Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Week One: Ignore all responsibilities and slack off as much as humanly possible while still labeling it as ‘studying’, you know, like nyah. 

It’s a bright and sunny Tuesday morning when Izuku kicks in the door to Kurogiri’s bar with his arms full of notebooks and a coffee cup holding approximately seven shots of espresso. “Guess who?” 

Tomura, who’s face down on the bar, flips him off without looking up. “Not my fucking Fallout game?” 

“The internet says the package will be here between eight to two, Shigaraki Tomura.” Kurogiri says evenly, washing another glass from his never ending supply of them. “Have patience.” 

“Fuck patience!” Is Tomura’s muffled reply. 

“Anyhow,” Izuku rolls smoothly over them as if they never said anything to begin with. “I’m doing something out of purely spite and I feel like you should be proud of me.” 

“We are proud of you, immensely.” Compress tells him kindly, before turning to where Dabi has his feet up on one of the tables with a faker smile than Izuku’s optimism in the world. “Here’s a gentle reminder to not put your shoes where we eat!”

Dabi pointedly crosses his ankles. “No.”

“That was a gentle reminder, yet your words of defiance bring me ungodly amounts of rage.”

“Guys,” Izuku, honest to god, whines, slinking over to his seat™ and throwing his notebooks down on the bar (gently, because he loves Kurogiri and respects the man for dealing with Tomura all day). “I need validation.” 

Himiko flounces up to him, taking the seat next to him and greedily grabbing one of the juice boxes Kurogiri puts out for them. “Aw, it’s okay Izuku-kun, I’ll listen!” Magne nods from her corner of the room where she’s playing Battleship with Spinner. Even Tomura sits up a little, (probably) staring at him past the dead hand on his face. 

Straightening up, Izuku flips open the first notebook on the bar and shows off the application form. “Kacchan always told me I’d never amount to anything and I would never be able to go to U.A., so I’m being petty as fuck and doing both at the same time.” 

Tomura’s hand falls off. 

“You’re going to a Hero school?” Dabi asks, voice thick with disgust. 

Izuku frowns. “Obviously not the Hero department, but I was thinking either general or management. It’s the best school in the prefecture - which I have a few things to say about because the amount of money the government funds them while other public schools in the county are well below satisfactory levels - and besides, I don’t want Shouchan to go alone.” 

Dabi chokes. “Shouto’s going? To a Hero school?!” 

“The Hero program, to be specific.” Izuku adds. 

Spinner nods. “He would be a good Hero. Stain would approve.” 

Magne hums. “You’re only saying that because he buys you your s'more pop tarts, darling.” She comments idly. “B4, if you would.” 

“That’s not true.” Spinner defends. “And fuck you.” He stabs the red peg into the board with far too much untapped anger.

“Poptarts are ravioli!” Twice hops onto the table next to Magne and Spinner, throwing a peace sign and knowing full well the amount of chaos he just caused. 

3, 2, 1… 

Tomura slams his hand down on the counter, his pinkie carefully raised. “Poptarts are not fucking ravioli you shitbags!” 

“Yes they are!” Himiko jumps up and down, dragging Compress into the argument, and within less than three seconds the entire bar descends into pure and unadulterated chaos until Kurogiri warps in an air horn and silences them all with the deafening sound of Izuku’s future investment in hearing aids. 

“Children!” Kurogiri shouts, the gold of his eyes furrowing heavily. “I am this close to dropping you in the middle of the pacific ocean and making you swim back to land.” 

Spinner raises a hand. “I can’t swim.” 

Kurogiri just stares at him, letting him know without words how little fucks he has about that fact. They all quiet down, the fear of god (or Kurogiri’s irritation) effectively put into them as they go back to their tasks. 

Except Izuku. “The planet is ravioli.” He whispers under his breath. Dabi glares and throws his left shoe at him. 

It’s silent for a good minute, Dabi scowling at his shoeless left foot before the earlier conversation reoccurs to him. “Wait, we were talking about Shouto joining the Hero Program. Why the hell is he doing that? Didn’t he run away from home because he didn’t want to be a Hero?” 

“No, he ran away because your dad is an abusive dickbag.” Himiko chimes in helpfully. 

Dabi’s eyebrow gains a twitch. “Thank you, Toga, you really needed to announce my tragic backstory to the entire bar.” 

“That’s so awful! Grow up, everyone has a shitty past!” Twice pops up on the other side of Himiko, which she grants him a single pat somewhere on his face. It’s hard to tell where exactly with that mask on. He looks happy enough, at least. 

“Bitch, we’ve already unlocked it twenty levels ago.” Tomura deadpans to Dabi, ignoring the commotion behind him easily. 

Compress dramatically presses the back of his hand against his forehead. “Me, on the other hand, will forever remain a mystery -” 

“Sako Atsuhiro, a former entertainer, age thirty three, lives at 45-6, Higashi Ikebukuro 1-chome, Toshima-ku, Musutafu, prefers dogs over cats but isn’t picky, favorite drink is warm sake, favorite food is grilled eel, likes to listen to jazz music and electro swing, quirk ‘Compress’ is activated through physical touch through the arms so the best way to subdue would be to immobilize at least from the forearm down.” Izuku rattles off absent-mindedly. When nobody says anything for a long moment, he glances up, blinking at their stunned expressions. “Was I wrong about anything?” 

Compress slowly slinks down, crouching on the ground with his hands over his head. “Kurogiri, can I…”

Kurogiri doesn’t say a word, only slides the shot glass of warm sake over. Compress downs it without even glancing up, shivering silently on the floor. 

“Is he okay?” Izuku asks, concerned. 

Himiko claps him on the shoulder. Once, twice, trice… “I’m sure he’s just fine, Izuku-kun.” She reassures him cheerfully, her eyes frenzied. “Speaking of, you wouldn’t happen to have anything about me, right?” 

Izuku smiles comfortingly. “Ah, don’t worry Himichan!” She relaxes, smiling back at him - “I didn’t write any of it down! Everything’s in code anyhow, but just in case, I memorized all of it and destroyed any of the physical evidence.” 

Himiko, for some reason, doesn’t look comforted. 

“Since I’m taking the U.A. exam, which is one of the hardest exams in the country, I’m gonna need all the help I can get.” Izuku shuffles all his notebooks back together, having already made a study plan of all the information the exam might have and stayed up to three AM last night regretting everything, had a panic attack, called Dr. Shinsou and had her talk him out of his usual coping mechanisms of dissociating and playing Nier: Automata so that sweet sweet existential dread can kick back in. 

He’s doing fine.

“Midoriya.” Kurogiri begins almost hesitantly. “It’s December.” 

Entrance exams are in January. 

“So,” Izuku smiles maniacally. “My plan for doing everything this month is to not sleep, drink a lot of coffee, and hope the power of Christmas can get me through it all.” 

Kurogiri stares. “…Do you take constructive criticism?” 

Izuku keeps smiling. “Not without crying!” 

From behind him, Magne pipes up with, “C5.” And Spinner curses so colorfully as he flips the board game that Dabi opens up the notes on his phone and writes some of them down. 

The doorbell rings. “Delivery!” 

Tomura shoots up, grinning excitedly. “My Fallout game!”

.

Ever since Izuku first started leaving the house on a semi-regular basis, he usually finds himself in either one of two places. 1. Kurogiri’s bar, because while he may have friends now, they’re all usually somewhat busy doing crime, or at least pretending to be busy. Izuku doesn’t think Tomura has looked away from his handheld once for anything other than passing out from sheer fucking exhaustion in the last four days. And 2. The Shop. 

A mix between an inventor’s wet dream and just a run of the mill coffee shop that serves drinks probably laced with crack, it’s a place where the desperate, the needy, the students with exams, find themselves at all times of the day. 

Seriously. It never closes. Never. 

Izuku’s about 70% sure it’s a front for a drug cartel, but they serve drink abominations so strong that a single cup keeps him awake for two days straight, so he’s not complaining. Also, they’re addicting as hell. Another tick for possible drug dosing. 

Stepping up closer in the line, Izuku hums as he considers what to order. “Um, can I have cappuccino with, uh, nine shots of espresso -”

“Jesus christ,” the boy behind him exclaims. “Just do cocaine!”

Izuku flips him off over his shoulder, waiting for the dead eyed worker to make his coffee. There’s a reason he’s never worked customer service before, and that reason is murder. When he turns away with his drug addiction in hand, his face splits in a grin right as the person grimaces in recognition. “You should have said you’re part of Not For the Hero Fuckers!” 

The boy with eyebags deep enough that airport security would have to search through them before letting him through just looks visibly pained as stares up at the ceiling in a god take me now manner. He’s also wearing the same T-shirt Izuku is.

You see, when Izuku decides to do something, it’s either all or nothing. When he started playing video games, he became a shut in. When he decided to befriend a bunch of Villains, he made them friendship bracelets and braided their hair (literally). When he decided to attend U.A. as an ultimate sign of his pettiness, he fucking committed. 

And by that, he means he formed an online study group for those applying for every other course but the Hero course, aptly named Not For the Hero Fuckers. Izuku made t-shirts. 

The boy’s eyebrow gains a tick. “They mailed this goddamn ugly ass shirt to my house.” He hisses out between his teeth. “How the hell did they find my address?!” 

“No idea.” Izuku blatantly lies. It was his IP address; the cat video link works every time. “But hi! I’m Midoriya Izuku.” 

“Shinsou Hitoshi.” The boy answers blandly, only to stare at him impassively as Izuku chokes on his drink. 

Clearing his throat after several seconds where his life flashed before his eyes in a mirage of empty chip bags and shitty coffee, Izuku tries a smile and miserably fails. “Shinsou? Like Dr. Shinsou?” 

Some of the tension in Shinsou melts. “Ah, you’ve met my aunt.” He says simply, but Izuku feels a hot flush of shame on the nape of his neck. He would die for Dr. Shinsou, with how much she’s helped him and Shouto, but she’s also exclusively trained for patients dealing with quirk discrimination. Quirkless isn’t really in her repertoire, but she took him on anyway. 

“Yeah, I’m one of her patients.” Izuku laughs nervously, jumping in place as Shinsou fetches his coffee and they set off together towards a seat in the corner. 

Shinsou simply hums in response, the whites of his eyes widening as he sips at the pure crack they sell as coffee. Honestly, with his hair, demeanor, and love of cats, Shinsou reminds him a lot of Eraserhead. 

The other boy simply stares at him with dilated pupils. Ah, he said that out loud. “You know Eraserhead?” Shinsou asks wonderingly. 

Izuku slowly takes out his phone. “I have about three hundred videos of him downloaded and a quirk analysis memorized.” 

Shinsou sets down his coffee with the carefulness of a newborn drug addict, turns in his chair, and grabs Izuku’s shoulder with a gentle desperation. “Midoriya,” he says, deadly serious. “I would like to ask for your hand in friendship.”

“Goddamn, I thought you would never ask.” Izuku grins. “One one condition; I get to call you Hichan.” 

“Deal.” Shin - Hitoshi doesn’t even hesitate. 

Fishing out his headphones, Izuku brandishes them right along with Eraserhead’s debut video, not that it’s called as much. “Want to binge about four hours worth of him strangling people with a scarf and kicking them in the head hard enough to knock them out?” 

Hitoshi looks at him like he just hung the sun. “I’m buying you a ring pop tomorrow.” He mutters, and takes the offered headphone. 

.

Izuku rests his hands on his hips. “Why did you call me over? I was hanging out with Hichan and Meichan.” The two friends he made for sure from Not For The Hero Fuckers. Personally, he thinks Hitoshi would be an amazing hero, but the other boy seems a bit discouraged and is jumping between general and management. Mei, on the other hand, is a literal genius and if she enters support like she’s planning to, she’ll probably take over the world by the time she graduates. He keeps buying her coffee and hopes that’ll put him in her good graces when she inevitably becomes the shadow prime minister. Izuku is amendable to being a secretary - he could 100% pull off the miniskirt and heels look. 

Tomura merely looks excited though, clapping his hands together with his thumbs raised. “You’ll see.” He says ominously, leaning against the abandoned garage's wall as they wait for Kurogiri to drop in the gift for the very unimpressed Dabi. 

“As I said before,” Dabi glares at Tomura, slowly working himself up to a rant. “Buying me video games is a shit apology for turning my sandwich to dust. You know that place doesn’t deliver and I can’t go there more than once a month with my ugly mug without having the pigs on my ass. I had been looking forward to it for weeks. And if you think buying me another crappy fighting game after whatever the fuck Dark Souls was about -” Kurogiri warps in the present. “Shigaraki, I love you.” 

“I know.” Tomura says smugly. 

Which finds them in this situation, ten minutes later with an officer glaring at them in disapproval. Dabi is steadfastly not making eye contact from behind his hoodie and scarf. Izuku’s just looking at the sky. It’s a lovely day, overcast with heavy clouds that promise snow. Violent snow. So beautiful. “Do you know why I pulled you over today?” 

“Nope!” Himiko says brightly, sweating slightly. Maybe if Izuku keeps staring upward, a blizzard will appear right this very instant and put them all out of their misery.

The officer sighs, like their very existence pains them. And that’s before knowing about their not so secret identities. “I’m pulling you over because you were driving with three people on a motorcycle.” 

Dabi shifts in his seat, Himiko and Izuku squished in front of him. And then it hits them. “Wait, three?” 

They glance behind them.

“Oh fuck,” Izuku curses. “Tomuchan fell off!” 

. 

“You’re all fucking dead to me.” Tomura curses, nursing an ice pack against his side and pouting up at the ceiling from where he’s lying on one end of the couch. 

“That’s fair.” Dabi replies, holding a bigger ice pack against his cheek from where Tomura almost knocked out one of his teeth for revenge and lying on the other end of the loveseat. 

Shouto sits on their coffee table, unblinking as he cracks open a water bottle, pours it into the plastic bag of ramen, heats it up in his hands, and then eats the half cooked noodles straight from the bag without any seasoning and with his bare hands. Himiko hisses a breath between her teeth, wincing like she's in pain at the very sight. Izuku can relate so badly. 

“You should probably leave soon, mom should get back from work in the next hour or so.” Izuku comments idly, not really expecting them to actually follow through, and gets two snorts and four middle fingers in return. (Dabi only has one available hand, so Shouto helps him out by lending him his own with the blank expression of ‘Am I really that oblivious, or do I actually understand what I’m doing and am just messing with you?’)

“Tomura-kun, we have game night tonight though! With the whole league!” Himiko whines, poking a finger in Tomura’s rib and almost losing it. She only giggles when the five fingers come very close to circling around her index finger. 

“Then they can move their lazy asses over here,” Tomura snarls, closing his eyes and ignoring her as he presses the ice pack harder against his bruised ribs. “I’m not getting up for anything less than death.” 

Izuku taps his phone against his knee. “Would you get up for monopoly?” 

Tomura cracks an eyelid open. “Keep talking.” 

.

“Hey,” Dabi says casually later that night while the Midoriyas introduced all of them to the wonders of monopoly. Twice is facedown on the floor crying. Himiko's rapidly growing paler every time she lands on one of Izuku’s railroad stations. Izuku himself is cackling as he collects in all the dough he’s extorting from his friends, ignoring their desperate pleas. Compress called it quits three rounds ago and is helping himself to mom’s yakitori in the kitchen. Shouto and Dabi teamed up but yet are both still failing collectively harder than anyone else in the house. Tomura’s been banned back to the couch to sulk after he ‘accidentally’ dusted some of Dabi’s money with another icepack. Magne watches all them, terribly bemused and laughing freely as she lands herself in more and more debt with the attitude of someone who’s stopped giving a fuck. Spinner keeps muttering under his breath ‘this isn’t what Stain would want’ as he lands on another one of mom’s many, many properties. 

And Inko, his lovely mother, the apple of his eye and the person he loves more than anyone else in the world, just smiles at all of them with that gentle, serene smile as she ruthlessly destroys all of them without batting an eyelash. 

Kurogiri, who’s nursing his small handful of money and even smaller handful of properties, had said at one point to her quite genuinely that she reminded him of Sensei. 

His mom had only smiled and thanked him, because she was amazing like that, before laughing and stating that the only person who had even come close to beating her was her husband. “Only once though.” She said mildly, taking another four hundred dollars from Spinner’s shaking hand without even looking at him. “He cheated horribly too; was always a sore loser, that one. He married me for my competitiveness though, he should have known what he was getting into.” 

Quite unfairly, everyone’s head turned towards Izuku, which he thinks is rude. He’s not that competitive. 

“Yes, Dakun?” His mom prompts when Dabi only frowns at his and Shouto’s property, a single brown one that Izuku’s been eyeing for the past twenty minutes. If he puts a little more pressure, he might be able to get it for a hundred. 

Dabi flushes, though whether it’s at the nickname or the unfamiliar maternal affection Inko tends to douse whenever some lost looking child wanders within three feet of her. “I, um, I have a request.” 

Even Shouto looks curious, blinking up at his brother with his forever impassive expression. The closest he’s gotten to expressing anything close to a smile is when either A. Cold soba is in front of him or B. It’s Thursday Book Club with Inko and the rest of the neighborhood’s middle aged mothers. Personally, Izuku just think all the Todorokis have mommy issues. 

Point proven literally thirty seconds later what the fuck. “I want to break our mom out of her psychiatric hospital.” 

His mom calmly sorts her money. “I see. Is this the one where she’s been stuck in for the past ten years?” 

Dabi nods with a deep glower, and his mom hums, folding her money away. “Well, that will be a bit difficult, considering how tight the security is there.” She says easily as she tugs at Himiko’s offered property, the younger girl close to tears as she desperately clings on to it. “But give me three days; I have some calls to make.” With that, she rips the property away from Himiko and fans out all her cards on the table like they’re playing poker. “I believe this is a win for me, ladies and gentlemen.” 

Compress leans over Izuku’s chair, still eating their yakitori. “Your mother is absolutely terrifying.” He informs the teenager cheerfully. 

“My dad’s scarier.” Izuku says blandly. All of his friends look various degrees of horrified, except for Kurogiri. Kurogiri looks delighted. 

.

Three days later, Izuku trails into Kurogiri’s bar with his mother on his heels, holding an impressively thick manila folder. “Dakun, dear.” She hums softly, dropping it on the table of the suddenly polite and well behaved adults. Mommy issues, the lot of them. “I called Hisashi, had him pull some strings to get some information about your mother’s location in exchange for a few things.” 

Dabi hesitates, obviously concerned. “It wasn’t anything bad, right?” 

She laughs, patting his cheek like he’s a small toddler. Dabi blushes. “Oh, it was just a couple videos of Izuku, don’t worry about it.” 

Izuku crosses his arm with a scowl, cheeks burning red. “He wanted me to dictate letters I wrote to him when I was five.” God, could his dad get anymore embarrassing? Or creepy. He dug through his father’s old things while searching for an old Pokémon game to play with Tomura, and came to two conclusions. 

1. His dad is possibly a career criminal, if his tax returns are any indication. 
2. The amount of baby pictures of himself is quite frankly disturbing. 

He shudders. He could deal with being a career criminal, but who the fuck needs over four hundred photos of him as a newborn?!?

Dabi brightens up with the obliviousness of someone who’s never had an overly attached parent before. “Oh, well, that’s not too bad then.” 

Shouto, who knows full well what living with an overly attached parent is like, hides underneath the table and continues playing animal crossing on Izuku’s switch like the little snitch he is. 

Chapter Text

Week two: Continue acting like everything is under control while coming to the slow realization that no, things are so far out of control it’s not even funny

“Izuku?” His mom knocks on the door gently, and then louder when he doesn’t answer immediately. “Izuku honey, one of your friends is here.” 

Groaning, he rolls out of bed, landing on the floor with an audible thud and a crack of his spine. “Which one.” He mutters, but somehow she hears him anyhow. Mother powers include superpowered hearing, eyes on the back of the head, and the ability to put the fear of god into him with just a look. 

She hesitates. “The, um, blonde one? Shokun's grabbing her a towel now.” 

He glances out the window. It’s not raining, though? 

Wait. 

“HIMICHAN!” He roars as he sprints through the house, nearly bludgeoning her with the goddamn door as he bursts into the entryway. “WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO?!” 

Himiko, who’s literally coated in blood, cries out. “Izuku-kun, it’s not what you think!”

“I WON’T HESITATE, BITCH.”

“Izuku!” His mom scolds him, hurrying to catch up with him. “Though, she is dripping all over my brand new rug…” 

Himiko cries louder. 

It’s at this point Shouto returns, stopping dead in his tracks as another glob of blood falls off Himiko’s shoulder and hits mom’s week old white rug with an audible splat. 

Shouto stares at Himiko, then at the towel in his hands, then at Himiko again. “I -”

“It’s okay,” Izuku reassures him gravely. “This situation requires the strongest asset we have.” 

“God,” Himiko garbles later, standing in the backyard with her arms spread out. “Why did you abandon me?” She curses to the sky, waiting for the sweet release of death. 

“Close your mouth, Himiko-chan, I don’t want you to get any water in it.” His mom tells her sweetly, and Himiko does what she says with a sour expression, lifting her arms up higher for Shouto to keep washing her down with the hose. 

.

“Shouchan.” Izuku nails dig into the shitty leather of the booth in the lovely ice cream shop they found after burning Himiko’s clothes in an abandoned parking lot so no one would track them by smoke. “Shouchan, I love you dearly, you’re probably one of my very best friends, but sometimes.” 

“Hmm?” Shouto hums back at him, eating his ice cream with fucking chopsticks. 

Izuku reminds himself to take deep breaths. While this is a grave offense, it’s no reason for him to commit a murder in front of twenty plus witnesses. If he’s going to finally kill Shouto, it’ll be with an alibi and somewhere that no one will notice him using nitric acid to dissolve the body, or god forbid, calling in a favor from Tomura or Dabi. 

Nevermind, Shouto just put ketchup on his vanilla ice cream, he’s going to mcfreakin lose it - 

Someone slams into the glass on the other side of the window. “Shouto?!” The muffled yell catches the attention of half the shop, both of them glancing up curiously. 

They freeze. 

“Shouchan.” Izuku repeats, his face pale. “Why is there a giant, beefy version of you pressing his face against the window?” 

The giant, beefy version of Shouto somehow inches himself closer. “Shouto, is that you?! Don’t worry, Nii-chan will come save you!”

“…Ah.” His friend slowly puts his ice cream down, adjusts his ball cap, and forces himself to a stand. “Time to go.” He says briskly. 

“Couldn’t agree more!” Izuku agrees cheerfully, leaves some money on the table for the poor owners, and fucking books it out the back door with Shouto on his heels. 

The two of them dash down the alleyway, breaking out onto a side street and cutting across it to the other side. Both of them don’t slow down until they’re at least three blocks away, emerging onto a busy intersection and blending into the crowd as much as two out of breath (or just him, because Shouto is a monster when it comes to stamina) teenagers can. 

An arm swings around Izuku’s shoulder. “Nice try, kiddos, but you’re a little too green at outrunning authority figures to beat me.” The giant, beefy version of Shouto grins teasingly, his other arm wrapped securely around Shouto’s neck. 

Shouto looks like he swallowed a lemon whole. “Hi…Natsuo.” 

Natsuo winks. “Hey little brother! If you wanted to run away from Daddy dearest, farthest from me to stop you, but a phone call would have been nice!” He squeezes Shouto playfully, a glimmer of hurt in his eyes. 

Shouto seems to catch it too, for how bad he is at social situations. Seriously, he asked Izuku the other day while he was on the floor crying over his math textbook if he was cutting onions. They didn’t even have any onions.

“It was a bit of a…spur of the moment decision.” Shouto decides on, and Izuku chokes down an inappropriate laugh. Well, that’s one way of describing it. “Sorry, Natsu-nii.” 

It’s like Shouto hit the jackpot. “That’s okay,” Natsuo announces, his eyes huge as he fights off a giant grin. “You know what? I’m totally cool with it. Just give me a number so I can keep in contact with you, and keep calling me that, preferably forever.” 

His best friend grimaces. “Sure thing…Natsu-nii.” If his mouth can purse up any more, he wouldn't have lips. “Natsu-nii, meet my friend Izuku. Izuku, meet Natsu-nii.” Under the bus Izuku goes. 

“Nice to meet you, Shouchan’s nii-san.” Izuku puts on his award winning smile to the older brother of the teenager he accidentally kidnapped. “I have a question, if you wouldn’t mind?” He asks shyly, giving the act his all. 

Natsuo blinks, smiling back brightly. “Sure! Anything for Shouto’s friend.” His tone 100% implies that Shouto’s never had friends before, so he’s about thirty seconds away from giving Izuku his first born. Great, should make things easier. 

“Are you a vigilante?” He asks, humming innocently as Shouto suddenly chokes on his own tongue. Natsuo keeps smiling, his eyes screaming. “Your statement earlier implied you run from authority figures often, which includes more than just police as a Hero would never deal with a teenager doing petty crimes. So obviously you’ve done something big enough to have Heroes chasing after you, and you navigated rooftops when chasing me and Shouchan if the emergency ladder from the alleyway just behind us is any indication. And those muscles aren’t for show, nevermind that your sneakers are a professional brand for those in extreme sports. I doubt you’re a villain, mostly because you weren’t subtle when you saw Shouto and you’re making no attempts to hide your identity - there’s no current masked villains in the Musutafu region with your height and stature. So, vigilante.”

Natsuo blinks. “Wow.” He finally murmurs, at a loss for words. “Shouto, you sure know how you pick them.” 

Shouto glares at Izuku. “He picked me.” He mutters petulantly. 

“Was I right?” Izuku prods. 

“Yep!” Natsuo admits quietly, grinning boyishly as he finally lets go of Izuku to scratch the back of his head. “I’m the vigilante Avalanche.” 

Shouto looks suspiciously at his brother. “Is that a reference to -” Only to get a hand slammed over his mouth as Natsuo shushes him nervously, but Izuku’s mind is already running a thousand miles an hour. 

Finally, he has to ask it. “Why?” 

“Why?” Natsuo tilts his head to the side. “Well, I had to get rid of all of my all consuming anger somehow!” He chirps brightly, and yeah, Izuku sees the family resemblance now. 

The cogs spin in Izuku’s mind, remembering anything he can about the vigilante Avalanche. They mostly patrol in the in the late night to early mornings, implying they work in the afternoon (or take afternoon classes, Izuku side-eyes him), and fights with flash bangs and a taser most of the time, though they’re strong enough with just their fists. There’s no sign of quirk usage - Eraserhead used his quirk on Avalanche and neither his speed nor his strength decreased in the slightest. No obvious sign of a mutation either - maybe it involves brain chemistry? 

“There goes the mumbling.” Shouto deadpans. 

“Ah!” Izuku startles, blushing once he realized both of them were staring at him. “I didn’t mean to creep you out or anything, Shouchan’s nii-san.” He bows several times.

Natsuo waves his hand. “Don’t worry about it, kiddo!” His teeth seem to sparkle in the light as he winks, ruffling Izuku’s hair playfully. “And for my quirk, well…I’m quirkless.”

“Oh no.” Shouto mutters.

“Shouchan’s nii-san.” Izuku says, utterly serious. “Natsuo. Natsu-nii. I would die for you.”

.

Gently opening the door, Izuku trots inside with Shouto and Natsuo on his heels. “Hi mom! I brought home a new best friend.”

His mom pokes her head in from the living room, smiling brightly at the sight of Natsuo. “Oh, another one! Do you need any medical treatment? Food? If there’s any blood on you, I won’t ask questions just as long as you clean it up properly.” At this point, she’s skipped right past being taken aback and has pranced neatly into blasé when it comes to the people who keep crashing on their floors (Shouto has a monopoly on the couch and refuses to share no matter how much he’s threatened with fire, knives, or a disintegration quirk).

Natsuo seems amused at least. “No thank you, ma’am, I’m all good.” 

Something crashes loudly behind his mom. 

All three of them skid towards the doorway, with Izuku hoping fervently that it wasn’t any of his new All Might merchandise. He’s been warding his video game stash with figures and posters of the Hero so that Tomura’s grubby fingers stay away. They’re limited edition too! 

Only for them to see Dabi, his controller askew on the coffee table and mouth open as he stares at Natsuo with a bag of chips on his lap, the TV screen showing a paused screen of…is that Farming Simulator!? 

“Touya-nii?” Natsuo croaks.  

Shit, Izuku knew he forgot something. 

Dabi carefully places his bag of chips on the coffee table, saves his game, turns the TV off, and dives straight through the window. It wasn’t open. 

Unfortunately, Natsuo also inherited the dumbass genes and nosedives right after him. 

Carefully picking his way through the shards of glass, Izuku pokes his head out the now very broken window. Both of them are running down the street, screaming incoherently for two vastly different reasons. Natsuo, for seeing his seemingly dead brother after ten years bumming it out on Shouto’s couch and playing shitty video games. Dabi, for faking his death and having karma catching up to him in the form of his five foot eleven beefy younger brother. His stick ass doesn’t stand a chance. 

Sure enough, Natsuo tackles him in a move that would make a professional quarterback weep, yelling something so littered in profanities that his mom instinctively covers his ears despite him hearing far worse from Tomura whenever he gets PKed. 

“Are they…” Shouto trails off from where he’s sticking his head out a foot below Izuku. “Noogying each other?”

“Either that or passive aggressively hugging.” Izuku notes wonderingly.

“I certainly hope one of them plans on paying for the window.” His mom frowns, glancing at the glass all over the floor. “Damn, I just cleaned in here too.” 

.

Ever since Natsuo discovered his missing younger brother and his supposedly dead older brother, Shouto and Dabi have thus ditched the friend group in order to invite Natsuo on their sibling bonding. Their sibling bonding, if Shouto’s search history was any indication, involves donuts, sticky notes, mayonnaise, and jello.

No, Izuku doesn’t know either. 

Thus, Izuku finds himself at his fifth best option, after his mother, Shouto, Dabi, and the cat that likes to hang out by the convenience store on the corner. 

“Fuck you and fuck your pixelated cartoon ass, you fucking two-bit knock off kraken.” Tomura howls at the TV screen, shooting at Cala Maria with extreme prejudice. Considering Izuku keeps getting hit by her eel and fish combo, he’s about ready to flip the TV himself. 

Maybe playing Cupheads wasn’t the greatest of ideas. 

Then Izuku dies, and he flings his controller at the wall. “I fucking dodged that! What the hell, who the fuck designed this level?! SATAN?!” 

Tomura growls, closing the game without saving and switching to his game library. “I’m playing something else before I have a goddamn aneurysm.” And because Tomura cringes at the mere thought of Harvest Moon (it took Izuku two fucking years to seduce Cam, he’s not deleting his save file if it kills him), he immediately puts on Call of Duty to destress. 

He’s beginning to feel like they have two very different coping methods.  

Leaning back against Tomura’s headboard, Izuku absently plays Bitlife on his phone and has sex with twenty people in a year, keeping one ear out to Tomura’s shouts at the game. 

“Who the fuck used a goddamn grenade?!” A tense pause. “I’m not a fucking hypocrite, you dick! I’m perfectly confident in my shooting skills that I don’t have to compensate it with a bunch of fucking grenades.” 

“Tomuchan, calm down.” Izuku scolds lightly, more focused on abandoning his eighteenth child on the side of the road. He’s sorry, but he only works as a stripper, he doesn’t have time to pay all that child support. If Dr. Shinsou sees him now, he has a feeling he would be psychoanalyzed to hell and back. 

“I am calm.” Tomura hisses out, but obligatorily flops backwards so his head is resting on Izuku’s lap while he kills people violently in COD. Izuku hums to himself, patting Tomura’s head and running his fingers through his greasy hair, which he knows Tomura is self-conscious about even if he won’t admit it. Sure enough, Tomura tips his head up and eyes him speculatively during a loading screen. “Tell me I’m pretty.” He orders. 

Smiling softly, Izuku pinches his cheek. “Pretty fucking annoying.” 

“Rude.” Tomura huffs without much intent, eyes flicking back to the screen and eyebrows scrunching up. “I’m fucking pretty because I said I’m pretty, asshole.” He spits out to whoever’s on the other end of his headset, button mashing with his pinkies raised. 

Rolling his eyes, Izuku goes back to playing bitlife, before eventually skipping over to webcomics when he gets bored. Honestly, some of these are good inspiration points for when Mei inevitably takes over the world and he has to help her manage the populace. 

An hour later, Himiko bursts into Tomura’s bedroom with Kurogiri’s Kiss the Cook apron and her hair done up in a ponytail with a cute scrunchy. “You two are fucking!” 

Both of their noses wrinkle, because, ew, videos games are way better than sex. But they also have a reputation to remain, so Tomura pauses his game and looks up at Izuku. “Why didn’t you tell me, Midoriya, I would have put my game down.” 

“I’ve been meaning to tell you this for the longest time, Tomurchan, but I…” Izuku trails off dramatically. “I have a fetish for Xbox controllers.” 

“Brrh.” Tomura intimates his controller vibrating with a suggestive eyebrow wiggle. Himiko looks a little sick. That’s what she gets for being gross. 

Plopping down next to them, she flings her legs over Tomura’s and props her head up with one of his many pillows. “I’m bored, Kurogiri kicked me out of the kitchen for ‘reckless use of knives’ and ‘arsenic doesn’t belong there’, he’s such a drag.” 

“Tell him that to his face.” Tomura states flatly, knowing full well that’s a one way ticket to the middle of the goddamn pacific ocean. 

Unfortunately, Himiko has about an ounce of common sense and that lies in not pissing their sole warper off. “No thank you!” She chimes sweetly. 

A faint smell reaches upstairs, but Izuku can’t tell what it is. “What were you making?” Sue him, he’s a little hungry too. 

“Cinnamon rolls.” Himiko bobs her head, having slipped out her phone and idly browsing it while Tomura plays his game loudly. “Though he’s probably busy dealing with the kitchen being on fire.” 

Izuku chokes, Tomura’s controller fumbles in his hands and accidentally disintegrates, and Himiko reblogs a post about cats being assholes. 

The smell is definitely smoke, and something dawns on Izuku horribly. Dabi spends more than a given quarter of his time here, which means… “The fucking sprinkler system is disabled!” Tomura shouts, leaping off of the bed and scrambling for his consoles. “Midoriya, get all my limited edition figures! Toga, my pre-ordered games!” 

“Sir, yes Sir!” 

.

“Would you mind telling me why all three of you ran back after evacuating the first time?” Kurogiri asks them, voice low and simmering with anger. 

“I’m a minor so legally, anything I say doesn’t count, right?” Himiko asks with a panicked smile, juggling the giant Persona 5 box next to the Dissidia collection. 

The gaze turns to Izuku. “I’d really not say.” Honestly, the figurines are getting a little heavy, but he has a feeling Kurogiri will warp them the instant they’re out of his arms and up a thousand feet up in the air directly over his head.

Tomura, oh Tomura, the man has no fear. “Bold words for a man who saved his alcohol collection first before checking in on his ward.”  

Kurogiri is silent for a long moment. “Agree to never speak of this again?”

“Agreed.” 

.

Izuku comes home in time for dinner, covered in soot, ash, and icing. Turns out that even after being roasted in the oven at temperatures unsurvivable to humans without either a fire resistant quirk or pure spite, those cinnamon rolls tasted pretty good. So despite brushing death (Kurogiri), he’s in a pretty good mood. 

Until he walks into the kitchen to see not only his mother, but Dabi, Natsuo, and Shouto crying hysterically. 

“Is…everything okay?” Izuku asks, almost hesitant to know. Did something bad happen to the boy's mom? Did someone famous die? Does he need to go on a revenge spree?  

“T-Turtles never m-meet their mothers!” Dabi sobs out with blood trickling down his cheeks as his Walmart brand tears, and the four of them start crying anew, positively wailing at the top of their lungs. 

Blinking, Izuku slowly steps back. “I’m just…gonna go.” 

His mother waves him off, loudly blowing into her napkin and patting Shouto’s shaking back. Izuku retreats back to his room, suitably weirded out, and vows to bleach the very memory from his brain in favor of playing Undertale. 

Chapter Text

Week three: Cram, cram, cram, until sleep becomes an unaffordable luxury all the while listening to ‘All Izz Well’ on repeat because it resonates with all dying students

“Midoriya-kun,” Hitoshi says slowly, dead eyes focused on the screen in front of him from where they’ve been studying linear progressions for the past hour. They’ve only grown deader with every letter found in a numerical equation where there shouldn’t be one. “You have weird friends.” 

Izuku hums distractedly, checking his phone. Shouto sent a picture to the #Who-is-that-villain-I-see channel, a selfie of him throwing a peace sign with a blank expression in front of a giant billboard with his face on it and the words HAVE YOU SEEN ME?. Right below it, Dabi sent one with a similar theme, but with a manic smile in front of a home shrine with his baby picture on it. Himiko has one with her T-posing in front of a whole board of missing teenager papers in a Seiyu store, and even Tomura has an old newspaper, with the name already decayed. He’s beginning to feel a little left out at this point. 

“I don’t think they’re that weird.” Izuku lies blatantly. 

Hitoshi makes eye contact, takes a long sip of his crack coffee that somehow comes across as threatening, and then points out the window. 

Izuku refuses to look. He knows full well that Twice and Himiko are having an aggressive dance-off right outside the Shop. 

For a teenager who has a surprising amount of issues about villains, he took the revelation that the people who randomly teleport into Izuku’s house to steal his food are villains admirably well. Which means he passed out when Tomura held out one of his many, many hands for a handshake, only to be woken up by being fanned with one of them. At this point, Izuku has passed having fucks to give about touching dead body parts.

When the fainting and the screaming passed, Hitoshi took the offered breadstick from Compress and numbly ate it on Shouto’s couch between Magne and Spinner, both of them giving him condolences for his unwilling incorporation into this madness. Izuku’s pretty sure they go bowling every Wednesday to complain about them now. 

The sound of sirens puts a halt to Himiko’s and Twice dabbing, both of them shrieking before diving into a nearby alleyway as some rookie hero gives chase. Izuku goes back to studying. 

.

“I’ve brought you here,” Compress says slowly, the room dark and lit only by a dim light bulb above his head. “To play the most dangerous game -”

“Knife Monopoly?” Himiko idly asks, turning on her phone and blinding the entire league with a very graphic image of a dissected bird. As her home screen. Izuku needs better friends.  

Compress hesitates. “I was going to teach you all how to play strip poker, but now I’m curious about whatever Knife Monopoly is.” 

“Later.” Izuku begs, eyes burning as he stares at his chemistry textbook, trying for the love of god to understand what the fuck electron clouds are about. “I’m begging you.” 

“You okay, kiddo?” Dabi asks carefully from the other end of the bar, nursing a drink that is taking all of Izuku’s self control not to rip out of his hand and chug it like a keg stand. 

“Just. Fine.” Izuku hisses, slamming his head down over his textbook and blinking back the sheer misery he’s feeling. Why can’t he dissociate for a bit? Studying is so much easier when he doesn’t have to set five minute crying breaks every hour. 

Glancing around the room, he tries to find anyone who isn’t a dropout, and fails miserably. Compress maybe? No, Izuku asked him what 9x3 is and he had to look it up on his phone because he forgot.

A glass of juice gets set down in front of him. “Remember to hydrate and take frequent breaks.” Kurogiri reminds him gently, patting his unbrushed and unwashed hair without a moment of disgusted hesitation. 

Oh. “Could you do a small favor for me, Kurogiri?”

“I would literally die for you, but go on.” Kurogiri tells him, completely and utterly serious. 

Izuku’s face doesn’t even twitch. “Can you explain this to me?” 

Their warper leans over the bar, squinting at the fine text. Well, that’s what Izuku thinks those yellow lines for his eyes mean, anyhow. It’s hard to read a sentient mist’s expression okay. 

“I,” Kurogiri starts, staring down at his textbook. “My apologies, I don’t seem to understand it either.” 

Well. Izuku’s fucked. 

“Let me see,” Tomura leans into space, and then Dabi, both of them staring at it with identical expressions of confusion. “Magne?” Dabi tosses out desperately. 

“She’s out partying! Or selling drugs. Not sure which.” Twice answers helpfully, scratching the back of his head. 

“Toga - wait no, not you.” Izuku and Himiko glare at the fire quirk user, and Dabi holds out his hands pacifyingly. “Not anything against you! Just…we all know you wouldn’t understand chemistry.” 

“Toga-chan is the best at biology though, she knows so much about it! She only does it to dissect animals.” Twice winces at the words that roll out his mouth, and instantly Himiko’s lip is wobbling.

Her voice cracks a little bit as she speaks. “That’s mean, Jin-kun.”

“I’m sorry Toga-chan! No I’m not!” Twice smashes his face into the bar, screeching to himself quietly as his mutters dissolves into half baked apologies and off topic jokes. At least Himiko seems to have already forgiven him, if the way she pads over and rubs his back is any indication. 

Honestly, Izuku only has room for one mental breakdown right now. It’s him. He’s the one having a mental breakdown. 

Spinner rests his elbow on Izuku’s hair and kindly doesn’t comment on the fine layer of grease over it. “Hmm, you’re stuck on C₆H₁₂O₆? That’s the chemical reaction for sugar and it’s a polar bond, so it makes it soluble in water.” 

The entire bar goes dead quiet. 

“What?” Spinner asks defensively. “I liked that song ‘Molecular Shape of You’ a lot back in college. Helped me pass my gen-ed science courses I had to take.” 

“You.” Tomura rasps out, for the first time lost for words. “You went to college.” 

Spinner blinks. “I…did? Never finished though. Why? Is that a problem?” 

No one in the room said a word about how that’s probably the highest education all of them have gotten combined, including Kurogiri, and it was the person with the slightly worse personality traits of Izuku’s gamer, shut in, and obsessive tendencies combined. 

Tomura takes the hand on his face off, lays down next to Twice on the bar, and screams. 

.

Izuku walks into his house to see all three Todoroki’s assembling what looks like a fucking grenade launcher on his living room floor. 

“I’m so tired, guys.” He whispers. 

Natsuo trades looks with his brothers. “Uh, we can go back to my apartment?”

Izuku nods slowly. There’s nine Natsuo’s, which he knows for sure is his vision malfunctioning rather than him accidentally being cloned. The world can't take the sheer himboness of nine Natsuos. “You do that.” 

.

Barely managing to avoid the tempting cry of sleep while he crams English words into his brain, Izuku grunts his thanks as Himiko drops off a cappuccino in front of him. “I got you a nice, hot cup of coffee for my sleepy Izuku-kun.” She giggles as she sits down across from him. 

Her smile strains when he downs it with sheer desperation, looking mildly concerned for his kidneys. “It’s cold though.” Izuku retorts, still sipping at it. 

“Nice cup of coffee.” She amends cheerfully. 

Izuku stares down at the brown sludge. “It tastes horrible.” 

Himiko discreetly pushes her own drink, some pink abomination with glitters and sparkles, out of his lunging distance. “Cup of coffee?” She offers weakly. 

“To be honest, I’m not even sure this is coffee.” It’s amazing what eleven shots of espresso does to the taste. 

“Cup.”

“You know what, that works.”

Both of them go back to their respective tasks once that's settled - Izuku having a mental breakdown as he wonders if can get away with writing a dictionary worth of vocabulary on his stomach, and Himiko doodling in her sticker covered notebook with one only pink earbud in, humming to herself contentedly. 

It’s only been a week since she ran away from home and ended up crashing between Kurogiri's spare room upstairs and the floor right next to Shouto’s couch, but she just…seems happier. More livelier. Less like there’s a dull look in her eyes every time she gets lost in thought. 

His throat feels tight, so he downs more of his drink, catching her attention swiftly. “What does coffee normally taste like, anyway?” Himiko asks curiously. 

Izuku chugs the rest of it, leaning back in his seat and aiming towards a trash bin at the other side of Kurogiri’s bar. The paper cup misses, but Kurogiri only sighs from behind the bar and uses his warp gate to dump it properly. Izuku knew there was a reason he liked the man, and not only because of his ability to make Tomura shut the fuck up once in a while. “Not as good as it smells.” 

“Oh,” Himiko says, staring into space. “Like shampoo.” 

“Unicorn shampoo?” He asks, with the tone of a veteran who has seen the horrors of war. 

She nods. “Unicorn shampoo.” 

.

He takes Christmas Eve and Christmas day off at least. Well, it’s not by choice, but rather his mother tried to tug the textbooks out of his fiercely resisting hands, both of them hissing back and forth until Shouto walked over and dumped ice cubes down the back of their shirts. 

Natsuo must have taught him that, because Izuku sure as hell didn’t. 

So yeah. He’s forced to take the two days off, with his mother hustling the sacred texts off to lands unknown (his textbooks into her bedroom, as even when he wants to die he doesn’t dare step into it without her explicit permission). 

Luckily, she didn’t find out about the flashcards, so he’s studying on the floor of his bedroom, squinting at traditional Japanese sayings and wondering what kind of drugs they were on for them to come up with this stuff. Didn’t court ladies use led in makeup or something like that? Maybe that was England. 

Izuku’s arguing with himself on whether it’s Japan or England that used toxic chemicals on their face when he hears the sound of Shouto walking down the hall. His mother walks much heavier; he’s not sure whether the unnaturally light footsteps are because of Endeavor or just Shouto’s natural gait. Dabi walks the same way though, and Izuku had previously chalked Natsuo’s quiet steps to his vigilantism, so maybe he needs to turn on his computer for something other than Nintendo lo-fi music to study to and check in how his Endeavor hate forums are doing. 

