Chapter Text
Following the disaster of the Mall, U.A held a public press conference. Each student of U.A that was at attendance who wished to go went. 4 individuals refused. Tokoyami, who stated that he wasn’t in control of himself enough to take credit. Shinso, who claimed that he’d like to remain unknown for his future in underground heroics. Izuku, who didn’t want media attention, and Jiro, who claimed that she hadn’t done enough to be recognized for it, despite protests from other responders on the scene, who cited her as one of the largest factors in the relatively low casualty count.
An estimated 1200 people were in the mall when it detonated. 213 were pulled from the rubble quickly, protected by the efforts of the student who created a dome of roots, or just outside of the range of the debris and explosion. These 213 all had minor injuries, not exceeding bruising or scratches. 567 were excavated slowly, most having moderate injuries from a wide range of things. Metal rebar, drowning from burst water pipes, electrocution from exposed live wires, carbon monoxide poisoning from being in an enclosed area for far too long with no access to outside air. Of those 567, 38 died from complications after being pulled out. 387 were found dead on the spot, and their bodies, or what was left, returned to their families. It’s estimated that upwards of 30 to 40 bodies have yet to be found amidst the rubble.
The reported explanation for the explosion is faulty construction, though the specifics are unknown to authorities, it’s believed to have been some kind of gas leak near the foundation. The construction company responsible claims it’s impossible, but have been largely silenced by public outrage and pressure from the Hero Public Safety Commission.
Questions were once again raised as to the safety of U.A, and the class's presence. Extremist conspiracy theorists believe that U.A was responsible for the explosion, attempting to raise their public image. The idea has some renown in anonymous online chat rooms, but is largely dismissed by the public. Less extreme theories believe that there is some kind of situation being covered up by the authorities, and it’s used by others to justify their own theories and ideas. Regardless, people believe once again that the 1-A class of U.A seems to be unsafe.
Due to the continuing questions of the safety of their class, U.A asserted during the conference that every single attack has happened outside of the walls of U.A, and to address this, they were becoming a boarding school like most other hero schools. Students would be moved in before the summer camp, and said trip would be one of the last ones U.A took so long as attacks continued.
The attack was one of the largest to ever occur in Japan since All Might rose to the number one hero spot, and while the news was quickly moved past, outlets reporting on new hero debuts and large arrests, a lingering sense of unease seemed to hang in the air. Somehow, the mall only seemed like the very beginning.
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The detective tapped his pen against his desk, his overcoat draped over the back of his chair. He’d been scouring whatever resources he could find for information about the seismic activity of…pretty much everywhere in Japan. He started with areas around the woman, but had picked up nothing.
There wasn’t exactly a protocol for searching for seismic activities that happened several years ago, especially if he had no particular idea where or exactly when it would’ve happened. There was also the question of if the digging she had done would even cause a level of disturbance that would get picked up by seismic readers. The woman had mentioned a massive unknown indescribable thing, but god knew how he’d scan for something fitting that description.
He glanced to the side of his office, where the finely dressed man was lying on the floor, hands on the back of his head and arms out, like he was stargazing looking up at the plain white ceiling.
There was no telling what his price would be, or what more deals would cost the Detective in the long run. He had to piece this together on his own. This involved All For One no doubt, and if he could track these loose threads all the way back to him, he might be able to finally root out the last vestiges of his influence. Well, All Might would, the detective obviously wasn’t going to kill the remnants of a centuries old boogeyman with a pistol.
There was a knock on the door to his small side room, and he furrowed his eyebrows glancing at it. Pocketcat sat up as well. “Well? Are you going to get it?” Tsukuchi stared at the man, waiting for him to disappear or leave. When he didn’t, the detective stood up and walked over, opening it.
Eraserhead was standing at the entrance, eyebags looking much deeper than normal. “Detective.” His low voice drawled out the word. “We need to talk. About Midoirya.”
The detective blinked a few times, before pulling the door open more. “Come in.”
The man walked in, not glancing at or acknowledging Pocketcat, who was standing up and walking in a circle around him. “Tall dark and handsome, paying us a visit once more~? How exciting!”
The detective's eyes flicked between the two, but Eraser seemed totally unaware of Pocketcats presence. The detective tried to ignore it, to not look totally insane talking to himself. “What did you need regarding him?” the detective grabbed at a coffee cup on his desk, taking a long sip, hoping that would help him cling to sanity at least a little more.
“All For One.”
The detective spit out the coffee. He covered his mouth, rummaging through his drawers and finding a napkin to wipe off his mouth. “Sorry?”
