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Chapter 16: Chapter #16 | Abyss of Truth

Chapter Text

Aizawa Shota was a contradiction of a man. He wanted to do nothing more than sleep, and yet he worked two jobs that allowed him, maybe, the sporadic hour here and there. He had seen so much, stopped so many types of criminals. Strangers would see a sleepy, grouchy hobo. And those that knew him would agree with that assessment. But those that knew him also knew that he was so much more than just a cynic.

That was why, when Detective Tsukauchi had directed him to Midoriya Izuku for information in his current investigation, he thought he had been messing with him. Sure, the kid set off alarm bells in his head, and, sure, there was something preternatural with how the kid moved and behaved, but Aizawa simply didn't see how the kid could be of any help with his investigation. He may be smart, and he might be one of the best damn analysts that the department had access to, but he had no information, nothing for Midoriya to analyze. He was looking for information, and even the best can't make something of nothing.

And yet, Aizawa found himself rubbing his hands together in the lobby of Moonlit Industries at two in the morning. Initially, he had been skeptical of the detective, but when he realized that he was being serious, he figured he had nothing to lose from speaking with the kid. He had intended to keep an eye on him, anyway, especially if he was going to end up his student. If the visit yielded actionable intel, then all the better.

The detective told him that Midoriya hardly slept, so he hadn't been too worried about potentially waking him. But when Midoriya entered the lobby, he changed his mind. The kid had dark bags under his eyes, and his eyes, while awake, were a little too glassy for his liking. His fingers twitched as if he was resisting reacting to invisible phantoms known only to him. "I'm sorry if I woke you up. I was told you might be able to help me."

Izuku took a deep breath, and it was almost as if he became an entirely different person. His eyes cleared as he focused on Aizawa, his hands stilled, and a smile that could charm businessmen appeared on his face. "I'm not certain as to what I could be of help with, Eraser, but I can certainly do my best to try." Izuku motioned for Aizawa to follow him back into the facility before he continued on the way to his office.

"You did wake me, but don't worry about that. I don't tend to sleep much more than a few hours every few days. It works well for me usually, but I was having something of a nightmare, so your arrival was fortuitous on my part." Izuku motioned for Eraser to take a seat as he took one behind his office desk. "Tell me, what can I do for you this fine morning."

Aizawa weighed the kid's explanation of his ragged appearance against his need for information and decided that in this case, the information won out. He had no reason to pry. For all he knew, it was exactly as the kid said and nothing more. "I'm here looking for information on the Church of Clarity. I was told by a mutual acquaintance of ours that you might be able to tell me something."

Izuku narrowed his eyes, and for the briefest of moments, he could have sworn there was surprise on the kid's face. "Hmm, I've certainly heard of the name before, though I'm not really sure what I could tell you that you'd be unable to find out from the streets. They're a new pseudoreligion that has cropped up and gained some traction in the last few years. Why? What's your interest in them?"

Aizawa sighed and leaned back. He hadn't expected the kid to know even that much. They weren't terribly well known because they were seclusive. When they recruited someone, it was like they dropped off the face of the earth. "I'm looking into a series of disappearances that seem to link back to them. Right now, I don't have much other than their name. I don't know what Tsukauchi had expected you to know on a cult that pro heroes can't even find anything on."

Izuku stiffened in his chair and his eyes became sharp, locking with Aizawa's. "You said that Naomasa sent you to me for this? What were his exact words?"

Aizawa stiffened at the gaze. He was no longer leaning back because that gaze look promised reprisal if he was lying to him. The attitude switch reminded Eraser that Nedzu had rated him enough of a danger to bring both Snipe and himself to a simple meeting. It perturbed him more that the kid had so easily lulled him into that false sense of security. "His exact words were, and I quote, 'If you really think that they are going to be a danger, go see Izuku at Moonlit Industries. He'll help you if that is the case.'"

Izuku's gaze bored into Aizawa's, sending a chill down his spine. "And? Do you? Is the Church of Clarity going to be an issue?"

"I believe so, yes. Otherwise, I wouldn't have bothered you at this time of day. That would be illogical."

"Fuck." Izuku tapped under his ear, first connecting to Mei. "Mei, sorry to wake you, but I need you down here in my office asap. Things just got complicated again."

"I'm already awake. I couldn't go back to sleep after the nap in the foam. I'll be down in just a moment. Do I need to bring anything with me, or is this more of a verbal sparring kind of situation?"

There was a pause for Aizawa, but he could have sworn there wasn't a communicator in the kid's ear. So who the hell was he talking to? Izuku looked back at Aizawa and could see the kid sizing him up. "Coffee. We're all going to need coffee for this." Another pause. "Yeah, grab my special blend for this."

