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Chapter Text

The first time it happened, Katsuki should have been afraid. He should have screamed, ran, tore at his eyes until they bled. He should have fallen on his ass and soiled himself in fear. He should’ve, he should’ve, he should’ve.

But, he didn’t. He froze, not in fear but in awe. His eyes lit up in adoration. An astounded smile, soft and small but steadily growing, chased away the frown lines between his brows. He leaned closer to the storm of destruction in desperation to close the distance.

Black, miasmic clouds wisped around Izuku. Bones and rot surrounded him and the harsh light of the summer sun seemed to transform to palid, muted tones when it landed on his deathly skin. His eyes glowed toxic green.

Katsuki stumbled through the swirling shadows, choking on the stench of graveyard dirt and stagnant water. It should have threw him off, made him puke. It drew him closer.

When he stood mere inches from Izuku, he reached out with a shaking hand. The ever-present pastel flowers that ringed Izuku’s head constantly had been replaced with a crown of twisted thorns and black roses. Smooth bone peaked out through the gaps in the briars.

When Katsuki’s palm cupped Izuku’s freckled cheek (so pale and sallow) the shorter boy’s eyes snapped from their vacant stare to meet his with violent intensity. The ground around the blond’s feet was upturned by reaching arms, flesh substituted by royal blue flowers and covering the off-white of bone. Just before the hands wrapped around Katsuki’s ankles, they froze. Vines shot from the earth and wrapped around the skeletons like angry pythons, dragging them back beneath the surface.

“Kacchan,” Izuku said. His voice was eerie. It wasn’t upbeat or shy, outgoing or flustered. It rang with an ancient note and demanded attention, respect . Katsuki didn’t fight the shudder that wracked his body. The sheer power that Izuku was swathed in made it hard to stand without his knees shaking.

“ Izu ,” Katsuki whispered, breathless. He reached up with his other hand, framing Izuku’s face between his palms. The smaller boy’s rigid posture melted, his regal facial expression falling into the soft, open one so often gracing his features. Katsuki didn’t notice the cold, damp atmosphere melting away to the blanketing heat of summer. He didn’t notice when the smell of ancient crypts was replaced with freshly watered gardens and river stones. Didn’t notice the fresh iris and lily plants curling around both their feet.

When the backyard had been returned to normal, Katsuki pulled Izuku’s forehead against his own. The two boys stood there for a long moment, catching their breaths.

“I think you might be magic or somethin’, Izu,” Katsuki laughed.

“Kacchan~” Izuku whined, lifting onto his tiptoes before slamming his heels back into the ground in indignation. “Stop it~”

“Don’t whine, I’m bein’ honest.” Katsuki didn’t usually smile this much, even around Izuku. His jaw was developing a cramp.

“Yeah, whatever. Do you know… what that was?” Izuku said the last part softly, like he was afraid Katsuki would run away. Like his survival instincts would finally kick in and he’d be screaming for the hills.

“Nah, but it was fucking cool ,” Katsuki declared. He took Izuku’s wrist in his hand and led the greenette back into the house. “Let’s do some research.”

The four year olds toddled through the house, sneaking around Inko and into the study upstairs. Izuku waited for Katsuki to struggle onto high office chair, giggling softly when it spun around and Katsuki cursed. Once he had clamored onto the seat, he helped Izuku up and they pulled the chair closer to the desk while trying their best to balance on the rolling wheels.

“Okay,” Katsuki said, pudgy hand grabbing the mouse as best he could and sliding it across its pad. The monitor lit up silently and Katsuki found the search icon after a moment of intense staring at the screen. When the bar popped up, he looked at Izuku.

“What?” Izuku asked. His cheeks started to heat under Katsuki’s scrutinizing glare. The blond huffed and turned back to the computer, poking the keys with his pointer finger slowly.

flowr nd desth quirk

Katsuki hit enter.

Did you mean: flower and death quirk?

Katsuki clicked on it and the page reloaded, the entry into the search bar spelled correctly this time. The first few options were all news columns from different websites regarding a woman with a quirk that killed plants who had been banned from all the city parks in her ward. Useless. When Katsuki scrolled down—he went all the way to the bottom on accident because he spun the wheel too fast on the mouse—the other results were just as unimportant.

Katsuki clicked on the search bar and tried again.

bone com ot f grund quirk

He searched it.

Did you mean: bone com of gerund ?

“What’s… ger-runned?” Izuku sounded out. Katsuki shrugged.

“How’m I suppos’ to know?” he growled. Despite his surly response, he dutifully retyped the word in the search bar, waiting for the result. A dictionary entry popped up and Katsuki read it out loud to Izuku.

“A form that is de-der, um, der-ih-v’d from a v… verb? But that fun-ck-tee-ions assa no-un.”

Izuku clapped his hands together. “Wow, that was so many big words, Kacchan! I barely knew any of them!”

“Yeah, but we still don’ know what the word means,” Katsuki grumbled. Izuku shrugged and gave him a dazzling smile. Katsuki raised his hand to cover his eyes and mimed going blind, making Izuku giggle enough to snort.

Both of them froze, staring at each other for a long second like a pair of deer caught in each other’s headlights. Katsuki’s hand twitched on the mouse, causing him to accidently click on the speaker icon next to the word.

“J-air-und,” the computer read in a flat, robotic woman’s voice. It broke the spell on the kids with an almost audible snap. They dissolved into heaving laughter, doubling over and holding onto each other for support. Katsuki accidently hit the edge of the desk and it sent the chair spinning, causing Izuku to snort again which made Katsuki wheeze on his breath so he was silently losing it .

Inko found them like that, stuttering on inhales with tears streaking down their faces, when she heard the sound of rolling wheels on hardwood from downstairs.

“Are you guys okay?” she asked. Katsuki nodded from where his face was buried in Izuku’s shoulder. The smaller boy was clutching onto Katsuki’s shirt like a life line as they tried to come down from the endorphin high. “What were you doing on the computer?”

The boys looked up at her, matching expressions of panic on their faces. She waved her hands in front of her, “You’re not in trouble, I promise. I’m just curious, okay?”

After a brief moment of hesitation, and a silent conversation, Katsuki nodded.

“Izu kinda, um, he made a arm.”

Inko blinked once.

“Outta, bone I think?”

She blinked again.

“It came out of the ground.”

Another blink.

“It tried to grab me but then these vines kinda strangled it an’ buried it again.”

She started making a high-pitched noise out of the back of her throat without realizing. She scooped the boys up in her arms and power-walked out of the house.

“Mitsuki!” she yelled, kicking the door belonging to Bakugou’s house on her way to the car. “I’m taking your kid!”

“Whatever!” a voice yelled from inside.

Inko set the boys into the backseat, Katsuki buckling himself into a black and orange car seat and Izuku into a floral patterned one.

“Momma, where are we going?” Izuku asked, swinging his feet. He was wearing yellow slip-ons decorated with cutesy bees and little dotted lines trailing after them. White socks with a lace hem were pulled up then folded in half so the lace fanned out over the top part of the slip ons.

“The quirk office, sweetheart.”

Katsuki slammed his palms into the slightly-singed armrests of his seat, kicking his orange, black polka-dot pattern rubber boots into the seat in front of him. “I want ice cream after!”

Inko smiled tiredly into the rearview mirror. Izuku was beaming at her, playing with the soft material of his sweater paws while Katsuki was still violently demanding frozen treats.

“Izuku, do you know who Persephone is?” Inko asked. Izuku cocked his head to the side and made a soft humming sound. Inko almost drove off the road when she saw him pressing a finger to his chin with a concentrated pout on his face in the mirror.

She clutched the fabric of her blouse above her heart while returning her gaze to the road. Holy shit, they were trying to kill her.

“No, momma, I don’t thin—” Izuku cut himself off and aggressive whispering filled the backseat. Inko waited patiently.

“She’s… a goddess? She’s the queen of the underworld,” Izuku declared. Inko’s heart didn’t just seize, her whole torso tried for a size reduction. Sure, she was trying to lose weight but this was not how you did it . Katsuki had just fed him the answer, not because he had been asked to but because he wanted Izuku to look good and that did things to Inko’s chest.

“Yes, yes she is. Very good, Izuku.” Inko met Katsuki’s eyes in the rearview and winked while Izuku beamed. Katsuki puffed out his chest with a grin but didn’t confirm nor deny her suspicions. Inko’s pretty sure her heart stopped .

“Why, momma?” Izuku tilted his head to the side, big doe eyes glittering. Katsuki didn’t give her a chance to answer.

“Because you’re like her!” he shouted proudly. “Badass spring lady who has bone powers!”

“Exactly!” Inko agreed. “You—wait, Bakugou Katsuki, what did you just say?”

“I, um—” Bakugou’s face flushed and his eyes were suddenly more interested in anything that wasn’t the mirror . Inko opened her mouth to launch into her motherly tirade but Izuku, the angel , swooped in to save him.

“Momma, I think that was the quirk office!” he squeaked, pointing to the left. Inko’s snapped to the side and she swore because they had indeed passed the office. Damn Bakugou and his potty mouth. Actually, it wasn’t his fault. Inko blamed Mitsuki’s horrible influence.

Inko scanned the road for police officers before muttering “fuck it” under her breath. “Hold on tight!” she said, at an audible level, to the boys. Katsuki’s face lit up like a Christmas tree when Izuku immediately reached for his hand. He linked their fingers together and held tight.

It was probably a good thing Inko missed their exchange. If she had tried to pull the U-turn she just did while distracted by the kids cuteness, they all would have died in a car accident.

Focused this time, Inko pulled into the facilities parking lot, picking a vacant spot near the entrance. A quirk office wasn’t exactly a hubbub of activity so getting a good spot wasn’t difficult.

“Alright, out you go,” Inko herded them. Katsuki unbuckled himself with deft fingers, crawling over the middle seat to help Izuku when he struggled with his. Inko opened the door on Izuku’s side and helped them both out. They immediately took each others’ hands and Inko guided them toward the entrance.

Inko left the boys to play in a closed-off waiting area with carpeting and toys. She went up to the front desk, careful to keep the corner of her eye on the kids. She knew Katsuki would be gentle with Izuku’s slighter disposition and that he would actually die if he let Izuku hurt himself but that didn’t mean accidents didn’t happen.

“Can I help you?” the young woman seated behind the reception desk asked genially.

“Um, yes. I came in a few weeks ago with my son, Midoriya Izuku? We came to have his quirk registered but this morning, um, something happened.” Inko leaned on the counter separating them and wrung her fingers together. “I’d like to have him retested?”

The woman’s face didn’t change from the politely disinterested smile but her eyes flickered with… something. Inko pretended not to notice it when she clacked away on the computer in front of her, flipping through a clipboards briefly.

“The first test is free, but any others after that are ¥4500,” the woman explained. “Please swipe your card.”

Inko was an autopilot as the receptionist walked her through the steps. A clipboard was thrust into her hands and she ambled back to the play area to complete the questionnaire.

“Momma!” Izuku cheered, patting Katsuki’s shoulder so the blond set him down. Izuku has stuck his hands in the dirt of the empty flower box surrounding the jungle-themed area, filling it with colourful blooms. He had to stand on Katsuki’s shoulders to reach but the blond looked more than happy to oblige.

“Hey, sunflower,” Inko smiled. “I need your help answering some questions, kay?”

“M’kay!” Izuku beamed. He made grabby hands at Inko and she dutifully lifted him and Katsuki from the enclosed space.

“Let’s sit there!” Katsuki demanded, rocking back and forth in Inko’s arms like he was trying to push himself on a swing while pointing at a low bench along the wall.

“Alright, alright,” Inko laughed, “Katsuki, calm down. I might drop you.” When that failed to get a response, Inko resigned herself to pulling the big guns. “And Izuku.”

Immediately, Katsuki stopped moving and pasted himself to her side. His eyes went big and watery and he reached across Inko’s chest to grab the soft fabric of Izuku’s fluffy skirt. Izuku patted Katsuki’s hand before nodding sagely, an air of childish wisdom falling over him.

“Don’t worry, Kacchan. Momma would never drop me!” Katsuki’s eyes were still watery but Izuku wasn’t done yet. He unwound Katsuki’s death grip and linked their finger together, leaning over Inko’s chest to get his face right next to Katsuki’s. Their noses were just brushing against each other and Izuku held the blond’s gaze intently. “Don’t be scared, Kacchan. It doesn’t matter what happens, you’ll save me no matter what!”

Inko was glad they had reached the bench because she was weak .

With the boys’ enthusiastic help, she filled out the questionnaire easily. They had only been waiting about 15 minutes when a short, bald man with rounded goggles exited a door to the left of the receptionist desk.

“Midoriya?” he called, scanning the otherwise-empty waiting room. Inko stood, hoisting the kids in her arms.

“That would be us,” Inko said sweetly. The doctor nodded and motioned for her to follow him.

“So, Izuku discovered a new aspect of his quirk, did he?” Doctor Teru asked.

Izuku closed his eyes and nodded his head enthusiastically. It made him look like a bobblehead. The doctor smiled genially. He led them to a heavily padded room with reinforced glass and a heavy door.

“Alright, Izuku,” Dr. Teru squatted down to where Izuku was standing on his own. “You’re gonna go in there and show me the new thing you found, okay?”

“Okay!” Izuku giggled. He ambled through the propped open door and made his way to the center of the room. Dr. Teru bolted the reinforced steel behind him and then returned to the console in front of the thick glass.

“Go ahead and start,” he said into a mic, his voice sounding tinny through hidden speakers in the testing room. Izuku nodded and focused, holding his arms straight down and splaying his fingers parallel to the floor. His face twisted in an adorable expression of concentration.

Slowly, a rumbling shook the foundation of the building. It wasn’t that unusual to have small tremors where they lived, but this one slowly built in size until Katsuki had to clutch to Inko’s pant leg to stay on his feet at all. A loud crack snapped through the air and a massive fissure spread in front of Izuku.

The greenette hadn’t moved, but his features had relaxed. Only a mild furrow remained between his brows. His pastel flowers were replaced with bone and thorns and the lighting of the room turned sickly and dark.

“Izuku?” Dr. Teru said into the mic, jamming down on the button with more force than was really necessary. Inko was too caught up in the dark dirt pushing up from the massive break in the floor to notice how the doctor’s voice didn’t shake in fear—but in excitement.

Izuku didn’t seem to hear him, to caught up in what he was doing. The black dirt sprouted, long stems with flowers budding like leaves down their side.

“A chasm, flowers,” the doctor whispered. His fingers shook and slid off the button for the mic. “Oh my god, after all this time.”

Inko zeroed in on the old man, watching as his fingers dipped underneath the console and pushed against something. She realized something was wrong when he slid a dial that made the metal door click with even more locks. He flicked a switch and the door they had entered through—the one that led back to the lobby—was covered by a heavy metal grate.

Inko wasn’t usually one for cursing, but she figured the situation warranted it.

“What the fuck are you doing?” she growled, picking Katsuki up and shielding him with her body.

The doctor turned to face her, a wicked grin ripping his face. “I’m afraid you’ll have to say goodbye to your son for a while,” he said, returning to the glass. Inko shouted and was about to rush the damn man when a door she hadn’t noticed burst open.

Katsuki turned his gaze to the glass. Izuku’s hands had lifted so they were straight out from his chest, hovering over the fissure like a puppeteer. Skeletal bodies were hauling themselves out of the divide, black shadows whirling around them. Black roses and crocus flowers substituted their flesh, violets and lilies dripping from their eyes.

“Grab him!” Dr. Teru shouted. The men who had busted the door nodded and made ready to storm the room.

“What are you doing?” Katsuki yelled. He was scared. Big boys don’t cry, his mom always told him. But Izuku was a big boy, right? And Izuku cried all the time. Auntie Inko always told him it was good to cry. So would it be wrong if tears sprung to the corners of his eyes and rolled down his cheeks? Katsuki would never admit to it anyway.

The doctor focused on him for the first time. Katsuki felt his blood freeze. The harsh ridges of his dark green goggles looked like they dug uncomfortably into his skin, if the pink of irritated skin rimming them was any indication. “You,” he said, twirling the dial that locked the door all the way open, making the heavy metal swing upon and the smell of graveyard dirt flooded the anteroom. “You’re the one with the explosion quirk.”

Inko didn’t let him answer, backing them up into the wall and keeping Katsuki behind her the best she could. “Don’t you fucking touch him you monster!”

“Now, how do you know I’m a monster?” Dr. Teru said. He pointed to the testing room. “ That though, that’s a monster.”

Inko and Katsuki’s gazes were drawn to the glass and opened door. Inko choked on air. Katsuki’s breath hitched.

Shadows danced at Izuku’s fingertips, clouding around the men that were trying to capture him and leaving them screaming at nothing, falling to the ground while clawing red lines into their faces. The skeletons moved with a grace and speed that should have been impossible in the absence of flesh and speared the men with sharpened bones. In a matter of moments, the men were dead or dying on the floor, no more of a threat than a rat high on LSD.

Izuku moved so fast, Inko swore he teleported. The footprints of dark earth left behind him proved otherwise.

Izuku raised his hand, cupping it to mime strangulation. Dr. Teru froze and, really, who wouldn’t? Intense, deathly green eyes focused on his face with a blank stare, as if he was a bug that had dropped on the table and was more of an inconvenience to kill than a challenge.

Thorns erupted from the ground, upturning tiles and wrapping around his throat. Dr. Teru gasped and clawed at them in vain.

Inko’s voice broke. “Izu—”

Katsuki squirmed out of her hold, lax with shock, and scurried through her legs. He approached Izuku quickly, without fear, ignoring Inko’s panicked yelling behind him. Katsuki wrapped his arms around Izuku’s waist, burying his face in the fluff of his curls. The points and jagged edges of his crown melted into soft blossoms under his cheek.

Izuku didn’t snap out of it, but that wasn’t Katsuki’s goal anyways. He just wanted to be close to Izuku. It didn’t matter what the greenette did. Izuku closed his fingers slowly, watching the life leech off the doctor’s face. He didn’t stop, keeping his pace until the pad of his thumb met the tip of his middle finger. He held it there for moment, the noose of thorns making the skin cave and blood spill across it, glistening in the altered light.

With an abrupt motion—one that choked a sob out of Inko—Izuku closed his hand into a fist. The thorns cinched shut like a belt pulled tight as a tourniquet. With a snap and a squelch, the doctor’s head rolled to the ground. His body fell with a thump.

The skeleton soldiers ambled into the room, movements graceful and surreal, like swirling mist over a still lake. One with more vines than blooms—the strands wrapped around bone like exposed muscle and sinew—hefted the body by its armpits and dragged it to the fissure. The other, violets blooming like a short bob of hair, dug the sharpened points of its finger bones into the skull. They jumped in with their parts of the severed carass.

The other bodies had already been cleared. The blood was replaced with budding beds of flowers—their roots sucking at the crimson pools. The blood was vacuumed into the stems, the flowers wilting when their nutrients ran dry and decayed with unnatural speed. The fissure snapped shut with a rumble.

The rooms were left spotless. Not a drop of blood or a grain of dirt remained.

“Izu?” Katsuki mumbled. He was still buried in the shorter boy’s back.

“Ka-chan~” Izuku sobbed, tears streaming down his face. “Wha-what did I do~”

Katsuki spun him around, pushing Izuku’s head into the crook of the blond’s neck. He rubbed slow circles into Izuku’s back while he clutched at Katsuki’s shirt.

Inko shut her gaping mouth with a snap and shakily got to her feet from where she had collapsed in shock. “Izuku, what was that, sweetheart?”

Izuku kept sobbing. The most he could do was shake his head side-to-side in Katsuki’s shirt. Inko lost track of time, no clocks in the room to help her. They could have been standing there for seconds or for hours.

Eventually, Izuku lifted his face from Katsuki’s soaked shirt. His face was blotchy and streaked with tear tracks. Katsuki cupped the greenette’s cheeks and held him still, their noses brushing. Katsuki leaned to press his lips softly against both of Izuku’s eyelids and rubbed his thumbs through the residual salt slowly.

Inko’s heart swelled. Izuku may be more powerful than any four-year-old had any right to be but at least Katsuki wasn’t running for the hills. She didn’t know if Izuku could bounce back from that. She didn’t even know if he could bounce back from this .

“Auntie,” Katsuki said. He kept his voice low—a rarity—like he was trying not to disturb something. Inko took a moment to process what he said, staring dazedly, before snapping back to reality.

“Yes?” she asked. Her tone mimicked the blond’s. Izuku was stuttering on his inhales occasionally, but his breathing had evened out and deepened, eyes shut and leaning his head against Katsuki’s palm.

“Why did they want Izu?” he asked. That was a good question. One Inko didn’t have the answer to. This was a run-of-the-mill quirk office, wasn’t it? Why were there secret doors and men that tried to attack a four-year-old?

“I don’t know, firecracker,” Inko said, standing. “Let’s go find out.”

She pushed open the door the men in military suits had burst through earlier, motioning for the kids to follow. Past it was a long hallway, lit almost harshly with fluorescents. Izuku put his arm over his eyes and linked elbows with Katsuki. Harsh fake lighting made the greenette nauseous.

Inko didn’t have to tell Katsuki to mind his stomps as the trio softly padded to the end of the hallway. The blank white walls slowly filled with wisps and whorls of black paint, inky black shadows dancing around them. It wasn’t until off-white skeletons crawled from the seam of the wall and floor that Inko decided something was wrong . Why was this in a quirk office?

“Hey,” Katsuki whispered behind her. The soft word made her jump in the dead silence. Speaking of, why was it so utterly quiet? They were in the middle of a city, there was no way traffic just disappeared. Besides that, where’s the white noise of the building? Didn’t they have generators, air conditioning, something ? “The lights are dim, you can see now.”

Inko blinked. How had she not noticed it getting darker? The lighting was indeed dimmer, like moonlight in the middle of night. She looked up. The hanging fixtures had morphed into glowing lines running along the top of the walls where they met the ceiling.

“Wow, these are pretty,” Izuku oohed and awed. He traced the lines of one of the skeleton paintings, this one with flowers bursting from the eye sockets and spilling over like colorful tears.

As soon as Izuku touched the paint, a whirring sound came from the end of the hall. There had been no doors so far, not even a vent or fan. It seemed the only porthole was where the whirring was.

“Okay then,” Inko sighed. “I guess we’re going there.”

Upon reaching the end, there was indeed an exit. A trap door was opened, a section of the floor tiles moved up and to the side.

“Nowhere to go but down,” Inko mumbled. She peered over the edge but couldn’t see anything except swirling blackness. Sighing, she fished a pen out of her purse and dropped it through the opening. It hit something solid almost immediately so the drop wasn’t far.

Katsuki sat on the lip and pushed off, ignoring Inko’s strangled scream. It wasn’t a far drop but it was far for Katsuki!

“Woah, so dark!” Katsuki stage whispered from the shadows. “I can’t see anything!”

“Get out of the way, Katsuki,” Inko ordered, swinging herself down to sit. When the blond gave the affirmative, she hopped down. The drop was probably no more than 10 feet and she landed on the balls of her feet.

“Katsuki, never do that again!” she scolded him. “You can’t just jump into holes!”

“I had to make sure it was safe for you and Izu!” Katsuki complained, probably crossing his arms, not that Inko could see him. She fought off a sigh. Of course. She knew the blond had a hero complex but it had a horrible habit of hyping up at the worst times .

“I’m coming down, Momma!”

Inko whirled around, ready to save Izuku from splattering into a pancake on the concrete floor. Izuku was much, much more breakable than Katsuki. To her surprise, his landing didn’t make a sound.

“Izu—holy hell,” Inko cut herself off. The hallway lit up with fluorescent plants, their blooms unfurling and hanging like lanterns. Izuku giggled and jumped off the… bed… of… flowers? When had that gotten there?

“Auntie,” Katsuki tugged at her pant leg. “You’re staring.”

Inko could only nod dumbly.

“It’s okay, Izu’s just magic,” he said matter-of-factly. Inko rubbed her palms into her eyes. Her kid was magic. That was actually a wonderful explanation.

She needed a nap.

Izuku skipped ahead of them, grabbing Katsuki’s hand as he passed and tugging the blond along behind him. Glowing moss lit up in the wake of his steps, leaving a trail of footprints behind him. More glowing plants bloomed as he pressed forward.

At the end of the admittedly shorter hall, there was a heavy black door. Inko puzzled over how to get any further. Should they call the police? Oh, they should have done that to begin with. But Izuku had killed all those men! What if they wanted to take her baby to prison? She couldn’t let that—

Izuku pressed his hand to the door and the massive thing disintegrated into dark dirt. It collapsed like a mudslide, carrying Izuku—and by extension, Katsuki—backwards gently like a wave.

“You’re magic!” Katsuki declared.

“I’m magic!” Izuku agreed. The boys giggled and entered the dark room. Inko felt a migraine pushing at her temples. What was happening ?

Predictably, the room came to life once Izuku crossed the threshold. Luminescent plants served as lights but a massive screen whirred to life on the wall opposite the door. When Izuku spread his hand on the table, it opened to a plethora of files.

