Chapter Text
|| JAPAN TODAY ||
March 20th. THIS WEEK’S NEWS
pg. 3 of […]
Tragic death after explosive battle in Shizuoka
Underground Hero, Trajectory, announced dead at the scene after a sudden battle broke out near Musutafu, Shizuoka Prefecture, last night. Little is known about the villain responsible, or indeed about Trajectory herself, a hero who preferred to avoid the spotlight… [continue reading]
~~~~~
.june.
Toshi knew he needed the experience, but that didn’t change the fact that stealth jobs were awful.
He knew they were important, of course, and vital for hero work, but that didn’t mean he was any good at them. He’d go so far as to say he was terrible, actually — which, to be fair, was probably why Gran had insisted he tag along on this one. But it had been a long week: homework up to his eyeballs, six hours of class during the day, training on top of training on top of training…
Fucking up this mission and getting chewed out by Gran, on top of everything else, was not an appealing concept. God, when was the last time he’d had a full night’s sleep?
Gran grumbled quietly at his side. “Absolutely stinks of piss in here.”
It did, indeed, stink of piss. The abandoned warehouse they were currently sneaking their way into was big, as city-storage units went, and sat tucked away in a sad corner of Musutafu’s industrial district. The foot traffic in the area was low, police presence practically non-existent, and the company that technically owned the place had gone bust just over six months ago. All in all, it was the perfect hideout for a gang of criminals.
The smell, though — it clung to the air, stale and sour, and did very little for the place’s overall ambiance. Toshinori ducked around a dubious-looking chain-hook dangling in his path.
Yeah. Definitely criminal hideout material.
“Look, I’m just saying we grab it and run, yeah? No need to take a hostage too—”
“We need the insurance, Aki. The fuck do you think the original plan was for?”
The voices were muffled, but clearly coming from the other end of the warehouse, somewhere within the stacks and stacks of old material and machinery. Whoever they were, they were making no effort to keep themselves concealed, probably confident in the belief that the police would continue to overlook this place. Toshinori and Gran both froze.
“I’m just saying—”
“You morons better shut ya goddamn mouths before I shut ‘em for ya.”
Gran made a motion with his hands. You go left, I’ll go right.
Toshi nodded, and his teacher snuck off on foot, scowling. Stealth jobs, he knew, were not the man’s favourite either. His jets were loud — far too loud for any form of sneaking — and a grounded Gran Torino was a grumpy Gran Torino.
Toshi headed in the opposite direction as instructed, awkwardly maneuvering his frame around the heaps of rotting wood and rusting metal. Avoiding detection took far more concentration than he’d like to admit — Gran could stress that versatility was key as much as he liked, but words didn’t magically narrow Toshi’s sweeping shoulders or deflate his ever-broadening biceps.
After some effort, and several close calls with precariously balanced crates, the targets came into sight. There were quite a few that he could see — six or seven at least — and most likely some more that he couldn’t. They were huddled around a battered oil drum, ringed with a few battery-powered lamps that illuminated them in the low, pale light. Judging from the empty wrappers and crumpled cans spilling from its rim, the drum was functioning as a bin.
“No need to be so harsh, Acid,” one said, scratching his nose with an elongated finger.
Acid, a large man with an equally large head, bared his teeth. Even from his distance, Toshi could see them, dark and rotted in his gums.
“Ya want ya face melted off, Arms?”
Arms quietened.
As he moved to gain a better vantage, Toshi felt something catch against his arm — brush past. Time seemed to slow. He glanced over and watched as a stack of tall metal pipes toppled, agonizingly, to the ground.
They hit the concrete with an echoing c-clang c-clang c-clang, and it sounded through the warehouse like some deafening, metallic explosion.
They rolled noisily over the floor to individually thunk against Toshi’s boot. His heart lurched from his body.
Shit.
There was no time to contemplate just how much this was exactly why he shouldn’t do stealth jobs, Gran, because the villains were jumping to their feet. Some flared their quirks, but most simply pulled out an assortment of hand weapons. Toshi spotted several knives, a sword, and one particularly brutal-looking iron club, before he was distracted by the nasal bellowing of Acid-with-the-gross-teeth.
“What the fuck was that?” he roared, spittle flying from his mouth and catching in the lamplight. “Someone’s fucking here!”
“Bet it’s heroes is what it is. I ain’t sticking around here to get my ass busted!”
There was a flurry of movement as they scrambled, clearly thinking to flee, and Toshi tensed. Should he engage? Did he have much choice now? He couldn’t let any of these guys escape under his watch, but he had no idea where Gran was, or whether there were any more members of the gang scuttling about the building. Would fighting them now be jumping the gun?
Toshi gritted his teeth: this was exactly the kind of fuck up he’d been worried about.
“Any of ya so much as think about bailing and I’ll kill ya spineless shitheads myself!”
The scattered thugs all froze as Acid snarled after them, voice rough and menacing, fury etched in lines across his face. The man‘s beady eyes scanned this way and that.
“Come out, come out wherever you are, hero...”
The taunt was childish, but Toshi was tired, and frustrated, and done — so he figured, fuck it, no other option, really, and launched himself into their midst.
He landed with a thump, dust whirling in little flurries around his boots.
“Evening, gentlemen.”
The gang charged him.
Despite the sheer number of them, the fight should have been easy. Some low level thugs trafficking drugs from a dingy warehouse? All Might should’ve had that, no sweat.
And he did, to begin with. The first guy, who slashed at him with claws like a cat’s, Toshi elbowed solidly in the gut and tossed over his shoulder. Another, wielding a pair of short knives, dropped after a swift uppercut. They went down — one, two, three more. Their numbers cut in half.
The difficulty came when, as Toshinori plowed through the close-combat fighters like a pro, Acid started spewing actual, real-life acid at him from the sidelines.
The first globule sailed past him, sizzling and spitting and far too close to his face for comfort, right as he dodged a wild sword-swing. It landed with a hiss a little ahead of him, and ate through a foot of the concrete floor below. The hole smoked and bubbled.
Toshi recoiled. If Acid’s acid could do that to solid concrete… yeah, he wasn’t all too keen on having his skin melted off at eighteen.
Another projectile fired towards him, and Toshi dove to the left, using the momentum to roll and spring back to his feet.
“Sprightly one, ain’t ya, hero?” Acid leered at him, rotten teeth like gravel in his gums. The state of them made sense now, though the whole effect was no less grim.
The man made a retching movement in his throat, and something warm and squishy wrapped around Toshinori’s neck.
His stomach dropped, but his immediate revolted jolt did nothing to stop him being yanked backwards, colliding with something that felt most definitely like a body. He clawed at the things pressed against his throat. His fingers met the sensation of flesh and, with another swoop of nausea, he realised that the warm and squishy things were arms. Long, elasticated arms.
