Chapter 111

.::Brothers::.

"I'll tell you everything. But first, tell Aiko to lift whatever Quirk she put on Uraraka."

Shouto spoke blunt as ever, seeing no point in dancing around the subject or trying to be coy or vague. Nearby Uraraka and Ashido stood frozen as they stared at Shouto, clearly in shock at his directness. He ignored their dumbfounded looks, focused on the phone call as he continued, "Once it's lifted, we'll tell you everything. I'll give you two days to get it done."

There was a moment of silence on the other end, but his own end wasn't nearly as quiet. "Todoroki, are you crazy?" Uraraka blurted, darting to his side with a frantic glare. "Don't! You're just putting yourself at risk!"

Shouto ignored her, hearing Dabi take a deep breath. "Shouto, what kind of Quirk are we talking about?" he asked warily.

"She made it so Uraraka can't talk about her. She can't say her name, talk about her, or even point to Nabu on a map."

"Todoroki!" Uraraka hissed, while Dabi fell silent as he mulled it over.

"...If she can't tell you, how do you know that woman's name?" he finally asked.

"That's part of the explanation," Shouto replied firmly. "Get Aiko to lift her Quirk, and don't mention that I asked you. Then we'll talk."

There was another long moment of silence, the girls holding their breaths as Shouto waited for an answer. "You're all together, right?" Dabi finally asked. "I could hear Floaty whining in the background. Put this on speaker phone."

"Touya, I said I'm not—"

"I'm not going to demand an explanation about what you're doing. But I have some questions about what's up with Floaty that I need answered before anything else, and you're not the best at explaining this shit either. I assume you're not in the middle of the sidewalk, so put it on speaker phone now, or go somewhere private and then do it." Shouto frowned, but before he could respond felt a tug on his sleeve, and glanced over to see Uraraka frowning at him.

"Do it," she said, her eyes filled with stony resolution. After a moment he nodded and put the phone on speaker, Ashido joining Uraraka to stand next to him.

"It's on speaker now," he informed his brother.

"Good." Dabi's voice sounded more clearly, not echoing through the alley but loud enough for the girls to hear as they crowded around the phone. "Now, you said Floaty can't talk about you-know-who or where she lives? And do me a favor and don't repeat those words," he added. "Because Birdbrain's still here trying to pull the muck off his wings, and I don't know how good his hearing is."

"You could just leave," they heard Hawks remark in the background.

"I would, except after I sat down I realized some of that stupid pink gunk got on my pants and I can't get up without ripping them." Dabi's voice dripped with barely suppressed irritation, no doubt trying to refrain from yelling as he continued a little too calmly, "So I am just going to ignore that until this phone call is over, because if I don't, I'll just get pissed off again, so. I'm ignoring that. Anyways, details. Now."

The last word held a note of authority that demanded an instant response. "She totally can't talk about any of it," Ashido said quickly. "This morning she couldn't even search up train tickets from Na—that city, to Nagoya because she can't even type the city's name!"

"She still can't point it out on a map," Shouto added helpfully, reiterating his earlier point.

"It's like my mouth just skips over the information," Uraraka groaned. "I can't even write stuff down or type it! My hand just doesn't even respond! And it even works with people I don't know, like Kaminari's!" Her expression darkened as she skipped yet another word.

"Who the hell is—know what, don't wanna know," Dabi grumbled under his breath. "But how does this person you just tried to mention connect to not talking about her?" The three teens exchanged silent looks, Uraraka cringing guiltily as they all realized she'd given away a bit more than they wanted. Before they could come up with a response, they heard Dabi sigh. "This is a gag order about the whole freaking Alliance, isn't it."

All three teens winced, already wary of how much they'd revealed.

Meanwhile on his end, Dabi bit back a frustrated sigh as he saw Hawks snap to attention at the word, stopping his fussing with his feathers to direct his full attention to the conversation. "Alliance?" he repeated sharply.

