Chapter Text
Akari stands on the sidewalk outside UA's campus that day expecting to weasel a free rescue heroics lesson out of the instructors with her quirk.
But when she stretches her range out, she instead hears the sound of the USJ being invaded by villains. She hears the hero students worry about the alarm not going off, about nobody on the main campus knowing that something is wrong. About nobody coming to rescue them.
She knows she must do something. She starts sprinting. It takes a good five straight minutes of running before the main campus comes into range of her quirk...it's frankly an obscene waste of space, how big UA's grounds are. Her quirk picks up all sounds within her range, and paints a picture of her surroundings, an effect almost like echolocation. It tells her that UA's Principle is speaking to All Might in a conference room right now.
When she speaks, even though her mouth doesn't move, and her feet stay planted on the sidewalk outside of the school, her Voice nevertheless comes from the empty space right next to the Principal. She tells him about the invasion, and All Might is already running off to rescue class 1A from the USJ.
Nedzu thanks her for the warning, and asks her to pass the message on to the rest of his staff with a grin. Normally, this would be no problem. Akari's quirk has more than enough range and multitasking ability to simultaneously alert all the heroes in the school to the invasion. But...
...her father that man works here.
She saves him for last. She hates to give that man the chance to do something heroic, to continue the lie to everyone around him that he is a good person. All the other heros will get there before him, because she warns him last.
She finds Present Mic teaching an English lesson in his classroom, acting all cheerful and silly like he's not secretly a piece of garbage. Her nails dig into her palms as she clenches her fists when she speaks to the man. She uses her real voice, which unfortunately comes off quite young, as she is only thirteen.
"Present Mic." Her voice comes from right behind him, despite the fact that she is standing outside the school on the sidewalk; such is the power of her quirk. Her tone is much colder than when she spoke to the other heros. "Principal Nedzu asked me to pass on a message. The USJ is being invaded by villains, and he needs you to join him and a few other teachers in rescuing the students and staff there."
...
Hizashi was caught off guard when he heard the voice behind him, but quickly excused himself from class and ran out to the USJ.
He had no idea that he had a child, or that she hated him.
When he got to the USJ, he found Aizawa being attacked by some kind of creature. He'd had a bit of a crush on Shouta for years now, but never found the guts to say anything. It was painful to see him like this now.
He rushed right into the battle, using his quirk on some villains but making sure to keep students out of the line of fire.
...
Akari moved to try and keep pace with the heros she could hear rushing from one end of the campus to the USJ at the other end. She could hardly hope to keep up with them physically, as their legs were much longer than her's, but the sheer range of her quirk made up for a lot of the difference. She felt like she was running right beside them...
The USJ fell within the range of her quirk at about the same time the UA heros reached the building. All Might defeated one of the bigger villains, and the UA teachers defeated the rest.
Her fatherThat man opened his mouth and screamed.
Villains went down to the sound of his Voice, but so did Akari, knees scraping as she fell to the sidewalk, stupidly clutching at her ears as if that would stop her quirk from hearing the noise. Partially, such a loud and unnatural sound was simply grating to her quirk's senses. Mostly, it was because hearing that noise took her back to that day, so long ago, when that Voice rose higher and higher, until dust was shaken lose and stone trembled and fell and the building came down and her momma didn't walk out of it.
She reached out with her quirk, and stifled that noise, her father'sPresent Mic's Voice dying before it even left his throat. He fell abruptly silent as Akari took control of the soundwaves produced by his vocal cords and laid them flat, an unnatural silence now swallowing that terrible Voice.
Akari knelt on her knees and elbows on the sidewalk along the outside of the back wall surrounding UA, hands clutching at her ears, and sobbed quietly into the unforgiving stone ground.
...
Hizashi froze, all of a sudden he couldn't use his quirk. He felt his vocal cord straining, but no sound came out. He almost wanted to look for Eraserhead, figure out why the guy had eyes on him. But no, this felt different from Erasure, and there was no more time to dwell on it.
All hell broke loose, Hizashi had to rely on his small knowledge of hand to hand fighting to carry him through. It wasn't completely hopeless; he wouldn't be much of a hero if he couldn't throw a punch, and Shouta would kick his ass if he neglected his ability to fight without his quirk...still, these villains had strength, numbers, and quirks on him...
...
