Chapter Text
It was always a fifty-fifty chance.
-
It happens so fast that Fumikage doesn’t realize what’s happening until it’s too late. He’s trapped in a small space, unable to move and too disoriented to examine his surroundings. Not even Dark Shadow can escape his body and this enclosed space. The world is a frenzy outside. He hears shouts, sees flashes of light, and then—
He’s back to himself, a cold hand wrapped around his neck as he sees his classmates staring back at him in shock.
“Tsk,” The man behind Fumikage tuts. “Well, good enough. Let’s go.”
Midoriya comes running, a desperate, bloodied mess still moving in one last attempt. Behind him, Fumikage sees glimpses of the others: Shouji’s blatant horror, Todoroki’s muted panic, and Bakugou’s wide-eyed disbelief.
Then, everything goes black.
-
Time passes in a blur for a while. It’s hard to keep track of the hours when you’ve been locked up in a bar that has no windows and you’re surrounded by villains who are constantly talking. They’ve restrained Fumikage to a reinforced chair and locked a metal case around his hands, which must have been made with Bakugou in mind. They don’t have any safety measures against Dark Shadow, since none of them anticipated bringing Fumikage here, but it doesn’t matter. One of the villains clearly has a fire quirk, and that’d be enough to keep Dark Shadow at bay.
“Trust me, you should have seen the sheer destruction the boy caused all by himself,” the thief in the mask says. “He’s an even better candidate than Bakugou Katsuki. It’s just a matter of environment.”
“I don’t know, he seems pretty puny and pathetic! I mean, he looks badass as hell!” The man in the full-body suit strikes an energetic pose as he speaks. Fumikage isn’t quite sure what to make of him, but he doesn’t make his skin crawl like Shigaraki or the man with the fire quirk. He’s not very threatening when he jumps close to inspect Fumikage from inches away. “You should totally join us; not that we want you anyway!”
Fumikage tries to pull away from the man as far as the chair will allow him. “Why would you want me to join you? I’m literally a high schooler.”
“So am I!” The girl in the school uniform volunteers. There’s something unsettling about her, even though Fumikage can’t quite put a finger on what it is. “Age is just a number. Villainy is for everybody!”
“Why do you want to be just a high schooler?” The man wearing a mask reminiscent of Stain’s asks. “You really wanna be one of those fake heroes that pretend to be upholding justice and crap? All to protect a society that won’t protect you back?”
“You know the public will cast you aside the very moment you aren’t good enough in their eyes,” the fire user chimes in lazily. “That’s how hero society works.”
The Stain mask guy says, very quietly, “You know society’s never gonna be as generous to you as your friends who aren’t mutants.”
Fumikage is very practiced at not reacting to things that hit too close to home. He’s had a lifetime to train himself into holding himself back and telling Dark Shadow no, no, no. We can’t be angry, we can’t fight back, we can’t react at all.
“So you’re saying I should become a villain because I’m a mutant?” Fumikage keeps his voice flat, unwilling to betray any emotion. “Sounds like a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
“Well, your quirk would thrive much more in the dark, wouldn’t it?” The masked thief says, and while it’s nothing Fumikage hasn’t heard a thousand times already, it still hurts to hear someone else say that about him and Dark Shadow. They don’t know that Dark Shadow likes cats or that he enjoys puns or that he always apologizes for causing Fumikage any pain. It’s unfair to think that Dark Shadow is inherently suited for villainy, when Dark Shadow has always been just as excited to be a hero as much as Fumikage.
(But then again, he had turned out to be the biggest threat to his friends in that forest.)
“Darkness is not inherently evil.” Fumikage weighs his options. Will antagonizing these villains come back to bite him? Should he at least pretend to go along with their farce, if only to seek out a prime opportunity to escape? Should he stall for time? “And the light is not inherently good, either.”
Shigaraki makes a sound of amusement. “Looks like we got ourselves a philosopher.”
Fumikage thanks his genetics for making it near-impossible for people to read his unimpressed facial expression. The villains don’t seem interested in hurting him so far, and their attempts to recruit him seem genuine. They probably wanted Bakugou because of the impression he made at the Sports Festival, and they’d gone through the trouble of trying to kidnap him alive. That was a lot of trouble just for one recruit; so converting Bakugou must serve a bigger purpose. Taking a hero student from UA…
‘Must be about knocking the school’s reputation down a peg,’ Dark Shadow muses through their mental link. ‘Maybe because All Might teaches us?’
‘Possibly,’ Fumikage acknowledges. ‘If they just wanted to ruin the school’s reputation, killing us off at the camp would’ve been enough. They brought us alive, and will want to keep us that way. We should stall.’
Fumikage decides the best tactic for now is to make the villains do their favorite thing in the world: villainous monologues. “Then are you saying you have no philosophy regarding the actions you take against society?”
And just as he intended, the villains take turns talking for a very long time.
-
There’s a press conference on the TV and Fumikage hates every second of it. He hates that these journalists are questioning UA’s methods, that they’re questioning Aizawa’s efforts to protect them, that they’re questioning Bakugou’s potential to be a hero. Fumikage might not be friends with Bakugou, but he’s seen enough of his classmate to know that he’s a terrible liar and that his drive to be the best hero is unstoppable. If he’d had a single villainous thought in his brain, he’d have already made a name as a criminal.
While they throw out perfunctory questions about Fumikage’s standing as a good student, the press doesn’t raise questions about his potential to become a villain, which is a relief. Apparently nobody got the memo about Dark Shadow’s rampage.
“Why are the heroes getting criticized?” Shigaraki questions, spreading his arms to gesture at the unfairness of it all. Fumikage can’t bring himself to entirely disagree with Shigaraki’s comments about the standards and restrictions that society has bound heroes to. It isn’t fair that the public treats the heroes who try their very best this way. Fumikage knows Shigaraki has a point.
But he also knows that Shigaraki is not the one who gets to make that point. Not when him and his lackeys here are literally villains who attacked innocent students and even tried to kill them.
“Is this justice?” One of the villains asks.
Fumikage doesn’t deign to answer. He’d learned, once upon a childhood, that there was no use in arguing with those who already had an answer chosen in their head. There is no point in making an argument in favor of heroes when all your audience wants is to tear them down.
