Chapter Text
Art done by SofiaMochi on Instagram, go check out their account, they got awesome stuff!
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Now
If there is a hell, Izuku imagined there would be no worse punishment than continuing a soul-sucking job for the rest of eternity. He’d been watching this zombie for three days, and each day they get ready in their apartment, putting on a white shirt stained purely with blood, a torn tie, and pants that were thoroughly shitted through. Other than that, Yurichi was pretty whole for a zombie, thanks to their Quirk. Not all zombies were like this, others were just your typical zombie. It was – in Izuku’s opinion – the truly depressing ones that followed the nine-to-five pattern after long being dead. Some would say Izuku wasn’t any different than them, other than being living. But at least his job was fun and may possibly save the human race. If he could ever get to that stage. He’s no hero, but being a Quirkologist hadn’t been too bad in this situation. He just hoped Yurichi here would help get him to that next step in a cure.
Now, one issue. Per Yurichi’s “schedule”, he left for work around eight in the morning. But despite the fucker tying a tie better than Izuku could have ever managed, Yurichi never set foot outside the building. Izuku watched for three days as Yurichi left his apartment, was nowhere to be seen for eight hours, and then reappear back in his apartment and “unwind” from the day. It had to be something with Yurichi’s regeneration Quirk that put him in a unique class of his own. Not too dumb to be your stereotypical zombie, not too smart to be one of those damn yurei’s that stalked survivors, and set up traps and ambushes. Smarter than most, dumber than some. Izuku hoped just dumb enough to make his job easy.
Izuku looked down from his binoculars and checked the time on his phone – something he’d had to custom make on the fly a few years ago and never had the chance to replace since. It was fifteen minutes to eight, might as well start heading in. He put away the binoculars and stood up on the rooftop of the building across the street from Yurichi’s. He had been scoping the area out for any variables that may impede his mission. He’d taken a peak into a few buildings - not too extensive a search, just enough to assure him there wasn’t a horde waiting to roll out on the streets at the slightest disturbance – and he’d seen a few small groups come and go down the streets. Nothing too worrisome, just a couple of zombies in Yurichi’s building on the ground floor. He had really hoped Yurichi would walk out so Izuku wouldn’t have to go in, but it wasn’t looking likely.
He climbed down the fire escape and stopped at his truck just parked a little further down the street. He opened the door and looked to Eri sitting in the passenger seat. Eri was a little girl he’d rescued from a yakuza gang known as the Shie Hassaikai. Her age was unknown, but maybe eight years old if Izuku had to guess. He suspected she wasn’t aging as much due to either her own peculiar Quirk, or Chisaki’s treatment of her while she’d been prisoner with the yakuza. Least now she was looking healthier. She wore the same drab clothes everyone else wore these days -bright colours being another attraction for zombies – and wore a thick coat two sizes too big for her.
His abrupt opening of the drivers door startled Eri. She didn’t shriek, but sank farther back into her seat. She relaxed when she realised it was just Izuku.
“Hey Eri.” Izuku said and pointed to Yurichi’s apartment. “I’m going to get Yurichi, I need you to get in the drivers seat, just in case things don’t go as planned and we need to get out of here quickly.”
“Okay, Mr. Midoriya.” Eri glanced out the window. “Um… There’s something over there that looks a little weird.”
Izuku looked and saw what she was meaning. It took a moment, but farther down the street something was casting a large illusionary barrier. It looked more like an intense heatwave rippling the air. He’d been focused on the building he hadn’t noticed it approaching.
“Thanks for spotting that, Eri.” He gave her a reassuring look and unslung his rifle. “Watch behind the truck, please.”
“Okay.”
Izuku unslung his rifle and braced it against the door. He’d spent a lot of times with rifles, the best ones for zombie killing he found were the .22 caliber with a suppressor. Quiet and effective after using a bow, which he sucked at. Besides, the calibre was cheap to buy in mass quantities and had the added bonus of sometimes ricocheting inside a zombies skull and scrambling the brains up pretty good. But of course, one should never just shoot a zombie once. His rifle could go between semi and automatic fire, had a scope, laser sight, and a double drum magazine. When the rifle was out, he had his .22 pistol, again with suppressor and laser attachments, because sometimes he couldn’t use a rifle effectively in close quarters. Now, when he really needed to put a hole in something, either because his target shrugged off .22 rounds or he needed it to be really dead, he had a spare 1911 in a shoulder holster loaded with needle point rounds and a sawed-off shotgun with a four-shell magazine loaded with single bore rounds.
