16
The large conference room had a huge table, it's top so waxed that everyone's face shown off of it like a mirror. It sat regal, dead center, middle of the room, and around the table sat twelve socialites.
A haze of purple glow appeared in the corner, quick to regain a humanoid form.
The villain, Kurogiri, clad in his normal, formal bartender apparel had arrived.
"Our leader, the mighty All For One, has requested you all tonight as an audience. I apologize I am the only LOV representative able to make the trip here today, my colleagues had other matters to attend to." He bowed.
A television screen flicked on, so huge that the entire viewspace covered the whole back wall, the lights grew dim. A masculine silhouette appeared on it, nothing except a black outline with a deep gray background.
"As you know, I am the great Master."
Everyone at the table silenced as he began to speak, the voice like a rumbling giant, if a mountain could speak; it's timbre settled, but deep and fierce.
"When quirks first arose and came to this world; I was the one that took advantage of that chaos. I was the one that seen that opportunity. I took quirks for my own use out of undeserving degenerates. The ultimate goal as I've told, is to become Japan's ultimate ruler, forever." A throat cleared.
It was such a stark tone that nobody dared utter a word.
"I forced a quirk into my kin, to stockpile my treasures." The black form looked to Kurogiri, then back to the conference room's attendees. "Those words are just to help you remember exactly who I am and what I am capable of, to those that oppose me."
Everyone gathered knew the story, he didn't have to reiterate: His brother had already had a quirk before he forced a secondary one on him. It was one of passing his quirk to others. The overwhelming vault of powers All For One pushed into him then mutated, creating One For All, something they're still trying to kill off.
"Yes, Master." Kurogiri knew they'd been unsuccessful. All Might, this particular vessel, that One For All had been passed to, was incredibly resilient. He knew the Master would never tell these people that All Might had incapacitated him in a fight, and that was why he had to go into hiding, to heal from his wounds.
But, he did not die, and created a League of Villians to aid him in his conquest. 'LOV', as they called it, was a fairly new organization.
Surely soon All Might was bound to pass his power; the league had their suspicions with who.
Silence.
"Kurogiri, if you don't mind. The list. I would like to hear the names. Let's all have a discussion, shall we? About the outliers?"
One man at the table stood, in full business suit, shining jet-black satin tie, handing a peice of printed paper to the purple, hazy void which only resembled a man by it's appearance inside of clothing.
After the gentleman reseated himself, Kurogiri began reading. "Category 1, Gene Research; Ito Aiko and Yamamoto Nami."
"Whereabouts, and what are we doing?" The TV spoke.
A man in a white coat stood. "Our intelligence center has discovered that Yamamoto is hiding in the northern Fuji region, in a valley. Currently we are trying to discover ways to infiltrate. It's so remote there's no technology, and in order to capture her correctly, we'll need specific equipment that requires a lot of firepower, hence why it has been a difficult process. Ito is equally as intuitive, and has picked up on our follow, and fled Japan; our database hackers discovered street camera shots of her in south Bangkok. We sent a private eye there to search. I have a more detailed report of the findings."
The man walked to Kurogiri and handed him portable flash drive. He portalled it somewhere instantly as soon as it touched his misty hand.
"Progress. Excellent." The Master's silhouette on the television swirled the drive now around a finger.
The white-coat again to Kurogiri. "I trust my newest Nomu is up to par?"
Kurogiri nodded, setting the man to smirk and return to his seat.
Shortly after Kurogiri began reading again. "Category 2, Traficking; Goto Naoko."
A smarmy looking guy, dressed very luxuriously stood, swishing his hair back. He held a gin and tonic. "Goto is in France, in the the city of love, Pari of course! I sent my little girls after him, they'll find him soon and snag him up, don't'cha worry your nuts off."
He walked over and handed a physical vanilla-colored file full of paperwork and photos. Unlike the other man, he liked to do things in a more basic way, a more 'human' way.
It disappeared, portalled.
"Category 3, Drugs; Ishii Saburo."
A woman stood this time. She was dressed in all black as well, extremely fair, she looked almost ill. "Saburo and his two brothers have fled to Seoul. I knew that was exactly where he would go, and would drag the others with him. He stole a fairly hefty amount out of one of our southeastern storage facilities, about 500,000 worth; a price to pay I suppose for the trust I placed in him at that location. Apparently, he's been jacking the price and selling it; Koreans can't get enough. We'll sniff him out, he keeps changing locations within the city, but I know him too well, he'll make a mistake and we'll pounce on him." She walked and handed a file similar to the previous', and out a pocket handed him something else. "For your trouble."
