"What about the words step on it do you not understand?" Katsuki seethed.

The situation was impossible. Katsuki couldn't use his quirk to get around the city with Sugu in his arms. For one, he needed both arms to fly well. His one-armed flight had improved, but it wouldn't be sustainable to travel any real distance, even with zero cargo. Furthermore, he couldn't subject Sugu to the volume of his explosions. Not now and not for many, many years.

"I apologize, sir, but I don't think your fare will cover the ticket I'll get if I go any faster," his cabbie said with a suppressed frustration that Katsuki almost admired.

Katsuki thumped back against the seat, crossing his arms and slouching into them. He reached one hand out a little, running the backs of his fingers over Sugu's leg, carefully tucked into a striped onesie.

Once the handle for the carrier was out, it was obvious how the thing converted back and forth, so Katsuki had been able to carry it out to the street and shove it in the car as a car seat no problem. Tearing him from Burnin's arms had been the most difficult part. And Sugu, bless him, had slept through the whole ordeal.

The familiar buildings of Katsuki's commute home rushed by, their many brightened windows keeping the night from ever growing dim as the sun fell ever lower in the sky. His resentment built with every passing one. The grocery store he stopped by on the way home, the conbini, the drug store, all mocking him as he drew closer and closer to home.

Because that's where he was headed. Not to find Izuku and pull his ass out of whatever predicament he'd gotten himself into, but home. Because they had decided—no, Izuku had decided, and Katsuki had gone along with it—that they were doing this just the two of them. No sitters, no parents, no friends. One of the two of them was with Sugu at all times. And just because Izuku had broken that didn't mean Katsuki was going to.

So Katsuki was retracing Izuku's steps, trying to suss out exactly what was going on without throwing himself and Sugu headlong into danger. And he had texted Izuku saying that he and Sugu were headed home and that he was fucking dead when he got back.

"Here's fine," Katsuki grunted when the car made it to the stoplight at the corner of his street. He'd be faster on his own, even while lugging a baby and his accessories.

As soon as Katsuki was in the door, he was in investigation mode.

If a little part of him had hoped that Izuku was actually back at home, it was quashed as soon as he saw the red sneakers missing from their cubby in the genkan. Izuku was gone.

Katsuki left the car seat by the door—who knew if he'd be needing it again—but slipped Sugu out of it and held him tight against his chest. Every moment had Katsuki's blood simmering a degree higher and higher, and Sugu's presence was steadying. With Sugu in his arms, Katsuki had to remain calm, he had to be a comfort.

The apartment had been cleared of party items, as though it had been wiped clean of evidence. The only lingering trace was the confusing smell of all of Izuku's cooking combined with the yeasty undertone of beer. Katsuki recoiled when he saw his giant head still looming over the television—he'd entirely forgotten that it was his birthday.

Katsuki moved on to the bedroom, doing the same search that had succeeded back at the office. He went for the laptop, warm to the touch, but only because it had been plugged into its charger all day. With one hand, he flipped it open and typed in the password only to find the screensaver staring back at him. Last time Katsuki had used this computer, it had been an image of Izuku and Katsuki on patrol together caught spontaneously by some extra who had proceeded to post it on Twitter, tagging the both of them. Izuku had liked it so much that he'd downloaded it and it had been their screensaver ever since.

Now it was a picture of both of them on the couch, Sugu balanced between them, looking clueless as ever. But Katsuki and Izuku were just smiling, looking awfully happy—maybe even content. The picture was only a week or so old, if Katsuki remembered correctly, and already Sugu was bigger and stronger.

Katsuki only allowed himself a moment longer to look at the picture before moving onto the open applications. Nothing seemed related to Dr. Oukubo. When he opened up the Internet, the most recent history was from the day before—cake recipes. Katsuki pushed the laptop aside. Clearly he wasn't going to learn anything that way.

Then, he had an idea.

