[EXCLUSIVE] FIC - “Kill the Ghost” Chapter 1

A/N: I’m bouncing off the walls excited to start sharing this fic with you guys! I’m not sure how many chapters it’ll end up being, but it’s gonna be a long one. New chapters will go up every Friday. Yaaaay!!!!

CONTENT TAGS: urban fantasy AU, human Izuku, magus Katsuki, not childhood friends, action/adventure, medium burn, falling in love, canon-typical violence, smut, first times, angst, mystery, happy ending, more tags to be added

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CHAPTER ONE

On his tenth lap around the block, Izuku spotted the monster watching him. It was crouched against the wooden post of a neighbor's mailbox, little more than a shadow with large-knuckled fingers that raked at empty air.

Izuku stifled a groan. Sprinting through his neighborhood at midnight was hard enough without an unwanted audience. He stopped to catch his breath beneath a lamppost, his hand braced against the cool iron.

The monster across the street moved, shifting on spindly legs that trembled beneath its slight form. Its bulbous eyes glowed an eerie yellow in the dark.

Izuku had learned that if he ignored them hard enough, eventually, they went away. Didn't help his doubts about his sanity, but at least it worked. Except they'd been showing up more frequently the last few weeks, and the watching thing was new. Pretending something wasn't there was a lot harder when it was staring at him.

His phone vibrated in his back pocket. With a glance at the screen, he put the phone to his ear.

"You sound like a goat on the rack," Shouto said in greeting.

"How," Izuku asked between breaths, "do you know what a tortured goat sounds like?"

He shook out his legs, but it didn't help. Even running for three miles hadn't burned off the energy. Great. He considered just rolling into a ditch and letting the monsters have their way with him.

Shouto’s voice was perfectly flat as he answered, "Animal Sacrifices Hour. Wednesday nights at eight. Bring your own blood bucket."

Izuku could never be entirely sure that Shouto was joking. His deadpan was just too powerful.

"Did running work?" Shouto asked.

"No." Izuku didn't know what else to do. Imaginary monsters he could deal with—those, at least, went away. Sort of. The restlessness, combined with the insomnia, was something else.

After weeks strung between exhaustion and energy, his days now passed in a blur, and he'd begun naming his counting sheep (he liked Sora, number one hundred and seventy-two).

At least he wasn't still trying to get Shouto to knock him out for some quality unconscious time. Shouto refused anyway, even though it was Izuku's best idea. What good were best friends if they wouldn't be accomplices? 

He didn't have the nerve yet to do it to himself, but he'd give it another week before he started searching the house for handy bludgeons.

"Why are you calling?" Izuku asked. 

"Just making sure you didn't pass out in someone's garden."

"That would be the best possible outcome actually. Gonna head home now. 'Night." He tucked his phone into his pocket and continued on, ignoring the way the monster across the street rattled forward again. 

He turned the corner, out of the monster's line of sight, and drew in a slow breath of relief. He turned his face into the breeze. It barely stirred the green curls sticking to his forehead. 

The heavy air smelled of grass and drying paint from a neighbor's fence, but beneath it sat the bitter scent of the city. It smelled of distant summer evenings beside the docks, scraping mold off rotting wood with the sharp edges of stones, of soil and brine and Dad's arm around his shoulders as they watched shadowy barges pass like ghost ferries. 

A lamppost illuminated the crooked steps of Sasaki-ojisan’s house and the banana tree sitting in a clay pot beside the door. Its shriveled leaves were curled against its trunk like a giant spider.

Izuku crept inside and made a quick detour to the bathroom to wash up. Once in his room, he stripped down to his boxers and collapsed onto his bed.

His limbs twitched with the need to move. Groaning, he considered smothering himself in his pillow. 

The restlessness had been gradual, building slowly enough that he hadn't even noticed until, one day, Shouto had given him a puzzled look and asked, "Can’t you just sit still?" and Izuku had realized that no, he really couldn't.

Even stranger, he felt certain that if he just did something, it would go away. Sprinting hadn't worked, and he'd given up on drugstore sleep aids after falling asleep in his bed and waking up in their tree. He felt overwrought, with no way to release the energy, and he'd begun to wonder, in a morbid way, if he would eventually explode from the pressure.

Sighing, he closed his eyes and counted backward from Hoshi, number one thousand and one. 

+++

Izuku awoke to darkness.

