Monochromatic Ideals

Episode 14- Recovery

When Kyomu awoke, it wasn't to a ridiculously high and slightly damaged, curved ceiling. Instead it was a normal white ceiling. The same white as the walls around him and the bed sheets covering him.

He sat up in the bed he lay in, looking down. His hero costume had been replaced with a hospital gown and nothing else. He was pleased though unsurprised to see that the wounds Hikari had given him were completely healed. The holes were sealed and not even a scar was left from where all those blades made of light had impaled him. At the very least he felt okay.

His eyes traveled upwards. It wasn't a hospital room, though UA stocked the infirmary with enough medical supplies that it could pass off as one. As far as he could tell nobody else was present. What was present, however, was a small chair resting against his bedside. There were only two things on the chair: a black pair of pants and a lollipop. Raising an eyebrow, he reached over an took the lollipop off from the chair. A small sticky note was attached to the stem.

"'Get well soon. Iida.' Huh." Kyomu tore the note and wrapper off the candy to inspect it. It was little else than a flat, circular piece of hard candy on a small stick. A blueberry flavored one. "Could have sprung for cherry, but whatever. Thanks, man."

He popped the treat into his mouth and tore the robe off of him, only to quickly slip on the black pants. He groaned softly, rolling his left shoulder and feeling a few bones pop from the movement. Questions like how long he had been out and how everybody else was doing passed through his mind by faded as he quickly bit the lollipop off the stick and tossed said stick in a trash bin on the other side of the room. He was sure they were fine. From what he knew nobody affiliated with UA had died in the attack.

The door to the room opened. He tensed up very briefly, but relaxed when he saw that it was only a short, old woman walking in. The school's nurse, Recovery Girl. One with a healing Quirk at that. Seemed like a lot of doctors these days had a healing Quirk of some kind.

"What the...?" The eyes the old lady seemed to keep in an eternal squint seemed to tighten impossibly further as she shuffled towards him. "Young man, what are you doing out of bed? You were hurt just yesterday. You shouldn't be moving around right now!"

"Yesterday, huh?" Kyomu seemingly ignored the nurse as he looked out a window on the other end of the room. The sun was shining brightly through. "Yeah, feels about right."

Recovery Girl attempted to grab at his wrist he rose the arm up, scratching the back of his head as he stifled a loud yawn.

"The others doin' okay?" he asked. "Saw that some of 'em got pretty roughed up. "

"Shinka, you really shouldn't be moving around. The wounds you sustained-"

"I'm fine," he said. "Hey, you didn't answer. What happened to me friends?"

The old woman placed her hands on her hips. "Shinka-"

The teen's change in demeanor was so sharp it could almost be felt. His body went rigid and his eyes snapped down to the old woman, eyes boring directly into her squinted ones. His face was completely blank, though the eyes boring into her had actually managed to put the nurse off guard and served to actually make her uncomfortable the longer he stared.

"Stop saying that. I'm fine. I'll walk out right now if you say it again." His tone lowered into one that had set the nurse on edge, but lightened to a normal tone as he stretched his arms behind his body. "Ah man, used to sleeping in late, but a full day? Geez, new record."

"Ah-huh..." She took a step back. "You really... are looking pretty well all things considered. Hm."

Her head was moving up and down to get a full view of his body. Her gaze had particularly stopped near his midsection and limbs, the areas he'd been stabbed. Her lips tightened into a thin line.

"Shinka, are you aware of what my Quirk does?" the nurse asked him.

"Heals people?" he shrugged. "I don't know, lady. I'm not Midoriya. I don't keep up with every single Quirk I see like he does. Guy even compiles it all into those notebooks of his. He'd be an amazing stamp collector."

A brief grin spread across her features, but went back to the tight line it had been. "My Quirk doesn't expressly heal people, but speeds up the body's natural healing ability at the expenditure of a large amount of the recipient's energy. Wounds that are, well... permanent can't be helped."

"What are you getting at here?"

"You sustained wounds that shouldn't have been healed so well, Shinka. Some of those wounds should have been permanent." Kyomu's arms lowered as he slowly turned to face the elder nurse. "You had multiple tendons in your joints completely severed. Fourteen of your ribs alone were completely broken, not to mention over a dozen other bones you had broken. You suffered heavy blood loss and your blood pressure was fatal when you were brought in. I'm not even mentioning the multiple full-bore lacerations that were all over your body." She crossed her arms. "Even with my Quirk, you shouldn't be walking around. You don't even have any scarring from the stab wounds. It's all completely healed."

He managed to keep his outward, placid appearing, though on the inside Kyomu was heavily wincing. There had never been a point in his life where he'd been as heavily injured as he was yesterday. Throughout his entire life the worst wounds he ever sustained were a few scratches here and there from accidents. He'd theorized his healing had been augmented from his mother's Quirk like everything else, but he never knew to what extent.

Apparently it was almost too good.

"I wouldn't worry too much about it." Kyomu's hands were placed in his pockets as he leaned against the bed. "So it's the middle of the day, right? Probably missing a class right about now."

The nurse shook her head. "In light of yesterday's events, today was cancelled. There are no classes."

"Ah." The teen nodded his head. "How 'bout the wounded?"

"Most of the students' injuries were minor and I was able to treat them here. Eikyo's case was a bit more involved." Kyomu stiffened when he heard his friend being mentioned. Recovery Girl actually laughed at this. "Oh, don't worry about him. We flew in a doctor from Tokyo who had a regenerative Quirk. He managed to reattach the arm with no difficulties whatsoever. He'll make a full recovery."

