"Come on, somebody, why don't you run. Ol' Red's itching to have a little fun," Denki continued to sing under his breath, trying to avoid another visit from Phantasm. "Who let the dogs out? Who-who-who-who?! It's the eye of the tiger, it's the thrill of the fight—"
"I think I preferred the Christmas songs, actually," Full Throttle muttered.
Shrugging, Denki switched to "Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer—"
"Reindeer," Full Throttle chimed.
Denki smiled wider. "Had a very shiny nose. And if you ever saw it—"
"Saw it."
"You would even say it glows."
"Like a lightbulb."
"All of the other reindeer—"
"Reindeer."
Reindeer.
Reindeer.
The echo repeated in his head as his soulmates chimed in, and he finished the song with both Full Throttle and his soulmates chiming in on the background lyrics.
Then, more lyrics filtered through his mind as soon as the song ended. Baby, I'm preying on you tonight, hunt you down eat you alive. Just like animals, animals. Like animals. Then, switching almost immediately to I saw the sign, and it opened up my eyes, I saw the sign.
Denki exhaled and allowed himself to relax, just a little more than he had previously. His soulmates understood what he was trying to convey, because of course they did. They had always been so in sync that he wondered how none of them had pieced it together before.
It was about an hour later when Full Throttle's eyes trailed after something that Denki couldn't see, and Full Throttle got up to follow whatever hallucination caught his attention, Denki took the chance to give as much warning as he could to the soulmates about what they were up against.
"Do you know the enemy? Do you know your enemy? Well, gotta know the enemy, wah-hey!" Denki sang before quickly switching to another song to give the next clue. "Lucy in the sky with diamonds. Lucy in the sky with diamonds."
Full Throttle was there then, eyes narrowed, regarding Denki suspiciously, most likely wondering why he felt the need to try to warn his soulmates about the existence of Phantasm when there was no way that the soulmates would be able to find him.
Unless…
Full Throttle's eyes widened. "Phantasm!" he called out as he started to yank the filing cabinets open, pulling out folders and throwing them onto one of the chairs. When she appeared in the doorway, he commanded, "we have to be ready to move! Goddamn it! They have someone who can talk to animals!"
Denki watched as they quickly packed up, but after everything essential was removed from the building, Full Throttle was back in the armchair, eyes sometimes straying to watch a hallucination, but mostly watching his own hands as he fidgeted with his fingers, deep in thought and planning.
"Why would you send out hints like that when we had just talked about why it would be a bad idea for them to come to your rescue?" Full Throttle asked, his eyes flickering up to pierce Denki through the bars. "Now we're going to wait for them to show up and walk into one of the traps we've set. Or, if there's more backup than we can handle, we have everything ready to go to just take off."
"I trust them," Denki said. "If our positions were reversed, I would want them to keep asking me for help, regardless of the risk. Besides, I want to see my soulmates."
"And how will you feel knowing that you're the reason they're coming to meet their demise?"
"Well, I'll just have to hope that the League of Villains gets here before my soulmates do, won't I?"
"What?" Full Throttle asked, thoroughly exhausted.
This hero had stopped making sense and he didn't have the energy to play convoluted games to follow along anymore. Phantasm was a little ball of anxiety at the abrupt change of plans, and Full Throttle's long-term plans hinged on their continued success. His failure would let her down, and he couldn't afford to do that.
"Maybe if you weren't so concerned with laying low, you would know that I'm under the protection of the League of Villains," Denki said with a laissez faire shrug.
Full Throttle had paled but tried to remain calm and think it through. There was no way, right? This had to be a bluff, and a ridiculous one at that. But why choose such an unbelievable one in the first place? And Denki hadn't lied since first arriving, opting to refuse to answer when feeling cornered instead of lying. That didn't make it make sense, though. Maybe it had to do with the hallucination and Denki thought that he was telling the truth. It wouldn't have been the first time Phantasm's quirk caused something like that to happen, but he would have expected Denki to be able to keep reality and hallucination separate once he got the hang of it.
Denki was freaking out a little bit, too. Force Majeure's quirk didn't kick in, and his first thought was, oh shit, Full Throttle was his third soulmate, and two were plenty, and he didn't really want Full Throttle to be his soulmate. It helped when he realized that he had heard Full Throttle sing with no echo in his head and realized that when he requested Force Majeure remove the restriction from Hawks and Midoriya, she might have just removed the whole quirk.
Full Throttle didn't have the chance to ask any clarifying questions because, at that moment, the far wall crumbled to dust, replaced by a flickering wall of blue flames.