He took aim down the street and let loose a couple of rounds. The mirage flickered as each bullet passed through it, and a shimmer of focused light to the side caught his attention. He adjusted and put half a dozen rounds at the source, the illusion fell and the zombie stumbled. They were pink haired, short, and eyes seemed to shimmer brightly. He put a round through its head before its illusion could come back up. Beside the illusionary zombie were a few others shuffling towards the truck, each with various Quirks or mutations enhanced by the virus. Back in the day he would have loved to study the Quirks, but now not so much. He did pause and consider each. There was an emitter with an orbit of small debris around it, a bull mutant, another with thorns growing out of it, and the illusionist.
He focused his sight on the next zombie, lining up the crosshairs with its head when the ball of metal and wires that made up his right eye went a little whacko, zooming in and going out of focus. He cursed and gave his right socket a good smack to fix the issue, he needed to get that looked at but there weren’t a lot of cyberneticists to be had around here. His eye returned to its normal functions he resumed shooting down the rest of the zombies. The emitter with the refuse orbiting around them was a little difficult, he had to sort of spray and pray until one of the bullets managed to get past the refuse it collected. The shot struck it in the forehead and it dropped to the ground lifelessly in true death.
Izuku glanced around for more anomalies, and thankfully saw none. “Streets look clear to you, Eri?”
“Yes.” Eri said.
“Alright. Get your driving shoes on and be ready.”
Eri looked nervous at the idea of trying to drive the truck again, but she bravely nodded and grabbed her stilts from the backseat and got in the driver seat. Izuku let his rifle hang by its sling and drew his .22 pistol and headed for the building. Hopefully no more unexpected visitors stopped by.
He entered the apartment building, immediately found three zombies had moved to be close by the door and he shot each of them a few times in the head. They didn’t have a chance to react. He checked the doors as he approached the stairwell, seeing which ones were locked and which ones weren’t. He’d checked them before on the second day, but it didn’t hurt to check a second time. He could try picking the locks and clearing each one to make his exit more expedient should he fuck up. But more time he spent doing all that, the more time he was leaving open for something to go wrong. He was just going to pull a Katsuki and go right in. Just not as loud. Quicker he got to Yurichi without alerting other zombies, the better.
He entered the stairwell and was immediately faced with five zombies lingering on the first set of stairs. Quickly, his pistol moved, sights lining up on each of their heads and putting a couple of shots in each. He couldn’t help but think of Katsuki reprimanding him with Jesse Eisenberg’s rulebook for zombie survival, his old friend had taken it to heart and did not miss a single chance to drill the golden rules into everyone’s skull. Despite it being from a movie, it had sound advice. He resisted a chuckle as he double tapped each zombie with a couple extra bullets as he passed, the irate blond in his head ridiculing him on procedure.
Switching out the magazine, he went straight for the third floor and stopped abruptly. At the top of the stairs was an abnormal rock formation blocking him off from the third floor. The zombie was entirely encased in rock, the cause being its own Quirk. Oh, that explained why Yurichi hadn’t been able to go anywhere. It would be too good to believe it was just stuck there. Likely this person had a hardening ability like Eijiro Kirishima, but the virus enhanced it like it usual and made things complicated. He thought about slipping by, but why risk it? If he got too close it would pulverise him.
Holstering the pistol, Izuku retrieved the shotgun, quietly sliding back the action enough to make sure he had a shell in the chamber. Hopefully he wasn’t going to need to use it. Stepping out further on the stairwell, he reached out a hand and knocked on the wall beside him. As he feared the zombie immediately moved, breaking an arm free of its stoney prison and gnashed its teeth together, it sounded like rocks clacking against each other.
Izuku kept knocking on the wall. “Come on, dummy, get your ass over here, nice and slow please.”
The zombie tore another arm free and smashed them down onto the lower parts of itself, freeing its legs. Izuku half expected it to take a tumble down the stairs but it surprised him by taking a leap. He moved out of the way just in time for the zombie to fly past him and go through the wall, falling outside and landing on the street. Pretty spry for a rock guy. But that had been a lot of noise. He should have kept moving, but being cursed with a curious and intuitive mind, he had to check and see if the damn thing had died from the fall. He glanced out the hole to see it rolling onto its back, stone hands tearing away chunks of rock from its face, tearing away gross decaying flesh with it and revealing a pair of red angry eyes glaring up at him.