A relieved sigh escaped Kyomu. "Oh. That's... that's good." His head turned down to hers. "You know where he is?"

"He's somewhere in the school. Apparently the process of reconnecting all those severed nerves forced Eikyo to go through a bit of... we'll say rehabilitation." A look passed through the nurse's face that Kyomu couldn't quite place, though it was soon dropped. "I can go fetch him for you. Might take some time, though. He likes to wander."

"Mm. I'd like that." Kyomu pushed off the bed and headed towards the door.

He'd been at the school long enough to know the layout of it. And fortunately enough, he knew exactly where the teacher's lounge was thanks to All Might showing him the way there one time. Conveniently enough, it was rather close to the nurse's office.

He had no idea if any of the other teachers were in the school if the day was cancelled. The principle most likely, but anybody else would be unlikely. As unlikely as it was, however, he at least wanted to look and see.

So he'd gone to the lounge and opened the door. There was a startled gasp less than a moment before the door fully swung in to reveal who it was in there. In this case it was All Might himself holding a cup of coffee.

"Oh. You are here after all," Kyomu intoned. "Cool."

"Young Shinka." Slowly, the hero set down the coffee. "Uh... I'm not sure that the students are allowed to just open the teacher's lou-"

"'S fine." Kyomu closed the door behind him and walked over to the same couch he'd been sat in not even three days ago, slowly sitting down.

The moment of silence that passed between the two of them would have been tense if All Might didn't look so flustered upon Kyomu entering the room so abruptly. That or the fact he had yet to find a shirt to put on since leaving the infirmary. It didn't matter much to Kyomu. He only wanted to kill some time until that nurse found his friend.

"You're looking well," All Might commented. "I would have thought the injuries you sustained would have had a more lasting effect. Or at least have put you in the infirmary longer than a day." A bright smile flashed through his features. "It just goes to show you're made of sterner stuff, eh, young Shinka?"

"I guess."

Another awkward moment of silence that had to be broken by All Might speaking.

"You seem troubled by something," he noted. "Is something the matter?"

"..." Kyomu looked up towards the ceiling. "Losing at something feels weird," he said at last. "I don't like it."

"Losing?" Shadowed eyes rose in realization. "Ah, I see. Your brother, right?"

The teen nodded. "I didn't expect to meet Hikari like that. I expected us to be fighting even less. We never... did something like that. Fight." His head rolled down. "And apparently he's really good at it, because he floored me and five of my classmates before nearly running a dumb light sword through you."

There would likely be no end to the awkward questions that would result from that. Questions like how his brother was that strong. Questions he could probably play off with the excuse of him just having an overly powerful Quirk, but he doubted that would work on everybody in the class if they all asked. Most, for sure.

But he wasn't concerned with how his brother had won. He knew fully well how his brother had won even if nobody else knew exactly how. He was just concerned about what he was supposed to do about that.

All Might, either sensing Kyomu's distress or trying his best to guess the teen's troubles, nodded. "Your brother was a... formidable villain, I'm afraid." His voice was almost pained from the admittance. "You are all still children. You've only just begun your training as heroes. I myself was at his mercy from being so weakened from the fight with that Nomu person. You can't expect-"

"That ain't the problem," Kyomu interrupted. "I don't blame you all to losing to him. But I could have won if I really wanted to. And he knew that."

The hero tilted his head to the side. "I'm afraid I don't understand, young Shinka."

"Hikari's Quirk is versatile as well as powerful," Kyomu began. "It has offensive capabilities. It has defensive capabilities. And all those abilities are strong enough to compete with the number two hero. His only weakness is that it runs off light." He sighed, looking at his hands. "Mine isn't so... flexible. I can open portals left and right all day long, sure, but there's only so much I can do with that, you know? Sure, in terms of defense and support it's amazing. You've seen the things I've done with it. I can use it to move around, make obstacles, hell, use it as a shield. Why not? Offensively, though..."

"You're worried its offense it too strong," All Might interjected, causing Kyomu to look up. "Don't look so surprised, young Shinka! We all saw your performance during the exam. You wouldn't have placed first if you hadn't destroyed so many robots. I even think a few other teachers were worried about your Quirk being a bit too dangerous."

"Yeah, and that's the problem. I can throw some fancy punches and kicks using my Quirk to redirect my hits, but outside of that?" Kyomu shook his head. "If I were to actively attack with my Quirk at best people lose body parts, and at worse they die. Fine if I'm fighting a guy with a regeneration Quirk, but ninety-nine percent of the time that ain't gonna be the case. That's why I couldn't fight all out against my brother. I would have killed him."

And what did that say about his Quirk compared to Hikari's? That it was too strong by comparison? Or that he didn't have as much control or that his brother's Quirk was just more adaptable? Kyomu wasn't quite sure. What he was sure of was that his brother knew that his Quirk was so dangerous. So much so that he knew Kyomu wouldn't have risked using it at full power against him.

Kyomu had a lot of thoughts about his brother currently. No matter what, though, he would never have seriously hurt or killed his brother.

"It's a problem many heroes have to contend with," All Might admitted. "Some Quirks are just too dangerous for their own good. Some manage to train themselves to work around their own Quirks and compensate for this weakness. Others have support companies make special devices made to intentionally cripple their own Quirk so that it doesn't get out of hand."

"I don't think an anti-support device is gonna help my case," Kyomu said with a shake of his head. "Eh, whatever. It's fine. I'll think of something. Probably."

