Hey doc, the hallucinations are back

Izuku had returned home, and was sulking on his bed, about two seconds away from crying. He'd found out about how he had died, but had no idea how to deal with it. He could find Yosuke again to yell at him some more, but he really didn't want to. What he really had to do was figure out who wanted him dead and why. Sakura had promised to try her best to find someone who knew something, but she couldn't promise anything.

"Izuku," a voice said from the other side of the room. He looked up and spotted Nana.

"You're back!" He hopped out of his bed and ran to her, hugging her with whatever strength he had, being a scrawny middle school kid.

"Eager to see me, I see," Nana chuckled.

"A little," Izuku muttered.

Nana ran her hand over his hair with a little smile and reciprocated the hug. "How did the meeting with Sakura go?" It was then when she realized that the young boy had started crying. Her smile fell. "Hey kid, what's wrong?" Izuku dropped to his knees, his strength failing him, and Nana hurriedly followed, trying to make sure he was okay.

"I was murdered," Izuku said through his sobs. Nana's jaw dropped.

"What?!"

"Peter," Izuku paused, the weird hiccupy feeling when you're crying really hard hitting him like a truck. "Peter helped me remember how I died. Yosuke threw me off the building."

"Yosuke!?" She started to climb to her feet. "That- He did what?!" She cracked her knuckles and started for the door. "I swear, I'm going to find that man and kill him! Again!"

"There's more. Apparently, he did it on orders. He didn't tell me who did it."

"Oh, dear," Nana sighed, but then returned to Izuku and knelt back on the ground. "C'mere, kid. Let it out." Izuku hugged her and sobbed harder, an awful pain in his heart like somebody had stabbed him there. He almost felt the open wound in his chest, and the hole fraying at the seams.

"He took everything from me," Izuku said simply, not sure what else to say.

"I know, kid," Nana said gently. "I know." Izuku knew what she meant. They were two sides of the same coin, a son who had lost his parents, his friends, his opportunity to have a normal life, everything, and a mother who had lost her whole world. Izuku was angry, and upset, and had fifteen other emotions he didn't know how to track. When Izuku started to calm down. Nana gently stroked his hair. "Do you remember Juniper?"

"Yeah," Izuku said, sounding a little choked. He rubbed away his tears again.

"She promised to take me to this one cafe sometime. She tells me that someone who speaks to ghosts is on staff, and that she can make us something. Would you like that?"

"Yeah," Izuku sniffed.

And so, Izuku and Nana went back to Tartarus.

It was just as miserable as the first time, but this time, with flavor. The walls of the holding cell block had been broken down, and people were hurriedly trying to put it back together. Izuku turned to a nearby ghost who was shuttling through the halls. "What happened?" he asked, entirely unsure as to how this could have happened.

"Shigaraki escaped from Tartarus," the ghost said. "Somehow only he and a couple of others got out, but the media and quite literally everyone else is in shock. I was just heading out to visit my family and make sure they were okay." The ghost left without another word, and Izuku was left with his thoughts.

"My grandson escaped, huh?" Nana mused, before floating off without another word. They walked down a familiar hallway and made it to the cell Juniper had been in last time. Once again, they found her staring at the man chained to the chair, but this time, she was muttering something to him, as if he could hear. Nana knocked on the wall, getting Juniper's attention. The man in the chair responded, but then seemed to dismiss it as nothing. "Hey, Juniper. It's me again."

"Nana Shimura in the flesh!" Juniper whirled around, interrupting her mumbling. She smiled like she was trying to hide what she was thinking, and floated over. "And you brought the kid, too."

"Midoriya, in the flesh," Izuku said, smiling weakly.

"Aw, you look awful, kiddo." She glided across the floor over to Nana and him. "What happened? You smile like you're about to cry."

"It's a long story," Nana said.

"Yeah," Izuku sighed, his smile falling. "I found out that I was murdered by someone I was just starting to trust."

