Chapter Text
Shinobu woke up to a horrid smell, one she was intimately familiar with. The first breath she took wasn’t to celebrate a Demonless world but to survive a Demon. She had no Nichirin blade nor any of her precious Wisteria poison, she would need to keep it occupied till the sun came up. So she danced. She darted around the Demon, herding it deeper and deeper into the dark and dirty alleyway she had found herself in. She fluttered over the Demon’s head whenever it made a grab at her, using the walls to give her the extra height her underdeveloped body couldn’t. She made sure to never stray too far from the Demon lest it lose it’s interest and left to hunt easier prey. She danced for hours, ignoring her pain.
Adjusting to her new body was tough but even still, the Demon could not catch her. As it neared dawn, someone jumped feet first onto the Demon’s head. At first she thought the man was one of them, a Demon Slayer. She was relieved until she truly looked at him. His uniform was a similar colour to the members of the Corps but that was where the similarities ended. He only carried one blade — a knife strapped to his leg — that didn’t give the distinctive shine of Nichirin.
“Get away! You don’t know what you’re dealing with!” Shinobu almost paused at her own voice. It was young, even younger than Muichirou.
“I should be saying that to you, kid.” The man tells her, uncoiling the scarf around his shoulders, she was suddenly reminded of Obanai.
As the man steps off the Demon to tie it up with the weird scarf, it leaps to action. Clamping it’s filthy jaw into the man’s side, it rips the flesh off and swallows gleefully. Shinobu shakes off her pause and rushes the Demon. Pulling it off the man is no easy feat for her weak body but she does it anyways. Drawing the knife from the sheath on the man’s leg, she manages to behead the Demon. She uses the knife to stake the head into the ground and fights to keep the Demon’s body from reaching it. She almost cries when dawn breaks and the Demon keels over. After making sure it starts to disintegrate, she turns towards the man.
“What did I tell you? You almost just got yourself killed for no reason.” She unravels his scarf and uses it as a makeshift bandage to stem the flow from the gaping hole in his side.
“What was that?” The man stuttered out as Shinobu helped him up into a sitting position.
“Do you have a way to get help?” She made some final adjustments to the wrap so it properly compressed the wound.
“Yeah.” The man sighed.
“Then I best be on my way then. I need a nap after distracting it all night.” She sighed as she turned away, utterly exhausted.
“Wait, who are you?!” The girl was gone before the man had finished his question.
Shouta’s body slumped over as soon as he managed to request a pickup. He woke up under the harsh fluorescent lights of the Hero Ward of Musutafu General. Nemuri’s concerned face soon entered his field of vision.
“What happened, Shouta? It’s not like you to be caught unawares.”
“It was a…” Shouta paused slightly before continuing, “It was like a Demon. Unnatural, terrifying, hungry. I had jumped it from four stories high, it wasn’t enough. As soon as I stepped off it so I could tie it up, it attacked me.”
“What happened then?” A new voice stepped in, a voice Shouta knew well, Detective Tsukauchi Naomasa.
“I…” Shouta stopped again, “Before I arrived, there was a small child.”
“A boy or a girl?” The Detective asked.
“I don’t know, it was dark. The only time we spoke was when they were bandaging me so I didn’t die of blood loss. I don’t know how reliable that information is.”
“Continue.” Naomasa scribbled down Shouta’s observation.
“Actually, no wait. We did speak before I got injured. They yelled for me to get away, that I didn’t know what I was dealing with. I was foolish, I ignored the warning.”
“You said they bandaged you?”
“They grabbed my knife and beheaded the Demon.” Nemuri and Naomasa’s faces both paled, “They then used it to stake the head into the ground and fought to keep the body from reaching the head. They fought it for seven whole minutes before the sun came up. It disintegrated as soon as the sun hit it. She only bandaged me then.”
“So it's some sort of vampire?” Nemuri finally mustered up the courage to ask.
“Maybe. There was one last thing they said to me before they left. They’ve been fighting the thing all night.”
Now that she was no longer in any danger, she let the memories of her new life flow through her. Her name was Midoriya Izuku, a nine year old boy living in Musutafu with her single mother. She was Quirkless and was regularly beaten black and blue because of it. The ringleader, for some reason, always made sure that the bruises, burns, and scratches they left her were well hidden under her uniform. The mothers of the two boys were best friends so that probably explained it. Bakugo Katsuki, that was his name, hated her. He claimed her a burden to her mother, a waste of oxygen, a liability in the field. But why? What was it that made them so different? Ah, that's it. Bakugo had a quirk, she didn’t.
