The driver's foot became like lead. He tried to shake them off as he accelerated down the alley, but Stain wouldn't let him. His shiny new sword stabbed into the now non-existent car door and hit the man's leg, forcing him off the gas. Stain's lanky and flexible body twisted in and hit the brakes.
Izuku rolled forward as the car stopped, landing right in front of it and brandishing his sword. The doctor, sitting behind the driver wearing a mask which denoted his alignment with the yakuza, gave a frightened shout.
He wasn't alone in the car, however. Someone like him was valuable. Someone like him would be well protected.
With the driver out due to his leg, this left the three other idiots. Izuku had to dodge a burst of ice.
Of course there'd be emitters.
The doctor remained in the car, hunkering down and squealing like a pig. The man with the ice quirk all but kicked the door to the passenger seat open and rolled out, then proceeded to send another cold wind.
It wasn't just ice. The cold air created snowflakes. Small blue crystals which froze whatever they touched. Izuku swung his sword upwards. Stain was fighting the other two, he could handle them, but Izuku had to deal with this man first. The blunt sword wasn't quite as good as the sharp one when it came to the Breath of the Sky. The surface of the sword did hum the same as it did with the instrument of slaying.
His mark flared as he cut the snowflakes and dispersed the wind. The ice on the blunt sword was solid, but easily shattered against the ground.
"You messed with the wrong group, boy," the man said. His fingertips were glowing blue. He punched the air, and another gust, much faster came forward. Izuku leaped over it, the edge of his haori was caught by a snowflake and started to freeze, but Izuku had landed home.
"Fifth Form," Izuku announced. The Howling Wind smashed the man into a wall, and the sound of snapping bones announced a broken rib. The man didn't hesitate to attack again. He fell off the wall into a sprint, despite his pained and raggedy breathing.
Izuku slammed the hilt into the man's chest, dodging into him to avoid the next wind.
It might have been unorthodox, but when the man reeled, he jumped.
Slamming his head into the man's chin. The yakuza fell over. Turning around to help Stain, Izuku had found the man already finished.
With extreme prejudice. He frowned at the cut off fingers. Alive, yes, but still hurt much more than Izuku was comfortable with. He supposed that was the compromise he had to make.
"Once all of this is over, I'll arrest you one day," Izuku announced. Stain grinned at him as he turned around, wiping the blood off the blade with his crimson scarf.
"Looking forward to it, Slayer," Stain said. They turned towards the car, leaving the whimpering and crying yakuza lying in the dirt. The doctor wasn't very old, but streaks of grey hair showed just a hint of age. He had thick rimmed glasses, and a suit that shouted out his desperation of recognition.
He looked out of place in this nondescript car. Izuku took the lead, not wanting to see what Stain would do to the man in their questioning. Grabbing him by the neck, he pulled him out, ripping the suit slightly.
"G-gentlemen," the man stuttered, raising his hands. Izuku sheathed his sword, slamming the man into the wall with one arm. "Hrk. I'm sure we can come to an agreement-"
Izuku pulled the sharp sword out and stabbed it into the wall next to him. He squealed again, his feet shaking and no doubt ready to let him down if Izuku wasn't holding him in place.
"I'm sure we can," Izuku said. He didn't feel like a hero right now. But that was fine. Even now, he could do it with kindness. "I know you have contacts with a man called All For One. Maybe not by that name."
"Y-you, you're the little town samurai, right?" the doctor asked. "Ronin Hero, Kagura?"
"I don't think we're here to introduce ourselves," Izuku said, sternly. He pursed his lips, glancing over to Stain. "And I'm sure you'd rather be interrogated by me than by him. Unlike him, I have a reputation and a license to keep. So please, indulge me."
"O-of course," the man stuttered, adjusting his glasses. Izuku let go, causing him to fall on the ground. "I don't know anyone by that name-"
"He might be seeking medical aid for a girl, a bit older than me," Izuku said. "Lost an arm, and has practically every bone shattered. Some organs are likely not intact as well. I have it on good record that someone like you is capable of healing such damage."
It felt strange, explaining this clinically. The damage he had done to Himiko Toga might be the same or worse than she had ended up inflicting on Momo. He knew that. While superficially he hadn't cut her up as badly, the hands of the angry gods were as vicious as they were effective.