God. So the situation could actually get grosser.
“Move an inch an’ Arms’ll choke ya,” Acid snarled, “if I don’t dissolve ya skull first. I’ve heard having ya brain corroded is mighty unpleasant.”
The grip on his neck had become decidedly less squishy, bones and muscle reforming to dig viciously into his windpipe. Toshinori gagged.
Where the hell was Gran?
He sparked One For All, feeling it hum through his fingers as he tightened his grip on the arms squeezing his neck. Hopefully, Acid would be too surprised by his buddy rocketing towards him to spit any corrosive—
The oil drum careened into Acid in an explosion of garbage and steel.
Acid was flattened head first into the ground, but the drum kept on going, hurtling directly towards the roof like a large, barrel-shaped arrow. Gravity, however, seemed to snatch it back before it made it all the way, and the thing nosedived to the earth with a thunderous crash.
“Sorry to barge in, boys.”
The voice came from above them. Shock had put the fight on pause, just for a second, and they all looked skyward. Toshi squinted, and could just make out a figure crouching in the rafters, barely visible in the gloom.
“Boss—” one of the villains said, “Boss, it’s that vigilante bitch.”
From his spot pancaked on the concrete, Acid twitched, spitting red onto the grimy warehouse floor. The appearance of his teeth was, unsurprisingly, not improved by blood spatter. He growled.
“Ya fuckin—”
With all the force of One For All, Toshi seized Arms and yanked. The man went flying into Acid at the speed of a bullet, slung by the elasticity of his own limbs. The two howled as they slammed into each other with enough force to break bone.
Immediately, the remaining thugs rushed him.
Toshi leapt into action, his muscles singing. He dodged and kicked and punched; weaved in and out of attacks and slid into defense like his body was made for it. This — this was his thing, and damn did it feel good to be back in his element. He ducked under the swing of a bat, the very same he’d spied earlier, and swept the man’s feet out from under him.
There was a squeaking sound — rope running through a rusty gunny above — followed by a brief rush of air, and suddenly a blur of green shot past him. Two feet slammed into her chest, and the swordswoman leaping at him went down like a bowling pin.
The green blur alighted next to him. The figure from the rafters.
She was short, much shorter than him, and decked out in a rather battered green bomber jacket and what looked like cheap sports leggings. Most of her face was hidden: a scarf, also green, tied around her mouth and nose; her hair concealed beneath a hood, pulled out from under the jacket’s collar. The villain had been right earlier — dressed like that, there was no question she was a vigilante.
“Er,” he said.
She glanced over at him. “Nice throw.”
Then the remaining villains were upon them. Her technique was unrefined, but the woman fought like a whirlwind. She slid around Toshinori, guarding him against incoming hits, following up his attacks with finishers of her own. Objects flew into her hands and were cast aside faster than he could track — a knife aiming for his legs; one man’s shoelaces, dragging him off his own feet; a pole, ricocheting into the back of an attacker’s skull.
Her movements were unbalanced, and more often than not she used her quirk in place of any physical strength, but her results were nothing to sneeze at. Gran would probably have pulled a face at her method — cast a disapproving eye over her locked-elbow punches and narrow stance — but Toshi wasn’t about to look down on someone currently roundhouse-kicking a villain in the face.
From the corner of his eye, he spied Acid and Arms climbing back to their feet; battered, but still not out, apparently. Acid looked nothing short of murderous.
The vigilante peeked around him, the warmth of her back pressed up against his.
“Duck,” she said.
Suddenly, Acid and Arms were airborne again — a storage crate had plowed into them from behind, just like the barrel earlier. They soared directly towards Toshinori, expressions carved halfway between fear and fury.
Toshi did not duck.
Instead, he raised his fist back, ignited with the blaze of One For All, and smashed.
The resulting force was a little excessive, he’d admit. The hit sent not only the two men snapping back head-over-heel, but also ripped a chunk of the building’s structure out with it. It scraped a long track into the floor, cracked several rafters, and tore a large hole through the outside wall’s brick, letting in a waft of night air and silvery shafts of moonlight. The warehouse foundations groaned.
“Shit.”
Even with her face half covered, Toshi could tell the vigilante was gaping. Her brows had leapt up her forehead and her eyes — caught a brilliant emerald in the sudden moonlight — were huge.
“U-Um—” she stuttered. The wall of confidence she’d been before had shifted, replaced by… nerves? Fear? Toshi struggled with reading faces at the best of times, let alone when they were half-covered. Her voice had gone quiet. “What—”
“Toshinori!”
Toshi felt his entire body wince.
Slowly, knowing full well what was coming, he turned. Gran stood atop a battered crate behind them, reappeared at last, his arms crossed and a scowl set heavily in place. He cut a much more intimidating figure than a man shorter than Toshi reasonably should.
Toshinori swallowed.
“Oh hey, Sensei—”
“Don’t you ‘sensei’ me, brat—”
“I was wondering where you’d got to—”
“Oh you were, were you?” His tone was cold enough to freeze hell, and familiar fear struck icy intoToshi’s heart. “Well then, tell me what part, exactly, of reconnaissance mission did you not understand, Toshinori?”
“Gran—”
“Here I was, thinking this would be good practise for you. A simple job to gather intel. Not engage any hostiles; not alert the villains that we were onto them; give our findings to the police investigation. And suddenly, what do I hear?”
“Sensei—”
“A brawl. A goddamn brawl! So I hurry over here, only to find you and a hole in the side of the building— and don’t you move one more inch, vigilante.”
Toshi started. The vigilante, he was embarrassed to admit, had slipped from his focus after Gran’s arrival. He glanced back. She had shuffled a few paces away, probably in an attempt to escape unnoticed, but was now frozen, staring back at Gran nervously.
“Who the hell are you? What is going on here, Toshinori?”
“It’s a — complicated story, Sensei.”
“Spare me, brat. Just start talking.”
Then, out of nowhere, the vigilante exclaimed, “You’re Gran Torino!”
If it was possible, Gran scowled even deeper. “Yes, well done. You know who I am. Astounding. Now who are you?”
“You—!” For a moment, the woman seemed to quiver, as if she was physically restraining herself from saying something else. She clenched her hands — shoved them into the pockets of her jacket. Swallowed. “If I— if I tell you who I am, what will you do? Arrest me?”
Gran studied her, expression harsh. “You’re breaking the law.”
“Then there’s no point in me telling you.”
Toshi glanced between the two, unsure. Then his teacher abruptly propelled himself forward in a burst of air and noise, and was toe-to-toe with the vigilante before any of them could even blink.
The woman stumbled back.
“Young lady, don’t misunderstand me,” Gran said, uncommonly gentle — or what passed as gentle for him. He leant down to get on her level. “I don’t want to report you. I don’t really think you’re in the wrong. But vigilantism is illegal — you’re not trained, you’re not qualified. You’re putting yourself in danger. I understand why you feel the need to do what you’re doing, but leave it to the professionals. Don’t make us do something we don’t want to.”
