Shirokuro crouched on the roof of the tallest building in Hosu, scanning the streets below with the help of the Zoom quirk. He was taking the chance to practice stabilizing his sights to effectively use the vision quirk, despite the slight nausea of adding a new quirk.
The Sleep Deprived was truly wonderful. The sun had been down for a good while already, but Shirokuro still felt fresh as in the morning. The quirk had even taken away tiredness he had accumulated during the day before getting it, and it was effortless to use. The quirk was nearly automatic. He could choose to not use it, but it was easier not to.
No wonder the previous owner ended up overusing it. Feeling like this, it was easy to forget there was even such a thing as need for sleep. The effect was similar to almost forgetting permanence of serious injuries on other people when he had regeneration. If Izuku didn't worry about those around him so much he might have forgotten that altogether.
He blinked and zoomed out before zooming in again on a different place. That was easier than trying to move the spot he was looking at any significant distance while zoomed in. A group of heroes got out of a car in a nearby parking lot and scattered in different directions; some alone, some in pairs. One flew up over the rooftops, causing Shirokuro to duck, but she headed in another direction, leaving rest of the group and Shirokuro behind. He reminded himself to not make the mistake of forgetting to look up as most people do.
He still had to check the people below. Doing his best to check each of them, none raised any special familiarity or interest from his research, except... He turned back to one of the heroes, referencing his memories of the heroes in the area. When the man stepped straight under a streetlight it clicked.
"Manual," he muttered under his helmet.
"Do you wish something?" Kurogiri asked behind him.
"I'm going to follow a hero. Let's go to that roof."
He pointed at a building down the street. He would have rather stretched his legs and trained with his jets leaping from building to building, but no one could see Shirokuro using that quirk. Also, his control was still limited. He could leap fine but relied solely on his agility to avoid a need for regeneration with any significant height or distance. Instead, he hopped on a little warp gate that looked like a dark puddle on the roof, a puddle with a whirlpool.
He landed on the other roof and after a few seconds of reorienting rushed to the edge. He was now ahead of Manual who was walking towards him. Shirokuro continued following him, switching between watching him and scanning the surrounding roofs. Mostly the hero just walked around and waved to people that did so to him first. Shirokuro started mentally counting what share of people did so, trying to estimate how these people felt about the man, not that it would describe his true personality. Shirokuro often scanned the alleys Manual passed in case of familiar faces.
He eventually spotted one, but it wasn't one of the ones he was looking. This one made him frown under his helmet. Manual stopped to chat with Native. They seemed to be friendly. Tenya's chosen internship hero was looking worse moment by moment.
They walked together a moment, but a few blocks later stopped by a crossroads, raising their hands in goodbye. Shirokuro froze still for a moment, his eyes darting between the two to the best of his ability at such zoom level. Part of Izuku wanted to keep an eye on Manual to learn everything he could about the man, but that wasn't Shirokuro's mission here.
He leaped between adjacent buildings of the same height to follow Native, the so-called hero he at least knew to be rotten and with at least some people aware of it. If he wanted to discover Stain, he couldn't afford to track every hero individually hoping they were also rotten in the eyes of the killer.
The so-called hero, like most, didn't look up even as Shirokuro was directly above him, and he was alone despite the recent appearance of the Hero Killer; such arrogance was nothing new among heroes though. If Shirokuro wanted to kill the man he felt he would have had a very good chance despite Native being pro, even more so if he could have used Izuku's quirks and blasted the man from above. With so many witnesses around on the street there wasn't even the chance to risk doing so in secret and that was most important. Shirokuro had even added protection in his gloves and sleeves between the hands and elbows to compensate for lack of Dragon Blade for defence. They were inspired by Hitoshi's armguards, but much more hidden in the sleeves.
Unfortunately killing the 'hero' would not have solved anything. Native would just have been shown as a martyr and added to the list of dead heroes that mostly consisted of Stain's victims. It would have been yet another 'hero' who did as he pleased and got away with a clean image. Shirokuro forced himself to look away and up, to check nearby roofs again.
