A Tarnished Hero

Chapter 43: Big Pupper

After what seemed like an eternity, they could finally see a silhouette up in the far distance. Izuku stood up from his sitting position, a slight grin on his face. Katsuki, meanwhile, scowled as he clenched his fists.

"Fucking finally. Thought this was gonna take forever." The ash blond sneered, rolling his arms as cracks popped along his limbs. "So, how we gonna do this if there are assholes at the top?"

"Same thing we did earlier with those guarding the entrance." Izuku shrugged as he readied his zweihander. "Knock them out if they're hostile or talk if they aren't violent."

"... Eh, sounds good." Katsuki cracked his neck as he readied himself.

The silhouette of the rocky formation slowly grew large and larger as they got closer. The shadow it casted underneath the moonlight hid them beneath its blanket as they slowly ascended. It took at most a minute before they jumped off, Izuku with his zweihander ready to slash any poor fool who decided to give him a hard time, and Katsuki with his gloves hanging on his belt, hands sweaty.

Nobody greeted them at the top, which was quite weird. Mostly, whenever they went through a long wait such as a lift, at the end, there would be someone waiting for them ready to skewer them a new asshole.

But they could see a figure in the distance, hidden within the mist. Its form was low, crude even, and Izuku could see that its arms rummaged through something right in front of him. Approaching it, Izuku's eyes widened slightly when he saw an emaciated figure in rags scrounging through a box, only for it to suddenly look their way and let out a feral groan.

"Huh, didn't expect to see a commoner here." Izuku hummed, blade raised to give the figure a simple beheading to let it rest for a moment. "Thought most of the inhabitants would be sorcerers."

It stood up, body ready to scrap. It lunged at them and Izuku wasted no time bisecting the figure in twain. Both halves landed on the ground, blood pooled underneath the corpse as it breathed its last, its eyes glassy and unseeing.

Katsuki winced slightly. It never got any easier seeing Izuku kill without remorse, but he was slowly getting used to it with a bit of morbid fascination as to how the man himself stayed sane. But then again, was he even sane? Having experienced the Lands Between, even he could say for himself that he was slowly getting broken down, piece by piece, his intentions of being the best of the best slowly losing its merit as he realized the struggle for survival.

And looking down at the corpse of the commoner that Izuku had just struck down made him think back to Japan. Imagining the countless innocents caught in the crossfire between Heroes and Villains made him shudder. It was sickening, and he was all but adhering to the dogma spoonfed to them every day by the mass media about how Heroes were the paragons of society.

He was lucky that he had learned that the hard way when Izuku first died right in front of his eyes after he tried to save his sorry ass. Even after all that he did to him during their childhood, he still tried to save him, to make sure he didn't end up a walking corpse controlled by that fucking Slime Villain.

When he gets back to Japan – and he will, no doubt about that – he was gonna make strides into the Hero Industry, changing it for the better even if he had to drag it kicking and screaming towards a new age. All Might caused a new age all on his own as the Symbol of Peace, reducing the crime rate to near zero, but when he retires, who is gonna pick up the slack?

Truth of the matter was, he saw the writings on the wall. The moment All Might vanishes from the hero scene, things were gonna go fucked. And his egotistic mind was telling him to be there for the fallout.