Chapter 39: Traitors
Shota had never been to Might Tower before. In his mind, it has symbolized everything he disliked about All Might; it was big, gaudy, attention-grabbing, and far too commercialized. However, much like the man himself, there were certain things about the building that did meet Shota's approval. The free and high quality services that the tower provided to the nearby community, including medical services, were one example. He just didn't like walking by a gift shop with All Might's face on every piece of merchandise as he walked into the building. Even, and perhaps especially, at four in the morning, it was enough to put him on edge.
Interrupting his patrol was not something that Shota liked doing, and he wouldn't have done so if it had just been All Might that had tried to get him to do so. In fact, Shota had completely ignored the initial phone call from the man. However, the call from Detective Tsukauchi was harder to ignore. The two of them worked together on enough cases that he might have had information on that it would have been illogical to ignore it as well. Once the detective had explained what All Might wanted, though, Shota made his way towards Might Tower as fast as he could.
After all, if they had a good lead on rescuing Midoriya, then Shota wanted to be involved all the way through. Despite the fact that the Problem Child had gotten kidnapped while on internship, Shota was still his homeroom teacher.
The elevator ride up to the seventy ninth floor was remarkably quick, and the doors opened to reveal Detective Tsukauchi waiting for him. The police officer appeared nearly as sleep-deprived as Shota felt, and was holding two steaming cups of coffee; he handed one to Shota as he stepped off of the elevator.
"Good to see you, Eraserhead. All Might was emphatic that both of us should be here for this meeting, although he wouldn't explain why." The detective sounded tired, as Shota knew he was, but resigned to helping at this ungodly hour. Shota merely hummed in response, taking a sip of the coffee. It was surprisingly good, almost worth going out of his way for. Almost.
The two arrived at their destination and Tsukauchi opened the door to a small conference room with what would soon be a beautiful view of the sun rising over Tokyo harbor. Two of the chairs were taken up by All Might in his civilian form and Gran Torino, still dressed in his hero costume. It was unclear if the elderly man had slept any more than Shota had, but he appeared sharp enough even without any coffee in front of him.
The third person in the room, however, was a surprise. Toru Hagakure sat at the head of the table dressed in her U.A school uniform. Shota frowned. All students had returned to campus earlier in the day and the faculty had been told that none were to leave, with no exceptions.
Although, if this was about the League of Villains, then there was obviously some reason for her to be here. A number of possibilities flitted through his head, and he didn't particularly like the implications of any of them.
"Let's get this started." Shota spoke as he slid into a chair, his attention zeroed in on Hagakure. "The sooner we do the sooner we can all get some sleep."
"You may find that difficult after this discussion." All Might sounded grim. "Before anything else, I need to provide you with some important background, Eraserhead. Tsukauchi and Gran Torino are already aware of what I'm about to tell you, but the list aside from that is quite small indeed. Are you prepared to keep this a secret for as long as necessary?"
"I'm an underground hero." Shota didn't really answer the question, but All Might seemed to accept it regardless. "Hagakure knows as well?"
"Unfortunately, yes." All Might's lips stretched to a displeased line, but he continued to talk. "We'll explain momentarily. First, though, have you heard of the villain All For One?"
Shota snorted. "A myth. At best, a half remembered villain from the dawn of quirks."
"If only we were so lucky. All For One is very real, very dangerous, and the mastermind behind the League of Villains." Shota's blood chilled. Stories about the legendary quirk thief had circulated the underground for years, but he had never put much stock in them. Hopefully the actual villain was not quite the blood-thirsty demon king that legend made him out to be. "He is the villain that gave me my injury six years ago. I had believed that I had killed him at that time, but it appears that I was wrong."
Carefully, slowly, Shota took a deep breath. "Ok. I'll deal with all the ramifications of that later." By which he meant he'd have a quiet mental breakdown, but All Might didn't need to know that. "So, why did you need me here? For obvious reasons I've never used Erasure on someone with multiple quirks, if you're hoping to use me to shut him down. I don't even know if it would work." The nomu at the USJ didn't count; apparently the super strength and super speed quirks were mutation quirks that Shota couldn't erase even under the best circumstances.
"Hopefully it does, but we have plans for if it does not. However, tonight you are here because of young Hagakure. If you will, young lady." Shota returned his attention to the student in the room. Since she was Vlad King's student, he wasn't the most familiar with her. He had, however, seen her in the recommendation exam and had been pleasantly surprised that a student with a quirk perfect for the underground had shown such preparation and physical proficiency. Her success in the sports festival had only reinforced his approval of the invisible girl.
None of that, however, prepared him for her to suddenly appear, canceling her invisibility.
He hadn't known that she could do that.
The first thing that caught his attention when seeing the girl for the first time in the flesh was the number of scars on her face, running down her neck and, presumably, across the rest of her body. If Shota had his way, no one that age would have any scars, let alone as many as Hagakure had. The girl's multicolored eyes and iridescent hair briefly snagged at his attention before she began to speak.
"Eraserhead, I asked you to be here, along with Detective Tsukauchi, so you can help confirm that I am speaking the truth." Shota had understood Hagakure to be a bubbly and outgoing person, not the dispassionate and analytical girl sitting in front of him. Perhaps it was the stress of the situation.
"Why would you need me for that? The detective should be enough on his own."
"Observe." Hagakure turned to face Tsukauchi. "I was born in Tokyo. I was born in Kyoto. I was born in Nagano. I was born in Himeji. All of those statements should have read as true." Tsukauchi's eyes had gone wide by this point and he nodded in shock, confirming Hagakure's statement.
"That doesn't mean anything I say will register as true. I was born in Nagoya. I was born in Seoul. I was born in Beijing. All of those should have registered as false." Again, Tsukauchi nodded as his face took on a more thoughtful expression. "I have asked for you here, Eraserhead, to prove that there is no quirk of mine that is letting me fool Detective Tsukauchi's quirk."
