All That's Left

by Mirrond

When All for One died, it was supposed to get better. Japan was supposed to get better. But it didn't. Vigilantes are now as common as heroes and villains, there's a new Trigger epidemic across the country, and things are going from bad to worse. Meanwhile, a group of people has enough of it, and wants to live in peace. But was that ever truly an option?

10. Hijack

Uraraka finds herself seriously out of her depth with the kids. They were fun and all, but to be honest, out of her little friend group at UA, Tsu-chan was the one that was best equipped for a mission like this.

Too many conflicting personalities attached to still rather childish minds.

Immortal acted as if she was going to grow into another Ashido Mina. She was cheerful, happy and formed an odd friendship with Bunny in that she apparently wouldn't mind getting stabbed by the latter and that was enough to make Bunny respect you.

In Uraraka's opinion (shared by Monoma), Ryo Inui was going to have a field day over this.

Mindblank in the meantime said very little, almost nothing, and gave them a bit of an ice queen vibe. It might have been shyness or social anxiety more than anything else, though.

Fleshwarp was, as stated, lightly ill. Although that was apparently pretty normal for him. They were told by Rabbit not to touch him when he sneezed (at least his hands), which was a weird thing to suspect them of doing. At least, they thought Rabbit suspected then of something until they saw Fleshwarp sneeze only to slightly freak out when the tissues he was holding changed into a paper flower.

"Fleshwarp?" Uraraka decides to stop guiding Bunny through complicated meanders of math (it turns out that changing all the examples to involve knives did wonders for her focus) and instead asks Rabbit.

"H-he's better with flesh changing, but he can a-alter everything on t-touch." Rabbit replies. "G-gave him h-health issues, but he is d-doing better nowadays."

"A lot." Fleshwarp mumbles. "It was much, much worse. My quirk's stupid. Powerful, but stupid. I preferred not having it." Then he sneezes again and this time the tissue is turned into a small, metal-looking ball. "I only willingly do flesh, I can actually control it. And it doesn't make my allergies worse."

He preferred not having it? Late-bloomer? It sounded like that. To wait for so long, hoping to have a quirk, and then get one that's so… problematic? That had to suck.

Bunny, in the meantime, was a delight as always. Forming a really, really fun dynamic with Rabbit, whose main job was clearly keeping her (and everyone around them) alive. Uraraka found that adorable.

(***)

They ended up watching a movie with the kids afterwards. Carmilla appeared to find that hilarious. Monoma appeared to be tortured by it (delicious). It's an ancient, pre-quirk movie called Lion King.

"Just stab him!" Bunny wails right after Scar's first appearance. "Just look at him, Mufasa! He's obviously evil! Just stab him in the eye and be done with it!"

"B-Bunny, you can't stab people for looking bad." Rabbit intervenes before Uraraka can. It looks like he's used to it.

"Scar doesn't look bad, he looks evil!" Bunny retorts. "He's obviously the bad guy of this story! You gotta stab the evil people, right? That's what heroes do!"

"I don't think that most heroes do that, Bunny." Uraraka decides to speak. "Lethal means are the last choice, they're supposed to arrest people."

"Okay." Bunny concedes the point. "The cool heroes stab evil people. Which, admittedly, isn't a lot of heroes." At least she is consistent with it. "C'mon, tell me that you don't want Wash to have a knife! A washing machine on legs going around and stabbing people would be hilarious!"

Monoma gives Uraraka a tired look over Bunny and Rabbit's head, clearly displaying his opinion about his co-villain laughing at that.

The second incident happens after Mufasa's death. Bunny yells at the screen about being vindicated that Scar should have been stabbed long ago, just as Mindblank lets out a brief 'eeeep' in the background. Then she looks around, slightly confused.

"Mindblank, you remember the rules!" This time it's Immortal, who was sitting on the couch beside Carmilla, close to Mindblank's side. "Stop erasing your memories each time you see something sad! Vox said that it'll make you grow up e-emotionally stunted and that's bad!"

"You look sad too." Mindblank replies calmly. "I don't know what happened but if you want, I can make you forget too."

"I'm going to be brave!" Immortal retorts back.

"Did you just say that I'm not brave?" Mindblank's eyes narrow.

"Yes." Immortal replies smugly.

Carmilla managed to stop them from having a fight, but it was a close call. Uraraka and Monoma without a word file another scarily powerful quirk for their future report. Memory alteration? Where did the Numbers find her?