The roof was cold now that the sun had sunk below even the shortest buildings in the city. There was always a breeze up that high, even on the stillest days. So Katsuki held Sugu close to his heart—warm core to warm core.

The shed was locked with a padlock, not a key, and Katsuki was able to thumb the numbers in by rote, callus rolling over dial after dial. When the door opened, Katsuki reared back, surprised by the pregnant robot suit he'd forgotten about. It was intimidating, all dark metal and girth. But when he looked past it, he immediately noticed missing slots. The jetpack he'd come home to Izuku practicing with just a week earlier. And his gloves, the ones meant to mimic his old gauntleted Air Force model.

Whatever Izuku was doing, he was either anticipating a fight, or preparing just in case.

Katsuki looked down at Sugu, and back at the shed, loaded with Mei's best inventions. Years of experience on her part had made them reliable, the best in the business, just shy of bringing Izuku's quirk back to him.

Well. If Izuku was preparing for a fight, Katsuki sure as hell could too.

It was black as unconsciousness. Dark as waking with gauze over your eyes.

Izuku pulled his gloves on tight over his biceps, closing his eyes in an effort to acclimate to the darkness as fast as possible. Night had fallen outside and either there were no street lamps on this side of the building or there were no windows at all. Regardless, this wasn't the kind of trick someone pulled when they were happy to just chat.

"I'm not here to take you in," Izuku said, listening hard for the sound of approaching footsteps or even Dr. Oukubo's breath hinting towards his location. "I just wanted to talk."

"I just want to talk too," came the voice from the dark. It was the slightest bit familiar to Izuku, but he was too busy trying to place it in space to place it in time. It wasn't right up next to him, and there was too much stuff in the lab to navigate his way until his eyes adjusted.

Dr. Oukubo was blind, though. He had the advantage in the dark. A part of Izuku wanted to think that hitting the light switch had been an accident, but from his first words, it was clear that none of this was an accident.

"About what?" Izuku asked.

He should have come more prepared. This slow prelude would have been the perfect opportunity to stock up energy in his newly outfitted Fa Jin accessories, maybe even without notice. But all he had was the pack and his gloves.

"I wanted to talk about you," Dr. Oukubo said, sounding for all the world like a genial friend. Nothing threatening or overly light and fake in his tone. It was natural, genuine. "I wanted to know if you miss your quirk."

Izuku bristled, immediately back on the offensive, clenching his fists until he remembered that he needed his fingers open, ready, and flexible for Air Force. He loosened up and stayed alert.

"This is about One For All," Izuku said, flattening the question right out of the statement. "Well, you can't have it, because it doesn't exist anymore."

"That's where I think you're wrong."

Izuku's jaw clenched. "You were a part of the break-in at the lab, right? So you've seen my DNA sequencing. If you're an expert in this at all, then you know that's not true."

"I'm not just an expert, Hero Deku, I'm the expert," Dr. Oukubo corrected. "The gene reading that your Dr. Sudou performed was based on my research. And if he called you quirkless, then I think his conclusion is wrong."

Izuku hesitated. He knew that if things were too good to be true, one shouldn't believe them, but that just didn't reflect the life that he'd lived. Being given All Might's quirk had been too good to be true. Getting into U.A. had been too good to be true. The boy that he'd always admired finally loving him back was too good to be true. Izuku's life had been rewritten by luck again and again, so it wasn't something he could simply turn away from. Not without knowing more.

"What are you talking about?"

"Do you know about gene regulation?" Dr. Oukubo asked, and Izuku could hear the smile in his voice. It added breath to his consonants as his lips failed to articulate them as tightly. It made him sound even more warm and approachable.

"No," Izuku replied when it became clear the question wasn't redundant.

"Gene regulation controls when genes are expressed," Dr. Oukubo explained. "That means that some genes are able to turn off and on, depending on what's needed. So I don't think that One For All is gone. I think it's turned off. I think that might even be what all quirklessness is, maybe what it always was."