“Dabi, untie him,” Shigaraki says, and the fire user makes a face. “We have to treat him as an equal if we want to him to be one of us.”
‘I wanna snap him in half,’ Dark Shadow hisses. It makes Fumikage worry to hear his quirk’s violent tendencies when they’re not even cloaked in darkness. It means Fumikage’s emotions are slowly inching out of his own control. The canary in the coal mine, a warning signal that Fumikage needs to cool off so that he doesn’t let Dark Shadow snatch the reins.
But would allowing Dark Shadow to take over be such a bad idea?
As Dabi starts unlocking the box trapping Fumikage’s hands, he makes his decision.
In the very moment Fumikage is freed from his restraints, he kicks Dabi away and deliberately feeds Dark Shadow his fear and anger. He knows he can’t win this fight—Dabi’s fire wouldn’t let him—but if he can just fend them off and reach the door, he has a chance.
Dark Shadow screeches, swooping out of his chest and smacking Shigaraki, hard enough to drop the hand placed on the villain’s face. Everybody freezes.
There’s a sudden tension in the air, the kind that crackles up your spine. At the sudden overwhelming sense of danger, Dark Shadow growls and grows bigger, hovering between Shigaraki and Fumikage. Not to attack, but to shield.
The teleportation quirk user starts moving to placate Shigaraki, but the tension dissipates in an instant when Shigaraki waves everybody off, picking the hand back up as he says something about Fumikage being an important piece. For what, Fumikage has no idea.
“I thought you would understand,” Shigaraki says. He almost sounds regretful.
“You thought wrong,” Fumikage grits out. “I agree that the system is flawed and society is biased against me. But I disagree with your approach to changing the status quo. I want to fix our society; you just want to destroy it.”
Stain mask guy clicks his tongue. “You haven’t seen how deep the cracks go, kid.”
“We should show him,” Dabi says lazily.
“I think this could be a productive discussion, but we don’t have the time to persuade him when the heroes are investigating.” Shigaraki turns towards a monitor at the side of the bar. “Sensei, lend me a hand.”
A voice crackles through, raspy and approving. “Good decision, Tomura.”
Shigaraki gestures at the others. “Put him back to sleep. We’ll continue this later after we move locations.”
It’s now or never. The thief and the teleportation quirk user are moving in, and Fumikage isn’t sure he can make it to the door fast enough—
Somebody knocks on the door and announces a pizza delivery.
-
Fumikage isn’t sure how he got here.
For a moment, he’d been so sure it was over. That he was safe now that the heroes were here. But then Nomu were appearing out of thin air, erupting from bursts of black sludge, and then the same sludge was rushing out from his own beak, swallowing him whole into darkness.
And now he’s coughing, trying to get his breath back as he takes in his surroundings. He’s outside; that much he’s sure of. It’s late, too. So he has the advantage of the night to call upon Dark Shadow if necessary.
“Hello, Tokoyami,” A voice says, and something about it sends a chill down Fumikage’s spine. “I’m sorry for the rather…unorthodox transportation method. Teleportation quirks are rare, you see, and it’s so hard to get one as useful as Kurogiri’s. But yours…your quirk is truly one of a kind.”
“What?” Fumikage tries to inch away from the man who is too close—don’t touch him don’t touch him don’t touch him blares in his head, a primal recognition of a threat—but then he hears sounds from behind him. Wet sludge. Coughs. Voices of villains he’d already listened to for hours. Now Fumikage is surrounded, and Dark Shadow is snarling inside of him, the blood-thirst on the verge of becoming all-consuming. “Don’t come near me.”
The man, who wears a very thick helmet, Fumikage distantly notes, makes a sound that could almost be a laugh. “I’m afraid you’re not in a position to make demands.”
Something black and spidery shoots out from his fingers, like elongated claws. They stretch and curl around Fumikage, dragging him in and holding him tight as the man presses his other hand to Fumikage’s forehead.
“A quirk that feeds off of negative emotions…that could fit quite well,” the man says, and then everything goes supernova bright.
Bright might not be the correct word, but Fumikage doesn’t have any words to describe the lurching sensation of having something vital to him being grabbed and pulled, like somebody has his heart in a vise grip and wants to yank it out entirely.
‘No,’ Dark Shadow hisses, and that’s the horrifying moment when Fumikage realizes that the man is trying to rip Dark Shadow out of him. ‘No! Stop it!’
Fumikage tries to tell the man to stop. He tries to scream. He can’t move.
‘You can’t take me!’ Dark Shadow shrieks, louder and louder and louder until his voice takes up all of Fumikage. ‘I’m part of Fumikage and you can’t make me leave! So stop it or I’ll tear you apart and rip your heart out!’
The man pulls harder and Dark Shadow screams. Maybe Fumikage screams. He’s not sure where the line between the two of them is, right now.
And then, with a vicious kind of single-minded fury, Dark Shadow roars and pulls back.
The light, the pain, all of it is gone in a flash, and then Fumikage is panting, staring at the man, who is looking down at his own palm.
There’s a moment of silence as the man stares at his hand. Then, as he looks up to face Fumikage, he utters quietly, “You took it.”
There’s something icy in his tone, a flash of true anger, but before he can do anything else, there’s a high-pitched whistle in the air that has him turning away to face the incoming crash of All Might. The thunderclap of All Might’s punch reverberates through the air, shock-waves pushing a newly freed Fumikage away just before the symbol of peace takes a blow from the man in the helmet.
“Tomura,” the man calls out. “Go. Take the boy with you. He’s an important piece. Do not leave him behind.”
The teleportation quirk user is knocked out, but his quirk has been activated. Fumikage can’t let the villains manage to drag him into the portal, but he’s outnumbered and the villains seem more determined to subdue him by force. There’s a high chance that he might lose a limb or two if they get desperate enough.
“I saw that,” Shigaraki hisses, and for once he seems to has lost his cool; he sounds both awed and angry, unsure of which emotion he should focus on. “How the hell did you—”
“Not sure what’s going on here,” the person with the giant magnet says, “but I’m guessing something went wrong.”