As the implications of those words filtered through Shota's head, he went through a number of emotions very quickly, before instinctively activating his quirk on Hagakure and shooting up out of his chair. "What is your connection to All For One?!"
Instead of answering right away, Hagakure looked briefly towards All Might who nodded slightly. "We have nothing to fear from her, Eraserhead. I think it would be good if we could all listen to her story before jumping to any conclusions, understood? She has explained her connection to All For One to me and I tentatively believe her. It matches with his typical M.O. Tsukauchi will let us know what, if anything, she says that is a lie." Reluctantly, Shota nodded his head, sitting back down, but not deactivating his quirk. Tsukauchi removed a notebook as he prepared to take down everything Hagakure said. Once she began, Shota didn't let his quirk drop for more than a few seconds at a time.
"I am a nomu," Shota had to do his best not to blink at such a revelation. "Albeit different from the sort you are used to. I, obviously, retained my higher order thought processes and have a measure of free will. Four different people with four different quirks died in the process of creating me. One of them, Tabata Satoshi, had an eidetic memory quirk, and so I remember every detail of each of their lives as well as my own existence. Detective, this is how I was able to fool your quirk both now and while you and All Might were scouting students. I presented their history as my own because it is." Tsukauchi nodded slowly, having obviously never considered this particular loophole in his quirk. After all, why would he?
"I was planned as an espionage and reconnaissance asset, and my quirks reflect that. In addition to eidetic memory, my quirks provide me with broad control over the electromagnetic spectrum. I allow part of this to manifest as Toru Hagakure's Invisibility, the quirk that she possessed before being experimented on. However, it also allows me to replicate two of my other constituent quirks: X-Ray Vision from Endo Tsukiko and Adaptive Appearance from Kubota Jun."
"And those quirks are…" Shota prompted when she briefly paused.
"X-Ray Vision is self-explanatory. Adaptive Appearance causes me to appear as whoever you expect me to be. It is useful for blending into large crowds to disappear."
"Wait. Why would you need that along with Invisibility?" Tsukauchi asked, even though Shota could already see the uses.
"Invisibility is, ironically, quite noteworthy. While I can extend the field to my clothing, it is still hard to do much without drawing attention from anyone who knows what to look for. Hiding in plain sight is often much better. Also, the invisibility that I show on a day-to-day basis is simply part of a disguise. What you are seeing now is my default appearance."
"I see. Thank you for the explanation." Tsukauchi returned to taking notes, somewhat paler than he had been at the start of the night.
"You're welcome. As these quirks mixed, I gained broader control over electromagnetism, including abilities to interrupt wireless communications and electronic technology more broadly. These are quirks, but not strictly identical to any of the quirks I was created with. As you can see, none of these would fool Detective Tsukauchi's quirk."
"So you say." Gran Torino grumbled. At a glare from All Might, though, he fell silent.
"Why are you talking with us at all? And especially now?" Shota asked. The timing seemed almost too good to be true.
"Because fuck All For One." Shota actually did blink in surprise at the venom in her voice, the first real emotion she'd shown so far. "Two of the people who died to give me life wanted to be heroes, and the other two just wanted to live their lives. None of us wanted to live this way. The only reason I obeyed his commands is because I was, and still am to a lesser extent, under a significant amount of quirk-based mental conditioning. My encounter with Shinso in the sports festival, however, loosened his hold. I've been biding my time ever since."
"Then why not tell us immediately?" Shota followed up. "Why wait until after the League made their next move?"
"It would have been illogical." Shota frowned. Was she taunting him? "First, I was only told what I needed to know, and had never been told about the attack on Hosu. Second, All For One still has some connection to my mind. The only reason I felt comfortable coming forward now is because he is distracted."
"By Midoriya." All Might rumbled, sounding angrier than Shota had ever heard him.
"By Midoriya." Hagakure nodded in agreement. "Any other questions?" Shota looked to Tsukauchi who still had yet to indicate that any of what Hagakure had said was a lie. If it was all true then All For One was worse than Shota had imagined, kidnapping and experimenting on a teenage girl.
Even if Hagakure wasn't being entirely truthful, if she was trying to feed them false information, it was still the first lead in the case that they had. They would follow up and do their own investigation before making a move. It wasn't Shota's first choice, and it tasted sour to go along with it, but it seemed like it was the only logical way forward. Based on the look on Gran Torino and Tsukauchi's faces, they were thinking similar thoughts. All Might had obviously made his decision long ago.
"All right then." Hagakure stated. "I'll tell you everything I know about where All For One is hiding."
---
There were only a few other students in the common area as Juzo stumbled downstairs. He'd been awakened far earlier than he had planned on getting up by a rough knocking at his door. Juzo understood the need for a class meeting, but why Aizawa thought it had to be at eight in the morning on a day where they had no other responsibilities was beyond him.
The usual suspects were already milling about finishing their breakfasts before Aizawa reappeared to begin the meeting. Yaoyorozu and Jiro were sitting at a table, quietly chatting as they ate. While Yaoyorozu looked as put together as ever, presumably having been up for some time already, Jiro looked as if she hadn't slept at all the previous night. She sipped on a cup of coffee that Juzo could smell from across the room, something he had never seen her drink before.
In addition to those two, Koda and Shiozaki were in the kitchen preparing their own breakfasts. Shiozaki appeared to have been gardening for some time before coming in for breakfast and handed Koda some fresh greens for his rabbit, Yuwai. Todoroki was also awake, but simply sat in the common area waiting for the rest of the class to show up. It was unclear if he had already eaten, or was simply choosing not to this morning.
As Juzo shuffled over to the seating area to nab one of the more comfortable seats, Uraraka stumbled down the stairs from the girl's side of the dorm. He waved and she made her way over to the seating area, eyes bleary from lack of sleep.
The chair the Juzo had chosen was oversized and could comfortably hold at least two baseline-sized students. Shoji might have filled it entirely, but he still hadn't come down from the fifth floor. Instead, Uraraka bee-lined for him and squeezed in next to him, curling against him for warmth.
