43

Izuku followed behind Mirko as they bounded from rooftop to rooftop toward a destination that he wasn't even sure of, but his mind was too scattered to even think about that. The primary thing occupying his brain was what he learned of Shishida after the battle and its dark implications. He didn't know if Shishida was part of the MLA, if he was simply sympathetic toward their ideology, or if he had just fallen down a strange, online rabbit hole and came out the other end "based and Liberation-pilled." It didn't really matter in the grand scheme; Izuku sent Nezu a heads-up regardless before leaving to go on patrol with Mirko, and he'd sit down and talk with him about it the next day.

"Hey," Mirko called out to him, snapping him out of his thoughts. "You're distracted. What's on your mind?"

Izuku didn't initially respond, instead gathering his thoughts as they continued hopping along.

"Remember the UA student who was apparently a spy for the League of Villains?" Izuku finally spoke up, and when Mirko nodded, he continued. After my match, I think I learned that he wasn't the only one."

Mirko stopped, ignoring the cracks left in the roof of the building by her sudden halt, and she turned to Izuku who followed suit. "Another League spy?"

Izuku shook his head. "No. I'm not even sure that he's even a spy, to be completely honest. He just casually invoked a Meta Liberation Army talking point. A spy would be a lot more careful about that sort of thing."

"Walk me through it," Mirko instructed. "What exactly happened?"

Izuku nodded. "Well, after the match was over, Shishida was lamenting over the fact that he couldn't let loose and have fun with his quirk more often. Then, he said, 'Liberation will be upon Japan soon enough,' but it was more wistful than declaratory. I didn't know what to make of it; I didn't want to jump to conclusions, but I wasn't going to let it slide either, so I tipped Nezu off before we left campus."

"Shishida's the Beast kid, right?" Mirko asked, and upon his nod, she hummed. "Your gut instinct that he might not be a spy is probably correct. No decent spy would be that careless. What we most likely have here is a teenage heteromorph discovering an ideology that actively encourages freeing the beast. Easy way for impressionable kids to enter a pipeline and become radicalized. It happens more often than you'd probably be comfortable with."

"Well, that's not at all concerning," Izuku sarcastically deadpanned.

Mirko shrugged. "Yeah, well, it's actually part of what we're doing today. Come on, I'll explain on the way."

With that, she turned and blasted off again with Izuku following suit.

"You mentioned earlier about some uncomfortable rumblings in the underworld," Izuku noted. "I'd hate to think that some radicalized teenagers joined up and formed a terrorist cell."

He was mostly joking, but when he didn't receive a response from Mirko, he paled. "Wait, seriously?"

"It's complicated," Mirko finally responded. "Calling them terrorists isn't fair. They're disgruntled and want to change the status quo. Some people are looking to breach that threshold, though."

"I think I see where you're going with all of this…" Izuku muttered.

Mirko chuckled. "You're a smart kid; I figured you would."

She finally stopped on a rooftop of an old apartment building, and then she dropped to the street, scaring the unsuspecting civilians in the area half to death. Izuku wasn't far behind, though his landing was considerably more graceful and less frightening to onlookers. Mirko walked with an urgency that indicated to everyone in sight that she had somewhere to be, so the civilians milling about respectfully kept out of her way (and Izuku's by extension).

Of course, that didn't stop them from staring. At first, Izuku thought the stares were directed at Mirko for, well, being Mirko. A lot of them were, but he quickly realized that many other gazes were aimed at him specifically. That alone wasn't terribly surprising, as he was a reluctant internet sensation in his own right, particularly in tandem with the very person he was following. Still, the nature of the stares intrigued him. They weren't malicious, instead they were far more surprised and appraising. There was the odd sneer or two, but nothing outwardly hostile was directed his way.

Then, there was the small detail of nearly everyone he saw being a heteromorph. That helped add a bit of context to the stares.

As the two heroes trodded down the sidewalk, Izuku took in the scope of the location. There were mutations of all kinds in the area, from animal characteristics, to horns and other protrusions, to simply unusual skin tones of any given color. There was even a man with a spray bottle nozzle for a head exiting a convenience store with some onigiri that he was eating… somehow.

It was a little surreal to finally be in a mutant neighborhood if he was quite honest. Some people called them slums, but those were the same kinds of people who called him a half-null early on and villain sympathizer later on. It wasn't like the area was even impoverished; it was no better off than any other ward of Shizuoka, but it wasn't a slum from what he could tell.

A commotion up ahead drew him out of his thoughts once again, however. A burly man with green skin and a long, wild main of orange hair frantically bowled through pedestrians on the opposite sidewalk, all the while ignoring shouts of indignation and a despaired "My cabbages!" from behind as he clutched a black duffle bag for dear life. Izuku was about to move until Mirko placed a hand on his shoulder to stop him and let it play out. In doing so, they watched a manhole cover burst from the ground and nearly whack the frazzled thief before a horrifying creature popped out of the hole. An equally inhuman screech peeled out of the grey, slimy monstrosity that emerged on the street from the depths below. It was a malformed, fleshy creature of indeterminable shape with six bony protrusions acting as legs and elongated arms rearing threateningly over its prey. The slimy creature wrapped around the terrified man and brought him face-to-face with a large vortex of jagged teeth under two horrifically wide eyes.

"What the fuck…" Izuku muttered in both horror and awe. Even more confusing was the absence of reaction from anyone else in the vicinity. Apart from a few curiously stopping to watch the scene, most just kept going about their business as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening.

Just when Izuku thought the creature, now completely coiled around the struggling thief, was going to eat him, he slammed the man against the nearest wall and relieved him of consciousness. Then, he bonelessly uncoiled and slinked backward, allowing the man to haphazardly fall to the sidewalk with the duffle bag long forgotten.

Izuku had thought that was the end of it, but he was thrown for yet another loop when the creature started to compress and fold in on itself, reconfiguring into the shape of a human man until the eldritch abomination that had previously stood before them was gone entirely. In its place was a man with grey skin marred by suture scars presumably trailing all over his body under his black body suit (which also appeared to stitch itself back together).

"That will never not be tiring," the man sighed, wiping a bit of sweat from his brow before his eye caught on to two of his audience. "Mirko?"

"Sup, Cronenberg," she casually greeted, appearing beside and carrying a blue-screening Izuku under her arm.

"I'm never escaping that nickname," he sighed in resignation before bending down to restrain the thief. "Didn't think I'd see a big shot like you around here. You just passing through?"

