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When Tokoyami came to Hitoshi asking for his help in summoning an eldritch being (well, his exact words were “The night the moon hides in fear of the darkness and the void awakens from its slumber is an auspicious time. The veil is thin and the beings of the beyond shall more easily hear our calls, but more voices would project the query father than just mine alone.”) Hitoshi had just squinted at him over his cup of coffee, looked the bird-headed teen up and down, and shrugged. Why not right? He had nothing planned for the day and the dorms had been getting a little too quiet lately, practically just asking for some chaos to stir things up.
He was decidedly not expecting it to work.
When the sun had fully set, Tokoyami decided to set up the ritual in the common room and his movements obviously drew the interest of the rest of Class 1-A. A few members had volunteered to help or been dragged along by their friends, and a bunch of others were just there to watch the show. Bakugou had scoffed at Tokoyami’s preparations and stomped off to his room with a shout of “Don’t you idiot extras come crying to me when your fucking hare-brained scheme doesn’t work!”. Iida, Kouda, Satou, Aoyama, and Ojiro also decided not to stay but left with much more polite goodnights.
Tokoyami had set up a circle of salt, drawing strange runes along the inside of the circle while frequently checking his work against a small black, leather-bound book he held in one of his hands. He had himself, Hitoshi, Midoriya, and Shouji sit at the four cardinal directions and hold candles, all also carved with more of the runes.
It looked surprisingly legit for something the emo teen had probably found in a sketchy pawn or antique shop, but Hitoshi had even done a few of these himself, so he knew how it would go. Tokoyami would say a few nonsense words, they would wait a while, and, when nothing happened, they would make some consolation snacks and put on a movie or something.
He was right about the first part, but not the rest of it. Tokoyami had the little black book open in front of him with, when Hitoshi looked, more of the runes written on it. There were handwritten scribbles in the margins, decidedly not Tokoyami’s handwriting, seemingly writing out how to pronounce the runes. Clearing his throat, Tokoyami started to read out the inscription in front of him, and Hitoshi startled slightly when the noises he made didn’t sound like they could come from a human’s mouth. He chalked it down to probably bird vocal cords, but a nervousness took hold in the back recesses of his mind.
A nervousness that grew when a cold wind swept through the common room, the scent of something only describable as void carried on it.
It swelled when all four candles simultaneously blew out at the same time as the electricity. Various students of Class 1-A shrieked.
“C’mon Kaminari, this ain’t the time for jokes,” Sero nervously chuckled. Hitoshi’s eyes were very slowly adjusting to the sudden darkness, but he saw him and Kirishima holding tightly to one another.
Kaminari’s protests were drowned out by a rumble shaking the foundations of the dorms. A purple mist appeared in the center of the circle, and Hitoshi’s nervousness rose alongside it as it swirled twisting tentacles up toward the roof, cresting as it condensed in a spot about six feet off the ground.
“⍑𝙹∴ ╎ᓭ ╎ℸ ̣ ╎ ⍑ᔑ⍊ᒷ ʖᒷᒷリ ᓭ⚍ᒲᒲ𝙹リᒷ↸ ⍑ᒷ∷ᒷ?” A voice boomed out with the shrieks of dying stars echoing in the word’s passage. The purple mist twisted and finally solidified into… a thing, floating above their heads. It was vaguely humanoid, vaguely bird-like, four large feathered wings outstretched over the gathered hero students, with two smaller wings where there would usually be ears half-tucked around a bone-white mask with a purple symbol resting in the center of it. Its body was elongated, neck and limbs longer than seemed natural, dressed in flowing purple and white robes and feet and hands ending in vicious claws. A long, whip-thin tail swished idly behind it, as the being focused millions upon millions of eyes upon them. The words dripping out of it’s mouth and tearing a burning hole in his mind sounded similar to what Tokoyami had been speaking earlier, but the noises were so much more natural and full of such power.
Hitoshi’s nervousness was replaced with soul-sucking dread and the knowledge that the thing in front of them was so much more powerful than he, and that if it wanted, he would be nothing, never having existed in the first place.
