My Hero Academia: Ruby and Emerald

Chapter 10: Older Midoriya Izuku POV(Mikumo)

Principal Nedzu contacted Mikumo and Kacchan three days after they spoke to him at UA. Their family registries were fixed. Their hero licenses would be in the mail that day. Mikumo didn’t want to know what Principal Nedzu had done, but according to the email, the HPSC (which paid freelance underground heroes like Eraserhead, and now the Gemstone duo, Ruby and Emerald) would treat them just the same as any other underground heroes. They had hero costumes waiting for them at HSPC headquarters.

It meant that the rough plans they had discussed about each member of the League of Villains could start being implemented that night.

“Hell yes,” Kacchan smiled wide and sharp. Anticipatory.

“This will be amazing!” Mikumo cheered.

“Yeah it will, nerd. Now. What do we do first?” Kacchan asked. Mikumo cocked his head questioningly. Katsuma rolled his eyes in response. “Who are we saving first?”

“Oh! Uh, I was thinking about that. Toga Himiko is only a year older than us, right?”

“You would know better than me.”

“Right. So, this is the year she graduates middle school. Which gives us about five months before she snaps and stabs her classmate, kicking off a string of serial killings via bloodletting that eventually lead her to join the League,” Mikumo explained. Kacchan huffed, falling backwards onto the bed.

“So what do we do about it?” he pressed.

“Toga… all she needs is a loving home.”

“Haah?”

“It was all over the news when this first happened, Kacchan. They interviewed her classmates, of course, but also her parents. They called her a demon child on national television,” Mikumo spit. He could hear his voice harden into the familiar tone he used when he was passionate about something unjust.

“That’s wrong,” Nana asserted.

“What the hell?”

“Right?” Mikumo exclaimed. “Her quirk, Transform, well, you know what it does. But the admiration for blood she has is a side effect that’s built into her quirk, likely to combat the regular human instinct to be repulsed by blood and allow her to use her quirk in the first place. The only problem is that she was being forced to suppress her quirk 24/7, at school, at home, in public—there was nowhere she felt safe! Of course she snapped!”

“That’s fucked. And hella discriminatory. What can we do?” Kacchan could always be counted on to ask the right questions.

“Well, those Hero Licenses’ coming in the mail today have a built-in emergency fostering license. So…”

Mikumo explained the plan.

-----

The Toga family lived in a nice house. Kacchan pressed the button on the buzzer. It crackled to life a few moments later.

“Hello?” asked a female voice, presumably the mother of Toga Himiko.

“Is this the Toga residence?” Kacchan asked, redundantly. The door sign clearly stated their name.

“Yes, it is. Why?”

“My name is Ruby. I’m here with my partner, Emerald. We’re underground heroes. We have reason to suspect that Toga Himiko is connected with a crime we’re investigating,” Katsuma lied. Only Mikumo could see the slight twitching of his eyebrows that gave away his rage. Over the years, Kacchan had become very adept at disguising his emotions to get the drop on villains.

“Oh, god!” Toga-san exclaimed. “Yes, come in.”

“That seemed a little too easy…” Hikage muttered.