“Midoriya,” Shouto's voice from the doorway draws him out of his thoughts, wearing sunglasses and a rainbow beanie, a sure sign as any that he left the house. It’s not Sunday, so it can’t be brunch with Dabi, nor Tuesday, so it’s not sibling bonding time with Natsuo, or Friday, which is when he has his appointments with Dr. Shinsou. Izuku tries not to bug Shouto on where he’s going - the boy deserves his independence more than most- but Shouto literally thought a mugger was just a homeless beggar and tried talking to him about his life choices. 

The surprising part is that the mugger listened and got his act together. They’re friends now on Tiktok apparently. 

“I went to go buy Inko-san a birthday present, but I don’t know her well enough.” Shouto explains, almost hesitantly as the bag over his wrist ruffles. “So I had an idea.” 

“No presents for me?” Izuku asks wryly, and gets Shouto rummaging through his bag to pull out a single packet of ramen with a bow slapped on it only to fling it at his head with what feels like terminal velocity. He deserved that. 

Both of them move on without another blink. “Do you think she would like this?” Shouto asks, pulling out the last item in his bag and showing it to him. 

A box of hair dye. Izuku’s eyes widen. 

“Fuck yes.” He whispers. 

.

His mom bursts into tears when they walk into the kitchen while she makes dinner for them - and probably the whole league when they inevitably show up. “Shoukun…”

Shouto nervously fiddles with his now very green bangs, a stark copy of Inko’s pure green rather than Izuku’s black highlights. Izuku offered, but Shouto had one person in mind when the two of them were dyeing his hair, and one person alone. 

He doesn’t mind. Shouto deserves all the good people in his life, and Izuku isn’t biased, but his mom is the best. 

“Shoukun, come here.” His mom gently beckons, and Shouto folds himself into her arms, hilariously tall and broad shouldered compared to his mom’s small frame. She talks to him softly, so quietly that Izuku can’t hear it, but Shouto relaxes more in her arms, burying his face in her shoulder. 

Izuku makes to leave, only for Shouto to call his name. Glancing back, he raises an eyebrow as Shouto steps back from his mom and digs through his pocket, eventually holding out an eyebrow pencil. “For the freckles.” Shouto explains at his confused look. 

Needless to say, the hug Shouto gets almost sends him flying to the floor. 

.

Izuku scans the fresh produce, dropping a couple of bell peppers from Kurogiri’s list into the basket over his elbow. At his side, Dabi picks up a box of raspberries with his gloved hands, humming as he checks it for mold before putting it back and grabbing a different one. 

“WHAT BRAND OF CHIPS DO Y'ALL WANT?” Himiko shouts from one end of the store. 

“I’M ALWAYS A SLUT FOR DORITOS!” Tomura yells back from the other end. 

Izuku sighs. “Man, this has been a long week.”

Dabi gives him a weird look. “It’s 8 am on a fucking Tuesday.”

“I know.” 

Himiko skids around the corner with a carriage full of junk food, Tomura on her heels with three baskets of canned goods in his gloved hands. “We good?” 

Both of them do a cursory look at the list. “Yeah, we got everything.” Izuku finally says, sending the text out to Kurogiri. Within moments, a warp gate appears in the middle of Aisle 1, vegetables and fruits. 

“Thank you everyone!” Himiko waves to the hostages sitting on the ground, but it’s with her bloody knife. Everyone gasps and flinches back in sync. “What?” She blinks, glancing around to find the source of their terror. 

Luckily, the sound of sirens distracts her confusion. “Let’s go!” Dabi shouts, pushing him and Himiko first through the warp gate like the good big brother he is. Izuku oofs as he lands in the middle of the bar, Himiko skidding next to him, then Tomura and Dabi already bickering. The gate closes, leaving them surrounded by the efforts of their biweekly grocery run (theft). It’s a shit ton of food to feed the whole ass League, okay. 

“How did it go?” Magne asks, already rifling through Himiko’s snacks and stealing a bag of Cheetos. 

“Good.” Izuku chirps cheerfully, pushing his thermal goggles up into his hairline and pulling his respirator down. Giran really came into a clutch to help him hide his face, with the whole ensemble being vaguely threatening with red lenses and a toothy grin painted on the respirator. 

Compress walks up next to her, both of them sorting through the junk food. He glances up, probably to ask something, before doing a double take. “What are you wearing?” 

Frowning, he points at his face coverings. “You mean this?” 

“No, those make sense.” Compress waves off. “I meant your shirt.” 

He glances down at his shirt, a plain white t-shirt with the words Villain Costume printed on it. It was on clearance at his local thrift store. 

“It’s my villain costume, obviously.” Izuku explains slowly, still confused. 

“Don’t bother.” Kurogiri mutters. “I haven’t been able to make sense of it either.” 

.

The smell of bacon and eggs cooking stirs him from his sleep. Normally, that would be a comforting smell, just him laying in bed and listening to his mother cook breakfast while Shouto talks to her quietly. But considering the last thing he remembers is studying with Hitoshi and Mei at the Shop, and the only food they serve is prepackaged chips, it’s a bit concerning. 

“Mmh.” He groans, forcing his blurry eyes open from where he's sleeping face first on the table. The first thing he sees is several people gathered around him, all of them gasping at the sight of him awake. 

“Ivy.” Mei nudges his shoulder, using her nickname for him. “Ivy, don’t move.” 

Blinking slowly, he squints up at her as she…smirks? “Why.” It comes out as a statement. 

“Just trust us.” Hitoshi chimes in next to her, also smirking heavily with his phone camera aimed towards him. 

Or what’s on his back.  

“What did you put on me?” 

Before Mei or Hitoshi could say anything, another girl walks up to them with a plate. “Do you mind if…” 

“Not at all!” Mei grins, leaning over him with a…spatula? 

“Mei-chan,” Izuku asks desperately as she scrapes something, quickly handing the girl some scrambled eggs and bacon. Hitoshi and the girl pose for a selfie before she escapes back into the crowd of eating students. “Please tell me you didn’t put a tripod Bunsen burner on my back while I was sleeping and decided to make breakfast for the entire café.” 

“Okay, I won’t tell you.” Mei pats his head. Hitoshi takes another photo. 

.

“What’s Hokusai's most famous work?” Tomura reads off the flashcard, his face twisting into a frown. “Who the hell is Hokusai?” He mutters to himself. 

Himiko’s head pops up from where she’s playing Bayonetta on the TV in Izuku’s living room. “Oh! I know this one.” 

“It’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa.” Izuku rattles off, limbs twitching slightly against the carpet underneath where he’s lying on his back. According to WebMD he’s either having a heart attack or a pulmonary embolism, but mostly he’s just tasting colors. His mom has banned caffeine ever since he let that fact slip, so he’s making due with eating Cosmic Brownies while crying hysterically. 

“Correct again. I think that’s it for art history, so -” Whatever Tomura was about to say gets interrupted by Izuku’s front door being bashed open. 

“If anybody asks,” Natsuo says, reeking of smoke and soot with char marks all along his clothes. Shouto and Dabi don’t look much better, but Natsuo steals the show by holding the goddamn grenade launcher while saying this. “I was here the whole time. Okay?”

All three of them slowly nod. “Great!” Natsuo says faux cheerfully, shoving the grenade launcher into Dabi’s fumbling hands before wandering down the hall. “I’m gonna go steal your shower real quick, be right back.” 

“What were you three doing?” Himiko asks, pausing her game and leaning over the back of the couch. Her cheeks grow rosy at the sight of the bloody cut on Shouto’s arm. 

Shouto, smartly, hides behind Dabi. 

“None of your business.” Dabi says curtly, hefting the grenade launcher up. “Just…don’t check the news for the next twenty four hours or so.” 

“Works for me!” Himiko grins, flopping back in her seat and resuming her game. Tomura, on the other hand, gazes down the hallway Natsuo left through with an unreadable expression. 

Dabi notices his gaze. “Problem, hand fucker?” He asks defensively. 

“No, just…” Tomura scratches his neck. “Your brother is…kinda hot.”  

Dabi immediately attempts to load the grenade launcher. It takes the combined force of Shouto, Himiko, and Izuku to hold him in place. When Natsuo comes out of the bathroom with just a towel wrapped around his waist to investigate the noise and Tomura blushes, they end up having to knock Dabi out with Izuku’s math textbook to prevent a voluntary manslaughter. 

.

Why are you hitting yourself why are you hitting yourse

lol im dying 

An Overcooked Lasagna nOODLE

Mood

I feel gay in this Chili's tonight

[It’s-what-she-deserves.gif]

WELCOME TO BIBLE STUDY WE’RE ALL CHILDREN OF JESUS

Is this more of your slang? 

Shigaraki Tomura, did you change my username again? 

whaddup im tomura im 19 and i never fucking learned how 2 read

can you prove it

WELCOME TO BIBLE STUDY WE’RE ALL CHILDREN OF JESUS

… 

Not currently. 

whaddup im tomura im 19 and i never fucking learned how 2 read

then no i didnt

Abracadabra but its Harry Potter so I just fucking killed you

Everything okay Twice?

HIT ME. HIT ME WITH YOUR CAR

give an amen to compress for being a good bean

The Yoyo Master just keeps on yoing

Amen

I may be a simp but I’m not a fucking thot

Amen °˖✧◝(⁰▿⁰)◜✧˖°

Abracadabra but its Harry Potter so I just fucking killed you

Thank you all, that actually means a lot to me 

But yes Twice, is everything alright? 

Why are you hitting yourself why are you hitting yourse

no like im legit dying 

some guy i was trying to recruit stabbed me in the parking lot behind dennys 

the lol is a habit 

[Blurry picture of Twice dabbing in an ambulance with blood all over him]

Several people are typing… 

Chapter Text

Week four: Imminent breakdown over approximately -90 hours of sleep and contraband caffeine, helped by sass and physical affection

“How many hours do you have to go without sleep before you start hallucinating?” Magne asks Compress after a long night with Twice at the hospital. Well, more like breaking Twice out of the hospital, the entire thing involving rubber bands, a hot glue gun, and copious amounts of photos of Nick Cage. None of them have insurance, after all, to pay for the stab wound. And the whole villainy thing, that too. 

“Forty eight, maybe?” Compress tilts his head to the side, putting a hand on his chin contemplatively. 

“It’s seventy two hours.”

Magne makes a startled noise while Compress barely suppresses a flinch, glancing behind them to where Izuku is sitting in the corner booth with his textbooks spread out across the table. “It’s seventy two hours.” Izuku repeats, dead eyes gazing past them as he holds his drink with badly shaking hands. 

Both of them stare at him, obviously bewildered. “How do you know that?” Compress asks slowly, voice thick with concern. 

Izuku takes another long drag of his coffee. “There’s a clown behind you.”

The clown waves. Izuku waves back. 

.

“What’s bitchin?” Hitoshi asks, dead eyes not moving from his laptop as he furiously types at their seat in the Shop. Across from him, Mei sticks her tongue out of the corner of her mouth as she frantically pages through an engineering textbook, her other hand fiddling with some other contraption that sparks ominously. 

Izuku collapses next to Mei, uncaring of the potential explosion if it could get him out of studying. “I long for death.” 

Without missing a beat, both of them chime in. “Same.” 

Flipping open his Japanese textbook, he slips out the worksheets he downloaded online and throws himself into studying them, the rest of the world turning psychedelic colors in the corners of his vision. Sweet, another side effect of not having slept in almost a week. 

Eventually, they take a break, with Mei being the elected coffee fetcher. She grumbles, not wanting to separate from her death machine, but obligatory gets up with their combined cash and joins the line of exhausted students, quickly chatting up several of the Not For the Hero Fuckers members who formed their own study groups. They’re nice enough people, but quickly grew unnerved with the fervor the three of them took to studying. It’s not his fault that his past incarnation was a feral raccoon with rabies. 

“What are you studying from anyhow?” Izuku asks curiously when Hitoshi quickly switches tabs when someone walks behind him, hunched protectively over his screen like he’s a dragon and it’s his gold. 

Hitoshi purses his mouth, eying him for a long moment. “…Promise not to say anything to Hatsume?” 

If there’s one thing Izuku loves more than friendship, it’s secrets, specifically the kind of secrets that are the exact opposite of ‘Midoriya I need your help to hide a body’ that he gets at least four times a fucking day. “Sure!” 

Spinning his laptop around, Hitoshi brandishes his screen. 

Izuku takes back every good thing he’s ever said about Hitoshi. 

“Coursehero?” Izuku asks cheerfully, voice so fake it wouldn’t fool a snail. But Hitoshi’s…not dumb, but has very little experience with friends lying to him, mostly because he’s never had friends before Izuku took the baseball bat of ‘Platonic Soulmates’ to his skull. Lying is a skill Izuku had to learn within three days of meeting Tomura. 

“Yep, Auntie got it for me to help me prepare for the exams. I guess she still felt bad for missing Christmas.” Hitoshi states conversationally, and Izuku shoots him a dark look which reads we’ll be talking about this later, while Hitoshi conveniently looks out the window attempting to whistle. Attempting, is the key word. It’s quite evident that Hitoshi can’t whistle for the life of him and can only make a sound like some pot smoker after a hit. Don’t ask. 

But still. Coursehero. 

Just the idea of it is making him salivate. All those papers no longer hidden by hundreds of firewalls and fake blurry images to fool him into hoping that the first four offered lines could offer him the answers he craves. And Hitoshi has it. 

Mei flounces back with two of their drinks, setting her and Izuku’s coffees down. “Someone volunteered to test one of my babies out!” Her eyes sparkle ominously, leaving Izuku with the feeling that they didn’t quite volunteer as they were voluntold. Without another word, she’s gone just like that, screaming at the top of her lungs as she approaches some boy with yellow hair and a black zig zag who, understandably, looks terrified for his fucking life right now. 

“Purple Panda…?” The poor barista calls out, sounding so confused and drawing the attention of half the cafe. Hitoshi stares at the ceiling, long suffering. “Um, mocha for Purple Panda?” 

Izuku’s silent for a long moment. “Are you gonna -”

“Yeah.” Hitoshi interrupts him, still staring at the ceiling. “Just…Just give me a moment.” 

A long moment stretches into two, a full minute passing by before Izuku realizes Hitoshi is too anxious to get up. Immediately, Izuku feels the Mom Friend Override™ activate like he’s some kind of sleeper agent, every instinct screaming at him to solve every problem of Hitoshi’s that has ever existed. 

So of course he just gets up and fetches Hitoshi’s coffee for him. 

The barista, towering over eight feet tall with tattoos running up and down his arms and knives for hair, hands over the coffee with evident confusion as he stares at Izuku’s own green hair. He opens his mouth, and then closes it again, which is good because otherwise Izuku would have to add his appearance to reason 403 why this place is probably a cover for a drug cartel. 

Trudging back to the table, he retakes his seat and offers out Hitoshi’s coffee. “Congratulations, I now have to come up with some kind of cover story on why I would be called Purple Panda, when I’m neither purple nor a panda.” 

Hitoshi smiles at him behind the rim of his cup, taking several large sips. “You’re kinda like a panda though. A baby panda. Tiny, harmless, and cuddly.” He eyes Izuku. “Maybe not harmless.”

“Another word about my height and I’m going to break your kneecaps, Hichan.” Izuku says sweetly. 

“Moving on,” Hitoshi accepts quickly. “Please don’t tell Hatsume I have Coursehero? Or anyone, please.” He smirks. “Everyone for themselves, after all.” 

“Sure, it’s no problem!” Izuku shrugs, a small little half smile playing around his mouth. 

Hitoshi sighs. “Thank you. Sometimes, I feel like you’re the only one I can trust, Midoriya.” And that’s the exact moment when the sleeping drugs Izuku put in his coffee kicks in and he passes out. 

Izuku keeps smiling serenely even as Hitoshi’s head hits the table with an audible ‘thunk’, carefully extracting the mocha from his grip before it spills over the table. Then, he reaches over for Hitoshi’s laptop and slides it across the table towards him, phone already out to take nonstop pictures. “Everyone for themselves!” He chirps cheerfully. 

He’s not that good of a friend. Besides, Hitoshi needs the sleep.

(Izuku acknowledges the hypocritically in that statement, but given that he has the self preservation instincts of a goldfish, he’s elected to ignore it)

Across the room, Mei cackles as her newest victim screeches in agony. No one bothers to look over. 

.

Shouto walks into the kitchen to find Izuku crying hysterically over a baking pan, and then immediately does a U-turn and walks straight out. He pauses in the doorway, and Izuku swears he hears him mutter “do this for Inko-san, Shouto” to himself. 

Either way, Shouto pivots back into the kitchen, face set like he’s a soldier going off to war. “What are you doing?”

“Baking!” Izuku sobs cheerfully, smiling brightly at his best friend with tears running down his face. “I was really craving honey buns.” 

Shouto blinks. “It’s two AM.”

He keeps sobbing with a smile. “I know.”

Another blink. “Do you ever sleep?” Shouto asks, almost wonderingly. 

“I mean, sometimes I close my eyes when I blink.”

As if he was a wild animal, Shouto slowly approaches him, gently taking the baking pan out of his hands. Izuku let’s him, mostly because his hands are shaking horribly. “I was making the dough and I didn’t let the yeast rise enough so I had to add more yeast and then the dough was too wet so I had to add more flour and now…” He sniffs. “There’s so much dough.”

Shouto glances over to where a giant cooking bowl is filled to the brim with dough. “Don’t worry about it.” He reassures, though he frowns in bafflement at what they’re going to do with approximately ten pounds of dough. 

“It isn’t this hard in Cooking Mama.” Izuku blubbers, barely noticing how Shouto tucks the pan away and guides him by his shoulders out of the room.

“Have you ever heard about ASMR?” Shouto asks, faux casually as he steers him towards his room. “I’ve been really into the video where the nun takes care of me while I have the plague.” There’s a long pause, before he says, voice fond. “I feel like I’m in good hands.” 

Considering Izuku has watched that video, he feels like he should be concerned about that when he has more energy to care. 

Izuku gets three lines into Shouto monotonously reading the Bee movie script before he passes out face first sideways on his bed, Shouto asleep perpendicular over his back. Inko takes a photo and hangs it up on the hallway wall to shove off to all the other Thursday Book Club members

.

Kurogiri walks into the bar to see the entire league crying hysterically, all of them holding loaves of various sizes. 

“There’s just…” Himiko sobs. “So much bread.” 

Shouto sits among a throne of bread, handing out more loaves to the crying villains with a blank face. “Have some more.” He says blankly to a bawling Spinner. “Homemade bread for free.” Shouto chants, like some knockoff 19th century newspaper boy. 

Kurogiri tries to leave, but a small figure cloaked in green stops him in his tracks, balancing four loaves on his open physics textbook. “Eat the bread, Girichan.” Izuku says, eyes manic. “Eat the bread.”

“Don’t do this to me, I can’t handle anymore yeast products! Load it on, buddy-o! ” Twice yelps, the sound mixed with both utter joy and utter pain as Shouto hands him more bread. 

In the corner, Dabi shoves an entire loaf into Tomura’s mouth, laughing maniacally as Tomura let’s out a muffled scream.

Kurogiri, understandably, is terrified. 

.

“Hey, do you have a bag I can borrow?” Tomura asks, searching around the bar for his handheld. 

“The only bags I have are the ones under my eyes, and they’re specifically designed to carry the burden of my existence.” Izuku says. 

“…Literally all you had to do was say no.” 

Izuku glares at him, one hand practically attaching the coffee cup to his mouth while the other is scribbling formulas in the vain attempt at memorization. “What do you even need a bag for?” 

“I’m going camping.” Tomura says absentmindedly, not noticing when Izuku chokes on his coffee. Tomura…camping? “I need something to hold my games.” 

Across from him, Himiko looks vaguely shell shocked. “This is the dark timeline.” She mutters under her breath. 

Kurogiri, luckily, comes to their help while wiping a perfectly clean glass. He has a feeling that the fact they live on top of a bar isn’t a coincidence in the slightest with how much he’s thrown himself into the aesthetic. “Shigaraki Tomura has discovered where the middle Todoroki son lives and has decided to go stalk him.” 

Himiko and Izuku trade wide eyed looks. “Dude,” Izuku breathes. “Dabi’s going to kill you.” 

Tomura grins. “I know, right?” Finding a bag, Tomura pockets all his games and pulls up his face mask. “See all you losers later, I’m going on a stealth mission.” 

“Have fun…?” Himiko waves hesitantly as Tomura walks out the door, looking honestly not sure what to do with herself. Izuku feels her. He feels her so badly.  

About twenty minutes later, one of his snapchats lovingly nicknamed Cryptid Sightings solely for embarrassing pictures of Tomura pops up with a notification. Himiko and him open it at the same time, staring at the selfie of Natsuo grinning wildly in a grocery store with Tomura following him, not being inconspicuous at all, and the caption yoooo he thinks he’s so slick! LOLOL. 

Less than thirty seconds later, Dabi storms down the stairs, already on fire like some kind of avenging angel. “I’M GONNA FUCKING KILL THAT NECROPHILE ASSHOLE!” 

Izuku just sighs as he watches Dabi practically fly out the door in his endless pursuit in turning Tomura to a fried corpse, biting down on his pencil and trying to write with his coffee cup. Himiko stares, and it takes him a moment to realize what just went wrong. 

Are you fucking killing me -

.

Izuku doesn’t sleep the night before the exam. He doesn’t study either, a migraine taking residence behind his eyes by banging pots and pans obnoxiously. It’s nearing one AM when he creeps out of bed, stumbling down the hall towards the low level of noise from the living room.

Shouto’s asleep on the couch, socked feet kicked up on the armrest and elbow thrown over his eyes to block out the flashing light of the TV. Izuku takes a look at the TV, catches some blonde model in heels bitch slap either her identical twin or a fellow model, and promptly turns the reality show off before its content can burn into his brain.

It’s not that Izuku dislikes reality shows. Rather, he gets so into it that his mother had to suplex him to tear the remote from his white knuckled hands. Avi should have won season two of Skin Wars and he will die on that fucking hill. 

Picking up one of their numerous throw blankets, he gently lays the surfing dogs quilt over Shouto. His best friend shifts in his sleep, a grey eye peeking up at him cautiously before relaxing back into the couch cushions. “Mmh, sleep.” Shouto grumbles, gesturing to his general direction. 

He smiles humorlessly. “I’m trying.” But Shouto’s already unconscious once more, so the words go unheard. But once again, he doesn’t give his mother enough credit, including her ability to automatically tell when Izuku’s up later when he should be, especially after he finally somewhat fixed his sleeping schedule. 

“Izuku?” He jolts up, glancing up down the hallway. His mom yawns back at him, hair messy and a sleeping robe loose around her shoulders in the dim light of the lamp from her bedroom. “Can’t sleep?” 

Shaking his head mutely, she smiles gently, beckoning him over. They end up sitting on her bed against the headboard, her arm wrapped around his shoulders as he cuddles into her side. For a long moment, he just listens to her breathe, closing his eyes as she gently runs her hand through his hair. 

“What if I don’t get into U.A.?” He whispers. The hand threading through his bangs stills for a moment, before she brushes them back to affectionately kiss his forehead. “What if…What if everyone was right about me?” 

It burns to admit it. But even when the whole world was against Izuku, his mother has always been there. Sometimes she’s failed, he admits, even though the very thought feels sacrilegious. But what parent hasn’t messed up at some point or another? 

His mother has always loved him. She’s always tried, when no one else was willing. 

“You know, that day when I got the call from your school, I was terrified.” His mom admits, and Izuku’s breath catches in his throat. “I didn’t know what to do, I…I just sat in my car for so long. It was only when the hospital called me so I could come in to sign paperwork that I finally made myself move.” 

He grimaces, hiding his face in her shoulder. In retrospect, there was nothing in particular that led up to it. He did his homework (mind drifting, half scribbled problems that he gave up on halfway through because his mind couldn’t focus), he went to bed at a decent hour (tossing and turning, unable to sleep and unable to entertain himself), he walked to school (bag yanked off and books scattered in the road, loud taunts of go kill yourself already, freak! and he stared at the cars passing by with far too much longing), he attended class on time (listening to to their jeers and insults and pins his shoes and milk on his gym clothes and white flowers on his desk), he paid attention to his teachers (Midoriya you’ll never amount to anything Midoriya you need to think realistically Midoriya) (Hero Teacher Doctor Manager Lawyer Technician Engineer Counselor Accountant Midoriya you’ll never amount to anything Midoriya you need to think realistically MIDORIYA -). 

And Izuku…just…snapped. 

It was ugly. He doesn’t remember most of it; just the god awful crying, the strands of green he teared out in his shaking fists and the screaming. The principal was there, and so was the nurse and the counselor as he shrieked himself uncontrollably, threatening to kill himself in front of half a dozen witnesses. 

They called an ambulance. Of course they did, they had no choice, but he wouldn’t let anyone touch him, clawing and kicking at anyone who tried. 

Kacchan was the one who ended up carrying him out. He bulldozed his way between the swarm of all the suddenly concerned teachers, scooping up the screaming Izuku in his arms and didn’t bat an eyelash at the scratches Izuku gouged down his cheek. By the time they met up with the paramedics, Izuku had exhausted himself and let himself be limply handed off and strapped down. 

He’s never seen Kacchan look that scared before. It was the last time he’s ever seen him, too. 

Izuku spent three days in a pediatric psychiatric hospital, with the consent of his mother after his suicide threat. When he was let out, he spent another week hiding in his room, drifting between sleep and the heavy haze in his mind. Little things made him cry, or go numb entirely, and his mother fretted herself into a nervous wreck. 

He dropped out of school about a month after that, when he realized that the mere idea of leaving the sanctuary of the house had him puking in the toilet. Agoraphobia onset from a Depressive episode, Izuku learned from an overheard phone call between his terrified mother and their family doctor. Desperate for anything to fill the endless hours besides the void of his head and the tears that blurred his vision when he watched Hero videos, he played a game his father had bought for him in his recent splurge of gifts in an attempt to make up for his lack of emotional involvement in his life. Sea of Thieves, to be exact. 

And he met his friends, and the rest is history.

“You were so small and so quiet when I saw you again.” He remembers how she had clasped his cold hands with her trembling ones, crouching down in front of his chair with unshed tears clinging to her eyelids. “I promised myself that I would do everything I could to make the world easier for you.”

“Izuku, listen to me.” His mother looks him in the eyes, and tells him the words he’s always wanted to hear but never had the courage to ask. “You are not useless. No matter what you do in life, what you become or career path you chose. You’re fourteen, baby - you’re not supposed to know what you’re doing with your life right now.” She tickles his side, pulling a laugh out of him. “If one path collapses, there’s three more in its place. If U.A. doesn’t work out, there’s the programs at Shiketsu or Ketsubutsu, there’s online schooling, you don’t even have to go to school at all and I would still be just as proud of you.”

She kisses the top of his head. “So just live.” 

. 

Izuku wakes up the next morning in his mom’s bed, the blanket tucked tight around his shoulders. He smiles despite how hot he feels, neatly making the bed after he climbs out to take his shower. 

His mom is in the kitchen making breakfast when he walks in, Shouto dodging her heels like a sullen puppy, matching green hair shining under the lighting. She hugs him several times, fussing over his appearance and checking to make sure he still has the lunch she packed. 

Shouto’s less aggressive of his worry; all he does is hand him a charm for exams he must have bought at a nearby shrine. He’s surprisingly traditional on things like these. 

Natsuo walks him part of the way there, excusing it as him passing through the neighborhood on a jog despite there being at least three stun guns under his suspiciously black overcoat and blood on his knuckles. They jump over all the cracks in the sidewalk together until they reach the train station, Natsuo ruffling his hair with a wild grin before disappearing back into the crowds to finally get some shut eye. 

The entire train ride, his phone keeps buzzing obnoxiously, forcing him to bow in apology to the irritated commuters before muting the sound. It still vibrates every few seconds, his screen filled with constant messages. 

Mag-nee 

You got this darling!

Astukun

Put on a show they’ll remember for the ages or I’ll disown you 

I realize you’re not my child but I have a very powerful ‘I’m not mad, just disappointed’ stare

Jinkun

kick their asses! or get your own ass kicked!

whatever you want <333

Iguchan

[Stain-is-proud-of-you.gif]

Show all those false heroes how it’s done kiddo

Girichan

I’ll prepare some of your mother’s katsudon for when you visit the bar.

You’ll do wonderful, Midoriya. 

Tomuchan

dont fuck this up

i didnt spent all those hours learning fucking art history for nothing 

you better ace this fucking exam or ill kill you

…

good luck

Himichan

˚✧₊⁎( ˘ω˘ )⁎⁺˳✧༚❀.(*´◡`*)❀.

Good luck Izuku-kun!

I made a blood sacrifice for you ~

Don’t worry it’s from a pigeon (✿◠‿◠)

If you get tired let me know and I’ll take your place for a bit (๑✧◡✧๑)

I love you!

Dachan

Kick names take ass

I’ll be waiting for you after the exam, go left, third alleyway on the right, next to the mochi shop

We got superman ice cream depending on whether you want to celebrate or cry and Super Smash Bros so we can watch that funny twitch in Shigaraki’s eyebrow whenever he gets his ass kicked

Let me know if anyone’s mean to you so I can torch their ass

Show all those losers up, Midori

Izuku wipes his eyes, sniffling quietly as he shuts down his phone. He’ll respond to them later - right now, he just…he just needs to breathe for a little bit. 

He’s got such good friends, he realizes as he catches sight of Mei and Hitoshi waiting for him at the gate, Mei waving enthusiastically and Hitoshi tugging his hood over his face in embarrassment. Both of them smile when they see him, Hitoshi linking their elbows together and Mei chattering his ear off about possible inventions. Izuku doesn’t say much, carrying that torch of warmth in his stomach even into the exam, a pencil in his hand and a packet set in front of him. Exhaustions still clings to him, blurring the world at the edges and softening his thoughts, but more than anything, he feels fucking petty. 

So when they ask him What are the flaws of the Hero System? Izuku…Izuku blacks out. 

The next thing he knows, the examiner (It’s Present Mic what the fuck) is taking the exam away from him looking slightly disturbed, the essay spilling out onto his back up papers. And his seatmate’s back up papers. And the people behind him. His hand aches, graphite smeared across his aching fingers and mind blissfully numb with the knowledge he spent fifteen pages roasting the Hero system into smithereens. Izuku, why are you like this. 

Hitoshi is whisked away by the crowd, but not without a high five and manic eye contact because what the fuck just happened. He’s pretty sure Hitoshi just had a come to jesus moment on the reality of management studies, especially because he’s pretty sure half of the students were either sobbing hysterically or laughing maniacally throughout the entire exam. Or both. 

He was both, obviously. Duh. 

Rubbing his eyes, he staggers out of the exam room, letting the crowd and the faint memory of a text guide his steps out of the school and down the road. The street signs are too blurry for him to read, the words sliding right out of his vision and color smearing like some kinda asshole abstract art. He’s just… 

Izuku is so tired. 

The mochi shop has a bright green sign, he remembers, but he doesn’t know why he needs to go there anymore. He stops a little off to the side of the glowing sign, the neon lights pulsing in his brain, and doesn’t protest when a figure with a hood up grabs his wrist and drags him into the alleyway. Death’s finally here, yay. 

“Uh oh, someone’s exhausted.” A familiar voice teases him, but Izuku can’t remember who. A warm hand poke his cheek, warm enough that he instinctively sinks into the chest in front of him with a relieved sigh. “Uh, Midori? Wait, don’t tell me -”

It’s at this point his knees give out, eyes rolling up as his spite-induced energy finally runs out. Someone barely catches him, leather feeling arms snagging him under his shoulders before his head smacks against the filthy cement. “Called it.” The voice says, sounding strained. 

A sigh, and then his limbs are being arranged, his arms pulled around a warm neck and legs wrapped around someone’s waist as they monkey carry him. “The things I do for you. You’re lucky Shou and Natsu like you.” They grunt, and Izuku can only hum, sinking into the warmth as the person carries him somewhere. 

A hand rests on the back of his head, tucking his face into their scarred neck. “Go to sleep Midori. We’ll celebrate when you wake up.” 

Izuku smiles, and lets the tidal wave of exhaustion drag him under. 

.

Wrinkling his nose, Izuku mutters something incomprehensible as he feels something moving along his cheek. Several people gasp, and Tomura cackles, which is an immediate sign that he better wake up right now.

“The fuck?” He mumbles, forcing his eyes open. His cheek is pressed against warm leather, arms locked tight around the thing he’s forcibly cuddling.

The thing that is currently chuckling into his hair. Izuku eyes widen, cautiously glancing up. 

Dabi raises an eyebrow back, his phone balanced on the top of Izuku’s hair. “Hey there Midori, think you could release me now?”

Izuku realizes very quickly that he’s currently lying on top of Dabi’s chest and is gripping his shirt with a Vulcan death grip. He squeaks. “Shit, sorry!” He yelps, hurriedly untangling himself from Dabi. It’s only when he’s scooted himself to the other side of the bed that he realizes that the rest of the league is standing around them in a semicircle. Kurogiri has a camera. Himiko’s holding a marker. 

Narrowing his eyes, he glances down at his forearms. “You didn’t.”

Himiko nods sagely. “I did.”

All over his forearms are little doodles, obviously little sketches from everyone in the league. He doesn’t recognize most of the handwriting, except for Tomura’s lopsided DEATH IS A PREFERABLE ALTERNATIVE TO COMMUNISM next to a highly detailed sketch of Mr. Clean in a thong. He doesn’t even want to know what’s on his face. 

“I hate all of you.” He grumbles. 

“Love you too, kiddo.” Dabi says dryly, and feeling bad considering he’s been using Dabi as a pillow for the last…who knows, considering he still feels exhausted, Izuku mumbles a quick not you and gets a single head pat in return. 

“Great, love this sweet moment, can you get off my bed now?” Tomura snips, nudging Dabi’s leg with his toe like he’s some diseased thing. 

“You wouldn’t let go when I put you down for a nap,” Dabi explains at Izuku’s confused expression. “It was either stay hunched over or lay down and browse my phone. It being Shigaraki’s bed wasn’t exactly a hardship.” 

“I’m gonna have to wash everything.” Tomura hisses. “Who knows what kind of shit you carry around, you walking staph infection.” 

Dabi blows Tomura a kiss. That, somehow, is the worst possible response he could have chosen. 

Before (another) blood bath occurs, Kurogiri claps his hands faux-cheerfully. “I’m sure Midoriya is still exhausted. Your mother called, you can stay as long as you need to rest up before returning home.” Izuku was pointedly not thinking about the fact that they have each other’s numbers. Kurogiri’s crush on his mother isn’t something he likes to think about. 

“You heard him: get.” Tomura pokes Dabi again with a gloved hand, and it’s only quick reflexes that stops himself from getting a steel toed boot to the crotch. The rest of them trickle towards the exit of Tomura’s room, lingering around the doorframe as Dabi extracts himself from Tomura's nest of pillows and blankets. 

“Goodnight, Midoriya Izuku.” Kurogiri says, sounding like he’s smiling. 

Izuku smiles sleepily, moving over so Tomura can crawl into the bed next to him. “Night, Girichan.” 

“Get some sleep!” Spinner waves enthusiastically. 

Compress tips his hat. “Sleep tight.” 

“I love you, Izuku-kun!” Himiko jumps in place. “Don’t let the bed bugs bite!” 

But of course, the league being the league, they can never have a soft moment without someone ruining it. He trusted Magne. “Tonight.” 

“Ima fight.” Twice immediately chimes in, his huge smile visible even under his mask. 

Dabi finger guns, shit eating grin stretching as far as the staples would let him. “Till we see the sunlight.” 

“Tik tok.” Compress whips out a pocket watch from gods know where, because he lives for drama like Shouto lives for shitty reality TV. 

Rolling his eyes, Izuku can’t help but join in. “On the clock.” He states monotonously. 

Himiko, at the very least, doesn’t seem deterred. “But the party don’t stop-”

“Oh, whoa, whoa-oh!” They shout as one, several of them even throwing a fist up into the air or yelling excitedly. Except for Kurogiri, because Kurogiri is already safely in the hallway far away from the inevitable fallout. 

“SHUT THE FUCK UP!” Tomura screams, throwing a pillow at the group. It hits Himiko hard enough in the face to knock her right over. “THE NEXT PERSON WHO SINGS IS GETTING THEIR PAYCHECK DOCKED!”

Despite the fact that Izuku is about 90% certain they don’t get paid, they all take the hint and quickly clear the room, most of them snickering or outright cackling. 

And Izuku? 

Izuku grins widely, feeling more alive than he has all week as Tomura grumbles to himself with that hysterical twitch in his eyebrow, flopping down in the bed next to Izuku. Fuck U.A., Izuku decides as he lays down, tucking his head underneath Tomura’s chin. He’s got all he needs right here.

Chapter Text

Dabi’s room above Kurogiri’s bar is always warm. 

Back at Fath - Endeavor’s home, it was warm as well, but in a different way. Every breath was a death rattle, his chest aching as he creaked through the house on soundless feet. At Dabi’s, even if the room was small (it’s really just a converted broom closet with a twin bed shoved in the corner), Dabi layered the room with blankets and pillows, reminding Shouto of those pillow forts he used to see on TV. 

Inko-san’s home is warm as well, like the heat from an oven after cooking a fresh loaf of bread. Shouto shakes his head at the memory - no more bread. He’s firmly shut the memory in a box and threw it at terminal velocity towards the fucking sun, like most of his traumatic experiences. And while he prefers to sleep on her couch (both Dabi and Natsuo invited him to live with them, but Dabi has strange sleeping schedules and Natsuo shares a dorm room with two others) he tends to sleep on Dabi’s floor once a week or so. He decided to sleepover last night, as Midoriya has finally recovered enough to leave Dabi's boss's bed for more than bathroom breaks and three AM incidences of eating everything in the fridge, the residential cryptid that he is. 

“You excited for school?” Dabi asks him, barely awake and not even hiding the fact that he’s putting more rum into his drink than actual coffee. 

Shouto nods, setting his bowl of cereal down on the table in front of him before adding ice cubes from his hand into the milk. Dabi winces like he was shot, before skipping the coffee altogether and chugging rum straight from the bottle. “Inko-san made me a bento for lunch. It has little sausage octopuses.” 

Dabi’s lip twitches. “You’re a simp for mamadoriya - wait fuck don’t look that up.” Shouto slowly places his burner phone back down, knowing full well what simp means but reveling in any petty revenge he can get after his brother decided to fake his death for ten years. “I know that look. Fess up.” 

Putting down his spoon, Shouto straightens up, trying to look as serious as the matter feels. “What if…” He starts slowly. “I can’t make friends?” 

Dabi laughs at first, but rapidly realizes that Shouto is dead serious. “Oh shit.” He glances around desperately. “Where the hell is Natsu when you need him?!” 

“He’s tracking down a drug cartel and ‘putting the fear of god into them’, or otherwise he would be here, he said.” Shouto says, straight face, and even opens up his messaging app to show Dabi. His brother reads the message Shouto spent a solid twenty minutes last night deciphering between the wave of emojis and slang, and he only rubs his hand across his eyes in response. 

“Okay, look.” Dabi heaves a great sigh like this conversation is killing him. “As long as you don’t talk about sex - you’ve had the sex talk, right?”

“Yes, Midoriya gave it to me.” Shouto answers evenly. “It was quite informative.” It was. There was a powerpoint and everything. They ordered pizza and made an afternoon of it, and Inko-san taught him how to use ‘incognito mode, Shokun it’ll be helpful for a lot of things, not only sex, it showed me how to get the blood out of my new carpet after Himiko-chan’s visit and how to word my prenup so I'll get my fair share when he dies’. 

Dabi groans, head thudding against the kitchen table. Shouto wonders if he’s trying to give himself brain damage. Unlikely, it would be much easier if he used the sharp corner instead of the wooden top. “I don’t want to think about Midori teaching you how to put a condom on a banana.” Before Shouto can ask what bananas have to do with anything, Dabi picks himself up with a mutter. “Okay, what was I saying? Oh yeah, sex. Just don’t talk about sex and you’ll be fine. I think.” 

“Is that how you made friends?” He asks curiously. Dabi flips him off. 

“Get going, you’ll be late.” Shouto checks the time on his phone, and while it’s still a comfortable amount left over, he goes back to eating his cereal, crunching on the ice loudly. Dabi gets up, mumbling something about not being paid enough for this, why did I decide to be a brother again? It was better as an only child and takes the rum bottle with him. 

His phone beeps, reminding him of one of the several group messaging apps Midoriya forcibly installed. There’s some games downloaded too, which he plays whenever the others are involved in their more competitive console games. Currently, a game called ‘Dream Daddy’ is his favorite. No Natsuo, he does not have ‘daddy issues’, he just thinks Craig is attractive. Toga understands him, though she called him ‘basic’ for his tastes, whatever that means. 

King Simp

Good luck today, Izuku-kun, Shouto-kun! (•̀ᴗ•́)و ̑̑

God Simp

thanks himichan! you’re the best <3

Anti-Simp

choke on a dick and die

God Simp

are you offering tomuchan? i bite :))

Normie

Why are you biting? 

From somewhere further in the apartment, Dabi lets out a muffled screech. 

Simp Magnet

FREJKFENFRF NO ONE FUCKING TELL HIM

God Simp

it’s a sex joke, shoucchan

Normie

Oh.

What does ‘FREJKFENFRF’ mean then?

Anti-Simp

it’s a keysmash idiot

Normie

How do I do that?

King Simp

Just type anything you want! (✿◠‿◠)

Normie

7.

Dabi laughs so hard Shouto has to get up to make sure he isn’t actually choking. 

It’ll be a good day. He thinks. 

.

Meanwhile, Izuku is about ready to kill a bitch. 

“Love you mom!” He calls out as he runs around the house like a chicken with its head cut off. Where did he put that notebook - !

His mom smirks at him, raising an eyebrow as she dangles his blackmail notebook from one hand. “This one?” 

“Thank you!” Izuku grins, throwing himself in a hug. She instantly hugs him back, rubbing his back and soothing any of his first day’s nerves. “You’re the best.” He says as he steps back, rubbing the back of his head sheepishly. 

She playfully slaps his arm. “You know I am. Now, your father called earlier - you were still asleep at Tokun’s, don’t worry - and he wants to call you after your first day of high school.”

Despite himself, his face scrunches up. “Does he have to?” 

“If you really don’t want to.” She says slowly, eyes moving across the ceiling oh so casually. “But if you talk to him, he might just buy you that new PlayStation you wanted.” 

Izuku narrows his eyes. “God of War edition?” 

She nods with a smug grin, knowing she already has him. “Fine.” He acquiesces grudgingly, because a ten minute awkward conversation would be worth it to have the white console with a matching controller and a price tag worth well over 100,000 yen. 

They shake on it, because they understand the value of deals, before Izuku realizes he’s going to be late at this rate. “I gotta go, I’ll update you on how my day is going at lunch?” He sends his text to Kurogiri, begging for a quick pick up. 

“Please do.” Ruffling his hair, she steps back as the unmistakable sound of Kurogiri’s warp gape opening fills the room. “Have a good day at school! Don’t hurt yourself! And please, for the love of all that is sacred, don’t kill someone on campus.” 

Izuku waves goodbye. “No promises!” 

“Which answer is that question for?” 

“Yes.” 

“Izu -” 

“Bye!” He jumps through the warp gate with a sharp salute, snickering at her exasperated sigh. It’s like stepping out his front door, the change in air pressure and temperature that’s just noticeable enough for him to hesitate for a beat. There’s a glimmer of the warm amber of the bar, before he’s falling through another gate onto something that squishes beneath him. 

Izuku doesn’t have much time to dwell on that, mostly because 176 inches of pain lands directly on his solar plexus and grinds his spine into the dirt like spices in a mortar bowl. 

“Hey Shoucchan.” He wheezes. 

Shouto wheezes back from where he’s starfished over him. “Hey Midoriya.” 

“I see that you took Girichan’s gate too.” He notes. 

Shouto makes some kind of sound that, at best, would be described as a cat overcome with disgust at the absolute failures of humanity. Izuku’s not sure if it’s aimed towards himself, Izuku, Kurogiri, or the world in general. 

Eventually, both of them manage to climb to their feet, clutching their aching stomachs and glaring half-heartedly at each other. He finally manages to take a look at what he landed on, and his face scrunches up at the sheer pettiness of it. 

A dumpster? Really, Girichan?

Having somehow fully predicted this, Shouto whips out a Febreze can from his bag and douses himself liberally. “Want some?” He offers, shaking the bottle. 

Izuku sighs, spreading his arms out. “Why not.” 

Shouto quickly showers him down like it’s bug spray with a bottle labeled as ‘Downy April Fresh’. At least Izuku has good friends. And even mildly annoyed, Kurogiri only dropped them a street over from U.A. Izuku knew the old grump liked him somewhere in that cold, dead heart of his that only cares about Tomura for some reason. He’s not touching whatever weird pseudo parental/exasperated adult vs. whiny manchild dynamic they have going on with a ten foot pole. 

“Have a good day at school, Shoucchan!” Izuku waves his best friend goodbye at the gate, ignoring all the weird looks they get as they take turns taking pictures in front of the entrance. Both of them are going on his mom’s wall and considering he would literally kill god for her, everyone else can burn. Quite literally, as Shouto sets fire to someone’s Endeavor keychain in revenge for their snickering. Or it might just be because it’s Endeavor, who knows. “Emerge from your chrysalis like the beautiful social butterfly you were always meant to be.”

