MHA Academia Archives

My Hero Academia (MHA) Fanfiction and Fanart. My Hero Academia (often shortened to MHA or BNHA) is a popular Japanese manga and anime series. It was created by Kohei Horikoshi. It takes place in a world where most people are born with superpowers called Quirks. The MHA story follows Izuku Midoriya, a boy who starts out without a Quirk but still dreams of becoming a hero. MHA mixes superhero action with emotional character arcs, big rivalries, and a lot of questions about what it really means to be a “hero.” Because the cast is huge and the world is full of “what if” possibilities, MHA has inspired an enormous online fanfictions, fanart and other fandom. My Hero Academia Fanfiction My Hero Academia fanfiction means stories that fans write themselves, using MHA’s characters and universe. Some fanfics stay close to canon and fill in missing scenes. Others go in totally new directions, like alternate universes, different Quirks, or changes to major events. MHA fanfiction can be short and sweet, or extremely long with many chapters and detailed worldbuilding. Common MHA Fanfiction Ideas (No Spoilers) - Canon rewrites and “fix-it” stories that explore different outcomes - Alternate universes (school AUs, no-quirk AUs, fantasy AUs, etc.) - Character-focused stories about growth, fear, confidence, and resilience - Found family and mentorship dynamics (teachers, classmates, guardians) - Worldbuilding around hero society, rules, training, and public pressure Where to Find MHA Fanfiction - Archive of Our Own (AO3): Huge selection, strong tagging system, lots of long fics - FanFiction.net: Older platform with many classic MHA stories - Wattpad: Often includes AUs and reader-insert styles, especially for newer fans My Hero Academia Fanart MHA fanart is artwork created by fans of the series. It can be anything from cute sketches of Class 1-A hanging out, to dramatic fight scenes, to AU designs with different outfits and settings. Fanart is a big part of the MHA fandom because the characters have strong visual designs and very expressive personalities. Where to Find MHA Fanart - X (Twitter): Fast-moving fandom posts, WIPs, and finished pieces - Pixiv: Very large anime/manga art community, including many Japanese artists - Tumblr: Great for collections, themes, and reblogs of fanart - Instagram: Lots of polished pieces and artist portfolios - DeviantArt: Long-running fanart platform with many styles Introduction to “Yesterday Upon The Stair” by PitViperOfDoom “Yesterday Upon The Stair” by PitViperOfDoom is one of the most well-known My Hero Academia fanfictions. It is a longer, chaptered story that takes a familiar character and explores their life through a very different lens, while still keeping the heart of MHA intact. The writing is atmospheric and character-driven, with a tone that can feel eerie and emotional at the same time. Length and Reading Experience This is a long-form fic with multiple chapters, designed for readers who like a slow build, strong character development, and a story that takes its time. It is the kind of fic you can settle into for a while, especially if you enjoy stories that focus on emotions, perspective, and gradual growth rather than rushing from event to event. Themes Without giving away plot details, some of the major themes include: - Feeling isolated or misunderstood - Learning how to cope with fear and pressure - Quiet courage and determination - Trust, support, and building connections over time - Seeing the world differently than the people around you Main Characters The story centers on Izuku Midoriya and features important canon characters from the MHA world, including classmates and teachers. Character interactions are a big highlight, and many readers enjoy how the fic adds depth to relationships and reactions without losing the personalities that make MHA feel like MHA. Why Readers Love It “Yesterday Upon The Stair” is frequently recommended because it has a memorable concept, strong emotional writing, and a tone that stands out. It balances tension with warmth, and it gives readers a version of the MHA world that feels both fresh and believable. If you like fanfiction that is thoughtful, immersive, and character-focused, this one is often considered a must-read. Yesterday Upon The Stair - by PitViperOfDoom Chapter 1 - Yesterday Upon The Stair “Excuse me? Um, excuse me?” It takes a while for the woman to notice him, and even longer for her to look up. She's sitting crosslegged on the park bench, curled in on herself as she rocks and weeps, and she's been sitting and rocking and weeping since Izuku first arrived ten minutes ago. He can feel a painful pressure in his throat just looking at her, and his eyes sting. He forces the feeling back. It's hard not to cry when other people are crying, and this woman's been sobbing her heart out while Izuku waited for everyone within hearing range of her to leave. He wishes he could say he was surprised, but just three days ago a supervillain was in the area. Heroes from a local agency took him down, but not before he took a few buildings down with him. The damage still lingers. Finally, slowly, she raises her head. “Were you talking to me?” she asks quietly. Izuku manages a smile. “Yes,” he says. There's nothing to be embarrassed about, not now when there's no one close enough to hear. “S-sorry to bother you. If you want me to leave-” Her hand closes around his wrist, and Izuku manages to keep still and calm instead of startling. She can't help it, he knows she can't help it, but once in a while he still spooks. “No,” she says. “No, please don't go.” Izuku sits beside her gingerly. “It's okay,” he says. “What's your name? I'm Midoriya.” After a moment, she whispers, “Y-Yamamoto.” “It's nice to meet you, Ms. Yamamoto.” She's still holding his wrist. “Did you need help with something?” “Yes,” she chokes out, and the sob isn't just for fear and sorrow – there's relief in it, too. “What is it?” Izuku asks gently, always gently. “What can I help you with?” “I...” With her free hand, she wipes in vain at the tears coursing down her face. “I... I'm trying. I can't remember. Why can't I remember?” “It's okay, Ms. Yamamoto,” he repeats. “It's okay. Nothing's going to hurt you. Just... breathe.” It's an absurd thing to tell her, but he can't think of anything else, and going through the motions of inhaling and exhaling seems to calm her anyway. “I, um,” Ms. Yamamoto sniffles. “It was... it was something important.” “Do you need to tell someone something?” Izuku asks. “N-no, not really, I don't... I don't have anyone to tell... there's no one...” “Okay. Do you need to find something?” “Yes! Yes, I... um...” She pauses, and her cold grip on his wrist tightens. “Or maybe...” “Did you lose something?” Izuku presses. “Did you... leave something somewhere?” “Yes!” Her voice grates oddly in his ears, sending chills up his spine, but she's smiling through her tears. “Yes, yes! That was it! I left... I left...” “Was it at home? At work? Where did you leave it?” “Home,” Ms. Yamamoto says. “Home. Take me home.” Izuku nods, and smiles at her in what he hopes is a reassuring way. “Tell me where.” She takes him to an apartment building, only a few blocks away. She lives on the fifth floor, she says, and takes the elevator up and down every day. Izuku bypasses it and takes the stairs instead. There’s no convenient spare key hiding under a doormat, which is a minor hiccup for Izuku. He knocks, just to be sure, but when no one answers, he checks over his shoulders for witnesses or security cameras. When none appear, he picks the lock and enters. He's only just closed the door behind him when there's a faint, rhythmic jingling, accompanied by a high-pitched trill. Ms. Yamamoto lets out a sob as a small, one-eyed cat comes trotting out of the apartment's hallway, yowling over the ringing of the bell on its collar. As Izuku watches, the cat threads its way around Ms. Yamamoto's ankles and rumbles with a loud purr. The woman’s fingertips ghost over the cat’s fur, barely touching it. Izuku moves off and creeps through the empty apartment. It's not messy in any way, but it looks cluttered and lived in, and he can tell that Ms. Yamamoto never had any roommates besides her cat. There's a daily calendar on the kitchen counter, showing the page for three days ago. At the foot of the pantry is a cute little mat with the cat's food and water bowls on it. Both are empty, and Izuku winces. He fills them, after hunting and poking through pantries to find the cat food, and moments later the cat comes trotting back in and falls upon the bowls. Izuku checks the tag on her collar; the cat’s name is Mika. “I left her.” Izuku looks back at the sound of Ms. Yamamoto's voice. The woman stands at the entrance to the kitchen, hands wringing at her sides. “I left her,” she repeats. “Three days ago, when that man... the building fell… I wasn’t fast enough. She could've...” She flickers, like an old video. For a split second blood runs down her face and her neat clothes are ragged and scorched with dark, wet stains, and then Izuku blinks and she's normal again. “I left her.” His eyes sting, and when he blinks his vision is blurry. “It wasn't your fault,” he says softly. “She could've starved.” Her eyes – or the blank white sockets where her eyes would have been, three days ago – turn to him. “She would've died, but you helped me.” Izuku forces a shaky smile. “Do you need anything else?” “Make sure – make sure she's okay.” Izuku blinks again, and then Ms. Yamamoto is beside him, stooping to stroke her cat. “Can you do that?” “Of course.” Ms. Yamamoto smiles and stops crying. Izuku blinks one last time, and opens his eyes to an empty kitchen with a purring cat at his feet. “I don't understand,” his mother says, for at least the fifth time. Izuku sits quietly in her lap, brows knitted together in a thoughtful frown. His stomach feels tight and uncomfortable and heavy, and he's not old enough to know what word goes with this feeling. “The X-rays-” “The X-rays do... throw a wrench into the diagnosis,” the doctor sighs. “It's