He focused on one nearby roof in sight of the 'hero'. There was a potentially human sized form on it. Shirokuro wasn't sure if it had just arrived or if he had not noticed it before. The only reason he did now was because the wind had picked up, blowing around some long strands of fabric or something similar hanging from the form.
"Kurogiri, rooftop at ten o'clock," Shirokuro said and waited a few seconds, during which the form moved away from the edge and out of sight.
"I saw it. Do you wish to go to that roof?"
"Y..." Shirokuro paused as his thoughts caught up to his mouth. "No, the one next to it that is one story taller, and keep out of sight once I'm there."
Quietly a warp gate formed in the air in front of Shirokuro and he dove through. His feet touched the surface of the other roof without a sound. He crouched down before the second foot even touched the roof and rushed to the edge to look down onto the other roof below. This time he relied on his helmet's night vision rather than his quirks, though a night vision or infrared vision quirk would have been handy.
Even more so considering even with the helmet's optics there was no sign of anyone on the roof. Shirokuro snuck alongside the roofs edge, scanning every millimetre of the roof and those around it. With the warp gate it had only been seconds from seeing the other person to Shirokuro getting here. He couldn't have gone far, but there was no one in sight and the only sounds came from traffic far below and the blowing of wind that was just calming down. Soon there was just a slight whistle of air moving, and a tap of something soft, the whistle of air got higher like...
...something was moving through it rapidly.
Shirokuro leaned back and down so deep he had to catch himself with his hand as a blade of a sword whizzed through where his neck had been a fraction of a second earlier.
He pushed with both his leg and arm to kick at his attacker and immediately flip up. The attacker avoided, but it gave Shirokuro enough time to get on his feet and raise his arm. The sword swung at him again. It impacted his forearm with enough force to even bend the armguard, causing a small slice to press painfully against his skin. The force of the slash alone might have thrown Shirokuro out of balance had Izuku not regularly taken punches from a walking boulder and occasional rocket powered kicks.
Still Shirokuro parried the slash and jumped several steps backwards, dodging a second strike. The attacker didn't immediately charge at him, giving Shirokuro the chance to finally really see his opponent.
It was a tall muscular man with a dark sleeveless shirt and some kind of bandages wrapped around his arms. The waving fabrics Shirokuro had seen were long ends of a scarf and a fabric mask covering the top of the man's face above...
The man had no nose. Also his strangely elongated tongue hung out of his mouth. The minor mutation had to have something to do with his quirk.
He raised the sword, pointing it at Shirokuro who was glad the mask covered his face. He tugged on the Calm Mind to remain focused and keep his feelings away from his voice.
"You are Stain."
"And you were looking for me, 'hero'."
"I was, but I..." Shirokuro started, but Stain's arm twitched. In a fraction of a second a knife appeared in his hand and got thrown towards Shirokuro. It was slower than some of his father's air canon blasts, but Shirokuro barely avoided it, by which time Stain was already on the move. Shirokuro stepped aside from the slash and struck out towards Stains arm with an open hand Vibration already active.
He only barely brushed the sword's handle. Enough of a shockwave passed through the handle to make Stain drop it. The long sword hadn't even touched the roof as Stain swung a smaller but more gruesome looking blade. Shirokuro tried to pull back in time, but the blade still grazed his arm, finding the gap between the arm guard and reinforcements in his gloves.
Shirokuro hissed once as he backed away, but the injury was nothing. The small wound made moving his hand properly more difficult, but would not have taken him out of the fight even if it wasn't already healing. Stain didn't chase after him. The sword clanged once against the roof and bounced a little bit. Stain caught it before it could hit the roof again. He grinned.
It wasn't a happy grin, but rather a deranged grin of a sociopath looking at a helpless prey. Like Bakugo, but maybe even a magnitude worse. He licked his lips, raising the small blade in front of his face. Shirokuro felt death peeking over his shoulder. Stain was planning something. He hadn't even shown his quirk yet.
Shirokuro couldn't leave initiative to the killer anymore and charged. Venomous nails extended through holes in his gloves.
Then Stain licked the blade.
Shirokuro lost all feeling in his limbs and fell forward with the momentum of his own attack. Without the helmet he would have broken his nose at the very least. At least the paralysis didn't come with agonising pain.
