To TM11's comment regarding "False Truth Speakers", the example most-recently that comes to mind is Aiwei the "Truth Seer" from Legend of Korra. He'd been doing his job for so-long that everyone just took his word as gospel, and because of it an innocent man almost got put away for life. It's only because Varrick, who's used to playing people for complete suckers, pointed it out that Aiwei was ousted as a traitor. And I don't see why it'd be any different in MHA. For the same reason that some states/countries don't treat the results of Polygraph Tests as "Evidence", it just doesn't make sense that people would trust Tsukauchi out-of-hand unless he has some evidence backing up his assertions.
To Reptil, of course Kenji Sato wouldn't know there's gun turrets all around him; he doesn't have working eyeballs anymore. I have something in mind for All Might regarding Quirks, but I never honestly thought about Melissa in that way. She's a young, albeit grown, woman who's made a life for herself without her Quirk, and even if she did get one, I doubt anything about her life would change. Even if she did get a Quirk and people who mistreated her in the past suddenly warmed up to her, she'd know that it's all a false pretense, which is why it always irks me when Izuku is written as a spineless pleb after seeing Bakugou's true nature for so many years.
"Quirk Worship" at its very worst. In my Headcanon (in AHA:OOT) I imagine that sort of thing gets worse and worse the closer you get to a Hero Academy; but I digress.
As for Loamy Coffee's comment, the reason I referenced Black Summoner is because, if the person that Reincarnates retains their "meta-knowledge" about the MHA world, how they carry themselves would be completely different than if they didn't; obviously. Him having to choose which to keep, would "retroactively validate" why he didn't take advantage of his meta-knowledge sooner. Because the thing about messing witih meta-knowledge is, if you start making changes, there's a "Butterfly Effect" that'll later invalidate other foreknowledge. That and, like Kenji said, if you give someone [Body Change] and meta-knowledge with none of the moral restraints...
As for throwing Tiger & Bunny in as a Retroactive reference, it just always made so much sense that there'd be some kind of "Corporate Age" of Heroes before the present Age you see in My Hero Academia. Back when NEXT (Noted Entities with eXtratordinary Talents) first appeared, they were a rarity, and persecuted against, so of course they wouldn't be able to set up the same kind of "Agencies" as in MHA's present. They'd need very rich sponsors to pay for the overhead, which includes but is not limited to, collateral damage.
In response to OmniIBIBUltraInstinctGodzilla, the only reason he can get away with telling All Might and Tsukauchi that he's a Reincarnator, is because Dragonball Z already exists as fiction-within-the-fiction. Not only does the reference help the world feel "lived-in" (like how there's allegedly the Alien and Predator franchises according to Mina Ashido, as well as the larger Nintendo franchise according to Present Mic), but it also explains how Kenji's "Quirk" wound up looking exactly like another fictional meta-ability.
While it's true that he could've just said his ability was "the same as Captain Ginyu's from Dragonball Z" and left it at that, if he did, he'd have implied he "field tested" his Quirk at one point, and that arguably would've made him look a lot worse than if he were a Reincarnator. The only reason he can get away with saying he got Isekai'd at all, is because that world is all too perfect for someone to Reincarnate into; marginalized people that are discriminated against for having "No Power", marginalized people that are discriminated against because they are "Demi-Humans", and marginalized people that are discriminated against because they have "Evil Powers".
And honestly, if there aren't already Another World stories where the person Reincarnates into a world of Superheroes & Supervillains where the Power you're born with has sway over your entire life... someone's bound to happen upon the idea for that kind of "Reverse Isekai" very soon.
Onxio: Too bad he's horrifically Ugly and can't use Dilf charms on the female cast
Re: Who says I don't intend to do anything about that~? *Wink*
*SIAFO,SW?*
When the news broke about a formerly-thought-to-be-Quirkless office drone at a Gray Company using the Quirk he did have to steal the body of the Villain that pushed All Might to his limit broke headlines… reactions were massively mixed…
Those reactions were only exacerbated when it got out that Kenji Sato, with the body and Quirk of an SS-Rank Villain, was being released back into the public; albeit under protective custody and intense scrutiny. And it would only be all the harder for Yuuei to convince the parents of its Hero Course students to allow them to continue attending Yuuei once word somehow leaked that Kenji Sato's protective custody would be carried out on Yuuei grounds, which even now was being fortified up to a wartime status.
