Archive of Our Own ^beta

Izuku didn’t know much about the Hero Killer, but he didn’t have to.

He was a serial killer who targeted heroes; Obviously, he’d go for the out-of-the-way areas: shadowed alleyways, the edges between the City and the slums, places where a well-aimed gust of wind could cause a building to collapse and no camera crews would ever think to set foot in, even if they knew All Might was there selling crack while pole dancing.

Sometimes, Izuku wanted to beat up his own brain, in-between lamenting the lack of mental bleach. Maybe he could ask Shinsou to make him forget that vivid mental image once they were all safely back at UA.

He upped his use of One-For-All by another percent, trying to outrun his own thoughts. With Hosu in flames and Iida missing, speed was of essence.

Especially since he had a very good idea as to what Iida was currently trying to do. His progress with OFA was very conveniently timed. He zapped around the trash-filled alleyways and dilapidated neighbourhoods, moving on as soon as he confirmed there was no armour-clad Iida or bloodthirsty Hero Killer around.

In the end, he nearly missed it.

He was so focused on speed, on wasting as little time as possible, he almost didn’t notice them in the shadows - if it weren’t for the glint of his lighting reflecting off of a raised blade, he’d be none-the-wiser, continuing his search while-

He dropped that line of thought like a severed hand, focusing on understanding the situation.

A small groan sounded from the corner. He recognized the hero immediately — Native, the Indigenous Hero,— number 387 on the most recent yearly chart. The blood nearly blended with his costume, barely distinguishable in the dark.

A few steps away from him, Iida laid on the ground, unmoving. For a second Izuku thought he was too late, that he failed, but- Iida’s helmet was gone, his eyes zeroing in on Izuku the second he appeared in his range of vision.

And crouching nearly on top of him, with an unsheathed katana pressed to the boy’s throat, stood someone Izuku almost hadn’t recognized.

Someone he hadn’t been expecting to see ever again.

Someone he hoped he was wrong about.

Katanas could be stolen, there was no guarantee-

“Stendhal-san?” he called out, flubbing his landing just a little bit. He was blaming it on the shock, but he doubted Gran Torino would have accepted that as an excuse if he were there.

The Hero Killer froze, the blade pressing against the skin of Iida’s throat.

His head turned around and Izuku was pinned in place by the all too familiar eyes, petrified by the hardened bloodlust that had never been directed at him before.

The blade rose as he straightened out, leaving no mark behind.

“Kid,” he said neutrally, his voice rougher than it had used to be.

Izuku’s shoulders fell.

***

The first time Izuku met him, he was not having a good day.

Kacchan’s goons had recently come up with a new game. Izuku took the liberty to name it “Deku Usually Meekly Believes Anything Said, Seriously”, or “DUMBASS” for short.

Their current favourite was insisting there was someone on the roof, looking sad. And Izuku, knowing very well what could be the worst outcome of “Sad Person” + “A Roof”, never could go on with his life without at least double-checking that.

Usually by the time Izuku confirmed there was no one up there, and no one who decided to take the express route down while he was on the way, the doors were already closed and locked, all the students and teachers gone for the day.

Izuku sighed, sliding down the wall to sit on the old wooden crate, nestled between the doors and an old greenhouse no one had used for years.

At least his mother wouldn’t worry. Someone —likely one of Kacchan’s goons, since Kacchan himself seems to have an allergy to lying— had told her he was having a “sleepover” back when they first did it.

She was so happy when he came back the next day, squeezing him tight, that Izuku had no heart to tell her the truth.

It wasn’t that bad, really. The roof still exudes warmth so close after the summer, and the nights weren’t that cold. Izuku hid a cheap blanket after the second time it happened, and he tended to take extra snacks with himself every day now.

The view was nice, too, and there was enough light to do his homework without anyone interrupting him, spilling anything on the pages or ripping his notebooks apart.

Swaddled comfortably in his blanket —Endeavour themed, since it was decent quality, warm, fireproof (in case Kacchan ever found it) and extremely cheap— he was ready to enjoy some alone time.

No one ever came to the roof after closing time, after all.

Or at least, that’s what he thought before a soft scratching came from the side of the building, and a hand clutched at the small cement ridges.

After the hand came the head hidden by an almost completely flat mask and the rest of the body followed quickly.

Izuku froze, his math homework still open on his knees.

The man in the mask froze, too, one leg still dangling off.

“Pretty sure you’re not supposed to be here,” the man rasped, pulling himself fully onto the roof with a grunt, keeping as low as it was possible for someone with a foot tall hair fountain on the top of their head and two feet of a katana sticking out above their shoulder.

“A-And you are?” Izuku asked bravely, clutching at his pen. Not like it would have done much against the many, many knives strapped all over the man’s body, but it made him feel a little more confident, and that was all that mattered.

The man just chuckled, looking carefully over the three-feet tall (counting from the roof level) brick wall he just climbed over. “I’m supposed to be in places people aren’t meant to be in.”

Izuku thought that was, to borrow a word from Kacchan’s extensive dictionary of swears, complete and utter bullshit.

Having found what he had been looking for, the man settled himself on the edge, ready to move at a moment's notice.

Izuku used his motionlessness as an opportunity to properly take him in.

He wore a dark, warm-looking jacket littered with pockets. His cargo trousers seemed to have been hand-dyed into a more stealth-friendly colour, and he wore heavy combat boots with spikes. They probably helped him climb the side of the school.

Other than the katana, there were a couple more knives visibly strapped to him, but there was no doubt there were more hidden somewhere. No good hero would expose all of his weapons, that’d be just dumb.

And he was a hero, Izuku was sure of it. He didn’t look scary enough for a villain, and not scruffy enough for a vigilante. The trousers were a bit suspicious, but an underground hero with no agency would likely have to make do with his own support items, too.

But the biggest reason was this: Izuku really wanted him to be a hero. Maybe, if he played his cards right, the man would even help him get down from the roof.

It was still early enough to not worry his mother too much.

Decision made, Izuku stuffed the math notebook inside his bag, moving towards the hero with the blanket dragging on the floor behind him.

The hero’s shoulders tensed minutely as he approached, but he didn’t turn his head. Izuku wondered if maybe his quirk helped him with situational awareness. Or maybe it was some type of extra body parts? But no, surely his costume would be more revealing if his quirk required access to skin...

Maybe he simply put a mirrored glass inside his mask, using it like a car’s side mirror?

“I have ears,” the hero said. “And you’re making a lot of noise.”

...Oops. He said that all out loud, hadn’t he.

Not phased —it happened too often to be flustered anymore— he settled himself down near the man. It was as good a time for a snack as any, he figured, fishing out the tupperware box of cut fruit he brought along today.

Cracking the box open, he offered the first choice to the hero.

The man looked at him weirdly, making no motion to accept it.

Shrugging, Izuku selected a strawberry, popped it into his mouth and set the box in between them.

He was already done with his math, anyway. That was all the homework he had assigned, so he was free to do anything he wanted, really. As long as it was something he could do on the roof, but that was fine.

There was that awesome fight he saw just that morning, with the most interesting quirk: the villain was able to control markings from any surface to come and do his biddings. He mostly just stole the road lines and signs to use as bindings and weapons (which was rather rude, all of those would have to be repainted!) but there was a nearby graffiti of Miruko, too, which he brought to life to fight on his side.

The poor sidekick from Endeavour’s agency had been in over his head before the Number Two deigned to appear. The sidekick’s quirk, Firecracker, was similar to Kacchan’s, only his explosions seemed to be limited to his feet.

It added greatly to his speed and maneuverability, but against someone who could simply tie him up to the road like a damsel on the train tracks from the pre-quirk Western movies, those hardly mattered.

