Viridian: The Green Guide

Chapter 73: One for All

Izuku took a deep breath and reminded himself for the fifteenth time that he did not have to do this. He could go and find a crime to stop or he could do some investigation online. Heck, he could even just go home and go to sleep! He did not have to confront the number one hero.

As much as he didn't want to, however, there was a certain aspect of nostalgia to the whole thing. The last time he'd asked the number one hero an important question, it had been more of a spur of the moment thing and a lot more of a personal question rather than an interrogation, but Izuku just hoped that this time, the answer would be a little more positive.

He shook his head and focused on staying silent and keeping to the shadows that the first rays of sunset were creating. Normally he wouldn't go out as Viridian this early, but he didn't want to lose his chance and he figured this counted as an exception. If he had asked, Eraserhead would have probably been willing to have this conversation for him, but from what Denki had told him, All Might wanted to keep the knowledge of his quirk as close to the chest as possible. Looping in Eraserhead might get both Denki and Izuku in trouble and even if All Might was a lot weaker than he had been at his prime, Izuku still didn't really want to be on his bad side if at all possible.

So instead, Izuku had hacked into the city camera system again and checked the streets around All Might's last fight until he caught sight of his skinny form. In the end, he'd basically stalked the number one hero until he knew his basic schedule and could engineer a meet-up. He probably should have waited longer and gotten more information, but if the sheer amount of new articles today with All Might in the headline were any indication, he'd already reached his time limit, so there wasn't really going to be a better time for Izuku to talk to him without immediately getting beaten into the ground. It was better to get his answers sooner anyway, so that Denki could get back to All Might with his decision as soon as possible...or so that he could tell the heroes about All Mights true colors if he turned out to be working with All for One, but he was trying to ignore that possibility.

He hadn't told Denki what he was planning to do, for obvious reasons. With everything he had had going on, first with preparing for the UA entrance exam and now with the decision he needed to make about All Might's quirk, he seemed to have forgotten about his momentary suspicions about Viridian's identity and Izuku wanted to keep it that way. Thankfully, Denki assumed he knew so much about quirk transfer because of his quirk theory classes and not because he'd been researching to help the heroes with a case, so Izuku had said he wanted to do a little more research, he let Denki assume that he was reading a few more articles instead of kind of not really stalking a hero.

All Might turned onto a side street and Izuku took a deep breath. It had been ten months since he'd talked to the number one hero. There was no way he'd remember a weak little quirkless kid after all that time and he'd already gone over his limit, so as long as Izuku was careful, his identity should be safe. He pushed the memories of their last encounter and the last of his nerves under a thick layer of bravado and jumped down onto the street.

//

Something was off, but Toshinori couldn't quite put a finger on what. If he was in his muscle form, he would have assumed that he was being followed, but no one ever paid attention to Toshinori Yagi except to give him dirty glances when they assumed he was a drug addict or something. Tsukauchi would probably want him to call, just to be on the safe side, but he was the number one hero! He couldn't bother his friend just because of a little paranoia, especially when he was so busy with the villain factory case, so Toshinori just wrote the feeling off as him being tired after a long day of hero work and went home.

He should have listened to his gut.

He was just getting out his key to enter his building when he heard a soft thud behind him, "Hello All Might."