Looking out into the darkening night from a window of his own, All Might trekked around his apartment and took a swig from his opened beer, his desk almost completely buried under files and photographs. One of them, a publicity shot of the local band Hangman's Joke, was lying on the coffee table. It had been doodled on – the face of Izuku Midoriya was colored in with white, black over the eyes and mouth.
The R-rated hero Midnight, dedicated to her job, had caught him at it shortly after she'd brought him the files of Izuku Midoriya and Momo Yaoyorozu. He'd been sitting at his desk, thinking about his earlier encounter with the strange man.
"Don't thank me", she'd said as she delivered the files. "Are we fighting the good fight?"
All Might flashed her a gentle smile before his face returned to a somber mask. "Double homicide a year ago. No convictions. And Midnight, look at that", he'd said, pointing to a sheet of paper.
"'We, the undersigned tenants of 1929 Calderon Court Apartments...' What's this, a petition?"
Nodding, All Might clarified, "A big 'kick-me' sign for a very nice girl who found herself a cause...that cause got her killed."
"She was fighting tenant eviction in that neighborhood?" Midnight had asked with wide eyes. Even freshly hired onto the force, she had a good idea about how rough that neighborhood was.
"She being Momo Yaoyorozu, and her nice rock-and-roll boyfriend, Izuku Midoriya."
"You know", Midnight pointed out, "the last time you went snooping around on a mission is when you got injured by Toxic Chainsaw, All Might."
"Yeah, I know", All Might had answered rather moodily, starting to doodle on the publicity photo. "Aizawa keeps reminding me."
"Oh, I imagine he does..." Midnight's voice drifted off as she noticed All Might's doodling of the Irony mask on Izuku's face. "And at this rate, you're gonna wind up working a café."
Albrecht had merely answered with a sly grin and a wink. "I'm cool."
Midnight shook her head. "You didn't get that file from me, ok? And don't tell me you owe me one", she playfully demanded as she walked away from his desk.
"Uh...I owe you one", he'd said anyway, catching a hint of her charming smile as a response. Then he looked at the picture he'd colored on – noticing Izuku's face perfectly matching the face of the person he'd seen earlier. "Damn!"
Later, right as he'd been told his desk shift was over, All Might had taken the files and pictures home to study them. He had to see if there was anything unusual about what he'd seen back then – if one or the other had somehow faked their deaths by striking a deal, using a mannequin, something...but looking over the files and what they said, there was nothing at all unusual about the documented events from a year ago. So how had-?
Suddenly he heard a news report flash onto the TV – he'd forgotten he'd turned it on when he got back. "As you can see, I'm here near Dagobah beach, the site of last year's biggest Devil's Night conflagration. It was exactly one year ago – "
Something was wrong. All Might could feel it like the hairs prickling up on the back of his neck. Following his gut, he ran into his bedroom expecting to find something, but it was empty. The only thing different was the open bedroom window. But how-?
"FREEZE!"
The cry made All Might jump a mile, his beer bottle clattering to the floor as he caught his breath, and turning to face the crier. It was him again – long messy dark green hair, leather trenchcoat, painted face, and what looked like electrical tape wrapped around his palms, down his arms beneath the leather, and around his stomach. All Might also noted that around Eric's neck was leather on which hung a gold ring.
"Jesus...don't ever do that, Young Midoriya!" All Might ordered.
Giving him a shrug, Izuku came to the coffee table and bent down to pick up the photograph All Might colored in. "Good likeness" Izuku commended him.
"You...I saw your body, Young Midoriya. You died; you got buried!" All Might spoke as Izuku looked into All Might's bedroom at the files. But as All Might finished, Izuku turned around to face him.
"You're still in hero form."
Did he? All Might rose up a hand to confirm that before turning back to Toshinori, and suddenly he felt a touch subconscious that he was facing this guy in only a t-shirt and boxers. That feeling died quickly with all the questions that flooded his brain. Through this, he barely noticed Izuku departing into the adjacent kitchen and returning with another beer. "Say, a-are you some kinda... ghost?"
"Boo!" Izuku replied facetiously, twisting the bottle cap off and handing Albrecht the beer. Then he slowly fell back to seriousness, leaning himself down into a chair at the corner of the table. "I don't know what I am", Izuku answered honestly. "I need you to tell me what happened to us."
Ignoring his judgment, Toshinori went with his instinct again and decided to do as Izuku asked. He didn't know of anything else he could do. "Well, you took a six-story dive out of the window. She, uhm...was beaten and raped, died at the hospital."