They don't know what Carmilla's and Rabbit's quirks are, but thus far everyone here had a scarily strong one. Even Bunny. She was a complex mutant, yes, but so was Miruko. And she was clearly interested in matching up to the Rabbit Hero. That probably explains why Nedzu was so interested in them.

(***)

Eventually, they are relieved of their job(?) thanks to Carmilla involving a girl with bi-coloured hair in babysitting duty. Rabbit and the others bid them goodbye and thank them for spending their time with them.

Bunny tells them to come with their knives next time, because to know how cool they are, she has to know what their taste in knives is. She is absolutely adorable, and Uraraka is ready to die on this hill.

"That was exhausting." Monoma comments a moment later.

"I figured that you would feel great with children around." Uraraka replies with a wry smile. "After all, people feel at ease with others like them, right?"

Monoma groans loudly as Carmilla goes into a giggling fit in the background. He is used to this. Besides, if it helps those two get closer it might just make Carmilla more talkative further down the line.

Then they casually run into a dead person. And, to be honest, neither of them have any idea on how to deal with that.

"Carmilla." A blonde teenager that seemed to have returned to the living room from somewhere asks. "Do we have someone new? Why don't you introduce me?"

"They are here temporarily." Carmilla replies. "She's Gravity, he's Trickster. They were let in when they were fleeing from some heroes. Apparently hero course students of UA with a villainous gig on the side." The blonde boy looks at them weirdly. "They are staying until Monday, under Vox' orders."

"Great." The blondie deadpans "UA. Oh, joy. Did you recognize me already?" And yes, they did. They probably failed to conceal their reactions to that.

"You… you are Amaya Uyemura." Uraraka says. There is no point in pretending. She saw his face on the missing posters way too much. "You are Midnight-sensei's nephew." There is an angry flinch on his face.

"I, personally, would like to stop being reminded of that one thing." He says dryly. "I don't consider Midnight to be a part of my family, nor do I in fact consider myself to be a part of any family aside from the Numbers. Call me Mustard."

There is a lot of venom in his words. Venom and scowls. Like a meaner Bakugou with a less expressive face, really.

"But… she's been looking for you constantly, even today!" Uraraka should probably just nod and call it a day. But it's not what she is thinking about right now. "And she is a good teacher, I can't believe that she…"

"I had to live through enough shit in my old school due to being a nephew of Midnight, especially with her previous quote unquote hero uniform." Mustard replies dryly. "Do you want to imagine how bad it would be if she actually got to adopt me after my parents' died in an accident? Because we all know that this would be the result of having a respected hero in a close family?" Uraraka blinks at him, she didn't… "Well, I didn't want to imagine it, so I ran away from home. That's the whole story."

"I get that she is rather… unique, and that kids could be assholes about it, but…" Uraraka decides to take one more shot at this. "... she's really terrified that you fell victim to some quirk traffickers or something like that, she's a good person and…"

"I don't doubt that." Mustard cuts in. "I'm not saying she's a bad hero. From what I remember, she is also a rather nice person in private. But guess what? If she is allowed to spend most of her life being an icon of sex positivity, I'm allowed to be as sex negative as humanly possible. Thanks to my lovely classmates in the past I have fucking trauma on that field and anything even remotely sex-related makes me either have panic attacks or get nauseated, depending on the circumstances. I can barely think about her, her usual behavior and her hero uniform without having to fight nausea, so I want nothing to do with her. Worst of all I know that if I'm found, I'm going to be inevitably brought into her custody, because modern courts worship heroes. And it's not as if she would choose proper parenthood over her hero career, either way."

It was just a few months, but… Uraraka had some lessons with Midnight. She did mention rather openly that her nephew was missing, and that she was still looking for him, and if any of them were to ever see someone resembling him, during internships or anywhere else, she wanted to know.

Uraraka seriously doubted the validity of Mustard's last sentence.

"I guess I get you there." Monoma comments from the side, prompting Uraraka to stare at him in surprise. Was he trying to bond with someone just like he was letting Uraraka bond with Carmilla? "I never exactly liked the idea of her being allowed to be a teacher. I understand that her quirk is useful in getting rowdy students under control without a lot of damage, but other than that… yeah, no."