The thief tries to slip closer, but Fumikage knows better than to let the man touch him, this time. He fends off the others with Dark Shadow as he specifically avoids the thief, trying to circle them so he can make a break for the opposite direction from the portal. Dabi is knocked out, which is a small mercy, so Dark Shadow is vicious and looming over his opponents, keeping them away with swipes of dark claws.
He can’t count on All Might for help; in fact, Fumikage is devastatingly certain that his presence is hindering All Might from fighting at full capacity. He needs to get out of here, if not for his own sake, then for All Might’s.
If only he could fly. Fumikage desperately wishes he had more useful avian features. For a fleeting moment, he thinks of Hawks.
If only—
There’s an explosion, loud and ear-ringing, concrete crumbling as dust billows from a far-off wall. Before anybody can react, there’s a burst of sound and ice, a flash of green lightning, and Fumikage’s keen eyesight easily catches his classmates flying through the air, sees Shouji stretching arms upon arms, a long rescue line that ends with an outstretched hand that most people wouldn’t easily reach.
But Fumikage isn’t most people.
“Tokoyami!” Shouji yells, and Dark Shadow bursts upwards like lightning, soaring to meet the hand that waits for him at the end of many multiplied arms. When Dark Shadow’s claw clasps Shoji’s hand, The tether that links Dark Shadow and Fumikage shortens drastically upon contact so that Fumikage is instantly tugged into the air, flying away into the night sky as his friends carry him to safety.
-
It turns out that Fumikage’s classmates are near-suicidal and had come all the way here in an attempt to rescue him. Fumikage would be exasperated at them for the entire stunt, but he can’t disapprove when they literally hauled him out of the villains’ clutches.
It was a good plan, too. Bakugou exploding the wall to make an opening, Todoroki making a ramp of ice, then Midoriya and Iida providing the speed boost to fly through the air while Shouji used his multiplying limbs to create a chain long enough for Dark Shadow to grab. Then Bakugou, Todoroki, and Yaoyorozu making their getaway on foot while the villains are distracted by the rescue.
“You have my gratitude,” Fumikage tells them with all the sincerity he can muster once they hit the bustling downtown area. “I owe all of you an immeasurable debt.”
Midoriya and Yaoyorozu wave him off with pink cheeks and earnest words; Iida admits he came here to keep the others in check, which is still appreciated; Todoroki points out that Fumikage saved his life at the camp against the villain with the weaponized teeth, too; Shouji simply pats his shoulder and says he’s glad that Fumikage is safe.
Bakugou says nothing.
That is, until the group starts moving through the bustling crowd, walking in twos and threes. The plan is for his classmates to drop Fumikage off at the local police station, then for them to disperse and make their way home. So as they walk, Bakugou sidles close to Fumikage’s side, his expression strangely blank as he says, “Don’t thank me for coming here tonight.”
Fumikage blinks, even as his steps don’t falter. “You saved me.”
“It doesn’t count when it was my fault this all happened in the first place,” Bakugou growls.
To say Fumikage feels taken aback is putting it lightly. He never imagined Bakugou shouldering the blame for anything, let alone something that was completely out of his control. But more than that, the tone of Bakugou’s voice grates like gravel under Fumikage’s feet. It sounds a lot like guilt, and it’s an alien concept to associate with his explosive peer.
“You’re not the one who brought the villains upon us,” Fumikage says quietly, barely heard over the crowd, but he knows Bakugou is listening. “They’re the ones at fault.”
Bakugou’s words are quiet, but they’re heavy when he says, “Wouldn’t have had to rescue you in the first place if I’d been strong enough.”
Fumikage is about to argue against that when a giant screen showing All Might’s battle lights up, and they turn as one towards the screen along with the crowd. All Might is fighting, All Might isn’t winning quite yet, and then All Might is not the hero they know anymore.
Fumikage watches the greatest hero reduced to skin and bone on live TV, surrounded by strangers and friends as the nation holds its breath. He watches the symbol of peace slowly burn out, standing where Fumikage had been standing not even half an hour earlier, and he thinks, unbidden, of the villain in the Stain mask saying you haven’t seen how deep the cracks go, kid.
As All Might’s era comes to an end, Fumikage swears he hears something deep in the earth start to crack open.
Dabi’s laughter echoes like smoke. We should show him.
Fumikage doesn’t want to see. He doesn’t want to look at what’s coming next, doesn’t want to know what’s under the shiny veneer of heroism, doesn’t want to witness any of it. But if he looks away, the villains win.
So Fumikage watches All Might point at the camera, hears him utter words that will echo through society, and he doesn’t let himself cry.
-
Fumikage sits in a room at the local police station, waiting for his parents to come pick him up. The police also contact the rescue team to tell them that Fumikage has been secured, and Fumikage doesn’t dare ask if all the heroes are okay.
He gives his testimony about everything he remembers from his abduction, starting from the events at the summer camp to the very moment he was rescued and escorted to the police station. It’s impossible to hide that his peers came to rescue him, but he does try to frame it in a way that implies it was very necessary for him and low-risk to his classmates.
Fumikage tells the police everything in as much detail as he can muster, but there’s one thing he omits entirely.
“So he didn’t touch you?” The police detective asks.
A palm on Fumikage’s forehead. The bone-deep pain of somebody trying to yank out something that is so deeply embedded in Fumikage that it’s impossible to dig out. The rebound of power as Dark Shadow seizes and rips out something in retaliation, bringing it back into Fumikage. The barest hint of something in his chest that didn’t used to be there.
“No, he didn’t,” Fumikage lies.
-
‘What was that?’ Dark Shadow asks when they’re finally home and in bed, mentally replaying that specific interaction over and over. ‘He tried to pull me out, so I pulled something out of him instead. He had a lot of quirks, right? He takes them from people. So we took one. Which one?’
‘You must have stolen something valuable, judging by his reaction,’ Fumikage muses. ‘Although I am not sure if he told that to the other villains.’
‘Maybe it’s the teleportation one. I hope not. It’s gross.’ Dark Shadow hums. It’s a reassuring sound, most of the time, to hear in the dark, feeling Dark Shadow’s contented rumble reverberate through him. But there’s just a hint of anxiety coiling through them both right now, an uncertainty that stems from the alien sensation slithering under Fumikage’s skin. It’s barely noticeable, but it’s undeniably there. ‘Is that why we’re not telling anybody? Because it might be valuable?’
