There were a lot of things Izuku could have said. He could have said, "who?" but that would have been stupid. Aizawa at least knew of the greenette's extensive knowledge of the MLA war, so obviously Izuku would know who Tripswitch was. He could have said, "you were around back then?" because that was a nice, ambiguous answer. Perhaps the best answer would have been, "wait, what?" because that implied confusion, that the greenette had no idea why the conversation was going in this direction, that he had no idea he was quoting anyone at all when he told All For One that being rude to him was public service.
All of these things would have been good in hindsight. What he actually said was, "well, she had a point." He managed to stop himself just short of adding "you unmitigated asshole."
"Oh she did?" All For One purred. "Perhaps you think all of them had points." "Everyone has points except for you," Izuku replied.
"Oh really?"
Don't rise to the bait. Don't let him keep asking questions and controlling the conversation. Keep quiet. He likes to monologue. He'll get impatient. Aizawa shot Izuku a concerned glance as the greenette waited with his arms crossed. "What is it you know of me? What is it you remember from our meeting... when was it now? Must be close to two years ago? No, I'm getting ahead of myself. Time seems rather superfluous to me these days."
Should he answer this? Probably. "Next to nothing," Izuku replied. "But I see you remember." "Indeed I do. You were... very memorable, Switchblade."
"What did you do with Hirano?" Izuku asked. "After I brought him back to you?" They already knew the answer to this question, but All For One didn't know that they knew.
"He got what he deserved, I assure you," All For One grinned. Well, that was one way of saying someone was turned into a nomu that was then slaughtered on national television. So that's how it
would be; the truth and nothing but the truth but completely useless truth none the less.
"Why did you let me go, Soulstealer?" Izuku winced. Crap. He had not meant to call him that, damn it, damn it.
All For One laughed outright. "Your partner in crime was a sneaky little weasel, and very helpfully pointed out that I would be infinitely better off if I just gave them the trifles they asked me for so that they would leave me alone with no further fuss. I can be quite pragmatic, you see."
"What did they threaten you with?" Izuku asked.
"The Hero Public Safety Commission, All Might... the life of my protegee." "They threatened to kill... Shigaraki?" Izuku puzzled out.
"They were Shigaraki at the time," All For One hummed, "threatening a brutal suicide." Oh. Wow. That was... one way to negotiate with All For One, apparently. Was Izuku possessed twice then, with the bodysnatcher switching focus between him and Shigaraki, or did the controlling quirk work on more than one person at a time under certain circumstances? "You still have that note in your voice."
"What note?" Izuku asked, distracted by his musings.
"Ruthlessness," All For One grinned widely. "They would have killed me without an instant's hesitation if they thought they could get away with it. You would, too, wouldn't you? You would put a bullet through my skull at the slightest opportunity and feel nothing. Your blood may be warm but your heart is cold as ice."
Izuku didn't dignify that with a reply. It might be true but, again, it was baiting. The greenette rolled his eyes for the benefit of Aizawa, who looked extremely concerned. This was already more information than they expected to get, all be it All For One clearly was playing with them, dropping hints as to the identity of Izuku's bodysnatcher but making sure to never say anything identifying outright.
"Odd, isn't it," All For One mused, "that you speak Tripswitch's words when it was her quirk that started all of this."
"Excuse me?" Aizawa demanded, breaking the silence that the other investigators had kept so far.
"Tripswitch of the MLA... I took her quirk before I killed her, a lovely little power, easily twisted by mad men, unfortunately. It seems I sorely misjudged Hirano Niko when I granted it to him," All For One shook his head and clucked his tongue disapprovingly. "It might have been a better fit for a younger holder, perhaps a hero student."
Izuku bristled at the even more blatant baiting. "You're a complete monster," Izuku complained, "I swear, you don't have a single redeeming quality. If I saw a villain like you in a television show, I'd say it was poorly written and simplistic because it made you out as some kind of evil incarnate."
"Ah, such loathing... It is a hazard of my occupation, I'm afraid. Such is the fate of many revolutionaries."