Not when he wasn’t fast enough to avoid the ropes. It’s clear he could’ve, if he had trained in the air more, but he seemed to have decided a slight edge over the standard human speed was enough for him. Even Kacchan could already move faster than him, and he was 9!

“You do this often?” the hero asked.

“Mumble or analyse quirks?”

“Both, while on the school roof after hours.”

“I tend to mumble a lot,” Izuku rummaged in his bag to get out his notebook, lucky number 7. It was a little scorched on the edges, but nothing serious yet. Unlike number 4, which he had to rewrite three times before skipping straight to number 5. “Because I think all quirks are super cool and I tend to get over excited about them.”

Flipping to the next free page, he quickly wrote down the basics of the quirks. It was best to do it while fresh, but Kacchan was in a bad mood today and Izuku really didn’t want to risk his notebook any more than he already did by bringing it to school in the first place.

“And you’re on the roof, because…”

“Well,” Izuku paused, trying to remember the details of the sidekick’s boots for the sketch. “Tsubasa-kun said there was a sad-looking student here, so I went to check, but the doors got locked in the meantime, so. Here I am.”

Izuku couldn’t really tell what the hero was thinking. There was the mask, of course, but he never was good at reading other people’s body language even when their faces were exposed. The lack of any friends outside of Kacchan spoke volumes.

“That’s appalling, kid.”

It was considerate of the hero to spell his thoughts out like that.

“It’s just a bit of innocent fun,” Izuku mumbled, picking up an apple slice. “Anyway, they never do it over the weekend or twice in a row, so it’s fine, really.”

The hero’s attention was now fully on him. “You mean that happened before?”

Izuku tried his best to appear even smaller than he was.

“I know,” he mumbled. “I shouldn’t be such a dumbass to believe the same lie again and again, but what if there was really someone here? I couldn’t just-”

“No, I didn’t mean your hero complex, kid. The teachers didn’t do anything about it?”

Someone was laughing. It took Izuku a moment to realize it was him.

“Why would they do anything?” he asked. “They wouldn’t believe me, anyway. And the doors get unlocked in the morning to let Yoshimura-san smoke in peace before the classes start, so I can sneak out on time. It’s all fine.”

Izuku expected the hero to drop it. The hero, however, had different plans.

“What do you mean, they wouldn’t believe you,” he said, too flatly to be a real question, yet still expecting an answer.

Well, this was it. It was nice sitting next to a hero for a while. Once Izuku told him, he’d surely leave, and Izuku doubted he’d help him down on his way.

Pressing knees to his chest, he clutched tighter at the blanket, making sure he could hold on to it even if the hero tried to take it away. He probably wouldn’t —he was a hero!— but Kacchan would have, and he was going to become a hero, too, so who knew.

“I’m quirkless,” he whispered.

The hero seemed to be waiting for something more. “And?”

“I’m… sorry?” Izuku offered. Apologies usually made people feel better.

It didn’t seem to make the hero any happier, though.

“What does being quirkless have to do with anything?”

Izuku blinked up at him, stuffing the slice of an apple he was still holding into his mouth to avoid answering.

Wasn’t it obvious?

Considering the hero was still waiting, apparently not.

“Well, uh.” Izuku fiddled with his notebook, wishing very hard something would interrupt him. A comet, maybe. Or a bird. He’d even settle for a strategically placed spider. “It means I’m useless. And other kids think I’m weird and stalkerish because I like picking quirks apart so they’re mean to me and the teachers say I’m a liar and an attan-attention seeker whenever I try to tell them about it and-”

“Breathe, kid.”

Izuku took a deep breath.

“Short answer, nobody likes me,” he finished.

The hero stared at him for a while longer, before standing up with a sigh.

Oh, so he didn’t want to be around Izuku either. That’s fine, he had been expecting that, anyway-

“Come here, kid,” the hero called, standing at the roof’s door.

“Huh?” Izuku’s head whipped in surprise. What was he going to do? The doors were closed, anyway, it’s not like he could push him down the stairs…

The hero only tapped his foot impatiently, so Izuku rushed to close his fruit box, stuffing it in his bag along with the hero analysis notebook, and joined him by the door.

“What are you doing, sir?”

“Drop the sir.” The hero was rummaging through some of his many pockets.

“But I don’t know what else to call you, si- uh.”

“Chizome will do,” the man said, triumphally handing two pieces of molded wire to Izuku. “And I’m going to teach you how to pick locks.”

Izuku startled back, his hand startling away from the stiff wires as if they had burned him. “But that’s illegal!”

“So is locking a child on a roof, but nobody seems to care about that much, hm?”

Izuku was torn. On one hand, he loved learning new stuff, and here he had an adult who wanted to teach him! On the other hand, picking locks seemed like a rather rude skill to have… Then again, Kacchan and his goons never would be able to lock him anywhere again, and he could still make it home before dinner...

“Pro Heroes, especially the underground ones, often have to pick locks on the job,” the hero offered, apparently managing to nail Izuku’s obsession on the head within minutes of meeting him. Or maybe he just saw the title of his notebook.

Either way, Izuku was no longer torn.

***

“Midoriya!” Iida called out from the ground, his body fully paralyzed.

Izuku spared him a glance and a reassuring smile, but did not pause on his way over to Native. He ignored Stendhal-san completely for now.

“...Run…” Native managed to wheeze out.

Izuku offered him a slightly less genuine smile in lieu of rolling his eyes as he kneeled by his side.

“Don’t speak,” he said, helping him lie down on his back, knees drawn up. Stendhal-san’s quirk offered a slight advantage, helping him keep the position. “That’ll only make it worse.”

The wound was already bad. It was a rather deep cut through his abdomen, bleeding profusely.

“Your quirk would really come in handy right about now. Can you use it on yourself?”

Native shook his head weakly.

Izuku hummed. That was rather inconvenient, especially since he knew there was no reason for it not to work other than the hero’s belief in his own abilities.

There wasn’t a lot of space in his costume for medical supplies, but he had insisted, returning to the Support Department three times before they gave him all he wanted.

Threatening to let Hatsume modify his suit outside of school was what swayed Power Loader in the end, he was sure.

He wondered what happened to Stendhal-san to change his priorities so drastically. The costume he was wearing now had hardly any pockets. Izuku doubted he had even a single bandaid left on his person.

Fishing out a pack of gauze, he ripped it open easily, stuffing the wrapper in a designated trash pocket.

He knew, more or less, what needed to be done. The local library had quite a number of books on the topic, and he read all of them at least twice after his first crash course on first aid.

Izuku pressed the gauze to the gash, protecting it from any other pollutants. Unspooling the capture tape, he cut a little bit on the toothy dispenser edge, pulling the skin on both sides of the wound taunt. A couple more pieces of tape, and there was nothing more he could do to help.

It was all a temporary fix, of course, and the wound would have to be professionally checked, cleaned and closed at the hospital.

Usually, his first aid was a little more… final. He wasn’t used to the equivalent of putting a bandaid on a broken bone, and he had to admit, it felt really uncomfortable. Like he was half-assing it.

Like he was disrespecting the time his teacher spent instructing him.

***

Ever since he’d been graciously gifted his first set of lockpicks, it was like a whole new world had opened up for him.

Metaphorically speaking, of course.

Izuku’d never opened anything but the roof doors, and only when he was locked on the wrong side of them. But the simple knowledge that he could leave anyplace he might be trapped in at anytime he wanted was… Well, it was exhilarating.

Kacchan’s goons, of course, kept tricking him into the roof exile. The joke was on them though, because all it meant was that Izuku wouldn’t have to endure their mocking and “friendly” nudges the entire way home.

