Chapter Text
It starts like this.
Midoriya Inko looks dotingly into the eyes of her son on the morning of his seventh birthday and dies.
It is not instantaneous, for the world is not that forgiving. From her throat erupts a bone-grinding scream, raw and inhuman in the way that it doesn’t even sound like she should be capable of making that noise in the first place. She pitches forward at a sickening velocity like a fly dropping to the floor and there’s blood leaking through her teeth. Around laboured pants and moans, she wheezes out, “‘zuku.”
Midoriya Izuku’s legs are jelly. “Mom,” he croaks. “Mom, what’s going on?”
For but a fleeting moment, recognition lights up her face, but it’s gone as quickly as it came. Midoriya Inko -- the golden seed that bloomed and thrived despite her hardships; a woman who had been nothing short of the sunshine of every room she entered -- is now colourless and still. Her hands lose their vigour from where they'd been clutching and ripping chronically at her own skin. Mouth open, lips steadily spilling blood onto the hardwood floors, she pins her son under an empty stare.
Izuku wants her to laugh; to pounce on him with one of her warm, ardent hugs and tell him that it was all just one big joke; that she was just messing around; but minutes roll by like the tide and she doesn’t let up.
Staring and staring and staring.
He wrestles the apartment door open and charges directly across the hall. They need help from another adult; Izuku may only be seven, but he is not stupid.
What Izuku doesn’t realise, though, is that it's already too late.
The man who lives behind the door he raps at -- a kind accountant who babysat Izuku many a-time when Inko's shifts at the hospital start to stretch -- bumbles out, bleary-eyed and pyjama-clad. He doesn’t so much as register Izuku or his agitated babbling, for he notices the lifeless body sprawled out in the apartment over the top of his head immediately. It takes him all of two seconds to pull out his phone and stumble over to her, fingers desperately probing her neck and wrists.
"Midoriya!" He's shouting between his conversation with the phone and it's frightening Izuku. Adults don’t shout like that unless something is wrong. He doesn’t want there to be anything wrong. "Midoriya!"
Staring and staring and--
[--everything sounds like he’s been plunged underwater.]
“Shit,” his neighbour curses, minutes after he’s finished talking on the phone, and Izuku is scared because the adults only swear when something is wrong and everything is just so far away now. “Oh, shit.”
For the first time in his life, seven-year-old Midoriya Izuku becomes numb to the world. He doesn’t notice he’s crying until there’s a body pressed against his, gentle arms enveloped around his back, pulling him into alien warmth. Every touch feels distant and unfamiliar. Everything is so far away. The voice mumbling into his ear is making no sense; all of the words are disjointed and he doesn't understand any--
[--she's still staring at him.]
“My mom,” he whines out, struck with a moment of clarity. “My mom. Help- help her!”
The man clinging to him shudders. “Izuku,” he mumbles.
The arms uncurl from his body. Large hands place themselves on his shoulders, indifferent as the seven-year-old strains uselessly against them. “Look at me, Izuku.” His neighbour -- normally a put-together, determined man -- sounds well and truly defeated. “She’s gone, Izuku. Do you-- do you understand what that means?”
“No--!” he cries, because his mom is still staring, staring, staring and he needs to help her. Why isn’t his neighbour helping her anymore?
The man’s body shudders as he holds the child close to his chest, trying to shield his mother from his eyes, despite the fact that he’d already watched her die. “The-- the police are on their way. They’ll help you,” he tries hoarsely. “Please look at me, Izuku.”
“My mom-- she needs--”
His vision is tunnelling at the edges. Exhaustion tears at his brain.
“Izuku, please look at me.”
This time, he listens.
And then it ends.
>><<
It starts like this.
It’s eight in the morning and every resident in the apartment complex is awake. Seven police officers and six paramedics hauling heavy medical equipment up four flights of stairs yell commands to each other, heavy working boots thumping against hollow flooring, and it makes enough noise to stir the entire building. The walls shake and the pipes shudder with their overwhelming presence.
They had arrived prepared to see one -- presumed dead -- female, one adult male and one traumatised seven-year-old boy who had awoken to the most sickening birthday surprise he’d ever receive. It’s safe to say that they were not expecting to see another corpse joining the first, strewn across the ground barely two meters away from her and equally as grey. It was not long before three more paramedics arrived with another stretcher to carry the second body downstairs.