“Okay, Izu, let me past,” Inko said. She took Izuku’s place. The table was actually a keyboard but it was like a glass touchscreen. Inko dragged her finger over the blank box next to the keyboard display, noting with satisfaction that it served as a mouse.

Using the glowing keyboard to navigate, she skimmed the various file names.

Prophecy

Phase One

Operation Pomegranate

Phase Two

Speculation

Failsafes

Inko clicked on Prophecy . Several windows opened at once; video clips, soundbytes, sticky notes, hardcopy scans. The last pop-up centered over the top of the rest. It was a typed document.

A child wreathed in power

Green like the grass

Sharp like a crow

Juxtaposition

Opposites contained in one

Soft and harsh

Kind and cruel

Life and death intertwined

Bones wreathed in flowers

Pomegranate juice stains their lips

Luscious seeds pierced by sharpened teeth

Potential yet unearthed

Vibrant blooms in graveyard dirt

“What’s it say, Auntie?” Katsuki asked. He had been squinting at the screen but was unable to make out most of the complicated words.

“Um, it’s a poem? I think, at least. It’s about a kid with a lot of power. They have a lot of opposites. There’s stuff about flowers and bones.”

“Like me,” Izuku said.

“Yeah,” Inko said. Her eyes flew over the screen furiously. She clicked on a soundbyte to the side of the document and it overtook the screen.

A recording of a woman read the poem out loud before it cut off. Katsuki’s brow furrowed. He understood a lot more of the words once the woman had said them. It sounded a lot like Izuku.

Inko clicked on a video, immediately closing it when a gruesome picture fullscreened. She clicked the folder icon in the corner and the pop ups closed down again.

She choose Speculation next.

Same sequence of pop ups, this time heavily weighted by documents. Inko selected a large pdf file, scrolling quickly to skim. A paragraph on the fourth page caught her eye.

Necromancy may be an applicable skill. Quite possibly, the child will be able to reanimate the dead. If trained, they could perform missions typically saved for massive squads solo.

Inko clicked off. She didn’t need to see this right now. Not after she had watched her son command skeleton warriors to take out heavily armed hitmen with barely a glance. Not when he had beheaded—

Nope. Focus. She closed the file and opened Phase One . Blueprints and licenses lit up on the screen.

“What in the—”

A sticky note tacked to a set of blueprints marked the purpose of the building.

Monitor for child. Best way is to have them come to us .

“Oh my,” she mumbled. Her knees buckled and the floor rushed up to meet her.

“Momma!”

“Auntie!”

Inko suddenly had an armful of two very concerned toddlers. And that’s what they were, weren’t they? Toddlers. Izuku had killed someone and he wasn’t even five yet. Inko felt tears well up in her eyes.

“Momma, are you okay?” Izuku asked sweetly. His big doe eyes sparkled in the dim glow of the monitor and the plants. Katsuki fussed over her tears, wiping them away with a tenderness that was different from the intense care he had shown Izuku earlier but touched her heart nonetheless.

Having the kids in her lap, looking after her well being after the immense amount of trauma they had just been through made her heart bar and expression steel. She stood after gently removing the kids from her lap. She was the adult; she was the one who needed to figure shit out. And she needed to do it fast.

Fishing through her purse, the pulled out that USB drive that had been collecting dust underneath tissue packets and chapsticks. She had opened the two pack in the car—a work emergency that had demanded the purchase in the first place—and the extra found its home in the depths of the bag.

She downloaded all of the files onto it, thanking whatever gods were up there that the massive amount of data fit. As soon as she was done, she deleted everything. Since she didn’t have a tech degree, she resorted to dumping water from a bottle in her purse on the hard drive under the glowing keyboard, frying it thoroughly.

“Okay, we’re leaving,” Inko grabbed a hand each and power-walked out of the room. When Izuku started lagging, she swung him into her arms. Katsuki struggled a bit but did manage to keep pace.

“Up you go,” Inko said, hoisting Izuku out of the—thankfully still open—trap door. Katsuki followed soon after before Inko jumped to the ledge and pulled herself up. When she managed to finally lift herself out, she granted herself a moment to catch her breath. Pulling an entire body against gravity was a lot of work with just arms.

The trap door slid shut as they walked away and Inko wondered how the crazy people had manage to get the whole building to respond so thoroughly to Izuku.

They passed back through the observation room and Inko took a quick moment to send an email to the front desk on the doctor’s still-logged in monitor at the small desk in the corner of the room before continuing to the lobby. Inko stopped in front of the receptionist’s desk. It was a good thing that Izuku’s test had failed so early on since the time they had spent exploring was easily explained away as a longer than average test-time.

“Hello, I needed to talk to you before I left?” Inko said softly, sweetly. It wasn’t hard, she was gentle by nature. Right now though, she wasn’t the doting mother that worried a bit too much and slept a bit too little.

“Yes?” the young woman asked. Now that she was looking for it, Inko caught the flickering expression just underneath the surface. Whatever it was before, now it was resigned—irritable. If she had been in on the scheme, which she most likely was, then the fact Izuku was walking out of here at all would have meant that he wasn’t the one. It would mean she would be stuck here, pretending, for longer.

“The feeds from the testing room, they need to be deleted? Doctor Teru sent you an email but I wanted to make sure you remembered,” Inko explained. Her smile was sweet and unassuming. Innocent.

The receptionist eyed her suspiciously before clacking on her mouse. After a moment of flitted reading, she turned back to Inko.

“Yeah, I did get an email. I’ll delete them now.” A few clicks later and the feeds were gone. “If I may ask,” she called when Inko started to walk away, “Why were those deleted?”

Why did you know those needed to be deleted?

Inko gave the receptionist a bland smile. “Mostly because Izuku, the smart little bean, has a really good memory and started spouting off his social security number because he was nervous.”

“Mostly?” the woman asked. Inko felt her smile strain but it didn’t show on her face.

“Mostly. He also recited a few credit card numbers and pins before we calmed him down and I would rather neither of those things be recorded.”

The receptionist, apparently appeased if still irritated, turned back to her computer.

When Doctor Teru was reported missing later that evening, Inko smiled at the T.V.

Chapter Text

School children commonly visited the playground down the street from the school every day after their classes. Katsuki liked to have the extras, as the explosive boy referred to them, around to fawn over and follow him around while Izuku would run around barefoot, leaving behind a trail of blooms in his wake.

Every once in a while, a new kid would be at the park at the same time as Katsuki and Izuku. Most of the time, Katsuki would adopt them into his cult. Every now and again though, they would come to Izuku first, attracted by his demeanor like moths to a flame.

“You’re pretty.” a small voice sounded from behind the greenette, softly reaching his ears, but startling him.

Izuku jumped a foot in the air, whirling around to face the speaker. It was a boy the same age as him with crimson and snow hair. Izuku gawked at the boy for a moment, blinking in slight confusion, he had never seen the boy in front of him before. He most definitely would have remembered the other.

“Um, thank you? You are, too.” he stuttered. How do you respond to that? The boy’s face stayed blank, but he sank to a seat beside Izuku, making the smaller even more confused and slightly uncomfortable. The two said nothing for a long moment, the newcomer watching silently while flowers bloomed from the dirt that pushed up between Izuku’s bare toes he wiggled in nervousness.

“Your quirk is pretty, too,” he whispered. Izuku watched as he clenched his left hand into a fist, capturing it in the splayed grip of his right, as though trying to hide that hand from view. He looked… shattered.

“I’m sure yours is stunning,” Izuku declared, beaming. The kid’s head shot up to look at him in surprise rapidly blinking at the ray of human sun in front of him.

“You don’t even know what my quirk is,” he whispered. He seemed hesitant but eager, shyly sneaking peeks at the boy next to him. It confused Izuku, but he was sure he wasn’t wrong so he kept going.

“Yeah, but someone as amazing as you has to have a quirk to match!”

The boy’s eyes teared up. Izuku panicked and waved his arms wildly. “Please don’t cry! Why are you crying? Did I say something wrong? Oh, I’m so sorry if—why are you laughing now?” the younger panicked.

The boy bent was bent over in half, unable to breathe due to the guffaws falling from his lips. Izuku was still frantic, hands flying about in his anxiousness.

“Hey, halfie!” Katsuki shouted, stomping over to the two boys, having noticed the commotion. He observes a panicking Izuku and a laughing stranger, jumping to conclusions. “What the hell did you do to Izu?”

Izuku whipped his head back and forth between the two boys. “Wait, Kacchan, I’m the one that did something! I think I broke him, don’t yell at him!” The freckled boy pleaded to his loud blond companion.

Katsuki eyed him suspiciously, but, it’s not like he could argue with Izuku when he wasn't there to see the events occur. He sighed and shrugged, still keeping a skeptical eye on the newcomer. “So how do we fix him?”

Izuku watched the way the dual colored boy was looking at them with a mixture of jealousy and confusion. At Least he thought it may have been those emotions, he had always had a talent for reading others.

“Why don’t we play a game!” Izuku suggested figuring it would be a safe option to take. In response, the kid cocked his head to the side and posed an inquiry towards the other two boys.

“...A game?” he asked, “What’s that?”

Katsuki and Izuku stared at him in shock, they looked at one another then turned to peer back at the other boy.

“You—” Katsuki couldn’t even finish the sentence, shaking his head in puzzlement.

Izuku tried to pick up where he left off, “You don’t know what a game is?” he softly asked.

The boy’s ears lit red and he looked at the ground. “No. I don’t. Is that a problem?” he responded half fearfully and half defensive.

Izuku’s heart broke a little and, even if Katsuki’s capacity for compassion was lower than most, it horrified him.

“Holy—okay, let’s fix this,” Katsuki ordered. He held his hand out to help the boy rise to stand on his feet. “C’mon, halfie.”

The boy took his hand silently and let Katsuki haul him up. Izuku beamed and waited with his arms up for Katsuki to lift him, too. The blond huffed but scooped Izuku to his feet without complaint.

“What’s your name?” Izuku asked. He pasted himself to Katsuki’s side. The taller boy had a self-satisfied smile on his face, holding the smaller closer.

“Shouto.”

“Okay, Shouto!” Izuku giggled. “I’m Izuku and this is Kacchan!”

“Katsuki,” the blond corrected with a snap. He wasn’t about to let just any extra, despite their tragic lack of playing, call him by that nickname. That shit had to be earned by anyone but Izu.

Shouto just nodded. He looked like he was expecting one of the two boys—mostly Katsuki—to rescind their offer and laugh at him. Sweet-hearted Izuku would never do that, and he wouldn’t let Katsuki do it either.

“Do you—no, you’ve never played before,” Izuku mused. He put his finger to his chin and looked at the sky. “Okay, let’s play tag. That’s easy, right Kacchan?”

Katsuki nodded. “It’s super basic.”

Shouto looked between them as they talked, his brow furrowing. “...Tag?”

Izuku grabbed his shoulders and manhandled Shouto until they were eye-to-eye. “I’m so sorry. You’ve missed out on so much.”

Shouto puffed up his cheeks. “I don’t think I’ve missed much,” he argued. Katsuki laughed cruelly.

“You’ve never played tag, halfie, you’ve missed a lot.”

“Whatever,” Shouto rolled his eyes. “How do you play?”

Izuku explained the rules to him quickly before distancing himself from the other two.

“Okay, I’ll be it! Go!” he shouted. Katsuki took off for the big slide on the other end of the playground, scaling the play structure behind it quickly and perching right before the enclosed tube. Shouto, scarily easily, climbed one of the poles holding up the swings and shimmied until he was holding the top bar like a sloth.

“Wow, so not fair,” Izuku moped. He ran for Shouto first since he didn’t want him to feel left out, so he slowly shimmied up the pole. He eventually managed, but Shouto had pulled himself all the way across the top bar while hanging beneath it and was successful on crossing to the other side. He then slid down the pole and ran off.

“How—”

Katsuki chucked a pebble at him from where he was perched safely behind the slide. It nailed him in the thigh even from across the playground. It stung when it hit.

“Ouch, Kacchan!” Izuku whined. “That’s just mean.” he pouted.

Katsuki smirked and swung his legs, which slammed into the slide and caused the plastic to reverberate loudly.

Back on the ground, Izuku chased after Shouto, flowers continuing to blossom after Izuku. The dual haired boy was booking it for the same slide Katsuki was on.

“Oi, halfie,” the blond yelled. “Go somewhere else.” he gestured with his hands as if shooing the other boy away.

Shouto didn’t answer, ducking into the slide and ridiculously quickly sprinting up it. “Move,” he ordered when he reached the top. Izuku was about halfway up the slide anyway, so Katsuki grudgingly rolled out of the way. Instead of hopping to his feet and rushing back down the platformed structure behind the slide, Katsuki just kept rolling until he reached the end of the platform he was on and grabbed onto a twisty pole that ended on the ground.

He spun himself down and ran away. Izuku followed him this time, bypassing the pole completely and using his quirk to discreetly cushion his landing, in a similar fashion to what he had done before. He technically wasn’t permitted to use it in public but it didn’t hurt if no one noticed, right? It’s not like it really mattered, Kaachan used his quirk all the time.

Katsuki squawked and called him on it though. “What the heck, Izu? You’re not allowed to do that!”

Izuku gave him a dazzling, innocent smile that pierced the heart of the blond, causing him to falter slightly in his sprint. “Not allowed to do what, Kacchan?” He kept chasing him, beaming smile still on his face.

Katsuki whined in exasperation but didn’t slow down. He hopped onto a large tire near the middle of the playground and jumped across the ring of three. He tripped a little on one track and stumbled. He didn’t fall, but it slowed him down enough that Izuku caught up to him and slapped him on the back, with a cheer.

“You’re it!” he declared and immediately sprinted the other direction. Katsuki whirled to go after him, but he spotted a mess of red and white out of the corner of his eye and zeroed in on Shouto hanging from the monkey bars.

Katsuki abruptly changed his trajectory and barreled toward the monkey bars. Shouto hauled himself up from where he had been dangling upside down and sat on the edge. The bars were too high for the six-year-olds to reach from the ground so Shouto was safe until Katsuki climbed the ladder.

“Damn it, halfie!” Katsuki yelled upon realizing that he could not, in fact, just reach Shouto out of force of will from the ground. Clicking his tongue and hoping Izuku wasn’t watching, so he didn’t call him on his hypocrisy, Katsuki used an explosion—a very, very tiny explosion—to give him that extra boost to reach the bars.

Shouto grunted and flipped backward off the monkey bars when Katsuki’s fingers closed around the bar running along the side.

“Get back here!” Katsuki screamed, bolting after him. “You seem to do just fine playing for someone who’s never done it before!”

“Training,” Shouto said flatly. Katsuki supposed that made sense. Izuku and he did lots of training together, too, and it made them better at physical stuff than the other kids in their class.

Shouto pulled himself up the ladder that led to the hanging rings (like monkey bars, but triangles dangling from chains and with a higher supporting bar). Shouto swung across them quickly, skipping two at a time. Katsuki gaped and just dropped to the ground, following underneath and jumping to swipe at his feet. Shouto, the bastard, pulled his legs up every time Katsuki leaped without even breaking his momentum on the rings.

“How are you doing this?” Katsuki screamed. Shouto sprung off the ending ladder and landed like a cat on the merry-go-round. The sudden weight made it spin and Shouto stuck his foot into the ground when he was opposite Katsuki.

“I just am?” Shouto answered unsatisfactorily with a nonchalant shrug. Katsuki growled and ran after him again. The blond planted his feet in a spray of gravel and took a 90-degree turn to the right, ducking under the set of bars that were arranged into a caterpillar-like shape.

Izuku squeaked and rolled to the side, barely dodging the diving Katsuki. The blond rolled and scrambled after Izuku, slapping his foot before rolling to the side, back under the caterpillar, and took off once on the other side.

“Kacchan!” Izuku yelled, “Rude!”

The game went on like that for a long time. Izuku and Katsuki would try their best to catch Shouto before getting distracted by the other and tagging them instead. Shouto was just so good at the game, despite supposedly never playing before.

“Okay, Time Out!” Izuku yelled, holding his hands up in a T. Katsuki crawled out from underneath the slide, making Izuku gasp (“That’s where you went!”) and Shouto slid down the fire pole of the main play structure dramatically slowly. When he finally squeaked to a stop at the bottom, he wouldn’t come near the other two.

“What’s a Time Out?” he cocked his head to the side. Katsuki, not yet halfway underneath the slide, slammed his head into the ground.

“How do you not—”

Izuku cut him off, “It means a pause in the game. It’s safe to come near us, and we can’t tag you.”

Shouto nodded and approached warily. Katsuki joined them once he had wiggled out from his hiding spot.

“So, Shouto,” Izuku began, clapping dramatically. He usually would have left his hands in a 'T' but Katsuki had overtaken the job. “You are really, really good at this.”

Shouto shrugged. “I wouldn’t know, I’ve never played before.”

Izuku groaned. “See, that’s what I mean. How? You are awesome and this is the first time you’ve played.”

Shouto opened his mouth to respond but suddenly froze.

“Shouto!” a booming voice screamed from across the playground. Izuku and Katsuki flinched back, but Shouto’s face shuttered. He didn’t move. A big man with flaming hair stomped toward them angrily. Endeavor. “What are you doing out here?”

Shouto looked up coldly. Izuku felt a shiver run down his spine. Katsuki always told him that when he was mad, his face was frightening but surely it had nothing on the look that Shouto was pulling right now.

“Playing,” Shouto said flatly. He looked at Izuku and Katsuki out of the corner of his eye. “Having fun.”

Endeavor tried to grab Shouto’s arm, but the boy effortlessly side-stepped. Izuku held his breath. Katsuki was not so reserved.

“Hey, what are you doing to Shouto!” the blond yelled. He stomped up to Endeavor just as angry as the man himself and looked him dead in the eye. Shouto stared, disbelief clear on his stoic face.

Endeavor’s lip curled. He opened his mouth with a scowl before freezing. The parents and older siblings of the kids playing at the park had their phones out, all pointed at the fire hero. He growled and clenched his jaw, this time succeeding in snagging a shocked Shouto.

“Hey, what the heck?” Katsuki screamed. “Where are you taking him?”

“Home,” Endeavor growled. He forcibly dragged Shouto away. The boy looked at his two impromptu friends with a mixture of longing and sadness.

“I had… fun,” he whispered softly before Endeavor had dragged him too far away. Izuku’s eyes teared up.

“Me too,” he said, just as softly. Katsuki watched with a snarl, glaring daggers into Endeavor’s back. Shouto thought it was sweet. No one had ever stood up to his father for him before.

As soon as he was out of sight, Izuku turned to Katsuki. “We have to go home. Mama can help us get him out.”

“Okay,” Katsuki agreed without hesitation. “Wait—get him out of what?”

Izuku gave him a look. “Um… out of whatever situation he’s in, silly?”

“Oh,” Katsuki said eloquently. “Yeah, let’s do that.”

The two raced back to their apartments. The building was only about a block from the park and the two six-year-olds were responsible enough to walk themselves there when they wanted.

Back two hours earlier than normal, they kicked off their shoes and raced into Izuku’s bedroom. Katsuki flopped onto the bed while Izuku sat in the office chair in front of his desk. It had blankets draped over the back and pillows in the seat, making it almost as plush as the bed itself.

“Step one,” Izuku declared, “Research.”

“Research… what?” Katsuki tilted his head to the side. Izuku sighed and wheeled over to the edge of the bed, patting Katsuki’s head and leaving it resting there.

“His situation, Kacchan. Endeavor’s a hero, the internet probably has lots of information on however those two are related.” Sometimes Izuku forgot that Katsuki didn’t read as much as he did. The greenette had an inkling of how abusive households worked, despite being so young. Inko lamented that Izuku would teach himself everything the school was before he even got there.

“Okay, you do that,” Katsuki said. He closed his eyes and burrowed into the plushes piles around Izuku’s pillows. Izuku sighed and rolled back to his desk. Katsuki looked so soft, surrounded by all the pastels and stuffed animals in Izuku’s room. Izuku liked it when Katsuki dropped the tough act—though it wasn’t much of an act, honestly—and just relaxed.

Four hours later, Izuku emerged from his hyper-focused spree. His desk was a mess of loose leaf papers covered in writing, he had three of his old notebooks spread out on top, a fourth with fresh pages devoted to this project specifically covered in ink. It covered the chalkboard he had begged Inko to hang on the wall opposite his desk in multi-colored chalk, and his computer had 47 new bookmarks.

“Are you back?” Katsuki asked from the bed, popping open one eye. Izuku yawned and nodded.

“All right, Auntie popped in a while back,” Katsuki took a glance at the clock, “About an hour ago. She said dinner would be ready whenever we were.”

Izuku smiled and hopped up from his chair, wobbling on dead legs and slamming into his desk for balance. Katsuki snorted at him, rolling off the bed and squatting in front of him.

“Hop on, dumb butt,” the blond ordered. Izuku happily flopped across his back, making Katsuki grunt. The blond hauled him to the kitchen, tossing him on a chair before sliding into one himself.

“Auntie!” Katsuki called. Inko padded down the hallway, a pin holding her hair into a messy bun and wearing sweats and a bra. She looked like she had gotten back from work and only bothered to half-change.

After the Incident—as the three had taken to calling the events at the quirk office—Inko had begun to work out. Katsuki and Izuku did lighter versions of her increasingly intense regime. As a result Inko had more of an athlete’s body than a mom’s.

“Did Izuku come back to the land of the living?” Inko teased, ruffling the boy’s hair around his flower crown. He puffed out his cheeks and crossed his arms.

“Mom~” he whined. Katsuki laughed.

“Can we have spicy curry?” Katsuki asked. He bounced in his seat.

“No, katsudon!” Izuku complained. He and Katsuki locked themselves into a stare down. Inko chuckled and dug out a flat pan.

She set about making grilled cheese, because she had been working for a long-ass time before this and this is what she wanted, without telling the kids. When she completed the task a few minutes later, the kids were still glaring at each other. She waved a hand between their faces, watching as they blinked back to awareness.

“Ooh!” Izuku cooed, grabbing for a half a sandwich with greedy hands. Katsuki scooped up three and dropped them on the plate in front of him.

“Thanks!” they both said in unison while stuffing their faces. Inko couldn’t blame them, they had spent the better part of the day running around at the park and the last four hours holed up in Izuku’s room. Growing boys needed their food after all.

“So, what were you researching so intently?” Inko asked after Katsuki had finished his fifth half (where did he put all of it?) and Izuku was starting on his third.

Katsuki didn’t answer because his cheeks were reminiscent of chipmunks so Izuku did. “We made a new friend at the park today.”

“And?”

“Well, I think it was Endeavor’s son.”

Inko dropped her sandwich. She had, thankfully, not taken a bite of it yet since she would have choked.

“Is there more to this?” she asked, resigned.

“Um…” Izuku fiddled with his crown. A nervous tick. “I think he may… have an abusive home life?”

Inko dropped her head onto the table. “Izuku how?” she quietly questioned into the tabletop.

“How what?” Izuku asked, tilting his head to the side, the picture of childhood innocence. Inko rubbed her temples in exasperation.

“How do you end up in these situations?” She demanded. Katsuki snorted.

“He’s magic,” he said flatly as if that explained everything.

“I’m magic,” Izuku agreed. Inko sighed. Honestly, at this point, she wasn’t sure Izuku wasn’t magic—if his quirk wasn’t some genetic mutation but some blessing from a higher power. She shook her head. No, just because they had named his quirk after the Queen of the Underworld didn’t mean Izuku had some divine power. Probably. Right?

“Hey, mama?” Izuku started, a few flowers blooming from his crown and draping over his forehead in a subconscious attempt to hide his face. Izuku’s nervous tics were oddly beautiful.

“Yes, lily-flower?”

“Um, can you, maybe—you know how you, y’know, know people that, um know things—could you ask, please, ask them, that is, if, “

“Could you ask about Todoroki Shouto’s home life,” Katsuki, mercifully, cut Izuku off. The greenette sighed in relief and nodded his head. Looking at the blond in thanks.

Inko regarded the two six-year-olds in front of her. Both of the boys were well ahead of their age group, physically and mentally. Katsuki was probably on par with an average third grader, despite starting first in a few weeks. Izuku, similarly, could most definitely give a middle-schooler a run for their money, at least mentally.

Inko supposed she should have expected this to happen, eventually; Izuku had a heart of gold and, while he may not share Izuku’s compassion, Katsuki would follow the greenette into hell. Besides that, Izuku was an industrial-sized magnet for every misfortunate situation possible.

“Yeah, I can,” Inko affirmed with a resigned sigh to herself. Seeing the smile she received from her son, she smiled to herself.

After the quirk office, Inko had reconnected with Hisashi. He had stayed in the states after she had to return to Japan, not able to leave the Seven Aces behind. Inko had only been there for four years, studying abroad, but her and Hisashi had hit it off fast and hard—it’s how Izuku came to be.

