A/N- sorry for the wait you guys!
In the office above the arena, Melissa had more screens than Midoriya remembered, most of them filled with some sort of informatic or chart. A couple had stills of the sparring match, Midoriya and Lemillion coloured for temperature. Lemillion looked yellow-orange, while Midoriya's silhouette ranged from red to white- what looked like a higher temperature. Midoriya frowned at the image as he took the seat that Melissa offered him. His body felt heavy, and the bruises Lemillion had given him were just starting to hurt.
"So? Does he have a second quirk, like you thought?" Lemillion asked.
Melissa sniffed, and Midoriya's eyes widened. "Two quirks?" he croaked.
Melissa shook her head. "After reviewing the footage of your license exam, I thought that might be the case, but these readings say otherwise." She pursed her lips, pushing her glasses to the bridge of her nose. "Your feats of speed and strength, your increased body temperature- they're not a new quirk. Rather, they're a symptom of your body adapting to your existing quirk."
Melissa tapped the screen in front of her, and an image of one of the scans she had taken popped up. "Usually, bodies are designed to last- if not as long as possible, then as long as practical. The body puts limits on its functions in order to achieve this- limits on body temperature, on heart-rate, and so on. A better performing body is no use to anyone if it keels over dead. In your case, however, your body is, ah, death agnostic. If you keel over dead, it will just rekindle. So your body just keeps increasing heart rate, and stops caring about things like its internal temperature limits and potential organ failure."
"You're saying my body might kill me?" Midoriya interrupted, something like anger hammering in his chest.
The silence from the others was uncomfortable, and Melissa spoke. "No. I'm saying your body is going to kill you. And faster than normal. Even performance like that is going to have a cost."
"I'm going to keel over dead randomly?"
"It's probably going to be heart failure," said Melissa. "But, basically, yes."
Midoriya shook his head. "It's too dangerous, then. I might hurt people when I burn. If I was in a convenience store, or a train station-" he trailed off. "You should lock me up. In Tartarus, maybe-"
He had the feeling of hope, not dissolving, or being dashed in front of him, as Kacchan had once tried to do, but of being crushed, in his own hand. His quirk was going to kill him, and everything around him burning in his ad-hoc pyre.
"Tartarus?" Lemillion interrupted his train of thought with a hand to the top of Midoriya's head. "You're hardly a villain."
"My quirk might kill me. It might kill others-" the truth of it bubbled out of him, too much emotion.
"You and me both, buddy," said Lemillion, wryly. "That's no reason to give up."
"You're right, though, it is dangerous," said Melissa, thoughtfully. "I'll work something into the next iteration of your suit."
There was a chirp from Lemillion's pocket, and he glanced down, his face falling as he swore softly in English.
"What is it?" Eri asked, frowning.
"A call for backup. Any available heroes to come to the power station-" Lemillion trailed off as he read the rest of the message, brow furrowing. "There's been an attack."
Ken Mujinaki breathed deep as the floor rattled beneath him. Some of the others were nervous, he could tell, but he felt only a deep sense of peace and belonging, like he hadn't felt in a long time. The ceiling above them blocked his view of the sky, but it felt as if he could see it, it would be endless and blue. They'd picked up their youngest member, Wakezono, last, still in his Shiketsu uniform, and the boy pulled his equipment from a school backpack, a sharp nod to Mujinaki before he got to work.
Mujinaki breathed in, willing his breath to reach each part of him, as he had trained. That was the key to his quirk, visualising his breath. With it, he could form spines from his body, and shoot them at will. The suit he had bought with his savings was specially perforated, each hole large enough to let a spine pass easily.
Bubaigawara, the gray-haired scar-faced man, the man who had made this all possible, sat down on his haunches next to him, cigarette balanced between his lips. In a previous life, Mujinaki might have scolded him for smoking inside, but now was hardly the time for that.
"You doing okay, porcupine man?" Bubaigawara asked, brows knitting together under the bandana he wore, and his face twisted a little before he spoke again, tone changing. "Any last words?"