His mother questioned him about the abrupt stop to the supposed sleepovers, looking rather disappointed. Izuku, not one to worry her needlessly, spun a tale of a non-existent student from another class in his year who sadly had to relocate to Taiwan so that his family could take care of his elderly grandparents.

Somehow, his mom never doubted him.

And then, one day, Kacchan had to stay over after school.

Izuku knew he would have; He was in the same room when the teacher informed Kacchan about the sports team asking for his presence.

But there was supposed to be a public marketing event led by Best Jeanist not too far away, and Izuku was so excited to attend it he hadn’t stayed up on the roof for long enough.

He regretted it immediately after he crashed into Kacchan’s back at the lockers.

“EH?!” Kacchan exploded immediately. He nearly fell onto the floor had it not been for a well-timed explosion.

That time, fuelled by the strong desire to attend a Hero-led event, Izuku managed to escape.

Other times, he wasn’t so lucky.

Kacchan, apparently interpreting that one-off accident as Izuku thinking himself better than him (somehow), decided to steer him off of heroics via frivolous displays of his quirk.

You know, like what he did everyday, only way closer to the only person in their year who was at all interested in figuring out exactly how quirks worked.

And it inspired others to do the same, which was frankly a wonderful gift and Izuku enjoyed the additional data a lot.

That is, at least, until the students decided to take a more hands-on approach.

Izuku still appreciated the data points, but he would have preferred if they could have been obtained without hurting him in the process.

Kacchan was the only exception, only ever threatening, but Izuku knew that wouldn’t last long. Kacchan would never let anyone upstage him, even if the competition was entirely within his own head.

The first time he pressed his palms to Izuku’s skin, leaving two star-shaped burns behind, it was his birthday.

He was now ten years old, and his best friend burned his shoulder.

Honestly, at that point, he was a little more concerned about the damage to his gakuran.

The hero found him by the water fountain at a nearby park, a pack of gauze stolen from the nurse’s office sitting on the bench next to his folded jacket as he was trying to figure out the best way to clean the burn.

“What happened to you, kid?” the hero —Chizome-san— said. He must have been a very good underground hero, because that name yielded absolutely no results when Izuku researched it.

Izuku startled badly enough to jump a foot in the air. He nearly fell, too, his ankle throbbing painfully when he put any pressure on it.

Two strong hands caught him by the arms, steadying him easily. The hero’s reflex and speed were phenomenal. Was that a part of his quirk?

“Kid?” Chizome-san repeated. “You alright?”

“I’m fine,” Izuku responded on autopilot.

Izuku glanced back at the man, who, even despite the mask, was rather obviously staring at him. No, not at Izuku- he was looking between his shoulder and the gauze, something stuck at the tip of his tongue.

“Were you planning to just put the gauze on?” he asked.

Izuku curled in on himself. “I didn’t know what else to do.”

“You should never put a gauze straight on a wound if you know it’ll stay there for a while, kid,” he sighed, looking through his pockets. “It’ll get stuck to the new skin, and rip it away when the dressing is removed.”

Chizome-san gestured at Izuku to sit on the bench and he did so immediately. His shoulder was a really awkward place to try and reach, especially when he had no idea what he should have been doing. Speaking of which.

“What should I do, then?”

“Cover the area with specialized cream or ointment first. If you’re in a hurry, a clean plastic bag will do, but that’s only a stop-gap until you can treat the burn properly.”

He handed Izuku a wad of antiseptic wipes and ordered him to clean his shoulder. Izuku did so, admittedly paying more attention to whatever the hero was doing.

There was a flat plastic disk in Chizome-san’s hands, which he turned into a small bowl. A sachet —the size of a sugar packet— of some powdery substance was poured in and he topped it off with just a little bit of water from the fountain. Then, he stirred it gently with what looked like a small plastic ice cream stick.

It smelled faintly of aloe vera.

“What is that?” Izuku asked, forgetting all about the task he had been given.

“The most space-saving way to store burn cream,” Chizome-san offered.

Izuku was intrigued.

The hero gestured at his shoulder, and Izuku wiped at it frantically a few more times. Then, Chizome-san used the flat stick to spread the paste over the burn. It felt cool, and soothed the sharp sting almost instantly.

“Here,” he said, passing the empty bowl to Izuku to hold while he took the pack of gauze.

Izuku used his free arm to put the bowl in the water fountain basin, pressing the button to rinse it. That was the least he could do to assist the hero who took the time to patch him up.

With the gauze fully covering his star-shaped burns, Chizome-san affixed it firmly with a tape Izuku couldn’t not recognize.

“Capture tape?” he accidentally asked out-loud.

“Yep,” Chizome-san used one of the many knives strapped to his person to cut the tape. “It saves space to only carry one roll, and between medical tape and capture tape, only one can fulfill both roles.”

“It’s designed for skin contact, so it won’t further damage it during removal,” Izuku mumbled.

“Got it in one.” Now done, the hero packed away the roll in its designated, easily accessible spot.

“Thank you, hero-san!” Izuku beamed.

“Not exactly a hero,” Chizome-san mumbled, almost too quiet for Izuku to hear. “Now, have you got any more scrapes, or was that it?”

Izuku tilted his head, considering.

There were some scrapes on his hands from when he had to catch himself on the wall and on the floor, but those were a constant these days. His bloodied knees were, sadly, also a permanent addition. His torso and hips were a little bruised from when he got knocked into the desks, and there were a few long scratches from Yubisaki-kun’s quirk, but-

“Shit, kid,” Chizome-san gasped, making Izuku realize he had been mumbling that entire time. “Is there any injury you hadn’t gotten?”

“I still have all my limbs,” Izuku said, kicking the ground for the lack of anything better to do. “And they’re all very small injuries, anyway.”

“You’re a very small person,” the hero shot back, getting some more medical supplies from his seemingly infinite pockets. “Do you know any first aid?”

Izuku thought back to barely five minutes ago when he was struggling with tending to a burn. Chizome-san apparently realized that, too.

“You will when I’m done with you,” he nodded.

Izuku supposed that was meant to sound like a threat, but… He loved learning. And first aid was something that would definitely come in handy very often, not to mention it had way more legal applications than lockpicking.

And it would be such an honour to learn straight from a hero! An underground one, sure, but clearly with a focus on medical assistance judging by the name and the sheer amount of medical supplies. No healing quirk, or at least not one that could be used for small-time injuries, or perhaps one that used up a lot of energy.

It could’ve been similar to Recovery Girl’s —only where hers used the patient’s energy for healing, his could have used his own— so it would have made more sense to conserve it for bigger threats to somebody’s life.

“I don’t have a healing quirk, either,” Chizome-san said, cleaning the scrapes on Izuku’s arm. “And what was that about my name?”

“Well, Blood Stain would definitely fit a Healer Hero, and while I don’t know the right kanji-”

The man groaned, accidentally cutting Izuku off.

“I know I said you could use that name, but on second thought, please do your best to forget it.”

“Okay, hero-sama!”

Izuku couldn’t really tell through the mask, but he was pretty sure the hero was grimacing.

“Never call me that again,” he said, his voice pained.

“But then, what-”

“Stendhal,” the hero interrupted him again. “I go by Stendhal. If you must call me something, call me that.”

“Alright, Stendhal-san!”

***

Once he was certain Native wouldn’t bleed out when he wasn’t looking, Izuku turned back to Stendhal-san. Or, should he say, Stain.

But before either of them could say a word, Iida was once again screaming, reminding Izuku that oh, yeah, due to his very faulty judgement he was currently lying paralyzed on the ground.

