Chapter Text
Kaina was not inclined to help anyone any more. This included just about everything there was to exist: an old woman struggling with carrying groceries, a child tripping and scraping their knee, someone crying for help in a suspicious alley. Kaina was not inclined to assist with any of it, any more. A part of her instinctively dove to do it. A part of her that was small, withering, and almost gone.
But the rest of her was saying leave them, leave them, leave them.
“Nagant?” Izuku asked, and she looked away from the world below her.
The child stood behind her, at the balcony door, and had a terrible face again. She should have expected it, but she still found herself surprised by the way the skin molded together in strange places, inhumane. He smiled. She waited, cast one last glance at the world below. Useless things. Then she looked back at the boy.
Kaina smiled, too. “What is it?”
The lab was a cold and dreary place.
It was dark and dim, never alive, never quite dead. People rarely entered, and on the occasion someone new walked in, they did not get to leave. A morgue as well as a lab, a morgue in the day and a lab at night while strangers bustled about.
There was a doctor with a bushy mustache and a bald head. He wore shiny goggles over his eyes, and prodded at her like some lump of flesh. He only left when someone told him to, when she was too drugged out of her mind to say anything but sit and stare with hazy eyes that burned and bristled like a forest fire. Through her time, she still remained cruel. She was not beyond murder. It was what she was used to, what she had been imprisoned for, and yet here she was.
In a lab.
Out of Tartarus.
Apparently Kaina was only here because a child had asked for her out of every other hero available. She was here because Tartarus was worse, because despite being dragged out from that prison she remained alive instead, not yet facing death like an old friend. Her life was in the hands of a child, now, twisted and coiled up like some kind of rattlesnake waiting to strike.
She had been told by that boy that this was a hospital lab, an underground wing—something the heroes had yet to find.
He had bowed, had smiled at her like she was still being publicized on the news for things she had no control over. How could a child come to love a villain? How could a child ever wake up one morning and say I want that one while the name Lady Nagant was burned and covered up by falsehoods? Too many, so many, hundreds upon hundreds because her name had been ripped apart by bloodthirsty media, and corrupt government officials.
It bled over her, even now, like a shower. Her comrades died at her hands. This strange child might ask her to kill hundreds more.
(She might let him.)
So Kaina was here. So her days of being a hero and pawn for the commission were over. So her life was turned over on a new leaf, another promise of power if she did one simple thing: watch over the boy, listen to him above anything else, and you will get to kill whoever it is you wish. The man with power had cupped her face in too big palms, a blurred out face that had been smeared with silver and machinery.
He had asked, he had questioned, and so Kaina had agreed.
And so she was introduced to a fourteen year old by the name of Izuku, who had no qualms with telling her everything and anything.
He liked checkers and connect-four, and hated chess, and loved cinnamon. He was strange. He was crazy. He was kind. He was a child and yet he acted more like a dog, a Frankenstein. He talked, he smiled, and he ate cereal more than anything else. He brought whiskey, hid pink shot glasses in his oversized coat. He liked the sun. He liked everything, hated very little.
Izuku liked heroes even though all his counterparts hated them.
He said he liked her out of all of them, that she had not wavered, and that was why his loyalty was tied into her supposed death and imprisonment.
He had not been fooled by the cover stories from a decade ago, he even pointed out the little things that had been overlooked. He had hundreds of freckles and thousands more of scars, hidden under clothes and thick shadows that did not belong to him—Izuku claimed it was a gift, as good as any other warp quirk might be—and Kaina had bit her tongue as a means of staying alive.
Quietly, she knew.
Quietly, she understood what it meant.
Quietly, she realized that this child was not just loyal to the man who gave the power to free her, but that this child could have freed her all on his own.
Quietly, she realized that this child must have murdered the man made of mist.
The individual who stole her from Tartarus only did so because he had wished to give the boy a gift, another stranger to call a guard; and so Kaina was dragged into the picture. Izuku called her a good example, called her a hero through unsavory means, but never hesitated to tell her she would work better as an anti-hero than something so keen on lying and controlling the public. He never lied to her about that, it seemed, as if he did not have a single lying bone on his terribly messed up body.
The man was a villain.
This child was the beginnings of something else entirely, but he followed that person so strongly, fought tooth and nail and never lowered himself further than a simple bow.
Kaina knew what lay beyond machinery. She knew what lay beyond what the public could see, what gazed could reach. She knew what lay beyond betrayal and disobedience, and yet she found herself lost.
The labs were dark and gloomy.
Her body did not feel like her own, yet she knew her hands were the same, knew that the muscles deep in her arm provided her with weaponry she needed to take out targets from so many kilometers away. The blood in her veins was still bright red, a contradiction to the blood that spilled from Izuku’s fists when he bit at the buckles with his protruding teeth like some kind of little animal, desperate to free itself from a trap.
For all her training in the Hero Public Safety Commission, from all her time as a hero, she still found herself watching with wide eyes, narrowed and then sharpened with the kind of keenness you see on television. She had been locked up for so long that self-destruction was less of a shock and more of a rusty language, something that was not foreign but simply unused.
Collecting dust.
The agreement had been simple. It still was, and perhaps it always would be.
Izuku was her target and her ally, her only job was to watch over him and listen. She listened when he spoke, she followed and gave in to whatever he demanded—which was often to come with him into the city, to hold his arm up so he could stitch it like a normal person, or to have tea with him in the loft of an abandoned warehouse he had claimed as his own little home.
Her job was simple. It was to be his watcher, his guide—the woman in the back who stood at his side. That was her job. That was all she had to do.
In turn, she was given freedom again. She was on call no matter what, always on standby, but the strange thing was that Izuku was less strict than his leader, and kept her as far away from that man and the others as humanly possible. If she was injured, he healed her himself. If she slept, he sat down and waited for her to wake up. The boy was strange. He was odd. He was a mess of lies and pale lines, wounds from teeth and wounds from knives; ghostly wings that were so cold they burned, a body that had been changed over the years, that had been adjusted to fit someone else’s ideology of a perfect weapon.
Kaina had been trained to kill. Izuku had been trained to live in the lives of those he killed.
Perhaps that was the difference between them.
Instead, she was given food and clothes and power; she was stitched up and repaired, she was wiped clean, her face blurred out with identity stealing quirks and her lungs bursting open with air that felt far worse than anything else she had ever breathed.
Izuku told her how things worked in the empire he called the master’s, how a man by the abridged title of Sensei would give her another quit if she merely asked, if she proved her worth—you’ve always listened to me, just go ask, I’ll go with you, it’s power. You need power to win stories, to be the character who lives. He was earnest, he was kind, but she had seen him be cruel and she had seen him be just like the one he kept her away from.
A revelation: Kaina had a self-destruct quirk by nature.
Not because she was born with it, oh so long ago, but because the boy she had been told to protect was that man’s favorite child, and so he was highly valued.
If Kaina failed, if she ran, if she tried to kill that boy, she would die too.
The explosion of a lifetime.
