Inside his room, Izuku Midoriya stared at his phone. For the first time in weeks, a genuine, fragile smile broke through the hardened mask of the Ninth Successor. A message from the Central Hospital: Gran Torino. Full recovery. Discharged to private rehabilitation.
Izuku's thumb hovered over the screen. He immediately dialled the old man's number, his heart light for a fleeting moment.
He wanted to hear that raspy, grumbling voice, to hear the man who had taught him how to move. But the call went straight to a sterile voicemail. He tried again. And again. But there was only silence.
He sighed, tossing the phone onto his bed. As he did, the wall-mounted monitor, tuned to a mandatory news feed, flickered with a breaking report.
"AFTERMATH: THE FACE OF THE NEW TERROR."
Izuku froze. The screen showed a grainy photograph of the Osaka bay wreckage, and then, three faces appeared in a lineup. In the center was the boy he hadn't seen in over a month.
Yoshi Abara.
The name hit Izuku like a physical blow. Seeing that face again, the Nigerian-Japanese features, the eyes that always seemed to be looking at a world Izuku couldn't see, ignited a complex, toxic cocktail of emotions in his chest.
A month, that month, felt like a decade. To the world, Yoshi was now some "Demon-God" terrorist. To Izuku, he was a thief who had used Izuku's own body as a vessel, a boy who had stepped into the light of the Ninth's shadow and stolen his narrative.
He's with Akira Furuhaya? And the Crawler? Izuku thought, his fingers curling into a fist. He's added himself to the growing list of evils that want to burn the country down.
A dark, spiteful thought bubbled up in his mind, a remnant of the malice that now fuelled his previous home guest. He remembered Stinger. He remembered the truth about that "Hero" that Yoshi had dealt with. He remembered the evidence he held, his memory really, that Stinger was a fraud, a criminal in a cape.
Why am I holding onto it? Izuku wondered, his gaze hardening. To spite him? Or because I'm afraid that if I reveal the truth about Stinger, I'm admitting that Yoshi was right?
Another part of Izuku also just didn't want to believe it all, even though he did see those memories. He hates the thought that the society he has been living in and clawing for access to may be so toxic and fake.
He wondered if there were more fake heroes, like Stain preached before his demise. And if so, how many?
He shook his head, the obsidian vines of his quirk twitching beneath his skin like restless snakes. No. The law was the law. He needed to take this to Aizawa. He needed to be the "Gatekeeper" he was designated to be.
He stepped out into the hallway.
Ochaco Uraraka was leaning against the wall, adjusting the straps on her new, reinforced wrist-brunts. She was in training gear, matte black and charcoal gray, designed for durability in high-friction combat. Her hair was shorter, her face thinner, her eyes possessing a sharp, protective ferocity that made her look years older.
"Midoriya," she said, her voice steady.
"Uraraka," he replied, stopping in his tracks. "Heading to the gym?"
She nodded, her eyes scanning him for any sign of the strain he had been under since Bakugo's return. "I've been doing double sessions. I feel we should all be getting stronger, Midoriya. The news from Osaka... it's just the beginning. Everything is just getting scarier."
She looked at him with an intensity that bordered on radical. She had abandoned the "Deku" nickname, viewing it as a relic of a time when they were allowed to be children. To her, "Deku" was a victim. "Midoriya" was a soldier.
"You've been training a lot more frequently," Izuku noted.
"The only response to chaos is strength," she said, pushing off the wall. She paused, looking down at her boots, then back at him. "When you're free next... will you accompany me? I need someone who can push me. Someone who doesn't hold back. And you might be able to help with your analysis."
Izuku looked at her. In this decaying world, she was the only person who didn't look at him with fear or pity. She looked at him with an expectation of greatness. It was a suffocating, beautiful weight.
"I'd like that," Izuku said softly. He hesitated, then spoke. "You... you don't have to keep calling me by my last name. We've..." He honestly didn't know what to say to justify it, it just came out so quickly.
Ochaco blinked, a small, genuine softening appearing in her gaze. "Then... Izuku."
The name felt strange in the sterile hallway, unrefined, human, and warm.
"And you're Ochaco," he replied.
She nodded, a ghost of a smile touching her lips. "Izuku. Don't be late for the session. I'm not going to make it easy for you."
"I wouldn't want you to, Ochaco."
She turned and headed toward the stairs, her steps heavy and purposeful. Izuku stood there for a long moment, the sound of his own first name echoing in his head. The warmth of the interaction, the sudden, sharp intimacy of it, acted like a fog in his mind.
He looked down at his hand. He was still standing by the elevator. He looked at the door to the faculty wing.
What was I...
The spite he felt for Yoshi, Stinger, the idea to see Aizawa, it all felt distant, muffled by the weight of the girl who had just looked at him and seen a person.
___
The hideout was a crumbling apartment on the edge of the Shin-Sekai district, where the neon lights of the city couldn't quite reach and the smell of industrial grease hung thick in the air. Inside, the only light came from a flickering, wall-mounted television and the dim, blue glow of a portable medical monitor hooked up to Koichi that Makoto somehow got her hands on.
