"Isn't this nice? The Three Shit Stirrers are together again."
Inko sent Mitsuki a flat look at the declaration. "You've been trying to make that name a thing since our second year of high school. It's not happening."
"Ever the party pooper, Inky," Mitsuki exaggeratedly bemoaned with a sip of her tea.
"I admire the determination," joked Rei Todoroki, the final piece of their reunited trio as the three sat in the living room of her daughter's newly acquired apartment.
It had been years since the three childhood friends had been in the same place at the same time outside of the confines of a hospital, and they were relishing the opportunity. Given Inko's newfound celebrity status, meeting for a public outing was off the table, so Inko and Mitsuki just came to Rei directly. Fuyumi did not mind in the slightest; she loved having company over, especially since it made the new place feel a little more lived in after leaving what she was accustomed to behind at the Todoroki estate.
Speaking of Fuyumi, she reentered the room carrying a tray of gyoza, yakitori, and spicy edamame for the three. Setting the tray down for them to dig in, she was quickly set upon by a beaming Inko.
"I can't believe how big you've grown," she gushed over the young woman. "You were so small last I saw you."
"Take a load off and eat with us," Mitsuki insisted.
"Oh, I don't want to impose," Fuyumi bashfully tried to decline, but they were having none of it.
"Impose?" Mitsuki snorted. "It's your house. You could kick all of our asses out right now if you wanted. Besides, you cooked the food."
Following suit, Inko pulled an empty chair out for her to sit and eat with them, motioning for her to join in the merriment. An encouraging smile from her mother finally convinced her to take the offered spot and partake in the snacks and conversation while the TV was on in the background. Over time, her attention slowly diverted to the TV when she realized that her favorite soap opera was on, which didn't go unnoticed.
"Fuyumi got me hooked on this soap opera," Rei chuckled, drawing their attention back to the TV. "It's about a man with 15 kids trying to reconnect with his eldest daughter after being absent for a decade. There's a special guest cameo every episode."
"I AM HERE! As your urologist."
"I'm not surprised she inherited your love of over-the-top dramas," Inko commented with a chuckle of her own.
"Did she also inherit your crackpot theories?" Mitsuki chimed in, eliciting an audible laugh from both Inko and Fuyumi.
"I'm not afraid to ask questions, there's nothing wrong with that," Rei defended, then her gaze shifted to her green-haired friend. "On that note… Inko, I have to ask, and I won't be angry if the answer is yes, but I do have to ask."
Inko blinked, already wary of where this was potentially headed if she knew her friend well enough. "Okay…"
"Is Enji Izuku's father?" Rei bluntly inquired.
The next five minutes were filled with Inko's aghast silence, Fuyumi's mortified scolding, and Mitsuki's hysterical laughter.
It was a calm afternoon in the bustling ward of Hosu. This was just the way Manual liked it; that wasn't to say that he preferred an easy patrol because it meant less work for him, but a calm afternoon with very little ruckus simply meant that the city and its inhabitants were safe. That was all that mattered to the Normal Hero, especially after the ordeal the city went through with Stain and the Nomu attack.
It had been a few months since Stain's bloody rampage, and he would be lying if he said that the Hero Killer didn't leave his mark on the populous. Everyone, hero and civilian alike, was much more cautious when out and about. Virtually no one went down alleyways anymore, especially when alone. Even criminals avoided going down dark passageways for fear of running into an even deadlier criminal than them. There was an unmistakable paranoia about the city these days, and Manual didn't know how to feel about it.
Manual was just glad that Stain's final victim before he was apprehended, Ingenium, made a full recovery. That was still amazing to him; Stain brutally wounded him and left him crippled, and all it took was some experimental treatment at I-Island to fix him right up. Modern medicine really was something-
"Help, that man just robbed me!"
Manual's attention snapped to a woman in a hoodie calling out to him. Hurrying over, he took stock of the woman: she was wearing her hood, but the heavy fox mutation was unmistakable. Her orange fur was frazzled as if she had just been mugged, and her blue eyes were pleading for help.
"Don't worry, ma'am, I'm here to help," Manual assured her with a warm smile once he made it to her. "Which way did they go?"
"They went down that alley!" she informed, pointing to the open alleyway to her right.
Manual momentarily hesitated; something didn't feel right about this, but he brushed it off and sprinted down the alley, nonetheless. The fear and desperation in the woman's eyes looked as genuine as Manual had ever witnessed, and it was his duty to investigate and apprehend any possible criminals, regardless of the circumstances. So, that was what he did: his duty as a hero.
Fortunately, he came upon a man in a hoodie shuffling nervously while counting money from a woman's wallet. If he was trying to hide, his bushy, bright yellow tail was making it very hard for him. Bingo.
"You know, I never understood the whole thing with petty theft," Manual announced himself, seemingly spooking the man. "Why go to all this trouble for maybe a few thousand yen at most? There are much better paying avenues for criminality that won't almost always end in swift apprehension."
"Should you really be giving me advice on how to be a better criminal when you're apprehending me?" the hooded man almost laughed.
Manual shrugged. "Wouldn't really matter after it's all said and done. A few months in jail usually puts petty thieves off of the stuff."
"A few months? For a purse snatching?" the man legitimately sounded insulted, then a bitter, mirthless laugh escaped him, and he turned to face Manual fully. "Forgot. Punishments are different for mutants, right?"
The sudden coldness of his tone unsettled Manual, as if the temperature in the alley dropped a few degrees. The frostiness of his blue-eyed glare wasn't helping matters, either. However, something caught his eye. The man had a fox mutation just like the woman he mugged-
Years of experience was the only reason Manual had the presence of mind to turn and block the sneak attack. However, the minute he locked eyes with the new arrival, he felt his body go stiff. He was trapped by the glowing, slitted eyes of a snake ruthlessly invading his very being, and that was all the advantage they needed. A powerful, furry fist slammed into the back of his head and crumpled him to the ground, and two sets of feet viciously stomped him into the concrete. Then a third set of feet joined in, and Manual was helpless to fend off the barrage of brutal stomps and kicks to his back and ribs.
