An old man sits hunched in the far corner of the subway station; shadows gathered around him like blankets. Mumbling, he nurses from a bottle of Thunderbird when a phone begins to ring. Deku leads Uravity and All Might bounding over a set of turnstiles towards the ringing phone inside a graffiti covered booth.
"Let's go! You first, All Might."
All Might then gets in and answers the phone. Lost in the shadow, the old man watches as All Might disappears, the phone dropping, dangling by its cord. His eyes grow wide, glowing white in the dark.
Elsewhere, Agent Bakugo stares, his face twisted with hate. He will never be free of the Matrix. He starts to turn from the edge of the building when he suddenly hears it, his head whipping back around, staring through the old man's eyes as the world begins to rumble. Uravity hangs up the phone, then turns to Deku.
"Deku, I have to tell you something. I don't know what it means or even if it matters but I feel I have to say it." The rumble grows, the ground beginning to shake. "I've never told anyone this before. I think I've been afraid to." Behind her, the phone begins to ring. "When I went to the Oracle, she told me... she told me that I was going to fall in love... But..."
The rumble rises, drowning her voice. Deku is drawn towards her, their lips close enough to kiss when a train blasts into the station. For a moment, they are frozen by the strobing lights of the train until Deku whispers in her ear.
"Promise me you'll tell me the rest?"
She nods as he closes the booth. The phone rings once more before she lifts the receiver when, In the darkness of the far corner, Deku sees the old man in the flashing train-light as he becomes Agent Bakugo, raising a fistful of black gun-metal.
"No!"
The gun fires, the bullet flying at her, bursting through the plastic window just as Uravity disappears. The handset hanging in the air as the bullet hits, shattering the earpiece.
"We gotta fight him, kid." Neo told Deku.
Uravity blinks, shivering as her conscious exits the Construct.
"Deku!" She yells in fear.
"What the hell just happened?" Mic asks.
"An Agent! You have to send me back!"
"I can't!"
The destroyed phone dangles in the empty booth. Deku turns to Agent Bakugo whose gun stares at him like a third eye.
"Mr. Midoriya."
All Might and Uravity stand behind Mic riveted to the scrolling code.
"Run, Deku. Run."
Deku looks at the dead escalator that rises up behind him. Slowly he turns back and in his eyes we see something different, something fixed and hard like a gunfighter's resolve. There is no past or future in these eyes. There is only what is.
Uravity is unable to understand.
"What is he doing?"
"He's beginning to believe." All Might said.
Deku whip-draws his gun with the flashpoint speed of lightning as Bakugo opens fire. gun report thunders through the underground, both men blasting, moving at impossible speed. For a blinking moment we enter bullet time. Gun flash tongues curl from Deku's gun, bullets float forward like a plane moving across the sky, cartridges cartwheel into space. An instant later they are nearly on top of each other, rolling up out of a move that is almost a mirrored reflection of the other Each jamming their gun tight to the other's head. They freeze in a kind of embrace; Deku sweating, panting,
YOU ARE READING
Izuku: the one
ActionHave you ever had a dream that you were so sure was real? What if you couldn't awaken? How would you know the difference between dream and reality? When a beautiful stranger leads computer hacker Deku to a forbidding underworld, he discovers the sho...