"Here for business," Mirko responded. "I've been hearing some things, so there's some people I need to talk to."

"What kind of things?" he questioned.

"You ever hear anything about a 'mutant renaissance' lately?"

"A bit. Never really took it all that seriously. You know how these things go."

"Yeah, well, my instincts are telling me to be a little vigilant on this one."

"Copy that," he nodded, then his gaze amusedly fell onto the teenager in her grasp who was in another world. "Your sidekick's kinda conked out."

Izuku's brain was gracefully exploring the outer reaches of the known universe until a hand upside his head from Mirko brought him back down to Earth. However, he had taken some stars from the cosmos along the way, as his eyes were shining bountifully with them.

"Yo, the name's Morph," the pro hero casually greeted. "I recognize you from the UA Sports Festival. You go by Beacon, right-"

"Your quirk is so cool!" Izuku excitedly interrupted, practically phasing out of Mirko's grasp and appearing before a startled Morph with his notebook in hand. "How does it work? Is it a transformation or mutation type, or maybe somewhere in between? Can you turn into anything you want? It doesn't look like you have very many biological limitations since you can create things that aren't limbs and use them as limbs! I have a classmate who could learn so much from you!"

Mirko, having done her body weight in cocaine over the course of her life, was able to follow most of that rapid-fire inquiry. Morph, as well as the onlookers on the sidelines, however, had no such luck. Even the civilians that had begun recording the scene once Morph apprehended the thief and Mirko showed up were too dumbfounded to stop recording.

"Um…" Morph lamely drawled, desperately trying to regain his bearings when a glance over to Mirko that served as a plea for help went unanswered.

Fortunately for him, Izuku finally got a hold of himself and bowed. "Sorry about that. I get a bit excited about quirks sometimes…"

"Just a bit?" Morph replied with a chuckle, finally gaining his footing in the interaction.

"Maybe a lot," Izuku sheepishly muttered, and then his bright, inquisitive smile returned. "You're right, I'm Beacon. I'm doing work-study with Mirko. Your quirk is incredibly interesting; could you tell me more about it?"

Morph was luckily able to keep his wits about him this time. Having a non-mutant excitedly gush over his generally horrifying quirk and genuinely want to know more about it was certainly a new experience.

"Sure, but I'll be brief since I have to hand this guy over to the cops," Morph answered while gesturing to the groaning criminal at his feet. "It's called Cronenberg. I can transform into… well, what you saw earlier, or anything else I can think up based on the situation. The only caveat is that whatever I morph into can't exceed twice my mass or go below half."

"Marvelous…" Izuku commented while furiously scribbling in his notebook, completely blind to the world of amused onlookers recording the entire scene.

"Wait, Cronenberg is actually what you named your quirk?" Mirko asked incredulously.

"You didn't know…?" Morph asked in confusion, then his brow furrowed when Mirko shook her head. "Then why the hell have you been calling me Cronenberg all these years?!"

"So, this is where you patrol?" Izuku interrupted, redirecting the conversation away from his mentor's need to give everyone a nickname.

Morph's attention returned to Izuku, and he shrugged. "Someone has to. You don't see Mt. Lady or Death Arms patrolling areas like this. Then again, Mt. Lady causes so much property damage wherever she goes that maybe it's a good thing."

That's when it finally clicked for Izuku why he was getting the number of stares that he was, and he frowned. Non-mutant heroes must not make a habit of coming through this part of the city.

"Are the three stooges still at that shitty yakiniku restaurant?" Mirko asked.

"They should be," Morph shrugged. "Not like they have anywhere else to be. They live right above it."

"Good," Mirko nodded, and then she started ushering Izuku along. "Come on, there are some idiots we're gonna talk to. Good to see you again, Cronenberg."

Morph sighed in resignation before offering a lazy wave to the retreating Mirko and Beacon. Without turning his head, the right half of his body bubbled and contorted until a large, man-sized lump grew out of his ribcage. The lump quickly stretched and hovered over the previously apprehended thief that was attempting to covertly crawl away while Morph was distracted, then two wide, unblinking eyes and a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth spawned at the tip of the fleshy lump to create a nightmarish second face.

"And just where the hell do you think you're going?" the new face asked in a distorted rendition of Morph's voice.

Meanwhile, the duo strode toward the restaurant on Mirko's agenda, and pedestrians had wordlessly cleared a way for her as they had done previously. Izuku could tell that even those who didn't care for heroes weren't going to try their luck against Mirko walking with any level of urgency, but that didn't stop them from sending annoyed or dismissive looks in their direction (mostly at him).

"I never took you for an investigative hero," Izuku joked, grasping onto the easiest way to keep his mind off of the attention. "Figured you preferred kicking first and asking questions later."

Mirko snorted. "I'm way too recognizable to be low-key in a bar and fish for information, but it pays to have informants regardless. I just have to find other ways to go about it."

Before long, they were entering the restaurant. Mirko's steely, red gaze scanned the establishment before they locked onto a particular booth. Sitting at that booth were five men, each one vastly different from each other. The first one to catch Izuku's eye was the tallest of the bunch, a man with long, red hair resembling yarn that fell completely over his head, covering everything except for two eyes sitting atop his cranium. Beside him was a much shorter man with duck mutation made clear by the signature green head of a Mallard, and Izuku could just barely make out the brown blazer he was wearing with a red handkerchief in the coat pocket. On the other side of the red guy was an even shorter man with yellow skin and a blue mohawk dressed in overalls.

Those three appeared to be who Mirko had zeroed in on, and they were sitting across from two others: one was a man with the head of a very old computer, while the other had the body of a worm with skinny arms and legs and was frustratedly dipping his cooked beef into a sauce dish before eating it as they approached.

"I just don't get it," the worm-man huffed after he was finished chewing. "How can a confident, handsome worm- EAGLE have trouble keeping friends?"

"Is it because of the way you look?" the red guy asked in a matter-of-fact tone of which Izuku couldn't determine whether it was deadpan or sincere.

"I- what?" the worm-man coughed in surprise and a bit of shock. "The way I…"

"Yeah, all sort of lumpy and red-raw," the red guy continued in the same casual tone.

The worm-man sputtered. "U-uh, it may not-"

"Or is it because you look like a bit of a bigger animal than fell off or was removed and then came to life?" the duck-man spoke up with a bit of pep in his squawky voice, and Izuku had to viciously stomp the laugh that threatened to rip itself from his throat.