When he could hear a fourth, much heavier set of footsteps approaching, the feeling in his limbs began to return to him, and he leaped into action by blindsiding the closest threat he could.
Or, at least, that was the intention. The closest person happened to be the snake-eyed man that paralyzed him with just a look, and while Manual managed to avoid looking into his eyes directly, he didn't avoid the knife the heteromorph was brandishing that was slammed into his gut. The scaly criminal cackled in his ear as excruciating pain exploded throughout the area of the stab wound, bringing the hero back down to a kneel.
"That knife was poisoned, dickhead," the snake-man snickered, punctuating the remark with a nasty knee to Manual's face, and the crunching of his nose echoed through the alley.
He wouldn't be allowed to fall down, unfortunately, as the fox-man caught him on his descent and pushed him back to his feet, just for another, furrier fist to slam into his cheek and bounce his noggin against the brick wall. All Manual could make out was the sight of his blood pooling in front of him after gravity brought him to the concrete with a wet thud. He faintly heard a fifth, much lighter set of footsteps enter the area in his daze.
"I sealed off the area," a woman said, and her voice sounded dangerously familiar to Manual, even as beaten as he was. "No one will hear him scream."
"Killer," the blonde fox-man "Excellent job getting this dumbass down here, Mirage."
Manual's heart would've sunk to the pits of his stomach if he was upright, but from his place face down in a pool of his own blood on the cold, unforgiving concrete, he could only want to wretch his dismay. It was a setup from the beginning, and he failed to trust his gut.
"Hey, dumbass," the fox-man called out to him, and Manual felt his left arm being pulled to lay flat against the ground beside him. "Wake the FUCK UP!"
Manual's brain did not register the unimaginable pain that shot through his arm until 3 seconds after the boot stomped his elbow. By the time that scream ripped itself from his throat, he was flipped onto his back and received 4 separate stomps to his diaphragm, forcing every molecule of air he could spare out of him.
"Yo, hold up," the original assailant called out and brought the ordeal to a pause, then he turned to the newest male arrival. "Before we continue, you sure this is the guy?"
"Yeah, that's him," a gruff, hateful voice confirmed from the snout of a large, crocodilian man wearing a black hoodie like the rest of the gang. "I'd recognize that goofy, little bitch anywhere."
"Ah, excellent," the fox-man grinned. "Proceed."
The crocodilian man bent down and snatched him by his face with his monstrously large hands and slammed him against the wall, cracking the structure and smearing the blood that was jettisoned out of Manual's mouth into his rough, scaly palm.
"The Normal Hero: Manual," the large, reptilian man sneered. "You don't recognize me, do you?"
Manual was conscious enough to look the man in his slitted gaze, a pair of hateful, reptilian eyes that reminded Manual so much of the only man he truly hated in this world. However, that couldn't be possible, as that man was dead. Manual killed him himself.
"Ah, you do remember," the crocodilian man remarked with a chuckle. "I can see the hatred in your eyes. It's not me you're remembering, but my brother. The one that you tortured and killed, then had the Commission cover up for you."
"He- k- ld- p-r-nt," Manual struggled to gurgle out his retort.
"Speak up, hero, I can't hear you."
"He… killed… my parents," Manual finally managed with a furious snarl. "He… deserved… even worse."
The larger man chortled darkly. "I guess in your mind, that's true. But that's the thing about revenge, Manual: it's never a one-way street."
With those parting words, Manual was slammed into the wall a second time, dazing him once again and forcing even more blood out of his quickly paling form. He could still vaguely see five figures in front of him, each one wearing a black hoodie and sporting a heteromorphic mutation of some kind.
"Don't be so glum, Manual," the fox-man almost grinned, tapping Manual's cheek with his palm and staining his bright fur red with the hero's blood. "This ain't just a revenge killing. You're the first in our path to upending society and creating the world mutants deserve. You'll be the first brick laid in the path to our mutant renaissance."
"The hell are you talking about?" Manual ground out, struggling to maintain his faculties.
The fox-man actually chuckled. "You know what I'm talking about. We mentioned it earlier. Japan's been fuckin' mutants over for 200 years. It's high time we fuck with 'em back, right?"
The fox-man stepped back and patted the taller crocodilian on the shoulder. "Titan, he's your mark. You do the honors."
Titan grinned, and his maw full of deceptively blunted spikes masquerading as teeth were on full display. "With pleasure."
That evening, the common area of Heights Alliance was abuzz with activity. Nestled in the couch in one corner of the room were Izuku and Eri comfortably watching TV amidst the excited merriment of both First-Year classes having a 100% pass rate for the provisional license exam.
"It's a close match!"
"This is beyond intense!"
"Neither one is conceding any ground! It's pride versus pride, crashing into each other!"
"Yo, Midoriya, there's someone at the door for you!" called Sero from across the room.
"Be right there!" Izuku called back, then he ruffled Eri's hair. "Be back in a sec."
"Okay," she smiled as he got up to check who had come to see him. Once he had left, the intense arm-wrestling match on screen had reached critical mass, locking Eri's rapt attention to the display.
Izuku made his way to the front door of the dormitory, and to his surprise, nervously standing in the doorway was Chikuchi Togeike holding a potted plant. She gave him a small, unsure smile when he appeared.
"Togeike?" Izuku questioned.
"Hey…" she awkwardly greeted. "Are you busy right now?"
"Not really, why? What's up?"
"Um, it's about my quirk…"
"Gotcha. Do you want to come inside, or should we talk out here?"
"Can we talk out here?"
Izuku nodded in understanding and stepped outside, closing the door behind him. Unbeknownst to him, the show he and Eri were watching had gone to commercial, and Eri changed the channel out of curiosity of what else was on. She landed on a bubbly musical number showcasing a girl in a maid cafe uniform gunning down an army of rival maids.
