The car didn't seem more crowded, but it was. Spinner had the dubious honor and privilege of being in one of Mr. Compress's marbles, along with the doctor. Midoriya Inko sat in his recently vacated seat.

She was, without a single doubt, the most dangerous person in the vehicle. Mostly because she was completely insane. She had spent the first few minutes of driving detailing how she could blow up the car with her quirk and making sure that they knew she'd do it if she thought she had to.

What would make her think she 'had to' was a mystery Tomura didn't particularly want solved.

He could totally see what Sensei saw in her, and he didn't like it. He wished he could go back to ignorance. This questline was insane. The whole game was going to wind up broken. Had he killed an essential NPC at some point?

Eyeballs were small objects. So were most organs.

Midoriya Inko was someone Tomura could respect.

Would Midoriya Izuku be like this, if Tomura had an actual conversation with him? Their conversation at the mall hadn't exactly been… normal. Tomura could admit he'd been using his intimidation skill to move the conversation along. Of course, Midoriya had struck him as a two-dimensional All Might fanboy at that point. Limited dialogue options. Killed in the next encounter. A hidden miniboss, yes, but just a miniboss. Not terribly important to the main campaign. Forgotten by disc two.

Clearly, he'd been wrong.

Which he shouldn't have had mixed feelings about, but definitely did.

"Dear," said Midoriya Inko, making everyone in the car stiffen, "do you have eczema?"

"The what?" asked Tomura, his tone too subdued to be considered snapping, because he wasn't about to snap at someone who had convincingly demonstrated her ability to crush his organs against the inside of his abdominal cavity.

"Oh!" said Toga. "I know this one, Mom! It's a skin condition."

Tomura pulled his hand away from where it had been scratching at his neck. "I don't have a skin condition. It just itches sometimes."

Midoriya Inko nodded. "Yes, that sounds like eczema, I—" She stopped, blinking. "Did you just call me 'Mom?'"

"Yeah, is that okay? Izu-kun and I are dating, after all!"

"No, she isn't!" shouted Twice, the car swerving a little. "She is not! Only in her dreams!"

"Ah," said Midoriya Inko. "I see. Well, I don't mind you calling me that, but I think you really need to ask Izuku before you say that you're dating. Make sure you're on the same page, dear."

Toga pouted.

"Now, where was I? Eczema. Izuku used to have eczema, but he grew out of it, mostly. I still carry some cream with me. Do you want some?"

Would refusing be dangerous?

Was the cream secretly poison?

Was this a complex scheme to get under his skin?

"Oh, Izuku mutters like that, too," said Midoriya Inko, happily. "You remind me quite a bit of when he was going through his antisocial phase, actually. It would be funny if it turned out that you were related, wouldn't it? Quite a coincidence, hm? One I'll have to talk to my husband about." The last sentence was as hard as diamonds and as poisonous as cyanide.

Tomura once again decided that he regretted everything.

.

"This is terrible," whispered Tsuyu for the fifth or sixth time.

"Tres mal," agreed Aoyama.

"Is it bad that I can completely believe All Might wrote this?" asked Satou.

"Why would it be bad?" asked Shouji.

"Because it's so… bad."

"And yet," said Yaoyorozu, "oddly compelling."

"Why does he use so much English?" grumbled Mineta.

"What a mad banquet of darkness," said Fumikage, who was, nevertheless, also reading the fanfic on his phone.

"But, like, it makes it pretty obvious that All Might thinks the world of Midoriya," said Kaminari. "Do you think he knew that other people could read this?"

"I mean," said Jiro. "He had to, right? It wasn't like he was born in the nineteen hundreds."

"I don't know, sometimes you've got to wonder. Like… sometimes it's as if he was grown in a lab to be the perfect hero, you know?"

"Kaminari, stop trying to be Todoroki, please," said Fumikage. "You do not need to dip yourself into the darkness."

