Here it is… the next chapter.

This was kind of a mess to write. Hopefully, I made it somewhat coherent. Right now, a lot of worlds are colliding.

-SpiritOfErebus

Hans couldn't take it anymore.

The stabbing pain. The searing burns. The unending desire for it all to end.

Hans wanted it to be over. The flashing lights. The darkness flashing in front of his eyes. The dizziness as he was manhandled as he was transported, from hand to hand, and from wall to wall.

At last, he blearily opened his eyes when the bag over his eyes was removed.

…What? The torture hadn't started yet?

No. It had just begun. Hans hadn't eaten since the morning. One, singular, measly croissant brought off the clearance sale section, one can of coffee, and a couple of bottles of water… for the entire day of attempting to fight a villain, before sitting on a sunny, yet iced over bridge for several hours while constantly assuring civilians that came up to ask questions that everything was alright.

And oh… what a horrid day it was. As he looked around the dark room, at the indistinct figures that surrounded him, Hans exaggerated a laugh to distract the generic gangsters while trying to come up with a plan.

"Heh… Heheheh… Hahahah!" he laughed, shaking his body as he laughed to assess what was still left on his person. A hard knock on his leg indicated that his phone was still in the pocket of his white lab coat. "What are you high school rejects even trying to do to kidnap me? Did you really think that I was a part of your supposed gang war?"

He brought his hands away from his lab coat pockets as a duckling appeared in his pockets, and, under his control, turned on his phone. As Hans endured the splitting headache of trying to get a duckling to operate a phone and send his location along with a text explaining the situation to Iida, he had to continue talking to piss off the many, many people slowly walking towards him, trying to intimidate him.

"Me, Hans Christian Andersen, a member of the gang?" he asked incredulously, his two arms spreading to the sides in a gesture of helpless confusion. He was partially trying to draw attention away from his lab coat… while he was actually incredibly confused.

"Wait, you're Hans Christian Andersen?" the woman that kidnapped him exclaimed.

"And you're probably that gang that's been spreading across my neighborhood." Hans sighed dramatically. "It's funny. Even the most compatible couples may not make it to the end, but those with grudges will run into each other time and time again. I suppose that's my fate, taking employment related to the happenings in this district."

"I think that there's a big misunderstanding here…" a blindfolded woman said, moving rather quickly towards him.

But it didn't matter anymore. Hans was ready to fight back. His distraction had succeeded. His overly dramatic personality mask could die in a fire now that the duckling in his pocket finished typing out the message. Now all he had to do was survive the horde of people with various implements of violence. Yay...

But he still did want to finish his mini-speech.

"And here's the thing about grudges…" Hans said, grinning as the duck hit send, before dissipating into light, blue sparks. The woman took a startled step back, wary of the sudden flaring of his quirk.

"They just keep going. And between our social classes? Civilian and gangster?"

The Elder Tree Mother sprouted from the floorboards, circling around the feet of gangsters. The Ice Queen spiraled into existence behind Hans, ice sparking in her fingertips.

"There's just no end to our conflict."

Hans sighed as he saw the construction workers beginning to rummage through their piles of equipment. Before preparing to throw out some matches to cause an explosion, he froze as he realized his phone was still in his pocket. Doing a quick spin and putting his phone down on the chair in the center of the room, he began to make preparations so that even if he would be severely injured, his phone would still be intact.

Truly, material possessions were worth more than his life.

"What?" one construction worker said, stopping in the middle of getting his sledgehammer out. "Aren't we fighting?"

"Okay, okay." Hans said, freezing the chair over to further protect his material possessions. "Fighting is fighting. But we all know how expensive a phone is, right?"

The construction workers muttered and nodded.

"We're not enemies! We're-" the blindfolded woman began.

"Shush." Hans said, pointing at her. "How could somebody like you possibly start a gang? You're probably just their accountant or something."

The woman recoiled back, almost as if she was struck physically.

"Anyways, you may be gangsters and I may be a hero-in-training, but this doesn't stop us from respecting each other's property, right?"

"...I guess. But you're probably still a gangster, right? Just pretending to be a hero to get us to lower our guard. Hasanote obviously didn't kidnap you for no reason."