“Run, Midoriya!” he yelled, his eyes straining to look at Izuku despite his immobile head pointing in the other direction. “He’s dangerous!”

No way! The Hero Killer? Dangerous?

“Maybe you should have thought about that before you ran off to find him,” Izuku replied, moving closer to Iida to ease the strain on his eyes. And also to get a better look at his shoulder.

He was nice like that.

“This has nothing to do with you!” Iida continued.

Izuku froze, pausing the dismantling of the armour in the shoulder area as he turned to look straight at the face of his friend.

“Nothing to do with me?” he repeated. “I’m sure this is just pain and blood loss speaking. All Might himself said that meddling when you don’t need to is the essence of a hero!”

“Just leave me!” Iida ignored him completely. “I don’t want you to die!”

Izuku took out another pack of gauze, this one slightly smaller.

“Maybe you should’ve thought about this before you ran off to get revenge on the Hero Killer.”

There were tears in Iida’s eyes, but Izuku couldn’t be sure if that’s because he refused to leave Iida to die in a dirty alleyway or because of the antiseptic he just poured into the large gash in his shoulder.

“Midoriya, please!”

“I asked you, too,” Izuku said with deceptive pleasantness. “I asked you how you were feeling. I asked you if you wanted to talk. I asked if you were sure about going to Hosu. And every time, every time, you brushed me off.”

“Please, just leave!”

“I can’t,” Izuku pressed the gauze to the wound, grabbing pieces of the capture tape. “I need to make sure you won’t bleed out first, anyway.”

That was the big wound covered. The small scratch on his other arm —which he could see only because there was a miniscule chink in his armour— would have to wait until they were at the hospital.

“I don’t want you to die for my mistakes!”

Done with the first aid, Izuku stood up, dusting off his knees. “I don’t want you to die for them, either. You’re fifteen, Iida.”

Fifteen, and growing increasingly desperate, it seemed.

“He’ll kill you!”

Izuku smiled sadly, looking straight into Iida’s eyes.

“I’m the last person he would kill,” he said, gently.

***

Izuku hit the surface of the water with a loud splash.

His yells cut off, water of a questionable cleanliness replacing the air in his lungs.

For a short eternity, Izuku was almost certain this was it.

This was how he would go out - alone, surrounded by water and trash. His mother would be left wondering what happened to him until he washed up somewhere downstream a few hours, days, weeks later. She’d be called in to confirm the identification of his body and she would cry like she always did, only Izuku would no longer be there to comfort her-

And in that brief second when he accepted his fate, a pair of strong arms surrounded him, dragging his body towards the surface.

He knew they were helping him, he knew that- And yet his body insisted on fighting back.

This was probably the first time he was glad there was no power behind any of his kicks or punches. Something stung, just for a moment, and Izuku must’ve calmed down, just a little. He was no longer trashing, immobile in the arms of his rescuer.

Delirious from the brief oxygen deprivation, Izuku first thought it was Kacchan.

That he had realized what they had done was wrong, that he remembered Izuku couldn’t swim, that he jumped after him to save him.

They breached the surface, and Izuku was too focused on getting the much-needed air to pay much attention to anything else.

Then he was being dragged out onto the stone beach, his saviour much bigger than even Tsubasa-kun was; and the illusion shattered.

Izuku tried to speak, but his lungs were still full of water. He coughed instead, hacking out the liquid in short bursts. A hand was thumping his back, helping him along.

Finally able to draw a proper breath, he turned to his saviour.

Who was undoubtedly Stendhal-san, even when he lacked his katana and mask.

Izuku stared at his face, intrigued by the lack of a nose. That certainly explained how he was able to wear such a flat mask. Perhaps it was related to his quirk? Or maybe it was an accident. He’d read up on the hero —on the vigilante— ever since he’d learned his name. It could’ve been in a fight with a villain, or a hero, or maybe even a training accident with his katana or one of the knives-

Stendhal-san snorted, moving away towards the nearby pile of stuff Izuku missed completely on the account of the entire beach being filled with similar piles of trash.

“I’ve got more control than that,” he said, mask in hand. “It was an altercation with another vigilante, if you must know. Nothing to do with my quirk.”

Izuku slapped his hands to his mouth, mentally cursing his unruly mouth.

Judging by the amused glances Stendhal-san kept throwing his way, his mental cursing wasn’t as soundless as he had intended it to be.

He was rather sad to see the mask go back on —being able to see Stendhal-san’s face and assess his mood was a balm for his anxiety— but that was clearly the vigilante’s preference.

Maybe the mask had something to do with his quirk-

“No, the mask is not related to my quirk, either.” Stendhal-san sat on the ground, checking through his pockets in case anything fell out during the rescue. Or at least that’s what Izuku assumed. “Why’s everything about quirks with you?”

“I just think they’re neat.” Izuku shrugged, hugging his knees in an attempt to warm up. It might have been the middle of the summer, but the day has only just started and the sun didn’t quite reach where they sat.

A soft rustling sounded from off to the side and a moment later, Izuku was covered with something thin and silvery that made him feel slightly warmer right away. Whoever thought to make metal blankets deserved every award thrown their way.

“The quirk counsellor once said that because I don’t have one myself, I overcamp- overcompensate by analyzing everyone else’s.”

The mask turned in his direction, tilting slightly.

“The counsellor probably felt jealous that a little kid like you could do their job better than they ever could.”

Izuku stared, wordlessly.

That… was different from what most people said, whenever he mentioned his analysis. Usually he’d get a fake smile and a condescending “that’s nice!” if they didn’t know his quirk status, or they’d change the topic, or leave him behind, or call him creepy-

“That… Seems unnecessarily rude,” Stendhal-san said, helpfully pointing out that Izuku had been mumbling again.

Izuku shrugged. “People don’t like me much in general.”

“Is that why you jumped off of the bridge?”

“I didn’t jump,” Izuku scowled before he could think that response through.

Stendhal-san stiffened. “You were pushed?”

“Tsubasa-kun called it practice,” he wasn’t entirely sure why he was admitting that, but it felt good to finally share it with someone who didn’t seem to despise him on sight. “Since I was too much of a coward to jump when they locked me on the roof.”

He could, somewhat, understand Tsubasa-kun. He had wings, it’s not like jumping off high places held the same implications for him.

But Kacchan was there too. They were friends, right? So why didn’t he stop Tsubasa-kun? He would have listened; everyone listened to Kacchan, even the teachers. Did Izuku do something wrong, again? Was Kacchan angry at him, again? He said things, when he got angry, he said and did things he didn’t mean and wouldn’t have otherwise, but-

“Friends don’t push you off a bridge,” Stendhal-san said, for some reason removing the mask again, his expression uncomfortably serious. “Friends don’t lock you on the school roof throughout the night, they don’t use their quirk to hurt you, they don’t call you mean names and they don’t say you’re useless.”

“Well then I don’t have any friends,” slipped through Izuku’s lips like water did mere moments before, but the truth tasted worse.

The expression Stendhal-san wore looked off to Izuku. There was the pity, which nice people always had on when talking to or about him. But there was something else, too, something more similar to the way his mother looked at him when he came back with his uniform torn.

“Is everyone at your school like that?”

Izuku ignored the question, hoping enough silence would chase it away. It was enough of an answer in itself.

“Why don’t you change schools?”

“Mom can’t afford any other,” Izuku said, hopefully too quietly to be heard. Not his fault if Stendhal-san didn’t hear, he answered. “I’m in 6th grade, anyway. Just a few months, and I’ll be going to a middle school. New school, new opportunities, right?”

Stendhal-san seemed to accept that, mulling it over without a word.

“Just make sure you pick a good one,” he said eventually.

