Chapter 14

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"It's Bakugo."

"Old Bakugo," said Todoroki.

"I don't know," said Uraraka. "He hasn't sworn at us yet."

"Wish fulfillment old Bakugo," corrected Todoroki.

First contact, said two voices. Aizawa could recognize one as belonging to Two.

"Stop comparing me to the exploding brat," snapped Two. He returned his attention to Midoriya. "I don't agree with your philosophy," he said. "But this isn't the time or the place."

Midoriya nodded even as he swayed in place, the edges of his body fuzzy.

"Your idea will work. Eight can take him."

"What are you talking about?" asked Aizawa.

"Nine here just ran into that fire user."

"Dabi," supplied Midoriya, voice thin. "Thank you for letting me use your quirk, sensei."

"Anytime," said Aizawa.

"Is there anything we can do?" asked Uraraka.

"Stay back and don't distract him," said Two. "I'd send you on ahead to One, but I need to give him my power if he wants his ridiculous escape plan to work." He crossed his arms. "Focus, Nine."

.

The thing was, Dabi relied on his quirk to the exclusion of everything else. Which was fine. It was a powerful quirk, and his body really wasn't up to quirkless fighting, seeing as it was literally stapled together.

But there was a reason he had not faced Aizawa himself in the training camp, but instead had delegated that task to one of Twice's duplicates. No matter how much his quirk hurt him, no matter how much it reminded him of that man and that time, he did not fare well in fights without it.

Toshinori and Izuku had picked up on this, and, thanks to the joys of partial telepathy and haunted quirks, had managed to come up with a plan.

It was, if Izuku was being honest, a sort of terrible plan, but Izuku and Toshinori were both injured and exhausted, and it was the best they could come up with.

Izuku would hang back and cancel Dabi's quirk, while Toshinori beat him to a pulp.

This division of labor was decided upon through the observation that Toshinori had much greater experience in beating people to pulp and that Izuku probably wouldn't be able to focus on using Aizawa's quirk and fighting at the same time. But Izuku worried. Toshinori had been under so much strain today. His body was in just as bad a shape as Dabi's. If Izuku blinked.

So don't blink.

What a comforting consensus from the peanut gallery in the back of his head.

Nana chuckled, but she sounded strained. Not much else we can do for you right now, kid.

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Toshinori was prepared to fight dirty.

As a hero and Symbol of Peace, he was often faced with the expectation that his fights be clean, straightforward affairs. Usually, he complied with the expectation. Few people could match his strength. Few enemies stood up again or kept fighting after he knocked them back, once. For those enemies who could match him, relatively clean fights were often still the best option to defeat them.

But there had always been exceptions, All for One being chief among them.

Toshinori could fight dirty. It was a skill he knew better than to let lapse.

He knew how much old injuries could hurt, and he had no scruple against going after them. Any weak point was fair game.

(This wasn't even beginning to mention the others, still whispering in the back of his mind, who had maintained the thin line between the light of hope and the darkness of despair for so many years.)

His fist impacted the line of Dabi's medical staples. Toshinori felt them bite into his knuckles, felt Dabi's skin tear around them.

The man – the boy, really, he couldn't be more than a handful of years older than Izuku – reeled back, shaking his hands as if he couldn't quite believe his quirk was gone. Then he looked up, at Izuku, and Toshinori could give him this, at least: He caught on fast.

He snapped an arm out, clotheslining Dabi before he could pass him and attack Izuku. Dabi hit the ground, and Toshinori tried to follow up his advantage with a sharp kick to the head.

But, even with as much experience as Toshinori had, Dabi was younger and sprier. He recovered quickly, retaliating with comparatively clumsy but strong fists.

Toshinori was very aware of the time limit he was on. How long had Izuku kept his eyes open already? Aizawa could only keep his version of the quirk going for a few minutes.

He knew when Izuku started to waver, the concern of the past users going clear and sharp in the back of his head.

Dabi's hands burst into flame.

"Touya!" shouted Izuku.

The man whipped his head around, apparently forgetting that Toshinori was even there.

"We saw your hair dye, you drama queen!"

Toshinori grabbed the sides of Dabi's head, and tried to slam it into his knee, but Dabi pulled free. They were both breathing heavily, now, but Izuku had his eyes back open and fixed on Dabi.

Toshinori doubted they'd be so lucky to distract Dabi again. The others slid into place in his mind, their experience neatly complimenting his own. They needed to finish it before Izuku had to blink again.

