Can You Tell Me How You Feel, Look Me in the Face? (I've Always Wanted to Know)
"I'd give you everything but that would never be good enough and that's alright with me. You take me for granted; I tried to help you be who you wanna be. I'm a sucker for a complication…"
"Here goes another week, it must seem. You weren't worth my time, you weren't worth my time; I still let you take it from me…"
('Same Book But Never the Same Page' by 'A Day to Remember')
When Ochako woke up, she immediately felt a flaming, horrific pain in her chest and leg, gasping for breath as tears tracked down her face.
Her breath came out shallow and wheezy and she began to instinctively panic when she realized her arms were tied behind her back in some way and her feet were stuck together. She tried to lean forward and look at her feet but her whole body felt sluggish and lifeless while her vision blurred. Ochako also realized, to her horror, that she was freezing and she couldn't feel her face very well.
"Good morning," an unpleasantly familiar - and irritatingly, slightly sarcastic - voice said from somewhere to her left, and Ochako's chest began to heave harder in response.
"Wh-where… What did you do to me? Where are we?" She spat out, trying to sound more confident than she felt as she stuttered. Ochako realized that she was in the jaws of death and her mind was still processing her primal, baseline fear at the prospect.
Distantly, her mind asked, why was she still alive at all? But, in her panic, she couldn't bear to focus on that.
"I didn't do anything to you," All for One replied simply. She still couldn't see him. "And we are in the Tokyo subway system presently, with a skyscraper's worth of rubble on top."
Ochako tried to call on One for All but it wasn't working. She made a strangled sound of irritation, then found that the slightest movements were beginning to feel agonizing. There was an uncomfortable pressure on her left leg and what felt like fire in her chest. Her breathing was coming out faster and shallower every second and the pain intensified accordingly.
"Did you… Did you take it?!" Ochako said as loud as she could muster. She meant to yell but her voice came out scratchy and muted in her fear. All for One merely cleared his throat in annoyance.
"No," All for One said. "You're just wearing two pairs of quirk-suppressing handcuffs."
Ochako blinked in confusion and her vision began to clear a bit. She glanced down the best she could and saw that, indeed, her boots had been taken and she had handcuffs on her ankles. She turned towards where she thought All for One's voice was coming from but it hurt and she cried out in pain at the sharpness of the feeling. Tears stung her cheeks but they were hard to feel in the cold and that didn't improve her panicking, either.
All for One walked around into her field of vision at a slow pace, twirling four familiar-looking pink rings on his index fingers. Her gauntlets and her boots, she realized, collapsed into their portable forms. Her vision swam in and out and her head was pounding, making processing what she could see difficult.
"Give those back," Ochako growled as she screwed her eyes shut in pain.
All for One's expression was neutral when she opened her eyes again. Ochako shivered under his gaze but also because of how cold it was wherever they were. Her costume was built for flight and high-intensity, short-duration combat. It was not built for long-term exposure to the elements and Ochako cursed herself at that moment for having discouraged Melissa from working on that concept a few months previously.
"You haven't noticed yet, have you?" All for One replied quietly. Ochako blinked a few more times and looked down towards the main source of her pain and the uncomfortable pressure.
Then she gasped when her brain finally processed and accepted that there was half a meter of rebar sticking out of her left thigh.
"F-fuck, I… Did you do that? What happened?! I…" Ochako trailed off as All for One remained impassive. Ochako's crying intensified as she saw how much blood was soaking her costume at her thigh and how ripped and damaged it was.
She knew that she needed to get a handle on her panic but she was increasingly realizing she was going to die in some hole and the last person she was going to see was All for One. The prospect of losing to him - and letting Nana down - was almost too horrible to consider. The prospect of dying, possibly alone - or worse, at his hands -was unbearable.
"I… I don't want to die…" She whispered, voicing her fear out loud impulsively, and All for One slowly exhaled from his nose. His breath came out like fog in the frigid air, then her vision was blurry again through tears.
