Ties that Bind

by Mirrond

All Might left his home that evening hoping to find a successor. Instead he found his old lover (that he thought died years ago), discovered that he has a son, offered him his quirk... and adopted a few additional children. After all, the best answer to All for One being a stepfather to your son is becoming a stepfather to his children, right? [Dadmight or Dad for One? Yes.]

60. Chapter 59: Innocence Lost III

Monster King - That's my intent :P

TheGreatBubbaJ - xD

Detrametal - Absolutely. And I like their dynamic as well xD

PokeKing Charizard - Thankfully, he's about to spent the rest of forever in prison.

InfinityMask - Aye. Gonna bite them in the ass real soon.

(***)

"Message from Gang Orca: Beast and Curator have been apprehended." One of the aides announces triumphantly. He has valid reasons to be happy.

"Status of the first assault group?" Sir Nighteye replies with a question, answering all the victorious looks exchanged between the people present in the command center.

"Miruko and Gang Orca injured and exhausted, but claim to still be combat capable." The aide replies. "Bloodblade appears to disagree. Shishido is heavily injured and currently evacuated to the field hospital. As for the remaining heroes…"

The list goes on and on. Sir Nighteye quickly summarizes it in his mind with the words 'not bad'. They have three fatalities, something almost impossible to avoid in an engagement of this scale, and a solid thirty percent of the regular heroes are injured or too exhausted to continue fighting.

That's something around twelve heroes out, if you excluded the three Top Heroes. Considering the fact that they counted no less than one hundred incapacitated or killed villains, including four supervillains (Glassmaker was listed as a confirmed injury, even if they failed to apprehend her), it was certainly a 'not bad' moment.

Less than a hundred enemies left. All of them probably holed up underground. What to do now?

"Sense reports movement in one of the escape tunnels!" Another aide takes that very moment to speak. "It's Overhaul, plus ten according to Lifescan. It seems that they are trying to escape."

There they are. Sir Nighteye was wondering what move was Chisaki going to make. That was… honestly, one of the options, but the one he considered to be the less probable one.

What were the chances of Overhaul - the PLF's main field commander and a man whose quirk made him a nightmare to fight underground - fleeing out of the underground section of the base if it was actually a trap for the heroes?

Low. Extremely low.

"Message to Best Jeanist." Sir Nighteye makes a decision. Hopefully it's the correct one. "Enter the underground section of the compound. Be wary of potential traps, no need to hurry." One of the aides nods and goes on to relay the order. Sir Nighteye turns towards another one. "Message to Sense. Continue monitoring Overhaul's progress. If he approaches the end of the collapse, make Grand create another one beyond it to keep him locked in."

Then he also tells the mobile warp coordinate scrambler on that side of the base to start moving after Overhaul. They have him trapped. Now they just have to make sure that he is safely apprehended.

They have a LOT of questions to ask him.

(***)

Best Jeanist realizes rather quickly that this (almost) certainly isn't a trap. Because the underground section of the base (that they have more or less mapped thanks to Sense's quirk), is in total chaos.

Abandoned equipment and items, a handful of ISP warriors that fled underground when the attack began but didn't manage to get away far enough to regroup with Overhaul's party, generally speaking all signs of a total panic.

As they expected, the other PLF-subsidiary group that was in the base was the Quirkless Liberation Front.

The gunmen were a pain in the ass to deal with, but they had a few body strengthening quirk heroes carrying ballistic shields in front of them. And Crust. The former were responsible for the forward direction, while Crust was jumping around, responding to the QLF flanking attempts.

Not like they were a lot of those. What's more, they still had Lifescan above the ground, his message relayed to them through Sir Nighteye. So they knew of any such attempt beforehand, letting Crust reposition in time. And then, from behind his shield, Edgeshot and Best Jeanist promptly dealt with the counterattack.

It happened twice before the QLF realized that they weren't going to win. And it was enough to mostly deplete the Quirkless Liberation Front's reserves.

The closest they came to encountering a genuine trap was a handful of claymore mines that Best Jeanist promptly turned around with his threads to face the wall of the tunnel (or the other side of the tunnel when there was no one there) and then triggered.

