This one is a little different. Starts with an isolated storyline with characters you don't know. They will come back into play later. There is still a scene with Izuku and company at the end, so I request you to read all the way through.
.
"I'm convinced it's to the left," said Kubo.
Tomiyasu only half-listened to the conversation. His hands were a flurry of movement as they lined up the bolts to be placed in the cannon.
The work did not require focus. The voice took care of that. He was only half-listening because he didn't want to hear it.
"What do you know, he's found another of his patterns," Mitsuri scoffed as she adjusted a panel with a wrench, one mechanical sound amidst a sea. "Back up," she muttered to Yamada, the youngest of them, as he lingered too close before she turned the machine around.
"They were much more aggressive with me than usual," Kubo insisted.
"Because you've done it a dozen times. They'll shoot you next time."
"They won't." Kubo, still in his twenties, was convinced that he had a destiny outside this place. "They can't."
"They have the same command," Faulkner put in softly, in his heavy foreign accent. His eyes were sky-blue. How he'd ended up in the Company Town, none of the rest of the team knew.
"Yeah, and kill isn't part of it. If we can figure out the limits-"
"Get to work," Mitsuri complained, "or I'll report you myself."
Kubo, grumbling, conceded. He slotted in next to Daichi, the old man. While they'd all gained stooped backs from the hours upon hours of manual labor here, Daichi had come to them with one already. He did his work quietly, his beady eyes sunken back in the folds of his leathered face.
Tomiyasu kept his head down and tried to ignore the dead stares from the other teams working around them. Team 6 was a bit infamous at the Company Town as a result of Kubo's antics, and productivity had taken a bit of a hit…though that was due to a number of other factors as well. Thank God. Otherwise, they might have been in for a beating in the bunkhouse.
If it's even possible to fight. Kubo asked a lot of questions, but the only ones that ever tickled Tomiyasu's brain were related to the limits of the voice that guided them.
The voice only ever said one word. It wasn't that one could hear it, exactly…but whenever Tomiyasu had moments of sensory deprivation, away from the noise of the factory floor, when he was using the restroom, or trying to drift off to sleep while ignoring his sore bones and callouses…the voice yawned in his ears. It was always present, like tinnitus - sometimes possible to not notice, but it guided their movements in perpetuity.
The one word was Work.
Yet there was clearly more to it. The voice did not have to tell them what they were building. In fact, no one knew what the cannons were for, exactly, or how they functioned. But they were all able to build them accurately.
The voice did not prevent them from sleeping and eating and drinking and shitting and anything else to maintain the bare minimum of health. It did not prevent them from talking to one another, even openly about the graveness of their situation, though if the guards overheard, they usually shouted at them to stop.
But there was no resistance. There was no leaving the shield. That strange, ethereal shimmering border that rose up into a dome around the factory in which they all lived. They could not leave. To leave would be to abandon work.
But fighting? Fighting the guards? They were trusted more by Hojo, but they were subjected to the command, same as the workers. Obviously, in the case of their roles, work meant doing some fighting. So there is a degree of subjectivity to it. The guards still obeyed, but they obeyed in a different way.
The cruelty of the voice was that it left you completely cognitive even as you were unable to resist. If you could somehow believe that "work" meant something else…if you could somehow convince yourself…but how could Tomiyasu hijack his own mind? He had nothing to work with. His mind was convinced that this was his lot, for the rest of his days. And there was no coming back from that.
"Alright, ready to lift?" he asked Daichi, putting both hands under the chassis. They needed to set it up on the panel that Mitsuri had prepared. The work was repetitive; this was something they'd done a million times already.
The old man, on the other side, blinked, not moving. His hands hung in the air.
"Daichi," Tomiyasu said, gently still but a bit more loudly, firmly. "I said, are you ready to lift?"
Kubo looked on with interest. Mitsuri frowned. Faulkner and Yamada seemed uncomfortable.
Daichi started. "Hrr…sorry. Yeah. Yeah, I'm…I'm ready." He hunched over the chassis and put his arms beneath it. On the other two sides, Kubo and Faulkner stepped into place, and they all lifted it together.
Tomiyasu noticed the drag on the old man's side, that slight delay in getting the chassis level. It had been increasing every day.
He ignored it.
Three hours later, the alarm rang.
"LINE UP!" the guards roared, from the metal-grate balcony that ringed the factory floor. "LINE UP, NOW!"
The several hundred laborers of the Company Town obeyed, shuffling into a single-file line in front of the stairs that led out of the workspace. Left behind were hanging tools, machinery, equipment, all in a state of transition. The work was done for today. It would continue tomorrow. And the next day. And the next.
The two guards at the top of the stairs kept tight grips on their firearms. "Come on." One waved the workers forward. "Come on. Come on. Hurry up."
They trudged up the stairs, arms limp at their sides. Tomiyasu tried to ignore his heart pounding in his head. He was parched. The voice was more audible again. Trying to escape it was like trying to clear your head three hours after taking some particularly potent edibles. He was eternally crashing into the worst high of his life. Work. Work. Work.
From across the room, more guards watched. The laborers, all dressed in their gray jumpsuits, reached the top of the stairs and continued on through the factory hallways, headed for the bunkhouses.
Kubo and Mitsuri had begun to argue again.
"I saw those spikes extend."
"No you didn't. Now who's seeing things? I'm telling you, they can't use their Quirks."
"We can't use ours. They hear the voice differently."
"Exactly! If it's possible to hear it differently, then-"
"You two!" one of the guards roared, following them from the side of the line. "Quiet."
Angry muttering came from further up the line. The other teams, mad at Team 6. For causing too much trouble. Tomiyasu didn't have the energy to reprimand them…though he wished Mitsuri wouldn't be so argumentative.
Yamada, who couldn't have been more than seventeen, mumbled, "Why would they need guns?"
Kubo perked up. Tomiyasu winced, and Mitsuri growled in annoyance.
