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Chapter 24: Humanity
🕑 Added 2024-05-08 16:23:46 +0000 UTCSeason 7 has started the first episode as something else. However, part of me is wondering if we're getting anime-exclusive content much like he got with the TYBW in Bleach since Hirokoshi really sped through stuff post-war arc. And I'm not considering the movies, as the mangaka has said as much while they are. They have difficulty fitting into the story's events in a way that doesn't feel like what it is later additions tacked on.
This chapter is another slow one since, while I could speed things up, that means sacrificing moments like this. My one regret is that I couldn't swap out Kon for Makihara since I've been told I've neglected him. But I've made plans for him in the future, so for all you Mummy fans, he'll get some time in the spotlight, don't you worry.
Chapter 24: Humanity
They were well out of sight from the alley, but it also meant they were far from her. But even though he couldn't make out all the details, Midoriya knew that the woman seated next to Aunt Mitsuki at a café was his mother; he could never mistake her for someone else. Watching them speak, his heart sank when he saw how worse off she looked. Those bastard news reporters never managed to capture it, but his mother looked pale and much skinnier than she had been when he last saw her.
It wasn't her physical appearance, but her attitude as neither he nor his mother were the most confident people, but now she was near paranoid, as he could tell she was skittish, looking around, waiting for something to happen. Maybe more reporters didn't care about the restraining orders he read about; perhaps she worried that he'd just re-appear.
Both were possibilities, especially that first one since he could imagine how much buzz was generated by their involvement with the U.S.J. the underworld seemed to think it impressive as they've been getting more offers for work, and whenever they went around in their parts of cities, other criminals turned away or cleared their path. After all, just 2 of them had helped a new group storm the bastion of hero society, their fortress where they trained the next generation of enforcers and not only made it out but took down several students there.
"Despite acting like she's going to get swarmed by the press, she seems to be doing okay," Kon noted, with Midoriya nodding along, even if he had a frown. He wanted so badly to rush over, to speak with her again, to hug her, and apologize for making her worry. Some of him wished for things to return to what they were again, but a more significant part of him knew he didn't regret his current choices. He didn't regret meeting Nine or joining. So, even if he did apologize to her, he knew it would be hollow.
“Is it weird that I want to go back?”
Kon looked at him before reaching into his coat, which was a different one from his regular. "Nay, that's just how people work, the devil, you know, and all that." He stated as he pulled out a cigar, placed it in his mouth, and shot out a small, controlled fire to light it. Midoriya turned an eye with his disapproval.
“You know that’s bad for you.” Midoriya stated, to which Kon scoffed, taking a drag from the cigar before letting out a puff of smoke.
"Piss off; you burn your lungs to ash on the regular. You don't get to talk about this." Kon replied, letting the nicotine-infused smoke soothe his itch.
"My lungs regrow well as new." Midoriya countered as he had seen plenty of pictures of what smoker's lungs looked like after just a few years of that, the peaks of public schooling wanting to dissuade students from it. It didn't work; he had seen a few kids messing around with cigarettes, but he knew he was against it.
"And I breathe fire. Trust me, kid, this shit ain't gonna kill me till I’m old and grey.” Kon laughed as he turned to leave. They had done what they had come for. “Come on, we’re done all we can.”
Watching the taller man leaving, Midoriya paused before looking back towards where his mother sat, evident to his presence in town, never mind in less than 50m of her. But that was all he could do as he turned to follow after Kon, adjusting his hoodie to better cover his face as ever since the USJ, it had been plastered all over the place. It wasn't just the regular 'keep away from this person' anymore. Oh no, the word in the underworld was that he and the rest had earned themselves something of a badge of honor for villains C-rank and above, a bounty.
The authorities didn't advertise it, fearing how many randos would try their hand at being bounty hunters. Still, if a non-hero managed to capture just him and hand him over to law enforcement, that could be a good payday. Despite the extra attention and increased chances of other villains trying to screw them over for the cash, such things were seen as positive in the underworld, as it meant that the authorities were at the level where they didn’t care about the law so much as they wanted them captured which Nine called a perfect example of their obsession of upholding their flawed society.
