Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It started like this:

Izuku Midoriya, the day after the UA Entrance Exam, numbly wandering the city streets. Looking for something, anything, to take his mind off his failure.

0 points in the practical. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that was probably a failing score. The one impressive thing he’d done had also shattered his limbs, which probably wasn’t a very good look for him.

His nose was currently buried in one of his notebooks, but he couldn’t keep his mind on the analysis. No matter how loudly he muttered to himself, he couldn’t drown out the twin voices bouncing through his head:

The first was All Might’s. “ Young man, you can be a Hero. ” It had been the first time anyone ever told him that, and it was this memory he clutched to like a lifeline.

The second was his own. A single, accusing word, echoing in repeat. “ Failed. ” He’d failed the Exam, he’d failed his dream, he’d failed to be a Hero, he’d failed All Might .

He was suddenly pulled from his thoughts, by virtue of being almost bowled over by a figure even smaller than he. A girl, with pale hair, bandages all up her arms, a single tiny horn, and the deepest crimson eyes. She looked up at him in horror, backing away even as he reached out to steady her.

He blinked in confusion; in most interactions he’d had, he was usually the one backing away fearfully. Quirkless, useless, Deku.

Young man, you can be a Hero.

He crouched down and gave a gentle smile. “Hello. Are you okay?”

She stared up at him in incomprehension. “You need to run. He’s coming.”

He blinked again as she grabbed his sleeve and tried to pull him after her, into one of the side alleys he’d just passed by. He obligingly followed, more curious than anything. “Who’s coming?”

The girl glanced around fearfully, pulling him harder. Her voice dropped into a near-silent whisper. “ Overhaul .”

The name itself- Izuku assumed it was a name- meant nothing to him, but the raw fear in the girl’s voice gave him chills. He leaned down closer to her, picking up his pace enough that he wasn’t slowing her down. “Do you need me to call the police?”

She shook her head frantically. “No. We need to find a Hero, someone strong enough to beat him.”

Well, if this Overhaul was a villain… Izuku’s first thought was All Might, but that wasn’t feasible. The man’s agency was miles away, and this felt urgent. Running through the local patrol routes in his head, at this time of day their best bet would be… Ingenium? It’d be a bit of a run, but-

The girl came to a sudden stop, almost tripping Izuku in the process. In front of them, a tall figure in an intricate plague mask blocked their way. The girl’s grip on his sleeve tightened as they stared at each other. Just from her reaction, he could tell this man was her ‘Overhaul.’

Failed. Failed, failed , failed, FAILED.

The man shook his head slowly. “Eri, dear, what have I told you about running off on your own? And now you’ve gotten some raggedy brat involved, too.”

The girl- Eri?- let go of Izuku’s sleeve as though it had burned her. Her eyes lingered on his for a second, and… he recognized that expression. It was his own, every time he jumped between Kacchan and someone else.

Seeing that face on a girl half his size struck something, deep in his core. It was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, WRONG . Wrong enough to drown out that other pesky word stuck in his head.

And yet, he looked deeper. Behind that face, behind the growing resolve, behind a carefully crafted facade of bravery built not to fool others but oneself… and he found those eyes .

Izuku Midoriya took a deep, deep breath. The nervous, restless energy that itched in his bones finally came to a stop, replaced with a deep, slow burn of determination. Because those eyes? They belonged to someone who was, deep down, screaming for help .

Young man, you can be a Hero .

He stared Overhaul in the eye, head running a mile a minute. The goal wasn’t to fight him, the goal was to get Eri out safely. Ingenium’s patrol would take him by in about five minutes, which meant he had to either stall for that time or get past Overhaul and run against the patrol route until they met up.

The villain before him had majority skin coverage, with latex gloves covering the hands. So probably no Quirk based on skin contact. Was it something to do with the mask? Maybe-

Overhaul made a tiny gesture with his hand, and the gloves were… torn apart? Disintegrated? Exploded? Something along those lines. That countered the no skin contact theory. Probably based on his fingertips, since those were held somewhat threateningly forward. The villain continued talking. “Just look at what you’ve done, Eri. I have to kill this boy now, all because you felt the need to get him involved.”

Oh, that’s just straight bullshit. Pinning the blame of murder on a child who probably ran away specifically because you pull shit like this? Also, shit , Izuku didn’t want to die. What could he do? He was Quirkless-

Wait, no, he wasn’t! But the only time he’d used One for All, it had destroyed his limbs. And the force … Eri was in the alleyway with them, he couldn’t risk using something that powerful. He needed some way to tone it down, some way to limit the destruction. And he had to still be in shape to run afterwards, there was no Recovery Girl here.

Hold on. Something about that thought felt… useful. Limit the destruction … what if he-

Overhaul made his move.

And Izuku was forced to make his.

You see, those ten months of training on the beach had led to Izuku learning a whole lot about the structure of the human body. He knew where his muscles were, what they did, and how they worked . And looking back, when he’d broken his arm during the Exam, he’d just flooded the whole limb with power and fired away.

So what if he only used it in part of his muscles? What if he only activated the Quirk in, say, a thin strip of muscle, parallel with the fibers to avoid creating a weak point in any one strand. Enough to boost his strength meaningfully without immediately destroying the limb.

Of course, this meant that he would be destroying his limbs over ten or so shots instead of just one go, but he was on a time limit here. This wasn’t going to work for a sustained battle, but he wasn’t going for battle anyways.

He just needed to get Eri, and run away.

So as Overhaul darted forwards, fingers outstretched, Izuku fired up his improvised technique: One For All: Fragmentation. Roughly a tenth of his leg burned a glorious technicolor rainbow, giving him strength to launch himself to the left. This knocked him into Eri, but he scooped her up into his arms and hugged her close. 

“It’s alright,” Izuku fought through the blinding pain to tell her, “I’ve got you now.”

Holy shit, that worked . It hurt like hell but it fucking worked .

Judging by how hard that had launched him, he would need… Let’s say an eighth of a leg to get him into the main street. With this kind of commotion, Ingenium would likely notice and use his Engine Quirk to arrive faster.

He prepared to launch, but Overhaul leaned down and skimmed the concrete ground with his fingers. It whirled apart, then back together around Izuku’s foot, anchoring him in place.

He grimaced and used another tenth of his other leg, shattering the concrete and freeing the foot. Cracks spiderwebbed out to the street, and nearby buildings shook. He hurriedly launched himself, using an eighth of both legs. He flew into the air, and Eri looked up at him, worried.

He twisted in the air to keep an eye on Overhaul, catching a glimpse of Ingenium rushing down the streets towards them. Oh, thank God, this was almost over.

Overhaul appeared to notice him too, but somehow didn’t seem all too fazed. Hah! He probably didn’t know how strong Ingenium, the Turbo Hero, was!

But instead of trying to fight, the villain pointed dramatically at Izuku and shouted, “That villain kidnapped my daughter!”

Oh, you dumbass. Like Ingenium would ever believe that -

The Turbo Hero screeched to a stop in front of Overhaul. Putting his back to the incredibly dangerous touch based Quirk and instead facing down the child holding another, smaller child?????

“Don’t worry sir, we’ll get her back where she belongs,” promised Ingenium.

This… was not how things were supposed to develop.

“Hey,” protested Izuku as he landed on the far side of the street. “He’s the villain, not me!”

“If you’re willing to hand over the child peacefully, we can all sit down and work this out like civilized people,” offered Ingenium.

Izuku glanced down at Eri, who frowned and pulled herself tighter against him. “I need you to promise she’ll be safe.”

“Of course,” agreed Ingenium easily. “I’ll put her right back with her family.”

Izuku growled with frustration. “That man isn’t-”

“SLIDIN’…” shouted a voice from the side, as a purple blur sped towards him.

SHIT . With a frantic burst of Fragmentation, he launched himself into the air just in time to avoid a blindingly fast lateral punch. “...PUNCH!” finished the new Hero on the scene.

Ingenium groaned and put a hand on his helmet. “Wow. Thanks, Slidin'go. He was literally about to surrender, but go off I guess. Not like he has a hostage or anything.”

Izuku tumbled through the air, hugging Eri tightly to his chest as he tried not to scream in pain. He hadn’t had time to dial back that last burst, so it had taken about a quarter of each leg. That left him with… a little over half both his legs. Arms were fine, back was fine, and he was still tumbling through the air. Still going up, even. Damn, One for All had some kick to it.

And therein lay the problem, he mused. He was going to need to get away from the Heroes, if only to get enough time to explain himself. Going up against Ingenium and Slidin'go, he was going to need agility . Control. As he was, he could only travel in a straight line, and that was Ingenium’s forte.

But, he noted, the idea had worked. Firing up smaller sections of each limb let him meter out his use of the Quirk. It just took too long to prepare, and as he said earlier, didn't give enough movement control.

So what if he took it further? What if he didn’t stop using it at all? What if he fired up a single point, and ran it through his body to where he needed the boost? It’d probably leave some really weird injuries, zigzagged trails of bruised muscle through his body, but nothing Recovery Girl couldn’t fix, theoretically.

So as he fell back down to Earth, he took a deep breath and focused . A single rainbow spark flared to life deep in his chest, sizzling against his control. The street flew up at him, providing a challenge this new technique probably wasn’t suited for. He shifted Eri to one arm and fired up Fragmentation in the other.

A burst of pain and air, followed by a surprisingly smooth landing all things considered. Definitely worth a fifth of his left arm.

But Ingenium and Slidin'go were hot on his trail, he couldn’t afford to marvel at the fact that he’d survived that. He directed the rainbow spark to his legs, wincing whenever it passed through sections spent by Fragmentation. It bounced around beneath his skin, pushed towards whatever muscles needed it. It felt a little bit like a weird, complicated, and incredibly painful game of pong, actually. Or maybe Atari Breakout. (Now that’s a thought. One For All: Breakout had a nice ring to it.) 

That being said… it worked . Breakout had him bounding down the streets, sailing past blocks that would have taken minutes to walk without it. Sure, he would have probably caused a few injuries if the crowds weren’t parting for him, and he wasn’t entirely sure he could steer, but he was schmovin’ . 

Sadly, so were Ingenium and Slidin'go. And they were gaining.

Hmmmmm. Ingenium had a wide turning angle, so dodging into an alleyway would slow him down. The same could not be said for Slidin'go. Let’s see… he usually takes out fleeing villains by pulling even with them and attacking from the side. His Quirk requires a relatively smooth or flat surface, so…

Firing up Fragmentation for a tenth of his leg, he drove his heel sideways into the pavement, shattering the surface of the road beside him while redirecting his own trajectory towards an alley on the opposite side. The purple-suited Hero was forced to jump over the broken ground, losing his Quirk’s mobility during the key moment of Izuku’s escape.

By the time the speed Heroes made it to the alleyway, all that remained were a few raggedy boxes. They rushed past them, deeper into the narrow alleys, frantically searching for any sort of tracks or signs of Izuku’s passage.

After a moment of silence, one of the boxes shifted. A pair of green eyes peered out from one of the holes, making sure the coast was clear before speaking. “Eri?”

Eri looked up at him, eyes wide.

“I should probably mention,” he mumbled quietly, “that what I just did was wildly irresponsible as well as illegal, and you should never run away from Heroes unless they’re going to hurt you.”

She nodded slowly, still staring.

He climbed to his feet, wincing as he put weight on his legs. They’d taken the brunt of his use of Fragmentation, so calling them sore would be an understatement. He was gonna be feeling that in the morning for sure .

He turned back to Eri. “So, uh. Did you have any plans beyond running away from Overhaul? Because I feel like we knocked that one off the list.”

She shook her head silently. The constant staring would have been kinda creepy if she weren’t so cute.

He coughed awkwardly and tried again. “Did you wanna go to the police, or…?”

She shook her head harder and grabbed onto his shirt again. He nodded and patted her head. “Alright, alright, you can stay with me. I’m pretty sure Mom won’t mind too much.”

She said something, too quiet for him to hear. He leaned closer, and she stood up on the tips of her toes to speak into his ear. “Name?”

Izuku blinked. Had he actually just not introduced himself the whole time? On one hand, Overhaul didn’t know who he was. On the other hand…

Actually, no, that was almost exclusively positive.

Anyways. He crouched down next to Eri and looked her in the eye. “Hi. My name is Izuku Midoriya. I’m going to be a Hero someday.”

And she looked back at him like he’d hung the very stars in the sky.

“Hey mom! I’m home! And I brought someone!”

“I see,” said Inko Midoriya from the living room. “And who would that be?”

Izuku picked up Eri by the waist and held her up as he entered the room. “Her name is Eri, and…” he trailed off. “Mom. Why are there cops in the house?”

“Oh, I don’t know sweetie,” she replied dangerously. “I was hoping you could tell me.”

“Yep,” said one of the officers. “That’s the kid he kidnapped.”

Izuku frowned. “Okay, well, first off. I didn’t kidnap anyone. It was voluntary.”

The officer snorted. “Yeah, sure.”

“And second off…” He paused for a moment.

The other cop leaned forward mockingly. “Oh, this is gonna be good.”

For Izuku’s second argument, he activated One For All: Breakout, tucked Eri under his left arm, and jumped through the window.

“OH SHIT, HE’S GETTING AWAY!”

“Mr Midoriya?” Eri spoke up as Izuku doubled back down a side alley for the fifth time in the hour. “Why are we running from the police?”

That… was a very good question. One he’d been asking himself the entire time.

That had been the perfect opportunity to sit down and explain what had happened. That’s what he wanted, right?

Another line from All Might came to mind, unbidden. “ Most of the top Heroes show signs of greatness even as children, ” he’d said. “ Many of them claim that their bodies simply moved before they could think!”

And despite his best efforts, he couldn’t stop himself from thinking: does the same ring true for Villains?

All Might save him, Izuku didn’t want to be a Villain.

And yet… if the alternative had been to leave Eri with Overhaul, to leave Eri with people who didn’t understand how dangerous that man was…

Perhaps it said something about the fragility of dreams, that he was throwing away his chance to become a Hero- not just any Hero, but All Might’s successor , over one small child. But that was the point . Izuku Midoriya would shatter his future a thousand times over with a smile on his face if that was what he had to do to well and truly save even a single person.

He was a Villain now , he realized. And the worst part was, he didn’t even regret it.