All for One didn't say anything for a bit and Ochako wondered if it was all going to be for nothing. If she had really failed Toshinori, failed to live up to what he had seen in her. If she had failed their superhuman society and if All for One would just walk away and really burn everything to the ground once and for all.
She made a promise to Inko that she wouldn't let her son go on like this, no matter what it took, and she'd failed.
"I can help you if you promise you won't try to kill me if I do," All for One said after a long pause.
Ochako tried to clear her throat but it hurt and her breathing was getting more ragged the more she panicked. She realized, distantly, that she was going into shock and that she needed All for One to do something before she died. She needed… She needed-
He was important. You needed him.
Nana's voice was like a thunderclap in the dark in the back of her mind. Ochako was almost frightened by it, but it gave her focus.
"Please…" She gasped out, then her vision went starry and white as she began to tremble.
Ochako didn't really register anything for a few minutes after that as she shook uncontrollably. There was… sound and the sensation of being moved gently around. There was something warm suddenly, behind her and she felt the warmth wrap around her neck and chest armor for a brief time. It was the only feeling she could really cling to in her panic, so she did and, after a long time, she began to come back to reality.
Slowly, she realized that the warmth behind her was rising and falling. She registered that she was leaning against All for One; specifically, she had her head against his upper chest and her back in his lap and he was sitting cross legged behind her, with his arms around her front and above her chestpiece.
Ochako looked down and saw that he had propped her feet up on a piece of broken concrete, so she was tilted back into him. She could feel his shins against the small of her back through her costume and she brushed his boots when she wiggled her fingers around searchingly.
"What… what are you doing? D-don't… don't touch me," Ochako said, afraid of what he planned to do. She tilted her head back and saw that All for One's expression was pensive.
"First of all, you'll freeze if I don't do this," All for One said matter-of-factly, looking away from her and towards the rest of the room. "It dropped to negative fifteen degrees while you were out as the weather got worse and there's no heat in this space anymore." Ochako took a sharp, painful breath. "Second of all, I already did what I could for your leg but you need to relax before you have another panic attack and go into shock again."
"Why?" Ochako immediately asked, suspicion creeping into her tone. All for One hummed, deep in his chest, and she felt it against the back of her head.
There was an inherent intimacy and, accordingly, frustration to their position that aggravated Ochako. She wanted him to let her go so she could proceed to kick him in the face. Rebar in her thigh and handcuffs or not, she wasn't about to be manhandled by her archnemesis.
But part of her, the part that was terrified of dying and leaving her parents behind, of fading away without anyone else in a dark hole, of failing every promise she'd ever made as a Hero and a person, didn't want him to ever let go.
"It wouldn't be interesting if you died like this," he said after a moment's pause. He was a terrible liar and Ochako narrowed her eyes at him. "I rather admire you, Uraraka," All for One continued, surprising her. Ochako blinked in confusion, then her expression settled into a scowl.
"I don't care," she replied after a moment. All for One did not visibly react with his mask of impassiveness as she looked up at him above her and he continued to look away.
"I am… very tired," All for One admitted, his lips curled into the slightest pout. "I don't know if I can heal you right now, if I took the spike out of you. And… I was also hurt."
Ochako slowly processed that statement, then she couldn't decide what was more irritating: the fact that he couldn't heal her or the fact that she was relying on All for One to heal her. She saw dark, dried blood on his forehead as well and remembered him getting cracked in the back of the head by rubble. She realized that his internal injuries could have been severe… and she suspected he hadn't healed himself based on his words.
"What happened, did you get your ass kicked too much by Dynamight?" Ochako said bitterly, knowing that Bakugou was a sore point for All for One.
She wasn't precisely sure why. She never became very good friends with the explosive blonde at UA and he never deigned to tell her what the history was between him and All for One. Nana also never brought it up directly, though she had alluded that Bakugou was important, too, somehow. Bakugou also didn't know about One for All, so Ochako had no real way to justify her interest in All for One's backstory to him.
