Chapter Text
Monday, April 7th, 2149
“Young man? Can you hear me?”
Izuku grunted slightly as he was gently shaken awake. Distantly he felt as though he should be more worried about whatever was going on, but he was too disoriented to realize it and too tired to put up much of a fight. As he opened his eyes he saw somebody with a full-body cat mutation quirk standing over him, dressed in a police officer’s uniform.
“Ah good, you’re awake. From what I’ve heard you’ve had a pretty rough time, young man. We’re going to go down to the station so you can give your statement about what happened, okay? You’re not in trouble, to be clear.”
“TEXAS SMASH!”
Toshinori took a moment, as the villain’s body splattered across the tunnel wall, to assess the situation.
Slime was coating the tunnel’s walls and part of the ceiling - a small groan from the villain, but everything remained still, so it was the sound of them falling unconscious. One apparent victim - young, male, green hair, wearing a gakuran and some black gloves - that seemed to be smoking? Some sort of fire or heat quirk probably, could hardly blame the kid for trying to fight back. A yellow backpack some distance away, with a few items, including a notebook, spilling out of it - probably the kid’s.
He had, perhaps, two minutes left.
As he made his way over to the notebook, flipped over to the last page, and signed his autograph, he decided on a plan of action. Get the villain contained in the soda bottles he’d spared a split-second opening in the sewers, wake the boy up, and carry the both of them to the police station for a proper capture and a post-incident statement respectively - and probably get seen deflating by several police officers.
“Shit.”
While he still had the time, he sped around the area collecting as much of the villain as he could. The boy wouldn’t be waking up on his own for several minutes at least, and waking him up ahead of time seemed like a bad idea. After getting the villain collected, doing the bare minimum to make sure the boy wouldn’t be dropping dead in the next several minutes, and quickly checking to make sure nobody was looking into the tunnel, he dropped his muscle form with about another 30 seconds left for the day, just enough to drop the villain off at the station as All Might.
As much as he hated the idea of doing this, but no civilian would be properly comforted by skinny old Yagi Toshinori staring them in the face as they woke up. Cursing under his breath, he picked up the bottles, put them in with his other groceries to avoid notice, and pulled out his phone to text Naomasa as he began to slink off to the station.
After getting looked over by an officer with a cool-sounding touch-based diagnosis quirk who said he’d managed to come out of the incident without any injuries that would require a hospital visit, and getting his statement taken by a nice detective with some sort of lie detector quirk, Izuku sat on a bench in the lobby. The detective had mentioned that it might not be a great idea for him to walk home on his own, and with how out of it he still felt Izuku had to agree - but his mom’s route home didn’t pass by here, and she wouldn’t be off work for another few hours anyways so he’d called Uncle Marasu to pick him up instead, who happily agreed.
As he waited, he entertained himself by guessing at the quirks of the various officers, interns, and others passing through the area. That officer there, he thought, with the three-fingered gloves has some sort of five-point contact quirk, and it’s either powerful enough or he has bad enough control over it that he’s willing to put up with the gloves all day. White hair, and the loose clothing implies they don’t mind low temperatures. Touch-based ice quirk maybe? That lady there... not much to go off of. Maybe a mental quirk? Black hair, typical police uniform, big sho- oh. White button though, glad she’s doing well. That blonde guy is thin as a rail. Maybe something that consumes his body fat to work, or interferes with his ability to eat normally? Oh fuck, he’s heading this way, gotta act normal.
“Glad to see you’re doing well, young man.” the man said, to which Izuku nodded. “My name is Yagi Toshinori, I’m about the closest thing All Might has to a personal assistant nowadays. Lots of things you have to do as Number One Hero and all that, so he hires me to come around whenever he needs to rush off elsewhere before finishing things up properly.” He handed Izuku a business card which he made sure to pocket - he’d definitely want to keep it when he had enough energy to want much more than a nap.
That makes sense I guess, maybe some sort of energy-boosting quirk that consumes his body fat to work? Poor guy must be really overworked. Or maybe some sort of energy-stockpiler that siphons off all the energy from the food he eats, leaving nothing to build muscle with? or maybe-
“That’s quite insightful young man, though I’m afraid you haven’t guessed correctly,” the man laughed. Izuku put his hands to his face and groaned. Still chuckling a little, Mr Yagi said, “Say, I may be misremembering, but I think All Might mentioned you were wearing some gloves when he found you, right?”
“Gloves?”
“Yes, black gloves, skin-tight. Were they damaged? Here, I’ll write you a check for some new ones...”
“ ’m not sure I’ve worn a pair of gloves in my life, sir.” Izuku said.
Toshinori paused for a moment - was his memory failing him? Speaking of which, he had been certain a moment ago, when the boy had put his hands to his face, that he’d been wearing some sort of black nail polish or something, but a glance now proved they were bare.
“Well... regardless, here’s a ¥5000 check, to replace anything that was damaged by the sludge,” the man said, glancing towards Izuku’s mostly-ruined notebook.
“R-Right,” Izuku said as the man stood and exited the building.
Izuku had been in the classroom, a few minutes after school had ended for the day. He wasn’t remaining there by choice of course, having been held back by Kacchan and his followers, but he knew the patterns; they were in a taunting mood today, and if he let the taunting play out fully, they wouldn’t escalate it to anything physical. Kacchan had left now, satisfied, but long-hair-blonde-extendable-fingernails and undercut-black-hair-big-teeth had remained. Izuku managed to tune most of it out while still seeming to be affected, until Fingernails swiped his notebook from his desk. “-is thing is almost as useless as you, no doubt! Hey, you think the koi’ll like some decoration?” he said over his shoulder to Teeth, before ripping the book into ribbons with his quirk and tossing it out the window. Probably encouraged by Izuku’s more genuine distraught reaction, he continued, “How pathetic! Brains alone can’t make you a hero, ya goddamn nerd. If you want to be a hero so bad, why don’t you take a swan dive off the roof, and pray for a quirk in your next life!"
They had left shortly after. Izuku also left after a moment. The teacher who taught his class’s last period of the day was standing in the hallway, talking about nothing with the one who taught in the room across the hall. The door had been open the entire ti-
-Izuku was snapped out of the memory by a flash of pain. He was gripping his knee, and, it seemed, he’d managed to squeeze it hard enough for it to hurt. He blinked, surprised at himself, but before he could think more about it Uncle Marasu arrived through the station’s doors. Excellent, almost time to collapse into his bed.