The elevator was quickly rising. Green sparks flashed around Izuku as he pushed One for All to twenty percent. The whole world slowed down. Izuku's mind kicked into gear and shifted into Pinpoint Focus after a fraction of a second. He could see everything happening around him in slow-motion, and he used this ability to observe his allies. All Might and Tsukauchi looked up at the elevator with shock and fear. Gran Torino and Aizawa were moving already, with Aizawa's hands already tangled in his signature binding cloth. Gran Torino crouched down and sucked in a deep breath. Izuku followed their lines of sight and realised that they were going to try and either intercept the elevator and stop it, or bring it back down once it rose to ground level. Izuku was focused on something a little bit different, and his body started moving before the thought was done. Pinpoint Focus melted away as Izuku's perception of the world returned to normal and all three of the more mobile heroes present acted at once.
Izuku leapt up and reached the rising platform in less than a second. He spun around mid-air and, as he landed, caught Aizawa's quick but relatively short-range binding cloth with his Blackwhip so that he could pull his teacher along as the least mobile of the three of them. Aizawa tumbled to a stop on the elevator after the sudden acceleration, and nodded in silent thanks. Gran Torino landed on the elevator in a blur of white and yellow, and looked up with a grimace. The older hero looked back down at the friends they were leaving behind, and sighed.
"We'll catch whoever's responsible for this. You two focus on collecting evidence!" Gran Torino yelled.
"And we'll send the elevator back down for you!" Izuku added, just before All Might and Tsukauchi disappeared under one of the walls of the elevator shaft.
"Mind giving me a hand?" Aizawa asked as he looked up to the top of the metallic column they'd found themselves in.
"Sure," Izuku said.
Gran Torino and Izuku leapt up using their Quirks, but Izuku kept his eyes on Aizawa. His teacher put his hand out, and Izuku figured it was the same principle as his own binding cloth. Izuku had Blackwhip wrap around Aizawa's arm all the way to the shoulder, and flung him up ahead of them as hard as he could. He then recalled Blackwhip and used Air Force to propel himself up, catching up to and overtaking Aizawa's upside-down free-fall. Izuku held out his hand as Aizawa had just before, and his teacher seemed to get it. Aizawa got both of his feet under him and let Izuku push him even further as he stalled in the air, giving him another rapid increase in speed. Gran Torino sped past Izuku as this happened, and even Izuku's enhanced perception — which was necessary to keep up with the speed of One for All — almost couldn't pick up just how fast this old-timer was. Aizawa stalled the second time just as he reached the top, but by then he was able to use his binding cloth to swing out from over the pit of the elevator shaft and to safety. Gran Torino was only a second behind him, and Izuku was barely a second behind Gran Torino, as another burst of his Air Force had him crashing into the ceiling feet-first, though luckily he didn't rip right through the roof of the Shigaraki house.
Izuku let Blackwhip and momentum carry him, and he swung over to the front door of the Shigaraki home. He emerged into daylight, and surveyed the scene. Aizawa was running, and because there were no structures around, he was limited to sprinting. Off in the distance, a few hundred metres down the road that led to the house, Gran Torino was ripping through the air in a circle around a few figures that Izuku couldn't immediately recognise. A solidly built person with sunglasses, someone in a balaclava, and a person who had green, scaly skin and bright hair. Izuku's whole body tensed as he realised who they were. Magne, Mr. Compress, and Spinner of the Vanguard must have been the ones who'd tried to lock them in the bunker. Izuku didn't wait to formulate a plan, and leapt into the air toward them. Aizawa might've yelled something at him from the ground, but Izuku didn't hear it over his own heartbeat roaring in his ears.
He landed before the three he'd seen and must've caused a tremor in the ground, because all three of them looked toward him in horror. Izuku's greatest fear and hope was confirmed — Magne, tall and wide with reddish hair and dark sunglasses covering her eyes, Compress, wearing the waistcoat, bolo tie, and black balaclava Izuku had seen from him before, and Spinner, his distinctive green, scaly skin and purple hair on full display. All three of them were there. Izuku glared at them and scowled, unable to put on any persona when facing down his own failure. Gran Torino stopped flitting about, landing on the ground out of the villains' reach, and looked at him strangely, but the old man said nothing. The three villains each had a look of terror on their face.