She did know that Bakugou was always madder than hell whenever he had to fight the archvillain or his henchmen, though.
"No… but I haven't eaten or slept for three days," All for One said. Ochako coughed once in surprise, processing that information, then took note of his dark eyebags now that she was close enough to study his face in detail.
"What the fuck do you mean, you haven't eaten or slept for three days? You…" Ochako paused and watched sadness flicker across All for One's face for a moment.
Depression.
Analysts for the Hero Commission had speculated on All for One's mental state. They theorized that he was likely abused in the custody of the original All for One and he never had a good personal relationship with Shigaraki even if they worked together to further All for One's legacy as their own. Shigaraki was captured and sent to Tartarus along with the remaining high-ranking League of Villains members last year and it was believed that All for One was operating alone now.
So he wasn't eating or sleeping anymore and Ochako was going to bleed out because of it.
"Wonderful," Ochako said with more than a little rising irritation. All for One did not immediately reply, verbally, but she watched him swallow thickly. Maybe she wasn't being fair but maybe she didn't care, either.
Nana would've wanted her to care but, then again, Nana wasn't the one who had to physically be present in this wretched place.
He still had his arms around her and he threaded his fingers together at the collar of her armored chestpiece. Nothing about his touch was inappropriate or forward but the inherent discomfort of being as close as she was to her nemesis made Ochako shiver, even with how warm-
Ochako watched his breath go out into the air as fog and realized how cold the room was. Her feet were so much colder than her upper body, now that she focused on it, and she squinted at the thought. All for One generated so much warmth and she wondered if he was using a quirk for that; it certainly felt that way. She knew that her legs were cold partially from blood loss and she was glad, at least, that she wasn't lightheaded anymore thanks to being propped up.
Being thankful for first aid from him was only moderately humiliating.
Looking around, she could now see properly where the hell they were. They were definitely in a subway tunnel, though it was collapsed on both sides. Most of the walls were cracked and falling apart and Ochako saw water dripping from the ceiling and freezing to the ground. There were only two lights still working and one of them was flickering.
Ochako realized she had no idea where in the subway system they were and that digging them out without using blasting or other destructive mechanisms could take days.
"You could have just left me to die," Ochako said, voicing her final conclusion out loud. "I would've just bled out slowly or froze to death. Isn't that the kind of death you want to give me?"
She glanced back up at All for One to find him grimacing as he looked away. He seemed… flustered and all at once Ochako was reminded how she had only turned twenty and so had he and he seemed so… normal now.
"I could have," All for One agreed calmly. He didn't say anything else, so Ochako growled in frustration.
"Why are you like this?" Ochako said angrily, before realizing that was a more open-ended question than she really intended it to be. She felt All for One shifting behind her, though he continued to look away.
"I used to be a normal kid," All for One admitted in a quiet voice. "All I ever wanted to do was help people and all the world ever told me was, 'you're not good enough to help people.' When Father took me, part of me… Part of me was relieved at the idea that maybe I would matter, after all."
"That's stupid," Ochako said, feeling no sympathy whatsoever or, at least, so she told herself. There was a strangeness to hearing a story she already knew from his actual perspective, though. "What good does it do to 'matter' if all you do is hurt people to get there?"
What good does it do to be important if no one knows the whole truth? Nana added, words spoken silently into the expanse of Ochako's mind directly. All for One, to her immense frustration, chuckled ruefully at her, still looking away.
"What good does it do to want to help people if all they ever do is hurt you?" All for One replied in a low whisper, and that gave Ochako pause.
Be careful against the boy without a fate, Ochako.
Nana's voice again, clear and bright and true, cut through Ochako's irritation. She blinked slowly but All for One made no indication that she had said the words out loud. Nana used to like to do that - to speak through Ochako to emphasize her points, especially around Toshinori and Sir Nighteye - though she didn't do it very often anymore; not when she had given up hope.
"That's selfish," Ochako said after a moment, refocusing on All for One. "You… you learn to help people, regardless of your own personal desires, because it's the right thing to do."
