Chapter Text
Izuku was at least forty percent certain that this was a dream. It had to be, right?
Might Tower lived up to its name. Standing on the sidewalk outside, Izuku’s neck ached at the angle he needed to peer up the building’s looming facade. It was all of his dreams built into a thing of glass and steel, piercing the Tokyo skyline. He felt faintly dizzy at the sight of it.
The paper clutched in Izuku’s hand was warping with the sweat dampening his palms. Nervousness and excitement warred within him and he took a second to take in the unreality that his life had so quickly become.
Taking a deep breath, he launched into a quick walk toward the front doors. The sliding glass opened soundlessly as he neared them. His entrance to this place should have been cinematic: swelling music, dramatic lighting, and the entire world spinning slower and slower around him as he crossed the threshold. As it was, though, the doors slid shut behind him just as quietly as they had opened, muting the busy street outside, and the mild chatter of the Tower’s lobby didn’t bother to pause as he gaped just inside its doorway.
He had seen pictures of the building, obviously. It had been Izuku’s dream to work here since he was in middle school, but his obsession with the Tower predated even that goal.
When he had turned five, Izuku’s mother had taken him on a trip to Tokyo. They were visiting some distant family, but Izuku was already deep enough in his All Might obsession at that point that, when they walked through the hero district and happened by the building, he had pulled his mother to a stop in the middle of the sidewalk and lost his little mind. They were standing in front of the agency of the top hero in Japan! The top hero in the world, as far as Izuku was concerned. His mother wasn’t as thrilled about the random skyscraper as he was, but she was still obviously thrilled for him. It was a sign, he remembered telling her, even if he didn’t know what the sign was for.
By that point, Izuku had known he was never going to develop a quirk. The year following his diagnosis had been horrible, but standing on that street in Tokyo, his dream of being a hero felt like it was within reach once more. It would be years before he gave up on his goal of becoming a pro hero- that wouldn’t come about until his rejection letter from UA arrived in the mail- but he knew even then that one day, no matter what, he would work in the towering building. Izuku wanted to walk the same halls as All Might. He wanted to be part of the greatest hero’s narrative in whatever way he could.
Almost two decades later, he was here, with a signed job offer in hand. So when Izuku walked through the doors of Might Tower, it felt a bit like fate. Even without all the theatrics.
Massive windows curved along the front and side of the building so the whole lobby was lit with sunshine, and the lobby’s ceiling stretched high enough that Izuku had to crane his neck to see the rafters above. There was a receptionist desk not too far from where he stood and heroes, sidekicks, and civilians wandered around the space, heedless of his presence there. Izuku tried to steady his breaths through the fluttering joy he felt as someone with a lab coat pushed open a door along the back wall of the lobby and vanished into the building’s bowels.
A huge, electronic board on the wall behind the receptionists desk listed out the agency’s hero’s names alongside their current rankings. Beneath the list, the screen paged through a carousel of faces he’d seen in news reels a thousand times before. Izuku pointedly avoided looking near the top of the list, not wanting to spoil this moment for himself with an old ghost he knew haunted these halls.
He had wandered over to a counter that was covered with recent news printings of Might Tower’s work in the field when someone cleared their throat right next to him. Izuku startled, not realizing someone had walked up while he was busy gawking.
“O- oh, sorry! I didn’t see you!” His voice was too high-pitched to come off as casual.
The person who’d walked up to him took Izuku in with a long look up and down his figure and he felt his face heat.
“Can I help you find someone?” they asked in a flat voice, not sounding unkind, but not exactly welcoming, either. Their voice was low and lovely, even as unimpressed as it sounded, and their face, though blank of much emotion, looked familiar enough to worry Izuku.
Izuku blinked. Right. Of course they wouldn’t know who I am. Izuku fumbled with the letter in his hands for a second before extending it in offer.
“Ah, here,” he said, voice shot through with nerves. “The recruiter told me to bring this.” The stranger took it with a sigh, but their eyes quickly widened as they scanned the page. Their gaze started flicking from the printed words to Izuku’s fidgeting form.
“My name is Midoriya Izuku,” he said before they finished reading. Sharp, obsidian eyes flicked up to him and stayed there as he introduced himself. “I’m a new support engineer starting today.”
The stranger’s stony attitude melted almost immediately, something like surprise coloring their expression before it was overtaken by a cool smile. They extended a hand. “Right, I’ve heard a lot about you, Midoriya. Everyone is excited you’re here to join us.” A corner of their mouth flicked up for a beat.
Izuku took the offered hand and gave it a firm shake, hoping they didn’t notice the way he was nearly vibrating with nerves.
“It’s nice to meet you,” they said. “My name is Kyoka Jirou. I’m one of the heroes that works for the agency. You can just call me Jirou.”
Izuku let out a little yelp at their name and Jirou dropped his hand in alarm.