Suddenly, the vigilante’s entire demeanor changed, like a switch had been flipped. Her body went taut as a steel rod, eyes lit up like burning green coals.
“Leave it to the professionals? What, the professionals who were only here on a recon mission? These bastards were planning on kidnapping someone!” she gestured vaguely at the villains sprawled around, most out cold, some groaning in pain. “On holding her for ransom and trafficking her into the same disgusting underground ring they were exploiting her for in the first place! Did you know that? Would you have found her? Would you have saved her before it was too late if you’d left tonight with only intel?”
Gran looked taken aback. Toshi’s own stomach clenched. The vigilante’s words were furious, so different from any other way she’d behaved since he met her. The passion in her voice was a physical thing, assailing them with its weight.
“I’ve been tracking this group for months. I knew exactly what they were planning, exactly when they were going to strike. I’ve saved that girl tonight, and I’ve cut off a limb of the ExQuick black market in Musutafu.”
“Kid,” Gran Torino began. “We were sent here because the police knew about these guys. The investigation team had a plan, they knew what they were doing.”
It was wild to listen to Gran praise law enforcement. Toshi understood why he was saying it, of course, but it didn’t lessen the novelty of watching his teacher so thoroughly swallow his own grudges.
“No.” The vigilante stepped back, shaking her head viciously. Her scarf slipped a little down her nose. “No. They don’t. They don’t care. They don’t care about the people this gang has hurt — would’ve hurt. They can know what they’re doing as much as they want, but that doesn’t mean anything when they don’t give a damn.”
Something stuck in Toshinori’s chest.
Outside, sirens wailed. The woman jumped; her hands flew to her scarf, her hood, tugging them tighter into place. Toshi glanced at Gran.
“You called them? Sensei!”
“’Course I didn’t, brat!” his teacher snapped. He was irritable, more so than usual. Had the vigilante’s words pricked at him too? “When would I’ve done that? Someone probably called them after hearing you knock out the whole goddamn wall of this warehouse—”
“It wasn’t the whole wall—”
The vigilante moved.
In a flash, Gran had grabbed her wrist. His grip was forgiving, but she froze all the same.
“Reconsider.”
For a moment she said nothing, just met his gaze with an expression that Toshi couldn’t place.
“I won’t,” she finally said, firm. “Please, let me go.”
Everyone was still. Toshi watched them, unsure of whether he should say anything, do anything — but then, with a sigh that looked to rattle his bones, Gran stepped away.
“Goddamnit,” he said. “Don’t make me regret this, kid.”
The vigilante stared at him a second longer. Looked at Toshi; looked back at Gran. “Thank you.”
Then she ran, through the shattered wall in a scurry of green and black and away into the night.
The police arrived not long after. Toshi was unsurprised to learn, from the grim-faced unit leader who strode over to them, that it was the investigation team. She was a severe looking woman, her uniform prim up to top collar button, her eyes a sharp shade of steel. The rest of the team quickly went about cuffing the gang members and upturning the scene, some stomping off to search the rest of the building. The leader scowled as she surveyed the two of them.
“Care to explain how the hell this happened, Torino?” she said, gaze like a knife. “Your orders were very clear.”
Gran grumbled “Tell me something I don’t know. The kid here had to go all in — he’s still learning how subtlety works.”
“Subtly, huh? Perhaps consider that before you bring your student along on a police-issued job.”
Gran’s shoulder’s stiffened. He raised his chin, staring the chief down through the white lenses of his mask. “How I teach my kid is none of the police’s concern, Officer.”
Toshi shuffled awkwardly. He saw the woman’s jaw clench, before her attention was caught by another approaching officer and she turned away.
“Kimoto?”
“No bite, sir. We swept the whole building and there’s nothing concrete. No comms, no plans, no drugs — just a one-off hideout, as far as we can tell.”
“Nothing concrete?”
“We did find this.”
The officer held something up: it was small and tattered, but distinctively, distinctively green. Toshinori’s stomach dropped. It was a little slip of fabric, the exact same colour and texture as the vigilante’s scarf. When had—?
The chief reached for it and ran her fingers across the weave. “Now what do we have here?”
“We found it stuck on the claws of one of the thugs over there. It doesn’t match any of the clothes on them, or—”
“Or Torino and his sidekick. Interesting.”
She studied at them, long and hard and cutting. Gran looked back at her evenly, but Toshi’s gut was twisting into knots. He bit his tongue; he should be better than this by now.
“You know what’s interesting about this?” she dangled the fabric in front of her. “We’ve been flooded with reports recently, all talking about some vigilante moron running around, endangering their lives, putting others at risk. And coincidentally, all those reports describe this vigilante as wearing green. So this seems an awfully strange thing to find in the hands of some drug trafficker who just got knocked out in a fight. Would either of you happen to know anything about this?”
Gran huffed. “Never seen it before, I’m afraid.”
“And you, kid?” The chief turned her harsh gaze on Toshinori. “Recognise this? You were the one who engaged, after all.”
For just a moment, Toshi feared he’d freeze up. She was a vigilante — a criminal, legally speaking. And wasn’t it his job to catch criminals? To keep people safe, even from themselves?
But— her ferocity as she’d fought those traffickers, her passion as she’d spoken of justice—
He didn’t freeze, didn’t even break eye contact with the chief, and the lie fell from his tongue tasting like honey.
“No idea. Sorry, Officer.”
--------
The flat was quiet as Inko slipped in through the window.
Everything was draped in that early-hours stillness, painted with quiet shadows, nothing but the familiar hum of next door’s television bleeding through the walls. She both loved and hated these moments: loved the buzz of leftover adrenaline, the accomplished exhaustion of her limbs; hated how the stench of dust and stale beer brought her crashing back to reality.
Tonight had not gone how she’d expected. Lead after lead had led her to that warehouse, months of snooping and citizen tip-offs, sleepless night after sleepless night — and it had paid off. That arm of the ExQuick ring was busted, probably being cuffed at that very moment. One less part of the drug supply chain in Musutafu.
But the appearance of those Heroes, Gran Torino and the boy he’d called Toshinori, had thrown her off balance. She’d lost her cool, first at the very presence of Gran Torino (Trajectory’s old partner, holy shit—) and then at the Hero’s words.
You’re not trained, you’re not qualified. You’re putting yourself in danger—
Inko stripped off her jacket and hoodie, tugged the scarf away from her face, and tossed them furiously onto the foot of her bed, her skin hot with anger and adrenaline. Hearing one of the Heroes she so admired tell her to stop almost felt like a betrayal, even though she didn’t truly know the man; but the worst part was, she knew her anger wasn’t directed at him.
