Chapter 21

Izuku is becoming increasingly familiar with the taste of Gran Torino's hardwood floors, and he's not entirely sure how he feels about that.

He would have said mortified, because that was how it felt the first time a tiny old man sent him somersaulting straight into the floor, but it's happened often enough now that he's almost numb to it. He certainly doesn't have to wonder why All-Might was so scared of this guy anymore.

Every trick that Ms. Shimura has shown him thus far, every feint and maneuver that's gotten him through his previous fights, even the few tricks Todoroki has had the chance to show him, are next to useless against Gran Torino. He even tried a few cheap shots out of desperation, and… well. He's not in a hurry to make that mistake again.

At least Rei doesn't look so offended anymore whenever he hits the floor. She's far too busy laughing at him, the traitor.

"You're a scrappy little thing, that's for sure," Gran Torino remarks at one point, charitably giving Izuku a chance to catch his breath. "But scrappy won't get you far if you won't even use your damn quirk."

"It's not that simple," Izuku says, gritting his teeth in frustration. "If I use it, I either break myself or you or both of us, and—" He's flat on his face again before he can finish the thought.

Recovery Girl's warnings are fresh in his mind as he focuses his power. He concentrates, remembering how he'd brought it out against Todoroki in the cavalry battle. It hurts, but his arm stays unbroken, and for a moment it looks like he's finally going to land a proper hit.

Thud.

And there's the floor again. There's a lovely dent in the ceiling, though.

"Damn it, boy, if you were any more rigid, I'd paint you neon and use you for a Welcome sign!" Gran Torino tells him.

"Almost had it," Izuku mutters, trying to hide the fact that the wind has been knocked out of him.

"Don't flatter yourself, boy." Gran Torino doesn't move to let him up. "You're problem's plain as day to me. Maybe it is to you too, by now—you've stuck All-Might on a pedestal so high you need five stepladders just to reach it. And you've stuck your own quirk up there with him, haven't you?" He leans closer. "You've shackled yourself, boy. And until you shake 'em off, there's only so much I can do."

Gran Torino leaves him to chew over his failures (and clean up the mess they've made of his living room) and Izuku thinks.

Silently and aloud, he thinks. He's new to hero training, to having this kind of quirk. But if there's one thing he's good at, it's thinking.

And slowly, as the aches fade and Rei lets him bounce ideas off of her, things slowly start to fall into place. He scribbles notes, cudgels his brain back and forth, changes the angle of his thoughts several times. That night, he finds a secluded alley to put his tangled thoughts into practice. He isn't worried; there isn't much crime in this area, and he's always had pretty good night vision. With Rei keeping watch for trouble, he flings himself against the walls, wrestling with the power inside him. It leaves him exhausted and battered the following day—more than usual—and still he has nothing to show for it.

"It ain't your fault," Torino tells him, which isn't really a compliment at all—at best it's a very charitable comment—but Izuku will take what he can get. "That power always came naturally to All-Might. I'd say that's why his way of training ain't working for you." He barks out a laugh. "His body was all he had going for him. Didn't stop me from making him spew, back in the day."

Izuku winces in retroactive sympathy. He hums thoughtfully. "Um… Mr. Torino? Yesterday… I know you were sort of messing with me at the beginning, but you didn't answer my question." He hesitates. "Is that his name? Toshinori?"

The old hero considers him for a moment, then shrugs. "Ah, hell. You've been workin' hard, I guess I can give you this one. Yeah. That's his given name—Toshinori. And you didn't hear that from—heh. What am I talking about. What do I care if he knows I told ya? I'd like to see him complain!"

They're interrupted then by a package at the door.

In the end, it takes a microwave and an extremely mundane metaphor for everything to click.

Like a switch, really, if he's going to be thinking in boring analogies from here on out. His upper limit is still only five percent of his power, but that five percent means a whole lot more if it's spread evenly to every inch of his body.

How could he have been so dense? This whole time he's been limiting himself, and limiting his new quirk—only for special occasions, only for certain parts of his body, only as an absolute last resort. But this—this feels right. This feels…

"Can you move like that?" Torino asks him, as One For All courses through him from head to toe.

"Good question," Izuku grits out through clenched teeth. Too rigid, he thinks, and relaxes his jaw. He feels a cold poke from Rei's finger on his arm, and carefully turns his head to look at her. "I think so. Maybe."

Even over the hum of power and the pulse pounding in his ears, Izuku can hear Torino's knuckles crack. "Would you like me to test that?"

He feels another smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. He wonders how he must look, with his teeth bared and lightning in his veins. "Please do."