The word "probably" had caused All Might to give him a sideways glance, but the teen had ignored it. He'd think on his Quirk, that was a definite. He needed to find some way to make it more versatile. At the end of the day for him, though, it already had its most important function: the ability to kill quickly and dispose of evidence, mainly body parts. Killing villains would be no problem for him. Fighting without killing with it was the problem. And he wasn't fool enough to believe he'd always be able to kill a villain he fought. He wouldn't always be alone.

All Might cleared his throat. "I'm glad you are contemplating ways of improving yourself, young Shinka. It's a sign of growth. Can I... ask you something, though?"

"Mm? Yeah, what?"

"Your Quirks, the ones you and your brother use... they wouldn't happen to have any effect outside of what we've already seen, do they?" Upon seeing Kyomu's confused look, he elaborated. "Young Shinka, some of the things I saw you and your brother do were unusual, especially for teens of your age. I thought your brother defeating Endeavor just meant he had a great intellect and a good Quirk to counter his fire, but now I'm wondering..."

Kyomu had to resist groaning. It was the nurse questioning his "miraculous" healing all over again, he could just feel it.

"I saw you fall from the top of USJ to the ground. With those light blades sticking from your body," All Might stated. "The fall alone should have killed a normal person."

"Is that so?" Kyomu airily replied.

"Not to mention how you were moving despite all that blood you were losing, your results from Aizawa's test from the first day, the way your brother kicked young Midoriya to the ground so... casually..." He shuddered. "He even broke Aizawa's capture scarf. His carbon-reinforced capture scarf made to restrain villains with high-grade strength."

"I get it, I get it." The black-haired teen raised his hands up. "Okay. How much do you know about my mother, All Might?"

He hummed, rubbing his thick fingers over his chin. "She was a hero, correct?"

"Yeah. Called herself GACT." Kyomu gave the hero a nod. "And she called her Quirk Genetic Hardening. She was able to genetically improve anybody she used her Quirk on temporarily. More strength, more intelligence, it improved everything. Most of the time she ran support with other heroes by buffing their abilities for the duration of a rescue or battle or something like that. She was able to improve herself, too, but from what I know she rarely ever fought." He looked down at his own hand, flexing it. "When she was pregnant with me and my twin, she had her Quirk on twenty-four seven because she was working so much overtime. Apparently it did some... weird things to our genes. Best as the doctors could figure, our bodies were permanently enhanced by her Quirk due to being exposed to it so long while we were still in the process of being... constructed, I guess you could say." He held his arms to the side. "So if you want an explanation for how I could survive impossible heights and why Hikari is so strong, there it is. My brother and I were born with a natural advantage over normal humans outside of a Quirk. And we think even those got enhanced from our mother, too."

He could tell from the face All Might was making that he paid rapt attention to the explanation, though it seemed to throw even the number one hero for a loop. Kyomu supposed that he couldn't blame him. For whatever reason, it wasn't exactly a fact that was ever made public. And as far as he knew there were no other cases he had ever heard of where somebody's Quirk had permanently enhanced another individual. Temporarily, for sure. There were tons of Quirks out there like that. But the circumstances around what happened to him and his brother were so unique he doubted there were any others like it.

Finally, All Might cleared his throat. "Well, that's... that's good for you! I appreciate you telling me-"

"Didn't do it for free, All Might."

The hero froze mid-sentence whereas Kyomu had crossed his arms, leaning back in the couch while fixing him with a glare. "You wanna explain to me why you were shrinking like that back at USJ? Back when all that steam was wafting off of you?"

Sweat began to bead down All Might's face. "I, uh... have no idea what you're talking about!" The smile he held began to waver as he released a nervous chuckle. "You were heavily wounded at the time, young Shinka. Why, there was so much blood pouring out of you that everybody was surprised you were able to stand so long! You must not have been seeing clearly and-"

"Don't insult my intelligence." It was said in a soft tone of voice, but Kyomu still found a way to make it sound icy. "I know what I saw. My brother was standing right over you. Even if you were exhausted, you should have been able to at least try swatting him off."

His mouth opened to try and say another excuse, but the accusing glare Kyomu threw at All Might caused him to slowly close it. He let out a long, drawn-out breath and then exploded.

Kyomu's had nearly fallen off of the couch when the muscled man sitting across from him had exploded into a cloud of white smoke, and was so busy staring that he couldn't think of what to make of what he was looking at. Slowly, though, the smoke dissipated, and through all the smoke he managed to see that a figure was still sitting there. All Might's form. Though it was noticeably smaller than what he remembered.

And then the smoke cleared completely and Kyomu saw what the problem was.

The man who was now sitting across from Kyomu wore the same teaching suit All Might had been wearing five seconds ago. He had the same hair, though it was noticeably more disheveled and... flat, for lack of a better term. His skin had grown a sickly pallor. He'd gone from having an imposing height to being shorter than Kyomu himself, and to top it all off it seemed like all the muscle the man once possessed was gone. There wasn't even any fat to replace it. The thing trying to pass off as a man was so skinny that he would probably keel over if Kyomu tried to breath on him. His face didn't even look the same; impossibly chiseled jawlines had turned into hallowed cheeks and a chin sharp enough to cut the tension that was starting to set between the two of them.

"I change my mind, go back." It was the only response the student could come up with as a response to the sight sitting in front of him.

He chuckled. The confidence and boisterous tone of his voice had completely disappeared. Now he just sounded tired. "Wish it were that easy, kid," he mumbled, fixing Kyomu with eyes so sunken into his head the only parts visible were the blue irises. "Really do."