Kurogiri was given a thick stack of money.
"Keep it." All For One spoke.
He bowed to the television and to the woman. Then continued.
They went through ten categories, each with a signifying leader standing and updating the progress of the searches, with only one or two people of topic each.
"Now that we're concluding, let's discuss the most important matter." All For One continued, ushering for a very specific person to stand.
A chair scooted out. "Yes." An older man, who looked not a day over thirty-five, bowed to the screen. "As you know, we'd found the child fairly early in his life." He took a sip of whiskey sour. "Once we discovered where the quirk went, he'd been easy to locate."
"Continue with the details." It sounded slightly agitated.
Kurogiri and him both knew the backstory, there was no need say it.
"After we unexpectedly lost control over him..." He looked down at the girl sitting to his left who looked away smugly. "we know now from our spy, and are certain, that it was his brother who aided. Similar to your once own, with his resilience. Infiltrating where he's being holed-up now is not possible."
"Oh?" The silhouette took on an entertained tone.
"Yes. It's at UA."
A few people in the room gasped.
The man went on to explain. (Which, in fact, were the exact reasons why some at the table were surprised.)
"As I recall, we aided the League of Villains with the training dome infiltration nearly a year ago. However, sources provided that afterwards, the school clinched up it's security. A year ago, we were also unaware of this outlier's whereabouts, so we took a shot in the dark, and we failed. All Might may of been the main mission, but it was his students and himself that got in the way of us carrying out the secondary." The man took another sip of his drink. "We now know, he was not being kept at that school at that time, but on a military base. Funny, how where we thought he was, is now actually where he is."
"'All For One, and One For All.' That's the motto of a fictional story 'The Three Musketeers' by Alexandre Dumas. Did you know that?" The master suddenly spoke, it was completely off subject.
Or so everyone thought.
The man took a swig of whiskey. "Eh, no. I didn't."
"That's why this is priority Dr. Connely. One For All is a direct pun in opposition to my campaign, to me. It was a favorite book of our mother's. That is how personal this is, and I had entrusted you to a piece of that job." Something in his voice, swarmed with a dark tone. "As ironic as it may be; it remains just as vital. This isn't just any outlier."
"..." He was silent as Kurogiri turned to stare at him, that metallic helmet thing he wears looking like a fearsome Spartan. A strike of fear slid through him.
'Had.' It shivered his insides.
He wouldn't tell him about the other half of his spy's findings... about a possible court case. He and his daughter, they'd settle this, by themselves. They'd succeed, hopefully, before they ended up dead alongside a road somewhere.
"Let me tell everyone the 'why'. I don't believe I've mentioned. This might help you understand the reasoning to this issue's pertinence." That was vile.
The man knew it was a blunt, passive-aggressive way to say that he was being 'watched' from here on out.
They all had wondered about this particular individual, everyone at that table; never had they been told, they only knew that this mission had been going for 17 years now, with it's peaks and falls like any other, but with no exact end. All For One would never close it, and the socialites never understood why.
"My adopted cousin. Her name was Chiara. I'd always hated her. She was nothing but a sick little girl, always attached to my brother's hip. That was why I chose to exterminate her. I wanted to use him for what I wanted without her snotty nose in it. And I did kill her, after I forced a quirk into him."
The room grew even quieter, as if silence could silence itself. Breaths became airless, nothing was being inhaled as he spoke.
"The problem was, my brother had fallen in love with that quirkless girl. Love sick, of all things, disgusting. The power I put in him, as it mutated and changed his quirk, it created a chaotic environment in his body. The mental quirks that I gathered, and the physical ones, did not like mixing." He took on an informational quality. "Now, natural genetic mutation allows some cross-over, but many generations ago, the DNA lines were too pure to combine. Can you explain further Kurogiri?" He knew his minion understood it all too well; he, the Master, had gained a sense of 'immortality' from his quirk gathering, power stock-piling.
He was 100's of years old.
The purple haze began. "His brother's quirk forcibly split into two halves. One mental. One physical. Like a cell mitosis, it created two equally as powerful, equivalent, but different quirks, both with the ability to 'pass' onto others. Keeping both of them inside his body was tumultuous, both battling for dominance, and so, the only option was to let one of them go on to someone else." Kurogiri looked to the man standing with the drink, which sent more chills through him. "The hero we know as All Might is the embodiment of the passed One For All, the physical quirk kept by his younger brother. The other half, his brother passed to Chiara, in an attempt to save himself from the death he'd experience if he'd of kept both of the new quirks inside himself."