… seriously? Uraraka just looks at him in complete shock. That was… well, Midnight might have not acted as you'd expect from the teacher, but her knowledge on the showbusiness side of heroics was straight-up incredible, and…

"Looks like there is hope for the Hero Society left." Mustard replies while shaking his head. Monoma replies with a rather wry smile. Yeah, hope for the Hero Society left - namely, a villain hiding in its midst. "Like, I get it, she does a good job as a hero. But teaching? She should just focus on targeting sexual abuse cases full-time rather than try to be someone that she shouldn't be. If any non-hero teacher acted on camera like she did during the last sports festival, they would be fired the same day. But guess what? She's a hero, and that's her aesthetic, so it's perfectly fine with everyone. Heroes and their fucking institutional hypocrisy."

Carmilla karate-chops him. Not strong enough to cause any damage, but enough to make him yell out a bit and then look at her like he was planning a murder. Uraraka deeply respects that maneuver and the girl behind it.

"What was that for?" Mustard asks while rubbing the top of his head.

"You know what Vox says about you going on anti-hero rants." She informs him. "They are pointless, and just something you're doing out of spite. You can't be free of your past and the connection to Midnight if hearing her name riles you up like that. Just let it go. And leave being violently and permanently anti-parent to someone whose parents were actually legally their parents and did things that really, really earned hatred."

Mustard clicks his tongue.

"If you weren't my adopted sister, I'd have seen to it that you choked to death on my gas long ago." He announces. Uraraka feels uncomfortable. Monoma doesn't seem to care about their roughhousing.

"If you weren't my adopted brother, I'd have seen to it that you bled out in front of me long ago." Carmilla replies. Uraraka's uncomfortableness grows in intensity. Monoma still doesn't seem to care at all.

Then said uncomfortableness vanishes as they both start laughing.

"Alright, alright, you damn bloodsucker." Mustard says through the laughter. "No more rants. I mean, let me do one for nostalgia's sake from time to time, alright?" She sticks her tongue at him. He shakes his head and turns to Uraraka and Monoma. "Sorry about that, we have a bit of a history together. Carmilla's dad picked me up after I ran away from home and pretty much adopted me as well. Been only two years before he passed away, but damn if I didn't get attached. So, what's your quirk?"

"Uhm, I can nullify gravity on objects that I touch with five fingers." Uraraka replies. She never heard what Amaya Uyemura's quirk was, it was probably something to do with gasses? Considering what his false threat to Carmilla was and, well, what Midnight's quirk is about.

"I can temporarily copy the quirks of people I touch." Monoma adds. He is vaguely smug about it, and probably for a reason - when correctly used, his quirk is a fucking nightmare to fight.

"That's cool." Mustard says to Monoma, whose smugness grows stronger. "As for you… you can make things float? Like in space?" She nods. "People too?" She nods again. "Don't let the kids hear about the floating people part, or they'll pester you until you die of quirk exhaustion."

"Why do you think I didn't mention it with them around?" Uraraka replies calmly, before letting herself summon a wry smile on her face. "I can predict threats to myself, thank you very much."

"Cool, cool." Mustard nods. "Did you have your quirk assessment with Vox already? I don't think he'll figure out anything groundbreaking about Trickster's quirk, but yours sounds like one of his potential new favorites."

"Err, no?" He looks at her with pity. She is getting incredibly uncomfortable with the concept of 'Vox's quirk assessment'. Everyone acts terrified of it, that's for sure. "What?"

"No, nothing." He replies promptly. "Vox's quirk knowledge is legendary among the Numbers. My quirk lets me create and control poison gas, though depending on the dosage it might only paralyze or knock people unconscious. I could only burst some of it at people and my control was bad back then, mostly because it felt wrong to use something deadly. A few years with Vox and I'm pretty much an equivalent of a Disaster-class villain." He shrugs. "Well, if I wanted to become one, that is. Still, you are in for a wild ride tomorrow, girl."

She has no idea what he means by the Disaster-class. Monoma seems unaware of it too. She should probably check it up, just not now. The Internet should help.

"Warned her already about it, Musty." Carmilla points out and pouts. "Now she is just going to be scared of it."

"That's kinda the point." Mustard gives them both a mischievous smile and decides to go bother Raven. Uraraka can hear him argue that 'City of Ominous Darkness' is a horrible name (Raven seems to disagree) before Carmilla pulls them elsewhere.

(***)

Eventually the evening comes, and people start gravitating towards the sleeping areas. There are apparently 3+2 of those. One for girls, one for boys and one for pairs of older kids that decided to live together (there weren't many of those, apparently).