"Well, if that's the case, then there's nothing I can do to turn it on," Izuku said. "Not when I'm in danger, not when someone I love is. Not when I'm concentrating really hard or…when I forget that I've lost it and try to use it like I used to. It's gone."

"Maybe there's nothing you can do," Dr. Oukubo conceded. "But I think there's something I can do."

"No," Izuku growled immediately, though the opportunity dangled in front of him like All Might standing before him on a sunset evening. "No, I can't work with someone who would create a baby for some genetic experiment."

"Well, now that you're here, I don't need him at all," Dr. Oukubo said. "All I ever wanted was you, and even though this wasn't the plan, you ended up being quite easy to lure. If you work with me, I can promise that I'll never seek out your son."

Izuku was inclined to believe people when they told him things, even villains. Even child-experimenting villains. And Izuku did believe him—if his intention had been to clone Izuku from the beginning, then the real Izuku was just as good. And in this moment, there was a hell of a lot Izuku was willing to give up for Sugu's safety.

"I cannot," Izuku repeated, "work with someone who thinks that experimenting on a baby, or me, or anyone is worth it to bring One For All back."

"I think you're underestimating how important this would be, Deku."

"I get that One For All was once important to the world—it was important to me too," Izuku said, harsh breaths coming out of his nose as he tried to remain steady. Anger was building in him, now that it was as good as confirmed that this was the man behind everything. If he was as important to science as he claimed to be, he had the money to throw around at people with helpful quirks. He had the pull with the university to award a random scholarship. He had the ego to play God with a new life. "But I'm not going to participate in whatever twisted game you created my son in order to play."

"Do you know any kids, Deku?" Dr. Oukubo asked. "Older than yours, say around…three or four?"

Dr. Oukubo's voice was moving, and Izuku stayed quiet, trying to keep an ear on it. He could make out tiny patches of the lab's interior at this point, particularly around the spots that were lit by the lights on some of the electronics. But he couldn't see Oukubo's form.

Of course, he knew Burnin's kid, who was four now. And Rocklock's, who was about six. But not a lot of heroes had kids and Izuku had never had much time to make other friends.

"I want you to know, I would have cared for your son as my own. I have a daughter," Dr. Oukubo continued. "She's four. She's absolutely the most important person in my life."

Izuku ignored the words, hardening himself to them. He couldn't allow Dr. Oukubo to humanize himself, to share parenthood with Izuku. It was an easy shot—it was manipulation for sure.

"She's quirkless."

Manipulation.

"Many of her classmates are too, actually," Dr. Oukubo carried on. "Everyone younger than her, and a few who are older too. I thought this odd, since kids had been manifesting more and more powerful quirks, often at three and four years old instead of five."

Izuku was acutely aware of that. His last years of school had often had emergency cases of strong quirk manifestations in toddlers. The quirk singularity theory had thrived in those days, but it had been a while since Izuku had heard of it, dipping back into obscurity like most Internet fads.

"Obviously those kids could just not have manifested yet," Dr. Oukubo mused. "Except that I'm a parent in the class, and many of these parents wanted to know for sure. And every single child I tested came up quirkless—turned off. And do you know what birthday marked the dividing line between the quirked and the quirkless?"

Silence.

"About nine months after your final fight with the League," Dr. Oukubo explained, "is the date when you see the drop off in children who can expect quirk manifestations."

"That would make them only four years old now," Izuku argued. "Sure, quirks have been manifesting younger, but all of those kids have more time. In just a year, you could be proven wrong."

"Not so," Dr. Oukubo said. "I've been doing this research for years, and there is a genetic difference between kids whose quirks have not yet manifested and those who will never have one. That's why Dr. Sudou was sure of your son's status."

Izuku paused, his mind reeling. "…So what are you saying?"

"I'm saying that unless we reverse it, the end of One For All was the end of all quirks."

Izuku fell back against the lab door, the handle punching hard against his lower back, but he didn't even bother to move away. The shock had him skewered in place like an insect being pinned live to a board.