“Oh my god, of course you are!” he said, feeling like a fool for not realizing it earlier. He chalked it up to a residual daze from walking into the Tower. “I’m so sorry I didn’t recognize you right away. You’re Earphone Jack! That recent fight where you and Creati took down the spider villain in Shibuya was amazing.” Izuku was getting dizzy again. “I was watching the whole thing live. I’ve never seen reconnaissance like yours, and that trick where you calmed civilians with an amplified heartbeat?” He waved his hand around enthusiastically. “Everyone online has been losing their minds at what a spectacular application of your quirk that was.” Himself included, he didn’t add. “You’re amazing!”
Izuku didn’t realize until he finished that he hadn’t taken a breath that entire time. The last sentence was practically wheezed out in his over-excitement.
Jirou just blinked at him for a long moment before tossing their head back and laughing. One hand raised to cover their mouth and the other clutched at their stomach.
Izuku mentally kicked himself as she gasped for breath. He had a tendency to let his mouth run away to the point of freaking people out, and nothing had him talking more than heroes did. And to come face to face with one of his favorite current heroes and immediately start blabbering at her… he could die of embarrassment right here in Might Tower’s lobby, dream job be damned.
However, once she caught her breath, Jirou just patted him lightly on the shoulder and gestured towards the elevators at the far end of the entry hall, “You’re fun, Midoriya. I can see what all the hype was about. Follow me. I’ll take you upstairs so you can get started on paperwork.”
The hype? Izuku didn’t know what they were talking about, but as the pair neared an elevator toward the back of the lobby, any his slight curiosity on the matter evaporated. It was happening. It was really happening. It had been a week since he had received the offer letter from Might Tower in the mail- the very same letter Jirou now held as they stepped into the elevator and pushed a button for the top floor- and Izuku still wasn’t convinced the past seven days hadn’t been a long, feverish dream. As Jirou pulled a phone out of her pocket and started typing away on it, Izuku ran the long-since memorized words of the offer letter through his head once more.
Midoriya Izuku, it had read,after reviewing your portfolio, Might Tower Hero Agency is excited to extend an offer for you to join our team of highly valued Support Item Engineers.
Your senior thesis concerning thermochemical quirks and their relation to material selection during costume and support item design caught the attention of several Might Tower employees, including several of our top heroes. Your academic record is remarkable, as is the ample practical lab experience listed on your transcript. Your potential and talent is undeniable and Might Tower Hero Agency sincerely hopes you consider applying those skills here. Please consider this offer of a position in our engineering department.
The rest of the letter had been filled with clerical information about the job along with an obscene salary offer. The money, quite frankly, hadn’t mattered to Izuku. They had seen his work! His dream agency had seen what he was capable of and, even more unbelievably, they had liked it.
Izuku had spent a lifetime trying to convince himself and everyone around him that being quirkless didn’t make him less capable than anyone else. That one piece of paper Jirou now held was the physical proof he had waited and worked for all these years.
When he was fourteen years old, Izuku’s idol, All Might himself, had saved his life and then promptly devastated him with the advice that he should give up on his dream of being a hero. Looking back on it now, the number one hero had probably said whatever he could to keep some dumb kid from getting himself killed. Still, to hear at such a young age that all of Izuku’s dreams would never amount to anything more than the pretty picture in his head… it destroyed him.
Izuku was grateful every day of his life that his mother had noticed him spiraling in the weeks after his confrontation with All Might. She hadn’t hesitated to help pull him out of his misery any way she could.
“You’re not useless, Izu.” She had knelt on the floor with him, holding him together as he fell apart. “My brilliant boy, you’ll do something amazing.” Izuku had lost count of how many times she reminded him of those exact words over the years. As the elevator began it ascent, Izuku believed her more than he ever had.
He might pass out.
He must have swayed on his feet a little because a strong grip on his shoulder steadied him and onyx eyes moved into view.
“Are you alright?” Jirou’s brow creased with concern and their face being this close wasn’t helping Izuku’s dizziness.
“I- I’m okay. It’s just a lot to take in.” He couldn’t exactly come out and say that he’d half-expected to show up today and be laughed out of the agency, especially since one of the heroes here-
He cut that thought off with a shake of his head before he ruined his day entirely. Izuku had decided before he set out that morning that he was only going to be focused on the parts of today that involved him fulfilling his lifelong dream. He refused to think about the reason he’d actually paused before accepting the offer letter. He would avoid thinking about that reason for as long as he could get away with it.
“Maybe I should’ve had a bigger breakfast,” he added sheepishly once the world settled back beneath his feet. The small smile he shot Jirou seemed to convince them more than his poor attempt at levity.
The concern didn’t completely leave her expression, but she did smile a bit. “I completely understand,” they said. “I tripped and busted my lip open my first day on the job because I opened a door to one of the patios and Mirko was standing there.” Izuku didn’t miss the way the hero’s cheeks reddened and their smile turned a little dopey at the memory. “She left Might Tower pretty soon after I started working here to start her own agency, but,” Jirou sighed and it was downright smitten, “she was amazing.”
