Heroes, Vigilantes, and Villains

Chapter twenty

Izuku POV

I fell out of the warpgate created by Kurogiri onto my bed, managing to have a soft landing for the first time since I've met the misted man. The first thing that I noticed was that I was in my room and it was already dark out. The second thing was that my phone was on my desk, face up in a way that I would never sit it down.

Ignoring the phone for the moment, I scrambled over to the light switch and turned it on as fast as I could. I've never been scared of the dark before, but now I knew the monsters that roamed in it. I had the bruises and cuts on my skin to remind me of them.

Maybe I'm the monster, maybe that's why everyone and everything else seems so driven to kill me. Knowing who my father is, it's not such a far off suggestion.

I walked over and picked it up, fully expecting to see hundreds of missed calls and texts from my mother, but all I found was a few from Hito, a good text from her in her time zone, and the date of the day.

Double checking the day, I saw that I'd been a full week, that Mom was supposed to be coming home this upcoming afternoon. I unlocked the phone and went to my messages, not believing for a second that my mother would go a whole week without saying anything to me and being okay with me not texting or calling her once during that time. Whenever I got there, I saw multiple messages and conversations that fit my texting patterns with my mother, but were not sent by me at all.

One of the villains created a cover to keep her from worrying and interfering.

Though looking through the rest of my messages, the ones from Hitoshi, they weren't so generous as to have the same consideration with anyone else texting me at the time.

Sucking in a breath, I took a moment to come up with a story that would settle the other teen, something with enough truth that he wouldn't be able to hear the lie in my voice. Something that if he were to talk to my mother during one of the times that he's over here, I could easily take care of the conversation before a mess is made. Living the way that I have for the past ten years, the lies bubble up on my tounge much easier than I would have wanted them to, but I have never had such a pretty life that lying could be anything less than an art form that I have become a master at.

Pressing the call button, the waiting tone was only there for a moment before the person on the other end of the line picked. "Izu?" The voice on the other end asked, their voice was small with worry and something else that I could place. It wasn't a sound that I heard often enough to know what the quiver in the other teen's voice meant as he spoke.

"Hey Hito," I greeted, silently glad that my voice has been so monotone since that day on the roof that the other boy couldn't hear anything in it even if he wanted to.

"Where have you been?" The purple haired boy asked. I could almost imagine the expression on the other teen's face, the pull of his brow and the downward quirk of his lips. It was an expression that matched the strain that was going in the boy's voice, growing enough that I could almost place the emotion but couldn't believe it, not really.

"I was sick," I lied. It was a bad lie, but it was the easiest one that I could give to explain away the past week. "I spent most of the past week too sick to move."

There was a heavy sign on the other side of the phone that told me just how tired the other boy was of my decisions. "You could have told me and me and Mom would have and brought you soup or something," the other teen said at last, seemingly deciding that I was a lost cause, something that I could have told him ages ago.

"You both would have gotten sick too," I told him, letting the point sink. "Besides, I was barely well enough to remember to text my mother that everything was fine, I don't think I would have been able to answer the door if y'all had come."