weary travelers.

HEY, IT'S OKAY

Ochako asks if she can bring her friends to meet Izuku. He says that he'd have to ask Mom first, but she says it can be at an arcade (he asks Mom anyway but she just cried on the other end of the phone, saying how proud she was that he was making friends).

He has to make a schedule for the seven people that are going to be with him and Ochako and Tomura and Natsuo. But she says it's okay, that things will be fine, and that Iida, the boy with the engine legs who saved her, would one-hundred percent make a plan, too. He says he's sorry and she snorts into her fist again.

His mouth tastes like vinegar. It's bitter and hateful and he thinks this is what jealousy is like. This awful feeling that creeps up on him that makes him feel so small and weak and pathetic. He feels like he is Deku again, he hasn't been Deku in a long time and he doesn't want to be either. But he lets the feeling disappear, crawling away like sand in the wind. Izuku Midoriya is not selfish.

He has too many things to want and not enough of anything to have. Longing is useless; he's a Deku after all.

_

Tomura is awkwardly thin and lanky, standing beside Izuku, and Natsuo is just tapping his foot nervously (towering over both of them), he has to be prepared to run.

He's only nervous when Father is around because Father is fire and fire is dangerous and it burns. Natsuo does not want to be burnt, not again. One time was good enough a lesson, he knows to be fast now. To run, run, run, whenever Father is in the room. This world is a dangerous one, not even the saints are spared, Fate is a merciless creature, (Izuku is so selfless, so scared of everything).

Hate crawls up his spine, there is tingling on his arm, on his scar he wants to tear it off, but he's seen what happens when Izuku does it.

Tomura says it's like a drug, you can't stop once you start. Natsuo doesn't want a neck like Tomura's. (Not that he thought Tomura was ugly or anything!)

Ochako runs, a group of five― not seven like she said ―follow her. A boy that is tall, and blue, and far too square for it to be anything but a mutation of genes (he looks like a comic book character).

A girl with a soft face and glazed eyes, her tongue is slipping out of her lips and she stares with blank precision at everything. Bluntness radiates off of her without fault.

Next is a boy with hair red, and spiky, and teeth sharp as knives, but he smiles like the sun; there is a cut by his eyebrow and he is childish to a flawed point. Tomura feels the scars on his neck itch. But he smiles, even when he sees Tomura's neck, and suddenly Tomura doesn't feel the need to let himself bleed. (He has red eyes too, but they're determined and happy; shadowed with discouragment.)

Last are a pair standing hand and hand with each other. The girl is bright with short, messy bubblegum hair and brilliant, pink skin to match. Her eyes are a glowing yellow shrouded in black, like cats' eyes, but more terrifying.

Next to her is a boy with straw hair and a childlike smile. He grins dumbly at her, shocked by everything around him; there is a black strike in his hair that looks like lightning. It fits him, oddly enough. He points at everything around him with childlike awe.

"Hey, Izuku! Not everyone could make it, but these guys came along. Tenya even agreed that we should take a small break before the sports festival!"

"It is very important to maintain your health by taking breaks so you do not forget the information you have been taught!" The boy- Tenya, Izuku presumes, speaks sharply. With intentions and dramatic, semi-robotic, hand gestures.

"Yeah, see Ashido, told you we were fine." The straw-haired one said Izuku does not know what to do.

"Yeah, yeah Kamanari. But not doing any work and staying up 'til school starts again then napping in class isn't healthy at all."

"Darn, you caught me." He snaps.

The boy with sunshine in his eyes walks up to Izuku's small group. Izuku's hands shake. He does not understand why he's so afraid. He doesn't see anything like Kacchan in this boy, but he can smell ash and caramel and oh God―

"Hey! I'm Kirishima, that's Kamanari, Ashido, Iida, and Tsu! So who're you guys? Uraraka said you were super manly!"

"M-manly?" Izuku says. Kirishima does not hear his response.

"Hey, you can call me Natsuo!" Natsuo points to his heart with his thumb. It beats rapidly in his chest. He doesn't know why. Danger, his mind screams. But then Kirishima smiles and holy fuck Shouto used to smile like that.

"I think you're pretty manly, too!"

"Thanks, bro!" Kirishima grins wide enough for his face to split in two.

_

Tomura dusts them all even when he can't use all five fingers to play. Everyone is amazed by his skill and Kamanari comes to a fault when he realizes he is no longer the best at video games. It's discouraging until Tomura asks him to show a move and then he's up and running like a hyper puppy that drank coffee for the fourth time that hour.

Izuku isn't the best at video games, he hasn't played in ages. Not since―

"Whoa! You're really good at that game, Midoriya." The straw boy, Kamanari, exclaims. Tomura yelps somewhere.

He chirps in a chipper voice, nothing weighs on him, Izuku can tell. Nothing holds him to the ground like being too weak or getting into a fight with anyone that has a quirk, because he's not quirkless. He's a child-but-not, he hasn't seen past the yellow wallpaper that lunes the world in a fake sunshine.

The bitter taste is back in his mouth, it sticks to his tongue like vinegar and salt and copper. It's tangy. Izuku wonders if he's been biting his lips. If its blood he's tasting. He hasn't bled since Kacchan hit him last year, since he ran to the rooftop and stared over the ledge.

He snaps out of it and looks at Kamanari with wide eyes and an agape mouth.

"Th-thank y-y-y-you, K-kamanari-kun!"

"No problem-o, Mido!"

There is something so innocent about Kamanari and it makes Izuku sick. It's not jealousy. He is bitter and sad and angry at a world that has given the ignorant abilities they will never seize control over. Never grasp, not completely. Kamanari will never control his gift because he has never known life without it and he never will. It will always pulse through his veins like ichor, and it fills Izuku with something like resent and disdain because he was always good. He wanted to be the good guy even when it would kill him; he shakes the thoughts away as fast as he can.

It is not jealousy, it isn't. Envy was something he didn't want to possess.

Izuku Midoriya is not selfish, he will not let himself become something he loathes. He will never become like Kacchan; loud, and abrasive and all bite with his bark. All burns and no bandages with a smile that looks more like a sneer. Izuku does not want to hurt anyone. He will not kill, he is not a villain. He is not Kacchan. He is not selfish.

(Izuku Midoriya is not his father. No matter how curly his hair or freckled his face. He is not his father, he will not leave his mother.)

He will not let his words cut through someone's mind. He will not become a murderer. He will not leave the people he cares about.

(When did he get so attached? They're going to leave him in the end.)

Some part of him wonders if that bridge in the neck of the woods has been burnt down yet. It's defective, with a hole sinking through the middle, just like he's defective, a hole where his quirk should be filled by the smallest bone in his pinkie toe.

The world turns to red in front of him.

GAME OVER.