A State of Decay

Chapter 5

"I might not be back for a couple of days," Izuku tells his roommate as he puts on his hero costume. It's altered from when he last wore it publicly; Hatsume still designs his stuff and helps him do a complete redesign, opting for darker colors this time around. His arm braces were black with dark green accents; he still rocked the red and black shoes and the black leg braces. The suit was black with darker green accents on the sides where the white used to be. This way, he could be a lot more stealthy. The green stuck out like a sore thumb.

"Why's that?" Hitoshi asks.

"There's someone I've been tracking for a while," Izuku says as he adjusts his leg braces. Hitoshi is getting himself ready for his legit Underground Hero shift, securing his capture scarf over the top of his black hero costume. "I can't say much about it just yet, but I promise I'll let you know how I'm doing when I can."

"It would be better if you could let someone know where you were going," Hitoshi says.

"I would do that, but I can't. You know that, Toshi," Izuku tells his roommate. "The last thing I want is to put anyone else in danger. Besides--I need this person to trust me if they're who I think they are." 

Izuku was no stranger to 'befriending' villains nowadays. Yes, he still did some hero work, taking down those who deserved it, but he was starting to realize that he might actually get more done from the inside. 

Some people and groups dedicated themselves to taking down the Safety Commission. Yeah, they were classified as villains, but he was curious to see if these groups were real. He'd only heard a bit of gossip while doing his patrols and was tired of not making any progress by himself. 

He needs to do more. 

Even if they were classified as villains, if Izuku decides to take a stand against the Commission, that would inevitably get him labeled as a villain, too. There was no workaround. He just has to keep his morals straight and get through this without compromising who he is as a person. 

He has his convictions, and the villains have theirs. If their purposes align briefly, then Izuku would take advantage of that. Doing what he was doing now didn't seem to get him anywhere. He was ready to take more significant and purposeful steps toward his goals. 

* * * 

Izuku's search had to start somewhere, and he had an idea of where that might be. 

Stain The Hero Killer. 

Once upon a time, Izuku would have loved nothing more than to put this man behind bars, but he finds himself thinking more and more like the villain every day. While he disagrees with Stain's methods, the villain had seen through the Commission's bullshit sooner than anyone else had. There were corrupt heroes out there. Everyone knew that now. 

That's why Izuku had turned away from the legal hero track and decided to slip into his own methods of getting justice. The system just wasn't working anymore. 

His search takes him to a small bar on the "bad" side of the city. While order and control were starting to fall back into place, many places still couldn't be policed. Villains and gangs ran the streets in these places, where he heard he might find Stain. 

He steps through the establishment's doors and is immediately surprised by the atmosphere. Not only that--it's the man behind the bar that he wasn't expecting to see. 

Kurogiri. 

The place is clean and well-kept, and while he recognizes the faces of a few shifty characters, nothing else is out of the ordinary about this place. It's a clean and well-lit place that looks more like a cafe than a dilapidated old bar he would expect a villain to run.