"Yep, the Villain Alliance," Dabi confirmed flatly, unknowingly making the teens wince yet again. This conversation had taken an unexpected turn, one he'd rather not have in front of a Pro Hero, but at this point, he knew it was a lost cause. No way Hawks would leave it alone after hearing that. "Know what, fuck it. This is gonna be a pain to discuss if we're trying to be vague."

He turned to face Hawks fully as he continued, "So you wanted to know my contact? Well, here you go, and I recommend you don't repeat most of this to anyone at the Commission or whoever you're reporting to if you value your life." He punctuated the last point with a vicious grin, all teeth and with enough edge to make the winged hero flinch back.

Back on the other end, his words sent a particular chill down the teens' spines even without seeing the accompanying grin. Uraraka bit back a whimper, clenching her fists as she stared at the phone intently.

"Is it really that dangerous?" Shouto asked warily.

"Oh, definitely," Dabi confirmed breezily. "Believe me, Aiko is not someone you want to piss off. She could've killed Endeavor with next to no problems if sheʼd felt like it." The casual comment had them jolting.

"Wait, is it even safe to talk about her and that sort of stuff?" Ashido blurted. "I mean, talking on phones isn't, like, the most secure thing, right? What if the government hacks it or something?"

"Real quick," Dabi said. "Floaty, you got the phone I'm calling from Aiko, right?" Uraraka flinched but didn't respond, biting her lip even harder as she gave a low whine.

"She can't respond to anything about her," Shouto reminded him. "Not even yes or no questions. But I'm pretty sure she did."

"Damn, this is one thorough Quirk," Dabi mused. "But as long as the phone's from Aiko, we're fine. That woman's a paranoid mess, no way she didn't mess with the phone to make it untraceable and all that shit. Especially if her own number is in there. Hell, I'm willing to bet her contact won't show up for you and Pinkie."

The remark had them frowning, and Ashido snatched the phone from Shouto's hand. He blinked as she opened the contact list without ending the call, something he didn't know was possible. "I don't see her name," she reported, and Uraraka startled, quickly grabbing it to look for herself.

"Wait, what? But—" She stopped short, eyes going wide, and wordlessly turned the phone to show them the screen. There at the bottom, under a heading simply labeled "#," was Aiko's name.

"Okay, what the heck?" Ashido blurted, swiping the phone back. "Her name definitely wasn't there before—it's gone!" Shouto looked over her shoulder at her incredulous cry, and sure enough, Aiko's name vanished.

"Yeah, she definitely messed with it then," Dabi snorted. "She did the same thing with my phone, it only shows up when I hold it. That's why you've never seen her number on mine. Makes it so that no one else can just steal someone's phone and track her that way."

"How does that even work though?" Shouto wondered with a frown.

"No idea. Anyways, back to the point, I think I get it," Dabi drawled. "So Floaty got Quirked by Aiko to keep her from talking about her or the Alliance. That's a new one for me, but sounds like something she'd do... Definitely seems annoying though." Uraraka snapped to attention at that, eyes wide.

"You know," she breathed, drawing closer to the phone. "I was Quirked by. You know, you know! Is?" Her face screwed up with frustration as she failed to vocalize pretty much anything, making Shouto and Ashido exchange confused frowns. Dabi seemed to get the gist of it though.

"Sorry kid, this is the first I heard of her having a Quirk like that," he said, which had the others jolting.

"Wait, it is?" Shouto asked. "Don't you two know each other though? What do you know about her Quirk?"

"That's a loaded question if I've ever heard one," Dabi snorted, and Uraraka inhaled sharply, eyes wide and frantic as she grabbed the phone and clutched it with a death grip.

"You know!" she cried. "You know! Please!" She looked ready to cry as she practically begged him, her face twisted with absolute desperation. Shouto and Ashido looked at her with alarm and concern, neither sure how to handle their friend's frantic pleas.

"What's going on?" Ashido asked, quickly stepping over to Urarakaʼs side. "What does he know? What's going on with Aiko's Quirk?"

"What's going on is she doesn't have just one Quirk," Dabi answered, and the world seemed to halt.