"It's like shooting fish in a barrel." Edgeshot announces. "It's almost too easy."

"So, I'm not the only person who has been having that vague feeling of incoming doom from the time I woke up this morning?" Slidin'Go replies with a question. He is still smiling (then again, he is always smiling, he even laughed in an interview once that he considered naming himself 'Smilin'Go'), but it doesn't seem to be reaching his eyes.

"We have a precognition quirk user in the command post, stop trying to steal his job." Edgeshot shoots back.

"Heads-up, Lifescan reports a larger group of enemies in the next hall." Best Jeanist cuts in. "It seems to include most of the remaining enemy combatants aside from Overhaul's group."

"So, a rearguard." Slidin'Go summarizes, before looking at Best Jeanist, his eyes suddenly narrowing. "I was wondering when they were going to try that. How are we planning to go on with that? Do we have the time to go through them?"

"Any ideas?" Best Jeanist asks. It sounds like the Sliding Hero has one.

"Send me, Crust and half of our boys and girls after them." Slidin'Go replies. Crust gives him a questioning look. "He can deal with gunfire, we can deal with noumus if they have any there. If I remember the underground outline correctly, there is a way around the blockade. Jeanist, Edgeshot and the remaining heroes would go there. If the enemy rearguard would turn too strong, you'd then attack it from behind. If not, you'd go after Overhaul while leaving us to deal with it."

Best Jeanist seems to have quickly contacted Sir Nighteye over the communication network. They are underground, yes, but they placed a handful of relays behind them, which means that they are still within range. And the connection is actually rather strong.

Enough for Sir Nighteye to have heard Slidin'Go proposal. What was left was him communicating his opinion to Best Jeanist.

"Alright, we're going to do it." Best Jeanist announces eventually. "I'm going to announce who goes with which pair of the Top Heroes. Rock Lock, you're with me. X-Less, you go with…"

(***)

"Classic Slidin'Go." Re-Destro smiles again. "I was really worried that he would find no way of splitting off the group, but he managed to do it."

"He should be out of the blast zone when it happens, yeah." Skeptic nods. "Heroes are doing awfully well thus far, aren't they?"

"True." Re-Destro nods. "They planned the operation extremely well. I expected nothing less with Sir Nighteye as its leader. Especially with Valiant right next to him." At least several interesting tactics he saw thus far seemed to be young Midoriya's ideas that Sir Nighteye helped implement and execute properly. "It's a true delight to watch."

Re-Destro was a man who respected wits and an operation plan of a true quality. Even from his enemies. Perhaps especially from them.

"What's the point of complimenting them that much?" His personal assistant - Raven, use her villain name even in your thoughts, Re-Destro, she wants it that way - decides to cut in. "They are our enemies, right? Heroes, dogs of the state and so on?"

Re-Destro sighs. It's a restrained sigh. His personal assistant was a… work in progress, so to say. She seemed dedicated to the cause of the Meta Liberation, but… she needed some urgent fixes.

Considering who her father was, it was probably to be expected. Nasty among other nasties.

"Do you remember what I told you about the cost and value ratio when the decision-making process is involved?" Re-Destro replies towards her. Raven nods. "What's the cost of treating our opponents with respect?"

"I… honestly can only think of missing out on some boasts." She replies. At least she is honest about it, not trying to wiggle her way out of it. "But I fail to see anything of value in that."

"I'd say that defeating an enemy of considerable strength whose power you've acknowledged gives you just as much of a boost to your feeling of self-worth as looking down on your enemy and boasting about your superiority does. "Re-Destro replies. "And there are two more benefits that I can think of. First, is that not looking down on your opponents and actually admiring their strengths helps you both avoid falling into excessive pride… like the one that brought down the HPSC president… and helps you avoid a major humiliation if they manage to turn the tables on you."

"Sounds like… a voice of experience." Skeptic comments. Re-Destro smiles at him.

"What else can I say, I'm still having traumatic flashbacks to that spelling bee in Elementary School." He replies. Skeptic, for all his asocial tendencies, chuckles at the joke. So does his personal assistant. "The point is, recognizing the strength of your enemy makes you approach him in a more… realistic way. Helps you avoid mistakes. Speaking from experience, overkill is always better than underkill. That's the first benefit."

