Have you ever been conscious as the flesh was stripped from your bones, only to be melted down in a pit of lava and grafted back on with a million needles made of your own nerve endings? Take that, multiply it by a pit of acid, have it sing obnoxiously bad karaoke, then let it kick you in the nuts and tell you that your dog died. That's about a third of the pain that my arms were feeling as the world came back into focus.

Saying they burned would be like saying that being launched into the sun would be tepid. It would sting less if I'd decided to skinny dip in a pool of box jellyfish. It was a more terrible feeling than realising I'd woken up as Minoru Mineta… alright no, that one wasn't true. But it still really fucking hurt.

Normal logic would have dictated that my nervous system should have shut down long ago. Even just a few seconds of exposure to this should have overloaded me immediately. Unfortunately, as was tradition, normal logic was always the first victim whenever Quirks were introduced to the equation.

I didn't even have it in me to scream. There was a rave in both my ulnas and everyone was reusing syringes in the bathroom. A costume party in my humerus where the theme was stubbed toes. I would even go so far as to say my arms… well they were feeling kind of sore.

Moving seemed like a horrible idea, but I hadn't gotten this far by not acting on some of the dumber plans that shot through my head. It did take a minute, once the room had stopped spinning and my stomach had gotten over the initial reaction to every nociceptor in my body lighting up like a stadium, but eventually I was able to wrestle myself at least partly off the ground. I might as well have been moving through cement with how much effort it took to move my arms, so most of the work was being done by my torso.

The room had emptied somewhat, I noticed, doing my best to take in my surroundings even with my face caught in a perpetual wince. Twice was leaning against the car, his arms crossed over his chest. I couldn't tell with the mask on, but I think he was watching me as I reoriented myself. The Chisaki clone was also still in the room, still hunched over the remains of the alarm clock I'd been tinkering with. That probably meant that at some point while I was insensate, I had been rolling around.

Around on a garage floor that had a car parked in it as we speak. Gross. I could only hope that Gentle and La Brava hadn't been witness to that part, seeing as they weren't in the room.

"Fucking ow," was the first thing that came out of my mouth. My throat didn't feel too raw, which thankfully meant that I probably hadn't been screaming. Swinging my hand through thin air right now felt dozens of times harder than doing the same movement through water, but after a moment of effort I'd managed to lay my right hand against my left arm.

Maybe to massage it, or check that it was even still there. Hell, maybe I could magic away the pain or somethi-

I felt it in that moment, a pulse of warmth reverberating through my hand. It started within the skin, pulsing along with the blood in my veins, which had suddenly engorged. Before I could worry about that, the arm underneath my hand shimmered slightly, as though I was looking at it through a heat haze.

And then my arm was perfectly fine.

The difference was night and day. The space in between the blink of an eye, or the beating of my heart.. One moment there was agony, and the next there was an utter lack.

If anything, I felt amazing. The small aches that had been developing in my muscles after hours of nonstop work had been washed away. Small scrapes and blemishes had been replaced with flawless skin. Even the small pimple that had been starting to form near my elbow was gone.

Numbly, I stared at the clone, even as I repeated the process with my other arm. I didn't need intimate knowledge of biology in order to fix whatever damage had been done. My right arm was done just as quickly as the left, warping in the corner of my vision for a moment, before it too was perfectly fine.

The Quirk had caused the pain, right? All Quirks had a downside and that pain should have been the tradeoff. At least, that's what I'd been assuming while I thrashed on the ground and tried not to cry. But if I used the Quirk to take the pain away, then that would mean…

"Hey, Twice." Clones kept their personalities, I knew that much. So if I was right… "Do you have any injuries I can test this on?"

I would need to make sure of this sooner or later. Better I did it now when it would help someone who had helped me.

I swung my head around to Twice. He'd gone still, a rare sight for the man. Usually there would be a foot tapping out a random staccato, or a hand drumming along any surface it could reach. Having the visual with no audio to go along with it was almost eerie.

"...Will it hurt?"

"Maybe?" I could only really shrug at him. "It won't cause any damage to your body, but I kinda want to test if it does hurt or not."

The eyeholes of the mask squinted down at me. I would probably never get used to the amount of emotions that piece of fabric could convey, no matter how often I saw it. While Twice shifted his weight back and forth against his car, thinking over my proposal, I clambered to my feet. There was an embarrassing amount of relief when I turned around and saw that I hadn't, in fact, been lying in a pool of my own blood.

Twice was still thinking, I presume, if that's what him making exaggerating swiping motions across his chin meant. I left him to it, stomping a foot against the ground in an attempt to wake the leg back up. I must have been lying in a more awkward position than I'd first assumed.