Because he was right. He was right and she knew it.
She was only seventeen — seventeen, and spending nearly every night running through the city, hiding her identity behind dark swathes of fabric, taking on criminals twice her size with nothing but her generic, low-power quirk. She hadn’t even known how to fight at first. She’d scraped by on nothing but her reaction times and stupidly high pain tolerance until experience had taught her how to be scrappy.
She peeled off her gloves and stared down at her hands, at her chipped nails and smooth skin. Looking at them, it would be hard to guess what her nights consisted of, protected as they were by her battered gloves. No calluses, no obvious scars; clean and unmarked.
She let her arms fall to her sides.
No. Gran Torino might have been correct in a way, but he didn’t know everything. He didn’t know about the people she’d saved — the muggings, the fights, the attempted assaults — he didn’t know about the groundwork. Heroes were the big leagues, but not everyone who needed saving was part of the big leagues. Why should she stay on the sidelines when she was capable of helping? When she wanted to help?
God. Tonight had really thrown her.
Her stomach gurgled loudly.
“Yeah,” she murmured. “Yeah, okay. Food now, thoughts later.”
With her most incriminating garments thrown in a heap on her bed, she was safe to venture to the kitchen. The leggings she’d have to peel herself out of in a bit, but right now food was her primary goal.
Though the hall was dark, the kitchen light was still on, glowing feebly above the tiny dinner table. Her father refused to ever switch the thing off (which had always been bizarre, considering how tight he was with the rest of their electricity expenses) but Inko wasn’t about to complain; it saved her from having to fumble for a snack in the dark every night.
She shuffled, soft-footed, over to the fridge and rooted around as quietly as she could. Their fridge was never hugely well-stocked — especially now, given her newly increased, crime-fighting-fueled appetite — but tonight it seemed particularly barren. Her stomach rumbled unhelpfully again.
“Alright, alright,” she whispered. “Hang on.”
The tiny little yoghurt drinks were not her favourite, but she didn’t have all that much choice. She grabbed the closest one, ripped off its tin foil lid, and downed it.
“I never ask, you know.”
She jolted; the yoghurt burned her nose as it choked back up her throat. She whirled around.
Her father stood in the doorway, the harsh kitchen light sallowing his already drawn face. He looked half-awake and obviously drunk, judging from the angle of his stance, but no less wretched than she was used to. Inko’s heart dropped.
“Dad? Why aren’t you in bed?”
“Why aren’t you?” Alcohol rarely made her father slur, rather it gave his voice an edge; words low where they otherwise weren’t, letters harsher than they needed to be. She heard that edge more than she didn’t — she heard it now, as her fingers squeezed tight around the empty yoghurt bottle. “You think I don’t notice, but I do. How could I not notice my own kid slipping out in the dead of night?”
“Dad—”
“What is it you do? A boyfriend? Drugs? Both?” For a second he sounded almost pleading, and Inko could only stare at him, motionless.
“No, I—”
“Then what?” he snapped. His face suddenly soured, sharpening and twisting into an expression that Inko wished she didn’t know. “Oh — oh, of course. You whore yourself, don’t you? You're just like your fucking mother.”
His green hair had always been paler than Inko’s own, but in the shitty lighting it looked almost vomit-yellow. He glowered at her.
For as much as her parents had never cared, as much as her father had always been bitter, he'd never touched her, never exchanged his foul words for his fists. But, at that moment, Inko was afraid. She afraid, despite how he was swaying on his feet, gripping onto the doorframe for support. The fear that he would hit her flashed sharp and real through her bones.
She could take him, of course she could — he was drunk and she was used to fighting men bigger than her — but it didn’t diminish the fear that curled like acid under her skin.
“She was just the same, you know. That slut whored herself to everyone who looked her way—”
“I’m going to bed,” Inko said, trying to keep her voice level — failing. She couldn’t meet his gaze, and instead stepped towards him carefully, watching the way his feet moved. “Good night.”
He didn't budge, even as she approached the doorway and tried to slip past him. He grabbed her arm.
"Inko. Inko. Please—"
"Let go of me—"
"I'm sorry—" he began to choke, his muzzed words sounding disturbingly like the start of tears. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean it— you know I didn't mean it, I'm sorry— I just want you to talk to me—"
Inko wrenched her arm from his grip, but he held on fast, latching his other hand onto the back of her t-shirt.
"Inko— Inko—"
His nails, brittle and over-long, caught on her skin beneath the fabric and Inko whirled around reflexively, lashing out at his face with the sharp rim of the bottle still squashed in her hand. It scratched just under his eye. The thing could do little more than graze, but it was enough to mark an angry red line into his flesh.
"I said let go!”
The man stumbled back and clutched at his eye. He stared back at her with nothing but shock, though whether it was more at her or at himself she wasn’t sure.
"Inko, I—"
She didn't let him finish. Before he could say another word, she fled, scurring across the hall and slamming the door to her bedroom shut behind her. She threw her body back against the brittle wood.
For a moment she heard nothing. The neighbours TV babble was gone; Inko doubted that they'd call the police — what happened in this building tended to stay in this building — but the commotion was apparently enough to warrant them switching off their show to listen out.
She heard her father's uneven footsteps shuffle on the other side of the door, heard him pause in the hallway. Inko counted to three.
His footsteps receded to his bedroom, and there was the click of his own door closing after him.
After a moment more, the neighbour's TV started up again.
Inko sat frozen, her heart racing against her sternum. The confusion and anger of five minutes ago felt like a dream. This adrenaline was different — a terrible kind of nausea that throbbed through her ribs like a sickness. Her anger had died and all that was left was an aching pit in her gut; an exhaustion marrow-deep. Tears ached at the backs of her eyes.
“No,” she said to herself, the words no more than a whisper in the stillness. She curled her hands and bit her nails into the palms. “You’re not crying again, Inko.”
Against her skin, her shirt burned, phantom sensations of her father’s fingers in the fabric prickling along her back. Tangled. Tugging. Desperate.
She ripped the garment up over her head and flung it away, watching as it landed in a lump by her bed’s footboard. Beside it, the heap of her jacket and scarf were still visible in the dim light, the shadows making them look more black than green.
The sky was still dark outside, but, judging from the time glowing on her alarm clock, dawn would come soon. Inko knew she should at least try to sleep; she had school in the morning, after all, and her grades were already slipping as it was.
There was the sound of smashing glass from her father’s room — a bottle breaking — then a drunken, keening wail.
You’re putting yourself in danger. Leave it to the professionals.
She didn’t let herself hesitate.
She strode over to the bed and grabbed her costume: tugging the hoodie back on, winding the scarf back around her face. The gloves slipped on with ease, her shoulders sliding into the jacket with a familiar shrug.
Midoriya Inko disappeared beneath the hood, and climbed out into the night again.