Izuku winced, his eyes growing wide with terror and anger. He'd had a sinking feeling that that was ultimately what happened, but fresh rage washed over him again at hearing again what had happened.
"Hey, come on. Read the file", Toshinori told him, going into his bedroom to grab it. "Momo Yaoyorozu held on for thirty hours in the ICU, and then her body finally just gave it up. I couldn't do jack for her, man." He offered Izuku the file to see for himself. Instead, Izuku rose from his chair and approached Toshinori, his hands outstretched.
Toshinori took a step back, but Izuku managed to reach his temples –
-the palpable atmosphere of anxiety and fear as doctors and nurses worked feverishly at the battered and ruined body of Momo, applying an IV, AED paddles, watching her heartbeat slowly give way, her outstretched hand slowly dropping to her side, the anguish and pain through All Might's eyes seeping into every fiber of his soul –
Eric backed away, tremors rocking every bone in his body as if he were falling under the trance of a seizure. He collapsed against the chair, cupping his head with his fingers digging into his dark locks. "Don't touch me!" he screamed, pushing the chair away as he fell completely onto the floor.
"Hey...you ok?" Toshinori asked.
"I saw her", Izuku sobbed. He looked up at Toshinori with wide eyes, tears at the edges. "I saw her through your eyes." His tone was one of surprise and gratitude. "You stayed with her the whole time."
"Yeah, well..." Toshinori started, unsure of what to say at first as he sat down on the corner of the table, taking out a cigarette. "You've gotta understand something, alright? I was...hoping she'd come out of it, you know? Give me something I could work with." He lit the cigarette with a sigh as Izuku's face looked back into his, half-stony and half-devastated.
"Why didn't you do something about it?"
"Hey, come on, man." Toshinori said. "You think any of those people in that building – even the ones who signed the petition – would talk after what happened to you? I mean, I kept asking questions and..." He let out a dejected sigh as he finished, "I finally got busted for sticking my nose where it wasn't wanted."
Izuku nodded slowly, understanding that there was nothing else Toshinori could've done. But this made him beg the question: what could he, Izuku, have done to help make things better? Sure, vengeance on the gang that killed him was a start, but maybe he was inflicting it a bit too late. He didn't know, and at this point, not knowing was killing him.
He noticed a picture sitting on the coffee table – Toshinori and a lovely young woman, her eyes locked onto Toshinori, but her body slightly turned away from his. "This your girlfriend?" Izuku asked.
"Yeah. We...well, not anymore", Toshinori confessed. "We broke up. All this...well, kinda proved to be too much for her."
Izuku nodded lightly, his gaze seeming to fade inward. "It's funny...little things used to mean so much to Momo. I used to think they were kind of trivial." Then his gaze sharpened, seeming to bury itself deep into Toshinori's soul and start to light a distant fire inside. "Believe me, nothing is trivial", Izuku finished. Then he reached up and snagged the cigarette from Toshinori's mouth. He took a drag from it, holding it up with a rueful look on his face as he let out a shaky breath. "You shouldn't smoke these", he said with a light, half-forced chuckle. "They'll kill you."
Then, slowly, Izuku rose to his feet and moved toward the back of the room toward the hall that let into the apartment. Toshinori kept a close eye on him as he did so. "You gonna vanish into thin air again?" Toshinori asked.
Izuku slowly turned his head back to Albrecht, his eyes glistening with restrained tears and his voice barely composed. He kept his arms crossed tightly across his ribs as if he were physically holding his body together. "I thought I'd use your front door", he said, his voice quiet and soft.
Toshinori nodded before saying, "Listen, man...I'm sorry as hell for what happened with you and your girlfriend.
Izuku looked at him sadly. "Yeah", he whispered, unable to say anything else, his mind lost in the memories of Momo as he departed through the door, leaving Toshinori alone.
"Yeah."
"I got stabbed!"
Bakura paced impatiently across the room, separated from Dio and his angry ranting by the long table on which Haruko lounged almost lazily. Just behind Dio's form lurked Iida, fiddling lightly with a jointed finger-cuff on his pinky. This wasn't exactly the best point of their evening, but they had to listen if they truly wanted to know who – or what – they were up against.
"I shot the son of a bitch!" Dio continued to cry. "I watched the bullet hole close by itself, and then my business gets blown up real good." His gaze turned to Haruko, finishing, "Other than that, my day sucked."
