So many times, Izuku had been told that his altruistic tendencies to launch himself into danger to protect others was going to get him damaged beyond all repair if he kept doing so with the reckless abandon he had been since he first got his Quirk. Being a Hero was choosing to be willing to throw oneself into danger, that much was true. But doing so with such disregard for oneself was only ever a one-way trip to not only breaking oneself, but by extension, letting down all the people that Hero hadn't saved yet.
If a Hero were to save a hundred people in their career, but was so reckless, they crippled themselves, or – All the various Gods forbid – died around rescue twenty, that was eighty people who would never be saved. Eighty people who that Hero let down.
It was rhetoric, and it was incredibly subjective – But it made sense. What that rhetoric was trying to say made sense.
That was the harsh logic Izuku had been forced to learn about Heroism. That putting himself in danger over and over, without even remotely thinking about the consequences, was something that would in the long term, make him a worse Hero. It was something that could get him killed.
He wasn't All Might. He couldn't do what All Might had done in his career. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
All Might could do these things. He could throw himself into the fray without consideration for himself. He could recklessly charge in, and just punch things until the situation sorted itself out. He could afford to let his heart rule his head.
….And for that, he had ended up crippled. Without a stomach. And had had to give up his amazing Quirk so much sooner than he would have wanted. Frankly, he was lucky to still be alive.
If All Might had died there, the situation in society could be so much worse. And his successor would be left without a teacher.
This was the lesson Izuku needed to learn. It was something that he knew. Even if he couldn't force himself to act on that, he knew deep down, that the harder lessons were going to be the lessons that he had to learn. Just like everything else about Heroism.
Yet there was something about seeing a little girl in danger, being towered above by a gigantic, reckless, rampaging lunatic that made all that knowledge throw itself right out the window.
All sense be damned.
One For All seemed to activate on its own, fueling the entirety of Izuku's body, and maybe even his soul, as his body moved to rescue the child in his sights. His entire vision seemed to focus in on this petrified child, and his brain focused on nothing more that how he was going to get her out of the danger zone, and to safety. Could he leap in, grab her, and leap out? Was he fast enough to get away with that? Did he need to deal with the attacker first, and knock him out, or just get him out of the way? Would that cause damage to the surrounding area, and harm the child he was trying to protect? Did he have time to assess all of this before he launched?
No, he didn't.
All those ideas shot through his skull in just a few seconds, before his legs shot out, and fired him towards the girl. Snap decision – He would grab her, and leap away immediately. He would use his body as a shield, to do what little he could to defend her should he fail. Assuming he got away without getting smashed up himself, he would leap away, get the child outside the battle zone, and then jump back.
Maybe it wasn't the best idea, but he didn't have time to think anymore.
As he launched, he heard "Izuku!" being yelled by Mina behind him. He already knew for a fact that he was going to be given a stern lecture from her, even if this didn't go horrendous in some way. He couldn't help it though.
Like the act that spurred him at the start, that made All Might choose him as a successor, and put him on the path to meet Mina in the first place – His body had moved on its own.
He had landed at the spot the child was in in about a second and a half. To an untrained eye, it looked as though he had practically teleported there. He was in the shadow of the goliath, but his back was turned to that opponent – Perhaps not the smartest choice, but if an enormous fist was coming to smash him into the ground, he didn't want to see it coming.
For a brief moment, time seemed to slow down as he and the child looked at one another. Izuku was able to fully see her face – She couldn't be older than four or five, and if she was, only by a very small amount. Her eyes were bright red, a light scarlet shade. She also had one horn. A single horn, that came off the right side of her head. She looked terrified.
Izuku couldn't stop himself from smiling at her in that brief second – A mimic of his mentor, his favourite Hero. He didn't even realize he was doing it – Trying to, in just a momentary glance, assure her that everything would be alright.
Even when he wasn't certain that it would be in that moment.
His arms wrapped around the small child, picking her up, holding her close to him, and the muscles in his legs prepared to launch the pair of them away. Around him though, he could see the shadow that towered over him becoming smaller, and could feel the vibrations in the air shift against his back.