Torino quirks a grin back at him. "If you can maintain that, and still move with One For All coursing through you, that'll be a pretty big step. So I'll tell you what, kid." He takes out a stopwatch. "You said you had questions, didn't ya? Hold that for three minutes, and I'll answer one. Anything your little heart desires." The grin widens. "Land a clean hit on me, and I'll answer all of 'em."

The kid grazes him. Grazes him. Torino dodges like he means it, and he still feels the brat's knuckles skim against his face. It's not a clean hit, but it's something, and that means two things. One, Toshinori's judgment is maybe a little better than he thought. Two, there may be hope for this kid yet.

They sit down to a breakfast of microwaved taiyaki. Even without looking up, Torino can feel those busy little eyes fixed on him. He sighs.

"Welp. I'm a man of my word. So." He meets the kid's eyes. "Pick a question, and ask away."

Those eyes search his face again, watchful and wary, like their owner isn't sure whether to believe him. How cagey has Toshinori been with this kid, if a simple offer to answer a question gets a look like that? "Is there anything you won't talk about?" he asks. "I don't want to waste a question on an answer you won't give me."

"I've got thick skin, kid," Torino says dryly. "I said anything your little heart desires, and I meant it. Hurry up and ask."

It seems to take a moment for the kid to decide to believe him. Finally, face carefully blank, he asks.

"Who is Shimura Nana?"

The taiyaki crumbles into three pieces in his hand.

What. No—no, that's impossible. Toshinori never even told this kid his name, so how the hell—?

"You hear that name from All-Might?" Torino asks.

"Well," the kid says. "He… I…" His hands slowly clench into fists in his lap. "Let's just say—I don't think that name was something he meant for me to hear." He bites his lip. "I don't know anything about her. I just know she's important."

Torino heaves a sigh. Toshinori slipped up, from the sound of it. Spoke her name and the kid overheard. Though Torino has to wonder why Toshinori mentioned her, and to whom. Eh, he was always a mumbler, just like the kid he picked. Might be the death of them someday, if they don't get a handle on it.

Well. He's a man of his word.

"She was a good friend of mine," he says. He has to pause, there. It's been years. Decades. It doesn't hurt any less. "A damn good friend. We fought together, back in the day. Couldn't tell you how many times she saved my life and I saved—" His voice catches. "We had each other's backs, is what I'm getting at."

"So she was a hero," the kid murmurs.

"Huh. You really don't know anything." There's no trace of deception on the kid's face. "She wasn't just a hero, kid. She wielded One For All before All-Might did."

For a moment, he's half convinced the kid is about to launch himself across the table. "She—what?" He's gone dead white.

"Yup."

"But she—I—" He clamps his mouth shut for a few moments, staring down at the table in front of him. His eyes are shining a little too much for it to be anything but tears. "You said she was your friend."

"I did."

"…She died, didn't she."

"…She did."

"How—"

"Eat," Torino says shortly. "Four minutes and you get another question."

The kid frowns, looks ready to argue with him, but then his eyes soften. It's all Torino can do not to snap at him for looking like that—like Torino's somebody who needs his sympathy. "Yes sir."

This kid has a long couple of days ahead of him.

"How did she die?"

"Killed in the line of duty. Not every hero gets to live long enough to look like me."

"Do you know any details about… about how she died?"

"…If you want to ask me if I was there, then just say it."

"…"

"I wasn't. …No one was."

"When did she die?"

"Decades ago. Can't remember the exact year. Only time I ever drank in my life was to forget it."

"Were she and All-Might close?"

It's the following day when the kid finally gets to this question. Torino takes a little while longer to answer this one. "Maybe," he says. "Maybe they might've been."

"What do you mean?" Even looking away, he can feel those wide eyes boring into him, like this kid's trying to read the answer off his brain cells before Torino has the chance to say it out loud. "Did something… happen between them?"

"No. Nothing happened. That was the whole problem." Torino meets his stare. "There was never a chance. Kid, did he tell you how he used to know me?"

"He said you were his homeroom teacher, his first year at UA."

"I sure as hell was," Torino tells him. "And there's a reason I was the one training him back then."

He already knows the kid's a sharp one. He can see the exact instant that the answer hits home, without any help from him. "You mean…"

Torino heaves a sigh. He's been doing that a lot in the past couple of days. "I think he was a little younger than you are now, when she died," he says. "She'd gotten him started, passed the torch, and… well. She dragged a promise out of me, that I'd train him if anything happened to her. Practically made me swear in blood. Sometimes I wonder if she didn't know she was on her way out."