-.-.-
Oh, I keep it a secret… Okay, it's vodka on ice…
"Who the hell is singing to our soulmate?" Neito growled.
"Maybe he's making friends, again," Hitoshi offered. "It wouldn't surprise me."
Into your sanctum, you let them in! Now all your loved ones, and all your kin, will suffer punishments beneath the wrath of god! Never to forgive, never to forgive! Them rats! Oh-oh-oh! Rats! Oh-oh-oh! Rats! Oh-oh-oh! Rats! Oh—
Hitoshi looked over at Neito who looked skyward, considering. "Ghost," Hitoshi explained. "I'm not surprised that you're not familiar. Denks probably learned it from Ashido."
Come on, somebody, why don't you run. Ol' Red's itching to have a little fun. Who let the dogs out? Who-who-who-who?! It's the eye of the tiger, it's the thrill of the fight—
"Wow, okay. For someone who never sings, I didn't realize he knew the lyrics to so many songs from so many different genres," Hitoshi commented when the stream cut off, trying to lighten the mood after noticing Neito going deeper into his thoughts instead of coming back to him. "It's fine if you didn't know some of those. You're so busy being master of all the quirks; no one expects you to be master of all the songs as well."
"It's not that," Neito reassured, looking into the sky in consideration once again. "Denki switches from topic to topic, but not like that. His mind doesn't work like that. He's trying to tell us something again, I can feel it."
"Okay," Hitoshi agreed, taking a breath and gathering his own thoughts. "He started out the Stand by Mother Mother, then Rats by Ghost, changed it to county by singing Ol' Red, then back to some more classics like Who Let the Dogs Out and Eye of the Tiger," Hitoshi listed, mind whirring, trying to pick up a pattern in the titles, artists, genres, anything that he could think of.
Neito perked up. "What if we ignored the Stand because someone else was interfering?"
"You want to ignore a clue because you're jealous that someone was singing to our soulmate?"
"Shut up." Neito rolled his eyes and shoved at Hitoshi's shoulder, but Hitoshi got a small smile out of Neito, so it was worth it. "No. What I'm saying is that if we ignore that first one, which was an outlier anyway, all of the other ones have animals in them."
As the lyrics about a certain red-nosed reindeer ran through their minds, it just added confirmation.
Hitoshi's gaze locked on Neito's. "He's somewhere with animals around. Probably rats, or at least some type of rodent, if we go by the first song that came to his mind, if we go by your theory to ignore the Stand."
Neito smiled his trademark manic smile, and Hitoshi knew that smile should never have left its place to begin with. "We need Koda," Neito said.
… All of the other reindeer.
"Reindeer," Hitoshi and Neito echoed, smiling at each other as Hitoshi pulled out his phone to track their previous classmate down to see if he'd be willing to lend his quirk to Neito.
Used to laugh and call him names.
"Like Pinocchio."
They never let poor Rudolph—
"Rudolph."
Join in any reindeer games.
"Like Monopoly."
"Hey Koda, we need a favor," Hitoshi said into the phone as the song ended.
While Hitoshi handled getting Koda on board and arranged the meeting place, Neito took care of sending a message back to their soulmate to let him know that they understood and they were using the idea that he had sent.
"Baby, I'm preying on you tonight, hunt you down eat you alive. Just like animals, animals. Like animals," Neito sang loudly. Hitoshi threw a lopsided grin in his direction, not bothering to tell him to tone it down. Koda was sure to know what was going on with Denki. And even if he didn't quite know about the soulmate situation, everyone knew how close the three were. "I saw the sign, and it opened up my eyes, I saw the sign!"
"I don't mean to underestimate you—" Koda started.
Neito kept his voice quiet but spoke quickly. Time was of the essence of course, but Koda was doing them a huge favor, here. It wouldn't help to upset him. "I know we didn't work together much, but the quirks I copy last up to an hour for me now."
"I've heard," Koda admitted. "But my quirk was really hard for me to get started with."
"That's also the thing that makes my quirk so unfair," Neito explained. "I don't get your quirk from how it was from the beginning. I get your quirk with everything you've put into it up until how it is from the moment I copy it. Remember that training when I went against Denki? I wasn't expecting it to be that powerful because I didn't know that at the time, and I didn't know how much he'd progressed since the last time I'd copied his quirk. I completely benefit from all of your hard work with none of the work put in on my own, and I know it's not fair, but please—"
"That's what you really think of yourself?" Koda asked as he reached out his hand to offer his quirk to Neito, offering no resistance. "You made it, and you graduated from UA with the rest of us because you deserved it. I saw you training with so many different quirks, and I saw you train quirkless, just in case you were in a situation where you couldn't get your hands on a quirk. I don't think in terms of fair and not fair, but even for those who do, you're more than deserving, Monoma."