Distantly, Akari realized that the pace of the fight between Present Mic and those villains had changed, the near echolocation-esque feature of her quirk painting the picture of the fight in her mind's eye.
But she was still trembling on the ground, shivering from the intensity of the sudden flashback. She should never have come here. She should never have skipped school to go bum free hero lessons off of UA. What did she even hope to achieve? She could never be a hero. And she had known her fatherthat man worked here. She should have known this was a possibility.
(...in the back of her mind, she followed her father'sPresent Mic's fight, seeing how he was getting more and more pressured without his quirk...pressured enough to lose? Would he...could he...die here? Because of her? Deprived of his quirk in a critical moment...could she get away with it...?)
She tried to push the thought aside.
Meanwhile, Nedzu had stayed in the entrance to the USJ, on the platform which overlooked the central plaza while his underlings fanned out across the zones to clean up the rest of the villains. His eyes scanned everything, but his attention was drawn when Present Mic's Voice quirk suddenly cut out. The mammal studied the situation for a moment with his head tilted to the side. Then he abruptly addressed the thin air. "Miss? Excuse me...Miss? Little girl?"
Hearing the principal's voice, even from a football field away, Akari sniffled, raised her head, and her Voice came from the thin air the mammal was addressing when she waveringly said, "...yeah?"
"Well, our local Voice hero seems to be having some trouble, do you think you could..." he trailed off leadingly and gestured.
"...yeah." Akari replied reluctantly, with a sniffle. "...sorry." She added, insincere and resentful. She released her quirk's hold on Present Mic's Voice, and in expectation of the return of that awful sound, she curled up sitting with her back against the wall and her head between her knees, shivering.
...
As soon as he was able to use his quirk, Present Mic continued to knock down as many villains as he could. But in the back of his mind, all he could think about was whether or not Shouta would be alright.
...
Akari, now anticipating the noise, was able to hold herself together a little better this time. Still, her fingers went bloodless for how hard she clutched at her knees and flinched with every sound out of that man's mouth.
When the fighting was all over with and the villains secured, Akari uncurled and relaxed just a little, only for her quirk to pick up on the sound of the principal's voice again, asking her to please stick around so that she can give a statement, and that someone would be coming by soon to escort her onto the grounds. She hesitated, torn between not wanting to interact with authority, and being given an opportunity to see her father closer up than she has in years. She didn't quite know what she would do with the opportunity, but it was there.
She was debating it for too long. Nedzu had already sent Midnight to escort her onto the grounds so there was no turning back now, though Akari failed to recognize the R rated hero as the woman strode up to her on the sidewalk. Midnight stopped and stared as Akari looked up and their eyes met.
Akari knew she looked a bit a mess right now. Her long blond hair had a million flyaways from all the running she had been doing, and her face was streaked with tear marks and stress, her clothes were rumpled.
The staring from Midnight went on just a little bit too long. Akari had the brief worry that as Present Mic's coworker, the unidentified hero had somehow taken one look at her and realized their connection. Akari told herself that was silly. Akari had too much baby fat still clinging to her face for the similarities in their features to be pronounced yet, and blond hair was too common for anyone to clock their relation that way. No, Midnight was staring because of her ruffled appearance, not because she had taken one look at Akari and just known.
What Akari didn't know was that she was wrong. Nemuri had known the little girl she had been sent to fetch was related to her friend Hizashi somehow as soon as their eyes met. The little girl's eyes were red where Hizashi's eyes were green, but the rings and swirls around their pupils were identical and rather distinctive. Nemuri was trying to remember if Hizashi had ever mentioned having a niece or something while she stared.
Midnight shook herself out of it when Akari interrupted the staring contest to stand and take a step closer. Midnight jumped into gear, smiling and peddling her 'comforting shaken civilian children' routine as they walked back to the growing police presence around the USJ even as her mind raced.
As they walked back to where Nedzu stood overseeing things, the same thing happened again. Akari met the mammal's beady black eyes as they approached, and Nedzu's head tilted curiously while he stared as if solving a difficult puzzle. Then, he started to laugh, almost more of a cackle.
Akari nearly didn't notice. Her eyes quickly found Present Mic's back and stayed there. The man seemed preoccupied with an injured hero, all in black and covered in blood. Akari could hear the dark haired man's heartbeat struggling weakly in his chest. She couldn't tear her eyes away from her father though. Her fists clenched with anger at her sides.