"Well…" the woman with sharp fingertips said, taking a closer look at Hans. "I may have made a mistake…"

"You should be more confident!" one of the gangsters said. "Just look at him! He's even wearing a lab coat! What kind of hero wears a lab coat?"

"Whatever makes you happy." Hans sighed, for what he felt like the fifth time this minute. There was no way to talk this out now, when possible misunderstanding had festered in both of their minds.

But looking at the group of people that relied exclusively on physical attacks, Hans was… relatively confident that he could at least survive for quite a while.

"We're not a gang." the woman claimed.

"That's funny." Hans said, grinning like a shark. "Because you just performed a kidnapping."

The construction worker shrugged uneasily, but after determining whether or not his cohorts were going to charge forwards, he sighed as the rest of the gang finished perfecting their intimidating postures. "Aaaargh. Die, heroes."

"Yes." Hans said very, very energetically. "Let us battle to the death and such."

Lethargically, they began to do battle, their spirit completely dampened by the non-sequitur of Hans's instinctive phone preservation.

…

Kdnpped bi gasters. Send halp. Cam to explsdin buldang.

Iida looked down at his phone.

"Nii-san?"

"Yeah?"

"Anderson-san sent a text message." he said, handing his phone over to his brother. As Tensei tried to interpret the mess of spelling errors, he tilted his head and even tried to flip the phone over.

"...Exploding buldang? What the hell is this?" he muttered.

In the distance, a great plume of fire rose up into the sky.

"I guess that's close enough. We have to get over there!"

…

Hans lay in one corner of the house, clutching his stomach. On top of enduring hunger for the whole day, it had now been hit by a sledgehammer… twice.

It probably wasn't healthy. And they were probably particularly motivated by the fact that Hans had just used the Little Match Girl to set off an explosion in their headquarters, because after the explosion, they started to attack ferociously.

Sadly, the fire itself wasn't very effective somehow. It was probably a combination of the people standing in front having quirks that made them physically tougher… or the fact that Hans wasn't doing great on mana supply, given the fact that he hadn't eaten or rested for many, many hours.

Even if his quirk was pretty good at stopping groups from attacking him, it wasn't able to stop the thirty or so muscle-bound idiots with sledgehammers, jackhammers… other… hammers… and things like that to completely surround him. Hans had a grand total of eight summons powerful enough to make a difference, but the ducks already had played their part in sending the text messages and were useless in direct combat. The little mermaid was on vacation. The little match girl, having used all of her matches, hung about nervously, waiting for her supply to regenerate. And… the girl who got her feet chopped off because of red shoes wasn't useful at all because nobody here wore red shoes.

Thus, he lay in the corner, hiding behind the elder tree mother getting sledgehammered and the tin soldier's surface being furiously wrinkled by the unending blows. However, refusing to yield, the construction workers, apparently too angry to really think for themselves, kept shouting at him and trying to subdue him.

Behind the crowd, through the branches of the Elder Tree Mother, Hans could see the blindfolded woman and what looked like a man made entirely of molten rock attempt to pull people out of the melee, shouting at them to stop fighting. The woman that had kidnapped him, with knives as fingertips, was unable to do anything, probably because when she would get involved, she would probably split some veins.

And one guy carrying a machete in his belt was trying to block the door, stopping more construction workers from entering.

"You no-good hero bastards!" the muscle-brained gangsters yelled. "You didn't do anything when we were being exploited like slaves, and now you're trying to stop our ideals from coming into this world!"

A sledgehammer hit.

"Go die!"

A jackhammer was stabbed into the Elder Tree mother's roots and turned on, sending chipped wood flying everywhere. The Ice Queen attempted to freeze the bunch of people, but after a couple of muscle bulges and sledgehammer swings, they were free of the ice.

…Hans really wasn't that useful. He really wasn't strong. But he was very annoying. Very, very capable of being annoying.

And after a brainstorming session, he finally chose the option that would greatly inconvenience those gangsters.

"...Didn't Churchill want to build an aircraft carrier out of pykrete?" he muttered. It had been the results of one of his history reads after learning about the fact that Denmark surrendered two hours after the German invasion had begun.