Izuku didn’t tell him he already knew where he was going to go. The Aldera Junior High already had his application, along with Kacchan’s and most of their classmates. It was right next to Aldera Primary, close by and cheap.

He already knew nothing would change, but that’s what an excuse is: something you know is a lie, but will placate others.

Distraction. He needed a distraction, and fast.

“Will you tell me about your quirk?”

“If you figure out what it is, I’ll answer any additional questions you have,” Stendhal-san offered.

“DEAL!” Izuku immediately moved to shake his hand on it. “What about the katana?”

Stendhal-san glanced at the blade, the hilt wrapped tightly in a dark red ribbon. He unsheathed it for just a couple inches, examining the impeccably sharp edge. “What about it?”

“Can you teach me how to wield it?”

Stendhal-san startled, head turning to take in Izuku’s scrawny, 90-pounds-soaking-wet body.

“Please?” Izuku tried utilizing his best puppy eyes. “It’s my birthday!”

“This katana is bigger than you are.” Stendhal-san proved entirely immune.

Izuku pouted.

“...Is it really your birthday?” Stendhal-san asked, and Izuku could see him cracking.

He sighed.

“No,” he fiddled with the corner of the blanket. “It was back in July, on the 15th.”

Stendhal-san looked surprisingly scandalised at that.

“...When’s yours?”

Silence answered him. He turned to look at Stendhal-san, apology ready, only to find the man staring at his hands.

He was counting his fingers.

“August?” Stendhal-san said, almost like a question. “Yeah, I think it was august. The fourth.”

Izuku gasped. Loudly.

“But that’s today!”

Stendhal-san blinked. “Oh. Then I’m freshly 29.”

“That’s so old,” Izuku scrunched up his brows. “Will you have to retire soon?”

Snorting, the vigilante reached out towards Izuku, further messing up his curls.

“Feeling cheeky, kid?”

“Mostly, I just feel damp.”

Stendhal-san sighed, but there was a small smile on his lips, so Izuku counted that as a win.

“I can’t teach you how fight with the katana,” he said. “But, tell me, how’s your swimming?”

“Uh… Bad,” Izuku tugged the edges of the blanket closer to himself. “Dad left before he could teach me and Mom doesn’t really have the time for it.”

Putting the mask down on the pile of knives, Stendhal-san stood up, extending a hand towards Izuku.

“Then, since both of us are already soaked, would you like to learn?”

Izuku stared at him, nearly vibrating from excitement.

“YES!”

***

Stendhal-san scoffed, his hands moving through the hilts of his knives in what Izuku knew to be a nervous tick.

“I will have no choice if you decide to meddle,” he said, but Izuku could see the unease on his face, the stiffness in his shoulders. “The fake hero still needs to die.”

Izuku glared at him. “No hero deserves to die, even if they’re fake. If they make a mistake, they deserve to live long enough to be able to correct it.”

Stendhal-san raised his eyebrows so high they peeked out from under the scarf-like mask. Izuku was still getting used to the lack of his old mask.

“I wonder if you’d say the same thing if you knew exactly what he had used his quirk for while visiting nightclubs.”

His quirk? How could it have possibly assisted him in doing anything non-heroic? It was a perfect quirk for a rescue hero, putting the body in a coma-like state, allowing the injured a bigger chance of survival until they could be transported to a proper healer hero or a hospital.

What could he have-

Understanding dawned on Izuku and Stendhal-san grimaced in a weak facsimile of a smile, spotting the exact moment the boy connected the dots.

Izuku swirled his head around, glaring at Native. The man pointedly avoided his eyes, his silence louder than any confession.

“How could you,” he hissed, his voice low. “You’re a hero!”

Native, predictably, did not answer.

“I’ll make sure the HSPC knows about this,” Izuku promised.

“Like they’re going to do anything about it,” Stendhal-san scoffed, rolling his eyes. Native didn’t look too worried either.

Luckily, Izuku knew exactly what to do.

“Correction: I’ll let Principal Nezu know.”

The unheroically behaving hero blanched, further confirming that Stendhal-san was right in his accusation, if not in the execution of his idea of justice.

“And what of your classmate?” Stendhal-san asked, head tilted. “Will you ensure he faces consequences for seeking out a villain, as well?”

“That’s a bit different,” Izuku pointed out. “He’s emotionally compromised due to the fact his brother is currently lying paralysed in a hospital bed. Because someone attempted to murder him.”

“He was a fake hero.”

Izuku suppressed a groan. “We’ve been over this, that doesn’t mean-”

“Why are you listening to him?” Iida asked, pure confusion in his voice. “He’s lying to you, you know that!”

Now, how to properly convey he might be batshit insane, but Stendhal-san is on the same boat as Kacchan when it comes to lying to make him understand… “Iida-”

“Just go, and don’t let him cut you!” Iida interrupted once again. “His quirk-”

Oh, yes, let’s talk about quirks, shall we? It’s only the one topic Izuku had been eagerly studying since he knew how to speak Japanese.

“I know.”

“He knows.”

Izuku exchanged a glance with Stendhal-san after their voices nearly chorused.

“I’m positive the kid knows more about my quirk than I do, by this point,” Stendhal-san said, a wide grin stretching out his face. “And he certainly knows more than you could ever hope to divine.”

***

Occasionally, Izuku spotted Stendhal-san’s silhouette passing through the roofs.

Sometimes in Musutafu, sometimes on the rare school trips they went on, sometimes on unrelated camera footage.

Usually, Izuku didn’t bother him.

But then again, usually Izuku wasn’t hopelessly lost.

In his defense, he’s never actually been to Nagoya before, and Kacchan led him on a wild goose chase with the intention of losing him. He might’ve not intended to make him lost as well, but he still succeeded at it.

Izuku was just about to start asking random passersby for directions —and none of the ones he saw looked particularly nice or approachable— when he spotted the shadow of the by-now familiar silhouette passing on the wall opposite him.

He could just barely see the top of Stendhal-san’s ponytail from where he was standing.

Yelling out his name sounded like a dumb idea. Yelling out Izuku’s name sounded like an even dumber one.

Stumbling into a side alleyway next to the building Stendhal-san was on, Izuku set out to make a lot of other, non-specific noise.

Metal trash cans were perfect for that.

“Kid?” Drifted down at him from the roof.

Izuku turned around, waving at the vigilante wildly.

Stendhal-san looked around before making his way down. It was rather fascinating to see him climb a vertical surface with no apparent trouble.

“Stend-” Izuku started, only to be interrupted be a pair of arms slinging him over Stendhal-san’s shoulder like a sack of potatoes, immediately climbing back up on the roof.

Even though Izuku did a big fat nothing to help, he still felt slightly winded.

“Stendhal-san!” he repeated between gasps, genuinely happy to see him, and not only because he was guaranteed to know the way back to Nagoya Train Station.

“Didn’t expect to run into you here,” Stendhal-san said, returning to his spot at the edge of the roof.

“I’m on a school trip,” Izuku declared proudly, moving to plop next to the man. “I got kind-of lost, but then I saw you, so now I’m not lost anymore.”

Stendhal-san spared him a glance. “I’m a bit busy at the moment.”

“I don’t mind,” Izuku fished out a notebook out of his trusty backpack, the freshly started number 11. Flipping to the first free page, he immediately started scribbling down the quirks he saw on the way there. “I’m only supposed to make my way to the station a bit before sundown, and that’s still hours away.”

Stendhal-san just hummed at him, focused on whatever was going on in the alley below, but it still felt as if he was giving him more attention than anyone else did, with the exception of his mother.

Izuku heard a slam of the door, and someone was yelling down below. But when he tried to see what was happening, a large hand stopped him.