true, Izuku lacks the extra toe joint that we would normally associate with quirklessness. Statistically, his lack of a quirk is highly unusual, but-” “The other doctors said it was practically impossible,” Mom interrupts. “But it's time to face facts,” the doctor continues patiently. “Even if he does have a quirk, you can't register it if you don't know what it is.” “What do you mean 'even' – he could just be a late bloomer!” “With all due respect, Mrs. Midoriya.” The doctor's eyes are full of sympathy. “His sixth birthday has come and gone. It's long past the usual window in which a quirk would manifest.” Mom sighs deeply, and the doctor leans forward. “There is a possibility. It's rare, but some people are born with what we call 'invisible quirks'.” “Invisible quirks?” the boy from the emergency ward echoes. He's a little older than Izuku, sitting over in the corner on the plastic chair where Mom left her purse, dripping water all over the floor. Izuku first saw him while having his height measured, and he'd introduced himself as Takada. “That sounds kind of cool.” Izuku perks up hopefully. “With certain people, their quirks are so obscure that they simply aren't noticeable,” the doctor explains. “Or their quirk can only be activated under an extremely specific set of circumstances. Such people can go through their entire lives without even noticing their own quirk, simply because those specific circumstances never occur, and there's no practical use for it.” The doctor shrugs apologetically. “That's the best explanation I can offer.” Izuku's face falls. Across the room, Takada blows a raspberry. “That's lame,” he remarks. “That's almost as bad as having no quirk at all.” Mom is quiet for a while, lips pursed. “W-what if he sees things?” she asks at length. “There have been times... I mean, he talks about people who aren't there, he'll talk to himself or stare at the wall for hours – when he was three he said something about his father tucking him in, a-and... and Hisashi died just after he was born-” “Mrs. Midoriya,” the doctor says patiently. “I know you're worried. And I know you want the best for your son and his dreams, but... it's dangerous to nurse false hope. Children have wild imaginations, and if you encourage them to see something in nothing, it may be harmful in the long run. If he does have an invisible quirk, then it will either show itself or it won't.” He stands up, putting on a smile. “In the meantime, being functionally quirkless will in no way prevent him from living a normal and happy life. He's in excellent health, and well-behaved on top of it.” The doctor ruffles Izuku's hair, but Izuku barely notices. He's too busy watching as Takada rolls his eyes, gets up from the chair, and strolls out of the room, lazily swatting the jar of tongue depressors as he passes. The jar wobbles and tips over. The doctor glances over his shoulder with a frown. “Odd,” he mutters, and goes to turn it right-side up again. “Must be a draft in here.” Izuku stares at the jar and doesn't say a word for the rest of the doctor visit, even as Mom holds back tears, kisses him on the cheek, and takes him by the hand. He barely hears her, barely feels the gentle squeeze of her fingers as she leads him back out. He's too busy thinking, sifting through what he knows and what he thinks and what he remembers, piece by piece as it all falls together. No one else can see his friends – he knows that much. But that's the first time one of his friends has ever done something that someone else saw. He saw Dad, back when he was three – he knows he did, he knows he didn't dream it, because Mom remembers him telling her. But Dad was dead. Takada was dripping wet, but the floor is dry. But Izuku saw him knock over the jar, and the doctor saw the jar fall but didn't see Takada. Izuku glances up as they pass through the hallway of the doctor's office. The hospital ward is close by, and Izuku looks around and sees– Among the doctors and nurses and patients, people pass by in stained hospital gowns, pale-faced and wandering. Lost. One of them wanders close to Mom, calling for her husband, and Mom doesn't even turn her head. Izuku reaches out, and his fingertips brush cold skin. The woman turns her tearstained face to him, meets his eyes, and vomits blood. Izuku hides his face in his mother's side and cries. She doesn't see what he sees. She has no way of knowing that he's crying with fear. She thinks it's because he doesn't have a quirk, or because he has a quirk that's so useless that he might as well not have one at all. He ought to be happy. Because he does have a quirk after all, and it’s not a useless one. And when he's cried all his fears away, when they're safe at home, then he'll tell his mother that she has nothing to be sorry about after all. He leaves the collar on when he takes Mika to the no-kill shelter he usually goes to for this. They'll call the number on the tags, do their homework, and find out that the cat's owner has passed away. She's a cute cat even with her left eye missing. She's friendly and loving, white with gray-and-orange patchwork fur, and a trilling purr. She has a good chance of being adopted, and then she'll never have to go hungry by herself again. (He gives the woman behind the counter his cell phone number, just in case.) The whole incident makes him late getting home, but not late enough to miss dinner. Mom is still busy in the kitchen, so Izuku parks himself in front of the TV and turns it on. The volume is as high as they dare to keep it without disturbing the neighbors. It always is; it drowns out the strange whispering in the pipes, the odd door that slams on its own, and the myriad noises that could be written off as “the house settling” if they weren’t so frequent. Izuku flips the channels listlessly, until coming to rest on the one he’s looking for. A jingle of faux-ethereal music signals the end of a commercial break, accompanied by a round of applause from the studio audience as the host of the show strides out on stage. His outfit is nothing short of gawdy, a spangled silver waistcoat over a pressed white shirt and bright blue slacks. Rounding off the ensemble is a bolo tie – a bolo tie, for heaven’s sake – with a decorative half-moon clasp. The announcer introduces the flashy host with a moniker that makes Izuku cringe with secondhand embarrassment and purge it immediately from his memory. There’s a lot of sound effects, wild gesticulations and grandiose announcements in an amplified voice that drags out every vowel. Audience members approach the stage for the chance to be on TV for fifteen minutes, and the garishly-dressed show host proceeds to exorcise demons from one, make contact with another’s deceased husband, and cure another of their recurring nightmares. At one point he swoons, staggering with the “effort” of using his “quirk”. One audience participant is reduced to tears when the host holds an emotional one-sided conversation with her twin sister who died as a child. The stage is empty but for the host and the crying woman. He’s talking to thin air. He’s been talking to thin air for as long as Izuku has been watching. “I don’t understand how you can watch things like this.” His mother pauses at the doorway and steps in to stand right behind where Izuku is sitting. She leans on the back of the couch and sighs, shaking her head in disapproval. “Who greenlit this show, I wonder?” “Why do you think people do this?” Izuku asks. He’s not really expecting an answer, or looking for one. “Just… make up stuff like this and pass it off as real?” His mother sighs again. “I think, maybe it’s because… even in a world like ours, there are still impossible things. Or, things that everyone thinks is impossible.” She drops a kiss on the top of his head. “Even if they may be wrong. And as long as there are impossible things, there will be people who want those things to be real.” She snorts a little, then. “And as long as people want something, there will be others who use that want to make easy money.” “But it’s not impossible,” Izuku says quietly. His throat feels tight. “In the world we live in, we can’t even know what impossible is.” He waves a hand vaguely at the screen. “It’s just because of stuff like this that everyone thinks it’s a big joke.” He’s still staring at the screen, watching the gawdy spectacle of a show, but he can feel his mother’s eyes on him. He knows she worries. “I know, Izuku,” she says at length. “And of course it’s not impossible – you’re proof of that, aren’t you? And one day… one day people will know that. I may not know much about ghosts, but if anyone can find a way, it’s you.” Another kiss, and Izuku manages a smile. “Thank your lucky stars you got your mother’s brains. Don’t worry about conmen like that. Your quirk is your own and nobody else’s.” “It’d be nice if it was any good for hero work,” Izuku mutters. “And even if it was, I’m still quirkless on paper, so no school’s gonna want me-” “Hey.” Mom touches the side of his face gently. He looks up at her automatically, and his heart sinks a little at the pity on her face. “I’m sorry, Izuku. I know it isn’t what you wanted. But you know, you don’t have to be a pro hero to help people. You help people that heroes don’t even know need help.” She smiles again. “And I think that’s really cool, don’t you?” Izuku changes the channel. When he doesn’t reply, his mother finally leaves the room. His hand is a fist, almost painfully tight around his pencil as he tries to turn back to his homework. In spite of Mom’s encouragement, the show has left him with a gross feeling in the pit of his stomach. It really isn’t fair. It’s like crying wolf, only everyone else has done the crying, and now that there really is a wolf on his hands, he’s at a loss for what to do with it. Hoping to lift his mood again, Izuku turns to the news to see if he can catch any superhero reports. There's not much – at some point during the afternoon, Kamui Woods stopped a corner store holdup, but beyond that it's been a quiet day. Izuku's interest wanes, and he finally turns his attention to school