Chapter Text
Ivy was waiting on the ledge of tonight’s randomly generated meeting location when they saw Eraser approaching from the south. They spotted him pretty quickly and watched as he grew from a tiny flea hopping from rooftop to rooftop in the distance until he touched down on the roof next to them. He didn’t even sit down in his usual spot to their right before he started yawning. So, of course, they looked at him with the most theatrically disapproving glare they could muster.
“I thought we weren’t supposed to patrol if we’re not well rested,” they sneered.
“Yeah, yeah,” Eraser dismissed, “I’ll be fine, I woke up like 15 minutes ago, I just need a second,” he said as he yawned again.
“You gonna fall asleep on me, geezer?” they poked.
“‘M thinking about it,” he mumbled as he opened up his bento, pulled out a flask, and took a swig from it.
“Good lord man, the students giving you that much grief?” Ivy asked, rightfully horrified.
“It’s just coffee, thermos is too clunky to jump around with, and no, not anymore they’re not,” he replied dryly
Well that response was more than a little ominous
“What the hell do you mean ‘not anymore they’re not’? Did you kill them?”
“No, just expelled ‘em, ‘s why I just woke up. I spent the whole day doing the goddamn paperwork for it an’ I didn’t get to take a nap,” he responded, nonchalant as ever.
They were so horrified that they couldn’t even make fun of him for being grumpy about missing a nap like a toddler.
“You expelled them? All of them? You expelled 20 students?” they asked incredulously.
Eraser simply grunted in the affirmative.
“What the hell did they do?!” they demanded.
“They weren’t serious,” he stated like that explained everything.
“They’re what like 15? Of course they weren’t serious, they’re 15!”
“Better to let their dream die than let them die, I’m not giving out licenses to people who aren’t taking this seriously. They can find a new dream they can’t get unkilled in the line of duty,” he said in an exhausted and rehearsed tone like he’d spent the day explaining that to 40 irate parents.
They supposed that made sense, but Jesus Christ, imagine getting into UA only to get expelled by Mr. Hardass in the first semester for being a bit too silly.
“I know it’s cruel but letting them live a pipe dream and die before they even get the chance to graduate is crueler,” He added sounding more sad than tired.
Ivy wondered if he’d learned that lesson the hard way, had he lost a student before? It was probably better not to ask.
“Yeah, I… I guess,” they conceded.
They wondered if any of those kids wouldn’t be able to work past the rejection. Kami knows they wouldn’t. It occurred to them for the first time that, if everything goes according to plan, they just might find themself in the opportunity for that to happen. Shit, if he expelled his whole class does that mean that he’d cycle back to teaching the incoming first years? They thought they had dodged a bullet when he said he was teaching first years this year.
“So, uh, does that mean ur out of a job for the next two and a half years or are you gonna cycle back to the next incoming first years?” they asked trying to keep the trepidation out of their tone.
“I’ll be getting the next batch of first years,” he confirmed and their heart dropped to their feet, “at least for my homeroom, I’ve heard talk of heroics classes changing next year so I’m not sure how that’s going to play out yet.”
Oh, he was so fucked. That left him with a 50/50 chance of getting Eraser as his teacher; there were only two heroics classes for each year and given his luck there was no way a coin toss was going to end in his favor.
***
Days passed by in a blur after he got the fridge up and running. Taking breaks and eating food made things a lot easier, hm, who would’ve guessed? Izuku had forgotten how much he enjoyed cooking; his first attempts were palatable at best but he got back into the groove of things after a week or so. Getting a hot plate would definitely help, he planned to use whatever money he got from the scrap yard next Sunday to buy one and he was really looking forward to it.
***
Izuku had been seeing a rather strange character around uptown both during the day and night. He felt bad about singling him out among the hundred or so other homeless people milling about the streets but he couldn’t help it, the man was covered in gruesome scars. He couldn’t tell how old he was underneath all of the gnarled flesh but the small amounts of unmarred skin looked quite smooth and soft so he probably wasn’t that old. He kept to himself for the most part, he seemed to have set up camp somewhere in the warehouse district, so they were neighbors, kinda.
He didn’t know what to make of him, he hardly ever saw him interact with anyone but that might just be because everyone gave him such a wide berth. It seemed rude but Izuku couldn’t blame them, he was quite an intimidating figure. Hell, Izuku was staying away from him too, but not out of fear, he just couldn’t tell if the guy wanted to be left alone or if it was just something he expected to happen.