"I wish I could talk with her, but knowing she's Auntie, I can rest easy knowing she's in good hands." Midoriya smiled. While Kachhan had long since stopped being a friend, Auntie was always lovely to him when they saw each other. She was loud and unapologetic like her son, but she wasn't cruel.
“The blonde, right?” Kon asked him, and when he nodded, the man continued. "You know, that woman looked much like the punk Kiruka described as dumb enough to fight you. Is there something there?" He asked him, making it clear that he knew that there was.
Truthfully, Izuku knew that this was coming, as there was only so much time that could pass before he was confronted with it. "She's the mother of Katsuki, the one that I fought. We're…used to be friends since my mothers knew each other in college, so we've known each other almost our entire lives." Midoriya recalled seeing the pictures from those days and their two weddings, where they were each other's best women.
"It didn't sound like it was a happy reunion since he tried to blast you straight to hell," Kon reminded him, and Midoriya nervously laughed in turn.
"I wasn't expecting much else from him. We haven't been close in years, not since we were 4, and his quirk came in…and mine didn't." He stated, thinking of how things changed for them, changed for the worst.
“Late bloomer?” Kon asked; with Midoriya nodding, the heteromorph took a drag of his cigar, letting out a puff of smoke. “Let me guess, that Bakugo kid was a little shit about it.”
"I wouldn't use those words, but he did change, or maybe it was the people around us who changed," Midoriya stated. His dynamic with Bakugo was a complicated one, to say the least, and his opinion of him was low, lower than before after he set off that blast that could have seriously hurt Koharu.
"Bakugo was always good at whatever he did, both when we played or in class. He picked it up super quick if he didn't know something." As Midoriya explained things, they exited the alley a couple of blocks from where they watched Inko and entered the streets correctly. Still, their disguises seemed to work fine, as no one batted an eye at them or gave them a second look. "He was also brave, always fighting when something was wrong, even if that meant fighting bigger, older kids, and he almost always won too."
Midoriya smiled, as Bakugo was really a kind person back then. Defending not just him but everyone in their kindergarten class. When one of their classmates cried that some bigger kids had taken his hero cards. At the same time, he wanted to tell the teachers that Bakugo went out and fought 2 boys 3 years older than them and won, returning the stolen cards like it was no big deal. Midoriya liked to think of those days, before things got weird between them when he could see that he genuinely was better… than what he had become.
Kon could hear it in his voice and see it in his eyes, the longing but the bitter acceptance that what you wished to have was impossible. "And then his quirk came in." He guessed, with Midoriya letting out a tired breath but nodding.
"People saw what it was and could be, praised him, and said he could become a great hero. But they fed into his ego, telling him repeatedly that he was destined for greatness, but I never heard anyone tell him that he had to work for it. They just treated it like a fact. And as they praised him, they let him get off the hook with stuff they'll normally punish him for." Kon stated, momentarily looking up to the clouds, taking another drag at his cigar.
Letting out a puff, he finished. "All that just overinflated his ego and taught him that he didn't need to respect the rules like everyone else. That he was above people like us." Midoriya looked up at Kon, surprised by that statement and the fact that he hit the nail on the head. How did he do that? He hadn't told him this before. He hadn't even told Nine.
Kon let out a short laugh at his younger friend's confusion. "Kid, your friend's story isn't unique in the slightest. There's a shit ton of brats like them that got the same treatment; I know that personally since that cop you helped me take care of was the same when we were kids."
“You ever why I wanted to smash up his legs?" Kon asked, with Midoriya shaking his head as he just thought he wanted payback. "It's cause his quirk; it grants him superspeed, and in our small town, you can imagine how people saw him as the next Ingenium; how could he be anything else when he had such a 'heroic' quirk." Kon snorted at the idea that a quirk, not the user, could ever be considered to have such a quality. As far as he was concerned, utility was the only quality a quirk could have.
"Kids, adults, it didn't matter; they all talked like he would be great, challenging even the Ingenium family for the title of the best speedsters in Japan. It was merely fate, and they treated him as such. It made him arrogant. It made him impatient. It made him cruel." Kon told him as he finished his cigar; taking it from his lips, he smashed its end into a wall as they passed, killing the fire before tossing it in the trash.
