Chapter Text
The noises get louder and Izuku can start to move a little bit. He doesn’t move too much, because if he does, if anyone’s watching, they’ll probably dose him again. Toga’s quirk continues to cuss him out the same way it’s been since he took it. Even All for One calls it annoying, which almost makes Izuku laugh. Almost.
He hears a door outside open and shut, accompanied by a pissed off voice. Toga. She’s coming for him. She’s going to demand her quirk back. They’re going to hurt him if he won’t give it back. Who’s in charge, anyway? Is it the doctor? Kurogiri? Are they training one of the vanguard to take control? Do they actually think they can make Izuku go back to the life he just escaped? Idiots, the lot of them.
Finally, after what feels like an hour but is probably closer to half a minute, the door to the room Izuku’s in slams open, letting a ton more light in. His eyes blink open and he squints against the light, being greeted with the girl’s silhouette. “Rise and shine, sweetheart!” she shouts, barging in and gripping the front of his shirt, yanking him forward. It’s only then that he realizes his arms and legs have been bound to the chair. He really should have noticed that earlier. What happened to his vigilance? He’s going soft in his old age. “We’re gonna have a little fun.” Oh, torture. It’s been a while since he had to deal with that. Hopefully his pain tolerance is still up to snuff, even if his observation skills have died.
“Bite me,” he slurs, his body still not properly responding. Then he remembers she might actually do just that and mentally takes back his barb. Either because she’s aware he can’t move too well or because she’s an idiot who lost her brain with her quirk, Toga quickly cuts his bindings and yanks him to his feet, leaning in close with a sneer. But there’s something in her eyes besides the usual bloodlust. Hell, he’s not even sure that’s there.
Then she does something even more out of the ordinary. “This is the Musutafu compound,” she hisses. “Run when you can. I’ll make sure you get out.” She’s still got that vicious smirk and her voice is low. That means one of two things: one, she’s fucking with him, or two, she’s actually trying to help him. She doesn’t allow him time to dwell on that, as she drags him from the room, unconcerned with his shambling steps. Stupid drug.
Dabi rears his ugly head, because things were going just a little too well. “What are you doing?” he demands as Izuku and Toga hit the main room. “Why is he free? The doctor said to leave him.” So the doctor’s in charge? Interesting.
“Doc ain’t here. I wanna see him covered in blood. Got a problem with that, you burnt crepe?” Toga taunts as Izuku starts to feel more secure in the movements of his body. God, he hopes she wasn’t just fucking with him.
Around them sit… most of the rest of the vanguard. Where Kurogiri is Izuku doesn’t know, but he’s not about to kick a gift horse in the dick and question it. So, six on one. Or… five on two, if Toga wasn’t lying.
Izuku wishes he’d had more time to mess with this quirk. With any of the quirks in his possession, really. Something before he was actually forced to use any of them. Too late. The boy, probably calm and rational only because of the drugs in his system, pulls a headassed move if he’s ever seen one. A familiar black sputters out of Twice’s mask and out from behind Mr. Compress’s before finally consuming them both. Spinner goes next as Izuku recoils, a searing pain in his temples making him wince. Perhaps it was too much to hope for, to have the quirk take them all. At least he got some of the troublesome quirks out of the way. Hopefully the doctor won’t be too upset by visitors. “You’d better not have been kidding,” Izuku mutters in Toga’s direction, taking off his gloves as she releases her hold on his shirt.
Toga lunges at Magne, blades drawn, while Izuku circles Dabi. “I told them you wouldn’t come back,” the villain admits offhandedly. “You’re too weak. Why any of them thought you’d make a good villain, a good leader is beyond me.”
The boy has to fight back the urge to laugh. “I can’t tell if you’re trying to degrade me or use reverse psychology, but either way, you’re trying to play mind games. After All for One, that’s like taking me away from a game with the world chess master I was winning and tossing me in a game against an average eight year old. Worthless and disappointing for everyone involved. Just fuck off or hit me.” And the next few seconds are a blur.
One moment, Izuku’s staring down Dabi, both waiting for the other to make the first move. The next, he sees Toga pinned down by Magne, her own knife to her throat. The moment after that, he and Toga are running as fast as his drugged body will let him and his hands are covered in dust. What happened? What happened?! Heat slams into his back and blue lights up the girl’s. Both of them pick up speed, despite Izuku having to fight not to trip. He can see a door at the end of the hall. Toga starts running even faster. That has to be the exit.