assignments while the news reports drone on in the background. He's nearly done with his math homework for the day when the reporter's voice fizzles out. At first he doesn't notice, but then the static blares, and his pencil jerks and scores a dark line on his paper. Grumbling to himself, he shoots the TV a scowl. The screen blinks black, then static. The whiteness falters and shorts out, and for a split second it looks like the picture might be coming back. Or... a picture, anyway. It doesn't look much like the news. It looks like a video of an empty room, but it blinks out too rapidly for Izuku to tell for sure. As he watches, the image breaks up and gives way to static once more. “Oh dear,” Mom mutters as she passes through the room again. She picks up the remote and tries to change the channel, to no avail, before handing it to Izuku. “You know, this is the third time this week.” The static gives a violent jerk. As Izuku watches, a pale hand emerges from the screen, clawlike and grasping at empty air. The hand reaches down to the floor, nails scraping for purchase, and a head comes out next. Black hair, tangled and stringy, spills from the white static, followed by shoulders, another groping hand, and finally the pale apparition claws its way out of the screen and onto the living room floor. “Well, let me know if anything changes,” Mom sighs. “Dinner's almost ready.” “Okay,” Izuku says. The corpselike figure drags itself across the carpet, face shrouded in dark hair. Izuku finishes the last math problem. His mother leaves the room. The apparition grabs his ankle. “I'm pretty sure that's bad for the TV,” Izuku says, twitching his foot. Her hand feels cold, even through his sock. The noise she makes in response sounds nothing like any noise that a little girl of eight or nine ought to make, but it does sound strikingly similar to the TV static. As if to prove him wrong, the screen blinks again, and the news is back. “TV's okay, Mom!” he calls toward the kitchen. “Oh, good! You two play nice, now!” The couch cushion doesn't dip when the pale ghost sits beside him, but her dark, damp hair does get in the way when she leans over to look at his homework. Izuku scoots over, positioning himself so that he has room to work and she has a better view of it. “It's pretty boring, Rei,” he says, a little apologetically. “Just math.” More ghostly rattling. Izuku has never heard her speak for as long as he's known her, and she's almost as old a friend as Bakugou was. That's all right, though. She doesn't need to talk to make him feel less lonely. Chapter 2 - Yesterday Upon The Stair Rei follows him to school the next day. There is nothing odd about this. She's followed him to school ever since that day in the second grade. It won't happen again, Izuku tells her, but she still follows. After years of practice, Izuku is the master of sitting still and perfectly attentive as she scampers to and fro, blowing papers off of desks to watch the students scramble to retrieve them, making the lights flicker so that some of them jump, or standing at the front of the room with the teacher and mimicking his poses and gestures. Izuku used to get in trouble for laughing, but not anymore. Today, Izuku is silent in the midst of his rowdier classmates, smiling slightly on the outside and cracking up on the inside, as she performs the Hare Hare Yukai dance on Hanamura’s desk three seats down, when his teacher’s voice sends ice water shooting through his veins. “Now that you mention it, didn’t Midoriya want to go to Yuuei as well?” Izuku’s been to a lot of cemeteries. The next few seconds of silence makes him remember each one. Then all at once, the room erupts into roars of laughter. Izuku stares straight ahead, letting his classmates’ scorn lash at him from all sides. Rei gets angry then, her shriek of fury piping above their voices, but Izuku faces the front of the classroom and keeps staring until a miniature explosion blossoms up from his desk and sends him tumbling back to the floor. “Forget having a weak-ass quirk.” The voice makes Izuku’s limbs lock where they are. He tries to look Bakugou in the eye; he really, really tries. “You don’t even have a fucking quirk! So where do you get off putting yourself on the same level as me?” Looking at his face is too much, so Izuku goes back to staring straight ahead. “I’m just applying to a school,” he says. “It has nothing to do with you.” “Fuck that, Deku, I know a challenge when I see one!” A step forward, and Izuku stares straight ahead and waits. “Are you trying to fucking die?” “No,” Izuku says. “I’m trying to get into a school. That’s all. I’m just… trying. There’s nothing wrong with trying.” The class jeers with derisive laughter. Rei screams and claws at his tormentor to no avail, and it’s a while before order is restored again. By the time class is over, Izuku immerses himself in the safety of online news reports. Videos, photographs, and eyewitness accounts of heroics put him at ease, and the gross, ugly feelings die down as he reminds himself of his goals. But Rei’s warning hiss brings him back to the present, and on instinct he starts grabbing his belongings. As a familiar shadow falls across his desk and his ghostly friend’s hiss becomes a threatening snarl, Izuku grabs his notebook and tries to shove it into his bag. The faster he gets his things together, the easier he can escape. The notebook is snatched out of his hands and out of his reach. Rei lunges, clawlike fingers outstretched, but she passes harmlessly through Bakugou’s face and chest and arms, and not once does he bat an eye. With a shriek of frustration she sends papers flying from nearby desks, and neither Bakugou nor any of his friends seem to notice. “We’re not done, Deku.” Rei’s frustration might be contagious, because Izuku feels it welling up within himself. “It’s just a high school app.” He makes a grab for the notebook, to no avail. Bakugou twitches it out of his reach. “Here’s the thing, Deku. Try and get this through your tiny little quirkless brain. I’m gonna be the first and only student from this crappy school to get into Yuuei.” A palm-sized explosion rips through the notebook, and Izuku makes a noise like he’s just been punched in the stomach. “So I don’t like it when a useless nobody like you comes along and challenges that.” He’s too close. Rei doesn’t like that very much, and he can see out of the corner of his eye what she turns into. It's hard to describe, and harder still to look at it for long without feeling his lunch creep back up his esophagus. He turns his eyes away from her and back to his classmates, and his brain immediately starts to scrub itself clean of the image, until all that sticks is dark, writhing hair and black pits where eyes should be. There's no blocking out the sounds, though. Izuku will take those sounds to the grave. If nothing else, it puts things into perspective a little. The tightness in his chest loosens, and the power of speech returns to him. “If I’m so useless, then why do you think I’m a threat?” he asks. “You’re not!” The desk takes more abuse with another explosive punch. “Don’t you ever fucking forget that! You’re not a threat to me! You’re nothing and you’ll always be nothing! Try and remember that next time you try to pull shit like this!” She’s angry, so angry. Sometimes Izuku has to avert his eyes and remind himself that she can't hurt Bakugou, even if she tries. (And she has tried.) “That’s your problem, Bakugou,” he says softly. “You always think everything is about you.” He regrets that in the next second, when Bakugou’s hand closes around his shoulder. There are a number of ways that Izuku can react to this. It is a small number, and does not include things like yelling for help, fighting back, or trying to apologize. The reason for this is that what Izuku does first, automatically, is panic. To be specific, the number is two. One option is to fold like wet paper, break down crying, and let “flight” take over since “fight” isn’t happening anytime soon. This option presents itself for a split second in Izuku’s mind, and what little remains of the rational part of his brain promptly vetoes it. And so, instead, Izuku lets himself freeze. A moment after Bakugou grabs him, Izuku goes dead-still. His limbs lock in place, his hands sit as motionless fists in his lap, and he stares blankly up at Bakugou’s angry face. (One of the fluorescent light panels in the ceiling goes out, and that’s all anyone would be able to see of what Izuku’s friend is up to right now. He can see the rest of it, and it’s still less frightening than the flesh-and-blood teenager who won’t let go of his shoulder.) There’s nothing he can do to stop Bakugou from squeezing his shoulder and shouting at him, so he does nothing. He simply sits and stares and keeps his mouth tightly shut and his fists in his lap and tells himself again and again, that squeezing and shouting is all that Bakugou is going to do. He tells himself, it won’t happen again. It won’t. The anger will pass. All Izuku has to do is wait. He doesn’t even have to wait long. Bakugou finishes saying his piece, and the ice in Izuku’s blood vanishes the moment Bakugou’s hand leaves his shoulder. Rei is still trying to hurt him. He wishes she wouldn’t. Still, Izuku is glad she's there, because when Bakugou hurls his notebook out the window, she dives after it. There's no fixing the scorch marks from Bakugou’s quirk, but when Izuku finally makes his way on wobbly legs to the courtyard below, he finds her standing by the koi pond with his notebook on the ground by her bare feet, perfectly dry. He's also appreciative later. It's all in vain, but Izuku still appreciates it. They're walking together beneath an overpass, or at least he's walking and she's drifting beside him with her feet floating above the ground. Izuku steps over a manhole and walks on, unaware of his surroundings as he wrestles with his thoughts and fears and hopes. He's not paying attention until she appears before him. Her face twists and contorts into a sickening mask. She hovers before him, her features dripping and