Listening to his explanation of that cop. The same one whose hands he injured when he blew up his gun made him think to Bakugo. They entered another alley, knowing that staying in the open for too long wasn't a good idea. "Bakugo seemed to hate it when people helped him. When we were younger, we went out into the woods to play. There were a couple others with us then." Midoriya recalled that summer day when they were around 5 years old. Things had changed between them, sure, but they weren't bad, or at least, they weren't nearly as terrible as they would get.
"We came across a stream with a log over it. Bakugo went first, as he always did, but he slipped and fell in. I rushed down to help him, and well…I think that was the day he started to resent me." He was scared then; Bakugo could have easily hit his head when he fell, so he rushed into the water to offer him a hand.
Most of the day had long faded from his memory, but that look on Bakugo’s face still felt fresh in his mind’s eye. First, he looked surprised that he was even offering help, then he looked offended by the idea that Midoriya thought he needed help before finally setting on fury that Midoriya, of all people, quirkless Deku, was trying to help him. After that, his default reaction to seeing Midoriya seemed to be anger. Perhaps that day was as important to him as it was to Izuku, and he never forgot it. Midoriya would never know.
Kon thought it over. "The boy's ego, by that point, must have been pretty big, so he couldn't stand the idea of someone helping him. It's not that big of a deal; brats are shitty by their nature. People get excited when one isn't a sociopath or an idiot."
"But when you got nothing but ass-kissers and dick-riders around you, that childish ego isn't just not kept in check, it's allowed to develop further," Kon replied, as he had looked into this in his free time in the past, at least what little time he had in the town library. He had to go in when others weren't there just to have a moment of peace.
"I assume you tried to keep in contact with him when your quirk eventually came in? Get him to see you as an equal?" Kon asked, with Midoriya catching him by surprise when he let out a bitter laugh, a sound he wouldn't have ever associated with Midoriya, the pyro-loving ball of positive energy.
He wasn't alone, as even Izuku felt that it came out of nowhere, but maybe he just had more feelings on the matter than he had thought.
"Sorry about that." Kon waved off his explanation before Izuku carried on. "When I embraced the flames…things just got worse for me as they praised Bakugo, they couldn't understand me, feared me, hated me as the problem child, the pyromaniac. As the monster that set fire to anything and everything he could." Midoriya's frown grew angrier as he recalled those days of isolation, insults, and comments.
"It was suffocating. It was madness! They just didn't understand me; sure, I set fire to animals, but it was to help them; they were hurt! Of course, if you stopped me halfway, they'd be worse off; I didn't know how to speed it up then! If you stop a baker halfway through baking a cake, you don't get to say the cake looks terrible!" Midoriya, having heated up from his frustration, kicked a garbage can and sent it flying to a dumpster, where it bent on the sharp edges of the larger steel container, its contents slipping out across the alley.
Kon raised an eyebrow at that as Midoriya took a breath; it wouldn't do if he set this place on fire; trash might have made great fuel, but he didn't want to start a fire that could hurt people for no good reason. "It just wasn't fair. Why did he get all the praise while I didn't? Bakugo hated me more after my quirk came in and called me a villain in the making." Midoriya's shoulders dropped at that part, recognizing that he was a villain now, one of the most recognized in the country. But he didn't want to be; he didn't want to rob people, hurt them, or, heavens forbid, take needless lives.
"Mom said Bakugo was just scared, scared that my quirk made me immune to heat and fire, so someone with an explosions quirk would need to rely on concussive damage if he fought me, but I never went after him, so why was he scared? What did I ever do to deserve that from him?" He had never told his mother the whole story, but he had told her that he and Bakugo had grown distant. But that assurance that they could be friends again always felt hollow, but now? Now, it felt like a bee sting that never ended.
Kon found that to be quite strange. "I've seen you burn yourself to stone and dust plenty of times. I wouldn't say you're immune to fire."