“Wait up here, and don’t make a sound,” Stendhal-san said, shifting into a crouch. “I’ll be right back.”

He jumped down, and Izuku followed his movement curiously. After all, he hadn’t been told not to look.

There were three other people in the alley. Considering Stendhal-san was attacking them, Izuku felt safe to assume they were villains.

The vigilante was so fast, and he had the element of surprise, the villains had no chance at all. And he wielded his katana like a samurai and his knives like they were an extension of his own body-

Maybe that was his quirk? Mastery over knives? Or some form of telekinesis, like Izuku’s mom? Magnetism? Electrostatics? Every single knife he threw seemed to strike exactly where he had wanted it to land, so maybe it was something relating to aiming, like Snipe’s Honing Quirk...

This was the first time he really saw Stendhal-san in action, and he barely dared to blink, afraid to miss a vital detail which would help him puzzle out the quirk and get unlimited clarifying questions in return-

Stendhal-san licked his blade.

And all three of his opponents froze.

He moved a few steps closer, shifting his grip on the katana, the three opponents now in a semicircle around him, motionless.

Izuku’s hand slipped, his pen dropping all the way down from the roof, and Izuku winced; He wasn’t supposed to make a sound, was he?

Stendhal-san stopped in his tracks just like his opponents did, glancing back at Izuku, who, for the lack of a better option, waved at him.

The vigilante’s shoulders dropped and he sheathed his katana, reaching for the capture tape. In no time at all, the three thugs were all tied up tightly.

Somehow, Stendhal-san managed to find a gun on one of them, discharging it into a safe direction before dropping it inside one of the trash containers.

Mere moments later, he was back on the roof.

“Come on,” he said, tugging on Izuku’s arm to make him stand up. “The police and at least one hero will be here shortly.”

“That was amazing!” Izuku said, following him like a lost duckling as he stuffed his notebook into the backpack, zipping it up safely.

It was like his own, private hero fight! Not only did he not have to push through the crowds to see anything, he was there for the entire duration, and he’d learned about four new quirks and-

“Four?”

“Yours, and the villains used theirs, too!”

Stendhal-san was looking at him, but Izuku couldn’t tell what kind of expression he was wearing through the mask. In the end, the man crouched in front of him without saying a word.

“Hold on to me,” he said, and Izuku climbed on his back, mindful of the katana. He was twelve already, but he was still tiny enough for a piggy back ride. “We need to move quickly, but in the meantime, tell me about the quirks you saw.”

So Izuku told him everything he had noticed.

About the mutant quirk which added spikes to the user’s spine and knuckles, which the villain uncreatively used solely as brass knuckles. The transformation quirk which allowed the user to transform any organs on his face into an equivalent organ of any animal, which he seemed to use to only manifest eyes with night vision - seems they could only do one organ at a time. And of course the smoke emitter, a variation of a fire elemental if Izuku were to guess.

And the most important one-

“I’ve learned so much about your quirk, too!”

Stendhal-san made an interested noise as he slowed to a stop on a garden balcony, barely a few meters above the road level. At least Izuku chose to interpret it as an interested noise. Adults made a lot of noises when he talked, and he never quite knew what they wanted from him-

“Definitely interested, kid,” Stendhal-san assured, sitting down by a giant pot of bonsai cherry tree. “Hit me with your best shot.”

Izuku beamed at him.

“It’s a paralysis quirk! Emitter, technically, but I hate how wide that categorization is. If it doesn’t cause a permanent or a temporary change to your body, it’s suddenly all the same? And they outnumber the other two categories 3-1-1, which is entirely ridiculous in itself-”

Stendhal-san snorted. “A sore topic?”

Izuku crossed his arms petulantly.

“It just doesn’t make any sense to have quirks like Mandalay’s telepathy, Pixie Bob’s Earth Flow, Tiger’s elasticity and Ectoplasm’s Clones all in the same group! If it was at least divided into User-Contained and Requiring Outside Resources, the ratio of those to transformation and mutant would be 7-7-6-5, which is way fairer in my opinion.”

“Which category would Bloodcurdle fall into?

Izuku did not miss the fact he was given the Quirk’s name, probably as a bribe to shift to the topic Stendhal-san wanted him to cover. Coincidentally, aside from that small distraction, Izuku was also very excited to talk about the quirk, so it was just a boon.

“Outside Resources, of course,” he offered without any hesitation. “The main criterion is: if you were alone in a room, would you be able to use it?”

“That’s a very reasonable distinction,” Stendhal-san praised.

Izuku took that to mean please tell me more about my quirk I’m dying to hear it.

“In case of your quirk, you require blood. By ingesting other people’s blood, you can paralyse them for a time. You took the time to tie them up, which suggests the quirk is either distance or time based. However, shortly before we left, one of them had already started moving.”

That was rather fascinating, too. It suggested there was a variable somewhere in between the factors. It couldn’t be timing, because Stendhal-san used his quirk on all of them in the same instant. It couldn’t depend on the amount of blood - there were plenty left on the blade still.

The only visible difference between the three were their quirks - mutation, transformation, User Contained emitter. It could work similarly to Erasure, which is less effective against mutant types, but it was the emitter type who started moving sooner. There would have been nothing different-

It was the blood itself, wasn’t it? The type of blood decided how long the victims were going to be stuck.

“That’s exactly right,” Stendhal-san offered a few claps, unbothered by the fact he had to pick the analysis out from Izuku’s mutterings.

“Have you tried if it would have worked longer if you ingested a larger volume of blood? It’s clearly effective against mutant quirks, but what about quirked animals? What about non-quirked animals, too? How fresh does the blood have to be? If you, for example, digested blood donated to a blood bank, would the donor freeze up? Does it work on larger distances? Can you release the paralysis early? How long-

“Oh, look, Deku’s being a creep!”

Izuku snapped his mouth shut with a soft click.

Two boys from his class and a few children from the other class in their year stood across the street, having emerged from the ice cream shop, mochi in hand.

“You shouldn’t speak to strangers, Midoriya,” one of the girls said.

“Speak? It’s more likely he’s bothering the guy!” Nishinoya from his class jeered. “Oi, mister, is Deku bothering you? You should probably leave him alone, his quirkless cooties might be contagious!”

Izuku curled his shoulders, wishing he could disappear into thin air. And they said all that in front of Stendhal-san, too...

“I’m bored!” another girl groaned dramatically. “You promised we’d go to that stationery shop before we have to go back, let’s go!”

They left without a single glance back.

“I thought you said Junior High would be different,” Stendhal-san noted.

“It is,” Izuku murmured. “Only most of the students actively hate me, as opposed to all of them.”

“Midoriya,” Stendhal-san repeated slowly as if tasting the word. He looked towards Izuku’s green curls. “A bit on the nose, wouldn’t you say?”

“Wha-what?” Izuku spluttered. “That’s my actual name!”

Stendhal-san went a little stiff. “Oh.”

“Deku’s the insult,” Izuku clarified. “It’s another way of reading the kanji in my name, Izuku, and it means useless. Kacchan came up with it when he was only just learning to read and it sort of stuck.”

Stendhal-san seemed to debate something shortly, before taking off his mask.

“My family name is Akaguro,” he said, gesturing towards his red eyes and black hair. “I fit that mould. My given name however, Chizome, often got playfully shortened to just Zome. With such a villainous quirk, I was clearly just a stain on my family’s and the school’s good names.”

For a moment, Izuku was glad he wasn’t the only one who was bullied. It might’ve been a little mean, but he’s almost forgotten it wasn’t just him people hated for no good reason.

He felt guilty about that almost immediately.