Shaking his head, Iida looked up at his boss and followed up with, "I saw him too, Bakura. He had a guitar. And he winked at me before he jumped out of Grape's fourth-floor window like he had wings. I look outside – nothing."
"He winked at you?" Bakura repeated, his eyebrows raising as he himself shook his head. "Tsk...musicians."
Dio, however, wasn't going to be kept waiting patiently for long. "So far I haven't heard shit about what you're all gonna do about all this crap. I mean, what do I get? My livelihood flushed away and going swirling, that's what I get."
Bakura had just about had enough of this hog's grunting. He leaned across the table to look Dio straight in the eye, saying as calmly as he could, "You haven't lost everything, Dio."
"Yeah, and maybe you're not such a big shot either!" Dio shouted, standing to return his gaze before Iida forced him back down, squeezing his shoulder tight. "Ow! Jesus!"
"Fair enough", Bakura conceded with a shrug before lazily tossing something to Dio. "Catch."
Dio followed his orders instinctively before looking down and dropping what he'd caught in abject horror. Bakura, however, kept his cool. "Say hello to the last fella who wouldn't cooperate with me", he asked.
His gaze moving between the ripped-out human eye and the person who'd tossed it to him, Dio could barely get his words out. "You're telling me...you're telling me this thing's real!?"
"All the power in the world resides in the eyes, fella", Bakura lectured, turning his back on Dio to walk over to a sword case hidden behind a secret door. As he withdrew a long cutlass, he continued meaningfully, "Sometimes they're more useful than the people who bear them."
"You're directly outta your fuckin' mind! You know that!?"
All but ignoring Dio's fearful cry, Bakura walked back toward him, flashing the cutlass at him from across the room. "Yeah. Eyes see. One of the most important things I learned from my sister", he said, raising his eyebrows toward Haruko, who flashed him the barest hint of a seductive smile.
"Your sister?" Dio asked surprisingly, looking at Haruko and Bakura in turn, unable to contain a few chuckles. "She's supposed to be your sister?"
"My father's half-human daughter", Bakura answered seriously, stepping closer. "That's right. What's the matter, you don't see the resemblance?" Taking a classic swordsman's stance, he held the tip of his sword up against Dio's bobbing Adam's apple while Haruko pressed one high-heeled foot against Dio's shoulder and Iida pressed his hands down on both shoulders. They had him trapped.
"Now, let's take it from the top, friend. With a lot of detail – what do you say?"
Shaking fearfully, his gaze flickering, Dio managed to eke out an answer to Bakura's threat. "He had a bird with him – nearly pecked my face off! He told me to tell F-Bird that...that death was on its way, whatever the fuck that means." He took a moment to let in and out a shaky breath, fidgeting a bit. "Midoriya. He said his name was Izuku Midoriya." His gaze focused on Bakura's blade. "Want to relax that thing now?"
Bakura did so, walking away from his prisoner for a few steps. "And this...bird man...he just happened to let you live, hm?" He looked back at Dio, his voice dropping to a growl. "You sure you ain't makin' all of this up just to save your own ass?"
Now he'd gotten Dio angry. "I ain't making all this up", he growled back in return, his voice rising to its gruff tone. "I ain't twisted like you two fucks!"
Slowly, Haruko removed her foot from Dio's shoulder, and Iida removed his hands after Bakura told him it was all right to do so. "A boy and his bird...awful touching", Bakura commented sarcastically.
Dio let out a laugh, and Bakura cracked a smile in return.
Then, as fast as a whip cracking, he spun on his heels and thrust the sword deeply through Dio's throat, the blade coming out bloody on the other side of the skin, pinning Dio to the chair as he convulsed wildly. The sounds of him choking to death on his own blood rang morbidly through the room.
"Oh, for fuck's sake, die, will ya!" Bakura ordered as if he were a work force boss disappointed at his workers not moving fast enough. Holding out a hand to Iida, he said, "Gimme that bloody thing."
Iida complied and handed over his custom TMP, which Bakura aimed at Dio's writhing form and fired a couple of shots, the twin explosions quieting everything else out as the slugs tore into Dio's chest and stomach, putting him out of his misery.
"Thanks", Bakura said, handing the gun back. Holstering it as Haruko went over to Bakura and held him closely, Iida reported, "Grape said he saw a big black bird too. Then he choked to death on his own blood after being shot full of enough morphine to kill an elephant."
Bakura nodded before his gaze moved back to Haruko – Iida's signal to leave. "I'll have the janitor come on up", he stated, leaving the private murder scene.