Her father’s wails did not follow her.|| JAPAN TODAY ||
March 20th. THIS WEEK’S NEWS
pg. 3 of […]
Tragic death after explosive battle in Shizuoka
Unground Hero, Trajectory, announced dead at the scene after a sudden battle broke out near Musutafu, Shizuoka Prefecture, last night. Little is known about the villain responsible, or indeed about Trajectory herself, a hero who preferred to avoid the spotlight… [continue reading]
——
.july.
Toshi knew he needed the experience, but that didn’t change the fact that stealth jobs were awful.
He knew they were important, of course, and vital for hero work, but that didn’t mean he was any good at them. He’d go so far as to say he was terrible, actually — which, to be fair, was probably why Gran had insisted he tag along on this one. But it had been a long week: homework up to his eyeballs, six hours of class during the day, training on top of training on top of training…
Fucking up this mission and getting chewed out by Gran, on top of everything else, was not an appealing concept. God, when was the last time he’d had a full night’s sleep?
Gran grumbled quietly at his side. “Absolutely stinks of piss in here.”
It did, indeed, stink of piss. The abandoned warehouse they were currently sneaking their way into was big, as city-storage units went, and sat tucked away in a sad corner of Musutafu’s industrial district. The foot traffic in the area was low, police presence practically non-existent, and the company that technically owned the place had gone bust just over six months ago. All in all, it was the perfect hideout for a gang of criminals.
The smell, though — it clung to the air, stale and sour, and did very little for the place’s overall ambiance. Toshinori ducked around a dubious-looking chain-hook dangling in his path.
Yeah. Definitely criminal hideout material.
“Look, I’m just saying we grab it and run, yeah? No need to take a hostage too—”
“We need the insurance, Aki. The fuck do you think the original plan was for?”
The voices were muffled, but clearly coming from the other end of the warehouse, somewhere within the stacks and stacks of old material and machinery. Whoever they were, they were making no effort to keep themselves concealed, probably confident in the belief that the police would continue to overlook this place. Toshinori and Gran both froze.
“I’m just saying—”
“You morons better shut ya goddamn mouths before I shut ‘em for ya.”
Gran made a motion with his hands. You go left, I’ll go right.
Toshi nodded, and his teacher snuck off on foot, scowling. Stealth jobs, he knew, were not the man’s favourite either. His jets were loud — far too loud for any form of sneaking — and a grounded Gran Torino was a grumpy Gran Torino.
Toshi headed in the opposite direction as instructed, awkwardly maneuvering his frame around the heaps of rotting wood and rusting metal. Avoiding detection took far more concentration than he’d like to admit — Gran could stress that versatility was key as much as he liked, but words didn’t magically narrow Toshi’s sweeping shoulders or deflate his ever-broadening biceps.
After some effort, and several close calls with precariously balanced crates, the targets came into sight. There were quite a few that he could see — six or seven at least — and most likely some more that he couldn’t. They were huddled around a battered oil drum, ringed with a few battery-powered lamps that illuminated them in the low, pale light. Judging from the empty wrappers and crumpled cans spilling from its rim, the drum was functioning as a bin.
“No need to be so harsh, Acid,” one said, scratching his nose with an elongated finger.
Acid, a large man with an equally large head, bared his teeth. Even from his distance, Toshi could see them, dark and rotted in his gums.
“Ya want ya face melted off, Arms?”
Arms quietened.
As he moved to gain a better vantage, Toshi felt something catch against his arm — brush past. Time seemed to slow. He glanced over and watched as a stack of tall metal pipes toppled, agonizingly, to the ground.
They hit the concrete with an echoing c-clang c-clang c-clang, and it sounded through the warehouse like some deafening, metallic explosion.
They rolled noisily over the floor to individually thunk against Toshi’s boot. His heart lurched from his body.
Shit.
There was no time to contemplate just how much this was exactly why he shouldn’t do stealth jobs, Gran, because the villains were jumping to their feet. Some flared their quirks, but most simply pulled out an assortment of hand weapons. Toshi spotted several knives, a sword, and one particularly brutal-looking iron club, before he was distracted by the nasal bellowing of Acid-with-the-gross-teeth.
“What the fuck was that?” he roared, spittle flying from his mouth and catching in the lamplight. “Someone’s fucking here!”
“Bet it’s heroes is what it is. I ain’t sticking around here to get my ass busted!”
There was a flurry of movement as they scrambled, clearly thinking to flee, and Toshi tensed. Should he engage? Did he have much choice now? He couldn’t let any of these guys escape under his watch, but he had no idea where Gran was, or whether there were any more members of the gang scuttling about the building. Would fighting them now be jumping the gun?
Toshi gritted his teeth: this was exactly the kind of fuck up he’d been worried about.
“Any of ya so much as think about bailing and I’ll kill ya spineless shitheads myself!”
The scattered thugs all froze as Acid snarled after them, voice rough and menacing, fury etched in lines across his face. The man‘s beady eyes scanned this way and that.
“Come out, come out wherever you are, hero...”
The taunt was childish, but Toshi was tired, and frustrated, and done — so he figured, fuck it, no other option, really, and launched himself into their midst.
He landed with a thump, dust whirling in little flurries around his boots.
“Evening, gentlemen.”
The gang charged him.
Despite the sheer number of them, the fight should have been easy. Some low level thugs trafficking drugs from a dingy warehouse? All Might should’ve had that, no sweat.
And he did, to begin with. The first guy, who slashed at him with claws like a cat’s, Toshi elbowed solidly in the gut and tossed over his shoulder. Another, wielding a pair of short knives, dropped after a swift uppercut. They went down — one, two, three more. Their numbers cut in half.
The difficulty came when, as Toshinori plowed through the close-combat fighters like a pro, Acid started spewing actual, real-life acid at him from the sidelines.
The first globule sailed past him, sizzling and spitting and far too close to his face for comfort, right as he dodged a wild sword-swing. It landed with a hiss a little ahead of him, and ate through a foot of the concrete floor below. The hole smoked and bubbled.
Toshi recoiled. If Acid’s acid could do that to solid concrete… yeah, he wasn’t all too keen on having his skin melted off at eighteen.
Another projectile fired towards him, and Toshi dove to the left, using the momentum to roll and spring back to his feet.
“Sprightly one, ain’t ya, hero?” Acid leered at him, rotten teeth like gravel in his gums. The state of them made sense now, though the whole effect was no less grim.
The man made a retching movement in his throat, and something warm and squishy wrapped around Toshinori’s neck.
His stomach dropped, but his immediate revolted jolt did nothing to stop him being yanked backwards, colliding with something that felt most definitely like a body. He clawed at the things pressed against his throat. His fingers met the sensation of flesh and, with another swoop of nausea, he realised that the warm and squishy things were arms. Long, elasticated arms.
God. So the situation could actually get grosser.