"I'm capable, yes," the man nodded. "But I haven't had any dealings with any villains who needed help like that. I-I know who might, though."
Izuku frowned, looking down at the man as he sat against the wall. Stain crossed his arms, leaning against the car.
"I assume you'll be honest with me," Izuku said. He tried and failed to smile. "I greatly enjoy it when people are honest with me."
"O-of course, we are men of integrity, after all," the doctor said, his teeth clicking against each other when Stain threw him a dirty look. "Look, my boss, he's a genius. A rotten personality, but his research is amazing, the test subject-"
Izuku drew the sword out of the wall and stabbed it next to the man. "Her name is Eri."
"Yes," the man said, too frightened to even shiver anymore. "Err, his… his research was done almost entirely by himself, which meant he needed equipment. The equipment is… it's very expensive and mostly foreign. Because of that there's only one person who imports it, if anyone knows where to find a doctor that can equip a hospital to heal injuries like you described it'd be him."
"How do we find him?" Stain asked. Izuku nodded, wiggling the sword a bit. That sounded not just like equipment for a doctor. Research like RS-9 would also need the proper equipment. Unless they stole it.
"There's an apartment complex that was torn down a while ago, near the district jail in Nerima," the man said. Izuku could hear the quiver. He was hiding something, but the presence of the import business seemed to be true. "The apartment buildings had a deep parking lot that's still accessible. It's where they stash their wares before sale."
"You're lying," Stain said. Izuku raised his hand, stopping the man as he walked away from the car and towards the doctor. The mancing stride ended with a single step.
"I'm going to believe you," Izuku said. The man wasn't entirely lying. It was something else on his mind. Perhaps the fear clouding his heart. "But you know that we know how to find you. If you lied, we will end up meeting again."
The man nodded slowly. Doubt. He doubted they would. Izuku pulled his sword out and sheathed it, walking away. The man could treat the wounds. He likely would have to if he wanted to get home.
"Just to be sure," Stain said. He stabbed at the man's pants, not cutting any skin but sending sparks out. The phone sizzled and died.
Izuku nodded. Stain proceeded to do the same to all the phones on the men groaning behind them.
They arrived at the broken down apartment complex. It lay in rubbles, but Izuku could hear the motion beneath the earth. Not the usual hum of flowing water of the sewer, but the rumbling of cars and machinery. Izuku could hear steps, many of them.
"The entrance is around the block," Stain said. Izuku turned to him, raising an eyebrow.
"How do you know?" Izuku asked. Stain frowned.
"I just know," he said, lying his ass off. Izuku shook his head, running behind him as they approached the entrance. It was a large gate, leading into an underground parking lot. They took a long way around. There were guards, of course.
Two men standing nearby, pretending to just chat in normal clothes that one would expect to see, but their eyes were hawk-like, staring at everyone that passed by.
They weren't hawk-like enough to look up. They say people rarely look forty-five degrees above their heads, which was something that shinobi of old had used. Izuku didn't feel like much of a shinobi, but he was certainly sneaking around like one. The sun was setting already. He crashed down on the back of one of the guards, watching as Stain did the same. Their heads hit the ground, not hard enough to cause a concussion, hopefully.
They rushed down the complex.
Of course, the doctor wasn't honest.
Izuku and Stain could see him standing there. He was sitting in a chair, surrounded by machines of various sizes. One of them, however, was an empty bed with tubes. No one else masked was around. A few men who looked like delivery workers rather than gangsters were walking and unloading machines.
"I knew you'd come," he said. Izuku glanced towards Stain, who was grinning like a madman.
"Overhaul," Stain greeted the man with a flick of his sword. Izuku's hands trembled as he clenched his fist. The man who hurt Eri so much. The man who had shown her death until she stopped feeling afraid of it.
He wore a tengu beak mask, his hair was short and black, his eyes spoke of untold pains he would inflict on anyone that was going to look at him wrong. His mantle spoke of wealth and power.
His gloves were, strangely enough, the same kind that Izuku wore.