The worm-man, meanwhile, continued to flounder. "I-it's, uh, it's actually a personal choice-"

"It's more like an old person's finger," the yellow guy contributed in a deep voice that juxtaposed his almost childlike delivery, and Izuku sent a questioning glance at Mirko who was very much content to remain silent and let this happen.

The duck-man came back in afterward. "It reminds me of an infection I once had up my-"

"Or is it the voice?" the Red Guy interrupted.

"He looks like a tumor," the computer-man bluntly stated in a robotic voice.

"And he stinks," the duck-man muttered.

"Oh, I know, it's because you have beady eyes like a rat," the yellow guy piped up like he had made a groundbreaking discovery.

Finally, the red guy came in with the dagger. "Or you're just generally unlikeable in a way that's hard to pin down."

"ALRIGHT, I GET IT!" the worm-man angrily shouted before slamming money for the bill down onto the table and getting up from the booth. "You guys are assholes."

He stormed away, ignoring the confused staring of the other patrons as he left. Mirko took the opportunity to slide into the newly vacated spot, and Izuku uncertainly sat down beside her.

"Um, what was that all about?" Izuku questioned the remaining patrons at the booth.

"That man is a self-absorbed con artist," the red guy dismissed. "Don't mind him."

The duck-man derisively scoffed at that. "He's not even a man, he's a brainworm with a Human quirk that has convinced himself that he's an eagle. He can do everything a human can do, up to and including delusions of grandeur."

"Be nice," the yellow guy told his avian friend. "He's got rights like everyone else."

"He shouldn't!" the duck-man fired back. "It's bad enough that we're already seen as only a step above animals by the rest of the population. To have actual animals drag us down even further is a step too far."

"Can you save your bigoted rants for when we're not in front of company?" the red guy tiredly requested, massaging the narrow valley between his eyes.

The duck-man simply muttered his frustrations under his breath in response, and Izuku could have sworn that he heard him say, "Mutants can't be quirkist."

The red guy ignored whatever his friend was grumbling about and turned his wide gaze onto Mirko. "So, what brings you to our neck of the woods?"

"I need information, and I'm certain you guys have some," Mirko answered frankly.

"As usual," the duck-man tsked. "It can never just be a social call with you, huh?"

"Implying that I'd want to spend a second longer interacting with you three than necessary? Pass."

"Fair. What do you want to know?"

"Have you heard anything about a 'mutant renaissance' recently?"

"Nothing out loud," the duck-man shook his head, and the red guy did the same. Then, the two turned to the yellow guy in the corner of the booth who was seemingly staring into space. That kept up for ten more seconds, and Izuku was going to say something, but the red guy put his hand up to stop him.

"Give him a minute," the red guy assured, and within moments, the yellow guy's eyes refocused.

"That man's wife is going to divorce him," the yellow guy lamented while signaling to the couple a few tables over, confusing Izuku even more. "As for the mutant renaissance, I've heard that come to mind from a few people in the last month or so. Mostly teenagers scrolling through their phones and lingering on something they see."

Something about what he said stood out to Izuku, however. "Hold on a sec. What did you mean when you said that you heard that phrase come to mind? I'm not sure I follow."

"I can read minds," the yellow guy replied simply.

Izuku blinked in surprise, choking down the desire to probe more into the mechanics of his quirk in favor of a more concerning detail. "…So, you just read the minds of everyone who comes here?"

"Pretty much," he nonchalantly confirmed.

"Okay, that has to be all kinds of illegal," Izuku said with a furrowed brow.

"Not to worry," the red guy calmly interjected. "We own the restaurant."

"…That doesn't make it any better."

"What are you, a cop?" the duck-man asked, his gaze narrowing suspiciously at Izuku.

"Kind of?"

"It's above board, kid," Mirko annoyedly cut in to end this deviation. "He's licensed… for whatever the hell that's worth."

Izuku looked at Mirko in surprise, then he looked back at the man for a long moment, and then he looked back at Mirko completely unimpressed. "Seriously?"

"Seriously," she confirmed with an understanding sigh.

The yellow guy nodded. "I used to be a sidekick for King Koala before he was arrested for having bad stuff on his computer-"

"We're getting way off-track," Mirko mercifully steered the discussion back on course. "Mutant renaissance."

"Right, right," the yellow guy nodded. "Like I was saying before, I had mostly heard it from people in passing, but it piqued my interest enough to ask around and dig a little deeper. The phrase originally came from some internet commentator that pretty much rides the line of mutant supremacist but keeps enough plausible deniability to reach a broader audience. Then, it caught fire when some influencer included it as a throwaway hashtag in a post. I don't know if the connotations were intentional, but the damage was done either way, and since then, a bunch of people have been co-opting the phrase for all sorts of things."

"Is that it?" Mirko probed hoping that she wasn't so nettled over what amounted to the usual level of discontent in the mutant community. "Any villains or possible agitators co-opting it?"

"Probably, but they wouldn't be at some yakiniku joint when seedy bars are way more in vogue for villainy," he shrugged, dragging a sigh of frustration out of Mirko.

"At least we have a better idea about where to look," Izuku supplied to soothe her frustration.

"Whatever," she huffed before standing up from the booth. "Thanks for the info."

"Always glad to be of assistance," the duck-man answered with far too much self-satisfaction, receiving a grunt and a half-hearted wave in return as Mirko walked away.

"Thank you all for the information," Izuku politely bowed to the three and prepared to follow his mentor, but just before he could leave the booth, a hand lightly grabbed his arm. Izuku turned to look quizzically at the man with the computer for a head that had been silent for the entire conversation.

The blankness of his flat, blocky stare unsettled Izuku enough, but the words that came out of his mouth in a hauntingly robotic tone really did the trick:

"Would you like to know your death date?"

Izuku's horrified yet morbidly intrigued expression was the only response he received. The table was silent for five whole seconds before the red guy finally intervened.

"Don't mind him, just go," he said, unleashing a long-suffering sigh. Izuku needed no further prompting, and he vanished from the restaurant.

"Do you really know his death date?" the duck-man asked.

"No, but he has no reason to believe that I don't," he mischievously replied.

"And this is why we don't have any friends," the red guy groaned upon facepalming.

"We at least have each other," said the yellow guy.