All for One hummed again and again she felt it on the back of her head through his bodysuit. It irritated her on a deep, baseline level, as another reminder of the situation she was in. He was lucky he had handcuffs and she still had half a mind to knock him in the chin with the top of her head. Maybe she could get him to bite his own tongue.
"You're right but I guess I'm not a good person like you. Never got that kind of chance, I suppose."
"You're just making excuses for yourself," Ochako countered. "You helped me, so clearly you have the capacity for it. You just rationalize the bad things you do for yourself."
Ochako watched All for One swallow again, tracing the lines on his neck and the movements of his Adam's apple. He hadn't looked at her for what felt like several minutes at this point but, finally, he glanced down.
His eyes were striking this close, deep and bright in their crimson with little flecks of gold and hazel. It was a false color, his true colors modified and taken by All for One just like the rest of him. She had seen them in the dreams, in the memories, and in the photographs. The thought was surprisingly painful to consider.
He was pale and seemed cold in the face, colder than he should have looked for how warm he felt.
"Are you not keeping yourself warm?" Ochako asked, voicing her suspicion out loud.
"I'm concentrating the warmth in my arms, chest, and legs," All for One replied shortly, then he looked away again. It seemed like he didn't want to look at her but, when he had looked at her, it seemed like he didn't want to look at anything else.
Ochako said nothing at first. Instead, she slowly tilted her head forward so she could drill a hole in the wall with her glare. She was annoyed, angry, and cold and looking forward reminded her that there was fucking rebar in her thigh, so she leaned her head back again.
"I hate you," Ochako said. It came out with less conviction than she would've hoped given their present predicament, more like a pout than anything, though All for One's reaction was priceless.
His cheeks were lightly dusted with pink - and there was no hiding it with how pale he was - as he frowned deeply. It accentuated his freckles as he refused to look at her. His black hair was matted to his forehead by sweat and blood, so it wasn't hiding his expression like it normally did… and so he wasn't safe behind it, like she suspected he usually felt.
He looked, simply put, like she had just kicked his puppy and looked right at him as she did.
"You don't know anything about me," All for One said quietly after a moment, and Ochako narrowed her eyes at him.
"You don't know anything about me, either," she replied flatly, and All for One actually snorted at her in amusement.
He slowly shifted, a bit more thoroughly this time, and Ochako made a small noise of irritation at how he jostled her. He unlaced his fingers and gently guided her shoulders into a slightly different position, then he returned his hands and arms to where they were. In the brief moment in between, Ochako was treated to how frigid the air had gotten and decided that demanding he move away was distinctly unwise.
"Uraraka Ochako. Primary quirk: Zero Gravity. Doesn't function how I would expect, relative to physics. Requires a five-fingered touch, result is that your hands are a vulnerability; you wear advanced armor on your hands to compensate. Secondary quirk: One for All. Super strength, super speed, energy construct attacks called 'Blackwhip,' the ability to levitate called 'Float,' and an innate, though unstable, ability to detect threats called 'Danger Sense.'
"Born December 27th, age twenty, stable home, parents still married. Family struggled with financial issues growing up, resolved to become a Hero to support them. Met Yagi Toshinori a year before applying for UA and became the Ninth Bearer of One for All. Motivations have shifted, genuinely enjoys working to save people and even other Heroes, well-regarded among peers and the public, considered the new 'Symbol of Hope' by the media.
"Your favorite food is mochi. Your favorite movie is 'From the Depths of Dark Water' by Nakata Hideo, your favorite television show is 'American Horror Story,' and you used to be late to class in your first year of UA because you'd accidentally activate your quirk in your sleep. Your old mittens were threadbare and, when Eraserhead finally confronted you, he had Present Mic knit you a new pair."
Ochako was speechless.
Her mouth hung open as she stared at All for One, her head tilted comically too far backwards and her bangs swept back. He turned his head and coughed once, awkwardly, before daring to look down at her again. He was surprisingly red in the face, all things considered.