Juzo froze in shock. While Uraraka had always been a bit more tactile than the rest of his friends (ignoring Midoriya and Jiro interacting with each other, of course), this was a bit beyond her normal. He had already slid as far to the side as he could, but didn't see a way of getting out of the chair without disturbing her more. And as everyone had learned shortly after moving in, a tired and cranky Uraraka was a dangerous Uraraka.
"Are you, uh, ok, Uraraka?"
"No talk. Warm. Sleep now." Well, that was no help. Juzo briefly looked to Todoroki who simply shrugged at him, the ghost of a smile on his face.
Jerk.
They remained stuffed into a single chair while the rest of the class quickly filled the common area. A high pitched gasp behind him announced the arrival of Ashido, perhaps the person he least wanted to see right now.
Thankfully, before Ashido could get any further, Aizawa spoke up. He didn't speak loudly, but it was still enough to cut through the ambient chatter and draw everyone's attention. "That's everybody. Pay attention, hellions." The man himself looked even more sleep deprived than normal. Perhaps he was.
It took a moment for everyone to come to the common area and find somewhere to listen to Aizawa. Kaibara and Awase made some perfunctory objections as they had their couch invaded by Kirishima, Ashido, and Tokage. Yaoyorozu and Jiro joined Todoroki on his couch along with Rin. Tokoyami and Shoji decided to stay standing, with Tokoyami brooding in the corner while Shoji simply loomed behind one of the couches. Surprisingly, Pony and Kamakiri squeezed into a single chair much the same way Uraraka and himself were, while Shiozaki, Koda, Kodai, and Kendo each took a remaining seat around the common space.
Juzo glanced down at Uraraka to make sure she was awake, and found her staring at Aizawa with hard eyes. She hadn't moved an inch, but Juzo could feel the tension building underneath her skin already. Urakaka hadn't been the most upset at Midoriya's kidnapping, that honor rather obviously went to Jiro, but she had been among those most affected. Juzo could empathize; he couldn't imagine what Midoriya was going through, but was prepared to do some distinctly unheroic things to anyone who hurt his friend.
"We wanted to wait until you had all returned to provide you with an update on the situation." Aizawa drawled. "First, you should all already know this, but we cannot share the status of an on-going investigation. No matter who you ask nor how clever you try to be, none of the faculty will share anything about our investigation into the League of Villains and Midoriya's location. That being said, U.A as a whole wants you to know that we are doing everything possible to bring Midoriya back and his kidnappers to justice as soon as possible." Juzo had hoped that would be a given, but supposed it was good to receive confirmation. Uraraka relaxed by a hair next to him.
"Second, you all are considered secondary targets for the League of Villains. As such, until we have a better understanding of the situation, you are all restricted to campus." There was the beginning of an uproar at those words, but Aizawa silenced the class with a flash of his quirk. "Your safety is our number one priority and now that we have our anti-warp defenses running, campus is the safest place for all of you. If you cannot follow the rules and decide to leave campus, then you should plan to never return as you will be expelled. Am I understood?"
"Yes sir." Juzo was one of several students who audibly affirmed their teacher, but all of them showed that they did understand, one way or the other.
"Normally you would be at your internships until the end of the week, so there are no academic requirements for this week. However, I strongly encourage continuing your physical training much as you did in the lead-up to the sports festival. You are losing out on valuable experience with actual hero agencies; it is up to you to manage that loss as best you can. The gyms and quirk training grounds are all available to you. Just find a teacher and ask to be let into one. There will generally be at least one teacher in the lounge, and Ectoplasm will be spending a good amount of time patrolling the campus with his clones."
"Note that classes are still in session for the other courses, so do not cause too much of a distraction. Even if you do not have classes to attend right now, you still can and will be punished if you interrupt other students' learning." Aizawa glanced around the room to make sure that everyone was following what he was saying.
"Are there any questions?" A dozen hands shot up almost immediately, Juzo's amongst them. "Any questions that aren't about Midoriya, the investigation, or other topics I cannot comment on?" Juzo put his hand back down sheepishly, along with everyone else who had their hands up.
"Alright then. All other dorm- and school-wide rules are still in effect. As long as you all stay on campus and don't burn the dorm down, I'll consider the rest of this week a success." Without a dismissal or indication that he had finished talking, Aizawa turned on his heel and strode out of the dormitory.
The class began to disperse, Kaibara grumbling about the rude awakening Aizawa had put them through. Most of the class, thankfully including Ashido and Tokage, for the moment, headed to the kitchen to go about making breakfast so Juzo stayed put for the moment. After all, the food wasn't going anywhere.
And neither had Uraraka, yet at least.
"Are you a bit more awake now, Uraraka?" He looked down at the girl still pressed against him and met her eyes. She blinked a few times before apparently realizing exactly where she was and nearly leaping out of the chair.
"Sorry, I wasn't thinking." She bowed slightly, cheeks redder than normal. "I apologize if I made you uncomfortable."
"Just surprised more than anything else." Juzo gave what he hoped was a reassuring smile. "You must have been pretty out of it. Did you get in late last night?"
"Not too late." Uraraka straightened, not quite meeting his eyes. "Just… worried."
"About Midoriya?" Juzo would admit to watching the video of his friend being kidnapped more times than he should have, and staying up later than he should have, hoping for some news or some new breakthrough to hit him. It didn't, and he had eventually gotten to sleep, but he wouldn't be surprised if Uraraka had been in a similar state last night.
"No… I mean, yes, but… not entirely." Uraraka looked around briefly, finding that the two of them were far enough away from the rest of the class that only Jiro or Shoji could hear them now. She took a deep breath before speaking softly.
"I haven't heard from Himiko yet. I know that she doesn't have a phone or a computer but I would think they would give her something once she started in the program. I'm just worried that I gave her the wrong number and email address, or that she ended up in a different program than I expected, or something else went wrong and she'll blame me."