Midoriya looked his way. "I don't feel burns as pain, and it's not like anything the flames can do to me does lasting harm. If anything, it heals and repairs my body." Midoriya reminded him, as the boy hadn't even gotten sick growing up, because his body was running at fever-like temperatures on a bad day, and when he changed and reverted back, any illness or flu was burned away, replacing any affected cells with perfectly healthy ones.
Kon smiled as he turned that over in his head. "In some ways, kid, we're the same, but in others, we couldn't be any more different."
“Sure, I liked heroes as a kid, but everyone does unless you were born with a shit poor quirk or lost someone because of heroes. But being a hero was never my dream.” Kon remarked, with Midoriya being curious since they were already sharing.
“Then what was it?” He asked, and Kon gave him a smile that others might have taken as threatening thanks to his appearance, but Izuku just saw it as him being amused.
“I wanted to be an engineer.” Midoriya made an o shape with his mouth, as that was unexpected to say the least.
“Really?”
“Yeah, yeah, I get it, not something you’ll expect from this,” Kon gestured at himself, the literal beast of a man that he was. “Probably thought I wanted to do something that used my quirk or something.”
"I just didn't think you'd be the type to like spending time designing stuff, but then again, you have all those model-building sets in your room." Midoriya mused as he liked to watch the older man work on those little side projects whenever the group wasn't on the job. He seemed passionate about it as well, almost as much, if not more, than Izuku was with his hero and quirk notes.
"I got into it when I was…4, maybe. I read some old articles about the old titans of industry. People who built bridges, skyscrapers, trains, and ships like it were nothing, and well, I wanted to be like that, to create something great and leave a mark on the world." Kon recalled those happier times, sitting in the standard room reading the dumbed-down accounts or when one of the caretakers did when he struggled with the words.
His moon grew dark when he remembered things and what came after. "But then my dreams fell to shit when my quirk came in. Like you, I was a late bloomer; my quirk came in when I was 5, and after that, people cared less about what I wanted to be and what I could do if 'left unchecked'." He used air quotes near the end, a snarl on his maw at the memories.
"Did your parents at least support you?" Midoriya asked, as while his mother and he had a strained dynamic, he knew that she loved him.
Kon shrugged his shoulders. “Wouldn’t know, never met them. I was raised in an orphanage. From what the caretakers told me, I was left on the doorstep one night; they only knew I was there because someone rang the doorbell and vanished." He tried to look for them when he turned 18, but since they just left him with no documents or pictures of them, that search came up empty. Quirks made it more complicated since, for all he knew, his quirk was unique to him.
"That's so sad," Midoriya noted, looking down as Kon rolled his eyes and put his large hand on the boy's head.
"Not really. Before my quirk came in, it was a pretty chill place. Plenty of other kids to play with, a roof over your head, and adults that actually gave a damn. It wasn't a rich place, but it was still comfortable." Kon replied as when he thought back to the place, he could say that they were never financially stable, but at the same time, it wasn't the dire kind when one lousy month could sink the place. Plus, the town was pretty generous with donations, so old toys, clothes, and food from local grocers meant that at least he and the other kids were never left hanging.
“All that changed just with your quirk?” Midoriya seemed confused by that.
Kon took some joy in that as if nothing else. This boy didn't care about such things and wondered how others could. "Kid, you should know by now how much your quirk can screw with your life. For me, I grew 10cm and gained 12kg practically overnight. Then the fur and muzzle came in, and by the time I was 6, I was already freakishly large for my age, being 1.4m tall and weighing 52kg." If he still had his photos from those days, he might show them off and how he was with the younger kids, but he looked like a larger-than-normal 10-year-old.
Maybe it was for the best he had lost those things over the years, else he would have to see a physical reminder of how, even in group pictures, others looked scared to be close to him, acting like he was a wild animal that could snap at any time for any reason.
Kon continued, it being his turn to grow angry at past wrongs. "Other kids saw me as a monster, a threat, so they stopped spending time with me, even around me. Whenever I got angry or smiled, it got worse. Whenever I fought back against others, I was punished for 'scaring' them, always told I should be mindful of others. They didn't care that the others called me names behind my back, said I was an animal pretending to be human, a monster that couldn't even figure out what he was and decided to be everything."