Quirks were not trading cards, were not collector items. Kaina knew of the rumors, and knew what they all pointed to. She had not been privy to them as a child, but became aware once the commission took her and swept up her childhood and teenage years into a neat little box where potential heroes were all manipulated and forced to stand tall.
Her life before the bleak walls of prison-hell were crossed out inside her mind, bound so tightly that she worried they might break open one day.
Her parents were either dead by now from their own two hands, or long since out of the country. Her old friends must have moved on with their lives, unsurprised at Kaina’s supposed violence, at the news of their hero friend killing another. Perhaps the crazy fans who had always followed her to autograph signings and other meet-and-greets had given up on defending her name, the conspiracy theorists having shut up, the world having gone dark because how could a hero ever do that to another, there’s just no way, there’s no way.
Her life before this point had been set into a graveyard.
She knew that her existence, if revealed as what she was—who she used to be, who she now was—if it were to escape the lips of her current employers, her current allies, she would be killed. Those that she used to speak with over coffee and laugh with in private settings no longer knew her the way they once did. They had never seen her kill back then and now was no different.
The Hero Public Safety Commission could not touch her now.
They could not chase after her.
They assumed she was dead, ripped from her confinement in Tartarus cruelly and then brought to the gates of the afterlife. Her body was supposedly never found. No other casualties remained. It would be kept a secret. Lady Nagant, Kaina Tsutsumi, still remained locked up in Japan’s top secret and heavily secured prison. No one would ever know beyond the important officials, the guards, and the people in the giant agency itself.
She was apparently still perfectly locked up, unable to endanger the public.
Apparently, even throughout all the years she had been spent in that prison hellscape, the legal world did not change in her absence. They still believed in hiding things from the public. They still believed in lying and hiding and ticking their tails between their legs, never revealing truth, never exposing themselves like the cowardly souls they were—another flaw, maybe, but one she let go after her first year in Tartarus.
As claimed, it was to be expected.
Of course it was.
Kaina had long since let the name Lady Nagant burn. She had let it rot and fester, twist upwards on itself and pop open like something exploding in the oven. She had chosen to give it up, to release it of its bonds to her life and her body: why keep what was dead?
For some reason, the name had been handed back to her by the hands of a shaken child with eyes that screamed of something far worse than villainy.
Her name, her work and all her effort.
Lady Nagant was the title of a hero who had the best aim and the best accuracy out of dozens of people in the career field. She could pierce through just about anything, could shoot through rain, could make any kind of bullet to get any perfect score she could ever want.
Now she was a glorified babysitter, playing parent for a stranger who had a problem with oversharing and another more serious problem with his life. That problem was called being hunted, being sought after, being undervalued and under appreciated. That problem was called being fought over, being torn apart, being taught by multiple figures but only ever protected by a few.
That problem was being alive when he should be dead.
Kaina was no hero.
She was stolen from her imprisonment, thrust into a new version of reality, and no longer connected to the inescapable burden of being one of society’s pillars. Now she only needed to watch over one thing, and that was a teenager who played pawn.
“Nagant,” Izuku said, and he bowed his head like a loyal creature, like he was the guide and she was the thing to prove. “How are you?” But he smiled, and his front teeth were chipped and sharp, and yet when he pressed his lips together in a closed smile, he was a boy. He was not a monster. He was not wretched.
“Fine,” She agreed, slowly, and she lifted her head up. The ceiling was white. The room was dark, the lights were off. She could barely see the outline of the boy.
“Good,” He nodded, and she saw his arms stretch, his shoulders. “I’m so glad.”
Was he?
The long scrapes of power that flowed off his spine, at the center of his back. Wings that weren’t there. Or they were. Quirks. With how slow her thoughts came to her, she was certain that she was either concussed or ill. Or drugged. And yet—the boy was here, in the dark. Izuku stretched his arms. Kaina watched, sluggish, not at all like the sharpshooter of a hero she used to be.
(Not that she would ever be one again. Not that she wanted to.)
“We get to leave soon,” Izuku told her, kindly, openly, and he folded his hands together and flashed her a smile. The light from a window glinted on his face, tangled in his teeth and eyes. She wondered what hell he was put through, to look like that. She wondered.
She didn’t say anything.
Waking up was a strange ordeal.
She knew what it meant, what it would always mean, but the mere idea of existing beyond shackles and bolts and white rooms made her feel fuzzy some days.
Today, unfortunately, was one of them. Very rarely was she surprised by the ache in her bones, or the hissing of her lungs when she peeled her eyes open to sunlight draping into her room and a kettle yelling down the hall—because at this ungodly hour, the boy was awake for some reason, and he always made tea and left it on the counter even when he never poured himself a cup. Kaina was certain it was out of a long-forgotten habit, something he did because his mind would not let him leave until he did. Like flicking the light switches, changing his shirt three times, or reorganizing the collection of candles he had every few days whenever the house smelled of jasmine and not cinnamon.
Kaina dragged a hand down her face, rippling with dismay, and pulled herself up. The bed she had been given was good. It was the guest room of this little apartment in god knows where. Izuku, though spending most of his days inside the lab or the strange collection of buildings that belonged to his supposed leader, had been gifted around fourteen apartments and little abodes to use however he liked.
The boy had never explained to her why he had so many. He had just said he had them, that when he left the place and did not return home, home became the nearest safe house.
This was one of them.
In that regard, the child had presented her with a pair of keys and told her that it was her home if she wanted it—because if not this apartment than the lab, and no one quite liked it there anyway. Kaina took it for what it was. She had one job, and that meant following the child’s demands like a meaningless parent to an overzealous toddler. She noticed the small things about him and took note.
It was not hard to fall into that role, though she still regarded it with distaste. She was far from a parent. She could watch over him, sure, she knew how to watch targets and keep them safe. She also knew how to kill them, which meant protecting Izuku would be no harder than following the instructions of a commission agent.
Long run, short term, whatever it may be.
Izuku would vanish for hours at a time and return with broken bones and strangely fine skin, folded and perfectly connected, no longer bloody like his body had been maimed. She was either allowed to go with him or told to stay. That was their little agreement, their little deal. Izuku said all she had to do was follow orders, be his hero, as stupid as it was—that means you don’t have to play guide, if I don’t want you following me, just stay here, it’s not a problem, it’s what I want—and she listened, and waited, and frowned at him when he unlocked the apartment door with a shaky hand and a bloodstained key.
Today, he was here. He had been here for six days without leaving before, and she had almost begun to think it was because he did not want to leave. Maybe that was why he had yet to leave this time. Kaina only cared because it was her job. She had to know so she could plan and categorize. If she put in no effort, she would be thrown off.
If she was to be thrown off from this, she would fail her assignment and die.
The kid might die too.
(With how he mended himself like a freak of nature, she doubted he would stay dead for long. If at all.)
Pulling herself up, her lungs howled, and her body cried for another hour of rest—roaming street alleys with a child at her heel had taken a toll on her. Years without training or proper exercise had ruined her once well-built routine, her muscles and strength, her speed and tempo.
Gaining all of that back was hard to do.
