Not even in my wildest nightmares did I think today would go this poorly. Silently, I led Nezu through the house towards the kitchen, listening to the rapid scuffling of his shoes on the carpet as he kept up with my much longer stride.
What an oversight. Overhaul wasn't designed to pick up on anything above the molecular structure. Even just sending it through the ground to pick up information was a difficult procedure, one that Chisaki had no doubt never attempted in his lifetime.
Even with the vastly differing biology offered by Quirks, the base genealogy of humanity was largely unchanged. Even if your head was a damn rock, your chromosomes didn't really change much to reflect that. It wasn't a case like Marvel mutants, where all the changes in a person's body could be traced right back to how that body was made.
There was something suspicious about Quirks, something that I didn't have the knowledge or resources to understand yet. But that also wasn't the issue.
I should have picked up on Nezu. I had picked up on him, loitering around the house just like many other animals were. Even now, I could feel three stray dogs within the general area, seeking shelter in the shade of the trees and sending a very similar signal through Overhaul that I had gotten from the principal. Whatever specific blend of chimera he was, canine made up a significant portion of his unique species.
…He probably already knew that. I hadn't focused too much on his shoes, but they weren't leaving a trail of dust or plant matter like I would have expected if he wore them through the yard. He'd blended in on purpose, exploiting a weakness I didn't even know I had with a Quirk that he couldn't possibly have had any experience with.
Or, he'd gotten lucky. Somehow that felt like the far less likely option.
I almost wanted to laugh. How fucking terrifying could one rodent be?
Turning the corner into the kitchen, I nearly tripped right over Setsuna. She'd been standing in the doorway, her fingers furiously tapping at the screen of her phone, and it was only thanks to my own reflexes that it didn't shatter on the tiles when she dropped it in surprise.
There was a question in her eyes that I could only answer by grimacing. I didn't even know how much she knew about me. That line of inquiry had died an ignominious death at the hands of the murids. Somehow I always knew that was how it would go.
At the very least, she'd known enough to create some distance in case shit went down. If the property survived this, I think we'd both be due an interrogation.
Directly behind Setsuna, sitting at the table and swinging her legs through the air, Eri sipped at a juice pouch. She didn't look the least bit harrowed, and why should she? The innocence of a child was the most terrifying thing to encounter, because it was perhaps one of the easiest to kill.
"Ey, little one." The smile I forced felt at least somewhat natural. It got easier as I ruffled her hair, and she pouted up at me. "Thanks for letting me know my friend was here."
"Your friend's really fuzzy." The inflection she'd given the words made it feel like she was sharing a secret with me. The fact she hadn't lowered her voice at all kind of gave it away, though.
I snorted. Somewhere behind me, Nezu snorted at the exact same time, which was just more evidence to the idea that she could rule the world, if she ever figured out how to weaponise that charisma.
"Watch over her," I muttered to Setsuna as I walked past her, heading towards the sliding door that would take us out into the orchard. Nezu didn't seem to have anything he wanted to say yet, merely tilting his head to the side and following after me as I gestured out towards the trees.
The glass door slid shut. Eri waved to me jovially, before leaping off her seat and taking Setsuna by the hand to drag her back towards the TV. Other than the shadows I could still feel lurking behind the trees, we were alone.
We would have to be. This was going to be the most important conversation of my life.
Our journey wasn't long, another ten seconds of walking before we came to the edge of the property. Tall grass stretched out beyond the trees, though none of it was tall enough to mask someone attempting to hide within it. The ground beneath my feet sagged slightly. Nezu came to a stop beside me, reaching out with one paw to tap his knuckles along the tree he was standing beside.
It was hard to tell with his face, but I think his smile had just widened. No doubt, he'd figured out exactly what I had prepared for him.
"Excellent heroic instinct, guiding a civilian out of potential danger." For a moment, I thought Nezu had been talking about me. The retort had died on my tongue as he continued, his tone almost ponderous. "I do so look forward to seeing how Miss Tokage performs in the entrance exams."
I hummed, weaving through the trees towards a divot I'd carved into the corner of the property long ago. Even with this miscalculation, it was nice to know that even if things went poorly, Setsuna wouldn't be held accountable for any of it.
Already, Nezu had done me a favour, without me even asking for it. This was going about as well as I imagined it would.
