okay, so I normally don't add warnings to my chapters since it usually feels like spoilers, but this chapter is pretty intense even by my standards. If y'all think I should put warnings on some past chapters too then you should let me know. and i suppose if this warning seems unnecessary and i just worry too much, then also say that.
basically there's some murder and suicidal themes happening, so take care of yourselves out there.
Mina. Tsuyu. Ojiro. Kaminari. Kirishima. Sero. Mineta. Shinso. Hagakure.
One of them was the traitor and he had all but run out of time to figure out who. Pointing fingers and accusing any of his classmates felt awful and wrong, but he was out of options. His thoughts ran in a panicked spiral, who could he rule out, who can't be the traitor.
What did the traitor do and who did that implicate? After a moment of scrambling through his thoughts he came to an obvious point that was easy to overlook in his frantic state. The USJ. They let the League know when they were going on the field trip. That meant it couldn't be Shinso, he hadn't joined the class yet and wouldn't have had access to that information.
Mina. Tsuyu. Ojiro. Kaminari. Kirishima. Sero. Mineta. Hagakure.
At the USJ Tsuyu was nearly killed by Shigaraki and she was only saved by him throwing himself in the way. No one else came close to death there so they can't be ruled out. Trying to figure out who was where and what implications it had would take too much time and there was a high chance that Shigaraki had just left the spy to fend for themself with the rest of them.
Mina. Ojiro. Kaminari. Kirishima. Sero. Mineta. Hagakure.
What was he missing? Who else could he eliminate? Kaminari had hero parents, making him unlikely but not impossible. His hero family all but ruled out the hostage possibility since it would make news that they were gone, but it didn't rule out a secretly bad home like the Todoroki's.
Mina, Kaminari, Sero, and Kirishima all spent so much time together that it was hard to imagine one of them being able to consistently sneak away to make reports. Then again, if the reports were given in the dead of night then it was possible again and they were just able to fake their friendships. Or maybe it was a hostage situation and the friendships were genuine?
The same could be said about Hagakure and Ojiro, they spent a lot of time together. Hell, even Mineta and Kaminari hung out a lot. But that was everyone, so clearly it wasn't a good way to rule anyone out.
He found himself grasping at straws desperately, wishing he'd spent more time getting to know his classmates outside his friend group. Maybe if he'd learned more about them, spent more time together, he'd know the answer to this.
"Well, do you have your answer yet?"
He looked up in panic at his very amused looking father. He needed more time! All he really knew for sure at this point was that it wasn't anyone who knew about Shouto and it wasn't class 1-B. "I-" Maybe that could reveal something? "Can I ask one more question? I think I'm close."
"Hm, very well, you've piqued my interest."
He hobbled over to Kendo's cage, the most level headed seeming person from 1-B.
"Kendo, I need to know exactly what happened when you were all kidnapped. As quickly as you can, but try not to leave anything out."
She nodded after taking a moment to compose herself. "We were all focused on the news with reports of All Might's death. Black pockets of smoke appeared and a handful fell in before a bunch of copies of a masked man were dropped into the room and started turning people to marbles. The vents kicked in and took away the gas before more villains could arrive, but the window was broken in after a few tries by some villain with these teeth blades who screamed about wanting flesh. We were overwhelmed pretty quickly at that point and were all taken one way or another."
He'd asked her because he needed to find the difference between their attacks. Whatever disadvantage 1-A had that 1-B didn't could be attributed to the traitor, since it would have been difficult to gain more than the basics on their sibling class.
Izuku turned and tried to hold himself together. "I know who it is."
"Fantastic news. Kill him." After a pause he spoke again. "Ah, my bad, I suppose that slip of the tongue narrows it down, but it shouldn't matter if you're as clever as I think you are and already know the true culprit."
Izuku shook his head and stumbled backwards. "No, no, no. Please, don't make me do this… I can't-"
"You can. And you will. Your choices right now are to either kill the traitor or watch me kill all of them, one at a time. And I assure you that my methods will be far less quick and merciful than your own. Oh, and one more thing, you must kill by your own hand, I will not allow you to pass this task onto that slime quirk of yours. Tanaka, was it? It must be your hand alone that does the deed or else it won't count, and I will know if you try to let it do the dirty work."
Tanaka wasn't sure if he was just trying to stall for time or not, but either way he spoke up, giving Izuku a moment to calm himself as Tanaka felt him start to give in to the panic. "If we tell you our guess, will you at least tell us if we're right first?"
"No, I don't think I will. This isn't about killing someone because they are a criminal, this is about Izuku killing someone I no longer have use for because I told him to. Now, tell me who the traitor is and strike him down."
Izuku looked up with tears running down his face. "It- it's- I-."
From behind him he heard Jiro's voice. "It's okay. None of us blame you, and this isn't your fault. Just do what you have to do, we already forgive you."
He gave a weak nod and let out another broken sob. "It's Mineta. The vents not working were the difference between the attack on our class and 1-B, who didn't have a spy. I saw him tampering with them, plus his quirk could have been used to clog the vents. It's only circumstantial at best, but he's the most suspicious of the remaining suspects."
All for One pressed a button on the control panel in front of him, causing Mineta's cage to swing open. "Good, now kill him."
At this point Mineta had backed up to the very back of his cage and started sobbing as well while begging for his life. "W-wait, please, I didn't do it! I was only at the vent to look at tits! Please! I don't want to die. I-I'm sorry I was mean to you, I take it all back, just don't kill me."
Izuku could barely see his shaking hand past the tears pouring from his eyes. "I'm sorry. I- I don't want this, all I can do for you is give you the quick death my father wouldn't."