Three months as a child’s glorified babysitter and her body remained at odds with her, rarely obeying her, rarely feeling like her own. She did not bother to ask why. The answer was as clear as day, as the sky, as the assortment of stained glass cups that Izuku dragged home from a bar once and scrubbed clean until his hands were red and pruny, and she snapped at him to be easy on the surface, and he had dropped the purple cup and it had clattered like a freight train roaring—a sad thing, a pathetic sight.
He had not been upset at her. He had possessed every right to be. Despite his age and his skittishness, he had more power than her in every way. Yet he had only looked at her and she had looked back, waiting for the rough edges, waiting for poison to drop from his too-sharp canines and blood to spill over the nice kitchen tiles.
Instead he had only asked if she would clean them a different way, or if she would be fine with scratched cups. She had shaken her head and told him to not bother, to just do it his way, that her opinion held no bounds here. Unnecessary. The boy had disagreed so clearly, trembling lips and crooked smile, too quick to tell her to say what she wanted or to let him assume everything about her, including dialogue. Speak your mind.
He was a fool with fawn legs, with a shaken heart, with too many scars to count.
Kaina hated how she grieved for the boy he might have gotten to be. She hated how her heart went out to a child who was so obviously fine with his situation, with his wiry limbs and strange features and odd fascinations with the world as it burned and crumbled at his feet.
The way he whispered it will kneel over eventually and wholeheartedly believed it. In a way, she nearly believed it too. But it was not her job to believe, it was her job to obey, it was her only purpose in life: die hard loyalty, live on the hill to die on it, as long as that was what was asked of her. A tale that lived on, that was forever as old as time. Kaina knew what it meant to have nothing to lose. She had already lost it all. The one thing remaining was her life, and if she lost that, then she would have truly lost everything there was to lose.
She pushed open the door of her room, leaving the window open and the curtains messily strewn open just like it had been the night before. Out of habit, she had fixed her bed. Neat. Two pillows, a tucked in blanket, another colorful quilt left on the foot of the mattress from the boy she was meant to be watching over.
Entering the hallway she was greeted by two things.
The first being muddy prints all over the hardwood, even smearing across the wall with a smudged handprint.
The second being the sight of one cat, aggressively licking its hind leg in the middle of the hall. Its fur was all fluffed up, messy and damp, and it almost looked angry. It was a pale grey color with dark brown streaks across its spine and paws—not mud, from what she could tell, but actual fur coloration—and two black dots above its eyes like eyebrows of a cartoon animal.
She felt like she was hallucinating, but that was not one of her symptoms.
“Who might you be,” Kaina muttered, without any intention of actually finding out. She pointedly didn’t care. The cat hissed, loud, and Kaina just stared at it from where she was currently standing in the hall.
From down the hall, she could see the kitchen lights flickering. Inside its confines was the boy she served. “Sorry!” He yelled And he looked frantic, even peeling around the corner to run to the hall just to get a better look at her.
“I didn’t know you’d be up,” Izuku apologized, and his voice tripled in pitch and volume. His eyes shot off to the cat, then the hall, and then back at her. The kettle in his hands shook, nearly dropping. He shoved it onto the table and exclaimed quickly, descending into a desperate ramble. “The cat, oh, right, the cat—don’t be mad, I swear it was accident, I didn’t mean to bring him back here it’s just that he got into an accident with me and it would have been mean to leave him alone without any—ah, the mud!” He winced, exclaimed, “Sorry!”
“Don’t apologize,” She said blankly, looking at him with a neutral face. She nodded at the mud that trekked into the living room, as well as the kitchen, and then back at the cat. “It’s your house. The mud can be cleaned.”
It was one house out of many.
Mud was not a problem. She would perhaps be worried if there was excessive blood splattering most of the apartment, but there was none to be found. After the bathtub had been stained red during one of Izuku’s many exertions once arriving into this little shack of a home, the old tub had been exchanged for a brand new ivory colored one.
When she turned to look at the stray animal, she found it angrily chewing on the side of the leather couch.
She blinked slowly. “Is the cat yours?”
“Yes,” The boy agreed, instantly—and the cat yowled in what she wanted to say was anger. How a cat could be angry, she did not know. It raked its claws down the leather next, little teeth punctuates infecting the edge. He winced, correcting himself and waving his hands. “No, sorry, no.” And the look on his face was strange, as was everything. The child swallowed, “No, he’s just here as a guest.”
“A guest,” Kaina echoed, and watched as it continued to shred through rather nice leather.
Izuku winced again.
She elected to ignore it, knowing better than to pry at the behaviors of a superior.
Her superior was an estranged fourteen year old who had more than one quirk and enough issues to be placed in some kind of psychiatric facility. So did she now, though, so it was a lousy description. Her superior was a child being manipulated and controlled by Japan’s simultaneously worst and best villain to ever live, and yet the boy remained steadfast and good. Bright depicted his flaws. He tried. She would never dare to say she liked to witness that trying, the endless feat, but his hatred only belonged to a few people. The rest of the population was seemingly spared of his cruelty.
The boy looked at her for a long moment, and then shook out his hair with a determined little exhale. He raised his head and gave her an awkward smile, twitchy and nervous around the edges like he was on drugs or high off caffeine. “I didn’t say—I didn’t say good morning.”
“Good morning,” The woman greeted. After a few months, she had grown used to his antics. Being trained as a soldier was a benefit to her many rusty tactics. She knew how to survive. Being a pawn, however free, was only one of the things she had forgotten about in her time spent behind bars. She looked at the boy, at his freckles and dark bruises. “Have you planned for something today?”
He shook his head at her.
The silent statement, the one she could hear even without a quirk being used: nothing worth sharing, nothing involving you, nothing at all.
Kaina was not bothered, and merely waited for him to continue. He always did. His tongue moved, clicking against his teeth like a chipmunk squeaking, and he jabbed his hands towards the animal that was currently within the apartment. “Just stuff. I need to take him to the vet.”
The cat hissed again.
She stared at it for a long moment. Its pale grey fur was neatly blue, its amber eyes burned like blood on white sheets. Kaina had been faced with a lot of quirks in her life, too many to count, but enough for her to see the signs of one in action more often than not. She swallowed her anger, her bitterness and disbelief, and asked another question no pawn should ask. “Is the cat supposedly your brother?”
Izuku stared at her for a long moment, his eyes flickering to the kettle on the surface of the table, still hot, and then back to her from where she stood passively.
“Oh.” He echoed after another minute. The strain in his face faltered and he exhaled. “Yeah.”
Tomura Shigaraki.
The teenager, probably a young adult, that Izuku once called Tenko in a fog of rage. Blue hair, cracked skin, and a decay quirk that was powerful enough to destroy and devour just about whatever his hands came in contact with.
Kaina had no orders to assist that boy any further than what Izuku demanded of her. That was the deal. That was her objective. Protect and guide Izuku, and do not fail, do not waver. Obey. And yet here the older sibling was, wrestled into an animal’s body, hissing and spitting as most feral cats did. She was not bothered by it as much as she should be—perhaps it was due to the formation of his body. He was not a violent half-bitten rabbit with antlers and bat wings, or a bird's beak with a human body that had a brain exposed at the top of its head; he was just stuck as a cat, mostly harmless.