Perhaps it’s counterproductive to deceive the authorities that could protect him, but Fumikage has a bad gut feeling about it. Maybe he has trust issues, right now.
The villains came after them in the summer camp despite the fact that they shouldn’t have been able to find it, after all. Who knows if the villains secretly have some kind of source, a leak, that could lead them straight to Fumikage once they realize what Fumikage stole?
‘The League knows something went wrong,’ Fumikage thinks. The fact that One For All very obviously failed to steal Dark Shadow was a dead giveaway. ‘The only question is if they know that we stole something. If they know, and if what we took is valuable enough, we might be in danger.’
‘Fumikage, are you sure we don’t want to tell the adults?’ Dark Shadow isn’t whining the way he tends to in daylight, but he’s worried. Fumikage can feel it. Dark Shadow tends to reflect Fumikage’s more vulnerable emotions. ‘Maybe somebody can at least figure out what we stole.’
Fumikage considers it, but then shakes his head. ‘No. This probably falls under the Hero Public Safety Commission’s jurisdiction, and there might be negative repercussions if they find out.’
‘You’re scared.’ He doesn’t deny Dark Shadow’s words. They can never lie to each other anyway. ‘You’re scared they’ll think you’re dangerous. More dangerous than we already seem. You think this is going to make it even harder for us to become a hero.’
(You know society’s never gonna be as generous to you as your friends who aren’t mutants.)
‘Perhaps they’ll think that. Perhaps not.’ Fumikage closes his eyes. ‘But I do not wish to find out which it will be.’
-
When Aizawa and All Might show up at Fumikage’s apartment to gain his parents’ permission to bring Fumikage into the new dorms, his parents say no. Rather, his mother says no, and his mom hesitates.
“Our son could have died,” his mother snaps, and Fumikage tries not to flinch. Dark Shadow makes a distressed noise in his chest. “How do we know you’ll keep him safe this time?”
“I know this is important to Fumikage,” his mom says quietly, “but I would rather have him disappointed than dead.”
Dark Shadow mumbles about their parents being overly dramatic, and Fumikage mentally shushes him. He still feels bad about seeing his parents wrecked and sobbing, hugging him tight in the police station as they thanked the stars and universe for his safe return.
Fumikage gently clears his throat. “I believe perils are part and parcel of the career path I’ve chosen.”
“Sure, if you’re an adult,” his mother says. “But you’re fifteen, sweetheart.”
“She’s right,” Aizawa says, which makes everybody blink in surprise. “Tokoyami, regardless of the fact that you aim to become a pro hero who faces threats regularly, you’re not supposed to face such dangers yet. We’re going to do everything we can to keep you safe. I am going to do everything in my power to keep you safe. I understand if you think that’s not enough, but I want you to know that if you give us a chance to protect you, we will not take your choice lightly.”
After a long pause, Fumikage’s mom says, “You said Fumikage wouldn’t give the villains the time of day if they tried to recruit him.”
Right, that brief exchange when the journalists had pressed Aizawa about what the villains might do to Fumikage now that they had him instead of Bakugou. Fumikage hadn’t really paid much mind to that part, but his mom apparently had.
“I’ve never…” his mom falters. “I’ve never seen anybody else be proud of him before.”
Fumikage knows what she means. It’s something his family is achingly aware of but never voice aloud. How people sometimes treat Fumikage and his mom, like strange creatures with their feathers and beaks. How people look puzzled when Fumikage walks with his mother who looks human through and through. How every year in school, Fumikage’s teachers never quite knew what to do except avoid him or look down on him.
“You were the first teacher who…” His mom trails off.
“I said it because it’s true.” Aizawa’s words are blunt and steady, his faith in Fumikage unwavering. “Regardless of everything he went through over the years, he still proved to be an excellent student with potential. More than that, he’s a good kid. He’d make a good hero, too. All he needs is a chance.”
Fumikage’s mom swallows. His mother inhales sharply, then turns to Fumikage. “What do you want, sweetheart?”
“I want to go,” Fumikage says. He’d already made up his mind, because he knew that he’d be less of a sitting duck if he was in UA rather than in their undefended apartment, but it’d been a reluctant decision. The lesser evil. But now, he realizes, he wants to give this a chance. UA, dorms, Aizawa. Because they’re giving him a chance, too. “I want to be a hero.”
His mother shakes her head and looks at his teachers. “This is your fault.” She cracks a smile towards All Might. “How am I supposed to tell him he can’t be a hero after seeing how inspiring you were on the night you saved him?”
All Might blushes, and his parents finally smile. His mom looks at Aizawa.
“You saw potential in Fumikage to do good when most of the authority figures in his life only saw his potential to do bad.” She sighs. “That means more to us than you could ever know. So, just—keep him safe.”
Aizawa bows his head and gives his word.
-
Contrary to Fumikage’s concerns, their days go by rather normally, given the standard of normal for teenage superheroes-in-training. Acclimatizing to the dormitory is easy—he’s still a little miffed about his classmates barging into his room, but he’s getting over it—and living with his peers certainly helps them bond. Fumikage has admittedly had very few friendships in his life; partially because people used to be afraid of him when he was little and had less control over Dark Shadow, and then because Fumikage stopped caring about making friends at all.
Still, he did have a handful of friends that he’d gotten along with well enough; whatever he’s cultivating with this class is rapidly turning into something stronger and more profound than what he’s ever experienced.
Maybe it’s the trauma bonding.
They work well together, undeniably so during the provisional license exam, and Fumikage starts seeing his future more clearly. Working as a hero: rescuing people, fighting villains, and cooperating with other heroes. Whatever he stole in Kamino is now less of a burden and simply something he’s pushed to the back of his mind. He’s safe for now. If he senses the League at all, he’ll tell his teachers, but for the time being, he thinks things will be fine the way they are.
-
When he gets an invitation from a familiar name for his first work study, Fumikage gladly accepts and finds himself at the front of Hawks’s agency. The pro hero himself welcomes him and ushers him in, all the way to his office with its wall of floor-to-ceiling windows.