Unfortunately, being the son of the biggest mob boss in America, it was imperative Izuku’s heritage be kept extremely hush-hush. Inko had only reached out to him because of Izuku’s clear cult following. Hisashi, ever the gentleman, had happily granted her as many resources he could spare from the Japan branch.

Inko was an official member of the Seven Aces, had been since her time in America. She wanted to keep Izuku out of the situation until he was at least in his double digits, though, and Katsuki would only have to join if he himself so chose.

“Hey, Izuku,” Inko said as she collected the plates and dumped them in the sink, “Have you read through all the files?”

“Which ones, mama?” Izuku asked, hopping off his seat to follow her to the sink. Katsuki followed him.

“The ones from the office,” Inko clarified. Izuku climbed onto Katsuki’s shoulders and used the added height to pull himself onto the counter. He knelt over the edge to help the blond up. Inko handed Izuku a towel.

“Oh, yeah, mostly.” Izuku nodded. “Operation Pomegranate confused me, though.”

“How so?” Inko asked. If she was being honest, it had made her head spin, too. She couldn't understand why it was relevant.

“I have the analysis and the notes in my room,” Izuku said. He dried the glass Inko handed to him and passed it to Katsuki. The blond put it away in the cupboard. The conversation lulled after that point, devolving into Katsuki telling stories of his amazingness and Izuku’s own accomplishments. The Midoriya’s oohed and ahhed at all the right times and soon the dishes were swiftly completed.

“All right, let’s see it Izuku,” Inko clapped her hands. She helped both boys off the counter and followed them as they tripped over each other rushing to Izuku’s room in their excitement.

“Okay, so,” Izuku started, launching himself into his chair. Inko joined Katsuki on the bed. “Kacchan, flip the board.”

Katsuki made a saluting motion before hopping to his feet. Not only did Izuku have chalkboards lining his walls, he also had a see-through marker board and a whiteboard—both freestanding ones that flipped.

Katsuki dramatically twirled the white board around, revealing six-year-old scribbles that were decently legible despite being the work of a child.

“Here, I have written lots of things it could be,” Izuku explained, gesturing to the board. Katsuki stood next to it like a lady advertising a car in a commercial. “It—oh! Here, I wrote the original thing on paper. It made it easier to write stuff on the board.”

Izuku twirled the chair so he could reach his desk, grabbing one of the looseleaf papers and shoving it into Inko’s hands. The corner was dog-eared and there was a wrinkle in the center.

Operation Pomegranate

The second prophecy given by the Subject stated that the Child would have the power to bind people to him using pomegranate seeds. In order for it to work, the recipient would have to willingly eat the seeds.

“The actual file was obviously a lot bigger, but that’s all I needed to come up with possible theories.” Izuku pointed at the board. “Kacchan! First point!”

Katsuki dramatically pointed to the first bullet point and shouted, “Mind control!”

Izuku nodded sagely. “Yep, mind control. See, if the file is to be believed,” Izuku inclined his head to the paper in Inko’s hands, “Then the recipient is bound to the Child, most likely me. That means it is possible I could have control of their minds! Scary thought, huh?”

“So scary,” Katsuki agreed. “Except… I don’t think that’s what it is.”

“Right! Second point, Kacchan!” Izuku giggled.

“Empathy!”

“Empathy!” Izuku parroted. “It is possible that the recipient and I could feel each other’s emotions. This one is actually highly likely.” he briefly explained

“Third point!”

“Telepathy!”

“Right, telepathy!” Both boys slurred the word a bit and it made Inko smile. A lot of the words from the file had probably been looked up and listened to intently until they could pronounce it correctly. “Another likely option, this one would let me communicate with the recipient’s thoughts! I don’t know if this would be both ways or just one, though, if any.”

“And the last point is…”

“G. P. S!” Katsuki said each letter individually, like its own sentence.

“I might be able to track the location of the recipient!” Izuku twirled the chair for flair, the blankets hanging across the back whirling like a cape. “Any questions?”

Inko nodded but clapped and both boys took a bow. Katsuki joined her back on the bed while she began grilling Izuku.

“Do you have any idea what the ‘pomegranate’ is referring to?”

“Actually, I’m beginning to think it’s talking about an actual pomegranate.”

“Why? What made you think it’s not a symbol?”

“Besides the part where I grow plants?”

Inko paused long enough for Katsuki to shout,

“Flower power!”

“...Fair,” she conceded. “Have you tried growing one yet?” she asked her son.

“Nope!” he chirped at her in an answer.

“Why?”

“If it works, I don’t want anyone bound to me! We don’t know how to get rid of it or if the effects go away when I’m done with it or if it has to be eaten when I grow one or—”

“Okay, I think I understand, Lily-flower.” Inko laughed. Izuku snapped his mouth shut with a clack and smiled sheepishly. “It’s late now. Why don’t you guys hop along to bed, I’m gonna go make some calls?”

“Will you ask about Shouto?” Izuku reminded her, bouncing up and down while clutching at her pant leg. She bent down to ruffle his hair.

“I will. Now go run along Katsuki so you guys can clean up for bed.”

Katsuki tugged Izuku away, pausing for long enough to let Inko kiss both their heads.

“G’night, Auntie,” Katsuki said, yawning just the smallest bit. He tried to play it off but was undermined in his attempt by bleary eyes. He clutched at Izuku’s shirt cutely leading the smaller along the way.

Izuku was in a similar state. His flowers were growing vines that swayed gently around his face like they tended to do when he was tired. The presentation must have taken a lot out of them. Inko would have worried about leaving them on their own to clean up, but Izuku’s plants had the nice habit of keeping him from accidental death when he was tired. Katsuki, too, by extension.

Inko left the bedroom, flopping on the couch and dialing Hiro’s number.

“Yo, baby mama!” Hiro greeted jovially. Inko laughed.

“What’s up, hoe?”

“Mmm, always a slut, nothin’ new.”

“I have a job for you.”

“Of course you do!" the man whined. "You never call just because you like to hear my beautiful voice, you only want me for my money!”

“Hiro,” Inko was fighting hard not to laugh, her voice strained. A few strangled chortles slipped through her fingers, anyway.

“Aight, aight, it’s good. Let’s hear it.”

“Todoroki Shouto. Find out everything you can, report back to me. I’m especially interested in his relationship with his father.”

Hiro whistled. “What did the number two hero do to get on your bad side, B?”

“I don’t know yet. That’s what you will tell me.” Inko smirked into the receiver, not that Hiro could see it. Inko had a feeling that the man could tell anyway. He always had been good at reading her.

“Aye, aye, captain. I’ll call you when I got the tea.”

She clicked the end call button and stretched, collapsing on the soft cushions of the couch. Reconnecting with Hisashi had its perks, including the protection and the man himself.

She stared up at the ceiling for a long while. Izuku was getting stronger by the day. Yesterday, he had accidentally sprouted an apple tree. He had never been able to pull off trees before or any kind of fruit. The sapling was growing at a steady pace in the backyard, healthy as could be. He still had a loose grasp on the darker aspect of his quirk, but they hadn’t been training that as much for its unpredictability.

Katsuki had been excelling, too. His blasts were getting more and more powerful. He blasted her in the thigh on accident yesterday when she was checking their progress on sparring, thankfully not at his full power. It still smarted almost 36 hours later.

The kids would be a menace when they were old enough to join high school, possibly long before that. She had hoped that training them herself would better prepare them for the amount of adversity they would have to weather compared to their peers. Not all of them were the son of a mob boss and had a cult full of deranged lunatics after them.

Inko fell asleep on the couch to thoughts of flowers and explosions.

A week later, Inko finally got the phone call Izuku had been waiting for.

“Damn, baby mama, I got enough tea to drown the flaming garbage fire in a crushing flood of his sins.”

“Spill.”

“Gladly.” The sound of Hiro cracking his knuckles was audible over the line. “So, first off, this bitch has got like, fifteen thousand counts of destruction of property. And seventeen hundred of harassment. That’s just the obvious ones, too, hon. There’s heavy ass speculation that the fuckwad may have assaulted some rando he thought was a villain? Like, this hoe straight up burnt this poor dude like a pig over a fire. And nada. No repercussions because, here it is, he’s been bribing state officials and using some shady ass lawyers to cover up his shit.”

Inko whistled. “Anything else?”

“Oh, baby mama, I got so much more,” Hiro said. “Thing is, I don’ got confirmation on any other juicy bits yet. I’ll call you back when I do.”

“Thanks, Hiro,” Inko said genuinely. “I really appreciate it.”

“Well, if you really want to make it up to me, have me over for dinner sometime.”

“Of course”.

Hiro hung up and Inko pocketed her phone. “Izuku!” she yelled down the hall. The boy slammed open his door and rushed her.

“I can’t believe it! He did all that? And got away with it? What the heck, isn’t this why we have a justice system? Why is someone like that representing it? And the number two her—”

“Izuku!” Inko interrupted. “Were you eavesdropping again?”

Izuku twisted his toes into the ground, looking down guiltily. “...Maybe.”

“Lily-flower, I know you can hear extra well with your plants, but you’re not allowed to listen in to my conversations!”

“I know, mama,” Izuku conceded. Inko ruffled his hair.

“But yes, you are right. Endeavor did everything that Hiro said. Hiro is very good at his job.”

Izuku made a 'hn' sound and bolted to the wall separating their apartment from the Bakugou’s. He stuck his hand near the crack between the floor and wall, sending a thin tendril of vine snaking into the adjacent apartment. He felt around until he found Katsuki, wrapping around his foot like a leafy anklet and tugging gently.

When the vine was gently untangled and the sound of pounding feet echoed from the walkway outside, Izuku rushed to let Katsuki in the door.

“Information!” Izuku shouted upon greeting.

“Finally!”

“Okay, listen to mama.”

Inko explained again once the door was securely shut again. Katsuki’s wide-eyed excitement turned into a thunderous rage the longer Inko spoke.

“What in the fuck,” he said flatly.

“Pretty mu—wait, Katsuki!”

Katsuki wasn’t apologetic. “He’s an asshole.”

Inko couldn’t even argue with him, he had a very valid point. She settled on sighing and playfully pushing his head down while ruffling his hair. He whined but didn’t fight her off. He always was more receptive of her than Mitsuki, but she supposed that was because her personality didn’t clash as much with his as the blond woman’s had.

“Does that mean we—”

Inko cut Izuku off. “No. No, you may not.”

“You don’t even know what I was gonna say!” Izuku protested.

“You are not allowed to break into Endeavor’s mansion,” Inko said decisively. Izuku’s face fell. Before it could turn into steely determination, Inko continued. “Not yet, at least.”

“...Yet?” Katsuki asked. His grin was malicious. Predatory. He would terrify when he gets older. Luckily he would use that intimidation for Izuku’s safety and happiness.

“Yet,” Inko confirmed. “Let’s say in… two weeks. If I think you two, and I do mean both of you, have satisfactory stealth skills, I’ll let you go.”

“Yeah!” the kids cheered together. Honestly, Inko was very concerned about the situation. Izuku wanted to save this kid so, so badly and he had known him for all of two hours. And Katsuki… his reasons for being invested so much were not as heroic as Izuku’s; he wanted the thrill had the desire to win. If it drove him and gave him ambition, then Inko supposed it would be fine—Izuku would keep him on track.

“You want to hear the rules?” Inko asked once the boys had finished celebrating.

“Rules? Isn’t this going to be like the training we already do?” Izuku asked.

Usually, in the morning, Inko took an hour run. The boys tagged along every other day. After she got home from work, she drove to the gym and spent about an hour and a half there. While she was gone, the kids did exercises around the house; Inko had drawn up a regime specialized to both of them. Just small things like push-ups or wall sits.

Once they were done with their exercises, and she was home from the gym, they went down to Dagoba beach. Inko planned to have the kids clear it when they were older but for now the piles of garbage made for ideal training environments—and a barrier between them and prying eyes.

“No, think of it more as a game,” Inko explained. Katsuki’s eyes glinted.

“Game?”

“Yes, firecracker. If I spot you, you have to run the route we do in the mornings.”

Izuku wrinkled his nose. “All day?”

“No, from the time I leave for my run until dinner,” Inko corrected. She would have to let Hiro know she would be working from home the rest of the week. He would get the message to the right people.

“Okay!” the boys chorused. Inko smiled. She slapped both their heads.

“And, you’re tagged! Run!”

Katsuki was tagged 37 times the first day. Izuku seven. Izuku had natural affluence with shadows as a part of his quirk but Katsuki’s loud, abrasive personality stood out as much as his quirk did.

The seventh day went similarly.

“Firecracker,” Inko laughed, throwing her pen like a dart at the tuft of blond hair she had seen out of the corner of her eye. She cocked her head back to look at him fully from over the side of the couch where she was splayed out working on paperwork Hiro had dropped off for her to complete. “You have got to muffle your steps.”

“Damn it!” Inko had stopped correcting him. It seemed the cursing was a permanent development. He was six. Inko blamed Mitsuki entirely.

When the door slammed shut, Inko turned back to her paperwork. She almost threw the thick stack on her lap into the wall. A vibrant yellow lily was delicately placed dead center on the page. Someone cut the stem, and no vines littered the floor, so Izuku had ghosted her well enough to get that close and retreat unnoticed. Inko clutched her chest.

“Damn,” she muttered. She really feared for Izuku’s enemies.

By the 13th day, she hadn’t tagged Katsuki in a while. She hadn’t managed to catch Izuku at all since the fourth day. The boys had been leaving her random surprises when her back was turned and it was beginning to give her trust issues. And paranoia. She would hear heavy steps or breathing or something (always something that could be explained away as the house shifting or the wind if heard by an unassuming observer) only to turn back to what she was doing only to be greeted by a flower or the sight of whatever she was working on rearranged while she wasn't looking.

If it wasn’t for the pranks, Inko would think she lived alone.

On the 14th day, Inko called them to the living room. “Game’s over!”

The boys popped out of nowhere. “God fucking damn it!” she shrieked, jumping a solid foot. She froze, a hand clapping over her mouth.

“Oh, my—Auntie—did you, holy—” Katsuki couldn’t speak around his wheezing. Once the shock wore off, Izuku giggled.

“Mama, aren’t you always chiding Kacchan not to curse?” he pointed out. Damn him.

Inko scowled. “Shush, you. I have decided you two are skilled enough in stealth to be permitted to break into Endeavor’s mansion.” Man, that had felt weird to say. Who tells six-year-olds they’re allowed to break-and-enter the home of the number two hero? Inko, apparently.

“Yes!” Katsuki shrieked, leaping into the air. “Let’s fuck shit up!”

Inko sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. She might have stopped reprimanding Katsuki because of the redundancy of the task, but now she just outright couldn’t because of her own slip. It seemed the blond would take advantage of the fact and bleed it dry.

“C’mon, Kacchan!” Izuku tugged the blond into his room, slamming the door shut.

Izuku cupped Katsuki’s cheeks in his palms, pulling the blond’s face forward until their noses were brushing. Katsuki was going slightly cross-eyed trying to meet his eyes.

“Kacchan, you can’t blow everything up,” Izuku instructed wryly. Katsuki scoffed at the knowing tilt of his lips.

“Shut the fuck up, Izu,” Katsuki complained, not trying to tug himself free from Izuku’s hold. His voice lacked all its usual venom, and it sounded breathy. He let his eyes flutter shut. Izuku smiled.

“Cute,” the greenette teased lightly. Katsuki’s cheeks flared, but he didn’t move.

“Shut. Up.”

“But you are!”

“Izu,” Katsuki’s eyes snapped open. He tipped Izuku’s chin up with his finger, stepping forward enough to make Izuku lean back slightly. Katsuki smirked down at him from his new in-control vantage point, watching the flush he had sported earlier mirrored on the smaller boy’s face. “You’re the cute one.”

Izuku may have imploded. His flower crown burst into color, all vibrant pastels, and vines curled down over his cheeks, blocking his face with the colorful blooms. Katsuki snorted and leaned back. Izuku still hadn’t released the hold on his face.

“So what do we need, Izu?” Katsuki asked. He stretched his arms out behind him.

“Need?” Izuku asked dumbly. Katsuki stared at him flatly, raising a brow and gesturing randomly around him.

“For the flaming garbage fire?”

Izuku’s mouth fell open into a small ‘o’. “Yeah, yeah, gotta save Shouto.”

Katsuki rolled his eyes. Izuku ignored him, devolving into muttering as he bustled around his room.

Katsuki sank into the ultra-soft plushness of Izuku’s bed, dutifully waiting for the boy to finish his hyper-focused frenzy. The smaller flung a backpack on him before Katsuki had zoned out. Smaller airborne projectiles slammed into him occasionally, adding to the growing pile slowly burying the napping boy. Katsuki only woke when Izuku roused him by slapping a pair of Katsuki’s own quirk-muffling gloves in his face.

Katsuki grumbled and sat up, making the now-filled backpack slide off him. He yawned and popped his neck with a stretch. He held out his hand for the proffered gloves and slid them on his hands without protest.

When Katsuki had first developed his quirk, it had been more powerful than his body could handle. The explosions wrecked his arms, prompting his mother to commission the state for a solution. They had sent back these high-tech gloves. They slid over his hands like sleek leather and stretched half-way up his forearms, a strap holding them tight around his wrist and the top. As per request, they were solid black with orange seams.

Izuku hummed appreciatively, throwing a hoodie at the waking-up boy. Katsuki slid it on silently, pulling up the hood at Izuku’s prompting. He already had black shorts on because he had told his mom that black and orange were his favorite colors so she bought him clothes composed primarily out of the limited color palette.

“Mama!” Izuku shouted, opening his door and motioning for Katsuki to follow once he had slung the sleek black backpack over his shoulders. “We’re leaving now!”

“All right, you have six hours until I send someone to come get you,” Inko said. She didn’t look up from her paperwork, but her phone was already sitting at the ready, her contact at the Seven Aces ready for an evac if needed.

The boys left silently and Katsuki followed closely behind Izuku as the greenette led him down the side streets and back alleys he had memorized long ago. Katsuki had been working on being more light on his feet and it showed. Where Izuku had always been as silent as a feather landing, Katsuki had adopted the same feline grace a cat handled. Twilight was steadily darkening into night, the bruised purple of the sky fading into black.

Izuku handed him a black cloth face mask as they neared the mansion. The estate was huge, a traditional building surrounded by a thick fence and heavy gate.

Izuku held up a hand, Katsuki halting behind him. During their two weeks, the duo had practiced moving together and performing tasks in complete silence. It made their silent conversations even more common, unfortunately for Inko.

Hiro had said the mansion wasn’t alarmed and cameras weren’t ever installed. Endeavor said they interfered with the traditionality of the house and that no villain would dare to break into the home of the number two hero. He wasn’t entirely wrong, Izuku and Katsuki weren’t villains. The kids slinked to the side wall, Izuku growing an ivy plant down the side. They climbed silently, Izuku saving Katsuki by wrapping him in an entanglement of vines when the boy’s fingers slipped because of the smooth grip of his gloves. They slid over the top of the wall as soon as they reached it, silently dropping to the ground on the other side and blending seamlessly with the shadows. Izuku decayed the ivy plant, and they moved on.

Katsuki led the way into the building. The hinges on the door were well-oiled and swung open soundlessly after Katsuki used a pair of lock picks Izuku fished out of his backpack to bypass the formidable but not impressive lock. Now, the hard part. Where was Shouto?

It had already been almost an hour since they had left; they needed to hurry if they wanted any substantial amount of time with the dual-haired boy. Katsuki padded silently through the kitchen and living room, noting the smell of bleach and blood with distaste. It smelled like someone had burnt flesh.

Izuku breezed down the main hallway, checking the contents of each room with his plants as he passed them. When he finally found Shouto’s room, he sent a vine after Katsuki to tug the searching blond to his location. Izuku gently pushed open the door.

Shouto wasn’t sleeping like Izuku had been expecting. The hour was late, creepingly steadily into the dead of night, but Shouto was rocking on his bed, his face… bandaged?

“Shouto?” Izuku addressed softly. The boy’s eyes—eye, one was completely covered—snapped to him with panic. His features relaxed when he recognized him. Izuku wondered in the back of his mind why he hadn't screamed.

“I—” he broke off into a hacking cough. Izuku winced at the harsh sound. “Izuku. What are you doing here?”

“We’re here to see you, halfie,” Katsuki announced himself dramatically. Izuku was proud to say he kept his voice a low murmur that barely carried across the room to Shouto.

Shouto nodded, motioning for them to come further into the room.

“Hey, what happened?” Katsuki demanded, crawling onto Shouto’s bed unprompted. Izuku gently shut the door behind them, using his plants to muffle the sound of the door closing. Shouto looked away, his hair falling over the stark white bandage in vibrant contrast.

“My—” his voice caught. He took a deep breath while keeping his face hidden from the other two. “My mother poured hot water on my face because she said I looked like my father.”

Katsuki’s face was shadowed in the dim lighting of the room, creating the visage of something mean and hungry for blood. His fists clenched hard enough in Shouto’s bedsheets they probably would have torn had it not been for the barrier between them and his nails. Black roses had replaced Izuku’s pastel flowers and spiking thorns. The shadows in the room shifted, taking on an almost alive feeling, leeching the warmth out of the room.

Shouto shivered. He hadn’t realized the sheer power these kids possessed when he had played with them earlier. He didn’t know how he had missed such an overwhelming force.

“She did what.” Katsuki said flatly. It didn’t even sound like a question. Ice crawled down Shouto’s spine.

“It wasn’t her fault,” Shouto whispered. Katsuki’s face snapped up, his visage picture of righteous fury, his yelling tirade was cut before it could really begin by Izuku gently covering snapping teeth with his hand. Shouto nodded gratefully.

“Please explain,” Izuku prompted. His face was… different. Everything looked the same structurally, but it wasn’t. The childlike softness from earlier was still there but his eyes were piercing and focused. His mouth had been twisted into a line of blank displeasure and his posture screamed don’t fuck with me. It threw Shouto off the slightest bit. Endeavor had been training him to roll with the punches that came, though, and he compartmentalized the information to come back to later.

“She said my left side reminded her too much of my father,” Shouto said. His voice was monotone. “She had a mental break so my father put her in the hospital because she’s sick.”

“Damn,” Katsuki laughed humorlessly. Izuku’s expression had changed little, but now he looked like a goddess ready to destroy a city.

“Listen, Shouto,” Izuku gently guided Shouto’s face back to his without touching him, his fingers hovering within Shouto’s line of sight and letting the dual-haired boy do the steering. “I want you to remember something; your mother is only sick because of your father. He is the one that made her that way.”

“What are you—”

“We’re gonna get you out of here, all right, halfie?” Katsuki interrupted. Shouto stared.

“Why?”

“Whadda mean, why?” Katsuki leered. “Because your father is a little bitch that deserves an ass-whoopin’, that’s why.”

Shouto felt tears well in his good eye. No one had ever shown so much concern for him. Not for his peak condition but for his happiness. His father always monologues about him being a masterpiece and his legacy but he never once asked Shouto how he was feeling. If he was all right. All he cared about was his strength.

“You can’t just get rid of him,” Shouto pointed out unhelpfully. Katsuki expressed as much.

“No shit, captain obvious. That’s why we got the supercomputer right here.” Izuku flushed at the praise, tilting his head so his curls covered his face. The flowers of his crown were still dark and angry, contrasting with the warm and caring expression upon lightly flushed cheeks.

“Listen, Shouto,” Izuku said. He lifted his face to meet Shouto’s eye dead on. “If you ever need us, for anything at all, you call us, okay?” he commanded, with a voice unlike any Shoto had ever heard, much less directed at him. It was warm, yet stern.

“I don’t have a way to get ahold of you,” Shouto reminded him with a shaky whisper. Izuku nodded. He motioned for Shouto to give him his ankle. The taller boy did so warily, flinching slightly at the sensation of small chilled fingers gliding on his skin.

Izuku grew a thin but sturdy vine that wrapped around his skin like an anklet. Shouto regarded the plant with surprise. It was inconspicuous enough it would be easy to miss if you weren’t aware of it, and would slide underneath pants and shoes without discomfort.

“What does it do?” Shouto asked, tilting his ankle to see it from different angles.

“Snap it and we’ll come running,” Izuku said, dead serious. Katsuki nodded in agreement. The blond hadn’t even wanted to come for Shouto but for the thrill, but here he was, attached like an angry mother.

Shouto’s eye welled up. This time, the tears cascaded down his cheeks. He crushed both Katsuki and Izuku in a hug and sobbed, with relief at having someone on his side.

“Thank you.”

Chapter Text

Shouto always refused to use the anklet. No matter how much Katsuki whisper-screamed at him when they snuck into the two-toned boy’s room in the dead of night, he would just shake his head and set his jaw.

“He has done nothing worth using it,” Shouto protested adamantly. Izuku or Katsuki hadn’t shared the sentiment. It was rare for them the find Shouto in a healthy state; he was always either bruised and bleeding to the point of immovability, or sprawled out lifelessly on his bed, unable to sleep because of nightmares but too exhausted to even twitch. Or the worst, if you asked Izuku, curled into a ball and crying while clawing at his face in desperation. His hatred for his left side continued to grow as the days passed, the two boys being unable to help their new friend.

