Musutafus Protector

35

Hey hey heyyy! Guess who's back! Updating two months in a row is a new record for me 😅 Anyway, this chapter gets pretty dark, I love me an angry Izu 😏With that being said, let's get on with the story, shall we?

Izuku pov

I finally jump over the last light pole and quietly landing on top of an old container, taking a deep breath in. The shipping dock smells like old salt, oil, and rusted metal, the night presses in thick and black, the kind of dark that swallows sound whole. My heart beating loud enough to drown out the distant hum of the city.

I move in that softened dark, a shape wearing black and blue stripes, neon blue at the palms of my gloves pulsing faint under the moon, my mask hides the rest, white hair tied up and kept short tonight, so it won't snag on anything. The red in my eyes is reflecting my thirst for chaos, and it does something to me.

My pupils slit when I get like this, a predator's focus carved into bone, there's a notebook tucked into the lining of my jacket, plans scrawled in messy handwriting, entries, fallback routes, dead zones where the cameras are blind. I've memorized it until the words have worn a path under my skin, tonight there's no room for improvisation or mistakes.

Not with a blueprint for a bomb meant to wipe out a city in the pockets of men who don't blink at the sight of blood. My earpiece is a cheap thing, Dabi insisted it would work, yet as he speaks his voice sounds distant, full of static, dry, and bored, but useful. "Perimeter's wrong tonight, two extra loaders, one dog, targets by the midline stack."

"Lights are on a twelve-minute sweep, you got a window." Static undercuts his sentence and I can feel the city breathe through it. "You know how to do this, I'm not your babysitter .... you better not die on me, green bean" I roll my eyes at the nickname but answer either way "yeah yeah whatever, like you're not the one who gave me the information"

I whisper, the word tastes smaller than it used to, childhood taught me how to make small sounds go unnoticed. It taught me how to fold myself until the hurt fit like a coat, my breath coming out in a foggy puff from the cold night. "You just worry about being my shadow, I'll do the shining" he lets out a soft chuckle "you mean the fun stuff?" I smirk slightly "exactly"

"Ya'know, I help by being a nuisance" "you're always a nuisance" "rude" the line goes dead after that and I'm left with the sound of static for a second, then the steady, almost comforting hum of Dabi's presence on the other end, and a reminder that this isn't a solo mission, even if I asked for it to be. I stay hidden in the shadows, walking around and memorizing the layout of the dock.

The dock is a geometry of containers and crates, stacked like steel pillars, spotlights from a run-down crane sweep the area on a slow, drunken arc, I keep to the low lines, palms neon-blue, gloves feeling for vibration, steps, and the thrum of a generator. There're more men than I expected, faces like scabs, leather jackets, and tattoos half-hidden under collars.

I hear a dog snuffle in the dark 'it'll piss me off if it barks'. The first mistake anyone makes out here is thinking their darkness is thicker than mine. I count silently, five at the loading bay, two by the keepers' trailer, one with the dog that's chained but alert. The trade is set near a hulking ship whose hull is scarred and sleeping.

Somewhere I hear an echoing laugh, a thin, ugly thing that makes me tighten my jaw. Dabi's voice suddenly comes through my earpiece "there's four with a radio, the kid with the scar by the trailer is a lookout, and the one in the trench coat? That's your target, and remember, no one can know that you're here." I roll my eyes again "no shit sherlock"

The lookout by the trailer smokes with his collar up, he smells of stale tobacco and cheap whiskey. I slide behind him and apply a wrist lock that isn't about violence so much as math, pressure placed on the right vector and the tendon folds like rope. He collapses soundlessly, I bind him with cable ties I made the night before, tuck him into my shadow, he's alive and breathing.