They all carry guns. If they can use their Quirks, why would they need them?
Tomiyasu was actually personally convinced that the youngster had the right of it. If a fight were to start, it would be one fought without the abilities they had all relied on so constantly in the outside world. The ones wielded by the heroes.
The heroes, who've long forgotten us here.
They went outside and crossed the gravel yard. Faulkner winced with every step; the soles of his shoes had worn through. Tomiyasu's were not that far gone yet, but he could still feel the sharpness of the rocks. Behind them, a woman from another team cried softly. She was barefoot.
The fresh boots of the four guards flanking the line made crunching sounds in the gravel. The voice kept them walking. They could not stop.
An old chainlink fence lined the yard on the Town's perimeter. Beyond, the barrier rose up into the sky, only visible when the light caught it a certain way. The city beyond looked blurry. The outside world may as well have been as far away as the stars.
"SHOWERS!" the guards yelled. "SHOWERS, TO SHOWERS WITH THE LOT OF YA!"
Once inside the bunkhouses, all industrial concrete and white tube lighting and spiderwebs in the corners, the workers were hurried into one of two massive, open shower-rooms. This was where the rest of the team parted from Mitsuri, the five men trudging onto moldy off-white tile and shrugging out of their clothes.
Doors were slammed behind them. Tomiyasu heard shouts and complaints from the guards, and then the sound of boots pounding on the floor. This was typical.
A guard kept watch on all the men in the shower-room as they stripped. There was another guard, also male, doing the same for the women across the hall. This too, was typical. The women had no say in the matter. Mitsuri never spoke about it.
Tomiyasu tried to banish the ache from his body as he stretched his spine a bit, barefoot and walking toward his assigned showerhead. Faulkner joined him on his left, Daichi on the right. The foreigner had long, pale red scars running up his back. Daichi's skin was in awful condition. Tomiyasu tried not to look at them.
He turned on the shower. Cold water dribbled onto his knotted dark hair. He heard the guard shouting at someone else. He tuned it out and focused on cleaning what parts of his body he could.
Work, reminded the voice.
Later, they were all back in their B-day grey jumpsuits (the A-day ones would be washed and returned to them after tomorrow's shower) and the guards shoved and hurried them into the bunk rooms.
Uncomfortable metal bedframes lined either side of the narrow room, stacked up in threes, with rock-hard mattresses on all of them. Each mattress had a metallic tin with processed meat and vegetables awaiting them, as well as a cup of water.
The laborers split up and went to their various stations, muttering. Some began eating right away, others hesitated. Tomiyasu climbed the ladder to his top bunk.
Across the way, Kubo and Yamada were whispering about something.
As Tomiyasu ate, he tried for the millionth time to use his Quirk. Tried to manipulate the water in his cup. Nothing. The voice suppressed.
Work. Work. Work.
It still persisted half an hour later, when the lights in the room had gone out. Tomiyasu laid on his back and stared at the dark concrete ceiling, feeling the ache leech off his bones. Mitsuri and Faulkner were having sex in the bunk beneath him, quietly but not quietly enough. Another thing the voice does not block.
Kubo and Yamada were still conspiring. Tomiyasu made out one word in ten. He wished he made out zero.
…
The next day began without incident, but did not end that way.
Tomiyasu allowed his thoughts to drift as he continued with the work. Assembling one piece of equipment after another. Trying not to think about how these weapons would be used. There are superheroes and supervillains out there, all ignorant to our plight. What was Hojo's plan? What would the weapons do? Which side did he intend to use them on?
As Mitsuri passed him a spanner, he thought again of how he'd come to the Company Town.
It was a week after the battle. After getting his old mother safely to a way station, where the local heroes had promised that she'd get sent on to a shelter, Tomiyasu had returned to their home to gather some valuables. Some men had approached him in the street and asked for his help with a job they wanted to pull. Said it paid well. Tomiyasu had known that it would take days to reach his mother again, so what was the harm in trying to make a bit of money before bunkering in? There was no guarantee that they would be kept safe by the shelters if they had no money.
Once he'd been taken past the barrier, there was no leaving again.
I need a cigarette. How cruel was it, to be aware of your own need for a cigarette, yet unable to stop your hands from continuing? His body so locked into the work that he could not even adjust his spine, which was slightly bent forward on itself in the worst sort of way.
On the other side of the table, Yamada was crying softly. His blisters had burst again. Blood dripped off his knuckles. Yet the boy did not stop working.
Tomiyasu lost track of time as he often did on the factory floor. Eventually, his bladder was nearly to bursting, and only then was his consciousness able to take over and make his mouth say, "I'm taking my three."
The others on the team nodded. They all held up three fingers to the guards on the balcony, then Tomiyasu pointed at himself. The guards nodded back. This was standard procedure.
He walked away from the table and toward the tiny bathroom just off the factory floor.
I can tear myself away and take a piss if I need it bad enough. He looked up at the guards on the balcony. Do I not need to escape bad enough? How can that be? How do I find the extra desire I need?
Only Kubo had managed to push the system, to force his legs to take a few wrong turns through the factory, but he'd gotten caught every time, and was no closer to figuring out a plan beyond that.
Tomiyasu walked into the bathroom, turned and sat down on the toilet, and froze.
One of the wall panels was gone just opposite him. Inside were pipes. Most were old and rusted metal, but there was one that looked pristinely new, coated in dull yellow paint.
Someone put this here in the last twenty-four hours. Someone installed this. But who? The only people Tomiyasu had ever seen in the Company Town were the guards and his fellow laborers. He supposed that such a facility had to have maintenance, as well as people doing the laundry and making the meals. And they all had to be subject to the Quirk - there was no escaping it inside the barrier.
The command has different contexts. For someone, work meant installing this pipe. For all affected by the voice, their own experiences and beliefs about themselves colored how they interpreted the command.