Neito grabbed Koda's outstretched hand with both of his own, pulled it toward him, and bowed forward until his forehead touched Koda's wrist. "Thank you so much. You have no idea what this means." Then he turned to Hitoshi and said, "let's go."
"Hi," Neito said, feeling so strange to be talking to a random rat he found in an alleyway. It was even stranger when the rat looked at him instead of scurrying away and stranger yet when it responded with a greeting of its own. "I'm looking for a hero who is in trouble. Can you help me?"
"What's in it for me?" the rat asked.
"What?" Neito asked.
"I should get something out of this exchange."
"We really don't have the time. Can we work out the details later?"
"What's going on?" Hitoshi whispered, looking frantically from the rat to Neito. It was very strange seeing his soulmate trying to negotiate with a rat.
"It wants something in return for its help," Neito said, exasperatedly dragging a hand down his face. "How are we ever going to find Denki like this?"
"Denki?" the rat repeated. "Kaminari Denki?"
"You know my soulmate?" Neito asked turning back to the rat, surprised.
"Our soulmate," Hitoshi corrected automatically in a grumble.
The rat looked back and forth between the two desperate heroes. "The blonde hero who wears white and black and makes my hair stand on end is your soulmate? He comes through here sometimes, dropping crumbs from his breakfast. He freed my brother from a trap once, loudly stating 'no need to fear, for Kaminari Denki is here!'"
Neito choked on something that he couldn't quite tell was a laugh or a sob. The rat agreed to find out if any other critters knew of anything, and Neito quickly explained to Hitoshi what the rat had been saying.
Hitoshi hummed and pulled Neito into a tight hug. "That's just like Denki. Somehow making friends with the right people at the right time, even if the right people happen to be rats in a random alleyway."
"I know where he is!" the rat reported to Neito as it came scurrying back out. "Follow me!"
The rat led Neito and Hitoshi through alleyways, in through a door that Hitoshi spent exactly forty-eight seconds picking the lock for, and down a set of stairs. When the rat rounded the corner and immediately turned tail again, it was too late for Hitoshi and Neito to avoid going around the corner as well.
They dropped down into a defensive stance, Hitoshi's hands already weaving through his capture weapon and Neito reaching for Hitoshi's hand to have his quirk at his disposal if nothing else.
On the other side of the dimly lit corridor stood the League of Villains, completely decked out in their villainous attire, also crouched and ready to leap into action.
Toga gasped, straightened, and waved while bouncing in place. "My boys! Don't worry, guys! It's my boys! Hi, guys! What are you doing here?!"
She took a step forward and Twice grabbed her wrist to stop her. She turned around and giggled, pulling herself free. "Thanks for the worry, but these guys won't hurt me. We're best friends, basically!"
She practically flung herself at Hitoshi and Neito, who took care to catch her carefully, their gazes forced from the rest of the League of Villains to make sure her equipment didn't end up jabbing them.
"Woah, Toga!" Neito admonished. "Watch where you're throwing those sharps around, yeah?"
"Oh, this is fun!" Toga said. "I've never gotten to play peacekeeper before! Shinsou and Monoma, this is the League of Villains! League of Villains, this is Shinsou and Monoma!"
The villains had relaxed from their ready-to-go stances and started to ease their way forward carefully.
"Uh, we've heard a lot about you," Hitoshi offered.
"Same," Shigaraki said. "What are you two doing here?"
"We could ask you the same thing," Hitoshi reflected. After a moment of the two staring each other down and reminding himself that Denki fully trusted all of these people, Hitoshi relented. "Probably for the same reason you are. To rescue Denki."
"What? No. We're here because this is the last known location of Full Throttle," Shigaraki said. He paused, eyes narrowing. His voice lowered, he continued, "Full Throttle has Kaminari?"
"Cool!" Toga squealed. "We're all on the same side. I'm so good at this peacekeeping thing!"
"Are you suggesting that we work together?" Hitoshi asked.
"I don't see why we can't, unless you have any objections," Shigaraki said, "heroes."
How could Hitoshi have any objections when they're just going to answer his questions like that? When Shigaraki himself was just going to answer his questions like that? If they wanted to play nice and fake the trust, he could have had one of the underlings always answer, but for the leader himself…
"None here."
Hitoshi didn't have to look to know the existence of the smile growing on Neito's face. He sidestepped out of the way just in time for Neito to leap forward, having the quirks of the League of Villains lied out like a buffet for his choosing, and he went straight for Dabi first. He was a sucker for fire quirks, and Hitoshi wasn't the only one who had theories floating around inside his head.