"You are not a revolutionary," Izuku bit back, tone still cool, unmarred by irrational anger but tempered with icy, calculating hatred. "You are a waste of protein."
"Um, Midoriya," Aizawa said worriedly. Tsukauchi appeared quite concerned now, too, clicking his pen repeatedly on his notebook but Nedzu... was trying not to laugh, whiskers shaking as he held his snout closed with one paw. Unfortunately, it seemed that Fossa's insults were entertaining All For One, too, and entertainment was the last thing the man deserved.
"So," Izuku ran his fingers through his hair. "Shigaraki's your legacy or something? Is he actually your kid or did you kidnap and brainwash him?"
"Hm," All For One just smiled.
"I'm curious," Fossa continued, cocking his head. "Do you actually care about him? Shigaraki? Or is he a problem for you? Were you tempted to let the possessor kill him?" All For One was not the only one who could employ some blatant baiting.
All For One probably would have glared had he possessed eyes. As it was, his ruined face scrunched like a wrinkly elephant's trunk. "He is my legacy, as you say. Certainly I care for him. I have no doubt that he will make me quite proud." The Soulstealer almost sounded sincere. Maybe he was. He might care for Shigaraki on some level, but certainly not beyond the level of "prized possession." Master manipulators forgot how to love.
"He'll make you proud? Doing what? Running the underworld with an iron fist? Blowing things up? Being a terrorist? I'm serious, which one of those things would be impressive to you?"
All For One shrugged in his straight jacket. "I'm sure that whatever he decides to do with his life I shall be most impressed."
"Oh? Even if he, say, turns himself in, joins a support group, emigrates to Sweden and becomes a firefighter?"
Aizawa did a double take, exchanging a bewildered glance with Tsukauchi while Nedzu coughed repeatedly to cover his laughter. It wasn't that funny, was it? Meanwhile, All For One considered the question and eventually decided it wasn't worth answering then turned the tables.
"I, too, am curious, Midoriya," the villain hummed. "Is it just her last moments you remember?"
"What?"
"Tripswitch. Is it just her last moments of life that you remember?"
"I have no idea what you're talking about," Izuku replied. Tsukauchi gave him a sharp glance. He'd almost forgotten about the detective... and here he had just told a blatant, suspicious lie.
"You expect me to believe it is a coincidence that you would use her final words among your first to me?"
"Well, given that lots of people probably say things like that to you--" Izuku began.
"Are you hiding this from me? You should know that I already know about it. Oh, no... no, you're hiding it from them. What have you to fear from the heroes? They are your allies, aren't they? They are here to save you. It's their job, after all. Do you perhaps worry you aren't quite up to their standards? Tainted somehow by the role you have played... by the power forced onto you?" Izuku bit his lip. Yeah. Yeah he was afraid of the heroes because keeping people safe was their job. Given everything that had been done to him, he could seem dangerous, enough so that it might be their job to get rid of him. "As someone with many, many foreign quirks I know very well the memories that they often bring along with them."
"Wait. What?" Izuku asked sharply.
"An imprint, one might say... a ghost, perhaps. Memories and experiences and personality, quirks keep copies of them as surely as their owner's mind." What. No... no way. That was... well, only All For One would know this, right? Who else... Monoma wouldn't be able to feel things like that given that he only copied quirks and only for a few minutes. "Tamiya Kuma was laughing when I first saw her. She did a lot of that in the early days of the war. She wasn't laughing when I last saw her... Tell me, Midoriya, what else of the life of Tripswitch of the Meta Liberation Army high command have you seen in your dreams?" Nedzu sighed and shook his head apologetically.
Izuku grit his teeth. So. The secret was out. More than one secret... the fact that Izuku had quoted Kuma at the beginning of this interrogation would seal All For One's truth in stone and it would look like Fossa had hidden it from investigators which, to be fair, he had. Sort of. Maybe. Was this it? Was this quirk ghost phenomenon the answer to everything that was happening to him--no. No. Most of Izuku's memories could not belong to Tripswitch, not even with memory transfers courtesy of Bit Weasel, because he had plenty of memories from after Kuma died, including that horrific nightmare where he found her shredded body.
