Chapter 9

He's free.

The crushing weight of the Noumu is gone, and Shouta is free and the pain is gone and his head is clear but for the roaring in his ears, and he's not sure how this happened but he can't afford to care.

He broke eye contact. That villain, the one with the disintegrating touch—Midoriya was there, and Asui Tsuyu—they were there, right there, and the villain was on top of them and he broke eye contact

His eyes clear. He's looking at the villain's back, just across the way. The pale man hasn't moved from where he was before, standing over the kids—they're children—they're his kids, his students—and Shouta moves before he can properly think. He reaches them far more swiftly than he has ever moved before—he blinks, he just blinks and he's there—and yells at them to run. He can still move, he can still fight, he can still protect them until he can't move or fight anymore.

Not one head turns to look at him.

The villain ignores him, still talking to the one with the warp quirk. Shouta stands between the man and his students in far too little space, and no one backs away. He looks over his shoulder and finds Asui speechless with horror as she stares not at him but through him, while Midoriya's eyes are glassy and blank as if he feels too much for any of it to show.

"Hey. Hey, you need to cool it before you go crazy."

He doesn't hear anyone come up, he just hears the voice. A young voice, belonging to another kid, but this is not a face he recognizes. This one is older than his students, pale and blood-streaked with wide eyes.

Wide, blank, dead-white eyes.

Shouta blinks, and finally he looks, and he sees.

The facility is crowded with people. Pale, spectral figures, too many to count. The closest one is a little girl, dark-haired and dressed in white. She watches him silently, one among countless others. Most of them mangled, disfigured, and crying out as the villains ignore them.

No—that isn't right. They don't ignore them.

They just don't see them at all.

Shouta looks down, and sees the ground through his own hands.

"No," he whispers. "No, no, no-no-no--"

"Hey!" It's the boy again, the one who bleeds from a hole in his head (and that's familiar, he recognizes that, he knows what it means but the memory is just beyond his reach) and watches him in quiet awe and horror. "Look, you—you need to calm down, it's not—

But Shouta stops listening, because that's when he looks back the way he had come, back to where the Noumu still crouches as it keeps guard over…

As it

holds down

He throws a punch at the man standing before him, vicious in his desperation, and the blow passes through him as if Shouta's fist is made of fog. He spits a curse that none of them can hear.

"Eraserhead." The boy he doesn't know tries to catch hold of him to stop him, but he can't touch Shouta either. "Look, you're not—if it helps, I don't think you're totally dead, just… almost."

"It doesn't matter." Shouta's words are nearly a snarl, and they sound far away even to his own ears. "I can't just lie down and let them do this!"

"You don't have a choice. If we had a choice, I'd've stopped them from doing this to you. I'm sorry." The boy meets his fury and frustration with sadness and pity, and Shouta doesn't need pity, he doesn't want pity—

Something warm curls against his wrist.

It's only because he feels something warm that he realizes with a jolt that he feels nothing when he is like this. No pain, no temperature, not even the ground that should be beneath his feet. He feels nothing, and that is why he notices when he feels something warm.

He looks back.

Midoriya stares straight ahead as his fingers curl around Shouta's wrist, not quite touching him—he can't touch him—but trying. Approximating.

His student's voice is so quiet that he barely hears the words.

"It's okay," Midoriya's eyes are wide and unblinking as he whispers. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." Tears gather in his eyes. "It's going to be okay. Nobody has to die here."

Midoriya raises his wet, shining eyes, and meets Shouta's.

"What was that?" The sound of the villain's voice curls in the air like oily smoke. "Nobody has to die?" His voice shakes with held-back laughter. "Well that's not really up to you, is it?"

Midoriya doesn't take his eyes away from Shouta's face, but when he speaks again, his voice rings cold and clear. "I wasn't talking to you."

Shouta doesn't know what's happening. He doesn't understand any of this; none of it makes sense to him, except the fact that his student is mouthing off to a villain instead of running away, and that's going to get him killed. "What are you doing?" Shouta hisses. He tries to shove Midoriya away, but it's no use. "Get out of here and run."

"They wouldn't get far," the young ghost tells him. "That one's fast, and that one warps. They'd be caught in seconds." Shouta looks sharply at him, and the boy shrugs. "I'm just saying."