Midoriya took his hand off his neck and immediately picked up his desk phone. Aizawa was about to ask what he was doing when Midoriya set the phone down, and set it to speaker. The line clicked, connected, and they both heard the slow, tired tone of Detective Tsukauchi recite his name and ask how he could help them.

"Sorry for waking you, Nao. I know you need it more than me, but I have to confirm something important. Did you send Eraser to me for information?" There was a brief pause across the line as the waking detective yawned and tried to pull his mind into coherence.

"Uh, yeah. I did. Why?" Izuku continued to look at Aizawa, though he relaxed marginally. "If he's there for information, then you can trust him. If that's it, I'd really like to get at least another two hours of sleep before getting back to work."

Izuku chuckled, "Yeah, Nao, that's all I needed. Thanks, and get six. You can't solve any cases if your brain is clouded by fatigue." Izuku clicked the phone back in place, took a deep breath, and sighed heavily, rubbing his eyes. Before Aizawa could ask him what that was about, the door to the office clicked open and Mei came strolling in with a coffee pot and three mugs.

The glorious aroma of dark roast coffee filled the air and made Aizawa's mouth water. When Mei filled a cup and handed it to him he could have sworn that she was an angel. A very tired angel that was wearing, somehow, greasy pajama pants and a tank top that was missing one of its straps. But at that moment, to Aizawa, an angel all the same. When he took his first drink, he decided that she was actually a demon temptress in disguise. Oh, don't get him wrong, the coffee tasted like ambrosia on his waiting palette. But the jolt that went down his spine couldn't have been natural.

"Whoa there. You may want to slow down on that. Izuku's blend of coffee has enough caffeine in it that it could legally be considered a medical stimulant. This is for sipping, not chugging. Unless, of course, you want to be wired for the next several weeks." Hatsume took her own and sat down in the other seat across from Izuku before sipping at her own drink. While Aizawa sipped on his drink, he was now subjected to both of the teenagers analyzing him. "What's this about?"

Izuku spoke now to Mei, though his gaze never left Aizawa's face. "He came for information. Nao vouched for him. What do you think?"

Eraser watched Hatsume's eyebrows furrow. "Well, I don't know you, Eraser. But I trust the detective's judgment. He's proven himself on multiple occasions. Besides, he jumped into a gunfight without any information to try to help you. So that counts for something doesn't it?"

Izuku took a moment to stare into his reflection in the dark fluid of his cup before he tipped it back and drained his mug in one go. Hatsume shuddered at the sight, and Aizawa couldn't help but be a bit impressed. "If it were anyone but you, Aizawa." Izuku shook his head and began explaining himself. "I don't try to keep it a secret, but I don't have a particularly positive view of heroes nowadays. Don't get me wrong, there are some that do good work. But a vast majority are in it for money and fame. It's wrong. But you and a few of your nighttime coworkers are different. You came into that firefight to save someone that you didn't know against unknown enemy combatants and an unknown situation. Then you avoided the media hounds like they were a plague. If I'm being honest, that one earned you points with me."

Izuku rolled his shoulders and cracked his neck, one hand against it. "But what got you my respect is your track record. You've had your hero license since you graduated from U.A at twenty-one. You were invited back by the president to teach at twenty-two and have both taught and patrolled since then. As much to please your husband, I'm guessing. Otherwise, I doubt you would have taken the teaching role. Out of the four hundred and eighty students you've had since then, barely ninety-six made it to their senior year. And out of those, only forty-eight have graduated with you as their professor. Those forty-eight students have since gone on to become heroes that can be proud to be called such. You don't train the many. You train the elite, and it shows."

Aizawa stiffened in his seat again. The coffee had been getting him to relax, but the kid knew too much. He knew that Nedzu hadn't given the kid his file, so how the hell did he know as much? Before he could open his mouth to question him, the kid locked him in place with a stare as he continued. "If you were any other hero to ask me for information, even with Detective Tsukauchi vouching for you, I would have turned you away. But I know that you won't betray that trust, and I know that you can understand the need for the gray zone of heroics sometimes. That being said, let us get your information, shall we?"

Aizawa watched Midoriya pour himself another cup of the black poison while speaking seemingly to the air. "Phoenix, prep the data room. We'll be making use of it for this endeavor."

"Acknowledged. Shall I prep all data regarding the Church of Clarity that we have?" Izuku gave the affirmative as Aizawa jerked at the voice emanating from seemingly nowhere.

