The dream had shifted from the memory, into a cosy, antique living room. "Do take a seat, Midoriya." said Pestilentia´s shade, motioning to an armchair. As he seated, he looked at the vague figure, and said "Wouldn't it be better for this to be face to face? Your Quirk has enough control for that, and you can see my face." "That is true. No one has actually asked me to use my true form before, interesting. I guess it lessens the power, the mystery. Fine." The shadow moved its hand, and became a man of some seventy years, but still straight-backed and proud as a man thirty years his junior. Pestilentia had grey hair going white at the temples, a well-proportioned face, clean-shaven, and had completely red eyes. In a way it reminded Izuku of Mina Ashido´s eyes, but in a much more intimidating manner. Those eyes, that stare…only All for One had matched the sheer menace with his presence.
"My eyes, isn't it? My mother used to tell me how much of an advantage they were for any kind of work involving leadership. She had the same eyes, and the men under her command feared her more than death and torture. They are completely unrelated to my Quirk, I know you probably were already theorizing." "You said you would tell me about Himiko. Tell me then, villain." Pestilentia nodded and pointed to a screen. It showed a family, a white-haired mother, and a blond father, holding two small children, the boy looked to be six years old, the girl four or five. The girl´s green eyes were very familiar, but she couldn't quite tell why. "Do those little fangs seem familiar? That is the Kan family. That little boy, Sekijiro, you know him quite well, don't you?" He was Class B´s teacher, Vlad King! Of course he knew him, Vlad King sensei had even given them some lessons on their third year!
"Let's look at a more recent picture." The image on the screen shifted, and was replaced by another, Christmas decorations on the background, and the four family members had aged, the kids were now teens, a lanky Vlad King wearing his UA uniform proudly, his sister wearing a dress. The sister looked even more familiar now…was she another hero? Why couldn't he place her? Had Vlad king mentioned her any time? "That was young Sekijiro´s first year, he looks so proud. And look at that young kid, with the dark blonde hair, that is the little Nagate. I lost track of him after he moved to Brazil years later. Have you taken a good look at the sister?" Izuku nodded.
The image shifted a few more years. The background was now filled with banners of congratulations. The parents looked very proud, Vlad King was smiling that smile that graced his lips whenever Class B excelled, looking at his sister. Wearing a wine-coloured graduation hakama, the sister was holding hands with a yellow-eyed boy her age, who was still wearing an American-styled graduation cap embossed with "UA Business School". Izuku couldn't help but wonder at the picture, his fanaticism for heroes getting the upper hand. Vlad King was wearing a dark suit with New York police medals, he had been in the US too? Asking the teacher was one more reason to get out of this situation. Beside him, was that the Mexican hero Catrina, who he only recognized from the rare pictures of her without the sugar skull makeup. Had they been a couple? And the kid in the last picture was older now and wearing the earliest Vlad King hoodie!
"I think you get where this is going, you are a clever one after all. The sister is Isana Kan, and that lad with her, is Noriaki Kojima. As much as I would like to show you some evidence, UA security is still quite good, and I can't just get the security footage, but here´s how the story pretty much went between the two. Isana was a support course student, as her Quirk only allowed her very minor control over blood, she looked for other ways to help out in society. She specialized in medical equipment, a few dozen items in every major hospital had contributions by her and her friends. While some support classes help the heroes be stronger and more resistant, she worked to help those already wounded.
"On the second year, a joint project was assigned by her mentor, the support hero Killdozer, with the Business Department. The students would have to convince the counterparts to approve a budget for a project, while the business students would keep them grounded on realistic goals. Teams of three students of each class joined their counterparts and worked for an entire semester together. Isana met Noriaki, and they formed a curious friendship. Isana had expected the Business students to be strict and humourless, and the lad was anything but. Eventually Isana asked him out on a date, and they had a rather beautiful high school romance.