Some people saw it fitting that All Might, former Hero or not, would be there to oversee the body of his nemesis, but others, panicking as they realized that All Might wasn't around anymore to keep the Villains in check, began to call out for blood. What did it matter if one innocent man had to die, just so they could all feel safe in their delusions that nothing would ever change?
Of course, Kenji Sato was kept largely in the dark about this; not out of any sort of malice nor the fact that Tartarus was an absolute information dead zone, but because in his current state he could do little to defend himself. Such was why Hawks was helping transfer the former office worker from his temporary place of incarceration to Yuuei, flying over one of the decoy trucks while Kenji himself hid in one of the patrol cars at the front of the convoy. Because he had used his own "evil" to snuff out an even greater evil, what awaited him in all likelihood was an early, comfortable retirement in one of the safest places in Japan; barring certain isolated incidents.
That, and, it wasn't like he could continue to be a computer programmer when he couldn't see a keyboard, let alone what was on the screen. All for One may've been able to "see" when he fought All Might, but that had been after years of practicing with what most would consider "Junk Quirks".
If society continued to deteriorate… Kenji might not have that sort of time.
*SIAFO,SW?*
"All the parents are probably having cows right now," Shota Aizawa, the Erasure Hero: Eraserhead said as he watched the police convoy make the final leg of their journey from his perch on Yuuei's rooftop corner.
By some miracle, neither the true nor any of the decoy convoys had been attacked by the League of Villains; a credit to the haste at which the operation had been carried out. The tightest of lids had been placed during the planning stage, and that nothing had occurred, meant that the few Top 10 Heroes that had been able to participate in this game of "Three Card Monte" would receive pay purely for attending.
"Perhaps so," Principal Nezu, otherwise known as the 'Murder Mouse', replied. "Though I'm hoping that the parents will recognize how Mr. Sato was in an untenable position. Damned if he did, damned if he didn't. And at least this way, we have a version of All for One open to cooperation."
"Perhaps, but how-long do you think it'll be until he realizes we're basically extorting him?"
"He spent two decades as a marginalized citizen. By now he's intimately aware of what it's like to be used and exploited by those around him," Nezu chuckled mirthlessly, still able to be amazed at the way humans treated (read: mis-) one another while espousing pretty ideologies. "We can only hope that the moral fortitude he used to not use his [Body Change] ability for personal gain, will remain even when he has [All for One] at his disposal as well."
"Assuming he can actually use it at all," the Wild, Wild Pussycat: Mandalay, replied. "But if there's even a chance we can get Tomoko's Quirk back, we'll lend you all of the aid we can provide."
"Getting Ragdoll's Quirk back would earn him a great volume of goodwill from the populace. Especially those that Ragdoll has had a hand in saving," Nezu hummed contemplatively, plans within plans within contingencies swirling through his mind. "And I am curious what someone who used to be on the bottom but is now at the top of the world is like, now that he has what is arguably the strongest Quirk."
"Assuming the League of Villains doesn't mount a massive counteroffensive to get him back," Aizawa hummed, remembering how-easily the League had been able to mount their kidnapping of Katsuki Bakugou, and their near-success of absconding with Fumikage Tokoyami.
True, they'd narrowed down the list of possible suspects as to who the "Yuuei Traitor" was, but that vetting had only served to paint an uglier picture. One made all the more vivid by Kenji Sato's commentary as a person who had been indiscriminately marginalized for two decades once he failed to manifest a Quirk.
