Leaving Tartarus stunk even worse than going in, and for once, it left Present Mic speechless.

They were sitting on a bench outside the facility, and neither of them spoke. Hizashi's eyes drifted over to Shouta. His own eyes were red, puffy and dry from the effort to stop Kurogiri from warping, but he just stared across the road without blinking, face blank.

His heart broke. God, what must be going through Shouta's mind? It was one thing to be told Oboro was still here, that his body had been stolen to build Kurogiri, to hold onto their denial, but it was another to actually see the face that had been buried in rubble so long ago appear again, buried deep within the villain that stood in his place.

Their best friend. Their! best! friend! was still stuck inside, and, and they had just left him. The boy who had been glued to their side from the day they started at UA, who always had a joke for Hizashi and a way to rile Shouta, and a bigger heart than anyone he had ever met. The mission they turned around and found Oboro dead was the mission a part of his heart had been ripped from his chest, and Shouta's.

Back then, it didn't feel real, for a while. Walking down the street, it was like nothing was wrong. People shopped, families visited—even their classmates at UA moved on. As if Oboro had never mattered. As if his best friend wasn't dead.

The only one who understood was Shouta. He knew that Oboro had meant something, had held Hizashi while he sobbed loudly in the bathroom stall and their classmates pretended they couldn't hear. He shared a twin scar on his soul, a scar that they healed together and had continued to heal together over the years. They were each other's constant when Oboro was gone. And now, those old scars had been torn open anew.

Those bastards, Hizashi seethed. As if his death wasn't enough (and now that he thought about it, had they had a hand in that as well?), they had taken one of the kindest, most generous souls in the world and perverted his memory into a soldier for their army. All so they could kill more, make more bodies for this war they were waging against the world. And they started by doing it to Oboro.

His blood boiled under his skin. Oh, he was going to make them pay for this. Him and Shouta, they were going to—

"Hizashi."

Present Mic blinked. Shouta stood in front of him, face drawn and hands stuffed in his pockets. When had he stood up? "Let's go home. I have lesson plans to finish."

His eyes nearly bugged out of his head. "Lesson plans? Don't you think we should, I don't know, talk about what just happened?"

"We can't change what's already happened. The only logical thing we can do is prepare our students so it never happens again." Exhaustion seeped into every word he spoke, and it was then that Hizashi saw. He saw past the physical exhaustion in the red of his eyes, and the mental exhaustion in their dead set. Because deep in the center, under it all, he saw fear.

And more than anything else, that these fuckers made Shouta fear for his students pissed him off.


Soft snores came from the bedroom. It wasn't unusual for Shouta to go to bed before him, but even by his standards, 6 PM was early. That suited Hizashi just fine though. He was angrier than one of the feral cats Shouta insisted on feeding, and he wouldn't be much comfort to his husband in a mood like this. Maybe later he'd work out some of his energy in a furious jam session or by glaring angrily at their neighbor's My Child is a Shiketsu Honors Student! signs. But for now, he was going to rage-binge some TV. Nothing like a little mass media distraction to take his mind off things.

He surfed through the channels, quickly shifting from one show to another. Zombie movie? A little too on the nose. Home baking competition? Too wholesome. Group of disillusioned adults who used to be crime-fighting kids? Well—that was certainly something he could relate to.

The umbrella motif and comedy were interesting but didn't do much to pull his mind away. So Shouta was trying to stop this kind of thing from happening again by preparing his kids? Well, Hizashi was going to stop it from happening at all by taking down the wackjobs that did it. After all, hero kids weren't the only ones this was happening to. This organization did it to their own lackey criminals, and beyond that, there were still plenty of good quirks to steal from the general populace. All for One was proof enough of that.

Onscreen, a portal opened with a crack. Hizashi shot up, his shades clattering to the floor. That portal—it looked exactly like what Kurogiri could do. Yeah, it was a TV show, but warp quirks were rare and any information on them was helpful. He looked closer at the screen, then rubbed his eyes. That character was a kid. Wasn't he supposed to be an adult? Wasn't the rest of his family adults?

A glass on the table shattered at Hizashi's high-pitched gasp. The character used his warp quirk to time travel.


"You're going to have to repeat that," Shouta said, deadpan.

"Look," Hizashi began, "I know it sounds crazy, but I talked to Ectoplasm and he explained a lot about timespace! So if Kurogiri can warp through space, then he should also be able to warp through time."

"And you got this idea from the show with the poorly-trained heroes and terrible teaching practices?"