"So, what's up?" Izuku asked, and Togeike took a deep breath.
"I think there's more to my quirk than I initially assumed," she answered, not entirely sure how to go about explaining what she had discovered. "I thought that I could only just make vines and roots grow from my hands, but when I casually waved at one of my plants yesterday, this happened..."
She put her plant down and activated her quirk, transforming her fingers into vines before she waved at the plant. Izuku wasn't sure what she was attempting to show him until his eyes shot out of his skull when the plant began to grow… and grow… and grow…
Pretty soon, the small golden pothos plant was eye level with Izuku, and white fire erupted from Izuku's hair.
"…I see what you mean," Izuku muttered.
"Yeah…" Togeike mumbled, completely caught off guard by the sudden combustion but writing it off as another weird aspect of his quirk. "I'm not really sure what to make of it."
"Well, it does sort of help answer why All For One wanted it," Izuku theorized with a hand on his chin.
"What do you mean?" she questioned.
"I was thinking about the subject for a little while, and I found it a bit odd that All For One wanted this quirk when it had just awakened," Izuku explained. "No offense, but it doesn't look particularly powerful, at least in a destructive sort of way that would catch a supervillain's eye."
"None taken," she shrugged. "Why do you think he would've wanted it in the first place? I hadn't really thought about it much after getting my quirk back. I just kinda wrote it off as a junkie getting their fix."
Izuku opened his mouth to reply, but he closed it when her words sank in, and he thought about it for a long moment. "That's also very plausible."
Togeike snorted. "Too bad we can't dig the bastard up and ask him ourselves."
"Maybe not, but maybe we can try the next best thing…" Izuku muttered in consideration.
"Hm?"
"I have an idea, hang on a sec," Izuku instructed as he pulled out his phone and scrolled through his contacts before calling the person he was looking for.
"Hello?"
"Melissa, are you busy right now?"
"Not really. I just got back to my room. What's up?"
"We have a conundrum that could potentially be resolved by doing something stupid in the name of science."
"I'm in."
"Awesome. We're on the way over."
"This is fucking brutal…" a cop muttered as he gazed at the grisly scene.
"This is easily worse than Stain," a second cop remarked with a disgusted grimace.
A brutal sight it was; the Normal Hero: Manual was left in pieces scattered about the alleyway that was painted a fresh coat of red. The police on scene did their best to avoid making eye contact with the disembodied head of Manual that was haphazardly tossed against the opposite wall. Worse still was the head missing its lower jaw. Above the carnage, there was a message written on the wall in Manual's blood:
FUKKŌ IS COMING
"Fukkō…?" the first cop questioned. "First LOAV in Shizuoka, now Fukkō? The hell is going on around here?"
"After the mess in Kamino, there might be a power vacuum in the criminal underworld," the second cop hypothesized with a sigh. "I really hope we're not seeing a race to the top, especially with brutal fuckers like these."
"You and me both."
"You got here faster than I was expecting," Melissa commented as she led the two up to her room in one of the Third-Year support course dorms. "To my knowledge, 1-A's building is on the other side of the complex."
"I may have been a little excited," Izuku sheepishly admitted, dragging the dizzy Togeike along by the arm. The swirls in her eyes highlighted just how much haste Izuku made in their journey.
When Melissa brought them into her room, Izuku deposited Togeike onto Melissa's bed so she could regain her bearings. It took her a minute, but she was finally able to gather herself and shoot Izuku an annoyed glare, one that was met with a sheepish, apologetic grimace.
"So, what's the conundrum?" Melissa asked as the two got settled.
Izuku's expression immediately brightened, and he turned to Melissa with an excited glimmer in his gaze. "I have a suspicion about Togeike's quirk, and I want to talk to the ghosts in your head to get some more information."
Melissa immediately paled at the casual reveal of that aspect of One For All in front of a total stranger, but Izuku quickly regained control of the situation by turning so to Togeike. "Right, background: Melissa's quirk is haunted. My grandma is in there."
"Uhhh…" was all Togeike could manage.
'Grandma?' Melissa thought in confusion before examining Izuku closely, matching his face with that of the woman who spoke to her when she ventured into the quirk in her sleep.
"Wait, that's your grandma?" Melissa exclaimed. "Uncle Might spoke about her like she was his mother."
Melissa narrowed her gaze and took a long, considerable look at him "You two aren't-"
"No, we're not," Izuku quickly shot the idea down. "He's like a step-uncle, I guess? In any event, it's irrelevant to why we're here."
"Right," Melissa sighed in concession. "Can I get a bit of background before we continue?"
"Sure," Izuku nodded, and he opened the floor to Togeike. "Do you want to explain?"
"Yeah," she sighed. "Um, All For One stole my quirk, apparently, and Midoriya got it back from him and returned it to me, but it isn't exactly how I remember it…"
"How so?" Melissa hummed.
"Well, I initially thought I could just turn my fingers into vines and grow roots from my arms, but apparently I can control plants in general?" she explained, still very unsure of it herself. "Or I guess just accelerate their growth; I'm not too sure, in all honesty."
"Can I see it?" Melissa asked.
Togeike nodded, and she brought out her golden pothos plant and performed a similar demonstration for Melissa. The plant grew even longer, reaching up even taller than the three teenagers, which really confused Togeike.
"Fascinating," Melissa hummed in wonder, ignoring Izuku scribbling in his notebook behind her.
"This is really odd…" Togeike noted with a frown.
"What is?"
"Well, pothos plants can grow up to 6 to 12 meters in length when they're fully mature," she began, closely examining the stiff plant. "But they're vines, so they don't stand straight up like this. They hang."
"Accelerated growth and abnormal qualities," Izuku muttered as he scribbled. "Perhaps you exert more control over the plant than you're aware of."
"That is a possibility," Melissa mused as Togeike awkwardly shuffled in the background while the two geniuses were analyzing her quirk. "Where do I fit into all of this?"