Between the Quirkless, the Mutants, and the Vilified, All for One had dealer's choice on minions to pick from as infiltrators. At the very start of the Paranormal Age, he would take the power from those who didn't want and give it to those that did want, getting two faithful servants for the price of one. But now that the power of [All for One] was in the hands of someone with the moral fortitude to not use a Quirk so-powerful as [Body Change] on anyone but the strongest of all Villains, that paradigm threatened to upend itself completely.
Whether society could survive that upheaval, on top of the fall of the Symbol of Peace, had yet to be seen.
*SIAFO,SW?*
"Perimeter clear," the SWAT Team commander announced once the convoy of vehicles had entered Yuuei's sum garage for its vehicle fleet, the exterior doors closing behind them.
Police and Heroes slowly filing out of the decoy trucks, at the heads and rears of their respective convoys, the trunks of patrol cars were opened since none of the drivers were aware of just who was carrying the proverbial "Lady". Eventually, the trunk for one of the cars in Hawks' convoy came open, revealing Kenji Sato laying on his side on a futon, head laid down on a fat pillow and clutching at a rebreather that he held to his face.
"Alright, we're here," one of the police officers, Quirkless because no-one with a meta-ability wanted to approach him, said offering a helping hand.
"Ngh. Thanks," Kenji replied as he blindly fumbled about for that helping hand. A minute later, he flopped somewhat gracelessly to the ground as a motorized wheelchair was brought over. And there to meet him, drawing salutes and straightened backs, was All Might, emaciated but proud in his yellow pinstripe suit.
"Mr. Sato… Kenji. How was your trip?"
"A little bumpy, but the League didn't get me, so it was a fair tradeoff," the man who had stolen All for One's body and turned society on his head shrugged, taking a shuddering breath through his mask. "You'll excuse me if I don't get up to shake your hand. Or ever again for that matter."
"Hah, well, that's to be expected. I did do quite a bit of damage to All for One before you pulled the rug out from under him, and his body besides," All Might chuckled humorously. "Come on, let's get you to your new apartment," he said moving to take hold of the handles and guiding him along. "Cementoss really got to flex his minor in architecture while making it."
"You could probably hole me up in a dingy backroom somewhere and I wouldn't be able to tell the difference," Kenji hummed laconically.
"Perhaps so. But after the sacrifice you made, you deserve to be treated well. It's only fair."
"Because I have a powerful 'Quirk' you mean?" Kenji scoffed derisively.
"No. Not because of your Quirk. Because you had the restraint to not use it for selfish gain until the last possible moment," All Might announced, both to Kenji and to everyone nearby.
For however long his words would carry weight, he would do all he could to ensure that this young man (Reincarnation notwithstanding) could lead a comfortable life, now that he carried an altogether greater burden. Not only the burden of inhabiting the body of the greatest Villain the world had ever known, but also the knowledge that the body he was born in, or reborn in as the case was, had died with someone else behind the wheel altogether.
That as well as how the knowledge of his "Quirk", [Body Change, had rapidly spread amongst the populous. Those that would willfully approach him with this knowledge in mind would be few and far inbetween, but as Kenji himself had admitted down in Tartarus when he came to give the man the good news; he didn't need a lot of friends to be happy, just a few good ones.
" . . . Thanks. I needed to hear that," Kenji sighed as he slumped down into his seat.
*SIAFO,SW?*
Kenji had no way of knowing this, but his new apartment, more of a one-story mansion, really, had been built down the end of a long winding road past what would come to be known as Alliance Heights, the dedicated Yuuei dormitories. The work on Alliance Heights itself had been put on hold once it had been decided that Kenji Sato would not be held accountable for All for One's many crimes, but it had been a necessary concession to ensure that Yuuei's latest charge, trapped in the body of All for One unless he chose to give it up for another, would not only be able to live in comfort, but in safety.
Even if the League of Villains were foiled for a time, the lure of [All for One] would always be too great for him to return to normal society. Whether it was Villains or governmental organizations from another country, someone somewhere would either want him dead, or want that power for themselves, now that it had gotten out what his core ability actually was.