An attack was incoming, and his legs weren't moving quick enough to let him escape.
Then he heard a scream. And then his legs pushed up and launched him and his rescuee away. No strike came.
In the middle of the air, Izuku was able to turn himself around to assess what had happened. The giant Quirk user had retracted their hand that they were using to attack him, and were now clutching hold of it in what looked like serious pain. Their other hand was clutching their side. It took a moment for Izuku to realize what was going on.
Mina.
Her Acid Launchers at work, specifically. Mina's Launchers helped extend her Acid far, far further than her natural abilities allowed her to. It limited the amount of impact power that each attack had, but it provided an extension on range – An addition to range that right now, was absolutely vital.
She had been able to land a strike against the giant before he had struck against Izuku and the child in his arms. The attach had been twofold – Against the arm that the giant had intended to hit Izuku with, and one against his side. It had bought Izuku the moment that he needed to leap away to safety, and out of danger.
'Get that kid away from here!' In his head, Mandalay's voice was crystal clear. Her Telepathy Quirk reached where vocal communication would have failed.
A command Izuku didn't need repeated. Briefly, he looked towards Mina, hoping that she would be okay, thanking her, and hoping that somehow, she would be able to hear all of his mental thinking before he spun himself around, and looked for a place to drop this child off.
Leaping off the walls of a few of buildings so that they were a few streets away from the conflicts point of origin, Izuku found a quiet area, that seemed to be fairly void of other people. The One For All holder landed carefully, so he didn't risk hurting the child he'd just shot from building to building holding onto. They were in a back alley, which seemed to be empty of people.
"Are you alright?" He asked as he knelt down to allow the child to stand on their own two feet. He helped her to climb down back onto the ground.
Now that he wasn't having to race against the possibility of being struck by a Villain, Izuku was able to fully look at the child he had just saved from immediate danger. As she found her footing, she looked back at Izuku with a mixture of some kind of confusion and barely concealed terror, like she expected him to turn around and attack her just like the rampager he had just saved her from, like she didn't even fully understand what a Hero was. Her red eyes were large and innocent, but they looked dull at the same time. Like she had gone through things that would make even a Pro jaded, even if they were ten times her age. To put it simply, she looked terrified.
A reaction Izuku didn't struggle to understand in the slightest.
He couldn't help but notice on top of that, her clothes – Or more like a lack thereof. She didn't wear clothes as much as she wore rags. Maybe some time ago, it had been a colourful, if plain dress of some kind, but the colour had washed out of it long ago. Now it looked more like something that someone in a hospital would wear. She had bandages, all over her arms and legs. Was that some sort of recoil of her using her Quirk?
Seeing people with bandages like this wasn't uncommon. Lots of children around this age had them, as they discovered what their Quirks were. She looked young enough to only just recently have developed a Quirk. Maybe she was just afraid of it right now, and by extension, Quirks in general.
He put on a soft smile this time – A deliberate smile this time, one that he intended to be kind and gentle, to try to reassure the child. "You're okay now. My friends and I are going to make sure that bad guy doesn't hurt anyone."
The child didn't even blink. Like she was afraid to. At the same time though, she did nod, and seem to understand what was being said to her. She just… Didn't seem to know what to do, or say. In fact, in that moment, Izuku realized that the child hadn't said anything at all.
"Did you get hurt back there?" He asked, checking to see if he could spot any obvious injuries he had missed in the heat of the moment. "That guy didn't hurt you, did he?"
The child shook her head. Barely. It was a response though. Izuku would take it.
"Good… Do you know where your parents are?"
Another shake of the head. Then the child began to shake. Heavily. Like she was about to cry.
"H – Hey, you're okay. You're okay…" This was a child who had been separated from her parents in the midst of a Villain attack, and now had no idea where they were, and had been whisked away by a complete stranger. Even if she knew that he was a Hero-in-training, there was no way that she was going to be in any state of mind to give him any answers.