Mujinaki gave a sad smile. "I think you know me well enough to know the answer to that."
"Yeah, but I meant-" Bubaigawara gave a hand gesture. "Relatively speaking."
"It'll be over soon," said Mujinaki, breathing in again. His spines were forming under his skin, making him feel like he was wearing an itchy too-small jacket as his skin puckered, threatening to split in places.
"I just wanted you to know," said Bubaigawara, not meeting Mujinaki's eyes. "I really liked you. All of you. Crazy bastards."
Mujinaki couldn't help but smile at Bubaigawara's tic. The man had been part of their little group since the first days, when they'd just been a little chat room. A support group, of sorts, for those who had lost loved ones. Mujinaki had lost his fiance and their unborn child. Tousue's twin brother had been burned alive in a back-alley. Wakezono, the youngest of the group, had lost his parents and grandparents.
In the early years they had tried to comfort each other, sharing stories and memories, and people had drifted in and out. Someone had killed themselves, Mujinaki didn't remember who, and a few of them had met up for the funeral. They'd gone to drink and smoke at the bar afterwards, and Mujinaki had voiced the idea that had been crystallising in them all along.
It wasn't them who was broken. It was the world. The world was horribly, irrevocably fractured, and there was no fixing it.
Human life condensed right down to a few scenes, when you got down to it. His first kiss, on the bridge over an overpass near his high school. The time he'd played in a band in front of a live audience, his grandmother on her deathbed in the hospital. Each of these scenes popped in vivid technicolor, while the time around them was filler- full of people whose faces he no longer remembered, nameless teachers reading from textbooks.
He'd done everything right. A good university, a good firm for his first job, marrying his high-school girlfriend. A child. He'd always wanted a child. A little one with soft hands and clever eyes, who he could show the world. And it had been ripped from him in an instant. The hospital had called him, but they'd both been dead on arrival. The police had asked for a photo to identify the body.
And why? Mujinaki had dwelled on it for a long time. What had he done to deserve this? He'd been kind to people and animals, he'd worked hard his whole life, and for what? The final scene of his life played back, his rush to the hospital, police meeting him at the door, static and ringing in his ears. Every scene after that had been empty, waiting for the credits to play. It was as if he'd been hollowed out, no grief, no prospect of revenge, just the world around him continuing like a lie.
To find out that the others felt the same was a relief. They'd found purpose in honing their quirks, preparing for the task ahead of them.
The world was wrong, and together they would put it right.
Mujinaki's fingers tightened around the vial of quirk-enhancer in his pocket, his eyes on the canvas roof of their vehicle. "You're a good friend, Jin. I'll see you on the other side."
Flying with Lemillion was a little like flying with All Might had been, sixteen years ago. Scrap that, it was exactly like flying with All Might. Right down to the crackling energy that seemed to flow through Lemillion's body, and the vertigo that Midoriya felt in the pit of his stomach as buildings became toy-sized beneath them. Was Lemillion's quirk the same as All Might's? Ever the loyal fan, Midoriya had dismissed those theories when they came up on the forums, but flying with Lemillion was too similar somehow. There must be some relationship between the two heroes- not father and son, necessarily- maybe they had been cousins?
Midoriya swallowed, willing himself not to look down again, but Lemillion's grip was firm enough that he didn't worry about falling. The visor on his helmet protected his eyes from the wind.
The power station loomed rapidly in front of them, making Midoriya very aware of just how fast they were going.
"Right-" said Lemillion, and Midoriya saw a smirk form under his helmet. "Brace for impact, guys."
Lemillion did something with his feet- Midoriya wasn't quite sure what, and their vector of flight was suddenly changed, the ground looming before them at incredible speed. Midoriya stifled a scream, but Rewind Girl seemed unworried as Lemillion blew air downwards, slowing their descent.
They landed gently, Lemillion's cloak fluttering as his feet touched down first.
"Thank you for flying Lemilli-air," Lemillion quipped as he released them.
Rewind girl gave him a lopsided smile. "How long were you working on that, Mirio?"
