"So let me summarize what you just told me." Overhaul replies almost three hours after his(?) resurrection.
He and Midoriya are sitting on both sides of a coffee table. Overhaul is still wearing Molecular's body, though he changed his outfit to that of his old villain uniform. So, a black shirt, olive green bomber jacket and a purple fur collar. He also got himself a gas mask.
It's kind of disturbing to see said black shirt cover a pair of rather impressive breasts, in Izuku's opinion. Although Overhaul decided to not comment on that thus far.
"The original me was killed by Emoji and Foresight, apparently." Overhaul then says. "Because I realized what Emoji's quirk is and attempted to collapse my entire laboratory on us all, knowing that, unlike them, I could dig myself out. But Foresight didn't let me."
"Which was honestly an interesting take on countering Emoji's quirk." Midoriya admits. "I think that you managed to circumnavigate it entirely by making the attack directly harmful to yourself too. His meta-ability couldn't…"
"... suppress the intent to harm that was coming from me to me, and thus something in it didn't work entirely, yeah, yeah." Overhaul waves his hand dismissively. "You then decided that everything's lost since I'm dead, and yes, I'm very touched by that. So, you decided to wipe out the PLF leadership completely, especially Entropy, which happened in Haiboro Woods."
"No issues with me killing Entropy?" Izuku decides to ask just in case.
"What?" Overhaul blinks at him, as if surprised at the question. "No, no, no way. Good riddance. I never liked her, and I'm fairly certain she was planning to kill me once I'd finished my research either way."
She probably did. Overhaul was their only shot at a quirk erasing drug, which Entropy could weaponize, and in more ways than one. Other than that, Chisaki was going to inevitably become a threat to her afterwards.
He, after all, wanted to end quirks. She didn't.
"It's great that we're thinking alike." Midoriya nods. "Please continue."
"You went underground and decided to focus on, let's call it that way, 'spicy vigilantism'." Overhaul continues. "Which is a very polite way of summarizing it, since you were rather ruthless when pro-heroes or police officers were or could be on your track."
"This way of referring to my activity is downright cursed, please never do it again." Midoriya deadpans. Overhaul ignores him completely.
"All while the Government was using Chronostasis to try to recreate my work, with so-so results at best." Chisaki continues. "And then, the HPSC kidnapped Eri. So, being the responsible father you are, you started a civil war, with civilian casualties in the millions, and we're, what, two months in?"
Thus far. There is a regular civil war starting outside right now, and that is going to be bloody. In a country so divided and with so much ingrained hatred, at least doubly so. It's going to be ugly. Very, very ugly.
"In my defense, most of the civilian casualties thus far were because Entropy decided to return from the dead and unleash Armageddon." Midoriya decides to set the record straight. "She probably had an extremely satisfying evening afterwards, especially with her bringing the old League back."
"Yeah, I didn't even get to someone unleashing Armageddon on the world yet." Overhaul sighs. "And please, not a single word about the… 'activities' that Entropy is so much into. Sex is disgustingly primitive in general, and what she's doing is not just primitive on its own, but also additionally disgusting."
They are in agreement there.
"Then you broke the hero system's back on your metaphorical knee, and kidnapped the person that the HPSC used my old prototype back-up permanent quirk bestowal drug on." Overhaul continues. "And thus, here we are."
"That's a very abbreviated version of what happened, but yeah." Midoriya nods. "That's more or less how we ended up here."
"I see, I see." Overhaul nods thoughtfully. "Midoriya, can I ask you for a favor?"
"Sure, for as long as it's in the realm of possibility." Midoriya replies. "What do you want?"
"If someone kills me again, let me stay dead, alright?" Overhaul decides to surprise him greatly.
Then again, Overhaul after his visit to Jaku was plenty different from himself before that day. Although, if Izuku is to be honest, what changed was Overhaul acting as if he was burned out by his work all of a sudden.
"That bad?" Izuku asks.
"Yeah, absolutely the fucking worst." Chisaki groans. "Quirks much more powerful than when I was alive, the Singularity almost upon us, the country too fucked up to try to do anything about it, Eri's not here and Chrono is… regretfully failing at the job, although to be honest I shouldn't be surprised since he lacks the data I got from Jaku. Oh, and apparently the yakuza is finally gone from the world. It's as if I woke up in my own personal hell."