The next training bout between them seems extra-vicious, extra-desperate. It seems the kid doesn't like those answers. By this point Torino is sick of questions and sick of waling on this kid, and sharply aware that he'll pick up bad habits if he only trains against one person using the same battle tactics.

"I think that's it for practical training," he says, as the boy staggers up and wipes his nose. "Any more, and both of us'll start getting predictable."

"I think I can keep going, but all right," the boy says. "So what now, then?"

"What now? It's time to do what you came here for. On-the-job training, remember?" Torino pushes down the old creeping thoughts and feelings, things that he tried to make himself forget years ago. He shows his teeth in another grin. "Get dressed, kid. We're gonna do some villain clean-up."

The boy carefully rolls a crick out of his shoulders. "So soon?" he asks.

"Whaddaya mean, soon?" Torino snorts. "Work experience was the whole point of this from the beginning, remember? You just needed a few days to play catch-up."

"Right."

"Hope you're able to stay awake."

"Huh?" The boy blinks owlishly at him, and the dark circles under his eyes stand out like bruises.

Torino sighs. "Never mind. Gearup, I'm calling us a cab."

The kid joins him outside shortly, dressed for work and still looking like he hasn't slept in weeks. Torino's starting to wonder if he actively cultivates that look on purpose to throw people off. It hasn't seemed to slow him down much during combat training. And if Torino weren't as observant as he is, he would make the mistake of thinking the kid looks too tired to be paying attention. One look at his eyes, especially the way they never waver long from looking at Torino, tells him that thinking like that is the wrong way to go.

It's… certainly not useless, if the kid's doing it on purpose. A villain could make that mistake easily, and pay for it. If there's one thing Torino knows, it's the value of being underestimated.

"So where are we going?" his pupil asks.

"Heading back to the main Tokyo metropolitan area," Torino replies. "Because—well. Can you think of why?"

The kid's eyes narrow in thought. "Well… it's more urban. More people there than here. It's the kind of place I used to go to look for hero battles."

Torino shoots him a glance. "Skirmish chaser, are ya? Why am I not surprised." He had this kid pegged as a fanboy, but this confirms it.

"I didn't… have a quirk, before One For All," the boy replies quietly as the two of them get in the cab. "I figured my best bet for, um, being a hero without one, was figuring out strategies."

Torino grunts in acknowledgment, chewing over this new bit of information. Toshinori passed the torch to another quirkless kid—also not surprising. "Well, you're right, more or less. Higher population density means higher crime rate. In places like Shibuya, that means you have skirmishes happening every day of the week."

"We're going to Shibuya?"

"Yep."

"By bullet train?" the boy asks. "For Shinjuku from Koufu, right?"

"That's the one," Torino answers. "Why do you ask? Worried about it getting dark?"

"Not really, I have pretty good night vision." The boy shrugs. "We'll be passing through Hosu, that's all. One of my friends is there."

"Well, that's all fine and good, but you just focus on where you are, got it?"

"Yes, sir."

Torino regards him for a moment more, but says nothing until they're getting out of the cab at the train station. "So. Any more questions?"

This gets a startled blink out of his tagalong, before a more thoughtful look crosses his face. "No," he says at length. "Not for you, anyway."

Sounds like Toshinori has a proper grilling to look forward to. "I see," he says. "Makes me wonder why you bothered asking me all of this, instead of the man himself." He shot a glance toward the kid. "He dodge your questions, or what?"

"Sort of," the boy says, with a shallow little sigh. "I guess… I get the feeling there're things he's not ready to talk about."

"Some of these 'things' are decades old, boy," Torino told him. "An excuse like 'not ready' can only carry you so far."

"I don't want to press him," he says. "I can relate."

"So you press me instead?"

"I'm sure you could've shut me up if you really wanted to."

Torino leads the way to the appropriate train, shaking his head. Hell, Toshinori. What on earth have you brought me?

As it turns out, the answer to that is "a typical teenager." The second they're seated on the train, out comes the smartphone. Torino's eyes roll heavenward. Kids these days and their texting and memes.

He does look worried about something, frowning down at that bright little screen. Won't do—Torino needs this brat focused if he hopes to teach him anything useful.

Before Torino has the chance to scold him for getting distracted, the kid's spine goes ramrod-straight, and he looks around, wide-eyed and startled like he's heard something. His mouth opens like he's about to say something, but the train slams into an emergency stop before he has the chance, sending the kid face-first into the seat in front of him. Torino would normally be thoroughly amused by this, but the half-conscious pro hero that comes crashing through the train not three seconds later puts a bit of a damper on things.

There's a hole in the train.