A sick laugh came out of the silhouette amongst all the gasps from the table. Nobody knew whether this was to be taken comically or seriously!
The TV continued: "That's right! Two. There are two of them! Chiara became the third musketeer. How even more ironic!" He laughed maniacally. "Before I set to my initial plan of capturing and murdering her, my brother told her that the power he gave could be passed onto whomever she wished. He let her in on that. So, she ran with that knowledge, finally seeing through my plans to stab her to death."
The younger girl at the table fidgeting in a funny way.
Kurogiri spoke again with the Master still laughing: "This quirk was named For One's All by Chiara. It's a powerful 'passing' cerebral quirk."
Whispers around the table.
The Master: "I was thrilled that we'd finally caught the quirk in our snare, able to keep it under our grasp for a time, using it to our advantage to get rid of people who crossed us." He cleared his throat, silencing everything again. "It's last master the LOV ID'ed as Boehler Stella, a German native; we'd cornered her here in Japan 17 years ago, as she had paired up with All Might. The quirk did not disappear with her unfortunate death because she was able to give it to a suitable candidate right beforehand." He motioned again to Kurogiri, the TV shut off, beginning to close. The silhouette suddenly gone as quick as it had appeared.
Kurogiri concluded the meeting. "Satoko Kasaya." He began to slowly disappear too, into a more undefined luminous form. "Is the inheritor."
Ashley turned to look up at her father with an indistinguishable look in her eye.
Could it really of been!? The using of his Level 3!?
How everything had turned white! Even his eyes began to glow! Then his whole form, she had watched a crackle of the purest, white lightning dissipate it into air.
Then... the man that owed them money, he also disappeared!
Kasaya, moments later returned, surrounded by a circle of blood from the person she asked him to kill.
He had came back from the mist.
Except that circle of blood, by his feet on the ground, wasn't blood, and he, himself, was spotless.
It was something else, dirt perhaps?
Was it truly... that he was truly... For One's All?
Kurogiri was completely gone now, and the table began talking amongst themselves.
She had controlled one of the ultimate 'super powers' of all quirks!
She realized now, it was because Kasaya had been nothing but young; innocent and uncaring, too concerned about baseball as a little boy to care about even touching his quirk, learning it hone it.
'Unknowing.'
Something struck her: Somehow he was never told what he actually was. He had no idea!
Whatever happened to Stella Boehler?
Kasaya never mentioned her, and Ashley, she'd heard everything, she knew everything there was to know about Satoko Kasaya. (Or so she thought.)
And she'd turned Diasuta to do her bidding! She'd been the one to throw the wrench in the bucket.
Even if he found out he possessed For One's All, what could he do?
Diasuta was hers.
Therefore, Kasaya was hers.
She wickedly smiled looking up to her father, and there, staring down, he had a similarly wicked smirk on his face.
Ideas flowing.
'Oh. Yes.'
He would be hers again.
She would make sure of it.
As long as Diasuta reined supreme over Kasaya's Level 2 and 3 tiers, that mongrel she'd created inside of Kasaya's head, it left Kasaya unable to fully use For One's All to it's best capacities; to control it to it's top capacities.
As long as that remained true...
As long as Diasuta remained a horrible creature... an unreasonable, unmanageable, reaper... Kasaya was as a powerless as a weak little mouse.
'For One's All or not...' Ashley bit her lip. 'You're as good as mine. Just as you've always been.'
Hiding out on UA, it would not stop her from gaining back the asset she lost.
And now knowing what he truly is...
How the more interesting.
How the more... powerful she could be knowing what he is; using Kasaya and Diasuta as her personal assassin.
She really would never sell him now to another socialite! He was worth more than a million jewels!
She, Ashley, and her father could rule Japan, not All For One, the 'Master', who never shows his damn face!
Cruel. Evil. Twisted.
It was.
Her and her father were.
That was their goal from the start.
Now they seen a golden ticket opportunity to pull the rug out from under them all, and they just smiled at each other.
Knowing exactly the others thoughts.
She'd been raised in this case, raised to understand that the family business of clubbing and property ownership was everything, the other mental-quirk members using the clubs to distribute their 'goods'.
All the other socialites, even though linked together in crime, under one organization, and managed by the League of Villians, they were nothing but heads for her and her father to step on to climb the mountain.
She was raised to understand that this was the goal. To befriend, then eventually infect Satoko Kasaya with her strong emotion controls.
Now knowing what the purpose of the case was for, it made getting to know, controlling, and having Satoko spill everything to her under the influence of the liquor, even more worthwhile.
There was no way they could lose.