"That aura," Spinner said.
Izuku said nothing, and attacked. He leapt at Compress, the one with the most dangerous Quirk out of the three villains. Compress fell to the ground as Izuku swept his legs out from under him. Izuku caught Magne and Spinner in Blackwhip and leapt up, causing the two standing villains to crash together. Magne thrust her hands out at Spinner and Compress, who'd gotten up, but nothing happened. That's when Izuku realised that Aizawa must have been trying to say that their Quirks had been erased. They were practically already caught, they just needed to be subdued. It looked like they weren't going down without a fight, though, as the three remaining Vanguards attacked Izuku again.
!
Izuku easily dodged all of their attacks. Two B-Rank villains, and one C-Rank, and that was all they could force Danger Sense to say about them. Not even a real threat. Compress went down in one solid hit, that being a sweeping kick at shoulder-level that had sent him tumbling. Magne also went down in one hit, though that hit had been a straightforward punch. Izuku didn't have the heart to call it a SMASH. Spinner was the one that surprised Izuku. He didn't go down. He only stopped fighting when Aizawa caught up and restrained him with the binding cloth, which took all the fight out of him. Izuku wondered why he didn't do that earlier. Had he wanted to fight them instead of restraining them? Maybe. He had been very frustrated with the three villains, so he might've let his desire to win overrule the knowledge that he had the tools to end the fight instantly. That didn't feel good to admit, even to himself, but Izuku knew he could be better than that. Spinner was still conscious, though, which meant he could talk.
"What have you been doing down there?" Aizawa asked.
"I don't know what you're talking about," Spinner said.
"Are you the ones who released the Nomu, or is there someone else?" Gran Torino asked.
"What's a Nomu?" Spinner asked in return.
"Don't play dumb with us, villain!" Aizawa snapped.
"You're the ones playing dumb, heroes. You always do, when people like me are involved." Spinner laughed, but there was no humour there. Just bitterness and pain.
"Are you playing the Mutant card?" Gran Torino muttered.
"Are you?" Spinner shot back silencing Gran Torino.
"Look, Spinner," Izuku said, pulling his cowl back. "You recognised me before, so you can't seriously expect us not to recognise you, too. You were part of the summer camp attack on UA. You know who we are." Izuku gestured to himself and Aizawa. "We know who you all are, too. You've been caught."
Spinner's whole body seemed to deflate like a balloon. Aizawa swept his gaze over the villains with a tense expression on his face, and blinked. His eyes stopped glowing red, and nothing visually changed about Spinner, but he seemed to relax. Izuku knew the feeling. He'd only had his Quirks erased a couple of times, but even if it wasn't too dissimilar to simply having his Quirks dormant like they were when he wasn't using them, it still left him feeling uncomfortable, like something was missing. Izuku went and captured the other unconscious Vanguards in Blackwhip, forcing them to their feet and dragging them along as Gran Torino went and let All Might and Tsukauchi back up.
The heroes regrouped and discussed their next steps. Tsukauchi insisted that getting the Vanguards into a cell down at the police station was their first priority. They'd assembled all the files and physical evidence they could down in the bunker, with All Might carrying the Children files and other papers, and Tsukauchi handling the blood sample they'd collected as well as the digital files from the computer in a flash drive. They had evidence and they had suspects. They just didn't have Nomu, which was a problem they could deal with after resolving their current mission's success. Everyone agreed, but there was one problem — how to transport the Vanguards. They didn't have enough room in the car, so Tsukauchi had almost called in an officer to come assist them, but Izuku volunteered to carry them with Blackwhip and fly above the car, which was faster. That was how Izuku ended up holding a bundle of bad guys as he hovered above Tsukauchi's car, which wasn't as horrible as it sounded. They dropped each of the Vanguards off in a different cell, making sure that Magne was placed further away from the other two, so she couldn't use her Quirk on them, and Compress's hands were bound in a way that he couldn't move his arms and hands. Spinner was left as is in his cell.
