Chapter Text
The scent of blood in the air was still very prominent but the quiet that followed was so much worse. Deku stayed rooted to the spot, his own ragged breathing being the only sound in that dark alleyway. He didn't know how much time had passed, if someone had found Bakugo, if his mother had been worrying about him. He sat there staring at his hands before he heard the rythmatic sound of shoes skipping against bricks.
"Wow."
A light and airy voice drifted through the shadows.
"That is a really reallyyy pretty color on you..."
Deku flinched, spinning around so fast and wiping his eyes with his bloody sleeves, marking his cheek.
Emerging from the shadows was a girl. She looked about his age, wearing a slightly tethered middle school uniform with an over sized beige cardigan. Her blonde hair was pinned up in two messy, undone buns. Her bright golden eyes gleamed with an intense unsettling fascination. She wasn't looking at his face, more at the stains splattered on his clothes.
"Who-Who are you?!"
Deku choked out, scooting back until his back hit the cold brick behind him. Panic hit him. He was gonna get caught. A witness. She'll call someone on him.
Instead of running in fear she just giggled, A sweet yet scary sound that didn't match the atmosphere at all. She skipped forward with no fear prominent on her face and tilted her head.
"Im Himiko Toga!"
She stopped In front of him just a few feet away, leaning close enough that Deku could see sharp fangs poking out of her lower lip.
"Who'd you make bleed? You loved them I bet...that's why you made them bleed!"
Deku's heart rammed against his ribs and clenched his fists.
"I didn't. Why are y-"
"Its okay!"
Toga cut him off in a whisper, her expression still twisted with a tinge of boredom.
"Y'know the world is sooo mean to people like us. They want us to hide what makes us happy! But I found some people and they don't care what I like...they think the world is built wrong too..."
She held out her pale and slender hand. Her nails sharp with dirt underneath.
"Come with me! No one will judge you! Plus if you stay hereeee..."
Deku looked at her stretched out hand. She...was right. If the heroes catch him he'd need to explain how he feels. He cant just say "I just killed my best friend and felt relief'!...They...They wouldn't understand.
Slowly, and with a trembling hand he reached out and clasped her. Her grip was surprisingly warm, pulling him forward out of the alley.
"Yay!"
Toga had exclaimed, squeezing his hand.
They walked through the neon-lit backstreets of the city, sticking to the blind spots of the security cameras. Toga catered the entire way, talking about how freedom was and how she was so glad to be done with middle school and her home life. Deku walked in a numb daze, the weight of what he had done finally settling into a cold, hard stone in his stomach. He wasn't a hero he had no shot anymore. If he went out in public he wouldn't even be considered a citizen.
Eventually, Toga led him down a flight of stairs into a dimly lit basement alley, stopping before a heavy metal door, she knocked 100 times before it opened.
The door swung open revealing a cramped up smoky bar. The air SMELT of cheap alcohol and dust.
"I'm back!〜"
She said in a sing-song tone, pulling Deku inside the room right behind her.
"I brought someone!"
He looked around the dimly lit room. The only light that's really being produced is the sunset colored lights in the liquor cabinets. It brightens up the whole room, leaving the dark brown brick on the walls with a red/orange finish.
"He's like us..."
"Toga. Why would you bring someone so fragile."
Said a pale man sitting on a stool. He was deathly pale, dry looking. His eyes are a piercing blood-red colour. The skin around his eyes are heavily wrinkled despite him still looking slightly young. It just makes him look older then he truly is. His hair is a grayish-blue that slightly reached his shoulders. It fell forward over his face. He was wearing a very simple V-neck black shirt along with wearing about 14- disembodied hands across his arms, torso, shoulders, and the back of his neck including his face.
"You are cluttering our space with weak creatures. You remember what happened to that rabbit I'm sure."
"That's a Rabbit Shigaraki! This is a boy...a beautiful one...And see all the blood?! "
Toga giggles to herself and she reached for Deku and lifted his arms to look at the blood seeping through his clothes.
"He got all this blood out of someone! So much of it..."