melting in a snarl, her hair twisting and writhing around her like snakes. But she's not staring at him – she's staring past him. Following her gaze, Izuku turns just as the slime emerges from the sewer. He has time to run, but it's not enough, and the slime is upon him before he even makes it out into the open. It covers him, sticky and clinging, oozing over his mouth and nose until darkness creeps around the edges of his vision. He sees her blinking in and out of view, and his ears ring and throb with her shrieking until his skull feels as if it could split in half, but it's not enough. The thing can't see her, and she can't touch it; her clawing fingers do even less harm than Izuku's. His quirk really is useless in a fight, some small, barely-rational part of him realizes. He helps people no one else can see, solves problems that no one else knows need fixing, but here he is, suffocating under a criminal with a fancy quirk, and there’s nothing he or any of his friends can do about it. At times like this, like second grade, like all his middle school years spent getting beat up and shoved into lockers, he’s as good as quirkless. The panic that clouds his thoughts is purely instinctual, born of raw survival instinct. But as Izuku suffocates slowly, his last thought as his vision goes black is that he's going to join her soon, and maybe that means he might finally learn his best friend’s real name. Never a dull moment with this big lug, is there? “You're getting slow,” she tells him fondly. “Time was, you'd have caught him like a rat by the tail before he even made it to the manhole cover.” Toshi doesn’t reply. He never does. Truthfully, Shimura Nana is a poor judge of speed these days. He could be outpacing the bullet trains, and still she'd be right at his heels without breaking a sweat. Of course, that's not fair to say; she couldn't sweat if she tried. One can't sweat without skin, or breathe without lungs, or get tired without a body. One can't do much of anything, really. So she follows, and watches, and her brilliantly witty commentary falls on deaf ears. Today, her faithful student has chased a criminal down into the sewer system. It's a petty criminal, hardly worth calling a villain, but Toshi never could ignore a cry for help. Unfortunately he's gotten a bit turned around, and there's little she can do to help or direct him. No, all Nana can do is drift along behind him, as she's done for years, watching as he races and backtracks and finds the right path. The criminal's body is viscous sludge, and he's left tracks in his haste. Not that Nana was otherwise worried. Toshi always finds his way eventually. The screaming makes her jump. She’s been around for a while, long enough to know what’s part of her new normal and what isn’t. This isn’t the scream of an innocent in danger; she knows it isn’t, because if it were then Toshi would hear it and Toshi would haul ass straight to the source instead of loping along at the same place, following the patches of goo left by the culprit. This is the sort of scream that nails on chalkboard could only dream of matching, the kind of gut-wrenching noise that feels like screws driven into your ears, the kind that sounds like many voices in one, that shakes walls and rattles windows and becomes the soundtrack of your nightmares for weeks to come. Not that Nana ever sleeps anymore. But in spite of Toshi’s obliviousness, he’s still heading right toward it, and that means that Toshi is heading for something that he might not be ready for. And what kind of watchful ghost would she be if she stood by and let it happen? In a blink she’s ahead of him, following her ears and whatever other senses drive the dead to act. She leaves Toshi behind, and the trail of slime becomes thicker and thicker until she ascends up through a manhole and– Oh dear God. The slime villain is there, and he’s not alone. Heaven help them all, there are children here. One of them is caught in his grasp, enveloped in slime like he’s drowning in a living swamp. His movements ebb and slow, getting weaker and weaker by the second as he loses consciousness. And the other… The other is still screaming, form shifting and twisting as she howls fit to wake the dead. Only her size and the vague impression of a child-sized nightshirt clue Nana in to the fact that she’s looking at a little girl and not some eldritch demon that crawled up from the depths of a fever dream. The rest of her is all writhing, twisting shadows, fingers that stretch like the shadows of branches through a dark window, wild tendrils of black hair, and a face that burns Nana’s memory white. She screams, howls, not with fear but rage, as her spider-claw fingers rake uselessly at the enveloping sludge. She’s attacking the villain, not the boy; with a jolt Nana realizes that she’s trying to get him free. And then Toshi is there. The fight is a blessedly short one, if it can even be called a “fight” at all. In two shakes, the villain is ensnared in a pair of soda bottles, and Toshi is gathering up the unconscious boy and carrying him out into the sunlight. The little girl is calm now, the shadows still, and Nana finds herself looking at a child of eight or nine, all pale skin and thin bones and dark, tangled hair. Her black eyes blink up at Nana, curious but not hostile the way some poltergeists can be. Nana smiles at her, and after a moment’s hesitation and a glance toward the still-living boy, the little ghost smiles back. It’s an unsettling smile, to be sure, but a sincere one. “Friend of yours?” Nana asks. The girl nods. “Ah. That’s very loyal of you. Don’t you ever get lonely? He’ll have a long life to live, you know.” The girl wrinkles her nose with a wry smile, like she finds Nana’s words funny somehow. It’s a relief when the boy awakens, and highly amusing when he goes into starstruck conniptions over meeting Toshi. Nana wishes she could sneak up and give her old student bunny-ears, something to show this poor kid that he’s the biggest dweeb and there’s nothing to be nervous about, but it’s not like the boy could see her anyway, so she hangs back. The girl’s fingers are like ice cubes when she takes Nana’s hand. She tugs at it until she has Nana’s attention, and points to her stammering friend with an eager smile. “What?” Nana looks at him, but beyond making an adorable fool of himself in front of her student, he isn’t doing anything noteworthy. The girl points, more urgently, but she doesn’t speak, and Nana isn’t fluent in children, much less ghost children. “I’m sorry, I don’t – oh hell.” Toshi takes off then – literally, like a rocket – with the boy clinging to his leg, and it’s all Nana can do to keep from laughing herself to a second death as she follows. “Is it possible for me to become a hero like you, even without a quirk?” the boy asks, and isn’t that a trick of a question. Nana’s a bit distracted from it, though, seeing as how there’s only a rapidly-dissipating cloud of smoke standing between Toshi and an unwanted discovery. She wishes she could wave her arms and cause a distraction, clap her hands over the boy’s eyes, something to help Toshi hide, but it’s no use. A simple gust of wind reveals Toshi’s sickly, gaunt true form, and the boy leaves off his embarrassed rambling to make a noise not unlike a stepped-on mouse. “Rotten luck,” Nana sighs, though she knows Toshi can’t hear her. “You might as well make a break for it before this kid plasters your sorry mug all over Instagram.” “W-what – what’s going on – you’re not–” the boy splutters. “C’mon, just leave already,” Nana urges. It’s like yelling at characters on a movie screen sometimes. “You’ll be back to full strength tomorrow and it’s not like anyone’s gonna believe him if he tells them he saw All-Might deflate like a sad muscly balloon animal.” The kid’s face tightens, eyes twitching, with what Nana abruptly recognizes as a stifled snort of laughter. She glares at him. Is he… laughing at her student’s misfortune? Before she can get properly angry, he quickly schools his face into a more neutral, curious expression. “You’re...” he says quietly, eyes wide with alarm. “Did… something happen to you?” Toshi opens his mouth to reply and vomits blood instead. Nana winces with sympathy, mostly for Toshi but just a little bit for the boy, too. That must be quite a fright, seeing the Symbol of Peace cough like he’s about to die. She glances at him, idly wondering which category he’ll fall into. Will he be a screamer? A fainting hemophobe? Or will he be one of the responsible quick-thinkers that go for their phones and have to be talked out of calling an ambulance? Ever curious and uninvolved, Nana looks to see his reaction. And… There isn’t one. Wait, no, that’s a blink. He’s blinking at least. Of course, he did just go for an impromptu flight through the city skyline, so maybe he just has dry eyes. “Are you okay?” the boy asks, and that’s about it. “Fine,” Toshi answers tersely, wiping his mouth on his arm. “Look… I’m gonna need you to keep this to yourself, all right?” And that’s that. Toshi changes the subject and… kid just goes with it. O… kay… Nana steps closer as Toshi explains his condition and the boy listens. Being dead means being an observer, and being an observer means chasing whatever sparks her interest for the sake of staying sane sometimes. There’s no point in ignoring curiosity; she’s already been thoroughly killed, and while satisfaction might not bring her back, it will certainly keep the threat of tedium at bay. He’s sort of small, this boy. Thin, even by gawky-teen standards. He’s the sort of kid that blends into the background without even trying. The only remotely unique things about him are the slight greenish sheen to his hair, and the dark circles under his eyes. There’s a pallor to his face, too, which would be unsettling if it didn’t make his sprinkling of freckles stand out. But his appearance isn’t what’s catching Nana’s attention and holding it – it’s how he’s taking Toshi’s story. Or rather, how he isn’t taking it. He doesn’t interrupt, beyond polite little noises and responses to show he’s still listening. His face doesn’t change. There’s no surprise, no horror, not even revulsion when Toshi shows him the ugly, gnarled scar on his side. The boy just takes it all in with the same expression of sad, sad sympathy. “That must have been awful,” he says quietly, when Toshi pauses. “I never realized.” “That’s good,” Toshi says, adjusting his shirt again. “I haven’t told the public about my condition, and I don’t intend to. I’m the Symbol of Peace, after all. The hero who rescues people with a smile. I can’t succumb to evil or fear.” “I know,” the boy murmurs, almost too quietly to be heard. “That’s, um. That’s why I want to be a hero. I want to be that kind of hero. Like you.” And oh, Nana wants nothing more than to put this kid in her pocket and take him home. Toshi sighs heavily. “Look. The truth is, there’s not much behind that smile. Glory and joy don’t enter into it when it’s enough work just to stay alive and save everyone you can. I smile to distract myself from the fear, and the pressure.” “I… see.” The boy looks thoughtful at this, brow furrowed as he takes in what Toshi’s telling him. “I kind of… know what that’s like.” He shakes his head as if clearing it. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you – this was really stupid of me and – I won’t tell anyone, so you don’t have to worry about that.” The boy manages a nervous, apologetic smile. “Thank you,” Toshi says, and means it. “And with this in mind, to answer your question... no. I don’t think you can be a hero without a quirk.” The smile vanishes as if it’s been slapped off his face. “This is the hazard of the job,” Toshi continues. “And this is what happens with a quirk. Without one, and without a useful one for combat, you don’t have much hope. It’s dangerous, and believe me – however cool it seems, it isn’t worth your life if you don’t have a quirk to protect yourself and others.” This boy and his face are breaking her heart now. “Little harsh, there, Toshi,” she mutters. “And hypocritical, God.” Nana remembers when this question came up, the day she tripped over a lanky kid with a surplus of heart and an unfortunate dearth of power to back it up. Why yes, a quirkless kid can become a hero, provided they gain a quirk at some point, but how rare is that? It’s not as if Nana or Toshi could hand out One For All to every hopeful who wants it badly enough. Doesn’t stop the look on this boy’s face from making her want to hug him. Toshi tosses out the suggestion to take up police work like it’s a consolation prize, and Nana winces because now the kid looks like he’s about to cry. “Now look what you’ve done,” she says with a flat look at her student. “See? There – there. There’s his heart breaking, that’s the exact moment it shatters. You monster.” She follows him off the roof, leaving the boy with his eyes welling with tears and a little girl ghost patting him sympathetically. Well, that’s that, she thinks. Before the day is even over, Midoriya Izuku whacks a slime monster in the eye and sobs as he accepts Toshi’s offer to take on One For All, and Nana has never been so pleased to be wrong. Izuku’s still in a euphoric daze as he meanders home. His legs are just barely sturdier than jelly, and his mind is an echo chamber for All-Might’s words. You can become a hero. You can become a hero. You can become a hero. “I should’ve thrown my schoolbag at a supervillain months ago,” he says out loud. Rei gives a rattling cackle that sends a stray cat spitting into the bushes. It’s not until he sets foot on his doorstep that the happy, disbelieving fog breaks, and a harsh unforgiving realization hits him like a sunbeam straight to the eyes. “Oh my God. Oh my God I’m not quirkless.” She blinks owlishly at him. “I just lied to All-Might. I just lied to his face.” Izuku’s heart sinks, and he covers his face with both hands. “I just looked the Symbol of Peace in the eye and I lied through my teeth and oh God I’m an awful person and Mom.” The second realization is no less brutal than the first. In a split second, a glaring flaw in his half-baked plan makes itself abruptly known. He’d said yes. Of course he’d said yes. All-Might, the Symbol of Peace, the Number-One Hero, the greatest active pro that Izuku had ever heard of, the man whose face was plastered all over his bedroom walls, had stretched out a hand and offered to personally train him as a successor and pass a powerful quirk into his keeping. What was he supposed to do, shake his hand and say no thanks? “Mom’s never gonna agree to this,” he whispers. She gives him a flat look. “I can’t just not tell her!” Izuku hisses, checking his surroundings to make sure no one can see or hear him arguing with a ghost. “I already have a quirk. She knows what that quirk is. If I suddenly start growing a new one, she’ll-” The front door opens, and Izuku could swear he loses at least five years of his lifespan. “Izuku!” He’s pulled into a hug before he has the chance to react. “Izuku, oh my goodness, I saw the news and I was just about to call you. Are you okay? Are you hurt?” “Mom I did a stupid thing,” slips out of Izuku’s mouth before he fully knows what he intends to do. “I did several stupid things.” His ghost friend’s palm makes a faint smacking noise as it meets her forehead. Mom fusses over him as they go inside, checking and double checking that he really is unhurt. Within minutes, his shoes and jacket are off and they’re sitting down to dinner. Izuku stares down at his plate, his brows knitted together. Somewhere in the walls, a disembodied voice whispers something incoherent before its owner moves on. “Izuku?” He’s not looking at her face, but he can hear how worried Mom is. “You know, honey… whatever it is, I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what’s wrong.” “I met All-Might today,” Izuku says. “Oh!” his mother squeaks in surprise. “Oh my goodness, you – wow. That’s amazing! I’m so happy for you, sweetheart, but… what’s wrong, then?” “That’s the thing, nothing’s wrong,” Izuku says, looking up at last. “Everything’s… amazing, actually, it’s just. You might not… feel the same way.” Mom frowns. “I… don’t understand. I think it’s wonderful that you got to meet your hero.” “He wants to train me.” The frown vanishes, and Mom stares at him with an utterly gobsmacked look that would have been funny in any other situation. “I beg your pardon.” “See, he – I–” Izuku stops, heart plummeting. The words stick in his throat, and before him lies a dilemma. He has two options. Either he can lie to his mother and eventually scramble to find a way to explain to her when he suddenly gains super strength, or he can tell her the truth and betray All-Might’s confidence by revealing the secret of his quirk, and possibly his injury as well. This choice sucks. Today is becoming less and less like a dream come true. “Izuku?” Mom prompts. “Um. I’m going to need a little context, sweetie.” “He told me something about himself,” Izuku says finally. “Something he doesn’t want people to know. But I can’t do this without telling you about it, and I can’t tell you about it without telling you that thing. So I’m just… stuck.” “Oh.” Mom’s face falls. “Oh, sweetheart. That’s a tough position to be in.” She frowns, but it’s more of a thoughtful frown as she hunts for a solution. “This thing he doesn’t want people to know about. Does it put you in danger?” “No,” Izuku says. “Not really.” “Does it put anyone else in danger?” “Just him,” Izuku says, remembering the twisted scar. “Okay.” Mom nods, still looking thoughtful. “If it’s not something that’s going to hurt you, Izuku, then… I guess it’s all right if I don’t know. But only then, hear?” Izuku nods. “Is there a way to tell me the rest without betraying anyone’s confidence?” “I’ll… try.” “And if you can’t, then… I’d really rather know about it, Izuku.” “I know, Mom. Okay.” He takes a deep breath. “All-Might’s… looking for a successor. His quirk… um.” There’s no getting around this one. “He can pass on his quirk, Mom. He asked me if I wanted to take it.” Mom drops her chopsticks with a clatter. She stares at him, shocked speechless. “I… I didn’t tell him about my power,” Izuku continues. His eyes move downward to his plate again. “He thinks I’m quirkless. But he – he thinks I have what it takes to take his power.” He pauses, throat bobbing as he swallows. “Mom, I… I told him yes.” “Izuku!” “I know!” Izuku bursts out, dropping his own chopsticks. “I know, I know, it was stupid but – it’s All-Might, Mom! And it’s me! What did you think I was going to say?” “You should have talked to me first,” Mom brings her hands to her face. From across the table, Izuku can see them shake. “You weren’t there to talk to,” Izuku says quietly. “So I’m talking to you now. Mom, I really want to do this.” “I know, Izuku, I know, but-” “I don’t-” His voice catches in his throat. “I don’t think I’m gonna get another chance like this, Mom. I...” Guilt bubbles up in his throat, and he feels tears prick at his eyes, because his impossible dreams are suddenly within reach but she might say no. “I almost didn’t tell you, but… you know about my quirk already, and I couldn’t have hidden it from you if I suddenly got a new one, and-” “You always tell me.” Her voice is soft, her face hidden behind her hands. Izuku can’t tell what she’s feeling, and that scares him. “No matter what, you always tell me, because if you don’t and you get in trouble then-” “I know.” “Izuku.” Slowly, her hands fall back to her lap, and Izuku finds it hard to look at her face for long. “This is – this is life-changing. And you’re only fourteen. I don’t know if this is a good idea. Do you – do you even know what he has planned?” “All I know,” Izuku says, “is that All-Might wants to train me, and this is the only chance I’ve ever had to become a hero.” “Izuku-” “Mom.” His voice breaks. “I need to – I need to tell you what happened. Mom, it was Bakugou.” He sees her expression turn to stone. “No, I mean – he was in trouble. I was attacked first, and then the guy went after Bakugou, and…” His breath hitches. “M-mom, he was scared.” The stony look in her eyes breaks. “He was so scared, Mom. He was just as scared as I was when – and I didn’t even care that he – I didn’t even care about anything he’s done, I just – it had him, and-” Mom’s shape blurs as the tears spill over, and Izuku struggles to speak through the shaking and the tight pain in his throat. “And all I could think was, I didn’t want to see him that way. Not yet. Not ever. I-I don’t ever want to see him that way. So I tried to stop it, and Mom, I couldn’t do anything. All I could do was just – slow it down. I threw my bookbag and that was it. And then it went right back to hurting him a-and I couldn’t do anything else. And then All-Might showed up and – and it was just over.” He sniffles, wiping his tears on his sleeve. “I know I have a quirk and I know it’s special and unique but I can’t save anyone with it. I can’t save people’s lives. All I can do is talk to them after they’re already dead.” Arms wrap around him, warm and soft, and Izuku sobs into his mother’s sweater. “I don’t ever want to feel like that again.” “Oh, sweetheart.” Her voice wobbles and Izuku wonders if she’s going to cry too. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry you were scared and I’m sorry you had to feel like that.” She presses a kiss to the side of his head and rubs his back gently. “You’re good, you hear me? You’re a good person and the world is lucky you’re in it.” “I can do this,” Izuku tells her softly. “I know I can. And Mom, if I don’t take this, if I don’t try, I’m gonna regret it forever.” “I...” Her breath hitches a little, and she lets it out in a sigh. “I… I know, sweetheart. I know. And I think...” She pulls back, fussing a little with the hair falling into his eyes. She takes another deep breath. “I think if I stop you, then… I’ll probably regret it, too.” Izuku blinks, suddenly wide-eyed, tears drying on his face. “You mean...” “I want you to be safe,” she says. “I want so badly for you to be safe. But I want you to be happy more.” Gently, Mom cups the side of his face in her hand. “Will this make you happy?” “More than anything,” Izuku whispers. “Well.” After a moment, she offers a brave little smile, and somehow it seems even brighter than All-Might’s. “All right then. Tell me what I can do to help.” Rei shrieks in triumph, taking out the kitchen light and sending a metal spatula flying across the room. Chapter 3 - Yesterday Upon The Stair Self-imposed community service is surprisingly difficult with all the screaming. Izuku’s not the one screaming – well, he does yell a little, like when he barks his shin on the corner of a discarded oven or accidentally drops a microwave oven on his foot. But he’s not getting distracted by the sound of his own voice. The first time it happens is on the very first day, and Izuku is so exhausted from waking up at the crack of dawn that he’s sure he’s just having a vivid auditory hallucination. But no, that’s not the case, because the sound of it sends Rei spider-crawling down from her perch on the trash heap, and it makes the ghost woman at All-Might’s side hover closer and look around in alarm. With the woman’s back turned, Rei tugs on his hand and points. He follows the direction of her finger, bleary-eyed, but all he sees are rolling hills of garbage. Rolling, screaming hills of garbage. He’s already tired and sore from the heavy lifting he’s done since he got started, but now there’s a buzzing in his nerves. It’s not fear, not yet, but it’s a quietly relentless, anxious energy. It’s a lot like fight or flight, but he can’t yet tell whether he wants to fight or flee more; all he knows is he doesn’t want to stay still. He wants to do something, anything to make the screaming stop. Before he can stop himself, he groans aloud and massages desperately at his forehead, trying to ward off an oncoming headache. A hearty pat on the back almost knocks him flat on his face, and his unbalanced staggering hides the fact that it makes him jump like a startled rabbit. “Resting already?” All-Might’s voice booms, momentarily drowning out the disembodied shrieking. “Not giving up so soon, are we, young Midoriya?” “Nope!” Izuku puts on his brightest, most determined smile, and gets back to hauling trash to the pickup. It doesn’t take much to get him out of breath, but he carries on. As he does so, he tilts his head this way and that, trying to pinpoint where the cries are coming from. His friend keeps close to him, glaring around all the while. Before long, Izuku determines that the voice isn’t just screaming; it’s crying, as well. His nervousness drops a little, but the buzz of restless energy is still there. Izuku pours it into what he’s doing. “I don’t like this.” Izuku shoots a quick glance toward the speaker. Ever since the sludge villain incident, he’s seen her hanging close to All-Might’s side. He has yet to see one without the other. She’s not someone he recognizes, and that only piques his curiosity. She’s broad and muscular, with dark hair in a half-updo. A lot of ghosts appear in whatever outfit they died in, but most of them can change how they look if they want, and Izuku’s never sure either way unless there’s blood or clothing damage. In this ghost’s case, her tank top and athletic pants make her look like she died on her way to the gym. There doesn’t seem to be a mark on her, though, so she was either poisoned or she’s changed her look. Izuku wonders what her name is. He hasn’t spoken to her – not yet. He hasn’t seen her without All-Might around, and there’s no way he’s going to risk talking to her when the Number One Hero might hear him. If All-Might hears him, then he’ll ask who he’s talking to, and Izuku can’t tell him the truth. He absolutely can’t. Izuku has his chance, his first and only chance to become a hero. There’s no way he’s risking it when he’s barely even started. All-Might doesn’t have to know. As he watches from the corner of his eye, the woman aims a swat at the back of All-Might’s head that goes right through him. “Welp, I’m gonna go check that mess out and, uh… hopefully figure out a way to clue you two knuckleheads in on a screaming rageghost if I need to. Sit tight, Toshi.” She vanishes then into thin air. Izuku purses his lips as he stoops and wraps his arms around what looks like the remains of a microwave oven. If it does prove to be dangerous, then he’ll have to find a way to warn All-Might without revealing too much. Can he make up some excuse for them to leave, without making All-Might think he isn’t serious about this? Before he can think further on the subject, the haunting voice is joined by a second, and that’s when the eerie wails turn into what sounds like the ghostly-shrieking equivalent of the noises cats make when they fight in an alleyway. Izuku certainly isn’t expecting it, because that’s when he drops the microwave oven on his own foot and adds his own high-pitched yelp to the din. Thanks to disuse and decay, it’s only about half a microwave oven by now, so Izuku avoids a broken foot. He can’t quite dodge All-Might’s attention, though. “Haha, w-whoops!” Gingerly he pulls his foot out from under the broken appliance. “Silly me, b-butterfingers, haha. No harm done, don’t worry about it, I can just. Pick it back up.” He does so, still chunnering to himself with the faint hope that All-Might will brush this off. “Yup, still going. No problem. Off to the truck.” Except there’s a very good chance that All-Might’s ghost friend is tangling with an unhappy poltergeist at the moment, and Izuku has no way of escaping his attention long enough to defuse the situation. He loads the broken microwave oven and almost bumps into Rei. Her hair is beginning to stir, without any help from the wind, and that’s usually a good sign that she’s uneasy, too. Izuku chews his lip and dawdles over choosing the next piece of trash to grab. The woman must be someone All-Might knows. She doesn’t look enough like him to be a relative – maybe a friend? A girlfriend? Did All-Might ever even have a girlfriend? He certainly has a lot of female fans – he’s getting off track. The point is, if she’s spending her afterlife following him around, then there was some kind of bond. There had to be. Rei’s different; if it weren’t for the fact that he could see her and hear her and talk to her, Izuku doubts she would have given him a second thought. But if this woman is important to All-Might… Well, sitting by while she gets in trouble with a poltergeist doesn’t sit right with Izuku. He can’t risk talking to Rei with All-Might so close, so he stalls a few more seconds to leave his hands free. “Go check on her?” he signs, turning away from All-Might to hide the movements of his hands. “Make sure she’s okay.” His friend vanishes, and Izuku scoops up an old tire, slings it over his shoulder, and jogs back to the pickup. The two-toned shrieking is cut off by a blood-curdling screech that churns Izuku’s stomach until he has to pause to let the nausea pass, and for a few glorious seconds, silence falls. Izuku waits on bated breath, before finally the original voice takes up its haunting wail once more. Rei materializes close by, and a few seconds later Izuku lets out a soft sigh of relief as the dark-haired woman returns to All-Might’s side. She looks a little ragged and faded around the edges, but she seems all right. “Shit,” he hears her hiss. “Shit. I’ve gotten weak too, Toshi. Time was, I could’ve ended a fight like that with my pinky finger. Now I need little monster girls coming to my rescue – no offense, sweetie, thanks for that. Ow. Okay. Just gotta… stay away from that sedan. For the love of God, Toshi, stay away from that sedan.” Izuku tosses a glance over his shoulder, frowns a little, and spots the car in question. It’s just as battered and disused as everything else in this shoreline junkyard, bent and warped out of shape, most of its windows smashed, and it’s in the direction that the wailing is coming from. It’s also just within the area All-Might set him to clean, but well out of his reach for now. At this point he’d need climbing gear just to get to it through all the rest of the trash. The wailing breaks into a sob, just for