"I'm just saying," said Kaminari. "And it isn't as if we don't know that there are a bunch of mad scientist types that would do just that, plus the Hero Commission is psychotic—"

"That's unkind to psychotic people," said Fumikage, glowering. "You know, most psychotic people never hurt anyone. The incidence of villainy among people who experience psychosis isn't significantly higher than among the general population."

"Sorry, man, just a figure of speech."

The bus slowly came to a stop outside UA's gates.

"My switch isn't working," said Green Light as he repeatedly pressed a button on his dash. "I guess they're still on lockdown. We'll have to wait for Nezu to come let us in."

"Still?" asked Midnight. "Midoriya isn't even in the city anymore, as far as we know."

"Not that he was ever a threat to the school," mumbled Present Mic, his quirk making him loud enough to be heard regardless.

Fumikage, having finished the fanfic some time ago, looked out the window and spotted two people in suits loitering near the gate. "Yamada-sensei, Kayama-sensei, who are those people?"

Everyone rushed over to Fumikage's side of the bus to look out the window, rocking the vehicle.

"Ohh," said Present Mic. "Yeah. That makes sense. Those guys are with the commission. Yep. Good ol' Nezu, keeping them out."

"Wait," said Jiro, "does this mean we're stuck out here, too?"

"No, no," said Present Mic. "He'll have to let us in… But then they'll come in, too."

"Midoriya's room," said Fumikage. "They'll want to search it."

"Can we do something?" asked Kouda, timidly.

"Should we do anything?" asked Tsuyu, bluntly. "We don't want to incriminate Midoriya even more by making it look like he's hiding things."

Fumikage turned to Kaminari. "Anything new from Principal Nezu?"

"Why are you looking at me?"

"You're the one he emailed last time."

"Hey, Fumikage," said Jiro, "do you think you can fly over the wall? Maybe you can get a head start on… well, whatever, I guess."

"I don't think we should do anything suspicious while they're watching," reiterated Tsuyu.

"Yeah, plus we really revamped campus security. And this is Nezu we're talking about."

"The Rat God," someone whispered, reverently.

(Was that Shouji?)

"Exactly, exactly," said Present Mic. "So, everyone, just, please, calm down. Just sit back down, and we'll ride the bus to the dorms. Like normal."

"Yamada-sensei, nothing about this is normal," said Tsuyu, flatly.

"Well," said Present Mic, "yeaaaah, okay, you got me there, listeners."

"Nezu's coming up," said Green Light. "Aw, he has Eri with him. They're so short together."

"Green Light," crackled the radio in Nezu's voice. "Did you forget that I have cameras and microphones installed on all our buses?"

"That's how he knew I was the one putting together the compilation!" said Kaminari.

Fumikage peered out the window and furtively opened it, so they could hear what was going on. Eri was definitely there. She was also sporting the deepest, most dismal, aura of darkness Fumikage had ever laid eyes on. Luckily, it seemed to be aimed at the commission lackeys in the form of a smile and dead, dead eyes.

"Good afternoon, gentlemen!" said Nezu, cheerily. "I apologize for the long wait! As Lunch Rush indubitably told you, we had a small emergency."

"We've been out here for hours. What kind of emergency could have kept you for hours under these circumstances?"

Eri's smile grew both broader and deader. "Me," she said. "I'm the emergenny."

"Emergency," corrected Nezu, gently.

"Emergency," repeated Eri.

"I'm sorry?" said the shorter of the two investigators.

"I'm the emergency. I hada—" she paused, and her face pinched slightly in concentration. "I had an emergency, because, because, you're being mean to Deku."

"We—"

"You're mean," insisted Eri. "You're bad guys. Deku is the good guy, because he saved me. Only bad guys are mean to good guys."

"Excuse me, is this Chisaki Eri?"

Eri hissed.

"Perhaps I could ask you to refrain from using that family name. We've been trying to get past what her form did to her, you understand. Teach her morality."