"Recovery Girl will be by later to give you an in-depth physical, and you'll have a live-in maid to help you out around the house in a few days," All Might said as he wheeled Kenji up the ramp, the door swinging inward automatically at their approach. "Also, if you're amenable, you have guests."
"It isn't any of my old co-workers, is it? Because if it is, send them away. I don't want to see any of them. And not because I don't have any eyes."
"Did you truly not have any friends at your workplace?"
"None that were genuine. Even though I was better at my job than most of the office, having a Quirk alone made even the laziest incompetent my 'superior' in the eyes of the company. Even the unpaid interns were treated with more respect, and all they did was sit in the crapper for hours and hours reading pornography on their phones."
A fact that made All Might uncomfortable. Quirkism had only grown worse as the Quirkless population continued to evaporate. You were 80% more-likely to be denied a job, even if you were qualified, if you didn't have some form of Quirk no matter how-small or insignificant.
The way Quirkless people were treated now… was probably the lingering grudge and resentment that those with powers that had been abused in the past held. Back when the majority was the minority and the minority was the majority.
And it only occurred to him now, when he himself was Quirkless, that he should've done more to advocate for justice and dignity for those that didn't win the genetic lottery. He'd had decades as the No.1 Hero to espouse that sort of message, and people would've listened to him by the millions… But if he tried to do so now, people would think he only cared as such because he was Quirkless. Any sort of message in that vein would come across as empty and hollow, and it would only cause the Quirkless, the Mutants, and Vilified to resent him all the more once they got the idea in their heads that All Might "never cared about them" because he was too busy living the high life.
When Shinso had sneered at Midoriya for being "blessed", it wasn't untrue. Those with strong Quirks were blessed… but only if you looked "normal" as well. Those with physical abnormalities always faced an uphill battle, in every industry, which was why those with Mutant-type Quirks that stopped them from looking like "people" rarely broke into the Top 10 in any country's Hero Billboard Chart. Gang Orca for all of his and his sidekicks' prowess straddled the No. 11 and No. 12 slots year after year, but never made it to No. 10.
"Well, don't worry, we'll be sure to stop anyone claiming they're your friends at the gate from now on," All Might replied from his reverie. "Have you ever heard of the Wild, Wild, Pussycats?"
"The fake cat girls who have a cabin in the woods? Yeah, I've heard of them. A few of the execs got saved by them when they went too far into the woods without knowing what the hell they were doing. Why do they want to see me?"
"Well, one of them had their Quirks stolen by All for One, his latest victim before you used [Body Change]-"
"Oh, okay, sure. Send them in."
"Wait, really? You'll agree to it that fast? Just like that?"
"You're probably thinking the same thing I am. If I give back this Quirk to one of All for One's victims, I can use it to garner goodwill from the mewling sheeple. From there I can use it as a platform to barter my services to high rollers with the HPSC acting as an intermediary. Am I about on the mark?"
"The principal had contemplated commercializing your ability, yes," All Might admitted. And it was more or less the platform that All for One used, only more "Lawful Good" compared to the "Chaotic Evil" used to build an empire that had spanned centuries.
Had All for One been taken alive, the possibility, slim as it was, would have always existed that All for One could break free or be broken free from Tartarus and take back his place in the criminal underworld. Now however, for all intents and purposes, the Symbol of Evil was dead and buried in another man's body. Tomura Shigaraki, the grandson of his mentor, was still a problem, but the loss of his mentor, of All for One himself, was a wound that might be well and truly impossible to recover from.
None of that was Kenji's problem, of course. All he had to do was play on the defensive and wait out the storm that was sure to be coming. He was under no obligation to put his life at risk for anyone or anything. Not when, technically speaking, he'd already made "the ultimate sacrifice".
"Okay, glad we're on the same page," Kenji nodded. "First one's a freebie. After that, we'll need to talk numbers. And I intend to wring this power for everything its worth. Just like every other Quirk user that gets paid for it."
All Might couldn't exactly fault the guy for his mindset. After decades of being treated as a second-hand citizen, now that he had a service people would gladly pay out the nose for, it only made sense that he would want to extort from the society that had treated him so-poorly in the past.
