This title was brought to you by Lazy Author-Kun

He didn't want to suspect his students. They had applied to the school to learn as they grew into adults, and it was his duty to provide them with the foundations of knowledge and power they needed to become heroes themselves. To prepare each for the true horrors of fighting and the importance of what they did, beyond having a lucrative career.

Midoriya Izuku had been no different than the rest of them.

He had been charming, friendly, and social despite his highly destructive quirk. He had been reasonably intelligent and respectful of his teachers, and he had interacted normally with the rest of the students. He had several friends and, outside of Bakugou Katsuki, all the students seemed to like him to some degree. Even with his record and his vanishing act after an apparent physical altercation with Bakugou, it had seemed that Midoriya truly wanted to better himself. To become a great hero like his classmates.

I have your students! Catch me if you can, All Might!

He had never seemed like the kind of lad to leave a mocking note in Aizawa Shouta's office, goading All Might into hunting himself and the villains he ran with. But he was, and he had.

Aizawa wouldn't talk about it. Not to his students and not to the other teachers. Toshinori assumed he had spoken with the principal about it and come to the conclusion that silence was the best course of action. He supposed he understood. There was no way to convince the students that they could trust each other now that the most charismatic of the bunch had shown them his true colors. The air around the class itself was ugly, as though the silence was the weakest shield they could wrap themselves in – as though to let Midoriya's name pass through their lips would make the reality swell up and smother them entirely.

Your friends wouldn't always be your allies was a harsh and cruel lesson for anyone to learn. Doubly so when it came to children.

Young Midoriya . . . he was a brilliant boy. A powerful young lad with so much potential. He could have been a great hero.

He kept thinking of the look of determination on the boy's face when he had punched him dead center; a firm resolve to protect edged with fear. He had been fully prepared to die to keep his . . . actual friend safe.

He kept looking over the note that had been left in Aizawa'a office too, and he thought it over. It wasn't the sort of thing that All for One would say, and from what he had seen of Midoriya it wasn't something he would write either. At the very least it wasn't his handwriting.

If Toshinori had to guess he would have said that the silver haired boy . . . that Shimura Tenko might have penned those words. Toshinori pressed his fingers into his temple and furrowed his brows before he folded the note and tucked it into his breast pocket. God, was this his fault?

He could have very easily looked for his teacher's child, found out what happened to her grandchild before All for One had gotten his caws into him. And from what All for One had said, it seemed that by failing young Shimura he had failed young Midoriya – letting both of them fall into the hands of an unspeakably evil man. When one boy fell he dragged down the other, and now they would never let each other go.

They had been children All for One had taken under his wing, and he had molded into what they were. And now the question was could they be made to see the error of their ways.

"What'cha thinking, All Might~?" Midnight purred as she sat down in the armchair across from the couch Toshinori himself was perched on. He only raised his chin slightly, looking at her in surprise. Had she knocked? There was a good chance he wouldn't have noticed even if she had but Midnight had very little formality about her.

"Ah, please call me Yagi when I look like this, Midnight." He smiled softly at her but she flung an arm across her forehead and sighed dramatically.

"Ahh! Of course, how could I forget!?" She raised her arm a little and stared at him with her piercing, pale ice-blue eyes and her own lipstick smile blatantly flirtatious before her expression softened. "But Yagi, how are you?"

"All right, I suppose. Worried about my students."

Midnight's expression became unreadable and she shifted in her seat a little. While she was strange if there was one thing Toshinori knew without a doubt it was that she loved her class 1B just as much as Aizawa loved 1A. She might not have been directly affected but he had seen her hanging around Aizawa's office frequently as of late. He was honestly surprised she had elected to invite herself into his more than anything else, rather than spend her time with the heroics home room teacher.

"Are you including Midoriya in that?"

Toshinori looked down at his hands but remained silent.

"Aizawa does you know, in his own way. I suspect he thinks if he had been more perceptive then he could have changed Midoriya's path before this happened."

"Young Midoriya is still a child. I believe he may still be helped onto the correct path, if we find the right way to go about it."

