Darkest Before Dawn - 5 (Patreon)

Chapter 5

‘Stupid Mineta, stupid game,’ Kazuki grumbled in his own mind as he made his way to UA. He wasn’t quite late per se, but he was certainly later than he’d been during the first day of class. And it was all because fucking Mineta had thought it was a good idea to introduce Kazuki to some shitty game on his phone.

And goddamnit was it addicting.

The game wasn’t all that good, admittedly. It was a gacha game with rather simple gameplay that stretched quite a bit. However, the important part was that Kazuki found that playing the game was very distracting. He had a great weakness to distractions, especially those good enough to get his mind away from the negative emotions around for extended periods of time.

So, he might have played the game for longer than he should have, especially since he wasn’t even getting anything out of playing except his time being wasted. ‘I regret nothing though,’ he thought to himself, taking a deep breath in and slowing down as he got closer to the school. It had been a great night, even if he hadn’t slept for as long as he should have.

Now though, classes were going to suck, he just knew it.

A spike of fear got his attention for a second though. Turning to the side, he saw where it had come from and Kazuki could see… ‘Oh, fuck you too,’ he growled in his mind, but otherwise just continued walking. The child’s mother, meanwhile, put a hand on his shoulder and moved him along. There were no words of how it was rude to stare like that or anything. They just went on with their lives.

And Kazuki was supposed to do the same, with such a clear reminder that his looks were disturbing for people. How fair was it? There were people with all sorts of hair colors and eyes. Hell, there were people that looked like outright monsters out there. However, there was something about his white hair, red eyes and black sclera. There was something about the dark gray veins on his pale skin that really spooked people.

Probably uncanny valley stuff, someone he met at juvie had told him back in the day. He looked very human, but not human enough. In a way, it’d been better if he looked less human instead of how he did. ‘Focus, Kazuki, don’t let a child ruin your day,’ he told himself. It was a lost battle already, but it was better to try and improve his mood than just continue brooding.

“Creepy, my man!” Mineta greeted him once he entered the room. Kazuki didn’t focus on that though, instead grimacing as he felt a particularly sharp spike of nervousness in the room. His eyes immediately darted to the side and found Midoriya. Had he scared the little guy for some reason? “How far did you get in the game? You were still online when I got off.”

“I mean, I got another ten pulls before I decided that maybe I should sleep,” Kazuki replied wearily as he continued walking and took his seat.

“No wonder, that must have taken you, what, an hour after I left?” Mineta asked, looking like he was trying to do the math in his mind. For his part, Kazuki just shrugged. He wasn’t very sure himself, since he hadn’t seen when he’d gone offline. “Anyway, didn’t expect you to like it so much. What with the… er… furry looking characters,” the short guy continued, growing a little nervous as he got to the last part.

“Humans with animal traits and anthropomorphic animal characters aren’t bad, man,” Kazuki replied, leaning down on the desk as he felt sleep come back to annoying him. Fortunately – or unfortunately, depending on who one asked – there were Midoriya and Bakugou there to keep his ass pumped full of nervousness and anger. He’d have preferred to fall asleep, honestly. “It’s when people get a little too into that that it gets weird… to say the least,” he added. He would know, there was one particular weirdo like that in juvie. It’d been an awkward experience for everyone involved.

Especially for the guy with an animal mutation quirk.

“Ah, yeah, that makes sense.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Ah!” Mineta exclaimed, jumping as the new voice came from right next to them. Kazuki himself had been quite caught off guard too, but his sleepiness had numbed down the reaction. Turning to the side, now more awake, he saw a school uniform floating in the air.

“Ah, Bubbly, how’s it going? Just got here?” Kazuki asked, blinking his weariness away and leaning back on his seat. He honestly hadn’t looked around much when he’d arrived.

“I’ve been here for a while, Creepy. You’re the last one to arrive,” the girl informed him, to which he double checked looking around. She was right, it seemed. Well, at least he wasn’t late. Now, he couldn’t imagine that would go well with the school staff.

“Did I miss anything fun?”