He glanced down at Eri, who simply waited quietly for an answer. He let out a small sigh. “That’s because I’m a bad person who made them angry,” he explained. He hesitated for a moment, then continued. “If you want, I can let you go back to them. If you explain everything properly, you should at least be safe-”

“No,” she interrupted. “You got away from Overhaul- you got me away from him. I need you .”

Izuku frowned pensively, pulling Eri into a dinky little thrift store and taking the time to think about his response. They would need something to hide his hair, maybe his face… definitely change Eri’s silhouette… 

After a few minutes, they made their way back into the streets.

“Are you sure about this?” asked Izuku, piling a threadbare blue scarf high on his shoulders. “I’m a villain now. Villains don’t give things back, once they take them.”

She shoved her hands deep into the pockets of the faded, child-sized All Might hoodie that was still too big for her and stared up at him. “That…” she trailed off for a moment, then frowned. “That is a price I’m willing to pay.”

Well, that was completely and utterly fucked up. For all she knew he was going to sell her organs online and then go about his day with little regard for what she wanted him to do. Now, obviously he wasn’t going to do that, but he was a villain! Some of those do tend to do those kinds of things! Clearly she needed to be more careful about who she trusted. Ah well, he’d just have to teach her that later.

He nodded slowly, then ducked down and pulled her back into the alleyways. He’d have to be very careful to keep an eye on her, wherever they ended up.

It was a dangerous world out there, after all.

Chapter Text

Izuku Midoriya needed a lot of things if he was going to be a supervillain.

Minions. Money. A usable Quirk. Time and space to breathe without the impending threat of the yakuza finding him.

The closest thing he had to a minion was the six-year-old girl sleeping on a beanbag beside him, and he would throw hands with All Might before he asked her to help build his criminal empire. As for the others… he had about 10k yen on him (a gift from his mother when he’d left the house, ostensibly to celebrate his entrance exam but handed to him with the air of a consolation prize), the Quirk equivalent of a WMD that caused grievous bodily harm to himself whenever he used it, and roughly four hours left in his cramped little net cafe booth.

Searches for ‘how to fight the yakuza and police at the same time’ turned up very little, and his anonymous ‘TIFU: kidnapped a child’ post hadn’t gleaned any advice beyond ‘bury the body upright because the authorities tend to look for rectangles rather than small circles when looking for graves,’ which was clearly written by someone who hadn’t even read the ten paragraphs of context.

No, he’d have to figure this out on his own.

The first issue he’d have to deal with was the yakuza. He was outnumbered, out-Quirked (until he could figure out One for All), and he didn’t even know if he was still in enemy territory- It wasn’t like he was handed a gang map or anything. He had no resources, no allies, and nothing he could exchange for either of those. He needed to create value, or somehow get people indebted to him. And to do that… he had no ideas.

A gentle knock at the booth’s door had him sitting ramrod straight, making the preparations to fire up One For All: Breakout even as he called out, “Yes?”

“I’ve got your coffee ready,” replied the bored-sounding waitress.

“Oh,” Izuku relaxed a little. “You can come in.”

The door swung open, and a tall twin-tailed waitress slouched lazily against the door frame. A dim blue glow washed across a wall of the booth towards Izuku, carrying his coffee with it.

He blinked, reaching for the floating drink experimentally. It resisted his grip for a moment before returning to inanimacy as the blue glow dissipated.

His head immediately swiveled towards the waitress, who gave a tired peace sign. “I accept tips,” she informed him.

“HolycrapyourQuirkissocoolisittelekinesis? Whatwasthatblueglow? Howmuchcanyoucarry?” the word-vomit tumbled out of his mouth before he could even attempt to prevent it.

She blinked, then tilted her head. Probably deciding if she wanted to bother answering highly invasive questions from some homeless kid who probably wouldn’t be able to tip well.

Which he couldn’t! He only had the 10k yen on him! Those were mission critical funds, he couldn’t spend them on bribing his waitress to tell him about her Quirk!

And yet. Two thousand-yen bills found their way into her black-nail-polished grasp regardless.

“It’s a pretty limited telekinesis Quirk,” she explained dully. “I can only move things within three or so centimeters of a surface I’m touching.”

Her tray glowed a dull blue, and the few spare cups on it lifted slightly up and began to float in circles. “I call it Helping Hand. Useful for waitressing- and not much else,” she spat out bitterly.

“Are you kidding me?” Izuku told her. “That’s an awesome Quirk! You used it on the wall, so you could probably use it on the floor and completely neutralize someone’s traction! Depending on how much force you can exert with that you could move furniture and obstacles around like nothing! With something like a Capture Weapon- a reinforced scarf like Eraserhead’s- you could easily negate the range issue, and you might even be able to use your Quirk to manipulate the weapon itself in a sort of pseudo-prehensile telekinetic whip-arm! Honestly, that’d be awesome for something like Hero work!”

The waitress stared at him for a moment, then wordlessly peeled out of the cubicle and down the hallway like a woman possessed, not even bothering to close the door behind her.

Izuku sighed. He really was creepy, huh? Maybe he should try to actually reign in his psycho stalker tendencies (as dubbed by Kacchan) and learn to talk like a normal person. About stuff like… baking. Or sports. Or the weather.

Anything besides Quirks.

The door swung back open violently, banging against the wall before being caught by the same waitress. A backpack hung off her front, pencil clamped between her teeth as she fished into it for a notebook. She swung a small folding chair into the cubicle, putting it up against the small table in the corner. “Alright kid,” she spoke around the pencil, “I talked to my boss and I’m on break for the next 20 minutes. Keep talking.”

Izuku blinked. “...what?”

She looked at him, all traces of fatigue completely overwritten by raw focus. Her pencil twirled across her fingers before coming to a stop hovering over the page. “I’ve been ronin for 2 years, stuck in this shithole. Couldn’t bring myself to apply for a college that didn’t have a Hero track, but couldn’t get into any that did with what I can do. At this point, I’m taking any ideas I can get- and you seem to have plenty.”

Izuku’s eyes gleamed. “Does the word ‘propsurfing’ mean anything to you?”

Shouta Aizawa sat at a cafe table, nursing a mocha doctored with so many shots of espresso that the barista had whimpered at his order. He held a ratty old paperback with one hand, idly thumbing the page over every few minutes.

Anyone looking at him would see a slightly bedraggled man drinking a sorely needed coffee and enjoying some trashy fantasy novel. They would not see the Underground Hero he truly was, focused entirely on his quarry.

Two children. One of high school age, with curly green hair and freckles. The other was younger, with white hair, crimson eyes, and the makings of a single horn jutting from her forehead.

They sat at a table in the far corner of the cafe; a position good for vigilance but bad for response time. Amateur work, but they were just kids.

Eraserhead scowled; he had no idea why Nezu had sent him to tail these kids, but even he could tell something sketchy was going on with the whole scenario. Midoriya had applied to UA and shredded his limbs blowing up a Zero Pointer, but busted out a completely different enhancer to escape from Ingenium and Slidin’Go. The girl didn’t legally exist, and the guy claiming to be her dad had disappeared before the police could figure out he was actually an honest-to-god yakuza kingpin.

A tall, goth-looking waitress brought the girl a small slice of cake, which was celebrated and devoured with gusto.

Aizawa took a long sip from his coffee.

The waitress worked her way across the cafe, delivering desserts and drinks.

The green-haired boy frowned, then lifted a plate off a napkin.

Eraserhead took another sip of coffee, eyes narrowed.

The waitress came to a stop in front of him, empty tray held up against her front. “Are you finding everything alright, sir?”

He glanced up at her for a moment, then looked back at his book. “Yes,” he said gruffly.

“That’s good to hear! I just wanted to let you know, right now we have a sale on our triple-chocolate cake, which has always been popular with our other readers!”

Aizawa blinked. “I- what does chocolate cake have to do with reading?”

The waitress shrugged. “Couldn’t tell you why it is, but it is.”

A door shut, and something suddenly felt wrong. It was a rookie move, and he knew it, but Eraserhead leaned back to get a view around the waitress- and the kids’ table was empty. Where did they-

“Is everything alright, sir?” asked the waitress, shifting to block his view again.

Of course. She was in on it. Probably not necessarily in on the kidnapping, but she’d probably noticed that the strange hobo in the corner was watching them and warned them.

He moved to stand up, and the waitress blocked him again. “Sir, I insist that you try our chocolate cake. I’ll bring you a slice on the house-”

Aizawa stonily fished his hero license from a pocket and flashed it at her.

She paled instantly, but still stepped in front of him when he tried to go around her. “Sir, you need to at least pay your bill-”

Aizawa let out a long, slow breath. She’d taken up enough of his time that the kids had almost certainly gotten away, so the point was now moot. He looked at her coolly. “...I think I need to take you to the station.”

She straightened upright. “I haven’t done anything wrong. I haven’t used my Quirk or broken any laws-”

“You obstructed the work of a Hero and impeded an active investigation- that’s more than enough to take you in. I have some questions I need to ask you, and you can either come with me voluntarily or we can use these.” Aizawa pulled a pair of cuffs from his belt.

The waitress raised her chin and stared stonily at him.

He sighed and slapped the cuffs on her wrists. “I don’t have time for this,” he grumbled, and started leading her towards the front of the building-

The windows crashed open, and gunfire rang out through the room.

“HAND OVER THE KIDS AND NO-ONE GETS HURT!” roared one of the yakuza goons kicking through the glass.

And as Eraserhead leapt towards them, eyes aglow and loops of his capture scarf whipping around him, a number of things all happened at once.

One; the waitress, who he’d roughly shoved down into cover behind a table, glowed a gentle blue and quicky hovered away like the opportunistic little shit she was.

Two; the goons cursed and turned their wild gunfire from its original angle- into the building but up rather than level with the civilians; more to indimidate than kill, he noted- directly onto him.

Three; A deafening crash rang out behind the building. In the same directions the bathrooms were, ergo in the most likely escape route of his original quarries; undoubtedly the ‘kids’ these goons were shouting about.

They’d set a trap to flush those two out, and he’d gone and unknowingly pushed them straight into it!

His lips curled up into a snarl as gunfire rained ineffectually into his reinforced capture scarf. He sent out a loop of it to snag a goon’s gun, only to turn and glare at another who rushed forward with metallic growths on his knuckles, which quickly retreated back into the guy’s skin.

And in the distraction, the first goon managed to wrest his gun free of the scarf.

The second glared down at his fists and snarled. “What the hell- oh shit, he’s fuckin’ with our Quirks!”

Hm. Intelligent. Potential leader, at least of the current bunch. Eraserhead mentally bumped up the threat posed by the guy, since it usually took longer for thugs like these to figure out what he was doing.

He sent out a strand of scarf upwards, grabbing onto a light fixture that he used as anchoring to swing into a long kick at the leader. The man raised his arms in a fairly solid block, but went stumbling backwards a few paces from the force.

Hm. Unusually sturdy. Potential secondary characteristics, or simple training? Didn’t matter. Archetypal brawler regardless.

And so Eraserhead found himself standing in the center of the goons. It was usually a bad idea to get surrounded, but he was quick, and the biggest threat to him was their guns. If he couldn’t take those away with a glare, the least he could do was make them worry about crossfire. Either they stopped shooting or they took each other out. A win-win. This was the rational path forward.

If he were a limelight Hero, he’d probably have some quip or catchphrase he’d say here. That was half the reason he wasn’t one. He allowed his scarf, fists, and Quirk to do the talking.

And out of the corner of his eye, he tracked the shimmering tendrils of dull blue light that worked their way out across the cafe’s floor.

Izuku Midoriya grit his teeth as he whirled through the air, Eri clutched tight in his arms.

He’d barely had half a second to react before a massive fist lanced through the space the two of them had been, and that had cost him. A full quarter of each leg ruined with Fragmentation, just to evade the opening attack.

But at least now, in the intervening moments, he had a chance to size up his opponent.

Massive. Muscular. Wore some form of fist brace, had a mask over his face that left his mouth free. There was no doubt that this guy was one of Overhaul’s.

“Stop messing around, Rappa,” another beak-masked man rebuked their assailant.

“I’m not,” Rappa replied, eyes locked onto Izuku as he perched on a rusty fire escape. “He’s quick.”

The thinner man sighed. “Just don’t let the girl get away.”

Rappa snorted. “That’s your job, Tengai. I’m just here to make sure the kid goes down hard.”

Izuku fired up Fragmentation once more, and leapt straight upwards. If he could make it to the roofs, he’d have a much better chance of getting away; he wasn’t ready to fight yet! All he had was his janky stopgap techniques!

He rammed facefirst into a shimmering yellow force field cutting off his escape.

Damnit! His eyes flicked to the sides, taking in as much detail as he could even as he fell backwards.

The force field? Barrier? Projected surface? It wasn’t a single plane, it was curved. It was a dome. Judging by the angle and distance… centered on the other man? Tengai? Probably his Quirk. It felt sturdy when he’d hit it; he could probably break through it with a 100% SMASH, but that would put him down a whole limb for much longer than he could afford.

There was no Recovery Girl out here; if Izuku broke a bone, it would stay broken until it healed normally, and with his status as villain he doubted he’d be able to swing a hospital visit about it. That ran the risk of it setting wrong, or- well, he didn’t even know enough medicine to know what the associated risks would be!

So no. Straightforwardly smashing the force field would be a last resort.

It was (probably) Tengai’s Quirk, so taking him out would probably bring it down. Rappa was probably there just as much to prevent that as he was to kick Izuku’s ass.

Also assuming that Tengai had to be at the centerpoint of the dome, Eri shouldn’t have trouble evading him if she stuck to the edges of it. He just had to… occupy Rappa, while also getting around him?

Which meant… actually fighting him.

Being a villain sucked.

He locked eyes with Eri and nodded, grinning slightly as he saw her grip the object hidden in her hoodie pocket. He really had to thank that cool waitress again; there was, after all, no real reason to give the albino girl a steak knife with that slice of cake.

She dropped out of his arms seconds before they landed, scampering back up the fire escape the moment her shoes touched the ground.

As for Izuku, he turned and faced his opponent, a spark of Breakout flaring to life in his chest.

Rappa smiled. “Heh… I like the look in your eyes, kid. You seem ready to do this.”