"And the second one?" Raven asks, clearly curious.

"Do not see our enemies as an army of faceless goons that are only varied in their combat skills and meta-abilities." Re-Destro replies. "They have a variety of personal circumstances. That young hero you fight might have been a bullying victim in his hero school, we all know that they aren't free of that especially when you have a 'villainous meta-ability'. If his enemy, a villain, actually treats him with a modicum of respect and compliments his strengths when compliments are due, if he doesn't look down on him like his 'allies' do… then perhaps he'll grow interested in their background. In the ideology they follow and the reason for them becoming villains. And that… might lead them to many interesting places."

She is clearly processing the idea for a few moments.

"Did that… actually happen to you?" She decides to ask. Yes, that's a pretty… specific benefit. Not something that happens often.

"Actually, that's how Geten joined us." Re-Destro admits. She is clearly surprised by that. "Not exactly a former hero, but… he was brought up in a fringe extremist group of the MLA. You know, the genuine quirk supremacists."

Useful for providing the muscle, but… going slightly too far for Re-Destro's taste. However, the MLA wasn't in a position to cut off a significant part of their firepower. Especially now, when they were so close to stepping into the light.

Once the heroes were out of the picture, however…

"He was a product of several generations of quirk marriages." Re-Destro continues. "Forced to train his meta-ability hard practically from its manifestation, brainwashed into thinking that it's the only thing that matters in the world. But then, it turned out that his meta-ability was merely a weaker version of the one that his sister manifested."

"I… don't think that I like where it's going." Raven says. Skeptic nods in the background. Re-Destro merely smiles.

"True." He admits. "They barely interacted, because that group kept them separate. Pretty much used Hypothermia's strength as a further motivation for Geten's mad training. 'Get better', 'be like her, you weakling' and so on. They eventually attempted a coup against me."

"Didn't work awfully well for them." Skeptic cuts in. "Hypothermia, their cherished princess, surrendered immediately. They cherished her a lot, but kind of forgot to ask her if she was sharing their views. Turned out that she did to a degree, just not large enough to want to kill for them. So they panicked and sent Geten."

"And I defeated him." Re-Destro smiles at his memories. "It was a truly beautiful battle. Two mighty meta-abilities clashing, their users having to use every possible trick to come on top. I saw no reason not to compliment his strength, especially when it turned out that he can do more than just manipulate ice, that he can also create it. A genuine meta-ability Awakening and a testament to his hard work."

He almost lost his arm when that happened. It was… close. Extremely close. But with his meta-ability being what it was, this only made him stronger. Enough to - narrowly - win.

"I won." Re-Destro then says. "And then I asked him to join me. Told him that a man of his skills and diligence is wasted on his 'caretakers', who failed to realize what sort of gem they had in front of them the whole time. He defected on the spot - because I was the first person that told him that he wasn't worthless. That recognized his hard work AND his value not just as a meta-ability holder, but simply as a human being."

She is clearly processing the story. Re-Destro decides to add some closing words before returning his attention to the battle on the screen.

"We're villains, my dear." He says. "We're killing people, yes. But we're doing this to make the world a better place. A monster will never make the world a better place. And kicking people around for our own enjoyment, looking down on them as worthless pawns to be exploited… that's something that a monster does." She has an expertise on that, thanks to her father. Ugh. "Try to be Smart Evil, not Stupid Evil, alright?" He adds with one of his trademark smiles.

Whether they are genuine or just a part of his CEO persona (he fake-smiles A LOT as Detnerat Company head) is a riddle for the ages.

(***)

"Just the two of you?" Chronostasis asks. The as-of-recent S-Rank villain is standing in front of them, surrounded by a small army of QLF soldiers. Some of them are armed in guns, some in a variety of melee combat weapons.

At least forty of those. Probably all that's left of the QLF garrison of the underground section of the base.

"Are you blind, my friend?" Slidin'Go smiles. "We have fifteen other heroes here with us. That's more than enough to deal with you, I'd say."

"YEAH, ASSHOLES!" Crust grins, only slightly maniacally. "YER GOING DOWN RIGHT NOW!"