That couldn't be right. Quirks had torn society apart generations ago—they couldn't be gone just as soon as society had finally rebuilt around it. As soon as All For One was gone, leaving the world in relative peace for the first time in hundreds of years. Kids like Eri, Kouta, Rocklock's son couldn't be the last kids to know the wonder of a quirk lighting up their bodies. The very last heroes.

Izuku's eyes welled up, his teeth tearing through his lower lip until blood ran thin in his mouth.

"You can't be serious," he whispered into the dark.

"Not too many people have noticed, since, as you say, there's still a good year before these kids pass their window," Dr. Oukubo continued. "But there's rumbling online already. Quirk manifestations had been skewing young, but now nothing. No babies born with quirks, like the Luminescent Baby. Like Present Mic. No three-year-olds manifesting young. Not from what I've seen."

"And how…"

Izuku's brain was stuttering, hardly able to keep up with the theory, its ramifications. He didn't have any proof against this. He didn't have the expertise, the arguments researched to disagree to anything this man had said. And even as Izuku tried to think of defenses for his case, he only found more pieces falling into place in his story. Izuku had spent the last three weeks trawling the quirk database, and he hadn't seen any entries for children born in the last four years. And that's not even information Dr. Oukubo would have, unless he'd stolen that too.

"…How would activating One For All solve this?"

"One For All is the connection," Dr. Oukubo explained. "When One For All turned off, all future quirks turned off. You know better than anyone, Deku, that One For All was quirk unparalleled in power—no one knows everything it was capable of. It must have influenced the world's quirks to turn off."

He couldn't. He couldn't go along with this scheme, not with a man who was willing to do who knew what to Sugu. Not a man who had targeted Izuku in multiple attacks before even trying to talk to him about this theory.

"I can't," Izuku stated, his voice breaking. It was overwhelming, his whole word was falling apart—but he knew this one thing. "I can't help you."

"Deku, you must."

"I won't," he said, voice a little firmer.

"You will."

Dr. Oukubo's voice had gone a little darker, and Izuku tensed. He stood up straight from the door again, flexing his fingers in his gloves.

"You don't want to threaten me, Dr. Oukubo," Izuku warned. "I may be quirkless, but I'm still a trained hero, and your quirk doesn't offer you any physical advantage. I know you can't see me."

They were even in that way. Dr. Oukubo certainly had a better idea of the layout of the lab, but Izuku was still a trained fighter and Dr. Oukubo was a scientist. Neither of them could see each other, but this wouldn't be Izuku's first fight in the dark.

"But I do still have the element of surprise."

Izuku crouched, ready to run or jump or drive a fist forward into someone's jaw. And then he was blinded by the lights turning back on.

"Gah!" Izuku grunted, his eyes shutting reflexively as spots danced behind his eyelids. The next thing he knew, he was being grabbed around the waist, but not by Dr. Oukubo—rather, by a machine.

It clenched around his waist, like he was the top-dollar prize in the claw machine. Instinctively, Izuku turned on his jetpack, and shot toward the high ceiling. As he wove around in the air, trying to reach the end of the robot's range, or twist the arm in a way that the joint became stuck, he tried to pry the vice-like grip apart. Even without One For All, he was strong, stronger than most heroes without a power-up quirk. But it didn't budge.

"Think you might be willing to reconsider?" Dr. Oukubo called out from the ground and Izuku grit his teeth.

"Not on your life!"

Izuku slipped his arms free of the jetpacks's straps and wriggled as much as he could. He only needed enough space for his shoulders to be able to fit through the machine's grip, but they were broader than his waist, and there was just no way. So instead, he twisted towards the jetpack, raised both fists, and slammed down on it as hard as he could.

It went shooting to the ground, wrinkling like a crashed car hood when it hit the floor, jagged pieces of metal breaking off and scattering. But it provided enough space for Izuku to fall back to the floor as well, rolling to reduce the impact on his knees. He might have had the gloves protecting his hands, but there was nothing besides the iron plates in his shoes.