Ah, shit! Villain banter! Quick, quick, what would Kacchan say?

Izuku gave a feral grin. “So, does Overhaul diddle all of you or is it just kids?”

…he needed a new role model, huh.

Rappa cracked his neck and rolled his shoulders. “You’re gonna pay for that one.”

“Fair enough,” he accepted.

And Rappa’s arms blurred into motion.

Izuku skipped backwards, his spark of Breakout zipping between his legs as he danced out of reach of the flurry of punches. Some kind of speed Quirk? But he wasn’t moving fast… it seemed localized to just his arms?

Rappa’s arms slowed back down, and he sighed. “I thought we were gonna fight! What’s all this?”

Izuku blinked. “...dodging?”

Rappa rolled his eyes. “How the hell are we gonna have a real fight if you aren’t swinging back? A fight’s a conversation, little man! You gotta put your soul in every swing and trust that the best man will win!”

Tengai gave a long-suffering sigh and began to massage his forehead.

Izuku had never before felt such a kinship with a yakuza. “...you have a Quirk that makes you good at punching? If we just punch each other until one of us wins I’ll lose?”

Rappa bared his teeth in a disdainful grimace. “What, so you’ll just run away from every fight you think you won’t win?”

“Yes!” Izuku shouted. “I- you can’t talk like I’m the weird one here!”

“I know you’ve got some steel in you, kid!” Rappa shouted, pointing a finger at him. “I saw it in your eyes! You’ve got the will to fight, so why won’t you?” He lunged into range and unleashed another barrage of punches.

Izuku ducked down low, rolling between the brawler’s legs. Lightning lanced down his thighs as he jumped up into the air into a wild kick at the back of Rappa’s head.

And as he rose in the air, he got a good long look at Rappa’s back.

Observation 1: Rappa’s Quirk, the rapidfire punches… almost like some kind of engine, it had to wind down. The time it took was miniscule, but it was there. He couldn’t instantly stop.

Observation 2: The mechanism of the Quirk was in his shoulders. The way the muscles beneath his skin rippled and his shoulderblades chugged back and forth… that was not standard human anatomy.

Observation 3: that wasn’t Rappa’s back any more.

Izuku’s foot clanged into the metal of the man’s fist brace as it rose into a guard.

“Better! Now stand your ground!” The brawler roared, and this time Izuku could see his shoulders warp and click into a different position.

Hypothesis: Rappa’s Quirk is not an Emitter Quirk. It is a Transformation Quirk. Activating it changes the structure of his shoulders, removing the versatility of normal shoulders in exchange for the ability to unleash that flurry of powerful blows. It would explain the wind-down time; if he immediately shut it off, all the power behind those punches would go straight into his own shoulder sockets!

Wait, shit. Izuku was still in the air. He had no footing. He couldn’t dodge.

He instinctively curled up, protecting his head with his arms and his body with his legs. The impact of the first punch rocked through him, grinding bones together and rippling through muscle and fat reserves alike.

And Izuku went flying.

He slammed into the barrier, sliding down it into a crumpled heap. His breathing interrupted by relentless coughing as agony burned through what seemed like every inch of his body.

And- and that had just been one hit of that entire barrage! He didn’t want to imagine what taking the whole flurry of blows Rappa could unleash.

Wait. Hold on.

The primary strength of that Quirk lay in the barrage, the raw speed those unrelenting hits- but that was all pointless if he didn’t stand his ground! The first punch sent him out of range of the rest of them! As long as he didn’t dig in his heels, he’d only ever take one of those hits!

But- how to take advantage of that? Even if the way he was fighting denied Rappa the full power of his Quirk, the point was moot if just the one hit would do this to him!

He had to think!

And, by pure habit. He sent the spark of Breakout where he needed it to be.

His brain.

He had a single moment of idle curiosity on what the hell was about to happen before it hit.

His neurons, synapses, the fundamental building blocks of his mind…. bloomed, for lack of a better word. Unfolded in a brilliant, utterly incomprehensible kaleidoscope of thoughts and emotions and memories and ideas. And-

‘Move!’

He flung himself to the side, narrowly dodging Rappa’s boot pinning him to the barrier.

“Still alive? Not bad, even if you only took one of my punches.”

He- he couldn’t see. Or- he could see, but it was too much. Too many. Conflicting definitions of color, incompatible processing patterns; too many new flavors of thought, clashing and blending and running into one another until he couldn’t even tell what was up and what was down.

‘Oh shit, this is bad- he’s really out of it! But- that punch shouldn’t have done this to him!’

“But you get it now, right? If you don’t fight back, you’re going to die here.”

‘Nine! You have to get up!’

“Who… who the hell is Nine?”

Dead silence.

“What are you talking about, kid?” Rappa loomed over him. “It’s just you and me here, now. We’re the only ones that matter, until one of us comes out on top.”

‘...did he HEAR US? That’s- that’s new, right? Kid? Kid, can you hear us?’

Izuku coughed and staggered to his feet. “Yeah, I can hear you. Who are you?”

“Oh no,” Tengai said slowly, not a shred of emotion in his words. “I think you broke him. He’s stupid now.”

‘We’re the Past Wielders of One For All- this hasn’t happened before! What did he do?’

‘He channeled it in his friggin BRAIN, like an absolute madlad! You’re lucky your head didn’t explode, Nine!’

It… didn’t feel like it hadn’t.

Rappa tilted his head. “...it doesn’t matter if you still remember. You still have that mettle. The only thing you need to know is this; I am going to kill you, and then I am going to walk into that building right there, and bring that little girl back to my boss. And you… are willing to die to prevent that.”

The spark of Breakout drifted, and Izuku’s vision resolved back to what he was used to. But- he tried to move, and eight different ideas of what that looked like piled together and rolled into an ineffectual, limp stagger.

‘Nine- Kid, you need to stop doing that. You need to spread out the power, rather than focus it into one point. Try- do your whole brain, not just parts of it!’

Whole brain. After dismissing the mental image of his head exploding directly off his neck, he tried it. The spark of Breakout… dissipating, from a roiling speck of lightning to a cloud of static that filled his whole skull, and-

‘Whoooooooooahg, that’s WAY better!’ cheered Five.

‘Shut up, Five,’ Three cut in. ‘We need him to be able to focus.’

‘Hn. Nine- no, Midoriya. I can help, if you’d like,’ offered Two.

Izuku frowned, and added a touch of One For All to his next thought. ‘What do you mean, you can help?’

‘You just have to let us in,’ Two replied.

Izuku wiped the blood from his lip and glared up at Rappa.

Rappa grinned cruelly. “So, what’s it gonna be? Are you going to fight, or is this going to be boring?”

Izuku closed his eyes, and when they opened again they burned an unholy toxic green.

“Do your worst,” said Two, with a voice dripping with static.

Chapter Text

Nedzu Nedzu– Principal of UA, Professional Hero and alleged scheming mastermind– sipped his tea calmly.

This was somewhat more difficult than it usually was, due to the myriad factors of stress acting upon him. There was the general back-to-school administrative crush, the delicate process of secretly onboarding the Number One Pro Hero into his staff, and the fact that he’d had to send Eraserhead out on a mission when what the man really needed to be doing was refreshing his lesson plans; he couldn’t rely on just expelling his whole class every year, after all.

But that was ignoring the elephant in the room, so to speak.

So it was with great difficulty that he smoothly placed his teacup back down on its saucer with a single decisive clink, and brought up the matter at hand with all the grace of a wrecking ball:

“Izuku Midoriya.”

All Might shifted awkwardly in the seat across from him. Good. The man deserved a little awkwardness for the mess that had been dumped in the diminutive principal’s lap.

“Your successor.”

All Might nodded.

“The boy kidnapped a child in broad daylight the day after the entrance exams, using your Quirk to evade authorities.” Nedzu steepled his fingers and leaned forwards, staring his newest teacher in his unnervingly bright blue eyes. “You understand why this is a problem.”

All Might coughed. “I’m sure this is all one big misunderstanding, Principal Nedzu. If I could-”

Nedzu interrupted the man sharply. “Even in the case that the situation is, through some bizarre comedy of errors, not what it appears to be… even if your protege’s descent into villainy the moment he thought he didn’t have a chance at UA is simply the result of happenstance and miscommunication- the fact remains that your Quirk lies in the hands of a runaway delinquent who, as it stands, cannot take your place as Symbol of Peace. This is, to put it lightly, a disaster of incalculable proportion!”

All Might coughed again.

Nedzu looked at him flatly. “So… do you have anything intelligent to contribute to the conversation?”

The Number One Pro Hero thought for a moment, nodded, then gave a brilliant, toothy grin. “I have nothing but the utmost faith in Young Midoriya’s judgment!”

Nedzu’s teacup shattered against the wall behind All Might.

A pair of red sneakers pounded into the concrete ground of the alley as a green-haired boy ran straight towards a larger, gauntleted man.

“That’s what I’m talking about, little man! Show me your soul!” Rappa roared, shoulders clicking as his Quirk engaged.

And as a pair of green eyes looked into Rappa’s… something clicked. They were somehow seeing double? But not the same thing twice. More like they could see from Rappa’s eyes as well as their own? And from that perspective, the boy’s left iris shifted from green to teal?

“Good,” Two mumbled under his breath, voice crackling unnaturally. “Still have it.”

Izuku mentally narrowed his eyes from his position in the backseat of his own body. Was- did Two still have his original Quirk? Was that what was going on? Did-

A thought was pushed into Izuku’s section of mind; he unpacked it to find the sensation of a warm hand placed on his shoulder. ‘Easy there, Nine,’ One reassured him. ‘You’ve done well, but it’s time for your senpai to show you a thing or two. It’s been a while since they’ve had a chance to stretch their legs, you see.’

Izuku nodded internally and turned his focus back to the fight; it was difficult to adjust to the multiple perspectives, but once he got his bearings it felt… right, somehow? Gave a much better overview than just the one he was used to.

Two had gone low like Izuku had before, but it seemed Rappa had learned; their opponent backpedaled while maintaining his onslaught to try and catch them in it.

With the barest hint of a smile Two dropped even lower, catching himself on his hands as he kicked Rappa’s feet out from under him.

The larger man went tumbling backwards, unable to catch himself in the key moment of his Quirk’s wind-down.

Two slipped forward as Rappa reached back to pick himself up; power thrummed in his legs as he planted a foot in the center of the man’s chest and leapt off him towards Tengai.

‘The barrier is his, right?’ Two asked internally.

‘Probably?’ Izuku offered. ‘I mean- that’s my best guess, but-’

A second, smaller barrier appeared around Tengai just in time to block Two’s kick.

‘Your best guess, huh? Have some faith in yourself, kid!’ Five laughed.

They locked eyes through the shield of yellow energy for a moment; Tengai’s widening in surprise, Two’s creasing with satisfaction.

Click. A third perspective slotted into place in their awareness. Tengai’s left iris suddenly matched Izuku’s natural green, and through the barrier user’s vision they saw Two’s left iris shifted to be concentric rings of teal and grey?

Ah! The visual tell of whatever Quirk Two was using! Triggered on eye contact, anyone caught in it had an iris change to match the user’s natural eye color, and the user’s corresponding eye takes the colors of everyone they have in the Quirk! Rappa’s irises must be teal, then.

Two kicked off the barrier with another pulse of power in his legs, neatly sailing over Rappa’s attempt at a surprise attack.

‘He’s gonna be the main problem,’ Izuku mused. ‘His quirk takes a moment to wind down and he can’t do anything but punch while its running, but I wasn’t quick enough to take advantage of that.’

‘Good eye; Hadn’t noticed that. Anyone else want to switch in?’ Two asked as Izuku’s body lit upon the rusty fire escape once more.

‘Oh! Oh! Let me, let me!’ Five shouted.

‘Inside voice, Five,’ Seven rebuked. ‘Lets all go in order and give our newest member one hell of an introduction, yeah?’

‘You and your theatrics,’ One chuckled. ‘You just want the big finish, don’t you?’

‘Hey! You can’t blame a girl for wanting to show off for her kouhai!’ Seven said cheerfully.

Two wrapped a hand around the railing of the fire escape, and with a pulse of power in his arm a four-foot section of it was torn off. He tossed the pipe in the air with a mumbled, “You’re up, Three.”

And Three caught it. “Ahh, just like old times,” she sighed with an undercurrent of radio static, then stepped off the edge of the rickety metal platform. “Oh, hey! Your Quirk’s still up, Two! That’s cool.”

‘It might drop if I lose focus, so don’t rely on it,’ came Two’s curt reply.

Three landed in a crouch, twirling the length of pipe experimentally. “Wouldn’t dream of it, hot stuff.”

Rappa rolled his shoulders and eyed them warily. “A weapon, now? How tasteless. It isn’t a true fight unless we’re tearing each other apart with nothing but our own power!”

‘HE’S LITERALLY WEARING GAUNTLETS,’ Izuku howled in his head.

“You’re literally wearing gauntlets,” Three relayed loyally.

“And yet, they are still my fists.” Rappa replied as he-

A jolt ran through their body; an arcing bolt of… some kind of sensation that ran from jaw to chest to shoulder to gut and back up to jaw almost faster than they could perceive, and Three moved.

Their vision was consumed by a whirlwind of sparks and loose rust; Izuku had to rely Tengai’s vision to understand what was happening! The pipe whirled in Three’s hands like a staff, batting aside each Quirk-enhanced punch like she knew exactly where it was going to be- and he quickly realized that she did! The jolt! Some sort of… precognitive threat detection? She didn’t have to be as fast as Rappa, because she essentially had a head start on every hit! That was so cool!

Three suddenly grimaced, hissing air in through her teeth as she tried to disengage.

Rappa moved with her, maintaining his onslaught while keeping pace for a moment before finally relenting.

‘Interesting… is there a limit to how long he can keep his quirk up, too? I imagine that much force would be rough on his shoulders even if his Quirk reinforces them…’ Izuku mused to himself as his body skipped backwards to the edge of the yellow barrier.

Three frowned down at the pipe, before sighing and snapping it in half over her knee. ‘Shitty random-ass pipe. I miss my real staff.’

‘It was a worthy sacrifice,’ One said solemnly. ‘I will forever cherish my memory of watching you shove that thing halfway down my brother’s throat.’