The keening sound Uraraka released echoed through the alleyway, the girl collapsing to her knees with overwhelming relief. "Thank you," she all but sobbed while Shouto and Ashido stared at the phone, faces slack with shock.

"She has multiple Quirks?" Ashido whispered, rapidly draining of color.

"Yeah, though I don't know the full specifics," Dabi said, disturbingly light and casual about something so utterly horrifying. "Didn't really feel like asking about the details, seemed like more trouble than it was worth. I just know she's got stuff that's definitely not part of whatever she had before."

The teenagers could only stare in shock as they processed this information. Multiple Quirks. Shouto's mind instantly went back to that day in Kamino ward, the way All For One's arms kept morphing and changing as he unleashed one power after another to throw at All Might. A chill washed down his spine as he quickly tried to push the memory away.

Next to him, Ashido was handling the revelation only slightly better. Her legs shook as she stared down at the ground, but she soon turned haunted eyes to Uraraka. "That's what you've been trying to tell us this whole time," she whispered. Uraraka just sobbed in response, her whole body shaking as she wrapped her arms around herself, and Shouto realized Ashido was right.

Suddenly, Uraraka's apprehensiveness about Aiko made infinitely more sense.

In the abandoned building Hawks was now staring at Dabi with an equal amount of disbelief, jaw hanging open. "Multiple Quirks?" he mouthed, and Dabi nodded, his expression serious as he glanced at the stunned hero.

"Yeah, there's a reason I keep saying not to mess with her," he said bluntly, speaking both to Hawks and his brother and friends. "I don't know what the hell the story is there, but even before she got all that, she was dangerous. Remember how I mentioned she could've killed dear old dad? She came up with this 'Endeavor kill formula' that doesn't just neutralize his fire if it gets injected, but can kill us. Specifically us," he added for emphasis. "I don't know the full details, but it's designed based on how the fire Quirks work in our family. And she was sixteen when she came up with it."

Hawks looked increasingly horrified as Dabi explained, jaw somehow managing to drop even further. "Why?" he managed to ask.

"Because she got pissed off after I apparently killed myself with my fire," Dabi responded casually. "From what I heard later, it took the reminder that being stuck in Tartarus would suck to get her to not go through with actually making and using it. She even offered to make it for me when I got back in contact with her, in case I wanted to go after him. Though of course, by that point the world had already gone to hell, but she'd already tried to give me poison to use on him for my thirteenth birthday, so..."

He shrugged while Hawks's eyes bulged with even more disbelief, losing what little color he had left. "She what?"

"Offered to give me an untraceable poison that I could slip into his dinner and off him for good. Just took me to the side to slip it to me discreetly while explaining what it was." The casual way she'd offered him the ominous vial, genuinely offering a tool to kill his father as a birthday gift, had been one of his major clues to how messed up she was. After all, no matter how much he'd complained about his father back then, there was a major step between preteen angst and murdering him.

He'd refused at the time, still a bit too soft as Touya to go through with patricide, but he often wondered how life would be if he'd accepted.

"She always said, 'you don't need a Quirk to kill,'" he said to sum it all up. "And I'm pretty sure she didn't strictly need chemistry to kill, either."

There was a deafening silence on both ends, the weight of his words settling in. Ashido had her hands over her mouth while Uraraka tried to stifle more sobs. Shouto felt numb as he stared at the phone, mind momentarily blank.

Aiko... was dangerous.

They'd known that already, had already marked her as one of the biggest threats to the escape. But this really hammered it in, more than anything else they'd heard. After all, for a teenager to be willing to murder the Number Two hero? And to offer the method to his own son no less?

"Why," he finally managed to ask, "why are you telling us this?"

"So you can understand how serious this shit is," Dabi replied bluntly. "Whatever you're planning, if you're going up against her—which I'm starting to think you are, given you want that Quirk gone—then you're playing a dangerous game. The only thing I can say for sure is that she won't kill kids, but I can't guarantee what she'll do instead. Using a silencing Quirk tracks with her personality though, especially since Floaty seems to be friends with that kid she likes."

