"And we're back in the booth, with an update on the craziest villain case Tokyo has seen this month! Hang in there, listeners, things about this case are about as wild as they get!"

Contrary to what was probably going to be popular belief, I had no intentions of being a villain.

"Six hours ago on the dot, police and Heroes that had been gathered near the center of the Minato ward were fired upon with guided missiles from the compound they were set to raid. We still don't know who was firing them, but they must have been a real crummy shot!"

His aim had been impeccable, actually.

"The only injuries sustained were grazes from debris being launched. We still don't have a number on how many arrests were made at the site or why Sir Nighteye enacted his highest priority alert in regards to it, but I'll keep you all updated as the news trickles in!"

Was this usually how thieves felt? The exhilaration of knowing the answers that everybody else could only blindly guess at? Because if so, I understood crime now.

I almost wanted to call in an anonymous tip. The reaction from people knowing that Twice's 'crummy' shooting had actually been him destroying the yakuza compound even further would have been hilarious.

It would also completely invalidate basically all the work I'd put into it, but damn if I wasn't tempted. Shaking my head free of the thoughts, I reached over and turned the radio off (a radio in this day and age, my old soul was finally at peace), returning the bedroom to the tranquil silence that I'd spent most of the morning working in.

Tranquil silence while still being in what was essentially the heart of Tokyo? I'd been sceptical too, when the information broker I'd been in contact with lent me the key. Then again, this was after he'd also lent me Twice. Above and beyond must have been his modus operandi.

Bank details can buy you a whole lot in this world, especially when the bank details were to the account of the biggest drug trafficking ring in the country.

Giran, I think that was his name. He'd been crying a lot over the phone when he properly introduced himself. Talking about retirement, the places he'd like to visit, the debts he'd be able to pay off now. He might have also offered his daughter's hand in marriage as well. I didn't actually know at that point, he'd been too choked up for me to understand.

The place itself, befitting the enormity of the property value when I'd looked it up, was almost extravagant. The house stood three floors tall, the top balcony from the master bedroom looking out over the gravel road leading up to it. In what I would have called stereotypical Japanese style had I not seen it with my own eyes, the grounds were surrounded by cherry blossoms.

The architect that designed it was probably rolling in their grave… actually the place wasn't that old. The architect would probably be rolling all over their house if they knew that the only way I could describe their project was "pretty, and also big."

Really, the garage was the only part of the house I'd paid any attention to. Everyone else had picked a bedroom to sleep off the exhaustion, from late night money handoffs to early morning hijinks. Gentle and La Brava had claimed the master bedroom, only looking slightly put off when Eri insisted on joining them. Twice had grabbed the most comfortable looking bed on the second floor, after carrying Eri's bed from the room beside his up to the master bedroom.

A whole bed frame, mattress and all, up a flight of stairs. Alone and with no issues. The man could lift.

I'd taken the room on the other end of the hallway… for about five minutes, before I figured out from experience that I wouldn't be sleeping anytime soon. Much like in my previous life, I'd been right on the money about that, and here I was hours upon hours later, still going as strong as could be expected.

There had been a wooden stool in front of the workbench that was seemingly fused into the far wall from the door into the garage. That stool was where I'd spent the time I should have been sleeping, after getting a running leap up to it. How the others had managed to sleep through the sounds of me using the power tools up there, I had no idea. How I'd managed to get the leverage for most of them? Chisaki's body as my witness, chilling in the corner under the same blanket I'd used in the car on the way here, I had no idea.

I only had the vaguest idea of what I was even doing. Like the plans were in my head but someone else was there, connecting the loose pieces for me. It was the same kind of sensation I'd felt whenever I started delving into code, now that I thought about it…

"Have you not slept yet?"

Being surprised while using a power drill wasn't the best course of action. I jumped at the sudden voice, thankfully shifting my weight away from where I'd been holding the power button for the drill in place with the majority of my body. It would be tragically hilarious to be taken out like that after everything that had already happened.

The voice was different without the compression of an earpiece or my headphones, but I could still recognise it. La Brava let the door swing shut behind her, hopping down from the step much like I'd had to do when first entering.

Our first meeting in person, and here I was, hunched over atop a bench with a powertool almost bigger than myself falling from between my legs. Truly it was a blessing that there was no grace to be upheld; she probably had a good enough idea of the kind of man I was just from the sheer insanity I'd pulled her into.

Idly, I checked the time on my phone. It was almost falling off the bench, a victim of vibration as much as my thighs had been before I'd figured out how to position the drill so it wouldn't shake my balls off my body. My hair balls, of course, what did you think I was talking about?

One in the afternoon. We'd gotten here at seven this morning. Man, time flies.

"Sleep can wait, this is far more important."

Maybe it was just my brain still rattling around inside my skull, but I honestly wasn't tired. All I got from La Brava was a shrug before she settled on the hood of the car, shooting Chisaki's covered body a sour look when it caught her sight. "If you say so."