"You look... you look awful," Kyomu admitted. "You make an anemic cancer patient on chemotherapy look like a professional body builder who's been juicing."

All Might's thin shoulder sagged. "I know."

"It's like you're a cartoon character and somebody just poked one of your biceps with a needle and all the air came shooting out."

"Hot air is what I'm mostly full of these days," the man sighed.

"You make that one tweaker that lives in a box near my orphanage look like they're in the best shape of their life."

"Shinka, I get it," All Might snapped. Kyomu nodded, closing his mouth. "You see why I don't tell the public about this? I'm supposed the be the Symbol of Peace. The number one hero who's so strong he stops crime just by standing around. The guy with a perfect hero record who saved countless people and ushered in a new era of peace in a society of heroes. Maintaining that image is easy when everybody pictures the me you saw walking in this room."

Kyomu turned to the side. "I wouldn't exactly pin all my hopes and dreams on that tacky suit you're wearing," he quietly muttered before turning back to All Might. "Okay, so it turns out your Quirk is a temporary body buff. A really, really good body buff. You've been maintaining the image for decades now though, right?"

All Might shook his head. "'Fraid not."

He reached down and lifted his suit up, near the bottom of what were once magnificent pectoral muscles but now mere slabs of weak skin. Under that suit, on the left side of his torso, was a large, purple and scarred wound. Kyomu almost vomited at the sight of it.

"Used to be that the form of All Might everybody knows and loves was permanent. It couldn't just be 'turned off' like this," the hero explained. "Five years ago I got into a pretty nasty fight with a villain. Got my whole stomach torn out of me."

The teen blanched. "L-like your whole stomach? Dude must have really hated you. Geez. How'd you even survive that?"

"Almost didn't. Went through a bunch of transplants and dozens of surgeries to fix myself, but by then the damage had already set in. My body was so weakened that it's been continually deteriorating over the years as a result of all the damage I took. I can use my Quirk to transform myself into the form I used to have, but it's temporary now. Even worse is that the time limit I've been shackled to has been shrinking more and more along with my real body. And that fight with Nomu clipped it even further." Sighing, he lowered his suit back down. "Now I'll be lucky to get an hour a day out of that form, and that'd be pushing it."

It was a story the teen was finding himself wishing he hadn't known more and more as time went on. Not because it shattered his world view of All Might- he hadn't even paid attention to the man before he became his teacher, nor because he now knew a secret he regretted asking about. It was mostly due to how awkward the situation had became.

And quite honestly, Kyomu wanted to leave.

"I'm not gonna lie, All Might. I walked in here only to end up carrying a lot more baggage than I thought I would." He found himself slowly sitting up from the couch. "I mean I just wanted to get some pressure off my chest and then you up heaving all this on me."

"You saved my life from your brother, and you shared your body's unique circumstance with me," All Might said. "Seemed fair enough."

"Yeah, my secret was just a weird quirk in my biology that I didn't really care about anybody knowing. Yours is literally a world-altering secret."

A bony smile graced the bony man's lips. "Shinka, you're one of the most prosperous students in class 1-A. There's no doubt in my mind you'll make an amazing hero one day. But with the stress you've undoubtedly been feeling with your brother and, well, everything else I just thought you'd want somebody to confide in once in awhile. Like what we did a couple of days ago, you know?" He winked one of his sunken eyes at Kyomu. "And I really am grateful to you for saving my life, young man. Doing this is the least I could do to repay you. The only reason I showed you this truth when you asked about it is because I didn't want any mistrust between the two of us."

"I..." Kyomu stood up fully and turned towards the door. "Thanks for the gesture, All Might. I appreciate it. That and the trust and everything." He quickly shuffled towards the door. "I gonna go check up on Sen. See ya."

The clicking sound indicating the door being opened had never sounded more liberating.

"Of course. And young man..." The teen turned just in time of a small explosion and a puff of smoke. The muscled, recognizable form of All Might was smiling back at him. "If ever you need somebody to turn to, you can always count on me!"

Kyomu had left the room without saying another word. With a sigh, All Might shrunk back down.

"Agh, that All Might. Always trying to help." A dogged sigh came out of Kyomu's mouth as he walked back down UA hallways on his way to the infirmary room. "Guess I can't fault the guy. He's trying his best. Still, that whole weakening thing was a bit much."

Was he disheartened by the news that All Might was slowly but steadily losing his power? It was a tough question for him to answer. If he thought very deep and very hard about the matter, he supposed there was a sliver of concern over the loss of the hero. Small and yet insignificant. He'd been the Symbol of Peace for decades. Everybody had to retire eventually, and in all honesty All Might's career had gone on longer than most other heroes'.

It was the only explanation he could think of for not being that overly concerned. The loss of the Symbol of Peace was an inevitability no matter what happened. Either he would eventually retire because his body gave out or somebody would kill him. Probably his brother if that were the case. And afterwards there would almost definitely be a swell of villains, even if all the other heroes who had grown complacent over All Might stepping down picked up the slack.

Worked for him. More villains meant more to kill down the line.

"Dunno why he keeps trying to help me by talking to me. Hope it's not something weird like him and some of the other teachers thinking I'm disturbed 'cause of the whole thing with my brother." He stopped at the infirmary door, his hand reaching towards the handle. "Ah, well. Doesn't matter I guess."