They raised their fists.

"Visit your mom, you loser!"

They closed in.

"At least tell the police what happened to you, so they can get your siblings out!"

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So, it turned out Izuku did have something else to contribute to the fight.

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"Please repeat what you told me earlier," ordered the HPSC president.

The hapless liaison with the DNA testing center flinched, then hid the flinch behind a cough. "Well," he said, "our technicians ran Midoriya's DNA through a number of databases, and Midoriya is related to the Scourge of Kamino, but, uh, I think it best if I let her explain the rest." He stepped out of view of the camera, the coward.

The technician waved at the camera. "Hi, uh. So, I guess the first weird thing about the sample you gave me was how contaminated it was. There were, like, almost a dozen different people's worth of DNA in the sample you gave me, which… usually Hawks is better than that? But then I remembered the nomu DNA, and the Scourge's DNA, so in retrospect… Anyway, I sort of ran them all through our databases—"

"Which databases?" interrupted Mr. Brave. "The commission ones, the police ones, the public ancestry ones?"

"All of them," said the technician. "I ran them through the old ones, too, because the Scourge of Kamino is supposed to be over a hundred years old, isn't he? I'm kind of surprised he wasn't run through the old databases himself earlier. You could have closed dozens of cases."

"Get on with it," hissed the offscreen commission liaison.

"But I ran them through, and, uh, one was All Might."

A whisper ran through the room. "He stole All Might's quirk?" asked one hero, traumatized.

"I don't know," said the technician, nervously. "I mean, All Might was there, so it could have just been contaminated in the normal way, but… No, I'll come back to All Might's DNA in a bit. Then there were three other heroes' DNA, Skyrunner, Fidelity, and Lariat."

"We'll have to assume he has their quirks, too," said the commission president grimly, for the benefit of the assembled heroes. "Continue."

"Another matched to the vigilante Forewarning. Then one matched to what was labeled as a 99% surety DNA sequence from Tempest."

"My god," said Mr. Brave.

"Then there were some sequences that matched to samples taken from the scenes of various crimes and terrorist actions but are otherwise unknown. That left two DNA samples that could be Midoriya's assuming he isn't over a hundred years old. They both matched as relatives to the Scourge of Kamino."

"What kind of relatives?"

"Uh, one was rather distant, and was actually had the least DNA present out of all the other strands… The closest possible relation would be half-brother, although cousins might be possible… The other was a parent-child relationship, and the most present DNA sequence, so I would assume that one belonged to Midoriya. The thing is…" She trailed off.

"We don't have all day."

"The thing is, all of the different people I've mentioned also are related to the Scourge of Kamino."

Silence.

"Excuse me," said Mt. Lady, raising a hand. "Did you say all of them? Like, including—"

"Including All Might, yes, though he's probably more like a great-grandson or something along those lines," said the technician. "Once you get more than a generation or two, it's hard to tell, because the ratios of what you get from grandparents aren't even…"

"Do you have anything more to add?"

"Yeah. After running them through the databases… Well, there are dozens of active heroes that are at least loosely related to either them or the Scourge of Kamino, not to mention villains, common criminals, and civilians who had to register their DNA for one reason or another. And the ShiHi cell line? The one that replaced the HeLa line in almost every drug trial after the quirked population got majority status? That's a perfect match." She laughed, clearly on the edge of hysteria. "I mean, I don't know what we expected. He's over a century old, of course he's going to have kids and family members. And he's – And he's clearly into shady medical research. Wouldn't put it past him to have donated to sperm banks, the sick—"

The commission president muted the technician. "You see," he told the heroes, "why we must act to contain and neutralize Midoriya Izuku as a threat as soon as possible. So many heroes being related to an archvillain like the Scourge of Kamino would damage confidence in the hero system, perhaps irreparably."

"Are any of us-?"

"I don't think that's relevant right now, do you?" asked the commission president, smoothly. "What is relevant is ensuring that Midoriya's DNA family tree never gets into public hands." He fell quiet, scanning the heroes with dark eyes. "Regardless of whether or not any of you could find yourselves in it, the fact of the matter is that the ensuing investigations would lay bare other things you may not wish to come to light." He cleared his throat. "Now, Hawks is putting together a team to track down the League of Villains. In light of recent revelations, we believe they have been working closely with Midoriya…"

.

"Maybe you can use my quirk," said Shouto. "If you're fighting Dabi, ice would be the perfect counter."