True, it wasn't exactly the most-altruistic of motivations, but then again, money made people dependent on a framework. It was what kept the Heroes from simply pulling up stakes and turning to villainy when they felt like they weren't getting the recognition they deserved. Because if you got paid to be a Hero, you didn't have to worry about paying overhead out of your own pocket. And if society as a whole collapsed, it didn't matter how much money you amassed if there was no-one in a position to manufacture the goods and services to spend it on.
Money was only paper if it wasn't being spent.
Well, technically it was closer to "cloth" than paper, but that was beside the point...
*SIAFO,SW?*
"Tomoko, are you sure you can do this?" Shino Sosaki, the Wild, Wild Pussycat: Mandalay asked as they approached the 'Quarantine Zone' toward the heart of Yuuei's wilderness property.
Allegedly, the region was surrounded with traps, countermeasures, and camouflaged drones. And the only reason they hadn't built the man's new home underground itself was that he wasn't a prisoner, but a guest. If the man were treated like a Villain even though he'd been formally absolved of his crimes and those of the body he now inhabited, it would only promote more enmity. And at least this way, if the Villains tried something, they too would be out in the open, instead of underground with a very expensive campus over their heads.
Just one of the many reasons Villains made their lairs underground.
"If I want my Quirk back, I have to," Tomoko Shiretoko, the Wild, Wild Pussycat: Ragdoll replied. "It isn't All for One, it's someone else. It isn't All for One, it's someone else. It isn't all for one, it's-" she chanted as she laced trembling hands.
"Hey, don't worry about it. If this Kenji guy tries anything funny, I'll claw his eyes out!" Ryuko Tsuchikawa, the Wild, Wild Pussycat: Pixie-Bob grinned maliciously.
"Kenji doesn't have eyes. Not anymore," Yawara Chatora, the Wild, Wild Pussycat: Tiger replied.
"Fine, fine, I'll claw his face off."
"All Might beat you to it."
"Could we please not talk about beating up an invalid?" Shino pleaded patiently, happy Kota was being babysat by Recovery Girl so they wouldn't set a bad example for her nephew. "All Might and the HPSC already screened him with a half-dozen accredited experts. This isn't All for One yanking our chains, this is actually someone with a body-swapping Quirk who had the decency not to use it on anyone that didn't deserve it."
"Mr. Sato has a heart as strong as steel if he could endure being 'Quirkless' for so long," Tiger added, he himself having witnessed the way the Quirkless were treated all his life when it had been more common than today. "And unless you want to spend the rest of your life like that, you need to confront this. There are still people in Kamino Ward who need our help."
"I know, I know…" Tomoko sighed, getting her jitters under control as they cleared the forest, finding themselves in a large open space with a perimeter fence, armed with equivalent defenses to the 'Yuuei Barrier' at the edge of campus. The gate letting them through thanks to their visitor's passes, they came upon a rather nice-looking one-story house that was almost a mansion with marble pillars, two-toned brickwork, and slanted roofs in a Western style.
"Where men fear to tread," Mandalay nodded as they approached the front door.
*SIAFO,SW?*
When Ragdoll steeled herself to face All for One, or at least his body again, she'd anticipated many things before stepping into a large den with plain but tasteful furniture.
What she hadn't expected was for the body of the man that'd stole her Quirk to be clad in an All Might hoodie with an ostentatious autograph slashing diagonally across the chest in All Might's iconic script, All Might-themed pajama pants, and fuzzy bunny slippers styled after All Might.
"Do they look non-threatened?" the man in All for One's body, Kenji Sato, asked over his shoulder toward All Might, his emaciated form looking worse than it had on the TV.
Whoever said the camera adds ten pounds obviously didn't know jack shit.
"I think they look a little stupefied…" All Might replied as he coughed awkwardly into his hand. "You're lucky I had some merchandise in your size."
"You mean 'his size'?" Kenji asked with a warped grin as he pointed at his chest.