“I presume you invited me to gain intel on what happened at my summer camp and my abduction,” Fumikage deduces dryly, and Hawks doesn’t bother to deny it. Fumikage didn’t expect him to.
Another thing Fumikage did not expect from Hawks: an apology.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” Hawks says, scratching the nape of his neck, his gaze flickering away before finding its way back to meet Fumikage’s. “I mean, I was kinda injured and totally concussed, but still. I could’ve at least shown up.”
“Plenty of other top heroes were involved,” Fumikage assures him. He’d already thought this over. He’d wished Hawks had been there, but he hardly takes it personally. “And you were injured.”
Weirdly enough, Hawks seems to be taking it personally. “Yeah, well, you were my intern. I should’ve been there.”
That’s oddly touching, coming from Hawks. Fumikage hadn’t realized the winged hero cared that much. Maybe it’s more of a concern over optics rather than personal concern for Fumikage, but it’s reassuring all the same to know that Fumikage counts enough for Hawks to take responsibility for him even when he’s away from the agency.
“But yeah, I do want you to give me the inside scoop,” Hawks admits, so Fumikage tells him everything. Except the part where he stole something from the villain.
After the lengthy explanation and some of Hawks’s questions, Hawks rolls his shoulders. “Okay, well, thanks for the report. You know the rest of the drill. I go solve crimes and you try to keep up. Let’s get to work.”
Fumikage pauses at the door leading out of Hawks’s office, then turns to face the winged hero. “Hawks.”
He blinks. “Yeah?”
“Don’t slow down.” Fumikage tries to give every word the weight it deserves. He needs to impress upon Hawks how important this is to him. “I don’t want you to take it easy on me because of pity or guilt. Don’t slow down for me; I don’t need you to. I’ll catch up to you on my own.”
Hawks stares at him, his eyes sharp as a predator’s as they flicker to Fumikage’s eyes to shoulders to hands to feet, measuring his relaxed stance and steady gaze. Gauging how serious Fumikage is. Then, the piercing stare is gone and Hawks is grinning again, lazy and mischievous. “I wasn’t planning to.”
Fumikage feels something relax inside of him. “I’m glad to hear that.”
-
Hawks doesn’t slow down, not even an inch, and Fumikage is both grateful and thoroughly annoyed by how hard it is to keep up, even as he swings from lamppost to lamppost, trailing after the winged hero.
-
The thing is, Fumikage has been thinking about it for a while. Ever since he’d found himself cornered by villains near the remains of a warehouse, when his friends came to his rescue and Shouji reached out to him. Fumikage has been terribly aware of how he is bound to the earth. He’d thought of Hawks back then, had wished he were there. Had wished he could be like Hawks.
Is Fumikage limited by his genetics? Is he limited because he lacks wings? Is he doomed to be shackled to the earth forever?
He’s still thinking of ways to break through that limit when Hawks gestures him over and takes him on a flight through the night sky. It’s exhilarating and sobering all at once, because if Fumikage had been capable of this back then, he could have saved himself a lot of grief, and probably prevented his classmates from revealing themselves, too.
Hawks tells Fumikage that he’s wasting his potential, that if you have wings, you must stretch them out and fly.
But Fumikage has no wings. All he has is Dark Shadow. Even in that moment when Shouji held out his hand, the only reason Fumikage reached him was because of Shoji’s multiplied limbs and Dark Shadow’s outstretched—
Wait a second.
Hawks is standing there, looking at the lights glittering below, and Fumikage’s mind is rushing, whirling, clicking into place. Inside him, Dark Shadow shrieks ‘now, now, now. Let’s try it out now.’
‘We’d probably need the cloak,’ Fumikage notes regretfully.
‘It’s nighttime! I can do it just fine!’
‘Dark Shadow, I am not risking my life on testing a theory by throwing myself off of a tower.’
Dark shadow whines. ‘Hawks can save us if we drop.’
‘I do not need the humiliation.’ Fumikage pauses, his thoughts turning less vehement with rejection and now with a hopeful giddiness. ‘Perhaps we can surprise him with it once we are experienced enough.’
The compromise seems to satisfy his quirk, so Dark Shadow quiets, and they savor the bustling city’s lights twinkling below them.
When Hawks flies him back to the ground, Fumikage realizes that Hawks runs fairly warm. It’s nice, and makes any fear about the heights melt away. He knows, with an unshakeable certainty, that Hawks will not drop him. And even if he does, he’ll be fast enough to catch Fumikage again.
-
It takes Fumikage two days of secret practice to master the art of flying via Dark Shadow holding him up. When he deems his skills satisfactory, he shows up on the agency’s doorstep and tries not to give away how much he looks forward to showing Hawks what he can do now.
“Oh, you’re early,” Hawks notes, looking up from his paperwork. “We’ll be heading out in ten minutes, so get changed and I’ll see you downstairs.”
“Understood.” Fumikage nods and leaves to prepare for the day. He thinks his avian facial features tend to hide his emotions well, but when he arrives at the ground floor, Hawks’s sidekicks both seem to notice his anticipation.
“Tsukuyomi, you seem to be in a good mood,” Striker says.
Mayday adds in a bright voice, “You got good news to share? Are you dating somebody? Did you invent a new supermove?”
“I’ll tell you soon,” Fumikage says, just as Hawks lands on the ground right behind him.
“Tell what?” Hawks asks, interest glinting in his eyes.
“That I’m not cleaning up after you today,” Fumikage says.
All three men around him blink. They seem a little bewildered, but Hawks also seems rather intrigued. Coming from anybody else, Fumikage supposes, it would be a rather arrogant statement. But Fumikage does not make his promises lightly, and the men here are aware of that.
“We’ll see about that,” Hawks says breezily, then takes off. “C’mon, let’s go!”
Mayday and Striker take off running, though they spare a confused glance back at Fumikage, who tugs at his cloak and takes a deep breath.
“Black Fallen Angel.”
Then he’s soaring, wind rushing through his feathers as Dark Shadow holds him tight and cackles with delight. Striker and Mayday shout with surprise and elation when he passes over them, but there’s no time to savor the moment when he needs to catch up with the man who’s too fast for his own good.