Speaking of how I imagined it would…
It was only a few steps later when Overhaul seemingly just… fizzled out of existence. The trees and grass that I'd been all but a part of faded away from my mind. My hair, always held somewhat aloft with the power, settled around my head and body in a tangled mess of fibres. The voice that was always whispering in my ear, clamouring to disassemble and dissociate everything and everyone around me, fell silent…
And then I stepped behind a tree, and it all came roaring back.
It was obvious. Glaringly obvious that a dangerous Quirk would elicit a full shutdown response. For any normal person, having a part of themselves shut down out of nowhere would be the ultimate disorientation. That was the whole basis of Eraserhead's fighting style, after all. You couldn't escape, you couldn't fight back. Pinned down, out of time, out of options.
Or so they thought.
I could feel him through the branches and the roots, rushing along far faster than the average person would be able to, searching across the landscape for a place where he could be out of sight, yet have his eyes on me.
With my previous modifications, he wouldn't get the chance.
"You're ahead of schedule." The tree that had become my cover was now my target. With one hand, I let my quirk factor pour out over it, morphing the wood beneath my touch until it concave and then split apart at the middle. It was an older tree, the trunk thicker than a doorway and standing taller than any other, though what was actually unique about it was the staircase hidden within, descending deep below the system of roots that I spoke to on a daily basis.
Nezu giggled as I gestured him forth, scampering through the opening I'd created with more glee than I'd been expecting. The staircase was lit with flickering torches held within stone brackets along the right side, casting our shadows eerily against the walls as I followed him through, sealing the entrance behind us.
The earth packed in behind us as we descended, him hopping down the steps like it was all a game, while I followed behind with a far more sedate pace. Stone and dirt groaned and shifted behind us as we went; there was no such thing as being too careful, especially with the information that would be coming to light with this.
"You were supposed to figure out that I wasn't dead next month."
I withdrew my hand, content with how much I'd clogged up the entrance. So long as Nezu's buddies didn't decide to Lorax the shit out of us, this was as private as the meeting was going to get.
Nezu hummed, linking his paws behind his back. He was still taking the steps at a hop, doing a damn impressive job of keeping his balance as he went. "I've known you weren't dead since July."
Even as resigned as I was to not feeling surprised by anything that happened now, that still almost made me miss the next step.
"And you just said nothing for seven months?" I couldn't help the incredulous lilt of my tone. Nezu twisted on his heel, still hopping backwards down the stairs with his picture perfect posture.
"You hadn't made yourself a priority."
Well shit. I couldn't exactly argue with that.
The journey to the bottom of the staircase was much the same. Nezu hadn't turned back, instead choosing to stare at me as he bounced along. Part of me was tempted to Overhaul the next step so he'd miss it and topple over, but the last thing I needed right now was him cracking his skull open. I wanted to pick his brain, yes, but not like that.
It was less than a minute later that we were walking into a round room, the table and chairs I'd carved out of limestone lit by a collection of strategically placed candelabras. Beside the table was a homemade stove, the logs beneath it crackling with merry fire. Two cups had been laid out along with a large box. Inside was a collection of different tea bags, because I could plan for a lot, but even I had no clue what a rat-bear-dog thing's taste buds would gravitate towards.
That was no excuse for not having tea at a meeting, however. Gentle would kill me if he ever found out.
A knock on the wall beside me shifted a patch of the ceiling, allowing the smoke that had been curling against it through. The opening would take it all the way to a middling layer of the soil. We wouldn't be in here long enough to worry about proper ventilation, and I'd be burying it back underground once we were done. Not exactly the smartest option, but letting random smoke out of the ground in a place with abandoned trees would also be begging for trouble once someone noticed it.
Nezu padded his way to the table, his shoes crunching along the gravel that had been left behind in my excavation efforts. He nodded at the kettle that I'd set to boil, which was appreciated; getting the flint and steel to hit the right spot with Overhaul without actually being able to see what I'd been doing had been hard. The seat he chose was the one further from the staircase, not seeming bothered by the circumstances in the least as he shuffled through the teas I'd supplied.
Was this an acknowledgement that I was in control of the environment or was it him mocking me? Both? Neither? I could already feel the headache approaching.
