Chapter Text
Tsukauchi Naomasa walks into Umemoto Blends and subconsciously tunes out the voices of the other people at the coffee shop.
“He just broke my heart and left me behind, Mai.” False.
“That eyeshadow looks so good on you, Nishikawa!” True.
“I promise I’ll be there by noon at the latest.” False.
Tsukauchi doesn’t notice that he’s at the front of the line until the barista gently taps on his arm.
“Ah, sorry. I’ll have my usual, Kitama,” Tsukauchi says and passes over the payment. The barista, Kitama, simply smiles and takes the money.
“Thank you,” Tsukauchi mouths to the woman. Kitama flashes him a thumbs up as she takes the next person’s order.
By the time Tsukauchi gets his black coffee with three spoonfuls of sugar, he knows too much about random people’s lives.
He walks down the street and absentmindedly looks around the city. His quirk buzzs in his skull with a never ending flow of ‘true’s and ‘false’s.
“Ooh! That new recipe sounds amazing, sweetheart!” True.
“Sorry, boss, the traffic is just really bad right now.” False.
“Do you need me to pick up anything else, Mom? I already got the eggs and bread for dinner.” True.
A harsh tug at the back of his jacket snaps Tsukauchi’s attention away from the stream of gossip. He whips around with a question dying on his tongue. A young child covered scrapes, bruises, gashes, dirt, and god knows what other injuries, is staring at the ground. Tsukauchi pauses and kneels in front of the kid, setting down his coffee on the sidewalk next to him.
“Do you need help?” Tsukauchi gently asks. The kid hoarsely whispers something under their breath. Tsukauchi slightly leans forward.
“Do you mind repeating that? I couldn’t catch what you said.”
“He’s alive,” the kid, probably male by the sound of their voice and features, mutters in a grating voice. It was as though the child hadn’t spoken in a long time.
“Who’s alive?” Tsukauchi asks, now thoroughly concerned. The boy raises his head and holds direct eye contact. Tsukauchi’s stomach twists at the sight of blood dripping down the entire right side of the boy’s face.
“All for One. He’s alive and he’s preparing to start a war.”
True.
Tsukauchi’s heartbeat thunders in his ears.
“Hey, kid, let’s go to the police station, okay?”
“Okay.”
The boy is eventually identified as Midoriya Izuku, a thirteen year old student at Aldera Junior High.
Midoriya looks very done with life when he confirms his identity.
“Midoriya, how do you know about All for One?” Tsukauchi inquires from within the safety of his office. The child across from him takes a long sip through the straw of the apple juice carton Kaniyashiki had given him. He slowly removes the straw from his mouth and scratches a gauze pad secured to his forehead with medical tape.
“Will you even believe me?” Midoriya asks. Tsukauchi’s heart feels heavier as he recognizes the tone of Midoriya’s voice. Tsukauchi had to interrogate far too many survivors of horrific crimes that had the same jaded tone. It was the voice of someone who had seen too much. Tsukauchi subconsciously tightens his grip on his pant leg.
“My quirk will decide that,” Tsukauchi responds. Midoriya’s lips twist into a sad smile. Toshinori had the same expression every time he talked about Nana.
“I guess I’ll start from the beginning…”
A raw scream echoes throughout the city of ruins.
None but the two battling each other are able to hear such an agonized noise.
The white haired villain rasps out a laugh through damaged vocal chords.
“Your friends can’t hear you scream, hero.” He wheezes. The hero falls to his knees and chokes on the metallic blood building in his mouth. The hero clutches the bleeding stump of where their right arm was.
“Look at you now, hero. Dying alone. Abandoned by your so-called friends. If only they could see what rank I’ve reduced you to. You were an A-rank player back then… now you’re barely an NPC. You’ll be seeing your dear party soon, Deku.” The villain hisses, his voice cracking with insanity.
Deku grits his teeth and glares at the villain.
“Don’t you dare talk about my friends like that, you bastard!” Deku screams, blood dripping from his mouth. His voice is hoarse from exertion. Deku pulls himself up onto shaky legs and falls onto a single knee. The white haired villain calmly walks over the corpses of innocent civilians. Bones snap under his feet. In Deku’s head, each stabbing throb of Danger Sense is worse than the last.