“Well, Tiny here,” she started, signaling towards Mineta who was just then recovering from the scare. In fairness to him, Hagakure had also been closer to him than to Kazuki. “Was trying to get Pointy to join your phone game thingy. Wasn’t very successful, sadly. I was listening though and I might give it a try.”

“Seriously?” Mineta asked, eyes wide as if he couldn’t believe he’d heard that right. Maybe he hadn’t expected one of the girls to take an interest in gaming?

“Yeah, the art is pretty neat,” Hagakure answered, placing her hands behind her back and leaning her body forward. “Must not be so bad if you two are into it?”

“It’s a nice distraction… Maybe a little too good a distraction,” Kazuki replied with a wry smile. “I played a little too much last night.”

Before any more talk could be had, their teacher went through the door.

[}-o-{]

Second day of classes was… almost normal, or what Kazuki guessed passed for normal. It’d been a while since he’d actually had classes, at a school that is. The rest of his classmates seemed to find those exceedingly boring, and he got it, but Kazuki still found them to be oddly nice.

It was the kind of normalcy that he’d missed while in juvie. It was the kind of thing one complained about all the time until they experienced worse stuff. The saying was actually so very true. One really didn’t know what they had until they lost it. Not that he’d really hated school at any point in his life.

After all, the more boring the class was, the better for him, really. After all, if the students were falling asleep, then they weren’t feeling particularly bad in any way. Granted, sometimes there was a bit of annoyance or a bit of nerves sprinkled here and there, but nowhere near as much as other times, that was for sure. So, yeah, Kazuki would take a boring class any day of the week.

Not that he thought the classes were that bad. Present Mic teaching English was pretty good and entertaining, really. Modern Literature could be a fairly interesting subject by itself, really, and Cementoss wasn’t too bad to have with it. Kazuki had a difficult time getting into the stories with his extra sense sometimes, but he’d managed to push those aside to read sometimes and he’d enjoyed it. As for Math with Ectoplasm… Well, everyone had a subject they liked less, he guessed. Still, even if he hated the subject, he didn’t do too badly in it, so that was the silver lining on that front.

“Ah, thanks for that,” Kirishima replied after Kazuki helped him simplify an exercise.

“You should still learn the way the teacher taught it, man,” he warned more than advised. “I mean, my way works, but it might not in certain situations, really. And I don’t know if Ectoplasm will be ok with you doing that either.”

“Yeah, but thanks. At least I have a way to check if I did things right,” the redhaired teenager replied with a big grin, smacking Kazuki on the back. “Thanks for that, Creepy, I think you’ll be a life saver in Math.”

“Which is great, because it’s quite possibly my worst subject,” Ashido commented, grimacing like she could already feel the trouble coming her way. Kazuki could tell it was a joke, for the most part. He could feel the slightest bit of nervousness but it was minimal, really. Might as well have been nothing.

“Why am I suddenly seeing a whole lot of tutoring in my future?” Kazuki mumbled as they walked towards the cafeteria.

“Having been in Pinky’s class and all… Yeah, that’s probably the right of it, man,” Kirishima said, grinning like he was just casually commenting how nice the weather was. Kazuki, for his part, groaned. Tutoring sucked because it usually drew more frustration and annoyance from a person than normal classes did. With any luck, things wouldn’t be that bad with his new friends. “That’s not the most important thing at the moment though,” Kirishima added.

“Right, we’ll be having our first Foundational Hero Studies class after lunch and I already can’t wait,” Ashido joined in, grinning widely and practically skipping forward instead of walking. “What do you think we should do? Do you think we’ll have a boring introductory class or we’ll jump right to it?”

“God knows I hope for the latter,” Kirishima replied to that, looking almost dreamily up in the air as if he could picture what the class would be like already. Precisely what he was imagining, Kazuki had no idea, but he could guess it probably wasn’t very realistic. If he had to bet, he’d say the former idea was more accurate, even if it’d dash his new friends’ hopes.

“Can’t be worse than Modern Literature, ugh, I’m gonna have a hard time with that one,” Hagakure grumbled from the side then. She hadn’t quite gotten over that class yet, it seemed.