She made her way into the kitchen, brushing past the table and carefully finding her place at the chair she always sat at. Instead of sitting, she leaned against the edge, exhaling—and then the boy she was supposed to serve grabbed the kettle, uncaring of its heat, and yanked a nice cup from the center of the wooden placement to pour the tea.
Kaina stared at him, raising her brows.
Izuku was adept. He poured a generous sum of tea, setting the kettle back down before picking the cup up and offering it to her.
She took it with a nod.
The former hero tapped the cup, sniffing at the tea and identifying it as chamomile. The boy looked at her with puppy-dog eyes. She was still put off by Izuku’s hospitality, his graciousness when he had been honest and claimed he never cared about manners. He meant well, always offering assistance, but the bond they had was built off a deal made by a villain with power and obsessive behaviors.
“Don’t mind me,” Kaina said stiffly. She held her cup steadily, ignoring the burning in her palms. “Your brother’s presence is not a concern of mine.”
Despite her words, he remained impassive to such a claim. He nodded. “Okay.”
She would do the same if it weren’t for the fact she had no past connections. There was her successor, of course, but she had barely known the teenager before she had snapped and killed the former commission president. If her research proved correct, her current replacement was none other than Japan’s fifth hero—Hawks. He would move up in the ranks soon enough. Judging by the commission’s many lies and demands, he would probably become one of the top three any year now.
“Are you going to tell your Sensei about your late night scursion?” The former hero inquired after another long pause.
Asking too many things may lead to the boy leaving, and though she could follow if she chose, she was not one to breathe down her targets’ necks. Izuku was her objective and sole job; taking care of him and listening to what he said and asked was the only thing she needed to do.
Sensei as in the man with a blurred face, with no eyes or hair or any identifying features past the absence of other ones. The man with power. The man with a child as a pawn and another as an heir. The man with enough influence to taint the underground until the only thing left of it was graveyards and unidentified bodies.
“No,” Izuku informed her promptly. His brows were high. “I don’t plan to. Tomura will be back to normal in a few hours.”
Kaina nodded slowly. “May I inquire what happened to you both?”
“You may,” He nodded, already moving on. His urgency was a stray animal in an alleyway. The apparent cat yowled again, another symbol of hatred and distress thrown into one. Izuku started talking, reaching down and grabbing his brother with shaky yet firm hands. “I was minding my business—shut up, Tomura, I was—and then we got ambushed by one of my old enemies, and they had a transformation quirk.” He shook his hand, grinned, “You know. Very simple explanation.” Shrugged, rolled his shoulders. The essences of spine, of wings, fluttered on his back. “So I shoved him in front of me so he would get hit with it, and then I took him back here after handling the ambusher.”
Right. Classic. Yes.
A thought passed through her head, another winter white coloration of a body in a morgue while a child whispered to her as several doctors walked away—don’t worry about it, don’t worry about any of it—green eyes, discolored and sharp like haunted and rusted razor blades. Like a copper statue in the middle of nowhere, oxidizing slowly. It made sense for him to let his ally, however strained, take a hit for him so he could then finish the job.
Kaina had been taught how to do the same.
The boy before her had always been violent. That was what she understood. He was strong and fast, an assortment of agonizing little noises tied up with a neat bow. He was a lost kid with no parents and no home, just a bunch of wiry limbs and twisted lies plastered into his very veins. Violent, but terrible at combat—not a natural instinct in him. That was why he went to the madman, the doctor.
His life was bound to the labs he had been reborn in.
“I see.” She uttered, brows still raised, face still passive. She knew how to be patient. She knew how to be kind. “Is there anything I could do to assist you?”
“Nothing comes to mind. Thank you, Nagant!” Izuku said, brightly, “Don’t worry about a thing.”
That was what the boy always said. She would still worry. Being complacent was a worthless skill, a skill she had no intention of keeping. He could tell her that she was going to die and she would still worry about what might happen if that turned out to be incorrect.
“I never knew you had a soft spot for animals,” Kaina hedged, tipping her head to the side. “Are you fond?”
“I’m fond,” He laughed, then quieted.
The cup of tea was warm in her hands, a reminder of life, a reminder of gracious generosity that curled too close to her stomach and heart like a parasite that dared to wiggle into her organs’ personal spaces.
She never knew a lot of things. The information she learned came from sparse glances and conversations that led to the boy over sharing his origin, his lack of a mother, his desperation to find a father—the lies that slipped past his teeth when he said my master is the closest thing I have to a parent and meant it. The glimmer in his eye, the stories he told when she stared at a scar too long, the blood that dripped from his nose when he returned to her apartment and laid down on the bathroom tile like it would save him and his wretched body from death.
He called it a wretched body.
She found it hard to agree, but harder to disagree. You cannot be wretched like this. Izuku was not one to argue with her, not really, but he always smiled and that was clear enough. You can be wretched in other ways, Nagant. He did not need to speak for her to know something was wrong.
“I love them. I just can’t have any,” Izuku continued, and there it was again. His tone. The look in his eye. She followed his gaze back to where he was holding the supposed man from the scruff of his temporary curse. “Tomura hates cats and dogs, so I think this is fitting.” Something coiled in his eyes. In his voice. He smiled, though. “He’s useless like this.”
(A liar, she knew, but would not pry.)
The cat wriggled and thrashed, fur puffing up. She stared at the thing for a long moment, swallowing the bitterness that was across her tongue. She took another sip of the chamomile tea.
Ambushed. Her mind whispered. You never get ambushed, boy.
“You did it on purpose, didn’t you?” Kaina asked after a long moment, not bothering to hide her jaded amusem*nt.
“No proof,” Her subject huffed like a child, a grin splitting down his features as he finally dropped the other—the hissing form spitting and snarling as its claws dug into the couch. You treat him poorly, and worry about how he will treat you when you are weak. Is it too hard to believe that Izuku sees you as anything but what you are? The boy smiled at her. “Don’t worry about it, Nagant, I wouldn’t let anything happen to you.”
Her eyes crinkled.
Tomura Shigaraki was the true heir to All For One.
That much, Kaina had gathered. She had paid him little mind, focusing on her job as a guide for the strange boy. But the strange boy brought him to the safe houses, talked about him with smiles and prickly teeth.
“My brother,” Izuku said now, with a small laugh. “We don’t talk like we used to.” And he leaned over the counter, arms waggling, nails scraping at the surface to try and grab the teacup on the far end. Gingerly, Kaina pushed the cup in his direction. It slid over the surface, and Izuku’s scrabbly hand managed to connect with the ceramic. He smiled, brightly, and his face pulled in awkward places. “But,” the kid said, hopefully, “I was thinking of visiting his bar tonight.”
“Alright,” Kaina agreed.