A strange, almost frantic light passes over Shouto’s eyes. “A social…butterfly…Midoriya, you’re a goddamn genius. I’m going to go make friends. All the friends.”   

Izuku pats his shoulder. “God help them all.” He mutters under his breath. 

“What was that?” 

“Nothing!”

.

Shouto pauses in front of his classroom, looking at the freakishly large door. Like, is this really necessary? But no, he has more important things, and that is his solemn duty to making friends. He's never really had any before, discounting Dabi and Natsuo, who are his literal brothers, and Midoriya, who's more like an affectionate parasite that bribes people into following them home before locking the door and gently kidnapping them. Inko-san, of course, is a goddess among men and doesn't count. 

Opening the door, he eyes the occupants, choosing his first target with precision after checking the seating chart on the teacher's desk. “Want to be friends?” 

The girl with a ponytail blinks. “…Sure?”

He sits down next to her in his assigned seat, mentally fist bumping at already making a friend. He's so good at this. “Great. I’m Shirakumo Touya, nice to meet you.” 

No, he did not choose the last name. Rather, when they were drafting his current fake ID so he could go see Dr. Shinsou on Fridays, Kurogiri was the one in charge of sketching up a fake name, as Shouto couldn’t be bothered to pick one. They couldn’t choose Midoriya, in case of plausible deniability, and that was the only one he truly wanted, so Shirakumo it was. When Shouto asked about the origin, Kurogiri himself seemed confused on where it came about. 

The first name was 100% intentional though. Dabi made the most hilarious face when Shouto chose it and every time it’s mentioned, his whole body spasms like he’s having a seizure. Natsuo, naturally, finds it hilarious as well. 

“Yaoyorozu Momo.” She answers hesitantly, hands folded neatly in front of her. In a way, she reminds him of Magne - perhaps it’s the ‘big sister aura’ they carry, as Inko-san would say. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Shirakumo-kun.”

Nope, he’s not gonna get used to that one. 

The boy sitting in front of Yaoyorozu spins in his rolling chair (his inner Midoriya is chirping at how this is such a bad idea. He gently, but firmly, tells his inner Midoriya to leave him alone and go cause chaos elsewhere) to face them and grins widely. “I overheard your conversation, and wow, I like your passion Shirakumo! Yoarashi Inasa, at your service! Nice to meet you, call me Inasa!” 

Yaoyorozu waves her hands frantically. “Oh, I couldn’t!” 

“Sure you should!” Inasa leans forward with an eager smile.

Shouto hums. “Okay. Call me Touya then.” It’ll be easier to respond to that then Shirakumo. “Want to be friends?” 

“Of course!” Inasa agrees easily, and Yaoyorozu’s face is so red he’s worried she’s having a sunburn. Maybe she’s overheating? He cools down the temperature around him just be sure. “We should get food after class together! How about udon?” 

He frowns. “Oh. I prefer cold soba.” It’s important to be honest with your friends, after all. 

Inasa makes a fist, still grinning widely. “I know a place that has both.” 

“Oh.” That’s a totally different story then. “Okay then.” 

Yaoyorozu still looks a little flustered, maybe she’s feeling left out? “It’s okay, you’re still my friend.” He comforts her. “Now we’re all friends. And going to eat soba and udon.” He’s looking forward to it. 

She puts her face in her hands, ears burning a bright pink. “T-That’s not the problem.” 

He tilts his head to the side, but before he can say anything, a monotone voice silences the entire classroom. “If you’re here to make friends, then go ahead and leave.” Guess he won't be mentioning his mission out loud then. That's okay, he can be stealthy. 

Shouto turns to look with his two other friends, and can’t help his single blink in reply. In the frankly ridiculous doorway, a man with shaggy hair stands in a sleeping bag, shedding it gracefully like a - “Butterfly.” He whispers, drawing weird looks from both Yaoyorozu and Inasa. 

“Welcome to the hero course, it took eight seconds before you were quiet.” The butterfly congratulates them dryly. “I’m your homeroom teacher, Aizawa Shouta. Nice to meet you. Put your gym uniforms on and meet me outside in ten minutes.” 

.

“Midoriya!” Hitoshi tries not to look too excited when Izuku walks through the perfectly normal sized door, but obviously fails. He’s adorable. Or utterly terrified at the sheer amount of future corporate sharks filling the room and eyeing each other warily. “I saved you a seat.” 

“Nice.” Izuku grins, skipping across the classroom and sliding into the seat behind Hitoshi next to the windows. The other boy spins in his rolling chair, and wait what, they have rolling chairs? 

He scoots back and forth testingly, and yep, there’s definitely wheels on his chair. Oh, he’s definitely going to abuse that at some point, just wait and see. 

“Where were you? Class is starting soon.” Hitoshi asks, almost accusingly for having abandoned him to the woods, and Izuku stifles a laugh. 

“Just wandering around. Did you know that there’s a highly complex and vast vent system that spans the entire classroom building and even some in the gyms?” He smiles innocently at Hitoshi’s glare. “Just saying.” 

Hitoshi glares harder. “There’s dust on your shoulder.” 

Without looking away, Izuku brushes it off. Hitoshi raises an eyebrow, and with his eyebags, the look is much more threatening than it should be. Izuku actually has a theory about his insomnia being linked to how mental quirks often can't be turned off. “Nice try, but wrong shoulder.” 

“I totally knew that.” Izuku lies, wiping off his other shoulder. Hitoshi opens his mouth, no doubt to call him out on his bullshit, but the bell finally rings and saves Izuku from being roasted like a finely grilled sea bass. 

Hitoshi sends him his this isn’t over look, to which Izuku replies with his best I’ve never done anything wrong in my life ever expression. Unfortunately, it’s not very effective, if at all. Drats. 

The bell has barely finished before boots with a heel that is way too long for field work kick open the perfectly average sized door with an unnecessary amount of drama and noise. Wow, he's already liking it here. “Hello boys and girls, I’m your homeroom teacher, Kayama Nemuri. For the next three years, I’m going to teach all of you naïve children how to beat the industry until it’s your whimpering plaything.” Midnight, the R-Rated Hero, tightens her whip with a threatening smirk. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.” 

“What the FUCK did you get me into.” Hitoshi whisper-screams frantically. Izuku just pats his fluffy hair. It’s too late, but if they die now, they’ll die together at least. 

.

“Where have you been?” Aizawa asks them in irritation when the entire class shows up to the field twenty minutes late. 

A brown haired girl with pink cheeks raises her hand slowly. “Um, Sensei, you didn’t tell us where the locker rooms were. Or the field.”

There’s a pause, before Aizawa groans and pinches his nose. “Fine, you get a pass on that one. Line up, we’re doing a quirk assessment test.” 

Overall, Shouto thinks he does a pretty good job. Yaoyorozu scores first, with Inasa in second and him in third. There’s a blond boy in fourth that seems vaguely familiar and is practically frothing at the mouth. “You!” He growls when the assessment is over and the rest of the class is making their way back to the locker room. “What the hell is with your quirk?” 

Shouto tilts his head to the side. “I can heat and cool the water molecules near me in order to create what you see as ice and fire.” Not quite, but it’s the closest approximation to his quirk that isn’t ‘half-cold half-hot’. It’s a very unique one, afterall, and Endeavor is still under the opinion that he’s been kidnapped. 

Well, that’s sorta true. He scowls internally. He should have listened to his instincts when they started screaming about the smiling boy with green hair who approached him on his way home from school. Now look at him, he has feelings now. 

“Not what I was asking.” The blond boy growls. “Were you fucking dropped on your head as a child or what?!” 

“Bold of you to assume I was held.” He answers without thinking twice. 

Silence. His classmates share troubled looks as the blond boy looks like he’s thirty seconds away from a nervous breakdown.  “I’m hungry.” Shouto announces out loud. They have been out here all morning, after all. 

Yaoyorozu touches his arm gently. “Let’s go to the lunchroom together then, Touya-kun.” 

Inasa pats his other shoulder. “Onward!” He cheers, and both of his new friends push him back into the building, not allowing him to look back once. Off to the side, Aizawa watches him with an unreadable expression. 

.

They’re taking turns introducing themselves, and by the virtue of being later on in the class roster, Izuku can just sit back and let his anxiety stew while they introduce their names and quirks. Great, another reminder on how they’re living in a dystopia. 

Eventually, it’s Hitoshi’s turn. “I’m Shinsou Hitoshi, and my quirk is Brainwashing. I can control people who respond to me, and no, I’ve never committed a crime beyond mild trespassing.” Said incident was because there was a cat in the window who looked sad. At least the owner was very understanding. 

“Shinsou, your quirk would be great for business!” Kayama snaps her whip eagerly as she stops next to his desk, but Hitoshi only frowns uglily. 

“I’m not gonna break the law.” 

The entire class jerks at Kayama’s loud laughter. “HAHA, HAHA, HAHA -” She grabs his shoulder with wild eyes. “Shinsou, my sweet summer child, do you think there’s laws in the business world?”

Hitoshi, wisely, sits back down and shuts up. 

“Next!” She snaps her whip towards Izuku, and he stands up with a soft smile. 

And then proceeds to lose his brain to mouth filter. “I think the entire Hero system is a deck of cards that’s about to collapse and I have no intentions of going into managing the business side of Heroes, but instead taking advantage of the amount of weight U.A. holds for college applications and your internship opportunities. Oh yeah, I’m Midoriya Izuku, and I’m Quirkless, but that just means I’m legally able to carry around a taser and no will believe I’m the perpetrator of an assault charge. Let’s get along now, mmkay?” 

Kayama only bares her teeth in a grin. “I like you!” 

“Thanks!” He grins back just as dangerously. “I like me too.” 

Hitoshi groans and smashes his face into the desk. “Is it too late to go back to General?”

Like they’re all working on some unheard signal, as one, they all start chanting, “ONE OF US! ONE OF US! ONE OF US!”

Hitoshi looks like he’s regretting every single one of his decisions that led him to this point, but mostly his sheer existence as the entire class plus Kayama start screaming loudly as they prepare for the war ahead. Or, you know, high school. 

.

“Shirakumo.” Aizawa’s face curdles as he says his face name, looking pained for a brief moment before it fades back into perpetual blankness. “Stay after class.” 

“I’ll meet you at the gate.” He reassures Yaoyorozu and Inasa, and then pulls out his phone to message Midoriya and Inko-san to be sure. Inko-san replies with a thumbs up and congratulations for making friends, causing him to feel fuzzy, while Midoriya leaves him on read. Not surprisingly, last Shouto saw him, he was talking to a group of rapt management students at lunch like he was a cult leader and they were all his loyal servants. 

Choosing to stand by the teacher’s desk, he waits patiently for the rest of the class to clear out, until Aizawa shuts the door. Then he glares at Shouto. “What’s your name?” 

Shouto blinks. Isn’t his name on the roll card? Besides, Aizawa just called him by it. Maybe he forgot about it. Inko-san did say once that older people forget things more often after he spent half an hour looking for her keys which were in her pocket the whole time. “I’m Shirakumo Touya.” 

“Don’t lie to me.” Aizawa shuffles towards the desk, glaring at him with red and baggy eyes. “You’re clearly Todoroki Shouto.” 

“No I’m not, I’m Shirakumo Touya.” Shouto immediately lies once again. Listening to authority figures is overrated. Except for Inko-san. He would die for her. 

Aizawa narrows his eyes. “The hair dye and quirk name change might have fooled most people, but you have a very distinctive scar.” 

He shrugs. “Wow, what a coincidence.” He says monotonously. 

“I could call Endeavor.” Aizawa warns. 

Welp. He wants to be a Hero, but not that badly. Sleeping on Inko-san’s couch and watching Married at First Sight all day doesn’t sound too bad either. Maybe he could do some minor jobs for Dabi’s boss to pay her back, though he’s seen her bank statements when he runs errands with her. She doesn’t need the money, not with what her husband sends her every week, but he could still buy her something nice. Maybe a new quilt, she likes the one that looks like a fried egg they saw on a commercial -

“But I won’t.” Shouto blinks up at his teacher, not bothering to hide his surprise. “Whatever the reason you ran away, you’re in one shape, you’re being fed, and you seem happy. Are you staying someplace safe?” He slowly nods, and Aizawa lets out a sigh of relief. “Good. If that ever changes, here’s my number.” Aizawa hands him a post-it note with a series of digits on it and a doodle of a cat in the corner. “Any questions?” 

There is one, actually. A burning question that’s been on his mind all morning, entwined so deeply in his being that he thinks of it every step of the way. He looks up at Aizawa with eyes burning brightly and asks, “How do you make friends?” 

Aizawa chokes. 

“Um -” He wipes his mouth, looking frantically around. “That’s - go ask Present Mic about that. I have a staff meeting. Right now. Goodbye, stay safe, I’ll see you tomorrow.” With that, he full on sprints out the door, the door left flapping behind him. 

There’s a rustling sound above him, and the vent’s grate moves out of the way for a head full of green. “I thought he would never leave.” Midoriya complains. There’s some kind of makeshift stun gun in his hands, but Shouto figures it’s better not to ask as his roommate climbs out of the vent and lands neatly on the sparkling boy’s desk. “Himichan and I are going shopping after this, so I’ll walk you to the gate?” 

“Sure.” Shouto replies, holding his hand out to help Midoriya down, which the other boy takes with an indulgent grin. “Oh. I made some friends today, I think.” 

“Nice!” Midoriya grins, dragging him into a quick side hug as they walk down U.A.’s corridors together. “I don’t think I made any friends, sadly, but people are calling me a prophet for some reason? I don’t know, but Hichan keeps sighing and Meichan finds it hilarious.” 

“Cult leader.” Shouto whispers under his breath. 

“What was that?” 

“What was what?” 

. 

“Do you feel better now, Shigaraki Tomura?” Kurogiri asks him with that stupid patronizing tone from the rooftop of a business center across the street. 

“Shut up.” He grunts, adjusting his binoculars as he tracks Izuku and Dabi’s brat walk down U.A.’s ridiculously shiny hallways. The entire place gives him the heebie jeebies, with its shiny symbols and crisp uniforms and All Might. 

“Shut up,” Dabi grunts, though Tomura hasn’t said anything, probably detecting an incoming rant. He peers down at the duo through his own binoculars, laying down over the edge of the rooftop in a lazy sprawl. “I’m trying to lip read over here.”

“Actually, lip reading only has an about 30% success rate, and is much more difficult than it’s portrayed in the media.” Compress pipes up ‘helpfully’, and both Tomura and Dabi wave at him dismissively at the same time. They pause, glaring at each other fiercely before they go back to spying.

“Isn’t this a bit…stalkerish? Not that I care.” Twice pops in from where he’s playing Pokémon Go. He’s spent the last three hours battling the Business center's gym back and forth with his Mystic team, only stopping to occasionally do a raid and reswipe the Pokémon stops. 

“I think it’s cute.” Toga giggles, not at all matching how aggressively she taps as she takes out Twice’s Breloom for the nth time that day and reclaims the gym as with her Instinct Blissey. Fools, Valor is obviously the best team. “Besides, this way we’ll know if someone bullies Izuku-kun or Shouto-kun!”

“And then we kill them.” The entire league says in sync. 

Kurogiri stifles a cough into his hand after a few more minutes have passed. “If I may, I suggest we start packing up soon? I have a chicken roasting in the oven for dinner.” 

Simultaneously, they all make a face. For all that that Kurogiri can do literally everything, from bartending to caretaking to tending to bullet wounds to running a fucking garden, that man can’t cook for the life of him. 

“I am hungry…” Compress considers, because he 1. has no taste buds and 2. has completely and utterly embraced his role as Kurogiri’s emotional support for dealing with all of their bullshit. 

Tomura groans. “I just paid for all of your lunches so you wouldn’t be hungry!” 

He may be a villain, but he’s not a heathen. They got McDonald’s barely two hours ago. Spinner is still painstakingly dipping his food into his half-melted milkshake and eating a single fry at a time. Tomura shudders at just the idea of it. 

Magne borrows one of Kurogiri’s extra binoculars, peering down at them curiously. “Oh! It looks like they’re leaving now.”

Tomura whips his binoculars back to his eyes, barely noticing Dabi doing the same next to him. Copycat. Sure enough, Midoriya and his little friend are walking towards the gate, where a girl with a ponytail and a bald kid wait. The stripes on their shoulders signifies they’re Hero course, so that means they’re Dabi’s problem now. 

“Kurogiri, I’m gonna need a file on those two.” Dabi says urgently, white knuckling his binoculars. “I don’t trust Hero students.” 

“Are you sure you’re not feeling jealous , Dabi-kuuun?” Toga teases, and Dabi sputters. 

“What, no, why the hell would I be jealous of my kid brother!? Dabi yells, waving his binocular frantically. “Beside having a heat resistant gene, not having his entire body horribly disfigured, and generally being a functioning member of society?” 

“I think it’s less being jealous and more along the lines of protectiveness.” Magne corrects gently, and Dabi can’t even say anything because it’s Magne. It’s like the third most important rule in the league, after video game custody rights and when it’s okay to maim each other - don’t ignore Magne’s advice because she Knows All. “I imagine you didn’t have a good time in school, did you?” 

Dabi refuses to answer. 

Toga frowns down at her lap, something undeniably sad about her. “Teenagers can be cruel.” 

“Not just teenagers.” Spinner says, as equally soft. They, more than most, understand how monstrous this world is for things you can’t control. 

Midoriya, for all he says that he says he’s a villain and is more than willing to twist the system to fit his needs, still believes the world is inherently good. And Tomura…doesn’t mind that.  

Positivity usually irritates him, but not with Midoriya. Maybe it’s because he also understands how cruel people can be, especially about quirks, but he still finds a reason to smile. His little friend is the same way, for all that he hides behind a blank expression, and it’s why Tomura tolerates Dabi’s brother living with them part of the time. 

“Can’t have our support members getting hurt, after all.” Tomura stands up, shoving his hands in his pockets as the entire league watch the blob of green wave goodbye to the other green blob. It's near impossible to tell them apart at this height. “We haven’t unlocked all the cutscenes yet.”

Compress elbows him. “You can just say you’re worried about them.” 

Tomura screeches, face red as a tomato. “SHUT THE FUCK UP!”

Chapter Text

Magne pokes out her leg from behind the crate they’re hiding behind. “Feel my leg, I just shaved.” 

Himiko gingerly touches it. “Oh. My. God.” She whispers, stroking her hand up and down her leg. “It’s so soft!” 

“Guys. We are literally under attack.” Spinner hisses, peeking his head up only to throw himself down as another row of flying thorns attempt to decapitate him. “This is not the time!”

Twice joins Himiko in touching Magne’s leg. “I don’t know about you guys, but this is looking pretty bad. I’m not worried at all! Okay, I’m pretty terrified, let’s leave.”

“Could you fuckers keep it down? I’m trying to think!” Tomura growls, hands clasped over his head, probably to contain the giant headache they’re giving him. And the large head wound he has that’s spilling copious amounts of blood all over the floor, that too. 

“Don’t worry, trying anything for the first time is hard.” Dabi reassures him with a patronizing pat on his shoulder, his other hand holding his face together where a few staples popped. Spinner screamed and almost stabbed himself with his sword monstrosity when he saw the inside of Dabi’s mouth from his cheek. 

“I get the sense we’ve finally encountered a problem where murder and arson aren’t the optimal solutions.” Izuku pipes up from where he's nursing several bad bruises on his ribs from where a villain got a lucky hit. Himiko, who’s covered in blood and absolutely delighted about it, grabs his hand and puts it on Magne’s other leg under her bemused gaze. 

Woah, it really is soft. He pets her leg like a skittish cat, wondering if he should start shaving his own legs if they always feel this nice. 

“So what, we try diplomacy?” Tomura groans. 

Dabi raises an eyebrow. “Let’s not get carried away here.” 

Tomura grits his teeth and looks about thirty seconds from killing Dabi and dumping his body in the river. He can’t do that - Dabi is one of their few long range members and he knows it. “Well, we’re fucking stuck in a warehouse with an outlying branch of some villain assholes who thought it would be a great idea to take a potshot at the League of fucking Villains. I’m open to some damn suggestions here.”

“How about a tactical retreat?” Compress suggests gently. He’s the least injured out of all of them, with his mask only slightly cracked and what’s sure to be a nasty cut on his ankle. 

“What’s that?” 

Spinner raises a hand. “It’s like running away, but cooler.”

You know you’re fucked when Tomura actually starts considering it. Unfortunately, they don’t have time to actually make said retreat, as the leader of the opposing villain branch starts to get cocky at their hiding. It’s not their fault that Dabi needs time to cool down before he cooks his organs like pasta in the oven and Kurogiri is currently on his lunch break with his phone turned off. “What? Is the big bad League too scared to come out and fight face to face?” 

Izuku face palms. They were so close to getting home before dinner. “Change of plans.” Tomura says coldly. “We’re going to go out there and BEAT THE LIVING SHIT OUT OF THOSE MOBS!” 

The leader laughs, though he sounds a bit nervous. “Go ahead and try it, princess, you’ll find yourself skewed before you can even stand up!” 

Tomura is practically frothing at the mouth at this point, ready to launch himself out from their hiding place, flying thorns be damned, only for Himiko to grab his shoulder. 

Oh shit. Oh fuck. That’s their ‘run for your fucking LIVES’ smile. “Pro tip,” Himiko says sweetly, dropping her bloodied knife in Izuku’s hand and lifting her sweater up. All of them advert their eyes, even if they know she has a shirt underneath it, and only glance back when they feel the movement of it falling back down. 

So that’s why the entire League of Villains has a collective heart attack at the sight of Himiko’s holding a fucking machete. “If a guy calls you a princess in a condescending manner, assert your newly appointed royal status and have him beheaded.” With that sweet statement, she charges right into the foray, screaming her head off. 

The other villains are screaming too, but in absolute terror at least. 

“Let’s…join her, I suppose?” Compress asks slowly, so lost. Izuku can’t blame him. 

They trade looks. Shrug. Launch themselves into the fight with absolutely no regard to their health or Kurogiri’s emotional sanity. 

Izuku ends up squaring again someone with a minor telekinesis quirk, who only snorts dismissively at his borrowed knife. “What are you going to do? Stab me?” 

Well, that kind of answers that, doesn’t it?

“I’M GONNA KILL YOU!” The guy hollers, holding his bleeding thigh and probably dislocated kneecap. He panicked, okay? 

Izuku laughs manically. “You can’t kill me if I kill myself first!”

“What kind of logic is that??” Spinner yelps from where he duking it out with someone who’s transformed into a giant bull. He’s currently using his red scarf like a muleta in a bullfight. What is his life.

Dabi drawls from somewhere near the ceiling where he's hanging on the metal bars by knees for some reason. Izuku is pretty sure he's taking selfies. The lighting in the warehouse is pretty nice…“The worst kind.” 

Izuku shakes his knife at him. “Those are bold words for someone within stabbing range.”

“A little help here! Nope, I got it, everything’s A-Okay.” Twice does a triple backflip by him, so Izuku kicks the guy’s blown out kneecap and charges after the three people riding skateboards, ignoring the guy’s whines as he passes out from the pain. Whimp. He didn’t even hit any arteries with his knife. 

Himiko cuts in front of him, shrieking in uncontrolled glee at the woman with floating blue hair. She looks at Himiko, looks at Twice, then at Izuku, before visibly deciding to fuck it and sprints out there, a literal child chasing after her with a machete. 

Twice can handle one guy, so Izuku goes after the guy with metal claws like a knock off Wolverine. At least Wolverine is mildly attractive. “I’m going to defeat you with the power of friendship and this knife I found.” Izuku tells him very seriously. “So please stay still?” 

He does not stay still. At least Izuku’s been taking up running lately, so chasing him down screaming the entire time isn’t that hard. 

When he comes back, most everyone has knocked out their opponents or is helping those who haven’t, so Izuku hangs back to where Himiko and Spinner are either stealing 1. Blood or 2. Weapons. You have three guesses who and the first two don’t count. 

“You shouldn’t be using a straw.” Spinner scolds lightly as he frisks someone down. They make a groaning noise, suds slipping out of their mouth, and Izuku quickly knocks them out with a kick to the head. Nope, nope, nope. Not today, motherfucker.

Himiko sighs like a war veteran returning home after having seen the horrors of humanity, a pink swirly straw that makes the word ‘Bitch’ slipping out of her mouth. “I know, I know, it’s bad for the environment.” 

“It’s just a really weird way to drink blood.” Spinner says. 

Dabi and Twice shamble up to them, leaving Magne and Compress to help defeat some girl who’s more slippery than she looks. “You realize this is one of the many, many, many reasons we call you creepy, right?” Dabi raises an eyebrow. 

Spinner nods. “We actually made a list. It’s seventeen pages. Single spaced.” 

Himiko pouts. “Let me live my life in peace.” 

“Aw, it’s okay Toga-chan!” Twice pats her hair. “We’re all creepy anyhow, to be fair.” 

Izuku crouches down next to her and hugs her shoulders. “We love you, Himichan!” 

“You’re the only one I like in this household, Izuku-kun.” Himiko decides, making Izuku smile and instinctively evade the knife to his side. He pointedly does not say that he wrote twelve out of those seventeen pages, in case the friendly knife stabbing becomes a whole lot less friendly. 

It’s at this exact moment the lady Tomura’s fighting throws a fistful of dust in his face while he’s mid monologue about who has the better dusting quirk. He opens his mouth, face scrunched up in preparation for another hissy fit - 

Only to sneeze. Loudly. Several times. 

Magne takes the distraction to knock the lady out with her giant magnet, looking over at the still sneezing Tomura in concern. “Are you okay?” 

“I have a dust allergy.” Tomura says, glaring at all of their shocked looks. Compress opens his mouth, but another sneeze and the middle finger interrupts him. “Yes, I realize that’s ironic!” 

“As long as you know.” Compress pets Tomura’s hair like one would to a particularly disgruntled cat. Tomura sneezes once more and seethes silently. 

.

“I was gone for an hour!” Kurogiri shouts. 

Tomura shrugs, rubbing his runny nose. “We wanted slushies.” 

Said slushies are a little banged up and melted, but none of them care as they lay around Kurogiri’s bar in various states of injury. They really need a team medic, but not many of those tend to turn towards villainy. Shame. 

Kurogiri sighs, pinching the bridge of his non-existent nose. “Just…don’t move.” He leaves for a bit, probably having a brief nervous breakdown in the backroom, before returning with a bottle of allergy pills. “Tomura.” Kurogiri warns when Tomura looks like he’s about to protest. 

Ooh, no last name, someone’s in trouble. 

Tomura glumly takes the offered pills and downs with a pout. “You’re not the boss of me.” He mutters petulantly. 

Kurogiri gives him the dad glare™. “Well, someone has to look for the welfare of this team since you apparently only care about yourself.” 

“Wrong!” Tomura points at him victoriously. “I also care about video games!”

No one points out how that statement really isn’t helping him. “Why a machete?” Compress changes the subject with the tact of a bull, and considering Izuku saw one go through a low bearing wall today and almost bring the ceiling on their heads, he can say it’s pretty damn graceless. 

They take it anyhow, because none of them are willing to touch what Kurogiri and Tomura have going on with a twenty foot pole wrapped in barbed wire. 

“It’s basically just a big knife.” Himiko explains, lifting it up from where she’s cleaning it, or trying to lick it when she thinks nobody is looking and almost cutting her tongue off the entire time. “I always carry a bunch of them on me at the same time. If anything happens and I lose my first nice, bam! Another knife! Lose the second one? BAM! Another knife!”

“By your definition.” Spinner begins, looking intrigued. “What counts as a knife for you?” 

Her grin widens. “Wouldn’t you like to know, weather boy?” 

At this point, Tomura’s fallen asleep mid argument, Kurogiri smoothing a blanket over his shoulders and tightening his gloves so he doesn’t accidentally disintegrate the bar while asleep. Izuku creeps closer, intrigued by the rare sight of Tomura’s bare face without a dead hand covering it. 

So of course he takes a picture of it and sends it to Cryptid Sightings. 

Kurogiri gives him an admonishing look, but Izuku just shrugs. He has to take what little joy when he can, okay? 

But really, Tomura’s sleeping pretty deeply, even doped up, if he’s not waking up to Himiko’s and Spinner’s spur of the moment knife show and tell. “Is Tomuchan going to be okay?” Izuku asks in concern. 

“Aside from being living proof that humans are doomed as a species, he’s fine.” Kurogiri replies flatly. 

“You think that’s a knife?” Spinner cackles, whipping out his giant sword made of knives. “This is a knife!” 

Himiko wails, collapsing to the floor hugging a medieval stiletto blade the side of her forearm. “It’s okay Stab-chan, I still love you.” She sobs to the dagger. The entire league is chanting Spinner’s name, with Twice and Magne even picking him on their shoulders like he’s a football player who just won the winning score at the Superbowl. 

Tomura keeps sleeping, a pile of drool forming on Kurogiri’s precious countertops. 

“That reminds me; where is Dabi?” Kurogiri asks, glancing around the bar. The league quiets down, all of them looking for their residential pyromaniac with daddy issues. 

“Oh my god we lost him.” Himiko breathes.

Kurogiri grabs one of his special wines from the top shelf that the entire league isn’t supposed to touch under the pain of quadruple amputation via warp gate, pops the cork, and then chugs it like a man dying of thirst.

.

Dabi was neither lost, or as the more hysterical members of the league would insist (Twice), kidnapped, but rather getting himself something to drink. His slushie got knocked over by a very enthusiastic Toga with a fucking machete, so he’s at the nearest drink place finding the coldest, most bland thing his stomach can handle. 

Also, Shouto’s never had boba tea before and it’s a fucking disgrace. He’s ashamed of him.

Waiting in line with a scarf pulled up to his nose and a pair of sunglasses on, Dabi endures the terrified looks of the cashiers believing they’re about to be robbed. See, he would, but he’s promised his brothers he would be at Midori’s house by three and also he’s really fucking lazy. Get someone else from the league to do that shit. 

His phone buzzes from the group chat between him and his brothers, reminding him that he should probably get them something to unless he wants to be fending off thieving raccoons with their monstrous bite sizes all night. 

N is for anywhere and anytime at all

You okay Shou? You seemed a little out of it yesterday

Yesterday consisted of them crashing in Natsuo’s dorm room and eating enough discounted White Day candy to put them into a sugar coma while watching animated movies. To be honest, Dabi doesn’t remember much past Shrek, having passed out on Natsuo’s cold concrete floor three inches in front of the blaring TV. He’s slept in worse places.

(sho)U(to) is for you and me

I’m fine, I was just thinking of something.

N(atsuo) is for anywhere and anytime at all

OwO?? Does our wittle Showoto hawe a crwush?

(sho)U(to) is for you and me

Is the Easter Bunny the Catholic Church’s fursona?

F(uckboy) IS FOR FIRE THAT BURNS DOWN THE WHOLE TOWN 

i hate this fucking family

N(atsuo) is for anywhere and anytime at all

You’re legally obligated to care about us

F(uckboy) IS FOR FIRE THAT BURNS DOWN THE WHOLE TOWN 

jokes on you i’m legally dead so the laws don’t apply to me

(sho)U(to) is for you and me

Wait. 

Does this mean you don’t pay taxes?

N(atsuo) is for anywhere and anytime at all

YOU DON’T PAY TAXES??

F(uckboy) IS FOR FIRE THAT BURNS DOWN THE WHOLE TOWN 

i’m a fucking villain why the FUCK would i pay taxes??

N(atsuo) is for anywhere and anytime at all

Idk

Bc you're secretly nice underneath all that ‘I don’t care about anything but revenge and video games’?? 

(sho)U(to) is for you and me

Ha.

N(atsuo) is for anywhere and anytime at all

You’re like an onion 

F(uckboy) IS FOR FIRE THAT BURNS DOWN THE WHOLE TOWN 

hey natsu

one question

what the actual fuck

(sho)U(to) is for you and me

You have layers. 

F(uckboy) IS FOR FIRE THAT BURNS DOWN THE WHOLE TOWN 

i do not have layers wtf

i’m as flat as the earth

(sho)U(to) is for you and me

The earth isn’t flat though. 

F(uckboy) IS FOR FIRE THAT BURNS DOWN THE WHOLE TOWN 

leave me alone i’m legally dead

what boba tea do you all you freeloaders want btw

N(atsuo) is for anywhere and anytime at all

Honeydew for me! And umm, get strawberry milk for Shou

(sho)U(to) is for you and me

Is this because of the hair?

N(atsuo) is for anywhere and anytime at all

It is 100% because of the hair

F(uckboy) IS FOR FIRE THAT BURNS DOWN THE WHOLE TOWN 

heh

(sho)U(to) is for you and me

Do you want me to kill you?

F(uckboy) IS FOR FIRE THAT BURNS DOWN THE WHOLE TOWN 

honestly?

N(atsuo) is for anywhere and anytime at all

Touya-nii no

F(uckboy) IS FOR FIRE THAT BURNS DOWN THE WHOLE TOWN 

touya-nii YES

Dabi puts his phone away as he reaches the front of the line, being careful to show his hands at all times to the cashier who looks like one shake away from calling the police. “Can I have three larges, a honeydew, a strawberry milk, and a chilled black milk tea?”

“S-sure…” She stutters, taking his cash with trembling hands. He would smile at her to reassure her, but his lower face is pretty terrifying even when he isn’t covered in blood from fixing his missing staples. 

The drinks are done in record time, the shop all too happy to get rid of Dabi. Too bad for them, his stomach actually feels good enough today for him to add condiments to his bland tea.

“Hell yeah,” he mutters as he squeezes honey into his cup. “Get in the leaf juice you sexy, sexy bee sauce.” 

Someone next to him chokes. Dabi glances over, only to meet someone else else wearing a gigantic trench coat, a scarf wrapped around the majority of their face and hair, and a pair of sunglasses. It’s like looking at a twin in rushed disguises. 

“Do you take constructive criticism?” They croak quietly.

Dabi winks from behind his heavily tinted sunglasses. “I absolutely do not.” With that, he takes the drinks and escapes out the shop before the cops really do get called on him.

His phone buzzes once he’s halfway down the street, and with some finagling, he manages to check it. One’s from the groupchat with his brothers (and considering the last message is from Shouto asking if they want their ice cream with pulp or no pulp, just…no), another’s from the group chat with the league which he muted after Toga spent three solid fucking hours spamming with pictures of yandere aesthetics, and the last is from…

Nice.

I don’t have enough munny for chicken nuggets 

Yo I saw the weirdest dressed guy today 

Chicken nuggets, otherwise known as the guy he’s catfishing from Grindr, who sends him a couple thousand yen a week in exchange for him to send voice recordings because apparently he ‘talks like a ASMRtist porn actor’. He literally just sent an hour long video three weeks ago consisting entirely of him bitching about his coworkers, and Chicken nuggets sent him a tip big enough for him to eat comfortably for the next month, saying that it made his day he laughed so hard. The league wishes they had what he did. 

69¢ ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

lol same actually

.

Dabi meets with his brothers in front of Midori’s house, Natsuo aimlessly turning in circles on his skateboard while Shouto watches in absolute enrapturement. 

“What are y’all waiting for?” He drawls, passing out their boba drinks. Natsuo happily chugs his, while Shouto cautiously takes a sip, before his eyes go hilariously big. Dabi sticks his straw in his mouth, making a face at how much it’s cooled down, and without looking away from his drink, Shouto sticks his finger against his cup, icing it instantly.

No, he’s not envious that Shouto’s basically his own environmental control system, shut up. It’s hard enough already for Dabi to be the gay brother, the punk brother, and the family failure, but someone’s got to do it and evidentially you either get a decent quirk and no personality or shit one and enough personality to fuel a small army; I.E. The entire goddamn league. 

“Just you.” Natsuo does another lazy loop, looking like the epitome of every skater delinquent out there with his bloodied knuckles and jersey tight around his biceps. A couple of teenage girls passing by swoon, with one even needing her friend to guide her away her face is so red. “It’s a nice day out, and I think Inko-san might have guests.” 

Dabi pops his sunglasses and scarf back on right as Shouto whips out his eyebrow pencil and starts furiously dotting his face, because for some reason he’s convinced that’s the ultimate disguise. Natsuo, meanwhile, just rolls his eyes at their paranoia and leads them into Midori’s house, skateboard tucked underneath his arm. 

“ - Your kids sound absolutely delightful.” Inko-san’s voice floats through the house, where she must be talking to the guests in the living room. “You’ll have to tell me stories of them later. Izuku was always a quieter child, so it’s hard to believe they can be so rambunctious.”

Natsuo strolls towards the entryway of the living room ahead of the two of them, speaking before he even passes the threshold. “Sorry for interrupting, but would it be okay -” His shoulders tense up in a manner that Dabi recognizes even ten years later. 

As if they’ve never dulled, long ago instincts come roaring back into Dabi’s brain, and his monkey hindbrain flings himself backwards safely away from the entryway against the hallway wall before the intruder can see him. Shouto stares at him with wide eyes, desperately glancing back between the both of them to see what he should do. 

“I didn’t know you were here.” Natsuo says, voice shaking. “How did you find this place?” 

“Oh, I just followed you last week.” Todoroki Fuyumi, Dabi’s twin sister and also single handedly the most terrifying person in the world, tells Natsuo from where she’s calmly having tea in the living room with Inko-san.

Shouto, realizing just how fucked they are, slinks into the wall next to Dabi and stares into space with an absolutely shitting his pants expression. 

Natsuo sputters. “I rooftop jumped!” 

“So?” Fuyumi inquires, in an exact imitation of Elle Wood’s what, like it’s hard? voice. “Who’s that in the hallway with you? I heard at least another set of footprints.” 

Dabi experiences one of those surges of adrenaline they show in movies or news clips, where mothers pull cars off their children or drag people out of burning houses. All of his muscles tense one by one, his breath picking up speed as his head whips around - 

And he grabs Shouto by the collar of his shit and literally tosses him right into the line of fire. 

“Shouto?!” There’s the sound of a teacup shattering. “I thought - we haven’t heard from you in months, we thought you were, I thought you were…” 

The youngest of the siblings ducks his head, glowering at Dabi from the corner of his eye. “I’m sorry, Nee-san.” Shouto shuffles his feet, pink growing along his cheeks. “I kinda got kidnapped and then…I didn’t want to leave. It’s nice here. I get to eat as much as I want and can sleep all day if I want to, though I try to sleep at night so I can marathon Food Network with Inko-san in the morning. Lately, I’ve been learning how to knit. It’s been…really, really fun.” 

“Oh, Shouto.” Fuyumi whispers, and then Shouto is charging into the living room to hug her. Dabi sighs in relief; he can sneak out through the window once they settle down and hopefully with a couple of bribes, Shouto will forget this ever happened. 

Unlikely. He’ll be waking up with pink hair for the next two weeks but he doesn’t regret it for an instant. 

“I wish you would have contacted me, but I don’t blame you for wanting to leave.” She sighs. “Father and I really were worried about you Shouto, he's been tearing up the entire country looking for you. I just wish you knew someone was in your corner, and that if you needed time away, I would have helped you. After Touya, I can't handle losing another sibling.”

“Touya, right.” Shouto states monotonously, the absolutely shitty liar that he is. Luckily, Fuyumi is too overwrought with emotion at seeing her baby brother alive that she doesn't notice his odd tone. 

“Now.” Fuyumi’s voice deepens, and Natsuo visibly shudders. He feels that so badly. “Repeat what you said about the kidnapping again?” 

Dabi smacks his face, and then freezes. “What was that?” Fuyumi asks, voice sharp. 

Natsuo laughs nervously. “Well…you see…um?”

“Who else is in the hallway, Natsu?” His darling twin asks sweetly, and Natsuo looks thirty seconds away from a nervous breakdown.

Dabi sighs silently, setting down his tea on a nearby table, before awkwardly stepping into the entryway, hands raised in surrender. “Hi, Fuyumi.” 

If Dabi was expecting the same kind of reunion, he was sorely mistaken. Fuyumi stares at him for a long moment, jaw dropped and eyes wide behind her glasses, before her face steels. “You.” 

“Me?” Dabi points to himself with a squeak. 

“You left me,” Fuyumi begins slowly. “On dish washing duty for ten years! Where the hell have you been?”

Dabi scratches the back of his head, avoiding eye contact. “I accidentally indulged in too much me time?”

Without looking away from him, Fuyumi reaches down, grabs a throw pillow, and flings it at his head hard enough he topples backwards into Natsuo. “You’ve been reported missing for a decade! Everyone thought you died! I made your shrine Hiyashi Chuka every year for our birthday and cried the entire time cooking it!” She flings out her arms in a mixture of rage and embarrassment.

Oh shit. Yep, he’s dead. He’s so dead. 

“I love you?” He squeaks.

Wrong move.

Fuyumi grabs the actual fucking COFFEE TABLE and lifts it up over her head. “That’s it.” She practically breathes fire, glaring at him with dagger eyes. “You’re dead to me.” 

“I thought I was already dead to you.” Dabi says immediately, because the league has one (1) braincell and Kurogiri has it. At least he’s fast enough to dodge Fuyumi dropping the coffee table with an inarticulate cry of rage and launching herself at the speed of a Mach 2 across the living room. 

“Fuck!” He curses, diving rapidly to the ground to avoid her tackle. “You and Natsu should take football lessons together! You’d be really good - shit shit shit!” Dabi contorts his body in ways he didn’t know were possible as Fuyumi stomps her foot and freezes over the entire floor in about two seconds flat. 

“Laundry! Vacuum! Cooking! All by myself!” She raves, ripping Natsuo's skateboard out of his arms and using it as a makeshift baseball bat, forcing Dabi to slide to his knees underneath it. “Ten. Fucking. Years. Touya!” 

“Should we intervene?” Shouto asks quietly from the safety of the hallway. 

“Nah,” Natsuo slurps his boba drink. “He deserves it.” 

Shouto tilts his head to the side as Dabi somehow manages to flip over the skateboard projectile by using the back of the couch as a springboard. “Why?” 

Natsuo shudders, before glowering in Dabi’s general direction where he’s now desperately clutching the ceiling fan in a terrified ball. “Bathroom duty.” He seethes. 

Shouto blinks, shrugs, and then goes back to slurping his own boba drink. 

Dabi squeals as Fuyumi sends a row of icicles at him, jumping off the ceiling fan and diving towards the window. Again.

Only for Inko-san, who had never left and was watching the family brawl like it was her favorite soap opera, to grab Dabi by his scarf with her quirk and halt him in his tracks. “No!” Inko-san hisses. “I just replaced that window!”

“Sorry Inko-san.” Dabi croaks. 

“And you!” Inko-san turns on Fuyumi with a fierce glare. “If you’re going to scold your brother, stop destroying the furniture.” Before Dabi can sigh in relief, Inko-san pulls a wooden spoon out of her apron pocket and slaps it in Fuyumi’s hands. “Use this instead.” 

Fuyumi beams at Midori’s mother, taking the wooden spoon gratefully. “Thank you, Midoriya-san.” She turns to Dabi with a terrifying smile and a white knuckled grip. “Prepare yourself, you absolute asshole!” 

“Oh fuck me.” Dabi mutters. And runs for his motherfucking life. 

.

Izuku looks up from doing homework at Kurogiri’s bar with a bright smile. “Hey, you weren’t kidnapped!” His smile falters at Dabi’s weird walk. “You okay?” 

“No.” Dabi says flatly. Is that a bruise on his cheek? 

He turns around to head upstairs, and Izuku chokes on his soda. 

The petite woman clinging to his back lets out a loud sob, burying her face into his neck as Dabi awkwardly piggy backs her. “I’m sorry, Touya!” She wails, squeezing his neck so tightly that Izuku’s about twenty five percent sure Dabi can’t breathe. Wait, bump that up to eighty percent, Dabi is looking distinctively purple in a way that has nothing to do with his burn scars. “I swear I don’t have badly repressed anger issues!” 

“Sure.” Dabi wheezes out. “Whatever you say, sis.” 

The two of them shamble up the stairs, with Dabi grunting out reassurances to his sister’s blubbers. Izuku’s jaw is still on the floor when Natsuo and Shouto stroll into the room, nursing half empty boba drinks and a container of popcorn. “Dare I ask what that was about?” 

“I don’t know, but I got it on video.” Shouto holds up his phone

Natuso rolls his eyes with a half smirk. “Fuyumi has a shit ton of pent up rage from over two decades of our dad's shitty behavior and it boiled over after having two very emotionally charged discoveries with two of her brothers she assumed were dead.” 

By Shouto’s eyebrows, that was simplifying it. 

Izuku considers that statement for a long moment, before deciding to stay out of the Todoroki Family Drama™ and simply makes a grabby motion towards Shouto’s phone. “Gimmie.” 

“Already sent it to you.” Shouto answers, leaning over his homework. “Also, you forgot to carry the four here.” 

Izuku knew there was a reason that Shouto was his favorite. 

A loud crash from upstairs interrupts them. “YOU’RE A FUCKING VILLAIN?!? ”

“Oops,” Natsuo mutters unrepentantly, right as Dabi starts screaming frantically. They all trade looks, before individually yet simultaneously decide that is it absolutely not their business whatsoever. 

“F,” Shouto intones quietly, all of them repeating after him and nodding their heads seriously.

Rest in peace Dabi, it was nice knowing you. 

Chapter Text

Class 1-J watches with bated breath as Kayama shuffles the pack of cards, dealing them silently to the four players hunched around the teacher’s desk.