"Oh come on—it's not that crazy. There has been documentation of time quirks in the past, so why wouldn't this work?"

"Because it's completely illogical."

"It's the most logical thing of all. It's physics."

Eraserhead waved him off. "Fine. I'll consider it. If we do attempt this, how would we do it? There's no guarantee we can even get him to activate his quirk."

"But we don't have to! We've already seen that Kurogiri's quirk can be activated by someone else."

Shouta raised an eyebrow. "All for One is imprisoned."

"Yes, but—and Ectoplasm helped me with these physics again so don't go saying it's not logical—if you take a closer look," he shifted his computer screen towards Shouta, and together they watched black tendrils pierce Kurogiri's chest and a warp gate appear, "you can see that when the tendrils pierce the skin, they start vibrating very slightly." He rewound the video, zooming in on the small frame of the screen where Kurogiri's body lay.

"So, you plan to replicate the forced activation. There's a student in Ms. Joke's class at Ketsubutsu that can control vibrations. Are you proposing we recruit help from a hero like him?"

Present Mic's hand sliced through the air. "If we want to do this, it has to be us. We can't risk anyone else getting hurt. What I'm proposing is: I hum to create vibrations, and when we reach the right frequency, Kurogiri's quirk will activate. When we go far enough back in the past, you'll grab Oboro, activate your quirk to stop the time travel, and when we get back to the present, he'll still be alive in the past!"

"That's not logical."

"Not with that attitude it isn't. I already had Ectoplasm calculate out the frequency at which I'd need to vibrate my voice. So we can start it. After that… okay, it's kind of unknown. But you need to conduct an experiment in order to determine results. Isn't that logical?"

"Ectoplasm told you to say that, didn't he."

"Well—"

"But fine. If it keeps Oboro alive, I'm willing to try anything."


One week later, they were back in the hell pit. The stark white walls made him nervous though he tried not to show it, keeping his hands occupied adjusting the dials on his directional speakers while he mentally ran through Ectoplasm's calculations yet again. It was one thing to have a thick wall of glass between himself and Oboro, but it was another thing to sit a few feet away from the empty chair he would be bound to. Uncanny valley type thing. The more he thought about Kurogiri, the more Oboro he saw in him. Stupid shit, like the way he tilted his head or the way his eyes laser-focused on you. Who even knew if that was a remnant from Oboro? What if there was nothing left of Oboro, even when they went back? Or if when they saved Oboro, it would alter the entire course of the past fifteen years? Or what if the Commission saw through their excuse of using time travel to determine how Kurogiri was created and kicked them right out the door? Or what if it didn't work at all and—

The slamming of a door made him jolt in his chair, the lasers in the room swiveling around to focus on the sedated, gurney-strapped figure being wheeled in.

The sound of his heart beating in his ears overtook conscious thought, and he froze, glasses shoved up on his forehead and eyes focused on Kurogiri as they transferred him from the gurney to the chair, returning the restraints. The guard said something to Shouta, but the words didn't register in his brain.

Another second and the guard was gone. Before him, Kurogiri gave the smallest of twitches, still unconscious.

He swallowed, the words almost getting stuck in his throat as he forced them out. "Do you really think this is going to work, Shouta?"

"Only way to find out," Shouta said grimly.


And for the sake of the plot, it did.

Well, that is to say, it worked, just not as expected. There was… considerably less control over time travel than one might have imagined. And Hizashi had a very active imagination.

The first thing that Hizashi registered was that there were some things that were very distracting to vibrating your voice at an exact frequency when time traveling. One of those things was whipping through colors faster than any trip he'd ever had.

Still, somehow he kept it together. A little lower frequency and they slowed long enough for him to process the scenes as they flew past. A bar. Kurogiri wiping down the counter. Brown eyes underneath a white mask. A chair across the room from the counter, familiar spiky blond hair—

The white walls nearly blinded him, so fast had they shot from the darkened bar back to Tartarus. Beside him, Shouta's hair floated in the air.

Oh no. That was Shouta's Hizashi-keep-it-down-I'm-trying-to-sleep face. The I'm-going-to-expel-someone face. His pissed face.

"Hey," he said and choked, the word dry in his mouth after so long activating his quirk. A moment later, Shouta pressed a glass of water into his hand and he quickly swallowed, grateful his throat no longer felt like it had been sandblasted.

Shouta didn't say anything while he drank. Then, he sat the cup down with a huff and tried again. "Hey, about Bakugou—"

"I don't want to talk about it." Shouta's tone was direct. "We can't afford to get distracted. Not when we need to try again."