He opened the door, and all his previous worries seemed to melt away when he saw the person standing in the middle of the infirmary. A shining head turned towards him, orange eyes widening in surprise. And then Sen smiled, waving his arm. The one that had been detached, now reattached.

"Sen." Smiling for the first time in over a day, Kyomu stepped into the room. "You're okay."

"Yo, Kyo-!"

That was as far as Sen got before his healed arm curled inwards and punched its owner in the face.

The bald teen yelled out in pain, crumpling downwards while grabbing at his face. Kyomu had stared in confusion at the sight before he approached Sen very rapidly, crouching down to help Sen onto his feet.

"Are you alright?" Kyomu asked. He moved Sen's hand out of the way to inspect his face. There was already a bruise forming. "Oh, Sen, why'd you go and do something like that? You're still in recovery, right?"

"Man, it's not my fault!" Growling in frustration, Sen ripped his arm away. "I'm happy UA flew in that guy to put my arm back on and everything, but damn, the thing won't listen to me!"

Kyomu cocked his head to the side. "How so?"

"Evidently attaching a whole limb isn't as easy as you think, even with a regeneration Quirk," he sighed. "My Quirk and blood circulation and everything is fine, but it's like I... it's like I forgot how to move the arm. And every time I think about your brother it flips out. You got his face so I guess seeing it... yeah." Grumbling under his breath, he shook his arm. "Doc said it was temporary. Give it a day or two and it'll be back to normal. Just gotta relearn how to use the damn thing."

"O-oh. I'm glad." Kyomu felt one of his own arms unconsciously rub at the other as a wave of guilt swept over him. "Sen, I'm sorry that happened to you. My brother, he... I-I didn't want anybody... I should have just moved out of the way-"

"Hey, dude, don't sweat it." A hand softly landed on Kyomu's shoulder. The hand that hadn't been removed from Sen. "Your brother's a messed up guy. I get it. You couldn't have known, right?"

He paused. "Messed up...?"

"Well, yeah." Sen shrugged. "Your brother killed your parents, right? Then he went and joined the League of Villains, and they just tried to kill all of us and All Might. Thirteen and Aizawa are in the hospital because of it. My arm-" it twitched in response, "- got cut off and had to be reattached. You even got really hurt. So yeah. Your brother's a bit messed up in the head."

He could see how the situation looked from an outside perspective when Sen said it like that. In fact pretty much every perspective painted Hikari in that light except for the perspective the brothers shared. The true one. He wanted so badly to correct Sen and tell him that Hikari was just a sane person as Kyomu himself was. But that would lead all sorts of questions he couldn't possibly answered. Instead he gave a weak nod.

"I... suppose that's not too inaccurate," he quietly chuckled. "So did you talk to anybody else after the attack?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah! Oh man, you shoulda seen how worried everybody was when they saw you bleeding out on the ground. 'Specially Iida. Guy was almost crying, and when Midoriya came to he was really crying, and everybody else..."

"Seeya tomorrow, yeah?"

"Yeah. Hope the arm gets better." The two waved at each other before turning in opposite directions and proceeding to walk away from the UA gates. It took no small amount of convincing on their part to get the nurse to discharge them, but they'd finally been let out. And even if she refused they would have just walked out on their own anyways. Kyomu was making his way to the usual train station. Sen's mother was apparently going to pick him up somewhere. She was apparently very worried from what Sen had said.

A mother worried about a wounded son. It made Kyomu wonder what his mother would have said if she saw his body all impaled like how it had been. Or that her two sons were fighting so brutally. It was thoughts that hadn't surfaced in the teen ever since he thought about what his mother would think of her son being a killer long ago. Thoughts he'd come to be content with.

Thoughts that were interrupted when he'd bumped into something.

He stumbled. Confusion grew on his face when he realized that there was nothing in front of him or behind him. He briefly wondered what he'd bumped into until he felt something in his hand that hadn't been there prior to the bump. He looked down to see a small piece of paper in his hand. Unfolding the note didn't reveal much; a street address and a time, eight at night.

He was almost positive that a piece of paper didn't have the same mass as a human being around his own size. Because that was what it had felt.

"Hikari?" It was either him or some other person who had turned invisible that had bumped into him. It was the only explanation he could think of for the phenomenon. And seeing as invisibility Quirks were extremely rare and he doubted his classmate Hagakure had stripped naked just to sneak into him and give him a note, he only saw one real plausible explanation.

He would have saw her mole if it actually was Hagakure.

Shaking his head, he looked down at the note. He didn't even know where this street was. most definitely not in this city, that was for sure. And he only had so many hours to find this place.

"Alright, Hikari. Alright." A black portal opened behind Kyomu. "You wanna arrange a weird meeting place, that's cool. We could have just talked right there, but fine. That's fine. I can work with that."

And he had, in the end, managed to work with it.

He'd found that finding the location was incredibly more simple that he thought it'd be. Internet was a beautiful thing when it came to searching for stuff, and while the computer at the orphanage was still as old and outdated as ever, it was still good for some things. Typing in the address in the note gave him an overhead map view of an area in a city just next to the one he lived in. There wasn't anything significant he could see, just a small space between a quartet of buildings. A couple trees and a bench were the only notable features.

Seeing that, he'd went to his room, grabbed a box and some clothes, and left in as many portals as he could make. The second one of the children there or, worst case scenario, Mizo, saw him he'd be run over with a sea of children and he'd never get out. And that was an inevitability no matter how long he put it off, even if he managed to sneak back into his room to catch some sleep. He'd just wake up with orphans jumping on him.