Lemillion stuck out his tongue at her. "I thought it up on the way over."
Midoriya stepped away, feeling a little nauseated as he looked around. "What's the situation?"
"If Melissa is using her standard design-" said Lemillion, thoughtfully, as he tapped a point on the side of Midoriya's visor.
An overlay shimmered into existence on the inside of Midoriya's faceguard, showing hero names of heroes on scene, a plan of the building, and the current location of Midoriya, Lemillion and Rewind Girl. A radio channel fizzed and stuttered in his ears too, a familiar voice speaking.
"-fucking two bit pieces of shit have another thing coming if they think they can pull this on my turf-"
"Kacchan?" Midoriya exclaimed.
"The hell?" Kacchan's snarl into his mic was loud enough that it made Midoriya's headphones clip. "What's this piece of trash doing here?"
"Kacchan-" said Midoriya.
"He's a provisional hero," said Lemillion, from behind him, speaking into his own communicator. "Now quit wasting time, number three, and tell us the situation."
"Suck a dick, you shitty All Might rip-off," Kacchan growled, but his insult seemed like punctuation more than anything. Midoriya heard the crackle of Kacchan's quirk in the background. "There's a group of villains holed up in the power station. They've taken workers hostage. My agency is holding ground, but we don't have the firepower to take them out."
"They're that troublesome?" For the first time, Lemillion sounded worried.
"They're well-trained," said Kacchan, darkly. "Red's tanking them, but we can't get a hit through."
"Understood." Lemillion's face was grim. "I'll see what I can do."
"I'll join the support crew with evacuation and medical care," said Rewind Girl. "If there's any trouble there, I'll call for backup."
Lemillion nodded assent. Midoriya moved to follow Rewind Girl, but Lemillion put a hand on his shoulder. "Midoriya," he said. "You're with me."
"What?" Midoriya hurried to catch up with the number one hero. "Why?"
"Everyone in the first aid triage is better trained than you, and your quirk doesn't help them treat people," said Lemillion. "Unless you're really holding back on us and can bring other people back to life."
"No."
"Then you're with me. C'mon."
Midoriya found himself chasing after Lemillion, towards the scene of the battle, chunks of masonry flying through the air.
Midoriya saw Kacchan before he saw the villain he was fighting. His outfit had barely changed since his debut, and he soared gracelessly through the air, a snarl on his lips, before hitting the ground with a roll.
"Took you long enough, shitty cape," Kacchan's voice crackled through the communicator. "They've got at least three emitter types. I've not seen any others, but there's another guy in there."
"Did they issue any demands?" Lemillion asked, moving forwards round a building. Midoriya followed him, stifling a gasp as the battle came into view. A gout of roiling tarmac whipped from the entrance of one of the buildings, hitting several low-ranked heroes aside, and the sturdy hero Red Riot rushed to the front rank, skin turning crystalline as he braced against the wave, arms crossed. It broke over him, but was followed in quick succession by a burst of ice, and he grunted and slid back, his feet finding no traction on the icy ground.
"Fucked if I know," Kacchan spat, annoyed. "We can't all afford to invite these guys to tea like you can, shitty cape."
Midoriya was about to suggest they formulate a battle plan when Lemillion surged forward, his phasing activating for the split second it took to pass through the wave before he landed, sending a shockwave through the earth, knocking back the barriers the tarmac user had constructed.
Midoriya's focus shifted abruptly to the hostages with the villains, tied up and huddled some distance behind them in a small group. They looked to be workers mostly, with high-visibility jackets, though their ID tags seemed to be missing. The villains didn't seem to be guarding them particularly closely, preoccupied with keeping Lemillion and Kacchan back. Eyes on the unfolding scene, Midoriya hurried to the side, looking for an opening. It came sooner than expected, the shockwave from Lemillion's attack tearing a hole in the side of the structure the villains were using. Had that been intentional?
Midoriya didn't stop to question it as he took the entrance, grabbing the nearest hostage and hoisting the man over his shoulders.