Back on the street, Izuku rushed out of the restaurant to find Mirko leaning on the wall beside the door.

"Death date?" she knowingly questioned with a quirked eyebrow.

Izuku paled. "Does he actually know?"

"Don't know, don't care." Mirko shrugged before turning and walking away. "Let's go."

Izuku barely had enough time to catch up with her before she took to the air once again, forcing him to light up and take flight after her. Soon enough, he was right beside her on their second go-around bounding across the rooftops.

"Those guys were… definitely something," Izuku commented. "Why do they help you? You seem to hate them, not that I don't kind of understand why."

"Equivalent exchange," Mirko bitterly answered. "Like them or not, they're good informants to have, and my presence in their restaurant drives up business."

"Ah, so it's entirely transactional, and mostly in their favor this time around…"

"Now you get why I don't do team-ups. When I say you're the exception, I mean it."

Izuku sent her a curious glance. "You teamed up with Ryukyu that time on I-Island."

"That was different; I was on vacation," she quickly responded, then she sent him a smirk. "Besides no one gets to kick your ass except for me."

"I was totally winning that fight until I lost control of my flames," Izuku huffed.

"Totally," she replied, sarcastically dragging the "o" to needle him.

"Whatever," Izuku huffed again, but a smile fought through anyway. "So, you'd never team up with anyone in an official capacity?"

Mirko took a second to think about that before answering. "I'd really prefer not to, but I would if I absolutely had to."

She looked back at him as they continued their skyline trek. "By the way, whatever happened to the kid that sold you out to the League?"

"Nezu said that he died while in custody," Izuku answered, still unsure of what to make of that whole thing. "Mysterious circumstances. There wasn't a ton of info."

"Convenient," Mirko muttered, returning her gaze ahead. "Still, a classmate dying under any circumstance is a tough thing to process. Must've been your first time dealing with a death so personally, huh?"

When she didn't receive a response, she looked back at him again, taking note of the pensive blankness dressing his expression. "…Was it?"

"No."

The simplicity of his response was both disheartening and unnerving. She peered at him with an unusual twinge of concern flickering in her red gaze. Her first thought was a death in the family, but that wouldn't have drawn such a curt denial. The death of a loved one, while unfortunate, was pretty simple to explain. There was something more to this.

Sensing her concern, Izuku spared her the trouble of asking. "The first one happened at the USJ. The Sludge Villain tried to take over my body after I exhausted myself fighting off a Nomu, and accidentally ignited. I don't know if his smudge is still there; I haven't been back."

There was a blankness to his tone that compelled her to stop on the nearest roof and face him directly, and he followed suit. To Mirko, it wasn't that he didn't seem to care about the event, but rather that he sounded almost removed from it entirely. She regarded him with a serious expression, but her gaze remained mostly unreadable to Izuku.

"You said, 'first one'," she stated rather than asked, and he nodded. "There were others."

"Just one," he quietly replied. "The training camp attack."

"Where the kid sold you out."

"Yeah. I was protecting Mandalay's six-year-old cousin from Muscular."

Mirko's eyes widened before she schooled her features and allowed him to continue.

"I was actually able to take him down with 2nd Gear," Izuku began again, flickers of emotion bleeding into the blankness dressing his tone. "But he got back up, and he was completely different. It was like he had lost his mind. I think he was hopped up on a desperation shot of trigger because he was a mindless killing machine at that point. I did what I had to do to keep Kota safe. I don't know how much I left of him, if anything at all."

He didn't actually keep Kota safe, but at least he was alive again.

Mirko continued staring at him without uttering a word. Not knowing what else to do, Izuku simply met her gaze as best as he could, but the prolonged silence was getting to him. He couldn't discern anything from her gaze. He didn't know if she was judging him or if she thought any differently of him at all, nor could he tell if she approved of his decision in the forest.

Then, she stepped forward and did something that threw him for more loops than a bowl of spaghettios. She hugged him, and it was only once the initial shock faded and he registered her ears in his face that it finally dawned on him that he was taller than her.

How it took this long for that revelation to be made, who knows…

"You don't talk to anyone about stuff like this, do you?" Mirko asked, drawing him out of his stupor and causing him to grimace when the question registered.

"Does Hound Dog count?" he asked.

"No. Well, yes, but actually no. I meant friends. Loved ones. Your mom?"

Upon his silence, Mirko sighed and broke the embrace. "We're a lot alike. Too much alike. I don't like talking to people about that kind of stuff either. Vulnerability was never really my thing."

"Never would have guessed," Izuku sarcastically muttered, and he received a swift stomp to his foot for his efforts.

"Anyway," she irritably continued, "I know what you're going through, even if I know there's some details you've got locked away up there that you're not telling me. I get that, too. Trust me."

"I'm fine, Mirko," he tried to brush it off, but she was having none of it.

"Kid, I'm serious," she insisted, staring him straight in the eye before her gaze lowered to the ground beside them. "I get it. When you can deadlift a Mack truck, accidents can happen out on the field. When you're high and can deadlift a Mack truck, accidents will happen."

Izuku paled. "Oh…"

The sigh that left Mirko was imbued with the purest of exhaustion and melancholia. "Yeah."

A moment of silence fell over them before she broke any burgeoning tension with a solid pat on Izuku's shoulder. "You know that you can talk to me about whatever, right?"

"Shouldn't I be the one telling you that right now?" Izuku chuckled.

Mirko snorted. "Not much to talk about. The Commission finally tracked down the Gourmet Ghoul at his little human trafficking and cannibalism racket. I was called into the fold to take it down, and being a dumbass, overzealous 20-year-old experiencing her first big job, I launched into the raid dick-first while high off my ass on cocaine. Well, wouldn't you know it, I'm the one that found him in a backroom attempting to escape."

Her tone grew sardonic. "So, with the primary target in my sight and a lifetime's worth of booger sugar pumping through my veins, I lunged to take him down in one fell swoop."

"Did you?" Izuku quietly asked.

She didn't immediately respond, instead staring out at the setting sun retreating into the horizon. After a pregnant silence, her gaze returned to Izuku. "Yeah."

She sighed, and Izuku had never imagined he would ever see her look so weary, even if it was just for a brief moment. "I don't regret that it happened; he was a monster that didn't deserve the oxygen he was stealing. I just wish it hadn't gone down the way that it did. I knew better, even back then, and I should have been better."

Izuku slowly nodded, processing all that she had just said to him. "Was that what drove you to get clean?"