"Right," Izuku said while snapping his notebook shut. "I have a theory as to why All For One would steal this in the first place. The quirk doesn't seem all that powerful, and if it was useful combatively, I don't see why he wouldn't have at least bequeathed it to a Nomu rather than hold onto it himself, so there's gotta be something missing here. Maybe the vestiges could help fill in the blanks?"
Noticing Melissa's trepidation about the subject, Izuku raised a placating hand. "She doesn't know about your situation, just that your quirk can let you talk to ghosts like mine."
Melissa sighed in relief, happy that Izuku hadn't blown her secret without even consulting her. She wasn't aware that his quirk allowed him to talk to ghosts, though. Uncle Might hadn't mentioned that…
"Situation?" Togeike questioned, her curiosity piqued.
"I'm a late-bloomer," Melissa spoke up, reciting the cover story she worked out with All Might. "Until about a month ago, I was quirkless."
The revelation that Melissa was also quirkless for the majority of her life put Togeike at greater ease than she even thought possible. She could not help the smile that developed in the slightest.
"Welcome to the club," she laughed. "I was quirkless until about a week ago."
In that moment with the two locking eyes, there was a deep, thick moment of pure understanding shared between them. Another kindred spirit had been found, and neither were going to look a gift horse in the mouth.
"So… ghosts?" Izuku broke the silence, snapping both of them out of their newfound connection.
"Right, right," Melissa nodded. "How are you going about this? I wasn't aware you could do that."
"Leave it to me," Izuku assured, and his hand ignited in a blue blaze before he slowly raised it and extended it to Melissa. She hesitantly reached to take it, but he stopped her and motioned for her to wait.
Within seconds, a yellow glove manifested out of Melissa and took his hand. Izuku's sapphire flames spread to cover the rest of his body and burned even brighter, and the glove that only Izuku could see then became visible to the other two just before an entire woman pulled herself out of Melissa and glomped Izuku as tightly as she could. Considering that she was now part of One For All and could channel the quirk's entire stockpile of energy, Izuku found himself locked in a bone crushing embrace courtesy of a crying grandmother.
"MY BABIES KILLED ALL FOR ONE!" Nana sobbed, swinging her suffocating grandson trapped in her arms. "I'M SO PROUD!"
"Grandma…" Izuku croaked. "Air…"
"Oh, sorry," she sheepishly laughed before releasing him. "I'm just so incredibly happy to see you again, especially physically for once. I know about everything that happened. You fucking beat him!"
"Eh, it was more my mom, All Might, Gran Torino, and Tomura Shigaraki handling that," Izuku bashfully tried to deflect.
"That sounds like a Shimura family effort to me," Nana beamed. "You took his stolen quirks, Izuku. You don't realize how crushing of a blow that was to him, both to his power and his ego. And Kotaro's boy dusted him! My grandbabies are so cool!"
Izuku was surprised that she knew of Tomura Shigaraki's true identity. "You know about that?"
Nana's bright, tearful smile dimmed, and she looked a little more forlorn. "We experience the world through Melissa's eyes and ears. We feel everything she feels."
Her smile brightened once more, becoming a bit mischievous all the while. "She also watches the whole thing on repeat every day."
"Shut up," Melissa grumbled with a mild blush.
It was at this point that Nana finally turned to acknowledge the third occupant in the room, and she sent Togeike a bright smile. "So, you're the one running around with the other singularity quirk."
Izuku's eyes shot out of his skull for the second time that night. Togeike idly wondered if that was also part of his quirk, but she also didn't know what the woman meant by "singularity quirk." In fact, Togeike had a lot of questions about the current situation, but she kept them to herself in favor of letting the more informed parties discuss.
"Come again?" Izuku pressed.
"Oh, so you know about singularity quirks," Nana smiled. "Not surprising since you have one yourself."
That… didn't really surprise Izuku. He kind of figured something along those lines a while back, and the spontaneous physical mutations only solidified his thinking. That was irrelevant, though; the subject was Togeike.
"Can you expand on Togeike having a singularity quirk?" Izuku pressed.
"Yeah, what's a singularity quirk?" Togeike chimed in, equally curious about the designation.
"Ah, I'm not the best at explaining the technical aspects of it," Nana lamented. "Yoichi would be better suited for that."
"Let's bring him out, then," Izuku said, surprising Nana with the declaration and burning a bright blue once again.
Reaching a hand towards Melissa, a thin, pale arm in a long, white sleeve reached out and took his hand. Yoichi began to pull himself free of the void, but halfway through, he was accosted by an excited Daigoro Banjo and pushed out of Melissa with a thud.
"Holy shit, it's the living world again!" Banjo remarked in awe before reaching behind him and grabbing onto something. "En, you gotta get in on this!"
"Wait, hold on a minute!" En protested to no avail as he was yanked out of the void and brought into Melissa's room with the others.
"Uhhh…" Izuku dumbly drawled at the developing scene, while Nana pinched the bridge of her nose.
"Fucking dipshits," Nana grumbled.
"Um, what's happening?" Melissa finally spoke up, completely flummoxed at what the discussion was devolving into.
Nana sighed in resignation. "Ninth, you've met the others already, but Izuku, this is Daigoro Banjo and En. They were before me."
Izuku nodded in understanding, picking up on Nana's intentional vagueness to not blow the secret entirely in the presence of Togeike.
"Hah! It's great to finally meet the kid Nana is always gushing about in person!" Banjo stepped over and took Izuku's hand in a firm shake. "We technically already met once, but the Shinigami made it weird."
"I remember," Izuku greeted with a smile, returning the handshake before turning to the exasperated man with the high collar. "En, right?"
"Mhm," he confirmed, briefly shaking Izuku's hand and sighing. "We didn't all need to be out here for this."
"Well, I was the one who was actually invited," Yoichi huffed as he got to his feet.
Before anyone could say anything else, the head of another white-haired man, this one with a scar on his face, manifested from the space in front of Melissa that the others came from.