Midnight reached out and covered his huge, skeletal hands in her small, plump ones. "Even if that's true, he's going to be marked as a villain for life. It doesn't matter if he's a child. He won't even be able to have a proper civilian life."

Toshinori took a slow breath. No, Midoriya could never be a hero after this, and who could know what Shimura wanted? Outside of his little speech, but Toshinori didn't know the why for that want.

"I still would like to try," he finally said, "even if those boys are damned, it's not too late for them to change. I know Midoriya has the potential to be a great man, and I won't give up on him because he made a child's mistake. I would do the same for all my students."

There was a long silence before Midnight withdrew her hands and burst out into loud, boisterous laughter. Toshinori stared at her in surprise, but whatever had tickled her left her absolutely giddy. "Sorry, sorry, but god if you and Aizawa aren't sentimental." She grinned and shook her head before she stood. "Let me know what I can do for you, darling, and it will be done."

On her way out, Midnight kissed him on the cheek and left a trace of pomegranate perfume against his hair.

XXX

Izuku ran his hand through his shaggy, knotted hair as he glowered down at his open notebook. His bright eyes were dull from stress, and he had dark bruises under them from lack of sleep. He kept insisting that he was FINE even though Kurogiri had caught him rubbing at the spot All Might had punched him on numerous occasions.

It had taken a little whole and a lot of frustration before he actually managed to pinpoint why Izuku had resigned himself to suffering but when he did Kurogiri could have smacked himself. It was the guilt! Kurogiri could see it written across his face. He felt guilty and he wanted to step up to cover a role he could never fill. He thought he had to step up to a role he wouldn't be ready for until adulthood, and it was already starting to wear him down.

'Tell me if you're hurt,' Kurogiri had told him, 'All for One was the strongest man I ever met, but after a single fight with that man he was in constant suffering. I don't wish for your pain and I know All for One wouldn't have wanted that for you either.' But Izuku had just insisted that he was fine, and grown agitated in his own gentle way when Kurogiri looked like he might press the issue.

Even so, when Kurogiri set a glass of water and two little rust colored tablets next to Izuku the boy gulped down the pain killers without comment.

"Ugh!" Izuku groaned as he set the glass down rather roughly.

"I can get you candy if it was too bitter." He had amassed a small collection of the types of sweets both Izuku and Tomura liked without either of them catching on, a feat he was still rather proud of. But Izuku shook his head.

Kurogiri would be dead before he admitted that he felt disappointed.

"No it's just . . ." Izuku looked a combination of frustrated and embarrassed before he mumbled, "I'm looking for allies."

"Oh?"

Kurogiri looked down and actually noticed what Izuku was reading. His own notes on quirks, open to a page displaying a muscular woman Kurogiri was unfamiliar with, but the boy had clearly spent countless hours studying her.

Izuku pointed aggressively down at his own sketch. "Yeah! I-I can't help but feel that the people who are drawn to that name, the 'League of Villains' are just . . . subpar. If we could recruit someone who's strong with conviction we could be so much better! I-I want Tomura to be safe and the people we had were more a detriment than an asset. They would all be useless in a fight with All Might – a-and if Sensei was . . . I don't stand a chance and neither does Tomura. S-so I have to find new people. Stronger villains."

"And the problem?" Izuku clearly had taken notes on the strongest known villains, he seemed to have worked it all out.

"Everyone's in prison! Or, y-you know, on account of the whole villain thing they're unreachable." Izuku ran his fingers through his hair again, tugging at it and a few strands floated gently down onto his giant orange t-shirt. "The only time I can think to get close to anyone is when they're actually in the middle of committing a crime-"

"That's not a problem," Kurogiri said blandly.

There was a long pause before Izuku moved his hand from his hair to his shoulder and looked up at Kurogiri. ". . .What."

"That's how we found most of the members of the League. They were cornered and I warped them away. They were usually so taken with the idea of an easy out they agreed to join right there."

