Viridian: The Green Guide

Chapter 42: The Little Things

"Dude," Kaminari panted as he tried to keep up with Izuku's jogging pace, "Your stamina is unreal!"

Izuku chuckled, "It's just years of running away from bullies!"

Well, that and six months of running away from villains, even though most of the time, he felt like it had been a lot longer than that. It was if he had always woken up in the middle of the night and gone out to help the heroes. Maybe that was just because he'd spent so long desperately wanting to be a hero himself, but vigilantism just felt...right.

For Izuku, being Viridian almost felt like coming home, like it was something he'd always been meant to do. Not that he'd forgotten why he'd started fighting villains in the first place, it was always in the back of his mind, but somehow, his suicide plans seemed a lot less urgent than they had when he first picked up his hoodie and goggles.

"Just go on without me!" Kaminari said dramatically, falling to his knees in the grass on the side of the road and immediately flopping down on his stomach. "Tell all the cute kids at school I'm sorry!"

Izuku giggled uncontrollably as Kaminari put on a show of pretending to die from training-induced exhaustion. Honestly, his friendship was probably another reason for the change in his mood. On his worst days, training Kaminari for UA gave Izuku something to live for and on his best days, it gave him something to look forward to. He hadn't told Kaminari about his death wish yet. It seemed unfair to burden him with something like that when he had such an amazing future in heroics laid out for him.

The only person that Izuku knew for certain that knew about his suicidality was Eraserhead. He'd been fully expecting the hero to abandon him and leave him to die in peace, but that still hadn't happened. Instead, Eraser had become a constant. It seemed that they ran into each other on patrol at least once a week, though a large part of that was probably because Izuku couldn't keep his nose out of the villain factory case instead of Eraserhead trying to check in on him.

It was weird having so much support. Just six months ago, he'd had no one, but now he had Kaminari, Eraserhead and the other heroes, and even his mom, who had been more supportive than he could ever have imagined after she'd found out about the bullying. He really only saw her in the evenings right now, since she worked all day and Izuku went to bed early so he'd be well-rested for his vigilanting, but during those few shorts hours, she always asked about what he was learning in his online classes and let him ramble about quirks, even when she didn't quite understand what he was talking about. It was nice.

"You okay, dude?" Kaminari had turned over onto this back and was weakly kicking Izuku in the ankle, probably so he didn't have to get up. "You spaced out, but didn't start muttering. It was really weird."

Izuku smiled and shrugged, "It's not really anything important."

Kaminari looked at him skeptically and tapped the ground next to him, "Pull up some grass and tell Dr. Kaminari about your troubles."

Izuku laughed, but sat down cross-legged next to Kaminari anyway, "You're a doctor now? And here I thought you were going to be a hero. I hear those double careers can be difficult."

"Did your grumpy uncle tell you that?" Kaminari groaned and sat up. "And no, I'm too dumb to be a doctor. I'll stick with just fighting villains, thank you very much!"

Izuku frowned, "Why do you keep doing that?"

"Doing what? Passing out after training?" Kaminari asked. "It's because I'm a weakling."

"Yeah..." Izuku said distractedly. "Wait, I mean, no! I mean, you are weak, but you're getting stronger! And that wasn't what I was trying to ask about anyway. I'm sorry, I'm just putting my foot in my mouth again, I didn't mean to call you weak, I just..."