On the screen, a news anchor was gesturing toward a slickly produced graphic. Beneath a photo of Yoshi, eyes narrowed, hair windswept, looking every bit the cold-blooded killer the reporters, or the commission wanted him to be, the word AFTERMATH was emblazoned in jagged, blood-red font.
Yoshi let out a short, sharp bark of a laugh. He was leaning against a damp wall, his arms folded over his ruined dress shirt.
"Aftermath," he repeated, the word tasting like copper on his tongue. "They really went for the dramatics, didn't they? Look at that photo. Although it is an old photo of me, from when I was thirteen."
Makoto didn't laugh. She was kneeling on the floor beside Koichi, her hands shaking as she checked the readout on the monitor. Koichi's face was the colour of parchment, his breathing shallow but steady.
"He's still out," Makoto whispered, her voice thick with exhaustion. "The blood loss was... it was severe, Yoshi. But the wound... it's like it was never there. It's sealed perfectly. I don't understand how you did it. But good job."
Yoshi pushed off the wall and walked over, looking down at the man who had tried to save his soul while bleeding out on a plane floor. "It's just an application of quirk," Yoshi said, his voice dropping into a clinical monotone. "I didn't heal the cells. I just identified the edges of the torn arteries and the skin, and I collapsed the distance between them. I forced the body to be whole again by removing the space where the injury existed, internally he should just mend naturally. It's a spatial stitch. But we probably still should find a real doctor."
"We can't go to a hospital," Akira snarled from the corner of the room. He was pacing like a caged animal, his eyes darting toward the window every time a siren wailed in the distance. "Did you see that broadcast? We're now on the list of some of the most wanted people in Japan. 'Aftermath.' They've turned us into a national disaster. Every hero from here to Hokkaido is looking for a piece of us."
Akira stopped, slamming his fist against a wooden table. "This is a nightmare. I never wanted this much attention again. I wanted to expose the truth, not become an actual villain in the public eye. We're going to die in a gutter, Yoshi. Do you understand that? One mistake and we're done."
Yoshi looked at him, his expression unreadable. "Are you scared, Akira?"
"Are you not?" Akira fired back, his voice cracking.
Yoshi looked down at his own hands. He thought about the darkness he had inhabited before he woke up in Izuku Midoriya's head. He remembered the feeling of being nothing, not a body, not a soul, just a memory of a boy named Yoshi Abara. He didn't remember the pain of dying, but he remembered the absolute silence of it, but it was more like it was there to prepare him for what he is.
There was no memory of the in-between or even the feeling of forming. Kind of like how he thought the everyday person felt since they don't remember the feeling of being born, or when they started to form memory and speech.
"We just need to be more careful."
"Careful doesn't stop a bullet from the Commission," Akira muttered.
"Maybe not," Yoshi conceded. "But this 'Aftermath' branding... it might work in our favour. If the world thinks we're the next big threat, it might provide a layer of protection from the bigger players. The League of Villains, for instance. Shigaraki might see us as potential allies. He might keep the wolves off us just to see if he can recruit us."
The thought sent a wave of genuine, physical disgust through Yoshi's chest. During his time as a passenger in Midoriya's mind, he had seen the League through the eyes of the Ninth Successor. He had felt Midoriya's horror, his righteous anger, and his bone-deep loathing for Shigaraki and what he was becoming in the media's eye so quickly.
Yoshi wasn't a hero, but he wasn't a parasite like them or at least not in that same way. He didn't want to be a part of their new age of villainy. He wanted his own life, not a seat at a table of monsters.
"I don't like it," Makoto said, her voice small. "The media portrayal... it's going to bring my brother. And I'm not ready for that. He doesn't even know I'm back in the country."
Akira paused his pacing, his brow furrowing. "Your brother? Who the hell is your brother?"
Makoto laughed, a dry, nervous sound, and scratched her cheek. "Naomasa. Naomasa Tsukauchi."
Yoshi went still. He knew that name. Through Midoriya's memories, he saw a man in a tan trench coat, a man with tired eyes and a heart of gold. He saw the "True Man", the detective who worked alongside All Might. He knew the quirk, the man was basically a human lie detector.
"Tsukauchi?" Akira whispered, his eyes wide with a mix of annoyance and betrayal. "The detective? The one who's basically the face of the police force's hero liaison? You're telling me your brother is one of the most powerful lawman in Japan and you didn't mention it until now?"
"If I told you from the start, would you have trusted me?" Makoto asked, standing up to face him. "You're an ex-cop, Akira. You know how the system works. If you knew I was his younger sister, you would have thought I was a mole for the Commission or him. And with how paranoid you are I didn't see much point in it."
Akira groaned, rubbing his temples. "This just keeps getting better. If he catches us, there's no lying our way out. He'll know everything the second we open our mouths."
Yoshi looked toward the door, the darkness of the hallway calling to him. He could feel the hunger in his stomach, a sharp, nagging reminder that despite being a "Demon-God," he still had a human metabolism.
"It doesn't matter who her brother is," Yoshi said, reaching for a discarded hoodie to cover his ruined shirt. "Not tonight. We can't change the news, and we can't change our names. A chance will come for us to figure out the next move, but we won't get there if we're starving."
He looked at Makoto and then at the unconscious Koichi. "I'm going out to get food. Stay away from the windows. If Koichi wakes up, tell him... tell him I'm sorry about the suit."