As soon as Izuku was as upright as a crouch, he squinted one eye, the room still blown out and blurry, and aimed one finger at Dr. Oukubo. With a flick, he shot a blast of Air Force concentrated at the professor, sure the silent move was going to make its mark.

Then, Dr. Oukubo dodged.

The glasses were off. This was the first look Izuku had gotten at Dr. Oukubo, and he wasn't wearing the opaque glasses he'd worn earlier in the day—he wasn't wearing glasses of any kind.

"You're not blind?" Izuku gasped.

It wasn't just that, Izuku realized. He was struck by the familiarity of Dr. Oukubo's face, and not from the university website. That photo must have been a few years old, a few kilos ago and before his hair had begun to thin.

No, this was the man in the suit. The man who'd been looking to scoop Sugu up from the street on that very first day. And Izuku couldn't even be surprised.

"Walking blind strengthens my quirk and my ability to read it, so I've become quite adept at it over the years…as you might have noticed, Hero Deku," Dr. Oukubo said. Izuku could see that smile that he'd heard, the genial tone that had made Dr. Oukubo sound reasonable. But now he could see that the smile was not warm, not kind, at least not towards Izuku. Seeing though he was, those eyes were cold, and trained right on Izuku. "But no, I can see you, and you'll come to see things my way too."

He'd been lured here, Izuku realized with a start. Dr. Oukubo had bumped into him on purpose—he'd said, I was expecting you, after all. He'd probably heard about Watanabe's capture as soon as it had happened, since it'd been such an event on campus the week before. He probably even knew about the Instagram page, and had used it to know where Izuku was. Izuku thought back to the robbery, the picture of the building online and winced. He definitely knew about the Instagram account. Maybe he even fucking ran it—Izuku had no idea at this point.

Izuku ducked as the claw came towards him again, and rolled out of the way, hitting some of that scrap metal, feeling it tear through his clothes. Shit, he'd forgotten he wasn't even in his costume—the t-shirt and jeans he was in would hold up to nothing.

He pointed a finger at Dr. Oukubo again, and one up at his claw machine and shot both at the same time. But Oukubo dodged again and did the same for his machine.

There was a controller for it. If Izuku could get a well-aimed shot at it, he could blow the thing right out of Dr. Oukubo's hands. But there was so much equipment to dodge around, slowing Izuku down, and his moves were too easy to read. He had to get up close.

Izuku charged. Dr. Oukubo was unafraid at a distance, but how would he dance around Izuku's fists, and heavy metal shoes? He leapt, kicking off a table for some height and aimed a good kick right for the professor's shoulders, something that might loosen his grip on his machine. But the claw came sweeping down again, and just as Izuku fired an Air Force blast at the ceiling to avoid it, Dr. Oukubo was swept up in the claw's hold.

The claw swung him to the other side of the room and placed him back on the floor, and Izuku growled. The guy was dancing around him, not losing any stamina, making Izuku look totally useless.

Heroes were supposed to avoid excessive damage; it was a measured part in determining their hero ranking, and something Izuku had always taken very seriously, especially with as outsized a quirk as One For All.

He threw it out the window.

There was a machine as big and clunky as the Endeavor Agency office printer, and Izuku pointed a finger right at it and blew it toward Dr. Oukubo like it was the cue ball and he was the eight ball. Dr. Oukubo ran to dodge, but was still glanced by the giant machine, and it knocked him to the ground. Izuku took that chance to run at him again, this time preparing an uppercut.

The blow landed. That one, and the next left hook as well. Izuku watched as those lucid, seeing eyes became dazed with the second hit and then the third. He needed to calm down, go easier on the guy. As Izuku had first said: he had no physical advantage, and Izuku was going to kill him if he kept attacking. But with every blow, Izuku saw Sugu and his safety, and a life where he was at home on the couch between Izuku and Katsuki like he was supposed to be. If only Izuku could protect him. And so without thinking, his arms kept moving.

