves. It's not fear, not yet, but it's a quietly relentless, anxious energy. It's a lot like fight or flight, but he can't yet tell whether he wants to fight or flee more; all he knows is he doesn't want to stay still. He wants to do something, anything to make the screaming stop.

Before he can stop himself, he groans aloud and massages desperately at his forehead, trying to ward off an oncoming headache.

A hearty pat on the back almost knocks him flat on his face, and his unbalanced staggering hides the fact that it makes him jump like a startled rabbit. "Resting already?" All-Might's voice booms, momentarily drowning out the disembodied shrieking. "Not giving up so soon, are we, young Midoriya?"

"Nope!" Izuku puts on his brightest, most determined smile, and gets back to hauling trash to the pickup. It doesn't take much to get him out of breath, but he carries on. As he does so, he tilts his head this way and that, trying to pinpoint where the cries are coming from. His friend keeps close to him, glaring around all the while.

Before long, Izuku determines that the voice isn't just screaming; it's crying, as well. His nervousness drops a little, but the buzz of restless energy is still there. Izuku pours it into what he's doing.

"I don't like this."

Izuku shoots a quick glance toward the speaker. Ever since the sludge villain incident, he's seen her hanging close to All-Might's side. He has yet to see one without the other.

She's not someone he recognizes, and that only piques his curiosity. She's broad and muscular, with dark hair in a half-updo. A lot of ghosts appear in whatever outfit they died in, but most of them can change how they look if they want, and Izuku's never sure either way unless there's blood or clothing damage. In this ghost's case, her tank top and athletic pants make her look like she died on her way to the gym. There doesn't seem to be a mark on her, though, so she was either poisoned or she's changed her look.

Izuku wonders what her name is.

He hasn't spoken to her – not yet. He hasn't seen her without All-Might around, and there's no way he's going to risk talking to her when the Number One Hero might hear him. If All-Might hears him, then he'll ask who he's talking to, and Izuku can't tell him the truth. He absolutely can't.

Izuku has his chance, his first and only chance to become a hero. There's no way he's risking it when he's barely even started. All-Might doesn't have to know.

As he watches from the corner of his eye, the woman aims a swat at the back of All-Might's head that goes right through him. "Welp, I'm gonna go check that mess out and, uh… hopefully figure out a way to clue you two knuckleheads in on a screaming rageghost if I need to. Sit tight, Toshi." She vanishes then into thin air.

Izuku purses his lips as he stoops and wraps his arms around what looks like the remains of a microwave oven. If it does prove to be dangerous, then he'll have to find a way to warn All-Might without revealing too much. Can he make up some excuse for them to leave, without making All-Might think he isn't serious about this?

Before he can think further on the subject, the haunting voice is joined by a second, and that's when the eerie wails turn into what sounds like the ghostly-shrieking equivalent of the noises cats make when they fight in an alleyway. Izuku certainly isn't expecting it, because that's when he drops the microwave oven on his own foot and adds his own high-pitched yelp to the din.

Thanks to disuse and decay, it's only about half a microwave oven by now, so Izuku avoids a broken foot. He can't quite dodge All-Might's attention, though.

"Haha, w-whoops!" Gingerly he pulls his foot out from under the broken appliance. "Silly me, b-butterfingers, haha. No harm done, don't worry about it, I can just. Pick it back up." He does so, still chunnering to himself with the faint hope that All-Might will brush this off. "Yup, still going. No problem. Off to the truck." Except there's a very good chance that All-Might's ghost friend is tangling with an unhappy poltergeist at the moment, and Izuku has no way of escaping his attention long enough to defuse the situation.