"Don't. You. D-ouch-are!" the Elder Tree Mother hissed as yet another one of her roots was severed.

"I'm very sorry." Hans said somberly, "But this has to be done."

He made the Ice Queen freeze the tree. As the Elder Tree Mother hissed in pain and grew more roots to try and quarantine herself from the frozen area, the patch of wood that she had vacated grew increasingly dark in color. Eventually, axes began to bounce off of the hardened wood. Sledgehammers still substantially cracked the now hardened wood, but the unfrozen wood that was behind the hardened shell held firm.

Clutching his stomach in both hunger and pain, Hans wondered if he would have to pay if he broke out of the wall to escape out of the window.

As he was about to succumb to desperation and contemplated the price of drywall as roots snaked towards the wall section, something broke… that wasn't wood. Or ice. Or Hans's sanity.

"This is pro hero Ingenium on the scene!" a familiar voice shouted tinnily, through whatever speaker system or voice system that his helmet had. "Stand down and stop hurting my colleague."

"...He's a hero?" one of the people swinging an axe said. "I thought he was joking about being a hero, but he's actually a hero?"

"Hero in training!" Hans shouted from his cocoon. "Did you really think that a small child would be a part of a dangerous gang?"

"Given the fact that quirks exist?" one of the muscle brained construction workers said. "Yes."

"Absolutely."

"Hans… they're right." Ingenium said. "A lot of the most emotionally unstable, powerful gangsters are children. Those with powerful quirks usually are sucked into the lifestyle and die young."

"That's quite dark." Hans sighed. "Well, now that unsettling truths have been revealed, are we ready to call this ceasefire?"

"And…" Tensei added, "We have a couple of questions for the… leader of this group. We were sent in to quell the conflicts between your two gangs."

"They killed Gagoiru!" one of the workers spat. "We were just standing in front of buildings guard-"

Somebody slapped him in the back of the head.

"-Passing out fliers!" he said. "Yeah. That. Definitely. Passing out fliers."

"And we actually started this because of you." the blindfolded woman said, pointing at Hans.

Hans took a step back as Ingenium, Iida (the younger one), and the gangsters collectively stared at him.

"What? Boss, you never told us about this."

"I've never heard of this."

"He looks like a foreigner!"

"What the hell is happening." Hans said, fumbling and stumbling for the frozen chair in the middle of the room. Hans slowly walked towards it, put one hand on the back of the chair, and sat down extremely slowly. He was feeling faint. Slightly dizzy. Maybe that was low blood sugar talking, but Hans was fairly sure it was confusion. The still-frozen chair was cold, and his phone was buzzing and showing his parents' names, for some reason, but he sat down anyway, in too much pain to really care about these disturbances.

Then, unexpectedly, the man that looked like molten rock began to speak. With a voice that sounded like rock and stone grinding together, he began to gargle out their origin story in a surprisingly coherent manner.

"It all started when you gave a speech in front of those protesters."

…

(One excruciatingly long hour later)

…

"So what you're telling me." Hans said, pinching the bridge of his nose as the ice freezing the chair he was sitting on slowly melted. "Is that I started all of this? I inspired this movement, which caused you all to go on strike and overthrow your local mafia, therefore causing a power vacuum in this city and attracting another gang in?"

"...Yes." the molten rock man, Shihiro, said.

"And all of this stuff was started by me equating the danger of quirks to guns, therefore questioning the necessity of quirk laws… and talking about how quirks and unfair treatment are linked?"

"It was more specifically… the idea that we were all inconvenienced by our quirks and kept out of opportunities because of it. You did mention that somewhere in your speech. Then, the fact that you were a hero student speaking out against the glorification of the hero industry was able to convince us that what you were saying wasn't out of self interest." Shihiro said.

"Of course I caused all of this…" Hans muttered. "Of course I did. One bit of tampering with the storyline and it all goes to shit. Now, I'll have to clean up this mess. Canon has probably been disrupted way too much."

"Andersen-san…" Iida said, his arms chopping the air like a sushi chef chopping a particularly large cut of tuna. "I had no idea that your ideas were this influential!"