“Move an inch an’ Arms’ll choke ya,” Acid snarled, “if I don’t dissolve ya skull first. I’ve heard having ya brain corroded is mighty unpleasant.”
The grip on his neck had become decidedly less squishy, bones and muscle reforming to dig viciously into his windpipe. Toshinori gagged.
Where the hell was Gran?
He sparked One For All, feeling it hum through his fingers as he tightened his grip on the arms squeezing his neck. Hopefully, Acid would be too surprised by his buddy rocketing towards him to spit any corrosive—
The oil drum careened into Acid in an explosion of garbage and steel.
Acid was flattened head first into the ground, but the drum kept on going, hurtling directly towards the roof like a large, barrel-shaped arrow. Gravity, however, seemed to snatch it back before it made it all the way, and the thing nosedived to the earth with a thunderous crash.
“Sorry to barge in, boys.”
The voice came from above them. Shock had put the fight on pause, just for a second, and they all looked skyward. Toshi squinted, and could just make out a figure crouching in the rafters, barely visible in the gloom.
“Boss—” one of the villains said, “Boss, it’s that vigilante bitch.”
From his spot pancaked on the concrete, Acid twitched, spitting red onto the grimy warehouse floor. The appearance of his teeth was, unsurprisingly, not improved by blood spatter. He growled.
“Ya fuckin—”
With all the force of One For All, Toshi seized Arms and yanked. The man went flying into Acid at the speed of a bullet, slung by the elasticity of his own limbs. The two howled as they slammed into each other with enough force to break bone.
Immediately, the remaining thugs rushed him.
Toshi leapt into action, his muscles singing. He dodged and kicked and punched; weaved in and out of attacks and slid into defense like his body was made for it. This — this was his thing, and damn did it feel good to be back in his element. He ducked under the swing of a bat, the very same he’d spied earlier, and swept the man’s feet out from under him.
There was a squeaking sound — rope running through a rusty gunny above — followed by a brief rush of air, and suddenly a blur of green shot past him. Two feet slammed into her chest, and the swordswoman leaping at him went down like a bowling pin.
The green blur alighted next to him. The figure from the rafters.
She was short, much shorter than him, and decked out in a rather battered green bomber jacket and what looked like cheap sports leggings. Most of her face was hidden: a scarf, also green, tied around her mouth and nose; her hair concealed beneath a hood, pulled out from under the jacket’s collar. The villain had been right earlier — dressed like that, there was no question she was a vigilante.
“Er,” he said.
She glanced over at him. “Nice throw.”
Then the remaining villains were upon them. Her technique was unrefined, but the woman fought like a whirlwind. She slid around Toshinori, guarding him against incoming hits, following up his attacks with finishers of her own. Objects flew into her hands and were cast aside faster than he could track — a knife aiming for his legs; one man’s shoelaces, dragging him off his own feet; a pole, ricocheting into the back of an attacker’s skull.
Her movements were unbalanced, and more often than not she used her quirk in place of any physical strength, but her results were nothing to sneeze at. Gran would probably have pulled a face at her method — cast a disapproving eye over her locked-elbow punches and narrow stance — but Toshi wasn’t about to look down on someone currently roundhouse-kicking a villain in the face.
From the corner of his eye, he spied Acid and Arms climbing back to their feet; battered, but still not out, apparently. Acid looked nothing short of murderous.
The vigilante peeked around him, the warmth of her back pressed up against his.
“Duck,” she said.
Suddenly, Acid and Arms were airborne again — a storage crate had plowed into them from behind, just like the barrel earlier. They soared directly towards Toshinori, expressions carved halfway between fear and fury.
Toshi did not duck.
Instead, he raised his fist back, ignited with the blaze of One For All, and smashed.
The resulting force was a little excessive, he’d admit. The hit sent not only the two men snapping back head-over-heel, but also ripped a chunk of the building’s structure out with it. It scraped a long track into the floor, cracked several rafters, and tore a large hole through the outside wall’s brick, letting in a waft of night air and silvery shafts of moonlight. The warehouse foundations groaned.
“Shit.”
Even with her face half covered, Toshi could tell the vigilante was gaping. Her brows had leapt up her forehead and her eyes — caught a brilliant emerald in the sudden moonlight — were huge.
“U-Um—” she stuttered. The wall of confidence she’d been before had shifted, replaced by… nerves? Fear? Toshi struggled with reading faces at the best of times, let alone when they were half-covered. Her voice had gone quiet. “What—”
“Toshinori!”
Toshi felt his entire body wince.
Slowly, knowing full well what was coming, he turned. Gran stood atop a battered crate behind them, reappeared at last, his arms crossed and a scowl set heavily in place. He cut a much more intimidating figure than a man shorter than Toshi reasonably should.
Toshinori swallowed.
“Oh hey, Sensei—”
“Don’t you ‘sensei’ me, brat—”
“I was wondering where you’d got to—”
“Oh you were, were you?” His tone was cold enough to freeze hell, and familiar fear struck icy intoToshi’s heart. “Well then, tell me what part, exactly, of reconnaissance mission did you not understand, Toshinori?”
“Gran—”
“Here I was, thinking this would be good practise for you. A simple job to gather intel. Not engage any hostiles; not alert the villains that we were onto them; give our findings to the police investigation. And suddenly, what do I hear?”
“Sensei—”
“A brawl. A goddamn brawl! So I hurry over here, only to find you and a hole in the side of the building— and don’t you move one more inch, vigilante.”
Toshi started. The vigilante, he was embarrassed to admit, had slipped from his focus after Gran’s arrival. He glanced back. She had shuffled a few paces away, probably in an attempt to escape unnoticed, but was now frozen, staring back at Gran nervously.
“Who the hell are you? What is going on here, Toshinori?”
“It’s a — complicated story, Sensei.”
“Spare me, brat. Just start talking.”
Then, out of nowhere, the vigilante exclaimed, “You’re Gran Torino!”
If it was possible, Gran scowled even deeper. “Yes, well done. You know who I am. Astounding. Now who are you?”
“You—!” For a moment, the woman seemed to quiver, as if she was physically restraining herself from saying something else. She clenched her hands — shoved them into the pockets of her jacket. Swallowed. “If I— if I tell you who I am, what will you do? Arrest me?”
Gran studied her, expression harsh. “You’re breaking the law.”
“Then there’s no point in me telling you.”
Toshi glanced between the two, unsure. Then his teacher abruptly propelled himself forward in a burst of air and noise, and was toe-to-toe with the vigilante before any of them could even blink.
The woman stumbled back.
“Young lady, don’t misunderstand me,” Gran said, uncommonly gentle — or what passed as gentle for him. He leant down to get on her level. “I don’t want to report you. I don’t really think you’re in the wrong. But vigilantism is illegal — you’re not trained, you’re not qualified. You’re putting yourself in danger. I understand why you feel the need to do what you’re doing, but leave it to the professionals. Don’t make us do something we don’t want to.”