He loads the broken microwave oven and almost bumps into Rei. Her hair is beginning to stir, without any help from the wind, and that's usually a good sign that she's uneasy, too. Izuku chews his lip and dawdles over choosing the next piece of trash to grab. The woman must be someone All-Might knows. She doesn't look enough like him to be a relative – maybe a friend? A girlfriend? Did All-Might ever even have a girlfriend? He certainly has a lot of female fans – he's getting off track. The point is, if she's spending her afterlife following him around, then there was some kind of bond. There had to be. Rei's different; if it weren't for the fact that he could see her and hear her and talk to her, Izuku doubts she would have given him a second thought. But if this woman is important to All-Might…

Well, sitting by while she gets in trouble with a poltergeist doesn't sit right with Izuku.

He can't risk talking to Rei with All-Might so close, so he stalls a few more seconds to leave his hands free.

"Go check on her?" he signs, turning away from All-Might to hide the movements of his hands. "Make sure she's okay." His friend vanishes, and Izuku scoops up an old tire, slings it over his shoulder, and jogs back to the pickup.

The two-toned shrieking is cut off by a blood-curdling screech that churns Izuku's stomach until he has to pause to let the nausea pass, and for a few glorious seconds, silence falls. Izuku waits on bated breath, before finally the original voice takes up its haunting wail once more.

Rei materializes close by, and a few seconds later Izuku lets out a soft sigh of relief as the dark-haired woman returns to All-Might's side. She looks a little ragged and faded around the edges, but she seems all right.

"Shit," he hears her hiss. "Shit. I've gotten weak too, Toshi. Time was, I could've ended a fight like that with my pinky finger. Now I need little monster girls coming to my rescue – no offense, sweetie, thanks for that. Ow. Okay. Just gotta… stay away from that sedan. For the love of God, Toshi, stay away from that sedan."

Izuku tosses a glance over his shoulder, frowns a little, and spots the car in question. It's just as battered and disused as everything else in this shoreline junkyard, bent and warped out of shape, most of its windows smashed, and it's in the direction that the wailing is coming from. It's also just within the area All-Might set him to clean, but well out of his reach for now. At this point he'd need climbing gear just to get to it through all the rest of the trash.

The wailing breaks into a sob, just for a moment.

Izuku sets his jaw and steps in the direction of the old sedan. There's plenty of junk in the way, but he'll get there. He has to; poltergeist or not, there's someone who might need help, and he's not going to consider this job done unless he cleans that up, too.

He sets his shoulder against a broken-down washing machine, digs his heels into the sand, and keeps working.

It takes two and a half weeks for him to reach the sedan. If All-Might notices that he's moving in a specific direction, he says nothing and Izuku offers neither acknowledgment nor explanation. The woman notices, though – the woman who follows All-Might. She was always nervous, what with the continuous screaming echoing through the trash pile, but a few days before Izuku reaches the car, she realizes that he's headed straight in that direction.

She tries to stop him. For the better part of that day, Izuku works through her warning shouts on top of the screaming. He tries to signal her when All-Might's back is turned, but she never notices. And she won't try to stop him physically, because Rei growls when she gets too close.

(He thinks about taking the risk anyway. All-Might is in his skeletal true form more often than not – is he more or less observant when he isn't using his quirk?)

It comes to a head the day Izuku finally clears the path. He manages to haul away three bicycles that got warped and tangled together, and that turns out to be something of a keystone in clearing the way to the sedan. After Izuku wrestles the mess into the back of the pickup, he runs back to continue. All-Might watches and waits, gaunt enough to be drowning in the jacket he's wearing.

The path that Izuku has cleared cuts between two larger piles like a narrow valley of garbage. At the top of the pile on the right, there's a television set balanced somewhat precariously. It looks stable enough to most, but most don't take into account the outbursts of anxious ghosts.

"One step at a time, young Midoriya," All-Might is saying as Izuku comes jogging back. "At your stage, I doubt you'll be able to move that." He nods to the broken-down sedan. "Unless, of course, you'd like to try."

"I'll get to it," Izuku says, and resists the urge to rub at his ears. The screaming is almost close enough to hurt at this point.