"I'll bite you," said Eri, malevolently.

"Self-defense, as well," continued Nezu. "It's very important for children to be able to feel safe and confident in themselves, don't you think? And the recent news dealt a serious blow to that. You understand, then why I felt that it was more important to take care of my ward and other students than to greet you here. Especially given that you wished to interview Eri-chan as well."

"I'll bite you," repeated Eri. "A lot."

"We'll… need a look at Midoriya's room, first."

"Way to go, Eri," whispered Shinsou.

"Very well! You'll have to come around to the front office to fill out some paperwork. We'll need a physical copy of your badges, as well as a copy of your warrant, for our records…"

The gate opened, distracting Fumikage from whatever else Nezu had said. Green Light quickly drove through, making straight to the dorms. Fumikage snapped the window shut.

"So, uh," said Kaminari. "What're we going to do about Midoriya's All Might shrine of a room?"

"Should we even do anything?" asked Jiro. "If stuff is disturbed, that's going to be suspicious. I don't want to get him into more trouble."

"It's a teenage boy's bedroom," said Mineta. "The stuff in there is already disturbed."

"Mineta, I don't know how to tell you this," said Kaminari, "but your experiences are not universal."

"None of you are disturbing Midoriya's room at all," said Midnight, standing. "You didn't forget that we were here, did you? If you say yes, we'll have to take some time to work on your situational awareness~"

.

Nemuri hadn't quite known what to expect from the words 'All Might shrine.' In her experiences, the word 'shrine' could, especially when applied to a person's hobby or area of interest, could cover a vast array of displays of varying intensity.

But Midoriya really went Plus Ultra on everything, didn't he?

"Okay, kiddos," said Midnight, "what would you say was the most incriminating thing in this room?"

She and Present Mic were the only ones actually in the room, but the students were gathered right outside the door.

"Notebooks."

Midnight nodded. They'd get those first, then search for other places Midoriya may have put evidence of less-than-entirely-morally-upright behavior. Not that Midnight really expected to find any.

"Where does he keep them?" she asked.

"He has a shelf above his desk he usually keeps them on, kero."

Midnight looked at the shelf above Midoriya's desk.

It looked back at her.

This was because it was a void. As in, void of any notebooks. An abyss of sorts. Empty.

There were no notebooks in evidence.

"This will be a problem."

.

"G-Gigantomachia?" asked Izuku, turning up the sweetness in his tone despite his nerves. And pain. Yep, there was a whole lot of pain, everywhere. Now that he was no longer actively running for his life, it felt like he'd pulled every muscle in his body.

"Yes, Little Lord?" asked Gigantomachia, happily.

He was like a giant dog. Izuku almost felt bad tricking him like this, but he reminded himself that Gigantomachia was a giant, evil dog. So.

"Will you do something for me?"

"Of course, Little Lord!"

"Well," said Izuku, "you remember how I said that Shigaraki Tomura and I don't get along?"

"Yes, Little Lord! My memory is very good!"

Izuku blinked. "Is that a—" He cut himself off with a shake of his head. Not the time. "Well, I think that it might be a good idea if, ah, we established that he can't attack me anymore."

Gigantomachia stood up, shaking the earth and almost sending Izuku tumbling down. "HE ATTACKED YOU?"

Maybe this would be easier than he thought. "Yeah. A couple times. I'm okay, though!" He waved his hands. "I just think that it might be a good idea if we established a, uh, a pecking order. Sort of."

"I'M GOING TO PECK HIM TO DEATH."

"Please do not actually kill him."

"I'M GOING TO PECK HIM MOSTLY TO DEATH."

"That's the spirit," said Izuku.

"I'LL SHOW HIM YOU'RE IN CHARGE. YOU'RE MUCH BETTER THAN HE IS. MUCH MORE LIKE LORD."

Wow. That was… certainly a statement. That Izuku was going to try his best to forget forever.