That was all fine and well, but he was on a time limit. He could save that for later.

Some portal traveling here, riding a bullet train there, and throwing an empty can at a police officer's head for yelling at him for public Quirk usage halfway to his location had ended with him walking to the clearing with a half hour to spare.

He almost wasn't surprised to see his brother sitting so casually on the bench he'd seen in the map image, one leg slung over the other with his arms draped over the back of the bench, his form illuminated by nearby streetlamps. He actually turned his head over to Kyomu and waved at him.

He felt like he should have felt a little bit of ire over such a casual gesture considering everything, but he didn't. Instead he felt he could only shake his head and approach his brother.

"Hey! Kyomu!" Hikari clapped his hands together and moved further down the bench to make room. "You got my note. Awesome."

"The hell is up with this?" Kyomu asked, gesturing to their surroundings. "We couldn't have done this anywhere else? We were right there. Makin' me run around the country just to find this place, I swear..."

"A combination of Shigaraki not wanting me being too far from the League and all the heroes around that place. Hero patrols got doubled because of that whole USJ thing." The white-haired teen shrugged. "I guess getting a couple kids and heroes wounded'll do that. You're looking great, by the way."

Kyomu rolled his eyes, sitting down on the bench and setting the box down. "No thanks to you," he dryly remarked. "You couldn't have been more gentle? That kinda hurt, man."

"I said I intentionally missed all the important bits. You're up and moving now, right?"

There was a bit of humor in the air between them, and both brothers could feel it. Having such a macabre conversation in the lightest of tones. And despite everything a smile had begun to grow on both of the teens' faces.

"What's with the box?" Hikari pointed down to the container next to Kyomu's feet. "Didn't think you'd actually bring something."

"Oh, that." Kyomu reached down and moved the box closer towards his brother. "You know that manga we used to read when we were kids? The one Amon hated?"

A pale set of hands reached down to open the box, the owner shaking his head mirthfully as he looked into the contents. "Oh, no way. Bright Night? You actually collected the series after everything?" he asked, holding up one of the books.

"Yeah. It only went on for twenty-one chapters though." Sheepishly, Kyomu began to rub at the back of his neck. "I already read 'em a bunch and everything and I remembered that you really liked them, so you can keep them."

Hikari's face lit up. "Really? Thanks! Prison life never gave me any manga to read." He set the book back in the box, closing it and moving it behind his feet. "And twenty-one, huh? Guess Amon was wrong, if barely. How's that guy doing, anyways?"

"His shop burned down. He had to move somewhere to restart his business."

The smile on Hikari's face fell a little. "Oh. That's too bad."

"Yeah." Kyomu's feet tapped the ground nervously as he wrung his hands together. "What's going on right now?"

"We're having a conversation. Thought it was pretty obvious." He gestured up towards the sky. "I even picked out some nice scenery. The smog and light pollution filling the sky is so slightly lower in this part of the city that if you squint really, really hard... well, you still won't notice a difference, but a bunch of graphs online said this area was cleaner than the rest."

They both chuckled. It was only a brief reprieve, though eventually they both fell back into an awkward silence. The brief mirth from earlier was quickly fading.

"Seriously," Kyomu began, "what's going on right now?"

"I wanted to have a conversation with my brother. A real one, not that... whatever you call what happened on the USJ roof," Hikari answered. "I haven't talked to you in ten years, and a whole country's worth of heroes looking around for me doesn't make things easier. I'm doing the best I can here."

"Your best," the black-haired teen repeated. "You're doing your 'best'. Hanging around with villains and trying to kill All Might is your 'best'. Cutting off my friend's arm is your 'best'."

"Hey, I said that was an accident," he rebutted. "How's he doing, by the way?"

"They got his arm back on. He'll be fine."

"Oh, good." Hikari leaned his head backwards. "Look, I already told you why I'm doing what I'm doing. Country's messed up. Heroes are messed up. I'm just the guy trying to un-mess the whole situation so I can regain some sense of normalcy in my life, whatever that means anymore."

A harsh scoff escaped Kyomu. "And running around with that hand guy, Shigaraki, was it? You think running around with him is the best solution?"

"I don't know if you noticed, Kyomu, but I'm a villain. Like it or not, regardless of the truth, I'm a villain." Hikari gestured to himself. "And Shigaraki's... yeah, he acts like a man-teen a bunch of the time, but him and his League are the only organized group of villains in the whole country. The only reasonably organized one, anyways. And our goals coincide. It was either join up with them, go it alone, or go back to prison." He lowered his arms. "What else was I supposed to do, Kyomu? Go back to prison? I'm not doing that. You're not there." His voice grew quiet. "You're the only reason I'm even doing any of this."

That got Kyomu quiet. He knew his brother's reasons well enough. He'd certainly said them enough to get the message across. And he couldn't blame him. Not truly, especially considering it was his fault Hikari was in this situation to begin with.

"I'm sorry," he said, guilt layered in his tone. "You had to spend so long in prison, and now all these heroes are hunting you. You're living with a bunch of villains and I, I..."

"Hey. I said it wasn't your fault, didn't I?" Hikari gave his brother a light smile and patted his shoulder. "You were young. You didn't even know you had a Quirk or what it did. It was an honest mistake, plain to see. Well, to us, anyways. To everybody else and the legal system it'd be villainous." His tone had darkened briefly, but soon went back to the previous playful tone. "You're my brother. You didn't deserve that. So don't worry about me taking the hit."