Because all their focus was on convincing Shouto to see reason, Izuku and Katsuki coasted through first grade with little fanfare. Katsuki established himself as the supreme overlord within the first week and held his title with an iron grip from then on. Izuku was quiet but fierce. Everyone knew that it was a better idea to mess with Katsuki than him, and Katsuki had bullied a fifth-grade student to the point of tears (in Katsuki’s defence, the fifth grader had gone around flipping the girl’s skirts and the teachers had done nothing about it).

Second grade had started with little fanfare just as first grade had. They coasted by on perfect grades and made themselves the top of the food chain, all while Shouto still refused to see reason.

It was about halfway through second grade year when it happened.

Izuku stood at the chalkboard that covered the front wall of the classroom, solving a problem the teacher had written quickly. The class stared at his rapidly moving hand, trying to comprehend how he was completing the system they had just learned with practiced ease.

Suddenly, the chalk snapped. Izuku was still, so completely and utterly still he resembled a marble statue capturing his frozen pose and then framed with a bed of roses in a garden instead of a living child. The class mirrored him with total silence, no one daring to break the monumental amount of tension that had fallen out of nowhere. Even the teacher choked on the weight of the atmosphere, frozen onto their seat just as was with their students.

Katsuki, predictably, was the one that broke it with a shaky breath. It affected him for entirely different reasons than the rest of the class. “Izu, what—”

A vine snaked around Katsuki’s middle and sucked him to Izuku’s side. His crown shifted to bone and black while the shadows around the room swirled and darkened. When Izuku turned to face away from the board, one collective emotion shot like ice water straight through everyone’s bones:

Fear.

Glowing green eyes zeroed in on the teacher, the owner a furious, beautiful creature. When he spoke, his voice sounded haunted and powerful, like a legion of warriors had bowed before him and offered their power.

“We’re leaving,” Izuku stated flatly. It wasn’t a question, it was a statement that brooked no room for argument. The teacher couldn’t even gather the breath inside their lungs enough to respond to the creature before them.

Izuku wrapped his arm around Katsuki’s middle and marched him out of the room. Katsuki didn’t dare to speak, too caught up in the raging storm that was Izuku. It made his knees weak in the very best way.

Izuku was walking toward a wall, with a purpose that spoke of authority. Katsuki’s steps stuttered when their pace didn’t let up but Izuku yanked him along with such force that all the breath in his lungs left in a whoosh. The wall was cast in shadow by the overhang of the roof and Izuku stepped straight through it, and by extension, so did Katsuki.

What? Had Izuku just walked into a shadow as though it were nothing more than the front door to his home? With familiarity and comfort that spoke of practiced ease?

Complete darkness slammed into them like a wall, damp air and the sound of bone shuffling over wet stone became the only sensory clues to their location. Katsuki couldn’t tell if his eyes were open or closed and the emptiness of the space made his breathing quicken in panic. It felt like monsters surrounded them, hungrily picking the meat from their bones with their eyes waiting for the chance to make the sensation a reality.

Katsuki didn’t whimper, but he buried his face into Izuku’s curls, trying to melt into the smaller boy’s body as they walked at a brisk pace. He didn’t know what he would do if he lost contact with the greenette. He was sure the presence that surrounded them wouldn’t think twice to devour him alive if the greenette didn’t have him in his arms.

As quickly as they had arrived, they passed through the void. Brilliant light pounded Katsuki’s vision, and the blond had to throw his arm over his eyes to block it. Blinking the black spots from his vision, he carefully opened his eyes and took in his surroundings.

Hard, polished floors were clean beneath his feet and the scent of burning… burning everything, really, flooded his nose. His breath caught in his throat for another reason than the sensation of the void.

Shouto was dangling from Endeavors grip, his head crushed between the hero’s large meaty fingers. His hands dangled uselessly at his sides and shook with exhaustion. His body looked like it had been frostbitten and burnt on their respective sides and vomit stains littered about the dirtied floors. Katsuki’s eyes zeroed in on the blood splattered across the room, ice shards and scorch marks marring the previously immaculate surface.

Endeavor hadn’t even noticed them, his flames flared in tandem while he continued furiously screaming at Shouto. Katsuki couldn’t hear him over the rushing of his ears. His chest constricted and his head lightened, still in recovery of Izuku's speedy transport.

Izuku gently placed his hand over Katsuki’s lower face from behind, his chest pressed into Katsuki's back. The scent of spring flowers and fresh water erased the sickening stench of the room. His head cleared, and he felt calmer the more he breathed in the familiar scent of Izuku's blooms.

When Izuku stepped away, a mask of flowers swiftly replaced his hand, held together by a framework of delicate bones with softened points, as though to avoid piercing the blond's face.

With Katsuki no longer on the verge of a panic attack behind him, Izuku prowled toward Endeavor like a lioness hunting her prey. The room’s temperature dropped from scorching to sub-zero in a fraction of a second, all the light dying like a gust rushing over the delicate flame of a candle.

Endeavor dropped Shouto, whirling to face behind him. The boy would have collapsed to the floor, probably breaking something, but Izuku caught and cradled him inside a gentle bed of flowers. The sound of stems and petals brushing over the hardwood made Endeavor flare his flames, so they licked against the ceiling as a show of power.

“Who are you?” he bellowed, a scowl twisting his otherwise handsome features. Izuku didn’t deign him with an answer. He carted Shouto to him gently and softly pressed his forehead to the smaller boy’s. The dual haired boy's body wracked with a burning fever. The ice cold fury that Izuku had been running on since he felt the anklet break snapped like a ravine cracking a massive glacier down the center dividing it into two halves with a sudden vengeance.

He cloaked Endeavor with shadows, making his flames sputter and die. Focusing the intensity of furious green eyes entirely on the man, he guided the soft flowers supporting Shouto to where Katsuki was watching with wide-open eyes. He wrapped both boys in relaxing blooms and gently grew a blindfold of petals over Katsuki’s eyes while Shouto remained unconscious, cradled lovingly inside the blossoms hold.

“What were you doing to Shouto?” Izuku asked. His voice was cold and dead—flat. An ocean of rage lurked just below its surface, waiting for its chance to release the tsunami upon the man before it.

Endeavor gagged and dug at the blackness slowly suffocating him in thick, inky darkness. He tried to call on his flames, to untangle the heavy shadows from his face, to release him from this prison. He failed.

Izuku let him flounder there, let him feel the burn of asphyxiation and the panic of suffocation. Let him feel powerless.

He stopped when the hero was on the brink of death, barely parting the viscous darkness enough for Endeavor to frantically suck in a breath through his nose.

“You can not fight me,” Izuku declared. He wasn’t confident, or arrogant. His voice rang with the finality of the statement; it was a fact. One as immovable as the physical laws of the universe. “You are as powerful as a wilted lily trying to weather the weight of a storm.”

Endeavor said nothing. He couldn’t—panic closed his throat while he tried to suck in the air that had he had just moments ago been starved of.

“I will say this once, Todoroki Enji.” Izuku moved like a petal floating on the breeze, halfway across the room at one moment and mere inches away from Endeavor’s face in the next. “If you ever harm Shouto again, you will die. I will drag your body to the depths of the underworld and flay your flesh from your bones. You will beg for the release, for death, only to find that you have already moved on and that pain and torment will be your eternity.”

Izuku placed his hand on Endeavor’s cheek with a deceptive tenderness. He rubbed his thumb over the rough skin there before hovering so his breath brushed over the shell of the man’s ear. “You will suffer forever.”

As soon as the last word left soft lips, as the waves of sound reverberated against the man’s eardrum, the shadows delved into his brain. They wormed their way into his thoughts, throwing him into the promise that Izuku had whispered to him with utter realism.

He screamed. He screamed loud enough to wake the sleeping dead that surrounded him, the sounds of bone and claw scraping over rough stone. The damp stone and graveyard dirt that covered the ice cold room did nothing to stop the agony of his skin being peeled from his flesh by blades of ice.

Water cold enough to leech every ounce of warmth from his veins doused him like a firehose. The exposed flesh of his muscles sizzled when it blasted over the raw nerves. Bile clawed its way up his throat, forcing itself out against the torrent of water. His chest was tight, caught in between getting air into battered lungs and fighting against the raging river traveling down his gullet.

As the blades continued to peel away his skin, harsh, bony fingers dug along his ribs, wrapping around them with a cruel and unyielding grip and yanking. Endeavor wailed as they were then viciously ripped unforgivingly from his torso and splayed out like macabre petals. The freezing hands were immediately replaced by scalding irons, burrowing into his gaping chest and burning. If he had the presence of mind, Endeavor would wonder if this is how his victims felt when he burned them alive in street alleys, hidden from the public and covered by corrupt, bought off cops.

The ice digging into his skin was suddenly gone, not that he noticed, with all of his skin removed. Blood glistened on the black stone beneath him, eerily reflecting the shadows about the room.

Sharp points joined the brands inside him, prodding and scraping against his heart, his lungs. Every harsh inhale sent the membranous covering of his lungs pressing up hard, almost puncturing against the agonizing barbs, with every frantic beat of his heart snagging on the rough edges and tearing open arteries.

Endeavor opened his eyes, all the pain gone, and was greeted by the grimly smiling face of the being before him. Izuku dropped the support of the shadows, and Endeavor’s body—the skin intact, his ribs in place—folded on itself and slammed into the floor.

His whole body convulsed as he threw up. He sat heaving on the floor for several long, drawn out minutes. Once he finished emptying his stomach, he was too exhausted to lift his head out of the putrid puddle, and barely twitched as it rapidly cooled against his cheek.

Izuku stepped on his face, grinding his heel and rubbing his cheek deeper into the vomit. Endeavor coughed and heaved when he breathed in some of his emissions, his nose burning and exhausted lungs aching from overwork.

“This is your only warning, you shitstain,” Izuku sneered, the expression sitting in an oddly fitting way upon his face. He gathered a thick glob of saliva in his mouth before bending down and letting it drip over Endeavor’s cheek, the hero’s eyes fluttered shut weakly, unable to fight the semi-cool substance sticking to his eyelashes and sliding over his lips.

Izuku straitened up his spine, with a last disgusted look at the man he left on the floor, padded over to the bed of flowers that cradled both Katsuki and Shouto. Katsuki was beautiful with the mask and blindfold of twisted flower and bone. Regretfully, Izuku gently unfastened the mask from the bottom half of Katsuki's face, freeing his mouth from its loving prison and letting the flower and bone dissolve to ash and then disappear.

“Katsuki, where’s your phone?” Izuku asked softly, voice ringing out like bells on the breeze.

Katsuki’s breath hitched and his lips parted. His head angled toward Izuku’s and listed forward the slightest bit. Their lips were almost brushing, breath shared between the two.

“Katsuki,” Izuku prompted the dazed blond. His eyes had returned to normal and his power was drained. He felt a building headache behind his eyes and a pressure in his sinus that felt like a building nosebleed that along with the exhaustion caused a lacking in his usual patience.

“Pocket,” Katsuki whispered in a barely audible voice. Izuku slid his hands down the front of Katsuki’s legs, feeling the outside of his pockets for the outline of the phone. Katsuki planted his hands by his side. Izuku was still radiating regal power, and the blond was not about to disrupt the greenette from his search.

Izuku sighed, and the air rushed across Katsuki’s lips similar to a cooling summer wind. He reached around Katsuki, moving his head so his lips rested against the side of the blond’s neck along his pulse. His breathing quickened, Izuku was so close to his jugular. It left him feeling exposed and vulnerable, yet oddly safe. Izuku would never harm him, nor let anything else get the chance to.

He couldn’t say it was unpleasant even though logic demanded him to. Izuku dug his fingers into Katsuki’s back pockets, fishing out the phone from where it was safely tucked inside the fabric.

“Mom?” Izuku whispered quietly and calmly into the receiver while he was still resting against Katsuki’s neck. “Get to the Todoroki mansion. We have a change of plans. Need medical.” he delivered the information promptly, with little else.

Izuku hung up the phone and slid it into his own pocket for safekeeping. He had yet to remove the blindfold from Katsuki’s eyes. He didn’t want the blond to see the crumpled heap that was the number two hero; didn’t want him to see what he could do, didn't want his most important person to see the monster he could be if the situation called for him to be.

Izuku peered down at his hands for a long time. accessed the shaking appendages while ruby dripped from his nose and stained small palms. He stared at them while Shouto’s breathing staccato'd and shook. He gazed at them until the door to the dojo was kicked open by Inko and two members of the Seven Aces.

“Izuku?” Inko approached her son cautiously. Endeavor still hadn’t moved, and the three boys, one unconscious and two silently still in wake of the destruction. Inko waved her hand to the member with a blank white mask, motioning for her to check the battered hero.

Izuku looked up slowly. Red cascaded down his chin, pooling around his lips, his eyes unfocused and glassy.

“Mom,” he said as he swayed and then, to Inko's shock, fell. Inko rushed forward to catch and lift him and her eyes fell onto Shouto.

“Damn it,” she cursed. “Katsuki, are you all right?”

Katsuki nodded his head shakily but made no moves to remove the blindfold Izuku had placed onto him. Inko didn’t force him, it looked like whatever had happened had been gruesome.

“Okay, let’s get you out of here,” Inko prompted, lifting Izuku and Shouto into her arms and resting one on each hip, Katsuki holding onto the tail of her shirt. She exited the building briskly and gently deposited the kids in the back of a black van. The back seats of the van had been completely removed then they had remodeled the vacant space to resemble the inside of an ambulance. Immediately, two people in white masks took them and began to check them over for injuries. She turned to help Katsuki, who had followed her via a hand fisted into her shirt, into the back where he then sat silently.

Normally loud and confident, seeing Katsuki so… pensive and thoughtful rattled her deeply. She stepped away to reenter the building when Katsuki shrieked.

Inko’s head whipped back around, where Katsuki was pushing wildly against one of the White Cards—as the medical branch of the Aces were called—who was attempting to remove the blindfold. It stayed firmly affixed on his head even though Izuku was laying unconscious feet away.

“Leave it on him,” Inko ordered. The Card looked hesitant but nodded, anyway. Arguing with the Queen of Hearts wasn’t advisable if you wanted your shoulders and neck to stay attached to your head.

Inko strode with a purpose into the dojo. Thankfully, no one else was in the mansion at the time—at least, not that they had found. Inko had sent out a pair of Diamonds to check the entire house just in case.

Upon reaching her destination, she squatted next to a White Card wearing a mask split by a thick black line running from forehead to chin. The Card looked up at her briefly from overlooking the fallen hero before returning to her task, answering the unspoken question the Queen has posed to her with just a look.

“He’s stable. His brain waves are all over the place but physically, nothing’s wrong,” the Card said. Inko nodded.

“When will he be conscious again?” Inko mused.

“It will probably be at least twelve hours until he comes around.” the Card answered. Inko nodded, standing strait, ready to give out her orders.

“Station a Squad of Clubs around the mansion and another watching Endeavor. I hate to ask it, but I would like you to stay with him and act as a monitor for when he is about to wake. I want to be called back about a half hour before you think he will wake.”

The Card hummed their understanding and pulled a sleek black phone from the large pocket of their stark white lab coat. Inko left while they relayed her orders to the others.

“How are they?” she asked when she was seated inside the back of the van. A White Card with a regular, blank mask gently ran her hands over Shouto’s face, inspecting as she went.

“This one has a fever, a combination of exhaustion and most likely quirk overuse, along with frostbite, also most likely from overuse.”

“And this one,” jumped in the other Card, “Is suffering drawback symptoms. They will both recover quickly.” he delivered to her while gesturing to her son.

Katsuki sat silently next to the gurney they stretched Izuku out on. Inko’s eyes followed him as he swayed, his hand laced tightly with Izuku’s lax fingers. She was beginning to suspect that the two held more than just brotherly feelings for each other, but she figured she would let them discover those on their own time and nudge them in the right direction if they ever got confused. Not that she would ever admit to meddling, or any matchmaking.

The ride back to their apartment was swift and soon all of them were unloading into the tiny and cramped space. Only one card stayed behind to monitor all three of the kids while Inko settled down on the couch to wait out the phone call from Doctor—the White Card she had left with Endeavor.

Inko didn’t even feel like she got the chance to drift off before she was awoken, not by the harsh ringer of her phone like she had been expecting, but by crashes and the sound of someone choking.

“Izuku!” Katsuki screamed, shaking the boy’s shoulder wildly. Izuku was sitting up on the kitchen counter, where they had laid him so they could easily monitor him, his arm outstretched with vacant eyes and a blank face. From his arm stretched a twisted thicket of branches that had coiled around the White Card’s face and pinned them firmly to a wall.

Inko stumbled forward, planning to stop Izuku from killing a member of the Aces. She changed her plans when Izuku’s head snapped to face her, those dead eyes staring straight through her and daring her to try. She didn’t, she couldn't. It was as though she was receiving an order from an ancient and powerful ruler while she was but a peasant.

Katsuki crawled onto Izuku’s lap, swinging his leg over the other’s hips and straddling him. He cupped the greenette’s face with his hands and slapped his cheeks gently as if he were waking the younger form a light doze.

“Izu, snap out of it,” Katsuki demanded, butting their foreheads together with a thud. Izuku didn’t respond, but a thick fruit grew on the branches that was still pinning the card to the wall. Izuku ripped his arms out of the branches and picked the bright red fruit from where it hung, cracking it open between his hands with a swift motion.

Inko’s heart stopped. The entire world stopped spinning. Pomegranate. Inko started forward again, this time her limbs were swallowed by angry vines that shot from upturned tiles in the floor and rendered her immobile without causing her any harm. She tried to scream, to cry out, but petals and stems clogged her throat.

Izuku held up a side of the fruit to Katsuki. When the blond stared at him strangely, Izuku lifted the fruit to his own lips, sucking six seeds between his lips, the juice dripping like crimson from his lips.

He tossed the fruit to the floor and grabbed the back of Katsuki’s head, pulling the blond’s face down until his lips pressed against his own, sealing them together tightly. Inko watched in frozen horror as red juice trailed over Katsuki’s chin, an inkling of what she is watching coursing through her.

When Izuku finally let up the pressure holding him down, Katsuki gasped for breath, choking as the last of the seeds went down his throat. They stained his teeth red, and as his breathing leveled out, a vine wrapped around Katsuki’s neck like a choker, thick and brown with green intertwined in the natural pattern of pigments.

Izuku raised his hand to brush against it and bright orange marigolds and lilies sprouted from beneath his fingertips. The branch pinning the White Card decayed and freed the gasping person, letting them slide to the floor clutching their throat, focused on getting air back into their lungs.

Izuku rubbed the juice stains that had dripped down the column of Katsuki’s throat with his finger, gently following the trail to the hollow of the blond's throat, finally he fell forward and passed out, his companion catching him before he hit the bottom and cradling him to his chest with a sense of protection.

Inko fell on her face when the vines restraining her promptly disappeared. She scrambled to her feet and rushed to the counter, eyes wide in fear and a sense of unease creeping down her spine.

“Firecracker, are you all right?” she asked frantically. His eyes were glazed over, and his fingers hovered near his lips in shock. 

“Auntie, that was my first kiss,” Katsuki whispered. “Izu took my first kiss.” he spoke more to himself than her, the revelation somehow being important amongst the events that had just occurred.

Inko sighed in relief. Katsuki seemed fine, and it appeared she was right about their budding feelings for each other—no pun intended.

“Damn it,” she mumbled. “When Izuku wakes up, we need to figure out what just happened.”

Katsuki nodded. His eyes were still stuck staring out into space. Inko rubbed a hand down her face. Her phone rang, and she cursed the universe. Of all the moments in her life shitty timing had a hand in, this was by far the worst.

“Queen speaking,” Inko mumbled into the phone rubbing the bridge of her nose in a resigned manner.

“Half an hour.”

“On my way.”

Inko hoped to god that Katsuki and Izuku didn’t die—or, more likely, kill anyone else—while she was gone.

She drove to the mansion in a haze and got there only a few minutes before Doctor had predicted Endeavor would wake.

“How is he?” Inko asked, clapping her hands to the side of her face to wake up. The motion reminded her of what had just happened and she dropped her hands quickly, still on edge about the experience.

“Fine, he should level out any minute now.” The White Card showed no outward signs of fatigue, but Inko knew she had to have been exhausted. It was nearing three in the morning and a lot had just gone down.

When Endeavor did eventually wake up, an arsenal of quirks leveled at his face and several firearms aimed at his head greeted him. He, wisely, didn’t move.

“What do you want?” he asked, keeping his voice level. Inko had to hand it to the garbage fire, he handled pressure well.

“What do you remember about earlier today?” Inko asked pleasantly, with a polite and innocent appearing smile. Endeavor’s face crumpled before smoothing back out into a mask of indifference.

“Everything,” he plainly stated. Inko frowned. It would have to do, she supposed.

“Do you know who we are?” Inko gestured around her vaguely. Endeavor took in all of them, studying the masks that covered everyone’s faces except her own.

“The Seven Aces. A mob based out of America but that has a strong influence in Japan. I did a case on a few of you a while back,” he answered. Inko hummed in understanding.

“Then you know we are powerful, yes?” Inko confirmed. Endeavor nodded. “We have enough dirt to drag your name through the mud and bury you twelve feet in festering cow shit. If you don’t want that to happen, I have conditions.”

Endeavor regarded her cooly. When he didn’t respond for a long time, Inko could sense the Clubs getting antsy and trigger-happy.

“That boy, the one who did this to you?” Inko said. She watched as his face flickered and he struggled to reign it back to neutral. “We can bring him back whenever. We. Want.”

That seemed to break Endeavor. Instead of snapping up and attacking, he sank into the mattress of the bed they had thrown him on while they waited. He nodded once.

“What are your terms?” He said it so flatly and resigned it was barely a question.

And Inko listed them. They were fairly simple.

He would allow Izuku and Katsuki to visit Shouto whenever they wanted.

If anyone found out about this, Endeavor would disappear from the face of the Earth and they would drag his name through the most putrid shit known to mankind.

If he ever hurt Shouto again, Izuku would be free to do what he pleased.

The last one made Endeavor’s whole body convulse. She didn’t know what Izuku had done, but it concerned her. Why was the number two hero terrified of an eight-year-old? Sure, Inko had watched Izuku take out a squad of heavily armed men when he was four, but that wasn’t traumatizing to someone like Endeavor. Plus he was alive, wasn’t he? So what exactly had Izuku done?

Inko wrapped up the meeting with a saccharine smile and a promise to return Shouto by the end of the week.

When she left, exhausted, at nearly five in the morning she made her own promise to herself. Whatever happened from then on, she would do her best to keep her kids safe.

With determination in her heart and a need for sleep on her mind, she drove herself back to her apartment and collapsed into her bed.

Chapter Text

For the second time in 24 hours, Inko was woken by a scream. She shook the gauzy haze from her mind and stumbled into the kitchen as quick as she was able. Shouto had been left on the couch, after all the earlier excitement, while Katsuki and Izuku were still passed out on the counter top.

Well, they had been passed out on the counter top. Now, Izuku was sitting up squealing like a pig that had had its tail cut off and Inko was genuinely concerned that Katsuki might go deaf from the point-blank range.

“Izuku!” she shouted over the din. Izuku’s volume slowly died down to a high-pitched keen in the back of his throat and large watery green eyes met Inko’s.

“Mama, what did I do?”  he pleaded.

Inko’s heart broke. Izuku was holding Katsuki’s chin up and to the side, leaving the column of his throat exposed and displaying the brand-new set of flowers that was sprouting from it.

“Izuku, you need to calm down,” Inko shushed, while cautiously approaching the duo. Izuku’s powers tended to go haywire when the child was in distress, and she didn’t want a spear of bone lodged in her chest accidentally.

With bleary eyes Katsuki awkwardly slapped his hand against Izuku’s face, he let it rest against the other’s cheek and tilted his head so that Izuku was looking at the grumpy blond.

“Shut the fuck up,” Katsuki demanded. He let his arm fall and burrowed himself into Izuku’s chest, while trails of juice still stained his skin.

“Izuku?” Inko addressed. Izuku looked calmer now, probably because Katsuki didn’t hate him. “Listen, we need to get all of you cleaned up.” She suggested in a quiet tone, not wanting to disrupt the peace.

“Yeah,” Izuku agreed vacantly. He blinked and shook his head, responded with more vigor. “Yeah, yeah we do.”

Inko smiled. “I’m trusting you since Katsuki and Shouto are a bit out of it. I’ll go run a bath, but you’re going to have to make sure they don’t drown, alright?”

Izuku’s face steeled with a familiar determination and he nodded. “Of course!”

Inko softly smiled, her baby was so precious. She left to fill the tub, dumping a very generous amount of caramel-scented bubble bath into the water. Izuku preferred the floral one but Katsuki had a new, probably permanent choker because of the smaller boy, so Inko figured he could suck it up and deal with the substitution.

She let it fill completely before turning the faucet off and setting three fluffy towels on the toilet lid and one on the floor. When she returned to the living room, she was greeted by an adorable sight.