“I’m really hoping it won’t be too… physical, honestly,” Mineta mumbled, suddenly looking and feeling nervous.

“I’m sure you’ll be fine, Tiny,” Kazuki reassured with a slight grin. “I mean, it’s the first class of the first year. How hard could it be?”

“Man, you don’t know you don’t have to say that? It’s bad luck. Now you’ve jinxed it!” Mineta lamented loudly.

“Oh, my bad,” Kazuki apologized with a grin that belied his true feelings.

“Why am I friends with you, Creepy?”

“Because I’m the only one that puts up with you?” Kazuki offered. “God knows it’s not for my looks, right?” he added with chuckle as he ran his fingers through his white hair. He really hoped the true self-deprecation there hadn’t shown as much as he thought it did a moment after saying that.

“What do you mean? You don’t look bad,” Hagakure asked, sounding confused and looking –  as much as the invisible girl could look anything at all – like she was looking at him up and down.

“Yeah. Besides, you’ve got nice eyes, Creepy,” Ashido said, jokingly batting her eyes at him. He knew what she was doing though. After all, she did have eyes very similar to his.

“If you say so, girls,” he replied, shrugging before Kirishima pushed the door to the cafeteria open. Instantly, one of Kazuki’s fears vanished into thin air. The part he’d been looking forward the least was eating lunch at the cafeteria, after all. He didn’t think it’d be as bad as it was at juvie, but he hadn’t expected it to be good.

Which was a mistake, because Lunch Rush – the hero in charge of preparing the food for them – was, in his humble opinion, pretty goddamn good. That one was probably the best meal Kazuki had had, ever, which was a statement that didn’t quite do the food justice, really. He wasn’t up to thinking too much about compliments for the meal though, because he and his mind were a bit too preoccupied eating it.

That is, until something interrupted him.

Or, someone, to be precise.

“Ah, Endo, could- Uh, could I speak with you for, uh, for a bit?” Midoriya stammered from next to him, drawing his red eyes away from the food. With his mind no longer focused on the heavenly taste, he was suddenly back to sensing the emotions around, which weren’t too bad. Lunch was certainly a good moment for the student body’s general mood.

Except for the boy in front of him, that is.

“Uh, sure?”

[}-o-{]

[Midoriya Izuku]

To say he was nervous was a bit of an understatement, but he was doing his best to tone it down. After all, the person he wanted to talk about could feel his nervousness, as he now knew and that probably didn’t feel too well. Unfortunately, Izuku had never been good at calming down.

“Relax, Midoriya. I’m not gonna eat you or anything,” Endo reassured him, which only made him gulp. At that, and probably the fear he felt for a moment there, the white-haired boy narrowed his eyes. “Is something the matter?”

“I, uh, I wanted to talk with you about… Well, what I mean to say is that, er, I looked up some stuff after you spoke to me… And, I guess, I wanted… I mean I…” Midoriya mumbled, unsure of how to even express what he wanted to. “I found some old news and…” That was clearly not the right thing to say, because Endo stiffened instantly.

“And you found me,” he finished, a bitter smile on his face. “Want to know what a villain is doing in hero school? Is that what this is?”

“I-That’s not it,” Midoriya waved his hands wildly in front of him, because it really wasn’t that. He’d just found those news and being reminded of them had made Endo’s creatures… Well, a lot more telling than before. “I just wanted to talk, I mean, not sure about what, but I felt like-”

“Like speaking to the criminal that caused the Black Rampage Incident, right? See how messed up I truly am and if I’m safe to be around or something?” Endo asked, his expression going from bitter to annoyed really fast.

“That’s not it either!” Midoriya exclaimed, feeling like the conversation was already getting far, far away from him.

“I can feel your fear, Midoriya, there’s no need to lie,” Endo accused before taking a deep breath in. “I’m guessing you’ll go to the staff? They already know about me. They brought me here. Although, they probably will put some more pressure and regulations on me, which I’m guessing isn’t the expulsion you probably wanted but-”

“Endo!” Midoriya all but shouted, before drawing into himself and looking around the empty hallway they were standing on. “I, I mean…”

“Huh, didn’t know you had it in you,” the red-eyed boy commented, seemingly caught off guard by that.