In a panicked flurry, Mineta threw orb after orb, attaching Izuku to the side of the cage, letting the small teen slip past him. Mineta ran as fast as he could through the room but barely made it more than a few feet before he found himself floating in the air, gripped by a telekinetic quirk.
"Now, now. Let's not be hasty. My son has a job to do, and I won't have you causing problems."
Mineta was deposited at Izuku's feet. "My patience has run out. You have five seconds to kill him before I begin torturing your friends to death."
"I'm so sorry." "Please n-!"
And with a quick swing of his free arm, powered with One for All, his fist struck the back of his neck with a sickening crunch.
He felt detached from whatever was happening around him as blood ran over his fingers. All he could think about was that horrendous feeling of his neck being crushed. He didn't know how long he had zoned out for until he was brought back into his body by the sensation of his face being grabbed. He was sitting in the observation deck again with his father staring at him with a prideful smirk.
"Ah, there you are. You'll be happy to know that you were correct. Mineta was my spy. Albeit one of the worst spies I've ever had, but one of mine nonetheless. You see, I had been badly injured seven years ago and had to lie low after faking my death, which meant I hadn't had anyone in UA since then. Because of that I didn't know All Might would be there until the exams were already happening. So, instead of my usual methods of slowly integrating a spy in with my enemies, I had to make do with my limited options available.
"With that in mind I found the most corruptible incoming hero student and gave him all he could ever want to convince him of villainy's merits. It was almost amusing at how easily he turned on the heroes. I dropped him off at one of the brothels I control and told ten of the women I employ to make him feel like a god. And with that he was more than willing to report everything his classmates did. Him being a pervert actually helped with his cover, he could get away with far more suspicious behavior since it could just be blamed on his desires. Well, no reason for me to monologue on it anyway, it's not really relevant anymore, is it?"
When he didn't respond after a few seconds, his father just sighed before teleporting Izuku once again, dropping him back into his own cell as he hacked up the black sludge from the quirk.
He was barely able to do more than just slump onto his cot and curl up into a ball.
He just killed someone and all his classmates watched him. His father clearly wanted to turn him into a monster and it was working. He had a classmate's blood on his hands. And that sound, that awful sound.
"Calm down, remember what Jiro said, this isn't your fault. I'm sure everyone else agrees, no one there hates you. They get that it was your dad, not you."
He slowly sat up and nodded as a realization hit him. "You're right. It's his fault for making me kill him. He wants to turn me into some sort of monster, so he's going to keep doing this, forcing me to do awful things to keep my friends alive. I'm not strong enough to stop him and he knows it, and no one else is strong enough to stand up to him. Even All Might in his prime barely survived a fight with him, and he's dead now too."
"Izuku… Where are you going with this?"
"It's like you've said to me over and over, I need to be more realistic. If we stay here he'll keep trying things until he finds a way to control me, and I'm not dumb enough to think that he'll never succeed. It's barely been a full day and I've already killed for him and I doubt things will get better from here. So, if I can't beat him, and staying here means I'll eventually become an asset to him, then the only way I can keep him from using me is to take myself out of the picture."
"I really hope you're not saying what I think you are."
He could barely use one or two percent of One for All in their weakened state, but that should be more than enough to end it. Maybe he could rip metal from the bed frame and use that. He had a metal skeleton and regeneration from the tampering done to his body, so his best bet would be to go directly for his brain through an eye socket. He started to reach over when his entire body locked up from Tanaka fighting him.
"Izuku. Just, stop and listen, please." Tanaka's voice was barely more than a whisper, the man sounding defeated. "Don't you dare give up. After all the bullshit we've been through you can't possibly think I'd let you give in that easily. You're not in this alone. I-"
He paused for a moment as he thought over his words. "I don't like to talk about it, and I don't want you telling anyone about me being all emotional and shit, but I know what you're going through. I'm gonna give you the long story short because fuck talking about feelings." Izuku sat quietly, somewhere between patiently listening and being too distraught to move anymore.
"My mom controlled water, no idea who dad was. Mom thought I was nasty and reminded her of whoever he was and wasn't afraid to remind me, used her quirk to mess me up, but like I told you a while ago, heroes didn't believe me when I told 'em. One day I got tired of it and hit back, but then I guess I just lost it and kept hitting 'til she stopped moving. From there I ran off and ended up on the streets, tried to die a few times but it turns out I'm real hard to kill. Ended up with Suzuki for a while after an overdose almost did the job, then joined the Yakuza later when my shit caught up with me."
He took a deep breath. "There you go, life story. But what I mean is, I get it. Not exactly the same, but I get the whole thing of bad parents turning you into something you hate and trying to take the easy way out. Cool, good talk, we're never bringing this up again."
Izuku sniffled and rubbed some of the tears from his eyes. "Get out here so I can hug you."
wowzers, we got a whole bunch of info dropped here. First, you might be wondering why I chose Mineta as the traitor. Basically, i wanted to do something different than the cliche options of 1. I was being genuine and am your friend but my loved one is a hostage, or 2. my entire personality is a lie, mwahaha look how evil i am
I wanted their betrayal to actually match their personality and character. this meant it would need to be someone corruptible. My top three considerations were, mineta for sex reasons, uraraka for the cash, and shouto because fuck endeavor.
also, we now get a complete (if very rushed) version of tanaka's backstory. honestly, there probably won't be a much more expanded version because it would be out of character for him to go into detail about his feelings on his past.
hope you've all enjoyed this wild ride, as always, I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.