Behind him the villain speaks again, voice dripping with quiet menace. "What… did you just say…?"

Midoriya's eyes shift then, moving from Shouta's face to the villain standing behind him. "I said," Midoriya answers patiently. "I wasn't talking to you." His head tilts to one side, blinking slowly as he considers the pale villain before him. "But, since you're asking… would you like to talk?"

"Midoriya, what are you doing?" Shouta would drag him away if he could, by the hair if need be, but his reaching hands pass through his student uselessly. Midoriya doesn't react beyond briefly closing his eyes. "Run, you idiot!" There's a hiss not unlike radio static, and the little girl in white rushes at him with a face that drips and melts into a snarl. He pulls back on instinct, and Midoriya stands before the villain unobstructed.

Midoriya's eyes briefly meet his, then flicker past him to look at the villain once more. Shouta has never felt so helpless in his life.

The man who wears severed hands stares back. His eyes glitter through the cracks in the fingers.

"If you're going to kill him, then do it quickly," the warp villain rumbles urgently.

"It's… Shigaraki?" Midoriya says. "Is that what he called you?" There's no reply. "Sorry to interrupt, I was just wondering. Does this mean you're still going to leave?" For all the tension and terror that Shouta feels sharply, he still has just enough room to approve of the sheer force of Midoriya's composure. It's impressive, given the circumstances—eerie, but impressive. And yet, that very same composure gives him pause, because it doesn't belong on that face. It shouldn't belong. Where is the boy who stammers and shakes in the face of a challenge? Where is the boy who rallies with a determined smile?

Midoriya… isn't smiling right now. He isn't anything. His face is as blank as a doll's.

"Maybe." The villain lifts one of his own hands again. "Not that you'll be alive to see it."

"Oh." Midoriya doesn't step back, but he does lean back, pressing into Asui and pushing her further away from the villain before him, as well. "You're still going to kill us, too?" He asks so bluntly, so casually, as if the thought of death doesn't make him panic; it simply makes him cold.

"Wouldn't that be nice?" Shigaraki's eyes shine with excitement. "If we can't kill All-Might here, then we may as well hurt his pride instead." The hand covers most of his face, but Shouta can practically hear the grin.

"Oh, well if that's what you want to do," Midoriya says. Shouta sees the way he eyes Shigaraki's lethal hands. "I think you've already done it, plenty. And I don't know what your plan is, but so far it seems pretty effective."

This gives the villain pause. He cocks his head, almost birdlike in his curiosity. "…Oh?"

"Shigaraki Tomura," the warp villain growls. "Why are you wasting time speaking with this child?"

"Well yes," Midoriya replies, ignoring him. He speaks slowly, unhurriedly, as if they're chatting out on the street. "I mean, you don't really need to kill us if you want to hurt All-Might's pride. I think you already did that just breaking in here at all." His eyes flicker briefly to Shouta again. One eye twitches, but it's not a twitch—it's a wink, on the side that Shigaraki can't see as well. "And, I don't know if you know this, but… Aizawa-sensei and All-Might don't really like each other very much. So it's already going to hurt his pride that Eraserhead did all the work and gets all the glory for fighting you by himself." That's a lie, Shouta knows. All-Might isn't that petty, and someone who admires him as much as Midoriya does would damn well know that he isn't that petty. He sees Midoriya's throat bob a little as he swallows. "And that All-Might didn't even show up when you beat him up. He's not going to be very proud about that."

"Ohh." There's an excited tremble in Shigaraki's voice—he's buying it, he's actually listening. "I didn't know that. I didn't think of that. That's very interesting… what was your name?"

"Oh I'm just… some guy," Midoriya says. "So, I mean… I don't think anyone's going to think less of you if you leave now. You've already done a lot, breaking in here, and beating Eraserhead, so it's pretty impressive. Except…"

"Except what?" Shigaraki leans closer. Shouta can smell the chemical preservatives keeping the severed hands from decomposing, and judging by the way Midoriya's nose wrinkles, so can he. The villain's fingers dance closer to Midoriya's face, not quite touching him, just… reminding him. Midoriya blinks, but not much else. "Do go on. You're a bold, funny little thing, aren't you?"