Which, if Midoriya was honest with himself, same.

“I… I didn’t want to accuse you of anything,” the green-haired boy mumbled, fidgeting with his hands and looking anywhere but at his fellow student. “Or insult you, or anything like that. I’m not afraid of you or anything either. I just… Well, I’m usually very nervous and er… kind of a coward, really… But, um, what I’m trying to say is…”

“Yeah?” Endo urged, not impatient but curious now, it seemed. Tilting his head, the boy gave Midoriya his full attention. Which honestly made the whole situation even more nerve wracking. “You are a mess, dude. Honestly, maybe you need therapy for that or something.”

“I… Maybe… Yeah…” Midoriya whispered, his voice growing lower and lower. He wasn’t wrong about that, really. And he wanted to be a hero when he had problems speaking to someone? He wanted to be like All Might like that? It was-

“Man, relax, will you?” Endo told him with a sigh, running his fingers through his hair. “Look, I don’t like talking about it, but I went to therapy myself… Still go sometimes when I feel like I need to. Going there doesn’t mean you are broken or something. Just that you need help with something, like going to the doctor, for example. I think everyone could do with a little bit of therapy, honestly,” his fellow student explained, awkwardly bringing a hand to his neck and massaging it.

“I… I’ll keep that in mind,” Midoriya mumbled, even though it still felt like a failure to him.

“Anyway, if you don’t want to… do any of that,” Endo commented, waving a hand in the air vaguely. “Then what did you want?”

“I… I think it was a tragedy, what happened…” Midoriya started, taking a deep breath in to try and steel his resolve. “But it wasn’t your fault,” he added, drawing a blink from the other boy. “I like Quirks, a lot, so I probably know a bit more than the average person. And, um, many Quirks can catch, you know, people off guard and cause trouble… It was just unlucky that you, I mean, er, that yours went a little further than that, is what I’m trying to say.”

Midoriya wasn’t sure, but he had the feeling that he’d screwed up somewhere in his speech. Besides the stuttering and mumbling, that is. Endo didn’t look to be angry or annoyed though, so he took that as a win. Although, to be honest, the boy didn’t show much on his face at that very moment.

“I… appreciate that, Midoriya,” was the answer he got eventually. It wasn’t like he’d been expecting a particular response to that, but it still felt sort of… lacking. Probably due to the somewhat flat delivery Endo used.

“And, um, there was something else,” Midoriya said then, further resolving himself to go through what he wanted to tell his fellow student. Because it felt like the right thing to do. Because he thought Endo needed it. And because maybe, deep down, he wanted to do what nobody had done for him. “I think you can be a hero,” he told Endo, looking straight into his red and black eyes. “Em, that, that is all, really, I’ll… I’ll just be going,” he stammered as he started walking away, his courage having fled him instantly after saying those words.

[}-o-{]

[Endo Kazuki]

“IT’S ME!” A very recognizable voice called from the classroom’s door and Kazuki grimaced. ‘That’s where the pain was coming from? Goddamnit, what did he do before coming here?’ he had to wonder as he looked at All Might, feeling like his chest had been put through a meat grinder. ‘Who the fuck did he battle to feel like that?’ “COMING THROUGH THE DOOR, LIKE A NORMAL PERSON!” the number one hero announced.

It wasn’t a very normal way to enter a room, but Kazuki was honestly too awed by the fact that the man looked perfectly fine. Weird, sure, but he still looked fine. One couldn’t know about All Might and not expect some level of oddity, really. It was part of his charm, making him more human, and thus relatable. Or so the analysis that Kazuki had read said. The important part right then and there was that the man was ignoring the rather astonishing amount of pain and acting like nothing was wrong.

It was honestly a little humbling, considering that Kazuki certainly wouldn’t be fine through the man’s class putting up with that. Granted, he had that on top of other stuff, but still. ‘Listen to the man, Kazuki,’ he reminded himself. ‘Focus on other things…’

“LET’S JUMP RIGHT IN WITH THIS,” All Might exclaimed, taking some sort of card from his pouch and dramatically turning it towards them. “THE TRIAL OF BATTLE!” he announced, making Kazuki’s eyes widen.