"What do you think these could mean?" All Might asked as he read through the Children files in the interrogation room they'd been given earlier.
"I don't know. I thought they were pre-Nomu, at first, but I've got a bad feeling that they're something else," Izuku said.
"Like what?" Aizawa asked pointedly.
"I mean … look at them. I hope we can all see that these subjects look like me. In the visions I've seen of All for One in his youth, he looks like me, too. I think it's the other way around, though. We all look like him. It's because we're all clones," Izuku said.
"You're not—!" All Might said, but stopped himself when he seemed to realise he'd raised his voice.
"I might as well be. All my DNA is his. My Quirk is one of his powers. Am I wrong?" Izuku said.
"No," Aizawa sighed.
"Hold on!" Tsukauchi said with shock written all over his face.
"Would you all explain what in the world you're talking about?" Gran Torino grumbled.
"Right, sorry," Izuku said. "All for One created my mother from his own DNA, a clone, with the goal of creating a version of his own Quirk that could steal Quirks from a distance. That didn't work out, though, and she ended up with minor telekinesis. He tried again the old fashioned way and they had me, but the Quirk I was born with also isn't that — no matter how many Quirks you give me, I can use them and I won't go braindead. That's how I awakened the Quirks of the previous holders of One for All, too, and can talk to the vestiges."
"It's like a perfect Nomu," Gran Torino said absently.
"Basically," Izuku sighed.
"Great. Thank you for explaining," Tsukauchi said. "What does that mean for this case?"
"I don't know. But I'm certain that these subjects are clones of All for One, and that they're out there. These clones, these Children need to be found," Izuku said.
"Okay. They don't seem to be a problem right now, though, so let's focus on the villain we have locked up right now?" Aizawa said.
"I agree. Let's get the truth out of these villains," Tsukauchi said with a grim frown.
They cleared out the interrogation room and brought Spinner in first, since he was still the only Vanguard conscious. Izuku, All Might, Aizawa and Gran Torino stood on the side of the window that allowed viewers to look in, but didn't allow those in the room to look out. Tsukauchi was the only one of them actually in the room with Spinner, which didn't seem to do much concerning Spinner's defiant attitude. The green man tapped his foot and crossed his arms, and wouldn't look Tsukauchi in the eye. Izuku watched and frowned. When he looked closer, it didn't seem to be defiance that Spinner was expressing. There was a bead of sweat on his forehead, and his eyes weren't just avoiding Tsukauchi, they refused to settle on a single thing, almost as if he was looking for or anticipating something. He was nervous. Izuku fidgeted with his mouth guard, which hung around his neck, as he watched the interrogation begin.
"Hello, Spinner of the Vanguard. I remember you from the incident in Kamino a number of months ago. If I recall correctly, your civilian name is Shuichi Iguchi. You're twenty-one years old. You were born in—" Tsukauchi said.
"Shut up. Get to the point," Spinner said.
"Is all that correct?" Tsukauchi asked. "I'm going to take your silence as confirmation that that is correct. I am Detective Naomasa Tsukauchi. I sometimes go by True Man. I'm going to ask you some questions, and I'd like honest answers. Is that okay?" Silence. "Once again, I'm going to take your silence as an invitation. How did you discover the Shigaraki home?"
Silence.
"Spinner?"
Silence.
"Iguchi, I'm asking you to—"
"Don't call me that."
"Okay," Tsukauchi said. "You prefer Spinner? Spinner, I'm asking you to work with me here so that we can help people."
"You expect me to do whatever you say, give you whatever you want, just because you're a good guy? There ain't any good guys, mister. Not in the whole world, and not in this room, so stop asking stupid questions or put me back in my cell," Spinner said. He glanced at the clock on the wall and began tapping his foot faster.
"That's an interesting thing to say. I can name a few good guys off the top of my head. All Might, for example. What makes you believe there are no good guys?" Tsukauchi asked.