"You didn't deserve it, either," Kyomu muttered.

"Yeah, probably not. I mean, you still lied to the police about it, but hey."

Kyomu's body straightened. "I-I didn't, I mean, I did but the situation was really- I panicked and th-the cop was really overbearing-"

A laugh coming from the white-dressed teen quieted the black-dressed one. "Man, it's cool," he said. "Worked for the best anyways. Helped solidify my lie."

"Mm." Kyomu shakily nodded. "Thanks, for... you know. Just, thanks."

"Don't mention it. Seriously, don't. You never told anyone, right? Because it's all for nothing if you did."

He shook his head. "No. Nobody."

"Awesome." Trying to lighten the mood, Hikari clapped his hands loudly together. "So, enough about me! Hero school, huh? What's the deal with that?"

"Oh, UA." Sighing heavily, Kyomu leaned forwards. "Well, if it isn't obvious enough, I'm on the hero track. UA seemed like a good place to go to, so I applied. Breezed through all the tests and got in no problem." He glanced at his brother. "You'd be surprised how laid back everybody in my class is considering how prestigious that school is. And how rich. You'd get sick if I told you how much money that school throws around. It's insane."

"I bet," Hikari chuckled. "But seriously? Woulda thought everybody in that class would act... I dunno, preppy."

"Eh, there's at least two hardasses in that class, but even they're coming around." Kyomu held up two fingers. "Already told you about one; you punched his dad out. Haven't actually talked to him much. Other's this girl that can make stuff outta her body's lipids. They both got in on recommendations, too, so maybe that's why. And dude, I'm telling you, she stores all that fat in her chest exclusively. She has to. I just- her breasts just shouldn't be that big. It's insane." He shook his head at his brother's growing grin. "C'mon, don't make that face."

"What face? I'm not making any face," Hikari teased. "Just didn't realize your interest lies in those kinda things."

Kyomu groaned. Already he was regretting even starting up this topic. "It's not my fault her boobs take up half of my vision whenever I face her to have a conversation. Surprised her spine hasn't snapped in half from the sheer weight of those things yet." He groaned once more. "But anyways, yeah. That's the uptight people. Oh, and there's Iida, too, but he's more weird than uptight." He paused. "Okay, he's a little uptight. But in a... weirdly friendly way? I dunno."

"Mm. How about the rest of the class?" Hikari asked. "They ostracize you yet?"

"You know what? Surprisingly not!" Hikari's eyes lit up at Kyomu's exclamation. "I don't know what the deal is. Maybe it's because they're mature or because they're all strong too, or maybe I just happened to land in the one class in the world not full of jerks, but everybody there is just... nice. So much nicer than anybody else I ever met besides you and some of the kids at the orphanage I live at."

Hikari tilted his head to the side. "That so?"

"Yeah, completely. They treat me like an actual person and not like a freak like everybody else did. I... really like them all."

"I see. And the orphanage?"

Kyomu tilted his hand from side-to-side. "Eh, it's not the worst place. Other than the lady who runs it I'm the oldest guy there, so all the other kids kinda look up to me. Barely ever get a moment's peace there, but it's a life. Better than being in a box for ten years at any rate."

The white-haired teen let out a "tsk" sound. "That's fair," he grumbled, smirking all the while. "Anyways, I'm happy you didn't suffer alone all these years. I made the right choice. Kinda jealous, actually. Everybody in that class sounds really cool." He poked Kyomu's shoulder. "But enough about them. I want to hear about you. Why are you trying to become a hero?"

"Oh, that's easy. If I become a hero it'll be easier to kill villains."

The tension that had been growing lax between the two of them suddenly had become very taut. Kyomu's face remained completely calm while Hikari's conversely, went rigid. Finally, he coughed into his hand and regarded his brother with a questioning look.

"You're... you're going to do what?"

"... I did some research on that guy that broke into our house that night," Kyomu said. "The one that stabbed mom and dad. His name was Hirose Kenji. He broke into the houses of heroes and stole stuff. Occasionally stabbed them like he did out parents with his Quirk." His head slowly turned to his brother. "You know he got convicted of that crime two times before he made it to our house?"

Hikari remained silent, taking in the information and slowly folding folding his hands over his lap. By contrast, Kyomu continued to talk.

"It shouldn't have happened," he stated. "Hirose. That guy should've stayed in prison after the second time, hell, the first time he got convicted. But he didn't. He got out and kept doing it over and over. What good are heroes if they don't keep the villains they catch locked up? Or kill them so they don't do it ever again?"

"Heroes don't kill," Hikari argued. "I mean, geez, prisons barely kill anymore. When's the last time a death sentence was even carried out."

"Years. This 'new age of peace' is so peaceful something so 'barbaric' is seen as unnecessary. And because of that our parents are dead and you're a villain."

Rage wasn't a look Hikari was accustomed to seeing in his brother. Even as children when they were picked on he hadn't been overly angry. When their parents were dead right in front of him he'd been more scared than angry. His Quirk attacking like that had been reflexive and nothing more. Even at USJ when his friends were being threatened and his friend's arm was cut off he hadn't looked enraged. Upset, sure, maybe even angry.

What Hikari saw here though wasn't anything close to anger. A smoldering rage set behind his dark blue eyes as his hands tightened and relaxed over and over. It was the darkest he'd ever seen his brother. And what's worse is that the look in his eyes were familiar.

It was almost the same look he saw Shigaraki give every time he saw a picture of All Might. But whereas that look was almost manic in its rage, Kyomu's was cold. Almost calculating in its calmness. Like comparing a bubbling volcano to an underground river of magma under a calm lake.