Izuku dropped his pen. "I- . . . I guess I never thought about how you guys did it before." Actually, Izuku had avoided thinking about how the league worked as much as possible until recently. And now he was trying to figure it out, as though he was trying to build a villainous empire all on his own. That he could use Kurogiri's ability and experience seemed to be a revelation to him.

Izuku drummed his fingers thoughtfully against the counter before he looked up. That old and familiar hunger shown from his eyes, and Kurogiri chuckled fondly before he ruffled Izuku's unruly curls. The look was gone in a second, and Izuku squeaked before he began to quickly flatten out his hair again.

"In deep circles people who want to find us know how, and after the scene at the warehouses I'm sure a few people will start to show up of their own accord." Izuku made a face at that, clearly unimpressed with that notion. "But if there's someone in particular you had in mind I can get them for you."

"Even from prison?"

"That's tricky. Doable, but it's a great risk to all of us." Izuku nodded sharply and pressed his eraser to his lips as he mulled it over. "Besides," Kurogiri said, "I thought you wanted stronger villains?"

"Strong villains end up in prison all the time."

"Hmm." Kurogiri folded his arms and brushed his thumb against his jaw for a moment. Izuku was about to start thinking himself in circles, he could feel it. He ought to nip that in the bud. "Well, Izuku, without any sort of limitations who would you want to recruit?"

Izuku lit up at the question and he started flipping through his book until he was nearly at the end. The page was particularly detailed but without a proper sketch, tagged with a small, bright blue shred of sticky-note. Izuku's eyes darted over his own notes as he read them over before he turned the notebook around on the counter so Kurogiri could read it.

He found the request . . . surprising.

"A serial killer?"

"A HERO serial killer. If anyone can kill All Might, this is him."

Kurogiri looked up and saw the nervousness eating away at the edges of Izuku's expression. He really was an uncertain child, wasn't he? Kurogiri sighed and picked up the notebook himself, and he read through the detailed notes. A lot of thought had gone into it, clearly. Kurogiri smiled faintly as he closed the book with a soft 'paf'.

"I'll find him, then."

XXX

"Excuse me," Katsuki said as he walked inside, not actually bothering to properly knock. It was less because of his brash and rude personality than because his arms were crammed with containers of his dad's cooking and he had needed to open the door with his knee. He was moderately concerned that the front door wasn't locked but he was more concerned when he walked down the short hall to find a perfectly immaculate apartment.

His brow knotted a little as he slipped down the short hallway to the open lounge and saw Inko. "Uh . . . good morning?" Katsuki said and Inko looked up.

She had been busy polishing the floor, evidently sick of living in a house that hadn't been cleaned since her son had left. And she had gone above and beyond in a way that made Katsuki feel unsettled.

"Good morning Katsuki!" Inko said as she got to her feet. She slung her rag over her shoulder and wiped her hands on her oily-gray apron. "What's b-brought you over here?"

"Dad . . . made a lot of food so I decided to bring it over?" Katsuki looked around. It seemed like Inko had snapped out of her funk rather abruptly, and it smelled like she had already been making breakfast for herself. But she beamed at him and took the offered containers out of his arms before heading into the kitchen. Katsuki trailed slowly after her, feeling increasingly worried as she continued to act fine. He sat himself down without actually asking, deciding that he was going to skip out on going to his first class.

Katsuki folded his arms tightly to his chest and pressed his thin lips together as he squirmed. He adored Inko, and he had trusted with her with more information than either of his actual parents. He had never really meant to do that, she had always been perceptive enough to figure him out effortlessly. In a way he envied that talent, if he had that ability he would know what Inko was thinking or feeling.

But . . . he wasn't her son. He would never inherit her kindness or her perceptive nature. And her bastard of a real son had inherited her nature and twisted it into something villainous. Only a fuck up like Deku could have done that.

"Inko, I . . ." Katsuki trailed off. He didn't know what to say but Inko was tucking things away in her kitchen, cleaning up and putting away the food Katsuki brought her. "I'm sorry."

"For what?" Inko asked pleasantly without looking at him.

