Afflicted: A Bnha Au Fanfiction

Chapter. 1: Dig

It's five minutes to dawn.

Five minutes before the window closes and five minutes before they need to get this done before he comes to town.

Five minutes.

"A-Are you sure we should be doing this?" The smaller one asks, straining to carry the stolen shove behind them.

The other one winces sympathetically but continues to march forward past the church towards the outside of town. "We're far too in it now. You know what he said that he would do if we didn't."

The smaller one looks around the dark landscape, watching the horizon as the dark blue of the sky shifts to a softer violet color. They gnaw their bottom lip anxiously. "How do you know this weirdo again? Is he like an uncle or-?"

"He's a friend," the taller one replies, taking the shovel from the smaller one, "A family friend."

"Right, right. And he asked you to do this because...?"

The taller one whips around, teeth gritted in frustration. "Do you want to help or not?"

The smaller one clams up, nodding hesitantly.

The taller one sighs, walking a few more paces before he stops in a clearing on the edge of town. He plants the shovel down, roots through his pocket, and picks out an aged piece of paper. He turns to the smaller one.

"Do you have it?"

The smaller one nods. He reaches into his coat, pulls out the bottle of thick red liquid and holds it out to the other.

"Good," The taller one says with a nod as he warily looks down at the disturbed earth, "Then let's get to work. We don't have much time till dawn."

"Are you sure you want to do this? You heard what he said if we do this. Not really sure if it's true but - if it is..."

The taller one hesitates as he reaches for the shovel, hand tightening into a fist.

"I don't think we have much of a choice anymore. Now...get digging."

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Izuku Midoriya has never been early to school his entire freshman year.

Not out of lack of trying, obviously. In fact, throughout his entire Middle and elementary school career, he was right up there with Ida for students with perfect attendance - a fact that Ida continues to bring up to punctuate how drastically Izuku has been "neglecting" his priorities.

He hasn't, and he says as much. His priorities are just...different now. He has other responsibilities than he used to back in middle school. Ones that he usually has to attend to at the crack of dawn that would distract him long enough until he realized how late he was and made a mad dash for school which was only a couple blocks away, so it really wasn't that big of a deal if he was late-

Either way, he was and will probably be late again this morning as he sits on the opposite side of the spell circle his neighbor/mentor/fatherly figure has drawn on the floor of his aging house. He's practiced these sigils a million times - drew them in the spaces between his notes, in the inner side of his notebook cover, there even some scribbled on his desk and on a couple pairs of his pants (which his mother was not happy about).

He flips through the 3rd in the series of aforementioned notebooks with shaky hands, trying to concentrate on reciting the spell with shaky fingers. His mentor watches him with a patient smile.

"Take your time, my boy," he says, "There's no rush."

Izuku wants to scoff at the irony of that statement but he's way too focused on trying to get this one spell right. It's such a simple tracking spell - just draw out the sigil and try to feel the enchanted object in the other room. Simple as that. It didn't need to be as big as it is if he had just gotten it the first three times -