“Go clockwise.” Is all she says before she steps back, allowing them free range to do what they please. 

Mei hums, before placing her card down first. “Ace of spades.” She proclaims to the room like an announcer. Someone dramatically gasps. 

Shouto, on the other hand, looks nonplussed as he sorts through his cards before playing his own red uno card. “+4.”

Izuku chuckles, shaking his head at those poor, poor fools. “Leafeon, I choose you.” He throws the card on the table, delighting in the crowd’s horrified noises. 

Hitoshi trembles. “What the fuck are we playing.”

Before Izuku can answer that delightful question, the warning bell rings, reminding them they have two minutes to get wherever they need to be. Mei’s out her seat at the first note, stomping her feet until a set of wheels pop out the soles of her shoes. “See you boys later!” She hollers as she roller skates out of the door at the approximate speed of a bullet train, leaving a trail of scorched ground behind her and several people flattened against the lockers with the skill of one who's used to this seven AM bullshit. 

Izuku glances back to Shouto, but his best friend is already gone, the only sign that he was there being the open window and the faint sheen of melting ice.

Kayama claps her hands. “Everyone to their seats! We’ll settle today’s round of Shock Value tomorrow, so Midoriya is the defacto winner…once again.” She narrows his eyes at him, but Izuku only smiles brightly. 

What she can’t prove can't hurt her!

.

Yaoyorozu doesn’t even bother to scream in shock anymore as Shouto dives through the open window feet first, perfectly landing in his seat and slamming the window shut literally seconds before Aizawa steps in with the bell. 

Aizawa stops dead in his tracks, eyes devoid of any emotion as he tries to make the connection of having seen Shouto in the middle of playing Shock Value with 1-J literally ten minutes prior and yet somehow being in the classroom without passing him by the door.

“I don’t know what you’re up to.” Aizawa says. “But for the love of all that is good in the world, stop it.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Sensei.” Shouto says blandly. He gave his best I truly have no idea what’s going on look, the same one that can drive Midoriya to attempted murder in less than two minutes. 

He knows this fully, as Midoriya did not take him eating the last Trix yogurt last night well in the slightest. Inko-san had to drag Midoriya off of him before the other boy suffocated Shouto with a pillow. 

Aizawa rubs his face. “You know what? I’m not going to touch that. I’ve gotten four hours of sleep in the last three days, I am just. Too tired.”

Kirishima raises his hand, despite how he's been shivering all morning. “Are you feeling alright, Sensei?”

“Peachy.” Aizawa says dryly, leaning back and using his eye drops. “In other news, I’m going to take a nap. Don’t wake me up for anything less than one of you bleeding out or the building within a couple meters is on fire.” 

.

They school didn’t burn down in his forty minute nap, but it came pretty close.

Shouto doesn’t have any proof, but he just knows it’s Midoriya’s fault somehow. 

.

For once, the League is actually having a somewhat calm day. 

Izuku says ‘somewhat’ because they’re never truly calm; all of them (except Kurogiri and Compress) are just too feral for that. Currently, he and Magne are braiding Himiko’s hair on one of the couches, weaving in as many googly eyes (Izuku) and ribbons (Magne) that can physically fit. Tomura and Spinner are on the other couch playing Breath of the Wild, while Dabi sits on a nearby stool reading something on his phone. Twice and Compress seem to be pretty reoccupied with an old pre quirk karaoke machine they stole from the restaurant they get their food from on Burger Thursdays. Why anyone thinks putting something that valuable behind glass will deter villains with sticky fingers is beyond him, personally. 

Kurogiri isn’t available, but he had told them softly, but very firmly, that if they left the building, he would eviscerate every single one of them except Tomura. Tomura would get grounded, though, so he’s not sure which fate is worse. 

“That looks pretty fun.” Izuku comments as he watches Link crossdress and still kicks ass in a crop top. What an absolute legend. “Can I have a turn later?”

“After the Yiga clan.” Tomura waves him off, teleporting somewhere with a shit ton of birds to buy some ingredients. 

Dabi perks up. “If you’re letting Midori play, can I skip around Zora’s domain -”

“NO!” Both Spinner and Tomura snap, with Spinner looking queasy at the mere thought while Tomura practices some very familiar deep breathing. Aw, he is doing the exercises Izuku taught him for his anger issues after all!

Magne blinks. “I feel like I’m missing something.” She admits.

“Dabi, is under no circumstances,” Tomura hisses. “Allowed to play Breath of the Wild.”

“Why just this one? It’s Dabi-kun’s kind of game!” Himiko points out brightly, which is true enough. If it’s marketed towards children, Dabi hops it on like a flea on shit. Izuku has a feeling he’s compensating all the childlike joy and wonder he didn’t have a chance to feel growing up, but the last time Izuku brought that up Dabi locked himself in his bedroom for a good bloody cry before giving him a cream filled donut that was in not, in face, actually cream, but mayonnaise. Izuku took the punishment like the good friend he was and ate the abomination against the natural order under Dabi’s narrowed eyes. 

Spinner slams his hands on the coffee table. “He just spends the entire time being fucking thirsty!”

“Listen, it’s not my fault that Sidon is literally the hottest character in the entire Zelda franchise.” Dabi instantly argues back. “Sidon is 100% prime boyfriend material, he’s incredibly supportive and would treat you like the king you are.”

Tomura lets out an inarticulate shriek of rage. “He’s a fucking fish!”

“Someone’s never seen The Shape of Water.” Izuku mutters. Magne, who has seen it, glares at him for watching an R rated movie with several graphic sex scenes. 

He gestures to the coffee table where Himiko is literally scraping blood off her knives. Magne shrugs - he’s got her there and she knows it. 

The argument between Tomura, Dabi, and Spinner is still going. Honestly, Izuku doesn’t know whether to be impressed or worried. “That overgrown smiley shark is not better than Midna you fucking heathen!” Tomura truly sounds offended on Midna’s behalf. 

“You just use the game to project your horniess on fictional characters.” Spinner accuses, have argued about someone named ‘Skull Kid’ being the true MVP of the entire franchise for the last several minutes. 

Dabi gasps like a scandalized old lady. “I wouldn’t do that! That’s what I have fanfiction for.”

Himiko tilts her head back, nearly dislodging the googly eyes he’s taping to the end of one of her many small braids. “What’s even the point of reading fanfiction - the blood is never as pretty as it is on screen!”

“It’s simple, Toga.” Dabi says. “So I can finally fucking experience all the love and sex I’m not having.”

It’s at this point that Compress and Twice pull themselves away from the jukebox and peer over Dabi’s shoulder at his phone. “Dabi, you’re in the tentacle tag.” Compress points out, right as Twice says, “Don’t you have like a bazillion sugar daddies? No, I think it’s only like twelve or five.”

Dabi raises an eyebrow. “Did I stutter?”

It’s not clear which question he’s answering.

“If Dabi-kun can’t play, can I play?!” Himiko pipes up, while Izuku hisses at her to keep still dammit. 

“No.” Tomura shuts down immediately. “You’re not allowed to play either after last time.”

Himiko whines. “Just because you like to be a completionist doesn’t mean that I can’t have fun.”

Tomura points at her. “Fighting Ganon buck naked with a fucking tree branch is not having fun, that’s being chaotic neutral and we already have Midoriya.”

“Excuse you?” Izuku asks, honestly offended. “I’m chaotic good and you know it.”

“We already said I’m chaotic neutral, Tomura-kun!” Himiko protests. “Izuku-kun is chaotic good, you’re neutral evil, and Dabi-kun is chaotic evil. We’ve been over this!” 

Yes, they had an entire debate about it. No, they're not allowed to argue about it anymore after destroying Kurogiri's sink.

It’s at this exact point, when Tomura is too distracted by League Alignment Chart Part Umpteenth, that the familiar anxiety inducing music starts. “GUARDIAN!” Spinner shrieks.

“I CAN FUCKING SEE THAT!” Tomura screams, hurriedly smashing the buttons to teleport away. They all let out a sigh of relief when Link lands safely on some tower, with Tomura handing the controller over to Spinner for a much needed snack break. 

Spinner, who’s much more willing to share, allows Izuku and Himiko to watch him play, explaining something of the finer mechanisms to them as he troops around Hyrule. “That’s a stalmoblin - basically the skeleton version of a moblin.” Spinner explains as a literal corpse climbs out of the ground what the f u c k. “You can rip their arms off and beat them to death with it!” With that cheerful statement, he proceeds to do just that with a smile on his face. 

“This is fine. This is the opposite of fine.” Twice whispers, with feeling.

Tomura slurps his capri sun. “You can do that in real life too if you’re not a fucking coward.”

Okay, they’re going to ignore that vaguely ominous statement. 

“Link is so small though…so swole.” Himiko says, before gasping dramatically. “He’s a twunk!”

Compress squints. “What’s a ‘twunk’?” His tone implies that he really doesn’t want to know.

“A mixture between a twink and a hunk.” Magne explains kindly, a distinctively haunted look in her eyes that screams of memories that should under no circumstances be relieved. She’s Seen Some Shit. 

Tomura snorts. “No way.” He waves it away dismissively. “Have you seen his biceps? Spinner, show them that Link is a hunk.” 

Spinner sighs long-sufferingly and strips Link down to his underwear in the menu screen, spinning his figure around so they can all get a good look at him.

Izuku hums. “Yeah, I don’t see it.” Can just anyone pull off crossdressing that easily? He doesn’t think so. 

Himiko holds the hair brush in front of her mouth like a microphone. “Izuku-kun challenges Tomura-kun’s argument with the idea that Link, is in fact, a twink.” Climbing up on the coffee table with dozens of small braids and at least ten googly eyes, she appraises the room. 

“Ooh, ooh, pick me!" Twice raises his hand with a little bounce. “Or don't.” 

She points at Twice excitably, to no surprise. “You, in the black mask! Three categories, take you pick!” 

“He’s a hunk!" He decides, covering his mouth before he can contradict himself. Something that sounds like 'twink' makes it past his fingers anyway. 

“That’s two votes for hunk, people!” Himiko shouts. “You, with the fancy mask!” 

Compress, who’s looking more and more like he wants to hide behind said mask, shrugs. “I suppose twunk? Admittedly, I’m out of touch with this sort of terminology and don’t know the difference.”

Himiko graciously ignores the last fact. “That’s two for twunk, two for hunk, and only one for twink. Anyone else care to join the riveting debate of the century?”

Dabi obviously must have just finished reading his tentacle fic, or maybe he was replying to one of his gazillion sugar daddies, but either way he finally contributes to the conversation with a single, “Twink.” 

Tomura, of course, rises to the bait. “No fucking way.” He gestures to the screen where Spinner has been ignoring all of them and is currently fighting some kind of white centaur. “He’s literally riding a Lynel like it’s a horse right now, he’s a hunk. This isn’t fucking Skyward Sword, Dabi.” 

“You can still be a twink and have big dick energy.” Dabi waves at himself. “I mean, look at me.” 

“You’re a walking corpse with your skin held together with fucking office max supplies.” Tomura hisses. 

Dabi raises an eyebrow. “Are said supplies being paid by people who think I’m hot? Yes. Are any of your stupid video games being paid for by anyone?”

“Sensei pays for them!” Tomura argues, before rapidly greening at the implications of what he just said. “I can’t…I just vomited in my mouth.” 

“Moving on now!” Compress hurries them, patting Tomura’s back and urging them to move on with the conversation.

Unfortunately, Himiko does just that. “If anyone’s the twink here, it’s Izuku-kun! He has the daddy issues to go with it!”

“That would imply I’m interested in sex.” Izuku says boredly, kindly ignoring her last statement. “Imagine the emotional labor.” 

Tomura wrinkles his nose. “That’s too much work.” He agrees, looking better now that they’ve successfully blocked out the last two minutes from their lives for the rest of time. 

“So we have two for each - Izuku-kun, Mag-nee, Spin-kun, may we have your votes?” Himiko holds out her hairbrush/mic. 

The three of them exchange looks, running on the exact same fucking wavelength. “Twink. “Twunk.” “Hunk.” 

Himiko flings her hairbrush at them. 

With a sigh, she collapses next to him and Magne on the couch, all three of them watching the screen in silence for a long few moments, which is never a good thing when it involves Himiko. The last time she went quiet for any long period of time, she made the headlines for a month. “Hey, Link is pretty small right? Even if he has great muscles?”

“Yes…?” Spinner trails off, not knowing where she’s going with this but smart enough to be wary. 

“Do you think he can fit in a dryer?” 

The league, minus Kurogiri, contemplates this.

“I…don’t know.” Izuku admits, not liking that it bothers him. 

Himiko sits up. “Hey, do you think -”

“No!” Compress points at her. “Under no circumstances are you allowed to climb in the dryer, young lady!”

“Boo.” Himiko sticks her tongue out at him. “You’re no fun.” She turns to face Izuku, her best puppy dog eyes on as he tugs on his sleeve. “You think I can fit in there, right?”

Izuku scratches his chin. “It’s a pretty big space. I’m more curious on how long the air supply lasts in there. Hypothetically, how long can you hold your br-”

“Let’s,” Compress interrupts loudly. “And I cannot say this enough, NOT do that.”

The league trades a look. Compress groans and mutters something under his breath about wishing Kurogiri would come back from his errands soon. 

.

Forty minutes later, they’re all crammed in the rather small laundry room at the back of the bar. “Midoriya, please don’t do this, I’m willing to beg.” Compress pleads as Izuku climbs into the dryer. 

Izuku levels him with a flat stare. “Then beg.” And slams the door shut. 

After drafting his anxiety-inducing phone call with his father and the perfect way to get back at Shouto for eating the last Trix yogurt, he taps on the door of the dryer, taking in a huge gulp of air once the door is opened. 

“Wow Izuku-kun, you really can hold your breath for four minutes.” Himiko chirps as Magne helps him climb out. 

“Thanks!” He grins brightly. “The trick is not caring if you live or die!” 

Dabi shoves him over. “Move it, Mag-nee said it’s my turn in the dryer.” 

.

“God,” Hitoshi moans at lunch time the next day, the four of them crammed between two potted plants in the frankly ridiculous sized cafeteria. “This headache just isn’t going away.”

Izuku plunks down a tray of tonkatsu in front of Hitoshi. “What’s this?” His platonic soulmate asks suspiciously. 

“Food and water.” Izuku answers blandly, nudging the glass of lemonade forward with a finger. “Maybe you’ve heard of it.”

Hitoshi makes a dubious expression. 

“What about you, Ivy?” Mei pokes him with her chopsticks, far more interested in her phone with one ear bud in than the maple tofu in front of her. Shouto, on the other hand, seems completely enthralled with his cold soba rather than his buzzing phone on the table next to him.

Because he has absolutely no boundaries, Izuku leans over and opens his phone to check his wall of texts, considering Shouto is one of those people who doesn’t put a password on their phones. Can’t relate, that requires too much trust.

The Objectively Hotter Sibling

i only exist to decay

The Objectively Cooler Sibling

Decay exists only as an extant form of life

The Objectively Hotter AND Cooler Sibling

We will all return to the earth someday to become the nutrients in which the living feast upon.

You fuckers think you’re real funny, huh

Ahhhh... peace is forbidden here

The Objectively Cooler Sibling

Peace is an idea, not a reality

The Objectively Hotter Sibling

okay what the absolute FUCK GUYS

im the emo one here, we need to clear the air

your most cursed takes within 30 secs, go

The Objectively Cooler Sibling

Saying “omae wa mou shindeiru” but with a country accent

The Objectively Hotter AND Cooler Sibling

Toothpaste is bone soap.

You fuckers think you’re real funny, huh

wussy is the uwu version of bussy

The Objectively Hotter Sibling

actually nvm go back to venting our repressed childhood trauma

The Objectively Cooler Sibling

Repressed? There’s no repression here :)))

Completely unrelated, I may have driven one of Father’s sport cars into Tokyo Bay while listening to Second Chance by Shinedown and no longer have a ride home

You fuckers think you’re real funny, huh

Damn sis go OFF

The Objectively Hotter AND Cooler Sibling

I’ll see if Kurogiri can pick you up

The Objectively Cooler Sibling

Thank you Shouto! 

The Objectively Hotter Sibling

i will allow you this one (1) time to be the fellow emo child

The Objectively Cooler Sibling

You’re not even emo, you just wear skinny jeans and dye your hair because you have daddy issues

Come talk to me when you’ve been to a rock concert in person

You fuckers think you’re real funny, huh

DAMN SIS GO OFF

The Objectively Hotter Sibling

i…okay

He glances up from the phone to meet Shouto’s dead ones. “Why is your family like this.” It’s not a question.

Shouto pauses mid-chew. “A lack of social engagement as children among our peers and our hostile household made us create unusual coping mechanisms for life’s usual stress and anxiety that every small trigger results in an explosive outbursts.”

With that, he goes back to slurping his soba.

Izuku opens his mouth. Closes it. Opens it again. “I…” He trails off, much like how Dabi did.

“No, I will not elaborate.” Shouto says simply. 

Hitoshi raises his glass. “Preaching to the choir, dude.” 

They high five, because this is Izuku’s life, and he hates it. 

“Can’t relate, my self esteem is too high for that.” Mei glances up from her phone, the screen tilted down enough for Izuku to see that she’s listening to a Wii music remix - the bad one. 

“What’s it like to be neurotypical?” Izuku asks in wonder.

Mei snorts. “Do I look neurotypical to you?” She points to her bowl, where she neatly divided the rice and tofu perfectly in a way that’s bordering on obsessive. “I just mastered bottling up all of my positive AND negative emotions that nothing can get my self esteem down. Nothing! HA HA, HA HA, HA -” Hitoshi shoves a cutlet in her mouth to shut her up.

Hey, if it works, it works.

The four of them go back to eating, well, three of them and Izuku busting out his flashcards for his Modern Hero Art History class considering he left his lunch at home. For an elective class, Kayama seems way too enthused about it, and he wouldn’t put it past her to do a pop quiz. 

Izuku doesn’t even look up when the alarms start ringing, frowning down at the art movement listed on the front of the flashcard. Was that 2074 or 2104? He almost has it, but then someone screams in terror, tearing him from his train of thought and making him lose it. God dammit, couldn’t they scream a little quieter?

Hitoshi sighs as someone dramatically starts shrieking about evacuations.  “At least I know that no matter what, I’m gonna die doing something that I love.” 

“What’s that?” Mei asks. 

“Dying.” Hitoshi says dreamily. 

Before they can unpack all of that, a bag of fast food - Lotteria, he catches from the label - is placed on the table by a deathly pale arm he’d recognize anywhere. Izuku brightens. “Tomuchan!” 

“Hey kiddo,” Tomura ruffles his hair with a small smile. “You forgot your lunch.” 

Izuku narrows his eyes - did he…? That bastard bugged him again, didn’t he! “I’m willing to drop this for now because I’m hungry and honestly this smells like what I imagine why people have sex.” 

Hitoshi does a spit take on his lemonade. Mei drops a piece of tofu. Shouto doesn’t even bother glancing up. 

Opening the bag, Izuku fist pumps when he finds his favorite burger and a pack of fries. There’s even a pack of honey mustard! 

The older villain deposits a cup of soda next to the bag with his pinky finger raised, and that’s it. “Tomuchan,” Izuku says, face steeled and voice deadly serious. “Marry me.” 

Tomura, of course, only snorts. “Sure, I need someone to do my taxes anyhow.” 

Izuku gives him an incredulous glance. “We’re villains Tomuchan, why the fuck would we do taxes.” He says, careful to keep his voice down even over the ruckus in the hallway. 

“You’d be surprised how much a warhead costs.” Tomura says mildly. 

Thoroughly not wanting to know about that, Izuku stuffs the burger into his mouth and moans into the decadence of grease and way too much salt for his blood pressure. “Where’s Himichan?” He asks once he’s done some truly indecent things to his food. “I thought the two of you were hanging out today.” 

“Oh.” Tomura blinks once, slowly, like a cat. “She’s been here the whole time.” 

At this exact moment, Kirishima bursts into the cafeteria, long jumping over fallen tables like an Olympic high jumper with a terrified expression while Kodai from class 1-B chases after him with a knife in her hand. “Why! Won’t! You! BLEED!” She stabs his shoulder, only for the knife to bounce off his hardened skin. 

“Whatever I did I’M SO SORRY!” Kirishima screams, looking near tears as he does a beautiful Fosbury Flop over a room divider. 

She howls with pure aggravation. “PAY WITH YOUR LIFE YOU DAMN CHEAT CODE!” 

Izuku stares at them fleeing the room with his mouth agape. But Tomura, the terrible influence he is, only looks begrudgingly proud. “I knew that our three hour lecture on video game slang would pay off.” 

“Just…go.” Izuku points at the door. Tomura smirks as he tightens his hood over his head and vanishes into the crowd, but not without one last mocking two finger salute. “I’m gonna kill that jerk.” He grits out. 

“I thought you were going to marry him.” Mei teases. 

“Haven’t you heard?” Izuku asks innocently. “The life insurance for widows is great this time of year!” 

“WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!” Someone shrieks as they run by with their arms flailing in the air. Mei takes a selfie with a peace sign, Hitoshi buries his face in his food, and Shouto bites into a tomato like an apple. Izuku hates his fucking life. 

.

Shouto sits next to Midoriya, Shinsou, and Hatsume in front of Aizawa’s desk in the empty staff room, none of them looking as chastened as they probably should be, if the scandalized look the few teachers who wandered in were any indication.

There’s not enough seats, so Shouto is crammed next to Midoriya in the leather chair, the armrest digging into his ribs uncomfortably. At least he isn’t being absorbed into the cushions like Midoriya is. A couple more minutes and his best friend might fuse with the chair entirely.

Next to them, Shinsou and Hatsume are also crammed in a char, but rather than hip to hip like him and Midoriya are, Shinsou is just outright sitting on Hatsume’s lap with his legs kicked over the side of the chair. “Isn’t he heavy?” Shouto asks. 

“Nah,” Hatsume cackles. “He’s nothing compared to my latest baby!”

“Your latest ‘baby’ weighs almost 300 pounds.” Midoriya drawls. 

Shouto, who has never lifted 300 pounds and likely never will, shuffles awkwardly in his seat. Midoriya wheezes slightly from where Shouto’s elbow digs into his spleen, kicking him in the ankle. Because Shouto is petty like that, he makes sure to aim for that exact spot the next time he shifts. 

The four of them quickly shut up when the door opens, multicolored eyes tracking Aizawa trudging across the staff room. With a groan, he plops down his rolling chair, just staring at his desk with an expression of ‘kill me now’. 

Shouto swears he hears Shinsou mumble I feel that. Now that he’s looking at it, Shinsou does look an awful lot like Aizawa…Another one to add to the cork board he has hiding underneath Inko-san's couch.

“Okay.” Aizawa inhales, closing his eyes for a brief moment. Then they snap open, glowing a menacing red with his hair rising towards the ceiling. “Why, pray tell, did the four of you not evacuate even under strict orders and the intruder alert blaring in your faces?”

“What can I say.” Shinsou drawls. “I long for death.”

Midoriya nods with a deadly serious expression. “I’m a bad bitch, death can’t kill me.”

“Death is my bitch.” Hatsume cackles, slapping Shinsou’s knee. For Shinsou’s part, he simply stares straight ahead with dead eyes, uncaring of the way he’s jostled around her lap 

Shouto, who doesn’t have any death jokes to make, simply raises his bowl of soba closer to his mouth, once more elbowing Midoriya-Cushion and nearly killing in the process. “You know the saying: a little childhood trauma builds character.” 

Aizawa stares. 

They stare back.

“Mandatory therapy with Hound Dog for a week and three days of detention.” Aizawa orders. “Don’t pull that again, you four are on thin ice as it is from your morning…” His face curdles. “Games.”

He blinks. “The chairs are seated on the floor though, not any ice.” Shouto kindly informs his teacher, just in case Aizawa didn’t realize that. His control is impeccable, he would never ice the floor without reason or a dare. 

“It’s an expression, Shirakumo.” Aizawa sighs.

Shouto glances down. “It’s a carpet.”

Aizawa squeezes the bridge of his nose. “Just…go. Talk to your homeroom teacher about detention. If your homeroom teacher is me, talk to somebody else, I don’t care who. Preferably Midnight.”

“Not Present Mic?” Shinsou raises an eyebrow.

“Keep that up and you’ll be my favorite.” Somehow, that comes across threateningly. “Go home, problem children.”

Slowly, the four of them disentangle themselves from the seats, Midoriya-Cushion especially having to claw his way out of the soul sucking leather. “Thank you Sensei!” Hatsume laughs, leaving a half disassembled pen on the teacher’s desk. When did she have time to do that? 

Aizawa waves them off, practically nodding off as he sits while the four of them make their escape. It’s only when they’re safely out of the schools and walking towards the train station does Shinsou let out a sigh of relief, eyes darting every which way as he hands Midoriya a scrap of paper. “That was terrifying, and you so owe me for this.”

Midoriya hums, a sound that sends the hairs on Shouto’s neck rising up. “Thank you Hichan! You got to meet your idol, though, so wasn’t it worth it?”

Shinsou’s cheeks turn a bright shade of red as he whips his head to the side and glowers at the ground. “Shut up.” He mutters. 

Hatsume tilts her head to the side, watching them not unlike a cat. “Do I want to know?” She asks, a mix of her never ending curiosity and her very strong self preservation.

“Nope!” Midoriya chirps, slipping ahead of them on the sunlit road and turning on his heel to grin at them. “It’s going to be fun.”

.

Himiko kicks her legs at the bar, sipping on a box juice as Kurogiri, long back from his errands, opens a window to air out the bar from an argument between Dabi and Spinner. “Hey, if Dabi-kun has big dick energy, what do you call someone when they have the opposite?”

Izuku, who’s staring up at the knife buried in the ceiling with a confused squint, makes a considering noise. “To be honest, I have no clue.”

“Little Penis Power?” Dabi suggests with a nasty smirk. Magne, without once looking up from her historical novel, whacks him upside the head. 

Spinner rests his chin on his hand. “Medium dick?”

Twice makes a so-so motion. “Does it matter? Hell yeah it does! What if it’s not a dick joke at all, what then? Guess we’ll die.” He shrugs, content with that and goes back to searching for the change he dropped during Dabi and Spinner’s duke. 

Compress tosses a marble and catches his midair. “To be honest, it’s quite strange to discuss this sort of thing with you. Most of you have called me dad at least once.”

Kurogiri grunts. “All of you have called me dad before. That reminds me,” he backs away from the window, eyes narrowed on where Tomura is watching the news on the couch with his feet kicked up. “I want to show you a video from earlier that concerns me.”

“Okay, but in my defense, Toga and Midoriya bet me ten bucks that I couldn’t fit in the dryer.” Tomura replies without looking away from the TV.

“That’s not what I was -” Kurogiri does a double take. “You climbed in the dryer?!” 

Slowly, ever so slowly, Tomura pulls his gaze away from the screen and towards his pseudo-father figure. “No…” 

It’s at this exact moment that Himiko slams her hands on the bar. “MEDIUM COCK POTENTIAL!”

Kurogiri drops his head into his hands. “Why can’t you use these talents for villainy?” He pleads with them.

“What did you think I broke into U.A. for? Just to buy Midoriya lunch?” Tomura snorts, and Izuku fakes being offended, even though the entire league knows that yes, Tomura would do exactly that. He’s a giant marshmallow under all those layers of spite and lotion deficit skin. 

Kurogiri sighs. “And just what reason did you break into U.A. for? What operation could be possibly worth the chance of you being arrested without anyone knowing where you were?” 

“I was there!” Himiko raises her hand.

Kurogiri glares. Himiko lowers her hand.

“Nothing that important,” Grins are echoed around the bar at Tomura’s lie - Dabi most of all. “Just a distraction big enough that no one can connect the League of Villains with one break-in.”

Izuku tugs out the piece of paper he had Hitoshi swipe for him earlier that day, while Himiko does the same at his side with her own stolen note. Everyone in the league, except for Kurogiri, follows their example, dropping their own scattered charts and schedules and patrol lists on the bar top for Kurogiri to see the evidence of their research over the last several days. 

Amongst the sprawling paperwork, several locations form a common thread: Hero Public Safety Commission, Might Tower, Unforeseen Simulation Joint, Kiyashi Ward Shopping Mall, Tatooin Station, Juko News, and Fujiya Hospital.

It'll be difficult, god will it be difficult. But she’s waited long enough. 

After all, isn't that the saying? Hide a tree in a forest? 

Tomura raises his hands with a smirk. It’s times like these that Izuku can see why they follow Tomura, even when they argue and try to kill each other. The failure King who will destroy the society that has hurt so many of them. “Any questions, Kurogiri?” 

When Kurogiri next speaks, it’s with a hint of pride. “Shall we begin, then?”

Chapter Text

5:14 AM, abandoned appliance warehouse, Yokohama city 

“Does everyone know what they’re doing for step two?” Kurogiri asks, neatening the pile of papers with all the planning Compress and Izuku spent all night helping him with. Even now, with a coffee cup clutched in Izuku’s hand, plans and contingencies for if the first one falls through and countermeasures if those fall through slosh together in his brain like slushies. Godammit! Now he wants a slushie. 

Twice raises his hand. “About the plan? Or life in general?” 

Kurogiri visibly stops himself from banging his head on the table. “The plan, Jin-san.” 

“Oh.” Twice lowers his hand. “Then yeah.” 

“Ooh, wait wait!” Himiko jumps up and down. Kurogiri looks so tired; Izuku relates. “If this was step two, what was step one?” 

“Fucking getting here, Toga.” Tomura snaps back without glancing up from his 3DS. Mood. 

Izuku fiddles with his respirator between Twice and Spinner, bouncing on his heels as Kurogiri and Compress finish packing the last of their supplies. “I just want to tell you something before we all split up;” Compress says after he’s finished with his part, wiping his eyes theatrically. “All of you are such amazing, wonderful people, and we’re going to show our best effort today and not focus on the fact that if one thing goes wrong, we’re all going to die.” 

“Thanks,” Dabi rubs his face. “That was so very comforting.” 

Compress beams. “You’re welcome!” 

“Nice pep talk and all, but can we go now?” Spinner complains, shivering despite Dabi wrapped around his back like a disgruntled housecat/portable heater. The warehouse they were using is awfully cold, considering it has half of a roof and not a single unbroken window. Even Himiko’s cold, though that might be the skin colored unitard bedazzled with glitter she’s wearing. 

“Fine.” Compress sighs. “Not a lick of showmanship in any of you.” 

“I’d have more showmanship if my balls weren’t freezing off.” Spinner retorts, half carrying/half dragging Dabi towards the drug van they stole that smells faintly of licorice and mustard. Weird combination, he knows, but it has a hitch for them to tow something and that’s what’s important. 

Kurogiri climbs into the driver's seat, while the rest of them cram into whatever available spot they can find. Izuku ends up sitting on Tomura’s lap in one of the two seat middle row, with Dabi the bastard stretching out his long legs in the seat next to them. Magne, Spinner, and Compress squeeze together in the backseat, while Himiko plops in Twice’s lap in the passenger seat. 

“Why the fuck doesn’t this car have seatbelts?” Tomura curses as the van starts up, refusing to touch Izuku whatsoever and hands firmly at his sides. Which would normally be sweet, but seriously, they’ve made out before in order to get a 12 pack chicken nugget from McDonalads, this is nothing. 

Izuku rolls his eyes, grabbing his arms and forcing them to hold onto his waist. If he’s dying, it’s not going to be from going headfirst through the windshield, that’d be too lame. On the rare chance he does finally die, it’s going to make nationwide news and involve at least three different governments. Tomura squeaks. “I’m pretty sure they were more concerned with transporting drugs than people.” 

Hopefully, anyhow. The league has been cracking down on human trafficking on their turf - none of them have any tolerance for that shit, and they make it well known what will and will not fly in Musutafu. 

“Just drive slow, Kuro-kun!” Himiko chirps, flipping open the mirror on her sunshade. “I gotta do my eyeliner anyway.” 

.

5:48 AM, Juko News Station, Musutafu

Taneo doesn’t regret becoming a journalist, but damn, early mornings are a killer. Juko News, the publicist he works for, is primarily a hard print agency, but they do have a broadcasting center on the upper floors. Most of Musutafu watch their morning news - mostly boring things, like a new city center being built or marathons for people to pet puppies. 

Stay at home parents and commuters like the peacefulness of it in a city where villain attacks occur on the daily, and so does the staff working at Juko News, even if it means they don’t get paid as much. 

Early mornings are still a thing of dread no matter how much one likes their job, and it doesn’t help that their newest intern is terminally late for everything, including getting their goddamn coffee Ishikawa. “Where have you been? We start in less than fifteen!” He demands, before sighing at her flinch. Be nice Taneo, be nice… “Nevermind, just don’t let it happen again. C’mon.” 

Ishikawa blubbers her thanks as Taneo leads them over to the elevator, swiping his card to allow them entrance to the upper levels. She watches his card keenly, fiddling with the long blue pearl necklace, before he ushers her past their meager security and into their broadcasting center.

“Set the coffee down over by the director and go assist lighting, okay?” He gentles his voice, glancing over his shoulder at their youngest member. But she’s not holding any coffee. 

“Oh, is that what she was supposed to be doing? I couldn’t tell, she was spending so much time talking on her phone.” Ishikawa hums, her left eye dripping down her face. Grey sludge plops at her heeled feet, blonde hair emerging from Ishikawa’s melting pink. “Unfortunately, you’re going to have to wait a little while longer for your caffeine fix.” 

With that, she rips her necklace off and chucks it into the foray, and the screaming begins. 

Taneo yelps as he stumbles away on tripping feet, but the girl darts towards him impossibly fast, swinging behind him and holding a blade to his neck. Ishikawa’s green slides into ecstatic yellow, and he recognizes that insane blush instantly. “T-toga Himiko, from the League of Villains.” There’s shouts behind him, but he doesn’t dare move in fear of his neck being slit. 

She grins, canines glinting in the studio’s dim lights. “Yep, that’s me! Now, will you be a good boy and go sit over there with the rest of your lovely coworkers?” 

Carefully, he nods, allowing her to walk him step by step towards where the rest of the broadcasting team are huddled on the floor with their hands raised. Two members he recognizes as Magne, the one with the magnetizing quirk, and Spinner, the lizard Stain cosplayer, work on tying them up quickly with thick lines of rope. Not like they could fight back even if they wanted to - the only one with a somewhat offensive quirk is Fuji-san, and all she can do is make people’s mouths taste funny. 

Toga roughly shoves him forward, and Taneo takes the hint and quickly sits down next to Murakami-san with his hands raised in the air. They share a disbelieving look, terror simmering in their guts as the terrorists adjust their cameras and fiddle with the equipment with baffled expressions. Among them, he only doesn’t recognize two; one with burn scars all over their body, and another with a gas mask and goggles to hide their face. 

“Yo,” the one with a hand on his face, wait is that Shigaraki Tomura?, asks Murakami-san. “Has anyone eaten this yet?” 

He’s holding her bagel. 

Murakami-san shakes her head. “Uh, no?” She sounds like she doesn’t understand what he’s asking. 

“Cool, thanks.” Shigaraki pops the dead hand off his face, stuffing it in pocket and taking a bite out of the bagel, before making a face. “Ew, you like cinnamon cream cheese?” 

Murakami-san helplessly shrugs, but Shigaraki has already moved on. “Hey, anyone want a bagel I just took a bite out of?” 

“Did you brush your teeth this morning?” The one with burn scars says, and when Shigaraki says yes, makes a gimmie motion. “Fuck yeah, come to papa you curdled milk and eggless donuts.” 

“Please never call it that again.” Shigaraki deadpans, but hands the bagel over anyway and goes back to sorting through their breakfast order. 

“Eh,” the guy with burn scars shrugs. “No promises.” Then, he proceeds to lick the cream cheese off the bagel, before blowing a breath of blue fire on the soggy bread and eating the burnt crouton it became. 

Taneo doesn’t even notice his wrists and ankles being tied, he’s in that much emotional shock. He only jolts out it when the league member - Magne - pats his shoulder with a sympathetic smile. “You get used to it after a while.” She offers. 

He never wants to get used to that crime against humanity. 

“Poggers,” Shigaraki fist pumps when he finds another uneaten bagel, this one without cinnamon cream cheese. Taneo is regretting becoming a journalist now. 

.

6:00 AM, Musutafu city center, Musutafu

Citizens glance up in curiosity as the screen on the Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group’s skyscraper tuned to Juko’s morning news remains blank, the screen showing nothing but black. Even if they don’t consciously pay attention to it, it’s become ingrained in their routine so easily, simply by being near their circles of existence.  

They don’t focus on it, more concerned with their daily lives. After all, it’s probably just a technical error. 

Until someone shouts. “Holy shit, what is that?!” 

More and more follow the glances of those around them, eyes going wide and mouths dropping in shock. It’s not so much the message painted across every screen, including the one on the skyscraper looming over the commuter crowd below, but the signature on the bottom of the screen. 

The show will begin in one hour! Stay tuned to find out ~ ☆*✲ﾟ*｡(((´♡‿♡`+)))｡*ﾟ✲*☆

The League of Villains

.

6:32 AM, Corellia University of Science and Medicine, twenty minutes outside of Musutafu

Natsuo, in lieu of actually brushing his teeth, knocks back some mouthwash, gargles, and then spits into a nearby trash can. He’s put absolutely no fucks into his appearance, still wearing the same hoodie and sweatpants he’s been wearing for three days now. At least he doesn’t show up to Organic Chem in a penguin onesie like that one kid a row down from him, though honestly he really wants to some days.  

Fuyumi pulls up to the curb with a squeak of her tires, rolling down the passenger window. “Get in loser, we’re going to go commit a felony.’ 

He squints, but does as she says. “Was that a Mean Girls reference?” 

“Maybe, I never watched it. You’ve seen it?” She asks, leaning over into the backseat and throwing a wad of clothes at him. 

“No,” he says, y’know, like a liar. “Are these…scrubs?”

“Trust me.” Fuyumi says convincedly, staring him dead in the eye with a hand on his shoulder. Natsuo immediately has flashbacks to at least times she’s said those exact words, in which he’s ended up either 1) in his underwear 2) covered in string cheese 3) in his underwear and covered in string cheese 4) bench pressing Touya when they were kids 5) bench pressing Shouto when he was a child 6) bench pressing Touya as adults 7) bench pressing Shouto when he’s a beefy teenager 8) committing spite fueled arson as a family bonding activity 9) stealing Endeavor’s credit card and buying a yacht (it’s still in Musutafu harbor) 10) drinking some kind of monster energy drink she gave him that kept him awake for four days straight during finals, which he still has no idea what was in it 11) crossdressing while doing his grocery shopping 12) stealing an entire dog. Like what the fuck, Fuyumi.

And because he’s an idiot, he says, “Yeah, okay.” 

Climbing into the backseat, he strips off his clothes and changes into the matching scrubs. “We’re gonna have to rush a little bit to be there in time for the shift change.” Fuyumi chimes in cheerfully as they pull away from the curb. 

Natsuo pauses in tucking the shirt in. “The shift change is at seven. It’s a forty minute drive.” The incredulity in his voice isn’t in the slightest faked. 

Fuyumi shrugs. “Only if you drive normally.” 

And then she revs the engine, and Natsuo sees god. 

Classical music blasts from her radio as she turns left sharply enough to cut a man, right through a narrow alleyway between two buildings and swerving backwards onto the main road, nearly colliding with another car and humming cheerfully to the cacophony of car horns. Natsuo screams. 

“Stop shouting!” Fuyumi shouts, cutting across four lanes of incoming traffic in the intersection. Natsuo only screams louder as a truck passes literally inches from their tail end, desperately clinging to the headrests to stop himself from being thrown around the car. “I know what I’m doing!” 

“WATCH OUT FOR THAT PEDESTRIAN!” He shrieks over the music. 

“He’s on the street,” Fuyumi argues calmly, driving across the road divider and onto an off-ramp, swerving around the incoming traffic. “He knows the risk he’s taking.” 

Natsuo starts praying. Loudly. 

.

6:54 AM, Kiyashi Ward Shopping Mall, Kiyashi Ward, Tokyo

“Good luck today, Izuku-kun!” Himiko pecks his cheek as she climbs out of the car, tugging the cat hoodie up with a bunch of pins (Izuku swears he sees one with a funky looking cat that says D A M N) over her head. Twice, instead of his usual suit, has a neon pink zentai zipped on with a guitar case strapped over his shoulder, the result being him looking like some weird street performer. No one will look twice at them, besides those side eyes you give to weird looking people on the street but you don’t actually want to look at them in fear of making eye contact. 

Well, except for the clone of Spinner, but he’s supposed to cause some chaos with his usual Stain cosplay. And the giant sword he’s carrying, that too.

“Before you go, Himichan,” Izuku pokes his head out the window, smiling at her excitement. “I just need to hear those three words from you.” 

“I love you?” She says hopefully. 

Izuku keeps smiling. “Try again.”

Himiko grumbles. “I will behave.”

They wave their goodbyes, before the clone of Kurogiri drives them the rest of them off. The real Kurogiri is with Compress running point, and that reminds Izuku to check in. “How are things back at the station?” He asks into his communication device attached to his ear. 

A crackle of static, and then Compress pops on the channel. “Everything is running according to plan! We’ll be on in five, so make sure to pull up the stream on your phone to get the full Sako Experience™.” Why did Izuku hear him say the trademark symbol? 

“Please don’t do anything stupid or dramatic.” Dabi deadpans.

“You could sooner divert a river from its course than deny me my nature.”

Tomura snorts. “You’re one to talk, Dabi. I’ve seen you practicing your Endeavor takedown speech half naked in your room with a hairbrush as a microphone.” 

Right as Dabi starts incoherently screaming, Kurogiri mutes him. “I’ll unmute him when the stream begins.” He says, absolutely tonelessly. 

As everyone devolves into bickering on the channel, Izuku mutes himself and looks back at his partners for this mission. “You guys ready?” 

“Oh yeah,” the real Spinner blinks rapidly, staring directly ahead. “Everything’s just fine. Totally not having an anxiety attack or anything like that. Is my heart still beating? I think it stopped beating. Either that, or it’s going so fast I can’t feel it.”

The clone Himiko, on the other hand, bounces excitably. “This is going to be great!” 

.

7:00 AM, Musutafu city center, Musutafu

The screen flickers, before the infamously familiar sight of Mr. Compress sitting in front of the camera appears. The magician seems for all appearances calm, expression hidden behind his mask and hat with his hands folded neatly over the desk in front of him. 

“Hello, Japan.” He greets pleasantly, like they were sitting down for tea rather than a terrorist who had taken over a morning broadcast. “As you can see, we’ve occupied Juko news station to deliver you a wonderful warning of the day of reckoning.” 

Mr. Compress unfolds his hand to toss a marble up and down, almost absently, the light bouncing off his impenetrable mask. “To the police who are likely to swarm the building within the next couple of minutes, I deliver you a warning. I have compressed a pyrophoric gas within this marble,” he holds up said marble to the camera. “The workers at this station are my hostages. I have access to surveillance, so if I see any one of you pesky Heroes infiltrating the news agency, I will bring this building down with me. If you have any arguments, feel free to contact me at this number here.”

Instead of a number, a green screen image of a Patrick from Spongebob Squarepants making that face showed up. Mr. Compress doesn’t react at all. 

Someone, probably one of the hostages, quietly mutters, “What the FUCK.” 

This may have been the desired effect.  

“Many of you may be wondering why I would go so far.” Mr. Compress switches tone, his voice falling back into joviality that leaves many viewers blinking rapidly at the sheer cognitive dissonance. “After all, to many of you, we’re a relic of times long gone, the last embers of Stain’s will. To that, I have only one thing to say.” 

Mr. Compress leans forward, and with deadly seriousness, says, “The last person who called me old, I compressed their arm and shoved it up their ass.”

With that, he leans back and pulls a deck of cards out of absolutely fucking nowhere. “Now, we have some time to kill. So…is this your card?”  

.

7:28 AM, Tatooin Station, Musutafu

A little known fact about Tatooin Station is that despite its location as a bullet train station, it's connected to not only the rest of the stations around Musutafu, but the conflict monitor that detects problems among all traffic lights in the city. To be honest, the only reason the League has this kind of information is because apparently Dabi dared Giran to a drinking competition with the rest of them as their witnesses. Giran, apparently, had a reputation among most drinking establishments as being unstoppable when it came to said competitions and took the dare with a smug smile. 

Well, when an unstoppable object meets an unmoving force… 

Needless to say, Dabi is a fucking tank and Tomura is never drinking with him again. No wonder no one has any videos of him getting shitfaced yet their private snapchat is filled with video evidence of their sins. If Tomura ever sees another video of Compress doing a pole dance half naked, it would be too soon. 

(That’s a lie, Compress has a godamn six pack like what the fuck. If Tomura had any interest in sex and if he didn’t view Compress as a weird somewhat fatherly figure, then Tomura might have fallen a little bit in love. Unfortunately, Tomura didn’t, so mostly he felt weirded out by his own attraction and had to go lie down for a bit.) 

Walking quickly through the busy station with a hood over his head, Tomura pulls off his two fingered glove by his teeth, closing his now bare hand around the doorknob for the staff room. The clone of Magne guards his back as he swiftly decays the lock, allowing them access to the security room. 

