Endless

3. (Un)Safe

Tokoyami Fumikage would not exactly call himself normal. That has nothing to do with the fact that his quirk gives him the head of a bird.

He likes to say he's part raven, or part crow, but his beak's the wrong colour for it and he knows it. Still, it's fun telling people he has a mutation for birds so associated with death.

In truth, the quirk doctors who helped him figure out his quirk when he was young couldn't quite put a name to the type of bird he is. Some of thought think blackbird, others thought he might be a hybrid of several birds with black plumage. So maybe there's a chance he's got a little bit of raven or crow in him, maybe both.

Anyway, while there are a lot of people out there who (are really bigoted) think having an animal quirk makes him weird (or lesser), he thinks the odd part of him is actually his personality. Quite simply, he's strange as a person. He quite enjoys being this way too; seeing the looks on people's faces when he speaks of darkness always amuses him.

Getting back on track, that isn't the point of things right now. It's a Monday morning, the first school morning after four of his classmates disappeared for two days. Thanks to the class group chat blowing up at three in the morning yesterday (yes, he was awake at the time, he has a tendency to do homework during the night and sleep through most of the day on weekends, his mum thinks he gets it from her since she's part owl), he knows the four of them were kidnapped and are now home safe again. None of them are injured either, though they're all pretty certain Bakugou was injured at some point. They all seemed to have conflicting stories, which was a bit confusing until Midoriya explained they'd all been affected by some kind of memory-altering quirk. Honestly, it just figures. If any of the students were going to be targeted, completely separate to the rest of the class, Midoriya was bound to be one of them.

He doesn't know what gods 1-A managed to piss off, but they are powerful, and very angry.

Coming back to the point yet again, despite the events of the weekend, the whole class is present and accounted for when Mr Aizawa opens the door. Tokoyami would've thought the kidnapped students would take a few days off but no, they're all in their seats. Todoroki is staring out the window in silence as ever, Uraraka is bubbly and overexcited as she talks to Iida about what they might be doing in class today, Bakugou is glaring at Midoriya for... Tokoyami's given up trying to find reasons for it, sometimes Bakugou just shouts at the poor boy for breathing. Tokoyami hates seeing how Midoriya trembles whenever that happens.

It should probably be concerning. They're all so young, they shouldn't be so ok with such terrible things happening that they're capable of going straight back to normality immediately after being kidnapped. It's just that they've faced so much already, it's made them all so resilient, bouncing back fast is simply the only way they can function.

Mr Aizawa thankfully walks in, distracting him from what even he can admit is a dark well of thoughts that would only have grown darker. The teacher isn't alone though. Tokoyami blinks at the small girl whose dark eyes scan over the group of students with some curiosity.

"Oh, she is a girl," Uraraka mutters, but it's loud enough that Tokoyami easily hears her.

Bakugou scoffs which means he almost certainly heard Uraraka too, it would appear she needs to learn how to mutter better.

Iida's arm flies up, he's the class' vice representative and a big stickler for the rules, so a random child being present isn't going to get by him without being brought up.

"Wow, Teach, who's the kid?" Kaminari isn't a stickler for the rules, not even close, but he shrinks in his seat when Iida turns a glare on him for speaking out of turn.

"This is Nu. I'd recommend against getting too close to her, she doesn't like strangers."

As is Mr Aizawa's way, that explains exactly nothing about who the unknown child is. It's odd, but she's familiar to Tokoyami somehow. Dark Shadow normally spends the majority of the school day dormant, sleeping in whatever place it is the sentient aspect of Tokoyami's quirk exists when he's not out and about. Right now, even though Dark Shadow hasn't made a physical appearance, Tokoyami can feel him and the feeling is nothing like he's felt in the past. He can't put a word to it, can't describe it, but he knows it's because of the little girl, Nu.