Overhaul isn't wrong about it. This does seem a bit like it. Of course…
"Well, that sounds about alright." Midoriya comments dryly, Overhaul giving him a tired stare. "You didn't expect to wake up in Heaven, am I right?"
"Bold words for someone who literally brought me back to life just so that I could save the world for him." Overhaul rolls his eyes around. "All my predictions are coming to fruition, and most of the stupid sheeplings populating this country are still in denial over the Quirk Singularity. Despite my most sincere attempts to make them see reason."
"They probably couldn't hear your words over Eri's tortured screams." Midoriya retorts. Overhaul sighs. "Look, we had that talk already, and a lot of times. Yes, your diagnosis was correct. No, your solution to it was all-around horrible. We're not going to like each other, so let's avoid subjects that would make me seriously consider killing you, alright?"
"That's the fun part, Midoriya." Overhaul replies. "Your threats don't faze me at all, because I'm seriously considering using my quirk to disassemble myself right here and right now just to let the whole world burn down out of sheer spite."
That, honestly, sounded incredibly like Overhaul. Izuku should have probably expected it from the start.
"You'll just erase yourself from the equation." Midoriya replies. "Chronostasis will finish the job for you."
Overhaul sighs painfully.
"Yeah, good luck doing that without the terabytes of data about quirks that Garaki had gathered during his lengthy life." Chisaki then says. "First attempt failed, you have two more to persuade me not to end myself here and now."
Unless his new body made reading him much harder, he was genuinely honest about it. He would actually kill himself just to spite the world.
Midoriya can't even find it in himself to blame him. He would have done something incredibly stupid (and he actually kind of did) without people like Eri or Tsuyu to keep him grounded. Overhaul was a sociopath who didn't really have any ties with anyone.
Unsurprising, really.
"You've dedicated your entire life to trying to succeed in finding the cure to quirks." Midoriya replies calmly. "Something that no one else in the past two centuries got even close to. No one aside from you. Don't you feel that giving up right now would make your life feel meaningless?"
Silence in the room, Overhaul staring at him quietly for a solid ten seconds before answering.
"Are you trying to…" He then says. "... push me into a sunken cost fallacy?"
"Yes." Midoriya replies instantly. "Is it working?"
Overhaul taps the table in front of him a few times, his eyes on Midoriya. He is thinking it over deeply.
"You know what, it actually kind of does." He then manages to (slightly) surprise Midoriya. "Fine. I'll make you the quirk erasing drug. But my face stays off the record, so don't expect me to become the new head of the Quirkless Liberation Front to replace Eclipse, because yeah, I know that you're considering it."
Overhaul was a mad scientist first and foremost, but he wasn't stupid. And he had experience from the time when he was the PLF's co-commander. Midoriya actually hoped for that to happen.
"Well, then it seems like the QLF will finally have a truly quirkless commander, rather than relying on the late-bloomers or, well, living corpses." Midoriya shrugs. "I'm alright with that. What's the timetable?"
"What's the laboratory that I'll get?" Overhauls replies with a question.
"I've planned to give you Five Under." Midoriya replies. "It stayed unused since the war, but it was retrofitted nowadays. Hatsume uses it to research and manufacture your temporary quirk bestowal drugs, so most of the equipment and the data I inherited from you should be there already."
"Ah yes, a brilliant choice for the location." Overhaul replies. He sounds almost exasperated about it. "My own personal citadel where I work on finding cure to quirks, surrounded by the ruined wasteland of an island decimated by quirks and still populated by hordes of walking dead. I'm loving the aesthetic, you know?"
"My personal citadel's much cooler, git gud." Midoriya shoots back. Overhaul actually smirks at it. "Entropy knows where the lab is located, but it has sufficient security. She, if she's even still around somehow, also doesn't know that you're back, so if she does mount an attack on you…"
"... then I'm going to turn her into a still screaming collage of bones, flesh and blood, before presenting it to you as an early birthday present." Overhaul cuts in. "No need to worry about it, she's good but to attack me underground you need a certain brand of stupid."
