hero's shadow // mha

80) futile devices

Izuku rises to his feet at the same time that lightning strikes somewhere down the block. His ear twitches, and his enhancements allow him to hear the way the tree cracks and falls to the ground.

Show them.

His hand moves to his face, and he feels blood dripping steadily down his nose. All he smells is copper and regret and disappointment.

The voice is back, and it's calling his name. It becomes so loud that it drowns out everything else. It drowns out the sound of Nezu's soft words, it drowns out Aizawa's yelling behind the doorway, it drowns out the storm.

And Izuku is just so sick and tired of being treated like a toy, like an anomaly to figure out and fix and contain.

He watches Nezu's mouth, but he doesn't care much for what he has to say anyway.

That voice is there. His father is there. Egging him on, pushing him, shoving him towards the shore so he can escape the roaring waters.

He calls his name, and then Izuku is not there. He's in front of that dreadful realm, in front of the almost heavenly veil separating him from his origin. And Izuku only stares through. There's something moving in the darkness, and he knows it's him.

He sees white hair through the haze, and he panics—but it's not his father. It's Izuku's vestige.

No, no. His One for All vestige.

And he's inside of his father's domain like he belonged there in the first place.

Izuku reaches a hand in, but his vestige is just as quick to blast him away with a flick of a finger, and debris crashes against his back, except it feels too real, and wooden splinters imbed in his skin a little too sharply—

He's snapped back to the present, and Nezu is in his hands once again, still as unperturbed as ever despite nearly being strangled. Sadness and genuine confusion shine in those black eyes like stars in the sky, and Izuku drops him in alarm as his quirks fizzle away.

Izuku turns, his entire body burning like static, and he meets Aizawa's shocked gaze through the wreckage of the office.

His teacher says something, shouts it, but it's delayed when it registers in Izuku's mind. The man takes a step forward, hand reaching out to him, but Izuku sees the way his other hand is gripping his scarf, ready to send it out—and the boy doesn't wait and see what mercy Aizawa will show him. He kicks the remnants of the splintered desk and couch away from his body and prepares to go straight through Aizawa.

He doesn't have time anymore to stand and search. It doesn't matter now; Nezu found his notebook, he has it hidden somewhere, and it's obvious he's already read the important things in it. Izuku has it all in a semasiographic code he created with Kacchan back when they were both younger, one that is based solely on actions and emotional movement. It is nearly impossible to be directly translated to a phonetic language, and not just because of Izuku's own mistakes and inconsistencies due to his previous circumstances. This is also Nezu he's talking about.

Why did he ever think it would take the principal days to figure it out? He did it in an hour tops, if Izuku's thinking is right. He did it so fast that Izuku wants to rip out his fucking hair and scream at how naive he was, how stupidly confident he was to think his notebook would be safe from the one being he never trusted with his secrets.

The chances are that Nezu already has everything copied down somewhere, so even if Izuku manages to find it, the damage is permanent. It isn't done, though, no. It will only get worse, because the only thing for Izuku to do now is see what Nezu will do next—see who Nezu will tell.