{MHA} The Lonely Pyromaniac

25

-Ikemoto-

Forget Izuku giving away All Might's secret. At this rate, I was going to be more likely to give away Japan-toppling information. All I had meant to do was check Hagakure off of my 'apology' list (I had already apologised to Kaminari by that point), but I'd ended up getting into a conversation about Izuku's life story with her.

I gripped the train pole tighter.

"Ike-kun? What's the matter?"

"Don't worry about it, Nii-san," I sighed. I'd already put Izuku through so much because of my mistakes. It wouldn't hurt him if I never told him that I'd almost messed up again.

Izuku shrugged. There was a thoughtful expression on his face. "What's up with you?" I asked.

"Something happened to Iida's brother during the Sports Festival. He's been acting funny ever since."

I scoffed. "Of course he is," I grumbled before clearing my throat pointedly. "Any younger brother would be worried if his older brother got hurt."

"I'm sorry!" Izuku whined.

"Sure you are," I muttered before a wave of guilt washed over me. Even if Izuku didn't technically still need my protection, the feeling of resentment seeded in my chest had no place being there. "Sorry, Nii-san."

"It's okay," he said, giving me a small smile.

The two of us didn't say anything until the train arrived at our stop. I looked around the station and saw Jiro leaving the train two cars down. "I'm gonna go talk to Jiro. See you at home, Nii-san."

I speed-walked away before he could respond and quickly pushed through the crowd towards Jiro.

She saw me out of the corner of her eye and turned to look at me. "Whaddya want?"

I took a slow breath and prepared myself to apologise again. Despite the fact that I'd already done it twice today, it still felt weird and it certainly hadn't gotten any easier. How were people like Izuku able to do this regularly?

"Listen, I uh-"

"You want to apologise for beating the shit outta Kaminari?" she drawled. I swallowed and nodded, unsure of how she knew. She smirked and said, "Was it cathartic?"

"Well yeah, I mea- wait what?" I cut myself off in a stunned realisation of what she'd asked me.

She shrugged and started walking with the rest of the crowd. "You seem pretty tense all the time. I figured you'd snap again sometime soon."

"What?! I'm not tense," I snarled, something about the statement upsetting me.

She gave me an exasperated look, and that only served to make me more angry. I stopped in the middle of the station and clenched my fists, feeling my temperature rise. I grit my teeth and looked down to watch my shoes start to look blurry.

I snapped my gaze back up to glare at Jiro, but before I could launch an attack, I saw her panicked face through the haze of anger.

"I- Sorry, I don't know what came over me."

Jiro nodded shakily and ran off. I stood motionlessly in the middle of the moving crowd, completely sure of what had happened just then.

-???-

I watched from a distance as Trial 2 unclenched his fists and stood limply in the middle of the train station. This was a promising development, a step in the right direction. For almost fifteen years, he had been fighting against his destiny, disguising his desires as 'means for a noble cause'.

Now that he had been robbed of his so-called 'noble cause', he had no excuse.

Trial 2 was on his way to discover his destiny.

-A/N-

New character, yay! He's not an OC, but he has so little screen time and characterisation (as far as I'm aware), that he's basically an OC for me to use. In any case, I'm not entirely happy with this chapter, mainly because of how short it is, but I'm too burnt out to care.

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