"It was one of the reasons," she mused before patting him on the shoulder again. "When I tell you that I get what you're going through, I mean it."

"…Thank you, Mirko," was all Izuku could say without letting a few errant tears shed.

"Anytime, Beacon," she returned his smile, and then that smile transformed into a grin. "Alright, that's enough saccharine bullshit for one day. Let's go stomp some mud holes into some villains' asses!"

She leaped off again, and Izuku could only shake his head in amusement before following suit.

The apartment doubling as the headquarters of the League of Anti-Villains was filled with the fabulous aroma of shawarma and the sound of a daytime soap opera showcasing the down-on-his-luck protagonist receiving a pep talk from an absurdly high-collared bartender about rebuilding his relationship with his eldest daughter.

"The only way to truly regain your daughter's trust is to do so fashionably."

Four of the five occupants of the apartment chowed down on their shawarma while Kurogiri inspected the stainless steel cookware that they had just splurged on using Twice's quirk as a disguise. It was to celebrate a job well done and a public service delivered (multiple, depending on who you ask), but with those out of the way, the questions surrounding what to do next began to float through their minds.

"So, we took down the Creature Rejection Clan, J-Store, and Uncle Touchy," Spinner spoke up once he finished his meal. "What's next?"

"We've made quite the name for ourselves in a rather brief span," Mr. Compress mused. "Do we strike again and keep the momentum going, or do we allow our actions to marinate with the masses a bit before we take center stage again?"

"And who do we hit next when we do?" Twice supplied while eating his shawarma without removing his mask… somehow.

All eyes were on Tomura as he sat and thought it over, chewing on the last few bites of his shawarma all the while.

"We lay low for a little while," he finally answered. "Our rebrand is officially on the map, so everyone is going to be paying attention to our next moves. Let's take advantage of that audience and do something big."

"Bigger than wiping out tens of thousands of convenience stores in a single day?" Mr. Compress questioned.

"Maybe not in scale, but definitely in impact," Tomura replied. "We're going after the government next."

"The Emperor, the Prime Minister, or the Commission?" Kurogiri inquired.

"Yes."

The typical vibrant glow of Kurogiri's eyes dulled to a flat, tawny glare, and a small portal opened above Tomura, depositing a saucepan right onto his head with a clang.

"Wait, wait, wait," Twice interjected amidst Tomura cussing up a storm and rubbing the developing knot on his cranium. "We're tearing down the Japanese government?"

"That's… certainly ambitious," Mr. Compress muttered.

"No," Tomura shook his head. "Not all at once anyway. We could go out and crumble the establishment entirely tomorrow with ease, but there's no end goal to that. Nothing is fixed, so people will only take their broken ideas about what works and use that to build up another broken system. No, we're gonna take a multistep approach, and we start with the HPSC."

Seeing he had their rapt attention, he stood up and walked to the living room to retrieve a big whiteboard and a marker. "Now, we can't attack the Hero Commission like we have the others. Regardless of their corruption, the general public still trusts them because of the image they carefully maintain. Taking them down right now would just throw society into chaos, and not the good kind. We have to annihilate their credibility first."

"Well, Endeavor sorta started doing that with his confession," Spinner mused. "If they're willing to bury the skeletons of the Number 2 Hero, just how many other skeletons have they buried over the years? Hell, how many top heroes right now have skeletons we don't know about because of them?"

Tomura hummed, and then he wrote Hawks's name on the whiteboard as a person of interest. "Who knows how many people they've silenced over the years, too? I wonder if there are any former heroes locked up in Tartarus that might have dirt on the Commission. Gotta ask La Brava to look into that…"

"If it's damning information that we seek, then perhaps a caper is necessary," Mr. Compress proposed with an excited twinge in his tone. "As the legacy of the Peerless Thief, who better than I to lead such a performance?"

"Perhaps a simpler method is feasible," Kurogiri spoke up.

"Let's hear it," Tomura acknowledged.

"We do not have to enter the building at all to retrieve sensitive information from them," Kurogiri began. "We could simply abscond with a Commission employee and send one of Twice's doubles in their place."

Tomura surveyed the room to take the temperature upon the idea, and everyone seemed on board, so he turned back to Kurogiri and nodded. "Alright, sounds good. Let's comb through their employee directory and pick someone who seems important enough to have access to at least some information but not important enough that their behavior would be noticed right away. Then, we can map out the details of what happens once the double is in there."

The first place Izuku went the next morning was Nezu's office. Despite it being the weekend, he knew that Nezu would be expecting him after tipping him off about what Shishida said after the conclusion of the match. He likely also knew exactly how many paces Izuku was from the door of his office so that he could open the door just as Izuku was about to knock. With that in mind, Izuku decided to circumvent all of that and simply enter the room without knocking, and that was exactly what he did…

Only to find an empty office.

"Welcome, Izuku," the voice of his principal came from behind him, and he spun around to find his animal mentor smiling at him like nothing was amiss.

Izuku took a moment to blankly make sense of his antics, but he very quickly gave up. "I swear you're a reality warper…"

"I will neither confirm nor deny that," Nezu replied before ushering Izuku inside. "Come, have a seat. I already prepared tea."

Once Izuku was seated and had a cup of the chimera's finest ujicha, he decided to bite and ask the obvious question. "Why exactly were you waiting for me outside of your office rather than at your desk?"

"To keep you on your toes, of course," Nezu answered. "It wouldn't do to have that sharp mind or those sharper instincts of yours go dull."

Izuku opened his mouth to reply to that, but he had no words to formulate a response with, so he simply sighed. "…You know, I don't know what I was expecting."

"Perhaps it should have been the unexpected."

"Point taken," Izuku conceded, taking a sip of his tea.

Nezu nodded before setting his cup down and clasping his paws. "So, you're here to discuss Jurota Shishida."

Izuku nodded. "He said, 'Liberation will be upon Japan soon enough,' and I wasn't simply going to overlook that. As I said in my message yesterday, I don't know if he's a willing spy, a legitimate sympathizer, or just a victim of the propaganda machine. You had to be made aware in any event."

"I'm already well aware."

"Right, so when he-" Izuku began before Nezu's words processed. "…Say what?"

"I'm well aware of Shishida's situation."

"…You knew?"