"No, you won't." The ghost who follows All-Might sounds all the more agitated. She blinks in and out of view, ending up perched at the top of the pile on the right. Izuku shoots her a look, but she's too upset to notice. "Stay away from there! Both of you! Toshi, I mean it!" Izuku's friend hisses back at her, and the woman's form flickers. "Can't we warn them?" she yells back. The force of her frustration rattles Izuku, and she bumps against the television set.

All-Might takes a step closer to the pile. Izuku doesn't even think about it. His hand shoots out, blocking All-Might from taking a step further. At that moment, the television teeters over, falls, and hits the sand just a few feet in front of them.

"Shit-" Izuku hears the ghost woman hiss, before Rei spider-crawls up the pile to shriek her fury right in the woman's face.

Wordlessly he crouches, lifts up the television, and staggers back to the pickup beneath its weight, while the woman's frantic apologies mingle with his friend's furious shrieks and growls.

All-Might surprises him by ruffling his hair when he gets back, and Izuku steers the cleanup away from the sedan once more.

It's only that night that he dares approach it again. Once he's eaten and finished his homework, his studying, and daily scheduled exercises, Izuku makes his way back to the beach. All-Might and his protective tagalong are nowhere to be seen. Izuku is alone except for Rei, and free to do whatever he needs.

"Stay back," he tells her. She scowls at him, and he glares back. "Stay back. I just need to talk to them."

Sand crunches beneath his shoes as he meanders his way through the garbage. The poltergeist still screams and cries, louder and louder as Izuku creeps through the path he made and approaches the broken sedan. His pace slows until he's inching forward. Step, then pause. Step, then pause. Step, then pause. Finally, Izuku can reach out and brush the bent door with his fingertips.

A pale hand, bloodied and missing two fingers, thrusts out the window, seizes him by the wrist, and yanks. Izuku catches the edge of the door, and that's all that keeps him from getting dragged through the broken window. He's still pulled to the opening, and finds himself almost nose to nose with the wailing ghost.

Her face is battered beyond recognition, her skull caved in and misshapen. Shards from the broken windshield protrude from her throat, and her scream bubbles wetly. Her other hand, mangled and half gone, grasps uselessly at his throat.

Terror rushes him, and for a split second Izuku drowns in it. It fills his chest and moves outward, buzzing just beneath his skin, filling his head like cotton.

Izuku breathes in, breathes out, and continues to do so as he waits for the fear to ebb and recede. Dimly he can still hear the waves lapping at the beach, and he focuses on that sound. The terror washes over him the way the waves wash over the sand, and roils in his stomach for a few seconds before it finally filters out again, leaving him shaky but clear-headed.

(His friend is staying back, technically, but he feels her clutching at his jacket sleeve and hears her soft, high-pitched warning snarl.)

He coughs, swallows the lump in his throat, and shifts his weight in the sand. "Good evening. My name's Midoriya. What's yours?"

"I lost it!" His ears burn when she wails so close to them. "I lost it, I just lost it! I need to find it before it's too late!"

"I'm sorry," Izuku answers. "What did you lose?"

"He'll cut the brakes." The poltergeist sobs as blood trickles from her eyes and nose and spills freely from her mouth. "I lost the ring, and he doesn't believe me. I was just hiding – here. I hid here. He wouldn't look for me here. He called me trash so I hid with the garbage. And I lost it!"

"A ring? Here, at this beach?"

"He thought I threw it away. He thought I was leaving him." She leaves his throat alone and paws desperately at the front of his jacket. "I was driving here. To this beach. To look for it – it's here. It's somewhere. I have to find it – if I don't find it he'll think I'm leaving him and he said he'd cut the brakes if I tried to leave!"

"I'll help you," Izuku says. "I'll help, I promise. I'm cleaning up the beach. I'll look for it, and if I find it, I'll bring it to you."

"Tell him I'll look for it," the ghost pleads. "Tell him. Tell him he doesn't need to cut the brakes."

"I'll help you," Izuku repeats, though it feels as if his throat is closing. "It's going to be all right. I'll help you."