"I had no knowledge of this phenomenon before you mentioned it here today," Izuku replied very quietly.
"But you've seen more than her final moments," All For One grinned. "You sound like her, some, or perhaps more like Fractal or maybe Switcher." Yeah, there was a reason for that... but it looked like All For One didn't know what it was. The information that the villain had just imparted about... quirk ghosts was shocking news to everyone, but All For One clearly didn't know what was really going on in Izuku's head or he would be baiting everyone with that, too. "Tripswitch tended towards an explosive temper," All For One mused, "Fractal was the eternal voice of reason, her opposite in some ways."
"Cut the intercom," Aizawa motioned to the warden. All For One grinned hungrily from behind the glass.
"Did you know about this?" Tsukauchi asked Izuku.
"Uh... which part?" the greenette quailed beneath the detective's stern gaze.
"I was aware that Midoriya now held Hirano's quirk," Nedzu answered abruptly, "as was Midoriya. This was quite a recent development and I had instructed him not to speak of it due to potential security concerns."
"And you didn't think to tell us?" Aizawa demanded. "Nedzu, we are lead on the investigation, I am his teacher for heaven's sake. What the hell were you thinking, keeping a secret like that?" Izuku shrank back. He'd never seen Aizawa furious like this, yelling furious.
Nedzu crossed his arms. "Put your anger aside, think logically, and you will be able to come up with some very good reasons why I would have preferred this information not to travel beyond my ears. The HPSC is in the process of being reformatted, and a good deal of the criminal justice system along with it. Before sharing sensitive information with the police force, the kind where it could be disastrous for a student should it become public knowledge, I must now think very, very carefully about how likely it is to be leaked. I was not aware, at the time I instructed Midoriya to keep his silence, that this quirk had belonged to an MLA general nor did I know about this quirk ghost phenomenon, but had I known I would have made the same decision only with less deliberation."
Aizawa growled. Tsukauchi sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. "Nedzu..."
"All For One thinks this is hilarious," Fossa muttered, filling the gap in conversation, "I wonder if this was his plan all along, getting us to fight."
"How much do you remember, Midoriya," Tsukauchi demanded, "from the life of your quirk's original owner?"
Fossa shrugged. "Some, definitely," he admitted. "'Being rude to you is a service to the public,' is definitely her memory although... I didn't know anything about the context until just now. I'm not sure... there are some other things that I've dreamed about that could be her memories." That weird dream where he was partly in control of himself and met Kuma to learn how to use her quirk... was that a memory at all? Or had that been her quirk ghost speaking to him directly? Was that actually possible?
It was Aizawa's turn to sigh deeply. "Could one of you escort Midoriya back to the elevators?" he asked the guards. "We'll all be along soon but we," he gestured to himself, Nedzu and the other prison employees present, "need to have a discussion first."
Izuku winced and followed his escort back through the portal onto the main floor. Everything was going to be alright. Probably. Aizawa had been furious but he'd been furious at Nedzu, hadn't he, not Midoriya, same with Tsukauchi... and Nedzu had a point, a nasty, bitter point but a good point none the less. They'd sort it out, maybe be annoyed with each other for a few weeks over the breach of trust or something... but Izuku would be alright. He could probably steer clear of the fallout. It wasn't his fault, after all, he was merely following what seemed to be a reasonable instruction by the principal and... What if it were illegal? What if what Nedzu had done were illegal under some technicality and the mammal got fired and then Aizawa and Tsukauchi held a grudge or thought Izuku was dangerous because he had Tripswitch's quirk and possibly some of her memories? What if there were nobody left to defend him? What if Nedzu decided to cut his losses and have Izuku expelled in order to bury all of this--it wasn't something he would do, was it? No, it wasn't--everyone here was a reasonable person, they cared about him, maybe, didn't they? But they all sounded so angry.
They arrived at the intersection. There was a group consisting of a guard, a warden, and several civilians walking to one of the cells. Huh. That seemed odd. Apparently it was more than odd because Fossa's escort raised his weapon, used his fingerprint to unlock the biometric safety, and demanded, "I was not alerted to further visits to this cell block. Identify yourselves."