This wouldn't have been strange, except Izuku's window directly faced a street light, and without proper curtains, his room never got completely dark. Mind still fuzzy and confused about what had woken him, he groped blindly for his phone on the nightstand.

Something exploded past his window. He flinched back, his elbow knocking into the headboard. The windowpane shuddered. A rush of sound thundered overhead like a flock of birds taking flight, dozens of beating wings clamoring above the roof. The picture frame at the corner of his desk tipped over with a clatter.

"What the he—" Pain burst through him, and he cried out, spine arching off his mattress.

Then, everything stopped. 

Izuku found himself lying on his side, curled around himself. The pain was gone, but the memory of it left his body trembling.

It had never been that bad before, never more than a prickling awareness sharp enough to be painful—an awareness of what, he couldn't say. Most days, he was convinced it was as imagined as the monsters probably were.

But he couldn't have imagined that. Breathing hard, he rose from his bed, willing his legs to accept his weight. He had to check on his dad. Toshinori got so easily confused these days.

He hurried down the hallway before throwing open his dad's door and slapping the wall in search of the switch. The surge of light stabbed his pupils, and he squinted as his eyes adjusted.

Toshinori's bed was empty. This wouldn't be the first time he'd risen before Izuku, but after what happened just now, he wasn't about to be rational.

He ran into the living room and cursed when he banged his shin against the coffee table. In the kitchen, the door to the yard was open. 

The yard was fenced, the planks of wood dressed in ivy and tall enough to keep Dad safe from curious neighbors. The silhouette of a thin man was kneeling beside their lone tree, where the lower branches pressed against the fence and the blooming ivy crossed from old wood to gnarled bark. 

Izuku took a hesitant step forward. Toshinori's unfocused eyes peered up at a sky barely streaked with the first hints of dawn. Looking up, Izuku half expected to see a legion of birds or... whatever they had been, sitting atop their roof. 

Nothing but the stars greeted him.

"They're beautiful, aren't they?" Toshinori's voice was light, lilting. 

Izuku hurried across the grass on bare feet. "Dad?"

His head turned at Izuku's voice, although his gaze lingered on the sky a moment longer before following. "Izuku."

Relief made his shoulders sag. Toshinoris voice sounded thick with lethargy, but he'd recognized Izuku. That was enough. 

"What are you doing out here?" Izuku asked.

"I don't know. I thought I heard something." Toshinori mussed his hair.

"Well, come back inside. You're not even wearing your shoes." Izuku tugged Toshinori along behind him, as if he were the parent and his dad the misbehaving child. 

"Neither are you," Toshinori pointed out. 

Despite how unsettled he was, Izuku managed a smile. He looked behind them as he shut the door, but the stars had faded with the sunlight bleeding out over the eastern sky. 

Helping his dad back to his room, he promised to be back soon with breakfast. Then, out in the hallway, he slumped against the wall and covered his face with trembling hands.

Toshinori was fine. Everything was fine. He'd figure out what just happened another time, just like how he'd eventually figure out why the monsters were growing in number, and why his awareness of them always hurt, and why he felt like he'd burst out of his skin—

Wait. The energy inside him… it was gone. He slowly lowered his hands, staring down at his fingers, waiting for the uncontrollable jerk of restless limbs… But there was nothing.

"What…" he murmured to himself. What the hell is happening to me?

A dull thump came from his room. His head shot up, eyes narrowed on his bedroom door, left ajar in his haste to check on Toshinori. He swallowed, stomach in knots, when another muffled thump sounded.

What now? Izuku wanted to fling himself down a well and he'd only been awake for ten minutes.

With slow, measured steps, he crept his way down the hall toward his open door. Apprehension chilled the back of his neck. Would he find a monster, gnarled and horrible, like the one he'd seen last night? Or would it be one of the flapping creatures that had flown past his window?

Taking a deep breath that did nothing to calm his nerves, he peeked inside.

The street light outside was apparently working again, because that, along with the sunrise, illuminated a child-sized figure standing at his window, thin curtains pushed aside with a small hand.

Izuku frowned, stepping into his room and flicking on the light. It was a kid.

She was wearing what could have been either a nightgown or a sack, and she didn't look much older than eight, skinny and long-limbed.

She startled when the light came on, whirling around to face him. She had large eyes the color of fresh blood. They were familiar, like something out of a half-forgotten dream. Izuku slumped against his dresser, reeling from this impossible series of events.

Maybe he was delirious. Insomnia could do that; he'd read about it.