They perked up at the reference to Midoriya. "Wait, I thought you didn't know Deku," Uraraka said with a frown.

"Yeah, well, I forgot until after you left," Dabi replied dismissively. "His name only came up like, three times when talking to her. But hold on, you can talk about him?" His voice took on a sharp note.

"It's so I can still talk to him," Uraraka replied tightly. "The only people I can name are him and Seiko."

"Seiko...? Wait. Do you mean the creepy shadow brat with the dead eyes?"

They perked up, surprised he actually knew the name. "Yeah, her. Though, that sounds kinda mean," Uraraka added with a frown. "She's just a little kid."

"Hold on, there's a kid with the Alliance?" Hawks piped up in the background, reminding them he was listening in too. "How old is she? Is she there willingly, or did they kidnap her?"

Dabi snorted. "I don't think she can be kidnapped. Aiko hates her guts anyway, tries to stay away from her and calls her a demon. And honestly, I can kinda see why. There's just something wrong with that thing. I can actually see Aiko excluding her from the Quirk or whatever so you can warn people about her."

That... was fairly unsettling, given how dangerous Aiko was. "But, she's a kid!" Uraraka protested. "I met her, and she didn't seem that bad? Sheʼs kinda creepy, sure, but how bad could she be?"

"Look kid, at this point, I have a pretty good sense for when people are bad news. And that brat? She sets off even more alarm bells than Aiko. Now, that might be because I know Aiko and know she actually likes me, but still. But we're getting off-track. Shouto, does that mean you're in contact with him too?" Dabiʼs voice took on a sharp note, and Shouto frowned, briefly weighing how to respond before deciding to just go all in.

"He's our friend," he declared firmly.

"...How did you even meet him?"

"I already said, we'll explain after you get Aiko to release her Quirk on Uraraka," Shouto said, and Dabi fell silent, the girls staring at him in shock.

"You're actually serious about this," his brother finally said. "Even after everything I just said. You realize how dangerous this is, right? Because even if she won't kill kids, she can still make your lives hell. Especially if whatever you're up to involves that kid."

Uraraka inhaled sharply, biting down on her lip, while Ashido seemed to hold her breath. "I know," Shouto said quietly. "When I explain, you'll understand why weʼre doing this. But until you get Aiko to lift that Quirk from Uraraka, I won't explain. We'll give you two days, but the sooner you can get her to lift it, the better. And I think you probably know you shouldn't mention that we asked you to make her lift it."

Dabi was silent once more, and Uraraka took the opportunity to speak up. "Do we really need to do that though?" she asked worriedly. "I mean it's really annoying for me, but—Dabi already said the thing I really needed to say! This is super dangerous!"

"Yeah, and isn't it super risky to tell him everything, too?" Ashido added in a hiss. "Last couple times we tried telling someone, it didn't really work out! And we're kinda at a critical point!"

"Touya deserves to know though," Shouto said firmly. "He needs to know. He's my brother." He emphasized the last word, meeting their gazes as he added, "I still have to stay with him after this." Understanding visibly dawned on the girls at long last, their eyes going wide and jaws dropping.

Shouto might not be the best with people, but he wasn't an idiot; he was one of the smartest students in their class, scoring fifth on the midterms. That intellect shone brightest when it came to tactics and strategizing, and after meeting Dabi, he realized there was a gaping hole in their plans following Midoriya's escape:

Everyone else could go home afterwards, but this world's Shouto lived with Dabi.

As it stood, the current plan was to reunite Aizawa and Mic, and then go with them to whoever they trusted so they could explain everything to the heroes all at once. Because while so far almost everyone doubted their story, if they could meet with Mailʼs siblings, they might actually stand a chance at convincing them. Then they could get help and hopefully get home, and their counterparts could return to their lives.

Except, this world's Shouto had different circumstances from the others. He ran away from home for a reason, and if he went with everyone else to get help from the heroes, his counterpart would be the one to live with the results. After everything was over, he would likely be stuck with the heroes instead of Dabi.