Suddenly, the vigilante’s entire demeanor changed, like a switch had been flipped. Her body went taut as a steel rod, eyes lit up like burning green coals.
“Leave it to the professionals? What, the professionals who were only here on a recon mission? These bastards were planning on kidnapping someone!” she gestured vaguely at the villains sprawled around, most out cold, some groaning in pain. “On holding her for ransom and trafficking her into the same disgusting underground ring they were exploiting her for in the first place! Did you know that? Would you have found her? Would you have saved her before it was too late if you’d left tonight with only intel?”
Gran looked taken aback. Toshi’s own stomach clenched. The vigilante’s words were furious, so different from any other way she’d behaved since he met her. The passion in her voice was a physical thing, assailing them with its weight.
“I’ve been tracking this group for months. I knew exactly what they were planning, exactly when they were going to strike. I’ve saved that girl tonight, and I’ve cut off a limb of the ExQuick black market in Musutafu.”
“Kid,” Gran Torino began. “We were sent here because the police knew about these guys. The investigation team had a plan, they knew what they were doing.”
It was wild to listen to Gran praise law enforcement. Toshi understood why he was saying it, of course, but it didn’t lessen the novelty of watching his teacher so thoroughly swallow his own grudges.
“No.” The vigilante stepped back, shaking her head viciously. Her scarf slipped a little down her nose. “No. They don’t. They don’t care. They don’t care about the people this gang has hurt — would’ve hurt. They can know what they’re doing as much as they want, but that doesn’t mean anything when they don’t give a damn.”
Something stuck in Toshinori’s chest.
Outside, sirens wailed. The woman jumped; her hands flew to her scarf, her hood, tugging them tighter into place. Toshi glanced at Gran.
“You called them? Sensei!”
“’Course I didn’t, brat!” his teacher snapped. He was irritable, more so than usual. Had the vigilante’s words pricked at him too? “When would I’ve done that? Someone probably called them after hearing you knock out the whole goddamn wall of this warehouse—”
“It wasn’t the whole wall—”
The vigilante moved.
In a flash, Gran had grabbed her wrist. His grip was forgiving, but she froze all the same.
“Reconsider.”
For a moment she said nothing, just met his gaze with an expression that Toshi couldn’t place.
“I won’t,” she finally said, firm. “Please, let me go.”
Everyone was still. Toshi watched them, unsure of whether he should say anything, do anything — but then, with a sigh that looked to rattle his bones, Gran stepped away.
“Goddamnit,” he said. “Don’t make me regret this, kid.”
The vigilante stared at him a second longer. Looked at Toshi; looked back at Gran. “Thank you.”
Then she ran, through the shattered wall in a scurry of green and black and away into the night.
The police arrived not long after. Toshi was unsurprised to learn, from the grim-faced unit leader who strode over to them, that it was the investigation team. She was a severe looking woman, her uniform prim up to top collar button, her eyes a sharp shade of steel. The rest of the team quickly went about cuffing the gang members and upturning the scene, some stomping off to search the rest of the building. The leader scowled as she surveyed the two of them.
“Care to explain how the hell this happened, Torino?” she said, gaze like a knife. “Your orders were very clear.”
Gran grumbled “Tell me something I don’t know. The kid here had to go all in — he’s still learning how subtlety works.”
“Subtly, huh? Perhaps consider that before you bring your student along on a police-issued job.”
Gran’s shoulder’s stiffened. He raised his chin, staring the chief down through the white lenses of his mask. “How I teach my kid is none of the police’s concern, Officer.”
Toshi shuffled awkwardly. He saw the woman’s jaw clench, before her attention was caught by another approaching officer and she turned away.
“Kimoto?”
“No bite, sir. We swept the whole building and there’s nothing concrete. No comms, no plans, no drugs — just a one-off hideout, as far as we can tell.”
“Nothing concrete?”
“We did find this.”
The officer held something up: it was small and tattered, but distinctively, distinctively green. Toshinori’s stomach dropped. It was a little slip of fabric, the exact same colour and texture as the vigilante’s scarf. When had—?
The chief reached for it and ran her fingers across the weave. “Now what do we have here?”
“We found it stuck on the claws of one of the thugs over there. It doesn’t match any of the clothes on them, or—”
“Or Torino and his sidekick. Interesting.”
She studied at them, long and hard and cutting. Gran looked back at her evenly, but Toshi’s gut was twisting into knots. He bit his tongue; he should be better than this by now.
“You know what’s interesting about this?” she dangled the fabric in front of her. “We’ve been flooded with reports recently, all talking about some vigilante moron running around, endangering their lives, putting others at risk. And coincidentally, all those reports describe this vigilante as wearing green. So this seems an awfully strange thing to find in the hands of some drug trafficker who just got knocked out in a fight. Would either of you happen to know anything about this?”
Gran huffed. “Never seen it before, I’m afraid.”
“And you, kid?” The chief turned her harsh gaze on Toshinori. “Recognise this? You were the one who engaged, after all.”
For just a moment, Toshi feared he’d freeze up. She was a vigilante — a criminal, legally speaking. And wasn’t it his job to catch criminals? To keep people safe, even from themselves?
But— her ferocity as she’d fought those traffickers, her passion as she’d spoken of justice—
He didn’t freeze, didn’t even break eye contact with the chief, and the lie fell from his tongue tasting like honey.
“No idea. Sorry, Officer.”
~~~~~
The flat was quiet as Inko slipped in through the window.
Everything was draped in that early-hours stillness, painted with quiet shadows, nothing but the familiar hum of next door’s television bleeding through the walls. She both loved and hated these moments: loved the buzz of leftover adrenaline, the accomplished exhaustion of her limbs; hated how the stench of dust and stale beer brought her crashing back to reality.
Tonight had not gone how she’d expected. Lead after lead had led her to that warehouse, months of snooping and citizen tip-offs, sleepless night after sleepless night — and it had paid off. That arm of the ExQuick ring was busted, probably being cuffed at that very moment. One less part of the drug supply chain in Musutafu.
But the appearance of those Heroes, Gran Torino and the boy he’d called Toshinori, had thrown her off balance. She’d lost her cool, first at the very presence of Gran Torino (Trajectory’s old partner, holy shit—) and then at the Hero’s words.
You’re not trained, you’re not qualified. You’re putting yourself in danger—
Inko stripped off her jacket and hoodie, tugged the scarf away from her face, and tossed them furiously onto the foot of her bed, her skin hot with anger and adrenaline. Hearing one of the Heroes she so admired tell her to stop almost felt like a betrayal, even though she didn’t truly know the man; but the worst part was, she knew her anger wasn’t directed at him.
Because he was right. He was right and she knew it.