"Hey." Juzo interrupted her stream of consciousness worrying and put his hand on her shoulder, feeling her tension drain away a little at the touch. "It'll be ok. It's just been a day, after all."
Uraraka nodded reluctantly. "I know. I just feel responsible. I'm the one who told her everything would be ok. She only came along because of me. What if I made the wrong choice? She was barely older than us and living on the street. We had to do something to help her."
There were tears forming in the corners of Uraraka's eyes. "You did the right thing." Juzo tried to put as much weight into his voice as he could. "I wish I had the courage to do what you did, getting between Yoroi Musha and Himiko. I promise you that she won't forget that and she won't blame you if something has gone wrong."
Uraraka sniffled a bit, blinking the tears away. She leaned a little into his touch, and he could feel her relax a little bit more. "I know. Just not hearing anything is hard."
"Have you thought about asking Yoroi Musha if you could get in touch with Himiko?" That obviously wasn't the question he should have asked, as Uraraka visibly stiffened with tension.
"He, um, let me know his feelings about me jumping between him and her that night. They… weren't positive. I don't think I'll be welcome back there in the future."
"Ah." Juzo had only interacted with the man for a few minutes in and around taking Himiko into custody, but that completely lined up with the impression he had developed. While Yoroi Musha did not have quite the reputation of being solely focused on results as Endeavor, he still didn't have anywhere near as positive a reputation as All Might or Crust, or even Best Jeanist.
"Well then how about this. Let's go eat breakfast," The madness in the kitchen area was finally starting to die down a little, although it looked like Ashido was waiting to pounce on the two of them as soon as they finished talking. A small price to pay for a distraction for Uraraka, Juzo figured. "And then we can try to find a teacher here who knows about the program. I'm sure there's someone at U.A who could help us out."
Uraraka sniffled again, but now with a small smile on her face. "Deal."
---
Shinya Kamihara's mind was spinning. When All Might had personally asked the Lurkers to take part in a rescue operation for the captured U.A student, he had not expected to be read into a situation of this magnitude. In addition to himself, Kamui Woods, and Mt. Lady, the room was filled with U.A heroes: Eraserhead, Present Mic, Cementoss, Power Loader, Snipe, Hound Dog, Vlad King, Thirteen, and even Nezu himself.
Aside from the U.A heroes, Gran Torino and Rock Lock were also present, although the latter still had bandages fresh around his chest from the Hosu incident. He'd been adamant that he be involved in this operation despite his injury as he had felt guilty for Midoriya being kidnapped in the first place.
So far all they had been given was what limited background on the League of Villains they had, as well as their shadowy benefactor, All For One. Shinya had certainly heard rumors of the legendary quirk thief early in his career, during his two years of sidekicking for Lady Grey. She had emphasized, however, that those rumors were just that, rumors. Shinya had occasionally amused himself with trying to determine just how powerful a villain with the ability to steal and redistribute quirks could be.
If anything, he had apparently underestimated just how fearsome such a villain would be. Being able to go toe to toe with All Might at the height of his power and survive, even with what was apparently a debilitating injury, was simply unbelievable. The fact that All For One had been able to deal such a grievous blow to All Might in return, restricting him to just a few hours of hero work per day, was equally unbelievable.
Like much of the Japanese heroism community, Shinya had no memories of a time before All Might. Only the oldest heroes still in action, like Endeavor or Yoroi Musha, could remember anything before the Symbol of Peace. Heroism being as dangerous an activity as it was meant that there weren't very many elderly heroes still in the game.
As such, to the heroes gathered here who, with the exception of All Might himself, Nezu, and Gran Torino, were all under forty five years of age, hearing that there was a villain that was seriously capable of injuring the Symbol of Peace was monumental. If the looks on Kamui Woods and Mt. Lady's faces were anything to go by, they found it just as disconcerting as he did.
While the assembled heroes from U.A had apparently known about All Might's injury, they hadn't known who had caused it, and so appeared only slightly better off than the Lurkers. Aside from Nezu, who was impossible to read at the best of times, only Eraserhead appeared as impassive and stoic as ever.
It took Shinya a moment, but he was able to compartmentalize and focus on the problem at hand. "Two questions, All Might." At a nod from the number one, Shinya continued. "First, how reliable is your information? If our opponent is as crafty as you say, then could this not be a trap? Second, do we know why they took Midoriya in particular? From my understanding of Hosu, it did not appear to be a random kidnapping."
"Excellent questions, young Edgeshot." Shinya bristled a bit at being called young; he was in his thirties after all. "To your first point, the exact details are classified, even to this group, but suffice it to say that we have insider information on the structure of the League of Villains and All For One's doings. We have confirmed what pieces of their information that we can both empirically and with the aid of truth telling quirks. So far, all of their information has been true. We will, however, discuss plans on the off chance we have been fooled."
Shinya hummed and nodded his head. Given that it sounded like they had no knowledge of any sort before this insider decided to help them, it made sense to trust them. After all, if All For One was about to get away with this kidnapping with no difficulties, why leak false information just to trap the heroes and run the risk of something going wrong.
"To your second point, we are unsure of why they took young Midoriya in particular. One of the leading theories put forward by the police relates the kidnapping to the fact that he won the Sports Festival, but fundamentally we cannot say for sure." Gran Torino glanced at All Might as he said that, face inscrutable. Perhaps the elderly hero had his own opinion as to why the boy was captured.
"If there are no further questions, then I will lay out the locations and persons of interest. We will be performing a simultaneous strike at two locations in the Kamino ward of Yokohama. The first is a small bar just north of the main drag. The second is a warehouse complex on the south east side of the ward. The first operates as a staging ground for League activities, while the second appears to be All For One's main base of operations, as well as where they produce nomu."
"Produce?" Kamui Woods asked.
"Yes, unfortunately. Nomu are the result of bioengineering creatures that possess multiple quirks. While they may have once been human, they no longer possess higher order thought processes. The creatures that attacked Hosu were nomu, although apparently they were among the strongest available."