Izuku can feel the evening breeze wafting into the damaged car. Torino gives him an order, and Izuku forgets it the moment he hears it. Not that it matters—the old hero doesn't stick around long enough to enforce it anyway.

"Rei," he hisses through clenched teeth. "Find Iida. Now."

Her dark hair billows in a breeze of her own making, and she vanishes from his side without a sound. Izuku braces himself at the gaping hole in the train, pays no mind to the hapless employee shouting at him, and launches himself out into empty space.

There are quite a few things that Iida Tensei regrets.

He regrets not kissing his mother goodbye, that last day. He'd been in a hurry, with the Hero Killer on his mind, and he hadn't thought he'd need to.

He regrets walking into that alley alone, with no backup and no one knowing he was there.

He regrets not fighting harder.

He regrets giving up, letting himself slip away on the cold, dirty ground with a slashed spine and blood in his eyes, before he could give his mother that kiss or tell Tenya to inherit his name.

And now, he regrets letting Midoriya Izuku walk away in the train station, instead of dragging him back to Tenya and saying Something is wrong, I don't know what, please help me fix this.

He'd misread his little brother. He'd misread everything—willfully so, even. Maybe he knew, deep down, what was going through Tenya's head. Maybe he knew exactly what was happening, and he'd been simply unwilling to accept that Tenya would really do something like that.

He's just in it for the general experience. No one's better for that than Manual.

He misses you. He's upset and hurting. He's finally taking Mom's advice and Midoriya's advice and taking the time he needs to heal.

But it's not until the hero Manual turns to Tenya and says, "This is kind of awkward to ask, but… you're after the Hero Killer, aren't you?" that Tensei realizes just how badly he's screwed up, how absurdly he's fooled himself.

He's an idiot. They're in Hosu. Tenya picked one of the most boring options for training. He's not taking it easy—since when has Tenya ever taken anything easy in his life?

What the hell else would he be doing here?!

Tensei has only a few minutes to panic and wonder before everything promptly goes to hell. There are creatures everywhere—those staring empty things, Noumu—villains are attacking, Hosu is in chaos, and Tenya slips away in the confusion.

"Don't." He trails after his little brother, pleading with him as if that's going to make a difference. "Tenya, please go back. Don't go looking for him. Don't make that mistake."

His words fall on deaf ears.

The dead are what give it away, in the end. Men like Stain are never as alone as they think they are, not with their victims always following, always watching. The other seventeen don't have little brothers to watch over, so they follow their killer, waiting for the day that he can finally see them and hear them. Tensei hears them before Tenya reaches the alley. He hears their shouts, their warnings, their desperate urging and cursing. Stain must have found another victim.

If Tensei doesn't do something, he's about to find another.

"Tenya, stop this." He stands in his little brother's path, for all the good that will do. "I don't want this. You know I don't want this—"

Tenya walks through him as if he isn't even there.

Tensei doesn't recognize the hero that Stain is poised to kill. It's selfish, but he barely sees them—he barely sees the seventeen pale figures that surround Stain and watch and wait. His little brother's voice is ringing raw against the close walls of the alley, and Tensei's desperate hands pass through him like mist.

"Please!" His voice is useless, almost drowned out by Tenya's challenge. "Tenya, please! Don't do this! You can't fight him—just run!"

Stain shrugs his little brother off, knocking back his furious attacks with open contempt. His blades hum through the air, and Tensei hasn't had a pulse for over a week but he can feel his heart in his throat.

"I know you," one of the dead heroes whispers. "You're Ingenium, right? We were wondering when you were gonna show up. Thought you'd maybe moved on." Sad, blank eyes turn back to his struggling brother. "Guess you had somebody else to look out for, huh?"

Tenya loses his helmet in the scuffle, and the other ghosts wince at his young face.

"Poor kid."

"Not long now."

One of the dead heroes nudges her neighbor. "Hey, you're good with kids, aren't you? Think you can calm him down when he joins us?"

"I'll try. They never train you for this."

"He's still alive!" Tensei snaps. Terror makes his temper short. "Don't just write him off—he isn't dead yet!"

The first hero that spoke to him looks at him with a face filled with sympathy. "How much of a chance do you think he stands?"

"One cut, and it's over."

Tensei's eyes burn with tears.

Tenya is speaking again. "I got some advice from a friend," he says. "He told me to do something useful. Something helpful. Something that matters to someone." His hands curl into fists. "I can't think of anything that matters more than this."

"Damn it, no!" Tensei shouts. "That wasn't what he meant, and you know it!"