“W-we apologize, great Watcher,” Tokoyami stuttered out, eyes wide with awe as he gazed upon the being they had summoned, rather than anything rational like fear. It was good that he did so, because the rest of Class 1-A were frozen in fear. This was nothing like the villains they had fearlessly faced down in the past. “We merely wished to ask of you a boon.”
The being hummed a few discordant notes, feathers settling almost imperceptibly. “You all are young,” It said, switching from the painful tongue it was speaking in before to an accented, old dialect of Japanese. “I will listen to you. What is the boon you wish to ask?” And Hitoshi suddenly startled. What was Tokoyami’s purpose in summoning an eldritch… god? Being?
“I have read of Watchers such as yourself granting protection to mortals. Myself and my friends often find ourselves in dangerous situations, and I wished to ask if you would consider placing such protections on us,” Tokoyami reverently said, head bowed. Hitoshi was simultaneously touched and mildly annoyed. It was sweet, him worrying about them enough to summon a being of the void to ask for protection for them, but they had been doing well enough up until now. They didn’t need any other-worldly protections!
Hitoshi glanced over the being’s form that sent ripples throughout the cloth of reality just by being present. On the other hand, other-worldly protections probably wouldn’t be a terrible thing to have… (Did the being just glance over at them? Was that amusement in its gaze?? It had too many eyes to count, so it’s probably just Hitoshi imagining things.)
“A selfless little one, you are,” the being smiled. Its six wings gave little flutters, and it stretched out its spindly neck to take a closer look at Tokoyami. “Your heart is true. Make sure it stays that way, and it will serve you well in the future.” The being leaned back up, stretching out its wings to their full length. A certain gravity filled the room. “I will grant you this boon, Tokoyami Fumikage. You and yours will henceforth be protected by me. You need but call the name ̇/ᒷꖎᑑ⚍ᔑ, and I shall be there. But,” and here all of the little movements that had previously made it seem alive stopped, and all of its uncountable eyes narrowed and focused on Tokoyami. The bird-headed teen gulped. “I ask one thing of you in return.”
And Hitoshi felt his heart sink. Of course it was too good to be true. What did it want from them? Blood sacrifices? Their souls?
“Where did you get the ritual needed to summon me? That knowledge should have been long destroyed - Watchers were not meant to be summoned to the mortal plane any longer.”
“It was given to me by a man who can see through the veils of reality, Great One. He spent many long years translating his glimpse into the beyond, and the ritual was the end result,” Tokoyami replied.
The being tilted its head, eyes moving from Tokoyami’s frozen form and onto the book still open in front of him. Tokoyami heaved a small, relieved breath once its attention moved away from him.
“Of course. Seers are rare, but not rare enough that we should have forgotten to account for them,” It hummed. With a snap of deadly claws, the book went up in purple, heatless flames, and all of the students scattered across the common room flinched in unison as a small pain flared up at the nape of their necks. Later inspection would show a slightly glowing purple mark, the same symbol as that upon the being’s mask but with a feather sat in the middle of it branded across all of 1-A, a symbol of… Xelqua’s? Protection. “And so the deal has been sealed. You, little heroes, have bright futures ahead of all of you, that I See. But they are not without their dangers. Call upon me when you have need, my little fledgelings, but never attempt this ritual again. Be glad the Universe put me in your path rather than one of my more bloodthirsty colleagues who would have snapped your necks for this slight.” all of Class 1-A felt a shiver run down their spines. “With that, I must return. You now have my protection - don’t forget it.”
And with that, Xelqua burst into light, purple particles, and a soft wind that rained down on their heads and erased what was left of the ritual. Nothing there to have ever shown it existed except their memories and their brand new glowing ornamentation.
“What the fuck,” Uraraka summarized, shell-shocked.
“Manly,” Kirishima breathed with wide eyes.
“You Problem Children have a lot of explaining to do,” Aizawa-sensei ground out from where he stood in the doorway.
Ah shit.
----
“They were so tiny Mumbo! Barely even a decade old, what was I supposed to do, just leave them?!”
“I still have no idea what you’re talking about, Gri.”
“Of course I couldn’t have, their futures are so dangerous Mumbo! Oh the poor little chicks…”
“No idea who these pups are, but you’ve gone all broody, G-man, and I’ve gotta say, it’s hilarious.”
“Oh like you’d be any better if you saw them, Ren!”