"That is this facility's caretaker. She's an artificial intelligence by the name of Phoenix. Treat her with the same respect you would anyone else, am I understood?" Aizawa was shaken for obvious reasons but managed to nod all the same. "I'll say it just in case it isn't obvious, but everything from this point on is a secret you will take to your grave." Izuku stepped over to the bookcase and scanned the chip in his hand, revealing the security door and elevator behind it. "Let's go get your information."

…

Aizawa had no issues with elevators. Or so he had thought before he was stuck in one with two creepily silent teenagers going down for the last five minutes. "How much longer do we ha-" The elevator itself cut him off when it slowed to a stop and the doors opened. Ahead of them was another lobby, and after having passed through it, a long corridor. Izuku turned at the first door and gestured for them to head inside. "How deep are we Midoriya?"

"About four miles under the surface, and before you ask, no, that isn't the deepest. The deepest is at six miles. Those are hot labs that we can detonate if an experiment goes wrong." Aizawa blanched before turning to him.

"Detonate? Go wrong? What exactly are you testing down here?" Izuku just smiled at him and, again, gestured him inside. When he passed through the doorway, the confusion that he had been feeling didn't abate. They were in a lit, circular room with only a couple chairs. Then the world lit up, as if a million stars were trapped underground with them. The lights swirled for a moment before coalescing into images and models of people in front of them.

"Holographics. It's a technology that we are hoping to soon release to the public. The only issue left to iron out is with ray tracking with fast alterations. Either way, Phoenix, it just occurred to me, cross reference these files against the police database so Aizawa has a starting point when he heads into the station."

"Confirmed. Cross-referencing CoC files with the police database. Displaying results." The lights swirled again and several more files appeared alongside the ones that were already floating around.

"Alright, first off, we've not been able to identify the head of the cult. Several people pop up repeatedly, but we've not found the leader yet. This here is the second in command from what we can tell." Izuku grabbed one of the folders and flicked his wrist towards the center of the room. Light burst from the folder, and now in front of them was a series of photos from varying angles. All high definition and all from different parts of the city. "He goes by the name of An'Seir and leads the local chapters of the church."

Aizawa shook his head. "This is all incredibly illegal." Midoriya just snorted.

"Law enforcement currently has more discretion than ever before in history to put people in prison. Heroes are even worse. They can practically hand someone off to the police with nothing but their word, and the police have to take them. What this is, Aizawa, is incredibly useful."

"The other major recurring character is this man, though he is far more careful to limit how much he is seen." Izuku once again grabbed a folder and brought up the images alongside the previous ones. In the air floated the image of a black cloud wearing a rather elegant suit. "If I had to guess, he has some form of transportation quirk, because anytime we try to track him we lose him almost immediately."

"What about invisibility?" Mei shook her head and chimed in from where she was parsing through several police documents and collaborating them with their own information.

"Nope, if that were the case, we would have picked them up on any number of the other sensors. IF, radiation, etcetera. They are just gone, poof."

Midoriya continued on from there to explain their base of operations here in Japan and the locations that they had sussed out thus far. It was only when Aizawa asked what their modus operandi was that Mei and Izuku hesitated, looking at each other.

"See, that's where it gets a bit strange." Izuku grabbed several of the images floating in the air and shuffled them back into holofolders, before grabbing another couple of folders and pulling bits from them to the air. "They are worshipping a deity by the name of Azathoth. If that name sounds vaguely familiar, it's because it's from the Necronomicon. As in, the book of the dead that appeared in early twentieth-century author H.P. Lovecraft's works. The deity first appeared in Lovecraft's 1922 unfinished short story Azathoth, before appearing in multiple other Lovecraft stories, most notably The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath."

Aizawa just stared at him. "You're fucking with me. Right? How can anyone buy into the stories of a dead man, from that long ago, as real deities? It's illogical." Midoriya just shook his head.

"Honestly? I wish I was, especially since the disappearances are a factor now. From what I can tell? The group has begun hailing the man as a prophet trying to show us the truth in a time where he would have been considered crazy if he'd claimed it was real. I'll attach the relevant information and stories for you to puruse if you'd like. As for belief, well, isn't that what all religion is? Belief in something bigger than themselves? Most notably that someone else has always written down first? Besides that, think about how easy it would be for a leader to manipulate the belief of such a thing nowadays. All it would take is one person with a squid quirk crying that Cthulhu is coming." Izuku shook his head. That was a debate for a different time, place, and audience. "Regardless of what they believe, there was some real nasty stuff in those stories. Dark shit, that if they are trying to replicate? Puts a whole new twist on these disappearances."