"But you aren't doing this to be useful, now, are you?" Stain drawls. His voice sends chills like crawling insects up Tensei's back. "Otherwise you would have saved him already, don't you think?" He nods toward the injured hero, whose murder Tenya interrupted.

"I'm here for my brother," Tenya snarls. "Do you remember him, Hero Killer? You murdered him just a week ago." Tensei has never seen his brother shake with rage before. "They said you ran off like a coward, and left him to die."

"Thought you looked familiar." Stain's tongue flicks to one side. "Yeah, I remember him. It was nothing personal, you know. I wasn't even trying to kill him."

Tensei goes still.

"I meant to leave him alive. To fuel rumors. I figured he had backup coming anyway—imagine my surprise when no one came." Tensei trembles, and he remembers sticky blood and cold brick and creeping darkness in his head. "Must've come after me on his own—another fake hero hoarding all the glory for himself. People like that always get what they deserve, in the end. I'm just here to help it along."

"Shut up!" Tenya's shout ricochets off the walls like a bullet.

"Tenya, don't listen to him!" Tensei voice cracks, raw with desperation. "He's baiting you—don't fall for it! Just run away! Just this once! You have to live!"

But Tenya can't hear him. Tensei wonders if Tenya would care even if he could.

"The hero Ingenium." His little brother speaks the name in a snarl. Stain's eyes narrow in amusement. "That was the name of the hero you killed. And it's the name of the hero who's going to take you down."

Until this point, Tensei has been frozen in horror, feet rooted to the spot. But the sound of that name—of his name, now Tenya's—changes that. He wants to stay—he can't leave Tenya, not like this. But staying… staying means doing nothing. Staying means waiting for his little brother to die, watching it happen, letting it happen—

And he can't. God help him, he can't.

But if he leaves—if Tenya dies, and he's not there—

One of the dead heroes sees his struggle, sees the way he looks desperately toward the streets beyond this alley. "Got somewhere to be, Ingenium?"

"I—I can't leave him." Not here, not with that monster. "He's my little brother—he'll die—"

"He'll die if you stay, too." The hero who tells him this speaks in a rasp, his throat laid open. "Not like you can do anything for him now."

And that's what does it, for Tensei. That's what gives him the strength—or weakness—to turn away from Stain, turn his back on Tenya, and move.

It barely occurs to him that there may be no point to all this. It barely even enters into his mind that Midoriya's assignment was nowhere near Hosu, and this could all be for nothing, and Tenya could die all alone while he's gone.

Because there's a chance. As long as Midoriya Izuku exists, there is a chance that he can get the message to someone and maybe, just maybe, he won't have to regret letting his baby brother die all alone in an alley like he did.

The streets of Hosu are a battleground, battered by heroes' quirks and torn apart by disfigured monsters. Evening darkens overhead, lit by city lights and spreading fires. Heedless, Tensei flies through it. Not long ago, he would have joined the fighting, thrown himself into protecting civilians and beating back the creatures that threaten them. But he is not a hero anymore—just a dead man who has nothing left to fear but seeing his family follow him too soon.

The living scream, the dead wail, and Tensei pitches his voice above the rest, calling the name of his brother's friend. Maybe someone will hear. Maybe the dead will hear, and pass the message along—find Midoriya Izuku—find the only person in the world who can hear us—

A scream rends the air.

At least, "scream" is the best word Tensei can guess for it. Most human throats could never make a sound like that, quirk or no quirk. Tensei turns toward it, wavering, and finds himself looking at a black hole writhing in the middle of the street.

No one, dead or alive, will go near it—only those twisted creatures, Noumu, don't seem to mind. The blackness thrashes, ever shifting like a living, angry thing.

Villain, Tensei thinks. Or Noumu. Some terrifying, destructive quirk, sending fear like driven nails into even Tensei's dead heart.

Except he's wrong. In the next instant the darkness shifts, and Tensei sees the very heart of it. He sees a pale face, and a child's white nightdress.

Not living. Not angry. Dead, surrounded by Noumu and very, very frightened.

Tensei is frightened, too. The creatures are frightening, Stain is frightening, and Rei herself is frightening. But even if his heart no longer beats, even if his title of hero ended the moment his life did, there are some things that simply will not die. And deep in Tensei's heart the desire remains, ever-burning and strong.

When faced with a lost, frightened child, Iida Tensei will never walk away.

Deafened by her screaming, Tensei plunges into the darkness and finds the little girl at its heart. He gathers her in his arms and carries her away, even as she twists and struggles and claws at him.