Maybe he should talk to him? He had a pretty good rapport with the homeless population as Ivy, it wouldn’t be out of character to ask him if he needed help or offer him some blankets or something.
***
Summer break came and went without its usual hunger pangs and Izuku was so grateful. The tomatoes he had been trying to grow didn’t end up any better than All Might’s did, but even so, he chopped them up and threw them into a stew which he brought to the beach one Sunday to share with All Might. They talked about their sad attempts at gardening as they ate.
“You made this yourself? Who taught you how to cook? This is delicious!” All Might exclaimed and Izuku couldn’t help but feel like that was an overstatement; it was just alright. It would be good if one of the key ingredients (his roof-grown tomatoes) weren’t under-ripe and out of season.
“T-thanks,” he replied even though he didn’t fully believe the compliment was genuine, “Um, my mom taught me,” he lied.
His mother hadn’t taught him anything about cooking except to not touch the burners, but his father had long since taught him to stay away from fire by that point, so that wasn’t anything he didn’t already know.
“How nice! You’re quite the prodigy, my boy! I was hopeless in the kitchen until my mid-twenties, you know? I learned to cook from a friend in America, he saw me eating microwave ramen every day for weeks and took pity on me,” he said with a fond laugh.
Izuku couldn’t help the smile that spread across his face at that, he liked hearing about All Might, it humanized him. It had been difficult to talk to him for a while; he had been such an icon in Izuku’s eyes for so long that it was hard to think of him as a real person, which seems stupid in hindsight. He was still difficult to talk to, he tripped over his words constantly but it was getting easier the more he got to know him. ‘Yagi’ wasn’t the same person as All Might, just like he wasn’t the same person as Ivy; he couldn’t imagine trying to talk to someone like Ivy but he could talk to someone like Izuku, and All Might wasn’t so different in that regard.
***
Izuku was learning a lot of things about his generator, things like he had to choose two of three to have at any given time, fridge, hot plate, or lights. And his phone charged twice as slow with the fridge plugged in, or he couldn’t turn the lights on and keep the fridge going if it had been cloudy that day. Really, he was learning that owning a fridge required a lot of sacrifice. It took up a lot of power and it was never not in use so he could never turn it off. It was a constant drain on anywhere from a third to three-quarters of the generator’s power but he’d learned to work around it. He was going to have some very strange tendencies if he ever got enough money to get out of here; he could imagine himself a few years down the line getting a place and groggily turning off the lights before he flicked on the stove and started cooking breakfast in the dark.
***
It wasn’t until a full month after he had gotten the hot plate that Izuku felt comfortable enough in his skills to make something for Eraser. It was a little less daunting to make the stew for All Might, that was a test run. All Might knew it was made from sad tomatoes and also that Izuku was a kid so he hadn’t expected top-tier cooking. He didn’t have any of those excuses with Eraser, so it had to actually be good, not just a kind gesture. He made the dish over and over again every night for a week before he built up enough confidence to bring a second helping for Eraser.
Ivy:
Dont bring ur dinner tonight I’m bringing u something
Eraserhead:
Im stuck between saying thanks and being horrified.
Ivy:
>:[ its good u dickhead
Eraserhead:
I’ll be the judge of that
Thanks kid
Summer was on its way out and the nights were starting to get chilly again so Ivy basked in the warmth from the makeshift tupperware containers (old yogurt tubs that they had cleaned out) they held in their hands as they walked to the meeting spot they had sent to Eraser for that night.
When they got there they took the fire escape steps all the way up because they did not trust the yogurt tubs to hold up to even a mild amount of jostling and they didn’t fancy being covered in rice all night. Due to their slower pace, Eraser showed up only a few minutes after they took their seat.
“Whatcha got for me?” he asked with mock suspicion as Ivy handed him his serving.
“Katsudon,” they answered with an eye roll.
He raised his eyebrows looking vaguely impressed as he pulled the flimsy lid off of the tub.
“Looks good, you got chopsticks or am I supposed to drink it?”
They threw his chopsticks at him and they nearly fell over the ledge as he fumbled to catch them with no warning.
“Brat,” he retorted under his breath as he adjusted the chopsticks in his grip.
“Keep complaining and I’ll take it back,” they shot back as they took the lid off of their own container and turned away before taking off their mask.
They expected to eat in silence like they normally did but after a minute Eraser piped up.