I waited for a moment, giving her ample time to talk. All I got from her was a raised eyebrow, which I copied. Her eyebrow arched higher; a move that I couldn't replicate, and with a roll of my eyes I turned back to what I'd been building. If she had nothing to say then I wouldn't try to force a conversation.

The drill buzzed on and off as I crawled around the workbench. It was remarkably clean for the amount of tools hanging above it; I was probably the first person that had ever used it for its intended purpose.

The shell of what I was constructing was mostly done. I sighed, swiping my hands off to the side to shake off the metallic flakes that were clinging stubbornly to my skin. Now it would be time for the hard part, the electronics.

Wires poked haphazardly from the sacrifices I'd made for this project. The remote for the television that was in my selected room had been my first victim, its batteries lying off to the side like spoils of war. It had been followed by one of the three blenders in the kitchen, the earpiece I'd been using in the raid, and a talking bird plush that I'd taken from Eri's room. Considering how she'd frozen up when first seeing it, I had my doubts she'd miss it too much.

I shrugged at its malformed beak, twisted up at me in what I would have sworn looked like a pained expression. I was fine with not knowing what had happened to get it into this state.

Deciding to start with its voicebox, I grabbed the doll by its head, feeling around for the lump that would tell me where its payload was.

There, right in its belly, that was easy enough-

"Gentle and I decided that we're not going to make the video."

I flinched, the bird plush giving up the fight to my grip instantly. With one hand on its body and the other gripping its squishy skull, the sudden force was enough to tear its head off completely, the voice box in its belly under my thumb giving a squawk at the sudden pressure.

"Wait, why?" I turned around, absentmindedly throwing the bird head over my shoulder as I went. "Was the footage not good enough? Did the drone crash?"

The body soon followed, after I'd dug enough of the cotton innards out to reach my prize. Finally, after that somewhat embarrassing moment, I focused on La Brava, taking in her relaxed posture and the lack of hostility in her eyes. So not something that had to do with me, or at least something that I could be blamed for, maybe.

"No, the footage is golden. We'll probably use it at some point in the future." The tiny woman kicked her legs out, visibly struggling for a moment before managing to push herself off the car. I knew the pain of the body not being big enough for leverage all too well, but at least she had way better legs to flail helplessly than I did. "But we can't make the video because we're not giving Eri to the heroes."

"Oh?" I turned away, partly to focus back on what I was doing, and partly to hide the fact that I'd been staring at those legs a bit longer than I probably should have been. "Whose decision was that?"

"Eri started crying when we brought it up and Gentle caved immediately." I snorted, meeting the flat stare levelled at me with a grin that was a bit too off on one edge to not be described as a smirk. The man had been composed in every circumstance I'd known him to be in, trying to imagine him panicking in the face of a crying child was too ridiculous to not laugh at.

Seeing that her glare hadn't been effective, La Brava rolled her eyes, spinning back towards the door and whipping her twintails through the air behind her. "I'm not sure where we're going from here, but I did catch him going through a furniture catalogue before I left."

"So I guess this'll be good practice for when the two of you actually have a kid, huh?"

"Don't tease me, brat." With an impressive vertical leap, La Brava grabbed the handle for the door, twisting it midair and yanking it open before she even started descending. With momentum my brain couldn't really comprehend, she was standing on the doorstep, glancing over her shoulder at me. "Tea?"

"Uh… sure?"

With a nod, the door swung shut behind her. With very little idea of what had really happened there, I turned back to the workbench, grabbing a hammer that was longer than my entire arm. The blender and remote didn't even have time to scream.

La Brava was back a few minutes later, a tray with 5 steaming cups atop it in her hands. The thanks I offered her was distracted at best, all my focus on the wires in my hands, but she didn't seem too offended. The door swung shut again behind her, not that I could tell how she managed that with her hands full, and soon silence returned to fill the garage.

By the time the door was opening again, both my cup of tea and the contraption I'd been fiddling with were complete. A power cord in hand, I jumped down from the bench as the door handle clicked, my back to the rest of the world as I crawled under the bench to reach the output.

Getting back to my feet, I dusted my hands, picked off and threw away a ball of hair from my head that had some kind of mean looking bug in it, and turned around. I then tripped on thin air at the sight of Gentle and La Brava, having not expected another person to be in the room.

One leg behind the other, I pitched forward, my gaze shifting from the wall and my fellow criminals to the floor rapidly approaching my precious brain cells. This was it. This was how I would die.

Before my very eyes, the floor rippled. I barely had the time to mutter out a quick, "eh?" before my forehead was impacting the cement. Rather than pain, however, my head sank slightly into the ground before springing back out like I'd been on a trampoline, my reversed momentum sending my whole body flipping forward. With nary a flourish nor a plan of action, I landed back on my feet, wobbling back and forth for a moment before coming to a complete stop.

I looked at Gentle.

Gentle looked at me.

He offered two slow, precise claps-

"I'm here! I'm here! Did I miss it!?"