“Just look around us, Deku! Look at every NPC you heroes failed!” The villain exclaims. Deku spits a glob of blood onto the cracked asphalt beneath him as he doesn’t even try to move.
“Shut the fuck up, Shigaraki!” Deku snarls. Shigaraki grins as he crouches in front of the injured hero.
“Your health bar is almost completely gone, hero. Any last words?” Shigaraki asks. Crimson leaks through his chapped lips from the strain of his wide smile. Deku’s mouth contorts into an expression that could pass as a cruel imitation of a smile.
“Say hello to the League for me,” Deku croaks.
Blackwhip roars and comes to life under his skin.
Shigaraki’s eyes widen in fear and he instinctively outstretches his arm towards the younger man.
Shigaraki’s mouth is open in a choked gasp. Multiple tendrils of Blackwhip are piercing through the villain’s entire body.
Despite the arm going through his chest, Deku’s grin hasn’t faltered.
“I didn’t… think you were capable of this, Deku,” Shigaraki rasps with an underlying awe in his voice.
“You killed everyone I loved. I think… you deserve this. An eye for an eye, a life for a life,” Deku chokes out. Shigaraki lets out a weak chuckle.
“I should’ve known you were going to use a secret item from that damn inventory of yours,” Shigaraki whispers. Blackwhip slowly begins receding back into the hero.
Deku closes his eyes and tilts his head, his vermilion stained smile becoming a little sharper in the process.
“I hope you rot in hell, Shigaraki.”
“He killed me that day. I’m sure of that. Then I woke up again. Alive,” Midoriya’s voice gets quieter at the end of his story.
True.
“Do you still have One for All?” Tsukauchi asks. If the boy still held One for All…
Tsukauchi didn’t want to think about what Toshinori would say.
Midoriya starts levitating.
“Huh. I guess I do,” Midoriya deadpans. His expression hasn’t changed since he first talked with Tsukauchi. Tsukauchi’s concern grows. From what Midoriya had said, he had been fighting in a war since he was sixteen years old.
“Midoriya? How old were you when you, uh, came back?” Tsukauchi carefully asks, trying his hardest to avoid using the word ‘died’. Midoriya clearly had some trauma from his death.
Midoriya looks over at Tsukauchi from where he’s now sitting cross-legged upside down in the air. His apple juice carton is sitting on Tsukauchi’s desk.
“I died when I was nineteen.”
True.
“That- kid. That’s not okay,” Tsukauchi protests. Midoriya raises a single eyebrow and crosses his arms. It’s the most emotion Tsukauchi has seen the boy display.
“What’s not okay?”
“Everything about your situation. Did you even get to decide if you would fight in that war?”
“I have One for All. It was my duty to fight All for One.”
True.
“It wasn’t,” Tsukauchi states. Midoriya’s mask of indifference begins breaking. His eyebrows knit together and anger builds in his eyes.
“I had to protect my friends.” True.
“Are- are you saying I shouldn’t have protected them?” Midoriya asks. Tsukauchi rapidly starts shaking his head.
“No, I’m not. It’s heroic that you protected your friends but the people who forced you onto the frontlines of a war are not. A war made by a monster isn’t meant to be fought by children. That’s the military’s and heroes’ job,” Tsukauchi explains. Midoriya suddenly finds the ceiling very interesting. Tsukauchi can’t help the beginnings of guilt building in his gut.
“The heroes told us to fight. The Japanese Armed Forces were eradicated in a month, give or take a week. It was just us,” Midoriya says.
True.
The time Toshinori accidentally broke Tsukauchi’s left collarbone had hurt less than the current twisting sensation in Tsukauchi’s heart. Tsukauchi closes his eyes and tries to calm his pounding heartbeat.
Midoriya gently turns in the air and gracefully floats back down to the chair in front of Tsukauchi’s desk. The boy wordlessly swipes his apple juice and takes an aggressive sip from it.
“Tsukauchi?” Midoriya asks in a soft voice. Tsukauchi opens his eyes to look at the child. Midoriya’s face has reverted to its emotionless state.
“Yes?” Tsukauchi answers while trying to keep the anger at the heroes of Midoriya’s time out of his voice. The last thing he wanted was for Midoriya to think Tsukauchi was mad at him.
Midoriya raises his apple juice carton.
“Can I have some more apple juice?”
“I… sure.”