"It's all right! It's all right. It's just me. Tensei, remember? You know me. You were teaching me how to sign." He spells her name with his hands, and she stills in his arms. "I need your help, Rei. Where is Midoriya?" She squirms again until she's free of him and facing him. Desperate hope fills him at the sight of her. He can feel himself fraying at the edges, torn apart by fear and worry and guilt, and he fights to keep himself together. "Is he close? Rei, please—please take me to him. It's Tenya. He's in danger—he'll die—"

She makes no sound, but grabs his hand and yanks.

What else can he do now, but follow?

Izuku has next to nothing to go on. Iida hasn't answered his messages since they last parted ways at the train station, two days ago. All he knows is that Iida is somewhere in this ward, and Stain's victims always show up in alleys.

Well that's useful, isn't it. How many alleys could one city possibly have?

The ghosts won't answer him. They're too busy watching the carnage, or running from it out of some leftover sense of self-preservation that they don't need anymore. At this point his only hope is Rei, and maybe, if he can find him—

"Midoriya!"

Or, Izuku thinks with a leaping heart, Tensei will find him.

His relief dies as quickly as it comes, when Tensei's scream reaches him again. Iida's brother catches up to him as he ducks into yet another empty alley, and when Izuku turns to greet him, he finds icy fingers clawing at him, driving him back against the wall. Rei is with him, her black eyes wild.

Tensei… doesn't look like Tensei anymore. He looks like what Izuku imagines the hero Ingenium looked like, on the day he died. The armor is there—not sleek and polished chrome like it ought to be, but dented, grimy, and torn open. Everyone in Tokyo knows that distinctive helmet—few have ever seen it like this, caved in as if with a blade or an axe, smeared with blood around the slits nearest the mouth.

The sound of Ingenium's breath rattles harshly in Izuku's ears. It's only through years of practice listening to voices like this that he can even understand the words.

"Save him."

The brick wall is cold against his back. His blood feels colder. "Iida?"

"Stain—in an alley—he's alone!" The helmet falls away, and Tensei's ruined face chokes on blood as the ghost pleads with him. "I left him alone—he'll kill him—help me!"

"Show me where," Izuku chokes out.

Fear is an old friend, but he has never known terror like this. With One For All coursing through him, he chases Tensei through the ravaged streets, ignoring heroes and villains alike. He may as well be deaf and blind, trailing after his friend's dead brother as he drowns in fear and runs.

The Hero Killer killed Tensei, and now he has Iida, and how much time has been lost? How long has Tensei been looking for him? How long would it take for Ingenium's murderer to kill Iida?

Stain left him in an alley to die, like he was trash. Tensei died all alone, waiting and waiting for someone to help, but nobody came.

How long has Iida been waiting?

I'm coming, Izuku thinks as his eyes sting and his lungs burn. It's not going to be like that, because I'm coming. I'm coming I'm coming I'm coming Iida hold on just stay alive hold on keep breathing don't die don't die don't die!

He's slow. Damn it, he's so slow!

He chases Tensei's back, and his terror makes him see Iida's back instead—pale, washed out, bloody and spectral, blank white eyes, just one more dead face among thousands—

I won't let it happen. I'm coming.

"There!"

They reach the alley, and Izuku sees the hunched figure of Stain standing poised over over a crumpled motionless body on the ground. His world goes red.

When it comes back, he stands on his own two feet, one fist smarting, and realizes two things as he faces the Hero Killer.

The first is that the alley is crowded.

Tensei and Rei are beside him or behind him, out of his line of vision, but of course the Hero Killer would be surrounded by ghosts. Izuku counts seventeen in all. Some of them are faces he recognizes from news reports, others are unknown to him. Some of them wear the wounds they died with, others do not. The one thing they have in common is death, at the hands of the sole living man who stands before him.

And Izuku's eyes well up to the brim with tears, because the second thing he realizes is that Iida is not among them.

He's almost afraid to look over his shoulder, but this is a fear that he is used to. Trembling, he forces his head to turn so that he can look down at the figure lying on the ground.

Iida stares back at him, wide-eyed and motionless and very much alive.

His eyes spill over.

No, not yet. He's still in danger.

You're both in danger now.

"Midoriya," Iida's voice is hoarse, as if he's been yelling—has he been calling for help? "You—how?"

Izuku faces forward again, and finds the Hero Killer watching him through narrowed eyes. Izuku meets his gaze in the dim light from a far-off street lamp, and he could swear he sees a look of surprise flash across Stain's face, but it's brief enough that it could just be his imagination. "It's okay, Iida," he hears himself say. It's not true in the slightest, but Izuku is no stranger to lying. "I won't let him kill you."

"Midoriya," Iida growls, and Izuku has never heard his friend sound like that. "You need to get out of here, now!"