Then I slapped myself in the forehead, and lowered a hand to it. One burst of warmth later, and my entire body felt fine. Great, even. The exhaustion that had been hovering over me like a cloud for weeks on end was gone. As was most of the stress that naturally came with planning a massive break in and subsequent murder, probably.

Speaking of subsequent murder…

The clone hadn't moved. I doubted it could if it wanted to, if at this point it even had desires. As I skipped, feeling so damn good in my own skin for the first time in weeks that I was skipping, towards him, I realised that he wasn't just idling in the middle of the room with the lights on and nobody home. There was more at his feet than just the alarm clock.

A pair of arms. Scarred, detached, useless; and yet there the clone, staring down at them with a glazed over, lidded gaze. Those eyes even twitched as I picked up the arms and tossed them into the corner, where they landed atop the rest of the body they'd once been attached to. The alarm clock didn't quite get the same level of treatment, simply skidding across the ground when I kicked it out of the way.

I stood up straight again, grabbing onto the stool I'd spent most of my time in this house on. It warped under my grip, the top part detaching as the metal that made up its frame shrunk down. Soon, where there had been four thin legs was instead a metallic club in my grasp, about half the length of my arm. The grip was rudimentary and the edges jagged, but it was fine for a first attempt and especially for what I had in mind.

I turned, and swung. The club caught the clone in the back of the leg, sinking halfway through it before there was enough resistance to cancel the momentum. The leg lost form, melting away into a puddle of greenish brown mud, and with it going down so too did Chisaki.

He toppled to the side, gravity claiming him now that his balance was lost. Club wrenched free, I met him on the way down, swinging the metal with all the strength in my tiny, though rejuvenated body. It met his skull in an explosion of Quirked gunk, staying lodged deep even as I exhaled shakily and let it go.

"Thanks for the Quirk, asshole."

The clone melted away, having never said a word. The satisfaction that welled up within me at the sight of the steadily spreading puddle was certainly dark, and I couldn't care less.

"Ok."

For a hysterical moment, I thought the liquified remains were talking to me. It was only after a second of bewildered confusion that I remembered that I wasn't actually alone in the room.

Twice had moved into a sitting position, his legs crossed. One of his knees rose and fell in a rhythm only he could hear, and as I watched, he gripped his mask with both hands.

It was my first unobstructed view of his face. Blue-grey eyes stared at me resolutely from a handsome face. The slightest hint of stubble ran along his jaw and upper lip. Somehow, even after who even knows how long underneath the mask, his blonde hair was artfully tousled.

Of course, I noticed all of that after taking in the massive stitched scar running down the middle of his forehead. But unlike some assholes who shoved Quirks into people and made sure it hurt more than any torture I would ever be subjected to, I had basic manners, so I only stared at it a little bit before managing to tear my attention away.

I probably should have remembered that little detail, though to be fair this was my first time seeing his face in any light aside from a distant and dim street lamp.

"Don't split me."

I offered him a wordless nod; compared to some of the shit that had come out of his mouth, that request was certainly weird, but it was also remarkably tame. Crossing the distance, I debated with myself for a moment, before deciding that the least awkward way I could go about this was to just place a hand atop his head.

Even with him sitting down, he was still a little bit taller than me. I would have to fix that right after I was done with this.

…Huh, his hair was surprisingly soft- damn it, focus.

How to go about this? Up close I could see that the scar, though large, was fully sealed. I'd had some stitches in my own forehead in a past life, and even for a wound less than a quarter of this size, I'd had an awful time making sure nothing went wrong with the healing process. The last thing I wanted to do was accidentally make it worse.

Fuck it. General statements had worked on my arm, so maybe it would work fine here.

With one hand atop Twice's head, I took a deep breath, and pushed.

Fix him.

And this time, I could feel as Overhaul responded.

It was like I was flexing a muscle that I never knew I had until that moment. The Quirk spread along my arms and out to my fingertips at a steady pace, moving along the pathways that my pulsating veins provided. Even after they reached the edge of my skin, they stretched further still, sinking into Twice's body and carrying with them both my will and the power to alter reality.

Fix him.

Twice's entire body shimmered. He jolted under my hand, though I didn't allow him to move away just yet. Only after the power had faded from my hands and the Quirk was safely within me again did I withdraw, stepping away from Twice and watching on as he ran his fingers slowly down his forehead.

"It didn't hurt." His hand fell away from his face. Any trace of the scar had been wiped clean. So I'd been right after all; the Quirk hadn't caused me all that pain. Fucking Chisaki.

I stooped down, picking up Twice's mask from where he'd dropped it near my feet. He reached for it blearily, staring down into the eyes of it for a moment before his own lit up with wonder.

"I didn't split?"

"You look pretty whole to me." I shrugged, turning away from him and rolling up my sleeves. The experiment had been a success, and now that I knew it wouldn't feel like I'd dunked myself into a tub of molten tungsten I was eager to get this show on the road.

