Puppet Master

Excursions and Fun Times

Eleven and a half-year-old Izuku took a deep breath, arms fanning out and folding in with every slow, measured breath. He lifted his hands and gently pulled the golden masquerade mask over his eyes. Izuku opened his eyes. They no longer held the almost constant fear of Izuku Midoriya but instead the bold, confident eyes of Golden Whip.

He grinned. The greenette got a running start before leaping up and latching onto the fire escape. He climbed up before starting his nightly excursion.

Before long, he found his first haunting: three people, one man and two women, walking down the street very suspiciously in the night. He silently followed them from a distance via rooftops. Izuku paused as they made a sudden turn down a dark alley. It wasn't a random decision. That was a deliberate turn. Izuku unlatched the rope with a grappling hook on the end of it. He hung it on the side of the building, letting the rope fall off the side. Izuku quickly but carefully climbed down the building before swinging the end of the rope like his whip which effectively carried the kinetic energy up the rope and dislodged the hook.

He had gotten the rope and grappling hook two months ago from the Junk Shop. That store had proved quite useful in Izuku's two and a half years of vigilating, despite how on edge Izuku felt in it.

He wrapped the rope and hook around his waist before crossing the street and stopping at the side of the alley. He peered in.

It was a lot more expansive than he had previously thought and held many, many more occupants than previously expected. Taking a quick overview, Izuku recognized two different gangs by the split between the two groups and the tattoo's on every person's body.

The Blue Bloods and the Scare. Those were the two gangs. Both were well-known gangs in the red lights, always fighting for the west side of the red light district.

Izuku waited. He could put up a good fight, sure, but he was still a small, underfed eleven-year-old boy, even with his muscular build and he was not confident that he could make it out alive. Not that he really cared if he died but he wasn't one that would go in knowing he would die or expecting to.

A movement from above caught his eye. Izuku grinned. On the edge of the building creating a wall of the alley on the roof crouched none other than Eraserhead. Despite always trying to catch Golden Whip after the fight, he and Eraserhead have actually banded up quite a few times for a particularly dangerous setting or when Golden Whip would message the hero over Hipstagram to inform him of something that would involve hero intervention.

Or just to annoy Eraserhead for the hell of it.

Eraserhead looked down at Izuku. Izuku nodded. The hero nodded back. They waited for the fight between the gangs to start. It was a cheap tactic but the two waited a good ten minutes for the gangs to tire each other out before joining the fray.

Izuku signaled to Eraserhead and dashed in.

A Blue Blood was mid-punch when Izuku swung his whip out. It wrapped around the outstretched arm. Izuku pulled harshly. The tall man with a blue-dyed mohawk came spinning at him. Izuku drew back his own face and used the momentum of the man to smash it into the gang member's jaw. There was a sickening *CRACK*.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Eraserhead drop down, immediately taking down a Scare with him. Izuku whistled. What a hero.

"It's the heroes and Golden Whip!" a Scare yelled above the fray. "SCATTER!"

Yeah, no. Izuku grabbed the arm of a sharp-jawed Scare and judo flipped him over his shoulder before spinning out of the way just in time to dodge a black pole that flew in his direction. Not fast enough. It nicked his neck, tearing the turtle neck and drawing blood. Black immediately began to spread over his skin from the cut reaching down to his collar bone and covering his right cheek. It... BURNED! Izuku bit back the tears of pain. Upon hitting the wall, the pole seemingly shattered into dust. Izuku placed a hand over the wound but the black spread to his hand so he was quick to pull it down. Looked at the source of the pole. It was a Scare member with pitch-black hair and a black trench coat.