Hawks is in patrol mode rather than crime-control mode; there isn’t an specific incident to rush off to, so he’s not at maximum speed. He’s taking it easy enough to keep an eye out below for any problems on the streets, but he’s still faster than most people could dream to be.
But Fumikage isn’t most people.
“Tsukuyomi?!” Hawks yells over the wind as he glances back, and Fumikage bursts forward like lightning, soaring to meet the man who looks at him with unabashed glee. Hawks does not extend a hand or slow down, because he waits for nobody, but Fumikage is fine with that.
He’s going to catch up to Hawks on his own.
-
“Kiddo, I knew you’d fly one day,” Hawks says during their lunch break. They’ve taken up a booth at a fried chicken joint, food already ordered as they wait for Striker and Mayday to arrive. “But I didn’t think that day would come so soon.”
“Our night flight inspired the idea,” Fumikage admits.
“The sky is pretty damn inspirational.” Hawks shoots him a sly grin. “So, you’re gonna keep up with me so that you don’t get stuck with cleanup duty?”
“Hopefully I’ll even resolve a crime before you do.”
Hawks laughs, bright and scrunching his nose the way he only does when his mirth is genuine. “Oh, this is gonna be fun.”
-
It’s almost a competition, but not really. Fumikage might be able to keep up with Hawks now, but he still struggles to keep pace when Hawks is at his maximum speed. More importantly, while keeping up with Hawks is one thing, beating Hawks to a crime scene is near-impossible. Especially because all Hawks needs to do is send a flurry of feathers ahead to get the job done. By the time Fumikage lands on his feet, the incident is halfway resolved.
Fumikage clicks his beak with frustration. He’s not annoyed with Hawks for being too fast; that’s the wrong thing to focus on. He’s annoyed with himself for not being fast enough.
“Sorry,” Dark Shadow murmurs, docile under the sunshine even from within Fumikage’s cloak.
“Don’t be. We can improve.” Fumikage already broke through one limit, and it’s only a matter of using his head and training his body to break through another. At the very least, they get to do more than they used to. If they’re fast enough, they get to do damage control or evacuate civilians. That’s already a significant step up from what they’d been relegated to before.
While he admires Hawks and emulates him in several ways—flight and prioritizing speed being the most prominent traits—Fumikage also knows that there are fundamental differences between them. Hawks can cover long ranges with his feathers much more efficiently than Fumikage can attempt with Dark Shadow. Hawks’s feathers can multitask and carry out more actions in a shorter span of time, while Fumikage can only do two tasks at most if he delegates Dark Shadow to accomplish one of them. Fumikage seems destined to never be as efficient as Hawks.
But.
Hawks isn’t a heavy hitter. Pit him against the likes of a large villain with super-strength and a thick skin, then Hawks has very limited options. Dark Shadow, on the other hand, can take down larger or stronger villains as long as he’s not exposed to too much light. If there are large obstacles that need to be removed, Hawks’s feathers are often not strong enough to clear the way; Dark Shadow can burst through walls or other heavy objects. While Hawks’s quirk is more versatile than Fumikage’s, there’s areas that only Fumikage can cover. And over time, he’ll find ways to lean on his strengths and find more ways to apply them.
But for now, he thinks he can live with having Hawks’s back.
-
The day before the end of Fumikage’s internship, there’s a bank robbery.
There’s multiple villains when they arrive, already sprinting towards their getaway vehicles. Hawks confirms that nobody is in immediate danger and that the next step is to apprehend the villains, who are splitting up. Two of them have backpacks and are heading for what looks like a pair of motorbikes. The other two have duffle bags and are dashing towards an convertible that has the top down. Hawks sends feathers after all four of them, but the ones aimed at the backpacks are melted away under what looks like a splash of acid, and the ones aimed for the duffle bags are swatted away when a huge stone hand intercepts them.
“Tsukuyomi, take the car!” Hawks yells as all the vehicles start tearing away from the scene in opposite directions.
“Roger!” Fumikage turns and flies after the car.
It’s a sports car that must have been fitted for maximum speed; it’s fast. Not fast enough to escape Fumikage, but fast enough to make things difficult when Fumikage tries to land on the hood. The villain who isn’t driving the car apparently has a quirk that allows him to transform his body parts into hulking stone limbs. With a villain who is currently very large and stone-covered from the waist-up fending Fumikage off during a high speed chase, there aren’t many options.
Fumikage tries flying low, approaching the driver’s side, all of it, but it doesn’t work. He’s considering alternatives when he notices that they’re approaching a tunnel.
“We need to get ahead of them.” The plan clicks into place. “Dark Shadow, get in there before they do.”
Dark Shadow cries out an affirmative and speeds up; it’s not all that different from when they’re trying to keep pace Hawks while he’s at maximum speed. They make it into the tunnel first by a good three seconds, pivoting halfway through the tunnel to face the car, whose occupants are ironically looking like a deer in headlights.
“Feel free to go all out,” Fumikage hisses, and Dark Shadow gleefully multiples in size as he shields Fumikage and dive-bombs the front of the car hard enough to crush the engine and kill the forward momentum instantly. The impact makes Fumikage’s teeth ache, but he has no time to lose, so he rolls to his feet and faces the villain who has graduated to a huge full-bodied stone man. As the man steps onto what remains of the car’s hood and towers over him, Fumikage reckons he’s even bigger than a full-powered All Might.
Dark Shadow, however, can grow bigger in this dimly lit environment.
“The hell is this,” the man yelps when Dark Shadow grows huge and swipes, grabbing both arms with his claws. The villain in the driver’s seat is knocked out cold, so Fumikage focuses on the squirming stone gargoyle of a man. He needs to restrain him or knock him out, but both are difficult to accomplish at the moment.
“This quirk is annoying,” Dark Shadow gripes. The man is strong enough that Dark Shadow can’t let go of him without risking a counterattack. Fumikage can’t approach either, lest the man aims a very solid kick at him. “We can’t slap the handcuffs on if you can’t get close to him.”
If only they could make him cancel his quirk, somehow. Fumikage is starting to feel impatient. Hawks probably already resolved things on his own end and is on his way here to see what’s taking so long. Fumikage doesn’t want Hawks to arrive only to see his intern still struggling with a mediocre villain.