“With you, of course,” The boy rushed to clarify, still hopefully. “Not like I’d ever go anywhere without you.”
That, despite everything else the stranger had ever done, was a half-lie. Kinda had been left to her own devices many times in these past months. Cigarettes on her nightstand, the fridge stocked with generic brands that she could not eat—not for a lack of trying. She supposed it was to create a normal environment. Something safe and fine and simple to return to. The blood stains in the carpet ruined that feeling, but Kaina wasn’t going to mention it. The boy could and would leave freely, whenever he pleased. Kaina only went with him when he told her to.
“If you want me to,” Kaina agreed, slowly. She held onto her own ceramic mug, waiting for the boy to continue his useless ramblings—as he always did.
Predictably, he nodded fast. “Yes,” the kid laughed. “I do. It’ll be worth it, Nagant, I swear.” He held onto his cup with fumbling hands, unable to keep still or steady. He dragged himself back into a standing position, no longer halfway draped over the counter in his measly attempt to get the ceramic. “My brother has a whole group. They know way more about weapon dealings and jobs than I do. They’ll be able to get you proper gear.”
“The cigarettes suit me just fine,” She smiled, taking a sip from her cup. The Earl Grey tea burned her tongue.
“Proper armor would suit you better,” Izuku dismissed her, gesturing to her bare clothes. Standard cotton. Nothing important. A washed out imprint from some richer-named brand. He waved again. “It’d give you more coverage.”
“Sure,” She nodded.
“Yeah,” He said, like the conversation had any value at all.
Maybe it did, to him, the kid who didn’t do much of anything. He had wings. He had teeth. He had a brain. He had a personality that made hate hard to achieve. Perhaps that was why he was a loyal pawn, a creature without true nature—something to be kept, to laugh at. A jester or a knife, not an heir, not a successor to an entire empire.
“Would your brother be receptive to this visit?” Kaina asked him, after a few minutes. “It didn’t seem like he particularly enjoyed your company, earlier, when you last spoke.”
When he was a cat, she meant.
(What a stupidly fun quirk. What a stupidly atrocious situation. What a stupidly humorous thing.)
Izuku was, oddly enough, dipping his tongue into the tea. Crowding it, but he wasn’t actually drinking it. She highly doubted he enjoyed tea. Izuku looked up, weakly, and his eyes slid across the room until they landed on Kaina’s unbothered form. “Oh,” the pawn laughed. “Yeah, no. I doubt it. He’ll hate it.” The boy went back to dipping his tongue in the tea, looking away from her.
Kaina waited, and then breathed out. “And yet you want to visit.”
“Sensei encourages it,” He sighed, easily, into his cup. “In order to prosper, I must meet people. I must connect. And Tomura, well, he’s easy to connect with.” He looked up, interrupted. Izuku smiled, again, lips curving in that inhuman way that Kaina had grown used to seeing. “We look at heroes differently, but we still have to be brothers, in the end.”
She couldn’t understand it. Perhaps that was the reason Izuku was bringing her along—to encourage her. Murder. Death. Vengeance. Glee.
He was unlike other children.
Kaina highly doubted he had ever been normal. If there were multiple realities, as some people theorized, then Kaina would gamble that Izuku was still f*cking crazy in other lifetimes. She doubted he was ever normal. She doubted he could ever be normal. This was his normal, splintered apart and with wings that he stole from someone else, with a quirk that warped space and location and pace. With the abilities of a weapon. With the job of a mouse. A pawn. He didn’t like chess, but always used chess analogies. He loved checkers. He liked marshmallows and alcohol—even though he said both tasted bad, he still consumed both sources. He could shoot a gun fairly, even though it did not compare to Kaina’s skills. I learned from a gunman, he had laughed, but he hadn’t been all that skilled, you see. Izuku didn’t drink tea, only made it. He was a stray cat at heart. He shattered and scattered and skittered around people, to people. He called heroes dumb but said if they ever asked for help, that he would give it.
She wasn’t sure why he stuck around. He had multiple quirks, something that was terrifying. Kaina wasn’t sure that she minded as much as she would have, if she met this boy back when she was still a government bitch. He talked about everything like it was normal. It was, for him. Kaina had learned that back when she was still locked within the labs, prodded back to life, to function.
“I suppose so,” Kaina agreed, if only for the sake of not mentioning her loss, her confusion, her disbelief.
A villain and a monster.
Though, to call the hapless child a monster felt unusually cruel. Kaina wasn’t a hero anymore. That didn’t mean she wanted to play the part of something that opposed society as a whole.
(Didn’t she?)
The boy was crazy. He was kind and helpful but also utterly useless in the long run. He obeyed the man he called teacher. He laughed when guns pointed at him. He laughed when people threatened to tear him apart. He peeled his lips back, like a bear snarling, and he fought even though he was not built for combat. Recon, support, defense, and spying, he’d say, but never head-on combat. Izuku was a mix-and-match human variable.
“He will probably like you more, now that he’s not four-legged,” Izuku laughed. Kaina was relatively certain it wasn’t a joke.
“His loss,” She shrugged.
Izuku shook his head, rapidly, and set his barely-drank cup back down. The tea must be lukewarm by now. “His loss!” The boy waved both hands, palms exposed and blistered. “Tomura hates heroes. He hates All Might most of all.” He looked at her, couldn’t help but drum his fingers along the counter. “But you’re a hero-killer. You’re the kind of person he likes most.”
“I killed heroes because it was my job,” Kaina said flatly. It was a crucial detail to her story, to her means of an end. She killed the previous president because she wanted to. But all her teammates—the heroes who died in accidents? That was a job. That was her line. She stared him down, “Not because I wanted to.”
Heir to All For One. The successor to the criminal empire. Japan’s most terrifying villain, the most critical, the most dangerous. Kaina was a killer, but she killed on orders. It was different. It was completely different from killing because of want, because of boiling hatred.
The kid shrugged, again. “Tomura’s not gonna care ‘bout that.”
“Maybe not,” The woman conceded, at last, and took her cup again to drink the rest of it. She didn't care for it. She drank it anyway.
“It’ll be worth it,” Izuku repeated, cheerfully, and he slipped away from the counter with a wave. “We can leave at a reasonable time, like seven,” he mumbled to himself, vanishing down the hall. The radios were on. So were the fans. And the lights. And the singular television in front of the couch.
Kaina set her cup down.
The child was strange.
Kaina came to this conclusion for the last time, tonight, and yet it didn’t bother her. She had seen worse. Strange was the least of her issues. She had seen cruel, insane, terrible, and evil. She had seen people who played God. She had seen people who thought they compared to the ones at the top of the food chain. She, unlike her former hero counterparts, had seen people at their worst, right before she put her bullets through their heads.
One singular strange child was the least of her concerns.
Except—this strange child was her concern, her job, her superior, and her task. He was the thing to watch and guide and protect.
Her face was blurred out. She would not be recognized. She would never be known. Kaina understood the potential compassion behind it, but she knew it had been done selfishly. It was not compassion or kindness. It was not generosity, like the boy and his master had said it was. A gift, to prosper, the growing Demon Lord had smiled without eyes. And Kaina had accepted, had not denied. Because denial was futile. Because she knew. Because she watched, she saw, and no one knew who she was.