…

By the time that Aizawa was led from the underground portion of the facility and back out the front door, he had more leads than he could have envisioned having. Multiple suspects to track, multiple facilities to observe and infiltrate, documentation on the cult. And for the first time in months, Midoriya Izuku made a bit more sense to him. He knew what he knew because he wasn't just a brilliant analyst but because he'd built an information network in the Kanto region that rivaled, if not surpassed, many government agencies around the world.

Nothing in this region happened without Midoriya knowing about it, and information was power. Aizawa shuddered at the thought but felt reassured strangely. If anyone had to have that much power, at least it was someone willing to aid the police department with it.

…

The air of the common room was filled with the scent of breakfast and the sizzling sound of meat in the frying pan. It was almost six in the morning, and the sun was just beginning its ascent into the sky. Golden rays creeping over the horizon and filtering across the room as Izuku cooked and Mei sat watching him.

Since they had moved into their apartments upstairs, Izuku had insisted on cooking breakfast for the two of them. It was his way of making sure she ate, and it let her do the same for him. For whatever reason, the food he tended to make was more western in nature. When he cooked in the morning, where one would expect rice with salad and some kind of grilled fish or eggs, Izuku would cook them something a little different each time. One morning it may have been bacon and an omelet. Another morning it might have been pancakes or waffles. It had always confused her why the son of one of the top Japanese chefs had such experience with western style dishes, but she had always let it slide.

This morning, when Izuku set her plate down in front of her with a smile, she finally decided to push him for answers. "Izuku, what is really going on? Not with Eraser, though the CoC is concerning, but with you?"

Izuku took a bite of his breakfast and quirked an eyebrow at her. "What do you mean? I didn't think anything was going on."

Hatsume shook her head with a frown. "Don't give me that. You may be able to hide it from Aizawa, but you can't hide it from me. Your hands were shaking when I gave you your coffee. You chugged the cup of that poison you call a blend. You don't ever do that unless something is bothering you. Besides that, do you think I don't hear you at night? The walls aren't thin, but I can still hear it when you wake up screaming. Please Izuku. Talk to me, I can't help you if you don't."

Izuku gave Mei a look now that scared her to the core. It was a mixture of self-loathing, hatred, fear, paranoia, and then, finally, resignation. His eyes held a deep sorrow, the seas of emerald glassing over as if seeing something far away from him. He sighed then, stood, walked to the counter, and pulled a bottle of bourbon from the cabinet. Mei's eyes went wide. "I wasn't aware you drank, Izuku."

He shook his head, "I don't, I use it for cooking. Its smokey vanilla flavor pairs nicely with a good number of ingredients." Izuku pulled a glass from another cabinet and poured a small amount in the bottom of it before capping the bottle, putting it away, and sitting back down with the glass. "But if I'm going to talk about this, I could use the drink right now. Hell, I don't even know if you'll believe me. I hardly believe it myself." Izuku rubbed at his face, scratching at the five o'clock shadow that had formed on his face. She wasn't used to seeing him look this weathered. Usually, he kept himself neurotically clean-shaven.

"Do you remember me telling you about the coma I was in? That year where I was in a hospital bed instead of school?" Izuku waited for Mei to remember, and when she nodded her head, he continued. "Yeah, well, it was a year for everyone here. It was eighteen for me." Izuku swirled the bourbon in the glass and laughed. "Doesn't that sound like something an absolute madman would say?"

Mei frowned. Because, yes, it did sound insane. What Izuku was implying should be impossible. But… "Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth." Izuku chuckled at her quoting Arthur Conan Doyle. Hatsume sighed, "Yes, you're right, it does sound crazy. But honestly, it would explain a few things. So what happened? You said eighteen years, so I'm assuming you didn't spend those doing nothing."

Izuku looked up at Hatsume with a look bordering on disbelief, then relief, and finally, he was just happy that she believed him. He chuckled, sipping on the alcohol. "Quite right. The last thing I remember before the coma was my head hitting the brick wall of the alley where I was found. After that, it was just black for a while. I don't know how long I was in that state. It was so dark, and there didn't seem to be anyone or anything. I was just in an abyss with no one and nothing but my thoughts to keep me company. It seemed like an eternity, and at the same time like an instant when I woke up."

Izuku could still see it, feel it. The feeling of rocks and branches poking into his skin, the feeling of the dappled sunlight shining through the canopy above him. The smell of sap and foliage thick in the air, as if a heavy rain had come through and drug up the smells of the earth. "I woke up in a forest. I had no idea where I was, how did I end up in a forest after all? I wandered for hours before I found a road. I followed it and ended up in a village. The church orphanage there took me in, and it's where I lived for the next eight years. It was funny, I was fourteen when the attack happened. But for some reason, I woke up a kid again. Five or six by the sisters' estimates. They were such kind women."