“Keep him still,” Fumikage tells Dark Shadow, and starts circling the man, letting the tether between him and Dark Shadow grow longer as he goes to stand behind the man’s back. At this angle, the man can’t kick Fumikage without losing his balance. If Fumikage does get kicked after all, though, it’s going to hurt.
Oh well. Fumikage will take a cracked rib if it means getting to earn a win before Hawks arrives.
Fumikage only has normal handcuffs—not the quirk-cancelling kind—but they can stretch large enough to accommodate villains with large limbs. Large enough to fit around this villain’s wrists—and definitely his ankles, too.
Who the hell wears sneakers to a bank robbery, anyway?
Fumikage kneels down and cuffs one ankle quickly, and he’s just about to cuff the other one when a stone heel kicks back and hits him in the shoulder.
“Fuck,” Fumikage hisses as he hears the crack of bone and feels the jarring pain ricochet down his spine. The kick wasn’t strong enough to send him sprawling, but he feels a little dizzy with the hurt throbbing through his body. The man has lost his balance and tipped forward, but he’s struggling hard even after Dark Shadow pinned him down. “What is his problem.”
He bends down to cuff the other ankle and narrowly dodges another kick. The pain is making Fumikage’s brain blurry. His head is pounding. He wants this man to stop. It’s his quirk that’s the problem. This goddamn quirk—
Fumikage grabs the man’s ankle and feels his patience snap at the resistance. He pulls, pulls the problem out and makes it stop.
When Fumikage blinks again, the man is back to his human form, whimpering in distress. Fumikage moves on autopilot to cuff the other ankle, but he hears the man muttering, “I can’t use it, I can’t use it, why can’t I use my quirk, what happened to my quirk?”
Fumikage stares and comprehends and feels cold horror fill his bloodstream. He grabs the man by the back of the neck. “Hold still.”
“I can’t, I can’t, what’s going on, my quirk, I can’t—”
Put it back, Fumikage thinks wildly to himself, because he knows that he did this. He took this man’s quirk, and he can feel the alien presence inside him, something hard and unyielding in his gut, and he doesn’t want it. He doesn’t want this. He doesn’t want the power to do this in the first place, but right now he just needs to put it back.
Amidst the panic and pain, something clicks and then he’s pushing the cold, hard presence back into the man. As soon as he does that, both of the villain’s arms turn to rock once more.
“Oh, it works, it works, oh thank fuck,” The villain blabbers, and Fumikage decides to take the risk of getting scolded for causing a head injury and makes Dark Shadow punch him unconscious.
-
Hawks does end up coming to help, though Fumikage has taken care of things by that point. Both villains are unconscious and cuffed; he’s secured the money; and he’s mostly in the process of trying to figure out a way to move the ruined car out of the tunnel. Thankfully, Hawks tells him to leave the rest to the police, who start arriving at the scene one by one, so Fumikage follows Hawks to the nearest hospital to get his shoulder checked out.
There’s a doctor present who has a healing quirk that specifically works on bones, so Fumikage’s fractured clavicle and his cracked humerus are healed up in no time. The bruising and muscle damage will take a while to heal, but Fumikage doesn’t mind that.
He has bigger concerns.
Later, they get a call from the police on their way back to the agency. Apparently both of the villains Fumikage apprehended were concussed. Not badly, but just enough to make their memories inside the tunnel too blurry to recall. Aside from that, the police were pleased that the stolen money had been recovered, the villains relatively unharmed, and the property damage minimal.
“Next time, we’ll work on solving a crime without either party getting injured,” Hawks says in a stern voice, but he’s smiling. Not the cheeky, upbeat one he reserves for the public, but the small, soft one. The one he only uses when he’s truly pleased. Fumikage keeps an eye out for that one, if only because it’s so rare to see.
The sidekicks and staff at the agency cheer when Hawks relays Fumikage’s victory to them, and they swarm him with congratulations and requests for reenactments. Fumikage would treasure the moment, but he needs to collect his thoughts, so he strategically excuses himself to the restroom, where he locks himself in a stall and calmly does not have a panic attack.
‘We took the quirk. The bad one. The one which lets us take quirks and give them away.’ Dark Shadow is restless in Fumikage’s chest. ‘Fumikage, we’re in over our heads. We have to tell somebody.’
Fumikage agrees. They got lucky because the villain they’d temporarily stolen the quirk from got a concussion after all; Fumikage has to figure out a way to resolve this before this terrifying quirk causes any more trouble. He needs help. ‘But who do we tell?’
‘Hawks,’ Dark Shadow immediately answers. ‘We have to tell Hawks. He’s the number three hero. He’s strong, he’ll keep us safe.’
‘Not even All Might was enough to keep us safe,’ Fumikage thinks, even if it’s unfair to think so. All Might had already been ill enough to barely fight; an All Might in his prime would’ve undoubtedly saved the day without shedding a drop of blood.
Dark Shadow lets out an agitated growl. ‘We don’t know who else to trust.’
‘We don’t?’ Fumikage asks, but it’s a rhetorical question. He and Dark Shadow share thoughts already; he simply wants to hear the confirmation out loud.
‘We don’t know if UA is safe yet. Aizawa sensei is probably okay, but if there’s really somebody leaking secrets there, they might find out.’ Dark Shadow makes an unhappy sound. ‘Besides, Hawks collects information all the time. He knows a lot. He could help.’
Fumikage sighs. ‘So we’re trusting Hawks, I see. The man who uses me for intel and never waits for us.’
‘He does that to save people. All he wants is to save people, even if he might a jerk about it. You know that. It’s why we came back here.’ Dark Shadow doesn’t let Fumikage hide behind doubts and uncertainty. ‘He’s a real hero and we’ve seen it. He rescues people in trouble, and he’ll rescue us, too. We can trust him.’
Fumikage closes his eyes. He thinks of Hawks. Sharp-eyes that forever seek another person to help. Loud laughter that cuts off as soon as he sees anybody in trouble. Warm hands that gently held Fumikage’s elbow at the hospital, that carried him through the night sky even when he owed Fumikage nothing.
(You were my intern.)