Midoriya shook his head. "You're not related. Can't."

"What?"

Two sighed. "The trick he did with your teacher's quirk only works on people related to him."

Shouto blinked, then turned to look at Aizawa. "Sensei—"

"Absolutely not," said Iida, loudly.

"You don't know what I was going to say," protested Shouto.

"You can't ask people if they have secret love children! It's improper! Let us simply wait quietly like, ah, I'm not sure we caught your name earlier, sir."

"No, you didn't," said Two.

"In any case, let us wait quietly," said Iida, not one to be easily put out.

"I'm related to Midoriya?" asked Aizawa in tones approaching despair.

"You are," said Two. "I think you're related to one of my younger siblings, like Six is. Possibly to the Shimuras, as well, given the secondary portion of your quirk."

"So," said Shouto, the gears in his brain turning, "Midoriya is related to all of you?"

"Some more distantly than others, but, yes."

"So, he based you off relatives and people he knew in real life."

Two sighed heavily. "Look. That was obviously a lie. Six only bothered with it because of that government bastard that's crawling around."

Midoriya had been right. Shouto's conspiracy theories could be used as an interrogation technique.

"Then what's the truth?" asked Shouto. "Or are you just embarrassed, like Midoriya is about how All Might is clearly his father?"

Midoriya made a very distressed sound, and Shouto realized that maybe this wasn't the time.

"You have no room to talk when the pyromaniac currently trying to roast Eight is your older brother, you peppermint styled weirdo."

"You really are like Bakugo."

"Do you have some sort of death wish?"

"C-can you guys not? This is hard…" said Midoriya. Then, he gasped and fell to his knees. "He got him. Oh, gosh." He took a deep breath. "My eyes."

"Luckily, you won't need them for this," said Two, kneeling in front of Midoriya. "In the movement, I was called Shadow Dragon. One came up with the name. He named my quirk, too. Perception Filter. Wanted to name it Chameleon Circuit for a while, but that made no sense. He was such a nerd. He's still a nerd."

"Yeah?" panted Midoriya. "Guess that… isn't a surprise. He used old manga to support his arguments with—No, it doesn't make it better that you only used that argument once. I mean, sure, I'd probably have made the same—"

"Focus, Nine," said Two, snapping his fingers in front of Midoriya's face.

Shouto stepped forward.

"It's okay, Todoroki," said Midoriya. "I'm just… How did it work? The Perception Filter?"

"No idea. We didn't have fancy tests and doctors on hand to figure out the mechanics. But I can tell you what it did. When it first came in—" Midoriya nodded at this, as if he heard something in the sentence that Shouto was missing, "—I could disappear from the senses of one targeted person, along with anything I was carrying. Sight, hearing, smell – that last will be the important one for you."

"Gigantomachia," said Midoriya, nodding again.

"Exactly. Later, I was able to affect more people at a time, and my range grew. The fewer people I was hiding from, the farther I could reach, up to about a mile. Sometimes, I could draw attention towards myself, too, although I could never keep it up for long."

"Activation?" asked Midoriya.

"Don't think too hard about being hidden. You're blending in. Part of the scenery. No ripples on the surface of the pond. A shadow inside a shadow."

"Okay," said Midoriya. "I think I've got it. Were you… were you ever able to hide other people with you? Otherwise…"

"Sometimes I thought I did. When Three and I worked together, we were always way luckier than we should have been, and there were some incidents with cars… But it never happened in a way I could test. Your best bet is just carrying Eight."

"R-right. Okay. I'll try that."

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"Izuku, you can barely open your eyes. Or stand up. You aren't going to carry me."

"But Two said—"

Toshinori frowned deeply and hoped Two got the message. "Just focus on yourself, right now, alright? Gigantomachia will be looking for you, first, not me."

We've always been thankful Gigantomachia isn't the brightest of All for One's minions.

Even if he is one of the most annoying.

I don't know if annoying is the word I'd use…

Toshinori blinked and shook his head. "You're shaking," he said.

"I'm okay," said Izuku, trying to get up. "T'many quirks at once."

Toshinori put his hands on Izuku's shoulders, silently telling him to stay down. What a time to forget where he had packed the blankets… Although…

He looked back at where he'd propped Dabi, unconscious, up against a tree.