"Right. So. If you see him, do that," said Izuku, nodding.

"OF COURSE, LITTLE LORD."

"And, this is just a reminder, but don't go into towns."

"I WILL REMEMBER!"

"Great," said Izuku. "I'm going to go back in and, uh…" He couldn't say 'plot my escape with Toshinori.' "Rest," he settled on.

"Oh!" Gigantomachia crouched down, his voice suddenly whisper-soft. Assuming rocks could be described as whispering. "Sleep well, Little Lord!"

"Thanks," said Izuku, beating a hasty retreat.

.

"Stop the car!"

"But you said-!"

"Just stop the car, Twice."

There was a not-at-all hidden 'or else' in those words. Twice, once again, stopped the car.

"Oh, my," said Midoriya Inko, leaning forward. "That man up there looks remarkably like the sitter Hisashi hired for Izuku."

"Oh, god," said Tomura, dragging his hands down the sides of his face in lieu of looking out the window. "We aren't prepared for this level."

Midoriya Inko suddenly disappeared. Tomura made a noise in the back of his throat that wasn't at all a scream.

Mr. Compress raised his hands defensively. "I thought it best to marble her while she was distracted. We wouldn't want her to get injured in "

"Wow! Way to go, Mr. Compress!" said Toga, giving the other villain a hug. "Good thinking!"

"Yeah!" agreed Twice. "Now she can't hurt us—But she sure can when you let her out!"

"Which is why I propose we bring her to Giran at the first feasible opportunity. Between him and the doctor, I'm sure they can make arrangements for her that we need not be involved in. And I will make sure we are all far, far away when I let her out."

There was a series of sighs of relief.

"Good idea," croaked Tomura. "But what are we going to do about—" He swore vehemently. "He's seen us, he's seen us we've got aggro! Reverse!"

.

"Is that Vlad-sensei's car?"

"Unfortunately," said Toshinori, "I think it is. Oh, dear, the man's one to hold a grudge. I think I'll have a new nemesis by the end of this."

.

Today had been a very annoying day in general for Vlad King, but for some reason, his sense of annoyance suddenly doubled. This made his hands clench and thereby tear the piece of paper he was holding.

Scratch that. His sense of annoyance had tripled.

"Yagi," he muttered, "I am going to sue you so much."

"What was that?" asked Hound Dog, looking away from the video feed displaying Eri-chan scarring Hero Commission agents for life in her undeniably cute way.

"Nothing," muttered Vlad.

.

All for One paused in his assault of the vault door. He couldn't help but feel like someone somewhere had said something unusually aggravating.

Ah, well. He had other things to worry about.

.

"Ah," said Toshinori as one of Gigantomachia's fists tore off the bumper of the rapidly reversing car. "Hm," he continued as Shigaraki climbed out on the hood, grinning. "I think we should go, now."

Izuku nodded. They could only hope to get far away enough away for Gigantomachia to be unable to hunt them down.

If they ran into any other problems…

.

Dabi paused as he heard quite a lot of noise from up ahead and rolled his eyes, ignoring how the movement pulled at his staples. The idiots had already started fighting Gigantomachia. Well. He didn't want any part of that.

He changed directions. Hanging out in the woods it was, then.

Eh. It was good for him. Fresh (cold) air. Sunshine (sort of). Readily available reminders of why he hated his father.

Nature was great. If only he could burn it all down without blowing cover.

.

"Oh, no," said a hapless technician.

"What?" asked the commission supervisor who'd brough the sample to the lab. "What is it? Is he related to the Scourge of Kamino?"

"Well," squeaked the woman, her mousy ears twitching. "Yes. But I ran him through a few other databases as well, and…" she trailed off. "Well… The number of cross references in the hero database is staggering, but, of course, if he's related to them, and to the other, well…"

The commission supervisor grabbed the edge of her monitor and twisted it around to face him. She watched the blood drain from his face and refrained from calling him out on his rudeness.