"The two were very much in love and kept together for the five years they went through college. Two years later, after a couple promotions at work, the decided to marry formally. The Kan´s laughed as they said "Finally!" to their new son-in-law. Here´s the wedding, this one does have video." A video played on the screen of the couple marrying in a traditional Japanese ceremony, and the party afterwards. Izuku was amazed to see some other teachers in the party, like Power Loader and Present Mic. "And here are their children, twins." A boy and a girl, showing photos from new-borns till about four years old. Izuku knew the girl´s golden eyes, the little sharp teeth. Izuku almost felt his heart ache in advance. Something had then happened, he was sure. "This picture is their fourth birthday, just a few days before their Quirk examinations at the doctor. Their Kyoto doctor was almost apologetic as he diagnosed young Ako with a Quirk that required more studies. Her brother had a useless Quirk that allowed any wound to close some 10% faster, but Ako…two months of studies determined she would have the power to transform into the person whose blood she drank. It is rather quaint how those test results never reached the clinic Ako´s parents had used…a certain Doctor Tsubasa was tipped off and in time, I learned of it. The little girl was finally diagnosed with a harmless face Quirk, that when trained would let her stretch her ears, as her father could move his cheeks and nose.
"It had been quite a scare for the Kojima-Kan family, thinking their daughter might have a dangerous Quirk, and they left in relief, back to their home. It gets a bit graphic here, sorry about that." The screen showed a slightly fish-eyed view, from a helmet camera. Two men entered the picture, a man with a rhino horn and one with a submachine gun with a laser pointer. The man with the camera brought his arm to view; it was a shifting dark mass, shaped like a claw. The cameraman walked towards the outer door of a large traditional Japanese home, and ripped it open with both arms, using the claws. A maid was behind, startled at the intrusion; the man with the gun shot her twice I the head.
The cameraman advanced to the house and jumped, his legs had to use a similar Quirk to the arms for that jump. He broke down a window and barrelled down the corridor. Below, the door was kicked down, and gunfire could be heard. The cameraman kicked down a door adorned with All Might stickers and chibi Draculas. The two children were terrified, and they started screaming in horror. The cameraman reached for the girl, Ako, with his hand extending in a creepy hook. The hand flopped to the ground as the cameraman collapsed, turning around to see Isana wielding a defibrillator. The man with the rhino horn charged her, but was stopped by Noriaki, armed with an old katana. The parents seemed to be holding their own, but the man with the submachinegun made it to the second floor, and fired, hitting Isana in the chest.
Isana´s white robe quickly turned red. Her husband, enraged, chopped off the gunman´s hands and leg, only to be impaled by the rhino horn. The cameraman got up, groggily, and snatched Ako from her brother, who tried to protect her, and was knocked away. The video ended there. "Vlad King arrived twenty minutes later. He found his nephew crying by his parents´ corpses in a ruined house. The poor kid was very affected, psychologically. He might have been able to repress the memory eventually, I don't know. The kid is now eighteen years old and lives almost normally with his uncle, he even managed to go to school without being accompanied by his therapists. He grew up to be a decent lad, with a close group of friends, young Koichi.
"The men we used for the job were caught quickly, Vlad king was very close to killing them when he captured them, but by that point, his niece was already half a world away. Ako became a student at my school, the Tselinoyarsk Institute. It started out as a government venture in the earliest years of Quirks, and by the point I took over, it was perhaps the best institution of its type. Ako received a number, and her past was erased, a small use of my Quirk to make young minds more…malleable. Number 132798 she was." The screen showed the terrified little girl he had seen in the video, and a dead eyed girl in a militarized school uniform. Izuku was horrified by everything he was seeing, but he couldn't look away or close his eyes, even if he tried.
"At Tselinoyarsk we make assassins. Enforcers. Sleeper agents. The methods have improved enormously, my Quirk was very useful for that. But number 132798…she was the best I trained. Its why I had her taken from her home, I knew the extent of her potential. It took eight years of hard training, but in the end, she could take down a Spetsnaz operator. A twelve-year-old girl. And her brain was filled with more, to develop as she grew." The screen showed Izuku videos of a very young Toga performing the techniques he was now so familiar with, training in physical condition, learning languages and stealth, being subjected to brainwashing, to torture. "The methods were never humane, yes, but I´m a villain, I don't care. In the end though, we could never finish her training. All for One approached me, requesting a candidate, as a failsafe, should he die, to kill a number of people around the world. All for One was my ally, and I might have even considered him my friend. We go way back. He even told me his real name. Anyone else, he would have ordered. Me, he asked. And so, I gave him Number 132798. But I never truly left young Toga, not at all.