“H-hooow did you get in here?” Izuku asked, finally recovering his voice. When she only stared back at him, unblinking behind a messy drape of long silver hair, he ventured, “Are you real?”

Her thin shoulders tensed. She licked her lips, looking uncertain. "Izuku," she said. 

Izuku’s hand tightened around the edge of his dresser. How did she know his name? What was she even doing in here? Where’d she come from?

In his mind, he saw her in broken images, like frames in an old film. Just her face—pupils little more than black pinpricks within large, luminous eyes, and strands of silver hair caught in her lashes as her mouth formed words he couldn't hear.

He shook his head to dispel the odd images. This was simply too much for one freshly eighteen-year-old boy to handle in the morning.

“Okay,” he said, before taking several deep breaths. "I need you to tell me who you are and what you’re doing in my house."

She gave him a look that was both measuring and uncertain. "I'm glad you're not hurt."

"What—no, never mind, who are you?”

"You made me," she said simply, before returning to gazing out the window. Her profile looked odd, something he hadn’t noticed before protruding from her forehead like… a horn.

Nope. No. No no no. That was fine. Nothing strange about that. Focus, Izuku. "Made you,” he echoed, thoughts scrambling to catch up. “Made you do what?" 

She gave him a pointed look. "You made me."

"Do what?" he repeated before he caught on. He paused. That couldn't be right. "Look, I don’t know how you got in here, or if you snuck in when I opened the back door, but, well, i-if you're lost, I can call the police for you, okay? They’ll help you get home, but you can’t—" He made broad, vague gestures at the wall. "You can’t be here." 

Maybe he should call his uncle. Sasaki left every morning at five. He'd be on the train to Otemachi now. Izuku gnawed on his bottom lip, conflicted.

He couldn’t call him. Sasaki was always giving Izuku a hard time about not being capable enough to care for Toshinori on his own, even though Izuku had been doing fine till now. The only reason he hadn’t yet sent Izuku off to boarding school was because Izuku had convinced him to wait one more year. Then Izuku would be off to college and out of Sasaki’s hair for good.

The girl looked around in a frantic sort of gesture, anxiety pinching her pale brows. "But I just told you," she said, her tone soft and thin with worry. 

With a pang of sympathy, he reached for a sweater hanging off the back of his chair. It smelled musty as he shrugged it over his head and then grabbed his phone. With one more wary look at the girl, he headed out to the living room where he began pacing. 

He should call the police, right? She was a kid. A bizarre kid with an off-center unicorn horn who kept saying things that made Izuku want to never stop laughing, but still just a kid.

He called Shouto instead.

"Izuku," came Shouto's muffled voice. "Why are you calling so early? This better be good or I'm hanging up. And if you say something like 'rise and shine,' I'm not talking to you for a week."

Unable to find the right way to begin, Izuku simply blurted, "There's a girl in my room, and I don't know what to do."

He heard the crackle of static as Shouto shifted, but didn't speak. Very little could strike Shouto into silence. Izuku took this as his cue to continue freaking out.

"Girl. My room. What do I do?" 

There was a quiet snort. "Didn't they cover this in sex ed?"

Izuku's feet, still madly pacing, suddenly stalled. "Huh?"

"There's a magical place called the Internet, Izuku. Google is your friend."

"You're not helping here."

"I know your uncle is an asshole, but skipping out on the birds and bees talk is–"

"Would you stop!?" Izuku lowered his voice into a hiss. "She's a kid!"

"Now that's just wrong."

"I hate you."

Shouto laughed. He sounded more awake. "You have a weird idea of prank calls. You're supposed to call a stranger. It helps if you're drunk. You're not drunk, are you?" 

"For God's sake, stop talking and just come over."

"What, now?" 

"Yes, now." 

"Izuku. You're hyperventilating about a girl. In your room."

Izuku acknowledged this with a sort of detached embarrassment. "It's not like that. Why are you not here yet?"

He hung up on Shouto's laughter and wiped his palms on his boxers before checking on the kid.

She was now sitting at the edge of his bed and wearing a too-big t-shirt he recognized as his own. It said 'Dress Shirt' across the front.

He opened his mouth, let it hang there a moment as he considered what to say, and then changed his mind. Whatever. He didn't care why she put his shirt on. Prioritize, Izuku.

He made a quick survey of his room, which appeared no more disorganized than usual, and then retrieved the picture frame that had fallen off his desk. A smiling five-year-old Izuku dominated the glass, his huge head with its round baby cheeks smattered in freckles blocking out half of his dad in the background. 