The hands on his jacket and wrist vanish. The woman vanishes. Izuku finds himself leaning against the broken sedan, staring through the smashed-in window of an empty car.

Stinging pain in his hand makes itself known. In catching himself on the door, he'd cut his palm on one of the shards left by the window. On his other hand, finger-shaped bruises encircle his wrist.

Before going to bed that night, Izuku does a quick internet search. He finds a news story from just a few months before: after a year-long trial, one Takeshi Matsumoto was convicted of murdering his fiancee by sabotaging her car. Izuku recognizes the car and its trapped driver in the photos, shuts off the computer, and sleeps about as well as you'd expect.

The poltergeist is quieter after that. That's a good thing, because that means All-Might's ghost friend is less nervous, Rei is less snappish, television sets are less likely to fall on anyone, and Izuku can focus better on the task at hand.

Or rather, the tasks.

It's entirely possible (highly improbable) that he's stumbled across the ring and thrown it away by accident already. But until he's cleaned up this beach, he has no way of knowing. Which means that, rather than clearing just a section of the horizon like All-Might told him to, he might have to clear the entire damn thing instead.

Oh, well. He was sort of banking on that anyway. This is just extra motivation.

The only real difference it makes is that now he goes out to the beach at night as well, and helps the murdered ghost search the garbage pile for her lost ring. It always leaves him exhausted the next day, and All-Might notices.

"You're not following the plan, are you?" All-Might chides him when he collapses in the middle of a run. "Overdoing it is just as bad as not working at all, you know. If you exhaust yourself, you'll only move backwards."

"Gotta keep going," Izuku wheezes.

"Within reason, kid."

Izuku grinds his teeth. It's not like he can explain why he's working himself so hard.

"It's good to push your limits," All-Might continues. "That's the entire point of this training in the first place. But you have to know those limits, so we can adjust your abilities in time for the exam."

"Not about the exam." Izuku tries to pick himself back up, he really does. "My – I'm not – I just have to be stronger. So I can-" save people, save as many people as I can, stop murderers so people don't have to worry about cut brake lines and lost rings, stop supervillains so that people can go home and feed their pets instead of dying in hospitals, make a world where there are less ghosts for me to talk to-

He says none of that. What he does say is, "I have to be stronger. As strong as the strongest hero." He raises his head and meets All-Might's eyes, willing him to understand, but not understand too much.

A moment later, All-Might is activating his quirk and scooping him right off the ground like a tired cat. "You really are obsessive!" There's laughter in his voice. "But I can't say I don't approve. Still! Impatience with your training won't help anyone, least of all you. Not to worry, though – this old man will revise the plan for you."

"Toshi, don't give me that shit!" the ghost woman yells. "Old my ass!"

In spite of everything, Izuku laughs so hard he almost pukes.

Bit by bit, the beach horizon clears. Trash and junk and litter give way to the white sand beneath, and for every heavy bag of garbage and broken appliance Izuku hauls away, the next gets lighter. He can barely remember how it feels to wake up in the morning without sore muscles, but it gets easier.

The shelter rings him up one day, tells him Ms. Yamamoto's one-eyed cat hasn't been adopted yet and may have to be transferred to a different shelter to free up space. Izuku tells his mother, and that night he falls asleep with Mika purring on his chest.

He gives the broken sedan a wide berth during the day. Izuku still hears the poltergeist cry from time to time. She never leaves the car, not during the day and not when Izuku comes at night, even when he talks to her and tries to coax her out. Maybe she can't come out.

After a while, Izuku stops trying. He won't risk getting close again, and beyond that there's only one way he knows how to help her. So he trains, studies, cleans up the beach, and searches every day for the ring. When he's not doing any of these things, he tries to sleep.

The entrance exam creeps closer. The garbage on the beach dwindles. No rings turn up.

He cleans the beach. He works during the day with All-Might's supervision, and under the cover of darkness with his best friend, and only the moon and a flashlight to light their search. He cleans far more than All-Might asked of him, clearing the white sand and the horizon.