"Why," he asked, "didn't they run the Scourge of Kamino's DNA through these databases?"

"I guess they didn't think it was necessary?"

"Excuse me," he said, "I have to make a few calls."

.

"You want us to attack the League of Villains now?" asked Hawks, frowning. "You've had me following them around for weeks, and you want us to go in now, with next to no preparation? We don't even know if the rest of the League is with Dabi."

What had they found out from Midoriya's blood sample? Had it turned out the way Dabi had expected.

Was Midoriya Izuku the son of All for One?

"Alright, alright," he said in response to his handler. He sighed deeply, leaning back to better look at the sky. "But even I'm going to need a couple hours to get everything together and start coordinating with other heroes. I'm—Sir, I really don't think I'm going to be able to take them all on just with myself and my sidekicks. Midoriya probably isn't with them to begin with—I'm not questioning you, sir. I just don't understand our objective in attacking them now. Why are we rushing? It seems counterpro—Yes, sir." The line beeped loudly as it disconnected.

Well. All this had been a monumental waste of time.

It also boded ill for Midoriya. It sounded as if he'd become an even greater target than before, and considering that the commission had been labeling him a villain even before testing his DNA… Something bigger than being related to All for One must have come out. Something that had scared the commission. Something they would scrap their stealth- and intelligence-based plan for dealing with the League for. Something they wanted gone. Locked away with Midoriya.

Hawks couldn't imagine what that could be. Maybe he was related to All Might? Or Endeavor? All Might wouldn't be bad, he was never publicly in a relationship, but then he'd always been private about his personal life. But Endeavor… that'd be a scandal and a half.

But, if either of those were the case, why were they so sure he'd be with the League of Villains? It didn't make sense. Unless… Unless Midoriya wasn't the only one related to All for One.

At least they weren't asking him to kill the kid. The mission was capture.

Which meant that Hawks had to come up with some way of letting an injured and probably exhausted teenager and a severely disabled old man escape without looking like he was letting them escape. Or looking like an incompetent idiot. Again. Because he wasn't about to bring Midoriya in under circumstances this shady. Maybe before, when he thought it was just trumped-up kidnapping charges, but with this uncertainty…

Commission lackey or not, Hawks was still a hero. Sometimes that meant he put aside personal feelings for the good of society, and sometimes it meant that he ignored orders so a minor wouldn't be indefinitely imprisoned at a commission black site.

Fun times.

He sighed and gathered in his feathers, angling down into a dive. Time to get to work.

.

Ochako kept seeing things out of the corners of her eye. Shadow in the shape of people, in the shape of children. Stains on the walls.

The hallways were scrupulously clean. Spotless. Empty. Brightly lit.

Todoroki had mentioned smelling smoke a few times and had started gagging for no reason once or twice. Iida kept twitching as if he had heard something. Aizawa appeared unaffected, but Ochako could see the way he gripped his capture weapon and the rigidness of his spine.

Izuku looked resigned.

"Did they really—" started Iida.

"Yes," said Izuku. "Almost certainly."

"What are you talking about?" asked Todoroki.

"You're only getting fragments of Three's memories, since she's suppressing this," said Izuku. "But…" He twitched, slightly. "It's going to get worse the farther we go. The places she was in…" His voice was soft, sing-song, not quite entirely there.

"Izuku?"

"I'm sorry," he said, "I'm focusing on something else outside."

"Please tell me you aren't fighting pro heroes again," said Aizawa.

"No, I'm escaping from the League of Villains right now."

"How?"

"Mm. Great question. I'll tell you how it goes later, if it works."

"That's not what I—"

An ear-splitting, bone-chilling scream filled the air, making everyone flinch and clench. Something crackled overhead.

"Incident response team to hallway C. Code Blue."

More screaming. This time, Ochako had a better idea of where it was coming from, and it seemed like everyone else, did, too.