“You made this?” he asked
They pressed their mask to their face and made sure the voice modulator was on before responding with an affirmative grunt and going back to their dinner.
“‘S good,” he commented before letting silence fall over them once more.
Ivy was glad their back was turned because they were sure they had a blush across their cheeks right now. Instead of responding they shoved more food into their mouth and did their best to ignore the swelling pride in their gut.
***
Shota wasn’t sure what he expected from Ivy making him dinner but it definitely wasn’t this. He figured their culinary skills would be on par with the average 20-ish-year-old bachelor and he was pleasantly surprised to find that they weren’t. It wasn’t the best katsudon he’d ever had but it was pretty damn good and he ate the whole thing without complaint, hell he might have gone back for seconds if that was an option.
“I made some for Mic too,” they said as they finished their portion and handed him a much more substantial tupperware that wouldn’t bust open mid-jump.
Looking at it more closely he realized it was his tupperware, one that he’d let the kid take home one night and forgot about.
“Might wanna have an early night, I don’t know how safe it is to leave out at room temperature for too long,” they added as he took the box.
“Should be fine for a few hours, thanks kid,” he said doing his best to keep an insufferably fond smile off his face, he had a reputation to maintain.
***
He finally met the man with scars that he had been seeing for a month or so now on accident. He noticed that some guy was following him around on his way back home from school one day and he was so busy looking over his shoulder to see if he’d lost him yet that he ran straight into the guy.
“S-sorry, sir!” he peeped out, “I wasn’t looking where I was g-going,” he added as he glanced over his shoulder again.
He must not have been subtle about it because the scarred man looked behind him as well.
“Someone following you?” he asked, ignoring his apology entirely.
That took him a bit off guard, most people around here would throw a big fuss if you ran into them like that, Izuku was expecting to be insulted at the very least if not pushed right back.
“Oh, um, yeah,” he answered honestly because he was too dumbstruck to talk himself out of the situation, “But i-it’s fine, I’m almost home and my d-dad’s waiting for m–”
“Is it the guy in the blue jacket?” he asked cutting Izuku off.
“Um, y-yeah,” he answered.
“I’ll take care of it, you watch where you’re going,” he said before walking away and not sparing Izuku another glance.
He stood there confused for a moment before shaking himself out of his stupor. That was… nice? He definitely didn’t need the help but it saved him 20 minutes of circling around back alleys to shake this guy off his tail.
Izuku couldn’t stop thinking of him for the rest of the night. Getting a close-up look at him didn’t make him any less intimidating, but it did give him some more information on the guy. He sounded young, probably in his 20s or so and the scars were most certainly burn scars (Izuku knew those all too well) but those were some of the worst he’d ever seen. His skin was held together by staples and over half of his face was purple and warped. He couldn’t imagine how much pain that guy must be in 24/7. He wondered what happened to him but he knew he would never ask, it was just morbid curiosity and certainly not something the man wanted to talk about.
***
All Might kept up his promise to keep sparring with Izuku and he was sure that Eraser had noticed; he was getting used to fighting someone faster than him and more than once it resulted in brutally quick takedowns on patrol. Eraser didn’t say anything about it but he did raise an impressed eyebrow from time to time and he even laughed once when some thug started talking shit and Ivy had him on his ass before he even finished his sentence.
They started each morning with 30 to 45 minutes of sparring before Izuku got to work on hauling trash. 5 months in and halfway through the 10-month plan he was definitely over halfway done, he honestly couldn’t believe it. It looked impossible when he surveyed the whole coast but once he started working he got into the rhythm and didn’t even notice how much progress he was making until he stepped back again.
Plus, it was much easier to work as the last of the summer heat faded from the air. He always worked through the sweaty discomfort so he wasn’t sure how much cooler air would help his progress but he was excited to find out. He’d always preferred cooler weather, it made his perpetual long sleeves and full-length pants more bearable. He used to be able to get away with shorts and three-quarter-length sleeves but ever since his vigilante career had started those weren’t an option anymore; he had too many scars and he didn’t have enough lies to cover them up. Maybe one day, if all of this goes to plan, he could go out in a tank top again; no one would bat an eye at a hero covered in scars.
***
“Sorry I’m late, my boy! I ran into an incident on my way here and felt I should stick around in case I was needed!”
“Oh, that’s n-no problem… um, what happened?” Midoriya asked nervously.
This may have been the first time that the kid tried to further a conversation without prompting and Toshinori had to bite back his excitement, lest he scare the kid off.