Katsuki licked his lips and ran a hand through his hair as he looked away. God. What wasn't he sorry for? Fighting Deku so much as they were children? Following Deku without actually confronting him or telling her? All the blaring signs that Deku was a villain that he had managed to overlook?

"I'm sorry I wasn't able to stop him."

Inko set down the cutting board she had been about to put away onto the counter. Her shoulders had grown stiff and she raised her head without looking around. Kasuki couldn't see her face and he suddenly felt a stab of unease.

"I was there for . . . well, everything. I should have-"

"No." Inko's voice was stronger than he had ever heard before. "Kacchan, sweetheart, there was nothing you could have done." Inko's head lowered and she raised her hand to rub her hands across her eyes before she turned to look at him. Her round cheeks were blotched and her eyes were bloodshot and watery, but Katsuki had never heard her speaking so firmly. "Taking care of . . . t-taking care of my son was never your responsibility, Katsuki. P-please don't think that you failed him o-or me." She walked across the kitchen, her bare feat making soft 'pap' noises against the tile until she was standing above the table. Slowly she raised her hands to cup his cheeks and she brushed her thumbs over his eyelashes, brushing away tears he hadn't known were gathering. Katsuki shut his eyes and, a moment later, Inko's lips brushed his forehead gently.

He kept his eyes shut even as she pulled away from him and let her hands fall. His chest felt strangely tight and he let his chin fall to the palm of his hands as she stepped away.

Inko left the kitchen, and he heard her stepping lightly away into her bedroom and shuffle around for a moment before she returned. The chair across from him scrapped against the floor and Inko sighed gently as she sat down for the first time in hours. For the first time Katsuki noticed that the third chair was gone. She had taken out Izuku's chair on her own. Part of him thought that was meaningful but it was in a way he was too young to understand. Maybe he wouldn't until the day he had a child.

"Katsuki, y-you . . . I think you should look at this too. B-but read it after you finish school. Y-your tournament is tomorrow, r-right? I'll be rooting for you." She set something on the wooden table and Katsuki looked away from his hand to see a crookedly folded sheet of paper, the top and bottom of the page pointed upwards like an overturned bug. Katsuki could see familiar handwriting on the interior, as rough and ugly as ever. He reached out slowly and picked up the note, folding it without reading it before he tucked it into his breast pocket.

"Thanks Inko. I'll be counting on your support." Nervously, Katsuki leand over and kissed Inko's cheek, the way he did with his parents when he was going to sleep. Before he could get a look at her expression he turned on his heel and stalked off, as though the floor mat had personally offended him in some way.

XXX

Tomura didn't look up at the sound of tapping on his bedroom door, he stayed hunched over his computer. He was watching videos without paying any attention to it, with a game open in the other window and a third window with a silent video chat. "Aren't you tired?"

"Not really," Tomura said blandly.

He heard faint footsteps moving into his room. Then there was the sound of a small mountain of sort of clean shirts being brushed onto the floor before Izuku slumped into his other wheeled chair.

The silence that lulled between them wasn't their usual, comforting sort. It was an oppressive cloud of gloom that stole their voices away.

Tomura could feel Izuku looking at the silent video chat. The one that would never go live again. He heard Izuku's breathing get shaky for a second before his name formed in Izuku's lips - but Tomura didn't let him get further than that.

"The fuck's up with the hands?"

Izuku's tentative sincerity was gone in a heart-beat, and there was a long pause before he said, "what?"

Tomura pulled his headphones off, not that they had actually been covering either ear, and spun around in his swivel chair.

Izuku was sitting in his hero costume. Or rather, in his villain costume. "Put on a fucking shirt," Tomura said. Izuku looked down at his bare chest as if seeing it for the first time before he pulled either side of his hoodie closed over his bare skin. Kurogiri had said he would add a zipper but he was too busy to have gotten around to it just yet. Until then, or until Izuku bothered to clothe himself properly, everyone had to suffer through his eye-burningly white skin.

The offending mask was around Izuku's neck, just below his goggles and Tomura gestured impatiently at it before he held his own hand up before his nose and north without touching his face.