"Can you really kill All-Might?" Midoriya asks, his voice blandly curious. "He's the strongest, you know. I don't know if anyone can kill him."

"He's stalling," the young ghost whispers, as if there's any chance of the villains overhearing. The ghost's voice trembles with excitement. "Holy shit, he's buying time, fucking go for it, Midoriya."

"Be careful." Shouta keeps his voice soft, too. If he startles Midoriya, then Midoriya might startle the villains, or otherwise lose this tenuous hold he has over Shigaraki. It is fragile. The entire situation is fragile, and if his student isn't careful then he's going to get all of them killed.

The villain's voice trembles with amusement at Midoriya's question. "Wouldn't you like to know?"

"Shigaraki…" the warp villain warns, and is ignored.

"So you must have something big planned, if you're here to kill All-Might," Midoriya says. His voice sounds alien to Shouta's ears, far away and unnaturally steady. "You must have something big up your sleeve, something you know will kill him. Otherwise you wouldn't have gone to all this trouble, right? You got so far, and you beat Aizawa-sensei and Thirteen, so you must be smart."

"Shigaraki!" the warp villain snaps.

"Shut up, Kurogiri," Shigaraki spits back petulantly. "He's going to die anyway. You are," he adds with a glance at Izuku. "And we can kill the Symbol of Peace. And even if we don't, how much will it hurt him to find children dead when he gets here? Maybe we can still wait for him. It would be nice, after we came all this way."

"Well that's the thing, isn't it?" Midoriya says. "You know you can kill him. …Just like you knew he would be here." Midoriya tilts his head to the side again, and that's when Shouta sees his student go for the throat. "Except he isn't, is he?"

Shigaraki goes still.

"You didn't know that All-Might wouldn't be here," Midoriya says. "You didn't know that Eraserhead would. You didn't even know what all our quirks were." And at that moment, Midoriya finally smiles at Shigaraki Tomura.

"Imagine what else you don't know, Mr. Shigaraki."

It's not a confident smirk, or a happy grin; it's just a bland, vague smile that doesn't quite reach his eyes because they're too busy playing host to a storm of fear and cold rage. Shouta can see it as clearly as if it's written on them, and it's so alien on a kind face like Midoriya's that Shouta can imagine chills running up his own spine.

There's a tremor in the villain's hand, still half-raised to touch Midoriya and turn him to dust.

"I think," Midoriya says, "that you were right the first time. You've gotten so far, and done so well up to now, and everyone's going to be very impressed. So… why risk that?" His smile stretches wider. "Imagine how cool it would be, if you just… after you came in here, and did all this, if you just vanished without a trace, before anyone even got here to stop you. Right? That would be pretty cool."

Shigaraki doesn't reply out loud, but he does make an eager little noise. He's like a child, Shouta thinks. Easily distracted. Easily flattered. Easily taken in. And from the looks of it, Midoriya has noticed this. It's as close to a weak spot as he's going to get, and Midoriya is digging his nails in for all he's worth.

"Shigaraki," the warp villain says sharply. "Stop listening to this child. If you're going to kill him, do it."

"Shut up, Kurogiri." Shigaraki almost whines. "I'm thinking."

"The brat with the speed quirk already went for help," the warp villain, Kurogiri, warns him. Relief finds its way into Shouta's mind—so Iida, at least, is safe. Help is on the way. "We're running out of time."

"None of the pro heroes teaching at UA have speed quirks," Shigaraki says petulantly.

"Unless they do," Midoriya chips in. "You should listen to him."

It's a mistake. Shigaraki rounds on him in a fit of unpredictable temper, hand poised to reach for him again. "Don't tell me what to do—" he snarls.

Boom.

The explosion toward the entrance galvanizes Midoriya into action before Shouta even knows what's caused it. His student springs back, out of Shigaraki's reach, and catches Tsuyu by the arm to drag her along with him. They don't need to go far; Shigaraki isn't pursuing them. He's too busy whirling around to see what all the commotion is. The Noumu leaves Shouta's body on the ground and moves to flank him.

The dust settles, and All-Might steps into the facility, his voice booming out so that it reaches almost every corner.