Tomiyasu felt as if he was on the edge of an epiphany, but his piss was done with, and it was time to go.
A funny color to paint it, though. Mustard yellow. The pipe looked so out of place, he almost wondered if it were for something other than plumbing.
He exited the bathroom only to find the factory floor in a bit of a ruckus.
Guards had come down from the balcony, and were now shouting at the jumpsuited workers to scatter, disperse from an area around a certain table. His table. The team 6 table.
It was only after the other teams backed up that Tomiyasu's eyes could see what had happened.
The old man, Daichi, had fallen over. Faulkner and Kubo were trying to get him to his feet. A guard stepped in to intervene, and then the old man gave him and the others a forceful shove. "I can take care of myself!" he barked, his words dragging a bit.
Tomiyasu blinked. The guard looked shocked - all the workers fell silent.
Daichi had shoved a guard.
His angry, sunken eyes quickly became demure, and he grunted, trying to turn back to his work, but the guard wasn't having him get away with that. The armed, younger man growled and grabbed Daichi's arm, trying to spin him back around. "Hey, look at me, you fossil! You-"
"You leave him be," Mitsuri hissed, even as her hands kept working. "He didn't mean it."
The guard looked as if he wanted to push the matter even further, but when he saw that Daichi had in fact, fully returned to work, almost to the point of not even remembering what had just happened or that any of the rest of them were even there…he backed off.
"BACK TO WORK, ALL OF YOU!" he roared. "DUE TO THIS DROP IN PRODUCTIVITY, MEALS WILL BE REDUCED IN PORTION SIZE BY TEN PERCENT FOR THE NEXT WEEK!"
Some angry cries of protest went up from the other tables, but they were quickly silenced.
Tomiyasu gulped and returned to the table. Exchanged a nervous glance with Faulkner. Mitsuri continued working, silently furious. Daichi was slightly shaking, but seemed okay.
And Kubo had a dangerous look in his eye.
Eventually the alarm rang.
Tomiyasu fell in line behind Daichi. The old man was lagging even more than usual, but he wanted to make sure he didn't fall backwards, at least.
They crossed the yard. They took their showers. They returned to the bunk room. As the guard had promised…supper was ten percent smaller.
Mitsuri bit down on the chewy greens, fuming. "How are we meant to get productivity back up on empty bellies? Do they want these damn weapons done or not?"
"Not," put in Kubo. "They want us to work 'til we're dead-"
"Hey! You! SIX!"
All of Team 6 stiffened. Tomiyasu, Daichi, and Faulkner had already climbed into their beds, but the other three still stood in the middle of the floor…as several large men from Team 4 walked up.
One of them cracked his knuckles. "This is all your fault," he hissed.
"An invalid, a boy, a snowbird, and a damn woman. Your team has been nothing but trouble since the start," said another.
"We're thinking that we shouldn't all have to suffer just because you lot can't keep up. So we'll be taking that dinner of yours." One of them stepped up to swipe Mitsuri's tray.
Yamada got into his face, despite being much smaller and skinnier. "Piss off, you bloated prick," he snarled, with surprising venom. Tomiyasu was astonished; he didn't know the youngster capable of such.
The Team 4 men laughed. "And what will you do if we don't?"
"You can't fight. You don't have your Quirk in here. What was it outside, blowing bubbles?" Yamada laughed harshly. "The voice won't let you do shit. All this is just empty words. So why don't you go drift off to sleep and dream of your mommy?"
The largest Team 4 man tried to shove him, but his arms refused to finish the motion, and he grunted, stuck. Yamada only laughed harder, and this time, Kubo joined in.
As the bullies walked away, disgruntled, Kubo taunted, "That's right! You sheep! You just don't have it! The bare minimum of resistance! But we do!"
Then Yamada turned on him, still angry. "Quiet. If you actually want to get out of here alive, you won't brag about that."
Kubo gasped. "So you mean to help me, then, with-"
"Oh no," Mitsuri put in, wagging her finger. "No. None of this. You can't."
"You're not the damn boss of us," Yamada hissed at her. "We're all equals here."
"I could report you-"
"Sell us out? That'd make you no better than those shitbags."
She looked like she wanted to say something more, but then…backed off and sat down in her bunk. "Fine. Fine. You want to get yourself killed? Leave me out of it." She laid down and turned over on her side, putting her back to them.
Kubo and Yamada both looked to the opposite bunk, where Tomiyasu and Faulkner sat. "What about you two?" Kubo asked.
"What…about us?" Faulkner laughed nervously.
Yamada rolled his eyes. "Yeah, we know you'll go with whatever she says. We don't need you." The boy looked expectantly up at Tomiyasu.
Tomiyasu could not respond immediately. He didn't know what to say. Work, the voice told them.
Kubo threw his hands up in frustration. "What the hell is this? Why don't any of you have the want? Not just you guys, but everyone! Those guards, the other teams…how can so many people collectively be fine enough with this to not resist it one bit?! Isn't it driving you crazy? How can you be so complacent?!"
Daichi's voice croaked out from the bottom bunk.
"Welcome to Japan, kiddo."
Kubo laughed it off, trying to mask his shock. "...Yeah, right. It can't be like this everywhere."
The sigh that Daichi let out had at least thirty years of memory laden in it. "It has always been like this."
"But…without our Quirks…"
"The Quirks amplify everything. They put man's desires into his hands. All the good people became better. All the bad people became worse. And once you have those traits…there's no going back, even when the power that gave you those traits is stripped from you."
Yamada's face was dark. "Leaving a shitty society, huh?"
Daichi nodded. "Just so. You'll never get this lot to work together, or wish for freedom. Their brains are all poisoned, and I don't just mean by the bloody voice."
"Well, I'll never give up hope," Kubo insisted. "Even if they have."