The group turned towards them--Izuku dived to the side and around the corner on instinct's whim-- and the guard stumbled back with a gasp, a huge shard of ice buried in his throat. Fossa's anxiety haze vanished as if blown away in a cyclone. Before he had made an conscious decision about how to handle this situation, his body had grasped the guard's shoulder and pulled the dead weight back around the corner.
He had not even processed that his companion--whose name he would never know--was mortally wounded before he had taken the man's weapon from around his shoulder and fit his finger snugly about the trigger.
The telltale clatter of ice quirks was familiar to him. Todoroki's power had a similar, shimmering crunch to it. Arch's was similar, too. Crouched to the ground, Fossa chanced a peek back around the corner. His mind was deadly calm now. "Get him, quick, before he can alert anyone else!" He could see the ice advancing towards him, deadly shards ready to spear. He ducked out of cover and pulled the trigger. He wasn't familiar enough with this weapon to properly aim, but at least one of his shots got lucky. He wasn't entirely sure which one of the group of six actually had the ice
quirk he was being attacked with, but given the sudden lack of frigid air advancing towards him following a pained shout, they were hit.
Fossa retreated about the corner, listening carefully, trying to keep an eye out in four directions at once. The (presumably impostor) warden and his group were swearing and shouting. "Come on, get him out and let's go! No time for this!"
Get who out? Moonfish, Hawks and that red haired woman were all imprisoned in this hallway. Releasing either of those first two would be an absolute disaster. The third was probably just as bad. Fossa was briefly tempted to shout for help but he kind of already had... automatic assault rifles, even modern ones, were loud.
He slammed the weapon into single shot mode--that switch was exactly where he expected it to be. He didn't have any idea how many rounds were in a magazine on this thing--might be more than hundred or might be as few as thirty--certainly didn't have the time to search his fallen companion for a spare clip, and didn't know how long he had to make the bullets last. Fossa ducked around the corner to shoot at the intruders again.
"Argh! Damn it! Go around the corridor on the left and flank him!"
Kind as it was for his enemies to shout tactical information for him to hear, their plan was solid. Being caught between two attackers here would be very bad. There was nothing Fossa could do about it, either, other than hope that someone from All For One's cell heard the fight and came to help him before the flanker could get in position. His only options for retreat were to run back the way he came, giving up his cover completely, or take off along the corridor to the right, which would, again, require giving up his cover for longer than he preferred and might not buy him much time, especially if his enemy were clever enough to say they planned to flank him on the left while actually preparing to flank from the right. He would stay put.
Perhaps a half dozen times he ducked around the corner and shot at the figures, returning to cover before he had the chance to really observe them and then... a red feather whizzed towards him, burying itself in the opposite wall like a throwing dagger. He sighed. Hawks was free. Running would not matter anymore, not in the face of someone with a quirk like Fierce Wings.
Izuku stepped around the corner ready to empty the magazine in a last ditch effort to defend himself--and did a double take.
Hawks stood on thin air, wings spread to either side like a pair of bloody cascades, as he snogged one of the civilian clothed infiltrators, hands on either side of the man's face. The other man was covered in scars... Dabi. That was his name, wasn't it? So it was the League... and they were probably trying to release All For One, too. How the hell had they got down here? What were the odds of them showing up at the same time as Fossa by accident? Pretty much zero. Somehow, the investigators' visit must have presented the League with an exploitable crack in Tartarus security. Hawks turned towards Izuku and smirked before giving his lover another kiss. Izuku stared at him in shocked incomprehension. "Really?" he asked after what must have been at least two seconds. "You just got out of your cell and you're going to kiss in the hallway instead of... running or something?"
There was commotion behind him, shouting, gunfire, the roar of an emitter quirk or two. Dabi raised a hand glowing with flame--Izuku threw himself back around the corner and just missed being incinerated by an explosive ball of blue fire. He squinted as the wave of heat surged over his face.