The first special case is for Vox and his siblings, who live together in a room beside his office. The second is for all the younger children.

There is apparently more than one living room. That one's the biggest, yes, but some members just want to, for example, read books in peace. So Uraraka didn't see the majority of Numbers.

Plus, there are several people on standby in case a Number is attacked, the people guarding the Labyrinth entrances (there are two), and some that spend time outside of it. Visiting arcades with their allowance money, part-timing to earn money for the numbers etc.

But when the evening comes, most of these distractions end. Mustard ends up grabbing Monoma to go to the men's sleeping area. Carmilla does the same to Uraraka, but the direction's naturally different.

The sleeping area is a bunch of bunk beds on one edge of the rooms, some more couches surrounding a large table (where are the Numbers taking all of this furniture from?!) and a handful of lockers and wardrobes. All of it underneath a wooden ceiling.

(insulating the rooms with all of the metal surrounding them during the winter had to be a nightmare)

Something like twenty minutes after their arrival, Uraraka finds herself playing cards with Carmilla, Toxicity (girl with two-coloured hair, for some reason still wearing her face-mask), and Runner (Number 24, according to her silent introduction, as she appears to be mute). A girl with twin-tailed brown hair and what feels like an overflowing abundance of energy (if not ADHD).

Uraraka is doing her best NOT to make it obvious that she recognized Runner. There are very few people that wouldn't recognize Mika Toyoda, the missing daughter of Thunderbolt, the SS-Rank Hero considered to be - together with Hawks - the only members of their class with a chance of getting promoted to SSS-Rank.

Another girl - green hair, nickname Thorn - was busy reading a religious book on her bed a short distance away. She put a pair of headphones on herself to make sure that they could be (reasonably) loud without interrupting her.

Maybe twenty minutes later another girl rolls in and decides to get involved. This time it's a girl with long, black hair and blue eyes. Uraraka doesn't recognize her.

"Carmilla!" The new arrival shouts and comes closer. Carmilla shudders a bit. "Fancy seeing you here, listen I have a SUPER important question to you…"

"I'm not narrating to you my today's encounter with Vox, Twilight." Carmilla cuts in, not letting her finish. "Stop pursuing him, you have a boyfriend dammit."

"I do!" The new arrival giggles. "But I wouldn't mind a threesome, you know!" Carmilla rolls her eyes around, just as Uraraka - against herself - smiles wryly. "C'mon, I'm an incorrigible connoisseur of eye candies! Share some intel with me."

"A few weeks ago she had the brilliant idea of shouting that Vox is the number one on her 'people I'd like to raw me' list. In public." Carmilla announces to Uraraka (with a deadpan stare to boot). Gravity ends up actually blushing lightly at that. "Turned out that Vox and his little sisters just entered the room. When one of them asked him what does 'raw me' mean, Vox ended up smacking Twilight with a rolled newspaper many, many times. While shouting things about common human decency and not teaching kids weird things. She didn't learn her lesson, as you can see."

"Worst of all, she is all talk." Toxicity adds before rolling her eyes. "Like, literally. Talks a lot, but has absolutely zero practical experience." Now Twilight looks hurt.

"You're no fun!" She replies. "Me and Blacky are getting there! Not my fault he isn't here for most of the time. On a side note, who's the new face?" She says, her face finally turning to Uraraka.

"Oh, we picked up a stray today." Toxicity says, ignoring the rythmic sound of Runner's feet meeting the floor beneath them. Someone was getting impatient. "Name's Gravity. She was running from heroes together with some guy that Mustard kidnapped for himself. Technically with us only temporarily, so don't divulge any serious secrets."

"Secrets? Like what?" Twilight tilts her head while looking at her quizzically. "Like me being the daughter of Eclipse', the elusive leader of the Quirkless Liberation Front and the patron saint of murderous reverse racism here in Japan? A daughter who hopes to one day see her mother getting jailed or killed on live TV?"

Uraraka inhales deeply at the revelation but says nothing. Carmilla and Toxicity give Twilight a death stare.

"Hey, I'm not hiding that fact!" Twilight replies immediately. "I'm waaaay too tired of living in fear of that bitch. You remember me when I first came here?"

"I do." Carmilla replies. "And I admit that you living in constant fear of her was preeetty bad. But going the opposite way too far is just as bad, ugh. Ever heard of moderation being a thing?"