"...I was wrong, though." Hans muttered. "And I'm sorry. The hero system isn't just a glorified version of the police. Quirk laws and quirk discrimination isn't the only thing that's holding us back."

"So we were wrong this whole time?" Shihiro said, looking up from his position cross-legged on the floor. His skin bubbled and sizzled in an agitated manner. "We were just led by your ideals, and now, in front of us, you're just saying that we were wrong?"

"No, no." Hans said. "I'm saying that there is no right answer to the problem, even if change is definitely required. Even without quirks, there will always be more differences that people will arbitrarily create. They'll emphasize our differences to drive us apart. To put us in constant conflict while societal norms and the rules that they create keep benefiting them."

"Who's they?"

"That's the worst part." Hans said. "I don't know. And that's what scares me."

"I'm sorry." Iida said. "'But I'm incredibly confused. Do you mind filling me in?"

"Did you actually pay attention to why the villain on the bridge attacked?"

"It was like you said." Iida said. "Nobody cares about why the villain is doing something if they're blowing up a bridge."

"Exactly. And in this case, the villain on the bridge was enacting revenge because his daughter was molested on a bus line that ran through that bridge, and nobody did anything." Hans said. "Japanese society is rotten to the core, simply because of how much people put emphasis on not stepping out of line. This wasn't even about quirks, one of the most popular driving causes of villainy and discrimination these days. This was just good old fashioned Japan."

"...So you're arguing that by outlining a path to revenge through the previous examples of villainy, our society is willfully excluding the voices of the ones that we've hurt by branding them as villains and not listening to them at all?" Tensei said, crossing his arms and bringing one arm up to support his armored chin.

"That's just the obvious tip of the iceberg." Hans said. "Who knows what other crazy things that the hero system alone is doing to keep people in line?"

…

"We've captured a teenage serial killer." one suited man said to another suited woman. "Our division thinks that she'll be a useful asset."

"Why?'

"She's virtually off record. Her parents have disowned her. She's dropped out of school, and with her quirk… it's basically impossible to keep track of her normally."

"...Again, why?" the suited woman asked. "Get to the point."

"Her quirk allows her to disguise as anybody perfectly… as long as she's ingested their blood."

"Interesting." the woman said. "Let me see her."

"As you wish." the suited man said, leading her through the inconspicuous office building. Down a stairway and into what looked like a janitor's closet, she turned into a long, underground corridor.

There were cages everywhere. Problematic individuals were kept here with quirk-restraining cuffs. Delinquents with interesting quirks were bound with chains, suffering in silence now that the fight had been beaten out of them. Some gangsters were grouped in a cell, where they were being interrogated in turn for information on the local underground.

At last, the suited man opened a cell with a keycard, unlocking what looked like a slightly more pleasant room. The girl inside looked up, wearing a bloodstained schoolgirl uniform.

"Hello!" she said cheerily. "Are you here to ask about my latest boyfriend too?"

The woman solemnly nodded, while taking peeks at her file.

"I was looking for Mister Stainey, you know? But he disappeared! And I was just soooo bored, I ditched Dabi just to get a little snack. You understand, right?"

The file was mostly about this girl's quirk. It was a blood ingestion type, allowing for the copying of all physical features.

But it could potentially go deeper than that. Copying somebody's appearance with their genetic information via ingesting blood could mean that the quirk factor was copied as well.

Their last experiments had gone poorly. Trying to find somebody with an appearance copy quirk that also copied the quirk factor was hard, especially considering the fact that they wanted to bring their subject's power levels to All for One's level. All Might was on his way out, after all.

"And I just saw this guy! Like, he was so cute! Athletic and tall, and he even smiled back when I waved at him on the streets!"

However, this girl couldn't be a hero. Her quirk wasn't marketable at all, and it would probably only work if she operated in secrecy. However, given the fact that she had committed many homicides for what was basically no reason other than liking blood, that idea was quickly scrapped.

"So I really wanted to get closer to him, you know? To really get to know him! So I snuck into his home and cut him! He screamed for a moment, you know? And only for a moment. But then, he was just this.. Brilliant shade of red. I wanted to be just like him… be one with him, you know? So I gave it just a little taste… and things got out of control… and you guys caught me…"

And as for quirk factors to test her on, well… they had an entire holding cell of delinquents with dangerous and powerful quirks that were also ostracized by society, right?