"It was a recent development, but yes," Nezu confirmed, sipping his tea once again. "After having a legitimate spy in our midst with Ojiro, I did extensive background checks on every living organism even tangentially connected to UA. The many things I found were most interesting, though largely irrelevant information. Did you know that Midnight has a son?

"Seriously?"

"Mhm. She had him shortly after she graduated from UA. She put him up for adoption, however, as she didn't believe that she would be able to give the child the life he deserved."

Izuku silently chewed on that information and why Nezu chose to share something so personal about someone else with him when he had admitted to obtaining it invasively-

"You already had this info, and you're just using it to fuck with me," Izuku deadpanned.

"And that is why you're my protégé!" Nezu chirped approvingly, and then his expression dimmed. "I did find a rather distressing tidbit in relation to that, but that's a conversation for another day."

He produced a teapot from hammerspace and refilled his cup of tea that Izuku had not even seen him finish. "Now, Mr. Shishida."

"You knew he was an MLA sympathizer."

"Sympathizer is a strong word. His search history told me that he simply fell down a rabbit hole but never truly explored the depths of it. Every page I found that he had visited was only surface-level information with rudimentary talking points and over-the-top quirkism at best. There was no theory, no deeper analysis, nor even any quotes from Destro himself. It was akin to Baby's First Anarchist Propaganda. I don't suspect that he stumbled upon any genuine MLA recruitment pipelines, just a few people parroting some neat ideas they might have read in a book a long time ago. We should count ourselves lucky that this is the case."

"Huh…" Izuku muttered. "That's reassuring, and also not. Are you sure that's as far as it goes?"

Nezu nodded. "Neither his search history nor downloads showed any traces of Meta Liberation War PDFs, nor did his bank statements indicate that he purchased a physical copy. Right now, he's no more threatening than any run-of-the-mill teenager exploring radical, totalitarian ideologies that they don't fully understand. It's simply a phase that he'll grow out of."

Izuku ignored just how unbelievably illegal that was to focus on the subject at hand. "Still, you should probably have a talk with him about it. If he's as surface-level as you believe him to be, it shouldn't be hard at all to reach him."

"Yes, and I intend to do just that, but I believe that herein lies an opportunity that we'd be foolish to pass up."

"And that is?"

"Injecting a spy into the MLA!"

Izuku's blank stare met the beady, black gaze of the principal in a several-minute silence. Nezu's smile remained fixed for the duration of the pause, whereas Izuku did not break eye contact a single time. The declaration of Nezu's intent to plant a spy into the Meta Liberation Army was allowed to sit, marinate, and fester.

That was until Izuku finally broke the silence. "Is there crack in this tea, Principal Nezu?"

"No more than usual," he replied with a smile.

"You can't possibly be considering inserting a student into an army of dangerous anarchists as a spy," Izuku pressed on, ignoring Nezu's cheeky reply.

"Oh, heavens, no," Nezu quickly denied. "I'm a sadist, not a fool. Shishida will not be dropped into the lion's den without any proper training in espionage. If I needed a student for that sort of task, I'd send someone who I'd be confident in their ability to fight their way out if necessary, and that list is very, very short."

Nezu's smile sharpened. "Shishido, however, would be a perfect candidate for this in the same vein as Mr. Shishida."

"The Lion Hero?" Izuku asked, and Nezu nodded. "A fiery, hot-tempered guy who looks like he'd relish a life where he could unleash the beast all of the time, huh? I see the vision."

"Indeed, but I won't burden you with the details about that," Nezu declared. "Just know that Shishida will be seen to. Is there anything else you wanted to discuss?"

"Two things, actually," Izuku said. "First, what exactly was going through your High Spec brain when you allowed Yui to take and wield Zero Pointers to use in battle?"

"Data collection and convenient field testing," Nezu answered. "You may have noticed that those were not the standard Zero Pointers that I have an army of at the ready. They're a new, far sturdier model that Power Loader and I have been developing."

"What makes them so?" Izuku inquired.

"It's their ability to receive vocal commands on the field and react accordingly, rather than simply being limited to remote signals like the others," Nezu began. "It allows for use on the battlefield alongside human combatants that won't simply be caught in the crossfire otherwise. The robots that Ms. Kodai has weren't outfitted with weapons, so she is allowed to keep them, provided she unleashes metallic mayhem responsibly."

"That is a phrase that only you could think up, Principal Nezu," Izuku shook his head. "As for the other thing, are you coming to family dinner?"

"Will there be pecorino?"

"There are at least four cheese wheels in the kitchen reserved explicitly for you."

"Then, of course, I'll attend!"

"The hell do you mean we're 'under new management'? I don't give a fuck how many rampages you've gone on, Dabi, you ain't bossing none of us around! Now get the fuck outta here, you blue, burning bitch!"

"Yeah, or do we have to make ya?"

"Come on, fellas, there's 10 of us and only one of him. We can take him! I ain't scared of his punk ass fire!"

"Yeah! Endeavor's quirk is cooler anyway!"

Within moments, the alley went up in a bright blue inferno that was serenaded by the horrific screams of the men burning to cinder within at the hands of a single man. Around the corner, three other men huddled together and held onto each other for dear life. They were all garbed in identical black overalls, brown boots, and black masks that covered the upper half of their heads, and the largest of the trio was hugging his two skinnier companions like a protective mama bear while they cried through their fear. Mercifully, the burning ended moments later, and the haunting footsteps of the boogeyman himself echoed through their brains like death knells.

When Dabi finally turned the corner and rested his bored gaze upon them, their legs finally failed them, and they fell to the ground before quickly scuttling backward, their fear so pungent that he could have probably smelled it kilometers away.

"Any questions?" Dabi asked, his tone as dead as the men in the alley.

"N-no sir!" the biggest man sputtered, jumping to his feet and saluting to Dabi as the other two did the same. "The Glutton God Gang swears fealty to The Vanguard!"

"Please don't kill us!" one of the other two squeaked.

"Excellent," Dabi smirked, then he turned to leave after tossing a folded sheet of paper at them with the address of the former Shie Hassaikai compound in it. "Be at headquarters in a week. If you're not there, I'll assume you're dead. If I see you again after that, I'll make it so."

"Y-yes sir!" the Glutton God Gang called before vanishing with the speed of Sonic with all seven chaos emeralds.

Dabi scoffed once they were out of the area. Good help truly was hard to find, unfortunately. Aside from the Glutton God Gang and the useful idiots back at the compound, he had only really been able to recruit Cider House and some fledgling trio going by the Volcano Thieves. As it happened, even hardened criminals were weary of working with or under a man who slaughtered dozens on a whim… and continues to slaughter dozens on a whim.