"It took me two years to break the habit of speaking so quickly I couldn't be understood when I get into things, after I gained this quirk and took over the League of Villains. It took me three more years to write an entire notebook's worth of notes on you, your abilities and how to defeat you." His red eyes were surprisingly intense and he didn't seem remorseful at all. "It was fun and I enjoyed the challenge. You're… a good rival to have had."
"So why haven't you killed me yet? If you know all that, you must have had the opportunity. You could've killed me when we met the first time. You could've killed me hundreds of times in the last few minutes," Ochako said, and she glared daggers at All for One as she recovered her composure. To her surprise, he kept looking at her.
"You know, one night when you were in your second year at UA, I stood over Katsuki Bakugou's bed in his dorm room as he slept and I considered to myself for about twenty minutes how many pieces of him I wanted to leave behind."
Ochako paled as All for One spoke. He spoke calmly and in an even voice, as if he were telling her a story about what he had for dinner the day before. The incongruity of it was almost startling and she was starkly reminded of how dangerous he really was, contrasted with how… vulnerable and helpless he came across as when he was alone with her in this moment.
Like a lost child in the middle of a murky ocean of death, looking for its mother.
"UA had no idea I was there. None of the security caught me. I was finally going to have my revenge on my childhood bully. The boy who told me I was useless and worthless, that I would never amount to anything and could never be a Hero because I wasn't lucky enough to be born with a quirk. The boy who told me I should seek death so I could chase a better quirk in the next life and be a Hero that way." All for One pursed his lips. "And in the end? I walked away."
Ochako blinked slowly at All for One, processing. So that answered her long-standing questions regarding Bakugou, she supposed, but she wasn't sure how to react - either to what she had just learned about Bakugou or All for One, for that matter.
He… walked away?
"Why? Did you forgive him?" Ochako asked, and she watched All for One's lips curl into a rather awful, frightening smile for just a moment. Then his mouth smoothed out into a thin line.
"No. I did not forgive him. I hated him so much after my father trained me and killing him was meant to be the completion of my training. But my father didn't understand the conclusions I would draw from his teachings."
All for One's eyes flicked away, towards Ochako's legs - and where the rebar was - before his gaze settled back on her. He had a degree of conviction in his eyes, his lips pulled taut in a not-quite-frown, but there was hesitation there, too. She wondered if he was lying but whether to her or to himself, she could not hope to say.
"I realized that it was never really about Katsuki, was it? He hated me and he tried to beat me down but he was only doing what he was told to do by our superhuman society. Everyone only ever does what they're told to do, I realized. Everyone marches to someone else's drumbeat, even the people who think they're the drummers." All for One paused and cleared his throat. "So I decided I would not kill Katsuki and I would not march to my father's drums anymore.
"My father had been dead for years by that point," All for One added, seemingly more so to himself, "but I decided he couldn't control me anymore, even in death. I still hear him, though. All for One is a rather inconvenient roommate in my mind."
Ochako thought about the vestiges and specifically Nana Shimura, who was the most active of the vestiges and often gave Ochako advice or direction. The vestiges of One for All were generally kind and helpful people and they weren't the worst thing in the world to share her mind with. Ochako imagined sharing her mind with Hisashi Midoriya, All for One, the man who would be king, and shuddered at the thought.
"My father does not approve," All for One finished, then he closed his mouth firmly and refocused on Ochako, almost as if he'd said something he didn't quite intend to. Ochako raised an eyebrow, trying to puzzle out what that was supposed to mean.
"Approve… of what?" Ochako asked.
"…Of anything," All for One responded, somewhat reluctantly. "Of what I've done with my power, of how I've handled my life as the supposed archvillain of Japan, of my being near you at this moment. He's screaming at me right now to tear your heart out and reclaim One for All for myself."
Ochako opened and closed her mouth a few times, then paled. Eventually, she turned her head away, trying to find something else to look at, instead.
