A State of Decay

Chapter 30

Izuku stretches out his arms and legs, groaning as he turns over in his bed. The morning light shining straight into his face from a crack in the curtains glares at him as he turns over to grab his phone. Looking at it, he sees that he has a text from a random number. 

Shiggy's Birthday is this Saturday. We're gonna throw him a surprise party. You're in charge of keeping him out of the house until 7. See you there!

It doesn't take long to figure out who it's from by the use of Tomura's nickname. He saves her number into his phone and gets out of bed. He hadn't realized that Tomura's birthday was coming up, and this was the first he'd heard about it. 

He pockets his phone and puts his hands on his head. He realizes he has no idea what to get Tomura for his birthday. He's never been an expert gift-giver regardless, but he has no idea what kinds of things he might like. 

Birthdays always stress him out for this reason. He thinks about just asking Tomura, but he doesn't want to do that. He wants to find something all on his own—something that will surprise Tomura. He wants to get him something thoughtful. 

He sighs, putting that thought on the back burner. He had other plans today- plans that would require his full attention. He goes over to his closet and pulls out a tub that he'd long ago shoved into the back. Blowing the dust off the lid, he removes it and stares at the bin's contents. 

It's his old hero suit--the green one he'd retired when he turned to vigilantism. 

He'd been thinking long and hard about what Stain had said and even what Tomura told him when they first met up again after the war. It's apparent that he'd lost his way along the path he picked for himself. 

Many people had been there for him—supporting him through broken bones, wars, and his low days—and he felt that recently, he'd given all of them a slap to the face. He thought he'd been doing the right thing all along, but he knew now that this wasn't the case. 

It was time for him to return to the limelight and be the kind of hero All Might wanted him to be —the kind of hero the world needed. 

He'd been called the Symbol of Hope before. Maybe, he could still be that. 

He puts the lid back on the bin but doesn't shove it back into the closet. Instead, he leaves it on the floor by his desk to serve as a reminder of his goals. Looking at it fills him with a certain kind of melancholy nostalgia for what he used to be. Leaving it on the floor until he could figure things out and get back on the right track would serve as the perfect motivation to get back on the right path. 

He puts on one of his nicer outfits before heading out. He has an interview of sorts with The Safety Commission. It wouldn't be easy, and this would decide whether he needed to retake his hero licensing exam or if they would just reinstate him as a hero without hassle. 

Izuku knows what they think about him. He's not sure they're going to make it easy. 

* * * 

He pops out of the Safety Commission's office two hours later. He was there longer than he thought, but after a long conversation, they agreed to let him have his hero license back. 

They'd hinted at knowing what he'd been up to but didn't outright say anything. He hated that he had to work for these people again, but it was inevitable--the lesser of two evils, in his mind. If he couldn't find an angle from the outside, he was going to have to try and fight like hell from the inside. 

And Izuku knows just the place to start. 

He makes his way to Hawk's agency, which is relatively new, having formed shortly after the war. It's also the same agency that Bakugou works for at the moment.