And then, they didn't.

There was a pinch in Izuku's stomach, right through his t-shirt, and he crumpled to the ground, limp.

Before Izuku could wrap his mind around what had happened, he was being lifted by the claw hand of the crane again, this time with his arms squeezed inside, and his extremities were already tingling back to life.

"Just a very weak tranquilizer," Dr. Oukubo explained, his voice muffled as he spat a wad of bloody spit to the ground. Izuku couldn't help but look at the ground as his head hung low from his neck, no more strength to it than a newborn's. "It'll fade right away. I need you to be able to feel for this to work.

As sensation bled back up Izuku's arms and legs, the pins and needles were chased by sharper pain. A burning sensation was taking over his body, and a formless scream turned round and full-throated as the muscles in Izuku's neck came back to life. His body was on fire.

"This is your quirk reactivating!" Dr. Oukubo yelled over Izuku's voice shredding from his throat. "See if you can use it!"

One For All hadn't ever been consistently painless, not even at the very end, but that pain had been nothing like this. Right now, the pain was all skin, as though every skin cell, every sweat gland, every hair was drilling down into his nerves, his muscles, trying to devour him from the outside in. One For All had always been inside out, splintering bones, tearing through muscles, spurting blood—evidence of the fight.

But the static was there. That charge that ran over Izuku when Full Cowl was activated, that brought him that additional layer of strength that had brought down villains, saved the world. He could almost feel it crackling over the pain and tried to focus on it, bring it to the surface with a yell, and use it to break free.

"Do it, Deku!" Dr. Oukubo encouraged. "You wanna fight me? Use your quirk and do it."

"Ahhhh!" Izuku shouted, cracking his eyes open and looking at his arms for any sign of that dancing green electricity, but there was none. And no matter how pushed his arms against the metal, the only thing creaking was his own bones, not the machine. Every additional bit of strength he thought might be One For All flaring up was just his muscles coming back to life, recovering rapidly. But nothing like the instantaneous boost of One For All.

"Do it!" Dr. Oukubo yelled again. "Fight me!"

"Ahhhh, I can't!" Izuku cried. He tried with all his might, pulling for Blackwhip, Fa Jin, but there wasn't even a hint of Danger Sense, despite the obvious danger he was in. He pushed against the machine until he sobbed, tears running down the tip of his nose, but the grip was too tight. His arms were crushed against his ribs, not even the sweat that was dripping from his body with the exertion providing any lubrication with which to wriggle free.

"You can, Deku!" Dr. Oukubo shouted, and Izuku could make out his face turning red with fury or frustration or maybe panic. "Do it for mankind! Do it for superhuman society!"

Izuku screamed again, wracking his mind for a way to escape. His gloves were pointed toward the ground, so he flicked his fingers furiously, trying to create enough force that he'd push out of the machine's vice grip, but it only caused the smaller machines on the ground to scatter, and the clawed arm holding him to waver like it'd been caught in a particularly strong gust.

He twisted his wrists wherever he could to adjust his aim. Towards the base of the crane, up higher to another part of the neck, and back towards Dr. Oukubo himself. But Oukubo could dodge away from the attacks, and the crane was too sturdy to sustain any damage. Meanwhile, the pain had become searing, now that Izuku's full sensation was back. And One For All was nowhere to be seen.

"Fuck," Izuku sobbed. "It's not going to work! Just let me loose!"

"It will work!" Dr. Oukubo roared. "It has to work!"

Just then, the door behind them blew open, crashing to the ground and skidding across the floor. Before Izuku could make anything out, an explosion shot from the doorway, right at Dr. Oukubo. When the smoke cleared, it revealed a large, metallic mech suit, with a round, abdominal protrusion.

Mei's suit. And Katsuki was in it, running as fast as the extra weight would allow.