"That's frightening," she whispered, being entirely sincere. It was frightening how normal he could appear, yet how dangerous he really was. She… she just wanted him to be normal, she realized, and the thought was almost startling.
All for One slowly shrugged and Ochako rose with the motion and made a small whimper of discomfort at the pain.
"I'm sorry," he said in response to her pain. "I wonder if this is what schizophrenic people experience, except I know the voice in my head is real," All for One added, and Ochako tilted her head back to raise an eyebrow at him. "You know," he continued when she did not immediately say anything, "I hated my father. I hated him when I found out who he was and I still hated him when he spent three years beating his teachings into me like a weapon being forged. I still hate him now and I ignore his crazed ramblings in the back of my mind."
He paused, glancing away, and the way he looked so small took Ochako's breath away. She was reminded of young children trapped in the rubble of collapsed or burning buildings. His expression was a cry for help.
"It… would be nice if you didn't call me All for One," he finished, and Ochako didn't quite know what to say. She swallowed and thought very carefully about her response.
Several moments of silence passed as she tried to find the right words. To her surprise, he looked at her the whole time and it made finding the right words more difficult, to her confusion and annoyance. His gaze was piercing and intense but all she could think about was how it was supposed to be green and not red and the sheer tragedy of it all.
When she began speaking, she went very slowly, trying to put things together in the right order.
"Akatani Mikumo; given name at birth: Midoriya Izuku. You were not born with a quirk. At age ten, you were… kidnapped, taken away from Midoriya Inko. She's still alive but she had to change her name to avoid the constant hounding for her connection… to you. Shigaraki Tomura, real name Shimura Tenko, is your adoptive older sibling, though you didn't ever get along. He is currently in Tartarus.
"You've had no official psychological evaluation or interview with police since you gained All for One as a quirk but it is speculated that… you have severe clinical depression and potential psychotic and obsessive tendencies. You have demonstrated a willingness to kill, though you are considered the more reserved leader of the League of Villains, compared to Shigaraki.
"You… you were…" Ochako trailed off and, abruptly, she began to cry.
She began to cry, then she slowly began to laugh hysterically and the shaking hurt her body but she didn't care. All for One made a noise of confused surprise but she didn't care about that, either, as she struggled with what she had realized. Her laugh turned into a sob, then she yelled in frustration, ignoring how her chest was on fire and her throat felt like a desert.
She realized that she really didn't know anything about Mikumo Akatani. She knew a mission profile, certainly, and she knew things about him - metaphysical things, things that might drive her mad if she thought about them too much, things she had constant nightmares about - that she wasn't supposed to know about him, thanks to Nana. But she didn't know anything about him as a person.
Because he wasn't a person to her until perhaps that very moment and grappling with the reality and unreality of that conclusion - the tension between All for One, her fated nemesis, and Izuku Midoriya, the little boy snatched away from his home at age ten and turned into a monster named Mikumo Akatani - felt like…
It felt like she was going to lose her mind, right there in the dark.
All for… Akatani pushed her forward by her shoulders, gently but firmly. Ochako stopped laughing hysterically and just made a long, low pained sound at the motion. Then she almost fell over when the handcuffs disappeared off her wrists and Akatani stood up.
Her vision swam and went blurry through her tears but she caught herself on her hands and winced at the soreness. Her arms had been stuck like that for too long and she wanted to rub them for the next hour, except she had to keep herself propped up so she wouldn't bleed out. She watched Akatani, unfocused, as he walked around.
She brought her right arm up and furiously rubbed her eyes with the sleeve of her costume. Then she gasped in surprise and horror as he atomized the handcuffs on her ankles too. He threw the little bands for her armor on the ground near her side after that.
"Overhaul," she whispered, though Akatani didn't respond.
Instead, he began to walk away towards one side of the subway where there was rubble. His gait was angry and determined but she noted that he was limping, favoring his left side. What she glimpsed of his expression was confusing; she couldn't tell if he was angry… or just upset.