“Hey! You’re not supposed to be -” The clone of Magne whacks her giant magnet over his head almost boredly, knocking the security guard out instantly and dragging the unconscious man from the chair. Slipping his glove back on, he takes the now freed seat and rubs his hands together, cackling maniacally to himself like the greedy little feral goblin he is. 

Midoriya once called him a ‘goose with rabies, which is kinda like a normal goose, but just drools more’. To this day, he’s still unsure whether that was an insult or a compliment. 

Considering Midoriya, probably both. 

Squinting at the bright screen, Tomura grumbles to himself as he yanks out his reading glasses from his hoodie, slipping them on his face and navigating over to the files. Locked, dammit. 

“You need glasses?” The clone of Magne asks, tilting her head over the top of the overstuffed chair.

Tomura smirks. “And no one will ever believe you.”

She looks reluctantly impressed. As she should be. 

Inside the pocket of his ratty jeans is a single USB with a code Spinner, Midoriya, Compress, and Kurogiri spent literally days working on. The four of them are some of the most intelligent people Tomura knows (even if Spinner’s specialty lies solely in computers), but even then, they barely managed to create this virus in time despite working around the clock. 

Plugging it in, he holds his breath as the four little emojis pop on the screen along with a loading bar - a black cloud, a blue marble, a green rabbit, and a purple lizard. Clearly, Midoriya once again had too much coffee. Though this may be Compress’ fault, as his job was more on the surface finishes, unlike Spinner and Kurogiri who had to create the finer details themselves while Midoriya tested them extensively on dummy computers the rest of the league had to fish out of dumpsters. 

Then the screen goes dark. “What’s going on?” Dabi asks as Tomura lets out a string of curses over the open comms. 

“Your godamn guess is as good as mine.” Tomura snarls, bashing the keyboard in frustration. Fucking shit! Everyone worked so hard on this, it cannot fuck up now! 

(He thinks of the sway in Compress’ usually jaunty step, the shadows under Midoriya’s eyes, the slur in Spinner’s voice, the flickering on the edges of Kurogiri’s mist, and feels anger so deep and hot that he nearly decays the entire system right there and then.) 

“Hey, watch your fucking language.” Dabi says, the distant sound of something revving obscuring his voice. “Anyhow, I’m pretty sure my guess will be infinitely better than yours.” 

“Now’s not the time.” Kurogiri scolds them, but over the comms and background noise, comes across as more ‘NoW’s nOT THe tIMe’. 

It makes Tomura crack a smile, and moments later, the screen reboots, credentials signed in and the vast wealth of Musutafu’s active infrastructure laid out in front of him. 

He can’t help it; he starts laughing like a demented hyena. Perhaps the rabies theory has more merits than he assumed. He should look to see if he remembers being bitten by a wild animal in the past. 

The clone of Magne leans over his chair. “Hey, quick question?” She doesn’t wait for him to stop laughing. “Why are you like this?” 

He instantly sobers up. “I used too much ‘no more tears’ shampoo as a child and haven’t felt a single healthy emotion since then.” Unlike around Natsuo, or any of Midoriya’s little friends, his ominous statement doesn’t even draw a blink out of her. 

They really have been spending way too much time together. Ugh, he needs better friends. 

(If anyone tried to take the league away from him, he would decay their fucking throat out.) 

With that, he cracks his knuckles, staring up at the thousands of lines of text laid out in front of him. “Let’s fucking gooo boys.” 

“Gender neutral terms, remember?”

“Oh fuck, my bad. Let’s fucking go, you undeserving fuck llamas.” 

“Better.” 

.

8:02 AM, Fujiya Hospital, Tokyo

“I’m telling you,” Natsuo explains to Fuyumi. “Molotov cocktails always work. Anytime I had a problem, I threw a Molotov cocktail at it. Boom! I had a different problem.”

Fuyumi rubs her forehead. “That may be true in your vigilante work, but we’re in a hospital. I’m not letting you set the place on fire just yet (“I heard that.”), even if it means getting out of this damn closet.” To prove her point, she kicks his shin from where they’re pressed uncomfortably together. 

Natsuo pouts. “Damn, I was in the mood for a little arson - wait.” He does a double take. “I never told you about being a vigilante!”

“I wear glasses, I’m not blind.” Fuyumi deadpans. “Besides, there’s only so many ‘hot sauce stains’ someone can take before it becomes obvious that it’s blood.” 

Natsuo crosses his arms, sulking silently, before he hears Fuyumi mumble, “You were easy to follow anyhow.” 

“You did what?” He cries, only to get whacked on the head with a clipboard. 

“Shush!” She glowers at him. “And it’s not like you were trying particularly hard to hide your tracks. I could sneak around the city better when I was eight.” 

Okay. Well, he has some questions. 

Unfortunately, it’s at that moment that the timer on Fuyumi’s watch quietly beeps. “Thank god.” She groans. “If I was in there for another twenty minutes I would have committed fratricide.” 

“Gee, thanks, I love you too.”

Fuyumi whips her head around 180 degrees. “What was that?” She asks, voice sugary sweet. 

Natsuo eeks. “Nothing!”

“Thought so.” Fuyumi chirps, poking her head out of the door. Natsuo leans over her, both of them glancing back and forth before scurrying into the empty hallway. With their scrubs and dollar store clipboards, they blend seamlessly into the background as they leave the quiet oncology unit and slip into the psychiatric ward across the hallway. 

“Remember, don’t be suspicious.” Fuyumi reminds him quietly as they take the empty stairwell up. 

Natsuo rolls his eyes. “Don’t be suspicious.” He mocks, but it echoes around the stairwell, sounding almost…nice. Which is weird, because it’s a chronic fact that none of the Todorokis can sing for shit. 

Fuyumi’s glasses gleam. “Don’t don’t be suspicious.” 

Running on the ‘neglected because you’re dad’s an asshole’ brainwave, both of them start sashaying up the stairs “Don’t don’t be suspicious.” Natsuo chants, and both of them smile. 

Instantly, Natsuo starts beatboxing as they furiously headbang, Fuyumi belting out “Don’t don’t be suspicious.” on repeat with her voice getting gradually louder and more guttural. 

“Todoroki-san?”

Natsuo screams, whips around, and punches the intruder right in the face. Their mother’s doctor goes flat on his back, tumbling over several stairs and likely giving himself a concussion, if the fact that he’s unconscious is any indicator. 

Fuyumi and him trade wide eyed looks. “He was kinda a dick anyway.” Natsuo blurts out. 

“Yeah, he was.” Fuyumi nods quickly, steals the doctor’s keycard, and grabs his hand to yank him up the stairs before he can knock anyone else out with his right hook. 

Quickly enough, they manage to find their mother’s room, swiping the card and diving into the room before anyone else could see them committing an illegal jailbreak. 

“Fuyumi? Natsuo?” Their mother glances up at them, closing her book gently. “I didn’t know you were visiting me today.” 

It hits both of them at the exact same time that no one told her they were going to break her out. 

“Hi mom,” Natsuo says weakly, before trailing off into silence. Fuyumi elbows him. “Ow! Okay, so we may be kidnapping you for a little while? And by a while I mean indefinitely?” 

Their mother blinks. “Alright.” 

…Alright?

Ignoring their flabbergasted expressions completely, their mother reaches under her bed, pulling out what Natsuo can’t call anything but a getaway bag. Standing up, she shoves her toiletries in the bag with what looks like tightly folded clothes and the letters they send her. 

“Um.” Fuyumi keeps blinking, like the sight will magically change if she refreshes it enough. “How are you not more surprised?” 

And in much the same way Fuyumi scolded him earlier, their mother gives them the look™ that even years later makes him sweat. “I’m old, not stupid. I know when my children are breaking the law.” 

Natsuo gulps, which is understandable, but why does Fuyumi look nervous? Actually, nevermind, he doesn’t want to know what his sister gets up to in order to vent. She’s scary enough as it is. 

“Oh right.” Their mother pauses in her packing. “How are Touya and Shouto doing? They really think they’re so sneaky sending me flowers, but neither one of them are known much for their subtlety.” She narrows her eyes at them. “None of my children are good at that, not that I think about it.” 

Both of them make a sound that shouldn’t be made by human vocal chords. 

.

8:42 AM, U.A. High School, Musutafu

“Is everything okay, Touya-san?” 

Shouto glances up from his phone at Yaomomo and Inasa sitting on either side of him on the bus. Despite it being a two seater, both of them seem determined to snuggle in on him, pressing their shoulders and knees together until his ears feel uncomfortably hot/cold depending on the side.

After living with Inko-san for six months, he thought he was used to physical affection. He was wrong.

“I’m fine.” Shouto says shortly, frowning down at his phone before locking it and placing it back in the backpack balanced on his knees.

Yaomomo frowns. “Is it what Bakugo-san said?” 

It really was strange. Bakugo had been studying at his desk when Shouto stopped by his desk to pick up his dropped headphones. When he stood back up, Bakugo was staring at his green hair with an expression he couldn’t place. The next moment, he blew up at Shouto, insulting him from the way he tied his shoes to his ‘stupidly OP quirk’ to his so called ‘resting bitch face’. 

Strangely, he never said anything about his hair or his fake freckles. 

“Remember,” Inasa shoves their shoulders ‘gently’, which means Shouto almost smooshes Yaomomo between him and the window. “Sticks and stones may break my bones…”

Shouto brightens up. He knows this one! Toga blasts it all the time, after all. “But chains and whips excite me?”

Both of them do a spitake. “NO!”

He blinks. He did not know that one evidently. 

“It’s not about Bakugo at all,” Shouto hesitates, before deciding to explain. “My friend isn’t answering any of his texts. It’s not like him.” 

Yaomomo taps her chin. “The one with green hair you were talking to at the gate this morning, right?” He nods, and she smiles brightly. “I wouldn’t worry about it then! He’s probably in class and doesn’t want to seem rude.” 

Shouto doesn’t want to explain that Midoriya doesn’t give a shit about things like politeness or laws. The only thing stopping him from flinging himself into the sun to fist fight it for giving Dabi’s boss a sunburn is the death grip Inko-san has on the back of his shirt. 

Inasa elbows him, nearly rupturing his spleen in the process. “He’s your friend, huh?” 

He’s not a fan of the eyebrow wiggling. Not in the slightest. 

“We’re cousins!” He blurts, and feels immediate regret for how white Inasa’s face turns. Actually, no he doesn’t. Inasa deserves it. Shouto can still taste bile in the back of his mouth. 

Besides, Shouto isn’t really interested in romance, nor is Midoriya. For Shouto, he simply doesn’t get all the social norms for that, he barely understands friendships as it is (thanks Endeavor). Midoriya simply gives romance the same amount of attention a fly gives world politics - absolutely zero. Besides, he has that weird thing with Dabi’s boss that had Shouto walking in on them more than once watching porn together and critiquing the acting with popcorn. 

Yeah, he doesn’t get it either. 

Quickly enough, the bus pulls up to USJ, the three of them waiting patiently for the more eager classmates to crowd off the bus before they themselves slip off. “You don’t have to be my bodyguards.” Shouto points out when they stand on either side of him while they wait for Thirteen and Aizawa to finish talking, glaring at anyone who dares to look at him wrong. 

“Of course we’re not your bodyguards!” Inasa gasps. “We’re your Protection Squad.”

Shouto stares. “Pro…tection…squad.”   

Yamomo nods fiercely, clenched fist held tightly. “We’ll defend you, Touya-san. You’re a cinnamon roll, which means you must be protected at all costs!” 

“Did Ashido tell you about this?” He asks.

Neither of them answer. That’s a yes. 

With a sigh, he allows them to escort him further into USJ once Thirteen’s lecture is over (Dabi would find the whole thing about ‘quirks are dangerous’ absolutely hilarious). Considering there are only two teachers, half of the class splits in the central plaza. Shouto trails behind Inasa as they enter the downpour zone, several of his classmates talking amongst each other.

“Are you okay?” Iida asks Uraraka, hands chopping like he’s teaching children’s karate. “You seem pale. If you don’t feel well, you should tell Aizawa-sensei!” 

Uraraka smiles uneasily. “I’m fine! Just…worried about the news. It’s been so long since the last big incident, I have no idea what the League of Villains could want now of all times.”

The league of fucking what. 

Out of the corner of his eye, there’s a flash of pink. 

Shouto glances up at the catwalks above them. Magne winks, and hits the speaker. 

Fuck. 

“Prepare for trouble!” Plays happily over the sound system as Magne races across the catwalks, high fiving Compress as they pass each other. “And make it double!” 

The rest of his classmates look around in confusion, blissfully innocent to the chaos occurring above their heads. Shouto envies them. 

“To protect the world from devastation!” Careful to avoid being caught watching, Shouto eyes them in his peripherals. Both of them seem to be using the music to cover up their loud footsteps as they stop every couple of feet at hidden terminals, rapidly typing in something, before dashing to the next one. “To unite all peoples within our nation!” 

“Do you ever wish you could sometimes die?!” Shouto yells to Inasa over the blasting music. Oh, one of them just hit the rave lights

Inasa stares at him. “No!? Should I be concerned?!”

Shouto just blinks, listening to the mocking, “To denounce the evils of truth and love!”. Why did he want to be a Hero again? Oh yeah, to make his mom proud and repay Inko-san, all that stuff. 

Yeah, maybe fleeing the country when Kurogiri had offered upon their first meeting, with an expression of deep sympathy, was a better idea. Damn you, Inko-san’s wonderful cold soba. 

“To extend our reach to the stars above!” Someone gasps, pointing up at the catwalks, Aizawa’s scarf already unraveling and wrapping around the edge of a building to gain momentum upward. 

Magne pauses, hand drastically pressed against the back of her forehead. “Jessie!”

Compress joins her, a leg propped up on the railing and hat held high in the air. “James!”

That’s the exact moment Aizawa launches himself at them with the fury of a cat that’s just recently been bathed, Thirteen’s puffy form emerging from the other side of the long pathway. 

Magne and Compress trade looks, before quickly scampering down the catwalk, awkwardly climbing over the railing near the middle and flipping off Aizawa smugly. “Team Rocket blasts off at the speed of light!” With that, they fall backwards. 

Hagakure screams. Aoyama makes a retching sound. Sero desperately flings out a strip of tape. Shouto puts up a hand to block the light. 

“Surrender now, or prepare to fight!” And both of them dissolve into goo upon hitting the ground. 

Welp. That was mildly traumatizing. 

The Pokémon music cuts out, someone awkwardly clearing their throat over the sound system. “Thank you for following our distraction, Eraserhead darling!” Magne chirps. “Just a heads up, all the systems in USJ will now fall into Pro Hero Mode within a minute, so if you’re not careful, the disasters might spread from one zone to another!” 

As if she summoned it, the rain suddenly grows from a heavy summer afternoon to a full on monsoon. Shouto, thinking fast before some of his lighter classmates could be swept away, stomps his foot and envelops them in a dome of ice, exhaling frost as the dome starts shuddering under the torrential downpour. 

“Also, we locked the doors and blocked all outgoing electrical signals, so have fun!” With that, Magne clicks off the call, leaving both halves of the class separated with no teacher supervision and undergoing hurricane level weathers. 

Oh, fuck you Midoriya, is his first thought, later followed by, this is because I ate the last Trix yogurt, isn’t it? 

.

Magne smirks to herself as she hangs up, yanking the wires out of the outdoor outlet in the camera's blind spot. “Did we really have to use Pokémon music as a distraction?” She asks, voice full of amusement. 

“Pokémon is a goddamn classic -” Magne tunes out Shigaraki’s rant, wrapping her equipment with the phone wire before setting it on the ground a good distance from the building and any trees. 

Digging her hand in the inside pocket of her jacket, she pulls out a small, heavily embroidered bag she made at therapy when she could afford it. In it, there’s several blue marbles, each of them with a color corresponding tape on it. 

“Sako, blue.” She orders, flicking the marble with the blue tape at her equipment. 

“Always a pleasure, Madame!” Sako crows, and the marble explodes, blue flames incinerating the equipment in seconds. A part of her has always admired Dabi’s quirk, though she knows the painful backlash on his body. It's certainly flashy enough. 

“Do you need a warp out?” Kurogiri asks. 

Magne hums in thought, glancing behind at the heavily reinforced barriers surrounding USJ. “I suppose I should go give the others some reinforcement…If you wouldn’t mind then, dear.”

A black portal forms steps away from her; Kurogiri’s quirk as dependable as always. 

“Oh!” She laughs, tugging the one other item she needed out of her pocket. “Nearly forgot about this.” 

With that, she tosses the burner phone into the flames, before disappearing into the portal to help the others. 

.

9:12 AM, Kiyashi Ward Shopping Mall, Kiyashi Ward, Tokyo

Himiko hums, resting her chin on her hand as she boredly sucks her fruity lemonade through one of her fancy straws - this one simply says ‘Karen’ because it makes Tomura snort everytime he sees it. “This is awful!” She whines, kicking her legs petulantly. 

“Huh?” Jin blinks from where he’s been playing with the jam packets and salt shakers. Currently, his tower is nearly high enough to come up to his neck. “Oh, yeah. Totally.” 

She only pouts harder, stirring her drink sullenly. “I wanted to go get a manicure today, but nooo, we gotta go be actual villains. It’s too much work!” 

Jin snickers. “Aww, Toga-chan, it won't be that bad! Yeah, have you ever worked a night shift at a gas station before? Still not as bad as the movie theatre job, though.” 

Himiko kicks his leg. “Well, this is the hardest I’ve ever worked on anything since…” She trails off, blinking. “Wow! I’ve never worked hard on anything besides video games! Damn, I have a nice life.” 

“But if you do really well…” Jin scoots closer conspiringly. “I bet Midoriya would praise you!” 

Oh. Her crops are watered, her skin is clear, the stars have aligned. Everything is wonderful. 

The alarm on her phone goes off, Teto Territory reminding her brightly that it’s now 9:15. “C’mon!” She jumps up, grabbing Jin’s hand and dragging him from his chair. The cafe’s workers have been giving them the stink eye for taking up one of their seats for the last hour. Well excuse her, but wandering around the mall checking out all the exits and entrances gets boring after a while. They already left Spinner hiding by the entrance, so he should be blocking any more people from entering or leaving soon. “I like malls and all, but I only want to go shopping when it’s closed with no one around and everything is free…”

Jin holds up a finger. “Isn’t that called a night robbery? You and me both, lol.”  

“Eh.” Himiko shrugs, stopping briefly at the mall’s map to double check. “Then so be it.”

“Oh!” Jin brightens up as he points towards a Natural House store near the back end of the building. “Fun fact!” He chirps as they skip towards the center of the mall - Jin does love his fun facts. “If you tried to live on eating only iceberg lettuce, you’d have to eat roughly thirty four heads of lettuce a day. Which is about 17.5K a year! And then you’d still die of malnutrition.” 

Himiko laughs, her arms swinging happily by her sides as she skips across the tiles, listening to the so not cute comms system (“It doesn’t go with my aesthetic, Giri-kun! Yes, an aesthetic is vital. What do you mean fashion and battle efficiency aren’t the same thing?”) crackle in her ear. At least Atsuhiro let her put stickers on it, even if it’s mostly hidden inside her ear.“ Do you ever think about these things before you say them?” Dabi drawls. 

Jin nods. “Yep! Not really. I think, ‘wow, that’s brilliant, I should say that out loud,’ and then I do, and it’s spectacular. It’s an absolute fucking disaster.” 

“But what a way to go.” Izuku says wistfully. 

Himiko’s smile grows even larger at the sound of her favorite people bickering on the channel, blood vial bracelet jangling on her wrist with every step of her dress shoes. She has another one around her ankle, and a glittery metal water bottle in her backpack bottle filled with a mixture of different people’s blood. While blood banks in hospital are usually tightly guarded, the same can’t be said for their buses. 

Overall, she just looks like a normal high school girl skipping school to go shopping. Bor~ing!

“Normal is overrated.” She sighs, feet slowing down and hands sliding into her pockets. Jin falls into step next to her and links their elbows together. 

“Who needs normal?” Jin jabs her side playfully, grinning behind the mask. “We’re all a bunch of whack jobs here anyhow!”

Himiko giggles, leaning into his side. “True enough!” 

The league is her family, full of people just like her wanting a new future where they can just be themselves. It’s her home. 

That’s why Himiko has no problem taking off her backpack once they arrive at the center of the mall, waving goodbye to Jin with an excited jump. “Big Daddy in the van, how are we doing?” 

“I’m not,” Kurogiri cuts himself off with a sigh. Admittedly, it’s one of her favorite sounds. “We’re doing fine. Commence with stage three.” 

“Commence with stage three…” Himiko trails off meaningfully, a shit eating grin stretching across her face as she climbs onto the fountain steps.  

Kurogiri grumbles. “Commence with stage three, Kitty Three.” 

Himiko fist pumps, before realizing something. “Wait, if I’m Kitty Three, then who’s Kitty One?” 

Tomura snorts. “Me, obviously.” Well, he is Kurogiri’s favorite…Though the idea of calling Tomura kitty anything is hilarious.  

…Maybe she should invest in some cat ears? Gasp! They could wear color coordinated ones! Himiko will obviously be pink, because only Izuku doesn’t care about gender norms, or Tomura if he forgot his glasses (she’s transformed as him, she’s seen his crappy vision first hand). Dabi can be purple, or maybe blue? No, Tomura’s favorite color is blue, so Dabi can be purple. And of course, Izuku will be green! 

A polite cough. “Toga, if you would?” 

She blinks. “Oh, sorry!” Giggling, she sets her backpack by her feet, searching through it for a moment, before pulling out two elastics, a megaphone, and a handful of marbles. The elastics, she uses to tug her hair up into her signature buns. Magne does her hair like this for her every morning, and she never realized how much she missed it until she had her hair down once more. 

Never again. She’ll never be that person ever again. 

Himiko hums to herself as she picks up the megaphone, gazing at the milling crowd below her like a queen about to serve her judgement upon the masses. Ah, that power trip always does feel nice. 

“Listen up!” She shouts into it, ripping her hood down. Gasps ripple across the crowd, and she can’t help winking at one particularly cute girl. She faints into the arms of her boyfriend, who’s hey, he’s not bad looking either! Wait, focus Himiko. There’s time to be a chaotic bisexual later. “This is a take over from the League of Villains! You’re now all our hostages, so be good for me, okay?” She winks. 

Needless to say, they all start screaming. She pouts. “Y’all no fun.”

“Why would this be fun?!” Someone shouts at her, which is just rude. 

“I don’t know.” She tilts her head to the side cutely. “Because I have a bomb?” 

Atsuhiro takes the hint, and the orange marble bursts open in her hand, a messy homemade invention involving lots of colorful wires and a shit ton of nitroglycerin. She doesn’t really get it, but Izuku turned a really cute shade of pink when she asked him how he knew so much about that chemical, so she’s got to go home soon so she can ask him more about it!

The timer, once set to thirty minutes but frozen safely within Atsuhiro’s marble, starts ticking down. 

“Now,” she grins. “It’s your move, Mr. Heroes.”

What’s more important to you? A mall full of civilians, a Hero high school, or… 

Guess you’ll find out, won’t you? 

.

9:19 AM, Hero Public Safety Commission, Senju district, Adachi, Tokyo

“You good to walk from here?” Dabi asks, leaning on his foot to gaze over at the three of them. 

Even as a clone, Shigaraki still manages to convey his sheer amount of irritation in one eyebrow. “Please,” he drags out. “It’s not like we have much of a choice.” 

Dabi rolls his eyes. “I was just being considerate, asshole.” 

“No you weren’t.” The clone of himself pops up, staples stretching up as it smirks at him. Wow, does he really look like that much of an asshole? Nice “You’re just being your usual condescending self.” 

Dabi points at his clone. “Stop psychoanalyzing me. This is why I have a therapist.” 

“You don’t have a therapist, you just go to AA meetings despite being in the vents the entire time.” The clone of Midoriya chimes in, not glancing up from his burner phone.

“Eh, what can I say,” Dabi shrugs. “I just like to watch them cry.” 

“You’re fucked up.” The clone of Shigaraki sneers. 

Dabi blows a kiss. Acting on instinct, the clone of himself grabs Shigaraki before he can throttle him while Midoriya reaches up with one hand to clutch Shigaraki’s collar in a death grip. 

Finally finding what he was looking for, the clone of Midoriya tucks his phone away. “Have fun, Dachan! I’ll keep these two in check.” The clone of Shigaraki snarls something violent and probably defenestrating, but all of them ignore him easily. They have a lot of practice. 

“Oh, I will.” Dabi grins ferally, but reaches over and ruffles the clone of Midoriya’s hair anyhow. “Take care of yourself, shortcake. You’re our main investigator here anyhow.” 

Midoriya grins cheekily. “That’s why I’ve got two bodyguards.” Notably, both of the other clones roll their eyes, but don’t protest. Damn, they really are whipped. 

With a two fingered salute, he drives away from the curb, revving the engine as he cuts in front of a minivan and through an empty overpass, the traffic lights dull and devoid of light. Shigaraki’s handiwork isn’t bad, but he won’t admit that under the threat of death. 

The radio on his motorcycle automatically starts playing once he hits the highway, and Dabi’s eyes nearly roll back into his skull as the music starts blasting into his ears. I'm blue, da ba dee da ba daa~

“I hate this fucking family.” He grunts, motorcycle thrumming underneath him as he takes the long way around HPSC, face hidden underneath his motorcycle helmet. Just because he’s an edgy bastard doesn’t mean he doesn’t appreciate road safety. 

“Aw, you do consider us family Dabi-kun!”

His face does an ugly twitch. “…Toga, you’re dead to me.”  

She only giggles. “Fair enough!” 

Brat. 

Luckily, or maybe unluckily, the clone of Midoriya enters their channel. “We’re in and taking the stairwell up, first floor is free. You officially have permission to absolutely fucking feral, Dakun. ” Dabi grunts his thanks, swerving sharply on the near empty highway and driving the wrong way down the road. Fuyumi would be proud of him. 

“Oh, do I really sound that nasally?” The real Midoriya wonders. 

“Nah.” Shigaraki lies, because he’s a simp like that. “It’s just the interference.”

“Actually - ”

Shigaraki’s voice goes deadly. “It’s. Just. The. Interference.” 

Note to self: don’t cross Midoriya or you’ll face Shigaraki’s wrath. Not that Dabi had any plans for that anyhow; if Shigaraki wouldn’t kill him for it, then Shouto definitely would. 

Gunning down the offramp, he readjusts his weight on the leather seat, freeing up one of his arms as he keeps his torso parallel to the bike. “Kurogiri, coming in hot.”

“Brace for impact in three, two, one…” 

Dabi grins, and blue flames flow from his hand in a straight line towards the HPSC. The fire churns on itself in a horizontal tornado, blasting right through the wide windows of the lobby and melting a direct path for him without risking getting himself impaled by glass shards. 

Kicking up the front wheel of his motorcycle, Dabi clings to his handlebars fervently as he barely manages to make the jump into the lobby, back wheel spinning out on him as he quickly pirouettes in a full circle. Holy shit , practicing that maneuver in empty parking lots has nothing on the real thing. 

“Come get some, fuckers!” He shouts, smoke escaping from the seams in his face as he lights his shoulder up, aiming for the front desk where a couple workers huddle behind it pathetically. No matter how angry he gets at their cowering when he knows first hand how fucking corrupt the Commission actually is, he avoids the actual people with an angry grunt. Avoid civilian casualties, avoid civilian casualties… 

“Language could use some work, but the passion is certainly something.” Compress comments. “I’d give it a seven out of ten.” 

“Fuck off!” Dabi howls, yanking his handlebar to the left and cackling as the workers scramble to stop him. Another jet of fire clears the hallway ahead for him of any glass doors, and he makes sure to aim his fires high as he sets office after office on fire. If they really want to get out that badly, there’s always the windows. 

So busy with adding more endless arson charges to his rap sheet, Dabi barely misses the beam of light aimed for his head, the motorcycle jerking underneath him before he manages to stabilize it. Glancing over his shoulder, he grins as he catches sight of the quirk user. 

A Hero. A crowd of Heroes. 

Dabi laughs. “Aw, all of this for little me?” He taunts, sending a wave of fire over his shoulder. “If there were more food and fewer people this would be a perfect party!”

“While you seem to be having fun, I would like to remind you what your original goal is.” Dabi rolls his eyes at Compress reminder, but takes a side hallway to do a loose U-turn regardless. Thank god for Mutation Quirk Protection bills mandating wide hallways in government owned buildings. 

“Yeah yeah.” He brushes off, leaning to the side as he drives with his lit fingertips leaving a trail melting tiles behind him. It’s a good thing they were snooty enough to use porcelain tiles instead of the usual ceramic, he could never achieve the melting point of ceramic without needing immediate hospitalization. “I know.” 

The Heroes' faces set into one of grim determination as Dabi guns towards them at the speed of a fucking rocket, before slowly palling as he shows no sign of stopping. “Just gotta cause as much chaos as possible.” Dabi bares his teeth. “That’s not gonna be a problem.” 

.

9:21 AM, Might Tower, Roppongi district, Minato, Tokyo

Rubbing his hands, Izuku bounces on his heels anxiously as they wait by the service elevator. “It’s been twenty minutes already, do you think she ran into trouble? They would have rang the alarm by now if they recognized her, right? Or maybe they’re keeping it quiet because they want to flush out any accomplices she might have -”

Obviously annoyed by his continual fretting, Spinner yanks him into a noogie, knuckles roughly rubbing against his scalp. “Ah, not the hair, not the hair!” Izuku yelps. 

“Then stop being so nervous!” Spinner jostles him around playfully. “You’re making me anxious, you little shit!” 

Izuku throws his head back. “If I’m such a nuisance, then just kill me!”

Spinner stares at him. “No? Why would I want to do that?” 

“I don’t know?” Izuku shrugs. “Suicide jokes are how I deal with my mental health issues.” 

Spinner sighs longingly. “Same.” 

Luckily, the elevator finally beeps before Izuku can gear up into Mom Friend Mode and embarrass all of them with his powerpoint downloaded on his phone and a twelve page essay memorized. “Hurry up!” The clone of Toga whispers, wearing the face of an old woman with wrinkles and a duffel bag at her feet. 

“Sorry, sorry!” Both of them scoot in next to her, waiting until she presses her thumb against the fingerprint reader so the elevator doors can close before stripping off their coats and unbuckling their boots. “Himichan, eyes down.” Izuku scolds when he catches her glancing at the mirrored walls. 

Her eyes snap back to her feet. “Sorry, Izuku-kun, it’s just that both of you are so cute!” 

“You’re only saying that because we have blood on us.” Spinner points out as he strips off his scarf and mask. Izuku nods vigorously, working in on his sweater and revealing his T-shirt underneath it. “Wait, what the fuck are you wearing??”

Izuku’s wearing a shirt that says ‘PANTS’. “It’s my ass kicking outfit, bitch.” 

“It’s your shitty taste in fashion.” The clone of Himiko mutters. 

“What was that?” Izuku asks brightly.

“Nothing!”

“Thought so.”

By the time the elevator ascends to the highest floor it can go, Spinner and Izuku are both dressed in the official custodian uniform for Might Tower they bought off Ebay (Izuku does not want to know what they did with these uniforms beforehand, and put it through the wash four times before he was satisfied that it was clean), tucking their actual clothes in her duffel bag. Izuku keeps his respirator and goggles on, while Spinner shoves his distinctive purple hair up into the required hat. 

“Follow me.” The clone of Himiko mouths as they walk through the service hallway, using her fingerprint to open the door to the main floor. They enter through an empty meeting room, Spinner and Izuku lingering back while she storms towards the main entrance.

Trailing after the click of her heels, both of them keep their heads down as they walk briskly through the empty hallways, walking faster every time someone makes eye contact and tries to open their mouth. Nope. 

Passing by a custodian mopping the floor, Spinner easily snags their maintenance cart while Izuku throws their duffel bag on the bottom shelf without stopping. “This was almost a great idea.” Spinner grumbles, having to deal with the office workers passing by shoving more and more trash at them. 

Izuku snickers behind his respirator. “You just described 90% of our plans.”

Eventually, they reach the server room at the far end of the floor, Izuku yanking out a ‘CAUTION: WET FLOOR’ sign from the cart and plopping it at the beginning of the hallway. The clone of Himiko swipes her card, only for it to blink red. She doesn’t have the clearance. 

“Okay, stay calm.” She breathes. “We gotta get through this locked door, so…” She brightens up. “Quick! Izuku-kun, give me your dad’s credit card.” 

Izuku blinks, but hands it to her anyhow. “Cool.” She pockets the card. “Shu-kun, kick it down.”  

Spinner sighs, but obligatory busts out the laser cutter. 

Once they’re in the relative safety of the service room with a giant hole in the door, Spinner wedges one of his blades underneath the window, breaking the lock and leveraging it up. “Fuck, it’s cold.” Spinner curses, rubbing his arms as he toes out of his boots.  

“It won’t be cold for long -” Izuku wiggles his eyebrows, but is stopped by a hand over his mouth. 

“Do not.” Spinner says, very softly but very firmly. 

Fair enough. 

They practiced this enough whenever they needed a break from staring at the computer screen testing Tomura’s code, so Izuku easily jumps into Spinner’s arm, the clone of Himiko helping tie the two of them together with the rope harness they brought in the duffel bag. “Don’t worry, if the harness fails, I’ll die from the G-force induced cerebral hypoxia long before I hit the ground.” He reassures Spinner as the older villain shoulders the duffel bag over his back. 

“That’s really not as reassuring as you think it is, but thank you?” Spinner blinks, before shaking his head and carefully climbing through the window. “Hold on tight, this is going to get windy.” 

Izuku nods against his shirt, arms clinging to his neck and legs around his waist as Spinner carefully splays one hand against the glass, and then another. His bare foot touches the glass, and then they’re off, moving as quickly as they dare up the side of Might Tower, leaving the clone of Himiko behind to distract All Might’s secretary. 

The reason they chose this server room in particular was because it was high enough for them to skip most of the tower’s defense alarms, but also low enough for them to access the floor with a civilian license. Still doesn’t mean shit when they’re almost a thousand feet up in the air. 

“I hate this I hate this I hate this -” Izuku keeps up the running matters as Spinner climbs up the tower towards the rooftop. “Goddamn quirk sensors, we could have used Kurogiri’s quirk but nooo, the alarms ring if they sense anything higher than the base level of a quirk factor, piece of shit technology fuck fuck fuck! -” 

“How did your mother raise you with that language?” Compress asks, mystified. 

Izuku growls. “With love and care, bitch.” 

“Almost there, Midoriya.” Spinner mutters. “Almost - holy shit thank you.” 

The instant they’re on the solid ground of the rooftop, Spinner disentangles them, both of them rolling until they’re face down on the sweet, sweet floor of the roof. “No offense, but you’re fucking heavy.” Spinner grunts. “I feel like I’m a rubber chicken and god is a 19-year old viner throwing me off of buildings and beating me with unusual objects to make me scream for the enjoyment of their followers.”

There’s a pause, before Kurogiri says, voice strangled, “What does this MEAN -”

.

9:29 AM, Tatooin Station, Musutafu

Tomura groans, dropping his head down on the table as he stews in his boredom. Why did Kurogiri assign him to the station again? “I hate all of you.” 

The clone of Magne grins, resting her chin on the top of his head. “No you don’t~” She sing-songs.

“You’re all dead to me.” He buries his face on the keyboard, ignoring how nice it feels to have her fingers rake through his hair. “Why did I decide to invite you guys to play Skyrim multiplayer with me and you all took it as an invitation to break into my house everyday?” 

“C’mon, admit it. We grew on you.” She says smugly. 

“Yeah,” Tomura admits. “Like moss, or toe fungus.”

A knock on the door has both of them springing apart, the clone of Magne nodding at Tomura as she slinks over to the wall behind the door. “What the fucks going on in there, Goto? All the systems are down and you haven’t said a godamn word?”

“Sorry, Goto can’t come to the phone right now.” Tomura says. “Feel free to log your complaints with your boss.”

Slowly, the door opens. Tomura, always a slut for a little bit of drama (Dabi and Compress can’t hoard all the theatre major energy in this household), spins in his rolling chair. “I’ve been expecting you -”

Except, the chair doesn’t stop spinning. “Shit -” He tries to put his feet down on the ground, but only manages to knock his foot into the table and send himself spinning at a fucking angle. “Shit!” Tomura grabs at the desk, but forgets about his goddamn quirk, so all he does is disintegrate part of it. “Shit!” Finally, god decides to give mercy to him by knocking him out of the chair entirely. “SHIT!”

The clone of Magne sighs like someone four times her age and whacks the new guard with her magnet. Unfortunately, he manages to hit the panic button beforehand. 

Immediately, the lights in the office go out, the computer powering down with a sad little sound effect. Tomura hurriedly climbs to his feet, key smashing on the keyboard, but nothing. “Are you fucking kidding me?” He cries, desperately trying to reboot the computer. Zilch, nada, nothing. 

“Shigs!” The clone of Magne shouts, peeking her head out the doorway, and at the guards rapidly clearing the station. “We gotta go! Come out!”

“I’m Ace!” Tomura shouts back over his shoulder, ripping the USB out and shoving it back in his pocket. 

She flashes him a thumbs up. “Not what I meant but I still support you!”

Ducking through the door with his hood up, Tomura and her dart through the leftovers of the crowd, allowing the guards to herd them up the stairs. If they can just get aboveground, they can hide in an alleyway and call for a pickup from Kurogiri - 

And the clone of Magne dissolves into slush next to him. 

“See!” Miruko lands in front of him, shaking the clone’s slush off of her leg. “I fuckin’ knew the league was involved in some way.” She grins, teeth bared. “If you surrender now, I won’t beat you too badly.” 

.

9:31 AM, All Might

Both of them stare up at the giant Might Gate with their hands on their hips. “Welp.” Spinner says. “I have no idea how we’re going to get through that with a fucking laser cutter.” 

Izuku glances down at the laser cutter in his hands, and then over at the gate. “…Have you ever heard of the term ‘Myopic Architecture’?”

They trade looks. “Skyrim.” 

And then they aim the laser cutter at the wall next to the gate. 

“I’m sorry All Might-san.” Both of them make a praying motion as they climb through the hole they made, eyeing the large office and big windows behind the desk. “I’ll take the desk, you take the computer?” Izuku offers.

Spinner salutes, plugging in his USB drive and allowing the program to extract the password while Izuku kneels down and begins going through the filing cabinet, taking pictures with his burner phone and uploading it automatically to the league’s Cloud. While the information provided nearly isn’t as juicy as the shit the clone of him is getting from the HPSC, from the glances he’s gotten at the stuff already uploaded, it’s nothing to sneeze at either. 

He narrows his eyes at particular file. Meta Liberation, huh? 

“What should I do with this?” Spinner’s question pulls him out of his musings, and Izuku stands up to glance over his shoulder. 

It’s a list of minor (and not so minor) criminals and criminal supporters in the greater Musutafu region, including the not so wonderful League of Villains. “Download it to the drive, we’ll take it with us. We need more resources besides Giran anyhow.” 

As the spreadsheet begins downloading, Izuku leans his elbow on Spinner’s head as he flicks through All Might’s emails. “Is there one on vigilantes?” 

“I…think so? Let me…” Spinner scrolls through his files. “Yep! Anyone in particular you’re looking for?” 

“Knuckleduster.” Izuku says, eyes scanning the page. Honestly, they have way more information than he’s comfortable with on not only the area’s vigilantes, but the league as well. Who the fuck needs the exact hex code of his hair? 

Spinner must think so as well, because he squints his eyes at the page, before logging into the tower’s database. “I’m gonna see if I can delete this, or at least scramble the information. It’s going to take a couple minutes for the program to run, though.” 

“Himiko is still distracting All Might’s secretary, so we should be good.” Izuku goes to kneel back down by the filing cabinet, only to pause. “Do you feel that?” 

“The soul crushing regret?” Spinner asks without glancing up.

“Wh - no?” Izuku blinks. “It feels like a kind of…rumbling noise?” 

The ground vibrates beneath their feet, and both of their eyes flick towards the elevator on the far side of the room. 84! The number above the elevator chirps cheerfully. 

“What floor are we on, again?” Spinner nervously asks. 

“The eighty fourth.” Izuku says weakly. 

Spinner grimaces, standing up and glancing back and forth between the computer and the hole in the wall. “There’s no way we can get an exit from Kurogiri in time, and we need a few more minutes for the program to be fully scrambled.” 

Izuku hisses out a breath between his teeth. “Do you remember when we played Sea of Thieves and you hitched a ride in someone’s Galleon to spy on their open mic?”  

“Tucking?” Spinner asks, with a tone of exhaustion. 

“Tucking.” Izuku confirms.

.

9:34 AM,  Kiyashi Ward Shopping Mall, Kiyashi Ward, Tokyo

“Toga, Twice, police are on the way, five minutes ETA. Shigaraki’s roadblock has failed.” Kurogiri’s tense voice fills her ear, and Himiko hums in acknowledgement, eyeing the crowd cautiously kneeling on the ground. minutes left on the clock, and people are getting nervous. And when people get nervous, they stop being predictable. She knows this too well. 

Himiko chances a glance at her phone, murmuring back. “Do you know if there’s Heroes?” 

“Two. Identities unknown, but neither of them are in the top thirty.” She frowns for the briefest of moments, hand tightening around her phone. That’s…not good. Not horrendous, but not good either. “Do you need to retreat? You’ve accomplished what you needed to do, there’s no shame in leaving now.” 

She honestly considers it, shifting from foot to foot as she watches the tension of the crowd skyrocket. “But if we leave, won’t the police just go bother Dabi-kun?” 

Kurogiri doesn’t respond, so that means she’s right. The whole point of them taking the mall captive was to split up Musutafu’s police and Heroes; the police will want to rescue the civilians, while the Heroes will want to protect the HPSC. 

And while they argue and argue on which one to choose, Kurogiri and Atsuhiro live stream every moment of it, with poor class 1-A stuck in the middle. No matter who they choose to save, they're going to look bad in the process. Pedestals just mean you have longer to fall. 

Himiko brightens. “I have an idea!”

“No murder.” 

Himiko pouts. “I no longer have an idea.” 

It’s at this point Jin rejoins her, having left a clone of one of the others at the back gate to guard it. “It’ll be okay, Toga-chan! We’re gonna die.” 

“No pessimism in this house!” She (gently) kicks his shin. “We’re going to win, because we have something they don’t!” Himiko points at her chest with a beam. 

“Heart?!” Jin asks excitedly.

“What?” Himiko pauses in opening her secret knife compartment. “No, I’m pointing at me. I’m going to win this. I have knives.” 

Jin wilts, but Himiko’s too busy with opening her backpack and judging her tools, rolling Atsuhiro’s marbles around in her hand. What to do, what to do… 

Oh!

Tugging on his suit for him to lean down, she cups her mouth as she whispers the plan in Jin’s ear. “That’s brilliant!” Jin whispers back. “The chances of it all going horribly wrong are only around seventy two percent.” 

She grins. “Sounds low enough for me.” 

The two of them split up amongst the hostages with her bag left on the lid of the fountain, stopping at secluded corners and trash cans, well aware of the eyes on them the entire time. At the three minute mark, they meet back up at the fountain, stretching in preparation for the fight ahead, with Himiko stripping off her hoodie and chugging her blood bottle while Jin tightens his measuring tape and rechecks everyone’s measurements in his notebook. 

“Visual on the two Heroes.” Kurogiri chimes in her ear, right on time. “Looks like Ms. Joke and Vlad King. Be careful you two, this is a bad matchup quirk wise.” 

“That’s never stopped me before!” Himiko laughs, wild and carefree as she readies her knife. “I’ve done worse with a thrift store switchblade and a pink gloomy bear kigurumi.” 

In the distance, a loud commotion. The Heroes and police have arrived. 

“There’s no light at the end of the tunnel.” Jin mutters. 

Himiko bares her teeth in a mockery of a smile, rolling the marble with an orange sticker on it between her fingers. “Then it’s a good thing we brought matches.”

.

9:35 AM, Hero Public Safety Commission, Senju district, Adachi, Tokyo

Dabi swerves around another Hero, flaming the ground near her ankles so she’s forced to duck and roll away from him. Sweat drips down his face as more and more steam seeps from his seams, new burns already creeping down his hands and across his torso as he’s forced to nonlethally blast at another Hero. “This sucks.”

“Thank you, captain obvious.” Shigaraki grunts, busy with his own rabbit Hero who’s giving her word on beating the ever loving shit out of him. “Any other facts you want to tell me?”

“You’re a bitch.” Dabi says sweetly.

Too many things are going wrong at once; Shigaraki desperately needs an exit even if he won’t admit it, Midoriya and Spinner have their comms muted as they’re currently playing a demented game of hide and seek in All Might’s Office, Toga and Twice are going to have a hoard of cops on them within moments, and Dabi is rapidly getting overwhelmed as the crowd he’s fighting only grows bigger, not thinner. He’s a ranged fighter meant for a show of force, not this close ranged endurance shit. 

“We need to withdraw.” He orders with all the authority being second in command gets him. To this day, he still has no idea why Shigaraki gave him this role one night after a drunken Cards against Humanity game, over Compress, over Magne, over Kurogiri, but like hell he isn’t going to abuse it. “HPSC clones, get whatever else you need and get out, make sure that USB doesn’t get in the Heroes hands no matter what. Kurogiri, Compress, Magne, if you have to abandon Juko News to extract Shigaraki, do it. Midoriya, Spinner, use Compress’ marbles when you can and get the fuck out of there, deleting the league’s information isn’t worth both of you being arrested. Use Toga’s clone as a decoy if you have to, we have Kurogiri’s clone on standby if things get messy. Toga, Twice, stall as long as you can. They’ll abandon fighting you in favor of evacuating civilians the closer the bomb ticks down, so be prepared to ditch when you got less than a minute on the clock. I’m on my way to you now, and the others will join once they rescue Shigaraki’s pasty ass, I promise.” 