Okay. The scene had evidently touched a nerve. But… Shouta was right. That, they could discuss later. Oboro, they had to help now.


They tried again, and again, and again. Until Hizashi lost count. And although math wasn't his strongest subject, he could still count pretty high!

They whipped back and forth between years of memories. Ones where Kurogiri patiently cleaned the bar. Ones where All for One gave commands in his low timber, and Hizashi could feel the chill run through his veins, trying not to let his voice waver; those they would have to come back to, to glean any insight they could. Ones where the League lingered around the bar, chatting or arguing amongst themselves. One particularly gruesome memory where Kurogiri went to clean Twice's pile of takeout containers and a massive centipede crawled out; that time, Hizashi was the one to abruptly cut off the memory for a change. Ones where a winged silhouette that looked very, very familiar was tightly entwined with the flame villain, which made Shouta's eyes bug out and snap them back to the present. That definitely required some investigation, probably a report to the Hero Commission, but they weren't going to say shit until they had a chance to look into it themselves. Not when the Commission could and would shut down their work to conduct an investigation.

Then, there were others. A small boy with gray-blue hair pulling him to a TV screen to show him his newest high score. Layering another blanket on the now teenaged boy's bed to stop the shivering, a bowl of soup cooling on the table next to him from Kurogiri's attempts to coax something past his lips. Pressing a Band-Aid to Shigaraki's kneecap when he cried over his skinned knee. Legs swung across his, arms wrapped around his form as wet tears stained Kurogiri's chest. Sitting quietly in a room while All for One lectured Shigaraki on the meaning of leadership, on the plans he had for him, while all Shigaraki could respond was "Yes, Sensei," in a blank tone.

Tears pressed at the corner of his eyes that evening when they left the facility. Really, truly, Kurogiri was Oboro; only Oboro could care so much for someone when no one else did. Which, what the fuck did that say about their society? Yeah, Shigaraki was a piece of shit right now, but he used to be just a little kid. A little kid that had lived in isolation training to hate heroes, while the only one who showed him love was someone already dead.

There was so much different about Kurogiri from Oboro, but that love and compassion was constant. It was the one thing that told him his best friend was in there, still seeing the best in everyone. It was the way he made small clouds for Shigaraki to chase, just the way Oboro had let little kids jump through his clouds. It was in the way he listened intently to Shigaraki's every word, actually listened, not just listening to respond. It was in the way he set down whatever he was doing, even when he was exhausted, to do whatever Shigaraki needed of him.

Somehow, he managed to hold the tears back, although he was pretty sure Shouta heard some of his sniffles. The drive home was quiet, Shouta keeping his eyes on the road while Hizashi stared out the window in contemplation. Each day they were at it seemed to grow longer. Their classes became more erratic as they ran low on lesson plans (even with popping a video in front of the class two to three times a week), and homework assignments were graded weeks later. Even the students had started to notice.


By the time Hizashi finally climbed into bed and slipped his arm around Shouta's waist, to his surprise, he found his husband still awake.

"How did hero society," Shouta said, eyes wide and unblinking as he stared up at the ceiling, "fail Tomura Shigaraki so badly?"

Hizashi squirmed in his seat. Shigaraki had beaten the shit out of Shouta at the USJ, and Hizashi was not going to forget the late nights spent at the hospital at Shouta's bed any time soon, no matter how many childhood memories he saw.

"I scoured the records and didn't find anything about a child like him going missing. It's as if he didn't exist; we know from Kurogiri's memories that Shigaraki first appeared when he was about ten, so how did he slip through the cracks?"

"I don't know," Hizashi said. "I really don't know what to say."

"You don't have to say anything." Shouta rolled over onto his side. "It's just another flaw in the system I have to consider."

Uncomfortable as it was to reconcile empathy with anyone who hurt Shouta, he was right. Shigaraki wasn't so much a born monster as a still immature child that was molded into one. Desperate for acceptance, he did whatever All for One wanted, while he manipulated and twisted him, master of the underworld that he was. The only one who showed him real affection and love was Kurogiri.

How deeply did Kurogiri love him? Did Oboro, within him, love Shigaraki too?

He drifted off to an uneasy sleep, the thoughts plaguing his mind.


The next day, they were back at it again. Hizashi shook off the concerns that had weighed his dreams the night before. Whatever existential and career crises he and Shouta were charging headfirst into, they had a mission that came first.