“It was an armed robbery at the bank on block 37 but young Kamui Woods took care of it in a flash!” he responded
“Kamui Woods? He’s newer on the scene but he’s made quite the entrance, I bet he’ll be topping the charts by next year,” the boy mused, seemingly to himself, but he did so without stammering or stuttering which surprised him.
“Yes, I don’t doubt that. He didn’t even need to enter the building to take those guys out! He stuck some branches through the vents and restrained all three of the perps before they even knew what happened!” he continued, hoping to coax more commentary out of him.
“He did? How far would he have had to extend his limbs to wind through the vents and get to them? What’s his limit? That was a pretty risky move, did he have visuals on his targets? If he missed it could have turned into a blood bath. I know some trees have ways of communicating through root systems, maybe he had a way to sense things with his limbs, that would be really cool, he could…” his ranting quickly turned into incomprehensible mumbles as he pulled out a beat-up notebook that was marked “Hero Analysis vol. 13” and started scribbling things down.
From his odd angle, he could see that the page already had some things written down and the page next to it had a surprisingly skilled and detailed drawing of the hero in question. This must be that analysis book he was talking about! The boy was writing faster than Toshinori could even think and he had to hold himself back from asking questions; he didn’t want to disrupt his train of thought. He watched for maybe 40 seconds before Midoriya froze and started spouting apologies for getting sidetracked.
“Nonsense, my boy! This is all a part of your training, you learn a lot from these analyses, don’t you?”
“I-I don’t know about that, it’s j-just a hobby,” he insisted.
“You don’t give yourself enough credit, young Midoriya! Those were some insightful thoughts, at least from what little I heard. Those are the types of questions you should be asking, heroics teachers have three years to try and beat that type of critical thinking into young heroes’ skulls and you’ve already got it down pat! If you can do analyses on the fly that quickly it might even be an asset in combat; being able to find and exploit an enemy’s weaknesses could be what makes or breaks a fight.”
He didn’t respond to that, he just looked down and started chewing on his lip as he fiddled with the pages of his notebook. He looked like he might be gearing up to say something so Toshinori gave him a moment.
“I, um, I do– well that’s part of what I, um, that’s part of the analyses I do, I outline a hero’s strengths and weaknesses, um, b-based off their quirk and fighting s-style,” he admitted sheepishly.
He didn’t look him in the eye when he said that and he barely said it loud enough for him to hear it but thankfully he stuttered enough for Toshinori to have the time to string together what he was saying.
“That’s brilliant, my boy!” he praised. He hoped he wasn’t pushing his luck as he pressed for more information, “So what do we know about Young Kamui then?”
“Oh, I-I don’t know m-much about him, I haven’t had the t-time to look into the newer heroes. B-but, um, from what I’ve seen he’s p-pretty well rounded, he’s got range and solid defensive and offensive skills, he would be well s-suited for rescue heroics as well as limelight. He has a lot of options open for him w-with a versatile quirk like that. I’d advise him t-to get a sidekick with a pyrokinesis or hydrokinesis quirk when he gets the chance b-because fire is a pretty obvious weakness for him, b-being a tree and all. Anything I have b-beyond that is pure speculation though, I really don’t know much about h-him.”
That was most certainly the longest he’d ever heard the boy speak, barring his incomprehensible anxious mumbling. He stuttered quite a lot but he made some good points, especially given how little he claimed to know about the subject in question.
“If that’s your analysis on someone you hardly know about, I'm curious about what you could do for someone you do know,” he admitted.
He knew if he outright requested to see more of his analyses the boy would comply whether he really wanted to or not so he figured he’d give him an out.
He laughed nervously before responding “Yeah, I-I dunno if we have the t-time to get that in-depth, I t-tend to ramble.”
“Oh, I’d love to hear you ramble, my boy!”
“M-maybe another t-time, we’re already getting a late start,” he responded with a flush high on his cheeks.
***
Izuku had been keeping an eye out for the burned man ever since he had ‘saved’ him. They made sure to stop by him on their annual blanket distribution run they did in the fall. They had continued to salvage any usable scraps of fabric they found on the beach and clean them up to pass out. This year they had far more than they had had in previous years so they loaded up a shopping cart that they definitely didn’t steal and roped Eraser into helping them one night on patrol.
“Where the hell did you even get all these blankets?” Eraser asked when he saw the overloaded shopping cart.
“I find them around and clean them up.”