"Heroes at both sites may encounter nomu. They are easily identified by their exposed brains and are dangerously strong and resilient. Lethal force is authorized against the nomu, as they no longer count as human. We do not know how many nomu exist. Our source knows that there are many that were not as strong as the ones encountered in Hosu, but not how many." Fantastic. After seeing how much damage just three nomu caused in Hosu, Shinya was not thrilled at potentially facing an indeterminate number of them.
"There are three additional specific villains to be aware of. The first is Tomura Shigaraki. He possesses a five point touch decay quirk, capable of quickly turning whatever he touches to dust. The second is Kurogiri. He possesses one of the most powerful teleportation quirks that we are aware of. We do not know its limitations. These two villains are likely to be at the bar. There may be additional low level villains at the bar, although after the USJ, our source feels this is unlikely."
"The final villain is All For One himself. He will almost certainly be located at the warehouse complex." Like most everyone in the country, Shinya was used to seeing All Might smiling. It was very odd to see the murderous expression on his face right now. "If you see him, do not engage. He is mine ."
---
Sweat dripped down Kyoka's face as she continued her assault on the punching bag in front of her, using hands and feet and earjacks. She'd been in front of the punching bag for a good twenty minutes at this point, and that had been after an hour-long workout in the gym. Her entire body had gone past pleasantly sore some time ago, and was now verging on overworked weakness. Her clothes were plastered to her body with sweat, and she could feel that she was verging on dehydration.
Kyoka knew that what she was doing was almost certainly going to set her back in her training. The only question was how far. While there was some benefit to mentally training yourself to work through exhaustion, the physical effects could be intense.
But she wasn't doing this for the workout, for the training, for the preparation. She was doing this to try and quiet the voice in her head that would not shut up about Izuku.
Where he might be.
She punched the bag with a right hook.
What the villains might be doing to him.
Kyoka threw a roundhouse kick at the bag, sending it flying backwards.
What she would do if Izuku never came back.
Heartbeat racing, Kyoka jabbed her earjacks into the bag and unleashed her vibrations, just a hair under the threshold that would have torn the bag apart.
How Kyoka might have prevented all of this from happening if she had just fucking reacted faster. She hadn't even gotten a chance to tell him she loved him.
No, godammit, no!
Panting, Kyoka caught the bag as it swung towards her and allowed herself to hang on it for a moment.
Physically exhausting herself obviously wasn't working. This wasn't a surprise. She was already operating on maybe thirty minutes of sleep scattered across the night; additional physical exhaustion wasn't going to make a huge difference on top of that.
Hitting the gym, especially late in the evening, hadn't been Kyoka's first idea to quiet the incessant ruminations that bounced around her skull. Her first attempt had, naturally, to drown them out with excessively loud punk and metal music. Truth be told, that had also been her second, fourth, and seventh attempt as well. She had also tried playing her own instruments and writing a song, studying with Yaomomo, playing video games with Pony, Kamakiri, and Kaibara, and even meditating with Shoji.
Nothing had worked.
A footstep sounded behind her and she whirled towards it, fists and earjacks at the ready. Kyoka wasn't expecting a villain to show up out of nowhere on campus, but her entire body was on high alert either way.
Thankfully, it wasn't a villain, but rather Aoyama stepping cautiously into the gym. Kyoka sighed and shook her head as she let her fists down, grabbing a towel to dry off somewhat.
"Ah, mademoiselle, I did not expect to see you here." Aoyama spoke in his typical flamboyant fashion, crossing the room to stand in front of Kyoka while speaking with her. She didn't really want to have a conversation with him right now, but it didn't seem like it was something she could escape.
"And I didn't expect to see you here either. I didn't think you were much for hitting the gym." The boy was even skinnier than Izuku had been when he'd started All Might's workout plan, after all.
"Non, you are correct." If Aoyama took any offense to Kyoka's comment, he didn't show it. "But I was looking for my classmate, Hagakure. She is far stronger than she looks, but you would know that, wouldn't you?" Kyoka did, in fact, know that. Their match in the sports festival had proven to her that she still had a ways to go with her own strength training.
"I've been looking for her all over campus, and hoped I might find her here." Aoyama continued. "Have you seen her?"
"Nope." In the interest of getting out of this conversation as quickly as possible, Kyoka didn't even poke fun at Aoyama over asking if she had seen an invisible girl. "Can't say that I have. Now, if you'll excuse me."
Kyoka tried to walk around Aoyama, but he placed himself in her path, looking into her eyes with a concerned look. "You don't seem like you're feeling so well." That was putting it lightly, but it wasn't anything she wanted to talk with a near stranger about. Kyoka tried again to walk around Aoyama, but he again kept in front of her. "You must be worried about Midoriya."
"No shit." Kyoka spoke before thinking. "Can I go?"
"I won't say I know how you feel." Aoyama continued in a lower voice, not as theatrical as his normal affect. He wasn't looking directly at Kyoka and his heart was racing. "But I can imagine it. What kind of hero would I be if I didn't try to help, right?"
His heart skipped a beat as he asked the question. Aoyama was obviously pushing himself way out of his comfort zone to try and help Kyoka, even though it was her own fault for being in the condition she was in. "I'll be fine, but thank you for offering."
"I know that when I'm down, I always find the most comfort with my mère and père. Surely you must want to see your parents as well right now."
In all honesty, that sounded like something that would help, but there was no point in hoping for impossibilities. "It's not like we can get off campus right now, so I don't see why that matters."
Aoyama's heart rate kicked up a notch, and Kyoka was sure she could even hear him chewing on his bottom lip. "What if I had a way we could get off campus?" Kyoka narrowed her eyes as Aoyama took a small electronic device out of his pocket. "I am, as I said, very close to my mère and père, and we happen to be decently well off. They gave me this when I started here, just in case I ever felt the need to be at home as quickly as possible. It will send a signal to a friend of ours to create a portal from the position of the signal to my parents' home. I'd be happy to lend it to you so you could visit with your parents."