But then Toga stops when they reach the door, opening it and shoving him out it. He falls, surprised by the push. “Run,” she urges, and he looks back to see her standing bravely in the doorway, facing Dabi head-on. As he pushes to his feet, the blond charges back down the hallway before the entire doorway lights up with blue flames. Every part of him wants to take her advice and get the hell out of there except the parts that matter. His legs send him flying back inside and all he can do is deal with the situation at hand.
It’s about this moment that he starts praying. Not to any particular deity. Just anything that will listen.
He grabs hold of a quirk he hasn’t even tested in full just yet. Izuku’s only interacted with it once, his first day at UA when Shinsou came to apologize to him and he freaked out. He really hopes it’s pyrokinesis like he thought it was. Dabi smirks as his flames die down and he can see the former villain. “Do you think I can get away with telling them you resisted and it was a total accident that you died?” he wonders aloud, raising his hand once more with a chuckle.
Blue spirals toward Izuku’s face and he swipes his hand through the air in front of him, not knowing what he’s doing in the least. It does nothing. The flames get hotter and it feels as if time has slowed down. His arm extends in front of him one more time and he swallows, ready. Ready for whatever happens. Either he dies today, or he doesn’t. That’s fine with him. Maybe. Well… Regardless, he raises his arm one more time, feeling the heat of the quirk gather in his forearm before an orange column of flame erupts from his palm, morphing to green as it gets further from his body. Green engulfs blue, devouring the fire and converting it into Izuku’s own. Taking a risk, the boy barrels through the green, his hand balling into a fist and extinguishing it as a whole, revealing the scorched corridor around them.
A moment later, Izuku’s got Dabi pressed up against the wall with a hand around his throat, just the same way they’d stood when they’d first met. “I think you could tell them I ran away with your quirk,” Izuku growls, grinning slightly as he does just that. The quirk burns its way up the boy’s arm, running back and forth across his collar bones. Then he grabs Toga and books it.
“Why’d you come back for me?!” she demands, keeping pace with him pretty easily.
Shaking his head, Izuku replies, “I could ask you the same thing. The Toga I knew would have never done that. Change of heart or was it just an act the whole time?”
“I don’t know what you did to me. It was that, though.”
-
[Earlier]
Kurogiri’s portal throws Himiko out in a random alley, where she proceeds to have a slight meltdown (read: massive fucking breakdown because fuck shifting, her entire world view has become a fucking Rubik’s Cube). Something happened. Hisade did something to her. He had her pinned and… and she put the thing on his back to signal that she had him and that Kurogiri could grab them. And now she's here, alone, disgusted with herself. She hurt so many people. She killed so many people. The way Hisade screamed when the portal swallowed them… Himiko can still feel it in her chest. She hurt him. She hurt him when he's been nothing but good to her.
Her chest feels cold, the space right above her diaphragm feeling empty. Why is it empty? What did he do? Blood. Blood always calms her down. She needs to calm down, calm down, calm down damn it, Himiko, breathe. She pulls a small vial of the stuff out of her pocket―she doesn't even know whose it is at this point―from beside the spare tracker she was given. You're fine. Just breathe. Drink the― Her thoughts cut off as she looks at the blood in the little glass container and retches, reflexively hurling it at the wall across the alley from her. She's not infatuated by blood anymore? That… At least she won't feel the need to kill anyone anymore.
What's happening to her?
Something in the girl's head twitches and writhes, forcing incoherent thoughts out into her mind, those quickly getting more and more discernible until the thoughts are finally screaming at her to help him. Help Hisade. He was good to her. She was bad to him. Make up for it help help help him help him h elp him help him HELP HIM SAVE HIM SAVE HIM SAVE―
With all the grace of someone who fell asleep during the daytime and just woke up to find it's dark outside and now has to figure out what day it is, Himiko stumbles out of the alley and into the street. Figure it out. Calm and rational, just like Hisade. She can’t go to a police station to tell them what’s happening, since they’d probably arrest her. She can’t contact UA. One, she doesn’t know how, and two, what would she even say? “Hey, by the way, I apparently had a change of heart or something after helping with the kidnapping one of your students and I know where he is and―” No, that’s stupid. She can just… save him herself. Yeah, save him herself.
-
[Back to the Present]
Izuku nearly trips over his own feet (which feel less like they’re weighted down by thirty cinder blocks each, thank you very much) at the explanation. “I took your quirk,” he says, his mind firing into overdrive. “Did the quirk mess with your head? It’s based around blood, so maybe. It might have drawn you to blood, which in turn drew you to villainy, so when the desire for blood was taken out of the picture, the morals that would have kept you from the blood were reactivated. That… makes sense, I’d guess.” Strange. Izuku never really knew quirks could have that kind of impact on one’s psyche.