“That’s why you took your villain name?” Midoriya asked him.
"If people want to see me as a Chimera, then let them," Kon replied, a frown on his face as he kicked a can down the alley. They both felt a little sad about things.
"I…I don't understand people. They bullied you because your quirk makes you different, but…don't all quirks do that? Ingenium has engines sticking out his arms, Mirko is part rabbit, and Hawks has big red wings growing out his back." Midoriya started, as those people looked different, yet no one seemed to care. Those who did just praised them for their quirks.
"Even people that aren't called mutants are different. I've seen plenty of pictures of people's eyes. Still, mine glow when I use my powers, and my average body temperature is high enough that if you had it, you'd need to see a doctor. Kacchan has explosive sweat, yet he's never hurt his shoulders or seems to have hearing loss. He had tied in the past to try and find a logic to it, but each time he thought he had it clued in, he saw an exception that threw that out the window.
"I just…I don't get it. Quirks make everyone unique, so why do some people get to be seen as good and others as bad? A quirk is a part of us; people with legs can kick, and people with arms can rob and punch." Most quirks mutated their users to some extent, yet they wasted time with a category just for mutants, which often even included people with passive mutations; what if your quirk gave you the ability to control orange juice, but you looked like a parrot? Clearly, you're a mutant, right? But not according to your quirk register, as it only counts the orange juice, making you an emitter.
Quirks were complicated and messy, but they didn't mean anything. Just because someone looked scary didn't mean they were. People called him scary for his flame quirk, yet not even Endeavour's haters brought up his flame quirk, so why the difference? Did they see him as a person first, then see his quirk? Why couldn't they do the same with him? Why not with Chōjūrō or Hōyō, or Kiruka?
Looking at Kon, Midoriya wanted answers to all this. “It’s the same thing, isn’t it?” Kon returned the look, seeing that the boy was as honest as always in his confusion, concern, and resentment toward a system with such a needlessly complicated and backward system of thinking.
"I'm not sure if you're one of the kindest people I've met or one of the most foolish." Kon laughed as Midoriya cracked a little smile in turn.
"I'm pretty sure it's a little of both. But if nothing else, if you ever need someone to burn down a couple homes of mean people," Midoriya didn't finish the offer. Still, he did open his smiling mouth a little, releasing smoke from his burning innards before shutting his jaw. Kon laughed even harder at the gesture, as he wasn't sure if Midoriya offered because he wished to help him get some payback or because he believed setting fire to those people's property might help them in the long term. It could easily be both with him.
“You’re one fun pyromaniac when you want to be.” Midoriya smiled at that statement, a gesture that would terrify people as much as the smile on Kon's. They momentarily fell silent, moving towards a safe resting spot before getting out of town. Still, Midoriya recalled that Kon never finished his story and reminded him of that, with the heteromorph snapping his fingers in realization.
"Well, back to the story of my life, over time, my old bully got worse till we were in high school. That was when I broke his first leg, but it was an accident." Kon told him, with Midoriya raising an eyebrow.
“How do you accidentally break someone’s leg?”
"When you're as strong as me, you'll be surprised how easily you can hurt people without thinking about it." Kon replied as Midoriya had seen firsthand how strong the mutant was. Getting back into things, he explained. "He was in the hero course, and I was, in general, planning to just keep my head down, finish and get into a good engineering university and never return, but as you can see, that didn't go well." Kon reached into his pockets for another cigar to light.
"By then, I was used to being treated like dirt when people paid me any attention. I knew I would age out of the orphanage as no one wanted the chimera kid, and I made peace with that. But after that fight with the speedster prick, they booted me faster than I could say, 'What the hell?'" Kon took a drag from his cigar, as when his caretakers heard about the incident, they didn't care that it was self-defense. They just saw it as some last straw on his rap sheet, and being 16 at the time, even if he wasn't a mutant, his odds of being adopted were already low.