Izuku was kneeling next to Shouto, helping the swiftly-recovering boy into a seated position. Katsuki, who was still stumbling a bit, knelt on his other side, one of Shouto’s arms slung around his shoulder, aiming to add support even though he was barely able to stand himself.

“The bath’s ready,” Inko alerted them. Izuku nodded. “When you’re done, I’ll make you some hot chocolate and we can figure out what happened, all right?”

“Okay,” Izuku agreed. He then led the two stumbling boys into the bathroom, setting Shouto on the edge of the tub with Katsuki to hold him up before locking the door behind them for at least an appearance of privacy in the small apartment.

“Shouto, can you hear me?” Izuku inquired, as he knelt between the feverish boy’s legs. Shouto listed forward but tiredly nodded in an affirmative. Honestly the only thing keeping him up was Katsuki’s arm around his chest, holding him up so he didn’t topple over onto the tiled floor. “Is it alright if I take your clothes off? We need to take a bath.” The greenette asked the dazed older boy.

Shouto looked hesitant for a moment but eventually nodded. Izuku smiled brightly, the mega-watt stretch of his lips ultra-effective at point blank range, causing the dual haired child to blink away the spots in his vision. Izuku gently stripped off Shouto’s training pants and shirt, taking an article from himself for every piece he removed from the other boy, helping him feel less exposed about the situation. Katsuki transferred his hold on Shouto to Izuku once both boys were entirely naked and threw off his own clothing quickly.

The blond stepped into the warm bath water and wrapped his arms beneath Shouto’s armpits, dragging him backwards while Izuku lifted his legs over the lip of the tub, working together to transfer the young Todoroki.  Once the two were settled, Shouto’s head resting against Katsuki’s chest and nestled between his legs, Izuku gently slipped into the bath. He sat facing the other two, throwing his legs beneath Shouto’s and over Katsuki’s so his knees pressed softly against Shouto’s sides, caging him in for support without making the boy feel trapped.

Shouto let his eyes flutter close and focused on the pleasant feeling of Katsuki’s arms wrapped tightly around his chest, just the slightest of pressure compressing his chest softly and engulfing him, and along with Izuku’s knees gently pressing into his ribcage, he had never felt safer as far as he could remember.

They sat and soaked for a long time, letting the stress and high emotions from the night before wash away along with the physical dirt.

Eventually, Izuku reached for the bottles of shampoo and bodywash, snagging a fluffy rag from where it had been left on the edge of the bath for easy access. He dipped the washcloth under the bubbly water and then rang it out, dumping a glob of the vanilla-scented wash on the soft surface and rubbing it in until a light froth of foam settled over it.

He lifted one of Shouto’s legs off his own and held it above the surface of the water. Shouto hummed and leaned further back into Katsuki as Izuku gently ran the cloth over his ankle, swiping delicately across the bottom of his foot. Shouto huffed and squirmed slightly at the ticklish sensation, making Katsuki tighten his grip to make sure the delirious boy didn’t slip and drown.

Izuku washed the rest of him with just as much care, having Katsuki sit on the edge of the tub when Izuku had to reach his hips so that they weren’t submerged. When Shouto was done, Izuku washed himself quickly and then accepted the proffered child when Katsuki had to wash himself. Shouto was settled on Izuku’s lap, his legs wrapped around his waist and arms hanging over his shoulders, nuzzling his face into the freckled child’s neck and shoulder.

Katsuki dumped a handful of shampoo into his palm, cupping it to make sure the slimy liquid didn’t slip off and escape into the water. He gently lowered Shouto’s head into the water with his free hand to wet the locks, relying on Izuku’s supporting arms behind the dual-haired boy’s back to keep him from dropping completely when he was bent parallel to the water.

Katsuki massaged his fingers into Shouto’s scalp, combing out the multi-colored strands as he went. When finally, his head was a thick mass of bubbles, Katsuki rubbed his hands from his forehead to the back of his neck, slicking it down and making sure the soap wouldn’t drip into his eyes while Katsuki and Izuku washed their own hair.

Katsuki slipped forward so Shouto was supported between both boys, throwing his legs over Izuku’s. It left both of their hands free, and they washed each other’s hair with practiced movements around the mostly-asleep Shouto between them, content to stay as he was.

Katsuki returned his arms to their initial position around Shouto’s chest when Izuku stood to fetch the showerhead. He unplugged the drain before turning the faucet back on, testing the temperature of the water with his hand. When he felt satisfied about the level of warmth, he angled shower head at the wall of the bath and switched the water from the bath faucet to it. When it had sputtered out the residual air and cold water, warming to the temperature Izuku had deemed fit, the greenette turned the spray to Shouto’s hair. Katsuki helped him rub out all the suds, holding him up while Izuku then used the running water to remove all the soap from the rest of Shouto’s body. When the they deemed Shouto rinsed entirely, Izuku and Katsuki followed suit quickly before Izuku motions Katsuki to shut off the faucet with his foot.

Izuku stepped out of the bath first, grabbing a fluffy towel and wrapping it around his waist before patting Shouto dry with a towel of his own. He then tucked the towel around the boy’s chest, letting it drape over him like a dress that stopped at his upper thigh. Finally, Katsuki dried himself and then helped Izuku cart Shouto to the greenette’s room.

Shouto was still out of it, his face and chest flushed with the fever that was still raging, thankfully not at a dangerous level. Katsuki held him up while Izuku dressed him in a knee-length skirt (none of his pants would fit Shouto’s longer legs, he’s short okay!) and one of Katsuki’s loose tees to fit the other boy’s broader frame.

Katsuki slipped into shorts and a long-sleeved shirt that lived specifically at the Midoriya’s apartment for such situations, and Izuku threw on another one of Katsuki’s shirts and his own high-waisted skirt that fluffed down to his knees.

Hearing the shuffling quiet down, Inko knocked on the bedroom door to Izuku’s bedroom, calling out to the boys.

“Come in!”  one of them answered, granting her permission into the room that held the three.

She stepped into the small room, but she wasn’t alone. Accompanying her was a lean woman dressed in a black catsuit with a gun pointed at Inko’s skull at point blank.

Izuku and Katsuki jumped up, putting themselves between the intruder and Shouto, creating a protective wall between Shouto and the unknown variable they deemed a threat.

“Down, boys,” she purred like a lioness on the hunt, shoving the barrel of the gun further into Inko’s skull, causing her to wince at the treatment. Inko clenched her teeth but didn’t fight back, and that fact is what scared the kids the most. Inko would fight a mountain if it meant keeping them safe.

This lady was a threat. A very large threat. Izuku’s eyes darted over her, taking in her ensemble, her stance, her expression, analyzing her as quick as he could to try to come up with a plan to get them out of this.

Black spandex with built in leather padding. A utility belt, eight holsters and several areas with enough space to hide more. Black hair in a ponytail, to keep it from her face to preserve her vision, reaches mid back, a sign of vanity perhaps. A smirk matched raised eyebrows. Flair for dramatics, confident. Green eyes peered over a black upper face mask and finished off with sharpened canines. A hunter, no, a predator for sure.

Izuku glared at her with all the cold fury he could muster. Something told him that trying to use his shadow power right now would end badly, and just the thought of trying to stay in control made his head throb and limbs ache. After yesterday he wasn’t sure if he had the energy to be able to do much.

Katsuki growled from beside him, palms popping. Izuku didn’t move but stayed lowered into a fighting stance, ready for anything she may throw at him.

“Cut that out, kid,” the lady spat, her cocky expression being overtaken by an annoyed sneer. “If you fucking make a scene, I’ll shoot little ol’ ma in the head.”

Katsuki did stop his explosions, but his scowl stayed set in place and he was ready to launch at her should the chance arise.

“Listen, I only really want the flower one and the hero’s kid,” she drawled, she jerked her head towards her and the door in a silent command, “So get over here.”

Options, battle plans, and strategies were flying through Izuku’s head at lightning speeds. Shouto was semi-famous, but not much was known about his face, depending on her information source and amount, Izuku could have tricked the woman into thinking he was Katsuki had the blond not used his explosions.

Not that that would work, she would have them confirm their quirks as soon as she could, she was practiced in this sort of activity. Katsuki would have been killed, hell he might still be.

Inko still wasn’t fighting back, staring resolutely at the wall. She wasn’t scared what Izuku could see, she looked beyond pissed. There had to be a reason for that. Izuku had watched his mother take down a team of assassins on her own when they had been sent to kill her because of her status in the Aces. There was more to this than he was seeing, and he didn’t like it.

Izuku locked eyes with his mother. Her eyes flashed in a silent manner, not drawing any attention from the stranger.

Quirkless , she mouthed. Izuku snapped his eyes back to the weapons littering the woman’s body. She wasn’t using them as enhancers, she didn’t have a quirk. That would mean she focused all her time on technique, on how to fight stronger opponents, how to be a weapon without a natural one to assist her.

That’s why Inko wasn’t fighting back—this woman could beat her in a one-on-one, her own quirk wouldn’t be of much use against the stranger.

Izuku took an aborted step forward when the woman cocked the gun, a sinister smirk gracing her features.

“I don’t have all day, hurry up.” She commanded of the child, not a single hint of hesitation or emotion besides a vague disinterest, and possibly aggravation.

Izuku’s mind went entirely blank, adrenaline closing off all the circuits unrelated to reflexes and survival, focused on the scene around him. He supposed improvisation was going to be key in this encounter, to keeping them all of them alive.

“Shouto can’t move on his own,” Izuku informed her, with a shaky voice, playing up the child factor. Her lip curled up unattractively in a sneer.

“Then fucking carry him, brat,” she ordered as if the thought had never occurred to him. Izuku nodded tersely, hoping that his improvisation kept going as he hoped it would. He backed toward where Shouto was glaring weakly at the kidnapper, he tried his best to help himself onto Izuku’s back.

“I need Katsuki to help me,” Izuku alerted her. She didn’t seem happy but nodded tersely, nonetheless, plainly annoyed with the hold up.

“Hurry up.”

Katsuki lifted Shouto using his armpits like one would when lifting a cat. When he leant forward to position his arms, Izuku whispered into the blond’s ear.

“Use the choker,” he said, moving his lips as little as possible and keeping his head lowered, keeping the sound from traveling any further than the blond’s hearing range. Katsuki didn’t respond, but Izuku knew he had heard him, he always listened to Izuku.

When Izuku had Shouto’s thighs in his grip, he stood, swaying slightly when the larger boy’s limp weight slid backwards. He hoisted him and bent forward, grateful for the way Shouto’s lanky form draped over him and his mother’s strength training, otherwise he’d really be struggling.

“Alright, hurry the fuck up,” the lady sneered. She shot suddenly at Inko, hitting her in the thigh causing a muffled cry to edge past her lips and her leg to give out from under her, driving her good knee into the floor. Katsuki shouted in alarm and raced to her side, kneeling next to her helping her to keep her balance.

The lady motioned for Izuku to follow her, and he did. She, apparently, wasn’t worried about Katsuki (her first mistake) and didn’t do anything to hinder him, deeming him unimportant or a threat.

She led the two children outside and to a vehicle parked just outside the door to the apartment complex. “Get in,” she growled, gesturing with the gun at the back of a nondescript van. Izuku warily did as he was told. He still couldn’t use his shadow power and, while he was certain he could get away from her since she didn’t have the variable of an unknown quirk to factor in, he couldn’t guarantee Shouto’s safety in the condition he was suffering through.

For now, he would play along, and hopefully he could figure out what the fuck was happening while keeping them alive.

“Boss,” she reached up and tapped a piece of plastic sitting on her ear. Comms. If anything had happened inside, the woman had back-up. Of course, she had back-up. Why didn’t Izuku think of that? “Mission successful, heading to the rendezvous now.”  She belayed to whomever was on the other end of the connection.

Rendezvous? Izuku felt like his brain was coming back online, cogs whirring at impossible speeds in his head. He stepped back and let the thoughts flow, half-formed plans and out-of-the-box guesses rushing past him like rapids in a mountain river, running the statistics and details that may lead him to discovering what exactly was going on.

The woman didn’t say any more, she was sitting on a bench in the back of the van and keeping her gun trained on Izuku. She wasn’t taking her eyes off him. Understandable, really. And smart, too smart.

That was unfortunate. He had been hoping she would be arrogant about catching two kids not even in the double digits. Damn it. He decided that wherever they were going, they were valuable. Therefore, he could afford to be a bit lax with his focus—just the smallest amount—and test his theory he didn’t think she would hurt them, at least not permanently.

While breathing in deeply and calming his heart, Izuku let his mind blank once again. He closed his eyes and just felt. There was nothing at first.

Ah. There it was.

Every time Izuku tried to grasp at the presence that was impeding like a pleasant warm weight on the edge of his conscious mind, it slipped further and further out of his reach. Izuku eventually learned to just settle and let the feeling wash over him slowly.

He let the staccato beats of the angry, determined energy pulse and whirl around him. It enveloped him in what was unquestionably Katsuki, everything about the tentatively growing tether between them screaming of the blond.

Well, if he could feel Katsuki, Katsuki could undoubtedly feel him. As soon as the anger had washed over him, it had spiked with success and a gleefully malicious intent. Good, that meant the emotions were translating clearly, and Katsuki was aware of them.

So, it was emotions, huh? Izuku was at least right about the empathy part of the theory about the pomegranates. He hadn’t even been sure it would work when he had whispered to Katsuki, panicking and out of options in the heat of the moment, honestly it was a Hail Mary.

Thankfully, using the feeling—Izuku decided to call it a bond for simplicity sake—didn’t seem to eat at his energy. Hopefully, it wouldn’t have a detrimental effect on his quirk control, but as of right now he wasn’t sure about either.

The woman across from Izuku had settled in, though she was still vigilant. It was going to be a long ride, then. Perfect, it gave him time to plan.

Izuku mulled over the events of the night before, and all he could distinctly remember was keeping himself from mauling Endeavor—he had felt the power trapped beneath his skin, begging to burst and rip the fuckwad to shreds. Fortunately, his control was better than when he was younger, and he had been able to restrain himself to purely psychological damage.

Barely.

But holding back so much of that swirling darkness while active and angry took a toll on the small boy’s body. He would have to wait for a while to be able to use his shadow powers, with control, again.

The pomegranate had been a product of sheer desperation and needed reassurance. Izuku wasn’t used to being out of it, wasn’t used to not being in control. He hated that his mind had been throbbing in time with the gushing in his nose. He hated that his shadows caused spikes of pain so intense they fissured through his skull when called upon.

But he abhorred that White Card who had been so close to Katsuki when the greenette couldn’t protect him.

Half-delirious and running on instinct, Izuku had grown the pomegranate as a sort of last resort. This way, it didn’t matter who took the blond, what they did to him, or how long he was gone, Izuku would always be able to find him. On a base level—due to his quirk, Izuku supposed—he understood what the fruit seeds were supposed to do. But that didn’t necessarily mean he understood how to work them.

The back doors of the van were violently ripped open and suddenly Izuku had been thrown over the shoulder of a beefy man, all within the blink of an eye. Shouto meanwhile was being held more delicately in a bridal carry of another, and Izuku was glad they were taking his currently-fragile composition into account. Though, it was probably just for the higher price binging the young Todoroki in alive would garner them.

Izuku couldn’t fight as they were thrown on the ground in front of people awaiting their arrival donned in lab coats. Abruptly they were swiftly injected with a deep blue fluid from a very sharp needle, and Izuku felt the edges of his consciousness fuzz and dim. He felt the bond between him and Katsuki go haywire with panic. He felt, and then he didn’t. Everything disappeared from his awareness.

Izuku didn’t know how long he had been out, just that he was no longer where he had started. High walls surrounded him, painted black and detailed with vibrant whorls that glowed with golden light. Izuku’s head was heavy and throbbing, his tongue and lips swollen and pressing against aching teeth. His limbs were about as useful as a limp noodle and cotton had been stuffed into his ears.

A pair of smart polished black shoes stepped into his field of vision. Vague sounds pressed against the cotton of his ears, sounding garbled as if he were underwater. Izuku couldn’t move much more than struggling to blink, his eyeballs refusing to roll even slightly to see the person towering over him.

With a harsh kick to his stomach, and nausea roiling to the surface, suddenly the world snapped back into motion like a rubber band breaking after being stretched too tight. Izuku’s head spun as he vomited onto the floor, sounds bombarding his ears, crisp and clear, the smell and taste temporarily hoarding all his focus.

“Ah, there you are,” the person—a man’s voice—said blandly. Izuku shivered with a sense of unease, they sounded powerful. Izuku said nothing, and kept his gaze trained firmly on the floor.

“It’s not polite to ignore people when they speak to you,” the man said. Another kick slammed into Izuku strong enough to send him flying into the wall of the beautifully decorated room. Izuku shakily tilted his face up, taking in the man’s appearance as best he could with the low lighting and a spinning head.

Tall. Pressed Suit. Blindfold.

“What do you want,” Izuku gasped. His voice was flat and gravely, cackling like it was filled with TV static. It must have been a long time since he last spoke. A weight dropped in the bottom of Izuku’s stomach. He had no idea how long he had been here, or where hereeven was.

“Now now, there’s no need to be rude,” the man cruelly grinned. His teeth were a dazzling white, perfectly straight and polished, and they almost seemed to glow in the dark room. “It’s simple, really. I want you.”

A hundred different horrific scenarios instantly flashed through Izuku’s head. Before he could focus on just any single one, the man raised a hand.

“Oh, get that frightened deer look off your face. It’s nothing like that. I’ve been looking for you a long time.” As if that statement made any of this a better or more comforting situation.

“That doesn’t really sound much like a good thing for me,” Izuku snarked. His ribs ached and pulsed with sharp pain. The man could kick hard.

“Ooh, feisty,” the man chuckled. He squatted in front of Izuku, putting him at almost eye level, bringing that damned white grin up close and personal. “Perfect.”

“Do you know why you’re here?” he asked the boy curled in upon himself.

“Obviously not,” Izuku said. The man’s smile edged on dangerous, edged on a delusional hunger.

“Obviously. You’re here because you hold a power that I need.”

“Power?” Izuku arched a brow. He was subtly trying to grow roots into the floor, but they couldn’t penetrate the smooth, unblemished stone, no hope of success without obvious effects, and certainly not with how weak Izuku was now.

“Power,” the man confirmed. “A special power. The next evolution of quirks.”

“I’m sorry, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I wouldn’t normally tell anyone this,” Izuku’s captor admitted, settling himself to sit cross legged in front of the eight-year-old. “But you are instrumental in my plans, so you’ll find out soon anyway.”

“Plans?” Izuku queried, leaning back. The suited man nodded in answer, settling down further as if to tell the boy a story.

“Plans. See, as one of the first NeoGen, your power is still frighteningly strong. Right now, we can get so much accomplished.” If anyone would bother to ask Izuku later, he would have sworn the man had a gleam, daresay a sparkle in his eye as he spoke further.

Izuku hummed. “And who exactly is we?”

“Well, you, me, and the Church.” As if the answer to that question should have been an obvious one to the young boy.

“The Church?” Izuku posed the question with an air of confusion.

“Don’t tell me you hadn’t noticed you had a following of some sort,” the man faked hurt, his hand mockingly over his chest. “You even destroyed one of our scouting bases.”

The quirk office. Well, Izuku did have to admit that he hadn’t been completely unaware that some creepy fanatics tended to pop up around him. He hadn’t expected something to this magnitude, though. Hadn’t expected it to be a cult.

“What do you want me to do?” Izuku asked with a sigh as he pulled his legs underneath of him to mirror the man’s, fighting back nausea and black spots that overtook his vision, fighting to stay fully aware and functional.

“It’s simple, really,” the man said. He smiled too wide and cruelly. “All you need to do is simply relax.”

The man then pulled out a syringe the length of his hand and plunged it into Izuku’s neck, injecting him with a freezing concoction. Izuku’s body shivered and then collapsed upon itself, blackness overtaking his vision yet again.

This time he dreamt, or perhaps dream wasn’t the correct term for what he witnessed. He saw. Surrounding him were shadows inside a massive cave lit by softly glowing blue-green silkworms and gentle fluorescent violet blooms.

Piles upon piles of bones littered the floor of the extensive cavern. Izuku treaded towards them, his bare feet padded against the black stone and vibrant greenery erupted from his tracks. Everything that sprouted had a dull verdant glow to it that when combined with the illuminations from the silkworms and violet flowers cast the room into an ethereal light.

When Izuku brushed his hand along a bone that rested atop of one of the piles, clacking sounds filled the echoing room. The masses all around him were assembling themselves, calling on the plants that grew with vigor to complete them to hold their forms.

A legion of deathly warriors stared at Izuku in silence. Without beating hearts, and inflating lungs, the air was still and cold.

Izuku had never before been more at peace. He reached his hand to a skeleton that stood beside him, the cracked bone held together by larkspur and grain. Long fingers wrapped around Izuku’s own and pulled the boy to its chest. Izuku’s laughter carried out and rang among the hall, sending all the other warriors into their own macabre dance as the skeleton spun Izuku around on deft feet in a morbid waltz.

Then they danced, all the newly animated bones spun and twirled in response to Izuku. The greenette had no idea how long it went on for, just that it was ended by a vicious snarl sounding around the space.

A throne arose, massive and cut in stark angles and jagged flats, coming to a rest sat against the far wall. Izuku had missed it earlier with its deep obsidian visage with purple and crimson glimmering in its depths, a pattern of petals and bone draped across the top in intricately carved detail. Though what truly made it impossible to miss now was the colossal three-headed dog snarling at the foot of the seat of power it was, as if guarding the monument.

Izuku’s logical brain screamed at him to run, to abandon the dancing skeletons and to save himself. Instead all his instincts surged forward, like he was supposed to approach this beast, to reach this throne.

Something deep within his gut told him that he would be safe, that all would be well. That something was all that Izuku needed to risk his life and put it in the paws of the monster. Every step Izuku took echoed around the chamber, was once again still and frozen. The skeletons watched with hollow eyes and blank faces as Izuku got closer to the throne, waiting.

He was centimeters away from butcher-knife teeth, bared and dripping with saliva when he stopped and raised his hand like he had been taught to when first meeting an unfamiliar dog.

The beast sniffed at his palm with one of its three heads, hot breath fanned between his fingers and Izuku noted in the back of his mind how the dog’s nostril was larger than his splayed hand.

Its maw opened wide but before Izuku could panic and run, a rough tongue drowning in drool licked its way up his front. Izuku scrunched his nose at the sensation and laughed as the beast’s tongue nearly lifted him off the floor. It appears he wouldn’t be eaten today.

The head to the left nudged Izuku toward the throne, following the unspoken command, he greenette climbed atop the cool surface and relaxed into the surprisingly comfortable seat.

The cavern wasn’t so much a cave as it was a rolling plain made of stone with a roof on it. Pillars dotted the landscape, connecting the lower, smooth rock to the more rough-hewn stone of the upper. A river, massive and black, flowed in the distance and skeletons milled about the whole place. Vegetation sprouted from their bones and eerie blue and purple light lit the whole of the underground kingdom, aided by translucent blobs that bobbed around, whining and moaning. When one drifted to close to Izuku, the feeling of an ice-cold slime pouring down his spine shocked him. So did the flashes of memory.

Blue sky, red dirt, serrated knives, warm smiles, glaciers, fire.

When the thing passed, the feeling and the memories floated away with it. Izuku took a shuddering breath in realization of what it was, those floating lights were souls.

Well, that was a new development. He thought he just had dominion over bones and plants, apparently not.

The dog had lain beside him, and Izuku wracked his brain. He had no idea what its name was, perhaps he should give it one, at least for now.

“Fluffy!” the greenette shouted. The monster—newly dubbed—whipped a head around. “Your name is Fluffy now!”

Fluffy blinked at him before huffing laughter and returning to its guarding of the base of the throne. Izuku felt reinvigorated in this place, like he could use his shadow power without consequence, with perfect control as well.

Deciding to test his hypothesis, the greenette hopped down off the throne and stopped in front of a smooth disk that formed a platform in front of the massive chair. He held his hands out to the side and cloaked himself with shadow, it answered his call eagerly.

The darkness felt alive. It swirled around him like playful water and brushed with a soothing coolness over his skin. The souls and skeletons stopped and watched as Izuku stepped forward, dropping into a pocket of shadow, and squealed in delight when he popped out of the ceiling. He fell with laughter twirling in the air, before landing on the spongy head of a mushroom, bouncing back into the air as if on a trampoline, a cloud of spores wisping around him.

He rolled off and did it again. And again. And again. Until the whole patch of mushrooms was doused in fluorescent spores and smelled like decomposing tree bark.

He stumbled back to Fluffy, flopping on to its soft, thick fur. The beast made a noise of discontentment (most likely from the mushroom spores) but shifted so Izuku was cradled safely between its legs that curled to its side.

Izuku didn’t know if, or when, he had fallen asleep, but when he opened his eyes, he was in a small room lit by torches along the walls, the nausea and weakness slammed into him like a truck. So, he was back in the real world then.