‘I’d been hoping for the other end,’ she moped. ‘Four, you ready to play?’

Rather than answering, Four… barked?

Three grinned and flipped the shorter half of the broken pipe in her hand. ‘Alright, boy…’

She wound her arm back, and the muscles of Izuku’s body rippled with energy. ‘FETCH!’

The foot-and-a-half of rusted metal whistled through the air towards Rappa-

And Four went bounding after it.

‘Four… is a little different from the rest of us,’ One explained as the pipe clanged off Rappa’s raised gauntlets. ‘He’s… a dog. As in, literally. A dog.’

‘...what.’ Izuku deadpanned.

Rappa let out a long, deep sigh as Four loped up to him on all fours. “Better! But… an over-correction. You’re allowed to walk.”

The brawler made a straight jab at Four, only for the previous wielder to… drop low to the ground with a crunching of joints and skitter up underneath him????

“OH JESUS FUCK!” Rappa shouted, dancing back to get away from the honest-to-god nightmare fuel that was Four doing whatever he was doing.

‘Yes! Good boy, Four! Bite his dick off!’ Five cheered.

‘No! No dick-biting!’ Seven snapped. ‘This is Nine’s body, he is fourteen, that mouth is going nowhere near anyone’s genitals unless absolutely necessary!’

‘...I appreciate that, Seven.’ said Izuku. ‘Anyone want to tell me what the hell is going on, though?’

‘Right, right. Uh. Four is my dog, and he originally had the Quirk to turn into a human,’ Three picked up the explanation from One. ‘But, well… he was also the first time we figured out that One For All actually boosts the original Quirk on top of acting as a physical enhancer. So he can do… that.’

The rest of the wielders watched silently as Four warped his body to climb up Rappa’s leg, winding around the man’s back to hiss into his face from the opposite shoulder.

Tengai quietly created two more barriers around himself.

‘Also! To clarify!’ Five cut back in. ‘He can talk. He just, uh. Usually doesn’t.’

‘...is it bad that I feel bad for Rappa now?’ Izuku eventually asked.

‘...I don’t think he doesn’t deserve it, but I suppose there are worse things to be than empathetic,’ One accepted. ‘I think its about time we move things along again?’

‘Four!’ Three called sharply. ‘Heel!’

Four immediately backed away and sat back on his haunches. Rappa and Tengai both eyed him warily.

‘Alriiiight!’ Five cheered. ‘My time to shine!’

And with a blink, it was Five sitting there.

On his haunches.

Like a dog.

He looked Rappa in the eyes solemnly. “It’s not what it looks like,” he defended.

“Then what the hell is it?” Tengai shouted, all pretense of composure abandoned.

“Advanced Heroics strategies. Very high concept, you wouldn’t get it,” Five deflected.

Rappa squinted at him. “Are you just going to pretend that you didn’t climb all over me and hiss like a psychotic spider?”

“This is why I don’t argue theory with amateurs,” Five sighed theatrically. “It’s always ‘what the hell are you talking about’ and ‘that was some super fucked up shit you did’ and not ‘wow that was so cool’ and ‘very effective psychological warfare tactics, good job’.”

Rappa squinted at him suspiciously and cocked his fist back again.

And a half-dozen inky-black tendrils shot out of Five’s body, each one wreathed in a corona of cyan energy. Three of them speared into the bricks of the alleyway and hoisted him into the air, while the other half surged towards Rappa.

The brawler raised his fists into a boxer’s guard that Five’s tendrils curled around to yank him off his feet.

“Goin’ up?” the Wielder quipped as he swung Rappa under and up around himself.

“FUCK YOU!” Rappa howled.

“Ohhhh, you wanted the other one!” Five nodded in mock understanding, wrapping his hands around the strands of Quirk energy for a better grip. He released his hold on the walls of the alley, swinging Rappa in a long, arcing orbit before slamming him directly into the unyielding concrete below.

Five reached out behind them with a thick bundle of Quirk-tendrils that wove into and wrapped around the lower level of the alley’s fire escape. With a groan of metal and a low crackle of blue lightning around his straining body, the bolts gave way and rusted steel tore free from the brick wall and into a trajectory straight towards Rappa-

Only for it to crash into an unyielding yellow barrier.

“TENGAI!” Rappa roared furiously. “How many times do I have to tell you? Don’t interfere in my fights!”

“HE THREW A FIRE ESCAPE AT YOU! OF COURSE I’M GOING TO BLOCK IT!” Tengai shouted back, equally as upset.

‘Alright, Six! Barrierguy is a pain in the ass so he’s your nut to crack now!’ And with no other warning, Five simply. Fell over forwards.

A hole in space appeared on the ground in front of them in a whirl of sparks. They fell through, and gravity shifted as Six fell onto their feet directly behind Tengai. Inside the second, smaller barrier with him.

Six simply and straightforwardly punched Tengai in the face.

The bird-masked man staggered backwards.

And the barriers shattered around them.

‘Ohohoho, what a drawback~!’ Izuku practically purred. ‘Barriers that only work when you’re stationary, hmmmmm? Works well enough against mundane enhancer/augmenter types, but weak to special triggers, nonphysical attack mediums, and anything spatial. Honestly, wasted on a team-up with Rappa, though he does need one; a better combination would be one of those special triggers or someone with something non-intermediary… ’

There was a moment of silence in his mind. Six dodged and weaved, dancing in and out of portals wreathed in whorls of sparks to pepper Tengai in an omnidirectional rain of blows while Rappa tried and failed to navigate through those same portals to get to them, but Izuku didn’t get the feeling they were focused on that. It was more like, a reaction to- wait shit they heard that!

‘Seven…’ Five eventually said. ‘I know you said he’s only fourteen, but… I feel like I need an adult…’

‘If I had to pretend I didn’t know you used your Quirk for self-bondage more often than you didn’t, you have to live with this,’ Three cut in flatly.

‘YOU GUYS SAW THAT?’ Five whined.

‘We tried not to,’ Two answered.

‘To be fair, there wasn’t really a way to see what was going on without also knowing that,’ One reasoned. ‘I’ve always done my best to respect the privacy of the current wielder, but there’s a certain point where it’s just actually your fault.’

‘Oh god…’ Five took a moment to marvel at the horrors. ‘WAIT. My literal dog knows I’m into petplay…’

‘See, we actually didn’t know that one,’ said Three. ‘We successfully avoided finding that one out until now. Good work, Five.’

‘What’s wrong with petplay?’ Four finally spoke up. ‘I’m a pet, and I play. Its kind of the best thing ever.’

‘At least one of us is pure,’ Seven mused.

‘Oh, like you’re one to talk,’ Five shot. ‘I remember-’

Six’s arm crackled with energy and lashed out through a portal into a vicious hook that embedded Tengai into the brick wall on the other side of the alley.

Six looked down at their arm in confusion as the visual feed from the smaller yakuza cut out.

‘Would you look at that,’ Seven raised her voice over Five, ‘It’s my turn! Lovely conversation, gotta focus on other things now!’

The portals sputtered to a stop around them as Seven bounced on the balls of their feet, shifting from Six’s boxing stance to something more casual.

‘I… didn’t do that,’ Six said slowly. ‘I think that was her.’

‘Fascinating!’ Izuku crowed. ‘I’d suspected as such with the way Two’s Quirk is still up, but it looks like it’s not all or nothing with you guys; partial control is also an option! I suspect that with more practice, all of your Quirks should be usable from a more backseat position!’

Seven’s eyes sparkled. ‘Hey! Four! Wanna try it? You remember what I looked like, right? No offense, Nine, but I’ve already had one lifetime’s worth of male puberty and I am not looking to make that number a two.’

‘Okay… I’ll try!’ Four confirmed, then went quiet.

Rappa charged in roaring, both fists cocked back as the joints in his shoulders clicked into position.

Violet lightning crackled around Seven’s body as she turned to face him, and gauntleted fists slammed into flesh.

The concrete behind her shattered as she caught both fists in twin vice-grips. Bones groaned with the strain as she grew, muscles and fat reserves filling out and facial features shifting and hair growing out until-

“You done fucked up, son,” said Nana Shimura, Seventh Wielder of One For All.

She was larger enough than Izuku that his loose pale blue hoodie was more of a short sleeved crop-top that clung tightly to her chest, exposing her very muscular midriff. His cargo pants were now more like cargo shorts and the less said about what remained of his shoes the better, but…

‘woagh,’ Izuku eloquently thought.

Rappa tugged back on his fists, but Seven’s- Nana’s grip was unyielding.

She grinned widely and yanked the larger man into her, pulling him down so her knee crashed into his face.

‘Watch and learn, kiddo,’ she said internally as she let Rappa stagger backwards for a moment. He roared and lashed back out towards her blindly.

She darted forward under the blow, hooking her arm around his shoulder and swinging herself up and around his back- and she didn’t stop going up, pulling him into the air after her even as she ruthlessly flipped him over.

‘When it comes to the big guys who won’t go down easy…’ she began, slinging the brawler over her shoulder as she drew level with the buildings around them.

Her Quirk cut out, returning them to the ruthless grasp of gravity. Air whistled around them as they hurtled towards the ground, and violet energy wreathed Nana’s taut muscles as she held Rappa in an unyielding wrestling hold.

‘It’s always about the powerbomb!’ she crowed as she slammed Rappa directly into the ground, cratering the concrete of the alley with the force of it.

She released him, getting back to her feet quickly and watching to see if he was properly out.

He lay motionless in the crater, lightly groaning but making no moves to continue fighting.

She nodded to herself and dusted off her hands. ‘Alright, good hustle, team! Nine, you want your body back? Eri shouldn’t have made it too far after the barrier broke, but she’ll be looking out for you and not… me.’

‘I, uh. That’s probably a good idea. I, um. I appreciate the help, everyone.’ Izuku found himself shunted back into the front as the body reverted to its original shape, leaving him with nothing but an inexplicable and fleeting sense of loss.

‘We should be thanking you, Nine!’ Five laughed. ‘It was nice to get the blood pumping again for the first time in… what, fifty years now? Longer than that for some.’

Izuku blinked. ‘I mean, yeah, but- I’m a Villain now, right? And you all were Heroes, right? You should be trying to stop me, right?’

‘Kid…’ Seven spoke after a moment of silence. ‘I- that’s not how it works.’

‘You are the Wielder,’ Two said quietly. ‘Your will is the will of One For All. Each of us had our time and made our choices. Now, we are simply at your disposal.’

‘Well- I mean, that too, but-’ Seven cut herself off again. ‘The line between Hero and Villain wasn’t always where it is, kiddo. As far as I’m concerned, you’re doing the right thing. Always have been.’

‘Remember, Nine,’ Three said with uncharacteristic softness, ‘We’ve been watching, ever since you got us. And, well, yeah that’s only three days, but what a three days it’s been- the point is, you’ve done nothing wrong. You’re fighting for a child who needed help. There’s nothing more heroic than that, ‘kay?’

Izuku’s eyes softened as he stared up towards the building Eri had run off to hide in. If the Wielders believed in him, if this legacy he carried stood wholeheartedly behind him, that could only mean one thing:

He was such a nefarious, manipulative villain that he’d subconsciously bamboozled seven Heroes into thinking he was the good guy! He really was a natural-born villain! He truly sickened himself at times, but… he needed them, to be able to protect Eri. So, despite the fact that it tore at his heart to allow the charade to continue, despite the fact that his heart screamed at him to confess, beg for forgiveness, give the Quirk back to All Might and turn himself in…

He simply blinked the tears out of his eyes and nodded.

‘Okay, I get the feeling we didn’t really get to you there, but that’s fine! We’ll work on it!’ Seven said calmly. ‘You are a good person, Izuku.’

He was such an evil person.

‘Oh, and sorry about your clothes,’ she added apologetically.

Izuku looked down at his stretched-out hoodie, stressed cargo pants, and tattered shoes.

He lifted a foot. The shoe did not follow.

He sighed.

All Might stood up from the chair in front of Nedzu’s desk. Tea dried on the wall behind him, and tiny fragments of ceramic lay in the quickly cooling pool of liquid.

“I understand that I must not appear to be an intelligent man, to one such as you. But it is not a lack of foresight, it is not foolishness or bravado that brings me to these words. I spent ten long months training Young Midoriya, and there is not a doubt in my heart… he is worthy to be my successor.”

Nedzu frowned. “He cannot be the next Symbol of Peace, All Might. Even if we were to miraculously bring him back into the fold- his reputation will be forever tainted. The public would never accept it.”

All Might chuckled lightly. “I wouldn’t ask him to be. The world only ever needed one.”

Nedzu rose to his feet. “I- you understand that the Hero System in its entirety will collapse the moment you step down, right? Your strength- the strength of One For All- is what legitimizes everything we’ve worked for all these years! Without another Symbol-”

“The Symbol of Peace did what it was meant to,” All Might interrupted, looking out the window to gaze over the grounds of UA, and past it the city. “The Second Dark Age is over. Heroes have rallied to the banner, and All For One has been struck down. I will admit, when I first looked for a successor I had hoped to pass on the title as well. But… Young Midoriya is a very different man than I was. I was driven, but him… His mind is sharp, his will is unbreakable, and his heart is utterly unyielding. If he is not a Hero, then it is because that role did not have the space within it for the good he will do.”

“I will not saddle him with my own mistakes and limitations,” he said as he turned back to face the principal. “One for All is his now, and I find myself interested to see the world he creates with it.”

Chapter Text

I drew a cover:

The sounds of destruction echoed from the alley behind the cafe, even as Eraserhead fought his way through the yakuza thugs at the front; this was reassuring. Sounds meant the kid hadn’t gone down yet.

He’d be a bitch to track down again if the yakuza got their hands on him.

His eyes sharpened, Erasure activating with a flare of red light. A goon’s axe arm snapped back to its original shape with a curse from its wielder. Threat Designation: Chopper quickly found himself wrapped in capture weapon and slammed into the hood of one of the unmarked black cars they’d arrived in.

A crystal-clear fingersnap echoed through the shattered cafe front, and Eraserhead’s capture scarf unwound itself from his neck, flying across the room to land in the hand of a newcomer.

Plague mask covering his nose and mouth. Long blond hair that covered an eye, green button-up shirt, salmon tie. Katana held carelessly in one hand, Eraserhead’s scarf dangling loosely from the other.