When he returned from school, he found his stuff left on the curve. The matron who ran the place told him that they weren't going to tolerate a crazed animal anymore and that he could fight it in court if he wanted. Kon knew that would just be a waste of them, so he grabbed his stuff and left what was the only home he ever knew. Izuku listened to this before speaking.
"I kinda wish you did try and fight it, though I'm not sure it would have amounted to anything. Maybe if things were better, but they aren't." Midoriya noted, as he would have liked to believe that the system would be fair and effective, that if Kon just told the police that he was kicked out of his home, they could force them to take him back or move him somewhere that would take him.
But that felt like wishful thinking, disconnected from reality, so they must make it so. Reaching the end of an alley, a large brick wall blocked them from going further, but there was a door to the side, one which was dirty and old, with little fanfare about it other than the small sign over it that read 'Jabba Canteen.' Kon reached for the door and opened it, letting himself in with Midoriya following him.
Walking through the seedy bar, they saw others present. However, most weren't drinking and merely sitting at tables or talking in whispers with one another. All of them looked dangerous to some level, but when the two of them appeared, these hardened criminals all looked in awe and fear before turning their gazes away from them. They might have been dogs who had cut their teeth already, but Kon and Midoriya were wolves, far more significant than them, and they knew it.
Humming, Midoriya didn't mind that his rather happy deposition and light steps toward the table only confused these criminals even more, especially those who had heard of what carnage he tended to leave in his wake. Instead, he plopped himself on a bar stool, his feet kicking back and forth as Kon took the spot next to him. "They don't know what they're missing because I'm happy we met and became friends." He told Kon, who nodded at him before turning to the barkeep.
Said barkeep, a grizzled-looking older woman whose oak brown hair was turning grey to the sides, yet she still had a large muscular physique with her exposed arms covered with scars. If that was from her younger years as a villain or just dealing with violent customers, they didn't know, and she didn't say. She hardly bats the two C-class villains in her establishment, despite their bounties for their arrests being clearly visible on the wall, lovingly called the 'board of honor.'
“What will you be having?” She asked him, her voice as rough and no-nonsense as her physical appearance as she cleaned a glass with a wet cloth. Kon, a little miffed that the kid’s bounty sat at over 15.4 million while his own was 11.3, replied.
"Nothing alcoholic for the kid. As for me, something strong." Kon pointed his thumb at Midoriya, who pouted back at him as he pulled down his hoodie.
"Hey, I can burn through the stuff." He rebuked, but as the barkeep got their drinks, Kon smirked back at Midoriya.
"That's cute, but I'm not going to be the idiot that got the walking arson case drunk." The rest of the room agreed with that but kept that opinion to themselves. Otherwise, Midoriya decided he didn't need to get drunk before he started torching, a sentiment to which the boy took offense.
That offense only grew when the bartender returned, passing Kon a large handled glass with a blend of lime, whiskey, and beer. At the same time, she handed Midoriya a glass of soda with a colored umbrella. "Here you go, the kiddy special." Looking up, his eyebrow twitched when he swore he saw the hardened criminal-turned-bar owner smirking as she turned her back to them.
“That isn’t funny.” He couldn’t wait till he was 18.
Line Break
And that is that! A slower chapter where we get another chance to dissect their mindsets and how their pasts have shaped them into the people they've become. And before you ask, yes, I do intend for mutant discrimination to be a greater issue than canon, as Izuku already started noticing it back when he was looking for Slice in Kyushu, and while he's aware that the world isn't as perfect as his canon self, it's not like characters are walking up to him and explaining ALL the world's issues, he's just learning about them piece by piece as a means to help reinforce why he's a villain.
Kon's back story is my own thing, as, like with most of Nine's crew, we know little about them; we don't even know if Nine remembers his real name if he ever had one, or if he's like AFO in that he gave himself that name. But that just means I can go to town with stuff like that. It also helps with the idea that the labels society created are outdated, if they were ever accurate since both are mutants, yet don't share the same story-just the same results.
The talk was also fun to write since I'm taking parts from Chika from Kaguya-sama when I do Izuku since I like making him just a little bit of an agent of chaos that is super sweet but tends to let their excitement get the better of them or say the weirdest things.
