The next few days were a blur.
Izuku tried to forget what happened and he was doing a wonderful job doing so. The sheer amount of unbelievable things that just piled on top of each other made it very easy to just imagine a really bad and strange dream. The only trace of this day was the nicely burned handprint on his shoulder, which by the way had been a pain to take care of because of the state of his clothes after... everything. And also the missing notebook.
After he woke up from his coma-like nap, Izuku had reached his backpack to check on something he had thought about, some hero whose quirk could be enhanced if he stopped using a particular method, but he almost had a panic attack when he realized he didn't have it. Then he calmed down and remembered this fateful day. And then, had a panic attack.
It had been morning, his mother had already left for work. She had been worried the previous night when she came back from a late-shift, hearing about the attack on Kacchan, which Izuku hadn't heard of until then, but had only told him she cared very much about him and would bring the ingredient to make katsudon the next day so they could relax after this worrisome situation. Izuku, far to tired to actually do so, had almost laughed and told her he might have gone through worse than Kacchan and his stupid attack because she immediately told him his childhood friend was fine and well, and his mother was just worried for nothing. Anyway, the morning after, Izuku didn't hesitate and stayed in bed. He would say he was sick if anyone asked and quite honestly he looked it. The rings under his eyes were dark, he kept flinching from any contact on his skin and his throat was sore, his voice barely a whisper.
That day, Izuku sat down on his bed. He stared at the far wall of his bedroom, a point between two precious All Might posters and spent some time thinking.
He just thought. He let his memory do the work, he recalled everything that happened yesterday. The telling off by his hero, the kidnapping, the weirdly supporting speech from the ugly super villain.
And then he buried it all very deep, never to be remembered.
All he did was take off the posters that covered his walls and nicely roll them before hiding them under his bed. He put his All Might figures in their boxes. He might have been heart-broken but he could sell all of this. Making money on his heart break, at least the whole ordeal wasn't completely useless. Watch this All Might, Izuku couldn't be a hero but at least... he could sell his poster and have some pocket money... He cried after that for half an hour realizing once again that his dream was impossible.
After that, Izuku tried to ignore it all. He pulled himself together, dried his cheek, putting a bright smile on his face because 'fake it 'till you make it' worked for serotonin or whatever; He cleaned his room, pushed his fanboy stuff as far as he could under his bed. Out of sight out of mind. Hopefully. He sat at his desk and began a new notebook. He named it '13 bis', forgetting to put the Hero Analysis usual title (he did not actually forget, sadly, but he wanted to think he did, that he'd put the whole thing behind him already). He ignored all of his problems and focused on recreating the lost item.
Who cared if he didn't have a dream anymore? Who cared if he didn't have a hero anymore? Who cared if he slightly felt like crying still but wasn't quite sure whether or not he could?
(The answer was absolutely no one, he knew that.)
(Or perhaps the faceless man did, after all he said...)
His mother had come home, hugged him tight and told him to rest the next day too if he was sick, that she would call the school and excuse him. It must be a terrible cold by the sound of his voice. She held onto him, crying and telling him she was glad he was okay and that it had been a good thing Kacchan was attacked and not him because, after all, Kacchan was a strong boy and what would have Izuku done.
As promised she made katsudon, putting his silence on the count of his dry throat. She made a light conversation, repeating a few times how glad she was that he was safe and sound and okay, here, with her.
Izuku stayed home the next day too. He didn't have to worry about school because no one would worry for him and it's not like class was hard anyway.
He refused to think. He turned on music, podcasts, movies or radio-stations to fill the silence of the room, the thoughts milling in his brain, ready to jump on him if he ever tried to rest.
He spent the weekend afterward in his room. He told his mother he needed rest if he wanted to be fine for the beginning of the week. She didn't question it and kissed the top of his head before burying him under his cover.
He was in his room when it happened.
He was on his deck, a newly made page of his notebook just finished under his fingers. The radio was talking about some theories on pre-quirk super-powers fandom and the possibility of those powers coming now in a time when they could exist. It changed drastically when the woman, a teen-girl who hoped to work in journalism, announced in a somber tone the death of a hero.
Izuku held his highlighter off the page, staring at his computer screen where some forum about hero lives was opened and listened.
"Yesterday night, Yagihashi Yukikazu, known as the hero Chronos, died in unknown circumstances," Izuku's heart was beating fast at the name. "He was found... in his kitchen, his, hum, skull, bashed open. The police think that the death was quick and that the hero did not see it coming. Evidence of breaking in and a minor fight seem to prove that the hero tried to struggle but couldn't fight whoever attacked him. We don't know yet whether or not the death was quirk-induced or if any kind of weapon was used. For a reminder, Chronos' quirk was a Slowing Time. The name's telling. He had been a hero for... 2 to 3 years now, and started rising in popularity a few months ago."