But this time when they dove into his memories, Hizashi's voice vibrated at a high pitch that sent them careening through past memories they had already trolled through, soaring faster and faster into Kurogiri's past. Past the USJ, past Shigaraki's childhood, past the years working for All for One, past visions of a lab, taking the first staggering steps off a lab table—

Black nothingness slammed against his body like one of Cementoss's arms and his voice cracked with a shout as he and Shouta tumbled back to the present.

With a groan, Hizashi pushed up off the floor and disentangled his legs from his chair. Come on—he really thought he had better control over his body than that, even with the wacky time shit! A nasty crack made him wince and look down at his hand, his purple shades crushed underneath. He groaned. Those were new.

Next to him, Shouta's hair settled back down as the pair of them looked over at Kurogiri. Still sedated, as he had been during every session thus far, which was a relief.

"What the heck happened?" he asked, turning over his glasses in the hope that they could be saved, to little avail.

Lips pursed and Shouta's brow furrowed. "We reached the end of Kurogiri's memories."

"The end of—huh-what?" If there was nothing beyond that, then it meant... "No, no, he's in there. We know he's in there, we saw him!"

"I know. There's a logical answer; we just haven't found it yet." Shouta's lips pursed further, and he steepled his fingers, bringing them to his lips as he lapsed into thought.

Almost, almost, Hizashi let himself sink into despair. Their friend was so close, just on the other side of that mental border, and yet they were unable to reach them. Scratch that—they were unable to reach him yet. Hizashi hadn't cleared out multiple convenience stores of their throat lozenges just to give up now when they were so close. So if they were at the end of Kurogiri's memories… "Then we need to get to Oboro's memories," he said. "And if Oboro is in Kurogiri, then we can get to them, then those memories are in there."

"Maybe not quite," Shouta said. "Kurogiri is a combination of multiple people, so he's distinct from Oboro. What we need is to draw Oboro out again, just like we did that first day."


Getting permission to provide sedation reversal drugs was a bitch, but with Aizawa's continued insistence that they were learning valuable information in their journeys to understand time travel, plus a little pull from Gran Torino, it wasn't long until they sat before Kurogiri, just waiting for his eyes to blink open.

And blink open they did.

Cold malice appeared only a second after his yellow eyes fluttered open, and the narrowed eyes filled with hate made Hizashi's gut twist. Oboro had seemed so much closer to the surface when Kurogiri slept; the quirks and habits shone through so much more, especially through his love. But through his hate? Well. He hoped this was the last time they had to try this.

"Well. If it isn't UA's finest, yet again." Hizashi's heart beat faster, ready to elevate his voice at the perfect moment. They just had to wait. To wait, and listen to Kurogiri's jeering. "I suppose if you both are the best UA has to offer, it's no wonder Tomura was able to break into your training facilities."

Beside him, Shouta remained still, but the telltale twitch under his eye belied just how much Kurogiri got under his skin. They had to do this quickly.

"Hey, Oboro!" Hizashi yelled, boisterous as ever. "Remember when you flew in the window and changed clothes during class? Sensei was so mad."

"The only one with less decency than you was Nemuri. She never cared about baring it all either."

Kurogiri's eyes narrowed again and the black mist around him puffed for a moment, before settling back down.

"Hell yeah!" The snap of Hizashi's fingers draws Kurogiri's attention as he points. "You and Nemuri were perfect friends for each other! Team Purple Revolution who? Shouta had nothing on you, Nemuri, and His Purple Highness for dramatic style."

For a moment, something seemed to shift within Kurogiri's face, an ephemeral, fleeting moment where Hizashi thought they'd done it. Before he shook his head again.

"I may not have fit in with the two of them like you," Shouta said, tugging the goggles from his capture weapon, "but we did look like a team. Especially after you gave me these." Kurogiri froze, staring at his hand. "I know you recognize them; you did last time. You recognize them because you gave them to me. You recognize them because they're just like yours."

And the moment Hizashi saw a pale form from the darkness, he activated his quirk.

They were only a second into the memory, but it was a scene that Hizashi knew. Setting the timber of his voice as low as possible, the waves kept them moving through spacetime oscillating as slowly as he could. There was darkness, then rocks, then a figure with vibrant, vibrant blue hair shooting through the air.

Shouta slammed into him, shoving him out of the way. They'd done it. They would go back to the future, and who the fuck knew how they messed up the timeline but their past was going to have Oboro back and oh god. This was it.