Go figure.

As luck would have it, though (whether it was good or bad luck was still up for debate), Kusari had been quick about sending some expendables over… though he may have been more serious about "expendables" than he should have been. Ending and Starservant were nut jobs of the highest order, and Dabi was almost certain that Kusari only chose those two in particular because they both had a voracious fixation on Endeavor. Fucking smart-ass.

Whatever. Those two had strong quirks, so they would be useful enough until they could serve as decent meat shields for when he finally killed his father. The people he was recruiting didn't even need to be of superb quality anyway, they just needed to be present to satisfy the Robotnik ripoff and competent enough to aid him in toppling society when the time came. He wasn't in any particular rush, especially with the Meta Liberation Army looming in the backwoods, and he suspected that things would become a lot more interesting once whatever was in that tube the old doc practically prayed to every other hour was finally done cooking.

Later that afternoon, Izuku had two stops to make (it would have been three, but Shoto was off campus visiting his mother). The first saw him standing outside of the door of someone he hadn't anticipated having to make a social call with anytime soon. Knocking on the door, it swung open moments later to reveal a scowling Katsuki Bakugo, and given that his default expression was a scowl, he was probably in a good mood.

"What do you want?" Bakugo asked, mild confusion adorning his tone given the admitted strangeness of their relationship.

"Family dinner," was all Izuku had to say to get his undivided attention.

"Auntie cooking?" he asked, and Izuku nodded. "What time?"

"7:00."

"Cool."

And just like that, the door was closed, and Izuku was on his way to his next stop. One day, he and Bakugo would address their history, but that day would not be today.

After heading downstairs and then back up the other side of the building, Izuku walked down the hall and past the room of Mina Ashido. He ignored the bright green glow emanating from under the door. It wasn't any of his business. Instead, he focused on his actual destination, Ochako's room. When he got there, though, he noticed that the door was slightly ajar, and he could just barely make out whispering from inside.

"Hey, Ochako," Izuku called after knocking, and the wraps slightly pushed the door open just enough for Izuku to catch a shape retreating into the shadows at damn near light speed.

"Izuku!" Ochako yelped, tumbling off of her bed with a thud and scrambling back to her feet. "Um, hi!"

"Uh, hey…" Izuku murmured, studying his beet-red best friend in mild confusion. "…Are you okay?"

"Yeah, totally!" she vigorously nodded. "Peachy! Just amazin', in fact!"

"…Right," Izuku shook it off. "You're invited to family dinner."

It took Ochako a few seconds to fully compute what he had said, and then her apparent flustered mortification flipped into astonished excitement. "Wait, what? Seriously?"

"Mhm," he confirmed. "It's at 7:00 at my mom and Eri's place on the top floor.

"I'll be there!" she happily declared.

"Awesome, see you then," Izuku said with a smile before turning to leave. "Nice seeing you, too, Vanta."

"GODDAMNIT!" he heard her shout from the shadows alongside Ochako's mortification re-emerging.

"Will you stop panicking, Uncle Might? It's just dinner."

"But it's not just any ordinary dinner. It's family dinner, meaning I'm seen as part of the family. There's so much at stake here! I can't make a bad impression!"

Melissa shot him the most deadpan look she could muster. "I get the feeling that you've already made whatever impression you were ever going to."

"How do you figure?" Toshinori asked, and Melissa simply stared at him in his goofy, bright yellow pinstripe suit.

"…Call it a hunch," she replied before knocking on the door, and Toshinori puffed up into All Might just before it opened.

"All Might, Melissa, it's good to see you two," Izuku welcomed them inside. "Food's just about ready. Make yourselves at home."

"Thanks for the invite!" Melissa responded with a beaming smile. "I know I'm just Uncle Might's plus-one, but I'm glad to be here regardless."

Izuku waved it off. "Don't sell yourself short. If my mom invited you, that means she already likes you more than she likes me."

"I'm not so certain that's possible," All Might chuckled.

"By the way," Izuku began once his eyes landed back on All Might. "I've never asked, but what exactly can you eat?"

"Nothing too heavy, but worry not, my boy!" All Might assured. "I can certainly make something work with what's provided."

Izuku hummed in consideration, and then he halted and turned back to face them just outside of the living room. "You may not have to. I have an idea."

Before All Might could question what he meant, Izuku's right index finger began to glow a soft pink, and then the glow intensified until it burst into pink fire.

"Young Midoriya?" All Might spoke up, piecing together what was going through Izuku's mind.

"I didn't think I had the power, energy, or skill to do this before," Izuku muttered as the pink fire intensified once more, becoming even wilder and building into a concentrated, rosy inferno. "I still don't think I quite have it right now, but I'm in a much better position to give it a shot than I used to be. Hold still for a sec."

All Might wanted to protest, but…

Having a gastrointestinal tract when he was younger was nice, and the sorely limiting dietary constraints he's been forced to endure for the last half-decade were admittedly depressing. However, such was the price of justice, right? He'd give up his stomach a thousand times over to stop the ultimate evil of All For One.

On the other hand…

"OOF!" he yelped when Izuku jabbed his finger into All Might's scarred left side.

He went ignored as Izuku tapped into 2nd Gear, kicking the healing and restorative properties of his pink fire into maximum overdrive while injecting them into All Might's injured abdomen. Beads of sweat trickled down Izuku's head after a time, and the flames began to slowly creep up Izuku's hand as his control progressively wavered. All Might and Melissa's gazes were transfixed on the sight; Melissa couldn't see what was happening internally, but All Might could certainly feel something happening. It was slow-going, but he could feel the twisted void within him diminishing little by little.

Then, Izuku cut his quirk off and dizzily stumbled backward into the awaiting arms of Mirko in casual clothes… who had definitely not been standing there when they arrived.

"Thanks, Mirko," Izuku gratefully sighed. "Guessing you heard everything."

"No prob, kid," she said, and then smirked while pointing at her ears. "Food's done."

"Awesome," he smiled before looking up at All Might. "How do you feel?"

So lost in the new sensations in his gut that were both unfamiliar yet so very familiar was he that he didn't realize Izuku had asked him a question until Melissa nudged him. "I… I feel like a third of my digestive system has returned!"