After a moment, he sat back, Li Shan in paw. I bowed my head slightly in respect; the man knew his tea. He reciprocated the gesture as I leaned forth and plucked some Shoumei from the middle of the box for myself. The kettle bubbled slowly as we set about preparing our beverages, with myself compressing the leaves down to get a stronger flavour, and Nezu scooping his crushed leaves into a mesh steeper.
Mine would be an explosion of flavour, while his would take longer, but would no doubt be a far more even spread.
For a moment, it felt like we understood each other.
"I have five possible theories." The principal almost caught me off guard with that one; I'd expected the conversation to open up with an obscure fact about tea. "Only two of them seem plausible, but I believe all but one of them to be wrong."
The kettle let out a shrill whistle. I doused the flames beneath it with a film of stone, grabbing the handle with some hair and setting it off to the side to let it cool. Neither of us made a move to pour any water.
"A psychotic break seems unlikely when you're still otherwise perfectly functional, much the same as a mind controlling quirk that doesn't need to be reapplied regularly."
Nezu reached for the kettle, tilting it the slightest bit to the side and breaking our staring contest to watch as the water dripped into his cup. It took a hypnotising moment, but eventually the last drop settled upon the quivering surface of his tea.
"There's no signs of blackmail, being used against or by you. Which means that you're either the victim of genetic engineering…" With the greatest of care, the kettle was handed over to a few locks of my hair. I let them pour the rest of the water into my cup, filling it perfectly to the brim. "Or I'm not actually talking to Minoru Mineta."
I set the kettle off to the side. Nezu slowly swirled his steeper, seemingly mesmerised by the dark swirls spreading throughout the water. As if I would believe for a moment that he wasn't contemplating a million things at once.
A single pulse of Overhaul against the cup distributed my tea throughout the whole thing. It scalded my tongue as I took a sip, burned my throat as I swallowed.
"Why was I not a priority?"
"Oh?" Nezu clasped his paws around his cup, the steam curling into his face. "Are we not going to play word games? I'm quite fond of word games, you know."
I laughed at that, the sharp bark echoing around us. "I think everyone in my life is getting sick of my word games, including myself."
"Perhaps you're using the wrong set of rules." I rolled my eyes at that, waving my hand through the twin trails of vapour that had drifted to my side of the table from his amused snort.
If he wanted a different set of rules, then I'd start us off with a speedrun.
"This is about All for One, isn't it?"
Right there, a crack in the invincible armour. Nezu hesitated for a moment, barely more than a heartbeat between his cup reaching his lips and him taking a sip. It was a bad idea, giving him time to regather himself, but it was also my best shot of getting us anywhere with this conversation.
Slowly, he set the cup down, the joviality noticeably absent.
"Knowing that name does not do good things for you."
"He's still alive." I took a dainty sip of my tea, belying the sheer magnitude of what I'd just said. I had Nezu's attention now, his lips thinned and eyes narrowed, even as I rolled mine at him yet again. "If I ever get the chance, he's a dead man."
In hindsight, it probably hadn't been the best idea I'd ever had to threaten murder in front of the super cop who would likely be the arbiter of my fate.
"Interesting."
Nezu raised his cup, slurping it just enough to be annoying. He'd known, then. He'd known dawn well that All for One was still alive, which evaporated yet another bargaining chip I had in my collection.
He wasn't even taking this seriously, was he?
"If you wanted to fuck around, I can send you back up to the surface right now." The anger was brief, but I regretted it all the same. I couldn't be doing that to myself, this was what I'd been working towards for the better part of a year. But like fucking hell I was going to grovel at this point, it was time to haggle, not to beg. "But hey, fair warning, if you decide to make things difficult for me or mine? I'll pull that sapience right out of your head."
Overhaul sparked along every single strand of hair as they rose, spreading across the room like an encroaching cloud. None of them strayed across the table; I kept a firm grasp on the power, but the message was clear. Purple hair crawled along the walls and ceiling like insects, buzzing with the intent to destroy and reshape.
Yes, I was threatening the smartest creature on the planet. We could make each other's lives hell if we wanted, and the whole country would be pulled into the mess if that was the route we decided to take.
I knew it, and if I knew it, then he certainly did as well.
And the craziest part?
It worked.
"You were not a priority because I found others in my research."
Overhaul didn't want to be contained. It was a struggle to reel it back in after giving it so much power. But I wasn't staring down Nezu just so I could be told what to do by my own hair.