"Oh, that's awful you poor thing." Juniper gently rested her hands on his shoulders. "Who did it? If it's anyone I know I'll find them, and I know most every ghost within the prefecture and then some."

"A ghost named Yosuke." Juniper stiffened for a moment, then relaxed and sighed, shaking her head.

"The one with the dark hair and the deep voice, right? Always hangs around that one girl who can see ghosts?"

"Yes," Izuku nodded, a little nervous at having someone he didn't really know so close to him.

"Did you ask him why he did it?" She asked slowly.

"He said it was on orders," Izuku grumbled, still angry about it. "But he didn't tell me who he was working for."

Juniper dropped her hands from his shoulders and turned to the side. "Where again did you die, kiddo?"

"In a hospital in Musuatfu. Yosuke threw me off a building a few blocks away."

"I think I know why he did it," Juniper mused. "I gotta go. Nana, whatever you came for, it'll have to wait."

"Hey, Juniper!" Nana started to hurry after her, but Juniper was already gone. "Dang it, I hate when she does that."

"Do you know where she's going?" Izuku asked.

"If I did, I'd be with her right now," Nana sighed. "She has a bad habit of running off, well, floating off if you want to be technical. I never have any idea where she's going."

Izuku sighed. "And she didn't even tell us why Yosuke killed me."

"Hey, Izuku," she said, patting his shoulder. "We should take a break on that for a minute, okay? Thinking is better done with a clear head and a full stomach. Let's go to that cafe, and then we can go do some investigating."

And dear readers, we cut back to U.A high school and class 1-A, which has been a neglected topic lately. The school was a few days away from the sports festival, and everyone was training and practicing, trying to be ready for the festival. Kirishima had told Ochako about Midoriya almost as soon as he had heard about the kid's death. Ochako had been distracted for the last week or so after that, and hadn't really been talking to anyone very much. The girls had started to notice almost immediately, but hadn't said anything.

Kirishima went to do his usual workout at the gym, and found Ochako practicing her quirk, floating into the air and falling to the ground. She twirled and flipped, and every now and then ran to the trash to throw up. Now, she wasn't even throwing anything up. She had been at this for a while.

"Hey." Kirishima broke the relative silence, and Ochako dropped to the ground.

"Hey."

"What have you been doing lately?"

"Training. I'm going to win."

"Pretty confident in that, aren't you?"

"I have to be." Ochako rubbed her stomach and grimaced. "It's all I've got."

"Not really. You beat me in training."

"My quirk isn't combat oriented like, I don't know, you and Bakugo. Or…" She paused. "Or maybe Midoriya," she sighed. "Right. The floating. Or the vanishing."

"Or maybe that's just the ghost abilities," Kirishima said. "Bakugo said he was um…" Kirishima stopped.

"Quirkless. Yeah." She nodded, and stayed quiet for a little bit. "I can't believe he's dead," she said quietly.

"Did you talk about it with anyone?"

"Who would believe me? Heck, I hardly believe it! A ghost saved me from a giant robot! It sounds like something straight out of a YA novel."

"I know."

"Imagine me talking to my mom about that!" Ochako was gesturing wildly now. "Hey Mom, guess what! I've been friends with a dead kid for the last month or so!" She sat down on a bench and sighed. "I don't know what to do."

"Maybe start with some water?" Kirishima offered softly. "The stomach acid is awful for your teeth."

"I know." Ochako pursed her lips. "I know."

"Do you want to learn how to fight?"

"Huh?"

"We could practice together," Kirishima said. "If you want."

"Would you be okay with that?"

"If I wasn't, I wouldn't have offered," Kirishima shrugged. "And both of us have stuff to learn. Maybe we could help each other."

"Maybe."

Soon it was time for the sports festival, and everyone was tense. That is, except Katsuki, who was entirely certain he was going to win. However, unlike the Katsuki in your My Hero Academia, dear reader, he didn't say anything about it. He had a lot of thoughts in his head other than his pride, and if people weren't thinking about the sports festival, they were thinking about how Shigaraki had escaped from prison, and how nobody had seen him since. Even as 1-A prepared to enter the arena, nobody was chatting like they usually did. They weren't sure about the other classes, but the rest of the school most certainly was filled with the same kind of tension.