They ran past classrooms that were alternately empty and full of shadow people, past soulless dormitory rooms stuffed with bunk beds, past cells and rooms Ochako didn't even want to think about.

A pair of dark-skinned girls stood in the hallway, one holding a bloody hand to her throat, the other baring her teeth. The lights flickered. Dimmed.

The girls were gone by the time the lights came back on.

The hallway they were in was full of operating theaters, complete with lights over the door. Ochako felt sick.

But she was used to dealing with nausea. She took a deep breath and swallowed.

"What now?" she asked. The quaver in her voice was barely audible.

"Now…" Aizawa turned slowly in place. "We're trying to find where they met Ryuji."

"Two," said Izuku, nodding.

"So, the most likely place for that…" He trailed off. "The most likely place for that is in the… residential areas." He sounded disgusted with himself for referring to a prison with such bland terms.

"We passed something like that," said Todoroki, quietly.

"Right," said Aizawa. "Let's go."

.

The way back was much more… crowded. The memories were more tangible. Ochako quickly taught herself not to look in any of the rooms. Not that it helped much with what they saw in the halls themselves.

Izuku's distraction only grew worse as they went further. He kept trying to follow, or sometimes fight, the memory ghosts.

"Sorry," he mumbled. "Focusing on something else."

"Just don't die on us, problem child."

"We're doing okay," said Izuku.

This was, of course, when the facility's alarm went off.

"Intruder alert. Intruder alert. Intruder alert."

.

Izuku couldn't hear the sound of the fight between the League and Machia anymore. This meant that either the fighting had stopped, or they had moved out of earshot.

Despite the League having a car (Vlad-sensei's car) Izuku doubted that the fight had gotten all that far away.

Next to him, Toshinori winced. Izuku looked at him with concern, but Toshinori waved it off.

Izuku took a shaky breath.

They just had to keep going.

.

Twice had, perhaps predictably, backed the car up into a ditch, where, despite the amount of pressure he put on the accelerator, it stayed. Stuck. Perhaps forever.

All members of the League of Villains that were not crazy enough to crawl onto the outside of a moving car to fight a homicidal giant climbed out. All members, meaning a single member. A single member, ironically, being Twice.

At least he hadn't been going very fast when he ran into the ditch.

"Everyone okay? –Of course, they're not! You were in a car crash, idiots!"

"Come help us fight!" ordered Shigaraki. "We were in the middle of something, you know, stupid level boss! Keep having to save scum I hate you aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!"

Well, that wasn't a good sign.

"Where's Himiko?" he shouted.

"Over here, silly!" said the second Shigaraki, because, yeah. Twice had forgotten he hadn't duplicated Shigaraki.

Man, he was dumb sometimes. It was great he had friends to help him with that!

He dove into the fight which, ever so slightly, ever so slowly, began to move away from the car.

.

Izuku's head throbbed sharply, and he stumbled, Toshinori just managing to catch him before he faceplanted. Four and the other past users hissed at him from the back of his mind.

Someone's coming. Hide.

They were in no condition for another fight.

Toshinori nodded sharply, and pulled Izuku aside, into some bushes. Izuku tried to breathe quietly but was painfully aware that both he and Toshinori were out of breath and raspy. Ragged. They'd been aiming for speed, not stealth, counting on the sounds of combat to cover them.

But if someone was out here—

Izuku smelled smoke. A branch snapped. He held his breath, despite the way his lungs longed for more oxygen. Had Dabi been in the car? Izuku hadn't seen him. He hadn't seen any blue fire. It wasn't like Dabi to hold back.

A pair of black booted feet came into view.

"Well, well, what do we have here?"

.

They found Two standing in a hallway, surrounded by the bodies of soldiers. A small horde of shadow children clung to his legs.

When he laid eyes on Izuku, he sighed.

"Does the world ever give you a break?" he asked.

"Not that I've noticed," said Izuku.