Sir Nighteye, in his own defense, didn't know the true scope of Overhaul's quirk. Overhaul wasn't actually advertising what he was capable of. And even then, Sasaki's preparations were enough to annihilate Shie Hassaikai, just not enough to capture Chisaki and Kurono and recover Eri.
The HPSC assault almost ended in a disaster that forced Foresight and Emoji to end him as otherwise he would have entombed the assault team alive. Despite the orders being to take him alive.
For all her flaws, the HPSC president was one of the few people in the country that realized that the Quirk Singularity was coming and tried to find a solution. It's just that, like in the case of Overhaul, her choice of solution was… well, it could be better.
The fact that her preparations laid the foundations of her own doom and that her attempts to prepare Japan for the inevitable societal collapse in 20 to 50 years caused said collapse to happen decades ahead of schedule was downright hilarious to Izuku.
Darkly hilarious.
"Great, great." Midoriya nods. "Anything else you need?"
"I need Eri." Overhaul says the words. Naturally, the temperature in the room suddenly drops.
"I…" Midoriya replies. "... don't like that at all, and you know it."
"The endgame always was a quirk erasing drug that could be reproduced without relying on her blood." Overhaul is unfazed by the hostility. "There are ways of achieving that. But first I need a working and tested prototype of the drug in question. And to this, I need her blood. Ethically or unethically harvested."
Well, that's just splendid. They need Eri to get a quirk-erasing drug, but they might need the quirk-erasing drug to get her back. Truly, a conundrum.
"That's… not what I hoped for." Midoriya replies, trying not to make it clear how disappointed he was.
"You could summarize my whole life with those words." Overhaul comments. Midoriya finds himself deeply agreeing and relating to Kai Chisaki and that's, honestly, unpleasant. "Good news is that I can do a lot of things without her. Prepare the lab, refresh and note down what I remember from Garaki's research notes. Once I get her blood, I should get the quirk erasing drug mass produced within a week, at worst."
Looks like Izuku will have to… apply some pressure on Monoma. Something to make him reconsider his decision to keep Eri imprisoned and instead hand her willingly to the Paranormal Liberation Front.
Maybe kidnapping Kendou will do the job? Something to consider. How many parts of her Izuku will have to send Monoma (together with a promise of patching Kendou up with Rewind or Overhaul) for Neito to reconsider his ways?
"Two questions left, then." Izuku decides to leave thinking it over for later. "First, Jaku. You know that the Exclusion Zone's diameter grew three times while you were dead?"
He just resurrected the one man who knew what the hell was living in that place. And, well, he didn't like the idea of saving Eri just to have some unnamed monstrosity eat the country a few years further down the line.
Seeing Armageddon in action made destroying all that was left from the All for One's WMD' program a priority.
"Just fucking nuke it and call it a day." Overhaul clearly doesn't like the subject. Yeah, it's pushing a trauma button. "I guarantee you that it will solve the problem permanently."
Izuku is surprised. It seems that the copy in front of him was made after Overhaul's visit in the Jaku Exclusion Zone. That was just a few weeks before his death. It seems like Chisaki saved himself (in a way, his original ego was gone either way) at the last minute.
"What is it even?" Izuku asks.
Overhaul gives him a tired look.
"All for One had a brilliant idea." He then says. Somehow, it doesn't feel like he was sarcastic. "After hearing about Emoji's quirk, right after that guy's debut as a hero.. He figured out that you can't kill something that you can't perceive."
"Some variant on Non's quirk?" Izuku asks. Mr. Compress' son had a quirk that allowed him to make himself impossible to be perceived by others for some time. But he couldn't influence the world in any way while under that state. Giving someone a similar quirk but without that limitation felt like a terrifying, but rather underwhelming option.
"The word you're looking for…" Overhaul replies. "... is 'cognitohazard'."
Izuku's eyes shot wide. It was…
"Cognitovore got some very fucked-up combination of heavily altered quirks." Overhaul doesn't let him digest the news. "As a result, anyone who sees him with a naked eye, hears his voice, touches his body or even goddamn smells him suffers from instant brain death. Jaku General Hospital is full of desiccated corpses of people that perceived him and just dropped to the floor where they stood."