In a vacuum, it was a generous, if misguided, offer. Kyoka would certainly give quite a lot to see her parents right now. However, with the League of Villains about, visiting them would only put a target on their heads. Beyond that, she already had a punishment hanging over her head for disobeying Gang Orca during her internship, and disappearing from campus would certainly make that punishment worse. Even if Aizawa wasn't serious about it being worthy of expulsion, and she suspected he was, she didn't particularly want to test it.
But ignoring all of that, the whole offer rubbed her the wrong way. Aoyama was refusing to meet her eyes and his heart was racing in an irregular beat. Part of her wanted to just turn him down and be done with it, but another part of her wanted to know exactly what was going on.
"Didn't they put in anti-warp measures after the USJ?" Kyoka knew damn well they had, but wasn't sure if any of the other classes had paid as close attention to that detail.
"They did." Aoyama admitted. "But it shouldn't be a problem if we turn it off for just a second to warp you out, right?" His pounding heart showed that he knew it would be a problem. And that was even if he knew where to do such a thing. Kyoka certainly didn't know.
Over Aoyama's shoulder, just outside the gym, Kyoka saw Shoji ducking to the side so he couldn't be seen. A second later, she heard Shoji whisper in a voice that was nearly too quiet to hear, so there was no way Aoyama could hear it. "I heard the last little bit. You ok?"
Aoyama looked over his shoulder to see what had drawn Kyoka's attention, but saw nothing in the doorway. "I'm fine, sorry." Kyoka spoke to both Aoyama and Shoji at once. In an effort to see if Aoyama was just well-meaning but misguided or actually a danger to U.A, she played along for the time being. "Do you know where we'd be able to do that?"
"I do!" Aoyama seemed all too proud of that, even as his heart continued to race.
Another whisper from Shoji came just afterwards. "Should I get the faculty?"
"Yes." Kyoka spoke under her breath, and was relieved to hear footsteps from Shoji hurry off in the hallway. "Alright then, thank you for your offer, Aoyama. Do you mind if I take a minute to get cleaned up first?"
"But of course, take your time." Aoyama seemed at ease even though his heartrate was still much faster than it should be. Kyoka was going to take as much time as she reasonably could. Hopefully Shoji would be back with some faculty soon and they could help figure out what to do with Aoyama.
---
Satoshi Nishida, better known as the hero Ectoplasm, found that his evening had suddenly become much more complicated. He was already pushing himself somewhat, having twenty of his clones patrol across all of U.A's campus as well as monitor the security systems. Running so many clones at once always gave him a hell of a headache, splitting his attention in so many directions at once.
Tonight it was out of necessity, more than anything else; much of the rest of the U.A faculty was actively involved in the rescue operation for Midoriya. Eraserhead, Power Loader, Snipe, Vlad King, Present Mic, Hound Dog, Cementoss and obviously All Might were planning to be on the front lines of the rescue operation. Thirteen and some of the other non-combat oriented business teachers were on call for urban aid if things went particularly poorly. Nezu himself even had his own role to play in the rescue attempt.
As such, the primary two faculty on campus tonight for security were himself and Midnight. They had not advertised this fact, and the large collection of robots on campus certainly counted towards their overall defenses, but Satoshi had still found himself on edge in case something happened.
Rightfully so, as it had turned out. Midnight had just met up with Mezo Shoji who had shared a worrisome story of Yuga Aoyama attempting to convince Kyoka Jiro to use a warp device to get off campus. As part of the lead-in to the story, it had also come out that Aoyama was explicitly looking for Hagakure before finding Jiro, which just made things worse.
Satoshi wasn't sure exactly what Hagakure's situation was; Nezu hadn't given them details. However, the fact that she was tied up in Midoriya's kidnapping and Aoyama was specifically looking for her as well did not paint a pretty picture of Aoyama's intentions. He had never seemed to interact much with Hagakure, and vice versa.
Switching his primary focus to his clone closest to Gym Theta, leaving his main body in the security control room, Satoshi hurried to meet Midnight and Shoji. Unfortunately, because there were so few faculty on campus, in the time it had taken Shoji to find Midnight and return to the gym, Aoyama and Jiro had disappeared.
Midnight met Satoshi's eyes for a moment before turning to the student. "Ectoplasm will escort you to your dorm, Shoji. I will go and check to make sure the anti-warp systems remain in place." It made sense. While Satoshi didn't like it, the attack on the USJ had made it clear that there could very well be a traitor on campus. There was no reason it couldn't have been one of the students.
If Shoji were telling the truth, then it would seem likely that Aoyama was said traitor, and was now trying to take down the anti-warp defenses for some reason. Possibly to divert attention away from Midoriya's kidnapping, possibly to kidnap more students.
But then, if Shoji were lying, this could all be part of a long con to find out exactly where the anti-warp systems were located for the future. As his clone escorted Shoji to his dorm, Satoshi checked the recordings from Gym Theta and found that Aoyama had indeed found Jiro there. The girl did not look thrilled to be caught up in conversation with him, but they spoke too quietly to make out any of the words.
Many of the students assumed that the entire campus was covered in secret cameras and listening devices for Nezu's amusement. To Satoshi's knowledge, at least (who knew what the principal had for his personal use), this was not true. There were obvious cameras in most public spaces, gyms, training grounds, and the like, but they generally were not paired with listening devices. The camera in Gym Theta was one of the few that was outfitted with a microphone, but tuned so it would not accidentally capture idle conversations that students may wish to keep private.
What this meant, though, was that Satoshi had a rather difficult time tracking where Aoyama and Jiro had gone after leaving the gym. If he had been suspicious of Aoyama beforehand, he was much more so now, as it seemed as if the boy was intentionally avoiding as many cameras as he could.
As it was, though, it seemed as though he was leading Jiro straight to the anti-warp systems. Midnight was heading there by a much more direct route and would likely beat the two students there by a few minutes. Satoshi redirected three of his clones, one to meet up with Midnight in the hallway in front of the anti-warp systems and two to block any sort of escape.
