Viridian: The Green Guide

Chapter 43: Growth

Izuku almost hadn't gone out tonight. It was New Years, so he'd been planning on staying up with Mom as late as she wanted, then maybe hacking into the hero comms after she went to bed. But then, Mom had had a long day at work, so she ended up going to bed at 12:02, about as early as possible while still being able to brag about staying up until midnight. So, with that plan out the window, as soon as he was sure she was asleep, Izuku had hacked into the city cameras and quickly realized that the holiday made the streets a lot busier than he was used to, which meant that the heroes could probably use some more boots on the ground, so Izuku had rushed to get dressed in his vigilante outfit and run straight out the door and onto the rooftops.

Which was how he had ended up on the roof of one of the many apartment buildings with a direct view of the bar district where Amplifier patrolled. A few fights had broken out that either resolved themselves quickly or that Amplifier made it to before he could get down to the street, so Izuku had spent most of his night looking for girls who were just a little too drunk to be willingly going home with a guy and shooting his marbles at the sketchy dudes trying to force them into either alleyways or cars. It was actually a lot more fun than he'd expected it to be and almost always bought more than enough time for the girl's friends to usher her away while the guy was busy storming around looking for whatever punk had just shot him in the leg with a marble.

He felt a little bad for laughing whenever, but at one point, Amplifier had caught sight of what he was doing and he'd seen her holding back laughter of her own and wink at him, so he supposed he wasn't doing anything too terrible, right? Whenever he wasn't annoying the crime out of frat boys, he ended up trying to eavesdrop on the people who seemed to be having good luck seducing people the right way. What could he say? He didn't know anything about flirting and he needed inspiration to help Kaminari become a better hero and add the weapon of seduction to his arsenal!

Izuku giggled as the most recent guy he was watching got definitively shot down by his target's best friend. The guy just laughed off the disappointment with his buddies before going to find someone else to flirt with. It seemed like, as busy and risky as the night was, everyone was having fun and there wouldn't be any major issues to ruin the party.

Until everyone started screaming.

Izuku whipped around to see a small crowd of people running toward him, some tripping desperately to get away from the stretching vines that were reaching for their ankles as a large, mutated villain loomed behind them. Izuku's brain immediately started racing as he analyzed what he could see of the villain's quirk in the darkness. It seemed to be somewhat similar to Kamui Woods' quirk, so there were probably weaknesses to things like heat, fire, and prolonged exposure to darkness, none of which Izuku was necessarily prepared to take advantage of right now. His top priority needed to be evacuation and letting Amplifier know about the villain.

Izuku jumped down onto the street and ran toward one of the civilians who was currently being dragged backward across the concrete by one of the vines. They were desperately trying to grab onto anything to stop themselves, but the villain was moving too quickly for that to do any good. His marbles probably wouldn't do any good here, not unless he could get close enough to the villain's main body to target his eyes, and his pipes were a bludgeoning weapon, which weren't going to be the most effective against wood, which could easily take the blows. Izuku didn't stop to second guess himself as he grabbed the utility knife from his belt. He didn't let himself use it that often because it just seemed way more harmful than his other weapons, but he was a vigilante! He had to do whatever it took to protect people!

He put on a final burst of speed and managed to grab the civilian's hand. The villain didn't stop pulling, but Izuku dug in his feet, grabbed the vine, and started hacking through it with his knife. The civilian started running away as soon as they were free and Izuku hissed as the vine snapped up and hit him in the face before trying to wrap around his neck. He quickly dropped and rolled away, hiding behind a car as the vine uprooted an entire mailbox and threw it across the street. Izuku felt a warm liquid on his cheek and reached to wipe it away in confusion, since he didn't think he'd started crying, then grimaced as he looked at the dark blood on his fingers. Of course the vines had to have thorns.