a moment. Izuku sets his jaw and steps in the direction of the old sedan. There’s plenty of junk in the way, but he’ll get there. He has to; poltergeist or not, there’s someone who might need help, and he’s not going to consider this job done unless he cleans that up, too. He sets his shoulder against a broken-down washing machine, digs his heels into the sand, and keeps working. It takes two and a half weeks for him to reach the sedan. If All-Might notices that he’s moving in a specific direction, he says nothing and Izuku offers neither acknowledgment nor explanation. The woman notices, though – the woman who follows All-Might. She was always nervous, what with the continuous screaming echoing through the trash pile, but a few days before Izuku reaches the car, she realizes that he’s headed straight in that direction. She tries to stop him. For the better part of that day, Izuku works through her warning shouts on top of the screaming. He tries to signal her when All-Might’s back is turned, but she never notices. And she won’t try to stop him physically, because Rei growls when she gets too close. (He thinks about taking the risk anyway. All-Might is in his skeletal true form more often than not – is he more or less observant when he isn’t using his quirk?) It comes to a head the day Izuku finally clears the path. He manages to haul away three bicycles that got warped and tangled together, and that turns out to be something of a keystone in clearing the way to the sedan. After Izuku wrestles the mess into the back of the pickup, he runs back to continue. All-Might watches and waits, gaunt enough to be drowning in the jacket he’s wearing. The path that Izuku has cleared cuts between two larger piles like a narrow valley of garbage. At the top of the pile on the right, there’s a television set balanced somewhat precariously. It looks stable enough to most, but most don’t take into account the outbursts of anxious ghosts. “One step at a time, young Midoriya,” All-Might is saying as Izuku comes jogging back. “At your stage, I doubt you’ll be able to move that.” He nods to the broken-down sedan. “Unless, of course, you’d like to try.” “I’ll get to it,” Izuku says, and resists the urge to rub at his ears. The screaming is almost close enough to hurt at this point. “No, you won’t.” The ghost who follows All-Might sounds all the more agitated. She blinks in and out of view, ending up perched at the top of the pile on the right. Izuku shoots her a look, but she’s too upset to notice. “Stay away from there! Both of you! Toshi, I mean it!” Izuku’s friend hisses back at her, and the woman’s form flickers. “Can’t we warn them?” she yells back. The force of her frustration rattles Izuku, and she bumps against the television set. All-Might takes a step closer to the pile. Izuku doesn’t even think about it. His hand shoots out, blocking All-Might from taking a step further. At that moment, the television teeters over, falls, and hits the sand just a few feet in front of them. “Shit-” Izuku hears the ghost woman hiss, before Rei spider-crawls up the pile to shriek her fury right in the woman’s face. Wordlessly he crouches, lifts up the television, and staggers back to the pickup beneath its weight, while the woman’s frantic apologies mingle with his friend’s furious shrieks and growls. All-Might surprises him by ruffling his hair when he gets back, and Izuku steers the cleanup away from the sedan once more. It’s only that night that he dares approach it again. Once he’s eaten and finished his homework, his studying, and daily scheduled exercises, Izuku makes his way back to the beach. All-Might and his protective tagalong are nowhere to be seen. Izuku is alone except for Rei, and free to do whatever he needs. “Stay back,” he tells her. She scowls at him, and he glares back. “Stay back. I just need to talk to them.” Sand crunches beneath his shoes as he meanders his way through the garbage. The poltergeist still screams and cries, louder and louder as Izuku creeps through the path he made and approaches the broken sedan. His pace slows until he’s inching forward. Step, then pause. Step, then pause. Step, then pause. Finally, Izuku can reach out and brush the bent door with his fingertips. A pale hand, bloodied and missing two fingers, thrusts out the window, seizes him by the wrist, and yanks. Izuku catches the edge of the door, and that’s all that keeps him from getting dragged through the broken window. He’s still pulled to the opening, and finds himself almost nose to nose with the wailing ghost. Her face is battered beyond recognition, her skull caved in and misshapen. Shards from the broken windshield protrude from her throat, and her scream bubbles wetly. Her other hand, mangled and half gone, grasps uselessly at his throat. Terror rushes him, and for a split second Izuku drowns in it. It fills his chest and moves outward, buzzing just beneath his skin, filling his head like cotton. Izuku breathes in, breathes out, and continues to do so as he waits for the fear to ebb and recede. Dimly he can still hear the waves lapping at the beach, and he focuses on that sound. The terror washes over him the way the waves wash over the sand, and roils in his stomach for a few seconds before it finally filters out again, leaving him shaky but clear-headed. (His friend is staying back, technically, but he feels her clutching at his jacket sleeve and hears her soft, high-pitched warning snarl.) He coughs, swallows the lump in his throat, and shifts his weight in the sand. “Good evening. My name’s Midoriya. What’s yours?” “I lost it!” His ears burn when she wails so close to them. “I lost it, I just lost it! I need to find it before it’s too late!” “I’m sorry,” Izuku answers. “What did you lose?” “He’ll cut the brakes.” The poltergeist sobs as blood trickles from her eyes and nose and spills freely from her mouth. “I lost the ring, and he doesn’t believe me. I was just hiding – here. I hid here. He wouldn’t look for me here. He called me trash so I hid with the garbage. And I lost it!” “A ring? Here, at this beach?” “He thought I threw it away. He thought I was leaving him.” She leaves his throat alone and paws desperately at the front of his jacket. “I was driving here. To this beach. To look for it – it’s here. It’s somewhere. I have to find it – if I don’t find it he’ll think I’m leaving him and he said he’d cut the brakes if I tried to leave!” “I’ll help you,” Izuku says. “I’ll help, I promise. I’m cleaning up the beach. I’ll look for it, and if I find it, I’ll bring it to you.” “Tell him I’ll look for it,” the ghost pleads. “Tell him. Tell him he doesn’t need to cut the brakes.” “I’ll help you,” Izuku repeats, though it feels as if his throat is closing. “It’s going to be all right. I’ll help you.” The hands on his jacket and wrist vanish. The woman vanishes. Izuku finds himself leaning against the broken sedan, staring through the smashed-in window of an empty car. Stinging pain in his hand makes itself known. In catching himself on the door, he’d cut his palm on one of the shards left by the window. On his other hand, finger-shaped bruises encircle his wrist. Before going to bed that night, Izuku does a quick internet search. He finds a news story from just a few months before: after a year-long trial, one Takeshi Matsumoto was convicted of murdering his fiancee by sabotaging her car. Izuku recognizes the car and its trapped driver in the photos, shuts off the computer, and sleeps about as well as you’d expect. The poltergeist is quieter after that. That’s a good thing, because that means All-Might’s ghost friend is less nervous, Rei is less snappish, television sets are less likely to fall on anyone, and Izuku can focus better on the task at hand. Or rather, the tasks. It’s entirely possible (highly improbable) that he’s stumbled across the ring and thrown it away by accident already. But until he’s cleaned up this beach, he has no way of knowing. Which means that, rather than clearing just a section of the horizon like All-Might told him to, he might have to clear the entire damn thing instead. Oh, well. He was sort of banking on that anyway. This is just extra motivation. The only real difference it makes is that now he goes out to the beach at night as well, and helps the murdered ghost search the garbage pile for her lost ring. It always leaves him exhausted the next day, and All-Might notices. “You’re not following the plan, are you?” All-Might chides him when he collapses in the middle of a run. “Overdoing it is just as bad as not working at all, you know. If you exhaust yourself, you’ll only move backwards.” “Gotta keep going,” Izuku wheezes. “Within reason, kid.” Izuku grinds his teeth. It’s not like he can explain why he’s working himself so hard. “It’s good to push your limits,” All-Might continues. “That’s the entire point of this training in the first place. But you have to know those limits, so we can adjust your abilities in time for the exam.” “Not about the exam.” Izuku tries to pick himself back up, he really does. “My – I’m not – I just have to be stronger. So I can-” save people, save as many people as I can, stop murderers so people don’t have to worry about cut brake lines and lost rings, stop supervillains so that people can go home and feed their pets instead of dying in hospitals, make a world where there are less ghosts for me to talk to- He says none of that. What he does say is, “I have to be stronger. As strong as the strongest hero.” He raises his head and meets All-Might’s eyes, willing him to understand, but not understand too much. A moment later, All-Might is activating his quirk and scooping him right off the ground like a tired cat. “You really are obsessive!” There’s laughter in his voice. “But I can’t say I don’t approve. Still! Impatience with your training won’t help anyone, least of all you. Not to worry, though – this old man will revise the plan for you.” “Toshi, don’t give me that shit!” the ghost woman yells. “Old my ass!” In spite of everything, Izuku laughs so hard he almost pukes. Bit by bit, the beach horizon clears. Trash and junk