"We shall see." Chronostasis isn't fazed in the slightest. He is supposed to buy time for Overhaul to clean up the escape route, the more they talk, the more time he buys.

"You're free to surrender." Slidin'Go, unawarely to Chronostasis, is also supposed to buy some time for the Best Jeanist/Edgeshot unit to be in position, in case Chronostasis pulled out something unexpected. Actually, Crust doesn't know that he is also buying time for something else to happen. "We're authorized to use lethal force, you know? Prison is clearly a better outcome than that.

Everyone's trying to buy time. No one seems interested in selling it. An interesting conundrum.

"Tempting." Chronostasis replies. Then, his eyes suddenly narrowed.. "... where are Edgeshot and Best Jeanist?"

Damn, he realized.

Crust generates his shields a second before the QLF soldiers fill the heroes with bullet holes. The battle starts.

(***)

"Report from Slidin'Go." Midoriya perks up. "It's Chronostasis and QLF soldiers. They'll deal with them on their own. Best Jeanist and Edgeshot are free to pursue Overhaul."

The man in question has managed to dig out a particularly long tunnel. Almost a kilometer long, and that's just the collapsed section of it that he unearthed (Grand was at his third subsequent earthquake).

Overhaul was a man who accepted no half-measures when evacuation tunnels were involved. And his quirk really made him into something akin to a Minecraft protagonist.

Endeavor was following him on the surface just in case he changed his mind and tried to return to the surface earlier. In short, the trap was almost perfect, all that was left was to incapacitate Overhaul and bring him out of it.

It was a long tunnel, and Overhaul was moving extremely fast. Unfortunately for the fleeing villains, one of the heroes in the pursuit group had a quirk that let her accelerate movement in a straight line. They were going to make it to him in less than a minute after reaching the entrance to the escape tunnel.

(***)

Overhaul stops unearthing the collapse and turns his head towards the direction of the base. The heroes just arrived. And all that he has is several QLF soldiers that were carrying the most crucial elements of his research.

"You are free to surrender, Chisaki." Best Jeanist (in his stupid denim outfit, ugh, Overhaul hates him for that alone). "But we won't ask for it twice."

What happened to Chronostasis? They are on the verge of their communicators, but he is almost certain that Kurono is still fighting. How did those heroes get to him so fast? Warp quirk? They had to know the outline of the base otherwise, and…

Another traitor? But who?! No time to think about it right now.

"Oh, reaaally?" Overhaul tilts his head to the side. "And what exactly, pray tell me, are you going to do about me? It's practically my natural habitat. It's where I'm the strongest. You really think that you're enough to deal with me?"

Behind the two Top Heroes, one of their companions touches the wall and performs a 180 degree spin of his hand. Overhaul pays him no mind.

"We shall see." Edgeshot cuts in. "Unless you surrender."

"I think that I'd rather tear you all to shreds and then continue on with my grand escape." Overhaul says, grinning behind his mask. Then he touches the nearby wall.

Nothing happens.

"What?" Chisaki lets out, utterly dumbstruck.

"We have someone with a quirk that temporarily prevents any alteration to the surfaces around him." Best Jeanist calmly replies. "You can't continue your escape. You also can't alter the walls, ceiling and the floor of this tunnel to create any rock spikes. You're basically limited to having to touch us to kill or even injure anyone. And…"

"... you have two Top Heroes in front of you that specialize in attacks from a short distance… but not a straight melee." Edgeshots takes over. "Even if I won't risk trying to knock you out with my quirk while you're still operational, Best Jeanist's fibers can easily immobilize you in a way that makes you unable to touch anything. And then I'm going to simply use my Thousand Sheet Pierce to knock you unconscious. It's over Chisaki. You lost. Don't make it any harder for you than it has to be."

(***)

Chronostasis nowadays is much more dangerous than he used to be. He trained himself hard in conventional combat skills, the battle that ended the Shie Hassaikai making him realize how much he lacked in that department.

For someone who wanted to help Chisaki at the very least weaken the quirks' influence upon Japan, he was awfully dependent on his own quirk. He got better.

He actually almost managed to get Crust under his quirk. He also managed to slow the deployment of his shields enough for his gunmen to score a handful of kills. Great! Progress, no doubt about it.