"Is this gathering exclusive?" Hikage Shinomori asked the room.
"Oh, fucking hell," Nana bemoaned. "You might as well. I seriously doubt the other two will pop in."
Shinomori nodded in confirmation as he exited the void and climbed into the room. "They chose to stay behind. They wanted nothing to do with this."
"Every party needs a pooper," Banjo shrugged. "Two in this case."
"No more shenanigans or interruptions," Nana ordered, then she turned to Yoichi. "Can you explain singularity to them?"
"Not a problem," Yoichi nodded. "Which one?"
"What?"
"There are three singularity quirks in this room, and each one is different," Yoichi explained. "Which one should I start with?"
It was Izuku who spoke up this time, pointing to the increasingly flummoxed Togeike. "Hers, preferably."
Yoichi nodded and turned to the girl in question. A lengthy moment of silent staring passed, and Togeike was fighting to keep from sweating by the end of it. Finally, Yoichi seemed satisfied with something.
"I'll begin with an explanation of what quirk singularity is," he said. "Quirk singularity is the idea that quirks will grow stronger and more complex with each passing generation, which has more or less proven to be true at this point. As people procreate and quirks blend, they create newer, stronger, and harder to control variations, even mutations. Those variations then become the meta, they blend with each other, and even more powerful, complex, and harder to control variations and mutations are developed. This cycle continues on and on until quirks evolve faster than the human body can evolve with them, making them outright impossible to manage."
Yoichi turned and motioned to Shinomori. "That's about what happened to him. The power of his quirk exceeded what his body, or any body for that matter, could endure, and aged faster than normal."
"I died at the ripe, old age of 40," Shinomori supplied with a chuckle. "My body just couldn't handle the power contained within my quirk."
The three teens were understandably unsettled by the information. They each had a singularity quirk, and singularity quirks appeared to have a perfect track record of murdering their users thus far.
Before their thoughts could devolve any further, Yoichi came to torpedo the mood even further. "Now, your quirk in particular is an interesting case. A sort of speedrun of what I just described occurred during the Dawn of Quirks when the human body was not equipped to handle the abilities granted by quirks whatsoever. Someone who manifested a fire quirk would likely burn themselves alive upon using it. Similar stories were true for those with ice quirks, or acid quirks.
"Plant-based quirks, however, were an interesting situation. More often than not, plant quirks were on the more powerful end of the spectrum. Rarely was it that plant quirks were limited to transforming your limbs or growing plants from various parts of your body, but they typically granted blanket control over plants in general within a specific radius. To my understanding, this occurred through the user connecting with the life energy emitted by plants, so to speak. It was almost always too dangerous to wield. You say that my brother pilfered your quirk when it initially manifested, right?"
Togeike nodded, idly noting the use of "brother" in reference to All For One but figuring that it was an irrelevant detail at the moment.
"He might have actually done you a favor," Yoichi hummed.
"What?" Togeike blurted out, not at all expecting that to come out of his mouth. She wasn't alone, either, as both Melissa and Izuku were sharing her incredulity. Even Nana was side-eyeing him for the comment.
He brushed it off, however, and continued. "I've seen this before. Had your quirk shown signs of reaching singularity upon initial manifestation, that is, enough signs to catch my brother's interest, then it's highly likely that you would have transformed into a tree by the age of ten had you consistently used your quirk."
"…Excuse me?" Togeike wasn't sure that she heard him right.
"You've seen this before?" Izuku followed.
"Eleven times, as a matter of fact," Yoichi nodded. "Being in sync with the life energy of plants is a dangerous road to go down for, well, non-plants. The energy will overwhelm you if you're not specifically evolved to handle it. Plants are living things; they can fight back, and they do. With that in mind, my brother probably stole your quirk to study a singularity quirk personally, but he might've elected not to use it for fear of transforming into a tree himself. Keep in mind that he and I are from the first generation of quirked individuals. His body just would not have been naturally equipped to handle the kickbacks of any of those abilities without the requisite healing and regeneration quirks in his stockpile, and I don't think there's a quirk in existence that can reverse wood-petrification… woodification? You get the idea."
"Woah…" Togeike muttered, and the sentiment was shared by her schoolmates. "So, am I going to turn into a tree?"
Yoichi hummed in consideration while taking a long look at her. "Do you enjoy being around plants?"
She nodded. "I've had my own garden and a few house plants since I was really little. It was sort of an escape…"
"Hmm," Yoichi considered. "You might've gotten lucky. I'm willing to bet that if we took a sample of your blood, it would be filled with chloroplasts."
…Togeike really didn't want to assume that he was insulting her. "Um, what?"
"I think he's trying to say that you're already more plant than person," Izuku joked, and Banjo snickered on the other side of the room.
"That's not strictly incorrect," Yoichi mused. "Your body has likely adapted over time through proximity to plants, and the lack of access to your quirk prevented you from unwittingly accelerating that process faster than your body could handle. You were effectively building up a steady affinity to the life energy of plants without even knowing it, and not having your quirk all but blocked you from dooming yourself to a fate of speaking exclusively to the Lorax. That isn't to say that my brother took your quirk out of the kindness of his heart; it almost certainly wasn't done for any selfless reasons. It's simply a silver lining to the ordeal."
"…This is a lot to take in," Togeike muttered, taking a seat on Melissa's bed and staring at her hands. "What does this mean for me?"
"It means you might end up with the strongest quirk in the room if you train hard enough," Banjo laughed.
"Okay, let's not get ahead of ourselves," Nana pumped the brakes on that. "When Ninth gets a handle on things, she'll be a force to be reckoned with, especially if the other two ever get over themselves and lend a hand. Besides, only one of us in this room actually beat All For One."
"Oh my god, I did not beat All For One," Izuku whined.
Nana laughed and pulled her grandson into a playful headlock/loving nuzzle. "A victory for one Shimura is a victory for all of us."
"You stole his quirks," En added from his spot seated on the floor. "That's more than any of us can say."