and litter give way to the white sand beneath, and for every heavy bag of garbage and broken appliance Izuku hauls away, the next gets lighter. He can barely remember how it feels to wake up in the morning without sore muscles, but it gets easier. The shelter rings him up one day, tells him Ms. Yamamoto’s one-eyed cat hasn’t been adopted yet and may have to be transferred to a different shelter to free up space. Izuku tells his mother, and that night he falls asleep with Mika purring on his chest. He gives the broken sedan a wide berth during the day. Izuku still hears the poltergeist cry from time to time. She never leaves the car, not during the day and not when Izuku comes at night, even when he talks to her and tries to coax her out. Maybe she can’t come out. After a while, Izuku stops trying. He won’t risk getting close again, and beyond that there’s only one way he knows how to help her. So he trains, studies, cleans up the beach, and searches every day for the ring. When he’s not doing any of these things, he tries to sleep. The entrance exam creeps closer. The garbage on the beach dwindles. No rings turn up. He cleans the beach. He works during the day with All-Might’s supervision, and under the cover of darkness with his best friend, and only the moon and a flashlight to light their search. He cleans far more than All-Might asked of him, clearing the white sand and the horizon. The entrance exam is a week away by the time Izuku can sling a broken bicycle over one shoulder and tuck a broken air conditioner under his free arm and jog both of them from the beach to the pickup at an easy pace. The ghost in the car wails and weeps day and night. Izuku thinks of her when he’s studying, when he’s jogging, when he’s strengthening his grip under the table, and when he’s lying awake at night, petting his new cat and waiting for sleep to take him. At six in the morning, on the day of the entrance exam, Izuku stands on clear white sand and drowns out her cries by screaming his frustration at the sunrise, because he hasn’t found a damn ring. It sticks with him in the back of his mind, persistent as a mosquito in the room. He’s almost glad for the excuse to punch a giant robot in the face(?) because at least that gives him a period of blessed distraction. Even if it does more or less destroy his arm and legs in the process. He comes out of Recovery Girl’s presence half-certain that he’s blown it all, six months of hard work down the drain, and for the first time in at least five of those months, he doesn’t venture out to the beach that night. All in all, it’s really not Izuku’s day. Against all odds, he gets in. All-Might meets him at the Screaming Beach, with the ghostly woman in tow and his hand held up for a high-five. Izuku blinks at it for a moment, bewildered, before summoning up the courage to return it. Who would he be to leave the Number One Hero hanging? “So, um, my arm,” Izuku says, trying not to talk too loudly over the wails that All-Might can’t even hear. “And my legs. Was that… supposed to happen?” “Figured it might.” “What.” All-Might’s ghost friend heaves a sigh. “You could have at least warned him, Toshi.” “It can’t be helped,” All-Might goes on. “You’re strong enough to be a vessel, but you’re still a raw beginner at using it.” “Which you could have warned him about, Toshi,” his ghost grouses at him. “Not everyone can be a big, beefy, man-beef like you.” Izuku manages, just barely, to disguise a stifled snort of laughter as a cough. “Something the matter?” All-Might asks. “Yes. No. Allergies.” Izuku forces his face straight again. “So, my arm? Well, more my legs. I sort of understand my arm, I mean I punched a huge robot in the face – I think it was the face, anyway, it was really hard to tell – but what about my legs? All I did was jump, and I completely wrecked both of them-” “Like I was saying,” All-Might interrupts. “You have a quirk now, after living your whole life without one. You’re not gonna be an expert at it on Day One – because those six months don’t enter into it, kid. That was your first day of possessing One For All, and that makes it Day One.” “You could’ve warned me,” Izuku mutters. “There wasn’t the time. Besides, it worked out, didn’t it?” All-Might jabs him lightly in the chest, making Izuku look him in the eye. “Remember what you told me, about being stronger? Well, you were right. You do have to be stronger. You’re gonna have to work harder than any of the other students. Them, they’ve been living with extra limbs and laser vision and what have you all their lives. Your first hurdle’s behind you, but you’ve still got a long way to go.” He bends a little, so that they’re eye to eye. “And I promise you, I will help you get there, understand?” There’s a swelling feeling in his chest as Izuku nods vigorously. Rei jostles his arm excitedly, and he tries not to let his shaking show. "And on that note," All-Might continues, reaching into his pocket. "There's something I wanted to show you. I wanted to show you earlier, but... well, look." Izuku steps closer, and All-Might holds out a pair of photographs. They're both pictures of Izuku, a before-and-after comparison to show off his progress. In one, he's the skinny kid he remembers being. In the other, taken the morning that he finished cleaning the beach, he's filled out his own frame, replaced scrawny arms with defined musculature. In both, his pupils are glinting red from the flash. "I was considering fixing that," All-Might says sheepishly. "But I'm not the best with technology, I'm afraid." "It's fine," Izuku assures him. "That kind of always happens, actually. My mom says it's a nightmare trying to get my picture taken." "Well, if it can't be helped... not the point, in any case. Your progress speaks for itself." All-Might pauses to look him carefully in the eye. "Remember, you got to this point through your own hard work. It’s gonna take more hard work to keep you moving forward from here. The stronger you become, the better handle you’ll have on One For All. It will take work, and it will take time. But for now… you’ve earned a break. Enjoy it while it lasts, and keep your strength up. You’re a Yuuei student now, and they don’t let up for beginners.” “I won’t let you down,” Izuku blurts. “Good.” They’re about to leave. The moon is high and bright, and Izuku buzzes with eager energy and glowing pride, and if it weren’t for those two things, it may not have happened. It’s a chance in a million, really. At precisely the right moment, Izuku turns his head to admire his handiwork of six months, and sees moonlight glint on something in the sand. No. No, it couldn’t be. Izuku jogs to the object, sending up sand in his wake, eyes fixed on the tiny glint of reflected moonlight. He slows as he approaches it, not wanting to kick sand over it and lose it again. He stoops, sweeps some of the sand away, and picks up a silver ring from the beach. It’s a simple band, set with a small diamond-like stone. An engagement ring, by the looks of it. It’s a little dirty from lying on the beach, but it still shines. All-Might calls to him from across the sand. “Midoriya! Everything all right?” “Um, go on ahead!” Izuku calls back. “I’ll get home fine!” He stays where he is, under the pretense of admiring the moonlight on the waves, until he’s sure All-Might has gone. He never did touch the old sedan during his cleanup. It looks a lot lonelier now than it ever did before, one last spot of litter tarnishing the horizon. Izuku comes to a halt a few feet away from the driver’s side door, and holds out the ring in his palm. Silence falls. “You found it.” Izuku turns around carefully. The weeping ghost stands in the sand, looking for a split second just as horrible and mangled as she did the first time Izuku saw her. Then he blinks, and she stands before him whole again, pale and thin in a spotless cardigan and skirt. “You found it.” Tears well up in her eyes, and she steps forward and reaches for it. “I wanted to look for it… to show him I only lost it. I wasn’t leaving… he’ll cut the brakes if I leave.” An inch away from the ring, her hand halts. Izuku can’t tell whether her form is flickering, or she really is shivering. More tears come, and her voice trembles and cracks. “Only… I don’t really have to worry about that. Do I?” Blank white eyes, shining with ghost light and tears, meet Izuku’s. “Because he already did.” “I’m sorry.” Izuku’s voice is thick from the ache in his throat. “I’m sorry he did that to you. You didn’t deserve that.” He glances down at the ring. “He’s in jail now, you know. He didn’t get away with it. He won’t be able to hurt anyone else.” “Good. That’s good.” The woman’s hand is clearly shaking now. “My name’s Sachi. Thank you for finding my ring.” “Happy to help.” “I’m sorry.” Sachi sniffles, and lowers her hand back to her side. “I’m sorry, I made you go through all of that trouble for nothing. I don’t want it anymore.” “That’s okay,” Izuku says. “I don’t think you need it. And it wasn’t for nothing. It really wasn’t.” “I can’t remember – the last time somebody helped me. Just because.” Sachi lifts her hand again, but only to wipe her eyes. “Thank you. Thank you so much. I won’t forget this.” Izuku smiles. “I don’t think I will either. I don’t know if I can explain it, but you sort of helped me, too. Thank you.” Sachi doesn’t reply, but she nods. “Do you think...” Izuku’s throat bobs as he swallows. “Are you going to be okay now?” “I think… yes.” Sachi smiles through her tears, and it’s one of the brightest smiles Izuku’s ever seen. “I think… I think I can go now. I’m okay. I’m going to be okay.” By the time Izuku blinks away the tears in his eyes, she’s gone. The car is empty. The beach is silent. He sniffles a little and wipes his eyes. A chill in the air makes him look up, to see Rei hovering nearby, beaming. “How about you, huh?” he asks. “Think you’ll ever…?” She looks thoughtful at this, then shrugs, and flits closer to give his arm a hug. “Well, okay,” Izuku says. “If you’re sure.” He goes home, and his limbs are heavy but his heart is light. You can read the rest here.