"You know what I mean," All Might said as he ran his hand through his hair. "Mandalay, Pixie-Bob, Tiger, Ragdoll, how is the day finding you?"
"It's a bit of a whirlwind to be honest…" Mandalay sighed as she and the others took offered seats across from All Might and Mr. Sato. "Kamino Ward looks worse and worse by the day."
"It could've been even worse than that had Kenji not pre-empted the fight the way he did."
"And all it cost me was a few stones and the body I was born with," Kenji chuckled self-deprecatingly before he began to cough raggedly into his oxygen mask, holding it to his face and bowing over.
"Ah, are you okay…?" Ragdoll asked, the man before her feeling far less threatening than All for One had been.
Sure, she'd only been half-conscious when he took her Quirk, but she was just-conscious-enough to have had their meeting leave a mark on her.
Admittedly, the cheesy All Might merch did take some of the edge off.
"Not really. That's the problem with getting a used car. You don't quite know the damage under the hood," Kenji replied as he rubbed at his face. Or at least what passed for a face under the mass of scar tissue dominating the upper half of his head. "So, you ready to get your Quirk back?"
"I am," Ragdoll replied.
"Alright. Before we get started, can you tell me what All for One did when he stole your Quirk?" Kenji asked. "Any specific hand gestures? Any trigger phrases?"
"The man just monologued for a few minutes before putting his hand on my head," Ragdoll replied. "As soon as he got a grip on me, it felt like part of me was being sucked out through a straw, and then I felt empty before falling unconscious. Next thing I know I'm waking up in Tiger's arms and I can't feel anything out with my [Search]."
"Hm. Not a lot to go on," Kenji shrugged as he made to get up, only to hit the coffee table in front of him with a *Thunk* and a- "Son of a bitch!" -as he fell back into his seat clutching his shin. "Would you mind coming over here? Still trying to get a feel of the place," he said through grit teeth.
"Oh, um, sure…" Ragdoll replied, having never expected to see the Symbol of Evil doing something as-mundane as bonking his shin into a table.
Walking around the coffee table to face him, Tiger picking the furniture up and moving it so they had some space, Tomoko took a knee before the garish merchandise-clad body, the tension ramping and her pulse pounding as he reached across the space between them.
"Would you guide my hand the rest of the way? I am literally blind and I don't want to touch you anywhere I shouldn't."
" . . . Sure," Tomoko replied awkwardly as she took hold of the man's wrist, guiding his hand until it rested atop her head. She felt a shudder go through her spine at the touch, but it was all to get her Quirk back.
" . . . "
" . . . "
" . . . "
" . . . Is it in yet?"
"RYUKO!" Ragdoll cried with a red face.
"Well, performance issues, it's not uncommon. One out of five-"
"Yawara!" Mandalay chastised.
"Is it supposed to be taking this long?" All Might asked.
"Hey, news flash, I've only had this body for a couple days. It didn't exactly come with a cheat sheet under the doormat."
"If you need a few days to pull yourself together, I can wait," Ragdoll sighed.
"No. We're not going anywhere until this Quirk is back where it belongs!" Kenji asserted in a tone closer to All for One's, causing the Wild, Wild Pussycats, especially Ragdoll, to jump in their skin. "I heard it all from All Might. You're probably the only victim of his that's still alive. I at least owe it to all his other victims to give someone their Quirk back. And it might as well be a nice girl like you."
"Aww, that's so sweet. In a creepy kinda way," Pixie-Bob hummed.
" . . . Alright. Let's keep going," Ragdoll nodded.
"Here's a throw pillow. This could take a while," All Might suggested.
*SIAFO,SW?*
"Sato. Sato wake up."
"I'm not sleeping I'm meditating."
"You're not meditating, you're napping. I can tell the difference," Aizawa huffed, the former desk drone's hand still on Ragdoll's head as he tried to give her her Quirk back with a Quirk he had only had for under a week.
"Miss, how-long was I meditating for?"
"Um… an hour, give or take," Ragdoll said rubbing her legs.