The opening ceremony felt like a blur, and the first event was announced right after it. The first event was an obstacle course, and a particularly dangerous one at that. Everyone was ready, that is, except for a few members of class 1-A. Katsuki and Todoroki had been on edge all day, sensing something was wrong. Ochako had been distracted all week, and couldn't shake her feeling of uneasiness. And well, Yaoyorozu, Yaoyorozu knew that someone was here that wasn't a competitor. She couldn't place her finger on why, but she knew, and had an eye out for someone who wasn't supposed to be here. Momo Yaoyorozu was a sharp girl, and had been known for most of her childhood for being the first person to notice when something was off. She noticed the disembodied voices in the corridors, how Ochako seemed to have been shoved to the ground during the training exercise, how someone seemed to be helping the students.

Unbeknownst to her, Yaoyorozu was very close to the spirit world. She wasn't exactly like Sakura, but she could see ghosts on the regular, though didn't realize it. The barrier between the world of the dead and the world of the living was already thin, but her family had a tendency to be born with one foot with the living and one foot on the other side. She remembered during the mock battle something strange, momentary images of a boy a little bit younger than her walking through the halls.

In the corner of her eye, Yaoyorozu spotted a shadow. It was tall, maybe around six feet, and in the vague shape of something humanoid. She turned to see it, and it was gone. Had anyone else seen it? She shook the thought away. She had to focus on the track ahead. The shadow walked across the dusty track, kicking up dust in its wake. Yaoyorozu tried to look directly at it again, and it was gone as soon as it had appeared.

"Are you okay?" Yaoyorozu heard a girl say. "You look a little green around the gills."

"I'm fine," Yaoyorozu said slowly. "Just thought I saw something." Present MIc's voice boomed over the loudspeaker, but Yaoyorozu hardly heard it over the roar in her ears. The race started, and the visions only got worse from there. She saw people running on the track that weren't there before, and the shadow still could only be seen in the corner of her eye. It was madness on the track, but nothing compared to what was in Yaoyorozu's head. She held out her hand, creating a staff to vault into the air over the giant robots that had suddenly appeared on the track. Bakugo and Todoroki brought them down, but they seemed just as distracted as she was.

When she landed on the ground, she stumbled out of the way of somebody who had appeared in front of her, but as soon as they appeared, they were gone.

What was happening?

Was she seeing things?

She saw a young man who looked vaguely like Mina appear on the track, with ram's horns sprouting from his forehead.

A woman appeared around her, one with blue hair and glowing gold eyes. After the race, she had made it into the second challenge, but she was so shaken up she could barely appreciate it.

What in the world had that been? A quirk? Has she been so tired that she was hallucinating? What was with all the vestiges appearing on the track? "Yaomomo, are you okay?" Mina seemed to notice her stress.

"It's hard to explain," Yaoyorozu murmured. "I think I'll tell you after the festival." Mina only nodded, and the second event began, a calvary battle, and Bakugo with the one million point headband. a cavalry battle. Yaoyorozu wasn't very strong, which left her as a rider. She had to think strategically about this. The gears turned in her head, and she scanned over the crowd. Teaming up with Bakugo was out of the question. He was way too stubborn and didn't seem to be much of a team player. On top of that, he had the one million points. It would make the game a lot harder than it should be. Her eyes scanned the crowd.

Todoroki was clever and powerful. She could probably join his team. Then again, he had (just barely) won the ten million points.

Iida had been recruited by Todoroki, and he looked like he was talking to a couple of other people to get them on his team. Yaoyorozu realized that Todoroki was looking for raw power, not a strategist. If she was going to contribute with her critical thinking, she would have to find someone else. She shook her head. No, Todoroki was still an option, but he wouldn't be for long. Todoroki could get almost anyone on his team, if he wanted. It was time to find a team.