“Yeah, cool. Less psychobabble and more running, please!” Toga insists, both picking up the pace.
Then Izuku hears a screech behind him. He doesn’t even have to turn around to know what it is. Noumu. Less-than-elegantly sweeping Toga onto his back, the boy grabs a speed quirk and sprints as hard as he trusts himself to. Once again, stupid fucking drug. He activates another and another, using three speed quirks and pure adrenaline to drive himself and his apparent savior to safety. Izuku, you need to breathe. That’s not All for One. Take a left. There’s a police station at the end of the road. It’s a woman with a gentle voice. It reminds him of the way people at UA would talk to him when he’s on the verge of a panic attack. Is he on the verge of a panic attack? You might be if you keep thinking about it. Left, now. He takes the left.
Skidding to a stop in front of the station, he lets Toga down and hears a scream. A human scream. No, no nonononono Noumu are mindless monsters and― Take care of yourself first. The woman is all but ignored as Izuku tells Toga he’s going to stop the Noumu and takes off once again.
-
Himiko watches as Hisade sprints back down the street, abandoning her in front of the police station with nothing beyond an order to stay there that she immediately ignores. Of course, she’s not nearly as fast as him, so she only catches up to find bodies.
Broken and lifeless hunks of flesh with piles of dust where the heads should be. The same sort of dust that Hisade pulled her out from under after he saved her from Magne. “Just run that way,” she tells the stragglers she comes across, pointing back toward the police station. “Everything’s―” Hisade lets out a roar of frustration as he hops off one Noumu’s back and onto another’s. “Everything’s going to be fine. Just go. It’s not safe here now.” She does this a few more times, getting closer to the action with every civilian she sends off.
It seems like things are going to be okay. Then Hisade gets thrown into a building, the bricks collapsing slightly with the impact. When he gets up, acting as if he just got thumped in the forehead, there’s a clear him-sized indent in the wall. “Fuck you!” he spits, his stance more like that of a threatened wild animal than anything. He launches himself back at the Noumu, digging his fingers into the monster’s eye and dangling until he drops, the eyesocket having dissolved beneath his fingertips. With the next one, he digs chunks out of the beast’s body, climbing to slam his palm against the top of its head and throw himself at another Noumu as this one starts to collapse.
He’s gone feral and all Himiko can think is that this is her fault. All of it. Not just that wild look in his eye, but the people running the other way. The casualties lying on the ground, dead or injured. The bodies of Noumu filling the street. Each time Hisade gets thrown or someone else gets beaten into the ground, a little, slimy voice in the dark part of her mind her quirk had blocked off since it came in croons that this was her doing. Every injury and death is on her head. The screams and the smell of blood, the pained expressions and crying, all of it makes the girl want to puke.
The last Noumu falls, Hisade falling with it and rolling to his feet. He still stands like a scared feral cat, looking at any and everything like it’s going to kill him. So much for calm and rational Hisade, she thinks distantly. When he decides every danger is sufficiently dead, he runs, using that damn speed quirk to leave the scene faster than he really should be able to. Like a lost puppy, Himiko darts off in a dead sprint, futilely trying to keep up with him only to see him run into a store a few buildings down as she rounds the corner.
-
“I need a phone.” Izuku makes the demand out of breath, panic making his attempts to refill his lungs after his run useless. He disregards the fear on the faces of the civilians in the store, some of them bloody. Someone should get an ambulance or something. “I need to make a call. Please?”
The startled cashier points him to a door behind the counter. “We have a landline back there. You can use that.”
Nodding, Izuku heads toward the door, doing his very best to keep his shit together. Then someone tugs on his dirty and singed and slightly bloody sweater and he nearly bitchslaps a poor kid to Hong Kong. Damn… Inko got him this sweater. “Th-thank you!” the kid stutters, tracks of tears shining on his face. “One of the monsters a-almost got me, but you stopped it!” The child has turquoise hair and hope in his bright green eyes. He’s probably younger than ten. And he’s definitely what Izuku could have been. Silently, without an expression on his face, Izuku stares longer than he probably should and nods stiffly. The kid’s so innocent. What is that like? He hugs Izuku around the waist and the teen has to hold his breath as to not completely flip his lid and accidentally murder at least the child, if not the entire block.
“I need to make a call,” the former-villain mumbles, patting the kid’s head. “Go back to your people, okay?” When the boy does just that, Izuku all but runs into the back room, ripping the phone from its hook and stabbing his finger against the numbers, dialing the only phone number he knows.