“So you steal homeless people’s blankets and then give them back to them?”
They leveled a glare at him for that before answering, “No, you ass, I assure you no one was using them.”
“How do you know?” he shot back just to annoy them.
“The places I venture to retrieve these are disgusting. I could clean them up in a muddy puddle and they’d be in better shape than what I found them in.”
That wasn’t too far from the truth, he cleaned them all by hand in the litter layden ocean water before he ever brought them to the laundromat. He couldn’t imagine they would keep letting him in if he brought those blankets in as they were when he found them; the fishy salty smell they gave off before a proper washing was already pushing it.
Eraser raised a brow at that but knew better than to ask further questions.
It was a slow night as they were doing their route on foot but eventually, they found the man they were looking for. He was stood leaning against an alley wall smoking a cigarette and Ivy dug down to the bottom of the cart where they were saving one of the 2 and a half comforters that they had found, they had even patched up the holes by hand. As they walked over and offered the blanket the man just looked at them with a raised brow.
“Why am I getting the only comforter?” he asked suspiciously.
Hmm, he was more observant than they had expected.
“You’re relatively new around here, I figured you don’t have much,” they explained, excusing their favoritism.
The man scoffed at that before dropping his cigarette butt to the ground and grinding it under his heel.
“I can keep myself warm just fine,” he said as he pulled out another cigarette from his pocket and lit it with a blue flame that he conjured on his pointer finger.
Oh… that was… unexpected. They did their best to not appear caught off guard by that and offered him a thinner blanket instead.
“We’ve got more than enough to go around, you might as well take one,” they said when he made no move to accept it.
He looked down to the blanket in their hand then over to the cart then over to Eraser who was talking to a woman across the street.
“You guys aren’t like other heroes,” the man mused before taking the offered blanket.
Ivy couldn’t help but laugh at that, it wasn’t the first time he was mistaken for a hero but he still hadn’t expected it, and he wasn’t wrong. They weren’t like other heroes, they would have been driven out of town if they started arresting people left and right; things were different here and they had to adapt to that.
“I’m not a hero, my friend,” they replied with a smirk.
“I’m not your friend,” he replied with no real malice and paused to take a drag before continuing, “What the hell are you doing this for if you’re not a hero?” he asked.
“Call me a good samaritan, a concerned citizen; I live here too, I’d like for it to be less of a shit hole so I do my best to keep it that way,” they explained.
“And what about him then?” he asked, nodding his head in Eraser’s direction.
“He’s a friend,” they stated simply.
“A hero?”
“Mhmm,” they hummed in the affirmative.
The man shot him with a half judgemental and half incredulous look.
“I keep him in line,” they joked, “He’s a good man. As long as you aren’t doing anything too heinous you don’t have to worry about either of us.”
The man let out a rueful laugh at that.
“Nothing too heinous? What exactly are your qualifications for something being “too heinous”?”
“Needless violence, hard drugs, sexual harassment, stuff like that. Why, are you planning on causing trouble?” they asked, returning the mischievous banter.
“Ah, you never know what I’ll get up to,” he said with a laugh before taking another drag from his cigarette, “Don’t worry, I’ll be sure to clear it with you first,” he said with sarcastic reassurance.
They studied him for a moment trying to figure out what he was playing at before they spoke again, “You can call me Ivy,” they said and offered a hand out for him to shake.
Unsurprisingly, he didn’t take it.
“Are you expecting me to give you my name?” he asked like they were stupid for even trying.
“Well, it was worth a shot,” they said as they lowered their hand back to their side.
“See you around, Ivy” the man dismissed before turning around and walking away with a thin blanket tucked under his arm.
***
As the brisk autumn nights started to bite with the telltale chill of early winter Izuku realized how good things had been going. He was in his brewery office with his sleeves rolled up as he was searing some pork in a pan over his hot plate. Things were good, they were better than good, they were great! He thought back to last April when he’d lost everything, he’d never been as low as he had been those few weeks. He still missed DJ bitterly and every time he got a message from All Might he would see the text conversation he had with Shinso that he couldn’t bear to delete.
The grief and regret came and went; it was difficult to enjoy the things he had without thinking about the things he lost but he did his best to think of the things he had when the thoughts of what he had lost took over his mind. It was cyclical but it was getting better, he was getting better. He had goals, he had a future, and he wasn’t going to let anyone take that away from him, they’d have to pry it out of his cold dead fingers.
He was going to make it, he was going to be a hero.