"It's all right now," he says, and Shouta is close enough to hear the strangled almost-sob of relief from Midoriya. "Do you know why?"

His teeth are showing, stark white from beneath his lips. But he isn't smiling. There's a woman at his side, grim and silent. It's not Midnight. It's not anyone that Shouta recognizes. Her skin is pale and her eyes are blank and white—another ghost.

"Because I am here."

Shouta is watching what happens next, and yet he sees almost nothing. In the space of a blink, villains go flying before All-Might reappears by his body. Another instant, and Shouta feels himself be violently jerked to the side by some invisible force. When he gets his bearings, they're halfway across the plaza from where they were before. All of them—Midoriya, Asui, and All-Might, who lays his body down with a gentleness that Shouta grudgingly appreciates.

The dead boy reappears next to him, grinning. "Wow. For a second there I thought he'd lassoed you or something. You must really still be alive if you're tied to your body like that."

Shouta only half-hears him, too caught up in his own relief. "About time someone got here," he mutters.

"Give him a break," the ghostly woman at All-Might's side snaps. "The principal held him up. I had to short-circuit half the lights in the room and knock tea all over the carpet just to give him the chance to slip off."

Shouta sees the grin spread across Midoriya's face, sees the boy look straight at the woman and see her. Thank you, his student mouths silently.

Midoriya can see them. There's no getting around that; the dead are everywhere, and Midoriya can see them.

"Midoriya, Asui," All-Might says quietly. "Head to the entrance. Take Aizawa with you—I leave him to you."

It's uncomfortably strange, being talked about like he isn't there. "I'm right here," Shouta says.

"They can't see you," the dead boy reminds him.

"They didn't kill him?" Asui whispers. Her eyes are fixed on his body, wide with horror.

Midoriya locks eyes with Shouta again. The boy's stare sharpens, considering him, searching his face. Shouta can only look back, helplessly lost, before Midoriya turns back to Asui.

"No," he tells her. "He's still alive."

"Hurry!" All-Might urges.

They rush to obey, and Shouta would spare a moment to be touched if the situation weren't so dire. And it is dire, though the students don't know it. He and Thirteen had signaled each other before; All-Might has spent his time limit already. He must be running on fumes and a prayer at this point.

Midoriya and Asui heave his unconscious form off of the ground, while the dead boy hovers anxiously and the little girl darts around them unseen, gathering up the bloodied, trailing scarf to keep it from getting underfoot and tripping them. It is then that Midoriyahesitates and looks back.

"All-Might," he says. "There's something funny about the big one—Noumu. And you…" He's oddly solemn, Shouta thinks. For a boy who so obviously hero-worships All-Might, he look almost unhappy to see him. Midoriya shoots a furtive glance toward Asui, before his throat bobs and he speaks again. "Is there time?"

He knows, Shouta realizes with a jolt.

"Young Midoriya." All-Might turns to face him, and the smile is back in place. At his side, the ghost woman's pale face mirrors it. "It's going to be all right. Now please, get him to safety."

Midoriya knows about the time limit. He knows, and All-Might knows that he knows, and what does this mean?

Tsuyu is staring at him.

Izuku can feel the full weight of her attention pressing on his mind. He isn't looking directly at her, but he can feel her wide eyes boring into him all the same, watching him as if she expects him to sprout fangs and shoot poison.

And why wouldn't she, after what she just saw him do?

Most people wouldn't talk that way to a villain. Most people would scream, would run, would shout and curse and threaten and spit defiance. Most people trembled before men who wore severed hands like trophies and crumbled flesh with a touch.

But Tsuyu has seen him look such a man in the eye, and talk to him like an acquaintance. She has seen him flatter and tease and lie with a smile on his face, not half a minute after seeing the villain stand by and laugh while his minion beat their teacher half to death.

This whole time, his classmates have mistaken him for someone normal. Someone cool, even. What will they think of him now, when Tsuyu tells the others what she's seen him do? What will they do when they find out how creepy and strange he is?

Izuku's eyes burn, and he ducks his head under the pretense of struggling under the weight of Aizawa's unconscious body. Friendship was nice while it lasted.