“Ah, shit.” Izuku cursed.
He ran up the rest of the stairs and quickly found the door to Yurichi’s apartment. He oriented himself and found the door. Putting away the shotgun and drawing his .22 pistol again. He knocked on the door to Yurichi’s apartment. He could have gone and kicked it open, of course, but it was rather amusing to see the zombie open the door and a pale dead face give him a curious look.
“Hi.” Izuku said, and shot Yurichi in the head.
Yurichi fell backwards. Izuku stepped through the door, catching and lowering the body steadily to the floor. The apartment itself was small with a big window, the one he’d been looking at from outside. Pretty bare with furniture, a tv sat on one wall, cracked like someone had been shoved into it. Other than that, it seemed rather tidy.
Midoriya secured Yurichi’s arms and legs with zip-ties, simultaneously inspecting the body. Pale with purple blemishes, Midoriya wasn’t sure what contributed to his condition there other than the virus, but otherwise Yurichi was physically whole. The hole in his head was spitting out the bullet fragments and sealing the whole shut. Yurichi’s Quirk was working like Midoriya hoped, he would have stopped and checked to see if the zombie had a heartbeat, but he could hear the rock zombie making a lot of noise as it charged up the stairs. Taking a quick peak out the front door, the ruckus the zombie was causing was also alerting the other zombies too. He shut the door and locked it for all the good it would do.
He went to the window and looked out. A three-story drop, he could survive that, yeah. He grabbed Yurichi and stood him against the window, then spartan kicked him out of the apartment. Midoriya watched him fall just as Rocky got back up to the third floor. Yurichi landed, Midoriya took a step back, calculating his jump, and just as Rocky broke down the door, he leapt. There was the moment of feeling his stomach jump into his throat, the split second “Fuck am I doing?” going through his mind, then his feet landed on Yurichi’s stomach and he let himself fall over on him, giving the zombie a mouthful of his arm. The zombies’ teeth gnashed against the leather, his dull teeth not even breaking through. Midoriya could have sworn he heard Yurichi swear as he landed. He didn’t get long to consider that as he looked up to see Rocky jumping out the window after him.
Izuku rolled to the side, disregarding the rifle and going for his shotgun. Rocky hit the ground; a stone fist intended for Izuku’s head instead hit Yurichi’s. Rocky’s full weight cratered the ground around it, pulverizing more of Yurichi’s body. For a second, Izuku froze, mouth open in a silent “Oh”. Rocky pulled his fist back, revealing a pulverized head underneath.
“Son of a bitch!” Izuku swore, getting back to his feet as Rocky turned towards him. Even with a regeneration Quirk, there was only so much damage a Meta-human could take, even a dead one.
He leveled the shotgun and fired round after round at the hip. The recoil hurt his wrists, but he couldn’t shoulder the damn thing without a complete stock. The single bore rounds blasted chunks of Rocky, but they only grew back as it charged towards him. Lurching to the side, barely dodging the zombie was it tried to grab him in a bear hug, he drew his other pistol and fired a couple shots into its knee in the hopes of slowing it. The zombie spun, delivering a powerful backhand hitting Izuku in the side, knocking him back several feet to the ground. Pain shot up his side and the air left his lungs. He struggled to breath for a moment, almost panicking in the moment as Rocky took an unsteady step towards him, one hand reaching up and tearing away another chunk of rock trying to block its vision.
Then his truck rammed the zombie so hard it sent Rocky skipping over the street till it slid to stop. Pieces of it had torn off from the impact and more had chipped away. Izuku started to breath normally and got back on shaky feet. Rocky didn’t get back up, and from the unnatural angle of its head, they were as good as dead. Uh… dead again.
The front of his truck had taken the impact well. The reinforced bar was bent inward, but nothing that would stop his truck from functioning. The driver door opened and Eri stepped out, looking much paler than usual and pretty nauseated. She stared at the zombie for a long moment, during which Midoriya had run over to Yurichi’s corpse and dragged it back to the truck. Dragging the corpse was not what his body wanted, what it really wanted was to lay down and die, but the other zombies inside the apartment were starting to shuffle out the door and he was feeling spiteful enough not to be a mid-day snack.
“Mr. Midoriya.” Eri said, sounding scared. “I just ran someone over.”
“I saw that.” Izuku grunted as he tossed Yurichi in the back and ran for the driver seat. “Good job.”