Izuku frowned and imitated the gesture for a moment before he lit up with understanding. Right before his face turned hot pink and he wrapped his arms around his head. Tomura blinked suspiciously at him as Izuku began to sputter but all he could make it was, "thought out was obvious" and "for you."

"Hold on, what the fuck are you babbling about?"

Izuku flinched but he did slowly, agonizingly slowly, lower his arms and stick his hands into his innumerable pockets. He was still scarlet but after clearing his throat he spoke in a way Tomura could understand. "W-well … I, um, when people look at me I don't want them to think of me. I don't even want them to see me I want people t-to think of me as an extension of you. That everything I am i-is to further your cause."

"Okay … But what does a hand have to do with that?"

Izuku looked too surprised to be flustered for a second before his face cracked into a wide, doofy grin. He quickly covered his mouth with the back of one hand as he giggled, then snickered, then burst out in near hysterical laughter.

"Um?" Tomura started but Izuku was laughing so hard he was in tears and in the middle of sliding to the floor. "Yeah, okay. That's cool, whatever. Let me know whenever the fuck you're done."

He spun around in his chair as he jerked his headphones over his ears. Izuku was fully on the ground now, and Tomura was unsure if he was laughing while crying or crying while laughing. Either way there would be no talking to him for a while yet and he irritability unpaused his game, only to die within a second after sliding off a cliff.

For fuck's sake.

.

The silence that lulled between them after that was comfortable and familiar, the usual silence between siblings as Tomura played and Izuku zoned out staring at the overhead light. But Tomura knew Izuku's thoughts were churning back towards whatever had drawn him to Tomura's room in the first place. "The Hero Serial Killer attacked someone again – Ingeium. He was one of my classmate's brothers. H-he's been hospitalized but his condition hasn't been made public at all."

"So?" Was he worried about his friend? . . . Tomura didn't like that. The idea that Izuku would be worried about someone on the other side. He could care about his mom, fine whatever. But outside of HER it was himself and Kurogiri. Tomura scratched at the side of his neck furiously as he pulled one knee up to his chest. YOU DIED lit up in red across his screen.

"He's attacked a lot of heroes, you know. I t-think he could help us." Izuku was laid out on his back on Tomura's bed, seemingly oblivious to the fact that he was lying next to a blood-stained jacket. Or maybe he just didn't care. "E-every hero in the world wants him, you know. At his point I don't think there's a single professional hero in Japan who doesn't have some sort of personal vendetta against him. H-his ideals are pissing a lot of people off."

"So?"

Izuku put his hands over his eyes, pressing his palms into the hollow of his sockets. He was silent for a very long time, but Tomura was hardly the sort to start rambling on his own.

When he finally did speak again, there was a tremor in Izuku's throat. "Y-you know . . . I've never actually felt before. I was willing to do what you wanted b-but I never wanted to actually wanted to . . . y-you know . . . wanted someone dead myself. I n-never hated anyone this much before. B-but I miss Sensei. A-and . . . I want to hurt someone. I don't want to, but I do. I want to hurt everyone in he world."

". . . Yeah . . ." Tomura pulled up his other leg before he rested his hands on his knees.

"My chest hurts. Every time I think o-of All Might my chest hurts a-and I . . . I wish I n-never idolized him." I wish I didn't still idolize him was the unspoken truth. Tomura finally glanced at Izuku and saw him crumpled in the same position Tomura himself usually took when he was a wreck.

"Did Kurogiri tell you how he died?"

"No."

Tomura unfolded himself and hunched over his computer, shifting through tabs until he pulled up a livestream of the tournament at U.A. "C'mere," Tomura grumbled, "your . . . 'friends' are fighting."

Izuku scrambled off the bed and scrambled to get off the bed and into the second rolling chair . . . only to fall out again when his phone buzzed and Izuku dug his hand into one of his many pockets as he made contact with the floor. Tomura didn't bother to look away from the screen – one of the brats had already caught his attention and he couldn't be bothered to look away as Izuku started to fiddle with his phone. "U-um . . . I wan to watch b-but um, give me a second, Tomura. I need to make a call."