"It's not that they have less hope than you. They have more. They think, deep down, a hero in a costume will swoop in here and clean this mess right up. They think they'll get out of it without having to do anything themselves. That's why they're all just fine with working and working and working until…" the old man's voice trailed off, cracking.
Tomiyasu's brain roiled. Is that true? Is that what he'd been hoping for, deep down? All those years of watching heroes on TV and in the streets? Was he unable to find the desire that drove Kubo just because he assumed that the rescue would be taken care of for him?
"You say they," said Yamada. "Not you. As if you're not fine with working anymore."
Daichi said nothing else. A moment later, Tomiyasu could hear him snoring.
Kubo cursed. "Well, that frees us up to talk openly about this, at least."
Yamada lowered his voice to a whisper. "Yeah, but…"
Tomiyasu stared down at them, still standing beneath his bunk, now whispering to one another, having forgotten his presence.
"There was a new pipe installed in the bathroom," he heard himself say.
Both of the others cut off abruptly and looked up at him.
Kubo raised an eyebrow. "Tomiyasu."
"Have you decided to stop being a damn NPC at last?" Yamada asked.
Tomiyasu swung his legs over the bed to get closer to them. "Someone installed that pipe. Someone cooks our meals…or what's left of them." He picked up his tray with its pitiful excuse of a portion. "Someone puts our jumpsuits in the laundry. Who are these people? They must be on-facility, subject to the Quirk same as us, but we never see them."
"You're saying that, like the guards…" Kubo began.
Tomiyasu nodded. "The command of work is contextualized based on what the victim feels that they must do. We have been assigned to make those cannon things, so that's what the Quirk makes us do."
"But others can do other things," said Yamada. He frowned. "But how do we know that this isn't all controlled on Hojo's side? We may only hear work because that's what he wants us to hear. But, in reality, he's actually finetuned the bubble to give specific, subliminal instructions to each individual depending on what their job is…"
"Here's why I doubt that," Tomiyasu replied. "If he was that powerful, he would be a proper supervillain already. I mean, how many times have you seen big brutalizer villains rampaging in the street? Villains always use their Quirks to max potential to achieve their greatest goals. And this Hojo guy…is building weapons. Using us to build weapons. A damn armada. He clearly wants to control a lot…but he can't just do that with his Quirk? If his Quirk was as good as you describe, he wouldn't need some shitty cannons. No, it has limits. Especially to keep it active over a whole factory for months on end. There are loopholes. Weaknesses. Have to be."
Kubo nodded, his eyes astir, grinning. "Alright, Tomiyasu, you've convinced me. We'll let you in on the plan. We need a fourth body anyway."
"...Fourth?"
Yamada nodded at the now-asleep Daichi. "He pushed that guard today. He's too old to work. His mind is slipping, which means the Quirk's grip is slipping. If anyone can get through the hallways, he can."
"Now, hold on-" Tomiyasu protested.
"I overheard one of the guards talking about a control panel somewhere. Something that can shut off power to the factory floor," said Kubo. "My theory is that if we cause a big enough problem…something that completely stops productivity, to the point where any kind of work is impossible…then we'll be able to fight and escape. Because we physically won't be able to do what the voice wants."
"We just need someone to get to that panel and actually shut the power off," Yamada said.
"And you think that someone is the old man?" Tomiyasu hissed. "If his mind is really slipping like you say, then…"
Then he doesn't have much time left.
"...then he won't really be able to do a task as part of an escape plan like this," he finished lamely.
"That's the kicker." Kubo bit his lip. "The other option is that I try to do it myself, but honestly…Mitsuri was right. I think they really will shoot me next time I step out of line."
"He sounded up for something like it, though," Yamada whispered. "I mean, before he went to sleep. You heard him. He thinks we ought to be taking this into our own hands."
Kubo chuckled. "He's so old he probably remembers a time before heroes."
The three of them were silent for a minute. The chatter elsewhere in the bunkroom died down. The lights went out.
Faulkner and Mitsuri had gone to sleep.
"If it comes to a fight," Tomiyasu muttered. "We really don't have Quirks. Not that I ever fought with my Quirk before either, but…they'll be shooting at us. And all we have are fists and feet."
"All my Quirk can do is extend my eyeballs out anyway," Yamada said. He stared at the sleeping Daichi. "I bet he knew a lot of Quirkless people. There were more of 'em when he was our age."
"That's all of them," Kubo corrected. "There are no Quirkless people your age, kid."
Yamada shook his head. "I knew one in middle school. Literally everyone in the class made fun of him, including me." The boy closed his fist. "Now I know how he felt everyday. Powerless. I wouldn't wish this on anyone. I'm sick of it. I'm ready to get out of here."
"What happened to him?" Tomiyasu asked.
"What happened to who?"
"...The Quirkless kid you went to middle school with."
Yamada's expression was hard to see in the darkness, but his response was soft. "His Quirk came in," he muttered. "Last I saw him, he was on TV. At the UA sports festival."
"So he wasn't Quirkless after all. So I was right," said Kubo.
"Fine. Whatever."
…
Everything felt different the next morning.
The alarm blared into the workers' sleeping ears, followed by an automated order of WAKE. UP.
Stirred, disturbed, they all hurried out of bed, powering through the horrible feelings in their necks and backs as the guards burst in-between the bunks, screaming at them with the same order. "WAKE UP!"
"GET UP, GUTTER TRASH!"
"THERE'S WORK TO BE DONE!"
Breakfast tins were distributed, and they were smaller, just like dinner last night. Tomiyasu chewed on the stale bread with his shoulders slouched. He met eyes with Yamada, then Kubo, both also eating. Kubo was watching the nearest guard, who had his back turned. Yamada mouthed, stay calm.
Tomiyasu gulped. He was calm. He was. It wasn't like everything had immediately changed just because he'd decided to help them with their escape plan.
