Muse

Chapter 3

It had been a fairly quiet day when Izuku finished up his afternoon patrol, at least for him. Whether it was having to deal with a bunch of low level crimes like stopping a mugger or a bike thief, or doing something as simple as help a lady carry her groceries to her car or keep a kid from getting hit by a car, he knew how to keep himself busy right down to when he closed up the agency for the night. When he saw someone in trouble, he just couldn't stand idly by while there were people in need of help. So naturally, when he saw the crowd of people gathered outside of the subway, he got curious and went in to investigate.

Judging from the unusual multitude of people wearing disgruntled faces, this had to be more than just rush hour chaos. Something must have happened on the subway- that was what his gut was telling him. Had someone jumped or was it something else? Sad as it was, it wasn't unusual for someone to end up on the tracks, either from getting pushed or trying to commit suicide. Cop cars on the street were pulled over on the street closest to the train station for crowd control as he ran over to the closest officer and saw a telltale sign of blonde hair with a black lightning bolt streak instead called out, "Kaminari!"

The stun-gun hero looked over from his previous conversation and greeted Izuku with a stunned yet pleased smile, "Hey, Deku, what are you doing here? Shouldn't you be back at the office?"

"I saw the crowd, so I thought I could be of some help." The stun-gun rolled his eyes and gave Izuku a knowing smirk.

"Of course you did. Man, you work too hard. You're going to make the rest of us look bad in comparison."

"So what's the situation?"

"The power's been cut for the Dantooin Station's subway transformer, so all the trains connected to it have been stalled until the power's been restored. The regular engineers they have on staff haven't really been able to figure out what's wrong with it for a couple hours now, so they called me in to perform a little electrical maintenance."

"Well, do you need any help? I can at least evacuate the remaining passengers stuck inside the tunnels. They have to be really uncomfortable sitting in those train cars for so long."

"Are you sure? You don't have to go out of your way to do this. No one can really move any of the cars further inside the track without directions from the operators so they're just kinda sitting tight while everyone tries to get this figured out, and they'll all move again once the power's back on anyways."

"I'm positive, and besides Hatsume added a few new features to my costume that might be a big help down there."

"Well if you're sure, I know we'd love the help. Seriously though, Midoriya, you need to consider taking a vacation once in awhile with all the overtime you've been clocking in."

"I'll worry about that after I get everyone out. Like All-Might would say, 'a hero's work is never done,'" Izuku then placed his respirator over his face and fastened it around his cowl. "Keep your comm link on and keep me updated on your progress."

"Okay. Good luck out there."

"Thanks. You too." And with that, Izuku took off for the tunnels. Pulling a mask over his face, he activated the night-vision scope part of his eye gear once he was on the subway station platform and crouched down once he got a good enough visual. Sparks of energy leapt off of him as carmine veins indicating One for All shimmered up his body, displacing the energy until it was his Full Cowling move. Then he leapt forward, creating a small gust of wind that helped push the evening humidity away for a few seconds. Knowing to avoid the third rail on the off-chance the power came back on while he was on the tracks, Izuku moved in towards his target at a brisk yet cautious pace until the first stranded train was just a few clicks away. The lights in the cars were mostly off, illuminated only by emergency lights and the ones shimmering individually from the passengers' smartphones. The tunnel had to be about eighty degrees. With as many people as there were on the subway lines at rush hour, they had to be cooking in those cars. Once he was close enough to the end car door, he knocked gently on the glass and waved at the conductor, who appeared startled by the sudden light knock.