His orders are greeted by a round of affirmations, excluding Shigaraki’s “Fuck you, I don’t need any help - no, I will not stand still for you to beat my face in no matter how intimidatingly attractive you are, so fuck right off!”, which is par for course at this point. 

Dabi kicks off the ground, shooting between two Heroes towards the broken window, ignoring the angry shouts behind him as he bursts out of the Commission and back up towards the highway. He’s caused enough property damage to make an insurance agent weep and bought the HPSC clones plenty of time; his work is done here. 

Only for his front wheel to jolt, the motorcycle rapidly slowing to a halt no matter how hard he revs the engine. “You piece of junk, what the fuck’s wrong with you?” He peeks his head down to see what could possibly be causing it to fail that a high speed fight with several Pro Heroes didn’t do. 

A feather. A single, bright red feather jabbed right in his tire. 

“You know,” a stupidly attractive voice says from behind and somewhere above him. “When fans want to catch my attention, letters or flowers usually work. But I suppose whatever floats your boat.” 

Despite his best intentions, Dabi glances over his shoulder. 

Hawks, the number three Hero, grins back. “Howdy.” 

.

9:38 AM

Oh fuck, all of them think simultaneously as things collectively go to shit.

Chapter Text

9:34 AM, Juko News Station, Musutafu

“-I will never forgive craigslist for banning me after I wrote a post seeking a sworn nemesis. Whoever reported that is obviously my nemesis, but still, I was so pissed.” Atsuhiro rants to the camera, casually tossing the marble filled with Dabi’s fire into the air. 

Someone whimpers. He ignores it with a smile that could outpower the fucking sun.

Kurogiri coughs politely. That man is truly too good for this world, too pure. Atsuhiro would (and has) kill a man for him. “Perhaps we should report on some actual news.”

“My search for a nemesis is actual news.” Atsuhiro complains, but obligingly fiddles with the screen in front of him. “So if that’s a wrap on sports, we’ll be checking in with Shigaraki for the story of the hour. Shigaraki, take it away!”

There’s a pause, before Shigaraki starts screaming on live television. “-AHHHHHHHHHH-” 

Atsuhiro cuts the connection. “Thank you Shigaraki!” He chirps brightly. “Next is Magne with the traffic report!”

“…There’s no traffic, we shut off all the lights and train stations.” Magne says, very, very slowly, with the tone of someone who is Too Tired for this Shit. 

“…On the other hand, the morning rush hour on the Shuto Expressway has never looked better!” Atsuhiro claps. No one else joins him; shame. “Moving on! …What else do people report on?” He asks, a little desperately. It’s not like any of them have cable! And even when they do, they’re not gonna spend their limited free time watching the, ugh, news. It’s usually a fight to the death whether it’ll be HGTV or Cartoon Network. Yes, they are either old folks or small children mentally, there is No In Between. 

“Weather?” Someone from the crowd of hostages hesitantly answers. 

Atsuhiro points at them. “Thank you! You’re now my new favorite hostage.”

They burst into tears. Oh dear.  

Spinning his chair, Atsuhiro tilts his hat to the camera, smiling wickedly behind it. “And now…the weather.” And cuts the feed. 

But not before playing some… ambient music.

“Was that a reference to something?” Kurogiri asks, voice tired. 

Atsuhiro finger guns him. Kurogiri sighs, deeply. 

Pushing back their chairs, they retreat to the breakfast table so as to not alert their ‘guests’ to the chaos going on outside these four walls. “Status check?” Kurogiri double taps the comms. 

Slowly, one by one, the rest of the League’s voices trickle in.

“Oh, well, this certainly wasn’t what I was expecting to do with my day.”

“I want ice cream! You fool, gelato is clearly the better dessert.”

“Fuck me fuck me fuck me fuck me fuck me please for the love of god fuck me -”

“Yeah, we want ice cream. One superman, one sanguinaccio dolce!” 

“Midoriya killed a dude!” 

“No I didn’t!’ 

“AGH, MY SPLEEN!”

“So!” Atsuhiro waves his hands in a way that someone may call ‘jazz hands’ if they were a fool, but that he would not admit himself under the excruciating pain of death. “We’re all good? 

The answer he gets back over the comms is less than PG, to put it lightly. 

“Shit, Compress.” Magne mutters from where she’s on her way to rescue their troublemaking younglings. “I just got an alert on the motion sensor our clones dropped. Check the cameras for USJ.” 

Atsuhiro shares a frown with Kurogiri, both of them hurrying back to the newscasting table they politely took over and waking up the monitor. It takes him a few minutes to spot it, but when he does, he curses. Violently. 

A girl with pink skin is shielded by her compatriots from the storm blowing violently around them, both hands pressed against the exterior metal wall. Said exterior metal wall, which is melting. 

“Kuro, dear, why didn’t you check the students’ quirks before we put them in a cell they could escape out of?” Atsuhiro moans, facepalming. Since he’s wearing a mask, the effect is a bit mitigated, but it’s the thought that counts. “On that matter, why did we attack USJ anyhow? That’s the only part of the plan I didn’t get.” 

Kurogiri shrugs. Magne, the darling she is, answers that for him. “It’s because he has a hard-on for Eraserhead!”

Slowly, Atsuhiro turns to look at Kurogiri. Kurogiri doesn’t outwardly react, but the edges of his mist ripple tellingly. 

“You sly bastard.” Atsuhiro says slowly, honestly stunned (and a little betrayed). “I didn’t think you had it in you! All those bonding sessions where we drank Pina Coladas while watching Golden Girls and you never said a word about this!” Which is quite embarrassing, in retrospect. Atsuhiro has, on more than one occasion, rambled about which Heroes he wouldn’t be opposed to sneaking off into a club bathroom with, Kurogiri could have at least returned the favor. 

“I simply admire his fighting style.” Kurogiri says stiffly, using a portal to swiftly switch the screen to the more innocuous one of the user’s background - which is a light bondage core image involving white rope, which at all doesn’t help his point. Atsuhiro doesn’t complain when YouTube is pulled up and fireplace ambient music is chosen; he only wiggles his eyebrows. 

Despite it being behind a mask, Kurogiri understands enough to use another portal and swat him over the back of his head for it. “Anyhow,” he continues, unruffled even as Atsuhiro whines. “I find him a…fascinating individual, especially in regards to his use of his Capture Weapon and his exemplary work as a teacher, despite his inability to take a shower or obey a certain measure of hygiene Eraserhead -”  

Atsuhiro pats him on the shoulder. “It’s okay, you can just say you’re attracted to emotionally repressed father figures with bondage wear.”

“You deserved that,” Magne says, after he’s been retrieved from his brief skydive over the fucking ocean until Kurogiri deemed him suitably punished. 

Atsuhiro, from where he’s dry heaving over the remains of someone’s bagel in the trash bin, simply makes a garbled sound not unlike a cat whose tail was just stepped on. 

He might have been content to lay there on the cool tile floors, bemoaning the deepest betrayals of his close friend and becoming intimately aware of what this person does and does not like on their bagel, if it weren’t for the stiffening of Kurogiri’s spine in the corner of his vision.

Carefully, he sits up, three marbles already balanced between his fingers. “Where?” It’s barely a whisper. 

Just as quiet, Kurogiri points towards the security feed - and there, just the briefest flash of movement through the window. 

Someone’s climbing the fire escape. Several someones. 

“Do I need to throw a pint at the ground and yell ‘scatter’? Atsuhiro asks as they watch the police try to stealthily climb up the stairs. Try, is the operative word. “I really thought my threat would have held them out longer, but, alas, capturing Villains is more important than rescuing civilians.” He grins, delighted. “We must be too dangerous for them to care about misfiring and shooting a civilian!” 

Kurogiri sighs, rubbing where his forehead would be, if, y’know, he had a face. “In all fairness, we are holding twenty four people hostage, that tends to rile local police up.” 

Said hostages whimper. 

Atsuhiro makes a so-so motion with his hand. “Semantics.”

“Well, either way, they’re on their way now.” Kurogiri waves vaguely towards the security feed, with the air of someone who’s 100% fucking done. He’s had it. The man has finally gone fucking feral. “What do the others say when things don’t even remotely go their way? Shigaraki Tomura says it often when repeating a level.” He pauses for a moment in thought, before his closed fist hits his palm in realization. 

And then, with all the primness and properness of a Victorian gentleman, Kurogiri says, “Ah shit, here we go again.” 

.

9:36 AM, Hero Public Safety Commission, Senju district, Adachi, Tokyo

The first thing Dabi does is think, quite vividly, that wow, they really don't use photoshop in the magazines he hides under his mattress that are not jerk-off material Toga thank you. 

The second thing Dabi does is throw fire at Hawks, because that’s how Dabi solves most (all) of his problems. 

Unfortunately, Hawks takes that as a cue to quite literally use the fire beneath his wings to propel himself further into the sky, great red wings blocking out the sun, before he twists. 

“Fuck me.” Dabi curses, before flinging himself off of the motorcycle with the grace of a newborn deer. And not a moment too soon, as Hawks dives, his fuckass feather sword slicing harmlessly through the leather seat rather than his leather jacket. “Hey! Don’t be rude to Ponyo, I just got her that paint job!” 

Dabi watches as Hawks visibly restarts like a shitty windows computer. “You…You named your motorcycle Ponyo?”

Rather than answering that embarrassing question, Dabi does what he always does to difficult problems that can’t be solved by throwing fire at it: by throwing even more fire at it. He may have a problem. 

Hawks dodges neatly, throwing himself back in the sky and sending a volley of feathers at him, which Dabi quickly incinerates before they even have the chance of pinning him down. “Get out of my way, you sorry excuse for an intolerable ass pastry!” He snarls. 

“Say that to my two million Twitter followers!” Hawks crows, switching the sword to a backhand grip and slashing precariously close to his neck. 

“Sure, you might be verified on Twitter.” Dabi ducks underneath the sword like a kid’s game of Limbo, kicking up with his left foot in the same movement. “But are you verified in the eyes of god?”

And, already mourning these nice pair of boots, flames burst out of the bottom of his foot and eat right through the rubber sole until Hawks is flinging himself backwards to avoid first degree burns on his ugly ass goatee.

With a flutter of his wings, Hawks lands a couple feet in front of him, roughly wiping soot off his face. “That wasn’t very nice of you.” Hawks narrows his eyes at him over his forearm.

Dabi smirks, practically purring his next words. “I’m sorry, Daddy, I’ve been naughty.” 

Neither of them expect Hawks, the number three Hero, the same Hero who has Japan's highest popularity vote and lowest mortality rate after the Symbol of Peace All Might himself, to trip over his goddamn feet like Dabi just shot him. 

“Um,” Hawks says. 

Dabi blushes so hard that he, quite literally, sets himself on fire. 

Usually, Hawks should be able to handle the kickback of that kind of explosive heatwave just fine, but his realization that he might just possibly have a daddy kink probably distracted him a bit, as it sent him ass over head right through a nearby storefront’s window. 

Dabi winces - ouch, that’s gotta hurt - before taking the opportunity to flee, recognizing the distinct hot itching warning him that his body is near its limit for the time being. “Status check?” Kurogiri asks him. 

He’s about to brief Kurogiri on his situation, ready to beg for a portal just so he can escape the second-hand embarrassment, when he hears glass crunch behind him. And like Orpheus in the underworld, he can’t resist looking back. 

The feral expression greeting him, all bared teeth and narrowed eyes as Hawks clutches the edge of the windowsill, has Dabi blurting out the first thing that comes to mind. “Fuck me fuck me fuck me fuck me fuck me please for the love of god fuck me -”

“Now,” Hawks’ voice is like gritted sand, thick and heavy in his veins. “Someone’s been a bad boy, hmm? I didn’t want to hurt you, but I’m beginning to think a certain someone wants me to punish you.” 

Dabi makes a sound that’s a mix of a broken printer, a cat whose tail was just stepped on, and the filthiest, dirtiest moan he didn’t think he was capable of. 

Absolute silence over the comms. Blistering, dead, silence. 

Finally, someone speaks. Unfortunately, it’s Shigaraki. “Sorry, I don’t speak bottom!” 

The sheer rage at Shigaraki’s taunt snaps him out of his gay awakening just in time to catch Hawks by the shoulders when the Hero tackles him against the tarmac, wings blocking out the sun until all Dabi can see are dilated gold eyes that look at him like Dabi’s his prey. 

Dabi grins, digging his nails into the ridiculous Big Bird jacket. “If you want to punish me, Daddy, you’re gonna have to make me take it.” And jabs his pointy knee directly into the Hero’s solar plexus. 

Hawks wheezes, eyes going crossed eyed with pain for just the briefest of movements, but it’s enough for Dabi to roll them over until his wings are crushed against the ground and Dabi’s straddling his waist. “Careful now,” he taunts, hands steaming from where they’re pinning him down. “Wouldn’t want to burn your pretty face, birdie.” 

He doesn’t expect the startled blink Hawks gives him. “You think I’m pretty?” 

“Wha - that’s not the point!” Dabi shouts, feeling the healthy parts of his cheeks rapidly warm. “I’m saying -” Hawks lunges, yanking him down by the lapels of his coat and spinning them until his back is slamming against the ground, one boot pressing his wrist palm-down, while his other hand is held perpendicular to his body, so any blast would miss the Hero sitting on him. 

Hawks smirks, a hint of talons through his thick gloves teasing Dabi’s neck from where he’s lightly applying pressure to his windpipe, which is…Oh wow, that’s lovely, really discovering a lot of things about himself today. “You were saying, hotstuff?” 

Dabi opens his mouth. Closes it. Is, for the first time, lost for words. “Listen… are we fighting or flirting, because I’m kinda getting mixed signals here?” 

Hawks stares at him. “I’m literally choking you right now.” 

“Yeah,” Dabi says slowly. “That doesn’t really clear things up.”

As he’s watching, delighted, a deep flush makes its way down Hawks face, staining his cheeks and ears red, and perhaps even further if it weren’t for the high collar of his costume. “I win.” Dabi mutters, his soul ascending somewhere high above. 

“No you’re not!” Hawks sputters, leaning closer with an indignant pout. “I have you pinned to the ground!” 

Dabi winks. “Exactly.” 

Y’know what? He thinks to himself as the flush darkens to the point that he’s half curious if Hawks will pass out. If he does, then Dabi can indulge in some light kidnapping take him home to treat his wounds, perhaps grow closer through the wonders of the Florence Nightingale effect - oh yeah, they’re doing 500K Enemies to Friends to Lovers slowburn here. But first… “Hey Hawks? Do you know what you and Plato’s definition of a man have in common?” 

Clearly thrown off, Hawks’ wings ruffle even as he tilts his head to the side curiously, which is way too cute and should be outlawed, effective immediately. “Uh, who? What?” 

Dabi leans forward with lidded eyes, barely noticing Hawks following his lead until their lips are inches apart. “You’re both featherless bipeds.” And bursts into flames. 

I fucked my way into this mess, I’ll fuck myself out

.

9:39 AM, Might Tower, Roppongi district, Minato, Tokyo

“What do we do?” Spinner yelps, glancing frantically back and forth between the quickly ascending elevator and the deletion screen, which was only at forty four percent completed. They needed to stall for at least another five minutes. 

Izuku flails, staining his fingers black as he runs them through his hair. Listen, he doesn’t work well under pressure! He’s not a diamond, regardless of what those stupid motivational posters say! “First, lets set off the fire alarm.” Which would evacuate the whole building but also draw more Heroes looking for the invisible fire. 

Spinner seems to actually contemplate it, before his shoulders sag. “We can’t set off the fire alarm if there’s no fire.” 

“Okay,” Izuku nods. “First, we start a fire.” 

The worst part is that both of them actually stop to consider the logistics of starting a fire big enough to trigger the alarm in the next fifteen seconds. But even some chaotic things are impossible, even for them. 

“Listen, I believe in you. And your innate ability to summon upon unholy amounts of shit disturbance to upset the natural order.” Spinner clasps his shoulder, dredging up whether wells of ‘responsible adult’ exist within him from time to time. Rarely, but it does exist, believe it or not. “So don’t stress about it! This time next year, we’ll be millionaires laughing fondly over this memory like the post credits of a slice of life game.”

“You said that last year.” Izuku points out. “And the year before that.” 

Spinner’s hand tightens. “Let me have my fantasies or so help me.” 

Izuku squeaks. “Okay.” 

“Great, glad we had this talk!” The smile he gets is all teeth. “Remember kids, it’s do or die!” 

Because he was born without a thing called ‘self-preservation, he opens his mouth when he should have really kept it closed. “Can I choose die?” He asks weakly. 

Luckily, Spinner just looks at him™. “Midoriya, we’ve talked about this.”

So, this leads up to where they are now. 

Have you ever seen the movie Matilda? 

If you have not, let him enlighten you. Matilda and her teacher, Miss Honey, come up with the great idea to break into a woman’s house to steal back Miss Honey’s stolen belongings, except that the woman is a former Olympian and could snap their spines like twigs. At one point, Matilda is cornered in the kitchen and is forced to hide underneath the table in a… drastic manner. 

Izuku, from where he’s holding himself up in the fucking air underneath All Might’s desk, has never so deeply related to a fictional character in his life. 

“Toshinori, answer your damn phone!” a distinctly not All Might voice barks, footsteps pounding through the room towards the giant hole in the wall. “There you are! Pick up on the first ring boy, we have a code black on our hands!” 

Exhaling a silent breath, Izuku feels it catch in his chest as the footsteps turn towards him, the yellow boots of a Hero’s costume stopping dead in their tracks when they catch sight of the deleting screen. “Gran Torino, what’s - ” 

“Give me a second.” Gran Torino ends the call abruptly, shooting up into the air so the short elder could reach the computer. “I never understood these things…” 

If he stops the deletion… Izuku unsheathes one of Himiko’s knives underneath the janitor jacket, closing his eyes for a brief moment as he makes sure he can support his weight only on three limbs like some kind of demented monkey. 

And then he stabs to the side - right in the Hero’s thigh. 

Gran Torino shouts in pain, backpedaling away from the desk as Izuku lands in a crouch, following it up with another slash that herds Gran Torino towards the window. He has to be fast, any kind of jumping quirk has the advantage in an enclosed room like this -

Spinner drops from the ceiling. Right on Gran Torino’s back. 

Lunging forward, Izuku snags the laser cutter off of Spinner’s belt while they wrestle on the floor (with Spinner mostly just sticking himself to the tiles and taking the brutal kicks to his ribcage), pivoting on his heel and aiming it towards the wall of windows. He’s never cut a sloppier circle in his life, but the instant the loop is completed, he’s bashing the glass circle out with the bottom of the laser cutter, hoping to god that no one’s on the ground below. 

“Now, Iguchan!” He shouts, sliding to his knees right as Spinner does a dive so smooth it could win an Olympic medal right off the Hero, leaving them face to face as Izuku’s hand closes around his ankle -

- and flings Gran Torino out through the hole in the window like he’s his heavily repressed childhood trauma. 

As if this is Team Rocket all over again, they can only watch in complete and utter silence as the Hero goes Blasting Off At The Speed Of Light. “Did you just -” Spinner begins. 

“No.” Izuku denies immediately. 

They go back to silence, and like a sign from above, their comms crackle. “Status check?” Kurogiri asks.  

Both of them look at each other, neither of them saying a word. 

Spinner breaks first. “Midoriya killed a dude!”

“No I didn’t!” Izuku’s voice cracks, to his immediate regret and embarrassment. Welp, time to kill himself. “Listen…I say this from the bottom of my heart: my bad.”

“You just killed someone.” Spinner deadpans. “A "my bad” isn’t going to cut it!“

“Eh,” Izuku makes a so-so motion. “He’s old, so it’s like he died of natural causes, right?” 

Spinner gestures towards the giant hole. “You threw him out the window!” They both look at said window, before deciding to collectively ignore it. 

Izuku doesn’t blink. “Gravity is natural.” 

Unfortunately, Gran Torino can fly. 

“Spinner and Mayhem, is it?” Gran Torino grins, an expression that has no right being that terrifying when he barely reaches Izuku’s waist. Like, what the fuck god. “Both of you are under arrest for trespassing, breaking and entering, destruction of property, and oh, I don’t know, being well known members of a terrorist group?” 

“In our defense,” Spinner says slowly, reaching for the katanas tucked underneath his janitor jacket that was probably used for a porno at some point. “We simply do not vibe with the law.” 

“Hey, we haven’t done anything illegal in like…” Izuku counts on his fingers. “Four days!” 

Gran Torino, without saying a word, looks pointedly at the hole in the window, and then their forcibly made entrance through the wall. Both of which, surprise surprise, are very illegal things. 

“Not including today.” Izuku amends. 

“As much as I love this discussion, can I get on with beating the shit out of you?” Gran Torino asks. 

“Oh, yeah.” Izuku whips out Himiko’s knife, lamenting that he really needs to get better weapons. First thing he’ll do when he gets out here. If he gets out here. “Okay, I’m ready. Also, please don’t break my spine, I kinda need it. I do Zumba every weekend.” 

Spinner does a double take. “When did you start doing Zumba??” 

“Shouchan likes it. He says it makes him feel like he’s doing a TikTok dance” He explains sheepishly. “We should start doing it with the entire League! Can you imagine Tomuchan in shorts?” 

“Can you imagine Kurogiri in yoga pants?” Spinner proposes the better idea. 

Gran Torino already looks so done with them. “Can I please get on with arresting you?”

.

9:41 AM, Kiyashi Ward Shopping Mall, Kiyashi Ward, Tokyo

Himiko crouches down, eyeing the jar of jaw breakers they stole from a nearby candy stall, whose owner is currently hyperventilating under the table and didn't offer a word when they stuffed their bags full of candy. Hey, never turn down free food. “You remember the plan?” 

“Of course! Nah.” Jin gives her a thumbs up from where he’s setting up the area like a true Kevin McCallister stan. Himiko knew there was a reason why he was her favorite. 

“What is it?” Himiko asks him suspiciously, narrowing her eyes at him. 

Jin clears his throat; this is a very important task after all. “If you get shot, as you fall to the ground, I am to sing MMM WHATCHA SAY no matter the circumstances. Or was it Never Gonna Give You Up?” 

Himiko gives him a thumbs up. “It was the first one! We only sing the Forbidden Song when it’s Trolling Tomura hour.” Both of them pause to reminisce about that lovely hour between ten and eleven AM where they could do anything they wanted to annoy Tomura and the man couldn’t decay them for it, sworn on the sacred vow of a pinkie promise. “Any who,” she snaps back to the present when she notices someone trying to crawl away, flicking one of her penknives casually at the ground by their knee and grinning at their subsequent scream. “Are you ready?” 

Jin takes a look around the courtyard where they’ve gathered most of the customers and staff, the clone of Spinner helping them on that front. She’s sure they’ve missed a few, but considering like eighteen panic alarms were triggered when they revealed themselves, she’s not too worried. “Ready as I’ll ever be! Hey, I hate that song!” He slings an arm around her shoulders, surveying the crowd below. “Worst comes to worst, we can always blow the place up! Damn, I liked this mall.” 

“Me too, Jin-kun, but sometimes sacrifices have to be made.” Himiko says solemnly, patting his hand. 

Footsteps. Two sets of them, one coming from the front and the other from behind. 

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” 

Jin, without a word, slowly releases Himiko’s shoulders, turning on his heel so he has his eyes on the Hero from behind, presumably Vlad King, since Himiko is now looking at a comically serious Ms. Joke. “Why are you doing this?” The Hero asks, hands raised in the air. 

Himiko hums, hopping in her spot even as she cracks open the jar of jawbreakers. “A lot of reasons, really. My boss told me too, it will make the boy I like happy, I’m having a really nice hair day and wanted to show it off…”

“We meant why is the League doing this.” Vlad King rudely interrupts her. Ugh, he’s not her type at all.  

“Fine, fine.” She sighs dramatically. “You see, we’re here to chew bubblegum and kick ass.”

“And I forgot the bubblegum! I fed it to a raccoon.” Jin says cheerfully. 

“Yeah, so you see -” Himiko does a double take. “You fORGOT THE B -”

Both Vlad King and Ms. Joke stare at them. “You guys are idiots, did you know that?” Vlad King finally asks. 

“In our defense, we actually do know that.” Jin nods his head seriously. “Screw you, I have a degree in Social Sciences at Harvard.” 

Himiko has no idea how true that is. “And I have a black belt!” She raises a hand like it's a kids show and tell. 

“In taekwondo?” Ms. Joke squints at her. 

“No?” Himiko blinks, confused. “From Gucci.”

She’s pretty sure that slap sound she hears from behind her is Vlad King facepalming. 

“What do we have to do in order for you to release the hostages?” Ms. Joke tries to negotiate, taking a step forward, only for Himiko to threateningly raise the jar of jawbreakers, her comms crackling as Kurogiri asks, "Status check?"

“I want ice cream! You fool, gelato is clearly the better dessert.” Jin chimes in, answering both questions simultaneously. 

Himiko nods eagerly. “Yeah, we want ice cream. One superman, one sanguinaccio dolce!” 

“Isn’t that last one a pudding?” She hears Vlad King mutter. 

Resting her hands on her hips (with the jar tucked in her elbow), she narrows her eyes down at Ms. Joke in her most intimidating glare. It’s a very good glare, as she’s caused at least three League members to break down into tears and apologize for their entire existence within the span of five minutes. 

Unfortunately, Ms. Joke gives it back as good as she gets. “Is that all?” She asks, the patience in her voice straining. 

“Oh, um.” Himiko taps her chin. “Watch this!” Setting the jar of jawbreakers on the ground and the lid next to it, she whips out one of her knives, flashily showing off the jeweled handle and the kind of thin cuts it can provide. “This is Slash-kun, he’s very good at cutting arteries and peeling potatoes! The person who I stole it from used to scalp people with it!”  

Ms. Joke’s expression remains unmoving throughout the entire conversation, even as her perpetual smile falters at the corners. “Am I supposed to be impressed or intimated?” 

“Distracted.” Himiko chirps. 

“Why would I be -”

“SHANK!” The clone of Spinner stabs her, disappearing into goo when Ms. Joke reaches behind her and breaks his shoulder in a move that makes Himiko drool a little bit. Bone breaking is attractive, what can she say. 

“Oops.” Himiko smiles, tilting her head as she watches Ms. Joke clutch the bleeding wound through the side of her stomach with a dismayed expression. That wound just put her out of the fight permanently. “You better stop the bleeding soon, or I might get a little hungry.” 

And then she kicks over the jaw of jawbreakers, barely noticing Jin doing the same behind her. “Duck.” She helpfully provides, right as several of Atsuhiro’s marbles hidden within the rest of the jawbreakers crack. 

Himiko dives into the fountain, hand in hand with Jin as the water rushes over their heads, moments before Dabi’s flames roar to life. Bubbles escape from her mouth as the bright blue glow washes over them, mourning the inevitable smearing of her makeup as they wait for the light show to die down before resurfacing for air. She's never been happier that she has a waterproof phone case. 

Both of them emerge at the same time, desperately gulping air and pushing their wet hair/mask out of their faces so they’re not accidentally waterboarding themselves. No offense, but she's not into that. “Well,” Himiko notes at the destruction surrounding them in a wide circle, the hostages luckily untouched, if a bit traumatized and smelling faintly of urine. Ms. Joke is flat on her back, having been thrown a far distance, while Vlad King looks like he just went for a sun tan underneath the ozone hole. “That could have gone better.” 

.

9:43 AM, Tatooin Station, Musutafu

“Don’t be a coward,” Miruko shouts, cracking up the concrete where Tomura was standing moments before he clumsily rolled out of the way. Video games make this look so much easier than real life! “Take my hits like a man!”

“I’m not being a coward, I’m just myself!” Tomura yells, totally not screaming like a little girl when Miruko spins on her heel and chucks a block of concrete at his head. 

Undeterred that he managed to (somehow) dodge that underhanded hit, she smirks. “Exactly.”

“Wow, rude.” He huffs, squealing when she aims another kick for his diaphragm. “Couldn’t you be at least a little bit corrupt so I could bribe you?!” 

Miruko laughs wildly, bouncing off the brick wall and nearly punching him in the temple, which only years of dodging Dabi’s pointy elbows giving him the innate instinct to duck. They only needed one incident of him braining Tomura hard enough to give him a concussion. “You’re gonna have to try a little harder than that if you want to come out here with your organs intact.” She singsongs. 

Tomura blinks. “My what-” She knees him in the stomach, right as Kurogiri asks for a status check. “AGH, MY SPLEEN!” 

“It’ll be your liver next if you don’t surrender.” She threatens, cracking her neck imposingly (and also making him reevaluate his life choices but not in the way most people would think). Tomura barely notices her pulling out a pair of cuffs, too busy on the floor clutching his stomach and groaning in pain. She crouches down next to him, eyeing his face as she cautiously reaches for his wrists. “When was the last time you saw a dermatologist? Your skin is an absolute horror show, fucking hell.”

Tomura squints at her. Are there four Mirukos? He thought Twice was the only one who could do that… “When was the Meiji Restoration?” 

Miruko tilts her head. “1868?” Her tone implies that he should know this, but excuse him, he’s never been to school and closest he’s been is helping Midoriya study, those memories carefully buried deep, deep, deep down. 

“Then I’ve never been to one.” He lunges forward, palm outstretched towards her forearm even as he keeps his thumb carefully tucked in. But she can’t tell that, smartly leaping backwards before he can decay her. 

And like the coward she accuses him of being, he fucking books it. 

“HEY! Get back here!” She bounds after him, but Tomura ducks his head as he dives into the crowd of civilians who get off on watching their daily bloodbath. Like, what the fuck, you would think they would have better hobbies by now. Their screams are ear grating, but in the packed train station, there’s no room for them to run. And no room for Miruko to break his spine like an over eager child wearing a historically inaccurate costume on Halloween night with a dollar store glow stick. 

“No thank you!” He shouts over his shoulder, like the polite boy Kurogiri raised him to be. Yanking his hood over his head, he dives behind several businessmen, tapping his comms desperately. “Send dudes, right now!” 

“Did you say nudes?” Dabi asks, sounding honestly flattered.

“Why the fuck would I want your skanky ass nudes!?” Tomura gag, knocking over several teenagers skipping school like the world’s worst game of bowling. It's a small price to pay for his liver. “I’m getting my ass beaten, I need back up like yesterday.” 

Dabi grumbles, sounding suspiciously like well some people are into that, before Compress kindly answers the call. “Backup’s already on the way, and once we solve our own little problem, Kurogiri will warp everyone out.”

Tomura checks his phone as he pushes a screaming lady out of the way on his jog up the stairs. 9:45. He just needs to hold on for four more minutes. 

And of course, because the universe hates him, the instant he emerges into the light, Miruko’s waiting for him. “Thought you were real clever, huh?” She sneers at him, voice deeper than his will to live. 

“Uh, yeah actually.” Tomura answers honestly. “Also, doesn’t your hair get in your way being down like that?” He’s been genuinely curious about this. 

Miruko blinks. “A little bit, but I like the dramatic effect. How about your hair, huh?” 

Tomura shrugs. “I don’t use shampoo. It stays in place on its own.” 

For some reason, out of all the crimes she was listing that he had apparently done at some point (he’s pretty sure releasing a flock of pigeons in the police station was Toga, but the crop circle thing might have been him after one too many tequila shots), that’s the one thing she’s the most horrified by. “Oh god,” she whispers. “You really are a criminal.” 

Tomura makes a ‘duh’ gesture. “I thought we established that on my third obstruction of justice charge.” Said obstruction charge was because he busting out different members of the League out of prison/hospital/police custody/some sugar daddy’s house Dabi. They really need to stop getting caught doing illegal shit. 

(Says the man who was arrested for said crop circle)

“How could you do this?” Miruko asks, horrified. “How could you betray your country in such a way? Do you even know what you’ve done?” 

Tomura spreads his arms. “BEHOLD THE FIELD OF FUCKS I GIVE AND SEE THAT IT IS BARREN.” 

Miruko’s expression steels, her foot sliding back for another quirk powered kick to probably rupture another one of Tomura’s organs - 

A pink glow gathers around her. “Huh?” She jerks, trying to brush it off of her. “What the hell is this?” 

Magne. 

Tomura spins, eyes searching the crowd for Magne’s dark hair. 

He doesn’t see her, but his comms crackle. “Down.” 

The same moment Miruko goes flying backwards, he’s slamming both of his hands against the ground, gritting his teeth as he forces the decay to go down down down until there’s a hole just big enough for someone to slip through. 

“See you when I’ve leveled up a bit.” Tomura smirks at the fallen Miruko, throwing a casual salute at her furious expression, before jumping down. 

Maybe he’s a fool for trusting his companion so much, but he closes his eyes, keeping his thumbs tucked in as he falls several meters to the station below, and his trust is reward when he falls right into Magne’s arms instead of the harsh and unforgiving tile floor. 

Opening his eyes, he’s unable to stop the relieved gasp from escaping him. “Oh god, I love you.” He wraps his arms around her neck, quickly hugging her, before drawing back and glaring. “If you tell anyone about what just happened, I’ll kill you.” 

Magne grins, hurriedly walking away with him still in her arms like a princess in distress. Usually, he’d complain, but he still feels like a semi-truck rammed into his stomach. At sixty miles an hour. While a hurricane was going on in the background. “Naturally.” 

.

9:44 AM, outbound highway from Fujiya Hospital, Tokyo

“Oh wow,” their mother says passively as Fuyumi pushes the speedometer past 90, swerving in between cars and nearly crashing as they take a right turn so fast it clips the back of their car against the guardrail. “This reminds me of my younger days.” 

Natsuo, from where he’s desperately gripping onto the door handle and face sheet white, glances behind them and somehow pales even further. “Are those cops?” He asks desperately, even as the blinking red and blue lights flash across the interior of Fuyumi’s car. 

“It’s nice to be wanted, you know.” Fuyumi says pleasantly, completely avoiding the question. 

“NOT BY THE FUCKING LAW!” Natsuo, who’s worst offense has involved mild vigilantism, mocking Pro Heroes (which is ten different levels of fucked up that it’s illegal to insult them), and harboring a criminal if he counts Touya sleeping on his floor during movie night, is on the verge of a panic attack. “Can you please lose them before I get arrested and kicked out of college?!”

Fuyumi scoffs, driving down the emergency lane like it’s an empty freeway, coffee in hand the entire time. Natsuo doesn’t even know where she got the coffee from; it certainly wasn’t here when he originally climbed in. “Relax, it’s only one car. They have much more important things to do than to investigate a missing patient or a speeding driver.” She drives right across the grass dividing the road, humming cheerfully as they spin out in a circle. 

Considering Touya and his friends are currently being let loose upon the Tokyo area with a frenzy that isn’t unlike feral raccoons, Natsuo can’t help but agree. 

But still. “Why am I the most responsible one in this family?” He bemoans, closing his eyes for dramatic effect before ripping them open when his stomach lurches. Touya fakes his death over every mild inconvenience, Fuyumi is actually insane  Shouto dips his cheetos in milk, and he’s finding out a lot of things about his mother that he never knew or wanted to know in this car ride from hell. 

Fuyumi gives him the look™ in the rearview mirror. “You literally just set a hospital on fire.” 

Said fire was caused by a tampon out of Fuyumi’s purse, two rocks, and the mouthwash he had in his pocket. Hey, his childhood teachers always called him creative, what can he say? And he’s sure someone put it out while they were making their Great Escape. Hopefully. Maybe. 

If it’s one thing Natsuo can count on, it’s the general incompetence of any emergency responder. 

“And I take responsibility for that!” Natsuo argues, slamming his hand over his mouth when Fuyumi yanks on the gear stick and sends the car into reverse. 

“Did you know that, even with seatbelts on, people die all the time in car crashes?” Fuyumi states conversationally as she weaves through the traffic going the opposite way. “I thought that was fascinating.”

“Please,” Natsuo begs, actual tears in his eyes. “Shut. Up.” 

Their mother, on the other hand, looks delighted. “Fuyumi, you never told me you could drive. When did you get your driver’s license?” 

Fuyumi blinks. “My what now?”

“I need to get out of here.” Natsuo mutters, scrambling for the door. 

.

9:45 AM, Juko News Station, Musutafu

Sato Haruto is probably the most boring person in the universe. His quirk, being able to peel boiled eggs perfectly, is good for when he’s craving eggs and literally that’s it. Ignore what people say about every quirk being useful, that's propaganda so they can ignore the quirk discrimination happening around them. Like most people, he thought ‘hey, I want to be a Hero!’ since they live in a dystopia where one lifestyle is emphasized over all others, but like most people, he failed the entrance exam because he struggles carrying a milk carton, nevermind punching a robot in the face. 

Becoming bitter over it would also be very easy, but unfortunately, he’d kinda suck as a villain since he has trouble squishing bugs, so he just became a police officer to fill him with equal amounts of dislike towards Heroes and Villains!

Seriously. If he has to fill out another IH-7 in triplicate again because a Hero has to do a pissing contest over the amount of damage they can cause without giving their insurance agent a heart attack, he’s going to mcfreakin lose it. 

This leads to where he is now: climbing up the emergency staircase of Juko News to arrest two terrorists and trying to pretend that he’s not out of breath even as his legs are wobbling like al dente noodles. 

“Come out with your hands up!” His captain shouts in her megaphone, looking very imposing even as she shivers in March’s brisk breeze this high up. “You’re surrounded, you have nowhere to go!” 

Personally, Sato thinks that anyone who can teleport anywhere they want is pretty hard to say that they have ‘nowhere to go’, but he can understand the need for dramatic statements.  

Speaking of dramatic statements… 

“If I come out, you must promise not to shoot!” Mr. Compress says through the thick metal door at the top of the fire escape. Quietly, so quietly that Sato almost missed it, Mr. Compress mutters, “I just bought this coat.” 

His captain trades glances with her lieutenant, before nodding. “Very well.” 

“Wonderful!” Mr. Compress says, before kicking the fucking door open. Despite the promise not to shoot, all of them flinch around the handles of their guns, because cops are nothing but trigger happy. 

“Hello, my dear audience -” And then Mr. Compress trips. 

But not like how everyone else trips. No, Mr. Compress somehow manages to fall with one hand dramatically pressed against his forehead and a leg stretched out like he’s a tango dancer. “Better make a wish, you just saw a falling star ⭐️.” 

“How did you say that out loud.”

Rather than answering that, Mr. Compress stands up, brushing invisible dirt off his bright ass coat before bowing dramatically with his cane held out to the side. “What can I do for you, Ladies and Gents and Non-binary folks?” 

“Give your delusions of grandeur and surrender peacefully. We can this right now peacefully without anyone having to get hurt.” His captain says smoothly, and Sato can’t help but admire her unflinching confidence. If he was her, he might have balked in the sheer… extraness of Mr. Compress’ appearance.  

Mr. Compress rears back like they just stabbed him. “I don’t have delusions of grandeur! I am grand and powerful and very, very sexy and you all just have to accept that.” 

“…Sure.” His captain says weakly. “So will you surrender?” 

“Oh, never!” Mr. Compress bites back cheerfully. “I’m just here to buy time and tell you to go fuck yourself! And now that it's 9:48…”  

Sato and the rest of his unit raise their weapons. Mr. Compress is faster. 

Large sheets of glass in a towering metal frame wedge their way between the police and the villain from a blue marble, towering over all of them and dividing the staircase in two. Sato’s heart sinks as he realizes two things:

The name above the stolen window, labeling it as stolen from a Jeweler's place specializing in diamonds, and the several bullets lodged in the window. 

Bulletproof glass. 

“This was just a delight, but I must say my adieus~” Mr. Compress tips his hat at them. “I’m off to my next morally questionable adventure!” 

And, for a lack of words to describe it, Mr. Compress… struts away. 

“…Fuck.” His captain mutters. 

By the time they manage to safely remove the glass and storm the top floor, it’s five minutes before ten and the news center is devoid of any terrorists. Only a picture left on the green screen projection, just to dig it in a little more while they’re at it. 

.

9:46 AM, Hero Public Safety Commission, Senju district, Adachi, Tokyo

Hawks pants as he pins Dabi against the cement, tossing his head to push his sweaty bangs out of the way. He’s unsure if the sweat is from the heat of Dabi’s quirk or the sheer amount of innuendos being tossed his way because the Villain has no fucking shame. “You’re under arrest.” He purrs.

Dabi grins back from where Hawks has him in tungsten strength handcuffs, which was the source of many more innuendos and sacrificed almost all of his feathers. “No I’m not.” He says, with such unfounded confidence, that Hawks nods at first because yeah that makes sense before snapping back. 

“Wait, no!” Hawks protests, wings ruffling. “Don’t try and trick your way out of this, backup’s on its way as we speak.”

Maybe. Hopefully. There was so much chaos over the simultaneous Villains strikes that he turned his comms off after sending an SOS. Also, partially, because he didn't want the world hearing him flirting back. 

“I’m not into exhibition, but I’m up for trying anything once.” Dabi winks, and Hawks growls. Somehow, that only makes Dabi’s ever present Glasgow smile grow wider. “Can I please call my sugar daddy first? I need someone to pay the bail money.” He gestures to one of his jacket’s pockets with a meaningful glance.

It’s a bad idea, but also a great chance to get more information on the League’s whereabouts. If they can get ahead of these coordinated Villain attacks and capture the League once and for all-!

“Password?” Hawks asks, tugging out the cheap burner phone out of Dabi’s pocket, having to stop at one point to stuff down whatever feelings emerge at the Badtz-Maru keychain he has. (Cute! His bird brain chirps, which he kindly tells to shut the fuck up)

“0701. He’s under ‘I don’t have enough munny for chicken nuggets’.”

Unlocking the phone, he tabs over to the contacts list, frowning when everyone’s names are under a nickname. Your Friendly Local Necrophile, I found a gun, Maximum Megasimp, Kinkshaming IS my Kink, Bitch (Bi/tch), greasy truck driver nobody likes, Professional Clown Breeder, Assigned Babysitter at Gunpoint, Lady Dimitrescu’s Thicc Hat… 

“Hey,” Hawks asks, from the deepest, darkest depths of his heart. “What the fuck?” 

Dabi winks. “Not only did I show you my titties, I also showed you my mental illnesses.” 

“You showed me your what?” Hawks, like the fool he is, looks down. And then has to close his eyes and take deep, meditative breaths because what the fuck. “Are those nipple piercings.” It’s not a question. 

“Made you look.” Dabi hums sadistically. 

Hawks opens his eyes, just to glare down at him with the full force of his narrowed raptor pupils. Dabi shivers. “Are you trying to seduce me?”

“Why,” Dabi probes. “Are you seducible?”

Gritting his teeth and wrestling the withering remains of his self-control back into place, he taps the contact with a little too much force to be natural.

Hawks’ own phone rings.

Both of them stare at each other. 

“69 cents?” Hawks croaks, the mantra of the number two of the League of Villains is my sugar baby the number two of of the League of Villains is my sugar baby the fucking NUMBER TWO - on repeat in his head.

Dabi throws the fucking handcuffs in his face. And then kicks him in the dick, because why the fuck not. 

While Hawks is curled on the ground trying not to cry, Dabi calmly stands up, brushing off his pants and plucking his phone off the ground. “Thank you for buying me time to undo those badboys.” He taunts, crushing a few stray feathers under his sole and burning them before Hawks could even think past the pain to use them. “I’ll be sure to repay you for your wonderful gift later, Birdie.” 

Hawks glowers up at him. “You played me like a goddamn fiddle!” 

“Oh, no.” Dabi tsks, shaking his head. “Fiddles are actually difficult to play. I played you like the cheap kazoo you are.”

The fucking audacity.

“Kurogiri, I’m done here.” Dabi gives one last survey to the smoldering HPSC and the rubble filling the highway, looking quite pleased with himself. He turns on his heel, coat fluttering dramatically behind him, and also coincidentally giving a great view of his ass. A black portal forms in front of him, one Hawks recognizes as belonging to their warper, before Dabi steps through it, blowing a kiss towards Hawks prone form.

Almost as an afterthought, the portal expands to collect the motorcycle, and then it closes, leaving Hawks alone as he focuses on the feather he slipped through the portal after him.

Only for surprisingly soft fingers to curl around it, a breath ruffling the pins. “Nice try, pretty bird.” Dabi whispers, before lighting the feather, and ending Hawks connection with it, with a crush of his hand. 

Hawks, who just went through a sexual awakening and got his ass beat simultaneously, lays flat on his back staring up at the sky. “Fuck me.” He mutters. 

.

9:47 AM, Might Tower, Roppongi district, Minato, Tokyo

Turns out, fighting a guy who’s like a ripoff Mega Man is like Toga on her period: uncomfortable and probably a little deadly. 

“I get the feeling you have no respect for me.” Gran Torino says calmly.

Izuku, who’s currently flipping him off, smiles innocently. “What makes you say that?”

“Less banter,” Spinner slashes upward with his terrifying sword monstrosity, but like every time before it, Gran Torino dodges, even using it like a mothefucking springboard to rupture Spinner’s poor kidney. The League doesn’t have the medical insurance to afford all of this organ rupturing going around. “More fighting!”