He tried to tense all of his muscles but could barely control his eyes and mouth. Was this Stain's quirk or did his blades have venom? No, the effect was too sudden, and it happened when Staid had licked the blade. Shirokuro realized it had to have something to do with his blood, but that didn't tell him how the paralysis happened or how to break it. Was it telepathic, a matter of willpower, something blocking his nerve cells from passing signals from his brain to the muscles and back? The lack of feeling suggested so, but then what did blood have to do with it? How long did the effect last and would his blood type influence that? Did it count as an injury he could heal from like venoms and poisons did?
A pair of still working feet stood next to his head. Thinking time was over.
"You are fast and skilled, I acknowledge that, but your fighting is still unrefined. With a little more time you could have been a worthy foe, but it won't save you from being purged like all fake heroes."
"I am not a hero," Shirokuro managed to finally say. "I tried to tell you. I just followed one who I know is rotten to find you. I'm not here to catch you."
Stain crouched over him. He was so close. If Shirokuro could only have moved. His brain kept sending orders to his muscles, but they did nothing.
"Then why were you looking for me? Answer carefully. You will be judged for it."
"I want to know why you do what you do, what you believe about heroes, but I was also asked to find you. Tomura Shigaraki from the League of Villains wants to meet you."
"Why would I want to meet him? Does he have any worthy conviction to support?"
Shirokuro could not give an honest answer the killer would like, and lying could return to haunt him and Tomura once Stain met him.
"I doubt my words would convince you of that."
"But you would consider him worth following, considering you are here?"
That was the question Shirokuro feared. He drew more on the Calm Mind, nearly forgetting his paraplegic state.
"I don't work for him. We don't get along that well," he paused. "I was told to find you by our... sensei. My name is Shirokuro Shigaraki."
"So, another Shigaraki. Then tell me, what is your conviction? What reason would I have to spare your life?"
The sword's tip hovered over the roof right next to Shirokuro's head and neck. He still could not move and had to control fear to maintain at least the appearance of calmness. As long as he was helpless, he had to convince the killer, and being a scared kid was not going to help.
"I think our convictions are similar, but we disagree on what to do about it," he said. "You hate heroes, probably not the concept of one, but the reality of too many of the 'heroes' in the current system, whatever your standards for a real hero are."
"And if this is my conviction, you say you share it? You also think the fake heroes should be purged?"
Now was the real do or die moment.
"Not the way you think. Heroes are full of selfish, bigoted, and evil people, and most people either don't see or don't care about it, but simply going around killing them won't help, if anything it might make things worse."
The sword twitched next to his head, but now wasn't the time to stop. Shirokuro had lost the initiative in the fight. He could not afford the same in the talk.
"I can understand the feeling of wanting some of them be gone, even the desire to kill them, but that is like treating a wound by wiping blood off the floor. The problem with heroes and the whole hero system isn't with individual bad heroes."
Stain crouched and brought his face closer.
"Then what is it with?"
"It is with the whole system, and how people value quirks and people based on their power. If you have a flashy, physically powerful quirk, people believe you will become a hero, or at least successful from a young age. They favour you with support others don't receive and raise you to believe quirks determine peoples' worth and that your quirk alone will make you successful, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because the people picking who get to be heroes were raised in the same way with the same beliefs. In the end we get a large share of 'heroes' raised to believe in their own superiority by birth, with all kinds of selfish motives and no judgement of their character. Even if they don't want to be rich and famous, they want to be the best for their own ego's sake, not to help others, and when picking their predecessors never even give a chance to kids they don't believe in from the start, based mostly on their quirk."
"So why shouldn't I kill all the fake heroes?"
"Because you cannot kill all of them, and even if you could, you are only making them into martyrs. They will be remembered as great heroes who died supposedly trying to save people from a serial killer. Another person with the same beliefs will take their place, and nothing will change, except the survivors might get more extreme after so much death.
"They will have received the fate they deserve, and a real hero might take their place. You clearly don't have the conviction to do what is needed."