Stain cocks his head, almost birdlike in his curiosity. "Huh. You must be the friend he mentioned."

"You must be the Hero Killer," Izuku says, trying to match the Hero Killer's frigid composure.

"The one who told him… what was it?" Stain's tone is light and thoughtful. "Be useful? Do something that matters? That's what he told me, before he attacked."

Izuku feels cold. "W-what?"

"Go!" Iida shouts at him. "Don't get involved! This is my fight!"

But Izuku does not. He doubts he could even if he wanted to, because now he can't stop shaking.

It ought to be fear that makes him shake, but it isn't. Fear is for keeping him out of danger, and since he's already in danger, it's useless to him. So instead, it hardens and twists up inside him until it feels less like fear and more like anger. He takes in a breath that hisses through grinding teeth.

"Can you move, Iida?" he asks. "We can make it back out to the main street if we're quick."

It takes his friend a moment to answer. "No. It must be his quirk—Midoriya, just go."

"He cuts you, Midoriya," Tensei whispers. "Whatever happens, don't let his blades touch you."

"Wait, he can see us?" one of the dead heroes murmurs.

"Get out of here, kid!" another shouts to him. "Get help!"

"I can't," Izuku says out loud.

"Yes you can!" Iida yells. "I told you, this has nothing to do with you!"

Tension grips his shoulders, running from his clenched teeth to his clenched hands.

"If you're going to talk," he grits out, at Iida or at the dead heroes crowding the alley. "Then tell me something I can use."

"It's not just cutting!" another hero pipes up. "He swallows the blood! That's how he gets you!"

"I don't want you rescuing me!" Iida yells. "This is my fight! Do you understand me? He killed my brother!"

And it happens again—the anger wells up and turns his thoughts black. It makes him cruel. "If you don't want me rescuing you," he says, in a quiet voice that chills even him. "Then you can come over and stop me whenever you feel like it."

Iida goes quiet. Stain laughs out loud. The blade in the murderer's hands twitches as if it has life and eagerness of its own. "You see what I have to deal with," he says. "I have a duty to kill these men." Izuku blinks, looks further into the alley, and sees another hero sitting slumped—wounded but alive—against the wall. Stain steps forward, tongue flicking out as if tasting the air. "If you wish to stand in my way, then so be it. The weak shall be culled either way. So what will it be?"

Izuku curses himself silently. He should have found a pro to come with him, instead of rushing in blindly like a fool. Even if it was hard to explain, he could have come up with some excuse or lie. Too little too late, now.

Buy time, he thinks. Buy time, and call for help. He slips his phone out of its pouch, behind his back. He knows that screen like the back of his hand.

"Stop it!" Iida shouts at him again, and the ugly anger roils and twists within him, threatening to throw him off. "Run away, Midoriya! I told you, this has nothing to do with you!"

"Hey Iida," he says, with a level of calm that he does not feel. "If you're still looking for ways to be helpful, you can stop talking any time."

"Midoriya—!"

His head whips around, eyes scalding with unshed tears. He can almost see the words die in his friend's throat as he spits out his anger like venom. "I said shut the fuck up, Iida."

A low chuckle reaches his ears, and he turns his burning eyes back to Stain. "Very well, then. I won't say no to another sacrifice."

"You don't have a choice," Izuku replies, and his voice is calm but cold. The cajoling and affability that he used with Shigaraki will be useless here; this is no man-child that will bend an ear to flattery. This is a murderer with an agenda. "You've got no good reason to kill anyone in this alley."

"That's where you're wrong," Stain answers coldly. "I don't expect a kid like you to understand what I have to do. This world is rotten with false heroes that are only in it for the paycheck, or the spotlight, and yet the people treat them as idols. It's time they learned what true heroes ought to look like."

As Stain talks, Izuku takes the time to send his message and palm his phone back into his pocket. "What, like you?" he asks. He looks for Rei, but she's vanished from the alley.

Another laugh. "No. I'm the necessary evil—I cull the weak and the greedy, until only the worthy remain. Selfless heroes, who follow All-Might's path. Who aren't slaves to their own egos. Those are the only heroes worth existing."

"Yeah, I don't really care," Izuku answers.

The alley goes dead-quiet. Iida is silent. Even the ghosts say nothing.

Stain's eyes bore into him. "What?"

"I don't actually care about why you're doing this," Izuku replies, and suddenly it's a fight to keep the trembling out of his voice. "It doesn't really matter to me, because… from what I can parse out, what you're doing is killing people who save lives, just because you don't like their reasons for saving lives."