Izuku's eyes went blurry for Mei, and she realized he had been holding back tears. "What happened to them?"

Izuku looked up with a haunted expression. So much loss and misery in his eyes. "I was out in the forest one day with a friend of mine. We were training to be soldiers. We wanted to guard the village, protect our friends and families. Even after waking up in an entirely different time and place, I still couldn't break out of the hero mindset." He shook his head. He had been so naive back then. Too willing to see only good and nothing bad.

"We heard the bells start tolling that signaled an attack, but by the time we got back, it was already too late. The entire village had been burnt to the ground, Mei. Buildings, fields, people. Everything flammable had been lit on fire by the Phurian raiding party. We got back to the church just in time for the roof to collapse. If anyone had still been alive in the church, then the roof collapse would have put them out of their misery." Izuku could taste the air, the wood smoke mixed with the acrid taste of charred human flesh. He could see the people run down in the streets, could still hear the gurgling sound the ones that were still alive made as they tried to pull their burnt and mutilated bodies to their final resting place.

He felt Mei's hand wrap around his own on the table and took another drink of the alcohol to wash the taste of his memories out of his mouth. "Our country's soldiers found us there the next morning. A young boy, barely fourteen, holding onto another boy just younger than him. We were the only survivors from our village." Mei had known that Izuku had seen things, but she had never imagined it would be as bad as this. It was one thing to be a part of a villain attack. It was something else entirely to be one of the only survivors from an attack.

"I decided to join up after that, went through training and was offered officers training. I went through that and was brought in for special forces training. Finally, I was assigned to a unit by the name of the Black Cats."

Hatsume's eyes went wide. "The cat on the moon emblem you insisted on having on your hero gear."

Izuku nodded grimly. "It was our unit emblem. There were twelve of us in the unit. Our commander, myself as her second in command, our operations sergeant, our intelligence sergeant, two weapons sergeants, two communications, two medical, and two engineering sergeants. We saw a lot of combat. The Phurian and Osmian empires were the two major powers on the continent, and it showed. The war lasted years, and they threw everything they had at us. First, it was chemical weapons, and then, when that stopped working, biological ones. We eventually lost the war, but the Black Cats never stopped fighting. We formed a resistance of sorts, tried to help people, tried to fight back against the sheer barbarity that was shown to the Osmian citizens."

"Eventually the resistance found an old facility out in the mountains. We moved our base of operations there and discovered several interesting tidbits. The first was the facility's name, Elysium. We thought it strange until we found their research data. Its research was from one of the lost eras. They had been experimenting with the ability to open a gateway to different worlds. Project Salvation, as they called it. They had almost succeeded before the facility was shut down. We decided to evacuate as many Osmians as we could rescue to a different world. We ran dozens of operations and worked with dozens of different projects at the same time, desperately trying to give us an edge. The genetic research data that was left behind was incredibly useful for that. All of us left underwent extensive genetic rewrite. In the end, we succeeded. We got the civilians out. But in the end, only three Black Cats got to see what we fought for." Izuku had almost finished the glass, but still, Mei could see the tension in him. It was taking everything in him not to break it in his hand.

"What was it like on the other side?" Izuku laughed now, a disparaging sound of self-hatred.

"I couldn't tell you. I detonated the facility's reactors so that no one could follow them through." Mei blanched as she realized what he was insinuating. That his last moments in that world had been inside of an explosion. She hadn't meant to, but she whispered in horror, that's why you were so careful with the reactor.

Izuku nodded his head slowly. "The one in our underground could take out a solid chunk of the Kanto region. I detonated three of them. There should be nothing left of that mountain range now but ash and the angry tears of Phurian high command."

Mei leaned back for a moment before shaking her head in awe. "You're a hero to all those people, Izuku. You saved all of them."

Izuku shook his head angrily before downing what was left in his glass and standing. As he walked towards the stairs to the residential level, he said, "I'm no hero, Mei. I'm just a killer. The real heroes are the ones I walked beside that didn't make it through that gate."

It took Mei a long moment to process everything she'd been told, and when she did, she looked sadly at Izuku's plate of food that was untouched. It was then that a passage from an old fantasy novel she'd read popped into her head. She hadn't understood it when she'd read it. Not fully, not its deeper meaning. Now she did, and she whispered it to the sun as it crept up for all to see. "Ten spears go to battle and nine shatter. War didn't forge the one that remained. No, it identified the one that wouldn't break."