"What… what are you doing?" Ochako asked, her voice hoarse and rough from crying and a general lack of water. Akatani did not turn to look at her as he atomized one of the larger rocks. That disturbed the pile of rubble and she watched a good sized chunk hit him on the shoulder, though he did not visibly react to it.
He didn't say anything, either, in response to her.
"Akatani, what are you doing?"
He paused then, as rocks began to roll down the pile of rubble from him disturbing it. But he didn't turn his head as he spoke.
"I… I can't stay in this space with you. It's not safe… It's not safe for either of us. I don't want to hurt… I just… I want to get out and leave and I can't…" He trailed off, and she watched his shoulders begin to shake. He was crying and having a panic attack of his own now, she realized.
Then he began tearing at the rubble again, atomizing larger rocks and pushing smaller ones away by hand. Ochako grunted in pain and forced herself to shift. The pain in her leg was horrific but she got her glove links and boot links on, gritting her teeth through tears at how much it hurt to move. She pressed the buttons, then her arms and legs were enveloped in light.
Then, at least, she had boots and gloves again. She attempted to stand - which was an awful mistake, as she found out as soon as she tried to put any pressure on her left leg. She screamed in pain and almost rolled over onto the rebar as the bandage on her leg ran red again and blood pooled slowly onto the ground.
Akatani did not stop what he was doing in response to her scream. Ochako growled in fury and sorrow and pain, then she put her hand on her arm. Her gauntlet's fingertips retracted and she made herself weightless. That let her rise up into a reasonable position and she used Float to stop her momentum.
"Akatani, stop, you're going to… It's not stable, you'll get yourself crushed," Ochako said, surprising even herself with how genuinely worried she felt and sounded as she attempted to hop over to him on one leg. It was slow-going without being able to walk properly.
"You don't care," Akatani replied in a flat, muffled tone. He wasn't looking at her and he was still shaking, almost violently now. She realized he probably wasn't seeing anything at all and he may not even have realized who she was anymore.
She thought about his words and wondered: did he mean that she didn't care about him or that no one cared about him? Because she wasn't sure he was talking to her specifically at all. He was a villain - the villain, even, the boogeyman haunting superhuman society - but she realized that he was also someone that no one had ever thought was worth saving.
She made it to him and caught his arm as he almost brained her by mistake. He was completely out of control, throwing rubble away with reckless abandon now. One for All flared around her and she forced him to spin around and face her.
"Enough," she said sharply. She wasn't sure what her plan was or what she wanted; she wanted him to stop, certainly, and… she realized she didn't want him to hurt himself, either.
A faraway part of her mind asked if she should hug him and never let go, in a voice that didn't quite sound like her own.
Akatani surprised her by lashing out wildly, trying to bat her away in a daze. She determined he was definitely having a panic attack. He wasn't using his quirk to be stronger - he was just reacting on instinct - so Ochako caught his attack with her other hand. One for All bathed the room in soft pink light and made the air around them pleasantly warm.
She watched the pink wildfire flutter in Akatani's eyes. They were shimmering in his tears and he had a crazed, frustrated look on his face, like he was halfway between absolute anger and an unfocused, confused sorrow. Like he was one wrong move from falling apart and she was holding him up. He tried to push her away again and it was difficult to hold herself in place with Float.
Ochako grunted in annoyance, then reflexively pushed Akatani directly into the wall to their right, back-first, trying to pin him. It was harder than she intended and the tile cracked from the impact. It knocked the wind out of him and he gasped and sank to the ground in a daze. She let him go and he fell entirely into a slumped sitting position.
Ochako maneuvered herself so she was next to him with her back to the wall. Then she released Zero Gravity, keeping herself up with Float, and slowly lowered herself to the floor. When she was finally situated, she was in incredible pain and breathing heavily from the exertion. She realized that she needed to keep her legs up, so she swung her ankles over his legs so at least they would be elevated.
"Akatani… Akatani?" She said, quieter than she really wanted to. She looked over and realized that he had passed out.
"Akatani! You can't… You have to stay awake. Stay awake!" Ochako said, her voice rising. Her eyelids were very heavy as well.
