Heroes, Vigilantes, and Villains

Chapter twenty-nine

"We're getting a new student?!" One of the girls in the class loudly exclaimed, her voice brimming with more excitement than I thought was strictly necessary for the situation.

The students in the room all started whispering to one another, a loud buzzing slipping out from under the crack of the door that sounded almost like a drone of bees rather than children.

"But why didn't they join earlier?" One of them asked in a tone similar to my own.

"I'll let him tell you that himself," the hero said after a brief pause that I could only assume was filled by one of his more drawn out sighs. Then louder he added, "You can come in now."

With a little force behind my movements, I pushed the door open and walked inside, closing it just loudly enough behind me that my mood was sent to the hero in the room without the door actually having to slam shut. The maneuver was a lot more complicated than it needed to be given the captivity of my hands, something that Eraserhead hadn't seemed to have accounted for as a guilty look had flitted across his face at the sight of them once more.

All eyes in the room train on me from the moment that I step inside of it. All of the children present were kids that I knew the name of from the UA Sports Festival only so long ago. But one pair of eyes stuck out more than any of the others.

Eyes as red as a raging fire tracked my movements as I walked deeper into the classroom, stopping in front of all of the desks. The gaze was heavy and without their normal relentless anger, instead filling themselves with something that I couldn't quite place. That I didn't bother to as I looked past him to the lilac ones that were waiting desperately to meet mine. Hito smiled in a way that looked remarkably like the teacher that was standing at my back, but I could tell that it was meant to be reassuring, at least in some manner.

Show them your teeth even if it's not with a smile.

"My name is Izuku Midoriya," I informed the class before any questions could start. I could feel the way that IIda's stare changed as he seemed to struggle to place just where he had heard my voice last. It was almost amusing to watch. "I've been put into your class as a member of a subsection of the villain rehab program that UA had created years ago, the vigilante rehab program. I watched as they all took in the information, a hint of fear betraying itself on most of their young faces. All except for Hito who already knew everything and Bakugo who, until now, thought that he did. He didn't bother to be scared, but rather confused instead. "Which is complete bullshit since I'm neither a villain nor a vigilante," I added bitterly, something that made the man standing behind me sigh as if I had said something tiredly and without base.

A light bulb seemed to have gone off in the kid's eyes as Iida finally looked up at me with recognition, finally placing where he had heard my voice before today. His hand ghosted over the carving on the back of his neck, wincing as if he'd expected a blade to still be placed there.

"But you-" the hero student began to protest, unable to grasp the words that he was hearing.

I looked down at the boy with a darkness in my eyes that I now knew came from my father, an endless abyss that seemed to reject all light from ever touching it once more. "I wouldn't finish that sentence if I were you," I warned the boy, "engines for legs."

Confused mummers drifted through the classroom as the boy shrunk away from my gaze, looking down guiltily at his hands that he had placed stiffly in his lap. "You know why you're here, Icarus," Eraserhead said, effectively cutting off the whispers at once.

"Yeah," I agreed dryly, my voice more devoid of humor than it ever had been, turning to meet the hero's stare head on, looking at him for the first time today. "Illegal use of a support weapon, that I had made myself, and that thing with the nomu. In other words," I decided, "bull. Shit." The hero seemed unimpressed by my words, but I didn't feel like stopping. That feeling was bubbling up inside of me once more and it was back with a vengeance, coloring my tone for the first time in a year now. "Just like these," I told him, raising my arms so that he would see the cuffs once more, so that he would be forced to see them and remember the information that he'd been made privy to without my consent.

The hero sighed to cover up the guilty look that seemed to be threatening to morph his face into something other than the featureless stone that he seemed to cling to almost as much as I did.

"Here." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a thin piece of metal that I knew even from as far away that I was from the other that it was a key.

"No need," I reported, rolling my wrists in a smooth motion that shifted and undid the last of the lock as I snapped just for show. The cuffs fell from my wrists, creating that most beautiful sight that I had seen all day as they came closer and closer to the ground. I kicked them into the air at the last second, catching the metal firmly in my hands as I walked towards the surprised hero, dropping them carelessly in his outstretched palm. "I would have behaved perfectly fine without them, you know."

It's not like I couldn't run when you already knew my name.

I walk past Bakugo's piercing stare to the boy sitting two desks behind him. There was a heavy sense of pride in Hito's eyes when I reached him, fist already outstretched as I bumped my own against his.

"That was some cool trick there," he commented in a tone that most wouldn't know was a compliment if they didn't know him as well as I did. "You'll have to teach me some time."

I wanted to tell him that he shouldn't have to learn such a skill, that it came from long days spent in my room as wide awake as I tended to be at night because my mind had become as much of a dangerous place as the streets at night since the shadows started to morph into monsters everytime that I closed my eyes. I wanted to tell him that I only learned how to pick locks as I had because I had never been able to escape the ones that had held me for a week that had felt like so much longer. That it was much more than a simple party trick.

But he didn't need to know that. Not yet.

Though some part of wondered if maybe a part of him already did.

"Thanks, maybe I will," was all I said instead.

Class started not long after that, though the hero never really did manage to make the other students listen as well as they might have on any other day.