Detective Tsukauchi Naomasa idles on the threshold of the apartment. Although both bodies have disappeared beneath the zippers of black body bags, their empty eyes and skin devoid of colour is all he can see. Officers and medical staff bustle in and out, bumping his shoulder as they go, but nobody tries to fill him in yet. What could they possibly fill him in on, when there's so little to know? With no visible sign of a break-in, struggle or cause of death, the detective hopes the autopsy of the bodies will at least give them answers.
“Found the child,” comes Officer Tamakawa Sansa’s voice.
There is no hesitation in his stride. The officer is crouched at the opposite end of the fourth-floor corridor, his furry orange head tilted over his shoulder to watch him. His ears are flat and his yellow eyes are grave. As it does everytime Tamakawa is distressed, his tail whips violently against the floor. For a good reason, Naomasa soon comes to realise; the trembling body curled up in the corner makes his breath hitch wetly in his throat.
The man being currently hauled downstairs in a body bag had told the call handler and dispatcher over the phone that the child’s name is Midoriya Izuku and that today is the day of his seventh birthday. Where he lays with wretched sobs shuddering from his body and fingers tearing at greasy green curls, he looks so much smaller than his age implicates. It’s heart-shattering; sickening, almost, seeing a child so small experience something so big.
What a horrible fucking birthday, Naomasa thinks to himself. He already knows that this will be an image that will haunt him for as long as he lives.
“Midoriya,” he tries. Although a fresh, new and talented detective in the force, he can't say he's at all touched up on consoling traumatised children. “Midoriya, my name is Detective Tsukauchi Naomasa. I’m with Officer Tamakawa Sansa. We work for the police. We’re here to help you. Do you understand?”
There’s no response. Midoriya just coils in on himself further.
Tamakawa, ever the diligent worker, takes it upon himself to seek out assistance from one of the paramedics on the scene. The humanoid cat mutant is a quiet, professional soul but he has the acute initiative in these situations that Naomasa often lacks. The detective listens to his footsteps leave as his hands hover over the child’s shaking body. “I’m going to touch you, Midoriya,” he warns, feeling too out of control for his own comfort. “I need you to--”
“No, no, no,” comes a tiny voice. “Don’t.”
He takes the hint immediately. “That’s okay. I won’t. Can you look at me, Midoriya?”
“No, no, no, no…”
Leaning back on his haunches, Naomasa considers the situation at hand. There’s no way that this kid is going to be uncurling on his own whim anytime soon. It’s extremely evident in the way that he’s shaking like a leaf in the wind that he’s terrified to his very core and so he comes to the conclusion that moving too quickly is the last thing he needs right now. It would help no one to rush this.
At first, Naomasa had arrived at the scene fearing somebody had murdered this woman in front of her own child’s eyes, but he thinks about the unexpected body joining the first and watches Midoriya Izuku sob in the corner and another theory begins to creep it’s way into the forefront of his mind.
One that makes his blood run cold and curdle in his body.
It isn’t long before a hand appears on his shoulder, startling him out of his thoughts. Tamakawa is standing above him and offering him an All Might stuffie. It looks well-loved; what with how it is crinkled and worn at the seams, Naomasa already knows the kid hugs this as he sleeps at night. The thought pulls at his heart strings. “It was on his bed,” the officer comments. “I thought it might help.”
Wordlessly, Naomasa takes it and peers over his shoulder. Two paramedics stand a few meters away, watching them, already looking prepared to jump in. The detective knows he should stand back and let them check the kid over for any injuries, but given the sensitive realisation he's made about the situation, he thinks it’s a better idea to wait until the kid feels ready.
“Kid, I have something for you,” he says gently.
“Please-- just leave me alone.”
“I can’t do that, Midoriya. We’re here to help you when you’re ready.”
With that, he places the stuffie on the floor and backs up so as to give him some space. Crowding and poking at the kid is going to get them nowhere. The paramedics list forward but he catches their attention before they can get close. “Bare with me here, but I think we need to tread carefully,” he mutters. There’s really no point in beating around the bush. “I think that the kid is the one who did this.”
“Wh-- what? You think a child murdered his own mother?”