The elevator pinged and Izuku was surprised to find himself fully capable of standing again, though Jirou’s hand didn’t stray far for a few seconds after they started walking.
The hallway the elevator let out to was long and narrow and ended with two massive oak doors at the far end. That was about all he was able to take in before the view out to his right stole his attention and breath. Floor-to-ceiling windows revealed all of downtown Tokyo spread out before him. They were high enough up that the tops of the surrounding skyscrapers were below the pair as they made their way down the hall. Clouds hung just above their heads, close enough to drag fingers through. Izuku leaned toward the window as he walked and peered down, his earlier dizziness returning as a wave at the back of his head. The people walking down below looked like tiny dust motes; barely present shadows drifting along the ground.
Before he knew it, they had reached the end of the hall and Izuku was tearing his gaze away from the view as Jirou propped open one of the doors they’d been heading toward. They ushered him into the room beyond with a casual flick of their hand.
The room was dark after the stunning brightness of the hallway, the furniture and details of the space no more than vague smudges of deeper darkness as his eyes struggled to adjust.
“I’ll see you around, Midoriya,” Jirou said from where they still lingered in the doorway. “He’ll be here in just a bit to go through your paperwork.”
Before Izuku had a chance to ask who exactly this he was, Jirou was throwing a casual wave over her shoulder and vanishing back down the hall. He was able to call out a quick thank you to the hero before the door fell softly shut behind her, robbing the room of the last of the hallway’s light. The silence of the room fell over him in an instant, the space taking on some invisible weight.
His eyes finally adapting to the low lighting, more of what turned out to be a massive office came into focus around Izuku. There were obviously windows, maybe even ones as large as the ones in the hallway had been, but heavy curtains had been pulled across them, obscuring the glass and view. At the far side of the room from where Izuku hovered by the door, a massive desk was cluttered with a few stray pens, several neat stacks of paper, and a lamp that let out a warm, buttery light. Aside from the lamp, the only other light in the room came from dimmed lights above. Izuku also noticed a cellphone laying face down on the desk’s surface, which confirmed Jirou’s assessment that whoever stayed in this office wouldn’t be gone for long.
As Izuku crossed the plush carpet to the desk across the room and, more specifically, to the chairs that sat invitingly in front of it, his head swiveled, taking in more and more details of the space. If he put these little clues together- a few potted plants near the covered windows, a tear-away calendar on a wall covered in furious, red scribbles, a couch shoved against another wall, and a discarded coffee cup sitting on a table at the couch’s end- he might be able to puzzle out who he was about to meet.
Even the size and location of the office told him quite a bit. Being on the top floor, in such a sprawling room, he couldn’t help but suspect he was about to meet with someone high up in the agency, maybe even a hero. There wasn’t any support gear laying around to clue him in, but that didn’t mean much. In an agency as prestigious and massive as Might Tower, he had no doubt there were designated areas in the building for costumes and gear to be stored. It was hard to image the space belonged to an HR worker, but what did he know.
Then, he caught sight of a poster on the wall behind the desk, and Izuku’s steps faltered.
It was a limited edition Silver Age poster of All Might. Once upon a time, Izuku owned one exactly like this. When he was six, he’d waited with his mom outside of a hero merchandise store for five hours in order to get his hands on it. Years ago- a lifetime ago, really- he had given it to a friend. Well… someone he’d considered a friend back then, anyway. In hindsight, he knew how the other boy had felt about him at that point. He just hadn’t wanted to accept it at the time. Looking back on it now, he could see the gift as the attempted olive branch it was.
Seeing the same poster here, all these years later, at the agency he worked at, was unnerving. Another instance of the day feeling a bit like fate. The sensation was markedly less pleasant than it had been earlier.
He was too busy puzzling over the poster’s presence to notice the figure that stepped out of another door off to his right- one much less grandiose than the one he’d entered through- that he hadn’t taken notice of.
In fact, Izuku was deep enough in his own thoughts that he wasn’t aware of this person until they were standing on the other side of the desk, directly in front of him. Ruby filled his vision and Izuku came back to himself with a shock of recognition. It was instant, even after all these years, and the flash-flood of certainty made him physically jolt where he stood. Only one person had eyes that burned this terribly.
The awed smile that had been near-constant on Izuku’s face since walking into the agency that morning vanished.
He was here.
Of course he was here. Izuku had known he would be. In fact, the knowledge that he worked in this building was the first thought he had after coming back down from the high that was receiving his offer letter. Still, he had hoped to have at least one day of uninhibited excitement about this place before the man before him showed up and ruined it.
As it was, though, he’d lasted all of fifteen minutes in the building before coming face-to-face with the last person on earth he wanted to see.
The man’s smile was deadly as his pointed teeth flashed in the dim light. “Deku. Been awhile.”
Izuku drew in a steeling breath. Let it quietly hiss back out between his teeth.
“Hello, Kacchan.”