The other teams ate their reduced breakfast, shooting angry looks at Mitsuri and Daichi. The woman threw them back, but the old man ignored them. He seemed to be in his own little world, his hand shaking slightly as he brought the water cup to his mouth.
Aside from the smaller portion, nothing out of the ordinary. Tomiyasu nearly made eye contact with a guard and flicked away quickly. It is impossible for them to suspect anything.
…Right?
Was he just too anxious?
He felt more watched than usual as they were shoved into line to head to work. The voice, Hojo's horrible Quirk, was as present as ever. Last night it had even haunted Tomiyasu's dreams. More and more often he was unable to dream about his old life. There was nothing left in his conscious but the Company Town. How will I manifest a desire to escape if I can't even dream of it?
"PICK UP THE PACE!" a guard shouted, waving his gun in the general direction of Daichi. Behind them, someone from another team shoved Faulkner, muttering under his breath. That barefoot woman was crying again. They were outside, crossing the yard, and the sun was up.
The sun is up. Beyond the shimmering barrier, it was alive. So why do I feel so nervous?
He licked his lips as the line of laborers was guided into the factory hallway, sleek and brightly, harshly lit. Their shoes squeaked against the floor.
"WHAT DID I SAY ABOUT DRAGGING?" The guard yelled, louder this time. Daichi had his head down, and Tomiyasu realized that Kubo was basically pushing him forward to keep the line moving even this fast.
Up ahead, on the wall across from the entrance to the factory floor, a panel had been removed, to show the industrial inner structure of the building. Another yellow pipe, freshly installed, sat there.
Tomiyasu froze at the sight, and Mitsuri bumped into him from behind.
"Ow," he muttered.
Mitsuri hissed. "Don't you-"
"Hey!" a man from Team 7 complained from behind them.
"YOU!" a guard roared, pointing the gun right at Tomiyasu. "Did you just stop?"
Tomiyasu was seized with terror. Work, the voice reminded him. "No, I-" he squeaked, shuffling forward. The line flexed like an accordion to readjust. "I'm sorry…"
The guard's eyes narrowed. "Your team is a problem, but we never had much trouble with you before. Is that gonna start now?" The gun was pointed somewhere near his heart.
"No…"
"SPEAK UP!"
Tomiyasu cleared his throat. "No." He put a little too much steel into his voice. And the guard's eyes narrowed further.
Can't look too resistant. Dammit, I'm screwing everything up already-
The guard's radios all made a bunch of sound at once.
"Huh?" The one pointing a gun at Tomiyasu suddenly broke off, distracted. He lowered his weapon and pulled the radio out from his belt.
The other guards all flanking the line were doing the same, their attention suddenly broken.
"What's this-"
"What is it?"
Hushed whispers crackled through the line. Tomiyasu's eyes widened. Yamada and Kubo looked back at him.
Something shifted in the air.
The guards were beginning to talk over each other.
"Shut up, I'm trying to listen!" Their captain held the radio up to his face. "Repeat?"
Meanwhile, the line kept moving forward steadily. Work, the voice told them, and the factory floor was just ahead. The laborers were unable to stop their feet.
"Hold on a sec, wait…" one of the guards gestured toward the line. "Hey, halt! STOP MOVING!"
"You can't make them stop, remember?" another guard said.
They both lifted their guns, divided on what to do. "Yeah, but…"
The captain made an exasperated sound. "I'm TRYING to hear what the border is telling me, could you guys…"
Wooooooork.
Tomiyasu's heart was pounding. Team 1 was reaching the door to the factory. They were going through, despite the guard's somewhat confused efforts to restore order.
"We have to do it now," Yamada said, very fast and under his breath. "Now, now, it has happen now."
"Wait!" Tomiyasu hissed. "We don't have a plan, we don't know what we're…"
"He's right," said Kubo. "We're here in the hall. We may never get a better chance."
Team 2 were beginning to file in. Tomiyasu's feet carried him forward along with the others, even as their mouths spoke conspiracy.
"A what…? An enemy? Who?" the captain of the guards was saying into the radio. More chatter came through.
"HEY!" one of the younger guards was shouting. "We need to make them stop walking somehow!"
"We can't! May as well just go in with 'em…"
"A sniper? And you said it's a woman?" The captain sounded baffled. "How much backup do you need?"
Team 3 walked into the factory room.
"They're all gonna leave," Yamada growled. "They're moving off. Kubo, you said two rights and then a left?"
Kubo nodded toward the end of the hallway. "That's as far as I got."
"The panel must be past that."
"Waaaaait," Tomiyasu moaned. It was all proceeding too quickly. His heart was racing a mile a minute. His mouth had begun to water.
"Daichi, are you listening? We need you." Kubo tapped the old man on the shoulder.
Daichi kept walking.
The captain of the guard waved to two others. "You, you. With me. We've got to take care of this-"
"What about these workers?" one protested.
"Daichi? Hey! What about what you said last night, remember?" Kubo whispered in the elder's ear. "This is our chance!"
Daichi took another slow step. Then another.
Team 4 finished walking into the factory room. The door was close. Once my mind sees that table, they'll be no turning back. Tomiyasu knew it with fervor. Work, the voice reminded.
"The workers will do what they do! Look at them!" The captain pointed at them all in disgust. "Come on!" He and a few of the other men began to walk down the hallway, in the direction that the control panel was.
The two youngest guards, walking right alongside Team 6, exchanged hesitant glances and kept a tight grip on their weapons.
Kubo shook the old man by the shoulders. "...Daichi?"
Daichi stopped.
Team 5 had just finished walking in. The door was directly ahead of Team 6 now.
The two guards next to them noticed immediately. "Hey, keep it going-"
When one of them poked Daichi in the side with the gun, the old man collapsed.
Tomiyasu's blood ran cold. The sight was horrifically plain. The way he fell to the floor with a shuffling impact, it was obvious how he was simply a wasting bag of skin and bone. A body at the end of its rope. Spurred on by nothing more than a supernatural puppeteer.