The detective bristles at the paramedic, distasteful of his dark, accusatory tone. “Not on purpose,” he snaps. “I’m unaware of what his quirk does, but something tells me that he’s just had a very unpleasant quirk awakening.”
The other paramedic, a young woman with bright eyes, braided pink hair and small horns flitting through her bangs, is the epitome of professional. “There is no visible cause of death on either of the bodies,” she informs the detective. “No sign of a break-in or a struggle. It’s definitely plausible, at this point, that it was a quirk that did it.” His quirk goes unspoken. Her gaze skips to the little body still balled up behind them, now clutching the All Might stuffie to his chest like his life depends on it.
Children born into average households with extremely dangerous quirks unrelated to that of their parents are often the unsuspecting victims of DNA mutations. They're considered an unfortunate byproduct of modern society; too dangerous to thrive, they're often reduced to a life of turmoil thanks to their adversity. In most cases, they undergo crippling surgeries to remove the jeopardy their quirk will cause, what with how they are offered no other option. In some extremely rare cases, there have been kids with these mutations who end up mysteriously disappearing. His superiors in the police force call it ‘damage control’.
It isn't something that happens all that much, but it happens enough for Naomasa to fear that it is exactly what they are dealing with today.
Glancing at a stoic Tamakawa, he steps away from the conversation. An idea clarifies itself. “Stay here.”
The kid isn’t sobbing anymore -- he’s probably run out of tears to cry by now -- but his body still shakes tremendously. He doesn’t appear to notice that Naomasa is sitting down beside him again. “Kid,” the detective begins gently, “I am here to help. This might be hard to answer, but I need you to tell me what happened here, so I can do just that.”
He twitches, then; a sign that he’s paying attention, gone as soon as it had come.
“You don’t have to look at me. I won’t touch you if you don’t want me to. Just tell me what happened and we can help you.”
At this, the kid’s mouth tips open a little. “My eyes,” he whispers hoarsely.
Naomasa’s heart hammers as he pushes for elaboration.
“My eyes-- my eyes.” Another choked wail rips from his throat and he curls into the All Might stuffie further “I-- I looked into their-- their eyes and--”
"And what, Midoriya?"
"--and they died! I looked i--into their-- their eyes and they died--!”
'ᴛʀᴜᴇ'
Realisation hits him like a freight train.
And then it ends.
>><<
It starts like this.
Tsukauchi Naomasa stands on yet another threshold, but this time it’s attached to a hospital room. The sterile white and robin egg blue of the walls is heavy on his eyes, the emotional distress of the day has left him feeling more worn out than usual. Dealing with kids and murder does that to you. Nevertheless, he keeps his composure strictly professional as he gazes at the child sleeping the morning away in the hospital bed, still donning the All Might pyjamas they'd found him in. Beside him, the stuffie protects its charge.
The most nerve-wracking part of this all is not the two fresh bodies awaiting investigation in the morgue, but instead the child who had been plunged right into the middle of it. They initially had trouble getting the kid off the floor without him struggling and screaming hysterically to the point where he risked hurting himself and so the female paramedic had been fast in administering a sedative.
They’d used the detective’s tie back in the apartment complex just in case he’d broken through the sedative, but it had been replaced with a plain black blindfold that clips securely over his ears and around the back of his head upon reaching the ambulance. It makes him look almost animalistic in the way that it implies it’s holding back something dangerous, and while Naomasa supposes that that is exactly what it is doing, it doesn’t sit right with him anyway.
This is a kid.
“When is he going to wake up?” comes a voice, and Naomasa tears his eyes away from Midoriya for the first time since they got to the hospital.
The Bakugo family are essentially the only people Midoriya Izuku has regarding proper guardianship. They’d searched and searched, but failed to find anybody still alive and living in Japan -- only a father living in America who barely even remembered he existed in the first place, which touches Naomasa the wrong way entirely, but there are bigger fish to fry -- therefore forcing them to turn to the Midoriya family’s emergency contact list.
The woman -- Bakugo Mitsuki -- has her full attention on the doctor she’s speaking with, but her young son appears to be paying the conversation no mind. Instead he idles at Midoriya's bedside, arms crossed against his chest, eyes thunderous as he glares at the sleeping boy. They look to be of similar ages and so Tsukauchi assumes they're friends. He doesn't need to use any critical thinking skills to know that, despite the hot, thick emotion wafting off the blonde's body, it comes from a place of fear rather than anger.
