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"Midoriya?"
Izuku turned, and there on the street beside him was a blond man covered head to foot in plated metal and wearing a long cape. It was probably a pro hero—which was strange, because he usually would have remembered a pro hero's name by now.
"Where are you going, mon ami?" the man continued, "And dressed like that?"
Izuku looked down at himself. He was wearing bright blue sweatpants and a long pale shirt that folded over itself strangely. Maybe this man wasn't a pro hero, but some kind of hero cosplayer acquaintance of his? After all, he knew that Izuku didn't normally dress like this, and he'd called him by name.
"Pardon," the man said, stepping away from the people he had been talking to, "Midoriya, where are your shoes?"
"I have to go," Izuku said, suddenly remembering what he had been doing, "There's someplace—I have to get going."
He started down the sidewalk again, heading resolutely for his destination. To his mild surprise, the blond man followed after him.
"Where is it you have to go?" the man said. Izuku couldn't place his accent, or the origin of the foreign words he kept throwing into his sentences. Maybe it was part of his branding as a hero, or of the hero he was dressed up as.
"This way," Izuku said, gesturing ahead. It wasn't that it was a secret—but he wasn't quite sure how to explain where he was headed, and he couldn't quite remember how he knew this person anyway. And he was his own adult. He didn't have to tell anybody where he chose to spend his free time.
The man drew a phone out of his pocket, pulled off a glove, and started texting with one hand. "Midoriya," he said, "Are you supposed to be here?"
"It's a public place," Izuku said, not sure he liked the direction this conversation was taking, "Anybody can be here." He started walking a little faster.
"Of course, mon ami," the man said, in the kind of tone teachers used when they had no intention of listening to your complaints, "I only mean—It's wonderful that you were released from the hospital so quickly."
"Yeah," Izuku said, gut twisting. He didn't think he'd been in a hospital recently.
They walked in silence for a while after that, Izuku moving purposefully toward his goal, the stranger acquaintance man trailing persistently after him. When Izuku had run into him, they had been closer to downtown, and the streets around them had been full of shops and pedestrians. But the farther they went, the more the crowd thinned out, and the businesses around them turned from shopping centers to obscure business headquarters and storage areas. They were still in the city though—plenty of cars passed them on the road.
"Oh look," the man said, pointing toward the roof of a building, "What's that up there?"
Izuku looked. There was a building roof up and to their left. The top of it made a crisp line against the sky. Turning back to his companion, he said, "I don't know what—"
A car had pulled to a halt next to them, and two strangers were jumping out. The blond man had stepped down off the curb and was pulling open the trunk.
Izuku turned to run and tripped. He never hit the ground—gravity had stopped working on him, and there was a hand on his shoulder, pulling him backward. Izuku flailed his arm to shake it off, but that didn't cancel out the quirk's effect. Before he could think of anything else, the two strangers—a brunette woman and a man with strangely segmented hair colors—pushed him into the trunk. The hero who had been following him slammed the door shut over him.
Footsteps sounded around him—the other doors slammed shut and the car sped up again. Bracing his arm against the top of the trunk, Izuku found the leverage he needed to kick at a corner. He had heard that it was possible to knock out a car's tail lights from the inside.
"Do not let him break my baby!" another woman shouted from elsewhere in the car. Izuku stopped what he was doing. As much as he didn't want to be kidnapped, if there was an infant in trouble, he needed to prioritize their safety.
The light changed behind him. Izuku pushed off of the carpet to spin himself around—losing the grip of gravity was not as strange a sensation as it probably should have been—and saw that the small square behind the backseat cupholders had been flipped open. The hero from before was leaning over to stare through at him.
"Mon ami," the man said, "Please do not break the car."
"You're kidnapping me," Izuku said, stomping on the corner again for emphasis.
"I vote we let him go," the driver said. It was the same woman who had interjected something about her child—but Izuku couldn't see any babies in the car. "If he's under a villain's quirk, then maybe he's headed toward a villain base. If we watch where he goes, then we could locate—"
"Absolutely not," the blond hero said, "We cannot allow Midoriya to walk into a trap in this state!"
The brunette woman leaned over to look from the other side of the back seat. "Can he," she started, then paused. "Wait—guys, he'll hear any strategies we discuss."
"Allow me," the hero said, and then rattled off several full sentences in a language Izuku didn't understand at all.
By the silence that followed, it seemed his co-conspirators hadn't understood it either.
"Hang on," the man in the passenger seat said. Izuku pushed off the wall to get a better angle—it was the man with the strange hair who had helped to capture him. He had pulled out his phone and was swiping at the screen with intense concentration. "If you can repeat that—I can put it through google translate."
"Or you could just text each other," Izuku said, and then winced. Why was he helping these people?
"Great idea, Deku!" the brunette said, which was vaguely terrifying. Had they gone to school together as kids?
"Allez," the hero said, "We should have thought of that."
His kidnappers spent the next several minutes texting each other furiously. Izuku continued to kick at the corner, even though the blond hero kept staring at him reproachfully. None of it seemed to matter. This car was very strong.
After a little while, the car turned and slowed down. From the change in motion, and the brief glimpses of their surroundings he could catch from his little window, Izuku realized that they had pulled into a parking lot. If he didn't get out now, he might be dragged discreetly into a building where there would be no bystanders to call for help. Something about the desperation of that thought must have affected him, because his next kick tore off the entire car door.
There wasn't time to question how he had done it. Izuku rolled out of the trunk after it, bracing for impact. Instead, he hung in the air, rotating slightly. That was right—the woman's quirk was still in effect. Looking around, Izuku saw that they had pulled under some kind of awning. There were pillars holding it up, so Izuku used blackwhip to grab hold of one and right himself.
That was when One for All finished fighting off the effects of whatever quirk he had been under.
The car doors opened, and Izuku's friends jumped out to rush him.
"Wait, guys—it's fine now!" Izuku insisted, waving his hands to ward off any attacks they might be planning.
Uraraka released him from her quirk, and Izuku landed lightly on his feet.
"So you'll come quietly," Todoroki prompted.
"Yeah—sure," Izuku said, still a little disoriented. Looking around again, he realized that they had brought him back to the hospital. "I think maybe whatever was in my head was trying to keep me from using One for All—since it's a mental quirk too, and it can resist brainwashing. So when I used it to—"
"My baby!" Hatsume shouted, running up to the detached trunk door and cradling it in her arms.
Aoyama grabbed Izuku's arm and started pulling him toward the hospital entrance. "Better that you get out of sight for now."
"Right," Izuku said, letting himself be towed away. "Um, thanks for kidnapping me."
Uraraka smiled brightly. "Anytime!"