Heck, maybe she couldn't even talk. Maybe she looked older than she was. Maybe she didn't know how to, or maybe she was mute. After the last few months, nothing would surprise the teenager anymore.
He bit his lower lip, and stood upright. Glancing around, he realized the street was completely empty of life. He could only really assume that either the police or other Heroes had come through here to evacuate people as a safety precaution. That or the noise had scared off the population from this area. Still, it meant that the child was on her own, and Izuku didn't feel like sending a child to wander the various streets of the city on her own to find more strangers to ask to help find her parents. There were so many ways that such a situation could go wrong that Izuku didn't want to even begin to think about them. He shook his head.
Loudly, he heard the sounds of pavement cracking and something smashing into what he could only presume was metal. A roar, and then the clashes of retaliation. Mina and Mandalay needed him. He couldn't stay here either.
"Stay here." He muttered, before he turned towards the small child. "I need to help my friends. Stay here. I'll come find you once we're done, I promise."
Izuku couldn't tell if the look of horror on her face was because of the brush with violence she had just been saved from, or the prospect of being left alone in a street without anyone there to look after her. If he looked at the situation coldly, he knew it was necessary to leave her here, and that her being afraid for a while was only temporary. And if he didn't leave right now, and something happened to Mandalay or Mina, that he would be the one responsible for not being there to back them up and contribute his powerful Quirk to the mix.
Cold thinking wasn't something that Izuku was particularly good at though. Maybe that was a flaw for a Hero-in-Training that he would have to overcome, but it wasn't one he was able to get around right now. He considered for a moment, before he came up with his idea.
He unzipped his jacket, slid it off, and then wrapped it around the child's shoulders. The young girl looked up at him with a confused expression as well as her normal expression of horror. He gave her another smile. "Look after this for me, okay? I'll need it later, and I want you to look after it for me, alright?" He then reached inside his ear, and received the radio contraption Mandalay had given him not long ago. He then cleaned it against the grey vest he wore underneath his Hero costume, and put it in the small girls' smaller hands. "If you need me, you should be able to reach my friend with this. You just tap it until it starts to glow, okay?"
This time, in the smallest – The absolute smallest of gestures – The young girl gave him a very small nod back.
The Hero-in-Training gave her another smile, and then turned, and leaped off to re-join the fight.
Of the three of them, Izuku's Quirk was probably the most versatile for combat.
Mina's Quirk was strong, and incredibly well suited to combat, that much was true, but it did come with drawbacks of its own. It's dangerous inherent qualities and its lack of serious impact made the power poor for a knockout blow – If she wanted that, she needed to get in close enough to strike someone with her fists and feet. Against close-combat oriented Quirks, that could be a dangerous prospect.
Mandalay's Quirk as also useful in combat, to a certain degree. Telepathy wasn't a combat-oriented Quirk, but the woman had spent her years as a Professional Hero learning how to utilize her powers in a variety of ways that made the most out of her power. In combat, one of her preferred techniques was either misdirection, or immense overstimulation.
Taking down a goliath wasn't a particularly difficult task once Izuku had gotten the only thing stopping them from going all out away to safety. Mina had been able to unleash her Acid at will, both from her launchers, and from her hands, combining the affects of sheer acidity, and the mare sticky varieties to assist her – She could injure the target, lure them towards her, and make her Acid a more sticky variety, and force them to get bogged down in a semi-liquid acid and half-dissolved pavement. Mandalay then went around generating an ungodly amount of noise inside the targets mind – utterly overwhelming her targets senses inside their own head that the target couldn't do anything but clutch their head.
By that point, Izuku wrapping up the fight with a kick to the back of the head and sending them into the black silence of unconsciousness probably seemed like a mercy from the Villains perspective. It hadn't been a particularly difficult fight either. Just one that required the freedom to do whatever they needed to, and without having to worry about civilians.