“You guys really are useless without me, haah?” the Thief shook his head fondly at his roughed-up minions before turning to glare at Eraserhead. “And you! Do you know who we are? We’re the goddamn Shie Hassaikai, you hobo bastard! Not even the Heroes mess with us!”

The Shie Hassaikai? Eraserhead gave a cool stare even as his mind whirled, trying to place the name. Shie Hassaikai… the Eight Precepts of Death… Wasn’t their leader the guy whose kid Midoriya nabbed? Things were getting interesting.

Thief waved the katana at him threateningly. “Oh, you’re real quiet now, huh? Starting to figure out how much shit you’ve gotten yourself into? I’m sure if you start kowtowing now, Boss Overhaul might only take a few fingers off ya!”

So their boss was named Overhaul, huh? Eraserhead’s mouth cracked into a terrible, terrible grin, even as the remaining goons regrouped around him. He charted the next eight seconds in his head as his backup knife slipped from his sleeve.

This… was going to be dangerous. A good Hero always had a backup plan, but he’d been counting on the scarf against their guns; without it his only option was evasion.

First: distraction. Make him think. Reveal identity as Hero, allude to corruption for him to take advantage of.

Second: movement. Close distance while he’s on the back foot, erase his Quirk and resecure the capture weapon. Get close enough that the goons hesitate to fire on their leader.

Third: capture. This man is clearly higher rank than the rest, his defeat may deal a blow to morale and turn the rest of the fight into a rout.

He opened his mouth to speak, only for a dim blue light to swim across the floor beneath the Thief’s feet. The waitress’ Quirk. It was the same glow as when she’d hovered away from him, though he was surprised she hadn’t run as soon as she’d gotten out of his sight.

The Thief sauntered closer. Good. Less distance for Eraserhead to close.

The katana twirled in the Thief’s fingers. “You listening, rat? Your attitude won’t last you very long once you’re in front of the Boss, so you might as well give it up now. I want you in a dogeza three minutes ago.”

And suddenly. The Thief’s feet jerked out from under him, forcing him into an involuntary split. His initial pained yelp quickly shifted to a high-pitched keening that skirted the edge of human hearing range, and in less than three seconds the man was simply crumpled on the floor clutching his crotch.

The goons stared at him in confusion.

Eraserhead’s capture weapon floated up from where it lay abandoned, flowing across the floor on a river of blue light. He leaned down and scooped it up with one hand, slinging it back onto his shoulders before sending out a fistful of loops to end the fight while his opponents were distracted.

The few that managed to dodge quickly found the cafe’s chairs and overturned tables in their way, and it was the work of mere moments to get them all bound on the floor.

It was the work of a few minutes to get them all bound in something that wasn’t his primary weapon, even with all haste; he used the few sets of cuffs he had on him plus some rope to get them all looped together and tied to a nearby column. He quickly pulled up HeroNet on his work phone and called in the location for the police to pick them up later.

A single pair of handcuffs dangled into his vision. “...did you want these back, or do I get to keep them?” asked the goth waitress from before.

Eraserhead blinked at the opened cuffs dangling from her fingers, before reaching up to take them back. “What did you do to him?” he pointed back at the Thief, who still hadn’t recovered.

The waitress held up a hand and pantomimed turning a knob. “Power word: testicular torsion.”

He nodded to himself, then slapped the cuffs around her wrists for the second time that day..

“You’re under arrest for vigilantism,” he informed her.

She stared flatly back.

“Now that you’re a vigilante in the custody of an officially licensed Underground Hero who is also in possession a teaching license, you are eligible to be taken as my apprentice under the Vigilante Reformation Act of 2452.” he droned flatly.

She blinked in confusion.

Aizawa did his best to repress his grin. “Should you accept, I would be responsible for your training and rehabilitation over the next three years, at the end of which you would undergo the standard Hero Licensing Exam with the HPSC. Should you pass, your record would be scrubbed clean and you would be free to operate as an independent Hero.”

He allowed that to settle in for a moment, before raising a single eyebrow. “Do you accept?”

This was the most rational path forward. She had potential, yes, but she also had had contact with the subject of his current mission. She knew the kid, she was willing to protect the kid, and there were enough complicating factors in the situation that it was a reasonable risk to take. While she had the makings of a rebel, she wasn’t quite good enough at it that he wouldn’t catch the signs she was going to defect.

The next three years of her life were not going to be easy. He would cut her loose if she didn’t have potential. The jail time would be kinder to her than a life in the profession if she wasn’t good enough for it.

The simple truth was that this was the logical decision. She’d shown enough potential that he was willing to invest at least a few more hours to see if she had more.

Which meant that the way her deep blue eyes slowly lit up as she processed the information, the way her deep-set frown twitched its way into a smile- all of that was simply icing on the cake.

“Oh my god- yes!”

The handcuffs clicked back open. He held them for a moment, then passed them back to her. “You get to keep them.”

She snorted.

“So… got a name?” he asked her.

“Saori Atsukawa, sensei!” She bowed deeply, then looked back up at him with a grin. “I’ll be in your care!”

“Just don’t waste my time,” he shot gruffly, then turned on his heel. “Follow me.”

He heard her following closely behind him as he pushed his way back into the store, through the employees-only areas to the alley in the back. The sounds of combat had died down, so he had little hope that he’d actually find the kid. Either way, he’d have to check for any kind of clues or hints to where those yakuza- the Shie Hassaikai- had taken him.

He opened the door to the alley to find an empty crater in the concrete about six feet across, a twisted wreck of rusted metal that used to be a fire escape piled up in a corner, and a groaning plague-masked yakuza embedded in a brick wall.

...what?

Izuku Midoriya, shoeless and bedraggled, walked into a thrift store.

His hair was pulled down to cover his left eye, which shone a bright crimson; the color of Eri’s eyes. And he knew that in the abandoned apartment two buildings over, her own shone a deep forest green.

He idly checked her vision; she stood at a windowsill, gaze fixed on the storefront he’d just stepped into.

Two’s Quirk was awesome.

The cashier didn’t even look up from their phone as they droned out a welcome, and he moved past them to make a beeline for the shoe rack in the back.

‘...bit of a gamble, isn’t it? Whether they have your size?’ Three asked in the back of his head.

‘The chances are pretty good for me, actually,’ he thought back. ‘I was born Quirkless, see?’

‘...what does that have to do with it?’ came Five’s voice.

‘Well, the main signifier for Quirklessness is the presence of a certain joint in the pinkie toe,’ he lectured internally. ‘It’s not, like, a huge difference or anything, but it does make most standard shoes pretty uncomfortable. We, uh. We need custom shoes, pretty much. And there’s only one company that does it for a decent price.’

‘...shouldn’t that mean you’re less likely to find your shoes, rather than more?’ Three asked after a moment.

Izuku simply walked down the rack, following it to the far corner. The final section of shoes was a solid block of red; the same exact shoe, dozens of times over.

Izuku’s exact shoe.

‘...I’m lost.’ Three declared after a moment.

‘I mean- they don’t fit anyone else. Where else would they all go?’ he pointed out, pulling at the tongue of a shoe to check for its size. ‘And statistically speaking, there’s always a supply.’

‘Can you, uh… elaborate on that?’ Five asked.

Izuku simply pulled out his phone- sans SIM card and location disabled- and opened the search engine.

‘Quirkless’ auto-filled to ‘Quirkless suicide rates’.

‘...fuck.’ Three cursed.

‘But, on the bright side,’ Izuku thought with an exhausted kind of forced cheer, ‘there’s a decent supply of shoes that’ll fit me!’

‘Nine… Kiddo… that’s not-’ Seven began.

‘Don’t.’ he cut her off, then immediately backpedalled. ‘I mean- I don’t mean to be rude, I really appreciate your- um, wisdom and guidance and everything- I just. Can’t, right now. Please don’t make me think about this right now.’

‘...consider the topic shelved,’ she said softly.

He took a moment to just stand there, before continuing his search. Most of them were damaged in some way or another, just barely in good enough shape that the thrift store could justify selling them. He ignored that most of it looked like Quirk damage. He ignored a pair that had one big scorch mark, not unlike what it would look like if Kacchan had- well, never mind what it wasn’t unlike.

He lifted up a pair that was in… startlingly good condition. Not new, but cared for. The white treads were clean, and closer inspection showed a number of tears and cuts and scrapes that had been carefully patched or sewn back together. The only thing that could be construed as a problem was the splattering of tiny flecks of pastel paints across the tops.

He checked the tongue.

It was his size.

And below the size was a name in sharpie, crossed out.

Mikumo Akatani.

He took a deep, rattling breath. Closed his eyes and sank into a crouch. Cradled the shoes close to his chest.

The Wielders were silent.

‘I was going to be a Quirkless Hero,’ he eventually told them. ‘Before, um. Before I met All Might. That’s what all the analysis was for. I thought that I could be smart, even if I couldn’t be strong. I wanted to prove I wasn’t nothing- or rather, I wanted to prove that we weren’t nothing.’

He found himself blinking away tears. ‘I- I’m fine being nothing, you know? But if I’m nothing because I’m Quirkless, then- then that means all of them are nothing too, and they’re not! But it’s just- it’s so hard to believe sometimes, you know? So I wanted to be… a reminder, I guess.’

‘...you’re a good kid, Nine.’ Three said hoarsely.

‘Maybe you can still do that?’ Five suggested. ‘Just because you’re technically a Villain-’

He shook his head. ‘It won’t work anymore. I have a Quirk now. Even if- even if I used to be Quirkless, if I come up and say it’s not so bad, but I have something- if the only reason anyone’s even listening to me is that I have this power, it won’t get to the people who need to hear it. I was- I am too selfish. The moment I was offered one, I just… forgot about them. No- I remembered. I just cared more about myself.’ He snorted at himself. ‘Some solidarity, huh?’

‘They say,’ Six offered in that low, steady voice of theirs, ‘that when you’re in an airplane, and the oxygen masks come down. You have to put on your own mask before you can help anyone else. That if you don’t, there’s a good chance you’ll black out before you can even finish helping the other person. I thought about it a lot, when I was a Hero. If you don’t save yourself, you can only ever save one person, and even then its not a sure thing. I think… you are too harsh on yourself, Nine.’

Izuku stared at the floor for a moment. ‘Right. Well. Mask’s on. Quirk acquired. I don’t see myself doing any good now, though.’

A thought was pushed into his mind from Two’s general direction. He carefully cracked it open to find the image of Eri’s eyes looking up into his own hopefully. He slammed it shut and pushed it away.

He took a long, deep breath, then stood back up. ‘Alright, enough of that. It’s about time to return to our regularly scheduled villainy, no time to get sentimental.’

‘That’s the spirit!’ Three cheered before pausing. ‘Or- is it, actually? I’m all for sentimentality, in retrospect. Huge fan of it. Maybe-’

‘Did you have a plan to deal with Overhaul?’ Seven interrupted. ‘Now that you know what you can do, and you know you have us?’

The edges of Izuku’s mouth twitched as he walked back down the shoe aisle, red sneakers cradled gently in one hand as the other reached out and carelessly snagged a much larger pair of flats. ‘You could probably say that…’

Rei Todoroki woke up in the dead of night to a hand over her mouth and a single violet eye staring into her own. The midnight breeze had her curtains fluttering over the opened window, letting warm air spill into her room.

How odd. Rei didn’t even have the key for that window.

The woman loomed over her, long black hair hanging over her face like a curtain. Her eyes were sunken but oddly bright, her face was thin, and her mouth was bared in a sharp-toothed grin.

Seeing she was awake, the woman leaned in close to her. “Play along,” she whispered, before straightening up and reaching for the blanket. She paused. “You’re. um. Decent under this, right?”

Rei blinked. “...I’m wearing pajamas, yes.”

The woman nodded sharply and tore the blankets off the bed. She paused again, then let out a swift kick at the nightstand as well.

Rei stared.

The woman grabbed her wrist and pulled her up out of the bed- surprisingly gently, actually- and tossed an envelope in the rumpled space left behind. She turned back to face Rei and clapped once. “Right. Mrs. Todoroki. Do you have any personal effects you would like to take with you?”

Rei blinked slowly, then moved to her nightstand to take the small book of photos that she had of her children.

The woman nodded approvingly, then looked around awkwardly. “Um. How long do you think it’ll take for the staff here to notice I’m here? It was pretty loud when I kicked that, right?”

“They’ve decided that I’m insane, so… they probably won’t investigate.” Rei said listlessly.

The woman drew herself up in indignation. “Well- that’s just medical malpractice, isn’t it? That’s illegal! That’s a crime!”

“Yes.” Rei said softly. “Yes, it is.”

“I’m going to be honest, I was kind of banking on making a scene here.” the woman put her hands on her hips. “Do you have, like, a call button or anything?”

Rei pointed silently at the small button pad dangling next to her bed.

The woman marched over, picked it up, and pressed the button.

“Ah. Mrs. Todoroki.” the male voice on the other end of the line droned unenthusiastically. “You should know by now we were instructed not to-”

“I believe there has been some form of misunderstanding here,” the woman informed him.

There was a moment of silence.

“...who are you?” the voice sounded more confused than concerned.

The woman held the call device over towards Rei and gestured for her to speak.

“Oh. Um. I think I may be getting kidnapped.” she said slowly.

“...you don’t sound very confident, Mrs. Todoroki.” the male nurse said skeptically.

“Well, she didn’t exactly tell me what’s going on,” Rei defended.

The man on the other end sighed deeply. “I’ll send security up to your room. I hope you understand that your husband will hear about this?”

“I expected nothing less,” Rei said morosely as the call ended with a click.

“Excellent, excellent,” the woman tapped her fingers together rhythmically. “Now, before we continue, do you have any particular fear of heights?”

“They don’t let me near high ledges,” Rei said in lieu of an answer.

The woman stared at her for a moment. “This place sucks, huh?”

Rei nodded.

After a moment, she perked up and looked at the door. “Ooooh, they’re coming!”

And she. Scooped Rei up into her long, bony arms!!! In a princess carry!!!!!

Rei felt her heart begin to beat faster; not that that was difficult, it was so boring in her cell- sorry, medical suite- they didn’t even give her access to the internet. There was just, nothing to do at all. Her heart rate hadn’t risen like this since the last time that man had visited! And this felt way better!