As soon as the thought crossed his mind he'd felt a surge of panic, a deeply embedded voice similar to his own whispering there would be no escape, not this time. He didn't know what his counterpart needed to escape from or what "this time" meant, but that heavy panic made it clear that it was serious.

And he could also feel a pang of longing as they spoke to Dabi over the phone.

As aggressive as Dabi had been in their encounter today, Shouto could still tell his brother didn't outright hate him. His eyes lacked that cruel, mocking gleam their world's Dabi seemed to possess back in the forest, even in his irritation—and his anger was just that, irritation.

Shouto had frozen him and then disappeared, completely ignoring his calls, and then when they finally reunited he tried to run again. It didn't take a genius to realize why that might irritate his older brother. More than that, Dabi had been worried. The fact he'd contacted Hawks was enough to make that clear, because Touya loathed working with anyone more than he had to. He hated indebting himself to others in any way. Shouto didnʼt know how he knew that, so it was clearly the subconscious influence of his counterpart.

To summarize it all, he had to tell Dabi the truth before the escape, or at the very least before Aizawa and Mic took them to the other pros. They needed to figure out how this would work for them, specifically.

And besides, something told him having Dabi on their side could be very helpful.

He heard an annoyed grumble from the phone followed by, "Fine. I absolutely hate this, but I know you well enough to know youʼll be dumb about this and wonʼt stop no matter what I say. Iʼm only doing this because this is the only way youʼll let me in the loop. But I swear Shouto, this explanation better explain everything."

"It will," Shouto promised. "We need to go now. Call us when you have everything on your end settled. Goodbye, Touya." With that he hung up, not giving his brother a chance to respond.

Deafening quiet immediately settled over the alley. For a moment the three teens stood in silence, just... processing the whole call. It was a lot to take in, and it was only really hitting him now what he had just set in motion.

They were going to tell Dabi the truth. It was necessary, but still a major deviation from their usual patterns. This would be the first true outsider they would bring into this. Even the runaways at least had some stakes because of Shouji's encounter with Porter and Shinsouʼs presence—and they were also familiar. They knew some of them from their own world, from their own class, unlike Dabi. Worse yet, Dabi knew Aiko. Telling him the full story would be possibly the riskiest gamble of all because he could pass it on to her afterwards.

At least if this worked, Uraraka would finally be able to speak freely. That should save them all some frustration.

Finally, Ashido broke the silence. "So, uh, should we try to get out of the city before they get out of the sticky bombs?" she asked sheepishly, and the other two looked at her blankly before they all ran for the train station. There was no point in that whole phone call if they just got immediately caught.

Meanwhile in the office building, Dabi glared at his now-dim phone for a long moment before opening his texts. He started a new one, sending it to the one contact he tried to avoid.

'We need to talk. I'm coming over tonight.'

There was no point wasting time. If this would get him some answers, he'd do it. Anything to keep his idiot brother safe.

So originally, I was on the fence on whether to have the Dabi reunion because of the whole "I want to have some actual PROGRESS" thing, but then I realized something: they NEED to tell Dabi before the escape because Shouto still lives with him in this world. This chapter covers exactly why.

Also, they FINALLY know about Aiko having multiple Quirks, so hooray!

Bad news though: hiatus time again. Because you know how I like to have a buffer? Well, I officially don't have one. This chapter was finished on SATURDAY. Between rushing to get all of Smoke and Mirrors done before October ended (still need to post the epilogue), and the big Animal Crossing update (which has been HEAVEN for me), I fell REALLY behind on the draft. And on top of that, the new Pokémon games come out Friday. And I'm a lifelong Pokémon fan and pretty much guaranteed to get sucked into those, so...

I'm taking off the remainder of November to build the buffer.

I've said before, we're going into a critical time when every moment needs to be carefully arranged because of the escape. I'm going to focus on writing this week to build up the buffer as much as possible. I'll be back on December 6.

Question for next time: How do you think Dabi will convince Aiko to go through with lifting Taboo from Uraraka?