"Ah… A hero fan, are you?" Stain's blistering scorn lashes at him. "A bright-eyed up-and-comer who thinks they can do no wrong. So naive."

"I'm naive?" slips out before Izuku can stop it. His fists ache. "Y-You're imagining a world where all heroes are perfect and never do anything for their own reasons! How is that not naive?"

"That's what separates the real heroes from the rest of these pathetic phonies!" Stain snarls. "A proper 'hero' doesn't act for his own benefit."

"Why not? You do." Izuku can tell he's starting to get under Stain's skin. He's not sure if that's a good thing or not. "Take now, for instance. You benefit from doing this because you get to pat yourself on the back without actually doing anything helpful."

"...What."

"I said you're full of shit," Izuku says, a little louder.

"You little brat!" Stain snarls, but Izuku almost doesn't hear it over the sound of ghostly laughter echoing in the narrow alley.

"Midoriya, get out of here!" Iida's voice has turned from angry to pleading.

"Your reasons don't make any sense to me. Sorry." His hands curl into fists again, and he meets Stain's eyes with a heated glare. "You talk like having selfish reasons makes people evil, but saving lives will always be a pure good."

The dead heroes' eyes are all on him. His voice cracks, but he forges ahead.

"And anyone can do it. It doesn't matter who they are, or where they're from, or what they've done, or why they're doing it." The shaking stills. He looks at each pale, white-eyed face surrounding the Hero Killer, and stands as tall as he can. "All they have to do is say 'no.' All they have to do is say, 'This is wrong.'" His lips pull back, and it feels more like baring his teeth than smiling. "Anyone. Even thieves and bullies and liars and cowards."

He steps forward again, directly between Iida and the Hero Killer.

His eyes are dry.

"So this is me, saying 'no,'" Izuku says. He faces the Hero Killer and braces himself to fight, praying that his message will reach someone. "So help me, if you lay another hand on them, I will break it."

Stain's eyes widen. The grin on his face shows a few more teeth than before. "Well. You might just be worth keeping alive after all."

My little brother needs help, he needs help, he's in danger he needs help help help HELP HELP

There's no one else, only ghosts, only enemies only monsters

black monsters with rolling eyes and they can't feel I can't feel I dig deep, deeper, and deeper but there is nothing on the surface and nothing below and they are full of nothing nothing n o t h i n g

Someone! Anyone! He called for help! He called for help, he called EVERYONE for help but

nobody came

nobody answered

please

somebody

anybody

There!

There he is! I've found him! I know him! My little brother knows him! He was cold before but now they're friends and he

He sees it. He sees my little brother's call for help. He's stopped.

Yes! Read it! Answer him!

Help him!

He won't. He doesn't know. He's taking too long! My little brother will die if he takes too long! Hurry up!

I reach in. He does not hide behind the cold anymore and I feel it—worry confusion heart pounding why why why what does this mean what is he trying to say—

He's saying he needs help, stupid! He's asking for help!

i dig deeper, claw through fog, past the confusion and the what-why-where until—there!

There's worry and worry means fear, it means there's danger everywhere, what does this message mean, what if he's there, what if he's in trouble what if he needs help what if he gets hurt what if he dies what if what if what if—

I grab his fear before it can get away.

I pull.

The message is a perplexing one, to say the very least. It's practically nothing, just an address not far from where Shouto is now. He stares at his phone, confused—why would Midoriya send this to him? The city is a battleground, so why—?

Is there something here?

Is he asking to meet up?

Is he—

What if—

All at once, his thoughts slam to a halt, and the fog of confusion is ripped to shreds in his mind. Shouto stops in his tracks, nearly dropping his phone as he chokes on perfectly good air and fights against the bile creeping up his throat. Fear is a familiar thing. With a father like Endeavor, it is never far away. But this fear—it's not the kind that makes him freeze, or that makes him want to turn and run. No, the pulse in his ears is like thunder as his heart sends terror pounding through his veins, chasing every other thought from his head until a single question remains.

What if he's in trouble?

"Shouto, pay attention!" Terror walls him off from his father's voice. "Stop looking at your phone and look at me!"

And in the end, he does turn and run, but not to flee. Without another thought, Shouto whips around, points himself in the direction of the address in Midoriya's message, and flies. His feet pound the pavement, leaving hot asphalt and patches of frost wherever they touch. Fear sends icy claws spidering up and down his spine, far colder than his quirk could ever hope to be.

He doesn't know what he's running toward. He only knows that there is danger everywhere, villains and Noumu and rampant destruction, but none of it is more terrifying than the thought of his friend in trouble.