Stain Stood up and the tip of his sword disappeared from Shirokuro's view. Shirokuro started again to internally yell at his body to move. His toe twitched. His fingernails grew out of his gloves.
"You have potential and might not be completely blind to the wrongs of this world. Perhaps one day you will also gain the will to do what is needed."
"Don't," Shirokuro gasped, "go anywhere."
His arm finally moved and struck forward at Stain's leg. The man's spiky boots were tall, so he had to reach upwards towards the back of his knee. Stain reacted fast, but not fast enough. The nails stabbed into the thick-feeling fabric for just an instant before Stain's leg moved away, then came back down on Shirokuro's hand. Shirokuro grunted as his hand got crushed between the boot and the roof.
"I gave you the chance. Seems you aren't even as smart as I tho... What... what is this?"
The pressure on Shirokuro's hand lessened as Stain staggered back and fell on his knees, shaking. Somehow, he had so far managed to avoid falling down completely from the paralysis. Shirokuro got up on one knee, finally able to move again. He laid the broken hand on his other knee as it healed, a bent finger snapping back into place.
"This," Stain gasped, "is not the same quirk as before."
His eyes moved to Shirokuro's hand as Shirokuro flexed his now healed fingers to make sure everything worked.
"What are you?"
"Someone who... has been given many gifts. As I said, I do not work for Tomura, and I'm not like him either, in more ways than one. Not like almost anyone else really."
He paused to look over the shaking murderer in front of him. The venom's effect might not have been as complete as it had been on Izuku what seemed to have been so long ago, but at least for a moment the killer was helpless. If he died now or just got hurt too badly to do anything for a few weeks, there wouldn't even be the risk of Tenya running into him.
Despite all his fears Izuku had not been this close, this eager to take a life since his last fight with Bakugo. Shirokuro stopped fully holding back the Killing Intent quirk, allowing his feelings to mix with the quirk. What effect the quirk had on the killer was hard to say as he was already shaking on his knees.
But Izuku hesitated. Despite all of the dark feelings, Shirokuro did not move. He had a mission, and he was curious. He wasn't here to do the heroes' job. Even if Shirokuro didn't go out of his way to assassinate scum like Native, he wasn't about to protect one from Stain either.
He sighed and pushed the Killing Intent quirk back into its box deep within.
"The Venom won't last forever, but perhaps you are more willing to talk now. I won't try to kill you. Hopefully you return the favour once you can move."
Stain still shaking, but not making a sound despite the pain, grinned.
"You are a strange person. Fine, neither of us shall die here tonight. I will not promise more. What is it you want to say to defend these fake heroes?"
"Nothing. I want to say I agree with you that many heroes and the system that put them in that place is rotten. Not sure if we agree on details of what counts as rotten. One thing we do not agree on is going on a killing spree. You need to do much more to really change anything. At the very least the rot should be exposed. If enough people learn the truth of enough heroes, they might start asking questions."
"You think we are going to suddenly have real heroes if people start asking questions?"
Shirokuro shook his head and spoke more quietly.
"No, at least not suddenly, but it is the only way. The system won't change if its flaws are not exposed and the rotten people the system supports won't go anywhere until the whole thing changes. Also," he paused, "there are still some real heroes. They just need the opportunities to show it. If you are a simple killer, you might not care about it, but if you really do it because of the flaws you see then you should also consider how to have them replaced by someone better. Seems like that should be at least half of your... conviction."
"And you think you can do this?"
"I can try. I think I can at least achieve more than your killing spree does if I can expose the actions of the heroes you would only kill."
"And the Shigaraki you want me to meet?"
"He... His methods are more similar to yours, and you might be able to help each other in your goals, but I am not convinced you would find common ground in your... convictions."
"You are not trying very hard to be convincing."
"If I trick you to come with lies, the chances of finding agreement, however low they might be now, will be lost as soon as you meet the truth."
"Interesting," Stain said and jolted a bit. He started pushing himself up. His movements were still shaky and he was gritting his teeth from the effects of the venom, but he was moving.
"How are you moving? If you are still feeling pain, it should be paralyzing you."