Dabi seemed to have a cold resistance vestigial mutation… although how Toshinori knew that was a mystery for another day (one probably connected with how One for All manifested in Izuku) and he was a fire quirk user. He didn't really need that jacket. Besides, Toshinori was a villain now. Sort of. As he and Izuku had discussed earlier, villains were veritable bastions of pettiness.

He stole Dabi's coat and wrapped it around Izuku's shoulders.

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Miles away, trying to coordinate heroes over a video call, Hawks lost contact with one of his feathers. Specifically, the one he'd hidden in Dabi's coat. He did not frown, twitch, stutter, or otherwise falter. He did, however, curse internally, using words he suspected the hero commission would have like him to never have learned.

Dabi must have found the feather and destroyed it. Hawks had thought he'd hidden it better than that.

This was going to be a pain to explain.

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Giagantomachia paused for a second, then, with a howl, redoubled his attacks.

"Can anyone tell what he's screaming about?" demanded Tomura.

"No idea!" said Toga, her cheerfulness more than a little ragged.

"Hey, boss!" said Twice. "If I made a double of this guy, do you think they'd fight each other, or – Dear god, who in their right mind would want two of these things running around?"

"LITTLE LORD," wailed Machia, "WHERE DID YOU GO?"

"Say, Shigaraki," said Mr. Compress, narrowly dodging a boulder, "you don't – ha – think he's referring to the little green haired – er, white haired – oh, you know what I mean."

Yeah, Tomura did, actually, which meant the brat (who might be Sensei's brat – don't think about it) was around here somewhere, and they'd missed him.

(Like everything else about this situation, Tomura had mixed feelings about this.)

"So, maybe, if the boy and the giant are acquainted, the mother—"

"Do all of you idiots have a death wish? You don't fight two bosses at once unless you want to be pancaked."

"I was thinking she could perhaps calm the giant—"

"Yeah, right before they team up to kill us. What part of this are you not getti-?"

Mr. Compress didn't quite make the dodge and was catapulted into one of the few nearby trees that were still standing. As he lost consciousness, all of the various marbles in his pockets ballooned and broke, disgorging their contents. This meant that Tomura had to rescue Midoriya Inko from being crushed between an entire bus stop shelter (why, Compress, why?) and several logs, because if there was even a chance that she was Sensei's wife, Tomura didn't fancy his chances at staying alive if she was unalived in his general vicinity.

As Tomura was in no way a goody-two-shoes hero student, had never trained himself to safely save people, and had a quirk that literally destroyed everything his touched, this went far from perfectly.

At least Midoriya seemed unharmed.

"Ah," she said. "My shirt." She shifted slightly. "And my bra…"

There was a shout of utter rage from Gigantomachia, and Tomura contemplated just letting Machia kill him. Surely, being stomped flat by a man taller than most five story buildings would be less painful than whatever Sensei would come up with.

"Oh, my, Machia, is that you?" asked Midoriya Inko, quite calmly, as if she weren't standing half naked in the middle of a battlefield in winter. "It's been forever."

"MRS. LORD!" shouted Machia, his eyes tearing up. "I AM SO SORRY! I LOST LITTLE LORD!"

"Oh, really? He was here, then?" Her eyes were glittering. "I'm sure he couldn't have gone too far. If we walk around a bit, I'm sure he'll hear us calling. In the meantime… perhaps you can explain to me what, exactly, you do for my husband? Your role in his business seems to have been downplayed."

.

"Is that better?" asked Toshinori.

Izuku nodded tiredly. Despite Two's instructions, he couldn't keep up Perception Filter and, well, do anything else, really. Toshinori wasn't much better. Izuku could tell, through One for All, that he was also on his last legs.

"Alright. Let's keep going the way we were before," said Toshinori, pulling Izuku up. "Got to get out of Gigantomachia's range, so you can sleep."

He did not say that reaching the Wild Wild Pussycats' camp was now out of the question, with how beaten up they were. They'd be sleeping outside tonight. Hopefully they had enough clothes and blankets…

Izuku shuddered as the pounding sensation in his head increased.

"I'm sure it'll be fine," said Toshinori, guiding Izuku with a hand on his back. "Good, you have the briefcase, good." Toshinori kept muttering encouragement. Izuku really wasn't paying attention, which made him feel terrible, but he had to keep Perception Filter going. He had to keep going. Just a little bit more… Aizawa-sensei and his friends were almost to One. One would get them out before he broke through.

He just had to hold on until then.

.

Midoriya's form flickered and then faded. Two sighed.