It worked like that only until most of his QLF soldiers were taken down. With Slidin'Go now free to lounge around, Chronostasis promptly found himself hard-pressed. His quirk operated on a straight line, the trajectory of his attacks being a child's play to dodge when you had a quirk akin to the one that Slidin'Go had.

Needless to say, things started to go bad from then onward.

Especially as while fending off Tatsuyuki Tokoname, he couldn't keep Crust suppressed. And with Crust unsuppressed, QLF's gunfire failed to find purchase. Truly, a conundrum hard to solve.

Slidin'Go solved it by punching Chronostasis into a wall, immediately sliding sideways to deliver a mean gut punch to the lieutenant in charge of the QLF unit. The resistance had all but collapsed by the time Kurono stood up. He was then promptly incapacitated and arrested.

(***)

"Chronostasis has been apprehended!" an aide reports with a smile on his face. "Overhaul has been cornered. Evacuation of the injured and captives from the surface compound has been concluded, except for Chronostasis' group."

Sir Nighteye lets himself breathe out with relief. It's almost over. The operation is practically speaking a total victory. They just need to deal with the Overhaul.

(***)

"The true battle…" Re-Destro says before snapping his fingers. "...starts now."

(***)

A black cloud that suddenly erupts right next to Overhaul is unmistakable. It's Kurogiri's warpgate. The one thing that couldn't be there. That wasn't supposed to be there. Yes, his quirk is powerful enough to force its way through warp coordinate scramblers, but trying to go through it was going to be invariably lethal.

"W-What?!" Edgeshot is the first one to speak, while taking a step back. The heroes are cautious enough. What if that's a bomb or something? But why right next to Overhaul.

A second later, the new arrival proves to them that their analysis was correct. You can't step through the warpgate without getting lethally mangled. Alas… does it truly matter when you have a Hyper-Regeneration quirk to kickstart you back to life?

"That… was unpleasant." A white-haired man announces while standing up from the floor in front of the heroes. His clothes (somehow) begin to repair themselves as well. "But guess what, I'm here!" He adds, raising his fist up in the air. An intentional mockery of All Might.

"R-Revenant?!" Best Jeanist says, clearly frozen in horror. That wasn't part of the plan. Why was he…

"Close." The man replies in a conversational tone. "I'm Nemesis. Clone of the same person as he was, albeit… superior to him." Revenant did, after all, lose. That made him into nothing more but a failed prototype.

"F-fucking finally." Overhaul looks reassured about some reinforcements appearing. "Why wasn't I informed of your existence?" His mind suddenly snaps back to paranoia. It's a correct question.

"Because, my dear Chisaki, you have been deemed expendable." Nemesis smiles at him, Overhaul suddenly freezing. "Your services are no longer required. After all, why would Doctor Garaki and Re-Destro want you to continue your anti-quirk research? But you were a very good bait for the heroes, I give you that."

"You son of a bitch." The realization dawns on Overhaul's face.

"Not really, no." Nemesis shrugs. The implanted memory of his mother is rather distant, but he is almost certain that she wasn't a bitch. Oh, well. "We've even sent some other expendables to try to capture your girl for you, just to calm down your little paranoia for a moment. And it worked splendidly, I must say!"

He gives Overhaul a wry smirk. Overhaul takes a step back in horror.

"Also they copied your quirk and gave it to me." Nemesis announces. "We still have some uses for your original, much stronger and better honed version, so I'm going to steal it once I deal with the heroes. In the meantime… Rivet Stab, Overhaul." He says.

Chisaki is impaled by the rivet stab and disassembled by a copy of his own quirk a second later. Or, the heroes in front of him correct themselves, not disassembled. Assimilated.

Overhaul-induced body fusion. Nemesis bulks up, his body turning into a grotesque fusion of Overhaul and Nemesis. The QLF soldiers surrounding him freak out, dropping their stuff. In one case, falling down on their butt, their eyes locked on the abomination in their midst.

"And now that we're done with that… Strength Enhancement Times Three, Air Cannon." He says before pointing his palms at the heroes in front of him.