Once again, he redirected his attention to the clone he had sent to Midnight. As he approached his coworker, he gave her a brief update. "Shoji is back at the dorms. Aoyama and Jiro will be here in just under a minute. Reviewing the tapes of Gym Theta appeared to back up Shoji's account, but no audio."
"Thanks." Midnight nodded to him in appreciation. "I'll take the lead here." That was fine by Satoshi; Midnight had always been better with negotiations and careful interactions than he had been.
There were a few seconds of silence before Aoyama and Jiro turned the corner. The two students had strikingly different reactions. Aoyama stiffened in surprise, eyes going wide at the sight of the two faculty in front of him while Jiro wilted in relief, edging away from her companion.
"Would either of you like to tell me why you are in a restricted part of campus?" Midnight slipped easily into a commanding presence.
"Aoyama was acting suspicious." Jiro spoke almost immediately, causing Aoyama to tense even further, tears beginning to form in the corner of his eyes. "I wanted to keep an eye on him while Shoji found the faculty. Did he find you?"
Judging by the sudden look of confusion on Aoyama's face, he had been completely unaware of Shoji's involvement. "Yes, he gave us a rundown of what he heard. However, I would hear the story from Aoyama next." Midnight turned her steely gaze onto Aoyama and gripped her whip tightly. "Why are you in a restricted part of campus?"
The effect of Midnight's glare was instantaneous. The tears that had been threatening to overflow his eyes began to stream down his face and he fell to the ground, prostrating himself before Satoshi and Midnight.
"Please forgive me! My parents are in danger and this was the only way I could keep them safe. I didn't want to do anything but that man threatened my parents and held my quirk over my head and there wasn't anything I could do to stop him. This is the first time he made me do anything directly and I didn't want to do it but I had to if I wanted to keep my parents safe." Aoyama's babbling quickly devolved into French. While Satoshi didn't understand the language, Midnight supposedly did. It was somewhat anticlimactic that Aoyama had cracked immediately, but Satoshi was glad that he didn't have to figure out which student was lying.
"Aoyama." Midnight attempted to get the boy's attention, but he continued to babble in French. "Aoyama!" Still no response. With no better option at the moment, Midnight tore a small hole in the sleeve of her costume and used her quirk to put the boy to sleep.
Satoshi brought his two rear guard clones forward to bring Jiro back to her dorm and secure Aoyama. In the meantime, he instructed another one of his clones to contact the local police. If what Aoyama had said about his parents was true, they would need to bring them into protective custody as soon as possible.
"Do you think he was telling the truth?" Midnight asked him once Jiro and Aoyama had been dealt with. "About his parents, that is."
"He seemed to be telling the truth, and he did not put up any resistance to you knocking him out." Satoshi replied. "Either way, it's obvious that we'll need to up security on the anti-warp systems. Security through obscurity won't cut it anymore."
"Agreed." Midnight checked her watch and grimaced at the time. "Nezu is in the preparation stages for his press conference. We'll have to wait until it's over to get his approval for anything."
"I will station two of my clones here, and redistribute my patrol routes to ensure several more are always nearby."
"It'll do for now. I'll get in touch with the assault team to let them know about this." Satoshi nodded and brought his attention back to his main body. Adrenaline was pumping through all of his bodies, knowing just how close they had come to a disaster on campus. He would make sure that Nezu and Eraserhead knew the crucial role that Shoji and Jiro had played in preventing it as well.
---
Slowly, painfully, Izuku woke up. He wasn't sure how long he had been asleep for; it could have been minutes or it could have been days for as much as he could tell. Dreams had been haunting him while he had been asleep, but all he could recall now were vague impressions of dread and terror. Eventually, though, Izuku remembered exactly where he was, and immediately snapped to attention.
Izuku was strapped to a metal slab in a cruel facsimile of a hospital room. Various electrodes were connected to his body providing electric shocks at uneven intervals while monitoring equipment made various chirping and beeping noises every so often. Computer monitors showed his heart rate, blood oxygenation level, respiration rate, and a dozen other vital signs that Izuku was unfamiliar with.
On instinct, Izuku tried to activate One For All to break his bonds and escape. What he found, though, was that he could not actually reach the power that All Might had given him. Izuku could feel the swirling storm that was the power of One For All, but he could not reach out and use any of that power for himself.
Everytime that he tried to pull any of it to him, one of the irregular electric shocks interrupted the process. There was no pattern to the shocks to let him acclimate and ignore them, and they were just strong enough to block his connection to his stockpile. For whatever reason, the shocks weren't disrupting his connection to his Fa Jin stockpile, but strapped in as he was, he didn't have any motions stored up that could help him.
Cautiously, Izuku flexed against his restraints and found that while he had some small range of motion, the restraints were strong enough to keep him effectively bound without his quirk.
"Patient is awake." A voice sounded from behind Izuku. A short, rotund man in a doctor's coat walked towards the monitoring equipment that Izuku could see. From behind, Izuku could not say much about the man as he began taking notes on the data in front of him. "Patient is alert?"
"Who are you?" Almost as soon as he spoke, Izuku regretted doing so. Nothing good could come from letting his captors know that he was awake.
"Patient is alert. Very good." The short man turned to face Izuku, and something about the bushy mustache and stylized goggles that he was wearing tickled his memory.
"Dr. Tsubasa?!" Even though he hadn't seen the quirk specialist in years, Izuku would never forget the man that had so casually informed him of his quirklessness.
"Mm? Ah, I suppose that I did use that name for a time. Were you one of my patients? What a coincidence." A small smile flitted across the doctor's face. "I've seen so many over the years that I simply can't remember them all. It comes with having lived for so long."
"You diagnosed me as quirkless, and were the first to say that I was useless because of it." Izuku ground out from clenched teeth. He tried to tamp his anger down. It wouldn't do to lose his cool here.