“The kid. He said a boogeyman was stalking him. His name was All For One, and he liked suits. I know, it’s ridiculous, but someone is using that moniker, and that someone was responsible for the mall bombing.”
The detective swallowed thickly. He grimaced, trying to figure out how to approach this. Pocketcat seemed to smile over the gruff hero's shoulder, reaching up and covering the man's ears with his gloved hands. “Uh oh~ Choices choices~ reveal that old secret, but maybe get vital information out of it, or keep the secret safe, and learn nothing. What will you do dear detective?” He pulled his hands away, the still waiting Aizawa furrowing his eyebrows.
The detective spoke before he did. ‘I…This is…a really big deal, I can’t…I can’t be the one to tell you about it, you need to go to All Might, or Nezu.”
His eyebrows shot up, eyes about as wide as they got with how perpetually tired he was. “...He’s not…He’s real, isn’t he?”
The detective rubbed at his forehead.”...Aizawa, I really can’t-”
“He’s trying to kill my students. He’s getting really damn close to succeeding.”
Tsukuchi grimaced, closing his eyes tight and letting out a sigh. “Yeah…he’s real. He’s real, and he should be dead. All Might killed him almost a decade ago.”
The older man gripped onto his capture scarf, scanning the area out of habit seemingly. “Well, he did a sh*tty job. What do we know about him?”
Tsukuchi shook his head. “Seriously, I can’t say. I’m sworn to silence and beyond. I think All Might will tell you, he trusts you, I think. It’s…it’s probably about time everyone in the know meets again anyways.”
He scoffed. “You’ve been having meetings? Am I walking into a whole ass secret society? Everyone at U.A already knows about All Might’s skinny form, if that's what you’re talking about.”
“There's only about 6 of us, not nearly enough for a secret society, and the skinny form is a half of the whole secret. That's all I can say, seriously.”
“Fine, it’s enough that I know that much.”
He turned to leave, and the detective stopped him. “Wait. What did he say to the kid?”
“Don’t know, just said he was interrogated, and that the man set off the bomb after buying him a suit.” Eraser walked out of the office, shutting the door behind him.
The detective stared at his computer screen. He set a bomb in the mall. Why? To get at Midoriya, maybe, but the logistics didn’t make sense. How did he know Midoriya would be there, and why use a bomb instead of a quirk? Or more Nomu? A bomb. That wasn’t really in his wheelhouse. No, no it wasn’t about Midoriya. It was something else.
The detective got on his computer, looking up the mall, looking up everything he could find. It took hours of scouring informational websites and old local news posts about new stores or closing ones, but he finally found something. A wing of the mall was added roughly 2 years ago. The same time the woman would’ve been digging. The construction would require pillars being put into the ground which means there was some kind of underground operation.
He swallowed thickly. Something was under that mall. Something All For One found, then covered, and now wants to dig back up. Pocketcat placed one hand on his chair, the other still in his pocket, and leaned down to look at the screen. “Well old boy, it seems you’ve finally found something without me! I’m so proud~”
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Izuku looked up at the enormous buildings in front of him. He glanced down at the small map he had printed out, more used to the paper then a digital one at this point.
He toyed with the idea of smoking for a moment, before deciding the hassle getting pulled aside would cause wasn’t worth it.
It took some wandering around, making all the identical huge buildings unlabeled and as generic as possible wasn’’t great for navigation, and he wasn’t too interested in reading pages of instructions for finding it.
Still though, he made it there after long enough. The class 1-A dorms. A little strange that he would be there in his own opinion, but he got what was going through Nezu’s head. The rat saw him as a serious threat, and wanted him somewhere he could observe. In the same vein, he should approach this with the understanding that he was going to be under surveillance the entire time.
Getting to dorm with Jiro would be pretty nice though. He was also at least familiar with a few others. Kirishima, and Iida specifically.
All of the decorating had already been done, their class being given a few days off to recuperate from being involved in the attack. Today was the first day the entire class would gather, and while he had bumped into and explained himself to most of them, there were still going to be a few people he needed to explain his presence to in the class.
He walked into the common room, seeing most of the gathered class all relaxing and lounging in various areas. The homeroom teacher he had seen once or twice was there as well. Seeing him walk in, the man turned, doing a sweep of the room. Somewhat satisfied, he stood up. “Everyones here. Alright, ground rules, don’t be stupid, don’t break things, no late night meetings, no parties unless you ask first, and Midoirya is here on purpose, if you have an issue with it talk to Nezu. Which, for an unrelated reason, is what I’m going to do now. If you kill each other, hide the bodies well enough I don’t have to deal with it.”