"So [All for One] isn't intuitive. Good to know," All Might hummed.
" . . . I think the problem is me," Kenji realized. "I'm not All for One, or the Symbol of Evil; I'm 'me', and no-one else. I don't mindlessly 'dominate', so I shouldn't act like some mustache-twirling dominator," he said as he got to his feet and discarded his oxygen mask, taking a shaky breath with his own lungs. "Come on, up and at 'em. I wanna try something different."
"Alright," she said getting to her feet, Tiger holding her up when her legs almost buckled after falling asleep.
Kenji for his part patted Ragdoll's face, getting a feel for where she was standing in front of him before he placed his right hand on her shoulder, pressing his thumb to her sternum above her heart. His left fingers ghosting along her jaw and next to her ear, his left thumb pressed to the center of her forehead. Letting out a ragged cough when he tried to inhale through a nose he no longer had, he took a deep breath through his teeth before letting out a long exhale, Ragdoll's eyes shutting.
Before the others could ask what he was trying to do, Ragdoll suddenly stood straighter in her skin, her hair standing on end and a sharp intake filling her bosom with air as her eyes went wide. A startled yelp leaving her lips as she flailed backward into her team's arms, Kenji rolled backwards as well, going ass over end above the back of the couch and landing in an undignified heap on the other side.
"Tomoko! Tomoko, what happened?!" Tiger demanded.
"My… My Quirk…! My Quirk is back!" Ragdoll gasped, her eyes wide and watering as her 'third eye' was filled with lights. "It's back… It's really… really back!" she sobbed as her hands went up to her face, a deluge of joy running down her cheeks as that empty hole inside of herself regained its missing piece.
"Holy freaking super-crap, you did it!" All Might gasped as he hauled Kenji up to his feet, the man flopping onto the couch tangled up in his oxygen hose.
"Thank you…" Ragdoll sobbed as the rest of her team held her, crying tears of their own. "Thank you so much…!"
"You're welcome," Kenji responded with a smile that didn't rightly belong on All for One's face, a ragged cough prompting him to put his O2 mask back on his face. "I'm… I'm kinda sleepy now. I'm going to meditate some more."
"You mean sleep?" Aizawa asked.
"Tomato, potato."
"Don't you mean 'tomato, tomatoe'?" All Might asked.
"Who the fuck says 'tomatoe'?" Kenji asked as he went over to the direction of the bedroom, only to bang his shin on the coffee table that Tiger had moved with a *Thunk!* "Son of a bitch!"
"Yep… That definitely is not All for One," Pixie-Bob hummed as she watched the man roll over the coffee table like a slapstick routine before clutching at his shin.
*SIAFO,SW?*
By the following morning, as the Wild, Wild Pussycats made an appearance at the ruined Kamino Ward to help with search and rescue, word had already begun to spread that Kenji Sato in All for One's body had been able to return the most-recently-stolen Quirk, [Search, to Ragdoll.
Some people had still been unwilling to believe that All for One, the Supervillain from all the old Wives' Tales, was real, but as word began to spread, they public found a certain perverse irony in the fact that the man who stole the Quirks of others had his own Quirk, AND body, stolen by a desk drone. And it was doubly-funny when a picture of him leaked, the man decked out in All Might pajamas with a giant autograph slashing across the chest, half-asleep with an All Might-themed toothbrush in his mouth, and a tube of All Might brand "All Bright" toothpaste off to the side.
"Dammit… Dammit. DAMMIT!" Shigaraki swore as he tore their fallback lair a superfluous new asshole. "How dare he…! That NPC just DLC'd himself into becoming the Final Boss! What kind of unbalanced shit is THAT?! HACKS! I! CALL! HAAAACKS!"
For the League of Villains, it'd have been one thing if All for One had been captured, or even killed. But for his body to be outright (if not unironically) stolen with a Quirk that most would only think existed in creepypastas online…
Suffice it to say, immediately after the Kamino Nightmare, the League of Villains' morale was not at its best…