"I'm sure I did. I told quite a few children that they were quirkless. Right after removing their quirks to give to All For One, of course."
What? Izuku could have had a quirk? Had All For One stolen his quirk at such a young age? Righteous anger and indignation bubbled up from within Izuku and he found himself straining against his bonds without even thinking about it.
"I couldn't take too many. It would stand out if one doctor diagnosed too many as being quirkless." The casual ease with which Dr. Tsubasa talked about stealing quirks from innocent children ratcheted Izuku's anger even higher, a growl developing deep in his throat. "Oh calm down. It's obvious to me that you were biologically quirkless. I had nothing to do with that."
Just like that Izuku fell back onto the metal slab that he was restrained upon, drained of energy. He was still furious on behalf of the other children whose quirks had been stolen, but finding out once again that he was born without a quirk had sapped him of his strength.
"You should feel lucky for that, by the way." The doctor had turned back to the screens, pulling up images that Izuku couldn't make heads or tails of at first. "If I had stolen your quirk, you would still have a quirk factor, and One For All would have overloaded it now that it has reached singularity. You would have survived longer than a quirked holder, but only by fifty percent or so. I estimate that you would still have been dead before twenty five years of age."
"You, however." Here he pulled up an image of what Izuku believed to be DNA sequencing, but he couldn't be sure from his position on the slab. "You never had a quirk factor to begin with. One For All wrote one directly into your DNA."
Despite himself, Izuku found himself growing more and more interested in what the doctor was saying. He'd always had an interest in quirks and while quirk biology was generally beyond him, he had done more reading and research on the topic than many kids his age.
"I've only seen a similar quirk factor in one other person before: All For One himself. I don't know what Yoichi Shigaraki's quirk factor looked like, I did not meet All For One before his brother's untimely end, so I can't say if this is genetic or quirk-related, but it is fascinating." Dr. Tsubasa looked at Izuku with genuine excitement in his eyes. "You are the second person in the entire world to be able to use more than one quirk at the same time with no backlash! With the two of you, I feel like I have been able to pin down exactly why that is!"
The doctor paused as if waiting for some response from Izuku. "Well, you could at least be excited about it."
"You have me trapped and unable to move. I don't see much to be excited about." Mouthing off to one of his captors probably wasn't Izuku's best move, but it felt good in the moment.
"Fair. It will take some time, but I should be able to adjust the nomu to take into account your quirk factor. If all goes well, I should be able to produce true multi-quirked nomu that retain all higher order processing." Dr. Tsubasa moved closer to Izuku, madness in his eyes becoming more evident. "And it's all thanks to you. You should be proud. You proved me wrong. Quirkless does not mean worthless. You're my hero, Izuku Midoriya." Those last words were coated in oil and turned Izuku's stomach.
Thankfully, the doctor left after running a few more tests on Izuku. It gave Izuku a moment to try to plan his escape. The electrodes blocking One For All remained on, but he could still access his Fa Jin stockpile. With nothing better to do for the time being, Izuku began jerking in his bonds, depositing every little bit of kinetic energy that he could into Fa Jin. It would take a while, but eventually he'd have enough to break out of this room.
If he knew All Might, the man would not rest until Izuku was found. As soon as any hero rescue attempt occurred, All For One would likely try to portal Izuku away to one of his other hideouts. Therefore, Izuku decided that he would not attempt any sort of escape until All Might came for him. It would make it more likely to succeed if he were actively evading any sort of teleportation that All For One attempted to use.
Some time after the doctor left, Izuku couldn't say if it had been thirty minutes or two hours, the door to his room opened once again. Izuku instantly paused his work towards breaking out. This time, though, it wasn't the doctor that entered the room, but Tomura Shigaraki. Izuku was initially glad that it wasn't All For One, but even that minor happiness was immediately quenched when Izuku saw the murderous look on Shigaraki's face.
"You. Everything is going wrong because of you." Shigaraki hissed as he stalked around Izuku. Izuku did not want to provoke the man any further and decided to simply let him rant if that's what it came to. "We had to retreat from the USJ before killing All Might because of you. Sensei ruined my attack on Hosu because of you. The media focused on Stain rather than the nomu because of you. What is so special about you?!"
In an instant, Shigaraki lunged at Izuku, hand landing on Izuku's face. Izuku squeezed his eyes shut and braced himself for the pain of Shigaraki's quirk. He was somewhat confused a few moments later as to how he was still alive. Opening his eyes a hair, he saw that Shigaraki was keeping his thumb elevated inches from his face, glaring at him with open hatred.
"Sensei says I can destroy whatever I hate. But I hate you and Sensei says you're off limits, at least for now. Sensei says I need patience." Shigaraki's lip curled at the word and his thumb began to descend. "But patience seems like a waste of time to me. I tried being patient and planning more with Hosu, and all it got me was Sensei ruining everything just to catch you."
This time Izuku watched in horrified fascination as Shigaraki's thumb fell closer and closer to his face. "So tell me, why should I be patient? Why shouldn't I just kill you now? Sensei will be mad, but he's been mad before. And then it can all go back to how it was before." Shigaraki's thumb was just a hair above Izuku's face when it froze.
The door behind Izuku opened once again, and from the sudden fear on Shigaraki's face, it seemed as if All For One had returned. In a flash, Shigaraki leapt back across the room, far from Izuku, and All For One rolled into the room in his wheelchair.
"I do hope young Tomura hasn't been causing you any grief, boy." Izuku simply glared at All For One, hoping that he could mask his terror with rage. If it made any difference to the villain, he didn't show it, instead speaking to Shigaraki directly.
"You can leave now, young Tomura. It's time that I spoke a bit more with our guest." There was only a moment of hesitation before Shigaraki sulked out of the room, leaving Izuku alone with the ancient villain. "Now then, the Doctor has had his fun. Let me explain to you exactly why you want to give me One For All as soon as possible."
Izuku didn't know how long the torture lasted, nor how long he was unconscious afterwards.