So she simply, let her head fall limp against her captor’s thin, bony chest and basked in the warmth of human contact that didn’t burn.

“Mrs. Todoroki,” a gruff voice came from the door. “This is your last chance, alright? You can admit nothing’s happening, I can leave, and this never happened. If I open this door and nobody else is there, your husband will receive a report about this.”

“That won’t be an issue,” Rei’s captor simpered, sharp teeth flashing in the moonlight from the open window.

The door slammed open. “Who the hell are you?” the guard shouted, pulling a gun but clearly unsure if he should risk hitting Rei.

Just do it. Her life wasn’t necessary anymore. Her husband already had Shoto, there was no need for another try.

Her captor simply grinned wider. “Good sir, that is not the question you should be asking. A better one is; who the hell do you work for?”

The guard blinked. “...who the hell do you work for?” he tried.

“The Shie Hassaikai!” her captor crowed. “Long live our exalted leader, Overhaul!”

The guard stared at her flatly. “Sorry- that’s relevant how, exactly?”

“Our demands are in the letter! Ciao~!” Rei’s captor clutched her close and. Fell backwards out the window?

The wind whistled past them for a moment that seemed to stretch out into eternity; was this it for Rei? Was she finally going to be free? There were certainly worse ways for it to happen.

Her life flashed before her eyes. It was a sad, short, and pathetic thing. A boring, pampered, captive childhood. A boring, perfect high school career in nothing more than a sanitized cage. Being sold as breeding stock to the Number Two Hero by her parents. That horrible, horrible night when the hatred outweighed the love and she scarred one of her children to spite that horrible, horrible man. And then, white walls.

The only bright spots were her wonderful, beautiful, incredible children. Her husband killed one, ignored two, and was almost certainly along his way destroying her fourth.

The only thing of real value she’d ever held was clutched in her hands even as she hurtled to her doom. A small book that held the dozen photos she’d gotten of her family without her husband ruining things.

Her eyes closed calmly; there were certainly worse ways for it to happen.

After a few, long seconds passed without her splattering onto the pavement in that artistic red smear that she’d spent months fantasizing about, she found the courage to open them again.

They stood on a roof. She hadn’t even noticed her captor landing, was how gentle the woman was. She glanced around; the hospital was nowhere in sight.

Her captor set her down carefully. Rei acknowledged that her death would not be coming by the hands of this woman, but there was still hope for this… Overhaul she’d spoken of. It would have to be quick, though. Their time was limited.

“I’m, terribly sorry about this Mrs. Todoroki,” the woman apologized.

“Don’t be.” Rei told her. “I’m sorry about what’s going to happen to you.”

Her captor’s head tilted to the side. “...what’s going to happen to me?”

She looked away mournfully. “You left demands for my husband. You know he is Endeavor. He will not do anything you ask.”

“I’m counting on it,” said a different, younger voice.

She blinked and turned back to her captor. Where a tall, bony, long-haired woman had once stood, now there was… a child. A boy. Green hair, green eye, freckles. He wore the same clothes her captor had; they hung loosely from his body.

Rei stepped backwards. “...how old are you?”

He scratched at the back of his head. “Fourteen. But! I know what I’m doing!”

Rei closed her eyes and carefully obliterated all memories of swooning over her captor from her mind. She eventually opened them again, and looked him in the eye. “My husband… is a prideful man. He will not comply with your demands. He will hunt down your Shie Hassaikai and destroy them.”

The boy smiled awkwardly. “I’m… not with the Shie Hassaikai. They actually, uh. Want me dead.”

Rei stared at him for a long, long moment.

He raised his hands and began explaining. “I’m not going to do anything to you, I promise- I just need you to stay with me for like, a week, just long enough for him to, you know, take care of them- and then I can bring you right back and-”

Rei Todoroki did something she had not done since The Kettle; she burst into laughter. It was… wild. Uncontrollable. Almost painful. Manic, bordering on hysterical.

The boy watched her carefully, probably trying to decide if she actually was insane or if this was some kind of medical emergency. It was anyone’s guess these days, really.

After a few long moments of the involuntary chest spasms wracking her body, she managed to once again control her breathing. “No,” she said hoarsely.

The boy blinked. “You’re, um. Not going to cooperate? I- to be entirely honest I would really rather not use force but I- well, I can if I have to-”

“No,” she interrupted. “You’re not sending me back there. I’m not going back. You can’t make me.”

He blinked again.

She laughed again; cackled, even. “I- I’ll join you. I’ll help you. I’ll do whatever you want, I don’t care, just- don’t send me back. Kill me, first. Or- if you don’t want to do it- just, leave me alone with a knife. I’ll take care of it. I cannot go back there. I won’t.”

She looked up at him- oh. She was on her knees, fists full of his too-big shirt. She felt him flinch at her touch; a thick roil of self-disgust tore into the burgeoning hope in her heart but her hands did not follow her commands to release him.

She buried her face in his shirt, so that he would not have to look upon her wretchedness.

And after a moment, his small, gentle hand settled on her head. At first awkwardly, but with growing confidence as she almost-involuntarily pushed into it.

”Okay…” he trailed off for a moment. “You don’t have to go back.”

A sob tore from her mouth as helplessly as her laughter had. He slowly stroked her head as she cried freely. “Thank you,” she whispered hoarsely. “Thank you.”

She did not see a child’s pair of red-and-green eyes that watched from the shadows, nor the way her benefactor turned to gaze thoughtfully in the direction of the hospital that had held her.

She did not hear the way he tested the name of the Number Two Hero in his mouth; he took great care to be silent, letting each syllable rest on his tongue for a moment.

He weighed the shape of it, tasted its sins and pondered the good it had done.

With a grimace, he judged it wanting.

Chapter Text

Hekiji Tengai sat in the dimly lit interrogation room, hands chained to the table as the cat-headed officer flipped through some notes.

His mask had been taken as soon as he’d confirmed he had no medical reason to wear it, and without it he looked the part of a simple monk; a person he’d ceased to be three long months ago.

“Now… can you describe what you saw during your fight with Midoriya, one more time?” Officer Sansa asked calmly.

Tengai inclined his head. “I understand it’s difficult to believe, but it was undeniable. The boy had multiple Quirks. At least four.”

Sansa blinked. “The facts, please.”

Tengai let out a low sigh. “He started with some kind of strength enhancement. Quick, powerful movement with some kind of backlash; he was hurting himself using it, that much was clear. Rappa-”

Sansa held up a hand. “For the sake of the record, you are referring to Kendo Rappa? Your fellow member of the Shie Hassaikai?”

Tengai nodded. “That is correct.”

“Please continue.”

“Rappa managed to corner him at the edge of my barrier, and then he started acting… different, is the only way I can say. His entire style of fighting changed. He, um. Picked up a pipe and used it as a staff for a bit, and then…” Tengai trailed off and shuddered to himself.

Sansa leaned forward.

“His... joints, they bent all wrong. He crawled around on the ground like that, then climbed onto Rappa. Next, he sent out these dark tentacles, swung him around. And then… portals. He used portals to get past my barrier, then, um. Punched me with his original enhancer. That’s all I remember.”

Sansa nodded slowly. “I see.”

On the other side of a one-way mirror, Eraserhead frowned. The strangeness surrounding this case kept building higher and higher; the fact that Tengai was talking at all was an anomaly in and of itself. Those yakuza types were always so tight-lipped, and getting any leads on the Shie Hassaikai up to this point had been like drawing blood from a stone.

But the moment they’d let slip they were hunting down Midoriya, Tengai had been all-too-happy to spill everything he knew. The kid had made one hell of an impression, that was for sure.

He side-eyed the other elements of oddity that had arisen from this interrogation; Toshinori Yagi. A tall, scarecrow-like man who introduced himself as a member of All Might’s support team, and had the credentials to prove it. High ranking, too. Why the Number One Hero was that interested in this kid was beyond him.

Detective Naomasa Tsukachi had entered with Yagi, and at least that was a familiar face. The Detective’s Lie Detector Quirk had been critical in quite a few cases Eraserhead had worked in the past.

The fourth person in the room was Sir Nighteye himself; he was leading the Shie Hassaikai investigation, and had been called in the moment they’d gotten back to the station. There was clearly some history between Nighteye and Yagi; they’d both frozen the moment they entered the same room, and they were still yet to speak a word to each other.

“He’s not lying,” confirmed Detective Tsukachi. “He really did see all that.”

“He could simply be wrong,” Nighteye suggested. “The Quirk manifestations he described are just too different for him not to be missing something.”

“...could be some kind of copy Quirk,” Eraserhead noted. “Something with long or semi-permanent duration and multiple Quirks copied at once would be indistinguishable from actually having multiple Quirks.”

“That’s not it,” said Yagi so confidently that Eraserhead had to turn to stare at him.

And he wasn’t the only one; Nighteye was staring at All Might’s assistant like he saw a ghost. “...you didn’t.”

Yagi inclined his head slowly.

“You-” Nighteye bit his tongue, and everyone else shot a glance at Eraserhead.

The Underground Hero sighed. “Do you need me to leave the room for a minute? I need a coffee anyway.”

The Detective smiled apologetically. “That… may be for the best.”

Eraserhead nodded sharply and stepped outside the room.

Saori Atsukawa looked up from where she was leaning against the hallway outside. “All done, boss?”

He shook his head, gesturing for her to follow him. “Atsukawa… sometimes, there will be things you aren’t supposed to know. Things you have to avoid learning at all costs. The people in that room are discussing one of those things.”

She blinked, and turned back towards the observation room. Even through the soundproofing, she could just make out “YOU GAVE IT TO HIM?” yelled at the top of someone’s voice.

She turned back to him in askance.

He sighed. “I’m pretty sure Nighteye had a bad breakup with All Might’s assistant. Detective Tsukachi was somehow involved, but is also somehow still on good terms with both of them. I hate that I know that much and I would rather die than learn more.”

Atsukawa nodded sagely, then tapped her chin. “All Might’s assistant was the tall guy, right?”

Eraserhead nodded.

She tilted her head. “...which one do you think topped?”

Eraserhead’s face did not have the capacity to express the sheer volume of disgust and disdain he felt in that exact moment.

He was saved from having to respond to his apprentice by the Number Two Hero kicking down the door to the police station.

“WHERE IS THE SHIE HASSAIKAI?” Endeavor roared, face aflame.

Eraserhead silently pointed a thumb down the hallway behind him.

Endeavor pushed past him and stomped down the hall.

Atsukawa stared off into the distance. “...that was an automatic door, right?”

Eraserhead nodded tiredly.

Rei Todoroki stared at the two children in front of her in the harsh morning light.

So… it hadn’t been a dream. She’d actually been kidnapped by a child. And this child had a second, smaller child. This was her life now.

She cleared her throat awkwardly. “Hello.”

They both stared back, equally awkwardly. Or at least the boy was awkward about it. The girl was simply staring at her with wide, crimson eyes while clinging to his leg.

“Hi,” he eventually said. “I, uh. Didn’t actually introduce myself last night, did I? I’m Izuku. Izuku Midoriya.”

She nodded. “Rei Todoroki.”

Ah. He already knew that, didn’t he? Oh! The girl didn’t! Rei managed to feel slightly less stupid about it now.

Izuku put a hand on the girl’s shoulder and pushed her forward a little. “This is Eri.”

Rei crouched down to bring her face level with the girl’s. “Hello, Eri.”

Eri stared at her for a long moment, before giving the tiniest of hellos.

Rei glanced back up at Izuku, who was wiping a tear from his eye. “They grow up so fast,” he mumbled to himself.

Hmmmmm.

She straightened back up and clasped her hands together. “I… apologize, for my… conduct, last night. I was… not at my best.”

“There’s nothing to apologize for,” Izuku declared. “It was a very stressful situation for you.”

“You are… very gracious,” she told him. “I… do stand by what I said last night.” She paused for a moment. “Every word of it,” she continued significantly.

A stormy look passed across Izuku’s face. “If you really don’t want to go back, I won’t force you. I…” The expression broke as he scratched at the back of his neck. “I could honestly, really use the help.”

She nodded sharply. “My Quirk is called Frost; I can create large amounts of ice very quickly, but using it does also cool my body down. Excessive use brings the risk of hypothermia; my… husband… had hoped to use it to counter the weaknesses of his own Quirk.”

Izuku blinked. “...you’re a Hero? I don’t remember ever seeing that team-up.”

She blinked. “In our children, I mean.”

Izuku squinted. “Please let me know if I’m overstepping but… how did you actually, you know, meet him?”

Her head tilted. “My parents introduced me to him when he expressed interest in purchasing me.”

He closed his eyes for a long, long moment. “...I’m going to break into my mom’s house and destroy all my old Endeavor merch later. Do you wanna come with?”

Hmmm. Interesting idea.

She looked down at her hand and slowly created a small ice model of Endeavor. She inspected it carefully for a moment, ensuring that all the details were correct.

She hurled it full force at the ground and watched as it shattered.

That did feel good, actually.

She looked back up at Izuku and nodded.

Chronostasis sprinted full-force down the corridors of the Shie Hassaikai compound as the sounds of battle raged behind him. He slammed into a door, clawing desperately at the handle before opening it.

Overhaul looked up from his notes. “Chrono. What is it?”

“The Heroes!” Chronostasis barked out. “They’re here!”

Overhaul sighed. “Assemble the Eight Bullets,” he commanded calmly.

“Five Bullets,” Chronostasis corrected hysterically.

Overhaul’s head practically snapped to stare at his assistant. “Explain.”

“The three we sent after Midoriya… they didn’t come back. Setsuno and Tengai got arrested and nobody’s seen Rappa so he probably found someone else to fight! And it doesn’t matter, because it’s All Might and Endeavor!”

“...both of them?” Overhaul asked dumbly.

“BOTH OF THEM!” Chronostasis wailed.

Overhaul stared for a moment, then calmly stood up. “Walk with me,” he said as he stepped briskly towards a door.

Chronostasis fell into step behind him, calmer now that the Boss had a plan.

His calm evaporated as Overhaul opened the door to reveal a supply closet. “...Boss?”

Overhaul rested a hand against the wall of the closet, and the surface exploded into a roughly hewn tunnel entrance. “After you.”