"You took something from me," Overhaul said. His voice was furious. Despite his relatively calm and collected appearance, added to by the long tengu beak mask, his voice was ragged and broken. Burning in anger. He slowly took off his gloves. "Something no amount of blood and money could repay."
"She's not something," Izuku said, drawing his own sword. Somehow, he fell into old habits. With the Breath of Blood next to him, he breathed.
And it was the Breath of Water, greeted with a smile on his face, like an old friend. A prayer he had not prayed in a long time.
Stain was already running at the man. Izuku could see the desperation to end the fight quickly. Overhaul touched the ground. The world around them turned into spikes and danger. Izuku heard the wind whipping up behind him and dodged to the right, cutting the spike and jumping onto another.
"Left! Izuku shouted, seeing Overhaul's hand move towards Stain. Stain dodged to the right, rolling under the swipe of the arm, stabbing the sword into the ground and using it as a pole to jump up.
"Breath of Blood," Stain announced, twisting his body in the air. It became visible for a moment. A red haze from his lips, a glowing crimson wind around the tip of his sword. "Blood Drop Thrust!"
The sword stabbed forward at absurd speeds. Overhaul saw and dodged. As if he knew it was coming.
Overhaul's hands touched the ground and created another spike right under him. Stain managed to get out of the way, but his way of dodging was as unrefined as his way of fighting. The spike grazed him, ripping his shirt and makeshift armor apart and leaving a large gash that began to bleed down.
Overhaul was fast and good with his quirk, but he was without allies.
Stain had ripped his way through his ranks, all the people who were loyal to the man were either dead or arrested. He was desperate and needed this win, to the point where it clouded his judgement.
He didn't even trust that gun at his hips to do what his quirk couldn't.
The problem was that this was the best location for him to use his quirk to the fullest. While Izuku and Stain needed close quarters, Overhaul could do whatever he wanted at leisure, even as machines behind him broke apart.
He didn't care. He just wanted them dead.
But he couldn't just break the ceiling. That would likely crush him as well. That gave them an angle.
Stain bent down. Izuku's foot touched softly on the man's back and he jumped up. With a whirling swing, Izuku cut the distance between him and Overhaul.
"Pathetic!" Overhaul shouted. He blocked the swing with crossed arms, his bones breaking. Turning his palms towards Izuku, he swiped, running his arms down the blunt edge and touching it.
The sword was destroyed. Ashes. Nothing but dust. Izuku jumped back as he let go of the hilt, grabbing the sharp sword. Overhaul, rather than follow up, created a wall between them. Then, the sound of squelching and pain. When the wall crumbled, with Overhaul's hands reaching out between them, the bones were fixed, the arms fully intact.
"That's cheating," Stain said, flying through the air. He landed behind Overhaul, his sword aimed to bisect the man. "Blood Surface Slash!"
The red mist cut into nothing. Overhaul had raised the floor until the sword cut halfway into a pillar. It was already half blunted and barely intact, and this was enough to cause more cracks to appear.
Stain dodged another swipe as the pillar crumbled, taking his sword down with it forcing him to pull it out of the rubble.
And that gun that Overhaul had previously ignored was now in that hand. While Stain had dodged the swipe to avoid being destroyed by the quirk, he could not dodge bullets from that angle.
Shot after shot hit the man in the stomach, one hitting the chest. Izuku heard that almost too familiar pop of a Breath user's lung bursting as it was in full use. He spat blood, falling backwards, unable to stand from such wounds.
Izuku knew that Stain's advice was correct.
When the breathing shifted, the air around him did as well. He gave a whispering prayer, and his body shook with the effort to change 'gears'.
Overhaul was intelligent. He was, in the words of the doctor they had interrogated, a genius. If it wasn't for his awful personality, could likely make himself a respectable doctor in spite of his rather ridiculous quirk.
The man's movements and the use of his quirk were not random. They were not indiscriminate attacks. In seconds, he could analyse and work out exactly where to set his spikes to make dodging his swipes harder. He could break the ground to trip them up, only to catch them off guard in the air when they jumped.
Stain had made a mistake in his hunts of the yakuza.
He had shown them so much, Overhaul had worked out a way to counter the Breath of Blood.
In the same vein, the Breath of Water, which was its progenitor, could be dealt with just as swiftly.