“Okay,” Fumikage whispers. “Let’s tell Hawks.”
-
He decides that he’ll call it off if Hawks doesn’t treat him seriously. If Hawks fails to understand how badly Fumikage needs his help, then he’ll find another way.
“Hawks,” Fumikage says softly. The pro hero is sipping coffee in the lounge area on the second floor while the rest of the agency bustles around them. “I wish to speak with you regarding the end of my internship.”
“Hmm? Right now?” Hawks blinks and looks Fumikage in the eye with a small frown.
“Yes.” Fumikage maintains the eye contact. He keeps his voice steady. Not too serious so that anybody else might catch on to the gravity of the situation, but just enough to convey that he’s not joking. “I need your help to catch up with you.”
Hawks blinks once more, his gaze curiously blank, then he shrugs and says, “Yeah, sure, might as well get it done now.”
A few people greet them as they make their way to Hawks’s office, and Hawks is relaxed and lazy as he waves at them with a cheery grin. It’s only after Hawks has ushered Fumikage into the center of the office and Hawks has locked the door behind them that the sunny act drops.
Hawks puts a finger to his lips as he spreads his wings, a movement Fumikage has learned that indicates Hawks is searching for any eavesdroppers. Sensing none, Hawks folds his wings and then strides closer, his eyes sharp and his mouth set in a grim line. He looks concerned in a way that Fumikage has never seen before. “What’s wrong?”
Relief lifts a weight off Fumikage’s shoulders. As messy as the situation is, Hawks didn’t dismiss him. He caught onto the unspoken plea and was taking Fumikage seriously enough to take safety precautions so nobody else listens in on them. Hawks will help, he’s sure of it.
“There’s something I didn’t tell anybody else, from Kamino,” Fumikage says, and starts talking.
He tells Hawks what exactly happened when All For One touched him. He mentions that the League of Villains witnessed All For One failing to take Dark Shadow, but he wasn’t sure if they were aware he’d taken All For One’s quirk instead. He elaborates what happened in the tunnel today. He even explains why he never told anybody about this, even though that makes shame flush through Fumikage’s blood. His fear and distrust seem so trivial in the face of the revelation that he now has a monstrously powerful quirk inside of him that will no doubt make him a target for many, with the League at the top of the list.
Once he’s done talking, Fumikage swallows with a very dry throat and watches Hawks tap his chin as he thinks things through.
Finally, after what seems like an eternity, Hawks says, “You’re right, you can’t tell anybody else about this. I suspect there’s a mole in UA, given what happened to you at USJ and your summer camp, so it’s safer not to involve anybody there. We can’t tell civilians, because it might put them in danger, and if we tell other heroes, we risk having the Hero Public Safety Commission hearing about it.”
“And if they hear about it?”
“They’ll want to use you.” Hawks makes a face like the very idea bothers him. “Or make you hand the quirk over, if that’s possible? Then at least you wouldn’t have to be mixed up in this anymore. Can you give that quirk to somebody else?”
“I don’t know.” Fumikage stretches a hand out. “May I try?”
Hawks blinks, looking a little stunned.
“I’m sorry, never mind,” Fumikage blurts, pulling his hand back, because what was he thinking? Nobody wants to risk having something alien and terrifying shoved into their body. In fact, now that Hawks knows what Fumikage can do, he wouldn’t be surprised if he doesn’t want to touch Fumikage again at all.
“Wait, woah, hang on.” Hawks grabs Fumikage’s wrist gently. “I was just a little honored? Or amazed, maybe? That you’d trust me with a power like that. It wasn’t a no.”
“Of course I trust you,” Fumikage says. “Why else do you think I’m talking to you right now?”
Hawks wheezes a little laugh, like he’s winded. Like Fumikage just punched the breath out of his lungs. “God, yeah, you really do, huh.”
After taking his glove off, Hawks offers his hand to Fumikage, who in turn grabs it with both hands and tries to bring back that focus he had when he’d given the villain’s quirk back earlier. To take that foreign thing in his chest and shove it into somebody else. He pushes and pushes and pushes, but nothing happens.
“I don’t think I can,” Fumikage admits as he releases Hawks’s hand. “I don’t know if it’s because the quirk itself can’t be voluntarily given away or if it’s because I lack practice, but it’s not working.”
“It’s not your fault.” Hawks slides his glove back on with a faint frown. “Okay, so here’s the game plan. You’re not going to tell a single soul about this, and we’re both going to pretend nothing is wrong. You’ll go to school. I’m going to go collect more intel and also find somebody trustworthy who can help. Hopefully we’ll be able to figure out a way to get the quirk out of you—or maybe help you practice using the quirk, so that you develop the skill to give the quirk itself away.”
Fumikage crosses his arms. “You want me to go to school when I could accidentally take away people’s quirks again?”
“Well, you didn’t activate the quirk when you were training at school or when you got your license, right?” Hawks points out, and Fumikage begrudgingly nods. “I know you’re worried that you’ll accidentally activate it again, but as long as you’re not in mortal danger or excruciating pain, I think you’ll be okay. You were doing fine right up til today, right?”
“Yes, well…”
“Listen.” Hawks sets his hands on Fumikage’s shoulders. They’re gentle but heavy. “Tokoyami, this is the safest way. There are more efficient ways, I guess, but I’m not gonna risk your life on those. I’ll get things done on my end as fast as I can, and you know how fast I am.”
Fumikage whispers, “I know.”
Hawks huffs a laugh and squeezes Fumikage’s shoulders. “I’m gonna get you out of this in no time, so just hang on there, okay?”
“Don’t make me wait too long.” The irony of the statement makes irrational amusement bubble up in Fumikage, but he can’t muster the energy to laugh. Judging by the way Hawks rolls his eyes, he gets the joke as well.
Despite the worry churning in Fumikage’s gut, though, he isn’t as scared anymore. With the weight of Hawks’s hands grounding him, he feels less like he’s floundering his way through the dark with nobody but Dark Shadow to lean on. Now it feels like he can see the distant lights in the darkness. Twinkling far below his feet. With unshakeable faith, he knows that Hawks will not drop him.
And even if he does, he’ll be fast enough to catch Fumikage again.