"Those who would allow pain to paralyse themselves will not survive in the shadows of this world," Stain said, his voice strained from the effort. "You are different from most that lurk in them, at least from most of those who have what it takes to survive."
Shirokuro was already back on his feet and a few steps back from the killer, nails extended again. He remained quiet, observing every tiny motion of the man in front of him. That was until the stare broke through even Calm Mind to make Shirokuro's insides squeeze like the Killing Intent had been turned around against himself. He remained still.
"If you think you can talk me out of my mission you are mistaken, but I can meet the other Shigaraki, with one condition."
"What is your condition?"
"You."
...
"Me?"
"Yes, you. I want you to meet me again. You might lack the will to go far enough, or maybe not. I want to learn more and..." He raised his sword he had somehow kept a hold of even while under the venom's influence. "I want you to face me again. I want to see the potential I can feel but have yet to witness, even if I have to force it out of you. If you accept this, I will meet the other Shigaraki after a few meetings with you. Assuming you aren't afraid... and survive. There is no point in fighting or training if I hold back."
Shirokuro was still processing what he had heard. Had this killer, a killer who had killed dozens of heroes seemingly with nothing but swords and a quirk that only worked after his opponent bled... Had he just offered to train Shirokuro? The man put his sword away with a swing nearly as fast as his attacks. He shifted his weight between his legs, about to move, perhaps leave.
"I'm not afraid," Shirokuro said, raising the hand Stain had stepped on and flexed the completely uninjured fingers. He pulled his sleeve back enough to demonstrate the cut had already healed. "You can't do anything to me that the Nomu I usually train with haven't already done. I'm sure you have heard about the Nomu by now, after the USJ."
"I have. What is your answer? I am not going to talk all night."
"I agree to your condition. Sounds interesting, but I expect you to fulfil your side of the bargain soon. Tomura is not a patient person."
Stain huffed in disgust and turned away. "Then you better be worth meeting him."
He stepped to the edge.
Shirokuro walked closer. "Needless to say you should not talk about anything you've learned to anyone," he warned.
"The same applies to you. I have no tolerance to anyone who would help the fake heroes. Come to this roof tomorrow at midnight, and make sure you are rested," Stain replied.
"Don't worry about that," Shirokuro smirked under his helmet. Then Stain jumped over the edge. Shirokuro waited for a few seconds and then strolled to look over it, not surprised when he saw no sign of the man.
He drew a deep breath then another faster and turned around to face the comforting dark form of mist.
"Time to leave," was all he needed to say before a warp gate opened and he rushed through into the safe solitude of a dark but familiar training room. Shirokuro rushed to a bench on the edge of the room and fell on it. He leaned his elbows on his knees and head on his hands as he began to unwind from the meeting. All of the quirk-covered tension crept up on him.
He had met Stain, the real Stain. He had fought the killer.
He had had the opportunity to end the killer.
Shirokuro knew what he did was the only right choice he could make to complete his mission and learn about someone who saw the same-ish issues he did and actually did something about it, however misguided and brutally he went about it. The helmet around Shirokuro's head started feeling tighter and more oppressing as he gasped for air through its filters. He grabbed the latches holding the helmet in place and started yanking them until he managed to take the helmet off and drop it on the bench next to him.
One different choice and Izuku would not have needed to worry about Tenya chasing after a serial killer, the serial killer that had already devastated him and his family even if Tensei was still alive. Shirokuro couldn't just ask Stain to leave a specific student alone if they ever ran into each other. Izuku put his hand on his face to hide the tears that leaked out. The room felt cold on top of being dark and empty, except for Kurogiri, but he remained standing a step away. Someone might have called it a respectful distance, but it felt more like a wide ravine separating them.
The watchful gaze of Kurogiri felt safe, but the Nomu's silent guard lacked the feelings and close warmth Izuku needed at the moment, and he didn't have his usual shoulders to lean on, not for Shirokuro's issues. Izuku gestured the walking mist cloud to come closer and leaned against the comforting darkness. Thinner mist flowed off the Nomu, completely covering Izuku. It helped a bit with his getting back control of himself without relying on quirks. It would take time, but he had time. It wasn't like he was going to sleep tonight.