That was insane. Even by All for One's standards. How the hell was Hisashi Shigaraki planning to control something that he couldn't even see without dying? Sure, his Hyper-Regeneration would have resurrected him right afterwards, but…
They had to keep some form of electronic control over it. Some sort of implant remotely transferring orders, so that no one important from their side couldn't accidentally see it.
"How did you manage to survive that trip, then?" Izuku asks. For all his skills with quirk analysis, this is the moment where even he hit the wall. "And why did you take the noumus with you?"
"I used my quirk on myself to sever key nerves, make myself unable to see, hear or smell, leaving only the sense of touch and taste." Overhaul replies. Then I had the noumus carry me according to the map of the hospital that I installed into their brain."
It was… yeah, Overhaul's meta-ability gave him a way of largely ignoring Cognitovore's quirk. One more proof of how infinitely useful that power was. If only the person who got it was a bit better…
"Each time they spotted or heard Cognitivore, they dropped dead." Overhaul continues his tale. He is… shrinking a little as it goes. It's clear that it's bringing back some really bad memories. "I had a… small electrical gizmo on my hand, like a bracelet connected to the noumu's heartbeats. Whenever one of them flatlined, I felt a little pinch. When that happened, I touched the floor and showered everything in the vicinity with spikes, or just randomly altered the corridors to make sure that the side corridors were cut-off and kept Cognitovore out."
Oh.
"The noumus were then brought back by the Hyper-Regeneration, and you knew if the corridor alteration or spikes worked by the fact that Cognitivore didn't kill them again instantly." Izuku says, Overhaul nodding.
That was… ingenious, really. Overhaul was one of the few people whose knowledge of quirks and smarts equaled Midoriya, and it showed.
"When we got to Garaki's laboratory, I had them bring me to each exit, before sealing it with my quirk." Overhaul continues. "Once again, according to the plan of the building I got from Garaki when we were working together. Then I showered the inside of it with some carefully measured spikes, to avoid damaging equipment, but lacerate everything aside from it. Then I brought my eyesight back, got the hard drive from the computer, and made myself blind again, before ordering the noumus to carry me back."
"You came out without them." Izuku notes. He finds no answer to that issue, especially not with the Hyper-Regeneration being taken into the account.
"Cognitovore is intelligent, like all the Special and Ultimate-Ends." Overhaul replies. "He got… creative. Dropped noumus dead in just the right position to have them fall down the stairwell or something, just to interrupt their orders while I was unable to issue new ones due to not knowing what happened. Half-way back I was alone, so I started to run away blindly, my hand on the wall, causing spikes around me at random while knowing that if it touches me and I perceive its existence, I'll just drop dead."
Silence in the room for a few seconds, Overhaul looking down at the table between them.
"It was the longest twenty minutes of my life." He then says quietly, before inhaling deeply. "And it, regretfully, gets worse."
Izuku feels like that could summarize his entire life (to paraphrase Overhaul earlier). But he decides not to say it. At least, not now.
"I think I know why Garaki lost control over it." Overhaul replies, his eyes on Midoriya again. "Because, you see, I saw his mummified corpse in the laboratory, still sitting on his chair. And I took the hard drive from the computer in front of him, which had both his research notes and the security feed."
"So, you saw the disaster in question." Izuku can't help but be morbidly curious about it.
"I didn't." Overhaul surprises him. "I had a… hunch. Garaki, for all his evil, wasn't an idiot, he wouldn't let himself die like this, not to his own creation. So, I had one of my assistants see the tape first."
What does he… oh no.
Oh no no no.
"Overhaul, please tell me that it's not…" Midoriya pleads.
"He dropped dead twenty seconds into the film." Overhaul replies. "Spontaneous, medically unexplained brain death. I brought him back, of course. But…"
A deadly cognitohazard that could actually spread through recordings. It was… if All for One hacked into a major TV Station during a popular program and played the tape, he could kill half of Japan at once.