No one knew who the boy was, either.
She figured—well, with all his presence—that people would recognize him more. But if anyone did, they didn’t say it. Izuku filtered through the crowds and smiled, laughed, took glasses from people’s hands. Their skin brushed. The strangers recoiled. And, of course, the strange child just laughed—kind, happy, carefree as if he wasn’t a danger to everyone on Earth.
Izuku returned to her side, at the bar counter. He was smiling. His eyes were faded, glossy, with white eyelashes even though his hair still had some green in it. His cheeks were stained red and pink and white. He was smiling. He was.
“I brought you some,” He said, happily, and set down a glass with unidentified liquor in it. Excitedly, he explained. “I like this stuff.”
Kaina dutifully accepted the glass.
Izuku grinned at her, widely, and held onto the other four glasses. He was a strange child. He was a bomb. He was a pawn. He was an heir. He was, also, the strange creation of All For One.
Sensei wants me to live well, Izuku laughed and laughed. That means he does what I ask, makes me happy. That’s why you’re here: to make me happy. I do love failure heroes, after all. Kaina wasn’t even sure what possessed him to say that. Nothing, probably. He was too honest. He was a chronic oversharer. Though, she supposed it didn’t matter. He could kill anyone who threatened him. He could get away with things worse than murder, if he wanted.
The boy looked around the bar, the loud noises. Strangers of all variations. Some glanced Kaina’s way, but they seemed to look right through her. She didn’t exist. Her identity was unknown.
It was completely void, here, null.
It was a good thing. Kaina had convinced herself that it was a good thing. She wasn’t Kaina to anyone. She wasn’t even Lady Nagant. She was a woman with no identifying features. No one, even if they tried, would be able to describe her. She was here but no one would ever know how to say it.
“Do you like the party?” He asked her, tapping her arm.
Kaina, decidedly, did not like the party. It was loud and awful. It smelled of sweat and alcohol and burnt sugar and nicotine. She did not like the bar. She did not like the liquor. “It’s fine,” she told him, instead. “It’s where you want to be.”
“Yeah,” Izuku nodded. “But.” He kept tapping her arm. His nails were chipped, stained black. She knew it wasn’t nail polish. The boy looked around, his wings stretching, his eyes flicking back and forth like a bunch of darts. Kaina ignored the urge to pry his hands off her arm. He looked back at her, finally, staring like an uncanny thing and not like a human. “But, is it where you want to be?” Izuku sounded honest. “I love parties. I love it here. But do you?”
“I do,” She lied.
“You’re a bad liar,” Izuku said, predictably, and squeezed her arm. His nails dug into her exposed skin.
“I don’t,” She sighed, instead.
He loosened his grip, predictably. Kaina knew that his predictability did not make him an easy target. He is impulsive more often than not. The bigger picture was always a mess of colors and things. But his personal behaviors, his speech, his actions—those were easier to predict, to guess, to gamble with. Kaina knew them. She did not act on her urges to usurp him. It was a dumb train of thought, anyway. To kill the boy was to kill herself. There were easier ways to die, after all. Her own quirk in her own mouth, for example.
Izuku was looking at her, and the bar’s lights were dancing and moving and so were the people. Flashes of magenta and yellow and green and blue and red and purple. But the child wasn’t swaying or smiling anymore. This, too, was something she expected. His shift in mood—all under thirty seconds
“What are you thinking about?” He asked tersely.
“Nothing of importance,” Kaina said, because that was true. It wasn’t important. And she believed herself when she said it.
Izuku relaxed. His wings twitched. “I mean, if you say so,” the boy laughed, and laughed, and laughed. “I was trying to make the night fun,” he explained. “Sorry that you hate it. I thought that some music, some people—well, I thought you’d like the chance to talk to someone other than me.” He tugged at the bangs of hair—combed and pinned with excessively large barrettes that resembled razor blades—and then smiled at her like she wasn’t actively thinking about her own hypoetnical suicide.
Kaina was certain that he did not have a telepathy quirk. It did not matter.
(Perhaps he could hear her obvious death, despite it.)
“I am fine with or without company,” She told him, like she cared. She didn’t. She didn’t care, didn’t want to care, and never would. “My job is to do as you tell me.”
Izuku frequently stayed at whatever safe house she was in. He made tea and food and brought home takeout and strange items and then slept for odd hours or stayed up for days at a time. Sometimes he went missing. Sometimes he came back, smiling, but he would drag blood into the kitchen and hallway. It was a hobby. It was a habit. He laughed about it. He also, for some reason, lied about it and hid the blood and got cold. Flicked his hair out of his ugly face, lied to her—she could see right through it, too, because the lie was obvious when he said there’s no blood, Nagant, but his body was bleeding and his skin was red, as was the floor. A bad liar.
“Yeah,” Izuku smiled, and then finally pulled away from her arm. There were little creases left behind. “Yeah, sorry, I know.” He looked away from her, wry, then pointed animatedly at a woman in the distant crowd. “Then, I’m telling you to go talk to new company.” He smiled. “It’s a good bar. It’s a good night.” The strange boy kept pointing, and Kaina followed.
It was a tall woman, in the crowd. A face of glitter and drunken haze. Out of everyone here, she was not sure why Izuku would point Kaina in the stranger’s direction.
She looked at the boy, again.
He looked at her, too. Then smiled, all his teeth, and stretched his wings upwards, like tapestries. “It’s a good night,” he repeated. “Go make new company. I have company to join, too.”
Kaina drank all of what was in the cup Izuku gave her, set the empty glass down, slid off her chosen barstool, and trekked into the crowd to go make company with the tall woman Izuku picked for her. The boy laughed, and his laugh became her shadow, her haunt. She wished she could take his tongue and feed it to stray dogs in the abandoned parts of Musutafu.
Twenty minutes later, Kaina had told the tall lady a false tale about a million unimportant things. She was a consultant. She was an accountant. She was in debt. She was rich. She was bored. She was overwhelmed. She was enjoying the night. She was loving life. She was going to loll herself behind the bar with her own quirk. The tall woman put her hand on Kaina’s shoulder, said she understood, and then hugged Kaina. They danced. The tall woman bought Kaina two more drinks. They talked. The music kept howling.
The strange boy was sitting across the bark far away, and one of his wings was wrapped around a blonde guy—older, hazy, with red wings of his own. The kid was laughing animatedly.
Kaina didn’t say a word. Didn’t go over.
Izuku’s lips moved. Kaina saw the words form, hated it, felt something akin to disgust start to pool in her stomach. Hi, fake-hero, the boy was saying. My favorite fake-hero is here, too.
The tall woman spun Kaina around, and she was packed together with a dozen other drunk people.
She was not real. She was fake. She had no name. She took a breath. She was not a hero. She was not a fake-hero, either. She was here. She was anything but what everyone said she was. Kaina put her hands on the woman's waist. She danced with a stranger. They moved in the crowd. The music was loud and thundering, and Kaina was three drinks into it.