"I never even got to fight him," Shinomori threw in.
"That's because you're a weirdo that hid in the woods to live out your life as a hermit," Banjo joked.
"My quirk constantly put me on high alert," Shinomori defended. "Solitude was just far easier."
"Yoichi, right?" Togeike spoke up, getting the man's attention. "You said that all three of our quirks reached a different kind of singularity. What's Midoriya's like?"
"Oh, his is much easier to explain," Yoichi began, turning to Izuku. "Your quirk seems to be a boosted manifestation of several dormant quirk factors in your family line fusing with active ones, alongside a little bit of 'seasoning', so to speak."
"Seasoning?" Izuku inquired.
"Well, this is just a theory I have, but I think that there were some… unforeseen consequences of Nana carrying a child while in possession of…" Yoichi trailed off, casting a brief glance at Togeike before returning his gaze to Izuku, "…her unique quirk factor."
"Oh?" Izuku was interested, producing his notebook. "Do tell."
"Nana was the only person here to procreate," Yoichi said.
"He means that I'm the only one here that wasn't perpetually bitchless," Nana gladly chimed in, earning indignant squawks from Banjo and En.
"Right," Yoichi nodded in agreement, "and as such, she was the only one among us to pass on her genes and her boosted quirk factor. It's very possible that her situation in turn boosted your mother's quirk factor in utero, and further blending resulted in your current state."
Izuku was floored. "Is that why my quirk is so comically varied?"
"It's likely one of the reasons," Yoichi nodded. "Another might be One For-"
He stopped himself before blatantly revealing the name of the quirk in front of Togeike, then the absurdity of the current situation finally caught up with him. "Okay, must we really speak in riddles like this? We're all literally standing outside of the fucking void. The secret has long since been blown."
"I didn't want to be the one to say it," En spoke up, and the other vestiges nodded their agreement.
"If it's a confidential thing, I can leave the room," Togeike suggested.
"It's your call," Nana said with a hand on Melissa's shoulder.
"…It's fine," Melissa decided after a moment of consideration. "We're all learning a lot today, and I'm sure that Togeike would like it if both of us kept the details of her quirk under wraps for the moment, too."
Upon Togeike's nod of confirmation, Melissa turned to Yoichi. "The floor's yours."
"Excellent," he exhaled. "Okay, from Ninth's repeated viewings of the battle with my brother, I've noticed a few peculiar things about Nana's daughter. Firstly, she's really short-"
Yoichi was cut off when Nana smacked him on the back of the head, and she glared at him amidst his victorious chuckling and Banjo's muted snickering behind them.
"Secondly," he continued, "She packs a significant punch when it really shouldn't make any sense physically. She was glowing when she was angry and decked my brother hard enough to knock him back a significant distance. It isn't out of the realm of possibility that your mother was passively strengthened by One For All's power stockpile. It imprinted on her and possibly her brother, as well, then that imprint was passed onto you in a different manner."
Seeing he had Izuku's rapt attention, he went for the kill. "Whereas your mother has residual power from One For All boosting her body and quirk, you very likely received an imprint of the stockpiled quirks melding with the boosted quirk factors already entangled within you. In other words, you're pretty much a quirk Frankenstein."
Izuku, while not as floored as Togeike had been at the end of the rundown of her quirk, was still very much taken aback. Yoichi had gone to great lengths to emphasize that what he said were merely his theories based on observation, but they matched up with a lot of Izuku's own speculation about his quirk and filled in the gaps on many other areas. He just knew that he was going to go through several notebooks by the end of the night.
"And finally, Ninth," Yoichi turned to Melissa, then he grimaced. "We might be here all day for this one."
'If One For All potentially imprinted on Uncle Kotaro, then I wonder what that means for Tomura…' Izuku thought to himself while Yoichi began his explanation of One For All's development.
"Lovely to see you, dear viewers! May I delight you with a smashing, new adventure? Yes, t'is I, Gentle! Gentle Criminal, at your service."
Tomura sat on the couch in front of a laptop in the living room of their base/hideout/apartment. His curiosity about what his old acquaintance/ business partner, PwrOfLuv, had been up to as of late had gotten the better of him, so he found himself reluctantly watching the latest video of the man he knew she was partnering with.
"I upload cinematic snapshots of deeds that some may consider heinous. But, my darlings, do not jump to conclusions, as I am not committing crimes at random. For example, I recently robbed J-Store, the largest convenience store chain in the nation, and a veritable corporate behemoth. Their bestselling item is Fluffy Pudding, but hark, viewers; this maniacal market is suspected of mislabeling said desert and forging its expiration date!"
Tomura quirked an eyebrow at the information, not particularly impressed with what he was hearing.
"Naturally, the company feigned ignorance, and it began to look as though no one would be punished for these dastardly deeds… Catching on, my loves? Yes, I reprimand those who behave in an ungentlemanly way! I am the modern-day Gentleman Thief!"
"…Pudding?" Tomura questioned after the video ended. "What a fucking weirdo."
"I don't know, Tomura, he does raise a good point," Mr. Compress mused from the attached kitchen, Kurogiri handing him a glass he had just cleaned. "And he goes about his stunts with such flourish! I can't help but respect a true showman."
"Yeah, but he didn't even take the money," Tomura complained. "He didn't even destroy the pudding; he just beat up some heroes and then left."
"True," Mr. Compress considered. "However, sometimes, it's not about the destruction or the crime, but the message you seek to convey. J-Store has been engaging in blatantly illegal business practices and has thus far faced no consequences."
"J-Store is as corrupt as corporations get," Spinner added from the other couch while shining his katanas. "They don't even hire mutants in rural areas. That's gotta be unconstitutional, right?"
"That's just capitalism working as intended…" Tomura grumbled. "If he really wanted to punish J-Store, he'd just burn every store in the nation to the ground…"
Tomura's eyes widened, and he stared at the laptop screen. "Burn every store to the ground, huh…"
"What are you thinking, Tomura?" Kurogiri asked from behind the kitchen counter.