Abandoning his highlighter, Izuku started to search frantically in his notebook, flipping the pages with fervor.
"For some time, rumors about the hero had been milling. Report and accusation of assault, physical, verbal as well as sexual, official and unofficial, had been made against him. His latest girlfriend, Mikami Usari, has been arrested 4 weeks ago under the name of Crooked-Moon, a villain following the ideas of the Hero Killer Stain. After finding evidence, both material and numeric in the domicile of the last-hero, an investigation is underway. Perhaps the hero wasn't as the public thought of him. He..."
Izuku wasn't listening anymore. He was reading the page he'd made on the hero. On Chronos. He had indeed been rising in popularity the last few months and Izuku had taken interest in his quirk. A rough sketch of his hero costume had been remade in his copy of the thirteenth version of his notebook. He also had wrote :
Name : ChronosQuirk : Slowing Time-slowing the time around him, not him, not super-speed-can change the speed of his slowing-takes at least 2 minutes (does it depend on how much he slows?) to charge the quirk-can use it for long periods of timeStrengths : -Catching criminals running away-preventing fights-doesn't have to be right on scene to charge the power-can slow enough for the time to almost seem like it stoppedWeaknesses : -faster aging (body continues to age at a normal speed)-support items are slowed as well, makes carrying more than a few really hard-can't handle surprise attacks at all-tires more quickly-if hurt, loses more blood??? : costume = dna ?Could try to accelerate time?Could impact others if right connection?
At the time Izuku had been proud of his analysis. He had thought of the quirk as dangerous for the user and had thought very highly of the hero for about 30 minutes for putting himself in danger like that before he went on the internet to find some video of the hero. Instead, he fell upon blogs and social-media accusations of diverse types of assault from the hero. He had added three entries to the notes about the hero life, mainly the name of three of the victims, the title of a video on some obscure site where you could see a drunk figure in a similar costume as Chronos' beating a lifeless form on the ground, and ideas of how one could investigate about all of this.
And now the body of the hero was found, following his notes on his weakness.
Okay, the ideas could have been obvious if one tried to think about it for more than a minute but still.
The next few hours, blogs, forums and news stations, both official and not, talked about this death. It had not been claimed by any known villain or vigilante (who would have fallen on the wrong side of the laws in more official ways with this). Izuku followed anxiously as a steady input of news came on diverse twitter accounts until, the next day, the police made an official statement about the hero. He had very much not been a hero. The accusations of assault were almost all founded and had proof. The Crooked-Moon villain had been abused for several months before she managed to get out of the relationship and tried to report everything. No one had listened to her and she had turned toward villainy to seek some sort of revenge and justice, must she do it herself. Many people were talking about the hero system, its bias and how unfairly non-hero were treated when it came to anything to do with the heroes.
Izuku could have tried to forget this too. He could have tried to lie to himself about his possible implication in the affair. Even with his missing, no, stolen notebook. Even with his notebook stolen, lost in the wild in the hands of some villain, he could have tried to ignore it all. With the amount of things he was trying to erase from his memory, one more wouldn't have been such a trial honestly.
But try as he might, Izuku couldn't ignore the text he received the very day the whole affair officially came out. It was a short message, from an unknown number. Two actually. They came successively, one shortly after the other. It said
"I told you you weren't useless; This is what I mean by helping the people who need it."
First he had ignored it. Usually unknown numbers meant either errors or bad pranks that didn't even hurt anymore. But a sick sort of curiosity won.
And now he couldn't ignore it.
He kept thinking about the faceless villain. Because who else could it have been from? It was a clear reference to their little conversation, to his last sentences. "What does it mean to help people? And who needs help? I'll show you that you're far from useless."
He had shown him that there were people like him. People that were simply not listened to. Because society favored strong quirks. Because it favored so-called heroes. They were untouchable, far away from the crowd, from the public who did not have any power over them, not unless they rallied and fought against one (and even that wasn't much if the law and authority weren't on their side).
Izuku felt sick thinking about it, but his analysis had helped. It really did. Even with the death of a man, it had given at least some sort of justice, of closure to people whose lives had been ruined because of him, it had stopped people from being furthermore hurt. The people that no one fought for, they were just a tiny bit safer because of that. Because of Izuku's ideas and notes.
Try as he might, he just couldn't stop thinking about it.
That's how he ended up contacting the number back.