“I’m trying!” Izuku wails. He lost Himiko’s knife ages ago to a kick that sent it at just the right angle through the hole in the window, and so he’s been relegated to defending the download with his life. Chancing a peek, he curses under his breath, the respirator long pulled down to around his neck so he could catch his breath easier. 

Seven percent left, and three more minutes to kill. 

Izuku dives back to the filing cabinet, rifling through the folders frantically. C’mon, c’mon, there has to be something worthwhile in here… 

“I don’t think so.” Gran Torino jumps off the wall, kicking down towards Izuku’s back. He’s unable to stop his surprised cry of pain, but not one to hold off on his revenge, Izuku spins and clamps his teeth down around Gran Torino’s forearm. “Ow, fuck! Did you just bite me?!” The elderly man shakes his arm like Izuku’s a particularly determined leech. 

“Fush wooh.” Izuku mumbles out around the Hero’s arm. Behind his back, he still keeps searching for something in the cabinet to use as a weapon, grumbling when all he feels is useless paper scraps. 

Spinner roars like a shounen battle warrior, this time glancing a hit against Gran Torino’s shoulder. “Let go of my friend!”

“He’s the one biting me!” Gran Torino shakes Izuku hard enough for his teeth to rattle in his skull, but Izuku only bites down harder, shouting mumbled swears as the Hero tries to pry his jaw apart, his hand finally grasping onto something behind him. 

The elevator dings. 

All three of them stare in varying degrees of horror at the sliding doors: Gran Torino with a teenager biting his arm, Spinner with a giant sword raised above his head, and Izuku being said biting teenager with rabies. 

The clone of Himiko, still in disguise, makes a choked laugh that somehow gets mistaken as a sound of fear by the Hero. “Suzuki-san!” Gran Torino shouts. “Why didn’t you evacuate with the rest of the building?” 

“All Might’s secretary left in a rush, so I thought I would come up to help.” The clone of Himiko explains, her heels clicking across the tile floors as she whips a knife out of her sleeve. 

Gran Torino’s eyes widen, then narrow. “Who the fuck are you?” 

Several things happen at once: 

The clone of Himiko rushes forward, knife held at ready- 

Gran Torino fires up his boots, willing to drag Izuku along for the ride if that’s what it takes-

Spinner swings his sword monstrosity down, completely down to decapitating him- 

Izuku brains Gran Torino with the several inch thick sketchbook he found in the file cabinet. 

None of them move for several moments as the Hero sways, mouth moving nonsensically as he tries to force himself to stay conscious, before his eyes roll up to the back of his skull and he collapses flat on the ground. 

Izuku spits out his arm. “Well, that was anticlimactic.” 

“Did you kill him?” Spinner asks nervously. “Like, for real this time?” 

All three of them stare down at the maybe corpse. “I think he’s breathing?” The clone of Himiko says, unsure. That’s not something you should really be unsure about. 

Tapping his comms, Izuku clears his throat. “Listen, don’t be mad -”

“What mess did you get yourself into this time?” Kurogiri asks, voice dead.

“Why would you assume I did anything?” Izuku doesn’t pause. “Actually, never mind, that's fair. I have good news and bad news. Which do you wanna hear first?”

“The good news?”

Izuku continues to stare at the maybe corpse. “It is very unlikely that I will EVER do that again.” 

Download complete! The computer chimes merrily. 

Great. He’s glad that one of them is happy here. 

.

9:48 AM, Kiyashi Ward Shopping Mall, Kiyashi Ward, Tokyo

“You know why a t-rex can't clap its hands?” Ms. Joke croaks from the floor. “Because it’s dead.”

Himiko throws a knife at her, laughing until her sides hurt. “That shouldn’t be funny! Why the hell is that funny?” Oh, because Ms. Joke’s quirk is a sadistic fuck. 

Behind her, Jin does a cartwheel out of the way of an exhausted Vlad King’s blood spears that makes Himiko’s eyes go a little hazy. “You have the right to remain silent.” 

“I choose to waive that right!” Jin takes a deep breath. Screams. “AHHHHHHHHHHH -” 

Himiko jumps on Vlad King’s shoulders, still laughing hysterically as she tries to stab his neck. The only result she gets is getting knocked off by the blood forming as a shield between them. She chances a lick, but Vlad King only bats her away frantically before her tongue can get anywhere near him. Having a Hero who uses his blood to fight a Villain whose quirk is literally about drinking blood seems like bad planning on someone's part. “Aw, are you sure I can’t have a little taste?” 

“Joke!” Vlad King ignores her completely, ducking as Jin tries to slice his throat with a tape measure. Weird flex but okay. “Why isn’t your quirk affecting Twice as well?!” 

“I don’t know!” Ms. Joke shakes her head, pushing herself up to a sitting position shakily. Himiko leaps away from Vlad King towards her, only to pout as Vlad King forms a whip around her ankle to drag her away from his injured colleague. 

“Love wins!” Jin crows, only to get punched in the head. “Or mental illness!” 

Himiko’s phone beeps. Running to another day, I wanna break away and take the leap~

Two minutes left before the bomb goes off. 

The Heroes seem to realize this at the same time, their head whipping back to the crowd of hostages the police were slowly evacuating. They won’t be fast enough. Not if they continue to try and arrest the League members. 

Dabi was right. 

“Bye everyone!” Himiko waves to the shivering civilians on the floor, sticking her tongue out to the two Heroes. “I had fun today, thanks for playing!” 

“You can’t run forever.” Vlad King spits, glaring at both of them, dripping water everywhere and Himiko still laughing even as her chest starts hurting viciously. It’s a good thing she’s used to laughing while fighting, or else this would suck a whole lot more. Can you imagine Dabi being affected by this quirk?? Hilarious. 

“Uh, yeah we can.” Himiko rolls her eyes. Heroes, so dumb. 

Both Vlad King and Ms. Joke give them one last nasty look before they race back to the crowds, ushering them towards the exits and away from the hidden bomb. “C’mon!” Himiko laughs, for the first time genuine instead of quirk induced, grabbing Jin’s hand and running in the opposite direction - deeper into the mall. “Let's blow this joint!” 

“Be careful! I wouldn’t care if you died in a ditch.” Jin tells her worriedly, and Himiko rolls her eyes, even if she’s still grinning. 

“When am I not?” 

Jin doesn’t say anything, but the look he gives her through his mask says enough. 

One of the hallways up ahead is filled with police evacuating civilians, so Himiko tugs Jin into an alcove, dropping her backpack and quickly reaching for an appearance from the mixture of blood she drank out of her thermos. Ishikawa from Juko News opens her eyes, just in time to see Jin changing masks to his pink zentai one. It’s not a perfect disguise, but it doesn’t need to be. They just need to get to an open yet empty area. 

Shouldering her backpack, Himiko glances up when Jin tugs on her sleeve, pointing to the store across the hallway. Natural House. 

“The world is hilarious sometimes.” She says dreamingly. 

“You got that right, Toga-chan. It’s a cesspit of misery.” 

Her phone buzzes. Fifteen seconds. Both of them skid into the nearly empty Natural House hand in hand, hitting the comms three times to send their coordinates to Kurogiri and stealing some food while they’re at it. Hey, broke is broke, and local grocery stores are beginning to get a vendetta against them for their biweekly theft. 

She’s unable to suppress her laughter once more when she hears the sound of crackling behind her as she steps into the warp, along with several startled shouts. Later, she’ll watch the news with the rest of the League and they’ll laugh themselves nearly sick when they see how the police verbally ream into them for endangering the civilians by letting the two Villains go. 

And for what? 

The bomb was just a bunch of fireworks strapped together and tossed in one of the trash cans, after all. None of them know how to actually make a bomb - that requires more skill than they have when the only thing they’re somewhat proficient in is giving Heroes ulcers. 

Himiko grins. Mission accomplished boys. Now, time for kitty cat ears. 

.

10:12 AM, Tatooin Station, Musutafu

“You think she’s gone yet?” Tomura hisses from where he’s huddled in the vent like a B-lister action movie. Cinema lies - films are not wide spaces that are somehow perfectly clean and big enough to crawl on your hands and knees. Vents are insanely dusty and claustrophobic enough that if Tomura wasn’t exhausted from his brush with death (Miruko), it might actually be something irritating.

Fortunately, all he can feel is bone deep exhaustion and a tickle in the back of his throat. Fucking allergies. 

Magne ducks her head through the vent upside down, checking the hallway beneath them. “We’re good.” She sighs in relief. 

“Aww,” Dabi mocks on the other end of the comms, before coughing. “Did someone not like being yeeted by a woman half your height? Or did you like it too much?”

“Shut the fuck you burnt masochist.” Tomura snarls, scooting on his chest out of the vent, which is a whole process of climbing over it and then backing up since they don’t have enough space to turn around and he’d like to land on his feet, not his face thank you. “Don’t think we didn’t hear you have a fucking orgasm on the comms while the rest of us were actually fighting for our lives.” 

“All I’m hearing is that you were just as horny on main as I was.” 

Tomura makes an irritated sound as he lands on his feet next to Magne. “For your information, I am not horny on main. I am rowdy on main. I am absolutely fucking lawless on main -”

“Okay, we get it.” Magne says, amused. Hopping down into the train tunnel, she unflinchingly holds out a hand to help him down onto the tracks. “You know, Shigaraki,” her uncharacteristically hesitant voice has him glancing up from where he was glowering at his feet as they walk. Only to see her shit-eating smirk. “It’s okay if you don’t want to admit it. It’s always hard the first time you meet a woman who could crush your head like a watermelon between her thighs.”

Tomura takes a deep breath. And then another. “Why,” he grits out. “Do I even bother to go to anger management classes if I have all of you as my teammates?”

“How are those anger management classes doing, by the way?” Magne asks, still with that goddamn shit eating smirk. 

“They’re doing great thanks for fucking asking.” 

“He punched a guy, and then cried about his daddy issues.” Midoriya pipes in. “And proceeded to use Mother 3 quotes as a thin metaphor for murder as a coping mechanism for his Misanthropy.”

“Don’t you have daddy issues too, Izuku-kun?” Toga asks innocently. 

“I do not. Have. Daddy issues.” Midoriya says pleasantly. So pleasantly, in fact, that the entire comms stays silent for over a minute. Grand record. 

“Whatever,” Tomura snorts, breaking the fear induced silence because as previously established, he has no fear. “Let’s just head into Plan B.”

“Aren’t we on Plan L? Nope, it’s I, because fuck you.” Twice argues back. 

Toga hums. “Technically, it’s Plan M.”

“Wait,” Tomura says, bewildered. “How many plans do we have?”

“Up until V!” Compress chirps with his usual gusto. 

Tomura rubs his forehead. “Let's do Plan Q then.” 

“Midori dies in Plan Q though.” Dabi points out. 

“I like Plan Q.” Midoriya says dreamily. 

“Midoriya,” Spinner says. “We’ve talked about this.”

Before they can (once again) descend into outright chaos, Kurogiri arises from the deep like the savior he is. “Shigaraki Tomura and Magne, I believe you’ve traveled far enough for me to accurately and safely use your coordinates.” Kurogiri tends to have trouble using coordinates when someone’s not near sea level, so for situations like All Might’s tower or an underground train station, it’s better for them to get to an area where it’s unlikely anyone’s above or below them.

“Try it.” Magne suggests, both of them whooping when Kurogiri’s portal forms in front of them.

“Oh thank god,” Tomura mutters, so ready to be done with this godforsaken day. “If I had to deal with all  of you fuckers for another second I was going to kill all of you and solo mission this shit. Except you, Kurogiri. I like you.”

“Thank you, Tomura.” Kurogiri honestly sounds a little choked up about the fact that Tomura would spare him on his murder rampage. 

Toga blows a raspberry, which sounds absolutely disgusting over the comms. “You lovvvve us!” She baby-talks. “And,” she begins, the rest of the League quickly pouncing on it like Midoriya with limited edition All Might figures, rabid screaming included. “It’s TROLLING TOMURA HOUR!” Someone, because he hates his life, starts playing Never Gonna Give You Up at max volume in his ear. 

“Existence is a prison and being your teammate is maximum security.” Tomura deadpans, before stepping through the portal. He’s going home, eating enough pizza to make his face greasy for the next three weeks, and will pass out while replaying Titanfall 2, and if anyone tries to stop him he will fucking lose it.

Goodnight and good fucking day.

.

“Hewwo!” Izuku says brightly, his hair washed from Dabi's black temporary hair dye. “I will be your suwgeon today! Intewnal bweeding you say? Let’s make ouw fiwst wittle incision.”

“Dowctor, wewre loswing him!” Himiko gasps dramatically, feeling for a pulse.

Dabi, on the other hand, is completely straight faced. “Owh no.” He says tonelessly. “Tuwn on da defibuwuwatow.”

“Please.” Tomura stares directly at the ceiling light. All four of them are, for some reason, wearing cat ears. “Turn off my fucking life support.”

Across the bar, Magne feels Compress’ nose for a break from where he tripped (once again) while fleeing Juko News. Turns out wearing a mask all day seriously fucks with your depth perception, who knew. “Ow! Is it broken?” Compress asks worriedly. 

“You’ll live,” Magne scolds, flicking his forehead. “Keep your head back.”

Compress squawks. “Of course I’ll live! I’m worried about the aesthetic.”

“Speaking of dubious medical advice.” Spinner says from where he’s sitting next to the adults popping grasshoppers in his mouth, right as Twice crashes through the door with the overstuffed med kit over his head. 

“I’m back on my bullshit! And better than ever!” Twice crows, darting through the bar to drop the kit in front of an exasperated Kurogiri.

Kurogiri just stares at him. “Are you ever off your bullshit?” He asks tiredly.

Twice pouts. “Shut it.” Glancing around, he brightens up when he sees Tomura flat on his back on the coffee table. “Do you need medical help!? I’ve watched House M.D.” 

“I’m fine.” Tomura says, which is Tomura Speak for ‘I’m in agonizing pain but I’d rather die than admit vulnerability’.

Dabi rolls his eyes. “You looked like a corpse that was just pulled out of the river.” Translation: you look like shit, you need medical attention. 

“Wrong. Tomura scoffs. “I look like a cool rock star who just OD’ed in his own pool. Get your facts straight.” Translation: don’t worry about me, others need it more than me. 

“Sure, if the rock star was an eighty old man and drank cocaine every morning with his fruit loops.” Translation: you really look like shit - “Midori, we can hear you.” 

Izuku covers his mouth. “Oops.” 

“That reminds me!” Himiko says, turning to face Dabi excitably. “How did you manage to unlock your handcuffs? That was so cool!” 

“Do you know how many times I’ve had to get out of handcuffs?” Dabi rolls his eyes. “I’m practically a pro at this point.”

“Wow! I didn’t know you’d been arrested that many times!” Izuku says. 

Dabi blinks. “Arrested?” 

“Now, we don’t have time to unpack all of that.” Compress doesn’t bat an eye, scooting Himiko and Izuku over so he can hover over a semi-conscious Tomura with the medkit. “Come along young man, show me those ribs of yours.”

“Wow.” Tomura deadpans. “I just got a random burst of energy and I think it's my body's last "Hurrah!" before it shuts down completely.” With that, he lunges off the table. 

Kurogiri catches him before he even makes it three steps, depositing him through a portal onto the couch. “Tomura.” He warns. 

Tomura sulks. “Fine.” 

While Tomura’s getting his ribs treated, Kurogiri props his hands on his hips and stares down at all of them. “So, did everyone learn their lesson?” 

They all trade glances, before individually yet simultaneously saying:

“No.” 

“Nope.”

“Can’t say I have.”

“I did not.”

“There was a lesson??”

“Nah! Yep!” 

“I may have actually forgotten one.”

“Oh good, I didn’t learn anything either.” 

Kurogiri sighs, deeply. “I suppose none of you were paying attention to my post-mission briefing?” When all of them staunchly refuse to look at him, Kurogiri rolls his eyes, for as much as sentient mist can do such a thing. “Then it’s a good thing I prepared this.” He clicks on the TV, staring them dead in the eye as kahoot music starts blasting. “Time to see if you little shits have a lick of common sense in those things you call a brain.” 

All of them look at the TV, and most importantly, on the name of the kahoot test. 

What Not to Say When You’re Getting the Shit Beaten Out of You: A Test by Your Surrogate Father Figure

“You may try to run,” Kurogiri says ominously. “But know that I will always be faster than you.” 

They play the goddamn kahoot game. 

.

“I AM -” All Might stops in his tracks. “Here?” 

Shouto doesn’t move his thousand yard gaze from Asui(“Call me Tsuyu”)’s shoes. Boots. Fippers? What do you even call those? The world has to know about this. 

Water drips from his hair, soaking into his clothes if they weren’t already the equivalent of a towel dumped in the ocean. There’s water everywhere, and even with the use of his fire side, all he’s creating is one side uncomfortably dry and the other sopping wet. 

“I came as soon as I got your message about the League attack. Are you alright?” All Might asks Aizawa gently, who’s currently laying face down in the parking lot like someone just brutally murdered him. 

Their teacher doesn’t even bother glancing up. “Peachy.” 

Shouto’s never related more in his life. 

His phone, thankfully safe from the fucking monsoon inside the USJ by a ziplock bag, buzzes. 

Inko’s #1 Child

: )

Inko’s #2 Child

I fucking hate you. 

“I am,” Shouto says, with such raw and painful conviction that both Yaomomo and Inasa finally snap out of their own thousand yard gazes to stare at him in concern. “Never eating the last Trix yogurt again.” 

. 

Ishikawa Hiriā jolts awake in a random dumpster with a smell of rancid fish, a needle mark in her inner elbow, and a post-it note stuck to her face.

Peeling it off with a grumble, she squints at the writing in the dim yet somewhat comfortable dumpster.  

Sorry for kidnapping you and stealing your identity (๑•́ ₃ •̀๑) we left some money in your pocket as a reparation!

I know you have a boyfriend, but if you ever want a wife, let me know ~

Love, Toga Himiko ⌒°ʚ(ෆ❛ั ᴗ ❛ัʃƪ)ɞ♡°⌒

Hiriā rolls over and goes back to sleep. “It’s way too early for this bullshit.”

Chapter Text

Once, back when Hawks was drunk off his ass and exhausted from a tough fight just earlier that day (he just has the worst luck with fire types. Its like Pokémon, if he knew shit about Pokémon and had an actual functional childhood instead of being trained as a child soldier for profit), he flew face first into a billboard. Of his face. While wearing a full on chicken fursona suit. In front of several, high quality cameras. 

He widely considered that one of his most humiliating days of his life, but yet, somehow, this cursed day is all of that and more.

“I don’t even know where to begin.” The Hero Public Safety Commission president (is it bad, Hawks muses, that he still doesn’t know her name despite her kinda raising him) says, absolutely flabbergasted. “How does one even summarize this kind of…” 

Vlad King doesn’t even remove his face from the table to speak. “Disaster?” 

“Shit-show?” Hawks volunteers.

“A goddamn circus.” Miruko continues staring at the ceiling with the gaze of a dead woman. “And we’re the fucking clowns everyone throws peanuts at.” 

Aizawa doesn’t speak, but the curled up ball on the floor seems to nod in agreement. 

“Event.” The president stresses. She, for once, doesn’t look like the stoic ever-watching guardian who legally buys children to train them into the Commission's personal watchdogs (just an example, really, no personal grudges here) and has mastered the art of sweeping the Commission’s long and bloody history with a heeled shoe to an art point. Rather, she looks like Hawks imagined he did the first time he was interviewed for what is now known as the ‘Billboard Incident’ - completely and utterly bewildered.

Gran Torino, who is probably the oldest Hero Hawks has ever met, clears his throat. “If I may…?”

The president gracefully inclines her head, taking the moment to smooth out her dress shirt’s frazzled wrinkles while the old Hero takes the stand. “If you think about it, the League’s attacks aren’t that powerful on their own. Rather, they were strategic, forcing us to divide among ourselves and preying on the conflict between police and Heroes. It’s a drastic shift from the League’s previous…crimes.”-

(“Bust-a-Rei.” The entire League chants on the car ride to Juko News, headbanging with eerily vacant expressions, practically frothing at the mouths as if they've possessed by some kind of demon. “Bust-a-Rei Bust-a-Rei BuST-A-REI BUST-A-REI BU-”)

-Hawks smothers a snort. Yeah, crimes, if you can count being a general nuisance and giving people headaches an act of Villainy. When the League first joined together, they caused quite a bit of a stir, but they settled down within months, only acting up on occasion when it came to territory fights among other Villains or their biweekly grocery theft.

Usually, the Commission ignored low leveled fish like that - it was better all around, as less people were caught in the crossfires when there was a sense of hierarchy among criminals, and the League was just that - an organization which kept control of its portion of Musutafu. And hey, they had strong anti-trafficking and anti-discrimination policies, so they weren’t the worst of the bunch, unlike those Shie Hassaikai folks. 

But what happens when the fish start swimming upwards? 

“Do we at least have an idea where the location of their base might be?” Vlad King asks tiredly.

He perks up. “Actually,” one of his feathers retrieves a white board, already stabbing the map into the reflective surface and showing everyone where the intel says that the League must be located. 

“Uh, Hawks,” the rest of the Heroes stare at him. “This is a map of Japan.”

Hawks shrugs. “Yeah, we have no fucking idea.”

The president sighs. Deeply. “Moving on,” she groans, before forcing herself to stand up straighter, leveling them all with a serious stare. “I called you here today to discuss each of the League members you encountered, in order to gather a deeper insight into these Villains profiles and how to approach this situation so that something like…today, doesn’t happen again.” 

Miruko groans, loudly. Mood, Hawks thinks, glumly taking the manila folder one of the president’s assistants hands him. Everyone despises mission briefings, especially ones where a bunch of Heroes, two of them in the top ten, were just utterly embarrassed on live television by agents of chaos that call themselves Villains. 

“We do know that the League of Villains are extremely dangerous, and if left unchecked, may reign terror upon society as we know it.” The president opens her own folder, gaze as deadly as a double sided knife. “So it’s our job to stop them, before they can cause more harm. God knows what kind of things they could be doing now…”

.

“If Cinderella was a cooking slave instead of a cleaning slave,” Spinner begins. “Would her name be Mozzarella?”

Izuku pinches his fingers. “Sometimes, just sometimes,” he says. “We have thoughts, but we don’t always have to share them with everyone and put them out into the world. Just a suggestion.”

“Only god themself can stop my inability to have a brain to mouth filter.” Spinner replies drily, which is…pretty valid actually.

The League goes back to staring at the ceiling dissociating. Distantly, Napstablook's Chill plays from the Bluetooth in the corner, and Izuku, from where he’s laying between Tomura and Himiko while embracing the vibe of feeling like garbage, has never related more to a ghost with anxiety in his life before. 

“Maybe I should move out.” Himiko breaks the silence next, humming contemplatively. 

Tomura sits up a little bit, honestly looking a bit distressed. The man seriously had more abandonment issues than a newborn kitten left in a bag on the side of the road. “Why? Is there something wrong with your room?” Said room is more like a converted pantry with a window and two beds for Himiko and Magne, but Himiko’s never voiced any complaints before. Except for not being allowed to paint her room with blood, but even Magne put her foot down about that

Himiko sighs sadly. “I just don’t think I can stay in the same house as the person who ruined my life.”

Tomura flops back down. “For fucks sake, I’ll steal you more fruit loops in the morning.” His arm falls over Izuku’s chest to flick Himiko’s forehead, hissing when the younger girl reacts as she usually does with annoying things - with something sharp. 

At least she’s too tired to reach for a knife, but the way Tomura cradling his bitten hand mournfully like a lost lover, Izuku doesn’t think it made that much of a difference. 

Ladies and broes and non-binary hoes, this was Shigaraki Tomura of the League of Villains everybody. 

“What the fuck, do you have rabies or something?” Tomura hisses, shaking out his hand tenderly.

“No, do you?” Himiko says sweetly.

“No way, Boss wouldn’t have rabies!” Twice tries to be supportive, which is immediately disproved at his next words. “That would require him to leave his room and stop being a NEET.”

Tomura, without moving from his starfished position, throws his right shoe at Twice. It somehow whacks Twice directly in the forehead - Izuku is reluctantly impressed. “I’m not a NEET, and I leave my bedroom at least twice a week!” 

“Yes, but are you vaccinated?” Compress proposes the question they’re all been thinking of. Inquiring minds want to know, Tomuchan!

Kurogiri grunts. “Despite what you may think, Tomura is vaccinated. I had to use a blowgun, but I got him.”

“That’s not really a point in your honor, though.” Magne points out.

“Is it Teasing Tomura hour? I think the fuck not, so shut your mouths unless you want me to decay one shoe from every pair all of you fuckers own, so you’ll never be able to wear a matching set again.” With that inhumane threat, Tomura goes back to zoning out at the ceiling like he’s a Tibetan monk meditating.

It’s silent for a long moment, before Spinner breaks it once more. “Hey, where’s Dabi anyways?”

“If you lost him again, I’m leaving all of you except Tomura on an abandoned island in the middle of the Pacific to wait out your reenactment of Lord of the Flies.” Kurogiri warns.

“This is just blatant favoritism, for one.” Izuku begins.

“And?” Kurogiri says, utter disinterest in his voice. 

Well. “Second, he’s asleep on me.”

Dabi, from where he’s facedown on Izuku’s stomach and snoring softly, shifts like he can feel all of their very intent gazes.

“Hey…” Tomura says, very, very slowly. “Where are our permanent markers, by chance?”

Magne, once again proving that she is the glue holding the entire fucking League together, already has them in hand. 

.

“To start with,” the president shuffles some paper, kindly ignoring their pained groans as she distributes a messy timeline to them. “The League formed initially with just Shigaraki Tomura and his handler/caretaker Kurogiri originally, but in recent years, there has been a sharp increase in core members.” She points at a spot in the timeline, roughly two and a half years ago. “We know that Stain’s arrest brought about several aspiring villains, and that Shigaraki Tomura capsized off Stain’s popularity-”

(“Welcome back everybody to our weekly Fuck Stain meeting.” The masked man, who introduced himself as Mr. Compress, says to the small group. “Today, we’ll be discussing how Stain’s quirk can be used in bed. Be creative here, fellas, I wanna break at least three BDSM etiquette rules.”

Tomura hurriedly stands up. “I think there may have been a mistake-”)

“-but at this time we don’t know how.”

“Did Stain work with the League at some point?” Gran Torino asks. There’s a very thick bandage wrapped around one of his forearms that he has yet to explain and only glared when probed, though Hawks swore he saw him get a rabies shot earlier today. 

Vlad King shakes his head. “Shigaraki has been a very big anti-Stain proponent in the past, I don’t see how that would change.”

Hawks winces. He remembers the Twitter posts. They all remember the Twitter posts.

At least Shigaraki got bored of hate-posting and reblogging gifs of video games to accept the thirty-sixth ban in a row gracefully. Either that, or Kurogiri took control of his account and shut it down. They’re all a little afraid to arrest Kurogiri and leave Shigaraki without supervision, just for that fact. 

“Where is Endeavor, anyhow?” Hawks gracefully changes the subject before the mood can plummet anymore from secondhand embarrassment. 

The president's expression grows graver, if possible. “His wife has gone missing earlier today, so he’s taking an active part of the investigation before the trail goes cold.”

“His son first, and now his wife?” Miruko hums sympathetically. “Poor guy.” 

Jeez, poor guy indeed. It’s one thing for your teenage son to disappear without a trace and for everyone to throw their hands up and say that he must have just ran away. It’s another for your mentally ill wife, a well guarded secret hidden from the public and only known to a selection of top Heroes and Commission agents for her protection, to go missing as well.

Once is a coincidence, two is an agenda.

“What are we doing to help Endeavor?” Hawks asks. Obviously, this is no longer a ‘family’ issue that the police dismissed it as and needs to be dealt with more professionally. There’s at least five Heroes Hawks can think of at the top of his head who have quirks helpful to tracking down missing persons and would be more than honored to help Endeavor. Especially with a case so close to the number two Hero's heart. 

For once, the president seems almost…bashful? “In the wake of the League attacks, we simply don’t have the manpower to offer any help in the search. If it’s the same kidnapper as his son’s, then the case needs to be handed off to local police for their jurisdiction..”

What she’s not saying is that Todoroki Shouto went missing on an isolated stretch of the road on his routine walk home from middle school, and that Todoroki Rei was in a highly secure and guarded hospital where no one should have known she was staying there. One is a common enough occurrence, while the other is near improbable. 

And the Hero Public Safety Commission doesn’t deal with improbable problems. 

Hawks reluctantly settles back into his seat, even as he chokes down the bitterness and urge to see how his feathers could be used for non-lethal stab wounds. What? People tend to talk more when they have a leaking hole in them, and yes he realizes that's an innuendo.  

But as the president easily switches into the next discussion, Hawks stews in his seat, feather puffed up like a disgruntled bird until everyone remembers said feathers are very deadly and very trigger-happy. Everyday, he sees the increasing appeal in just saying 'fuck it' and going absolutely fucking apeshit. He can't be liable for his actions when he's running on two hours of sleep and still a little (a lot) horny. 

.

Natsuo knocks on the doorframe. “Hey, y’all done with the existential crisis or whatever? ‘Cause the pizza is here.”

All of them slowly start to stand up. “Yeah, I guess…” 

Dabi yawns, stumbling over to Natsuo’s side and slouching into him like a particularly disgruntled housecat. “When’s mom getting here?” He asks sleepily. 

Natsuo does a double take at the drawings on his face. “Uhh…You know you have -” Himiko runs her finger across her throat threateningly. “Yeah! She’s with Fuyumi now, they’re buying her some essentials as we speak.” 

“Oh, okay…”

Izuku heads over to the kitchen with Himiko to grab some pizza, starving from all the sheer chaos they’ve pulled today, while the rest of the League slowly trickles in after them. “Are you feeling okay? I heard you on the comms take a rough tumble.” He asks her gently, pulling down the paper plates from the cupboard, since they’re now banned from using actual ones ever since Himiko discovered they could be broken and used as blades. 

Himiko stares at him. “What are you doing?”

“General human compassion…?” He trails off awkwardly.

“Disgusting.” She gives him a contemplative look. “Do it again.”

Behind them, Dabi crashes on the couch Tomura’s already sitting on, too exhausted to tell who’s lap exactly he’s cuddling in. Tomura looks about thirty seconds before a murder or a conniption. Could go either way, really.

“Aw, they’re such good friends.” Twice squeals as Tomura raises a hand. Takes off his glove. Lowers the hand. “Decay him, Shiggy! Wait no don't actually do that! -”

Murder it is then. 

Luckily, Magne and Kurogiri exist. Unluckily, Magne and Kurogiri exist. 

“I’m not getting involved in that.” Izuku says brightly as both of them simultaneously turn toward Tomura with the Glower™ on. Focusing on what actually matters (food), he reaches for a slice, only for his hand to brush against Himiko’s as both of them reach for the same pizza slice. “Oh, sorry -”

Himiko grabs his hand in a vice grip. “Fucking commit.” 

“Okay then, I guess this is happening now.” Izuku says easily. Then, both of them proceed to eat their pizza slices while still holding hands, because this is his life and he only sorta hates it now (see Dr. Shinsou, he’s improving!). Thank god he’s somewhat ambidextrous.

Compress walks in, takes a good look at Dabi and Tomura dubiously cuddling on the couch, Himiko and Izuku holding hands, visibly realizes that everyone’s being too chummy and that's obviously completely unacceptable, and yells, as loud as he humanely can, “THE FLOOR IS LAVA!”

Spinner launches himself at a nearby wall, pizza slice forgotten. Magne jumps on a bar table. Natsuo is ignoring all of them to keep eating his pizza in peace. Twice is in a fetal position on the kitchen counter. Compress is somehow, mysteriously, halfway across the room on the bar itself despite being next to them in the kitchen moments before.

Izuku helps Himiko up on the table. Tomura kicks Dabi off the couch. 

“There are two kinds of friendships.” Spinner mutters from the nearby wall. 

Magne counters with, “Twink on Twink violence.”

“You motherFUCKER -” Dabi starts to scream, only for Kurogiri to clear his throat, bringing silence to the room instantly. 

“Shigaraki Tomura,” Kurogiri begins evenly. “We need to have a talk about your professionalism.”

“Those are some mighty brave words for a man standing in lava.” Tomura snaps back immediately.

Both of them stare at each other in silence, the air conditioning dramatically blowing like the wind in an old western film. Izuku eats his slice of pizza while still holding Himiko’s hand.

“Why are you like this?” Kurogiri asks, voice anguished. 

Tomura makes a so-so motion. “I have this weird self esteem thing where I hate myself but still think I’m better than everybody else.”

Kurogiri looks like he wants a drink, or three. Izuku keeps eating his pizza. 

.

“Besides Kurogiri, Shigaraki seems to extensively operate with these three villains of his inner circle the most, giving us reasonable suspicion that these are his lieutenants.” Hawks swallows at the picture attracted to the front of the first folder, the cat-like blue eyes narrowed in a careless smirk from the camera above the grocery store’s self checkout. He was also, for some reason, holding at least thirty apples. 

The math problems in school were real after all. 

“Dabi, also known as Sōen from his pre-League days as a serial arsonist targeting Endeavor merchandise stores, is an existence still largely unknown to us. Any evidence we’ve gathered has been inconclusive, leaving us to believe he’s using DNA destroying dye and chemicals. Around a year and a half, he started interacting with Shigaraki Tomura in public, with witnesses describing it as 'a catfight but with every insult in alphabetical order', but only officially joined several months later as a core member and rose to second in command, likely for his levelheadness in contrast to Shigaraki's impulsiveness-

(“I’ve been awake for over forty-eight hours and I just drank so many five-hour energy drinks I can’t feel my heart.” Dabi holds up a deck of cards. “So, who wants a tarot reading?” 

Tomura squints. “Those are Pokémon cards.” 

“You got a Squirtle, it means fuck you.” Dabi throws the deck at his face.)

-He’s calculative, aloof, unafraid of physical confrontation and…” Her face twists up. “Often acts promiscuously with those that try to detain him.” 

“Hey, don’t slut-shame.” Miruko says sharply. 

The president clears her throat, cheeks a faint red. “Of course, we’re aiming to keep a neutral tone. A better explanation would be that he often…uses flirting as a distraction in order to escape custody. So far, it’s been shown to be extremely effective.”

Hawks, who saw said flirting face to face and came out a changed man, carefully avoids eye contact. 

Unfortunately, life hates him. “You turned your comms off during your conservation with Dabi, Hawks, so we have yet to hear your side of the story. How was your first impression of him?”

“If he stepped on me, I would thank him.” Hawks says immediately. And then goes, oh, I shouldn’t say that, so he follows it up with, “But honestly I think he’s the one into being stepped on, so I’d be cool wearing the heels in the relationship.” 

Dead. Fucking. Silence.

The president has, somehow in the past ten seconds, aged at least thirty years. “Why.” She whispers, staring at him with the deep expression of ‘Hawks, please, that man has more arson charges than the amount of chickens you’ve eaten during puberty, which is frankly terrifying. Dabi probably came out of the womb doing arson.’ 

It’s a very multifaceted expression.

Aizawa finally pokes his head out of the caterpillar bundle. “Vote to never talk about this again?”

“Agreed.” The rest of the room chimes in. 

“Moving on,” the president clears her throat, avoiding looking at Hawks. “Dabi’s quirk is incredibly destructive, and as we’ve seen today, can be used creatively by multiple League members either as a distraction, a full-frontal offense, or a way of destroying evidence. If you encounter him again, take extreme precautions and do not engage one-on-one. This man is dangerous and an A class Villain.” 

“And apparently a bottom.” Miruko mutters. 

.

“You are the sexiest, most handsome guy I have ever seen.” Dabi says. “Nobody deserves you.”

“Dachan?” Izuku tentatively asks.

Dabi turns away from the mirror, an extraordinarily well rendered illustration of a banana giving birth drawn on his forehead. “Yes?”

Izuku isn’t touching that one with a ten foot pole. “Nevermind.”

Tomura pokes his head past the doorframe, the dead hand back on his face and doing absolutely nothing to hide the grimace he gets whenever Dabi gets within three yards of him. “Are you done pep-talking yourself or what? I need to shit.” 

“Ugh.” Himiko’s face pops in on the other side of the doorframe. “You boys are gross. Except you, Izuku-kun, I love you! I would die for you!”

“Then perish.” Izuku says dryly. 

“Is this about Hawks?” Compress chimes in from above Tomura’s head. “I do have to say, your usual methods to distract the law worked unusually well today.” He pauses, mouth pursed behind his balaclava. “Should I be concerned about your level of dedication to this task?”

Dabi stares him dead in the eye. “What dedication?”

“Did you forget you’re not the only one who uses the League owned tablet?” Spinner says next, from below Himiko, a little embarrassed for the sake of the rest of the League's lack of shame. “All of us can see your internet history, you know.” 

Izuku nods. “I never knew they made so many sex toys in Hawks likeliness.” 

Slowly, ever so slowly, the healthy skin above Dabi’s burns flushes pink. 

“Of all people, Hawks?” Kurogiri asks from above Himiko. “I can understand literally anybody else, but the number three Hero?” 

“Well, All Might’s older than my dad and number two is my dad, so…” Dabi says. “I think I’m doing pretty good for myself!” He brightens up, looking quite proud of himself. 

“All you’re doing is being a nuisance to society with all your twitter thirst posts. We share the fucking twitter account, I don’t need to see a dakimakura of a naked Hawks the first thing in the morning because all you do is follow hornblogs.” Tomura hisses. 

“We only share it because Kurogiri took away your personal one after you kept leaking our location to live-blog about that new game with the girl who can snap your spine like uncooked pasta.” Dabi snorts, rolling his eyes. “You’re just mad that I win at being gay because arson is a gay crime.” 

Tomura raises a finger. “First of all, Aloy is a wonderful character full of depth who’s backstory and presence is deeply intertwined within the plot of the game. Second of all, fucking tax evasion.” 

“Try me bitch, I also don’t pay my taxes, I'm legally dead.” 

“Idiots,” Himiko shakes her head with a sigh. “Everyone knows Ellie is a better character anyways.” 

Both Dabi and Tomura rear back like she just bitch-slapped them, but Izuku turns out their subsequent screams as he thinks, ignoring the what the FUCK DO YOU MEAN ELLIE’S BETTER THAN ALOY YOU REPREHENSIBLE FUCK WAFFLE, CAN ELLIE RIDE A MOTHERFUCKING MECHANIC DINOSAUR?? and SHE HAS THE CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT OF A PAPER BAG TOGA THE FUCK DON’T BRING CLEMENTINE INTO THIS SHE'S MY BABY. 

Something about Hawks is tickling the back of Izuku’s mind, especially about Dabi’s interest in him. Red as the primary color scheme, generally a fan-favorite due to his kind personality, a literally sparkling smile (what kind of fucking toothpaste does he use??), could beat everyone in this room one-handed and blindfolded…

And then it hits him. “He’s Sidon!”

Everyone immediately stops what they’re doing and stares at Dabi. 

Dabi pales. “Oh fuck, he really is.”

“Wrong!” Himiko shouts, pointing a finger at him. “Sidon would treat you like a precious gift. Hawks would treat you like the whore you are.”  

“MOVING ON,” Compress screams when Dabi’s eyes go hazy at the thought.

Twice appears below Tomura. “Stop letting your heart and genitals choose your men! Or do, that makes complete sense.” 

“What’s left?” Dabi blinks, before realizing. “Wait, my brain. Fuck, you right, you right.” 

“You really forgot your whole brain, huh?” Izuku wonders out loud. 

“He heard me say that with his dick.” Magne says, a slice of pizza over her face from the couch behind them. 

Tomura gestures vaguely in their direction. “So can I shit or what?” 

.

“His second lieutenant,” the president hands out another folder, and despite knowing the contents of the folder, Hawks still feels his heart sink at the image of the brightly teenager. “Is Toga Himiko, currently seventeen years old, Quirk: Transform. She can turn into the form of anyone else by consuming their blood, and has used this ability to infiltrate several previously secure areas, the most recent being Juko News.”

“She was also at Might Tower,” Gran Torino interjects. “Likely through Twice’s quirk, as another version of her was at Kiyashi shopping center.”

The president acknowledges his words before turning to the room at large. “We have more information on Toga than Dabi to form a profile, but her behavior before and after the assault of her classmate, Tanaka Saito, is so drastically different that we’re led to believe that she suffered a mental breakdown for reasons we’re still unsure about.”

Vlad King frowns down at his papers. “It says here she was withdrawn in the months prior to her disappearance.” As a teacher, that must ring more warning bells for him than it would for Hawks.

“Extremely.” The president agrees. “According to her parents, she spent the vast majority of her time on the computer with what they believed was her playing video games, but we were unable to confirm it, as she took the computer before leaving.”

Hawks jerks up, flipping through the folder rapidly. “Wait, that doesn’t make any sense.” He finally lands on the page he was looking for, spinning it around for them to see the timeline on the day of her disappearance. “See, Toga attacked her classmate at roughly four ten in the afternoon with a boxcutter, before fleeing from the scene of the crime covered in his blood. Evidence and cameras show us she fled on the train lines towards the southern Tokyo region, such as Kawasaki, Musutafu, or even all the way to Yokohama - we don’t know, but it doesn’t matter, because why would she head south to retrieve her things when she lived north of Tokyo? Not only that, but her parents returned home at around five fifteen to find that the house was undisturbed. How would she go south, clean herself up so as not to leave Tanaka’s blood as evidence in her room, and return north to grab only her computer? She didn’t take anything else with her.”

“Unless she didn’t.” Miruko finishes grimly. “And the League cleaned up its tracks instead.”- 

(A teenage girl's room is completely empty, devoid of sound or people, until a small black portal opens in front of a desk. A blood covered arm pokes through, feeling around for the laptop on the desk with the quiet accompaniment of “Fuck fuck fuck~”, smacking into everything that isn’t the laptop all the while. 

After finding it, the blood covered arm and laptop, still open to the League’s discord, slink back into the portal, the black mist disappearing moments afterwards. Only to reappear, the same blood covered arm shooting out to snatch a piece of candy before retreating back to safety.)

-The president purses her mouth. “Then she was recruited by the League far before her disappearance.” She beckons an aide closer and whispers something in their ear, before turning to the room at large. “This was our oversight; we knew the League had changed its recruitment efforts, but we had no idea that they turned to the internet in order to gather more members. The video game excuse must have been just that - an excuse.”

Hawks isn’t so sure about that. When he unlocked Dabi’s phone, he saw the amount of apps the man had on his home page - specifically, games. And Shigaraki has already expressed interest in video games before.

Wouldn’t be the weirdest way to recruit other Villains, but pretty damn close. He’s pretty sure the only one he’s met was the guy who offered membership in their gang in exchange for feet pics.

Yep.

“After her disappearance, she re-emerged as a core League member and earned herself a strong street rep. While insistent on being called by her name rather than a Villain name, she’s still earned herself two prominent nicknames in the underworld. Camilla, by the Heroes, and Little Red, by the Villains.”

That…implies several things. Especially about how other Villains feel about her. Hawks feels a shiver run down his back, and reminds himself to never use fatal force with her (not that he does anyhow), as he might find himself with a hit on his back if he even bruises her too badly. 

Or a stab wound, because she's more than capable of taking care of herself and honestly she terrifies him a little bit. By the expressions going around the table, the feeling is mutual. 

.

Twice holds out a long, red shawl to hide Himiko from the room, the design unfamiliar considering Izuku and Himiko borrow each other's clothes all the time (no, he's not bitter about her being the only other member in the League he's roughly the same size of). It's probably Magne's, by her pinched expression. “Prepare,” Twice says ominously, “for the greatest genius to have ever walked the Earth! My silence is just another word for my pain.” And then he rips the scarf away, unleashing a hellish calamity onto the planet. 

“Young man," Himiko immediately falls into the wap dance. “The groomsbride is a whore I said young man, please close the goddamn door.”

“This is it.” Dabi says, gaze completely and utterly vacant. “This is simultaneously the best and worst sentence in existence.”

Himiko looks quite proud of herself, to be honest, even as Tomura immediately tries to kill her for that sacred injustice. Ducking under his stretched out arms, she cheerfully slams her fist into his solar plexus, whistling innocently when Tomura hits the ground like it’s the club and that early 2000s song was playing. 

“Children,” Kurogiri warns tiredly, helping Natsuo finish patching up the rest of the League. “I understand adrenaline crashes are difficult to deal with, but attempting to murder each other is no way to peacefully settle your fluctuating blood pressure - Midoriya, I expected better from you.”

Izuku smiles brightly, sliding the knife back into the sheathe under his recovered hoodie. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Girichan, I was just going to give Tomuchan a little trim!”

Tomura, finally conscious enough to speak, agrees weakly. “My hair is getting long.” He rasps like an eighty year old smoker. 

“I could cut it for you!” Himiko offers out one of her own many, many knives with rosy cheeks that promise that hair’s not the only thing Tomura’s going to lose if he decides to test fate.

Tomura blinks, undaunted. That man has no fear. “You could?”

“Sure!” Himiko nods eagerly. “I cut Dabi-kun’s hair all the time!”

Dabi stares at her, the horrors of wars scrubbed away and only the stray ink line across his unscarred skin a reminder for his sins. “…When do you ever cut my hair.” It’s not a question.