Chronostasis looked at him in confusion but stepped into the tunnel.

Overhaul sealed it shut behind the two of them.

“The Shie Hassaikai was a means to an end,” Overhaul explained as he used his Quirk to tunnel away from the compound. “An avenue by which to secure assets. There is only one thing we truly need, and that is Eri. All else is secondary.”

Chronostasis nodded slowly. “...of course.”

Neither of them commented on the roaring of Endeavor’s flames or the booming laughter of All Might behind them.

Neither of them commented on the way Overhaul’s hands shook between applications of his Quirk.

It all went without saying.

Izuku Midoriya perched on the roof of a two-story building in Yokohama, eyes scanning the flow of people on the streets beneath him. His left eye shone with concentric rings of crimson and grey; Mrs. Todoroki- no, Rei was an absolute life-saver, offering to watch Eri for him while he went out and did things.

First on the docket was the most nefarious and evil act of them all; to participate in capitalism. It was, after all, the pride of a villain to ensure his minions and captives were properly fed and cared for.

He idly cast his attention back towards the two of them; while he’d gotten a decent amount of practice in with ‘Eyes On You,’ he didn’t have the experience needed to be actively paying attention to all visual feeds simultaneously like Two could.

A black feed from Eri. Rei’s vision showed why; the younger girl had fallen asleep on her lap. The older woman was idly stroking her head while paging through a book in her other hand.

A gentle smile teased at Izuku’s lips, before Three’s voice in his head brought him back to his own location.

‘Alright, Nine. You see that bar? Notice anything about the flow of people around it?’

He narrowed his eyes and focused on the building in question.

‘Easy there, buster,’ she thought amusedly. ‘Around it, I said.’

He forcibly relaxed his eyes, focusing on his peripherals. ‘...people are avoiding the front, but the alleys around it are fairly active?’

‘Yep,’ she popped the p. ‘That’s a pretty standard pattern for underground hotspots. There’s a couple other indicators, but you’re still a beginner at this. I’ll teach those later.’

He nodded sharply. ‘Alright, what now?’

‘Now we go in!’ she cheered.

He blinked. ‘...just like that?’

There was a moment of silence. ‘...might be a good idea to let me take the wheel for this one,’ she eventually conceded.

Izuku mentally stepped back, and Three moved forward to fill the mental space he’d vacated.

“Alright, Four, here’s an easy one,” she mumbled to herself as she pushed a thought towards the dog’s corner of their mind.

Izuku watched from the backseat as their perspective shot up a few inches; just shy of being too tall for his clothes. Their center of balance shifted backwards as body mass moved around, and the seams of their pants tightened as their legs thickened until-

Yuzu Mitsuboshi, Third Wielder of One For All, winced. “Okay, maybe pull in the hips and thighs a little bit. Nine’s pants are not built for my legs, I guess.”

Four barked in affirmation, and the pressure eased up. She nodded and pulled a hair tie onto her long and wavy maroon hair. A disposable eyepatch to cover the eye that was Two’s Quirk’s tell finished their disguise.

‘I appreciate that I don’t have to get new pants again,’ Izuku murmured into his head.

Yuzu snorted to herself. “Don’t thank me yet; the night is still young~” she teased as she stepped off the edge of the roof.

A jolt in her legs had her reach out towards a streetlamp, bleeding off her momentum by spinning down it and landing into a crouch. She stuffed her hands into her jacket pockets and just… confidently strolled across the street.

A few respectful nods to a small group of men loitering at the entrance of the alley got her to the side door of the place, and she nonchalantly cracked it open and slipped inside.

The room was narrow and dimly lit, and a hazy smoke that stank of tobacco and something else filled the air. A few booth tables lined the brick walls, but the space was dominated by the hardwood bar counter with stools pulled up to it.

The crowd was a rough one; bulky and scarred seemed to be the theme for the night, and Izuku gulped internally. They… certainly did not fit in.

Yuzu took a seat at the bar anyways, slapping her yen onto the bar. “Whatever’s on tap,” she rasped, voice full of the static that accompanied all the previous Wielders.

A hand wreathed in dark mist scooped up the yen, and a glass of amber liquid was set on the counter before her. She picked it up and swirled it for a moment.

‘Alright, Four: Beef up that liver!’ she warned internally before taking her first sip.

‘...alcohol sucks, huh?’ Izuku noted after a moment.

‘Glad to hear I’m not completely corrupting you,’ she joked.

‘Don’t think I’m not watching you,’ Seven called out from the back of their head. ‘If our Nine becomes an alcoholic before he’s of age I will be holding you responsible!’

Three sent back a packaged thought of rolled eyes. ‘You know as well as I do that it’s necessary this time. Hell, I don’t even like booze!.’ In meatspace, she simply gazed into her drink and sighed quietly.

A body settled into the stool next to her; she very deliberately did not turn to look yet.

“Haven’t seen you around here before,” a rough, male voice noted.

“New in town,” Yuzu replied. “Took me a hot minute to find this place, I’ll tell you that.”

‘...it took us two hours,’ Izuku deadpanned.

‘shhhhh,’ she replied. ‘if he thinks he’s well hidden he’ll be less suspicious of us.’

“Just looking for a new watering hole?” he pried.

“And a spot of work,” she said. “Tough times all around, these days.”

“Got anything in mind?” the man asked lightly.

“I’m not particularly ambitious,” Yuzu confessed. “Plus… well, you’re listening to my Quirk right now. Radio Voice,” she gestured towards her own throat.

“I’d been wondering,” he admitted. “Well, come back in a few days and I’ll see if I have anything for you.”

“Got a name I should ask for?” She turned to face him, only for him to gently knock her head with his knuckles.

“Nah. I’ll find you.” He stood up and walked away.

Yuzu nodded, then quietly nursed her drink for another few minutes.

‘...was that some kind of code?’ Izuku asked.

‘Nah, just subtext. Barely even that.’ She chuckled internally. ‘I looked like am amateur there, but that’s better than looking like I know what I’m doing. He’s probably clocked us as a small-time criminal, not even a villain. Shouldn’t give us anything risky, just shady.’

She downed the rest of her drink and left the bar, giving a single nod to the bartender.

A few moments after stepping out of the building, she swayed unsteadily and staggered to the side. She leaned up against the brick wall to steady herself. ‘...what just happened?’

Izuku frowned internally. ‘You had a really suspicious conversation with some guy a few minutes ago?’

‘SHIT.’ she cursed internally. ‘Memory Quirk. Non-offensive psychic types tend to not trigger Dangersense since they don’t actually hurt. Did he say anything important? Did we see him? All I remember is… come back in a few days.’

Izuku thought back quickly. ‘He didn’t let us look at him or anything- and I didn’t catch anything that seemed important.’

Yuzu clicked her tongue. ‘Damn. That means he’s just careful. Good news, though! Guy like that, with a Quirk like that, in a place like that? We met one of the big ones, I’d guess.’

‘Better news,’ Two chimed in. ‘It only hits one of us.’

‘Ooooooh~,’ she thought. ‘That is better news. He might get sloppy, thinking he’s safe. What did I say our Quirk was?’

‘Radio Voice,’ Izuku supplied. ‘Creative use of the side effects of you being up front, I approve.’

‘Nice and useless,’ she nodded.

‘Hey! Radio Voice would be an awesome Quirk!’ Izuku argued. ‘It’d serve as an excellent auditory motif and add some weight to scare tactics if you used it right!’

She blinked. ‘Ooh, yeah, bring in an element of the ol’ analogue horror- ANYWAYS, my point is, it’s something nonthreatening so he shouldn’t be too wary of us.’

Izuku mentally paced in his corner of the mind. ‘About his Quirk… could have a few activation conditions. I’m leaning towards either threshold trigger or delayed activation, based on when exactly it hit. Threshold trigger, not a lot we can do about that. Delayed activation… its not sight based, since we didn’t even see him. Could be… voice, touch, proximity, or special trigger. There was a point where he physically touched your head. He asked you a few questions, which you answered. You asked him a question, which he… technically answered on a grammatical level, but the response was not informative. That was everything that stood out to me; I’d have to see it in action a few more times before I can confidently rule anything else out.’

The Wielders were silent for a moment.

‘...shit, you’re good.’ Yuzu finally said.

‘What I’m more interested in is the implications in regards to our Quirks.’ Izuku chose to continue rather than accept the compliment. ‘From what you said, Dangersense reacts specifically to pain rather than actual danger, which is… interesting. Also fair, since danger is a pretty loose and abstract concept; it itself would have to be fairly intelligent to understand what that even means.’

‘On the other hand, the way that memory Quirk interacted with… the whole brain situation… raises a number of questions and implications. No offense but I’d kind of assumed you all were mental constructs within my own mind, but from how that Quirk acted I suspect that each of us is independently considered a ‘mind’ for targeting purposes. I suppose… One For All is, fundamentally, a stockpile Quirk. It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to suggest that it stockpiles not only power and Quirks but also minds? I’d say souls but that invites debate on what a soul even is, and I’d argue that most ‘soul’ Quirks are simply emotion-attuned or synesthetic mind or vitality Quirks anyways-’

Chapter Text

The moon hung high in the night sky as Izuku Midoriya’s red sneakers touched weightlessly down upon the windowsill of his childhood bedroom.

After a moment of fruitless pushing at the frame, he frowned; locked.

He passed control of Float back to Seven and mentally reached out towards Five; Black Whip rushed to his fingertips eagerly.

A single squirming tendril of inky-black energy pried at the seam at the bottom of the window. Izuku hunched over the window, fully focused on making the strand of Whip as thin and pliable as possible.

He clicked his tongue as it simply coiled against the white-painted wood instead of slipping between the two pieces.

Black Whip was… temperamental wasn’t the right word. It didn’t have a mind of its own, it wasn’t uncooperative; the simple truth was that its function was to grab and pull things. Like a cool, oddly fleshy slap bracelet that would curl wildly along all axes until the target was hopelessly entangled.

The things it did, it did incredibly well. Its innate predisposition towards grasping and entanglement meant that in a fight, the user didn’t have to think about how it was grabbing things in-the-moment; it was an automatic behavior.

Unfortunately, pushing against surfaces and slipping past things without grabbing them were just… not functions of the Quirk.

‘Nine… allow me.’ Six’s voice echoed in his head.

Izuku mentally stepped back to make space, only to blink as Six only took control of an arm. And… stuck a hand through a foot-wide Sparkgate to flip the latch open from the inside.

‘...I feel kind of stupid, now.’ Izuku commented as he quietly slipped inside.

‘Don’t feel too bad,’ Six said seriously. ‘Thinking with portals is... notoriously difficult. I’ve used this Quirk for twenty years, you’ve had it for about two days.’

Izuku bobbed his head and turned to look back out the window, towards the moonlit silhouette that waited on the roof of the building across.

He reached for Sparkgate himself and narrowed his eyes. Out of all the Quirks held within One For All, Six’s was probably the most technical to actually use.

He focused on a point in space in front of the figure- no, not a point, a plane. Location, orientation, draw the circle… and then without dropping focus on that end, he dragged a… line? Not a physical, visual line, but more of a hypothetical, abstract node-to-node connection that existed more in his mind than reality.

He turned to the space above his All-Might-themed bed (it felt like a lot more than three nights since the last time he’d slept in it) and… location, orientation- ah, at least the diameter carried over from the first one-

And a whirling ring of sparks appeared in space.

Rei Todoroki inspected the rim of the portal cautiously for a moment before carefully stepping through, landing on the Bronze Age Costume bedspread with a quiet squeak of bedsprings.

The corners of her mouth twitched upwards as she took in the sheer density of All Might merch that plastered Izuku’s bedroom walls. “My husband-” she cut herself off, chewing on the words for a moment. “Enji would hate this room.”

Izuku’s awkward smile wavered, and he turned towards a display case to hide it. “I knew… I knew that he was competitive with All Might, but… does he actually dislike him?”

Rei looked up at a grinning All Might poster- the 30^th anniversary limited edition run that Izuku had dragged his mother to wait outside the store for four hours before open to get- and shoved her hands into the pockets of her jacket. “Enji… hates a lot of things. And All Might is number one on that list too.”

Izuku rested his hand on the glass of the display case. Where his shelves were cluttered with rows of Hero statuettes and action figures, his display cases were organized. Planned out, arranged, themed. He traced fingers up past the Legendary Team-Ups, the Agency Groupings, the Heteromorph Highlights… up to the highest shelf of it, his Top Ten spread.

Every year, the night after the annual billboard announcements, he’d open this case and rearrange the statuettes. Every weekend, he’d open it up and make sure each Hero was spotless. It was no exaggeration to say that this spread was the pride of his collection.

He gently popped open the glass.

All Might and Endeavor were the only figurines that had never been moved. Best Jeanist used to be the same, but Hawks had taken his position as Number Three two years ago.

He reached a single, shaking hand into the case.

Gang Orca stood tall, arms crossed at the edge of the group.

Ryukyu held a single arm forward, mid-transformation into a wicked set of claws.

Yoroi Musha’s luminous horn shone bright as he charged up a blast of light.

Mirko sat back on her haunches, legs tensing in preparation to leap into battle.

Crust grinned cheerfully, his layered hexagonal shields flaring out from his hands and shoulders.

Edgeshot crouched cooly, sharp eyes watching for any threats.

Best Jeanist held his arms out to the sides, the sleeves of his costume unraveling under his Quirk.

Hawks smirked, wings flared out with a pair of crimson feathers clutched in his hands like blades.

Endeavor held a hand wreathed in flames up towards the sky, as if reaching for the very stars themselves.

And All Might stood over them all, hands on hips and smiling as he always had.

Izuku almost expected them to leap into action to defend their Number Two, but… they were just plastic. They stood silently as Endeavor was pried from his display stand. They did not intervene.

He had to wonder if they would in reality, if they knew.

Plastic creaked in his hand. The points and ridges of the carefully sculpted flames dug into his fingers, and he forced himself to breathe.

A set of footsteps walked outside the door.

He froze, turning to look at Rei.

She stared back, just as wide-eyed.

“Oh dear,” came the voice of Inko Midoriya. “Did I leave Izuku’s light on?”