“Who is it?” Aizawa demands, stress evident in his voice. Stress Izuku caused. Why couldn’t he just keep himself from getting kidnapped―He stops right there, knowing he’ll break down if he starts cursing himself out like that.
Tears start to well up in his eyes, the adrenaline keeping him semi-sane finally fading away. “I didn’t wanna go, Aizawa. They took me. I didn’t have a choice. You have to believe me.” He chews his lip, grabbing a tissue and wrapping it around his pinky so he doesn’t break the phone.
The line goes silent. “Izuku?” Aizawa breathes. “Are you okay? Where are you?”
“I don’t―I’m alive and there were Noumu, a lot of Noumu, and they hurt people and I think I’m okay, I don’t think I got hurt. Did I get my license? I used my quirks, I had to use them. Am I in trouble? I don’t know where I am, and―”
“Give me the phone.” Izuku turns to see Toga in the doorway. “You’re panicking. I’ll explain.”
“Are you still there? What’s happening?” Aizawa asks, starting to freak out, but Izuku hands the phone over.
Toga takes a deep breath, standing a ways away from Izuku, which he appreciates. “Hi, I heard him call you Aizawa, so I’m gonna call you that, too,” she opens.
Magne. He killed Magne. He wrapped his hand around her neck and watched her die to help Toga. He killed a ton of Noumu, though that was probably mercy by that point. He took Dabi’s quirk. He made Bakugou and Kaminari and that Shindou kid watch as he was taken. Quirks start to roil under his skin and he can’t breathe and he can’t think it’s too loud too loud fucking― “Quirk suppressors. I need―Toga, I need quir-quirk suppressors,” he gasps, focusing on keeping his hands away from everything.
-
“Hi, I heard him call you Aizawa, so I’m gonna call you that, too. I’m Toga Himiko, which probably throws you off, but I just want to help Hisade now.”
“Izuku,” the man on the other end of the line corrects. “Midoriya Izuku. If you really want to help him, tell me where you are.”
Hisa―Izuk―Midoriya. Midoriya, ever since she took the phone, has been sitting on the ground, his arms extended in front of him, elbows on his knees, staring off into space. His breaths are shallow, but he’s still breathing, which is what’s important. “Musutafu. We’re in a laundromat a few streets down from a police station. There’s a pharmacy next door?” Giving up with a sigh, Himiko changes her plan of attack. “He killed a bunch of Noumu. It has to be blowing up online by now.” Midoriya’s mumbling to himself, something about Magne. “He got tossed around a bit by some of the Noumu, but he’s able to move fine, so―”
“Quirk suppressors. I need―Toga, I need quir-quirk suppressors,” Midoriya gasps, eyes wide, still staring off into space though now filled to the brim with panic. “Not safe―”
Shit. That can’t be good. “Look, Aizawa, he’s freaking out and begging for quirk suppressors, so I’m gonna hand you back to him and go look for those. I don’t know how to help him beyond this. Please come get him.” And she does just that, giving Midoriya the phone and trying to ignore the way his hand shakes. Trying to ignore the way she shakes.
Midoriya always seemed so… so unbreakable. Unshakeable. Invincible in a way Himiko could only dream to be. To see him now, shattered seemingly beyond repair… his broken pieces slice holes in her lungs, making it that much more difficult for her to breathe. Her heart threatens to burst out of her chest and tears burn in her eyes because he shouldn’t shouldn’t never ever never shouldn’t never have had to reach this point. And she wishes it wasn’t her fault. “Does anyone have any quirk suppressants,” she asks as she leaves the back room, her eyes scanning the room before seeing a tentative hand being raised in the corner.
The guy digs through his backpack before bringing out a pill bottle. “My quirk gets messed up when I get stressed,” he explains, as if Himiko needs a reason for him to have these.
“Cool,” the girl deadpans, taking the pills from him. “What’s the max you can take of these?”
“My doctor said four at once, but only if it’s really bad―”
Himiko cuts him off by pouring four pills into her hand and thrusting the bottle back into his hands. “Thanks. You got a water or something?” She takes that from him, too, and returns to Midoriya, who’s begun crying. “Come on, Midoriya,” she mumbles as she holds out the water bottle and the pills. He takes the water first, putting a mouthful in his mouth before snatching the pills and downing them all. Her work done, the girl goes to move away, but he stares at her with fear in his eyes, so she stays, letting him lean on her for a bit. This… is fine.