"Is that some sort of English cuisine?" Twilight replies before smiling wildly. "My secret is mine to hand to people, you know the rules and so do I." She then shrugs. "Can I play cards with you before we go to sleep? Pretty please?"

"Are you going to behave?" Toxicity asks. Runner's rhythmic thumping is steadily growing in intensity.

"Define behave?" Twilight retorts with a mischievous smile.

Twenty minutes later she is flung up in the air by Thorn's vines after Toxicity shouted at her to 'yeet the thot'. Thorn doesn't stop reading her book for a second.

Twilight returns a moment later, floating on some circular black surface (that looks VERY much like the quirk of Eclipse, one of the most dangerous villains in Japan), throwing curses around. They keep playing the cards together after that, but Twilight learns her lesson at least for a while.

(***)

Monoma had a surprisingly calm evening, if you exclude a slight internal fear that splitting them apart was some sort of plot on the Vox's side. It was a perfect way of asking them questions about their backstory without letting them compare their answers, to then out them as spies.

Thankfully, this didn't happen.

Instead, he spent a reasonably nice evening playing videogames with a victim of one of the more infamous disappearances of the modern era. He was absolutely fucking brutalized but that was beside the point.

"So…" Mustard at some point takes his hands off his controller and looks at Monoma. "... what's the deal with you two?"

Was it the interrogation he expected or a more innocent query? Monoma wishes he had a mindreading quirk on him.

"I'm not sure you want to hear me talk about it." Neito replies. Mustard gives him what looks like a very instinctual and automatic 'ewwww' look. "Nothing actually happened, for the record, but let's just say that the past me significantly regretted that fact."

"Huh." Mustard thinks it over. "That's rough, buddy. I mean, I guess. I can stomach talking about love for as long as I don't talk about the physical part of it, but I don't really have a lot of experience with that. Excuse me if I sound odd about it." He did sound a little condescending with the rough line, yeah. "Why did nothing happen?"

"Well, I was a bit too emotionally underdeveloped back then and didn't make a move." Monoma replies. He can basically see Kendou's head floating around him and asking 'you mean that you were less emotionally developed at some point in the past?!'. She was… good hero material, but had no understanding of the concept of good acting. "Then she got pissed off and destroyed a skyscraper over it. Rather than talk with me about it, or invite me to the fun." Mustard actually blinks at him over the skyscraper bit. Yeah, understandable. "Guess I felt betrayed so I walked out of the crew."

His parents were deeply regretful of that fact. They ended up meeting her once or twice before that, and were clearly happy that their son found himself a headstrong and bullshit-resistant girl that was going to set him straight.

Naturally, he couldn't explain to them what happened and why it happened, so he was fairly sure that they suspected him of doing one of his standard theatrics and going too far, leading to Uraraka walking out on him. While it was the exact opposite situation.

No one in his life was fucking treating him seriously. Aside from Uraraka. Because while she was ready to stab him with word-needles 24/7, their villainous past made it clear that she trusted him to do things on his own. Completely. For as long as he said that he would do something, she treated it as done and was ready to bet her freedom or even life on it.

Ugh.

"That really sucks." Mustard decides. "Bros before hoes, I guess?" Monoma actually chuckles at it and high-fives him.

"Yeah, that sounds applicable." Neito also says. "You feel fine treating a guy you met for the first time ever as your bro? And that you might as well not meet again after the weekend?"

That sounds like a Certified Tetsutetsu Moment to him. That guy would do that, no questions asked.

"Dude, I live in a teenager commune with no adult oversight." Mustard replies dryly. "I cherish my connections to non-horndog boys and hope to have as many of them as possible. Not everyone here is Raven, 'ya know? He has a girlfriend, but at least he doesn't do any perverted jokes."

Raven glances in their direction before returning to his present activity of writing something on a piece of paper, all while withstanding his living shadow's comments about writing down edgy poetry.

That boy had it rough, and his perseverance was worth respect.

"That's… fair, I guess." Monoma replies. He didn't see or hear a lot of horndogging thus far (everyone was acting really chaste and hobby-focused), but maybe Mustard had a different definition of it? "If you want to be friends, I'm okay with that."

"Sweet." Mustard nods. "Let's play another game before going to sleep!"

Monoma's undercover operation resembles a sleepover merged with a class field trip and it's as confusing to him as it's reassuring.