"Heroes are wrong. They take villains too lightly. They were willing to lock you up for so long but they let a monster like that guy loose twice. It's sick." He sharply stood up to his feet. "You're right, Hikari. This society is terrible at labeling villains. It's also terrible at treating villains. So I'm going to do what other heroes aren't willing to do and I'm just gonna kill the villains. Then there'll be no chance every villain I kill will hurt somebody else. I'm never going to let what happened to us happen to anybody else."

"And you're just gonna be a hero so you can go around killing villains, huh?" Hikari mused. "I don't know how well that'll fly with the law. Or literally anybody."

"Being a hero just makes things easier," Kyomu reasoned. "Gives me leeway with my Quirk, gives me sources on villain whereabouts. Makes it easier to find them. And with my Quirk I can get rid of any body or evidence I wanted."

It was now Hikari's turn to scoff. "Oh, and you think killing is real easy, huh? You think just because you accidentally offed our parents and Hirose you-"

"I've killed twenty-two people in the last five years. I'm capable."

The white-haired teen's voice died in his throat. "You what?" he whispered.

"I made my decision around ten, after I accidentally killed somebody who tried to mug me. After that I practiced a bit over the years. Once every few months I'd slip out and hunt around for a crook or mugger or something. I killed them with my Quirk. Cut them apart with portals or just dropped them into Void. And every time they'd turn up missing. Police'll never find a body that doesn't even exist in this dimension any more." He shrugged. "There was that one hero, too, but that was an accident."

"You killed a hero," Hikari flatly stated.

"He saw me kill a villain," Kyomu defended. "It wasn't even a big deal. He was a small-time guy, nobody anybody would care about. He saw me drop a body through a portal so I created a portal that cut him in half." He held his arms out to the side. "People go missing all the time for various reasons. The people I kill just become a statistic. They'd never suspect me."

The Light-user became silent for a long moment, looking down at his feet with his hands clasped together. He almost wished he hadn't heard that. Not that his brother was a killer, but that he was so willing to kill. Eager, even.

"Look. Brother. I don't blame you for becoming a villain. That's on me. And no matter what happens, I could never hurt you even if you become one of the worst villains in the world." Kyomu turned his back to his brother. "I'll even stay away from your League, but if you or them attack my friends again, I can't make promises. Every other villain, though? I'll kill them. I'll erase them from existence. Because nobody else will."

"... It's the fault of the heroes in the first place for releasing that villain," Hikari weakly argued. "Can't you see that they're the wrong ones? Villains do what villains do, but the heroes are the ones that... can't you just leave them?" He desperately asked. "J-just leave that hero school and come with me? To the League? We can- we can kill All Might, change society into one that properly deals with villains. We could be together finally." A few tears fell freely from his crimson eyes. "You... killing villains like that isn't a permanent solution. There'll always be villains. And as long as that man is alive the rules won't change. So please."

"Sorry. My mind's made up." A black portal opened in front of Kyomu. "Besides, I don't think I could stand to be in the same room with a bunch of villains all the time. I'd get sick." He placed a single foot through the portal, though he briefly looked back at Hikari. "Bye for now. Love you. Thanks for the talk."

He stepped through the portal, the darkness closing around him. Hikari had reached a hand out for his brother, but by then it was too late. He was gone.

The hand slowly lowered back to the bench, a final tear splashing down next to it. Slowly the hand started to shake and clench into a fist, wisps of light slowly curling around his arms.

"Damn heroes... damn All Might..."

The bar was the exact same when he came back. Kurogiri standing behind the bar cleaning a glass. Shigaraki sitting down at the bar and slumped over it. It was the sight Hikari had grown accustomed to ever since joining the League.

Right now, though, he didn't feel like appreciating the sight.

"You've returned," Kurogiri noted upon Hikari entering. He slowly closed the door behind him, giving the mist man a rigid nod as he approached the bar.

Shigaraki, having been roused by Kurogiri's greeting, rose his head up to look at Hikari. "Oh, hey. Your little pow-wow with your bro go okay?" he mumbled, trailing Hikari as he stepped to the other side of the bar.

"Yeah," Hikari hollowly answered. "He's doing fine."

"Huh. That's surprising. You messed him up pretty bad."

The teen shrugged. "He's pretty tough. It's to be expected." He copied Shigaraki by leaning over the bar, looking to the side at the leader of the League. "He said no to joining us, though. He shouldn't be a problem, but if he is, I'll deal with it. Don't worry."

He looked down. There was a poster of All Might partially disintegrated on the bar. It was a sight that caused so much distaste to build up in Hikari that he almost gagged out.

All Might. The one who built and maintained this age of peace and solidified the hero society. The same society that released killers. That made him a villain. That made his brother a killer. That ruined their lives.

"Hey. Shigaraki." Hikari tapped on the bar. "How's the plan for killing All Might going?"

He shook his head. "Right now it's just the three of us and Sensei, Shinka. We can't really do much of anything right now. So we're gonna be focused on recruitment for a bit. I'm thinkin' less quantity and more quality this time around. Try a different approach." He gave the teen an inquisitive look. "Why? You eager to get another shot in at the meathead?"

"Mm. You know there was a time, even when I was about to kill the guy, when I was a bit reluctant to do so." He rose a hand towards the All Might poster. It disappeared when a white beam of light shot out from his palm and disintegrated it completely.

"Now I just want to rip his heart out."