‘Well, so much for starting off calmly, huh? Then again, All Might is quite intense, so I guess that’s on me,’ the boy thought wryly. Still, the idea of letting loose a bit was tempting. He’d been keeping his negativity levels under control by creating Nevermores at his place and such, but that wasn’t the same as creating actual creatures and actually using them. His power didn’t like being contained, even if it could be.

So, it was a slightly giddy Kazuki that took the box his costume was in and made his way to the changing rooms for the exercise. He’d had a hard time thinking about what he wanted to look like as a hero. After all, there wasn’t much he could do to look friendly, which was what he’d prefer. He also didn’t want to look scary, which he knew was a theme some heroes embraced.

It was neat for them, but he’d feel the fear of any civilians that came across him and he’d rather not. It probably was an inevitable thing, but he’d prefer not to encourage such reactions. Thus, Kazuki had tried to go for a more neutral look if possible. He wasn’t sure how good a job he’d done when writing down his ideas for the suit, but with some luck it wouldn’t be awful.

His fate was on whoever had made his costume’s hands, really. He wasn’t an expert on the subject, so he’d done his best to ask for general ideas vague enough that someone with a better idea of things could fill the blanks. Or so he hoped, if he was unlucky, he might have gotten something else due to being too vague, really. ‘Good thing costumes can change,’ he thought to himself, since many heroes changed costumes throughout their career, let alone in school.

Still, he’d prefer not to be overly embarrassed by a crappy costume, if possible.

With those slight worries in mind, he started taking out his costume from the box and putting it on. First were the baggy pants he found that he had no problem with. Those would be nice and comfortable to move around, at least. That was followed by a pair of metal knee pads and black boots with metallic shines here and there, belying the fact that they were quite protective.

They were also a little on the heavy side, but Kazuki guessed he’d have to get used to that. The protection would come at a price, he supposed, and the boots and knee pads would be useful if he developed a fighting style with kicks. That was something he might do, depending on the chances he was given through his education.

After that came the upper part of his costume, with a tight black tank top that had the one thing he’d specified. On the middle of the chest, there was a silver-colored seven-pointed star. The costume maker had apparently taken the liberty of extending the ends of the star into lines that went on for as long as the piece of clothing allowed, but Kazuki wasn’t overly troubled by that. After that, there were the metallic elbow pads and a pair of black fingerless gloves with metallic knuckles.

Once he was finished, Kazuki stood there, looking at the empty box. He’d debated using a mask of some kind, trying to help his case and looking a little better for the people. That would be almost like he was lying to people, however, presenting a picture that wasn’t him. Kazuki knew who he was, and he may not like it, but he couldn’t change it. So… all he could do was stand tall and try to be proud of himself.

It was fine if people hated him. It was fine if he was the very last hero in the rankings. If he could save enough people to make up for the lives he’d taken, if he could help one child avoid ending up like him…

Then Kazuki would be happy.

“I think you can be a hero,” he remembered. Words of encouragement from the last person he’d expected and yet… They were just the words he needed to hear. Nezu had given him the chance, yes, but he’d never outright said that he thought Kazuki could be a hero. Maybe the man was taking a gamble, maybe it was a political move, maybe… any number of other things. But Midoriya, he was different. Because if one person truly believed he could be a hero then… Then maybe he could do it.

Kazuki would certainly try.

[} Chapter End {]

Hey guys! How’s it going?

This chapter was nice. I liked it. Maybe I could have handled that transition between the Midoriya scene and the next one better but… Oh well, I couldn’t come up with something better, so that’s what you guys get. I’m sorry if it’s not very good.

I hope you enjoyed the chapter.

Discord Link: discord.gg/UTDransjJZ

Random Question: What do you think about the costume? As I said, costumes change, so if you guys have any ideas, feel free to share them. I might use them, or they might inspire me.

See you.