"Ts-Tsu—Asui," he says quietly, and his classmate starts at the sound of his voice. The burning in his eyes almost brings the blur of tears, but he blinks as hard as he can to fight them back. He turns to her, and tries to read the look in her eyes. Is that fear he sees? Tsuyu's looking at him like she's never seen him before. "Can you go on ahead?"

"What?" She croaks in surprise. "And leave you, Midoriya? What for?"

"The two of us are sitting ducks like this," he says. "I can carry him by myself until you bring back help—some people to help carry him, some to cover the others. Okay?"

She blinks, and the previous unnameable emotion in her eyes is replaced by a sort of worried determination. "Are you sure?"

"I'll be fine, just hurry back."

"...Okay." She slips out from under Aizawa's limp form, and stays just long enough to help Izuku readjust the weight before she takes off at leaps and bounds.

Finally alone, Izuku raises his head and looks at Aizawa again—not the unconscious body he's carrying, but the faded almost-ghost who drifts along beside him. "Have you and Narita talked yet?" he asks. It's nowhere near the most pressing issue at the moment, but Izuku could use a distraction.

"What—"

"Not yet," Narita says. "I'm still waiting."

"Oh," Izuku says. Aizawa's limp weight isn't so bad if he just focuses on one step at a time. Tsuyu is fast and strong; she'll be back with help in no time. He only has so much time to talk. "What for?"

"If he dies, then we'll talk," Narita says. "If he wakes up after this, then he's going to forget everything he's seen and heard. That's what always happens with near-death experiences like this. So I won't waste my breath."

"You don't breathe, Narita," Izuku says.

"Stop talking about me like I'm not here," Aizawa says sharply.

"Sorry," Izuku says automatically. The moment the word is out, his throat feels tight, and the burning in his eyes is back.

"Don't cry, Midoriya." Somehow, Aizawa's voice is gruff but not unkind.

"Sorry," Izuku chokes out. "I'm sorry, it's my fault, it's—and you saved us, me and Tsuyu, and—if you die, it'll be my fault, and that's never happened before, and I didn't want—I didn't mean for this to happen."

"They did," Aizawa says.

Izuku blinks up at him, eyes blurring.

"You didn't mean for it to happen. They did." Aizawa looks back to the battling villains. "Making it more their fault than yours, wouldn't you agree?"

Izuku purses his lips to keep from crying. "He's out of time, isn't he," he half-whispers. "All-Might. If help doesn't come soon, they'll… he'll lose."

"He won't run out of time," Aizawa tells him. "He's stubborn like you. He'll be fine."

It takes a liar to spot a lie, and Izuku has been keeping secrets since he was five years old. He doesn't believe Aizawa, though he's grateful that his teacher cares enough to try to make him feel better.

"Since we have more pressing things to worry about, I won't ask you how you know about that," Aizawa goes on. "But you didn't answer my question before—you can see me. How?"

"No," Izuku blurts.

"Excuse me?"

Izuku meets his teacher's eyes again. "If I told you everything," he says, his voice shaking. "It would mean that you were dead, and you needed to be told. But you're not dead." His vision floods into a wet blur, and he blinks to let the tears fall and clear his eyes. "You're not dead and you're not going to die, and that means there's no point in telling you. Because you're going to wake up, Aizawa-sensei. And all of this will fade away like a bad dream." His hands are full, and he can't wipe his eyes. "I promise, you're going to wake up."

Before Aizawa can reply, there's a raspy, distorted cry, and Rei flickers into view in Izuku's path. He stumbles, almost dropping Aizawa, but her ice-cold hands steady both him and his burden. Her dark hair parts like a curtain, showing enough of her face for Izuku to see how frantic she is.

"Rei? What's wrong?"

She releases him to free up her hands so that she can sign. He's in trouble, she tells him without speaking. Her hands move frantically as they shape the words, one after another into a stream. They trapped him he's in trouble he needs help he's hurting.

Izuku stops so abruptly that he almost trips before he looks back. His stomach twists—All-Might is balanced precariously over one of Kurogiri's warps. The Noumu is visible from the waist up, protruding from the warp gate just far enough to grip All-Might in the ribs. Its fingers dig in, right at the spot where Izuku knows his scar is. Ms. Shimura claws uselessly at the Noumu, jaws open wide as she screams her fury.