Tomura slowly brought his gaze up from the screen and scanned the room. Kurogiri, Compress, and Spinner were all looking to him for direction, and even Twice had poked his head into the room from around the corner.
"League, I know what we're gonna do today," Tomura announced.
"Wait, are you suggesting we destroy every J-Store in the nation in one night?" Mr. Compress balked. "I'm not sure that even Santa Claus could accomplish that!"
"No, we don't move tonight," Tomura corrected. "We plan, and I know exactly how to do it."
His gaze shifted to Twice, who had fully entered the living room from the hallway at this point. "Twice!"
Twice was startled by the sudden address. "Yes, sir? Whaddya want?!"
"I have an insane idea, and you're gonna be key to pulling it off," Tomura began, looking at him with complete seriousness. "We'll have to address some things, though."
"'Kay… I don't like the sound of this at all."
"Spinner, Compress," Tomura called, and the two stepped over. "Grab Twice's arm and hold him in place."
The whites of Twice's mask bulged in apprehension as the two hesitantly did as they were instructed. "Wait, what? Kinky!"
"Do you trust me, Twice?" Tomura asked, and Twice was momentarily silent.
"…Yes," he answered without a single contradiction.
"Do you two trust me?" he addressed Spinner and Mr. Compress, and they both nodded. "Good. Dislocate his arm."
"Wait, hold on a sec-" Twice frantically began before his arm was yanked out of its socket. "GODDAMNIT!"
"Reset it," Tomura instructed, and the two did so with a touch more difficulty. Twice clutched his arm and shuffled away to a corner, sliding to the ground while he nursed the pain.
Tomura stepped over to Twice and kneeled to his level. "What are you feeling right now?"
"Pain. Suffering."
"Are you dissolving?"
"…No," Twice muttered before it finally hit him. "I'm not dissolving?! I'm not dissolving! I'm the real one!"
A genuine (yet very much unsettling) smile creeped onto Tomura's face. "Yes, yes you are. You have been the entire time."
Twice started tearing up, and he launched for Tomura and wrapped him in a bear hug, completely forgetting the excruciating pain his arm was in. "Thank you! Thank you so much, boss!"
"Yeah, yeah," Tomura grumbled, waiting impatiently for Twice to let him go. Thankfully, he did, and Tomura stood back up. "Now that the first step to getting past that hangup is out of the way, it's time the League of Anti-Villains officially got its name out there."
Yokumiru Mera thought that he could never feel more uncomfortable, more unsettled, more afraid in his life than when he was face to face with a smiling Madame President a few weeks back. He was certain that there could not exist anything on the planet more horrifying than that visual, and before he entered his boss's office on this grey, dreary morning, he would have bet his entire pension that nothing would ever come about to strike as much fear into his heart than that one instance.
With that in mind, no one could blame him for nearly shitting himself when he was met with a visibly scowling Madame President sitting behind her desk.
"Sit down, Mera," Madame President coldly ordered, and Mera quickly obliged. "What was your objective at the provisional licensing exam?"
"…To weed out the candidates and only accept the cream of the crop?" Mera cautiously ventured.
"Correct. What was your secondary objective?"
"…To watch Izuku Midoriya closely and assess him harshly."
"Correct. What happened at the exam?"
Mera sighed. "Izuku Midoriya passed."
"And why is that?"
"He defeated a top pro in the nation in single combat."
"And why is this an issue?"
Mera took a minute to think over what she was actually asking him. "Uh, because he's a teenager?"
"The more pressing issue, Mera," Madame President all but growled, sending a swift shiver through the man.
"Because several phone recordings of the battle were leaked online."
"Correct," she ground out. "With all of that in mind, who is to be punished for this?"
Mera sighed again. "Me."
"No. You did your job. This failure is not on you."
That caught Mera by surprise. He was definitely expecting this to be his final day on the planet.
"This failure lies squarely at the feet of Mirko and Gang Orca," Madame President continued. "If I cannot trust two of the most capable pros in the nation to handle an inexperienced teenager, then either my pro heroes are grossly incompetent, or the teenager in question is far more dangerous than anticipated. For this reason, Izuku Midoriya will be upgraded from mid-level to high priority, pending an A-rank designation."
Oh… well, shit. That certainly wasn't good for Midoriya. If Mera was correct, those who weren't explicitly villains weren't given ranks, merely levels of priority for surveillance. Ranks were typically reserved for apprehension purposes once those targets either crossed the threshold of criminality/villainy or were simply too dangerous to be left to their own devices. An A-rank entailed apprehension by any means and the use of lethal force if necessary. An S-rank entailed apprehension if possible with lethal force being preferred. High priority surveillance usually ended up in an A or S-rank designation at some point.
Mera internally groaned. This was guaranteed to get ugly in the future.
"That is all I needed from you," Madame President spoke up. "You are dismissed. Tell Hawks to enter when you leave."
Mera did not waste any time vacating his seat and exiting the room, signaling to the waiting hero that he could enter as he walked down the hall to get as far away from her office as he could.
The teenaged clerk of the J-Store was bored out of his mind. He got this minimum wage job to help out with his family's expenses by making some easy money after school, but he wasn't prepared for how mind-numbing it would be. Nothing ever happened at this particular store, not even a robbery. He silently lamented that the Gentle Criminal guy didn't barge into his store and rob-but-not-really the place because that would at least make the job interesting for once.
He sighed as he rang up the carton of Fluffy Pudding for the unwitting patron that would take home an expired container. It wasn't his problem anyway. He didn't get paid enough to care.
The next patron up was a girl about his age wearing a grey hoodie with the hood pulled over her head. He could somewhat make out blonde strands of hair peeking through above her tired, cat-like eyes, but his attention quickly shifted to the container of miso paste she placed on the counter.
"500 yen," he said after ringing it up, then the door opened again, and the teen was taken by surprise at the entrance. "Death Arms?"