It was a long night.
Izuku and her left the bar at dawn, with most of the crowd. The boy wrapped his wings and arms around her in the dark corner of an alley, thick mist wafting off his skin, and he had said: good morning, Nagant, it was a good night. She wrapped her arms around him, in return. He smelled like Hennessy. She wondered if that was what the other hero had been drinking in the bar, too.
“God,” Kaina muttered, now, in an empty room with no boy near her. She smelled like booze and cheap perfume. “What a f*cked up thing.”
She thought she heard the child laugh.
(She didn’t.)
The kid was making tea again. He looked strange.
Kaina was avoiding the long wound that stretched from the left corner of his mouth, down his neck, down under his shirt. It probably stretched to his ribs. She didn’t mention it. She didn’t look at it, either. She already saw it when he entered the safe house.
He smelled like smoke, but the kettle was whistling now and Kaina knew better than to say it.
“Do you like Earl Grey?” Izuku asked, even though he wasn’t making that blend. He was making green tea. Herbal something. Kaina rarely paid attention, seeing as the child would make it and pour a cup and then not drink it. He said it’s habit, but he rarely made tea at all. It wasn’t the kind of habit you would give a child. It was a habit in memory, maybe. He made tea. He didn’t drink tea. He laughed it off and let the cups go cold.
“No,” Kaina told him, over the counter.
She flicked through the magazine he had brought home. A yellow sticky note had been stuck to the cover, reading: to Nagant. She, of course, did not tell him that she didn’t care for magazines or Today’s World columns. The boy had seemed hopeful. As most people said, it was the thought that counted.
“Oh,” Izuku blinked, and his eyes were glossy and his lashes were white and his hair was green and snow-frosted. He smiled, though, laughing as the kettle yelled. “I hate Earl Grey, too. I just thought you’d like it.” He jabbed a thumb at the countertop by the stove, behind him.
A box of Earl Grey tea, still in its plastic wrap, presumably waited for her.
“I’ll drink it,” Kaina dismissed, and she flipped to another part of the magazine. “Don’t worry about it.” The lights were on. Everything in this apartment was on. The two radios, the fans—both floor and ceiling—the lights, the lamps, the kettle, the television, and even the laptop in the corner of the room that looked like it came from a trash heap.
“Sorry,” The boy laughed. “I’ll do better next time.” He took the kettle, poured himself up to the rim of his porcelain cup.
Predictably, he set the kettle down and left the cup on the counter.
He waved his hands, splintered and pale—dark veins, traveling everywhere like the roots of trees. “I’ll be back in a little!” The kid laughed. Then he went down the hall, leaving Kaina to her own devices. She imagined that he would leave through the balcony window in a few minutes. Leave her a useless note, a briefcase of cash, another philosophy book that Kaina would not read.
She glanced at the teacup on the counter. The steam wafted into the air. She wrinkled her nose, looked back at the magazine. HEROES OF THE YEAR was printed in bold yellow letters at the top of this page, littered with images and words she did not care to read or analyze. Her replacement, Hawks, was there, too. He was no longer number five. Instead, he was the grand number of four. Among the Great Ones. Not that Kaina thought any of them were great. She didn’t idle or observe heroes and their agency practices. She had no reason to. Unless the boy or the boy’s teacher demanded it of her, Kaina was fine where she was. Unpleasant, mostly, but not as bad as rotting within Tartarus.
Kaina thumbed at the pages, blank-faced. All of this was useless to her, now. It provided no comfort and no relief. Society was going to fall once the heroes fell. It was a simple situation.
The kitchen had begun to smell like green tea.
In her pocket was a pack of menthol cigarettes. The kid had bought those for her, too. A pass by, he had smiled. Plenty of people smoke. Not like anyone could report you to the media. Lady Nagant, smoking! You don’t have to be a goody two shoes. Izuku had handed her the pack, grinned, and left again.
It wasn’t like she particularly cared. It wasn’t like she was against smoking, either. Or drinking. Or even hard drugs. There had never been any time to get involved with substance abuse—unless you count adrenaline or prescribed sleep medication. Who would have guessed that violently and secretly killing the corruption within your coworkers would lead you to being unable to sleep, unable to think, and unable to present yourself to society with kindness. In her last years of heroism—last months, really—she had started slipping. She stopped going to interviews, to fan-reviews, to conventions, and to charities. She started cutting back. She got sharper with her tongue, made her handler get sharp, too. Back then, watching civil aliens get to smoke their dreams and nightmares away and made her feel strong. You’re weak to turn to that, she thought, because that was what the Commission had taught her. And then she realized it wasn’t weakness. It was freedom. And then she started hating it, really, truly hating it.
Now, things were different.
The kid dragged mud and blood and suspicious boxes into each safe house they stayed at. He brought her items that she did not want, need, or ask for. The cigarettes. The alcohol. The magazines from convenience stores that Kaina would never care to set foot in. The tea blends she disliked, didn’t care to drink. The softness of blankets. The brightness of lava lamps that looked stolen.
Kaina drummed her fingers—splintered darkened with damage from the labs that she would not name—against the counter.
Izuku’s cup of tea still steamed. Kaina looked back at her magazine.
What sh*t, she thought, blankly. No hero deserves it. And then she flipped the page to see whatever was next. It was an interview with Hawks, who was Number Four as of today. She closed the magazine entirely. f*cking bullsh*t, she thought, again. What bullsh*t.
She got off the stool and went to the balcony. She pulled out a menthol cigarette and a lighter. It tasted and smelled like sh*t.
Didn’t burn like other cigs, though.
Izuku took her to another bar.
The child’s life included keeping Kaina for company, and not for much else. She was unsure why he even bothered. The words that came out of his mouth were never practiced and never formal. They were brittle and giggly and useless. He, despite his decorum, was not useless. But Kaina had no patience to babysit children. She had no desire to be a mother. To be a kind teacher.
Kaina stopped being kind and stopped being good a long time ago.
This was simply another task to complete.
Perhaps that was why the child didn’t ask her how to shoot a gun, or how to be a hero. Perhaps that was why the child brought her to bars and clubs and places that were between terrible constructs of violence.
There were people everywhere, but this place wasn’t nearly as loud as the last partied-up bar. This place was calmer. There were dim lights that shifted colors, but everything was smoother. It was not a serious bar, not somewhere you would go for information, but it was operating illegally. The child seemed to know the people personally, so Kaina was correct to assume this place was one of the many locations Izuku frequented when he left Kaina behind in a dingy safe house. The music was quiet, like background static. Izuku was animatedly talking to the bartender in front of him, yammering away about something Kaina wasn’t inclined to care about.
The bartender said something, both brows raised.
The child laughed, “I can do whatever I want, don’t worry.” And then he wrapped his hands around a comically sized cup, sugar or salt-rimmed, with green liquid inside. “I came to have fun. Not to be serious.”