The blue haired male named Shigaraki looked at Deku, his red eyes pricing through the fingers on his face.
'Whats ur quirk kid?"
...
"I'm quirkless..."
Toga gasped and gripped him tighter. She got real up close to his face and smiled widely with very squinted eyes from her very...quite creepy smile.
"And you extracted so much blood?! So delicious!"
Shigaraki stared at Deku and scoffed. He leaned back in his stool, his hands dropping on the counter while keeping one finger lifted.
"Quirkless. Your telling me this quirkless brat managed to kill someone and take this much blood? Toga your taste has gotten worse. He's just garbage you need to throw out."
"He is NOT garbage!"
She whined, stomping her foot, though her grip on Deku’s shoulders never loosened. If anything, she pulled him closer, her cheek pressing against his blood-soaked sleeve.
"Look at him, Shigaraki! The look in his eyes... he completely broke someone. He did it all with his own bare hands! That's so much deeper than just using some flashy power, don't you think?"
Shigaraki didn't look convinced; his gaze remained cold, calculated, and entirely unimpressed through the artificial fingers masking his face. His hand twitched on the counter, a single finger still pointedly raised.
From the deepest corner of the dimly lit room, where the amber glow of the liquor cabinet barely reached, a low, gravelly chuckle broke the tension.
"The crazy chick actually has a point for once."
Heavy footsteps echoed softly against the floorboards as a tall, lanky figure stepped out of the shadows. The scent of cheap alcohol and dust was instantly overpowered by the sharp, metallic smell of burnt flesh and ozone.
Deku’s eyes widened, tracking the newcomer. The man wore a long, dark coat that swayed with his lazy stride. But it was his skin that made Deku’s breath hitch. A horrific patchwork of deep purple, scarred flesh covered his lower face, neck, and arms, held together entirely by crude medical staples. Bright, piercing turquoise eyes locked onto Deku, gleaming with a mix of cynical amusement and genuine curiosity.
"Dabi,"
Shigaraki muttered, his voice laced with annoyance.
"Keep your mouth shut unless you're planning on burning the trash for me."
"Oh, relax, Master Hand,"
Dabi drawled, stopping a few feet away from Toga and Deku. He shoved his hands deep into his coat pockets, leaning back slightly to look down at the trembling boy.
"I’m just saying. In a world completely obsessed with flashy quirks and genetic lottery tickets, a quirkless kid managed to paint himself red with someone else's blood. No superpowers. Just raw, ugly intent."
Dabi leaned in a fraction closer. The heat radiating off him was palpable, a stark contrast to the chilly, damp basement air. He looked at the frantic tear tracks cutting through the blood on Deku’s face, recognizing the hollow, point-of-no-return stare of someone who had just shattered the world's rules.
"You killed a hero-hopeful, didn't you?" Dabi asked, his tone surprisingly level, devoid of Toga’s manic energy or Shigaraki’s open disgust. "Or someone who thought they were better than you?"
Deku couldn't speak. He just gave a slow, barely perceptible nod, his mind flashing back to Bakugo's unseeing eyes in the dirt.
Dabi’s scarred lips pulled back into a grim, sharp smirk, the staples along his jaw pulling taut.
"See? The system tells guys like him they're nothing. Garbage, like you said, Shigaraki. But he just took a piece of their precious society and broke it with his bare hands."
He glanced back at Shigaraki, his turquoise eyes flashing with a cold, vengeful light. "That sounds a lot like what we're trying to do here. Rejecting the roles they forced on us."
Toga beamed, squeezing Deku’s arm tightly against her side. "See! See! Dabi gets it!"
Shigaraki scoffed, turning back to the bar counter and scratching furiously at his neck.
"Do whatever you want. If he slows us down, I'll decay him myself."
Dabi looked back down at Deku. He reached out a scarred, stapled hand, not to offer a warm greeting like Toga, but to roughly cuff the back of Deku’s head, forcing the boy to look up at him.
"Welcome to the bottom of the world, kid," Dabi said, his voice dropping to a low, dark murmur.
"Clean yourself up."