"Off-duty," the casually dressed Death Arms said with a friendly smile. "Just picking up some protein powder."
The blonde patron at the counter grew apprehensive, though, tugging her hood further over her head and sliding the money across the counter before quickly leaving.
"Weird…" he muttered before just as quickly shrugging it off. He was about to ring up the next customer in line when the door opened again.
"Everybody, out."
Everyone's attention shifted to the decaying door as a frighteningly familiar man covered in hands entered the store. Behind him were several other villains that had appeared in the news, namely at the Battle of Kamino. Death Arms returned the protein powder in his hand to the shelf, and he stepped forward.
"The League of Villains," Death Arms sneered. "Robbing a convenience store seems beneath you guys, and on my day off of all times. Guess it doesn't matter-"
Death Arms was cut off by Tomura closing the distance between them in the blink of an eye and slapping a palm onto his chest, reducing him to minuscule chunks in no time at all.
"Everyone who doesn't want to end up like this asshole, out!" Tomura ordered again. "We're not here for any of you."
Without having to be told again, all of the remaining patrons flooded out of the hole where the door used to be. Tomura turned his attention to the scared teenager behind the counter, and he approached.
"Hey, kid," he addressed him. "You like this job?"
When the teenager fearfully shook his head in the negative, Tomura reached into his pocket and tossed a wad of cash at him. "Then take 200,000 yen to get the fuck outta here and live to see another day."
The cashier fumbled with the money, then when he finally got a handle of it and pocketed the cash, he bolted out of the store. Tomura watched him leave, then checked his watch.
"It's almost time," he muttered. "Everything should be in position. Spinner, pull up a stream. The originals are probably starting by now."
True to the word of the duplicate of Tomura made from Twice's quirk, the real League was standing on the roof of a building across the river from J-Store's headquarters in the Shinagawa Ward of Tokyo.
"It's about time to begin," Tomura muttered, staring at his watch. "Spinner, we live?"
"Just about," he answered, various duplicates of him preparing to livestream the entire ordeal. "We're going live on every platform we can in 30 seconds!"
Tomura nodded. "Twice, is the logo done?"
"Finishing touches!" Twice shouted back. "Give us two more hours!"
"Compress, you got the drone?" Tomura asked the third member of the group.
"Of course," he confirmed, producing a marble and crushing it to reveal a drone with a camera attached that would stream an aerial view of the event.
"Bitchin'," he grinned. "We're about to make our mark."
"However, sometimes, it's not about the destruction or the crime, but the message you seek to convey."
'Oh, our message will be heard loud and clear,' Tomura mused to himself.
"Going live in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1!" Spinner shouted, and Tomura stepped forward.
"Ladies and gentlemen of Japan, you all know who I am," Tomura began, grabbing one of the hands on his arm and dusting it, "but you don't know why I'm here. Let's get one thing clear before we begin. I'm not here on behalf of the League of Villains because the League of Villains is dead."
He grabbed another hand and reduced it to dust. "It died with the Symbol of Evil."
He grabbed two more hands and dusted them, as well. "It died with the Quirk Thief."
He grabbed and dusted another pair of hands. "It died when I killed All For One and freed myself and the League of our shackles."
With only 4 hands remaining, Tomura turned to look at the J-Store headquarters. "So, why are we here? Well, some of you might have seen Gentle Criminal's latest video, but judging from the views, probably not too many of you. That said, he raised a decent point. J-Store has been knowingly selling expired goods at full price and denies knowledge of it ever happening, and no one was ever punished for that. That is how it works, right? You get punished for doing bad things, right?"
Tomura dusted one of the four remaining hands and chuckled. "Obviously not. Those rules don't apply to everyone. Corporations, politicians, bureaucrats, and anyone with enough money can do evil deeds in broad daylight without facing any consequences. But a regular guy like you or me? Absolutely not."
Tomura grabbed one of the three remaining hands and crumbled it, leaving only the two on his head. "So, if the precious law won't hold these entities accountable when they do villainous things, who will? That's where we come in. If they won't own the skeletons in their closet, then we'll shed some light on them in their stead and hold them accountable, like so."
A small portal opened up beside Tomura, and Tomura stuck his hand through it and placed five fingers onto the massive building. Within an instant, loud cracks reverberated through the ward, and a thunderous rumble followed. The building began to sway and buckle before finally collapsing, blanketing the area in a gargantuan cloud of smoke, dust, and rubble, serenaded by Tomura's hysterical laughter.
"CORRUPT BUREAUCRATS IN THE HERO PUBLIC SAFETY COMMISION AND THE BLOODSTAINED HEROES THEY GOVERN!" Tomura bellowed to the cameras amidst the destruction and mayhem below them.
Meanwhile, Twice gave Mr. Compress the signal, and Compress flew the drone into the sky directly above them.
"SLIMY POLITICIANS IN THE NATIONAL DIET!" Tomura continued, snatching the hand on the back of his head and dusting it. "FACELESS CORPORATIONS THAT CARE ONLY FOR PROFIT AND PROFIT ALONE! HELL, EVEN BIGOTS AND HATE GROUPS LIKE THE CREATURE REJECTION CLAN! ALL OF THEM WILL BE TAKEN TO TASK FOR THE DAMAGE THEY SO CARELESSLY DO TO A DEFENSELESS POPULOUS!"
Twice retrieved a match from his costume, lit it, then threw it on the large pile of sticks he arranged to spell out their logo, setting it ablaze for the aerial shot. Up above, the drone camera captured a flaming LoAV on top of the building.
Tomura fell to his knees and spread his arms in front of the blaze behind him, and the four other members of the LoAV flanked him. His voice was even more hoarse than his skin from all of the screaming, but he wasn't done. He grabbed the final hand of his costume, the one covering his face, and he clenched his fist, reducing the last vestige of his former persona and the life that preceded it to dust.
"We are the League of Anti-Villains," Tomura rasped. "And we will save Japan from itself."