Youchi while very happy for Nana and Eighth being reunited, felt awkward watching the two and turned away from them and walked back to the common area, glad the pathway had finally been made solid.
It took a lot out of him to rebuild a path that Eighth's mind consistently tore through, it was another reason for why the other's stopped coming around, Eighth's mind was strong and he was constantly trying to force them out.
Doing that was draining on them and they always needed to hide away in their own pockets to regather themselves, even Nana had to do that.
But now that Eighth was aware of them and opened himself up that should clear up, even if they couldn't visit Eighth in person with how little time Eighth would have left with them.
Reaching the common area he found the other five waiting for him.
"Well? Did blondie finally answer? Or is he still burying his head in the sand?" Second asked.
"Eighth and Nana are together right now, I'm not sure if they'll join us yet though, they haven't seen each other in years." Youchi replied getting a few sighs from the other members.
"I suppose it would only make sense, Nana was much closer with the boy then any of us were." En mused "No offense Youchi." he added after a moment, but he quickly brushed the thought aside.
En was right, while everyone had "chosen" their successor on some level or another none of them were as close as Nana and Eighth were.
He looked up to Second but they weren't quite friends until after so many years of being trapped here they just were, Second and Bruce grew close in the fight against his brother and have remained so but that was in a time where they could only rely on themselves and their allies.
Nana on the other hand took on a very familial role in Eighth's life, they could see that much when Nana was still alive, the exact details had been blurred for them since Nana passed the quirk on but Nana's worry for him was impossible to hide for long.
Second tsked "Well I'm not going to wait for the numb nuts to join us to talk about what Junior was blabbering about." he told the group and Youchi couldn't help getting flustered at that remark.
Midoriya Izuku admittedly bore a striking resemblance to him when he was younger, if he was healthier and had green hair, but other than those two things they looked super close, and frankly he wasn't certain that Midoriya wasn't related to him in some way.
And if that wasn't enough everyone had seen his memories of when he was little and how he used to be obsessed with working out how superhero powers from comics worked, so even if they weren't exactly the same personality wise, they were both quirk nerds.
"What's there to discuss? Junior didn't tell us anything we didn't already know." Banjo said dismissively.
"How about the fact he actually had a fucking explanation for how I died you idiot? For why each of us were losing it near the end of our lives?" Hikage spat back.
Which was true, Banjo had read the report and the coroner hadn't really seen anything like it before and the only thing they could come up with was quirk-based advance aging.
But the mental and physical destruction of the body made more sense in the context Midoriya had given them.
The brain's neurons would burn themselves out trying to keep this quirk space and that was probably too much to handle on a brain focused for one type of quirk.
And the rest of the body would go to hell if the brain was damaged, it had to be focused on the pituitary gland though to cause most of the 'aging' problems in the body, and he could believe that since each body would produce different levels of hormones because of their quirks-
Bruce began snapping his fingers in front Youchi's face "Hey! First stay with us! No running off in one of those quirk rambles." Bruce scolded.
"Right, sorry." Youchi apologized.
"We already knew about the damage, hard not to when we could see the degeneration in person." Banjo countered.
Also a fact, the degeneration was slower before, because there weren't that many quirks and they weren't that far removed from the quirkless generations so their bodies weren't as specialized yet.
But it was still seen by them all.
Taking risks they normally wouldn't, harder for them to take in more information and even having a harder time recalling things they used to know, memories that just seemed to slip away from them and were replaced with those of the past holders.
Bruce forgot he'd grown up in America and was certain he lived where Second had until he died himself and joined them in the quirk space and remembered it all.
Eighth had remained unaffected by it for the longest out of all of them and when it did start it was progressing at a much slower rate compared to everyone else, Eighth was still aware of who he was before and could understand new things in moderation.
And physically there were almost no signs of the collective quirks hurting his body like it had any of the others.
"But now we aren't just assuming crap and can find ways to reverse or halt the damage you knuckle head." Hikage argued.
Second nodded "Fourth is right, now that we know the exact details of the problem we can plan with Eighth around it to find a successor that will have the worst of it mediated in some way." Second concurred both hands on the war table that appeared, Second being just behind him in making things appear in the space.
"A quirkless person is preferable, even without Junior's say so Eighth is proof that a quirkless successor will last longer and not add to the burden of the multiple quirks." Bruce pointed out, easily falling in step with Second.
"But it would be hard to find someone with the right mindset in this day and age, if how Eighth feels is any comparison than we can expect most of them being self-defeatist at best you know, and that wouldn't work well with the strength quirk." Second said with a frown, getting a nod from Bruce.