Aizawa's ghost swears quietly.

I smell blood, Rei signs. They'll kill him.

Izuku sobs as every instinct in him burns to run back and help. But he can't do that without leaving Aizawa for dead. He can save Aizawa, whose almost-ghost stands before him and might become a real ghost if help doesn't come soon, or he can help All-Might, who trusted him with his power and his secrets and promised to train him into just as great a hero as Izuku has ever hoped to be.

"Whatever you're thinking of doing," Aizawa says. "Don't. And that's not just me being selfish. This is so you can save yourself, Midoriya."

"I don't want to save myself," Izuku whispers.

"Damn it, Midoriya, he stayed to fight to give you a chance to get away!" Aizawa snaps. "Don't throw that away so lightly!"

"I'm the only one who knows!" Izuku chokes out. "Nobody else—they don't know he's hurt, they don't know he's—"

"Deku!"

He turns forward again, and hope stabs him in the heart when he sees Tsuyu returning with Uraraka, Sero, and Satou with her. "Hurry!" he yells back, and his voice comes out cracked and raw and broken.

One touch from Uraraka lightens his burden, and he ducks out from under Aizawa's limp form. "Get him to safety," he blurts.

"Midoriya, don't," Aizawa's almost-ghost growls at him.

"I have to," he answers.

"Have to what?" Uraraka asks, but Izuku is already running. Rei keeps pace with him, her hair twisting like dark snakes, and he feels his own desperate fear and anger finally boil over. It lends him strength and speed.

He'll help. Whatever he can do to help, whatever he can sacrifice, he'll do it. All-Might will win.

Of course, it's not that simple. It's never that simple.

In the end, it's not so much a close call as it is a string of close calls, one after another. Every time All-Might is nearly beaten, something gets in the villains' way. First Izuku charging back into the fray after leaving Aizawa in his classmates' care. He can't do much on his own, but his other classmates are next to arrive—Bakugou, taking down the warp villain with a well-placed explosion, and Todoroki, freezing the Noumu's limbs so that All-Might can escape its grip.

And finally, when the battle is truly dire, when One For All ebbs from All-Might's body and shatters the bones in Izuku's legs with a single desperate leap, the rest of Yuuei's faculty arrives, with Iida leading the way.

In the end, two villains escape, and no new ghosts are made that day.

Izuku is left lying injured on the ground. Rei hovers over him, humming anxiously, while Ms. Shimura stands by All-Might's side like a bodyguard. She's been strangely quiet this whole time, ever since she came back with him. But there's time to worry about that later; for now, tears of relief, shame, and leftover fear stream down his face.

He's okay. All-Might is okay. Izuku couldn't do much, but he could buy time; he stalled the villains the last few minutes before All-Might could arrive, and bought a precious handful of seconds to keep them from killing him before Iida's return with reinforcements.

He wasn't useless. He wasn't much, but he wasn't useless.

Only one more thing of note happens that afternoon, before paramedics arrive to take charge of him and All-Might.

"Hey! Midoriya!"

At the sound of Kirishima's voice, Izuku looks up to see his classmate running toward them with a worried look on his face.

"Are you guys okay?"

Izuku pushes himself up on his elbows. "I'm fine, but I can't get up," he calls back. "And—wait!" Realization hits him like a jolt of electricity. There's only a cloud of steam hiding All-Might's true form from view. If Kirishima gets too close… "Kirishima, stop! Don't come any closer!"

Rei leaves his side, blinking out of view to reappear in Kirishima's path. Her hair ripples, she thrusts her hands out to stop him, and he runs straight through her like he always does.

His face freezes. He stumbles, falling to one knee briefly before recovering his balance. For a moment he stands in place, wide-eyed and blinking hard.

"Are you okay?" Izuku calls.

"Yeah, fine," Kirishima answers. "Just… felt someone walk over my grave, I guess."

Cementoss arrives then, and sends Kirishima running back to the entrance. Rei returns to Izuku's side with a proud smile on her face.

Izuku can only stare at her, speechless. She's attacked people before, many times. She's tried to hurt them, or slow them down.

She's tried. This is the first time that Izuku has ever seen her succeed.