Izuku grinned. "Sweet. I didn't know how much I could get done in one sitting without passing out. All For One really messed you up, didn't he?"

"That he did, Young Midoriya," All Might remarked before patting him on the shoulder. "Thank you, my boy. You have no idea how monumental of a gift this is. Will you be okay?"

"Yeah, I just need a meal… or three. Come on."

Izuku led the group through the living room and past Eri sitting on the couch beside Bakugo while the All Might animated series was on TV.

"What do you do when a shitty villain threatens innocent people?"

"Blow 'em up!"

"Damn straight."

Before long, the dinner table was set, and the eight people present were chowing down (voraciously in Izuku's case and almost reverently in All Might's). Soon, though, one notable absence stuck out in Ochako's mind.

"Hey, where's Principal Nezu?" she asked the Midoriya duo when it occurred to her that they were short one furry sociopath. "You two seem pretty close with him, so I figured he would've been here."

"He is," Izuku answered from beside her, and then he thumbed toward the wall behind them. "He's in the walls."

"…What?"

"How do you think he gets around campus?"

"By walking like a normal human," went unsaid when Ochako remembered that Nezu was not only abnormal but also nonhuman.

"I knew there was a wheel of pecorino missing," Inko muttered with her narrowed gaze fixed on the nearest wall, and muffled cackling reverberated through the room, confirming Izuku's assertion and Inko's suspicions. Then, she regained her smile and regarded the table. "In any event, I'm really glad that you all could make it. Blood relation or not, you're all family to me, and I'm immensely glad to have you all here."

"Not everyone is here," Izuku spoke up.

"Hm?" his mother questioned.

"It's not really a family dinner if not all of the family is here just yet," he explained, and before she could question him, Izuku looked toward Melissa across from him. "Can I…?"

"Oh, of course!" she replied after catching onto what he was asking, and then she stood up and stepped away from the table with Izuku following suit.

'Matatabi, I don't ever ask for much. In fact, I don't ever ask you for anything. Can you do me this one solid?'

He was met with silence at first, and he nearly sighed assuming that he'd have to empty his energy completely to do what he needed to. However, his body ignited in blue fire completely independent of his doing, and he smiled.

'Thanks, Mata.'

"Don't push your luck."

Izuku paled. 'Right, sorry.'

With his blue flames ready, Izuku extended his arms toward Melissa and felt for an ethereal tug. In no time at all, two yellow gloves reached out and took his hands, and out came the ghostly form of Nana Shimura before her wispy vestige solidified into a full-fledged human body. It took only a millisecond for that solid body to take Izuku into another bone-crushing embrace.

"What the fuck?" were the simultaneous responses of Mirko, Bakugo, and even Ochako.

"The ghost of my grandma is haunting Melissa," Izuku croaked out as Nana swung him around in the hug. "It's a whole thing. Grandma, air, please."

She sheepishly released him from the One For All-empowered death grip, though she wasn't very apologetic about it. Her eyes fell onto a flabbergasted All Might next. Having her vestige partially pulled out of him was one thing, but seeing her physically present again was a whole other matter entirely.

"Hey there, Toshi," she greeted with a smile.

The only response she received was a torrent of blood spewing out of his mouth shortly before he deflated back into Small Might. The people not in the know, which was half of the room, couldn't even comment on *that* development. There was positively too much absurdity going on right now.

"…Mom?"

The soft, unsure call from across the table brought Nana's gaze to a face so similar to her own yet so reminiscent of the man she loved so long ago. Purple eyes met green, and so much familiarity bloomed in that singular moment. Inko slowly rose to her feet and approached, though her footsteps were small and trepidatious, a far cry from the confidence she usually exuded. When she was just outside of arm's reach, she stopped and slowly lifted a trembling hand toward her mother, unshed tears sitting firmly in her eyes as she reached toward the woman she still didn't completely believe was real. However, Nana raised her hand and met Inko's finger with her own, sending a jolt through Inko's trembling body when they finally made contact.

"Inko…" Nana softly addressed with a loving smile. "My little parakeet."

And Inko promptly broke. Those unshed tears spilled out like a waterfall, and she practically fell forward into her mother's open arms. Nana wrapped her in a warm hug pouring with all of the love she had been stewing in for roughly four whole decades. All of the words that were unsaid, apologies that went unspoken, and grief that had been unresolved came to an ugly head in that embrace.

"I'm… so sorry… I'm so, so sorry!" Nana cried into her daughter's hair, which only made Inko cry even harder. "I abandoned you and Kotaro, and I have never been able to forgive myself for that, nor will I ever."

"You didn't have a choice," Inko tried to say through her sobs with moderate success.

"And I still made the wrong one, even if it wasn't," Nana replied. "Have you ever been so sure about something, so adamant that it's the right decision and that everyone will be better for it in the long run because you're the only one getting hurt, and then when the time comes, you still feel like a complete and utter piece of shit when you actually go through with it?"

"That's… very specific," Inko attempted a joke, and the minute vibrations within the embrace signaled that it worked as intended.

"Sending you two away was the right thing to do, and I still feel like a monster and a failure for it," Nana responded, her broken heart pouring now. "Holding you two for the final time felt like lead in my arms. It was the heaviest weight that I've ever had to carry. Even in death, I will still never forgive myself for what I did, even if it kept you two alive. I will never be able to undo the damage I did to you and Kotaro. I should have been strong enough to protect you from anything and everything, but at the end of the day, I couldn't protect anyone."

Inko did not have a response to that ready, so the emotional embrace simply continued that way, the only sounds in the room being the pained crying of Nana and Inko Shimura.

That was until a chair lightly slid away from the table, and the light pitter patter of a small body approached the two until both women felt something wrap around their leg. Looking down revealed a head of long, white hair falling over a small horn and a red, doe-eyed expression gazing into the furthest reaches of their souls.

"I'll protect you," Eri resolutely declared. "Both of you."

Eri to the rescue, as always.

Inko snorted, which soon transitioned into an infectious watery giggle that spread to Nana, as well. Before long, the two were outright laughing with Eri sandwiched between them, wrapped in both Inko and Nana's arms as the two showered her and each other with the infinite quantity of love overflowing between them. They didn't have to wait much longer for Izuku to step up and complete the picture, wrapping the three into a hug of his own and nestling his head into the nook between his mother and grandmother's.

The Shimura family had been torn asunder for so long, but for a brief moment that evening, it was almost whole again.