“Repeat your questions,” Stendhal-san said abruptly, clearly also uncomfortable with how personal of a turn their conversation took. “But slow down a little. Give me a chance to answer them.”

That- that was new.

“I told you I’d answer any clarifying questions if you figured out what the quirk is, didn’t I?”

He did, yes, but Izuku was painfully familiar with the figure of speech called ‘lying’.

“Fair enough.”

So Izuku repeated his barrage of questions, one by one, dutifully writing down the answers in his notebook.

A moment of silence fell as he ran out of things to ask about.

“When do you have to make it to the station?”

Izuku glanced at his phone, noting the time. “Four hours. The train runs every ninety minutes, so the next one’s in an hour… I could go home early! We’ve already visited the science museum, anyway.”

“There,” Stendhal-san pointed to two big, shiny towers off to the East. “That’s the Takashimaya Gate Tower Mall, it’s just a few minutes of walking away.”

Izuku knew what they were, he had seen them when he left the train. And that meant...

“That’s where the station is!”

He was no longer lost! But… Would Stendhal-san leave now?

Izuku turned to look at him with puppy eyes. Stendhal-san, mask-less, just smirked at him.

“There’s not much that can be done in an hour,” he said. “And the katana’s still bigger than you are, but would you like to learn how to hold and attack with a knife?”

What kind of a question even was that?

“Do I get to keep the knife?”

***

“You could just let me kill them,” Stendhal-san said, his voice entirely too reasonable for his proposition. “I could spare the student, he’s still learning, but the hero has to go.”

Izuku smiled, not because he felt like it, but because that’s what All Might would have done. Found a way to save everyone with a smile. It’d have likely been a Smash in his execution, but Izuku… He admired the number one hero greatly, but Izuku’s style was focused more on brains over brawn.

“You know me,” he shifted into a fighting stance, one of his hands sneaking behind his back. “You know I’d never let you do that.”

Stendhal-san sighed, drawing two of his throwing knives.

“I know,” he repeated. “And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry, kid. But I have a job to do.”

“So do I.”

There was no warning, no countdown.

One moment they were standing face to face, chatting amiably; the next, they swirled around each other, wrestling for the control of the fight as their blades clashed.

It hadn’t lasted long.

Izuku jumped away with a hiss, hand clamping onto his arm. A knife fell to the ground with a loud clang, the tiniest bit of blood visible on its blade.

His eyes widening, Izuku lounged towards it, but Stendhal-san was already holding it, mouth open.

“This won’t stop me,” Izuku warned.

Stendhal-san shrugged, a barely-there movement of his arms. “A minute is more than I need.”

His tongue licked the blade, quirk activated and-

Stendhal-san froze.

“I could use a little more time, but I’ll make do,” Izuku smiled, straightening up. His hand dropped, revealing his uninjured arm. “I’ve always wondered if your quirk could work on you, too.”

Stendhal-san was staring at him, his eyes wide. A choked sound emerged from his throat, quickly turning into a full-blown laughter.

Izuku hadn’t wasted any time, already removing any and all blades he could see in preparation for restraining Stendhal-san.

“You’ve always been a clever little hero, kid,” Stendhal-san said eventually. “But neither the police nor the heroes could hope to arrive before the time is up.”

“I know,” Izuku shrugged. “That’s why I sent an alert before I even started searching, and set it up to share my location every half a minute.”

The villain seemed unphased, clearly doubting the local law enforcement’s ability to arrive on time.

Izuku took the knife Stendhal-san was still holding from between his fingers, wiping it gingerly with a tissue before slotting it back into the disguised holster on his back.

“You kept it all these years?”

Izuku glanced at him, expression pinched. “Other than my mother’s presents, this was the only gift I’ve ever received. Of course I’d cherish it.”

Silence fell, nobody brave enough to break it.

As Izuku expected, it didn’t take long for the heroes to arrive. Manual was there, already scolding Iida for running off. Endeavour, too, being dragged by Todoroki, likely the only person who responded to the alert Izuku sent out.

And with Endeavour came Gran Torino, who decided to tear into Izuku for running off to find Iida.

“Leave him be, these two would be dead if the kid didn’t meddle,” Stendhal-san rolled his eyes after a full three minutes of Gran Torino chattering on without letting Izuku get a word in edgewise. “He’s more of a real hero than all of you fakes put together.”

The atmosphere in the alley changed immediately, the heroes’ attention turning to who they knew as Stain, the Hero Killer. Apparently the three of them managed to somehow miss him, even wrapped up as he was in the capture tape like the world’s most overgrown Christmas puppy, complete with a bow.

“What the actual fuck,” Manual-san voiced what all of them thought, clearly already resigned to the amount of paperwork they were going to have to fill.

Someone who looked like a mummy —Kido, Izuku guessed, one of Endeavour’s many sidekicks— poked his head into the alley at that exclamation, his phone pressed to his ear.

His eyes immediately drifted to the tied-up villain, further proving it was just the pros who had to have their eyes checked.

“Add a police van to that,” he said to whoever he was speaking to. “Yes, two injured and Stain’s in restraints, apparently. Yes, I can see him, he’s trussed up like a chicken.”

Kido wandered out of the alleyway again, loudly confirming that yes, they had Stain, no, it wasn’t a joke, what do you mean he would be gone before the truck arrived? There’s three pros around him!

“Let’s move you out to the main street,” Manual suggested. “The van, if they send one, won’t fit in here.”

At the time, they considered it a good idea. Izuku and Todoroki went to help Iida, whose paralysis was wearing down. Manual took care of Native, while Endeavour and Gran Torino were delegated to guard Stendhal-san.

There were more people out on the main street, but Izuku hadn’t had the time to take a proper look.

“Duck!” someone yelled, and Izuku turned around, very excited. He’d seen a swan quirk before but not a duck one...

Claws dug into his shoulder, lifting him up. He stifled a scream, squinting at the wings. They were thin and leathery, closer to a bat like Tsubasa-kun’s rather than any bird’s, let alone a duc-

Ah.

Izuku could freely admit that his interest in quirks caused him to sometimes have different associations with certain words than other people’s.

He glanced up, his hand already on his knife’s hilt, trying to think of something to do.

“KID!” Stendhal-san yelled from down below.

Somehow, Izuku wasn’t exactly surprised to see him free.

Without hesitation, he stabbed the Nomu in the first available bodypart, dropping the knife down in Stendhal-san’s general direction.

The beast froze, and Izuku-

Izuku was falling.

Just like last year. Was it only last year? He was falling and there was nothing to hold on to, nothing to slow his descent, nothing to break his fall.

He was once again just a quirkless nobody, chasing after an unattainable mirage-

And then someone rammed into him, again, arms surrounding him as they slammed into a wall. Another’s knees absorbed the impact of their fall, and Izuku was left free to drop on all fours, breathing heavily and begging the ground to keep him close this time.

“You okay, kid?” Stendhal-san —because who else would it have been?— asked.

Izuku offered a shaky thumbs-up, still catching up his breath.

Stendhal-san turned to face the heroes.

“This is exactly why I call you all fakes!” he yelled. “A child was kidnapped right in front of your eyes and none of you did anything to save him? How dare you call yourself heroes! This is my mission - purging the world of unworthy people like you, who go into heroics for selfish reasons. Fame, money, freedom to use one’s quirk: those are no reasons to become a hero! You should only become one to do what’s right- to help people!”

The heroes froze, the aura of terror permeating the air.

Stendhal-san looked rather satisfied with his speech. Izuku wasn’t.

“You’re a mass murderer,” he heaved out.

“I’ve been one the entire time you’ve known me,” Stendhal-san glanced down at him, his eyes sad. “Someone has to cull the weak. At least now I’m living up to my name.”