The detective considers approaching the kid, but immediately understands that maybe it’s best to give him space for now. Instead he steps towards Bakugo Mitsuki.
“The doctor tells me I can’t take him home,” is all she says.
“No,” Naomasa hums. “Not right now.”
“He isn’t dangerous,” Mitsuki insists vehemently. “Izuku has- he’s the kindest kid you’ll ever find. Hearing everybody talk about him like he’s-- he’s some monster--”
“How much have you been told?”
The woman glances back at the motionless child asleep on the bed. For but a moment, the heat under her collar softens. “You think he killed his mother and his neighbour with his quirk,” she mutters, bristling. “He's registered quirkless. You know that, right?"
Naomasa hums. "Late bloomers aren't uncommon."
"And the fucking blindfold makes me feel sick. He’s-- he’s no monster.”
“You need to understand,” the detective says seriously, “the severity of the situation. He told me himself. He told me that he looked into their eyes and they died. Do you realise how dangerous he is? A traumatised, terrified child who has a quirk that can kill a person with nothing but eye contact. We don’t know how much control he has over it or it’s activation requirements.” He pauses, noting the way irritability soars through her hands. “Nothing is confirmed yet. We are still figuring everything out. But I need you to understand how deadly he is, even if he doesn’t mean to be.”
Mitsuki says nothing.
“We need to tackle this with a lot of caution,” Naomasa continues, “but I promise we are doing everything in our power to get him the support and care he needs to get past this. We're going to get him straight into quirk therapy as soon as we can. Believe me; I want him to be able to go home to somewhere he’ll be safe and comfortable as much as you do, but that can’t happen today.”
“I understand,” Mitsuki says eventually. She glances towards the bed again, this time looking at her son, who is now gazing at the beaten All Might stuffie beside Midoriya's head. Her face is unreadable as she gazes at the pair. “My little twerp-- he pretends he hates Izuku, but I let it slip that I was going to the hospital to see him and he was determined to come along, too. Practically fought me tooth and nail so I'd let him get in the car."
“I thought they were best friends.” Naomasa tilts his head.
“They are. You won’t ever hear Katsuki admit it, though.” Mitsuki sucks in a deep, rigid breath. “I meant it when I said that Izuku is the kindest kid you’ll ever find. He could even win over my Katsuki. Izuku is a good influence on him, you know. He's always been the best at calming the brat down when he gets upset.”
The detective feels grave. “I don’t doubt it.”
>><<
It ends like this.
Tsukauchi Naomasa reaches the hospital at 2AM wearing his coat and boots over his pyjamas. The flashing red and blue of the dozens of police cars parked haphazardly across the carpark casts shadows of the officers across the tarmac. It does nothing for his headache but he takes no mind, focusing only on reaching the hospital room he'd been in barely five hours prior.
When they’d called him, he initially assumed that the kid had killed somebody else, but upon reaching the room to an entirely empty bed he comes to realise that it is actually much, much worse.
“Did he run?” Naomasa asks immediately.
Tamakawa, appearing as professional and as well-groomed as ever despite having also been summoned from his sleep, holds the police tape up for him to duck underneath. “No,” comes his serious reply. “Somebody entered the hospital during a period of high traffic and left with him. They went undetected.” The humanoid cat motions to the security camera -- or, rather, lack thereof. What with how the cables are bare and torn, it must have been ripped out in a rush. “That’s gone too. And a wheelchair.”
The IV stand is missing, too, Naomasa notes. Whoever took the kid must have taken that with them.
“No footage?”
“If there was footage,” Tamakawa says, “we would have showed it to you by now.”
As expected. Naomasa cards a hand worriedly through his hair, fighting away the sleep that pulls at his eyelids. “No leads at all?” he asks, despite the fact that he already knows the answer; when there are leads, Tamakawa does not believe in beating around the bush.
“Not yet.” The officer glances around. “You’re here now, though.”
“Christ,” Naomasa puts his head in his hands.
The All Might stuffie smiles at him from where it lays discarded on the floor.