Izuku wiped off sweat from his forehead, and focused on getting his breath back. As he did, he looked at the Villain he had just knocked out. He still had no idea what had caused this person to lash out randomly as he had. Even people who struggled to control their Quirks, lash-outs like this didn't happen all that often. Not anymore, anyway.
Maybe it was just a side effect of the loss of All Might. That people were more susceptible to panic. The loss of the Hero whose mere existence had been a deterrent to crime had had a profound impact on society.
Somehow though, Izuku didn't think that was the case here. This guy had a strong Quirk, and if he had been going to lose it before now, he would have. Izuku would have remembered reading about him from one of the many news outlets he followed when it came to Quirks and Villain attacks. So something else had caused this.
"Izu!" Mina ran up to him, skidding to a halt once she was close enough to him that she didn't ned to yell to make herself heard. "You okay?"
"Yeah…" Izuku nodded, taking in another deep breath, and then exhaling heavily. "Th – Thanks. For saving me back there." He gave her a small smile. "Your… Acid Launchers work well."
A grin of pride filled Mina's face. "Don't they? I'm glad I practiced with 'em."
"I uh… I'm sorry I ran in without thinking again."
"I'm not gonna give you crap for saving a kid, Izu." She told him, poking at his cheek with two of her fingers. "I'm not that nuts. It's part of being a Hero."
Something about this fight had exhausted Izuku. It hadn't been a particularly tough fight, but the close call he had had in it had taken a fair bit out of him, as had having to leap down a bunch of streets whole holding onto a small child and worrying about her and if he'd made the choice.
That exhaustion immediately seemed to erase itself when Mina mentioned the kid he had saved, and that was still presumably sat in that same place, still as terrified as she had been when Izuku had left her on her own again. He hadn't forgotten about her, but it served as a reminder that he still had work to do.
"Good work getting that kid out of here, Midoriya." Mandalay approached the pair of them, with some sort of device in her hands that resembled a handcuff of some sort. She knelt down besides the now unconscious Villain, and bound his hands behind his back, tying them up with the metallic contraption. If he woke up when the police arrived, he wouldn't be too much of a threat, hopefully. At the very least it might slow him down. "That was quick thinking."
"That kid… I left her in one of the back streets." Izuku informed the pair of them. They both looked at him. "There wasn't anyone around, and she didn't know where her parents were. She wouldn't even say anything to me – I told her to stay there until I was sure you guys were okay."
"That explains where your coat went." Mina commented. "I only caught a glance of the kid, but they looked pretty underdressed. Y'know what that was about?"
Izuku shook his head.
"She didn't say anything at all?" The Pro Hero questioned.
"Nothing. I think she might have just been way too shaken up to say something."
"I see…" Mandalay bit her thumb for a couple of seconds. "All things considered, I think you made the smart choice, even though leaving her on her own wasn't exactly ideal… Alright, I imagine the police will have set up a barrier between this area, and wherever the civilians are now. You two take her there, see if you can't find her parents – She might respond better to people closer to her own age than someone my age. If not, I suppose leaving her with the police should work. And tell them it's safe to send someone to pick this guy up."
"Understood!" Izuku nodded, turning on his heels and immediately running off back to where he had left the young girl, and Mina ran behind him.
Thankfully, finding the child wasn't all that difficult a task at all.
At the time he leaped through here, Izuku hadn't been planning on coming back to find the child again, so he hadn't thought about where he was going. On the ground level, all the buildings Izuku had leaped past and off of had shot by so fast that he couldn't really make a mental map of where he was or where he was going. It had been a bit like springing through a maze and just going through every single pathway that was available to the one in the puzzle.
The One For All user had a cheat for this particular maze, though.
Izuku utilized his Quirk to jump onto the rooftops of the buildings around, and had scouted around the place quickly, looking for anything green – Which would be his jacket.
"Nice thinking." Mina complimented when he explained this. As he jumped from building to building, she was attached to his back, in a manner skin to a piggyback ride – Only the pair of them were grabbing hold of one another far, far tighter - It was faster than conveying to her which streets to pass through to find the kid.