Chizome. Stain.

Izuku felt vaguely nauseous.

Wiping the knife on his shirt, Stendhal-san inspected it briefly.

“You took good care of it,” he said. “If you wish, and if they let you take them, you can keep the other knives, too.”

“Even the katana?”

Stendhal-san handed him the knife, handle first. “Even the katana.”

Izuku stared at the blade, the reality of the situation sinking in.

“You know what I’ll have to do.”

“If you refused to do what’s right just because I’ve been nice to you before, you’d be no different than all those fakes,” Stendhal-san said, his tone softer than the words suggested it should be.

Izuku sighed, pulling his lips into a weak shadow of his usual smile.

“Farewell, Stendhal-san.”

“Stay safe, kid.”

With no warning, Stendhal-san took running. A few heroes passed by Izuku, but they were more focused on catching the serial killer than checking up on the intern.

In the end, Iida and Todoroki were the ones to help him up. By then, the knife was already safely in its holder, seemingly never having left it.

***

Izuku just needed a moment to think.

A few minutes, at most, to digest everything All Might had told him. And since he was left on a roof, that was clearly the best place to do it, right?

He was familiar with roofs.

Leaning on the ledge, he stared off into the distance. Surely there had to be a way to fit him becoming a hero within the advice his idol had given him?

The sounds of a commotion drifted up from the street. A villain —either with a mutant quirk or a transformative one, though Izuku was leaning towards transformative considering his poor coordination— was being chased by one of Endeavour’s sidekicks.

Izuku leaned forward a bit, trying to see better. The hero tried tackling the villain into the side of the building, but the Rhinoceraptus-looking person simply shook it off, up and running mere seconds later.

The sidekick followed.

The building shook.

Izuku felt the ledge give just a second too late.

For the second time that day, he was in the air. This time, however, he was not holding on to the leg of someone capable of sticking the landing.

Maybe this was meant to be, the thought flashed through his mind. Maybe taking Kacchan’s advice really was the only way to reach his dream without going against All Might’s word.

He never reached the ground.

Someone tackled him out of the air, dropping into a roll on a nearby, lower situated roof.

“We gotta stop meeting like this, kid,” Stendhal-san said, his tone a little weird. Maybe he was winded up from the fall? Surely he couldn’t have been worried.

Only Izuku’s mom worried about him.

“Thank you,” Izuku beamed at him before moving to check on his belongings. It’d have been just his luck to lose the notebook when he had just managed to get All Might’s autograph. Should he make a joke? Jokes help people feel better, right? “Other kids already call me creepy, I’d hate to become a crêpe as well.”

Stendhal-san grimaced, appearing even more worried now.

His mask was gone- or at least the bottom half of it. He must’ve started using his quirk more if removing the mask every time he wanted to use Bloodcurdle became a hassle.

“What were you doing up on the roof?” Stendhal-san asked, sitting down next to Izuku. Between Izuku and the closest edge of the roof, to be exact.

Izuku didn’t feel the need to lie. “Just thinking.”

Stendhal-san waited. Oh, he probably wanted to know why Izuku was doing that on the roof.

“I’ve met a hero,” he admitted. “I wanted to ask them something, but they were in a rush, and so they accidentally took me with them when they left. The roof is where we landed.”

“What was the question? Something about their quirk?”

Izuku’s shoulders dropped slightly.

“I asked them if someone without a quirk could become a hero.”

Stendhal-san snorted. Izuku’s shoulders nearly covered his ears. He knew, he heard it from All Might already, he didn’t need to have Stendhal-san repeat it, too-

“Obviously,” Stendhal-san said, leaning back on his arms. “Quirks are merely tools; plenty of heroes have perfect quirks and not an ounce of heroism in their blood. You’re already more of a hero than numbers 2 through 10, combined.”

Izuku could feel the tears slipping down his cheeks, sobbing at the words he had been yearning to hear for so long.

“Did they- did they not say that?” Stendhal-san asked, startled by Izuku’s reaction.

Shaking his head, Izuku knew he couldn’t admit it was All Might who said that.

Stendhal-san held him in such high regard, he would surely change his mind immediately.

But… He could repeat the words alone.

“They said it’s too dangerous of a profession and I would be better off becoming a police officer or a doctor.”

Stendhal-san took off his half-mask, probably purely to convey the entirety of his flabbergastedness.

“But being a police officer is no safer?” he said. “And being a doctor in the age of quirks, when you must handle them going out of control, is rather dangerous as well. Arguably, being a hero with backup and support items is easier than either of those professions!”

Izuku smiled through his tears. “I know.”

Stendhal-san seemed to be debating something, internally.

“If you knew somebody committed a crime —one of your classmates, perhaps, or neighbours— would you tell anyone? Would you share what you know about them and their quirks?”

“No one would listen to me,” Izuku shrugged. “But I’d try, anyway. It’s the right thing to do.”

The vigilante smiled, but there was a weird tightness around his eyes. He didn’t seem like the type who smiled easily, maybe his face was just really unused to it?

“You’ve got the heart for it,” he said, placing a hand on Izuku’s shoulder. “Every day you wake up ready to help others, whether they’re friends, strangers or bullies, giving your all to anyone in need. As far as I’m concerned, you’re already a hero. Getting a license is only a matter of proving it to the world.”

Izuku choked on his tears, pressing into Stendhal-san’s side.

“Never change, kid,” he whispered. “Your kindness, your smarts, your determination- you’ve got everything you need. The world just needs to get their head out of their asses and look at you.”

They sat there for a short while, just to let Izuku calm down.

And when he finally got back to the street level, and made his way home-

When he spotted Kacchan, choked by the very same slime villain he’d met before-

Izuku did not hesitate.

***

After chewing them up, which the Chief of Police seemed to enjoy doing, came the time for the empty reassurances.

“Both the police and the heroes are doing everything in their power to find Stain, woof,” Chief Tsuragamae was saying, distracting Izuku briefly. How did that work with his quirk? Did he have to take diction classes when he was younger? “Sadly, we don’t know much-”

His moment has come.

“His name is Akaguro Chizome,” Izuku interrupted. “He used to be a vigilante under the name Stendhal. His birthday is on 4th August, and he’s currently 31.”

The time seemed to stop.

Everyone inside the room - the heroes, his classmates, the chief with his mouth still half-open - everyone stopped, staring at Izuku in shock.

He simply stared back, too tired to care.

“Someone get Detective Tsukauchi, now!” the chief yelled out onto the corridor, and a tall man in a long coat was shuffled into the room shortly after.

The detective wasted no time, immediately asking Izuku to repeat whatever he said. Izuku complied.

“He’s telling the truth,” the Detective said, his eyes wide.

Was that his quirk? If he was able to confirm it so confidently, surely it had to be something truth-related. Though, he had learned his lesson with Stendhal-san. Just because someone’s unusually good at something, doesn't mean it’s always because of a quirk…

“It’s Lie Detection,” the Detective said. Seeing Izuku’s confused look, he elaborated, “You were muttering about my quirk. I can detect whether the person is lying or telling the truth.”

“Objective truth or something they believe to be true?”

“Both.”

“Talk quirks later, woof.” Chief Tsuragamae waved his hand angrily. “Where did you get that information from, woof?”

Izuku smiled softly.

“We’ve met before, Stendhal-san and I. He helped me out a few times when I was younger, saved my life once or twice.”

The room was silent.

“Tell us everything you know, please,” Detective Tsukauchi said, settling down on a chair, his notebook open and pen ready.

Izuku took a deep breath. This was going to be a long story.

“The first time I met him, I was not having a good day-”