"Listen, if you're not going to tell me how you got in here, then at least–" He gestured at the door. "Follow me."

He led her out into the living room and didn't stare at the spiral markings on her horn. Yep, that was definitely a horn.

On normal mornings, he made breakfast, and if his dad hadn't come out of his room by seven, Izuku delivered the food on a tray and hoped Toshinori would be lucid enough to have a conversation. He moved into the kitchen while waiting for her reply and considered whether or not to cook for the crazy stranger.

"Do you have parents you can call?"

The girl slipped into the kitchen behind him, standing inside the doorway and looking even younger than she probably was in the too-large clothes and wild hair. "No, I already told you."

He set down the frying pan and drew a breath. "You can't seriously think I made you."

She gave him a cheerful nod.

"You can't just make people." His face went hot. "W-well, you can, but I mean, not..." Ergh. "What's your name?"

"I don't know." She tapped a finger against her bottom lip. "I think you called me Eri."

Izuku had done no such thing but didn't see the point in arguing. Nothing she'd said so far made any sense, regardless of the flashes of images teasing at his memory.

He made tamagoyaki, the smell of hot oil and the comfort of routine enough to keep him from freaking out. Maybe Dad's illness had finally taken hold of him, and everything, including the girl, was a figment of his deteriorating mental health. Or maybe he'd been spending way too much time watching documentaries on Alzheimer's.

The doorbell rang, and he rushed to answer it. 

Shouto stood on the stoop, his bike propped up alongside the wall behind him. One hand combed back dark red and white hair that was split evenly down the middle, and his other was raised mid-knock. He dropped it to his side and gave Izuku an accusatory look. 

"I'm here. Are you ready to tell me why you're... really...?" His eyes focused on something behind Izuku. 

The girl stood in the threshold to the kitchen, looping Izuku's t-shirt around her fingers. 

"You weren't lying," Shouto said flatly.

"Why would I lie about this?" Izuku ushered his best friend inside. 

Shouto crossed his arms, towering over the girl. He was an inch taller than Izuku, wiry and athletic and still growing into his broadening shoulders. Although Shouto was generally laid back and unaffected by most things, he was fiercely protective of the people he cared about and was downright terrifying when he was pissed.

Fortunately, he only looked mildly confused as he eyed the girl. "Who are you?"

She didn't answer, instead ducking her head and shuffling after Izuku, who'd returned to the kitchen.

"Izuku," Shouto snapped. "What are you doing?"

"Making my dad breakfast," he said, perfectly aware of how ridiculous this entire scenario had become. He gently transferred the tamagoyaki onto a plate, and then set the plate along with a bowl of rice on a tray.

Shouto stared at him as if he'd suggested they undress and swing from the light fixtures. Not that Izuku had ever thought about doing that.

"I have to make sure my dad eats," he said defensively.

Sounding highly aggrieved, Shouto slumped into a chair at the kitchen table. "You always do this."

Izuku pretended not to know what he meant. Shouto had never been shy about calling Izuku out when he was being either too accommodating (often to his own detriment) or too nosy (again, to his own detriment).

"We'll take her to the Koban. We can tell them we found her lost or something. It's not like she's..." Izuku glanced at the girl twining a thread of silver hair around her finger. "Uh. Threatening." He added a glass of milk and a napkin to the tray. "Be right back."

When Izuku entered his room, Toshinori was sitting up in bed, idly paging through a book he kept on his nightstand. He set it aside, tired eyes creased at the corners. 

"Hey," Izuku said with forced cheer. "How are you feeling?" He set the tray across Toshinori's lap.

Before Izuku could step back, Toshinori's hand covered his, warm and rough. Izuku observed the raised skin of an old scar, a couple inches long, beneath Toshinori's middle and forefinger, before tracking the jut of knuckles and the bump of a writing callus. He didn't write much anymore, but Izuku kept all his old stories in a well-worn box in his bottom drawer. 

"Will you be okay? I need to go somewhere with Shouto. I'll call Tanaka-san if I'm not back in an hour." Tanaka was a retired neighbor who kept Toshinori company when neither Izuku nor Sasaki was available.

At his words, tension pinched the corners of Toshinori's mouth. He hated being treated like a child, and Izuku hated giving him restrictions, but they both knew he couldn't be left alone for too long. 

"I'm sorry you always have to worry about me." Pain furrowed Toshinori's brow. 