As her new memories brought her to her new home, she climbed through her bedroom window and settled into her bed for her self promised nap. She had school in a few hours after all.
Bakugo didn’t know what was going on with Deku. One day — out of the blue — Deku started avoiding him. He arrived seconds before the bell rang, jumping into his seat from the window of all things. As soon as the final bell rang, Deku was out the window again. It was like Deku had been turned from an annoying gnat to an elusive butterfly, Bakugo didn’t understand it.
Shinobu stopped dying her hair and wearing contacts, she did not fear being Quirkless anymore after all.
Hitoshi had been locked out again. It was not an uncommon occurrence. He was the Villain kid after all.
He preferred the cool night air to the stuffy overcrowded room of the foster house anyways. He especially loved the cold winter nights, it felt right. It was missing something — someone — but it felt more correct than the warm room he shared with the four other children.
While he usually spent the night in the tree near his apartment — he couldn’t fall asleep — he spent that night wandering the city. He ignored the superstitious criminals that ran as if he was a ghost, like a rolling fog, like a misty night. He didn’t really care about them, most likely, they ended up where they were because they had a quirk like his. The remaining ones always left with a nod whenever he looked at them, understanding. The night streets always cleared out when he walked them.
That night, there was a man following him. It must have been odd, a nine year old child wandering the streets past midnight, the criminal nightlife leaving as soon as they caught a glimpse of him. He let the man — he felt no ill will from the man — and he kept wandering.
Muichirou woke to the smell of death, of rotting flesh, of maggots wriggling in his flesh. He ran. The man followed along on the rooftops. At the mouth of the alley, he watched as a man’s head was ripped off and swallowed whole.
“Are you a Demon?” Muichirou asks.
The Demon cackled and swung at him before freezing. For five whole minutes, neither of them moved. Then, the Demon swung again, but he hit nothing.
“Are you a Demon?” Muichirou asks again.
The Demon froze again. For four minutes and fifty eight seconds, they stood still. The Demon swung, once again he hit nothing.
“Are you a Demon?”
The Demon froze for four minutes and fifty six seconds this time.
Every week or so, all the criminals would go underground for the whole night. Shouta thinks he's finally figured it out. Every time it happened, there were reports of a small childlike ghost from adults around the area and a violent Villain from the children. He watched the boy as he saw some Villains run while others left only when the boy turned towards them. The boy didn’t seem bothered. When the boy ran, he followed.
Shouta watched the boy dance with the beast. He knew not to interfere with children who danced around monsters with no fear in their eyes.
He had happened on the Butterfly Dancer a few more times. Since their first meeting, they had donned a Haori patterned like the wings of a butterfly, it was much too large for the small child. They wielded a kitchen knife with the adept precision of a surgeon. He ignored the Vigilantism they did on their search for Demons. Their takedowns were always fast, the handle of the kitchen knife always hit with enough force to knock out but never to crack the skull.
He had found that the Butterfly Dancer also carried gauze, antiseptic, and anaesthesia after his second attempt at fighting a Demon. After five more tries — each ending in his injury — he had given up and told Tsukauchi as such, he was given a non-interference order to track the appearances and deaths of these so called Demons.
He watched as the boy continued asking the same question again and again, each time the Demon paused for less and less time. He watched as each time the Demon swiped at the boy, he seemed to hit nothing but air. No. Not air, mist. If the first child was Butterfly Dancer, then this one was Mist Dancer. He moved like he was gliding, and sometimes it almost looked like there were two of him. Whenever the Demon swung, the boy seemed to flicker in and out of existence. It wasn’t until the claws hit the mirage that you could truly see where the boy was.
He waited with baited breath as the time the Demon stayed still lessened each time it was used. It was approaching sunrise now. As soon as the Demon started burning he jumped down to talk to the boy,
“Are you hurt?” Was the first thing he asked, it had become customary to ask that after every time he saw the Butterfly Dancer take down a Demon.
“Who are you?” The voice was soft, light, almost mist like in quality.
“Ah, the one in the Butterfly haori calls me Kakushi.”
“Are you officially recognized?”
“What does that mean?”
“Then no, you’re not. The Demon had not once turned towards you, why is that?”
“The one in the Butterfly haori gave me this after the third time I happened upon a Demon.”
“A Wisteria charm. I will need to speak to her then. Currently, she is the only one capable of killing Demons.”
“We’re gonna need to open another file, Naomasa.” Shouta grumbles as he walks into the Detective’s office.