And that same puppeteer was forcing Tomiyasu to move forward still. To step over his fallen comrade. Even as Mitsuri screamed, as Faulkner vomited, as the people in line behind them shouted and yelled. Tomiyasu shut his eyes and winced, a few tears forcing themselves down his cheeks, as one of his feet brushed Daichi's body. "Move him," he heard himself say. To the guards. "Move him, please, he'll get trampled-"
Wooooooork.
He wanted so badly to disobey. He had never carried such unquenchable rage in his life, toward this system, toward the men with the guns that were perpetuating it, toward the monster, somewhere off partying at the top of his kingdom in Kijimi, that started it all.
His eyes opened again and he was still there. Still about to walk into the factory room. He could see the tables in there. The scattered equipment, all in incomplete forms, waiting for their hands to give it value. The shining lights, the metal and the grease and the power and the churning machine, the tools, the weapons.
I still don't want it enough.
But Yamada did.
The teenager broke out of line, his feet tripping over themselves in a mad scramble, just inches from crossing the threshold. The guards gave a shout.
Tomiyasu and Kubo's heads whipped sideways to follow the fleeing boy. He had gotten to his feet. He was running down the hall now, toward the panel, toward freedom. He had broken the spell. He had found enough resistance in his heart.
One guard lifted his weapon, and then the other said, "WAIT!"
The other stepped over to the wall, to the open panel where the new yellow pipe was. Tomiyasu noticed the other thing that was freshly installed there - a small switch - too late.
He opened his mouth to shout a warning. The guard flicked the switch. A valve opened. Something hissed through the yellow pipe. Hissed through the walls, toward the fleeing Yamada…
…From a nozzle in the ceiling, directly above the fleeing boy, purple gas burst downward, enveloping him. Yamada fell forward, reeling, sliding across the floor on his belly until he hit his head on the far wall, where the hallway turned.
The guard flicked the switch again, and the valve shut, and the nozzle stopped. The gas dissipated.
Yamada lay unconscious on the ground. The guard shoved his way through the worker's line and lined up an easy shot with his gun. POW!
Mitsuri screamed again. Tomiyasu's head turned away, unable to look. He'd only seen the flash.
His feet carried him into the factory room.
"That makes it easy, doesn't it?" One guard commented behind them.
"Yep," the other answered, matter-of-factly. "We'll bring someone in to clean the body when they get done with whatever was going on outside."
"I heard it was a sniper or something?"
"Regardless, they can't get in. Not when we've just…updated our security."
They both chuckled.
Tomiyasu trudged forward down the stairs. Kubo reached the table ahead of him and turned. His face was ghost-pale with cold shock.
Mitsuri and Faulkner joined them. They were four.
The other teams gathered around their respective tables, still complete.
"ALRIGHT! BUSINESS AS USUAL! GET TO WORK!"
Work, said the voice.
The four surviving members of Team 6 obeyed. Their hands and feet obeyed. Their eyes all unable to meet the eyes of the others.
Tomiyasu's brain retreated into a corner of itself, shriveled up and defeated by the horror. Mustard gas. That was why the pipe was yellow.
And it was installed everywhere in the facility.
They had assumed defeating the command Quirk would be everything they needed to do. They had assumed wrongly.
He looked down at the cannon that his hands built without his permission. He gasped. The realization was like a bag of ice being poured over his head.
We're making chemical weapons.
But where did the chemical come from? If they made the weapon part here, then where was the chemical part being made?
…
"How long will she be like this?" asked Nejire. She and Izuku were standing on either side of a bed, one of many that was now occupied in Seiai's large and crowded infirmary.
Camie was passed out and hooked up to oxygen, her chest rising and falling frailly.
"When my classmates Jiro and Hagakure got a full dose of it, they were knocked out for more than a day," Izuku answered. His fist opened and closed. "Ms. Joke. How did you…?"
The older heroine crossed her arms at the bed's foot. "Mustard was about to stab her when I arrived. They were fighting in a classroom and had both used their Quirks everywhere. I was the only one who could go in." She tapped her own gas mask that was part of her costume, now hanging around her neck. "My own Quirk, of course, didn't reach him either, since he was also protected. But I scared him bad enough that he jumped out the window."
"There must be footage on the cameras of him running for it," said Nejire. "What were security doing? Which way did he go? How'd he get past everything?"
"He just ran. There wasn't a single person who didn't have their hands full." Ms. Joke looked miserable. "Only a couple stayed in the security room to monitor the feed when there was so much rescuing to do. They saw him jump out the window and go around the wall on the outside. Then he vanishes before the next camera picks him up."
Izuku frowned. "He vanishes? Into thin air?"
Ms. Joke nodded. "Yes. There's an afterglow in the security feed, but it's hard to tell what it is, since the footage isn't in color. Nevertheless, it's definitely a Quirk."
"There was a turquoise-colored residue left behind at the arms deal," Izuku said, meeting eyes with Nejire. "Where the explosives disappeared."
"You think Mustard uses that same Quirk to get in and out of the schools?" Nejire gasped. "But…we still haven't figured out whose Quirk it is…"
"Maybe it's Mustard's. Maybe there is no secret ally from Kijimi like we suspected. Maybe he has two Quirks, and this one was given to him by All For One. Like Lady Nagant."
"But I thought we established that he isn't working for AFO…"
"That could all be a ploy!"
"That doesn't explain how he got those business cards, though." Nejire's expression was a storm of doubt. "I still think there is someone else helping him. Besides Moonfish, anyway…"
Izuku suspected that she was hiding something, but he couldn't linger on it, because Ms. Joke said, "There's no proof he used that Quirk to get in. Out, yes, if you watch the feed, but in…no."