The entrance exam is a week away by the time Izuku can sling a broken bicycle over one shoulder and tuck a broken air conditioner under his free arm and jog both of them from the beach to the pickup at an easy pace. The ghost in the car wails and weeps day and night. Izuku thinks of her when he's studying, when he's jogging, when he's strengthening his grip under the table, and when he's lying awake at night, petting his new cat and waiting for sleep to take him.

At six in the morning, on the day of the entrance exam, Izuku stands on clear white sand and drowns out her cries by screaming his frustration at the sunrise, because he hasn't found a damn ring.

It sticks with him in the back of his mind, persistent as a mosquito in the room. He's almost glad for the excuse to punch a giant robot in the face(?) because at least that gives him a period of blessed distraction. Even if it does more or less destroy his arm and legs in the process. He comes out of Recovery Girl's presence half-certain that he's blown it all, six months of hard work down the drain, and for the first time in at least five of those months, he doesn't venture out to the beach that night.

All in all, it's really not Izuku's day.

Against all odds, he gets in.

All-Might meets him at the Screaming Beach, with the ghostly woman in tow and his hand held up for a high-five. Izuku blinks at it for a moment, bewildered, before summoning up the courage to return it. Who would he be to leave the Number One Hero hanging?

"So, um, my arm," Izuku says, trying not to talk too loudly over the wails that All-Might can't even hear. "And my legs. Was that… supposed to happen?"

"Figured it might."

"What."

All-Might's ghost friend heaves a sigh. "You could have at least warned him, Toshi."

"It can't be helped," All-Might goes on. "You're strong enough to be a vessel, but you're still a raw beginner at using it."

"Which you could have warned him about, Toshi," his ghost grouses at him. "Not everyone can be a big, beefy, man-beef like you."

Izuku manages, just barely, to disguise a stifled snort of laughter as a cough.

"Something the matter?" All-Might asks.

"Yes. No. Allergies." Izuku forces his face straight again. "So, my arm? Well, more my legs. I sort of understand my arm, I mean I punched a huge robot in the face – I think it was the face, anyway, it was really hard to tell – but what about my legs? All I did was jump, and I completely wrecked both of them-"

"Like I was saying," All-Might interrupts. "You have a quirk now, after living your whole life without one. You're not gonna be an expert at it on Day One – because those six months don't enter into it, kid. That was your first day of possessing One For All, and that makes it Day One."

"You could've warned me," Izuku mutters.

"There wasn't the time. Besides, it worked out, didn't it?" All-Might jabs him lightly in the chest, making Izuku look him in the eye. "Remember what you told me, about being stronger? Well, you were right. You do have to be stronger. You're gonna have to work harder than any of the other students. Them, they've been living with extra limbs and laser vision and what have you all their lives. Your first hurdle's behind you, but you've still got a long way to go." He bends a little, so that they're eye to eye. "And I promise you, I will help you get there, understand?"

There's a swelling feeling in his chest as Izuku nods vigorously. Rei jostles his arm excitedly, and he tries not to let his shaking show.

"And on that note," All-Might continues, reaching into his pocket. "There's something I wanted to show you. I wanted to show you earlier, but... well, look." Izuku steps closer, and All-Might holds out a pair of photographs. They're both pictures of Izuku, a before-and-after comparison to show off his progress. In one, he's the skinny kid he remembers being. In the other, taken the morning that he finished cleaning the beach, he's filled out his own frame, replaced scrawny arms with defined musculature.

In both, his pupils are glinting red from the flash.

"I was considering fixing that," All-Might says sheepishly. "But I'm not the best with technology, I'm afraid."

"It's fine," Izuku assures him. "That kind of always happens, actually. My mom says it's a nightmare trying to get my picture taken."