Some of the other members of the League tensed and flinched as Neito neared, unsure around a new hero with whom they've never interacted before. Dabi stood his ground, not making a move to pull away when Neito reached out to make contact. The League wasn't sure what to expect: Maybe some manic laughing or for Neito to burst into blue flames as soon as he got the intended quirk. What they didn't expect was for Neito to stand there in front of Dabi, hand held out in between them with a small blue flame alight, Neito standing perfectly still and quiet. Hitoshi took a hesitant step forward, and without turning to look back at him, Neito held the hand that wasn't alit back to invite Hitoshi forward. Hitoshi grasped the hand with his own and was startled to see the silent tears dripping down Neito's face. Neito slowly looked up at Dabi, and Dabi didn't look away from Neito.
Neito squeezed Hitoshi's hand and said, "looks like the QQQ is back in business."
Hitoshi looked from Neito's face to Dabi's and was struck with the familiarity of his icy blue eyes darting over to meet his own. "Long time, no see," Dabi said.
"Because you fucking faked your death and then avoided me in that damn forest when I had the chance to figure your ass out," Neito snapped, melancholy washing away already. "I'm going to kick your fucking ass!"
Dabi clicked his tongue and shook his head in faux disappointment. "I thought I trained you better than that. Where's a technician when you need one?"
Hitoshi grabbed Dabi's wrist and yanked him into a hug. Dabi hugged back just as tightly.
"At least Hitoshi will protect me," Dabi said.
Hitoshi hummed as if he was trying to commit the moment to memory. "I just wanted to get one last hug in before I attend your real funeral."
Dabi gasped and pulled back, scandalized. "You won't protect me?"
"Protect you?" Hitoshi laughed cruelly. "I'll be the one holding you down!"
Dabi laughed boisterously, pulled both boys back in, and whispered so only they could hear, "we'll talk later. I'm so proud of you."
Do you know the enemy? Do you know your enemy? Well, gotta know the enemy, wah-hey! Lucy in the sky with diamonds. Lucy in the sky with diamonds.
Hitoshi and Neito recoiled and looked at each other, alarmed.
"There's more than just Full Throttle?" Hitoshi asked, trying to see if Neito thought that Denki could mean something else.
"What?" Toga asked. "What do you mean?"
"Denki sang Know Your Enemy, and then Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. That has to be it, right?" Neito asked, not seeing anything else that it could be.
"LSD? Someone who can make drugs?"
"Or maybe someone who can induce hallucinations?"
Hitoshi and Neito looked at each other, faces paling. "We have to get in there."
"You aren't making any sense!"
"Denki's our soulmate!" Hitoshi rushed to explain. "He doesn't have schizophrenia, the voices were us this whole time, and he's been sending us hints through songs, which is how we got this far on our own before meeting up with you guys. We can explain more later, but we have to get him out of there. If they're subjecting him to hallucinations after everything he's been through—he doesn't deserve that!"
Neito took a deep, shuddering breath, shook it off, and refocused. They had their soulmate to save, after all. Everything else could wait. He walked over to Shigaraki and held out his hand in offering.
"Can I try your quirk on for size?"
Shigaraki smirked at him and reached out his hand to meet him halfway. Just like how Shigaraki didn't hesitate to answer Hitoshi's questions, Neito didn't flinch when Shigaraki's hand touched his own.
Shigaraki sent a glance toward Dabi that clearly read, where the hell did you find these kids?
"Last but never least," Neito said, holding his hand out to Hitoshi, requesting his most frequently used quirk. Hitoshi easily obliged, and Neito was ready.
"Just on the other side of this wall," Spinner said, tapping a knuckle against the bricks under the flickering fluorescents. "We figured it would be safer and more unexpected to make our own entrance than use one that is already established."
Neito nodded, grinned, and put his hand against the wall. "I've always wanted to do this." Then, he allowed Shigaraki's quirk to course through him for the first time, and the wall disintegrated under his fingertips.
He switched Shigaraki's quirk to Dabi's and filled the space with blue flame, laughing manically as led the way through, leading two groups combined as one to save their soulmate that they had not had the chance to lay their eyes on since knowing that he was actually their soulmate, and not just their boyfriend.
A/N: Songs used in this chapter:
Ol' Red – Blake Shelton
Who Let the Dogs Out – Baha Men
Eye of the Tiger – Survivor
Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer
The Stand – Mother Mother
Animals – Maroon 5
The Sign – Ace of Base
Know Your Enemy – Green Day
Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds – The Beatles