If he did the same thing on a worldwide scale…
"How the hell did All for One manage to make something even worse than Armageddon?" Izuku asks. For the first time in a while, he just lacked words to describe something. "I thought it was the worst thing possible, but Cognitovore…"
"I don't think it was intentional." Overhaul cuts in. "They gave him a quirk allowing him to consciously interfere with recordings, like cameras and so on. It was supposed to make them not work to make it so that the heroes couldn't eliminate Cognitovore by using, for example, combat robots. My theory is that the two quirks merged together somewhat, resulting in Cognitovore projecting his death aura through altered camera feed."
Oh.
"And since Garaki, the only person who could control it, was probably watching its rampage through the security cameras…" Midoriya replies, before pausing. Overhaul takes that occasion to make the slitting-throat motion on himself. "Yeah, your petition to find a way to nuke Jaku has been approved. Especially as the spread of the killing zone implies that it began to wander off more and more. Also, thank you for giving me even more nightmares."
Overhaul shrugs. He himself isn't comfortable with its existence. The fact that it's wandering off means that Cognitivore's mental programming was getting looser and looser. One day it was going to wander into a nearby city, and if by bad luck it'll walk in front of some TV camera transmitting things live nationwide…
"You pulled me back into the hell you people call Japan." Chisaki then says. "Consider this a payback for that." Ugh. "What was the second question you wanted to ask me?"
"You know that if you make a new temporary quirk bestowal drug for your quirk, I should be able to give you something resembling your old body, right?" Izuku asks. Overhaul actually blinks at him a few times.
"Yeah, I guess." He then shrugs. "Don't bother though. Molecular clearly trained her body much better than I ever did. Better stamina, bigger physical strength, I don't mind using it."
…
"Shouldn't you be suffering from gender dysmorphia right now?" Izuku asks. Overhaul gives him a surprised look.
"I probably should." He scratches the side of his head. "But now that you mentioned it, I feel perfectly fine, while I shouldn't. This is weird."
This time it's Izuku to find out the potential answer first.
"Wait, you're technically a Vestige possessing a body, right?" Izuku asks, Overhaul nodding back with a clear 'where are you heading with it?' look at his face. "It's not super common, but they are ways of obtaining other quirks, temporarily or not. If Neito Monoma cycling regularly between quirks with some minor mutational components started making him feel bad about his body, it'd be pretty debilitating, right? The same with All for One. And, after her final stunt, Star and Stripe."
"Oh." Overhaul realizes it finally. "I'm technically a living quirk possessing a body, something like those 'exalted' you've described earlier. They don't have a gender, and practically speaking neither do I. Quirks, after all, fit every body, regardless of shape, color and whatnot. You could install me in a body with four hands, five legs and a throat at the back of my head, and I still wouldn't feel alien in it."
"That's the theory, yeah." Izuku nods. It was, honestly, a bit fascinating. And something nice to NOT think about the existential dread that learning about Cognitivore gave him. "So… you're staying like this, then?"
"Yeah, I guess." Overhaul shrugs. "I feel fine, and it's not like I was ever interested in sex to begin with. It's purely a matter of utility, as I said. I'll have to get used to being referred to as 'she', though."
That very thought was somehow incredibly cursed in Izuku's opinion. Just, great. He doesn't even want to imagine Eri's reaction to seeing Overhaul… like this.
"For as long as this isn't a plot to switch sides while pretending to be Molecular, a poor captive of the PLF, and waiting to be rescued by someone else, I see no issue with that." Izuku replies. He kind of doesn't see any issues, it's just… uncomfortable, a little.
"Yeah, no, I'm staying here." Overhaul replies dryly. "If I plan to dash overseas, change my face a little and open a small medical clinic in the middle of nowhere after this bullshit's over, that's nobody's business, though."
Izuku decides to not point out how Overhaul's endgame plan of getting rid of her own quirk just went up in flames. Because from now on, she was her quirk. What an ironic end for a person who wanted to end quirks as a phenomenon.
Maybe Overhaul really was in her own ironic hell?
In the meantime, Izuku could cross that one issue off the list. Time to focus on the civil war that's starting outside.
(***)
Aaand cat's out of the bag when the monstrosity from the Jaku Exclusion Zone is involved. Nice! It's pretty horrific, ngl. I considered leaving it at the 'Nothing is Scarier' trope, but... ehhh, it kind of fit the chapter.