"Yoohoo-" came a voice from the villain group, and a man stepped to the fore. He was middle-aged, with grey hair, a faded red bandana on his forehead, but more importantly he was Jin Bubaigawara, of the liberation front, and Midoriya hurled himself to the ground, his body shielding the man he'd rescued as everything happened at once.
Mujinaki watched Japan's number one hero in action in tandem with the number three from the sidelines, careful to not allow the sun to reflect on the lenses of his binoculars. His friends were fighting bravely, and it hurt to not be helping them, not covering their weaknesses, but out of all of them he was best suited for the next part of their plan. His heart dropped in his chest as Bubaigawara stepped out into view of the heroes, arms raised. The number one was on him almost instantly, the number three pouncing quickly behind him.
"Wakezono," Mujinaki called into his radio, the channel crackling to life. "Now."
"Roger-" came the boy's response, and the transmission distorted and cut as his quirk activated. But it was too late. It had always been too late. Even as time slowed in the region around Wakezono, Lemillion's fist was already making contact with Bubaigawara's face, a spray of matter frozen in the air behind him, and Mujinaki forced himself to tear his eyes away.
This was ultimate technique that Wakezono had been trained to hone, at the elite hero school he'd picked. Frozen time. Even with the help of Bubaigawara's quirk enhancing drugs, their little group had never stood a hornet's chance in hell of overpowering Lemillion. But they'd never needed to. All they needed to do was delay him a little. Mujinaki set the timer on his wristwatch running, turning to the stairs behind him. Without quirk enhancers, Wakezono's ultimate technique could last up to three minutes, and if they were lucky the drugs would double that window.
"I'm in the backup system," Tousue's voice crackled through to him as he ran down the hallway. Emergency lights illuminated the whole place in a pulsing red-yellow, the sirens reverberating through the floor. Mujinaki bull-rushed one security guard aside, pinning another to a wall with a spine before he could go for his weapon.
Tousue's success meant that they were one step closer to their goal.
"Kacchan!" Midoriya stared in horror at the scene behind him. Kacchan was frozen midair, face twisted in a snarl. Below him, red riot stood, arms braced against an oncoming deluge of lightning, and before them was Lemillion, his eyes wide with surprise as he struck the villain Twice, gobbets of white matter flying from his fist. They were frozen in time, like a photograph, and in the centre of the villains stood a figure that Midoriya recognised from the videos of the Shiketsu sports festivals he had watched. Teebo, a sphere of time frozen around him.
"The reactor." The hostage Midoriya had shielded with his body gave a cough from underneath him. "I heard them talking. They're going to overload the reactor."
"What?" Midoriya felt cold as he stared at the worker. "Why- why would they do that?" He tapped the side of his visor frantically, hoping that his communicator would know to tune into nearby heroes. "Melissa? Rewind Girl?"
"Midoriya?" Eri Aizawa's voice came through. "What's wrong?"
"Kacchan and the others have been taken out-" Midoriya fought with himself not to babble as he explained the situation. "The villains are going to take out the reactor. I'm going to stop them."
"What? They took out Mirio?" Eri's voice was tinged with fear.
Midoriya stood, brushing dust from his costume as the hostage he'd rescued did likewise. "One of the villains has a time control quirk. He's frozen time around him. The hostages too."
"I might be able to reverse it if I came. Wait there-"
"There's no time." Midoriya pushed his way through a door, eyes widening as he spotted the body of a security guard, pinned to a wall by a bony spike. "I uh- I think they might be at the reactor already."
There was silence on the other end, and for a second Midoriya wondered if his costume had lost signal. When it came through again, Eri's voice was breathless, as if she was running. "I'll patch you through to someone who knows the shut-down procedures. More heroes are en route, I'll let you know when they get here."
"Thanks." Midoriya rushed through another door, further towards the centre of the complex. The plan displayed on his headset was crude, but he'd seen enough of the complex from above when he'd come in with Lemillion that he was fairly sure that he was going in the right direction. He had an odd feeling in his gut, like he had on the train last night with Todoroki, the feeling that he was being watched, but he did his best to shake it off as he navigated through the complex.