“Welcome to the land of the living!” the man from earlier said standing in the entrance to the room, the heavy wooden door swung wide open and revealing a narrow passage beyond it.

Izuku didn’t say anything. He didn’t fight back—not that he could—when the man lifted him in his arms and started down the passageway.

“Right now, you’re drugged seven ways to Sunday,” the man said cheerfully. Izuku didn’t know how he didn’t run into the walls when they turned with that heavy blindfold over his eyes, but he kind of wanted to know. “So behave and act your part when you’re introduced.”

“My part?” Izuku’s throat scratched when he spoke, he coughed, weak but hacking.

“Yes. You’ve been worshipped as a goddess for quite some time now, so you’re going to be the fearsome but cute warrior.” The man spoke with an oddly cheerful demeanor.

Izuku looked down at himself. His clothes had been changed while he was unaware into a white romper with gold designs that overall, gave the impression of an extremely short toga. Gold bangles dangled from his wrists and ankles and jingled when he raised his hand to his ears to investigate an unfamiliar weight. He ears had been pierced, multiple times, and were weighted by studs and chains, the feel of hard and cold stone alerted him to the fact his feet were bare.

Fun.

“Change those damn flowers,” the man hissed, dangerous smile slipping from his lips like oil. Izuku raised the hand resting around his ear to his head, feeling the sharp points of the briars that hadn’t yet disappeared.

He had never really tried to change his flower crown before, but it seemed he had to do so now. He took a deep breath and focused, feeling pastels and big blooms emerge from the mess of green curls on his head. He found he couldn’t will away the thorns, so he concealed them behind velvety soft petals.

“Perfect,” the man purred, smile stretching across his lips again.

“What do I call you?” Izuku asked. He was too tired to be intimidated when the man’s gaze burned through the blindfold.

“Euryale.” You may call me Euryale.”

Izuku didn’t have time any to ask much of anything else before Euryale burst through a pair of gigantic oak double doors and Izuku’s vision was flooded by blazing pyres and floating balls of flames. The scattered torchlight in the hall looked as black as night in comparison to the lighting in the new corridor.

A cheer erupted from the mob of people gathered in the high-ceilinged room, coming from a long table that spread from wall to wall, covered in feast food. Euryale’s hold on Izuku switched from predatory to cradling, his smile turning soft and familiar, a mask of trustworthiness.

Izuku could still see sharp edges poking through the façade, though no-one else seemed able to.

“Devoted Acolytes!” Euryale boomed, gathering their attention, “After all these years, we have finally found the goddess!”

Izuku did his best not to wince when the shouting increased tenfold, briefly startled and very uncomfortable with the attention now directed at him. Euryale had exited the hallway onto an elevated platform that held a rickety wooden chair, and after staring at it for a long moment, Izuku blinked.

Was that supposed to be a throne?

Euryale set him down gently on the woven surface, with as much care as one would take for a fragile and precious object. Izuku’s face didn’t flinch, but he longed for the firm smoothness of the obsidian throne from his… dream? He wasn’t sure if it had been real or not.

When he attempted to call out to his shadows, none answered him. It was as if he was tugging on greased doorknob, he knew that his power lied just past the door, but he couldn’t get it open. His plants responded, though much weaker than usual. He could barely sprout a dandelion on his finger before exhaustion built like a pulsing wave behind his eyes, blood begging to burst out of his lungs, wanting to run from his nose.

Izuku was somewhat glad for whatever drugs they had flooded his system with. He could feel the prodding fingers of panic edging just outside his mind, held at bay by the gauzy fog that encased his thoughts.

The feast was loud and rancorous, raging on for hours, and Izuku, blessedly, wasn’t made to do anything but sit still and look pretty. After the seventh acolyte Euryale removed from the platform (he looked no older than Izuku, purple balls running like a mohawk down his head), Izuku was confident in his assumption that the blindfolded man was there for his protection. He barely glanced at Izuku, totally unconcerned with him, nothing more than something for others to admire but not approach.

Izuku was starting to wonder just how powerful these drugs were, that Euryale would completely ignore him as if he were no threat. They obviously knew Izuku had eliminated one of their posts by himself, when he was four. Granted, it had only been a handful of men, but it was a lot for an untried child.

Izuku soon lost track of time and wasn’t sure when his eyes had fallen shut but he couldn’t be bothered opening them. Eventually, he was hoisted bridal style and carried out of the room, with boisterous laughter and cheering fading behind them.

Soft sheets met his back before a something pricked the inside of his elbow. A familiar cold spread from the point and his arm cramped and tightened. He fell asleep like that, sprawled on top of silky sheets in a dark room encased in a soft golden glow.

The drugs made it so he couldn’t even feel sad.

Chapter Text

When Izuku eventually awakens, his limbs felt like they were filled with molten lead. They were sluggish and heavy and hot. Nausea built like a swelling wave inside his stomach until his whole mouth was flooded with saliva and bile painted the back of his throat. His eyelids were heavy and refused to open but Izuku could hear things happening around him. He could hear panicked voices swimming in and out of the underwater haze he was trapped in. He could feel hands shaking him, fingers pressing into his pulse and the pricking pain of needles sinking into his skin with every touch.

Eventually, the raging heat in his body slowly began to die down. He felt less like he was melting in the center of a pit of magma and more like he was covered in a weighted blanket in the summer, uncomfortable but manageable.

Sleep overtook him again, like the long limbs of a monster tugging him into the shadowy depths of the deep, keeping a solid grip on the boy.

Blackness with soft purple lights and glowing walls. Izuku opened his eyes and was greeted by the sprawling stone of the underground landscape he had dreamt earlier. Izuku ran his hand along the freezing, smooth stone, he was beginning to think these weren’t dreams.

Suddenly, ice tugged at him and filled every pore of his being. Izuku gasped and clawed at his throat when water clogged it and pain bloomed like explosions of cold over his skin. Water surrounded him, the rush of a current, lazy but strong, pulled him down deeper into the depts.

Air gusted over his face and Izuku hacked and coughed in retaliation. Izuku was dangling from Fluffy’s middle head’s set of jaws, draped over the black river he had seen in the distance during his first visit here.

The imposing dog set him gently on the ground, turning and leaning down so that Izuku could crawl his way onto his back. Izuku, limbs shaking and still exhaling water every breath, climbed on gratefully and buried himself into the soft warm fur that encased him.

Izuku turned to look over his shoulder as Fluffy’s massive paws carried them both away from the river. Women with lanky black hair and empty eye sockets stared back at him hungrily, half-submerged in the life-sucking water, beckoning him to return to their ghostly embrace. Izuku spat out the last of the water in his lungs before turning to face forward.

“Fluffy, who were they?” Izuku shakily whispered. The three-headed dog huffed but, obviously, didn’t answer. Whatever.

The women hadn’t seemed malicious, despite their attempted drowning. It had felt more like… longing. Like they wanted him to join them. Confusing.

Izuku burrowed deeper into Fluffy’s fur, enjoying the warmth. He would have to figure out how to get Fluffy to him when he was awake. He would have an easier time intimidating people that way, he wasn’t scary looking like Katsuki. 

When they got back to the platform that housed his throne, Izuku moaned in relief. The hard planes of the stone felt oddly comforting as he sat down, the regal power that hung around the throne like a cloud bathing him in confidence and calm. It was nothing like the flimsy dead wood that had been barely strung together that Euryale had tried to pass off as a mockery of a throne.

But something was different this time. Looking up, Izuku was greeted by the sight of a massive tree that curled and drooped over the back of the obsidian. The branches and leaves shifted and grew, reaching tendrils down closer to Izuku. The tip of a branch stopped barely a foot in front of his face, a pomegranate blooming and growing rapidly on the end causing Izuku’s throat to close and dry out. The last time pomegranates had been involved, he had kissed his best friend and, while Katsuki had clearly enjoyed it and was satisfied with the result, Izuku hadn’t asked permission first. It left him with a bitter taste in his mouth at the memory.

The pomegranate hung heavy and full, inches away from his nose. The branches had spiraled down the thick slabs of obsidian until they curled over the armrests and spilled onto the smooth disk platform that formed the base, the greenery forming a sort of half-shell over him that left him feeling encased and private while also out in the open.

When it became apparent that the greenette was not going to act on his own, the pomegranate split open on its own accord. The crack of the flesh breaking open echoed around the nearly dead-silent landscape, causing an anxious energy to emerge in the space.

The pomegranate seeds spilled over onto his lap, painting bare thighs a vibrant crimson. Izuku kept his gaze locked on the dripping husk, watching as an image carved into the inner walls was revealed to him in the flesh of the fruit.

A flower, one Izuku couldn’t remember the name of but he instinctively connected with Katsuki, was etched into the surface. Izuku has no idea what it was supposed to mean.

The greenette brushed some of the tree’s plumage out of the way so he could peer through the shrubbery at Fluffy.

“Hey, do you know how this works?” Izuku asked. The massive dog shook all three of its heads in amusement. It seemed Fluffy could understand him despite not being able to talk. So, he was just laughing at Izuku’s suffering then. Wonderful.

Izuku looked down at the mess of red in his lap. Shrugging and deciding you miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take, Izuku scooped up a handful with his fingers and stuck the dripping mess into his mouth and swallowed the seeds down with a gulp.

All he was left with for his efforts were stains across his mouth and chin and a terrible roiling in his stomach. Izuku quickly leaned over the armrest and hurled. When he was done convulsing, he shook in cold sweat for a moment, resting his forehead against a forearm that was draped over the armrest, while he let his body calm down and catch his breath.

Izuku didn’t know if the horrid reaction was from the seeds themselves or the fact that they were some sort of magic shit, but he did know he did not want a repeat experience. Ever.

Besides a puddle of red off to the side of his throne, Izuku was left with much the same he had started with. With a frustrated sigh, he gripped the sides of the pomegranate and pulled them closer to his face to examine them.

It hadn’t changed—the image was still the same, a spiky plant that looked like several birds’ beaks attached at the stem and flaring out in a mohawk. No clues were offered.

Izuku didn't know what it meant, Katsuki and him hadn’t had a chance to test the range of the bond before Izuku and Shouto had been whisked away.

Holy shit. Shouto.

Izuku choked on his spit. He threw the pomegranate husk out of his face, launching out of the throne and skidding on the polished stone when the juice from his lap spilled down his legs and slicked the floor beneath his feet. He had been so out of it he forgot about Shouto. Shit. He needed to find him immediately.

“Fluffy!” Izuku half-screeched upon arrival at the paws of the massive beast. Said beast stared down at him, amusement and tired exasperation easy to read on all three faces. “Do you know where Shouto is?” Izuku was frantic—desperate. He knew Fluffy couldn’t (or wouldn’t, he wasn’t sure) answer him even if he did know, but he had to try. He had no idea where his friend was.

Fluffy huffed and bent his middle head down so his eyes were level with Izuku’s own. The greenette stared into fierce, hellfire red eyes while his own forest green ones teared up and spilled over. Izuku held the monsters gaze for a long time and, eventually, his rapidly beating heart slowed. Ragged breaths he hadn’t even realized he was taking evened out and returned to normal. Salty tracks stained his face, muddying the red smeared across his chin and flushing his cheeks.

“Ok, I’m good, I’m good,” Izuku declared, voice raspy, not sure who exactly he was trying to convince, Fluffy or himself. He stepped back and ran his hand through his hair as best he could with the flower crown in the way in attempt to pull himself together.

The crown that still hadn’t morphed from those damn briars. He couldn’t ever remember them staying like this for so long at one time before. Ever. Even when he had been pissed for weeks when Shouto refused to use the anklet and let him help him, the thorns had worn out and returned to their usual pastels within a few hours at most.

With a sudden lurching in his stomach, Izuku fell to his knees. His vision blurred and his ears buzzed with a deafening white noise. When he blinked, he saw the ceiling of one of the gold-lit rooms. He shut his eyes and shook his head, opening them to sprawling stone again.

“I don’t want to go back,” Izuku mumbles. Being down here was nice. No one to bother him, a legion of skeletons waiting to do his bidding, and a badass dog. He would figure out a way to get Katsuki and Shouto here, his mom too, and then it would be perfect, his own world.

Reality, in all its jackass bullshit, snapped Izuku out of his head and into the real world. The greenette shot up, breathing heavily and eyes darting around like a cornered rabbit.

His whole being felt like a prey animal being hunted up against a wall, staring into the maw of a laughing predator biding its time, waiting to rip his flesh from his bones with sharpened teeth. Izuku shot up and fought the dizziness that followed rushing to his feet so quickly, trying to focus on the world surrounding him.

There were hands all over him, holding him down, a syringe waving and someone trying to bury it into his arm. Izuku whipped his hand to the side, backhanding the person away from him with a rush of power he had never felt before, flinging the form away from him.

Izuku watched in fascinated horror as the shadows sprung out from the low lighting of the room like living beings. They clawed at his control and begged to be set free. The greenette cast a sidelong look at the huddled cultists in the corner farthest from him holding various medical instruments in their hands.

Izuku let the shadows loose, free from his reign.

He wouldn’t admit to reveling in their silent (muted by the shadows) flailing. The distress and fear. Fear of him.

Okay, maybe he would admit to it. It did give him a power rush, but that didn’t mean he’d ever say it out loud. 

Izuku drew in a deep breath. The drugs were out of his system completely, probably what had woken him up to begin with. If the drugs were gone then maybe…

Izuku fell into a seated position on the floor, crossing his legs and feeling. He relaxed and dug inside of himself, groping around in the dark.

Bingo. Izuku brushed the last remnants of the drugs influence to the side like old cobwebs, releasing the gauzy plug they held on the bond. Immediately, Katsuki’s emotions floored him like a blow from a semi. Izuku fielded the intense flood as best he could before even begin to try and project some of his own.

Confusion, relief, and giddy excitement all hit one after the other in rapid succession. Izuku couldn’t feel Katsuki’s exact location, but he could feel his general direction. He guessed they were far though, so it might improve the closer they were. Hopefully.

The bond was still weak and, as soon as he removed the entirety of his focus from it, Katsuki’s emotions faded into muted background noise. Right now, he had to focus on getting out and finding Shouto, he could worry about Katsuki finding him later.

Izuku popped open the door and blended into the dark corners of the torchlit halls as he floated through them like a specter. While he was searching, he ran through his options.

Shouto was most likely kept alive and in decent shape. After all, his worth would be more if he was alive—both for ransom and hostage purposes. That meant that he probably wasn’t too roughed up. Maybe.

Well, that wasn’t necessarily true. The more he thought about it, the higher it seemed the probability of Shouto being hurt in some way was.

Shit, now he was freaking out. Shouto was fine, goddammit Izuku. Fine. He had to be.

Fuck, he didn’t even know if he was at the same place or somewhere else entirely. They had probably taken him to a separate location. Shit, shit, shit. The lady could have been a bounty hunter that grabbed the boys for different buyers.

Motherfucking dammit.

Izuku’s musing was cut short by a band of cultists rounding the corner in front of him. Izuku was in a relatively well-lit stretch of the hallway when they locked eyes on him and he didn’t have a chance to slip into darkness.

Izuku would like to point out sneaking into an overconfident hero’s house while said hero was asleep was a lot easier than maneuvering the labyrinthine catacombs of a lair belonging to the crazy band of people that had kidnapped you, after all they knew what to look for. With a sigh, Izuku turned on his heel and sprinted away as fast as he could. The cultists, they looked like kids, screaming and running after him.

What Izuku wouldn’t give to have Fluffy right now. He rounded a corner and crashed straight into the chest of—he looked up—Euryale. The man held a syringe in his hand and tried to plunge it into Izuku’s neck but the greenette blocked it out of instinct with a layer of shadow that sheathed a massive swath of skin with darkness. Izuku didn’t remember doing that automatically before.

Izuku’s mind, always running 100 miles an hour, often came to conclusions at terrible times. Now was one of those times. While he stumbled back from Euryale in attempt to distance himself, Izuku’s brain was sidetracked with where the mysterious power jump came from. It was decently obvious; his brain spit at him as he ducked a swing from Euryale and almost backed into the arms of one of the cultists that had chased him. It was the drugs. They hadn’t just sedated him, they somehow boosted his quirk.

Izuku smacked his palm over one of the cultist’s face, a bouquet of flowers sprouting from his hands and clogging the person's airway. They stumbled away from him, trying to pry the petals from their throat to get air into their lungs, fully distracted.

One bitch down, three to go.

Izuku hadn’t had much fighting experience besides sparring with Katsuki and Inko, and he couldn’t take Euryale on his own. He was bigger, stronger, and seemed like he had lots of experience. That was fine though, he didn’t necessarily have to beat him. Just outrun him.

Izuku, with a deep breath, sprung into the air. His agility had always been amazing. Plants erupted from the low ceiling and smacked into the two cultist pawing at him from behind as soon as his fingers brushed the stone, he hear Euryale growl as he struggled with the thick vines circling his limbs.

They wouldn’t hold out for long once Izuku put some distance between them. Izuku blasted off, stepping on one of the cultist’s face when he passed over them in retaliation for sending him into run mode instead of sneak.

Izuku couldn’t sense anything about the confusing maze of corridors. The stone was dead of plants and he couldn’t find any roots in the soil piled over top of the halls. No matter, this was an opportune time to test out the power boost they had injected him with.

Izuku tried to reach out with his shadows but was rudely interrupted by yet another band of cultists. He cringed when slimy arms encircled his shoulders, pinning his upper arms to his sides, effectively trapping him.

Izuku kicked wildly with his legs, trying to hit his attackers’ knees, groin, anything that would get them to release him. A shadow whipped out from the wall and encased the cultist’s head in thick darkness. They dropped him, clawing in vain at the suffocating blob, attention diverted for the moment.

Izuku stood from where he had fallen on the floor, conjuring a broad leaf to wipe away the slime dripping down his arms. He glared at the two cultists bracketing Slime Arms and doing nothing to help them sans staring and Izuku, gob-smacked.

“Move,” he growled. They did. Pleasantly surprised but still pissed at the whole situation, Izuku breezed past them. He stomped his way through the halls, trying to divide his attention between sensing people’s locations with his shadows and feeling for Katsuki.

The blond had gotten ridiculously closer since Izuku had first woken up. That was good. Hopefully he would get here soon.

Izuku was barely able to give Euryale the slip for the next hour, trying his damndest to just wait. Yeah, he had a lot of sheer power, but most of that was raw and unshaped. He didn’t know how to use it effectively without either losing control or completely exhausting himself from holding such massive levels at bay. His best option was to wait for the rescue team to arrive.

Izuku ended up back in the main hall where he had been put on display for the feast. Euryale burst in from a door across from him and Izuku wanted to melt into the floor from exhaustion. Before the furious man could do more than part his teeth to scream, the double doors were violently blown wide open.

A man in a three-piece suit, jacket draped across his shoulders and shirt cuffs rolled up his forearms, was flaming at the mouth. Literally. Smoke curled around his face and flame licked between his teeth.

“Absolutely horrible to meet you, asswipe,” the man said, lips yanked into a furious smile, “I’ll be taking my kid back now.”

Izuku sank to his knees, too tired to stand. His kid? Were they looking for someone else? Who was this—

Inko burst in just behind the mystery man, holding a gun and striding forward with a purpose. Her hair was pulled into a high ponytail, a phantom-of-the-opera-esque mask painted black with a gold crown over a red heart covering part of her face.

Well. Right people then.

“Mom,” Izuku croaked. Inko’s head whipped toward him and then she was sprinting across the room. A door directly behind the platform—the one Euryale had carried Izuku through before—opened to reveal three wide-eyed Acolytes. They were young, probably mid-teens.

They were dead before they hit the floor. Inko wrapped her arms around Izuku, the butt of the still-smoking gun digging into his back.

“Izuku, Izuku, oh my god,” she muttered hysterically. Izuku clutched at Inko’s shirt like a lifeline. She picked him up, cradling him firmly in her chest, and tried to inch around the firefight decimating the center of the room.

The man that Izuku didn’t know had lost his jacket and hat, curly black hair dancing in the wind created from his flames. Euryale’s blindfold was singed and falling off one side of his face, the smell of burnt flesh hanging in the air.

The flesh was singed and melting from Euryale’s face, leaving a mess of shiny skin dripping over the remnants of the blindfold.

With a yell, Euryale ripped the last bits of the cloth from his face and Izuku winced when skin ripped with it. The black-haired man blew hot fire from his mouth, the cloud billowing and encompassing Euryale.

Just before he was engulfed in the flames, Euryale looked over Izuku’s shoulder, eyes boring into someone behind him. Izuku was captivated by the black sclera and molten gold irises. Something about them was hypnotic, drew his eyes to them.

His body felt weighted down, pressing into Inko’s arms. He couldn’t lift his head. Then the flames singed and scorched Euryale, sending him crashing backwards with a shriek, frantically beating the flames down with his hands.

Energy slammed into Izuku, almost knocking the breath out of him. He felt like he had been slowly filling with lead. Izuku turned his head, trying to find what had caught Euryale’s gaze. He choked. It was a statue that had most definitely not been there before.

It was frozen mid-step, shoulders drooping and head lolling forward. It looked like it was on the verge of toppling into slumber before it had been encapsulated with stone. Izuku felt the air whoosh out of his lungs. Eye contact. That was—

Izuku grunted as Inko and him were sent flying backward. Inko’s grip on Izuku slipped and the second grader went skidding across the floor away from his mother. On the ground, Izuku coughed and rolled onto his back. He was met with tentacle-like arms that wrapped around his midsection and lifted him from the ground.

With a frustrated breath, head spinning and disoriented, Izuku slapped the side of the tentacle. The writhing mass of black was encompassed with flowers, the plants racing upward until they clogged the airways of his attacker like how he had done before. Izuku landed harshly on his feet and wobbled, fighting to stay upright.

No more than 20 feet in front of him, Inko was engaged in a vicious fight with another Acolyte. She had a gash in her thigh and a busted nose but was going strong. The Acolyte was in much worse shape.

Inko slammed the butt of her gun into the cultist’s head, grabbing the back of their hair and cracking her knee into their temple. The cultist stumbled back with a groan and Inko shot them between the eyes.

“Fucking bitch.” She spat and the glob of blood-mixed saliva splattered across the dead person’s cheek. She wheeled around, not even limping, as she frantically checked over Izuku.

“Why do you always get into these situations,” Inko muttered frantically, pressing his face into her collarbone. Izuku didn’t respond. With a deep breath, Inko hauled herself to her feet and grabbed Izuku’s hand.

“I can’t carry you anymore,” she informed him. Izuku glanced understandingly at the wound in her leg. “You’re going to have to run.”

“I can do that,” Izuku responded, trotting after her as they set off into a jog. It was a very fast jog, nonetheless. They had turned down two hallways and were almost to the door, if Inko’s muttering was anything to go by, when a wave of four cultist’s jumped out from the next corner.

Inko raised her gun, firing a bullet for each in rapid succession. One of them collapsed to the floor, blood dripping from their forehead. The other three were hidden behind a forcefield of some sort. Inko dropped into a fighting stance, but Izuku held his arm in front of her waist.

He had been wanting to test out his powers and this was a perfect opportunity. He knelt, placing both palms on the floor, head dangling between his shoulders.

He heard urgent shouting from his opponents, but they were too late. His crown morphed with a twist of movement from being primarily roses to having long, hand-length spikes of bone protruding at a 45-degree angle from his head. Briars crawled up their lengths, the roses forming the base.

A fissure pried open the stone flooring, smoky violet light and pure blackness wisping upwards with freakish cold. Even Inko was frozen behind him as he summoned, not a human skeleton as before, but a beast.

Claws scratched the edge, pulling a lithe, feline body behind it. Pitch black flowers wrapped around the bones of a jaguar. The cat was silent as it launched itself forward, crashing through the forcefield (that had since grown weaker) and tackled the Acolyte in the middle.

Izuku was desensitized to death, to a degree. He had killed several people when he was four and his power was related to summoning skeletons. But watching people, young enough to not even be adults, be ripped apart by a creature of your own making? Izuku held his hand to his mouth. He was fine, he just… needed a moment.

When their remains had been swallowed into a crevice of their own, Izuku and Inko moved on. Izuku didn’t send the jaguar back, and the beast prowled behind them.

“Mom, we have to get Shouto,” Izuku announced, the revelation falling over him again. He felt horrible, he kept forgetting his friend.

When Inko didn’t respond, Izuku stopped. Inko had fallen against a wall not far back from where he was, holding her side.

“Mom!” he rushed to her side, peeling her hands away. They came back red. “Shit,” he cursed. She didn’t even have the energy to reprimand him and that worried Izuku more than the gaping wound in her side. How had he missed this?

Another group of people rounded the corner, but these weren’t dressed in the flowing toga’s or cropped armor the cultists wore. Instead, they donned black masks, purple clubs painted over the top. Seven Aces.

Izuku waved them over.

“Queen?” the front man questioned, kneeling beside Inko. Izuku didn’t say anything. A lone White Card pushed their way to the front of the group, shoving the Club to the side and pressing their hands to Inko’s side.