"Is he alright?" asked Aizawa. "Is he safe?"

"As safe as he and Eight can be, wandering through a forest filled with All for One's minions while the government tries to track him down in the middle of winter," replied Two. "Which isn't very safe, speaking from experience. Come on, let's go." Two walked out the hole in the wall, not waiting to see if Aizawa or any of the kids followed.

"You're calling Yagi Eight, now?" asked Aizawa.

"That's his number, yeah. Hurry up."

"Yagi, not Yagi's… impression, his copy in Midoriya's mind." Two didn't answer. "You aren't impressions or copies at all, are you? You're real people, somewhere, that Midoriya is connected to. Why pretend otherwise?"

"Some of the others thought Nine could fix things with the government, if they didn't know what was really going on. Thought it would be 'worth it.' So stupid, after everything…" They walked through the compound gate and into a living room.

"It seems awfully contrived, though. Why try to be dead heroes? Why pick people like Skyrunner and Fidelity to impersonate?"

Two snorted. "They weren't impersonating anyone. They really are Skyrunner and Fidelity. Except for Eight and Nine, we're all dead, otherwise we would have finished this by now. Eight almost did, all on his own."

They turned a corner. Two young children played in a bedroom while a teen watched on. One child was obviously a younger version of Two. That hair was distinctive. The other child had a short curtain of white hair. They had action figures they were playing with, although Aizawa didn't recognize who they were of.

First contact, said a single, young voice.

The face of the teen leaning against the wall was scribbled out, as if with a marker.

"Don't look too closely at that one," said Two.

"Who is that?" asked Uraraka.

"All for One. I suppose you'd call him the Scourge of Kamino."

"He's your older brother?" asked Todoroki, his eyebrows raised into his hairline.

"Don't be disgusting. Biologically speaking, he was my cousin."

Oh, no, thought Aizawa, don't tell me... "Is he the one you have locked away? The one you don't count as being 'among your number?'"

Two sighed again.

"Are you doing that instead of swearing?" asked Todoroki. "The sighing, I mean."

"I told you to stop comparing me to the explosion brat! I—" Two tsked, then frowned. "Something's not right."

"What is it?"

"This isn't a safe memory, just a quick one. One should have been here to pick you up by now."

"What do you mean, it isn't safe?" asked Iida, before Aizawa could. "No matter how immersed we are here, it is only a memory, isn't it?"

"You did hear the part where he's breaking in, didn't you? And the part where we're all real people? Are those glasses just for show?"

"The real All for One is trying to break into Midoriya's mind," said Aizawa.

"W-wait," said Uraraka, "but… Izuku… That wouldn't mean that the commission was right…"

"Of course not. Nine would probably cut off all his limbs before betraying his friends. Even if I don't agree with him, and think he shouldn't… I can still see that. But where is One?"

"Why are you telling us this?" asked Aizawa. "You've told us why the others didn't. But you have no reason to say anything, yourself, do you?"

Two turned slightly, to gaze at Aizawa out of the corner of his eye.

"As long as we're waiting, I might as well collect as much information as possible, right?"

"It's insurance," said Two, finally. "It's hard to see how this will turn out. Eight wants to take Nine out of the country, but even if that works, All for One will still be here. Someone else needs at least part of the story." He turned more fully to face Aizawa, lips pressed tight against his teeth. "You have to understand. I want Nine to… do well. I don't want this on him. He's a kid. So are you." He looked at the students, then back at Aizawa. "You're all kids. If I can get someone else to take care of this for him, while he and Eight are somewhere safe…"

"All for One is in Tartarus," said Aizawa.

"You think something like that's going to stop him? I'm not entirely sure death would stop him. It didn't stop us, and he's at least as stubborn."

Well, wasn't this an impossibly heavy weight to set on Aizawa's shoulders.

"I have no sympathy, you lazy caterpillar lookalike. You're an adult, aren't you? Get help if you can't do it yourself. If I find out you pushed it onto children, I'll kill you."

"Wow, he's secretly soft, too, just like Bakugo," said Todoroki. "Are you sure you're not related."

"There is legitimately something wrong with you. Do you—"

.

The hinges of the vault snapped, and the door crumpled outward. Another well-placed kick sent the door tumbling outward with a crash.

Shaking his hand, All for One stepped into the mindscape and smiled.

"Well," he said, dragging his gaze over the assembled One for All users, his sworn enemies and the closest thing he had to family, "isn't this a lovely little reunion?"