"Well, if it can't be helped... not the point, in any case. Your progress speaks for itself." All-Might pauses to look him carefully in the eye. "Remember, you got to this point through your own hard work. It's gonna take more hard work to keep you moving forward from here. The stronger you become, the better handle you'll have on One For All. It will take work, and it will take time. But for now… you've earned a break. Enjoy it while it lasts, and keep your strength up. You're a Yuuei student now, and they don't let up for beginners."

"I won't let you down," Izuku blurts.

"Good."

They're about to leave. The moon is high and bright, and Izuku buzzes with eager energy and glowing pride, and if it weren't for those two things, it may not have happened. It's a chance in a million, really. At precisely the right moment, Izuku turns his head to admire his handiwork of six months, and sees moonlight glint on something in the sand.

No.

No, it couldn't be.

Izuku jogs to the object, sending up sand in his wake, eyes fixed on the tiny glint of reflected moonlight. He slows as he approaches it, not wanting to kick sand over it and lose it again. He stoops, sweeps some of the sand away, and picks up a silver ring from the beach.

It's a simple band, set with a small diamond-like stone. An engagement ring, by the looks of it. It's a little dirty from lying on the beach, but it still shines.

All-Might calls to him from across the sand. "Midoriya! Everything all right?"

"Um, go on ahead!" Izuku calls back. "I'll get home fine!" He stays where he is, under the pretense of admiring the moonlight on the waves, until he's sure All-Might has gone.

He never did touch the old sedan during his cleanup. It looks a lot lonelier now than it ever did before, one last spot of litter tarnishing the horizon. Izuku comes to a halt a few feet away from the driver's side door, and holds out the ring in his palm.

Silence falls.

"You found it."

Izuku turns around carefully. The weeping ghost stands in the sand, looking for a split second just as horrible and mangled as she did the first time Izuku saw her. Then he blinks, and she stands before him whole again, pale and thin in a spotless cardigan and skirt.

"You found it." Tears well up in her eyes, and she steps forward and reaches for it. "I wanted to look for it… to show him I only lost it. I wasn't leaving… he'll cut the brakes if I leave." An inch away from the ring, her hand halts. Izuku can't tell whether her form is flickering, or she really is shivering. More tears come, and her voice trembles and cracks. "Only… I don't really have to worry about that. Do I?" Blank white eyes, shining with ghost light and tears, meet Izuku's. "Because he already did."

"I'm sorry." Izuku's voice is thick from the ache in his throat. "I'm sorry he did that to you. You didn't deserve that." He glances down at the ring. "He's in jail now, you know. He didn't get away with it. He won't be able to hurt anyone else."

"Good. That's good." The woman's hand is clearly shaking now. "My name's Sachi. Thank you for finding my ring."

"Happy to help."

"I'm sorry." Sachi sniffles, and lowers her hand back to her side. "I'm sorry, I made you go through all of that trouble for nothing. I don't want it anymore."

"That's okay," Izuku says. "I don't think you need it. And it wasn't for nothing. It really wasn't."

"I can't remember – the last time somebody helped me. Just because." Sachi lifts her hand again, but only to wipe her eyes. "Thank you. Thank you so much. I won't forget this."

Izuku smiles. "I don't think I will either. I don't know if I can explain it, but you sort of helped me, too. Thank you."

Sachi doesn't reply, but she nods.

"Do you think..." Izuku's throat bobs as he swallows. "Are you going to be okay now?"

"I think… yes." Sachi smiles through her tears, and it's one of the brightest smiles Izuku's ever seen. "I think… I think I can go now. I'm okay. I'm going to be okay."

By the time Izuku blinks away the tears in his eyes, she's gone. The car is empty. The beach is silent.

He sniffles a little and wipes his eyes. A chill in the air makes him look up, to see Rei hovering nearby, beaming.

"How about you, huh?" he asks. "Think you'll ever…?"

She looks thoughtful at this, then shrugs, and flits closer to give his arm a hug.

"Well, okay," Izuku says. "If you're sure."

He goes home, and his limbs are heavy but his heart is light.