checkmate rewrite

chapter five

*Warning- there is gonna be violence and blood and gross stuff. This entire book is gonna be gross. 

Hitoshi ended up crashing on Izuku's couch after two rounds of Izuku maintaining his winning streak at Monopoly. He'd thrown the little sheets of pink and yellow in the air and proceeded to act out showering in all his money. Hitoshi had then thrown a pillow at him and they decided to call it a night before things got ugly.

The room was already filled with sunshine by the time Izuku managed to crack an eye open. He stumbled into his bathroom and took a shower before making an appearance in the living room but Hitoshi was already gone. He'd left a note saying Izuku's couch was terrible and he'd gone back to his place. There were instructions at the bottom of the page to text him when Izuku woke up.

Izuku dropped the note back on the couch where he'd left it. He would have followed instructions and texted Hitoshi but he couldn't remember where his phone was. Nyan was probably sitting on it anyway. He compromised by telling himself he would go looking for it after he was a responsible adult and nurtured his body. Izuku flung open the refrigerator door and scooped out another helping of chocolate moose. He leaned against the kitchen counter as he ate, his eyes wandering over the apartment between bites.

The recipe was tucked under a canister of flour. Izuku picked it up and looked at it more carefully. He smiled at his mother's handwriting. He knew it was a chocolate moose pie but the only letters he could make out from the title spelled out 'chop', probably his fault. His mother had been tidy and firm, the pillar of the household. He regretted how many times she'd had to clean up his messes. He was too young to realize how unfair it had been for her, how stressed she'd been. She would have been appalled at his apartment now. The sink was always full of discarded dishes, cat fur covered the furniture like a second coat, and there were stray papers filled with little notes he'd written to himself filled in every container of the household. He'd once found a note in the freezer he'd written to himself speculating on a robbery. She'd never liked how, intense, Izuku had been about the hero world. He was too fixated on a reality entirely outside of his own.

The longer he stared, the more he felt like he was forgetting something. The way the title looked, it was gnawing on him. Izuku set the recipe down and ran a hand through his hair. He would not be able to focus on anything else for the rest of the day until he figured it out. Determined, Izuku walked around his apartment and looked for other notes he might have left for himself. He was halfway through wrenching a desk drawer open when it dawned on him. Izuku rushed over to where his hero costume still lay crumpled in his backpack. He yanked out his support belt and dug through the pockets, grinning when he found the stray bit of paper he'd stolen from the purse thief.

He rushed back to his desk, shoving his books off to the side before he set the note down and turned on the lamp. The handwriting was awful, nearly illegible, and more than a couple of words were misspelled. It was probably the kind of note that teachers had nightmares about.

Go too grocery store

Pickes

rbrio rice

Peauts

Letuce

Bef

Soaps

Ice pudding

Deterget pod

It wasn't the usual misspelling of words. It felt too organized- too deliberate. Izuku thought back to the woman who'd been brainwashed and the series of small-level crimes that had been meant to distract the heroes. What was it the villains were doing during these distractions? Perhaps the better question was, were these simply distractions, or were they disguises? What if the man he'd fought had been coerced or brainwashed like that woman? He could have been carrying that note, intending to discreetly pass it off to someone working with the League. A secret message. But then why would Mindjack force him to do something so stupid? He'd attempted a chaotic robbery in broad daylight, while basically being in the commission's driveway.