And then gracious spun to the side as Twice burst through the doorway, a bucket of popcorn in one hand. The black and grey ventilated mask he'd been wearing this morning was still on his face, and it remained even as he took a handful of popcorn and lifted it up to his mouth. The mask didn't shift, there was nothing I could see to indicate a seam opening for his mouth, but when his hand came away there was nothing but a slightly chewed kernel in his palm.

…Ok then.

"You're right on time, actually. I was about to turn it on."

Twice cheered, his mouth still full. The mask kept all the food within and really just added another onto the growing list of questions I'd likely never get answers to.

"Can one of you grab the arms while I-"

They must have coordinated this beforehand. That was the only logical explanation I could come up with as Gentle grabbed my device from the bench, mindful of the power cord and how he was handling it. Twice, in comparison, gave roughly the appropriate amount of shits about Chisaki's remains, rummaging under the blanket to grab one of his legs, and bodily dragging him across the ground to where Gentle was laying down the machine.

Deciding to just roll with it, I offered them both a nod of thanks, powering up my little project. The glass screen on the front of it flickered to life, fuzzy lines running along the surface of it. A twist of one knob to the right widened them, just as a left rotation slimmed them down to normal. From the sides of the base, thin wires extended out, only some remnants of rubber insulation surviving where I hadn't needed to strip it for added room.

All in all, much like its creator, it was a disorganised mess with very little in the way of coherence, but it would probably work and leave behind more questions than answers.

With a grunt that couldn't have been exertion, because the man was fucking ripped, Twice dropped Chisaki beside me. The blanket was still mostly in place, only bunched up out of the way of both his arms.

Red hair settled on my shoulder. A glance told me it was La Brava leaning down, keep eyes scanning what I'd made up close for the first time that day.

"What is it? It looks like an alarm clock."

"I used the alarm clock as a base when I decided to work instead of sleeping. These cables," extending the wires on the side, I held them up for emphasis, "are going to connect with Overhaul's arms. The quirk factor resides in his hands, so I'm going to use this little beauty to pump fluctuating amounts of charge into them to simulate electrical impulses from the brain, to see what amount will trick the Quirk into activating and combining two things."

From behind me came one of the strangest noises I'd heard in a while. Almost like someone dropping a whole lot of ice cream, and then stomping on it. Being too interested in getting the show on the road and becoming steadily desensitised to the random shit happening around me, I ignored it.

"From there I'll combine the arms with my own body so that the Quirk integrates with me, and then I can use my own brain to-" I turned around, meeting the impressed gazes of Gentle, La Brava, Twice, and Chisaki. Chisaki's was still forming, however, building itself up from the mud pouring out of Twice's hands. "...Properly combine the Quirks and bypass… the degeneration from multiple quirk sources in the body…"

"Oh." Twice glanced at my machine, and then back to the clone he was in the process of creating. "So when you said you needed his Quirk…"

His free hand began reaching for the hammer. Jumping to my feet, I lunged, wrapping my arms around his bicep at the apex of my leap and doing my best to drag his hand away from the tools. He would use them. I know he would.

"Wait wait, that'll work too!" It took some doing, but the hammer was soon out of reach. Twice, predictably, had no difficulty supporting my weight. Seriously, what the hell was this man made of?

Throughout it all, the clone stood utterly still. Eyes barely open, staring blankly at the wall. Gentle and La Brava were holding their own conversation, casting glances at it every so often, but for the most part it just stood there.

Menacingly.

"Will the clone actually do this, though?"

"Hmm?" Twice lowered his arm. Though it probably wasn't a hint, given how scatterbrained the man seemed when there wasn't an active danger, I still let go of his arm now that the Chisaki clone wasn't in danger of having its head caved in. "I measured him when he was sedated, yeah? So I'll only be able to make a copy of him that's asleep! Pretty damn useless, huh?"

With a sharp laugh, Twice slapped the clone on the back. It wobbled precariously, but it didn't fall, its eyes continuing to stare at something only it could see on the wall.

Slowly, one eye at a time, it blinked. In the second it took for the second eyelid to descend, I thought it was winking at me.

"He doesn't look very asleep to me."

"Naaah, he's out of it, trust me." I shot Twice a dubious look. His mask twitched; the indignation that I felt upon realising he'd rolled his eyes at me was astounding. "Watch."

The clone received a slap on the back of the head. He stumbled forward a step, almost drunkenly. "Hey, dumbass! Put the Quirk into the midget!"

Those glazed over eyes turned to me. With another step, he was pretty much on top of me, one hand reaching for my head while the other splayed its fingers to cover both arms that had been discarded to the side.

"Whoa wait hang on-!"

I tried to backpedal. The lizard brain panic of 'holy shit this man can explode me with a touch' winning out against the logic that this had been essentially my plan from the beginning.

My foot caught the modified alarm clock. I went down, the electric current that I'd been planning to shoot through the arms zapping me directly in the ass. Insult to injury, in both senses of the word.

Of course, I didn't have time to be offended at the universe, as Chisaki's hand came to rest on top of my head.

And then-

PAIN.