The one technique he could only use as he was swapping. Izuku stepped forward, the sword by his side, the edge aimed at the sky.
He stepped forward once more. The grip changed. The blade swung around, aiming at the ground behind him instead, and then swung around from below. Overhaul swiped from above. Even if Izuku dodged, he would hit the ground and create spikes with his quirk.
It was a good thing that Izuku didn't dodge, then.
The sword came up and carved a path through the underworld.
Stain's sword came from behind, thrown unceremoniously and hitting Overhaul in the back, leaving him wide open for one last attack.
"Seventh Form," Izuku announced, breathless. "Izanagi's Ascension."
Cowardly father. Murderer of his child. He who ran when he laid eyes on what had become of his wife.
The sword crumbled, Overhaul's arm was split into two. Most of the Nichirin blade was nothing but dust, leaving less than half of the actual edge intact. Though Overhaul howled in pain, this was at best superficial damage. Something the man could easily heal with his quirk. Izuku had to continue.
The sword came down again. "Seventh Form: Three Precious Children."
As Overhaul raised his other arm to repair the damage, Izuku sliced through his wrist. A slice like a raging storm. Then, a crescent moon, slicing through his leg.
Finally, a beautiful sun.
The hilt of the sword hung overhead. The implication that had the sword been intact, Overhaul would have lost his head, was not lost on the man. The cuts were nonetheless so clean that his body took moments to start bleeding.
"I'm not going to kill you," Izuku said. He wasn't sure why his hands were still shaking. The man was breaking out into hives. The fury in his eyes had been replaced by genuine shock, as if he couldn't fathom the idea of losing. "That doctor of yours, he can repair that damage, right? Just today, I'm not even going to arrest you. You'll leave Eri alone. Promise me, and I won't let you bleed out."
"Heh," Overhaul coughed out. Pathetic and yet defiant to the end. "Here I was told you won't kill people with that blade of yours."
"You're right," Izuku said, looking towards the broken hilt in his hands as he pocketed it. He touched the sword that was still stuck in Overhaul's back, the blade peeking out of his belly. He poked it. "But this isn't my blade."
Izuku ripped the sleeve of his shirt off. The red mark glared back angrily. Ripping the shirt into shreds, trying to stem the bleeding as much as possible. He pointed his finger at one of the delivery men, who had tried to make themselves as small as possible near the wall as the fight started. Some of them had been caught up in it, a few spikes ripping into them. Fortunately it looked like nobody was dead.
"You can have her, that cursed child," Overhaul announced, glaring around. "I don't even care anymore."
Izuku doubted anyone would care about much else when bleeding from three cut limbs.
Whimpers in the corner of the large storeroom knocked him out of his thoughts.
His tunnel vision made him forget that there were others.
Just another thing Izuku would have to deal with on his own later.
After wrapping up all of Overhaul's wounds, he spoke up.
"He'll tell you where to go, and if he doesn't just drag him to the hospital," Izuku ordered. Snapping his fingers as he walked over to Stain's body, who was flipping him off to announce his survival. "I need to know who has purchased the most of these devices recently, any names, any addresses. I don't care who."
They didn't deny him. They shouted over each other. In the end, one name stood out to him.
"Hisashi Ubuyashiki, he was in the news-" the man who had rushed up to Overhaul said. He wasn't wearing a mask, but he looked desperate enough that he must have been someone from his organization. A bootlicker. "We don't know where he went, he picked up the delivery with his own drivers."
Back to square one, then.
Izuku cursed under his breath.
Picking up Stain, he put him over his back, ignoring the blood as it was staining his clothes.
He failed to find a lead towards his father, that was fine.
At the very least he had made sure that Eri would be safe.
Izuku breathed and ran. He knew where Tenko had his little backalley doctor thing now. With the rooftops it shouldn't take too long to reach. He picked up the hilt of his formerly blunt sword and pocketed it as well.
"Ah, this is bad," Izuku said, shifting Stain's body on his back.
"I'm sure I'll survive," Stain said. Izuku nodded. He was too stubborn to die.
"That's not it," Izuku said, glancing at his empty sheath and the hilt he was keeping in his pockets. "I'll need to explain to my girlfriend's parents how I broke their precious sword."