That hadn't been his initial reason for leaving his jacket with the kid, though it certainly did help in the current situation. It was also virtually their only advantage – Mina had tried to communicate with the kid via her earpiece, but the child hadn't responded at all.
Finding the child didn't even take all that long thanks to this birds-eye-view method of searching. Only a couple of minutes worth of searching, to leaping, to searching again. The streets were full of browns and greys that even a dark green stood out enough to catch the eye.
"There!" The Acid user pointed as she spotted the green against the greys and blacks of a back alley.
Immediately, Izuku jumped down, landing in the middle of the street without any trouble, other than the extra weight of his girlfriend causing him to stagger slightly as gravity pulled on the pair of them. On the ground again, Mina climbed down off Izuku's back, and the pair of them made their way towards his jacket.
The girl was hiding underneath the jacket, like she was using it for protection against whatever else existed in the city. She was still there though, that much was clear.
Her horn had poked a hole right through the fabric.
"Hello?" Izuku said, gently. "I'm back. You can stop hiding now."
It took a few seconds, but the child underneath seemed to respond to it, and poked her head out from underneath the jacket. She did so in such a way though, that the rest of the jacket was wrapped around her horn, making it appear like a headcloth more than a jacket.
"Oh my god you're adorable." Mina kneeled down and gave the small child a huge smile. "You okay there?"
The child seemed to flinch slightly at the sight of this new person, and by default, looked towards Izuku.
"It's alright. She's one of the people I told you about, who helped me against that bad guy." He assured her softly.
"I'm Mina." The pink girl introduced herself. "And that's Izuku. We're Heroes. We're gonna help you, okay?" As she spoke, she attempted to help untangle Izuku's jacket from the young child's horn.
Of the two of them, Mina was going to be the one better with younger kids, Izuku thought. She had siblings, two of which were younger than her. Given the maniacs they all were, a shy child like this wasn't going to be an issue in the slightest. He couldn't help but smile as she did her best to make the child feel at ease.
Mina managed to get his jacket untangled without too much trouble, though the hole had gone right through both the front and the back of the costume. Apparently, the girl didn't quite know the strength of her own horn.
She looked at the hole, and then to Izuku again. She looked both apologetic, and mildly terrified.
Something which this time, did set off some concern in Izuku's head.
"H – Hey, don't worry about it." He assured her once more. "I can get it fixed for free by my school support department – It's not a big deal."
"That's happened to me a lot." Mina said, poking her right finger against her respective own horn. "Especially growing up. My mom used to get upset with me too. You're like a half-me!"
It hadn't been a smile like she'd hoped, but Mina seemed to help the kid relax a bit. Mina helped the girl to stand up, while Izuku put his jacket back on, and zipped it back up. There were a lot of things about this kid that struck the pair of them as odd – The clothes, the fact the child just didn't speak… The constant terror this child seemed to have around other people.
Was it anxiety? Izuku recognized anxiety when he saw it – He'd dealt with it for much of his life. He understood how it could affect interactions with other people. Or was it just that she was shaken up?
Or was it something a lot darker?... Her flinching at realizing she'd poked a hole in his clothes put that idea into his head…
But given that the child wouldn't say anything, and that he had no other real way to reference what was going on… And without any sort of evidence… He couldn't make any conclusions until he saw the parents of this kid.
It could be nothing. Or it could be something. It depended on how the child acted around her parents.
"We're gonna take you to try and find your parents, or whoever's looking after you, okay?" Mina told her, smiling all the same.
The child immediately took her hand away, and clung onto Izuku.
"What – What's wrong?"
The child trembled. The difference in size meant all the child could cling onto was his leg, and her hands gripped onto that leg has hard as they could – Which was such little, weak force that it practically tickled. Her eyes were firmly shut.
"H – Hey, you're okay. You're okay…"
Izuku did the only thing that he could think to do. He Knelt down, and hugged the child.
"You're okay…"
Suddenly, he felt that he had all the evidence he needed that they had stumbled onto something much darker.