She was only seventeen — seventeen, and spending nearly every night running through the city, hiding her identity behind dark swathes of fabric, taking on criminals twice her size with nothing but her generic, low-power quirk. She hadn’t even known how to fight at first. She’d scraped by on nothing but her reaction times and stupidly high pain tolerance until experience had taught her how to be scrappy.
She peeled off her gloves and stared down at her hands, at her chipped nails and smooth skin. Looking at them, it would be hard to guess what her nights consisted of, protected as they were by her battered gloves. No calluses, no obvious scars; clean and unmarked.
She let her arms fall to her sides.
No. Gran Torino might have been correct in a way, but he didn’t know everything. He didn’t know about the people she’d saved — the muggings, the fights, the attempted assaults — he didn’t know about the groundwork. Heroes were the big leagues, but not everyone who needed saving was part of the big leagues. Why should she stay on the sidelines when she was capable of helping? When she wanted to help?
God. Tonight had really thrown her.
Her stomach gurgled loudly.
“Yeah,” she murmured. “Yeah, okay. Food now, thoughts later.”
With her most incriminating garments thrown in a heap on her bed, she was safe to venture to the kitchen. The leggings she’d have to peel herself out of in a bit, but right now food was her primary goal.
Though the hall was dark, the kitchen light was still on, glowing feebly above the tiny dinner table. Her father refused to ever switch the thing off (which had always been bizarre, considering how tight he was with the rest of their electricity expenses) but Inko wasn’t about to complain; it saved her from having to fumble for a snack in the dark every night.
She shuffled, soft-footed, over to the fridge and rooted around as quietly as she could. Their fridge was never hugely well-stocked — especially now, given her newly increased, crime-fighting-fueled appetite — but tonight it seemed particularly barren. Her stomach rumbled unhelpfully again.
“Alright, alright,” she whispered. “Hang on.”
The tiny little yoghurt drinks were not her favourite, but she didn’t have all that much choice. She grabbed the closest one, ripped off its tin foil lid, and downed it.
“I never ask, you know.”
She jolted; the yoghurt burned her nose as it choked back up her throat. She whirled around.
Her father stood in the doorway, the harsh kitchen light sallowing his already drawn face. He looked half-awake and obviously drunk, judging from the angle of his stance, but no less wretched than she was used to. Inko’s heart dropped.
“Dad? Why aren’t you in bed?”
“Why aren’t you?” Alcohol rarely made her father slur, rather it gave his voice an edge; words low where they otherwise weren’t, letters harsher than they needed to be. She heard that edge more than she didn’t — she heard it now, as her fingers squeezed tight around the empty yoghurt bottle. “You think I don’t notice, but I do. How could I not notice my own kid slipping out in the dead of night?”
“Dad—”
“What is it you do? A boyfriend? Drugs? Both?” For a second he sounded almost pleading, and Inko could only stare at him, motionless.
“No, I—”
“Then what?” he snapped. His face suddenly soured, sharpening and twisting into an expression that Inko wished she didn’t know. “Oh — oh, of course. You whore yourself, don’t you? You're just like your fucking mother.”
His green hair had always been paler than Inko’s own, but in the shitty lighting it looked almost vomit-yellow. He glowered at her.
For as much as her parents had never cared, as much as her father had always been bitter, he'd never touched her, never exchanged his foul words for his fists. But, at that moment, Inko was afraid. She afraid, despite how he was swaying on his feet, gripping onto the doorframe for support. The fear that he would hit her flashed sharp and real through her bones.
She could take him, of course she could — he was drunk and she was used to fighting men bigger than her — but it didn’t diminish the fear that curled like acid under her skin.
“She was just the same, you know. That slut whored herself to everyone who looked her way—”
“I’m going to bed,” Inko said, trying to keep her voice level — failing. She couldn’t meet his gaze, and instead stepped towards him carefully, watching the way his feet moved. “Good night.”
He didn't budge, even as she approached the doorway and tried to slip past him. He grabbed her arm.
"Inko. Inko. Please—"
"Let go of me—"
"I'm sorry—" he began to choke, his muzzed words sounding disturbingly like the start of tears. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean it— you know I didn't mean it, I'm sorry— I just want you to talk to me—"
Inko wrenched her arm from his grip, but he held on fast, latching his other hand onto the back of her t-shirt.
"Inko— Inko—"
His nails, brittle and over-long, caught on her skin beneath the fabric and Inko whirled around reflexively, lashing out at his face with the sharp rim of the bottle still squashed in her hand. It scratched just under his eye. The thing could do little more than graze, but it was enough to mark an angry red line into his flesh.
"I said let go!”
The man stumbled back and clutched at his eye. He stared back at her with nothing but shock, though whether it was more at her or at himself she wasn’t sure.
"Inko, I—"
She didn't let him finish. Before he could say another word, she fled, scurring across the hall and slamming the door to her bedroom shut behind her. She threw her body back against the brittle wood.
For a moment she heard nothing. The neighbours TV babble was gone; Inko doubted that they'd call the police — what happened in this building tended to stay in this building — but the commotion was apparently enough to warrant them switching off their show to listen out.
She heard her father's uneven footsteps shuffle on the other side of the door, heard him pause in the hallway. Inko counted to three.
His footsteps receded to his bedroom, and there was the click of his own door closing after him.
After a moment more, the neighbour's TV started up again.
Inko sat frozen, her heart racing against her sternum. The confusion and anger of five minutes ago felt like a dream. This adrenaline was different — a terrible kind of nausea that throbbed through her ribs like a sickness. Her anger had died and all that was left was an aching pit in her gut; an exhaustion marrow-deep. Tears ached at the backs of her eyes.
“No,” she said to herself, the words no more than a whisper in the stillness. She curled her hands and bit her nails into the palms. “You’re not crying again, Inko.”
Against her skin, her shirt burned, phantom sensations of her father’s fingers in the fabric prickling along her back. Tangled. Tugging. Desperate.
She ripped the garment up over her head and flung it away, watching as it landed in a lump by her bed’s footboard. Beside it, the heap of her jacket and scarf were still visible in the dim light, the shadows making them look more black than green.
The sky was still dark outside, but, judging from the time glowing on her alarm clock, dawn would come soon. Inko knew she should at least try to sleep; she had school in the morning, after all, and her grades were already slipping as it was.
There was the sound of smashing glass from her father’s room — a bottle breaking — then a drunken, keening wail.
You’re putting yourself in danger. Leave it to the professionals.
She didn’t let herself hesitate.
She strode over to the bed and grabbed her costume: tugging the hoodie back on, winding the scarf back around her face. The gloves slipped on with ease, her shoulders sliding into the jacket with a familiar shrug.
Midoriya Inko disappeared beneath the hood, and climbed out into the night again.
Her father’s wails did not follow her.