Stain laughed through spittles of blood that came down on Izuku's neck.
Himiko Toga was laughing. It was the deranged kind of laugh that she had laughed a million times. The kind of strange laugh that spoke of a behavioral malcontent. It was only with great difficulty that even someone as monstrous as All For One could force himself to describe her as 'human'.
Back when he had found her, that moniker might have applied. Right now it was only a rough estimate. Himiko Toga was the perfect vessel, because through that hint of madness came the glint of an intelligent monstrosity.
Himiko Toga was bent and broken. She had, against his advice, chosen to provoke the Hashira. Advice, of course, because he would not give her orders. His hands off approach had worked so far. While he guided her and taught her what he could, even enhancing her more and more with various quirks that her body could handle due to the unique nature of her quirk, he always preferred to let go of the leash.
Nezuko Kamado's student was formidable, as expected, but there was that glint in his eyes. The one he couldn't stand. The one he had beaten out of All Might the day he killed Nana Shimura. Himiko made a mistake in not killing the girl. Izuku Midoriya had made a mistake not killing this girl.
But that was fine.
She was broken, to a point where even his best regenerative quirks wouldn't be able to fix the damage without killing her from backlash. He could replace her arm easily, but the rest of the damage was made in a way that reminded him of a malediction.
As if they had been intentionally inflicted to stop any healing from happening.
As if they had been done by a demon slayer killing a demon.
How ironic, he thought.
Himiko's body convulsed. She frothed at the mouth. Bits of blood and saliva were dripping down her cheeks as she was grinning like a madwoman with every tremor through her body. Her fangs, already excellent and sharp, became even more menacing. They glinted in a crimson light. Her eyes shook, looking everywhere at once
Then her body twisted.
Hisashi, pathetic as he was, was not wrong. You could guarantee demonization, if you didn't try to focus exclusively on cell regeneration. In that case, the survival rate rose as high as fifty-five percent.
But with his quirks, she would survive and grow stronger.
Not perfectly, of course. Not quite yet perfectly. He knew the MZ-cells had a weakness to sunlight. A weakness that was almost spiritual in nature, as high doses of UV light only kept it docile rather than burn it.
One day, when Nezuko Kamado dropped her guard, he would have the cure for sunlight.
One day, he would have his own body intact again.
Himiko's body folded onto itself. It spat out bones and flesh, to the point that Hisashi had to avert his gaze. All For One's analysis quirk quickly revealed the changes inside her. Her heart stopped beating naturally. Her cells were rapidly expanding and multiplying. Her arm slowly recovered, bit by bit, first with bones, then muscle and flesh, then skin.
Until finally, in a puddle of her own blood and old human shell, she rose. Naked, her already slit yellow eyes were glowing unnaturally, she looked almost normal, as she usually did when her quirk wore off.
Something under her skin twisted and turned. Her face seemed to shift for a second until it returned to normal.
"Himiko," All For One said. "How do you feel?"
She raised a hand to her head. Grabbing the top of it with her right hand and cupping her chin, she twisted.
Her neck twisted with it. Upside down, her smile almost looked like a frown. With a second snap, it returned into its proper position. All For One smiled back at her. His mouth twisted into a satisfied grin.
"Hungry."
Chapter 31, upcoming:
The Responsibility of Failure
"You're not to blame, I know that," Mr. Yaoyorozu said, frowning. The man's callused hands were balled into a heavy fist that shook with the burden of worry for his daughter. "You're a good man. Not because you were taught by Kamado-san, or because you're of the Ubuyashiki family. You're… the best choice my daughter could have made."
"I'll take responsibility," Izuku said, bowing his head. "Whatever you need, however I can repay you. Tell me, and I'll do it."
"There's nothing you need to do differently that you're doing now," the man said. "Only one thing, there's a single thing I'll not ask but demand from you."
"Whatever it is," Izuku promised again.
"Don't stay with her out of a sense of responsibility," Mr. Yaoyorozu ordered. "If you stop liking her, whether it be her appearance once the bandages are gone, or any other reason under the sky. Don't lead her on."
Izuku frowned. "Of course."
"But if you do love her," Mr. Yaoyorozu continued. "Tell her. She might not love herself after this."