"Akatani… I'm sorry, I… Please, wake up!" She said, frantic. She didn't mean to hurt him. She didn't… She didn't want to be alone.
She kept shaking him until she didn't have energy anymore.
Then Ochako slumped into Akatani and lost consciousness.
Another dream from Nana and another one that Ochako has seen before.
Adult Ochako stands in a familiar, partially destroyed underground chamber. Off to the side at the entrance, little Ochako comes barreling into the room, chasing after Lemillion and struggling to make sure that the worst doesn't come to pass. Pink, ethereal fire surrounds her and lights up the corridors as she moves, the power of One for All lighting up the dark.
It is the day of the raid on the Shie Hassaikai and Ochako has spent the better part of the morning struggling to reach Eri before Overhaul does. Lemillion ran ahead, heedless of how unwise that was, so Ochako ran ahead, too, blowing through every other villain that got in her way. They couldn't hope to stop the Ninth Bearer of One for All, not with how focused she is on saving that little girl.
But as little Ochako walks into the room, adult Ochako watches on as she is not greeted with what she expected.
Little Ochako expected to find Lemillion fighting Overhaul and his guards. She expected Overhaul to be more than a match for the young Hero, with his immense power and ability to destroy. She expected to find devastation, a fierce battle, and generally some kind of back and forth still.
She didn't expect to find All for One, holding Overhaul in the air by his neck and slowly choking the life out of the Yakuza boss, as Overhaul is missing both legs at the shins and dark crimson splashes onto the ground.
"Oh… Hello, Uravity," All for One says quietly, turning to look at little Ochako. Adult Ochako remembers this moment vividly and the terror, wonder, and awe she felt seeing how powerful All for One really was.
The dream is silent but she still hears his words sometimes when she has normal nightmares.
"Lemillion already took Eri and ran. I… suggested that he did not want to be between my quarry and myself," All for One says, turning back to Overhaul with a blank expression. Overhaul grips All for One's wrist, trying to fight back, but…
Nothing is happening. Little Ochako realizes that Overhaul should have been able to disintegrate All for One, yet nothing is happening.
All for One raises his right hand and she watches his Rivet Stab tendrils form five razor sharp claws on his fingers. Then, little Ochako gasps and covers her mouth in horror as All for One tears Overhaul's heart right out of his chest, taking his time to do so. There are spatters of gore as Overhaul gurgles and tries to scream.
Then he is still and All for One crushes his heart in his hand. Blood seeps from his fist and spills to the ground.
"Overhaul did not understand what happens when you take children with immense potential and abuse them to fit your vision of the future," All for One says quietly, turning back to Ochako. His red eyes are piercing and intense and, behind them, crimson lightning sparks like wildfire.
"You'd do well to remember what happens when you push someone too far… until they break, Uraraka Ochako, the Ninth Bearer of One for All," he says. He speaks in a dazed, quiet tone, like he isn't really seeing or addressing her at all.
Overhaul's corpse is atomized in All for One's left hand, exploding into a mere splash of blood into the rest of the room. All for One drops his hand and Ochako watches the crimson liquid sizzle off of it.
It sizzles as All for One uses Overhaul to clean himself off from Kai Chisaki's remains.
"Choose your battle wisely, Uravity. I'll be seeing you, I'm sure."
Then All for One walks away as Ochako sinks to her knees. She is not afraid because she has long since accepted that she is not yet ready - not yet trained enough - to take on her archnemesis. She has long since accepted that, for whatever reason, he waits for her to be ready and the thought that he is so content to wait for that day is alarming in its own right.
But what she does feel is grief. She feels grief at what the boy before her has become. She feels her own grief but, more importantly, she feels the grief of Nana Shimura, crashing over her like a tsunami, as she reckons with what has been lost.
As Nana Shimura reckons with what has been taken from her by All for One, another stab wound in the heart of a guardian angel and proof that angels can fall, too, as Ochako feels Nana lose hope.