Midoriya's headset crackled to life once more as one of the heroes from the first aid tent patched him through to one of the engineers who had been evacuated. Midoriya couldn't see the engineer's face, but from the way the woman spoke, he decided that she sounded about fifty.
"I'm afraid it's bad news, Midoriya," she said, after their introductions were made. "I only have partial access to the systems, and it looks as if the villains have disabled the failsafe systems. If you want to stop the meltdown, you'll have to do so manually."
"What does that mean?" Midoriya asked.
"It means… you'll likely be exposed to a lethal dose of radiation. I'm sorry, young man."
Midoriya shook his head, before realising that the engineer couldn't see him. He passed through another set of doors, this one smashed open, the security panel hanging from the wall by a single wire. The line crackled with static briefly before the audio resumed. "Don't worry about me, ma'am. My quirk should protect me. Just tell me the sequence for the shutdown."
The sound of steam pressure building hummed in Mujinaki's ears, his heart beating too loud in his chest. Bubaigawara had sacrificed himself, and from the sounds of it other members of the chatroom were being picked off by security.
It didn't matter. None of it mattered, really. Tousue and the others had already started the process of overloading the coolant systems and disabling the failsafes. By the time the heroes worked out that the remote shutdown was inoperable, it would be too late. Mujinaki checked his wristwatch. Another two minutes left on Wakezono's frozen bubble of time. Even if Lemillion clocked what was going on and tried to destroy the reactor, it would have much the same effect as the planned meltdown, if not worse. Around him, alarms joined the chorus with a soprano urgency, gauge needles spasming to red, and he tasted calm again.
He surveyed the control panel in front of him, an array of manual switches. It had been years since he'd worked here, but thankfully this wasn't the sort of interface that got updated.
Mujinaki didn't bother turning as the hero entered the plant room behind him. The last hero.
"You can't stop me," he said, making his voice cold as he flipped a switch with one hand, palming the quirk-enhancing drugs with another. "You'll have to kill me first."
"You can't stop me." The villain before Midoriya was hulking huge, spines like those of a porcupine bristling from the mesh clothing he wore, some bloody, some damaged. "You'll have to kill me first."
Midoriya's body shook, his mind superimposing a thousand scenes of All Might on top of himself. His communication with the outside world was gone, even Melissa's handiwork unable to function in the ambient radiation, and a warning symbol hovered in the corner of his visor's HUD. What would his hero do? But Midoriya wasn't All Might. He wasn't even All Might's chosen successor- that man was outside, frozen in a pocket of time by a radicalised high school student. So instead of stop right there, villain, or I am here, he said "There's a dangerous amount of radiation in this room. You should leave."
The villain turned, a slight frown on his face, and Midoriya noticed too late that the villain had jabbed a needle of something into his own arm. "Make me," the villain growled, seeming to grow in height as his spines lengthened.
Midoriya barely had time to dodge the first attack, a barrage of spines from the man's arm. He rolled, the control panel behind him sparking as a spine shorted something.
Midoriya crouched behind a panel as the villain spoke, voice distorted and gruff. "You so-called heroes, you don't understand. You don't understand what we're trying to do here."
Midoriya weighed his options. There was no way of carrying the villain away and controlling the meltdown at the same time. The villain stood between him and the manual override. "What is there to understand?" he yelled, drawing the villain's attention. "You want to kill thousands of people!"
"No," the villain breathed, spines rustling, his boots heavy on the metal floor. "We want to heal the world. You must have felt it. Everything's been broken. For years. It's unbearable."
The image came to Midoriya almost unbidden, of All Might at Kamino, grainy footage, almost unreal, and a ringing in his ears. The sensation of hollowness he'd felt, almost palpable even years later. Midoriya ground his teeth, bringing himself back into the moment. "I understand how you feel," he said, bringing himself into a crouch. "But this isn't the way!"
"NO!" The villain turned as Midoriya leapt for him, spines shooting out. Midoriya smashed them aside, using the armour plating on his costume to deflect them as he closed.