"Oi don't get ahead of yourselves you crazy old bastards!" Banjo shouted and the three ended up in one of their typical fights, Hikage raising to try and break up the fight between the 'first' hero and the 'villains' as normal.
Taking the moment Youchi slipped away to a more distant part of the shared space, where the road looked out over a large chasm of space, and he sat down and took a deep breath before sighing.
The calm letting his mind fall blank, something rare since coming to this space, His grip of himself felt much less solid when something like this happened.
Letting dozens of memories, his own and the others flow in and out as they pleased.
The peace was short lived as another person approached, En silently walking over and sitting beside him on the edge of the landscape not looking at him.
"I suppose that today has left you with a lot to think about." En commented and Youchi nodded.
There was the overarching problems that the others were currently fighting about, but there were the other things that made him feel more existential.
Such as they themselves 'living' in this quirk space.
Youchi had first thought of himself as a ghost when he woke up here, he remembered the pain of dying and even his last moments, his hand going up to his upper chest where the spike of rebar that jutted through him had stuck out.
Barely able to breathe as his lungs filled with his blood, coughing it up in equal measure and aware he was dying, his already failing health would have made him surviving this near impossible even if they did get him out.
Second had been the one to find him in the collapsed building and sat with him once he realized that Youchi was going to pass soon.
Youchi could even remember how warm Second's hand felt when he held hands with him until he passed, and that he'd spent his last minutes wishing there was some way for him to give Second the strength his brother forced onto him.
It was only after Second passed the quirk onto Bruce that they realized this was probably a result of his secret quirk and began questioning whether they were ghosts or not.
Each of them could recall their deaths in vivid detail so he didn't think they were just memories or 'impressions' of who they used to be, memories wouldn't have their own sense of agency either.
This field of quirks likely wasn't that well explored, and the only 'expert' would probably be his brother.
Who knows, his quirk might not just be a quirk collector but a 'soul' hoarder too for all they knew.
"So, what do you think is troubling you more? The idea we might not be quite as real as we think we are or the fact we've been closer to killing your brother than ever before?" En asked after letting him stew for a moment.
Youchi clenched his hands and hung his head.
"... the second." he confessed, feeling dirty and guilty for admitting it like he was.
He should be glad, he knew the kind of monster his brother was having watched him twist and hurt people in so many ways over the centuries.
"It's okay to feel that way." En told him, placing his hand on Youchi's shoulder.
En was one of the few of them that was more in touch with his feelings, and considerably more friendly than the other wielders, bar Nana though for all the compassion she held he wouldn't dare think he'd ever ask her to sympathize with him in this regard.
And this was just another reason that En was more compassionate than the others.
While Youchi was alive it was harder to understand how horrid and manipulative his brother was even before the rise of the Meta Army, only in death and the others comments for centuries did Youchi truly come to terms with it.
But even though En had arguably died the worst death at the hands of his brother out of all of them, he still found it in himself to privately offer him support over the eventual loss of his brother.
En huffed amused "Well I'm glad you think so highly of me Youchi, but we're both human and I know that even with everything that's gone down between us and him, he is still your brother somewhere in your heart." En told him, pulling down where his coat hid his mouth so Youchi could see his sad smile.
Youchi returned it as tears welled up "I know the whole reason we've been fighting is to stop him, permanently and for good, but after centuries of trying and failing... I don't know. I just, it felt like he'd never actually be gone?" Youchi said somberly, fumbling to find the right words.
En nodded urging him to continue on.
"And now, after having it laid out so clearly and how easy it would be to… be rid of him forever I just... " Youchi trailed off as he became more choked up.
En didn't say anything and gently pulled him over to lean his head on his shoulder, En allowing him to cry quietly into his shoulder while rubbing his back.
Youchi filled with mourning that had been pushed off, sorrow and guilt eating him up from the inside out in equal measure.
Knowing that he might soon have his brother no longer be a part of his life, even as an antagonist brought on some deep form of sadness over him and made him choked up to think about.
But he also felt guilty about that because his brother was someone that tormented him and the closest people he had in his life.
Hell, Youchi remembered when Nana came home to what remained of her husband laid splayed on their shared bed and couldn't believe his brother could truly be that cruel as to use what was left of her family to continue to torture them all.
There was even days he hated his older brother.
And yet he couldn't stop himself from mourning his eventual death.
"Let it all out Youchi, go on, it's okay to cry." En assured him running one of his hands through Youchi's hair while the other remained firm on his back, offering Youchi a sense of security as both emotions warred inside of him.