Best Jeanist grabbed everyone he could with his fibers, planning to throw them back as far as possible. Their chances of survival were abysmal at that range and in a straight line, even if the enemy was keeping his strength to a reasonable level to avoid collapsing the tunnel, but…

No attack came.

"What?" Nemesis lets out, accidentally repeating Chisaki's words from earlier, when his quirk refused to work.

(***)

The Quirk Awakening is a… quirky concept. If merely training very hard was guaranteeing it, heroes and villains alike would be way stronger than they actually were. There were always secret conditions (starting, typically, from being driven to the very edge of death in order to force your organism to undergo it in order to preserve itself), and using your quirk a lot simply meant a bigger chance of nailing them.

It also made your quirk stronger. And having your quirk trained to the extreme was typically another requirement.

Things got even more quirky when Class Six quirks were involved. They couldn't Awaken further, and Awakening into Class Six was something infinitely more special. Something that happened maybe once or twice in human history, the prerequisites being so specific that actually nailing them was almost impossible.

In fact, the last time that happened might have been when a certain Class-Five power-stockpiling quirk was merged with an meta-quirk allowing it to be transferred to someone else.

If the battle played out in any different way, it would have never happened. But with Overhaul fused with All for One holder, a certain process began..

Kai Chisaki's consciousness was floating in a void, his grasp on the passage of time marginal at best. What was seconds on the outside, was years inside. Maybe. He wasn't sure. It was years, but also seconds, as if his mind couldn't grasp its own tiredness.

He was seething. He was furious. He was livid. His consciousness when he was assimilated was overtaken by extreme feelings. It was another factor, as it simply remained that way, despite the biological processes behind these feelings being all but terminated.

Then, something deep inside of him cracked. And then, he began to see hundreds of lights of varying size floating in front of him. Hear what he could only compare to music within them. As his quirk was breaking through into a Class Six, he also began to feel his - their - joint body.

He knew which part was himself. He knew which part was Nemesis. He knew that lights were on the latter side. It was when the realization struck. Those were quirks. The diseases he was fighting. Hundreds of them, floating around one particularly massive light.

Overhaul tinkered around that for what felt like a subjective eternity. But eventually, he realized the trick. It was like enlightenment. All those intricate connections between body and its quirk, laid bare in front of him.

He copied all the lights, except for All for One, onto his side. And then, he extinguished the originals, Nemesis' attack against the heroes failing, for he no longer possessed the quirks that he called for.

Chisaki couldn't copy All for One. And he knew that if he separated from Nemesis, the strain of all the quirks would have crushed him in an instant. But… all he had to do was to borrow the container after emptying it of things he didn't need.

And with his original quirk being amplified to the heights previously unimaginable to him, he could do something more than the crude fusion that Nemesis performed on him.

He started by tearing Nemesis' brain into pieces inside his skull with his quirk. His resistance would only make things harder.

(***)

A second after his failed attack, the shock on Nemesis' face vanished. Replaced by emptiness.

He then fell to the ground, like a marionette whose strings were cut. The heroes had less than three seconds to rejoice (or at least try to process what just happened, something that Sir Nighteye and Re-Destro were trying to do as well, both observing the events remotely) before something happened.

The body reshaped itself. From an abomination lying on the floor, to a tall man in a business suit surrounded by a pile of discarded flesh. A man the size of All for One, yet wearing Kai Chisaki's face. Now fully exposed, without a gasmask to cover it.

"I'm back." Overhaul says, looking at the heroes in front of him with a murderous glee on his face. "What did I miss?"

(***)

You didn't see that coming? Godhaul (to quote my beta-readers) is here. Awakened Overhaul allowing him to copy, bestow or erase quirks at a touch - together with All for One that allows him to store multiple quirks in himself. Two Class-Six quirks operating in tandem in a single body, their synergy created a monster that even without the AFO's collection of quirks would make Overhaul into a threat and order of magnitude beyond All for One at his peak.

I said in AO3 tags that Midoriya is overpowered but I boost the villains by a lot so it checks out. Sheesh. What else did you expect to happen after the revelation about the probability-bending effects of a synergy between multiple Class-Six quirks? I had to throw a threat to equal all of that into the mix.