Izuku internally wondered why so many of the teachers seemed to joke about their students killing each other, as Eraserhead left without another word. Izuku also needed to talk to Nezu at some point. All the way back during the sports festival, he remembered the old hero who burst into his room mentioning All For One. Nezu probably at least knew who that old hero was, if not what he was talking about.
He would do that later though, for now, he was going t-
“Let's check out everyone's rooms!” The one speaking was Mina, who seemed enthusiastic despite everything that had happened.
A seemingly floating shirt and shorts jumped up in agreement. “Yeah! I wanna see what everyones looks like!”
Bakugo snorted, and stood up from the seat he had taken. He walked up to Izuku, and a couple of the students who were vaguely aware of the history between them tensed up. Izuku didn’t react, staring at him. Bakugo looked him up and down, before clicking his tongue. He turned, stomping away. “Do whatever the hell you all want. Just don’t rope me into it.”
He disappeared into the hallway of the boys side of the dorm, an awkward silence following his departure. Kirishima broke it, shaking his head. “That dude needs to take a chill pill. Let's do a room tour!”
Mina got back into it. “Yeah! Let's make it a competition too! We’ll all vote on whose room is the best!”
The rest of the class started agreeing excitedly, while Jiro walked up next to Izuku, bumping his side. “That blondie giving you trouble?”
Izuku glanced down at her and smiled. “No, he’s a lot more subdued now.”
She paused for a moment, while the rest of the class continued chattering to each other. “Hey, a long while ago, you said you were getting bullied for being quirkless. You and Bakugo also come from the same middle school, and he seem-”
“He did.”
“Wow...what a dickhe*d.”
Izuku let out a small hum. “There were a lot of different factors involved. Honestly, he wasn’t even really that bad. So, please don’t go picking a fight with him. I’ve long moved on, even if he hasn’t.”
“Well, I’m still going to glare at him every now and again.”
“I can appreciate that.”
She smiled up at him, before interlocking her hand in his. Mina turned to them then grinned. “Hey lovebirds! You guys coming?”
Both flushed slightly, but Jiro just nodded. “Yup, whose first?”
The tour of the place was actually fairly helpful for Izuku. He managed to learn a lot about his new roommates just from looking around and taking in their surroundings. The punching bag and motivational posters on Kirishima’s wall, the rabbit in one of the silent kids' rooms, the minimalism of the kid with distorted arms which left Izuku feeling uneasy. It wasn’t the boy's fault, but it reminded him a little too much of the shifting and distorting flesh of the Bobbies, their multiple faces superimposed onto each other.
He walked into Jiro’s room, looking around it with a nod. “Looks about the same as your room at your house.”
Mina perked up, looking away from the base she was about to touch. “You’ve been to her house?”
“Once or twice.”
“You two move fast~”
Jiro flushed, smacking the pink girl on the back. “Shut it.”
The invisible girl cooed, and Izuku was entirely unsure where or what she was looking at. “Aw! That's so cool! I’m glad you guys are so close already.”
The class moved on, checking out a few more of the other rooms, before finally reaching Izuku’s. He pushed the door open for them, and the more inquisitive students walked in, investigating.
It was incredibly boring from the outside view, almost completely generic. The only thing he had requested was a small bookshelf, which the lightning bolt haired boy squatted down and was inspecting.
That, alongside the desk, desk light, and the computer in the room were about all that he had visible from the outside.
Mina pulled open one of his drawers, before jolting and jumping back. “Oh my god?!”
Izuku spoke before anyone else did. “It’s a model.” He walked over and pulled the small pistol out of the cubby, other students much more interested in it. “I take it apart and clean it.” He slotted the firing pin in, and pointed at the wall, clicking the trigger, and nothing happened. “See? Harmless. The school already cleared it.”
From his bookshelf, Kaminari waved over Yaoyorozu. “Hey prez! You have any clue what these are? They’re all going way over my head.”
She tentatively stepped in, crouching down next to him and investigating it. “Quantum theoretics of parallel existences, the grandfather paradox as approached through Deutsch's prescription for closed timelike curves.” she paused. “I have no clue what this is talking about honestly, and there's some pretty complex math in here.”
Izuku glanced over at the two. “It’s a…pet project.”
Kaminari raised an eyebrow. “Quantum mechanics is a pet project?”
“Just…might help explain some things if I could understand it. Helped a lot with my math tests.”
Mina, still looking through his drawers, tilted her head. “What's all of this stuff?”