“Really,” The guy said, from behind the counter. Looked Izuku up and down, and then shrugged. “‘S whatever you say, Calico.”
“I love your nicknames,” Izuku said, appreciatively, and then he looked away from the weird bartender to grin with all his teeth at Kaina.
She smiled back, terse, and didn’t comment on the drink in his hands, or the blood on his forehead, or the patterned circles that were digging into the side of his neck. She didn’t mention the bruising around his esophagus, either, even though it was distinctively hand-shapes. She didn’t mention anything, to be fair. It wasn’t her place. It wasn’t her concern unless Izuku said it was. He took the reins, here, and everywhere. She was just a pawn.
(Kaina knew what she was better than anyone else.)
The boy came over to her seat, stretching and lazing. He slid next to her at the counter, setting his drink down. He looked at her, flat and odd, “Is this place better than the last one?”
“It’s fine,” She told him.
“Is it?” Izuku asked her, again, and he tapped the rim of his glass. There was a crazy-straw in the liquid. He took a long sip, and his face contorted. He peeled away, coughing, and she stared blankly. He blanched, “Sour. Why is it so sour?”
“Try the sugar,” Kaina said, dryly. “It’s supposed to give you a balance.”
“It’s not balanced at all,” Izuku sighed. But he swiped his thumb across the drink and collected a thumb full of sugar. What a waste. She didn’t say it. He licked his lip, then looked at her again. “Is this a better bar?” He asked her, casually, curiously. “I tried to find one that wouldn’t be so excessive, like last time.” Kaina honestly didn’t give a sh*t. She hated parties, hated bars, didn’t care for the drunkards or the patrons. But this place was at least quiet.
“It’s fine,” The fake-hero said, again. “It’s better than last time.”
“I’m glad,” He smiled at her, and then started drinking the rest of his beverage through the crazy straw.
Kaina watched, blankly. It was an endless endeavor, she was sure. Izuku finished the drink in thirty-six seconds, blanching, fake-gagging, and then going silent and kicking his feet like a little kid sitting too high up. Then again, he was short, and the barstools were settled at a higher height than most table chairs. That was what he was, though—a kid. A strange and insane child who was loyal to a literal crime lord, but a child nonetheless.
(If she were still a mercenary for the Hero Commission, perhaps they would have told her to kill this child.)
“You should go talk to people,” He told her, after hiccuping. “Make company, like last time.” He looked like he might vomit. “You seemed to do well with that lady, last time.”
Kaina stared, unreadable. “Is that what you want me to do?”
“Go talk to people,” Izuku said, instead of answering. He hiccuped again, raised his hand to his mouth. Covered his teeth and lips and lower face. Hiccuped, gagged. Closed his eyes and spoke through a muffled piece of skin. “Make friends, Nagant. It’s not like any of them will ever chase you down. They can’t haunt you.” His voice was strange. “Go talk.”
Kaina got up, walked away from the boy and his empty alcohol glass, and fed herself into the quiet and self-entertaining crowd.
“You’d be good at this,” Izuku told her, without any emotion besides pride. “You were good at what you did, under the Commission’s rule, so think of this as a test trial.”
“You want me to kill,” Kaina corrected him, airily.
On the roof, in the middle of autumn. There were dead and bare trees all around, down below. They were standing on a roof, the sun barely rising, and the world had yet to wake up. For the rest of them, they were always up. Kaina’s hands were in her pockets. Her hair reached her shoulders, now. The child’s hair was messy, he had an undercut, had a scar that scraped right down the middle of him—like his ski pull had been cracked in the middle, like he wasn’t real, like he had a surgery that perfectly followed the pathway of his spine.
“I want you to do what you want,” The boy said, like it mattered, like it made a difference.
It didn’t.
Not to Kaina, it didn’t.
(Your next target is as follows, Lady Nagant. Do not disappoint us.)
Kaina was supposed to spend the rest of her life—at least four more decades—in Tartarus. She was meant to spend the rest of her time on Earth either begging the reaper to come to her, to take her neck and her functionality, her ability to think, or praying that a God would take mercy on her and smite her. Because that made sense, too, to a delusional inmate who lost her mind after one too many mandated murders. Some of her killings haunted her. Some of them didn’t even keep her up anymore. Years spent in isolation shaped her into something bitter, something almost worse than before when she was still the Commission’s bitch.
She wasn’t theirs, now.
She was a pawn, she was a weapon, and she was trained to obey and trained to kill. But that wasn’t the point. The point was that she served whoever held her neck in a noose, and that person was Izuku. That person was this boy. This useless trinket of a creature, more birdlike in his nails and wings, more dangerous than the Number Two hero and his raging hellfire.
Because Izuku was a bug, a bird, and a Frakenstein.
He had teeth. He had skin. He had a shadow as large as life, watching him, haunting him, making sure he ate. Sensei wants me to explore, he would say. That’s why I wanted you as my guide, Miss Failure To Comply. And Kaina understood that much.
She could understand the nuances behind it. She could even understand why the boy wanted a hero, a criminal from Tartarus. The symbolism had a lot of weight. But none of that explained this. Perhaps she should not question it. Perhaps she should just obey, do it. A part of her, though, didn’t want to. It wanted answers. It wanted Izuku to speak up.
Kaina looked at him. “Why?”
Izuku blinked fast, and his wings expanded. He stretched them out. They were dark, almost like oil spills rather than real, physical limbs. Motions made the wings splinter fade into the background.
Not this time.
The boy smiled at her, and the sun stretched out over his skin, colored his cheeks gold and tinted his green eyes with a yellow sheen. “You’re strong,” he lied. “You’re mean. You can scare them. You can make them listen.” Izuku gestured to the large expanse of the sky, the fortitude of reality, the place he never spared but always said he dreamed of. “You could teach me how to, too. You could be more than my guide.”
“Why should I kill?” Kaina clarified, low to the ground. She looked at him, at his emerald green colors, at his pale skin and his deep rings of injury. “Who would I kill?”
Izuku looked at her, “Anyone you want.”
“Why?” She repeated.
Izuku looked at her, and didn’t look away. He shrugged with one shoulder, and his wing shook, and he smiled shyly. “You have a bone to pick with the Hero Public Safety Commission, don’t you?” And she stayed silent, she stayed silent. The sun kept rising. The boy—not so much a boy but a monster—kept smiling, too. “You could start there. Then see where it takes you.”
And she could.
Kaina could start over. She could take up name and power, under the leadership of a monster. She could follow All For One and his pawns. She could become a valuable asset. She could. She could kill the current president of the Commission. She could overhaul what was left behind, could overtake and manage all the lives left to die. She could.
“You could be Lady Nagant again,” Izuku said, conversationally, “But without the title hero attached.”
Kaina looked at the sky, at the reds and pinks and streaks of purple that were turning into pale blue. She looked. She wondered what it would feel like to scrape the clouds. She wondered if she could hide on a taller roof, aim below and still succeed in every shot.
“Just Nagant is fine,” She told him, uninterested. “I suppose I could see where the blood path leads me.”
Izuku barked a laugh.