"Huh? But how else would he…"
"That's what we're not sure about. The same thing happened at my school, Midoriya. Every one of the major schools is armed with advanced Quirk detection. It's part of the barrier defenses. And at Shiketsu, at my school, and now here…every time has been the same: there is nothing on the radar, in the time leading up to the attack, that would indicate someone used a Quirk to sneak in. Of course, after the attack happens, he's free to use Quirks however, because the radar is going off like crazy…"
"He slightly changes things up every time, though. He didn't have Moonfish with him the other times."
"Fool me thrice, you know? I suspect he knew he couldn't dance the same dance he had before. If he really wants to accomplish his goal before he gets caught…"
"At least we caught Moonfish," Nejire grumbled.
"So," Izuku sighed, exasperated, "we don't know how he's getting in. But we do know one thing we didn't before - he doesn't leave before the bombs go off. For some reason, he can't detonate them remotely. And that's crucial."
"The bombs leave no traces." Ms. Joke pinched her eyes between her fingers. "And you said you couldn't really tell anything else about them from your brief glimpse…"
Izuku shook his head. "In the back of the car, you mean? They just looked like black…objects. And we have no way of knowing if he used all of them here. How much power does each individual one hold? It sounded like just one explosion, not several smaller ones…"
"It was the same way at Ketsubutsu."
"Still, back then he was on a different supply. We have no way of knowing if he'll need to replenish before his next target."
"And no way to find him before he decides to hit his next target," Nejire put in.
The three of them stood in silence for half a minute. Stewing in the weight of their lack of success.
"How many people died?" Izuku asked softly.
Ms. Joke swallowed. "Forty-eight. Less than at Ketsubutsu. More than at Shiketsu, but the Shiketsu bomb was sloppily placed and caused more injuries than anything."
"And injuries here…?"
"In the low hundreds. It would have been much worse without your forewarning, though. Much worse."
"Yeah." Izuku flattened his mouth. "If only my presence could have been similarly effective."
He could tell she had no idea how to respond to that. "...I'll leave you two with your friend, then." The woman walked off.
Izuku turned all his focus back to the unconscious girl on the bed. Camie looked so peaceful. Her skin was ghost-pale, and a bit clammy. He felt an urge to hold her hand, but…Nejire was standing there.
Kid, said Nana. At some point when you get a moment of peace, we need to have a serious talk. About girls.
Izuku gulped. He didn't like the sound of that. He was already trying not to think about what had happened between Mirko and himself while trapped together. With how delirious I was, I might have hallucinated the whole thing.
"She shouldn't have gone after him like that," Nejire murmured, also looking down at Camie. "Not by herself."
"I probably would have done the same thing." He suspected that Camie had underestimated Mustard's close combat abilities. Did I know that he could sense movements in the gas he creates? If he had, he would have told them. But now he couldn't remember. Tsukauchi literally showed me his Quirk file and everything. Before, Izuku had his notebooks, where he would have put all this information down in a helpful place. But out here he was recordless, save for the endless rolling storm of his own thoughts. Some kind of detective I turned out to be. I wonder how much important stuff I've forgotten already.
"I can't wait for her to wake." Nejire backed up from the bed. "I have to return to Kijimi."
"Yeah." Izuku didn't disagree.
"Midoriya-kun…you ought to come, too." She stepped closer to him and lowered her voice. "These people keep staring at you like they want to eat you."
Izuku's eyes darted around the crowded infirmary. Mostly civilians in here, though there were a few other students and school staff. The majority of conscious people were gathered around this or that bed, at the side of their wounded loved ones, and giving them all the attention. However, here and there…he sensed it.
Gazes. Gazes of hostility. Animosity. Toward him.
They know what I am. They'll have heard the tales. Someone being targeted by All For One. On top of that baggage, there was the bomb. The bomb that had gone off right after he'd shown up. It wouldn't be fair to correlate the two…except for the fact that I could have rescued at least one person, and didn't even manage that.
So no. He couldn't blame them.
You don't look like a hero.
Any other time, Izuku would have been very much in agreement with Nejire. The danger here was finished; the only thing he could do by staying was perpetuate it. If All For One caught wind that he was lingering in this area, Seiai would become a target for another attack. His entire philosophy of keep moving since he had begun his crusade was built on this idea.
Yet All For One had not shown himself. And…
"I can't just leave her here," Izuku whispered. "She doesn't have anyone but us."
Nejire bit her lip. "You're…right. But-"
"She should wake up by tomorrow. I'll get moving again then, and we'll…figure out our next move." At the moment, he had absolutely no idea what it would be, nor any notion of what he could come up with in the next twenty-four hours. Nevertheless.
His senpai nodded reluctantly. "Okay. Fine. But only because I think you need the rest."
"And you don't?"
Her eyes managed to conjure up a bit of challenging spirit. "I'm ready to fly."
"We both slept after the battle, and Moonfish beat you up pretty badly. I don't see how I'm any worse off than you."
She avoided eye contact. "...You don't get it, do you?"
"Get what?"
"How it makes someone feel when they see their…friend. In a pile of rubble. You were about to die."
"I know exactly how that feels, Hado-senpai."
"Yeah, but…you act like it's not valid when someone feels it toward you. If I had just been a second too late, you would have-" Her breath caught in her throat. Her eyes shimmered.
Izuku stepped forward and hugged her.
Nejire went stiff in his arms. It was the most forward thing he'd ever done with her, and for a moment, he panicked that he'd gotten it all wrong. Nejire, who he'd fought half a dozen battles with now, had been through heaven and hell and karaoke and back with…who he'd deemed worthy of sharing his katsudon.
She's so soft.
Her whole body relaxed into his. She buried her face in his shoulder and returned his hug tightly. How could her hair smell so good even now?
"I'm sorry," he muttered. "I'm sorry for making you worry."
"You better be." She sniffled, barely audible as she spoke into his collarbone. "Dummy."
He missed her immediately when she stepped away. Just like he'd missed her when he'd been down with Mirko. I don't understand. Nana was emanating feelings of frustration at him, but with no helpful context.