Midnight was glancing between Akari and Present Mic, looking like she was trying to solve a math problem in her head as she compared their features. Nedzu, because everyone else in the group was staring at Mic, also turned to look at him with a sharp toothed grin.
...
When Hizashi turned and saw Akari he froze, standing up to walk over to her. He knew the girl looked strangely familiar, but he couldn't place his finger on it. It was like he just met her, and yet also somehow like he had known her his whole life.
...
The paramedics packed the injured hero away, and then Present Mic turned and looked at her.
Akari felt herself freeze up as her father started walking closer, a strange expression on his face.
She had imagined meeting him properly before. What she would say, what he would say. She had imagined screaming at him, venting her feelings, making him feel regret over what he did to her. She imagined exposing his cruelty to the world, shouting it out for all to hear and watching his face fall as his lies were exposed. She imagined a lot of things.
She did not imagine being rooted to the spot, a tangled ball of fear, anger, and anxiety high in her throat and preventing her from saying a single word.
Her eyes averted from his after a moment, and she felt weak for not being able follow through on any of her daydreamed plans of this confrontation. She crossed her arms in a motion that she hoped looked angry, but really just came off as hugging herself for comfort. She forced herself to pretend to ignore the man's approach and turned to Nedzu.
She knew if she spoke now using her real voice, she would sound weepy and weak in front of the man who had hurt her the worst in the world. So she used her quirk to imitate the sound of her normal, unaffected voice when she said, "You wanted me to give a statement to the police, Mr Principal?" Her mouth didn't move as the sound of her voice came from the thin air next to her.
Meanwhile, Nemuri walked off a few steps to meet Hizashi. She lowered her voice as if to avoid Akari from hearing her, (though how could Akari not, with her quirk?), and said, "How is Aizawa? He wasn't looking too good from where I was standing."
...
Hizashi was still a little focused on Akari as he spoke. "I'm not sure, but he looked bad."
He then turned away from Nemuri, walked over to Akari and smiled, still with that strange feeling in his gut. "Hello, I'm assuming you're the girl who warned us of the attack?"
...
Akari felt the hairs on the back of her neck raise as that man got steadily closer and closer. The sound of his boots making contact with the ground told her where he was, and sent thrills of dred down her spine. She looked at him out of the corner of her eye when he got close enough, not wanting to face him head on. He seemed to tower over her in her mind. Her hands curled into fists.
And then he asked that damning question. "I assume you're the girl-"
Does he...not remember her? She looked up and faced him properly, full on and she searched his face, looked for the anger and loathing he was surely hiding. But she didn't find it. His expression was a little strange, but there wasn't an ounce of recognition in his eyes.
...had she really meant so little to him? She had thought he would at least remember her for how much he seemed to hate her.
Akari was eight when a hero with a terrifying voice caused enough collateral damage during a fight with a villian for her mother's workplace to collapse on top of her, killing her instantly. It wasn't long after that Akari started to suspect that the same hero, Present Mic, was her biological father. It was years before she had found enough forgiveness in her heart to explore that possibility.
She was ten when she wrote a "fan" letter to the Pro Hero Present Mic. Within, she explained why she thought they were related, including things like their appearances, their quirks, and her mom's stories about what she remembered about Akari's dad. She included a picture of herself, and a DNA sample, (a single strand of long blond hair), in anticipation that the hero would want to test their relation.
Three weeks later, a man in a sharp suit drove up to her foster home in a fancy black car. He told her he was Present Mic's manager, and he had come because the hero himself was too busy to come in person. He had said a lot of mean things to her then; yelled at her until she cried, made her sign a piece of paper called an 'NDA' and then told her she would get into big trouble if she told anyone that Present Mic was her dad. He gave her a typed letter from Present Mic, and the hero's words in it echoed his manager's. It said that he hated her, that he didn't want to be her dad, and that he wished she had never been born. He threatened her not to try to talk to him anymore, and not to try to tell anyone that Present Mic was her dad, because no one would believe her, and no one would like her anymore. At the bottom, in bright green ink, was his personal signature.
Something in her had cracked irreparably that day. She felt the sharp edges of those cracks scraping at her insides now, as she looked up at the oblivious face of the person she hated most in the world, the person who didn't even care enough to remember her.
Well, at least this means she probably wouldn't have to hear him say all those awful things in person. Silver linings, and all that.
Akari wanted to cry.