Much as he wanted to game it otherwise, the villain was right. He couldn't turn the valves and so forth that he needed to turn with someone obstructing him, and knocking the quirk-boosted villain out would take seconds that he might not have.
This isn't the way. The hero's words echoed inside Mujinaki's skull, and he roared, the canines his quirk had given him extending as he tried to block them out.
The hero was annoyingly fast, moving out of range of Mujinaki's spines as he mounted a counterattack, hitting hard with armoured feet and fists, hard enough that Mujinaki was sure that without the quirk enhancers he would be down. In the space between their movements, the hero moved towards the wall of switches and valves that would be the only way to stop the meltdown, forcing Mujinaki to intercept him.
Mujinaki took advantage of the change in pace to hit back, cracking the hero's visor. "We have to break the world into a thousand pieces," he said, his quills regrowing in under his skin fast enough to make him bleed all over, rivulets of it running into his eyes. It was hot in here, and he was rapidly growing exhausted. "So that it can be put together again."
"What?" The green-haired hero's face was a grimace. "That's not how you fix things. Killing people is wrong!"
"I thought you said you understood," said Mujinaki, pausing as he looked into the hero's eyes, green like his hair. There was something there, he was sure of it, some glimmer of recognition of the broken world. Around them, pipes thrummed, and there was the sound of machinery, metal on metal resonant below the scream of alarms.
The green-haired hero hesitated, and for a second Mujinaki dared hope that he actually understood their mission, but then his expression hardened again. "I'm sorry," he said. The noise of metal on metal intensified, and Mujinaki realised they were no longer alone.
Mujinaki raised his arm, shooting a spine at the hero's throat.
Midoriya moved at the last second, blocking the spike with his bracers. Backup, or what he assumed to be backup, approached quickly, and in the red shadows of the emergency lights Midoriya saw All Might before the interloper's true identity became apparent.
Ingenium. Midoriya watched with horror as the twisted mass of metal that had once been Tensei Iida approached, still human, just about, from the waist up clad in kevlar armour, and from the waist down a whirring, undulating mass of pistons and scar tissue. It formed jointless, pistoning limbs, propelling him forward like a child's idea of a centipede, but at incredible pace.
His engines roared above the sound of the sirens and the thrum of the over-pressurised pipes.
For a second Midoriya tensed, wondering if the vigilante was working with the villain group, and about to charge him down, until Ingenium's arm shot forward, more metal than flesh, the sharp edge of it severing the porcupine quirk user's head from his body. It hit a nearby wall and rolled, face down to the ground as the villain's body collapsed.
Midoriya stood to face the vigilante, arm raised as Ingenium turned towards him. "Stop right there!"
"We don't have time for this," Ingenium grated, his blue eyes calculating. "From how you were moving, you know the shutdown sequence."
Midoriya didn't bother to correct him. "It's dangerous in here- the radiation-" he started, but Ingenium cut him off with a look.
"My quirk lets me tolerate more of these harsh conditions than a normal person," he said, and Midoriya wasn't sure if he was being truthful, but the sirens wailed around them, the air in the room hot and thick. Only two lines of pixels on Midoriya's HUD still remained, the rest stuttering out.
"Alright," said Midoriya, with a frown. Moving as he did, he told the vigilante which valves needed to be turned, and they worked in tandem. True to his word, Ingenium seemed hardy, working through without complaint even as Midoriya's fingers blistered and bled. At last there was only one left.
"You should leave," said Midoriya, his voice unrecognisably hoarse, as they came to the final set. The sequence would be complete, but with the damage the villain had caused, it was likely to flood the control room with high-pressure steam. "I can handle these by myself."
Some small part of himself second-guessed his decision, but the vigilante was already gone, leaving him alone with the ominous hiss of the vents.
His hands shook as he turned the final set, blood pooling over his tongue. Death felt familiar, but it always hurt so much. He was so hot, sweating so much, his body so heavy. He gave a gasp, stumbling back as his flames ignited once more.