One of his drawers held a collection of 14 odd trinkets. Things he had picked up to remind him of each of the 14 contestants he had met throughout his time in Prehevil. They hadn’t exactly all been saints, or even good people, but they had all been people. Most of the time anyways.
The ensemble collection of items were: A scalpel, a small enamel pin of a briefcase, a similar stylized pin of a bow and arrow, a wrench, a pair of reading glasses, boxer hand wrappings, a halloween shrunken head decoration, a piece of chalk, a single white piano key, another enamel pin, this one of a steel pipe, a knife and fork, a keychain of a sun with radiating rays attaching to a metal circle around it, a keychain of a miniature camera, and a keychain of a bronze eagle.
“Little things I keep around to remind me of certain people.”
She seemed curious, reaching in and pulling out the rubber shrunken head. “Who on earth does this remind you of?”
“A mystic named O’saa, he had a uh…similar thing with him.” He took it from her and placed it back in the drawer, pushing it closed. It was nice to keep them, but if he left that thing out he would get worried it would start talking to him.
Kirishima co*cked his head. “Where on earth did you meet a mystic with a shrunken head?”
“...It was a weird time of my life.”
Hagakure waved an invisible hand up, like she was waiting for him to call on her. Though, she also might’ve been stretching, it was really hard to tell sometimes. He looked at her, and she seemed to take that as permission to ask her question. “Will you keep little trinkets to represent us if we get to know you well enough?”
He blinked, the thought never really occurring to him. “I…maybe?”
“Cool!”
Everyone seemed satisfied, and everyone moved on, going to the next room. Izuku tried to continue paying attention, but could feel himself steadily starting to zone out as he continued walking.
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Izuku’s eyes shot open, and he sucked in deep breaths, panting in exhaustion as he felt his body all over, feeling only the bruises left from Bakugo. What he wouldn’t give to be back there, getting beaten up by him and his gang rather than this.
He sat straight up, looking around at the familiar view of the interior of the train.
He rubbed at his forehead, sucking in deep breaths. How many times did that make now? 4? 5? He was already losing count, that couldn’t be a good sign. He stood up, and pulled down the familiar suitcases, grabbing his roll of bandages, bullets, and kitchen knife.
He stepped out of the traincare, looking out at the gathered people.
“Oh! Sleeping beauty woke up!” Marina smirked at him.
He lacked the energy to respond, just rubbing at his eyes. He looked around at the gathered people. How many of them were going to die this time? Who was he going to save, and who was he going to condemn to death?
Henryk raised an eyebrow at Izuku. “You alright kiddo? The hot ginger up there is trying to fix the train, so, might be best just to hang out in there.”
Abella above him grunted, looking down at him and raising her wrench. “Keep talking like that and I’ll find a better use for this.” She shook her head, long hair flowing. She turned and leapt down off the train, shaking her head. “Can’t figure it out, everythings in place, just not working.” She rubbed at some oil which got onto her yellow coveralls, the red straps keeping it up shifting slightly.
Izuku stared at her for a long moment. Yellow. Red. It was the same outfit the thing in the tunnel was wearing. The exact same.
He never found Abella or even a corpse in the tunnels. There was another thing that had bothered him. While he was moving food crates with Henryk, the mayor had never appeared, despite the fact that more than enough time had passed that he should’ve been there. He remembered the black haired girl, who transformed into a distorted monster right in front of him.
Abella noticed his zoned out staring, raising an eyebrow as well. “Gutt? You alright?”
Izuku ran.
He always had more of a fight reaction in his own mind, but apparently, once things got bad enough, he ran. He didn’t have a destination, taking off towards the woods and the woodsman's territory.
It was dangerous, sure, but what was another death at this point? He needed a clear head.
He knew on some level that the creatures here had once been human. But that was different from knowing the people. It was different when the monster brutalizing him had comforted him days earlier. It was different when the unintelligible monstrosity was at one point, kind to him.
No longer could he separate it in his mind. Had the monsters he had killed been the same? Could they ever go back? Was he robbing them of a chance for salvation? Could he continue the way he was? Could he keep killing to survive, if it meant he was killing people?
He stopped at the entrance to the Woodsman's territory, sucking in air as he caught his breath. One of the shambling distorted villagers limped forwards, before an axe impaled the back of it’s head.
Some of the impact was lost as Izuku watched it happen again for a third time.
The large man planted his boot on the deceased figure's back, and ripped the axe up out of its skull, throwing his head back and roaring. “TERMINA IS UPON US!”
Frustration flared up in his chest. “I’M AWARE!”
It charged towards him, and he didn’t have it in him to move, just letting out a sigh. The axehead sunk into his head with a searing pain, and everything went black.