“We have to move!” the card screamed. They motioned for the Clubs to lift the bleeding-out woman.

“We still have to get Shouto!” Izuku reminded futility. They couldn’t do anything with the injured Inko teasing death’s door. A frustrated whine whistling through his teeth, Izuku ground the heels of his hands into his eyes, scrabbling for purchase in his hair around the massive crown that had overtaken his head.

He needed to breathe, breathe dammit he commanded himself. His breath picked up, coming even shorter. This wasn’t working, and he was losing his control. The shadows around them were spiraling and drawing inwards like a booby-trap in the old adventure movies Inko sometimes watched on TV—the one where a wire is tripped and suddenly the walls are closing in, spikes waiting to rip them to shreds.

He stumbled backward, trying to distance himself from the cluster around his mom. He didn’t want to hurt any of them accidentally.

And then, suddenly, it was black.

There was a knock on the door.

“Get it, Katsuki,” Inko ordered. Katsuki slid off the couch and stomped to the door. Masaru was sitting at the table, cup of tea clutched in his hands, while Mitsuki was pacing the short space of the kitchen between the island and the counter.

Katsuki, warily, swung open the door. A tall man with curly black hair stood flanked by two women.

“Wow, you’ve gotten big, squirt!” the man said, ruffling Katsuki’s hair. The blond squawked affronted, swatting the hand away and retreating.

“Who the fuck are you!” Katsuki growled, lowering himself into a defensive stance and holding cracking palms at the ready.

The man looked over his head, holding his chest in mock hurt. “Inko! You never told Katsuki about me? How cruel!”

“Hisashi, shut up and get inside. You’re drawing attention.”

The man—Hisashi, apparently—sobered, face hardening into a neutral line. The women on either side of him stepped to flank the door before he waved at them to follow him inside.

“Spill,” Hisashi said, swirling one of the kitchen chairs to sit in it backward. He crossed his arms over the back and rested his head on them. Inko sighed but didn’t move from her reclined position on the couch. Bakugou opened his mouth to snap at him, but his mother hissed and capped him on the head. The expression on her face when he turned to face her had the brunt of his rage cooling and made him close his mouth with a clack.

She looked tired, like all of them, but also on the verge of... something. Like the next straw would be the one that broke the camel’s back. With a welt on the back of his head and his already short fuse made up of weathered hairs, Katsuki slammed his foot into the ground but silently stalked to his previously place at the couch by Inko’s feet.

“Izuku was kidnapped.” Inko explained the whole story, start to finish, while Hisashi listened with rapt attention. His face didn’t move, but the air in front of his face wavered, like a wave of intense heat was spewing from his mouth.

When she was finished, Hisashi stood. He slipped a sleek, caseless smartphone from his suit pocket.

“I have to make some calls,” Hisashi informed them, voice carefully, dangerously, blank. He floated down the hallway to Inko’s bedroom, shutting the door behind him without a sound.

Left in deafening silence, no one so much as stirred. Katsuki grit his teeth and clenched his fists, the minimalist nails chewed until they bled still managing to dig into his skin with the force of his fingers. Katsuki can’t believe he had let this happen.

Since, well, since forever, really, Izuku had been the strong one, the one that kept them safe. Katsuki had no doubts of his own strengths, of his own prowess, but Izuku was special. He was the only one allowed to walk in front of Katsuki, the only one not a mere pebble meant to be kicked out of his path.

Izuku was magic. He was sweet and kind, giving flowers to his teachers and emanating a natural perfume. He was vicious and cruel, bringing Endeavor to his knees in his own home. Nothing could stop him, wreathed in shadows and petals, making the world bow at his feet.

Except for this, when they thought they had been safe. Izuku’s power had limits, limits not touched before. It had rules and drawbacks just like any other quirk. Izuku was special but he was human and that fact, that short sentence, was the piece that toppled the tower—the one they forgot and didn’t plan for. All of them were to blame; Katsuki idolized him, Inko was blinded by his power, and Izuku himself had grown used to the thought of being unstoppable.

But that wasn’t true, was it? Izuku had been taken with Shouto. Inko had been shot. After the initial burst he felt through the bond last night, all he could sense was solid nothingness. It felt like there was a wall, one that had been thrown up quickly but sturdily to separate Katsuki from what he could feel just on the other side.

He felt his teeth whine as they scraped against each other. His knuckles and wrist strained as they clenched. With silent rage burning through him, Katsuki sat and didn’t move. He felt like a mine, his pressure plate stepped on and waiting for one false move, one thoughtless shift of weight, before he blew everything sky high.

Hisashi emerged from Inko’s bedroom, face cold. He looked like an avenging angel from hell; perfectly tailored suit closing over a burgundy dress shirt, stylish but practical boots as loud as stalking panthers as they padded across the polished wood of the floor. Coal black hair curled like the smoke from a waking volcano, lava building in its depths and lying in wait to destroy everything around it. Flames licked at his mouth, tendrils dancing up his cheeks and mixing with the yellow-orange-red of churning eyes.

Katsuki’s rage muted to a dull background din as he followed Hisashi with his eyes. It was like watching molten rock slowly burning a path over the earth, slowly moving forward with the inevitability of a force of nature. When those burning eyes shifted to focus on Katsuki, he felt like he was being burned from the inside out, locked in the path of a raging fire.

“Tell me more about the pomegranate,” Hisashi demanded. Katsuki’s tongue felt heavy in his mouth, pressed against his teeth and tasting like ash. He couldn’t talk like this, his throat clogged with smoke.

Inko threw a shoe lying by the side of the couch at Hisashi’s head. It smacked against his cheek, undignified, and flopped to the floor.

“Stop scaring him, damn it,” Inko grumbled, “Control your murder eyes, Hisashi.”

Blinking, the embers dancing around him cooled and vanished, returning the crushing pressure in the room to its regular levels. Hisashi shook his head.

“Sorry, it gets out of hand sometimes,” he apologized, laughing. Katsuki shook his head like a dog dispelling a flea from his ear. He was Katsuki fucking Bakugou. He doesn’t get intimidated.

Except for the fact that he undoubtedly, most definitely does. He was intimidated by Hisashi’s molten heat, he was intimidated by the lady that had taken Izuku and Shouto, he had been intimidated by the men that had stormed in the testing room at the faux quirk office.No, he—

Shit, he was crying. Tears slid down his cheeks silently before his chest got the memo and started heaving. He wiped furiously at his face with his palms, curling in on himself and trying to hide, to hide the weakness from the adults. Oh god, they would think he couldn’t handle himself, that he was a baby. They would think he was weak, that he—

There were fingers digging into his shoulder, pulling him roughly to his feet and dragging him toward the door. Bakugou couldn’t hear much of anything past his own heaving breaths, but he could hear the whispered threats in his ear. His mom had yanked him out the door and was yelling at him, berating him for crying when Hisashi just asked him a question. She capped his head with her palm when he didn’t respond to her.

“Are you even listening to me, you little shit?” she sneered, baring her teeth. Katsuki couldn’t speak, his throat occupied by rushing air, vocal cords protesting in an inconveniently timed strike. They got so much abuse, he wasn’t surprised they gave out at some point.

He was panicking and it was making his thoughts wander. His mom hated when he cried and there was always some sort of humiliating punishment if he did. She spouted off justifications like preparing him for the real world and toughening him up. He didn’t want that. Hisashi was scary but really, really cool and he didn’t want to be forced to stand on his hands for an hour in the corner in front of him like he had last time he cried in front of someone.

The front door burst open, Inko angrily hobbling on a single crutch through the opening. The lines of rage burned into her face scared Katsuki half to death. She was so mad. It was his fault, wasn’t it? He needed to go; he couldn’t face Auntie Inko being that utterly pissed at him. Wheeling on his heel, Katsuki ran.

He heard shouting from behind him, but he didn’t slow down. He charged forward, ducking into side streets and alleyways he explored with Izuku. A soft hand fell on his shoulder after he had made it about a block, and Katsuki, more from reflex than anything, wheeled around and blasted the owner of the hand in the face.

Burning flesh, and roasting caramel. Katsuki shook, clutching his wrist in his hand. He stared down at the calloused palm that had just detonated, eyes blurred with tears. His breath came in ragged, icy shards piercing his throat and ribs protesting the frantic inflation of his lungs.

He hadn’t had the gloves on. The person’s whole front was singed, the skin ripped from the face and leaving pulsing flesh and oozing fluids to clutch desperately to cracked bone. Katsuki stumbled on his feet and fell into the wall of the alleyway.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no—

Katsuki’s head slammed into his knees as he curled up against the wall, fingers ripping at his hair. The smell of the nitroglycerin floated like wrapped candies around the area, mixing with the burning stench from the body. It smelled like a backyard barbecue with dessert set out.

The thought forced images into his head he wouldn’t ever unsee. The body laid out on a platter, Izuku and him digging into it like it was a pig laid out with caramel balled in its mouth instead of an apple. Katsuki leaned to the side and vomited. He needed to—he needed to focus.

He was still hyperventilating. He couldn’t think. Nothing was working. His heart raced like a purebred racehorse galloping the last stretch toward the finish line. Then a thought struck him.

He had been out here alone, right? He didn’t have any adults with him, and Izuku had just been kidnapped! Who’s to say this person didn’t want to take him too!

Katsuki laughed. At first, it was just a small exhale lost in the haphazard randomized rhythm of his breaths. It built and built and finally burst from his chest until he was smiling, his eyebrows pitched together as cheerful, cracked, crazed sound bubbled up from his throat until he couldn’t suck in any breath.

He was fine. He had been justified. He had a reason to kill the person. He didn’t need to freak out.

Then, like a needle piercing the thin rubber of a balloon, a kid traipsed around the corner of the alley. The shaky defense Katsuki had built to justify what he did to himself crumpled and shattered on its sand foundations. Katsuki’s breath caught in his throat, eyes wide and tearless. Crimson eyes darted over the newcomer at lightning speed, trying to make an assessment around the flight or fight reflex that kicked into action inside his brain.

Purple hair that stood up like the kid had stuck a fork into a toaster, and heavy bags under deep violet eyes. They looked bored and tired even as they stepped over the singed corpse.

“What’s your name?” the kid asked. He squatted in front of Katsuki’s balled-up form. Everything about him seemed tired, his voice dripped with sleep deprivation and the kind of bone-deep exhaustion that comes from the mental, not the physical.

Katsuki didn’t answer. Couldn’t, really. He opened his mouth to speak, but he had lost his voice.

“I’m Shinsou,” the kid introduced himself. Katsuki’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline.

“‘Ou er—” wind whined in his throat and he coughed when that’s all that managed to eke out. You’re Hiro’s kid.

Just because they have the same last name doesn’t make that true though. Katsuki berated himself for even trying to express the thought out loud, but they did look an awful lot alike.

“Why don’t we get you home, yeah?” the purplette suggested, urging the blond to his feet. Katsuki only went willingly because he wanted to be gone. Wanted to be as far away from here as possible. When they stepped over the alley, Katsuki pointedly did not see the phone lit up with a picture of a teen, the contact name Pumpkin Pea, messages lighting up the phone screen asking when to be picked up from soccer practice and band rehearsal. He did not see the ring wrapped around the person’s finger. He did not see the spilled contents of a convenience store bag spilled over the ground; chocolate bars and a card.

And Katsuki most definitely did not see a small red light blip out of existence or hear the whine of a shutter as it spiraled close.

When they got back to the apartment, Mitsuki was nowhere to be seen, Masaru missing as well. Katsuki couldn’t look up, couldn’t meet anyone’s eye. He felt dirty, wrong, like an abomination. His emotions were all over the place, adrenaline mixing with fear and shame. The crash was starting to set in, everything feeling heavy and overwhelming.

Mitsuki was leaning against the kitchen counter, nursing her cheek with an ice pack. The smell of smoke lingered in the air and it made Katsuki choke, mind not totally removed from the body he had just left behi—

Holy shit, they left the body in the alley.

“Shinsou—“Katsuki rasped, throat sore, “body, we.”

“Yeah, I got it,” the purplette muttered. He kept his palm pressed into the small of Katsuki’s back—and when had that gotten there? —while he lifted his head to address the fuming adults. The tension in the room felt like a solid wall, physically blocking Katsuki from taking a step, but Shinsou spoke unbothered with a slight bored drawl.

“Hey, pops,” he tilted his chin like he was motioning to the door, “We have a problem.”

“We have lists of problems, you’re going to have to be more specific Hitoshi,” Hiro snapped. Well, at least Katsuki had been right about Hiro being his father. He had never seen the informant so irritated, his usual carefree attitude buried underneath nerves and stress.

“A body.”

There was silence. Hisashi waved a hand toward the door and the two women slid across the room like rolling fog, disappearing out the door. Shinsou pressed his palm harder into Katsuki’s back pushing him farther into the house.

Katsuki went passively, still a bit in shock. When Mitsuki tried to step after him, Inko slammed her crutch into the counter in front of her, glaring at the blond woman.

Katsuki didn’t notice too much, he just let himself by guided to Izuku’s bedroom and tucked underneath the covers by the purple-haired boy.

“I’m not tired,” Katsuki said, “I don’t need to sleep, I need to help.” He tried to push himself up, but his arms were filled with lead and his head felt like it was stuffed with cotton.

“You don’t want to sleep?” Shinsou asked, tilting his head.

“N—”

“Sleep.”

And suddenly, it was black.

Chapter Text

When Shinsou came back out of Izuku’s bedroom alone, a collective sigh of relief flew from everyone’s lips. When Katsuki had walked back in the door, it had been heart wrenching. Bloodshot eyes, shaking, calmed but stuttering breaths, all leaving bold, brash, and confident Katsuki shivering and staring with wide eyes at the ground in front of his feet. Katsuki had always hated people touching him, besides a select few, and he hadn’t said anything about Shinshu’s hand on his back, hadn’t even noticed it.

When Mitsuki tried to step toward her son, lingering anger smoldering like embers in her eyes, Inko had almost lost it. If Hisashi hadn’t physically restrained her, Inko would have pummeled Mitsuki with much more than a single solid haymaker to her jaw.

She couldn’t believe how she missed it. How Katsuki had always acted like he was walking on eggshells around his mother, always panicked with wide eyes whenever he said something was hurting, trying to backtrack and cover up what he said with a joke. How he never stopped training unless Inko threatened to bench him for a week, always pushing himself further than was safe. How he didn’t seem to listen to his emotions or his physical limits, as if he didn’t acknowledge they existed.

It made sense. Everything Katsuki did was centered around his inability to admit weakness and show emotion. His need to be the very best. Inko suspected the only reason Izuku was allowed in front of him was because Izuku’s power was so unfairly strong that Katsuki didn’t even count him as competition.

Shit. He had just watched his closest friend and his only other friend get taken from his arms. Literally. Right after then this happens? Besides that, what exactly did happen while he was gone? Katsuki just ran out moments before Hiro had arrived with his kid, and then the boy had disappeared, remerging with Katsuki ten minutes after he had left.

Inko asked the young boy and Shinsou simply responded with an even tone, “He killed someone.”

“What?” Masaru muttered looking close to a mental breakdown.

“He did what? I’ll fucking k—” the blonde woman started to get louder the further she spoke, causing what little remained of Inko’s patience to thin even more so.

“Mitsuki,” Inko smiled, her jaw ticking, “If you continue that line of thought, I will rip your intestines out and boil your teeth in your blood while you bleed out slowly in the dirt.”

Sufficiently cowed, Mitsuki resigned herself to being as involved as a potted plant for the rest of the conversation.

“Yeah,” Shinsou said, side-eyeing Mitsuki in the sassiest display of silent disapproval Inko had seen on a kid, one not even in the double-digits. “I found him against the wall of an alley. There was a body in front of him, entire face and upper torso completely messed up. Skin exploded off.”

“How can you talk about this so calmly!” Masaru shouted, sending the chair he was sitting in clattering backwards as he stumbled to his feet, a ball of nerves about to reach their limits. “You’re just a kid! How aren’t you bothered! Th—”

“Mister, what’s your name?” Shinsou interrupted. Masaru’s angry tirade cut off with astonished silence, he could do no more than blink at the kid.

“That—”

“Sit down,” Shinsou growled. Masaru slid into another chair at the table since he had knocked his own into the wall. “And shut. Up.”

Mitsuki wisely remained silent throughout the exchange.

“As I was saying,” Shinsou continued, bored drawl replacing his temporary icy rage, “He killed a person. Didn’t look close enough to tell the gender but they seemed to be a normal person. Probably just wanted to help a lost kid out.”

“Shit,” Hisashi cursed. He sank into his seat and buried his head in his hands. “Katsuki’s gonna be so messed up when he finds out.”

Shinsou nodded in agreement with the older man. “Yeah. It didn’t look intentional either. Imagine that; you’re first kill being an innocent and accidental.”

“Hitoshi,” Hiro warned, his voice quiet and stern. Shinsou’s face broadcasted detached apathy and his stance was relaxed; muscles loose, hands in his pockets, weight shifted to the side. But every part of him seemed carefully placed, practiced. Like he had rehearsed and rehearsed and rehearsed so that he could appear unaffected when he really, truly, was.

“Anyways,” Shinsou barreled on. “Katsuki was kinda messed up. He was laughing like a Chucky knock-off when I found him.” He shrugged at the end of his briefing.

Inko had never met Hitoshi before. She knew Hiro well, having worked with him a long time, but Hitoshi had never been brought up. Understandable, given the hazards of their jobs. The less people knew, the less they could give up. But she had no idea what the kid had went through. She knew both Katsuki and Izuku had been through a lot in their short time on the earth and had been somewhat desensitized to death and murder; Izuku performing it, Katsuki witnessing it (Katsuki wasn’t adjusted to doing it at all by, the act falling to Izuku thus far). Despite the two children’s’ obvious differences from their peers, they seemed mostly normal and carefree, like children were supposed to be.

This one though. This one you could see it. All over him. It was written in the way he held himself, with complete control over his facial expressions. The way his eyes darted around and took in escape routes and weapons and access for any potential threats. He had been through something—multiple somethings—that had left him like this.

He was eight.

Inko shook her head. Now wasn’t the time to get upset. She needed to focus.

“Alright, we need to make sure we take care of him when he wakes up,” she said, “But right now we need to focus on hunting down Izuku.”

Hisashi stood up and ran his hands through his hair, trying to get himself back under control, a sound came as Hiro cleared his throat and filled the silence.

“So, I’ve been trying to infiltrate the crazy cult group that made that fake quirk office since you told me about it, right? Well, I haven’t actually managed to get in which is aggravating, but I have found out some info on them.

“They believe in something called NeoGen? It’s apparently a new generation of quirks that have hella power.” The more he talked, the more it seemed like Hiro relaxed, the tension in the room shifting from dealing with a child’s emotional baggage to the stress of a hunt, this was by far more his element. “Izuku was the center of this NeoGen thing—well, they didn’t know it was him, but they somehow identified his power. Him and one other one, uh, they called her Ares or something? Anyways, they are the main concerns for this group of crazies.”

“Some blabbermouth I cornered a while back spilled the beans, said that they are trying to make a drug to unlock the full potentials of the power. I don’t know whether that’s true or they’re just trying to make a quirk booster. Either way, it’s dangerous, and a real problem.”

“I have a rough idea of who their main recruiters are, but otherwise nada. No idea where they are located or what their goal is, besides locating these NeoGen kids and boosting their power. I’ve got nothing, absolutely nothing.”

“Shit,” Hisashi muttered under his breath, he tapped his fingers into the chair back and then stood strait, smoothing out his suit.

“Alright. Hiro find information. I’m going to make some calls and get a strike force, so we’re ready when you find out where they are. Inko, try to make sure you stay off your leg as much as possible and for the love of god,” he looked at her with weary desperation, “look after Hitoshi and make sure Katsuki doesn’t blow the house up when he wakes up.”

Inko nodded in concession, soon a knock on the door startled everyone, even Masaru who Shinsou had released his hold on a while back. When Hisashi warily pressed it open, it revealed the women he had sent out to deal with the body.

“Hey,” Hisashi said, much more at ease swinging the door open wide.

The women’s bodies fell forward and thunked against the ground, massive holes ripped out of the centers of their backs. Hisashi leaped backwards, heat ripping from his mouth, but he was sent flying across the room by a massive fist slamming into him.

Inko used her quirk to draw her gun to herself, leveling it at the beast-like man charging through the doorway and firing off shots in quick succession. Mitsuki shrieked and ducked down to hide behind the kitchen island, leaving Hiro attempting to duck out of the way of a second assailant, this one small and lithe and armed with blade-like limbs that reminded Inko of that old movie about some guy named Edward.

Her bullets were bouncing off the beast-man without so much as scratching him. When the bullets ran out, Inko scoffed at the gun—offended—and chucked it at Scissorhands. The momentary distraction it provided gave Hiro enough time to hook his arms under Scissorhands’ armpits and kick their knees out, causing the assailant to fall to the ground, locking his forearms over their neck and sitting on their arms, efficiently subduing them.

Inko turned back to where Hisashi and beast-man were fighting. Hisashi had dug himself out of the tangle of broken bookshelves by the tv but wasn’t attacking. Inko appreciated his concern for her apartment, but he really needed to get his ass in gear.

Hisashi, having not survived in his profession for so long on luck alone, did exactly that. He waited until beast-man had swung at him—a heavy haymaker with no control—before darting inside the attacker’s range. Hisashi was a tall man, but he only reached beast-man’s chest. Inhaling, he blew yellow-hot fire in a controlled wave of heat that licked up the man’s chest and curled around his shoulders and neck, searing flesh as it went.

Screaming, the large body fell to the floor, the smell of barbecue and burning hair filling the small apartment. Before the sprinklers could begin to go off, Mitsuki tossed Hisashi the fire extinguisher that lay hidden underneath the sink.

“You live like this?” Mitsuki asked Inko who was hobbling over to retriever her gun.

“Like what?” Inko responded aloofly.

“Your kid gets kidnapped, another kid kills someone, people break into your house and you almost set said house on fire trying to get rid of them,” Mitsuki yelled, gesturing wildly. “What the fuck? How the fuck did I not know about all this?”

“Because you’re immature and have anger issues,” Inko said breezily. She hobbled over to where Hiro was still pinning down a thrashing Scissorhands.

“Alright, bitch,” Inko said, squatting with her injured leg straight out to the side, “Who are you and why are you here?”

“Fuck you,” they said, spitting. Inko watched the glob hit her foot, staring for a moment, before smacking their face with the gun.

“Let’s try that again. Hiro?”

“Who are you?”

“Malia Heart.”

“Who sent you?”

“Black Bullet.”

Hisashi drew in a sharp inhale, stalking forward. He stood next to Inko and the lowered woman held onto his pant leg for extra balance. “Black Bullet has been trying to take Seven Aces down for months. I didn’t think they would be bold enough to send anyone after me, especially these useless shitstains.”

Hiro’s face darkened into a deadly glower. “What is the rest of the plan?”

“Zoya sneaks in the back window and grabs the kids.”

“Shit!” Mitsuki swore, barreling into Izuku’s room, Hisashi hot on her heels. What they found was a large woman on the floor nursing a gigantic burn on her thigh—a thigh missing a large chunk from it. Katsuki was sitting up on the bed, breathing hard with widened eyes. He must have made the explosion during the fight and that’s why they didn’t hear it.

“Who the fuck, how the fuck, why the fuck,” he snarled, glaring at the intruder sprawled on his floor. She opened her mouth but Katsuki cut her off. “If one sound comes out of your malformed ugly smear posing as a wannabe mouth, I’m actually going to dismember you, painfully, with explosions.”

The lady snapped her mouth closed, sharp enough one could hear her teeth clack together. Katsuki lifted his head to glare at Shinsou, who had just entered the room, but left his hand raised. The woman shifted and Katsuki’s hand popped, making her freeze in place.

“Hey, purple freak,” Katsuki snapped at the fellow kid, Shinsou hummed raising a brow in response. “We need to fucking talk.”

“Feeling better?” Shinsou asked.

“Fucking yeah, but then this bitch busted in.” Katsuki stopped to look over Shinsou at Hiro and Hisashi. “Care to get her the fuck out?”

“Uh, yeah,” Hisashi muttered. He had known Katsuki for all of maybe a few hours, during which Katsuki was either crying, missing, or panicking. This change to aggressive vulgarity surprised him. Of course, when he had tried to blow him up upon first meeting, it should have been a big clue as to what the boy’s usual default personality setting was.

Hisashi dragged the woman to the living room while Hiro shut the door behind them. Shinsou stood with his arms crossed and waited for the door to click shut, then turning to the angry blond on the bed.

“If you do that freaky mind shit on me again, I’m going to blow your fucking face off.”

Shinsou raised a brow. “Like you did to that person trying to help you earlier?” 

“Shut up,” Katsuki muttered. He looked at the ground. “It was an accident.”

Shinsou sighed. He climbed onto the bed, ignoring Katsuki’s squawking. “Yeah, I know.”

Shinsou still remembered his first kill. It had been an accident too.