Rather than settling atop my head, I directed it into a ponytail, substituting a band of stone to keep it contained.
"Others? In what way?"
"Humans with multiple Quirks that were gained in ways that were at odds with how we understand nature to proceed." Nezu set aside his cup, empty. I probably should have spared some thought to bring along more water. "Humans that used those multiple Quirks to kill."
Unbidden, my mind flashed back to the way Muscular's face had crumpled once he realised that his Quirk had disappeared, and he was about to die painfully. The grandstanding had given way to tears, arrogance swerving directly into horror.
I didn't regret it, either. Not one bit.
"I killed people too, didn't I?"
"Murderers and rapists, those who would never seek help from the heroes or from the systems we have." Nezu fixed me with a sharp look, something flashing within those beady eyes that had me sitting up straighter. "And that was all by your design, was it not?"
I opened my mouth, not entirely sure how I would answer that. He'd hit the nail on the head, but at the same time, it wasn't that simple. It shouldn't have been that simple, when we were talking about lives.
Thankfully, his raised paw stopped me short.
"Legality and morality should exist co-dependently, but the hero system has a bad habit of turning one into the antithesis of the other." Nezu clasped his paws, laying them on the table in front of him. Even though we were further underground than any utilities and lit with nothing but candle holders I'd found in thrift stores, I was suddenly reminded of every job interview I'd ever had. "That is why you were not a priority, because you never attempted to make yourself a part of the system. Otherwise, this meeting would have been very different indeed."
I wasn't a vigilante, then. Or at the very least, nobody actually important would consider me one.
Would that be to my benefit? Hopefully, yes it would.
The air was starting to get stale as I took a deep breath. It smelled like dust and smoke. I should have used scented candles for this.
"You were right. I'm not Minoru Mineta, not really. I need your help-"
"Getting home?" That brought me up short. I'd never mentioned my circumstances out loud. I barely even thought about them unless it was to build up a plan to get somewhere with it. "Don't be so shocked, Mister Chandler. I already knew exactly what this meeting would be about."
What.
"How in the fuck-"
"It was a simple conclusion that you were never who you claimed to be. Once I ruled out Quirks that could force spatial and temporal shifts through the present day in the modern age, I decided to go a bit deeper with my research. I spent two whole months going over records from the late 20th century, which I concluded you had to have been from at the earliest, given your familiarity with technology." Nezu was leaning across the table, paws planted firmly into the stone. The glint in his eyes had surpassed mad and settled somewhere in the territory of deranged.
I leaned away. It didn't help.
"From there it was a matter of matching your accent to potential homes and then checking records from English speaking countries! I discounted eight hundred and twenty-seven thousand identities before finding one that fit the criteria perfectly! Intelligent, driven, and a random shift in personality one day that fit Minoru Mineta perfectly!"
Wait a second-
"You know we switched spots? Did you ever figure out who did this to me?"
"Not a clue! I hazard a guess that if it was a Quirk, it was never documented!" Nezu leaned back in his chair, mimicking my movement perfectly, up until he started clapping gleefully. All the fleeting hope I'd once held in my heart died a painful death.
"How did you even find time to look at the genetic experimentation angle…?" I rubbed my head, Overhauling away the migraine that I could feel trying to claw its way into existence.
"I did that afterwards."
"It took you seven months to look into that after taking two to discover time travel?"
"Legal records are much easier to find than unsanctioned lab experiments, of course."
Of course. Of fucking course.
"Oooh, we'll have much to discuss, you and I. But if you want my help, then you'll have to help me first."
The grin that Nezu had been wearing at the start was back in full force. He cackled to himself, loud and squeaky and convincing me that I had, in fact, just made a pact with rat Satan.
"Hmm, you'll need a convincing cover, however. We wouldn't want the government assigned heroes poking around where they don't belong. Perhaps you'd like to become a student of-"
That snapped me out of my existential crisis. "Not a goddamn chance."
"Very well then, we'll go with the second option." Nezu didn't sound the least bit surprised. Nor did he bother to elucidate on what the second option actually was. "Now, about that favour…"
That fanged smile that Nezu levelled against me reminded me of Mirko, in a way. Except instead of making my pants tighten, it instead made my heart tighten in my chest. Out of fear.
Was this how everyone else felt whenever I started talking about my plans?
Holy shit. I understood now.