"Yeah, sure, whatever."

"Thanks!" Izuku's uneasy delight was palpable before he scrambled to his feet bolted, racing down the hall to his own room.

XXX

"Heat resistant gloves," Kyouka said flatly.

Her friends looked up in surprise, as if they had managed to forget she was sitting right next to them. At least she hoped they had, otherwise that meant Mina didn't mind if Kyouka had to sit through her curling up in Deki's lap as she looked at his scarred hands. It was the only part of the . . . recent ordeal that the two of them were willing to talk about, that and Mina's half missing horn. (It had taken seven people and many tears to convince Mina that she actually looked even cooler now than she had before.)

". . . What?"

"Was it the electricity that burned you? Or the heat of the metal?" Kyouka asked without looking up from her phone, "You're immune to your own charge so long as you don't overdo it, right? And metal is super conductive so it got hot – that's why your skin started melting. So if you had heat resistant gloves . . ?" Out of the corner of her eye she saw the pair look at each other before Denki's face stretched into a wide grin.

"Oh my god???" He said, "oh my god you're right! I've always wanted a sword made out of electricity! I mean that's not really what that is but holy shit!"

Mina had picked up pretty quick and she suddenly pressed her own pale pink hands on either side of his face, her fingers teasing his shaggy mess of bangs. "That's so COOL! Kyouka's like totally right! If you don't like, melt your skin again you could do that all the time!" She balled up her fists and pressed them to her chest, for once mindful enough to know this was NOT the best time to bounce up and down like she usually did. "That's like, hero level technique! Plus Ultra!"

"You think so!?" Denki was just as enthusiastic.

Kyouka stuck a jack into her phone and let the music flow directly into her mind, tuning out her idiot friends for real as she watched the fighting down below. It was getting pretty intense, only the A-lister quirks from class A were remaining, along with a tired looking boy from class B. She didn't know what he was doing but he was winning all his fights in under ten seconds; everyone he went against just went rigid and walked out of bounds on their own.

She looked back down at her phone when the music cut out, and noticed that she had accidentally opened her message app, silencing her techno rock. Stupid, fleshy ear jacks. They always wiggled when she listened to music and one had brushed over her touch screen.

Kyouka moved her thumb to close the app when her eyes were drawn to a conversation logged just below the group chat. The name 'Villain' mocked her, complete with his face as a blurry icon next to it, he had jumped in surprise when she had said cheese but at the time she had found it cute. She had set it to her contacts despite his blushing and stammering and protesting that he wasn't really decent since his hero costume was lacking a shirt.

The memory made her feel a sense of fondness, but the pangs of betrayal quickly twisted up through her stomach and up into her throat. He had asked her to call him a Villain. He had been laughing at them this whole time, flaunting his true self to his classmates. And she had bought it without question. She hadn't opened his texts since then, but every time she moved to delete it she found that her fingers stopped working. She could only stare blankly at his blurry face, shock turning into his wide, infectious grin as he realized what was happening.

The cops had looked through the messages and copied all of them, but they hadn't done anything outside of that. In the age of quirks cell phones had become rather . . . untraceable. It was easy to find someone who could simulate a network once you had a device and it was impossible to trace anything since most people with electronic scrambling quirks ended up on the other side.

Kyouka's thumb tapped on his stupidly charming face, and their conversation appeared again. Even if her phone was being tapped, she was certain any contacts she tried to make with him would be untraceable to a third party, not without either of their physical phones.

jackROCK: Why did you do it?

Kyouka stared at the screen, disappointed but unsurprised when no text came back.

She almost jumped out of her skin when her phone started ringing, and Midoriya's blurry face covered the screen. Holy shit, Kyouka thought. Mina and Denki were distracted, and the rest of the people who had been involved were all preparing to fight in the final rounds so no one stopped her as she bolted out of her seat and made a mad dash for an empty girls bathroom, locking herself in and answering her phone on the last ring.