"Die!" Katsuki shouted as he fired another explosion Dr. Oukubo's way to keep him weak, which the man already was from suffering the many blows Izuku had managed to deliver. Still, he tried to run and dodge but could do nothing to avoid Katsuki's tackle, sending them both to the ground, Katsuki using Dr. Oukubo as a cushion for his own landing. Katsuki was then kneeling over him with the suit's pregnant belly pressing Dr. Oukubo flat against the floor.

Katsuki wrapped one hand, outfitted with his costume's gloves, around Dr. Oukubo's wrist, and it only took a moment of that for Dr. Oukubo to scream and release the controller. When Katsuki let go to snatch it up, the professor's wrist was burnt bright red. Then Katsuki growled, "Tell me how to turn this off, or your floor gets painted with your brains."

The hand not holding the controller out of reach was centimeters away from Dr. Oukubo's ear, threatening to make good on that promise.

"No, this'll work," Dr. Oukubo wheezed, and Katsuki shifted his open hand toward the ceiling, shooting an AP Shot skyward in warning. Bits of fiberglass and starch rained down on them, but Katsuki didn't so much as blink.

There was a second of silence as Katsuki awaited a more satisfying answer. When there was none, he closed that open hand and landed a punch square across Dr. Oukubo's jaw, knocking him out. With that, Katsuki straightened up, shifting so that one leg was kneeling atop Dr. Oukubo's stomach and he could look more closely at the device.

As he fiddled with it with his large gloves, the crane swung randomly in the air, causing Izuku to yelp. When the hold on him suddenly loosened, he adjusted to clinging to the claw for dear life, slipping with his damp grip.

"Fuck," Katsuki cursed as he seemed to gain control over the device. It lowered more steadily, and before Izuku even reached the ground, the pain was receding. The sensation, the new absence of pain was almost euphoric, feeling his body with a relief so profound, he couldn't help but gasp as he folded to the floor.

"Are you okay?" Katsuki asked, kicking off Dr. Oukubo's body as he rushed to catch Izuku before he totally faceplanted.

The relief was still pouring over Izuku's skin in waves, like rivulets of warm water infused with epsom salt and lavender oil and Katsuki's sweet scent. But it didn't erase the pain in his ribs or the soul crushing humiliation that he'd failed. That he'd needed to be saved.

A couple puffs of air came out his nose, somewhere between a laugh and a sob. But he wiped his face on his sleeve—which was also damp, but less so—and looked up, head throbbing, mouth grinning. "You have Sugu?"

Katsuki's face softened. "He's still sleeping. Either that, or he doesn't have anything to say. But he's fine. I can feel him."

Izuku looked down at the suit, opaque and apparently as soundproof as Mei had promised, if Sugu hadn't woken up from the explosions alone. "Good," Izuku said. "That's good."

Suddenly, there was movement over Katsuki's shoulder, and Izuku shot air from both his gloves at the floor and shot upward, the same way he couldn't as he'd been trapped in the crane.

Dr. Oukubo was up, shambling towards Katsuki, who still held the controller in his hand. But before Izuku even landed, he swung a reinforced shoe at Dr. Oukubo and hit home right in the side of his head. And that time, he wasn't getting up.

"Got no cuffs, gotta call it in," Katsuki said, tearing off his gloves with his teeth and pulling his phone from a pocket in the suit.

While Katsuki did that, Izuku stared down at Dr. Oukubo.

His face was already bruised and swollen, nose and mouth crusted over with dry blood. But his jaw didn't look dislocated, and he was still breathing.

He was a villain. Not an irredeemable one—hardly anyone was. But just because he was a villain didn't mean he was lying. In fact, he most certainly wasn't lying. He just wasn't necessarily right.

But he wasn't necessarily wrong either. In fact, Izuku was more and more certain that his theory was correct. Not about One For All coming back, but about quirks, superhuman society.

"Hey, hey!" Katsuki exclaimed, trotting back over to Izuku, who hadn't realized he was weeping. "Hey, Deku, what's wrong?"

"It's over, Kacchan," Izuku sobbed, falling into Katsuki's arms. "It's over."