Izuku didn't think Tsukauchi was particularly interested in Spinner's worldview. He could tell by the way Tsukauchi's hands flexed and clenched under the table, which Spinner couldn't see. Tsukauchi was fishing for any response, now, which Izuku figured made sense. He brought out his Hero Analysis for the Future notebook from his little pouch and flipped to the page on interrogation tactics. He wrote that it would be useful to be able to go with the flow of whoever it was that he was interrogating, since their willingness to engage in conversation with him was what dictated how much information he got. Making someone talk by pretending to get distracted and talk about something that didn't actually matter could be a good first step to getting the information he wanted out of a target. Izuku briefly considered not writing it down beforehand, since this was a hero analysis notebook, and Tsukauchi wasn't a pro hero, but he figured it was fine. Tsukauchi was a good man and he helped people, and that was enough to make someone a hero for Izuku. He didn't miss the look that Gran Torino shot his way for pulling a notebook seemingly out of nowhere, but he did ignore it in favour of Spinner's reply.
"All Might isn't a good man. He's a symbol, and symbols aren't good or bad, moral or immoral. They just are. He just is. We all have to figure it out, make choices that might backfire in the name of our ideals. He doesn't have to do that, because he has the power to shape reality to his will like the rest of us have the power to breathe. He's the strongest there is, and I'm a lizard. Do you know what it's like to be a lizard?" Spinner said.
"I can't say I do. What's it like?" Tsukauchi asked. He continued wringing his hands in the strange way he did under the table.
"It's not bad, on paper. Wall-crawling is useful every now and then, you sleep less if you get a lot of sun, your equilibrium is better than the average joe, and you heal from a paper cut in a few minutes. It's nothing great, but I didn't have a problem with my Quirk. I don't care that I look like this. Too bad nobody else got the memo. Forgive me for not having the utmost faith in good men when all the good men I grew up knowing would chase me away from their daughters and tell their sons to beat me because they couldn't do it themselves," Spinner said.
"I'm sorry to hear that. I can't imagine how hard it must have been for you," Tsukauchi said. He made the same hand movement under the table a few times, and Izuku started to wonder if there was a pattern to it, an intention.
"Yeah, I figured that's what you'd say. That's what everyone says. I'm sorry to hear that. But they know, they always know. But they ignore it, because that's more comfortable than confronting the terrible truth. You're not sorry I went through all that, you're not sorry that I had the misfortune of being born this way. It's because you can't look at my skin and imagine yourself in my place. But you're sorry to hear it. You're sorry for yourself, because that means you need to think about the truth, that terrible truth you ignore. People are rotten inside," Spinner said.
"I don't know what to say to that. You're right that some people can be—" Tsukauchi began. He had a tight expression on his face, like he was thinking very hard about something. Izuku thought he likely had a similar look on his own face.
"All of them. You're a detective, and I see the years on your face. How many people do you put behind bars in a day? How many of them stay there? How many are still waiting for you when you're done? They're all rotten, and none of them are even the problem. You're not even looking in the right place," Spinner continued. He glanced at the clock again, and the tapping of his foot stopped.
Izuku gripped his pencil tightly. Spinner was waiting for something. What was he waiting for? Izuku had the worst feeling that something was coming, and that it would be big. He looked around, both in the interrogation room and in the observation room, for anything that would give away whatever it was that had Spinner so anxious. He wasn't getting any pings from Danger Sense, but that Quirk had let him down in the past. Izuku put away his notebook and zipped up the pouch. He pulled his cowl up over his face and equipped his metallic mouth guard that looked like a smile. Izuku didn't feel like smiling right now, he doubted that he could if he was forced to, but he wanted to be ready for anything. Gran Torino looked over at him again, but fixed his attention back on the interrogation, unlike All Might, who kept his eyes on Izuku.
"I'm afraid I don't understand what you mean. Where should I be looking?" Tsukauchi asked.
"There are bigger things plaguing this world than petty thieves and teen thugs. There are people — no. There are monsters that are rising, and they'll destroy this sick society just like Stain, just like Tomura Shigaraki wanted! Before that boy took their fire from them, I would've followed them anywhere! I had no flame, I had no passion! I've changed, though. Do you hear me? Izuku Midoriya! I know you're there!" Spinner stood up and looked right at the one-way glass, though he didn't meet Izuku's eyes, because there was no way for him to have known where to look. "You can put out as many fires as you want, but the true fire is the flame of revolution, and you can't extinguish the embers that lie in the hearts of the downtrodden! The worthy will inherit our will and you will have to put them down! Can you do that, successor? Can you deny us our inheritance and still get to sleep at night?"