Judging by the way that the girl talked, and how her parents had disowned her, it was really a matter of finding acceptance. She was more likely to drink the blood of the people she liked, too, given the creepy murder talk about stabbing a random high schooler.

"Hey, are you even listening, lady?"

A plan was coming to mind.

"I know exactly how you feel, Toga Himiko." the woman smiled. A slightly hypnotic effect radiated from her expression. Not strong enough to be noticed, yet strong enough to influence one's decision making. That was why she had been hired, after all.

"I know what you've been through. We've all been through something like that." she lied.

"You… you do?" the girl said, before chuckling. Toga Himiko leaned back and laughed. The chair she was sitting in shook and the chains tying her hands together rattled.

The woman's smile remained on her face, though it was becoming unnaturally stiff.

"You think that you know what I go through?" Toga chuckled, a rare moment of lucidity and seriousness crossing her face. "Look at where I am now because of my actions! I've been kicked out of my house, everybody that I've loved is dead by my own hands… and all I have to show for it is a bloodstained school uniform. Am I not the most unfortunate person?"

Now, the woman knew that it was the time to inject her own sob story. These kinds of complaints from mentally disturbed teenagers was, sadly, very common in their line of work.

"Nobody wanted to talk to me, you know…" the woman said with a rehearsed sad smile. "My quirk tends to… warp people that talk to me. I convince people faster. I can manipulate them better. And everybody thought I was a villain for it."

Toga was looking at her now, her slightly watery, yellow eyes staring unblinkingly at a person that possibly had a similar origin story as her.

Of course, the origin story was a lie. She had grown up pampered and spoiled by her family, thanks to a family that thought she was completely quirkless. Scouted for her manipulation and persuasion abilities, she was able to convince countless agents to work for the Hero Public Safety Commission.

"I was kicked out of my own house too, you know." she 'reminisced'. "And when I was at my lowest… just like you… locked up in a similar cell… They invited me to work for them. Just like I am inviting you now."

Toga began to cry. Coupled with the effect of her persuasion quirk, the similarity of the nonsense she spewed, and a chance at her supposed redemption… It was working.

Her quirk gave results. And so did the proven formula of talking to troubled teenagers. All you had to do was be relatively relatable to them, and they listened to you like a god. Just like angsty webnovel authors and youtubers.

"And don't worry. You, along with me and the rest of the people here, have all been targeted by society. But how would you be willing to be a part of something bigger."

"Am I in trouble?" the girl asked. For a moment, disregarding the bloodstains and the cuffs that she was in, the woman almost regarded her as an innocent child.

But this was a serial killer.

"No." the woman said, continuing on smiling. "We understand what you've been through. But if you join us, there'll be plenty of new friends. New people to fall in love with. And all. The blood. You can drink."

And this was for the greater good. Having somebody that could use multiple quirks was just too much to pass up on.

Her sacrifice would be worthy if it meant the continuation of the status quo.

AN

Oh, boy. More HPSC morally gray moments.

I mean, it makes sense. By taking people off the streets amidst the LOV kidnapping-to-make-nomus spree (and they have tons of nomu, so they probably have done a lot of kidnapping), they can secure even more agents.

I wonder where Hawks and Nagant came from, amidst countless other HPSC agents. They were probably either manipulated in, or just gaslighted or brainwashed. With quirks like Shinso's in the universe, along with the politician in the Meta Liberation Army's encouragement quirk… it isn't out of the question that something like this exists. And with access to the quirk registry and quirk doctor reports, somebody with a particularly strong quirk in persuasion would probably be scouted out by the Hero Association.

Oh, and Toga is the one that's being affected. I mean, given the fact that she kind of joined up with the LOV because of Stain, now that Stain has disappeared from the media on account of not killing any more heroes, she'll probably just wander off. Does this make sense?

Maybe. Idk lol.

And also Hans realizes how much he's impacted the world. He's created this weird plotline, and so, he'll be the one to end it.

Discord link: discord . gg / 9t9MK3jHmV

-SpiritOfErebus