With my arms crossed and hands gripping just below my elbows, I stood straight and laid down the command I'd been waiting weeks to issue.

Grow!

I waited a moment. Overhaul sparked to life, I could feel it circulating in my arms, but after a moment the feeling faded to nothing. The fuck?

I tried again. And I got the same result. My new Quirk waking up, telling me to fuck off, and then going back to sleep. I could respect it for acting like how I would in this same situation, but this wasn't the time to be hitting a wall in terms of progress.

How had Chisaki done this again? It had been so long since I'd seen that part of the series that I couldn't remember off the top of my head. He'd just grabbed one of his cronies and fused with them… ah fuck.

I wasn't about to fuse with anyone in the house, mainly because I had no plans of unfusing from them in the future. They all had their lives to live, their own paths to walk that they couldn't do if they were walking them in my shoes.

All except one person, at least.

I could almost hear Chisaki's laughter as I turned slowly to look at where his body lay. I hadn't even wanted to bring him along. We'd just run out of time to get his arms off properly before the authorities arrived, because apparently surgery with a shovel is more difficult than medical school led me to believe.

Not that I'd attended medical school. I just assumed based on their reluctance to use shovels.

It was such cruel irony that I almost had to respect it a bit. I'd gone into this not giving the tiniest iota of a shit whether he lived or died, and yet here we were, with me about to ensure that so long as I lived, so too would he in some capacity. If I was more desperate I'd try using something else, like the car, or whatever we could find in the fridge. If I was more immoral I'd kidnap someone off the street for their height.

Alas, I was neither of those things. I was also not willing to give myself time to second-guess this decision, lest I come up with something else to try. I'd rather not risk my luck running out until it was a last ditch effort.

Much like I would a bandaid, I slowly lifted the blanket away, because I am an idiot and I thought it would hurt less. There was still the same amount of dead guy under there, unfortunately.

Chisaki's body hadn't really had time to start decomposing. Small mercies and all that, it meant that even though he was tragically lacking in being alive, he hadn't started to stink up the place. Nor had he had the time to rot, which was quite the boon, seeing as I had to touch him.

Laying his arms over his chest, I placed a palm over them, making sure my hand could stretch out enough to get in contact with all three pieces. My other hand came up to my own chest, slipping underneath my shirt and resting directly over my heart.

Combine.

It started off slow. Almost like Overhaul itself was hesitating with this one. Unwilling to back down, I pushed it into motion anyway, choking on my own breath as it capitulated.

It was very different from just working with one body. Parts shifted around and inside me, only getting worse as more was accumulated. I could feel myself stretching out steadily, hunching further and further until I was on my knees, my hands the only parts of me that weren't fighting to just shift.

Combine.

I could feel another set of arms trying to force their way out of my shoulders. I pushed them down, feeling them resist for a moment before giving in and simply adding to the length of my own. His legs were a similar story. Most of his organs, even without their functionality, fought over my own for dominance.

COMBINE.

Throughout it all, I weathered the storm. My face shifted, urged on by the control I held in an iron fist. My throat extended out, stretching my vocal cords with it.

COMBINE!

Steadily, the bodies of Minoru Mineta and Kai Chisaki faded from existence. Blood that until a few seconds ago had been devoid of oxygen flooded through my veins, stronger than ever. Limbs that had once been short folded out to push me into a new centre of gravity. Hair that had once been packed into tight spheres atop my head unfurled out, rushing across my vision in a purple waterfall that only stopped once it was brushing against my knees.

I pushed the wine coloured strands out of my face, my eyes flicking upwards on instinct. When all they met was the garage roof, I adjusted my view down, coming face to face with Twice. Who was standing up. Who I was now on equal footing with.

Actually, I might have been a little taller than him. Holy fucking shit.

"How do I look?" Oh my God, my voice was deep again. It didn't have the nasally lisp either. With a breathless laugh, I threw my hair around my shoulders, realising just before it all fell out of view that my now shredded shirt had been stuck to it. At least my pants had been able to stretch to my new proportions, even if they were more like shorts now.

Twice, or was it Jin now without the mask? Huh, I'd ask later. For now, he looked me up and down, head tilted to the side. It was uncanny how easily I could imagine his monochrome mask over his face as he did it.

"Oh,uhh…" He snapped his fingers suddenly, before that hand was pointing directly in my face.

"Did you get a haircut?"

I couldn't help it, I laughed. I laughed until I was red in the face, until I'd lost enough strength in my legs that my hair managed to stick itself to the ground. Even as I was unsure how I would get unstuck, I was still laughing.

I'd done it. It hadn't been perfect, it hadn't been easy, but I'd done it. This was proof that I could make this work. That I could make my way through this world and come out the other side.

This was proof that I could find a way home.

I just had to start looking.