Izuku gave a start. "Don't say that. I don't do anything you wouldn't do for me."

Toshinori's lips quirked, but something weighed at the corners. "Everything I've done since you were born has been to protect you."

Izuku bent over until he touched his forehead to the back of his dad's hand. "I know."

A knock sounded at the door. Shouto's face was framed in the doorway, hair falling artfully over his forehead. "Hi, Yagi-san."

Toshinori greeted him warmly as Izuku straightened.

"It's a nice day," Izuku told his dad even as Shouto jerked his head impatiently and then disappeared from view. "Maybe you could go back outside."

In the kitchen, the girl sat where he'd left her, inexplicably caught in a staredown with Shouto.

"Okay, ready," Izuku said to break the odd tension.

Turning, Shouto raised one eyebrow and said, "Izuku. You're still in your boxers. And a sweater which, by the way, it's mid-August."

Izuku glanced down at himself and remembered grabbing the first article of clothing he could reach. Waving off Shouto's laughter, he ran back to his room to swap his sweater for a graphic tee. He shoved his legs into scuffed jeans before hurrying out to wear Shouto now stood with the front door open.

The girl–Eri, she'd said–sat on the steps, her face turned into the sun. When she saw him, she stood and patted down her mess of hair. It helped little. Maybe he should have gotten her a comb.

"No," Shouto said, evidently reading Izuku's mind.

Rolling his eyes, Izuku shut and locked the door behind them.

"Think she's an alien?" Shouto asked. "Maybe the horn is an antennae."

Unlike normal people, Shouto possessed no tact.

Without waiting for a reply–he likely hadn't expected one–Shouto said, "So how'd she get into your house?"

"That's what I'd like to know." Izuku gave him a rushed version of the morning's events, from waking up to what sounded like a flock of birds outside his window to finding the girl in his room with no indication of where she'd come from.

Shouto frowned, mouth opening and closing a few times before he found his words. "You're sure you didn't just imagine—"

"I don't know." He'd lost count of how many times he'd asked himself that same question.

Shouto was silent for a few tense seconds. "Okay."

He didn't sound convinced. Izuku didn't blame him.

"I'm glad you don't feel like you're running on a gallon of caffeine anymore. Although it was kind of funny."

Sure, if by 'funny,' Shouto meant an express ticket to a psychotic episode. He should have forced Shouto to stay up with him at night. Great friendships were built on sharing things, right? Video games, homework, insomnia resulting in alternately suicidal and homicidal impulses. 

"Maybe it'd be funny if it wasn't me. Remember the last day before summer break? I couldn't sit still. I think Yamanaka-sensei wanted to tie me down to my desk."

"I think you should stop voicing your dirty fantasies."

"Ugh," Izuku said, but his mouth twitched despite himself. "That's disgusting. How old is he?"

"I don't know, at least two hundred. Anyway, I keep telling you to see a doctor. It's not normal." 

"It went away." He refused to say more on the matter. The last thing he wanted to do was see a doctor.

They continued on in silence, Eri watching not the pavement ahead of her but staring, unabashed, up at Izuku. 

Awkward didn't even begin to cover it.

At this hour, the street was empty save for a couple teenagers loitering at the corner ahead. For the most part, Izuku liked the neighborhood. It was quiet and clean, and having any sort of yard in Musutafu was a miracle. It had been quite a change from the tiny apartment he and Toshinori shared before moving in with Sasaki.

"What are you keeping from me?" Shouto asked.

He didn't think he'd been obvious, but they'd been best friends since they were eight. How exactly was he supposed to say the girl thought he'd made her or that, on some level that he had no words or rationale for, he kind of… maybe… didn't think she was lying?

"This is going to—" Awareness rippled down his spine. Izuku gasped and stopped short. The pavement warped under his feet, just for a moment, before refocusing. 

Shouto gripped his arm. "You okay?"

Izuku held his head, but there was no lingering vertigo, just a faint tremor in his hands. At his side, Eri looked shaken. Her big eyes darted about as if trying to track the frantic path of an invisible fly. 

"Hey," a voice said.

Izuku peered past his fingers at two teenagers. They were standing ahead, gathered near the crosswalk. He dropped his hand. 

A girl with spiky blond pigtails pointed a finger directly at Izuku. "It's that one." 

TBC

A/N: IT'S A LOT, I KNOW. But please let me know what you think? Chapter 2 will be up next Friday, and yes, we will get to meet Katsuki. O-hoho.