Izuku quickly reached for Black Whip, sending a fistful of tendrils out towards Rei while the rest shot into his closet. The moment each strand of the Quirk made contact with its target, he pulled.

The impact was muffled by the frankly absurd number of Hero hoodies Izuku owned (and had never worn because did you know how valuable those were?!?!?!), and another pair of tendrils pulled the closet doors shut just in time for his bedroom to creak open.

Inko stood in the entrance of his room for a moment, then made a noise of understanding. “Ah. I must have left his window open, too.”

She walked into the room, and Izuku held his breath. He felt Rei do the same from where she was wedged between himself and his collection of All Might hoodies.

“You know,” his mother mused to herself at the window, “it really is a shame I haven’t seen my darling son around anywhere. He’d have loved to analyze that charming Detective’s Quirk; Lie Detection seems like it’d be rare, right?”

Izuku blinked. Was she…?

“I’ll just leave this box of his things in here,” she monologued to the empty room. “I’m sure I’ll remember to put them away at some point. And I’ve been meaning to put up a few more of his things for a while, so… anything missing is only to be expected…”

She slowly made her way back to the door, before pausing again. “And I hope wherever he is, and whatever he’s doing, my Izuku is staying safe.”

And Izuku’s bedroom door clicked shut once more.

The closet door slid open, and the two budding villains slid bonelessly onto the floor.

“I was so sure we were caught,” Izuku mumbled.

Rei simply stared at the ceiling. “...that was your mother?”

Izuku nodded.

She lay silently for a moment. “She… has a lot of trust in you. I didn’t know parents could do that.”

Izuku opened his mouth to respond, but found he had nothing he could think to say. Instead, he stood up and went to continue what they’d come to do.

He blinked; there was a tea set and a plate of cookies left on his table.

There were two cups.

For some reason, this threatened to make him cry. He took a deep breath, and turned towards the other thing his mother had left in the room; a cardboard file box.

It had a label scrawled onto the top with marker; Perfectly Normal, Not-At-All Suspicious Things That Weren’t In Izuku’s Room When The Police Searched It For Completely Innocuous Reasons.

He silently opened it, and was greeted by a very familiar sight; Hero Analysis For The Future, volumes 1-14, all stacked in order.

He lifted the first volume and flipped through it. The first three pages were dominated by crayon drawings of All Might, with important notes such as ‘super strong!’ and ‘the coolest’. He smiled softly at his first attempt at statistical analysis; a rating system of ‘coolness’ communicated entirely by the length of a thick red line at the bottom of the page.

All Might’s ran off the edge of the notebook.

He paged through it slowly, letting the memories run through him as he read over his own slow, stilted attempts at analysis. Best Jeanist’s page was dominated by his clumsy attempts to portmanteau ‘thread’ and ‘telekinesis’, and also his attempts to erase crayon. Ingenium’s page had actually been created on the day of his debut, and Izuku had been so excited that none of the words written were actually legible. The first ‘underground heroes’ page was just a pitch-black silhouette with glowing red eyes and a swarm of tentacles (which he now knew was Eraserhead’s capture scarf) drawn in barely-visible grey.

Izuku’s breath caught as he flipped to a page that was practically entombed in crayon wax; it was a muddy mess of colors because he hadn’t figured out shading yet, but… he knew exactly what this was supposed to be.

A still, from All Might’s debut video. Where he smiled wide and carried a dozen civilians on his back as he walked out of hell, then turned around and went right back in because there were more people stuck in there.

Nobody had understood, when he’d told them it was his favorite All Might video. Everyone else pointed at the big, dramatic fights. All Might vs Stargazer. All Might vs Toxic Chainsaw. All Might vs The Hellcat Trio.

Those were the fights that looked good on camera. The fights where All Might demonstrated that he was the strongest, that there was no villain he couldn’t beat. The fights that proved that All Might was Number One.

But his debut… that was the one that showed why he was All Might. It was the one that made him All Might. There was no powerful villain to fight, no earthshaking clashes of power or relentless game of cat-and-mouse that the later fights evolved into.

There were just people in trouble, and a man with the power to help.

Because… that was what Heroes were, right? People who help. People who do the right thing. People who save.

And Villains are the ones that hurt people, and lie and steal and do bad things until a Hero stops them, right?

Izuku bent down and picked up the Endeavor figurine that lay abandoned on the floor. His eyes drifted off towards Rei, who continued to lay on the floor as frost slowly spread across the carpet. She gazed up at the hundreds of All Mights that covered the walls, as if any one of them could offer her guidance.

He looked back down at the figurine.

Endeavor was a Hero.

Endeavor hated All Might.

Endeavor was the Number Two Hero.

Endeavor bought a person, for a eugenics project.

Izuku felt hopelessly, utterly lost.

Saori Atsukawa followed in lockstep behind Eraserhead as he stalked out of the Nighteye Agency Headquarters. “Where to now, boss?”

“Back to the real mission,” he answered, eyebrows raised at the term of address. “The Shie Hassaikai raid turned up no leads on Midoriya, so for our purposes it was a bust. Overhaul and his second-in-command got away, sure, but as career criminals those two are going to be a hell of a lot harder to hunt down than two amateur kids. Better to cut our losses and go back to our own hunt.”

A black, unmarked car pulled up to the road in front of them, and Saori’s new mentor pinched the bridge of his nose.

The tinted window rolled down, revealing… some kind of albino mammal in a little suit, standing in the lap of Pro Hero Present Mic, who was actually driving the car. “I see that you are as rational and results-oriented as ever, Eraserhead!” the creature squeaked cheerfully.

“...Nedzu,” Eraserhead addressed evenly.

Saori blinked; this was Nedzu, the High Spec Hero? The Principal of UA? This… funny little rat man was the user of one of the most powerful intelligence Quirks seen on this side of the Second Dark Age?

Awesome.

As if sensing her thoughts, Nedzu turned to face her. “Ah! And this is Miss Atsukawa? Excellent, excellent. Get in, both of you! There is, as they say, no time to explain.”

Eraserhead sighed and opened the car door, gesturing for Saori to get in first. As soon as the two of them piled into the backseat, the vehicle was off.

Nedzu stepped off of Present Mic’s legs and onto the seat of the empty passenger seat. “Now, on to business!”

“You said I’d have at least another two weeks to find the kid,” Eraserhead said flatly.

Nedzu clapped his paws together. “The situation has changed!”

Eraserhead leaned forward. “You found information on him? Did he make some kind of move? If you’re pulling me off the streets it has to be serious; what’s the body count?”

“Nothing of the sort!” Nedzu’s smile was… perfect, on a technical level, but somehow gave the impression of a calm before the storm. “I simply realized that, as the caretaker of the foremost educational institution in the nation, I would be negligent in my duties if I did not ensure each and every member of the staff was trained for their position!”

Eraserhead blinked slowly. “You’re the one that hired All Might without making sure he had a teaching license,” he eventually said.

Saori blinked; All Might was going to teach at UA? It was crazy, the things you could find out just by hanging out with an Underground Hero!

“I’m not talking about All Might,” Nedzu held that unnerving smile without so much as a waver. “I’m talking about our newest TA!”

Eraserhead glanced over at Saori for a moment, then looked back at Nedzu. “Ah. Fair enough.”

Nedzu nodded, then turned to her. “Now, Miss Atsukawa! How would you best describe your own learning style? I could figure it out myself but that could potentially take up entire hours that we do not have to spare!”

Saori tilted her head. “Um… what are you talking about?”

Nedzu’s smile twitched. “Aizawa… I understand you’re partial to your logical ruses, but this one goes a bit too far, no?”

Eraserhead sighed. “Atsukawa. As my apprentice, especially under the Vigilante Reformation Act, you are required to be under my direct supervision for at least five hours a day. My day job is teaching at UA. I had intended to have you simply sit in on the classes, but-”

“But that would be an inefficient use of resources!” Nedzu finished cheerfully. “UA is, after all, accredited for post-secondary education! Why use you to fill another seat when you’ve already graduated high school? No, no, you’ll be a student teacher- but to be a student teacher, you must first study teaching!”

Saori raised a hand.

Eraserhead raised an eyebrow. “What is it?”

“When were you intending to tell me you teach at UA?” she asked plainly.

Eraserhead grinned. “The day of.”

She squinted at him. “With all due respect, sensei… why are you like this?”

“That would be my fault!” Nedzu answered cheerfully. “Now, do you have any medical conditions that might affect your body’s reaction to caffeine? The pacing will be much more punishing if we are denied that particular tool!”

Izuku crouched at the edge of a ruined park, wearing the same face he’d had when he first met Rei. A tall, bony, sharp-toothed woman who looked the part of the villain he was supposed to be. Something about it had just felt right, he supposed.

The park itself was a scorched, torn-up mess; it had been the site of a Hero fight eighteen days ago. Endeavor vs Halcyonite, a brutal clash of powerhouses that tore up grass and scorched trees until one of the few patches of greenery in the city looked more like the remnants of a warzone.

Izuku idly pulled out his phone; a quick search revealed that Endeavor Agency and the HPSC Restorations Department were still clashing on who had to pay for the repairs.

It suited his own purposes fairly well, he supposed. It was barren and empty, as not even the most familiar locals wanted to pass through anymore. The damage was such that there was very little they could do to make things worse, and… Rei had insisted.

Something about it had felt right, she said. To do this in the wake of the man’s own destruction. And he had to admit, there was a certain poetry to it.

The white-haired woman- Izuku’s newest partner in crime- stood in the center of the mess and stared down at the box at her feet. The entirety of Izuku’s Endeavor collection, every angry blue eye and scrap of dark-blue-and-flame that had darkened his bedroom, gently removed from its place and neatly packaged together into an unassuming cardboard cube.

She leaned down and reached between the flaps, pulling out a single statuette. The Ten-Year Anniversary run, celebrating Endeavor’s eternal position at Number Two, if he remembered correctly.

He watched her take a deep breath as frost slowly traced out from beneath her feet, scrawling crystalline patterns into the dirt and stone beneath her. The knuckles in her hand went white.

Rei glanced back and stared at Izuku for a long moment.

He straightened up to his body’s full height and slowly walked up to her, stopping a full pace behind her. “...Are you alright?” he asked her quietly.

She looked back down at the box. “...these were all yours,” she eventually said.

He looked down at it, too. “I don’t want them anymore.”

Her hand trembled around the figurine. “You… should do some of them, too.”

He opened his mouth to speak, to tell her that she shouldn’t feel bad or worried about it. That she had every right, and that he was giving them to her so she could do this.

The words died on his tongue as she glanced back up at him, because… maybe it was the added height of his current form, or the way the light of the distant streetlights shone in her eyes, but for that one moment he was looking down at a younger girl, with hair white as snow and fingers clutching the hem of his shirt and clear gray eyes that bored into his own.

‘Please,’ those eyes seemed to say. ‘Don’t make me do this alone.’

He blinked, and reality asserted itself once more. He looked down at Rei Todoroki, a woman old enough to be his mother, who had children older than him, and… he saw those same eyes.

Izuku nodded slowly, then reached down in the box himself. A rectangular, cartoonish figurine wreathed in plastic flame emerged, head filling his hand comfortably. He looked down at it thoughtfully.

He called out into his own head. ‘I- I’d do this myself, but I’m not sure I’ve actually gotten the hang of the physical enhancement function of One For All yet, so- would anyone like to-’

‘Always,’ Seven promised. ‘We can show you how to do it later, but- All you have to do is ask, okay?’

He bobbed his head, then glanced back at Rei. The older woman watched him carefully.

He gave her a gentle smile, and violet lightning crackled down his arm.

Funko Pop Endeavor exploded as Izuku’s fist closed in the space its head used to be. Fragments of plastic rained down over the two of them for a moment, and the decapitated body tumbled carelessly to the ground.

Rei Todoroki gave the smallest of nods to herself, then channeled her Quirk through her hands. A thin layer of frost enveloped her statuette, and the plastic groaned at the sudden change of temperature.

She grasped it in both hands and swiftly snapped it in half over her knee, then threw the two halves into the dirt.

She raised a foot to stomp the top half further into the cold earth, then paused. She glanced up at him with the beginnings of an apology in her eyes, and-

Well. Izuku knew exactly what to do here.

He raised a foot and, with a superhuman force heralded by the purple lightning that clung to his body, stomped the bottom half a solid three inches into the ground. The snap of plastic beneath his foot was… oddly satisfying.

The beginnings of a smile twitched at the edges of Rei’s mouth as she stomped her own half down right alongside it.

What she lacked in a strength Quirk she made up for with determination, and quickly the two of them were bludgeoning their way through rows of flash-frozen figurines.

Rei froze his Endeavor hoodie into a solid block of ice and hurled it into the ground, watching gleefully as it shattered into chunks that would eventually melt into tattered scraps of fabric. Izuku spent at least three minutes theorizing on the mechanics of her Quirk after that, and was only brought out of his musings by a hurled action figure that he swatted out of the air reflexively. This quickly evolved into a game of target practice, with Rei tossing frostbitten keychains for him to knock out of the air.

Ten minutes later, their breath frosted in the air from the leftover ambient cold of Rei’s Quirk and Izuku’s limbs tingled something fierce. He took his last Endeavor poster in one hand, and she grabbed the other end of it, and together they tore it in twain and tossed the paper scraps aside carelessly.

“I think that was the last one,” he told her.

“No,” she said. “There’s one more thing.”

And Rei Todoroki tore the wedding ring from her finger and hurled it as far away as she could. Her foot slid forward, and jagged rows of ice raced from the base of her stance until the two budding villains stood at the base of what could only be described as an iceberg.

A single point of light gleamed deep within.

Izuku grinned and jumped into the air towards it.

‘Hey, guys?’ he asked into his own head. ‘Wanna go for the big finish?’

‘Obviously,’ Seven answered.

Six gave a low, affirmative hum.

Five cackled, and Four barked.

‘Fuck Endeavor!’ Three crowed.

‘...what she said,’ Two agreed.

‘Sic semper tyrranis,’ One quoted.

‘Hah! Nerd!’ Three teased.

And Izuku Midoriya’s body lit up in a fulgurant rainbow that, for one glorious moment, burnt away the dark of night. His fist swung with a power that had once changed the weather with a single punch.

A diamond shattered.

And the final link in the chain that bound Rei Todoroki was finally unmade.