"I'll see you soon, Midoriya-kun."
"See you…"
Nejire Hado left, and his heart ached.
That odd feeling of melancholy was slowly replaced with creeping fear, however, as he realized that he had no conscious allies left in this room. The stares on the back of his neck were making him feel hot. He kept his head low and turned back to Camie, kneeling at her bedside.
…
It was nearly midday when someone else came by. Izuku heard an uneven tapping, and then - "Deku."
He winced and looked back at Mirko. The rabbit heroine was balanced on a crutch, since her prosthetic had been crushed in the collapse and was therefore unusable. Her eyelids looked heavy, but otherwise, she seemed fine. She was wearing a baggy grey t-shirt and tight black pants instead of her hero costume. They were clearly not her clothes, since the pants had a makeshift hole cut in them to free her fluffy little tail.
Izuku pointedly moved his eyes off her very eye-catching butt and cleared his throat. "I'm…glad to see you up and about."
"You got up before me. That's annoying." She curled her lip.
"My recovery time is…enhanced. It doesn't have to be a competition." He glanced down at her stump leg. "How long before you can get a replacement?"
"Couple of days, apparently. More reasonable than I expected. The supply lines between the schools are actually pretty good now." She gave a shrug. "Then I'll be back on the streets and hunting this slippery little shit again."
"You and me both," Izuku muttered. "Though we don't have any good leads. The only new things we know are that he doesn't seem to detonate the bombs remotely, and that he uses a teleportation Quirk to escape."
Mirko did not miss much. "To escape? Not to sneak in?" With a raised eyebrow.
"Just that. There's some security footage I need to look at before I leave…"
"Same, then. I bet they missed somethin'. There's no way there's not some kind of trail we can pick up on this guy." She flared her nostrils.
Izuku was almost afraid to ask, but…
"Do you mean we, as in…would you like to team up? From here on out?"
Mirko blinked. Her expression was blank.
And then she laid her crutch carefully against the bed and leaned herself against it, staring at Camie's softly sleeping form.
"Is this the girl you were talking about?" she whispered.
A seeming non sequitur. Except it wasn't. It wasn't at all. Both questions had everything to do with one another.
"...Yeah."
Mirko nodded. "She's a looker."
"I'm sure she'd appreciate hearing that if she was awake."
"Listen, uhh…" Mirko flapped her real hand across her forehead, pushing a strand of white hair out of her eyes. "Look, I'm the adult, so I'll take responsibility and uhh…talk about…what we…I mean…"
Izuku couldn't help but feel a little annoyed. First Mandalay and now Mirko. Two beautiful heroines that he'd crushed on for years. If he'd gone back in time and told himself that he'd have circumstantially made out with both of them within the span of a month…
…But those crushes had come from the confidence they exuded. So he couldn't stand to let this happen a second time.
"Don't…get like that." He managed. "What I said down there is still true. What I like about you is how strong and decisive you are. Don't get all sheepish now because of me. I'm not worth that. It doesn't make any sense."
Mirko's eyes were the size of platters. "But…Midoriya, you…you're a…I don't want you to get the wrong idea…"
"I haven't gotten the wrong idea. I know why what happened down there happened. We were delirious and wanted some last-minute comfort. You're only feeling guilty because we survived, which was basically a miracle anyway."
"You…" The woman seemed in disbelief at him, and he didn't quite get why, and that made him more annoyed. "Where'd you learn to think like that…"
He almost blurted that it wasn't the first time he'd kissed an older woman, or even the second, but that would probably freak her out even more. "Don't worry about it. I swear. We can forget it happened. Honestly, part of me thought it was a hallucination anyway until you brought it up just now."
Mirko had a deeply concerned look on her face. She grabbed her crutch and stood back up. "You're a really sweet guy, Midoriya," she muttered. "Don't let the world make you as nasty as I am."
"You aren't nasty! That's what I've been trying to tell you! Mirko, you're wonderful-"
"See? You do still think that. I wonder how many other good thoughts you keep to yourself just 'cause you think no one wants to hear 'em. Maybe they're so locked away that even you don't acknowledge 'em." Mirko nodded at Camie. "I bet she'd like it if you unlocked those thoughts. I bet she'd like it a lot."
"I…don't really know what you're talking about."
"You will." Mirko smiled at him, but it was a far more melancholy look than her usual grin. "You don't have to forget that kiss, Midoriya. If you don't want to."
Then she hobbled away.
Izuku watched her leave.
His eyes flicked down to her little tail. God, she looks good in those tight pants.
His brain crisscrossed itself. If I don't…want to…?
He looked back down at Camie. Thought of Nejire again. The heartache. The dream by the foggy bridge. All those murky primal thoughts. How part of him wanted to just run after Mirko, pull her aside into an empty room, and screw her brains out. Where did THAT come from?
He should have done it with Iruka when he'd had the chance. Or at least asked her to be his girlfriend when this was all over. But no, that didn't feel right. Then he couldn't have helped Rei, but he probably shouldn't have helped Rei in that way in the first place…no, he should have kissed Mandalay again when the opportunity had presented itself; Blackwhip had practically set him up for it, and the desire had been clear in her eyes…no, it was right to have let it go…
How did it all get so wrong and confused?
He remembered the advice Mirko had given him about Camie. She'd told him to act on what he wanted. Is forgetting what happened also part of what I want?
Izuku genuinely had no. Idea. Anymore.
"Err…excuse me?"
He glanced up in surprise.
There were two people standing on the other side of Camie's bed. One was a security guard, escorting the other, who, by her white jumpsuit and beeping ankle cuff, was clearly a prisoner. She was a tall woman with lines under her eyes and straight brown hair. Her face was very familiar. "Sorry, dear," she said, "I don't mean to bother you, but…how exactly do you know my daughter?" She pointed at Camie.