Tsukauchi began to ask Spinner to sit down, but Izuku gasped, and took a step back. The intensity in Spinner's eyes stunned him. He remembered the last time he'd spoken to Spinner, that night in Kamino. Izuku had revealed, in summary, the nature of One for All to the Vanguard. He hadn't named it, nor had he confessed who had possessed the Quirk before himself, but he'd admitted that he was All for One's son and that he held a power that All for One had created decades ago. Spinner was trying to call him a hypocrite for taking great power from the bottom of the ladder and then denying people who wanted to upset the order of society as they knew it. He scoffed, but didn't feel the anger or irritation that the villain wanted. Izuku wasn't going to fall for tricks, but he could engage with Spinner's argument face to face.
"No," All Might said. His eyes seemed to shine electric blue as they met Izuku's. Izuku sometimes wished his mentor didn't know him so well.
"But something's wrong!" Izuku said.
"I know. I can feel it too. Aizawa? Gran?" All Might sighed.
"Something about this feels too easy, yeah," Aizawa said with his eyes locked on the window.
"My gut says it's not over yet," Gran Torino said.
"Then we need to act on it. Spinner looks like he's waiting for something, and we need to find out what it is before it's too late!" Izuku said.
"I agree, but we have to let Tsukauchi do his work. If he can't do it, we can pivot. Trust his process," All Might said, smiling as he turned back to the glass and observed his friend.
Izuku kept his cowl and mouth guard up, just in case something happened, but controlled his desire to intervene. His eagerness was tempered slightly by a realisation. This was the test. Aizawa had said, back when he'd agreed to let Izuku come along, that his faith in Izuku hadn't been restored yet after his display of reckless, suicidal impulsiveness during the summer camp raid. He'd been watching Izuku carefully, and had not seen anything since camp to make him believe that Izuku was capable of making sound decisions in the field. That was fine, and Izuku even agreed that his choices then had been bad ones. He absolutely could have behaved in a more composed, logical way. That was going to change, though, and it started with this test of his patience. This was a way to show Aizawa that he was capable of letting things play out how they would without him stepping in and using his great power to take over a situation and assume great responsibility when it wasn't warranted.
It was like All Might had just said. He needed to trust the process. It had been a long road to earn his power, training for ten months on the beach with All Might and all the challenges he'd faced at UA so far. Izuku felt that power innately engendered responsibility in those who possessed it. If he wasn't using his power to do the most good that he could with it at any given moment, then Izuku couldn't help but consider that a waste. Maybe that wasn't the way to go, since All Might had spoken to him multiple times about how he'd lost his life to the Symbol of Peace thinking that way. Izuku was willing to be wrong. It stung, just like sitting tight while someone else did the work that he should've finished months ago when he could've just stepped into the room and helped, but he'd endure it if it meant being the best hero he could be. What was the point in going to the best hero school in Japan if he didn't listen to the teachers?
"You've got no idea what you're talking about," Spinner said.
Izuku left his own head and tuned into the conversation.
"Why don't you help me understand?" Tsukauchi asked.
"Oh, you're in for a rude awakening, alright. All for One wanted people to think he was a demon king, but he was just one man. He had power, yes, but he had no ambition, and that's what makes someone a monster," Spinner said. "I've seen monsters, now. Monsters who destroy everything they touch and remake everything in their image, even people. Monsters who command armies right under your noses, right under your feet. There are even monsters over the ocean that are coming to burn this place to the ground and start over! And those are just backup that's been called in, numbers to even the odds, bodies to hide behind until the real war begins. But the real monsters?"
Spinner stood up.
! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !
Izuku flinched as Danger Sense stabbed through his head. The space between his eyes erupted in pain that shot through his skull as if a needle the size of a baseball bat had been driven through his brain. He put his hands to his head and blinked spots out of his eyes. Izuku looked over and saw the other heroes in the observation room looking at him with shocked expressions. Their mouths were moving, but no sound was coming out. No, that wasn't right. Izuku's ears were ringing, and he shook his head to dispel it. He opened his mouth, but tasted something metallic and closed it again. The voices of his teachers and mentors faded in as the ringing in Izuku's ears subsided. Even after the pain of Danger Sense was gone, there was a buzzing in his head that had him shaking where he stood, like someone's finger scratching at the back of his brain and whispering in his ear to get far away from whatever it was that had triggered his Quirk.
"Young Midoriya, are you okay?" All Might asked. His face was pale and he wore a scowl on his face.
"Yeah. Danger Sense just—" Izuku tried to say, but was cut off.
The ceiling of the interrogation room imploded. Chunks of concrete fell into the room, and Tsukauchi and Spinner were sent sprawling for cover. They both went to use the table as a shield, and Spinner kicked Tsukauchi away to have it for himself. The debris from the ceiling fell to the ground around the two occupants of the room, and they luckily managed to duck and dodge away from every major piece of rubble, which littered the room in piles. A chunk of debris crashed into the window and sent glass flying at them. It had happened so fast that Izuku hadn't fully recovered from the stunning ping from Danger Sense, and he fell to the ground with the others, stunned, as he registered laughing. It was a deep, croaky voice, and it rattled Izuku to the core as he sat up after being blown back by the destructive implosion. Aizawa put his hand on Izuku's shoulder, and he was filled with relief that his teacher was okay. The two of them helped each other to their feet, and All Might and Gran Torino joined them, both with small cuts and red splotches on their faces and arms. Izuku took a look, and sure enough, he and Aizawa had them too, though their costumes had taken most of the damage. Izuku, relieved that his mentors were still standing, looked out into the interrogation room and froze, processing what he was seeing.
It was a person, seemingly male due to their frame. He stood from the crouching position he'd landed in as the dust and debris fell around him. The man was large, almost impossibly so, easily rivalling All Might's muscular form from the hero's prime. He looked every bit as powerful, too, as the former Symbol of Peace. He wore a one-piece bodysuit that hugged every muscle and length of his body perfectly, so it might have either been a part of his body or custom-made. The man had white, shaggy, shoulder-length hair, almost the exact length that Izuku's patchy green and white hair had grown to. The man's face struck Izuku, as it was exactly the same as the one he'd seen in the Children files from the bunker. It was Subject 3, in the flesh. He was easily more than seven feet tall, and looked around the room with a grin on his face.
Just seconds later, four other people descended from the new hole in the ceiling. The first was a child. He couldn't have been older than twelve. The kid had the same white hair as Subject 3, but it was shorter and presented more like the messy curls that Izuku's did at that length — Subject 2. Subject 2 fell through the hole in the ceiling, landed on the ground, and was across the room in a blur of black and white, poking at Tsukauchi and Spinner as he flickered between them faster than the eye could track. Izuku used his new Pinpoint Focus ability and still couldn't reliably track his movements as he flitted around. One by one, they entered from above. A girl roughly the same age as Izuku, with longer white hair tied up into a bun, who shared his face shape — Subject 4. A man who hovered down and stayed a metre or so above the ground as he came to rest, who was a dead ringer for both a young All for One and, in five or six years, Izuku — Subject 5. Finally, the last one of them came through and landed in a shower of long, white hair that flowed down to her waist. A woman, between the age ranges of Subjects 4 and 5, who shared Izuku's plain face. He realised as he saw her in person that their eyes were the same shape, too, though hers were red whereas his were still green. They assembled around the room, grinning and laughing as they watched Tsukauchi and Spinner scramble to their feet. Tsukauchi pulled a gun, which was crushed into uselessness by an invisible force as Subject 5 flexed his hand.
"Name yourselves!" Aizawa called as he tangled his hands in his binding cloth.
"Well, that's easy," the woman, Subject 1, said. She swept her eyes over the others, but her eyes stayed on Izuku a second longer than the rest. She seemed to recognise something in him, possibly the same thing that Izuku recognised in her. A toothy grin erupted on her face. "We're the Children of All for One."