"Her training, all the brainwashing to turn her into the perfect infiltrator, eventually became second nature. I kept her in check with nightmares. I kept educating her, in a way. And now, she has returned, and my perfect assassin is ready to meet the world. I guess this is what it feels like to be a proud parent!"
The supervillain paused for a moment and said "It appears the outside world requires my attention, young one. We´ll talk in a while." Izuku knew the villain would only abandon this if the situation was dire enough, so a rescue appeared likely. Maybe someone had survived the crash? He had no way of knowing how long it had been, as he had been unconscious through some of it. Likely less than a day, but he couldn't be sure. Izuku thought back to the training he had had with Shinsou, to escape from mind control using One for All. If he used that technique while unconscious, he could, in theory, wake up and destroy the pheromones affecting his brain. But if he used it now, he might reveal his hand too early and make his next encounter with Pestilentia more difficult, so he had to decide; immediate freedom, or the chance to defeat the villain on his own game, possibly incapacitating him temporarily?
Izuku knew what he had to do. He had to wait for his chance and strike hard. He wasn't going to go easy on the supervillain anyway, but learning everything he had done to Toga made it personal. Very personal. With a new location revealed, this Tselinoyarsk Institute, the supervillain was getting even more boxed in. If the rescue he inferred was occurring ended up being successful, he could relay this information to the agents and plan for a better operation, if not, the villains were bound to bring him to their stronghold. So now he had to wait and see. The dreamscape remained stable, the room didn't shift. He walked around, examining his surroundings.
If Pestilentia had created this room, it had to be a real room to be this detailed. And given everything they knew, it was likely in his St. Petersburg hideout or in the school he had just revealed. The books were mostly titled in Cyrillic, which Izuku couldn't completely understand. A few titles were in English, and he even found a couple of volumes in Chinese and Japanese. The villain was well-read. The windows outside only showed a few silhouettes, perhaps enough for Izuku to pinpoint a skyline if needed.
The doors didn't work, Pestilentia had pretty much painted them instead of rendering them as useable objects. Izuku sat down again and began working on a strategy to take down Pestilentia for good, hopefully including a part where the villain got punched in the face repeatedly, maybe his arms crushed for good measure.
An hour after the guard had told the white-haired underboss about a disturbance in the perimeter, Toga saw a second guard enter through a door hidden between the light panels. That is where I need to go to escape. Just you wait, fuckers, nobody, and I mean NOBODY, touches MY Izu-Izu! The chains holding her to the chair were tight, so she couldn't move, and the chair was metal, so she couldn't just jump on it and break it. She might have been able to escape by breaking one of her wrists if the restraints had been differently arranged. Her best chance of escape was the exchange with Izuku´s team, she knew, but it seemed less and less likely with every second that passed. On the other cell, Izuku seemed to relax on his chair, his head moving to a comfortable position. If anyone knew how to break out, it was probably him, but he would need to be awake for that.
If she hadn't been gagged she might have tried to scream, tried to get his attention. If the walls were that transparent it had to mean the material wasn't too thick, or the image would have been very distorted…and Izu-Izu could smash through anything that thin. She looked around her own room; it seemed curved, almost circular, with a tall roof and a clean floor. Two guards and the Mafioso…with a weapon she could have taken them down. She tried to analyse their Quirks like Izuku did; none had any apparent fighting Quirks, the leader had spoken Japanese completely fluently, then switched to Russian for one guard and what sounded like Greek for the other one. A simple polyglot, or his Quirk?
The guards were armed with dart rifles, likely using the tranquilizers that had allowed them to bring Izuku here. She had already been tranq´d by them, and she suspected it might be a harmful amount of whatever chemical it used, so she had to avoid getting hit again. It would also work in her advantage if she managed to free herself, as the tranq rifles were long and could be swung like a bat, and they weren't too easy to shoot in confined spaces. They would have to switch to their sidearms, and that gave her a slight edge on them. Now just an opportunity…