Himiko treats it as one. “You take a lot of naps!”

Dead silence.

“Well,” Tomura says to no one in particular. “I’m not touching that one.”

“Smart move, Tomuchan.” Izuku whispers-shouts. They're not touching a lot of things today. 

“What can I say,” Tomura finally stands up, only slightly hunched over from the agonizing pain. “My best talent is that I’m blindingly intelligent for about 30 seconds a day. I do not get to choose which seconds. They are not consecutive.”

“Oh, me next!” Twice raises his hand excitably, ignoring how Natsuo curses at how it messes up the bandages he’s doing on his arm. “The only thing I’m good at is crippling anxiety. Not to flex, but watch this!” He stares into space, his expression going blank behind the mask.

Himiko waves a hand on front of his face, then jabs his ribs in an area that Izuku knows is Extremely ticklish (they don’t talk about the Great Tickle War Part 38th). No reaction. “Jin?” She pokes him again, before turning back to them. “I think he just dissociated?”

Izuku claps excitably. “Wow, that’s awesome! He can just do it on will? I wonder how he learned how to do that? Is it a stress response, or does he have to trigger himself purposefully in order to reach it? It must be so handy!”

“Midoriya.” Compress says softly, coming up behind Izuku and wrapping an arm around him. “As much as I love your enthusiasm here, this is something that you really shouldn’t be excited about.” 

“Why not?” Izuku blinks.

Tomura groans into the dead hand attached to his face. “Still not touching that.”

“If any of you dumbasses have a braincell, I need help over here.” Natsuo calls across the room, glaring at them over his reading glasses which made Tomura turn into a tomato for a solid three minutes and twenty four seconds (Izuku counted, because it took exactly that long to hold Dabi in place before he could calm down from his quest to commit first degree murder of their favorite NEET). Spinner waves, his chest wrapped in a swatch of bandages.

Tomura and Dabi glance at each other, the actual two adults of the quarto. “Rock Paper Scissors for the brain cell?” Tomura proposes. 

“Oh bet.” Dabi scoots closer, hands raised.

Himiko jumps on the couch between them. “If it’s a tie I’m taking it!”

.

The third, and last lieutenant, stares up at him in the fuzzy picture through the tinted glass of their visor, face obscured entirely by the goggles and mouth guard, and even with the coverings and poor technology, it’s clear for everyone to see that the short villain was even younger than Toga Himiko somehow. 

“Mayhem is, despite his lack of combat ability and relative newness to the League, likely the most dangerous of the three lieutenants. Since his arrival a year ago, the League has gotten increasingly more strategic, switching to more hit-and-run tactics rather than full on assaults to better suit their breadth of quirks. Not only that, but Mayhem, simply put, doesn’t exist beyond the League.” 

Aizawa blinks, finally looking a little awake. “That’s not possible.” He says flatly. “Even Dabi had a past, even if it’s only for the last decade. A villain can’t just enter the League without some prerequisites.”

“And yet somehow, Mayhem appeared out of thin air a year ago, and immediately rose in the ranks to lieutenant.” The president counters evenly. “We have to assume that he was recruited through the same methods as Toga Himiko, but unlike her, he still leads a civilian life, if his extreme efforts to hide his identity are any indication. He's smart and efficient,-” 

(“Hey Tomuchan? My hands are stuck in a Pringle tube. Both hands, yeah, and Mom's not picking up her phone. Look, it’s not important how I called you, just please come over here and help me already!)

“-and known to be completely ruthless when it comes to the safety of his teammates, showing himself to be formable without an offensive quirk or equipment.”

Hawks eyes the list of black market tools the Commission suspects Mayhem uses with trepidation. Mouth guard that can also act as a gas mask, visor with night and ultra-violet vision, the same black DNA destroying hair dye as Dabi, traction gloves for hiding fingerprints and holding support gear - the line between what equipment Heroes and Villains use is a thin line. 

“Luckily, we have his teeth marks.” The president nods towards Gran Torino. Gran Torino, on the other hand, glowers at nothing. Hawks is dying to know the story behind that. “We’re currently running them through the Quirk database, and as we suspect he either has an analysis Quirk or a luck-based Quirk, we should find him quickly enough.”

“Why didn’t you run it through the civilian database?” Hawks wonder out loud. “Mayhem may be Quirkless, and they’re not listed in the Quirk database.”

The president laughs. Hard. For several, long, drawn-out minutes.

“Oh Hawks,” she wipes her eyes like he just told her a hilarious joke. “There’s no way a Quirkless person would be able to do what Mayhem’s done, you should know that!”

At least Hawks isn’t the only one looking ruffled by her casually Quirkest remarks; Gran Torino looks affronted at this new kind of a discrimination (and also probably the fact that Quirkless people still have, y’know, teeth to bite people with), and Aizawa is glaring at the president with the will of a man who has not a single shit given if he lives or dies. 

Hawks throws up his hands. Literally. “Listen, if this blows up in our faces, let it be on the file that I officially protested against this.”

As most people do, she ignores his words. 

“Mayhem’s an A-ranked Villain on par with Toga Himiko and Dabi despite his little experience in combat, as anyone we’ve arrested has contested this fact.” She lifts up a paper and clears her throat. “‘He tried to rip my throat out. With his teeth.’ ‘Don’t insult his mother. Just don’t do it.’ ‘I quit being a villain and decided to be a monk after the shit talking he gave me.’ ‘I’ll do anything as long as you don’t let him near me again. Anything! I still see his feral gremlin grin everytime I close my eyes.’” She places the paper down, and Hawks can see even from across the room that there’s still about another additional twenty quotes.

“So basically, he’s like a raccoon with rabies.” Miruko concludes.

The president pauses. Evaluates it. Narrows her eyes. “You’re not wrong…” 

.

Tittyfuck Princess

T MINUS FIVE MINUTES UNTIL MY MOM GETS HERE

Kinkshaming IS my kink 

He’s more excited about this than Mario Kart

Bitch (Bi/tch)

NO!

Friendly Local Necrophile

not again

please

im not strong enough 

I found a gun

We Don’t Talk About Mario Kart, Iguchan

Maximum Megasimp

I still see Isabelle’s floppy ears as she passes by me into first place every time I close my eyes…

Assigned Babysitter at Gunpoint

I, personally, would not be against continuing that game of Mario Kart.

Professional Clown Breeder

Please. Shoot me now

Friendly Local Necrophile

kurogiri and dabi beating us into a bloody pulp as fucking shy guy and isabelle still gives me nightmares

Lady Dimitrescu’s Thicccc Hat

If you fools wish to resume that dreaded game, I will marble all of you before shipping you off to the arctic 

: )

I found a gun

Says mister last place, King Boo stan

Lady Dimitrescu’s Thicccc Hat

Do you really want to do this?

I found a gun

no thank you i'm sorry sir

Bitch (Bi/tch)

Seeing Kurogiri and Compress be more and more alike each day surprises me sometimes 

Assigned Babysitter at Gunpoint

I'm extremely proud about the fact that we have at least two adults here now. 

Lady Dimitrescu’s Thicccc Hat

Aw, you know just how to flatter me! 

Friendly Local Necrophile

says the man who's username is a reference towards a RE8 mod

Lady Dimitrescu’s Thicccc Hat

Stronger men than you have tried and failed, and you think you, Shigaraki Tomura, have a chance? 

Friendly Local Necrophile

i don't care if I win

i just need you to lose

Lady Dimitrescu’s Thicccc Hat

Understandable have a nice day

Kinkshaming IS my Kink

Mag-nee, please stop Shigaraki from trying to murder me via a death glare

Bitch (Bi/tch)

No

: )

Kinkshaming IS my Kink

Valid

Tittyfuck Princess

GUYS

MY M O T H E R

Greasy truck driver nobody likes

what the fuck is this chat

Friendly Local Necrophile

its to tell you we completed your quest

I found a gun

He means that we finished the task you gave us ^^

Maximum Megasimp

Your information was a lifesaver, Giran-kun!

Greasy truck driver nobody likes

…what information 

Lady Dimitrescu’s Thicccc Hat

I believe now would be the time to check the news!

Professional Clown Breeder

I’m sorry :((((

Greasy truck driver nobody likes

…

what

what the fuck is this shit

I found a gun

Don’t challenge Dachan to a drinking competition

: )

Greasy truck driver nobody likes

Kid, how the fuck do you drink this much

Tittyfuck Princess

It’s the Trauma™

Maximum Megasimp

Mood

Bitch (Bi/tch)

Yep

I found a gun

Same

Friendly Local Necrophile

when am I not bi and vaguely traumatized 

Greasy truck driver nobody likes

y’all, go the fuck to therapy

.

Well, that was a massive waste of time. 

Hawks groans, standing up and cracking his back, his wings stretching out to their full length after hours being crammed against the high backrest. Yet another lawsuit he’s going to have to consider - all government owned bills should have a selection of chairs that cater to most mutation types due to the Mutation Quirk Protection bills, but yet he couldn't find a single low-back or backless one in the conference room or even the nearby storage. 

One lawsuit at a time, he reminds himself, as his legal team is currently tied up in about five different cases on varying levels from 'this villain was sentenced too harshly and I'm contesting this with the court' to 'this is a possible national conspiracy so I can't say shit to my mandated therapist about so I just drink way too much beer', so…time to add another one to the list!

His PA is going to kill him. And if she does, that’s on him, she caught him slipping, she fully deserved that kill and shouldn’t go to jail for that.

Gathering up his papers from the pointless meeting, he moves to go intercept Miruko, thinking he might take her up on her offer of drinks (he needs it, at this point), before a hand lands on his shoulder. “Hawks,” the president says loudly. “We need to talk.”

“Fuck.” 

The president blinks. “What was that?” 

Hawks beams with the power of the fucking sun. “Nothing, Madame President! What did you want to talk to me about?” 

She exchanges looks with her assistant. Uh oh. “This is a discussion best meant without anyone possibly overhearing.” She tries to push him towards her private office, but Hawks digs his heels into the ground. Nope. Nadda. Fuck this. He’s tired and still a little horny, he wants to go home, see if anyone made any NSFW Dabi fanart (who he is kidding, this is the internet, of fucking course there’s porn), and then go the fuck to sleep. Not this.  

The president sighs like he’s an annoying child, and considering her dubious mother figure role in his life, the comparison probably isn’t too far off. “I’ll buy us KFC as we talk.” 

Hawks instantly starts moving. “Well, what are we waiting for?” He winks over his shoulder, flouncing off to the very fancy office with a Statement Plant and everything, fully prepared to sell his soul if it means he can get some good old KFC. He’s banned from every store in the Kyushu area and if he even strolls through the door, they’re supposed to call the cops on him. 

It’s hilarious when the cops are torn between asking for his autograph and arresting him, but he’d rather not spend another night in the holding cell. 

Doing it once in a chicken fursona suit is enough for a lifetime. 

Nothing they ask of him could be too bad, he muses as he shoves an entire leg of fried chicken into his mouth without chewing, bone and all, as long as he gets his daily requirements of preservatives and grease. The disgusted expression on the president’s face is just a bonus. 

That’s until they tell him the mission, and chicken suddenly isn’t so great when it’s currently crammed in his throat and he’s choking around it like the world’s worst blowjob.

.

Todoroki Rei, Izuku’s first realization when he finally meets her face to face, is probably the prettiest woman alive (after his mom, of course). 

His second realization is that she’s absolutely batshit insane.

Izuku’s third, and rather painful realization, is that Todoroki Rei, daughter of the famous Himura family, wife of the number two Hero Endeavor and user of a powerful ice quirk, has a crush on his fucking m o t h e r.

“Hello, Inko-san,” Rei shakes his mother’s hand with pink ears, tucking a lock of white hair behind her ear, either unnoticing or uncaring of how her eldest and youngest children are clinging to her waist despite both of them being taller than her. “It’s so nice to meet the woman who took care of my son when I couldn’t.” 

His mother laughs, her own cheeks looking distinctly colored. “Oh, don’t say that! Shouto is a remarkable boy, and it’s all because of how his mother raised him.” 

Izuku gags. 

Unfortunately, that draws all the attention in the room towards him. “You must be the Izuku I’ve heard so much about.” Rei says warmly, shuffling over with the two parasites attached to her. 

“Midoriya is my best friend.” Shouto confirms, face buried in her shirt. “We share a toothbrush.”

“…I was not aware of that.” Izuku says. 

Shouto shrugs. “Well, we do.” 

Luckily, Kurogiri sweeps into the room, a towel over his arm and a bowl of freshly heated can soup, since Dabi is the only cook among them and he’s currently attached to his mother’s waist like a particularly insistent limpet. “Hello, Himura-san,” his use of her maiden name only makes Rei’s cheeks grow redder. “I’m sure you must be exhausted after such a long and emotionally challenging day. We don’t have much space, but I’m sure we could take you for however long you need until other accommodations are made for you.” 

“That’s very kind of you,” Rei awkwardly shuffles forward, taking the offered bowl of soup with a look from under her eyelashes and taking a tentative sip. “Oh, how lovely! You’re a very good cook, Kurogiri-san.” Kurogiri can't even cook, it's fucking canned soup -

Kurogiri puffs up, for as much as sentient mist can, the edges of it flickering and oh god, is he blushing? “Thank you, Himura-san.” He fiddles with his cufflink, almost shyly. “Please drop the honorifics, we’re all family here.” 

“I think I just threw up in my mouth.” Tomura says faintly. 

Izuku weakly nods. “Same.” 

“Shh,” Himiko slaps a hand over both of their mouths. “This is the best romance I’ve seen in forever.” 

“Only if you do the same, Giri.” Izuku’s mother flirts, neatly inserting herself into the conversation, but rather than grimacing at the interruption like most people with gratuitous amounts of UST, both Rei and Kurogiri fluster even more. “I’ve told you for forever to just call me Inko, we have two Midoriyas and five Todorokis here now. it'll be bound to be confusing sooner or later.” 

Rei jumps on that like Himiko seeing blood. “I feel the same way, feel free to just call me Rei. I insist on it.” 

Kurogiri shuffles, touching the tips of his index fingers together, all shy and demure with lovesick eyes. “…If you insist, Rei-san, Inko-san.” 

Dabi finally can’t take it anymore, reunion with his mother to be damned, stumbling away to go gag in a nearby trash can. “Shouto,” he groans as his youngest brother finally detaches from their mother to rub his back. “Distract them, please, I’m begging you.”

Shouto’s face instantly steels like a man prepared to jump on a grenade for a fellow soldier in the trenches. “Plankton built his computer wife, so he’s also the one who programmed her personality. Plankton made a wife who would belittle and mock him. That obviously means Plankton has a humiliation kink. Discuss.” 

The entire League immediately start debating whether or not Plankton from Spongebob has a fucking humiliation kink, none of them even looking nonplussed as the conversation rapidly descents into screaming and murder, Himiko trying to tackle Spinner with a knife from across the table for trying to introduce the possibility of sentient A.I., thus once more starting up the argument anew with the angle that his computer wife is the one with the humiliation kink. Spinner has a point; anyone with the name Karen, computer or not, has a humiliation kink. 

Izuku stares with horror. “Oh, I don’t like this,” he whispers, “I don’t like this at all.”

A pat on his back has him looking up to Natsuo’s sheepish expression. “It could be worse?” 

“How,” Izuku bemoans. “How could it be worse? Did you forget that both of our mothers are very much still married?” 

Natsuo continues staring. “Married? Mom isn’t married.” 

Well, RIP Endeavor, your son literally just wrote you out of the family tree. That man isn’t even a sperm donor at this point. 

Realizing that Natsuo won’t be able to be reasoned with, Izuku turns his desperate gaze to Fuyumi. Fuyumi smiles back, with the same lovesick glaze in her eyes as Himiko. “Isn’t it lovely? I haven’t seen Mom this energetic in a while.” 

Oh right, this is the woman who’s favorite hobby is watching soap operas. 

At his last resort, he turns to Shouto. He shouldn’t have bothered. 

“Are you,” Izuku asks, jaw agape. “Are you smiling? About our mothers wanting to start a ménage à trois?” Shouto didn’t even smile over the season finale of Selling Sunset!

“If our mothers divorce our fathers and marry each other, Inko-san could officially adopt me.” Shouto says, face set and gaze serious as he bulldozes into the rant. “Kurogiri can’t marry either of them because he’s a well known villain, but we could add him to the family tree so he has custody rights over us, so he’ll basically be our dad either way.” 

“Shouchan, I still don’t -”

A phone with an open google page is shoved in his face. “This is the average divorce settlement.”

Izuku stares. Revaluates what he was going to say. Officially gives up. “At least have our fathers die under suspicious circumstances so we get their insurance money too.” Is all he says to say in the face of such unflinching evidence. 

(Somewhere far away, Endeavor feels a shudder crawl down his back while he searches for his missing wife who is currently making heart eyes at one of the most wanted men in the country and a regular housewife.)

(Somewhere even farther away, a man in a suit senses a disturbance in the force. And then he tries to call his regular housewife, only for her to be busy with said heart eyes.)

“I think I have hives.” Tomura mutters. 

Himiko squeals. “Can I be the flower girl at the wedding?!” 

Dabi continues puking in the trash. 

.

“Soooo,” Hawks draws out slowly. “When you say you want me to be a spy, that means you want me to be a,” he spreads his hands, “✨honey trap.✨”

“NO!”

In the corner of the room, the assistant mutters, “How did you even say that” to themself. 

Resting his chin in his hands, his smile grows impossibly larger. “You want me to seduce that twink villain with the great tits. Dabi, right?”

“Why did you add the seduction part.”

Hawks sighs, shaking his head ruefully. “I know, he’s just my type, but it’s still a tough job and someone’s gotta do it.” Despite his words, his eyes are practically sparkling in sheer chaotic joy. Or lust. That too. 

The president buries her face in her hands. “Just be a regular spy, please. We’re begging you.”

Unfortunately, Hawks is full on ignoring her at this point. “And since I’m the only hero young and hot enough, guess it’s gotta be me.” He seems to forget that he’s friends with a vast majority of heroes who would call themselves young and hot. Or he’s willfully ignoring the fact in favor of getting laid. 

Just when the president’s geared to lecture him, Hawks hops up, an almost…sadistic grin spreading across his face that stops anything she has to say in its tracks. “Bye! Time for me to track down a little firecracker and teach him a lesson until the brat can’t walk for the next week.” Suddenly remembering that there’s an audience to his thirst rant, he chuckles, opening the window and perching on the sill. “Wish me luck! I’ll try my best not to be seduced by the dark side! Ha ha…Unless?” 

With that, he flings himself out the window, phone already out and humming to himself happily as he flies away. The president doesn’t even have time to come up with a response before both her and the assistant’s phone dings. 

Big Bird x Cucco Lovechild @hawksofficial 

i’m about to either have the spiciest ride of my life or get flambéed like bargain yakitori 

Big Bird x Cucco Lovechild @hawksofficial

Replying to @hawksofficial 

remember me not as who I was, but who I am 

Rabbit of Caerbannog @mirukoofficial

Replying to @hawksofficial 

A whore?

Big Bird x Cucco Lovechild @hawksofficial

Replying to @mirukoofficial

yes

“Japan is doomed.” The president mutters.

.

Dabi lifts his head from the trash can, eyes bleary and drool smeared across his cheek. “Why do I feel like my ass is in danger?” 

“WHO THE FUCK TRAMPLED ALL MY FLOWERS IN ANIMAL CROSSING?!” Himiko screams from somewhere deep within the League base. 

“Ah,” Dabi says. “That’s why.”

.

ChickenDaddy joined the LeagueofHeroFuckers Guild! Say hi, ChickenDaddy!

Chapter Text

“Okay, so,” Izuku finally says after a long, long, moment, surveying the room for the last time. While he and his mom upgraded from an apartment to a house after his breakdown in middle school (thanks dad for the guilt money), it was still a two bedroom, two bathroom, no matter how they stretched it. And now, with not just one, but two unexpected roommates, they’ve found themselves at a bit… “We have no fucking room.”

His mother brightens up. “Rei can sleep in my -”

Gently, but very, very, firmly, Izuku places a hand over his mother’s mouth. “No.” 

She pouts. Even Rei seems a bit put out about it, in her own refined Yamato Nadeshiko way. 

Because Shouto’s a sociopath, he doesn’t move to do anything besides to take another bite into a roll of hubba bubba gum like a motherfucking biscuit. 

“I hate you,” Izuku hisses at him. Shouto looks, as per usual, supremely unimpressed.

Fuyumi’s currently working on getting a place for her and Rei, as Natsuo is living in a college dorm and the League is already crowded as it is, so they’ll just have to deal with it being a little cramped for a couple of days. “Rei-san can sleep on the couch for now, while Shouchan can sleep in the futon on my floor.” Izuku makes the I’m watching you gesture at his mother, mentally communicating to her in the solemn bond of being an only child with a single parent gets you, the universal you won’t get that massive fucking alimony if you cheat mom - 

His mother makes eye contact and nods. Thank god, she understands the shit ton of money his potential crime lord of a father has to offer them. College is expensive, okay, and while he’s fully confident in his ability to take advantage of U.A.'s massive amount of weight in the scholarly world, he’d rather have a way to pay for Shouto’s education too. 

(Is it expected that Hero students never attend college and go straight to working in the field? Yes. Does he care? No. Besides, Kayama has already agreed to help him with whatever lawsuit he has planned while he’s at UA, and he’s got it in handwriting.)

Until she winks. Only if I get caught. 

MOM NO - 

“Rei, why don’t we get a nice dinner to celebrate your newfound freedom?” His mother sidles up to Rei’s side like it's the most natural thing in the world, already hooking their elbows together and leading her out the door, their voices quieting the farther they wander away. “There’s this lovely Nagashi Somen place nearby I’m sure you’ll love.”

“Oh, you sure know how to flatter me…”

How. When did his mother get this smooth??

The instant the door slams shut, Izuku turns to Shouto with his most disgusted expression. “You’re helping me roll the futon out; it’s the least you can do for torturing me like this.” 

Shouto seems to consider the sins of making Izuku watch their mothers flirt, before shrugging. “Fair.”  

Which leads to the second problem: Izuku’s frankly massive amount of All Might merchandise that can barely fit into the six full sized moving boxes they pilfered from a nearby shop to make room for the futon. 

“There’s only one solution to this.” Izuku says solemnly, viewing his boxed merchandise with the grandiose and poise of a king overruling his subjects. 

“Killing ourselves?” Shouto asks hopefully. 

Izuku casually reaches over and grabs his entire face, like one would to an apple or an egg. 

“Anywho,” He says over Shouto’s frantic muffled shouts. “I meant we should probably call Kurogiri for a lift, but you should really learn to love yourself too.” 

He mumbles something that sounds like, “Don’t you hate yourself?” from behind Izuku’s hand, but he has elected to ignore that (very true) slander. 

“Stop trying to change the subject and call Kurogiri. We all know you’re his favorite, so he’ll respond no matter how busy he is.” Izuku says, the ever present smile never fading even when Shouto starts biting. Please, he's friends with Tomura, he's used to people biting him just because they can. 

Shouto gives up and calls Kurogiri. 

After a few more minutes of roughhousing (if roughhousing includes ice shards sharp enough to be knives and actual knives), they break apart at the first signs of a warp gate in his bedroom, so as to avoid the Disappointed Look™ Kurogiri should really patent at this point. 

“Well, children?” Kurogiri asks, stepping out of the portal in a suit and tie with flowers under his arm. “I have somewhere to be in a few minutes, so please make this quick.” 

Izuku’s expression sours while Shouto’s brightens. “Mom’s favorite flowers are rindous.” The traitor provides helpfully. 

Kurogiri tosses the roses through the warp gate behind him without a second glance. “Of course.” He says genially. 

“Mom’s are roses, though.” Izuku can’t help but add on. 

The roses are summoned miraculously back in his hands. “Is there anything you particularly need before I leave? If you’re lonely, Toga seems to be getting herself in some mischief at U.A. today -”

“Nope!” Izuku isn’t touching whatever chaos Himiko’s touching. Not today. “We were just wondering if you could help us transport some of my stuff so Shouto can sleep in my room from now on.” 

Kurogiri pauses. “…To where?” 

“You know where.” He says solemnly. 

A long pause. 

“I’ll tell you mom’s favorite gifts.” Izuku offers.

“Deal.” Kurogiri accepts immediately. 

.

“You’re cooking?” Izuku asks in disbelief. And a bit of fear. “Are you sure that’s a good idea after last time? You looked really creepy without eyebrows.”

“Eat glass.” Tomura says pleasantly. 

Cautiously, he creeps closer, struggling desperately to keep his expression firmly neutral as he looks down at the black bubbling… something in Tomura’s pan. But because he’s secretly three racoons in a trenchcoat fueled by either a. spite, or b. free food, he simply asks, “Any chance that’s for me?”

Unfortunately, Tomura shakes his head. “It’s for Kurogiri. I’m planning on making some bad choices tonight and I need him on my side.” He pokes at the suspicious stain that may or may not have gained sentient life, still up in the air. 

Himiko, from where she’s cutely dressed with pigtails and a flour covered apron, giggles as she stirs suspiciously red cookie dough in a bowl. “I never realized the effort that went into being a disappointment.” 

“What, you think this is innate?” Tomura gestures at himself. “I’ve mastered the skill of disappointing the authority figures in my life down to a T.” 

“You’re a disappointment to the entire human race, don’t kid yourself.” Dabi snorts, eyebrows furrowed as he mushes something that might have once been alive within the last five minutes into the blender. Izuku squints. It might still be alive, actually.

Tomura throws the spatula at him. Dabi catches it between his teeth, like a fucking dog, and keeps stabbing the things that were maybe once a vegetable, maybe once a human organ, with a kind of glee that’s oddly reminiscent of Himiko when she’s hangry. 

Ah, Hawks must have left him on read again. Damn, they spend so much time helping Dabi pick out that push-up bra for that shoot too. 

“So yeah,” Tomura smoothly continues, like Himiko hasn’t stopped stirring to eat straight out of the bowl, just fucking bare-handing it like some kind of lolita fashion cavemen, and Dabi isn’t still holding the spatula between his teeth. “What time does the judgement express get here?

“Kurogiri gets back at one.” Immediately, Izuku’s face crumples up at the realization at how he knows that, considering, you know, his mother is on a date with him and his best friend’s mom. If you call passively aggressively flirting across a brunch table like it’s Sun Tzu debating battle tactics a date, anyhow. 

“Great.” Tomura nods, with the full and complete confidence of someone who's never cooked a day in their life. “We should have plenty of time then. How could this go wrong?”

.

Spinner flings himself bodily through the door, a giant lizard-shaped hold being left in his wake. “Five minutes until hostiles approach!”

“FUCK.” Tomura screams emphatically. “Where are the fucking oven mitts?!” The entire league glances around desperately, with Tomura’s hands hovering over the pot that’s about T minus ten seconds from blowing up. 

“We haven’t put the cookies in the oven either!” Himiko wails, red cookie dough covering her hands like she’s Lady Macbeth lamenting her sins. 

“The instructions say we can heat these cookies at four hundred degrees for ten minutes,” Izuku reads off the back of the box, and is, for some reason, sitting on top of the fridge. “That reasonably means we can do it at four thousand degrees for one minute, right?” 

“No, that’s not how you -” Spinner tries valiantly to say. 

Twice shoves him over. Literally. “FLOOR IT! DON’T, ARSON’S GAY!” 

Magne shoots up. “I’ll get a towel from the bathroom.” 

“No, there’s not enough time!” Tomura shouts. “It has to come out at exactly 12:45, not 12:44, not 12:46!!”

Spinner, from his position on the floor, has the gall to look nervous. “What are you going to do?”

“HOW ABOUT FOUR MILLION DEGREES FOR ONE SECOND!” Izuku drops from the fridge in a professional elbow drop that’s so neat his mother would shed a tear, if she wasn’t trying to become a swinger at this very moment. 

Magne dashes across the kitchen, trying to stop the chaos that’s already in its tracks. “YOU’RE GOING TO BURN THE BAR DOWN -”

Tomura grabs the pot with his bare hands, pauses for a moment, before he starts screaming from the very depths of his soul. “CLEAR ME A SPACE!” 

“WHERE?” Twice looks around frantically. “NOT THAT I CARE, THOUGH.” 

“MOVE THE OVEN MITTS!!”

Himiko rapid fire chucks the entire bowl of cookie dough into the oven, still in its metal bowl and splattering across the appliance. “I’M GOING TO HARVEST THE POWER OF DABI’S FUCKING QUIRK TO MAKE COOKIES!” 

Dabi, who up to this point had been ignoring them to take selfies with the rest of the League dying behind him, suddenly looks extremely interested. “DO IT!”

“NO!” Magne spins on her heel from Tomua’s screaming to Himiko’s, but too little too late, as Dabi has zero (0) hesitation and who’s hand is already reared to let loose a blast of fire. 

Dabi fires. The oven promptly catches on fire. 

“Oh god, I’m about to die…” Spinner wheezes from where his spleen was just violently ruptured by a caffeine filled gremlin. “SHIGARAKI, CLEAR MY BROWSER HISTORY!”

“I GOT YOU FAM,” Tomura goes to give him a thumbs up, clearly forgets he’s holding a boiling pot, fumbles with it in his other hand, and promptly disintegrates the entire pot. The hissing black ooze lands on his shoes with a sad little thunk. 

They all stare. 

“That’s so sad,” Izuku says solemnly. “Alexa, play despacito.” 

“It’s ok, it’s ok, it’s ok.” Tomura repeats feverishly. “It’ll still work, right?” He doesn’t wait for them to answer. “Of course it will! I’m not panicking!”

Izuku squints. “Are you sure? Cause I’m hearing a lot of panic in your voice.”

“…Really?” Tomura asks. 

“Uh…yeah.” 

“Oh yeah.”

“Yep.”

“For sure.”

It’s silent for a long moment. “Why are you all looking at me like that?” Tomura asks defensively. “Are you saying I’m crazy?!”

Dabi purses his mouth. “No no, no one’s saying that. But I’m certainly thinking it quite loudly.”

And then the fire, which they all conveniently forgot about, catches on Tomura’s ass. Tomura screams. 

Izuku, quick to see where this is going, takes the chance to fucking book it. “I’ll go get Atsusan!” Spinning on his heel, he darts out of the bar’s kitchen and towards the living room like he’s the one with his ass on fire. “HEY -”

“Shh,” Fuyumi shushes without looking up from filing her nails, and is, for some reason, sitting on Natsuo’s back. Natsuo’s, who’s playing Doom on a graphing calculator while laying over their coffee table, doesn’t even seem to notice. “Compress is sleeping.”

He is, in fact, sleeping. Izuku doesn’t know how but go off, he guesses. 

“Oh okay sorry.” Izuku whispers back. 

“It’s okay.” Fuyumi flicks what looks to be blood off her nail file. Izuku is at the point where he’s stopped asking things. “What’s up?”

He nods very seriously. “The oven is on fire.”

“The oven is on - HOLY FUCK!” She nearly stabs herself with said nail file. “Why didn’t you say so earlier?!”

Izuku flails. “You said Compress was sleeping, I wasn’t going to wake him up!”

From the kitchen, both of them hear, very distinctively, Himiko scream, “THE TABLE IS ON FIRE WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE SOMEONE HELP -”

Both of them stare at each other in silence for one really long moment. “Shit,” Fuyumi finally curses. “We need an adult.” 

Natsuo finally looks up from his calculator to give her the most bland look humanly possible. “You are an adult.” 

Somehow, this only serves to make Fuyumi more panicked. “Oh fuck. We need an adulter adult!” She points to the corner of the room. “Pass me that bucket of water, quick!” 

Izuku passes her the bucket. Fuyumi splashes it on the sleeping Compress. “MISTER,” She screams. “WAKE UP!”

Compress sputters to life, possibly being waterboarded by the baklava still on his face, top hat safely resting on his chest. “What was that for?!” 

It’s at this moment Tomura runs out of the kitchen, his ass still on fire. Someone should really put that out. “SPINNER,” he still finds the time to yell over his shoulder. “DON’T EVEN CLEAR MY BROWSER HISTORY JUST CHUCK IT DOWN A SEWER WITH THE GUTTER RATS!” 

“IT WILL JOIN YOUR BRETHREN DO NOT FEAR!” Spinner shrieks back, before screaming in pain. “OH GOD WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE I’LL MISS YOU YOU WERE THE BEST FAMILY I EVER KNEW EVEN IF I LOWKEY DESPISE ALL OF YOU!” 

Compress lays back down. “Oh, we’re so fucked.” 

From the kitchen, Dabi makes a sound that’s not unlike a teenage girl’s squeal. “GUYS, YOU’LL NEVER GUESS WHAT JUST HAPPENED!” 

.

“Gather around, children, we have a problem.” Dabi whispers in the impromptu huddle circle in the living room. There’s still ash smeared across his face. “It has to do with Hawks.”

Twice blinks. “This should be interesting! How about the fire literally destroying our house?” 

Kurogiri, who had arrived only about five seconds ago before being dragged into the huddle, drops the box of leftovers from his date. “There’s a fire?!” He warps himself out said huddle, presumably to check on the source of smoke and skip out on some good old team bonding.

“Nevermind, this sounds more interesting.” Tomura says. 

Kurogiri runs past them with a fire extinguisher. “ I LEFT YOU ALL ALONE FOR LESS THAN AN HOUR HOW?!? ” 

“In my defense,” Izuku says slowly. “I was left unsupervised.”

“Wasn’t the entire league with you?” Natsuo squints at him from across the huddle. He looks rather put upon that he got dragged from his game into their shenanigans, but if he didn’t want to be involved in family bonding, then he shouldn’t have hung out with them. 

Actually, that’s a lie. Even if he didn’t want to hang out with them they’d still probably kidnap him and stockholmed him into being their friend again. They really need a healer, and also Dabi is about 30% less grumpy when he’s around. 

Himiko raises a hand. “In our defense, we were also left unsupervised.”

“WHO ICED THE KITCHEN?!” 

“Ehe,” Fuyumi laughs awkwardly. “You see, we kinda panicked and one thing led to another…” 

By one thing led to another, Izuku means that the entire kitchen is now a solid block of ice. If it works, it works, though he does worry slightly for the structural integrity of the bar. Slightly. 

As if it was waiting for Kurogiri’s arrival, the flickering lights above them finally give out to the strain they put their wiring through in the last five minutes, swallowing the league in darkness. 

“Crap,” Compress mutters, water still dripping down his face. “The power’s out.” 

“You don’t say.” Tomura says dryly. Kurogiri materializes a warp just to bitchslap the back of his head. Deserved. 

“More importantly,” Natsuo prompts. “What’re we gonna do?”

“There’s only two things to do in a blackout. Get drunk and...uh…” Magne pauses. “Huh, guess there’s only one thing to do in a blackout.” 

Himiko’s shuffling closer to Magne’s side, Izuku notices in what limited lighting they have. “It’s dark in here…”

Twice straightens up, obviously noticing her nerves and stepping up to the pedestal to reassure her. “Don’t worry, I got this! No I don't.” He stomps his feet. Slips. Falls on his ass. “Damn, I forgot I was wearing my heelies! I thought I was wearing my sketchers!” 

“I’m glad it’s dark,” Dabi mutters. 

.

“If you made ice and then melted it with fire, could that make water or would it just be steam?” 

Shouto, from where he is supposed to be asleep on the futon but has been very badly secretly playing animal crossing under the covers, sits up to stare at Izuku. “It’s…it’s three in the morning.”

Izuku doesn’t look away from the ceiling to muse upon his sweet old friend Insomnia. “Yeah, but could you?”

It’s silent for a long moment, before Shouto sighs. “Let me put my pants on.” 

So that’s the scene his mother walks in at three in the morning: both of them standing in the dim light of Izuku’s phone's lockscreen, half-dressed, the freezer door open and Izuku shoving frantic fistfuls of ice cubes into Shouto’s mouth like he’ll die if he doesn’t. 

“I’m not even going to ask.” She says pleasantly, doing a straight U-turn back to her room, completely nonplussed by the strangeness of her children. She’s seen Izuku doing weirder things at weirder hours.  

Both of them exchange looks. Izuku narrows his eyes. “Whatever you’re thinking about right now, stop it.”

Shouto crunches the ice cubes between his teeth to let out a barely coherent, “What?

“You always make that face when you’re about to say something stupid to make me mad.” Izuku tells him, not falling for it in the slightest. Nice try, but Izuku was the one in charge of lying is only bad if you get caught and if it's to your mom lesson plan, he knows exactly what tricks of the trade there is. 

Realizing that he could just melt the ice in his mouth, Shouto swallows the mouthful of water. “I love you.”

Izuku squints. 

“Also,” Shouto admits. “Cereal qualifies as a soup.”

“I fucking knew it.”

.

A coffee in hand that probably has enough espresso shots to kill a man and a merry little skip in his step like he’s a little lad off to do a little lad dance, Izukut takes his seat across from Hitoshi at the Shop, already turning to tell him about his morning. Only to stop dead in his tracks at his eyebags. “Hichan?” Hitoshi hums, pupils blown. “When do you usually go to sleep?”

Hitoshi takes another sip of his own coffee. “Whenever I collapse next is purely up to the gods.”

“You…didn’t sleep last night, did you?” Izuku asks slowly. 

“I got a solid eight minutes.” Hitoshi shrugs, still not looking away from the far wall. “Not consecutively, but it’s fine. You’re not even that blurry.” 

Izuku stares. “You’re…not looking at me, though?” 

Hitoshi twitches. 

Slowly, ever so slowly, Izuku slowly pulls away Hitoshi’s thermos. “I really don’t think you should drink anymore coffee today…” Years of dealing with Toga’s antics is the only thing that stops the pencil from embedding itself into his hand. “Okay maybe not.”

“Coffee cures depression.” Hitoshi mutters fervently. 

“I don’t think it works like that -” 

“Coffee cures depression.” 

“Hichan -”

“MORE ESPRESSO LESS DEPRESSO.”

Izuku gives up. 

“You know what they say,” Mei joins in, her own coffee concoction in hand and pink hair done up in a messy bun. Her own eye bags aren’t as scary as Hitoshi’s, but the rapidly shaking cup in her hand has him eying her wearily regardless. “Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy and wise!”

“Early to bed and early to rise makes me a massive bitch.” Hitoshi mutters. 

“Yeah, I didn’t believe it either.” Mei shrugs. “I haven’t slept in three days!” 

Both of them look at him pointedly. He sighs. “Yeah, there’s four of you right now.” 

With that over, Mei slides into the seat next to him, humming cheerfully with what sounds like Careless Whisper. “Where’s your twin?”

“Shouchan couldn’t make it today, it’s his designated family day.” Sunday Brunch with the Himuras have gotten a whole lot scarier with the addition of Fuyumi, but now that Rei has cheerfully joined the chaos, he fears for the state of Musutafu.

…Eh, it’ll be fine. Hopefully. Maybe. 

Mei throws her legs over his lap, an invention he doesn’t know where already in her lap and being fiddled with. “How’s my favorite Ivy’s day going?” She asks, tone mocking.

“Good,” Izuku takes a sip of his coffee with at least eight shots of espresso, completely ignoring her sarcasm. “I prevented a murder.”

Mei tilts her head, uncomprehending. Hitoshi, who understands full well the clusterfuck that’s Izuku’s found family, takes another shot of his coffee like it’s tequila. “Oh? How?”

.

(“Is that Dawn Dimmadome?” Dabi asks, craning his neck back to watch a woman with a particularly tall hat (that shape that was perhaps inspired by Present Mic) walk by their hiding spot. 

Himiko, who just Carried (1976) herself, ignores all of their efforts to hide themselves by sticking her head out to watch the woman. “Wife of Doug Dimmadome, owner of the Dimmsdale Dimmadome?”

Tomura doesn’t look up from his Vita, also not bothering to hide himself. “She took the Dimmadome in the dimmadivorce.”

“This,” Izuku sinks down, the only one who has a brain cell between the four and is actually hiding from the police chasing them. “Is why I drink.”)

.

Izuku crushes the coffee cup in his hand. It wasn’t empty. “Self control.”

Mei and Hitoshi stare at him. “Just out of curiosity,” Mei says slowly. “What time did you last go to sleep?” 

He rolls his eyes up to the ceiling as he counts backwards. And counts. And counts. The worried expression on their faces only grows. 

“I passed out somewhere around four AM?” He offers. “Not for long though, I had to get up for school at five.” 

Hitoshi narrows his eyes at him. “You already did Kayama-sensei’s homework, I know you did, so why were you up?” 

Izuku, in the interest of deniable plausibility, avoids the topic with the grace of a trained dancer. “I drank six cups of coffee?” There. Smooth. No one will ever be able to tell how he dodged that. 

“Why.” 

Carefully straightening out his coffee cup and mentally thanking that it was iced coffee instead of his regular, he drinks whatever’s left at the bottom of the crumbled cup and not on the table, though by god it is tempting to just fucking lick it. Coffee is the only thing standing between him and a murder right now. “Today was done with me but I was not done with today.”

Hitoshi, carefully, like he’s approaching an injured animal, lays a hand on his coffee soaked one. “You know, Midoriya,” he begins carefully. “I would take a bullet for you -”

“You’d take a bullet for fun.” Izuku interrupts. 

Hitoshi’s eye twitches. “Yes, that.” He says tersely. “That’s why, as your best friend -”

“Shouchan’s my best friend.” 

“As your next best friend.” Hitoshi grits his teeth. “I worry for your well being, and also because I have your mom’s contact info saved into my phone, I have to inform you that you will be sleeping soon, by choice or not.” 

Izuku blinks, uncomprehending. Then he glances down at his spilled drink. “You drugged my drink?”

“No,” Mei corrects smugly. “I drugged your drink.” 

The audacity. The betrayal. He expected this from Mei (she’d backstab anyone for a few cents and maybe a bagel), but Hitoshi? His best bro, his platonic soulmate, his fellow insomniac and management student? “How could you?” He whispers. 

Hitoshi looks unimpressed. “You did it first.” 

Oh. Well, he supposes that’s fair, then. 

“Don’t worry, Ivy!” Mei cackles, slapping his back merrily. “I’ll carry you back home, sticks for limbs couldn’t even lift my newest baby today without throwing his shoulder out!” 

Hitoshi mutters something like not everyone can be built like a brick shithouse, but at that point the drugs had hit his system, as well as his forehead against the still coffee soaked table. 

Ugh, his hair is going to be sticky when he wakes up, isn’t it? 

.

Master has given Dobby a glock

[Image attached]

STOP CALLING ME BAD TOUCH MAN

if I had a dollar for every pixel id have 15 cents

Master has given Dobby a glock

If I had a dollar for every ounce of rage I felt after reading this text, I would have enough money to buy a gun to blow your head open

YOU SPIN ME ROUND RIGHT ROUND

Actually, I did the math and he'd have 225 dollars, not 15 cents

STOP CALLING ME BAD TOUCH MAN

do it

pussy

World, hard and cold...

If I had a dollar, I would buy a can of soda!

Titty, soft and warm...

While you're there, could you buy me an apply juice? o (^‿^✿)(❁´ω`❁)

World, hard and cold...

Sorry Toga-chan, I only have a dollar :((((

Titty, soft and warm...

( ´•̥̥̥ω•̥̥̥` )

let’s do the fork! in the garb-age! dis-posal!

You did the math wrong Iguchan, he would have $22500 bc its a dollar for every pixel, not cent

World, hard and cold...

If I had that much, I would buy a can of soda AND an apply juice!

Titty, soft and warm...

♪(๑ᴖ◡ᴖ๑)♪

The sole braincell.

Tbh you can buy anything you want with that kind of money

yes i was a theatre kid, what of it

And he wants soda and an apply juice

Eraserhead Simp

Apply juice to what?

Also, who changed my username? 

STOP CALLING ME BAD TOUCH MAN

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

let’s do the fork! in the garb-age! dis-posal!

Directly to the forehead where else

Master has given Dobby a glock

I hate you all with a burning passion 

ChickenDaddy joined the LeagueofHeroFuckers Guild! Say hi, ChickenDaddy!

ChickenDaddy

Hey guys! ٩(＾◡＾)۶ This is my first time playing games, but I’m really excited to join you guys! I promise I won’t let you down (･ω･)っ≡つ

Master has given Dobby a glock

Jwdnwkjednekwd

ChickenDaddy

?

STOP CALLING ME BAD TOUCH MAN

don’t mind him, our kitchen just burned down

now, what was that about joining our group?

.

Izuku wakes on the couch of the League to sticky hair, Dabi attempting to drown himself behind the bar, Himiko crying over her altar as she presents a dead pigeon as a sacrifice, Tomura being scolded by Kurogiri for almost killing them all that morning, Magne fixing Compress’ makeup with the seriousness of a professional makeup artist, Spinner crying on the ceiling, and Twice smoking a cigarette. 

He goes for the easiest one. “Hey Jin-kun, how are you feeling?”

Twice takes another drag. “My sketchers don’t light up anymore.”

…Nevermind then. 

Izuku rolls over and goes back to sleep. 

… 

……

………

“WHO THE FUCK PUT ALL MIGHT MERCH IN MY ROOM?!? I’M GOING TO KILL YOU!”

That’s his cue. 

“Bye, love y’all, see ya never!” Izuku rolls off the couch into a dead sprint towards the exit. 

“MIDORIYA!!”

“Bye, Tomuchan! Have fun with the new posters!”

“YOU’RE FUCKING DEAD!”