The familiar blackness of Shouta's quirk pulling them back from Kurogiri's power took over him, and for once, dark peace felt more at home than vibrant energy.

His peace didn't last for long, because right in front of him, eyes blinking wide as he took in the room, was a 16-year-old boy with very familiar blue hair. A 16-year-old boy they kind of assumed would stay in the past.

Well. That was unexpected. Then again, uh, they were fucking with timespace. So.

"Oboro." Surprise was evident in Shouta's voice. After years of mentoring high school students, Shouta had seen it all: risque rendezvouses, students drunk off mouthwash, and a cow on the fourth floor that couldn't get back down the stairs. But this, bringing their friend back from the dead, really did take the cake.

Oboro looked between the two of them, and his jaw dropped. "Hizashi? Shouta?"

"Yeah," Hizashi croaked. "Yeah, it's us."

"How'd you guys get so old?"

A burst of laughter made its way from Hizashi's chest and he clapped Oboro on the back. God, he missed that irreverence. Another giggle, half-choked its way from his throat. "Yeah, uh," he pulled his glasses down, wiping at a tear at the corner of his eye. "It's kind of a crazy story, but something bad happened to you in the past, and we kinda… invented time travel to get you back. And now we're all fifteen years in the future."

"Wait, so are you guys pro heroes now that you graduated?" He looked both of them over and grinned. "Costumes haven't changed much."

Hizashi puffed out his chest. "Hell yeah! Shouta did the underground ring for a while and I moved into entertainment, but now we're both teachers at UA!" He collapsed inward a little and scratched his nose. "Which reminds me… you're still a teenager."

Oboro looked down for the first time, hands scrabbling on his gi. "Aw man!" he groaned, head flopping to his chest. "You guys are all mature, and I'm a kid." Shouta groaned.

Hands landed on Hizashi's shoulders and shook him. "You guys have to adopt me!"

Another groan, this one from the other side of the room, drew their attention. Kurogiri was… still there? Even though Oboro was here?

"Who's that?" Oboro asked, already flitting over to Kurogiri.

"Don't!" Shouta yelled, hand extended. Oboro drew back, and both he and Kurogiri looked at Shouta in unison. Shouta winced. "Like Hizashi said, it's hard to explain… but there was an accident, and you became Kurogiri, who is this man here. So the fact that you're in the same place… is unsettling."

"So we were… each other?" Oboro looked back at Kurogiri, a more contemplative look in his eye. "Well glad to know we had nice style, I love the threads!"

To his surprise, Kurogiri laughed. Although what maybe surprised him more was that Kurogiri said back, "Your hair certainly appears more manageable than my own."

"Ughhhh, it feels so weird having them in the same room!" Hizashi complained, watching Kurogiri listen intently as Oboro launched into a story about how un -manageable his hair became when it rained.

"This doesn't make any sense," Shouta muttered.

"No, but we're just going to roll with it."

"This is more evidence that hero society is not logical." Shouta's arms were crossed, his eyes narrowed on the pair of them. "For all his villainy, Kurogiri has redeeming traits. He was Oboro at his core, even if everything around him changed. And yet we wrote him off, and he remains locked here in Tartarus, when the first person who was kind to him from our side made him open up like this."

"Hey, hey!" Oboro bounded over to them, grabbing onto their sleeves. Can I come back to visit Kurogiri the next time I get a break from classes at UA?"

Shouta blinked, stunned again. "Do you remember what happened?"

Oboro rubbed the back of his head, looking bashful for a change. "I remember we were fighting, and then there were all these bricks… and I don't remember anything after that. Which, I guess I know what that means."

"Yeah," Shouta said, then paused. "After all that, you still want to be a hero?"

"Of course! I wanted to be a hero to help others, and I knew there could be consequences. Just because they happened doesn't mean I'm going to stop trying to get my full license." He froze and cocked his head. "Wait, so what class am I going to be in since it's been fifteen years? Am I going to be in the other teachers' class? Can you guys teach me? Isn't that like, a conflict of interest?"

"Well," Shouta said. "I can't exactly force the other homeroom teacher to take you halfway through the year."

Oboro grinned, vibrant white. "Then I guess you'll have to let me into your class!"

Shouta groaned out loud, hands came to his temples to massage them while Oboro cackled in front of him, Kurogiri joining in with a chuckle from afar. Having Oboro in Class 1-A was going to be wild. He had no idea how it would turn out, all of Shouta's careful plans thrown out of whack.

But you know? They could deal with that later. Because for the first time in fifteen years, he felt whole.