“Wanna talk about it?” Shinsou asked. Katsuki stared back at him flatly.

“Fuck no. I just met you, you fucking bridge troll. Besides, Izuku kills people all the time, this is nothing new.”

“Yeah, but you haven’t done it before. It’s different.”

Katsuki was silent, and Shinsou knew he was right. He also knew it was better to talk about it then to let it fester. He was also aware that he needed to take his own advice.

“I can tell you something about me first?” Shinsou suggested getting a scoff from the other in response.

“I don’t care about you, freakshow,” Katsuki growled.

“Okay, here’s the deal,” Shinsou snapped, wheeling on the blond. “I don’t know if you’re always this much of an asshole or if it’s the trauma talking, but you don’t get to call me a freak when you don’t know anything about me, Blasty.”

Katsuki blinked once, twice, before a snarky smirk over took the lower half of his face. He looked… excited. Sadistic excitement, but, excitement nonetheless.

“Oh? And what are you going to do about it? How are you gonna make me shut up?” He taunted the purplette, leaning forward and baring his canines in challenge.

“You really think I can’t?”  a purple brow raises in response, challenge accepted.

“No—”

“Gotcha. Now shut up.” Katsuki’s mouth snapped closed. “Lay down and relax.”

Shinsou sat himself at Izuku’s desk, pulling out a spare piece of paper and a pencil and dragging the graphite over the blue lines absently. Slowly, he released the blond from his hold, pleased when he didn’t move to attack him.

Looking up from his sketch, he noticed Katsuki’s eyes were open, but they were staring up in contemplation at the ceiling. He looked like he was thinking hard, and deciding it was best not to disturb him, Shinsou kept sketching.

It could have minutes, it could have been hours, but eventually the peaceful—a few muffled screams from the living room aside—the silence was broken.

“Why did you come get me?” Katsuki asked quietly. Shinsou spun the pencil in his fingers, leaning back in the office chair.

“Because I figured you were going to be a mess,” Shinsou said bluntly. When Katsuki launched up like an angry cannonball, the purplette side-eyed him, unimpressed. “I was too, after the first time. If you aren’t, there’s something wrong with you.”

Katsuki remembered the first time Izuku killed anyone and the way the smaller boy had cried into his shirt. It made sense to be upset.

It made sense. Goddammit, Katsuki. It made sense. He can be upset. It’s normal. It’s good even. This isn’t a weakness, it’s normal.

“What was it like? Your first?” Katsuki asked. The boy beside him shrugged nonchalantly.

“Some bad people were after my dad. My mom got in the way, got killed. I got pissed, ended up accidentally ordering them to kill themselves.”

“Damn,” Katsuki muttered. Shinsou sighed. That was grossly oversimplified, but it would do for now. He didn’t want to unload his whole tragic backstory onto another kid who had just went through something traumatic.

They sat in companionable silence for a bit, and Katsuki seemed to accept Shinsou solely on the basis that he was sassy and knew when to shut up. Also, he needed to find out how the hell his quirk worked.

Katsuki was also still trying to sort through what had just happened. He had killed someone, he had accepted that. Izuku had killed before! But that didn’t matter much. Ultimately, it was different watching and doing it. Katsuki stared up at the junction where the ceiling met the wall.

His whole family—he was counting Izuku’s family as his—was made up of killers and murderers. They were a mafia. A. Mafia. American, but still. Killing was in their job descriptions. Auntie Inko had told him that he didn’t have to join the Seven Aces if he didn’t want to and that she wouldn’t think any different of him regardless of her choice.

Katsuki believed her, but he wanted to join the Aces. That’s why the blond decided to fuck these panicky emotions. He was Katsuki fucking Bakugou. So what if he killed someone. He was a badass. He could handle it. He would have to kill lots of people if he was going to take over the Seven Aces one day.

And he was. Izuku had no interest in Hisashi’s job, leaving the spot wide open and without an heir. Katsuki had already planned to take the top seat as a hero, he had just… moved his aspirations to something different. Becoming a wildly successful boss sounded justwonderful. Instead of the number one hero, he would be the number one mafia boss.

With that conviction in mind, Katsuki took a deep breath and closed his eyes, Shinsou subtly assessing him from the corner of his eyes.

And Katsuki let it go. He had killed someone. Fucking whoops. He’d be more careful next time. He refused to think about the corpse as anything but—refused to think of it as a person. He categorized it and filed it away, never to be examined again.

He was Katsuki fucking Bakugou. He didn’t do this shaken up shit.

As if summoned by his resolve, Hiro knocked, busting the door open.

“We got some leads,” he said, a sparkle in his eye that Katsuki couldn’t name. “Wanna come?”

Shinsou and Katsuki glanced at each other, and both nodded with smirks on their faces.

“Of fucking course,” Katsuki answered. He hopped off the bed, Shinsou right behind him, the two following Hiro out.

Chapter Text

A week and a half after Scissorhands and his companions had busted into the Midoriya’s home, and they barely had anything to show for their search efforts.

Hiro had dug into all his contacts, had infiltrated dozens of bases, digging up all kinds of secrets and information, but nothing useful.

Hisashi had employed more… direct tactics. Throwing his massive weight around, threatening both allies and foes, and stirring up even the most reclusive sewer rats of the underworld. The only thing he discovered was a whispered name; a rumor murmured over drunk lips and under dim lighting with no ears around to overhear: The Pantheon.

Inko had been confined to a crutch up until a day or so ago and was antsy to get out of the house. She hadn’t been able to do much other than help plan and sort through information. Fieldwork had been off the table and that had been an enormous hit to their efforts, Inko’s specialty was more… creative means of extracting information.

Mitsuki and Masaru had been holed up in their apartment, scared stiff at the thought of being targeted due to their close proximity to the Midoriya’s. Mitsuki and Inko had known each other since they were children, but it seemed fear and panic drove a wedge between even the most closely-bonded of friends (adding Inko’s newfound disdain for Mitsuki’s parenting tactics and the mixture became even more putrid).

Katsuki had only been able to trail Hisashi and occasionally Hiro. His guilt was vanishing quickly in regard to death, and he wasn’t unsettled when the adults took their time asking questions. His quirk wasn’t suited for information gathering and he didn’t yet possess enough finesse to use it for torture. As practice, Hisashi had let him fumble through beginning attempts on people they were done questioning. They took longer to die every time and Hisashi ruffled his hair every time he improved.

Hisashi had assumed Izuku and Shouto had been taken to separate locations. Even if they hadn’t, it would be good to have as many people working on this as possible. Inko made a call—a house call—to visit Endeavor and persuade him into helping the cause. Of course, as shady a person as Endeavor was, he had plenty of connections with crooked cops and easily bribed detectives. Not only would he aid in searching for both kids, he was asked to have the situation with Katsuki accidentally killing an innocent swept under the rug without a fuss.

Unsurprisingly, Inko was convincing enough to get everything she wanted from the flame hero. He didn’t tell her what he did, but the body was gone, and the news never caught wind of the incident. It was like it had never happened. He also paid the damages caused to the apartment when the trio from Black Bullet had busted in out of the goodness of his heart.

Despite everyone searching, seeking, and scouring every crack in the pavement of old forgotten alleys and behind every neon billboard, they found nothing. There was no trail. It was like they didn’t exist at all.

Katsuki hadn’t been able to feel Izuku since that first initial burst right after they had been taken. It felt like there was a wall blocking him from Izuku. He could the greenette was right there, but he couldn’t reach him.

And then, that wall shattered. Desperation, exhaustion, and determination. Emotions not his own smothered him like an undercurrent in an icy river. Katsuki coughed and held his head, breathing heavily. The sandwich he had been eating fell from his hands as he toppled off the kitchen chair, landing on his knees.

When the feeling passed, Katsuki shakily raised his head to look at the adults around him. Inko and Hitoshi were kneeling in front of him, concern evident on their faces (well, on Inko’s. Hitoshi’s looked vaguely disgruntled).

“What’s wrong, firecracker?” Inko asked, resting her palm against his forehead, checking his temperature and attempting to console the child. Katsuki leaned into the comforting touch and caught his breath. A tug in his navel, like a string was tied to it and had been pulled tight, made a smirk blossom on his face.

“I got him,” Katsuki announced. His teeth bared and destruction came alive in his eyes as he got to his feet. “I know where Izuku is.”

Katsuki didn’t remember much of the drive. He knew there was shouting and scrambling. He remembered giving directions to the best of his ability with just a direction and not a map of the streets to follow. He remembered a bit of the initial chaos when they had broken into the underground bunker.

But all of that was swept out of his mind by the sight in front of him now.

Izuku was wreathed in writhing darkness. His eyes were flat and glowed green, no emotion or recognition visible in the toxic light. What really drew Katsuki’s attention was the gargantuan crown on his head. Sharpened points finished long spikes of bone, roses, and thorns created the base of the off-white decorations. It looked like a crown fit for a queen of the dead.

Izuku took a step forward, toward Katsuki, and the shadows pulsed like clouds of disturbed dust away from his footprint. A ravine stretched behind Izuku, skeletons and creatures of nightmare clawing their way up from the pits of the underworld. Chaos and death rang around Katsuki, but he couldn’t look away from the sheer power that Izuku emitted.

He took a shaky step forward, instinctively trying to strengthen the bond between them. Izuku’s emotions swelled in his chest with such potency Katsuki almost thought they were his; icy rage, emptiness, disgust.

Katsuki ran the last few feet between them, launching himself into Izuku’s arms. The shorter boy gripped Katsuki’s waist in his hands while the blond buried his face in Izuku’s neck.

Katsuki was vaguely aware of the screams of agony and wet sounds of ripping flesh echoing around them, but he didn’t have the presence of mind to care. They had only been separated a week, but that week was long and stressful. Tears of relief pricked his eyes, not that he would let them fall.

After a time—it could have been two minutes or two days, Katsuki didn’t know—Izuku coughed and spluttered. The shadows slowed and silenced, but remained, pulsing and waiting to wreak havoc once more. Katsuki pulled back and looked at Izuku’s face.

The greenette was breathing heavily, eyes glassy but no longer empty. He panted and held a hand to his face, covering an eye. With a deep breath and a scream, Izuku banished the monsters and terrors he had brought to the surface.

All-encompassing silence. Nothing made a sound. Izuku’s eyes rolled into the back of his head and he collapsed in a heap on the floor.

A beat. And then—

“Izuku!” Katsuki screamed. He screamed loud enough that it echoed down the cleared corridors, drawing the surviving members of the aces to his location.

Hisashi tumbled into the large passageway, tripping over himself to get to the boys.

Katsuki was shaking Izuku’s shoulders frantically, trying to get him to respond to wake up, dammit, Izu! The connection between them had been snuffed down to a barely-there smolder, one Katsuki could barely feel if he concentrated.

“Izu, please wake up, c’mon, c’mon, come on!” Katsuki begged. He couldn’t feel him. Izuku wasn’t breathing.

Hisashi knelt on the other side of Izuku—he wasn’t stupid enough to try and move Katsuki away—and touched his fingers to Izuku’s pulse.

Faint, but there. Hisashi let out a rattling sigh of relief. He gave himself a moment before taking a deep breath and focusing. The kids needed him to be strong, he could break down later.

“Katsuki.” The boy didn’t seem to hear him, Hisashi tried again. “Katsuki!”

Angry, tear-filled red eyes snapped to the side, burning a hole through Hisashi. His teeth were pulled back in a snarl and a deep, protective growl ripped from his throat. Hisashi was surprised but didn’t back down. He leveled the blond with a glare of his own, one he knew to be effective on hardened criminals.

Katsuki snapped his eyes away—not in fear, Hisashi didn’t scare him right now, but because he had more important things to worry about. Like Izuku still not breathing.

A hard shove to his shoulder and Katsuki was sent sprawling across the hard-stone floor. He rolled to his feet, ready to attack whoever dared to separate him from Izuku but was met with Hisashi performing CPR. All the anger left him in a rush.

Tense, tense moments passed. Hisashi kept an even pace, Katsuki kneeling on the other side, to keyed up to even snap at the man. A cough and a splutter, and then Izuku heaved in a deep breath. It was scratchy but there and Katsuki almost passed out from the relief. Izuku didn’t wake up, but his chest was moving and his heart pumping.

Katsuki fell on his back, adrenaline flooding out of his body. He felt tears prick out of his eyes from the drop, sobs ripping from him. Hisashi sat, curled over Izuku, taking deep breaths of his own.

It had been a week, and it had been hard, but they had gotten him back.

Hitoshi crowded Katsuki as soon as he was on the surface again. The purplette checked the blond for injuries before the White Cards could even get near him, a steely look of detachment on his face. Katsuki didn’t have the energy to fight him off.

“What the fuck,” Hitoshi said flat enough that it didn’t even seem like a question. Katsuki knew what he meant.

“I couldn’t wait up here. I could feel him, bridge troll—he was right there! And—and he needed me. You wouldn’t understand.” Katsuki finished defending himself with a tired sigh and rubbed his palms over his face.

Hitoshi regarded him warily. He took in every line of Katsuki’s face, the slump of his posture, the sluggish movements, and absence of yelling. With a sigh, Hitoshi fell on his ass, joining Katsuki on the ground.

“You are such a dumbass,” Hitoshi whispered, holding his face in his hands.

“Worried about me, eye bags?” Katsuki taunted, the teasing edge falling flat and leaving it sounding more like a genuine question.

Hitoshi paused. “Yeah.”

Katsuki didn’t say anything, but Hitoshi knew he appreciated the sentiment.

Izuku knew where he was. He was next to the river that those ladies had dragged him into. The water was mesmerizing and dark, drawing him toward it despite knowing how icy and dangerous the current was. The smooth surface hid the monsters lurking inside it.

A soft growling to his side and Izuku knew Fluffy was there. Izuku didn’t turn to acknowledge the beast, staring with empty eyes at the dangerous river. He reached out a hand and Fluffy growled in warning. Izuku ignored him, brushing his fingers just barely against the surface.

Immediately, liquid nitrogen filled his veins, launching up his arm and causing even his shoulder to ache in protest. Before the second ripple could even form, a pale hand, long black claws tipping slender fingers, wrapped around his wrist in a crushing grip.

It didn’t surprise Izuku, and he let the hand drag him underneath the surface. Out of instinct, he shut his eyes and held his breath, barely able to think from the cold that made him feel like he had just gone skinny dipping in the Arctic Ocean in the middle of winter. It was probably colder in the river than there.

Hands cupped his face, claws brushing gently through his hair. Izuku blinked open his eyes, the cold burning against them.

Three ladies surrounded him. They were thin and gangly like they hadn’t eaten in years. Izuku couldn’t see their eyes past the heavy shadows of sunken eye sockets, and their hair was thin and floated in lanky waves in the water.

“Breathe”  the one holding his face commanded. Izuku sucked in a breath without thinking, coughing as the icy water froze his lungs. He took several deep breaths, honestly not surprised when he didn’t drown. Truthfully, at this point, he would be more surprised if he did.

“Who are you?” Izuku asked. The women’s legs had been replaced by scaly tails that ended in dramatically large fins that billowed in the water.

“Sirens,” the one to the left said. She swam so she was directly to the side of Izuku. The boy wasn’t concerned with them being out of his line of sight—the didn’t seem like they wanted to kill him.

The frigid temperature was starting to get unbearable.

“And what did you want from me?” Izuku asked. They had seemed like they wanted something from him the last time.

“We just wanted to meet you,” said the one on the right. She, too, swam closer.

“The one Persephone chose.”

Izuku woke with a gasp, hands flying to his throat. Everything burned, shivers still wracking his body as warm leached into his body, chasing away the phantom cold.

“Izu!” Katsuki yelled, tackling the young boy onto the bed he had been sprawled across.

Izuku’s throat was too sore to speak and he settled with gently running his hands through Katsuki’s hair. His grip tightened when he noticed another person in the room—one he didn’t know.

Katsuki felt his friend stiffen and looked over his shoulder.

“That’s the bridge troll,” Katsuki explained, completely unhelpful. Izuku gave him a flat look.

“Princess Plum, wake the fuck up!” Katsuki shouted, kicking a stray throw pillow at the boy and managing to nail him in the face.

He sat up quick enough that it made Izuku’s neck ache in sympathy.

“What the fuck, you goddamn Pomeranian,” he growled. His eyes flitted over to Izuku and understanding dawned on his face.

“My name’s Hitoshi, I’m Hiro’s kid,” he introduced himself succinctly.

“Oh! I’m Izuku!” the greenette said with a cheery grin. His throat still felt like it was in ribbons and the statement came out like static on empty radio waves.

All three occupants of the room winced. Izuku suddenly sat up.

“Where’s Shouto?”

Katsuki snarled. “He’s in the hospital.”

Izuku’s face darkened. “What happened to him.” This wasn’t a question, this was a demand for information, a demand guised as a question, in a way royalty would “politely” ask. Katsuki put his hands on Izuku’s face, forcing the other to look at him.

“I’m pissed too, but you gotta keep your shadow power under control. If you lose it again, we have literally no one who is any shape to take you on.”

Izuku took a deep breath. That’s right. He had gotten even more powerful because of whatever they had pumped his body with for… for how long?

“Kacchan, how long was I gone?”

Katsuki’s face twitched. “A week and a half.”

Well, could’ve been worse. Izuku ran his hands through his hair, dodging the pastels and pleased to notice that the massive spikes and briars had disappeared.

“Now, what happened to Shouto?” Izuku asked again.

Hitoshi cleared his throat and the boys on the bed looked at him.

“Katsuki and I were given the run-down by the adults together, but my dad gave me a more in-depth report a while after Katsuki came in here to sit with you.”

“And you didn’t tell me, you fucker?” Katsuki yelled. Hitoshi rolled his eyes. Izuku was astounded by the apparent ease with which he interacted with Bakugou.

Without acknowledging the blond, Hitoshi powered on. Izuku was impressed. “Endeavor received a ransom note from an underground organization; nobody got the name. They were probably some small-time that thought they could make quick cash and move up in the world fast.”

“Unluckily for them, Shouto knows what to do in the case that he’s kidnapped—this probably wouldn’t be the first time it’s happened, actually. So, the kidnappers roughed him up, but he managed to give a hint of his location in the video they sent to the hero.”

“Amateurs probably didn’t even check it before they sent it. Since almost the entire police force was on this case, they found him quickly.”

“Let’s just say it didn’t end well for the kidnappers. Shouto was badly injured though, so he’s resting in the hospital right now. My dad says he’s expected to make a full recovery within the week.”

Izuku slumped onto Katsuki. Everything was fine. Katsuki and Shouto were alive, he was alive, and his mom—

Wait, where was his mom?

“Where’s my— “

“She’s fine,” Katsuki soothed Izuku. Izuku hadn’t noticed how his breathing had picked up and he looked ready to bolt out the door. Katsuki continued, “She is in her room right now, some White Cards are healing her—where do you think you’re going?”

Izuku had slipped out from underneath Katsuki and was stumbling toward his bedroom door. Black spots filled his vision and his pulse pounded in his ears, but he had to see her. He had thought he was going to kill her as he lost control, he had to make sure she was going to be ok.

He heard Katsuki and Hitoshi following him as he slid on the hallway floor and barely managed to get to Inko’s room. He threw open the door and almost face planted.

An arm reached out and steadied him. Izuku looked up. He had never seen this man before.

No, that’s not true. This is the guy that burst in with flames coming out of his mouth and fought Euryale.

“Thanks for saving me, mister. But who are you?”

The man smiled awkwardly like he didn’t know exactly what to say. There was a snort from the bed and Izuku forgot all about the man at his side, barreling toward his mom.

He cried as he buried himself in her chest. Inko laughed, tears streaming down her face as well.

“Are you—you’re ok, right?” Izuku asked, lifting his head out of her chest.

She nodded. “Yeah, baby, I’m fine. Your shadows didn’t hurt me at all.”

Of course, his mom knew what he was worried about. She was awesome like that. Just then, she winced and shifted to the side. Izuku remembered her collapsing, holding her side, and immediately flew off the bed.

“I’m so sorry! I forgot about your side!” he apologized, hands waving in front of his face.

“It’s fine, lily-flower,” Inko reassured him. The man that had steadied Izuku earlier was leaning against the door from with a soft smile on his face.

“I forgot. Who are you, mister?” Izuku remembered his earlier line of thought. Katsuki and Hitoshi—both standing against the wall—snickered. The man glared at them, only succeeding in making them laugh harder.

“Laugh all you want, you little twerps, this is awkward.”

“Oh no,” Hitoshi drawled, deadpan, “The big, bad, mafia boss has met his match; awkwardness.”

“Shut up.”

“I will not.”

Inko laughed, coughing following soon after. She waved her hand, calling off the concerned doctors. “I’m fine,” she said.

“Izuku,” Inko addressed him. Izuku padded back over to the bed, dizzy and feeling like a he was going to pass out and vomit at the same time. “This is Hisashi. He’s the Don of Seven Aces.”

Izuku’s mind connected the dots lighting fast. “That Hisashi?”

“That one,” Inko smiled.

“So that’s why you said, ‘I’m here to take my kid back’. I had no idea who you were. It was a little weird,” Izuku said bluntly. Katsuki and Hitoshi dissolved into guffaws and Hisashi buried his face in his hands.

“Why me,” he moaned. The room laughed at his expense.

Within a week, Shouto was returned to his home and Inko was up and moving again, albeit gingerly.

There was a knock on the door and Hisashi rose to get it.

He was greeted by Endeavor.

“Hello,” Hisashi said. He wasn’t scared of the flaming dumpster fire, especially after hearing that his son managed to traumatize him. That was some top-quality comedy.

Endeavor didn’t do much more than grunt, a hand falling heavily on Shouto’s shoulder and pushing him to the front. The dual haired boy looked up at Hisashi.

“Where’s Izuku and Katsuki?” He asked with no preamble. Hisashi raised a brow.

“They’re in Izuku’s room,” he said, and the boy slid past him and into the house with no more words exchanged. Hisashi returned his attention to Endeavor.

“Do you need something?” Hisashi asked. He smiled but it was filled with venom. Endeavor seemed to catch on to the fact he was not welcome there and turned on his heel, leaving without a word.

Shouto flung open the door to Izuku’s room without knocking. Not his politest moment but he needed to see his friends. It had been a long few weeks.

When he saw Izuku decorating a kid he had never seen before’s hair with flowers while he exchanged insults with Katsuki, Shouto turned on his heel and walked out again.

He had been gone for almost three weeks, not that long, and they had already replaced him. Shouto knew he wasn’t the easiest to be around and he still didn’t understand why Izuku and Katsuki had wanted to be friends with him, but he guessed it didn’t matter now. Unsurprisingly, he hadn’t meant enough to then to warrant a permanent place in their lives since they had already found someone to fill in the gap.

He would just—he didn’t know what he’d do. Without the looming threat of Izuku over Endeavor’s head, the training sessions would pick up full-force. Endeavor would probably take out his frustrations on him and they would be worse than they had been for a long time.

Shouto could feel the panic attack coming on, his hands shaking and breathing heavy. He couldn’t do that here, he had to get out. Izuku and Katsuki didn’t want him anymore, he—

Vines wrapped around his waist, lifting him off the ground and dragging him backward.

“Halfie, where the fuck are you going?” Katsuki demanded, throwing his arms around Shouto’s chest and crushing him in a hug.

What?

Izuku came up behind him and suddenly he was sandwiched by the shorter boys. It was nice and warm there. He could feel the edges of panic seeping away from his mind.

But then he caught sight of the purple haired boy again and suddenly the air was pushed from his chest. He scrambled against Katsuki’s shoulders, trying to get him to let go. The blond pulled off, a confused look on his face. When he saw the look on Shouto’s face, his expression dropped.

Katsuki looked over his shoulder and then back at Shouto. He grabbed the struggling boy’s cheeks firmly in between his palms, squishing his face and forcing him to look at him.

“Shouto, look at me.” Shouto hadn’t realized his eyes had fallen shut. “We love you very much and we missed you. Nothing could ever change that. We were worried sick about you. Hitoshi—“Katsuki nodded toward the purple haired boy who waved his hand in response “—is Hiro’s kid. He was helping us find Izuku. He is not replacing you .”

Shouto’s body sagged like a marionette with its strings cut. The adrenaline drop left him crying softly into Katsuki’s shoulder, a pleasant, calming fragrance coming from Izuku behind him.

His legs gave out and Izuku and Katsuki slid slowly to the floor with Shouto still trapped between their arms. And they sat there like that, Shouto and Izuku bawling like babies, in the doorway to Izuku’s room.

When he got himself together, they moved all the way into Izuku’s room. Shouto sat on the bed, Izuku still wrapped around him, while Katsuki hauled the extra boy to his feet.

“Shouto, meet the bridge troll— “

“Hitoshi.”

“—who has been freeloading off us for almost three weeks.”

“You are doing the exact same thing Katsuki, you live next door.”

“Shut up! I am family!”

“And I was working!”

“That’s beside the point!”

As they continued to bicker, the corner of Shouto’s mouth twitched up. Maybe this new kid wouldn’t be so bad after all.