#but if i do it'll probably be a fast paced drama revolving around trickery plots and delicate maneuvering

[simkjrs]

black dirt under your feet

villain au, drabble, 6k. content warnings for: murder, instances of suicidal ideation, self harm through inaction, past/referenced/implied child abuse

**EDIT: this story is separate from and unrelated to the villain!izuku comedy au

———

On his fourteenth birthday, Izuku murders his father.

For all that this man has lived for centuries, has manipulated Japan from the shadows, has stolen so many Quirks – it is almost simply, stupidly easy to kill him in the end.

Father isn’t the only one who can steal others’ quirks. Back at the hideout, Shigaraki is lying catatonic in a back room; Izuku now has hands that should not be touched. He steps into the room and stands there quietly, waiting.

“Izuku,” Father says from behind his horrendous skull mask. Wires and tubes hiss and shake as he speaks.

“Father,” Izuku acknowledges. His heart thumps in his chest. He made sure to loop the camera footage so it looked like Shigaraki was just sleeping, but what if Father noticed? What if this – stupid, desperate – plan fails?

Father taps his fingers on the armrest of his seat. “I see you’re turning fourteen,” he says.

No shit, Father, Izuku thinks sardonically.

“You’re progressing along nicely in your studies,” he muses. “Your last assignments went well.” The next moments are laden heavily with thought, and then he says, “Do you want anything for your birthday?”

The correct answer here is no, Izuku knows, and Father knows that he knows – but Izuku very deliberately hesitates a half-second too long before he says so.

Father tilts his head. “Be forthright with your wishes when you speak to me,” he says, an implicit command to speak his mind.

Izuku swallows. Here is where it begins. “I…um, I would like to go see my mother again, please. Sir,” he tacks on. It’s weird, play-acting as himself, but it’s so easy, too. Performances are so much more real when you put yourself into them, right?

There is a silence, and then Father says, “I thought I disabused you of the notion years ago.”

“I–” Izuku presses his lips together. “I know you disapprove, but – I’ve – I mean, I’ve done good this year. I’ve done better. I can get around places without being caught, and I know how to wipe my tracks – and wipe memory too, if I need to, a-and – I’ll be careful. I can do it–”

His carefully constructed babble is cut off when Father shifts. “Izuku,” he says, and clicks his tongue. “How long will you cling to your mother? Are you still a child? You cannot stay blind to everything but her forever.”

“I’m not blind,” Izuku says indignantly. “You said it yourself. I did good on my last assignments. And I don’t – I don’t even want that much, I just. I don’t want her to think I’m dead. She doesn’t deserve that. Can’t I see her? Even just once?”

The silence that follows is even longer. Izuku pretends to jitter his foot, then stops. His heart beats loudly in his ears as Father says, “It seems I have not taught you as well as I hoped.”

Hook.

“Come here,” Father commands.

Line.

Izuku doesn’t obey immediately, painting subtle lines of hesitance and anger and fear in his body.

“Come here.” Father’s voice is colder, now. Izuku lurches forward and takes deliberate steps towards the chair Father sits in, stopping just outside arm’s reach.

“Closer.”

Izuku takes one step closer.

Father turns his head towards him. “You are too naive,” he says. “Do you think your mother would still want to see you, after all these years? She has grieved already. You are selfish for wanting to bring back that pain, and more selfish to willingly endanger our secrets by revealing yourself to a soft, civilian woman who has no power and no strength.” Izuku feels punched in the stomach. “I thought perhaps you had tempered yourself, but it seems you are still soft and ruled by emotion. You have no sense at all. Remember, Izuku, you brought this on yourself.”

Father stretches his hand out to touch Izuku’s forehead.

Sinker.

Izuku snatches Father’s wrist before he can touch him. Father doesn’t realize what’s happening until it’s already started – and then he screams, a terrible and ugly sound whose sonic force shreds Izuku’s skin and peels sheets of blood from his arms. He’s wrenching himself up from his seat, pulling away with all the force of his strength Quirks – but Izuku snatches the Quirks away, pulls them to himself and steals them for his own. His grip does not break. He watches with dispassionate expectation; it’s too late. Father is already disintegrating – his arm, his torso, and then his legs and head, all crumbling to ash on the chair and dusting to the ground.

The end of Izuku’s world is so soft.

Izuku stares at the ash. He feels like he should feel something, but there’s nothing there, just the same aching emptiness that he carries with him every day. Izuku tries smiling, and whispers to himself, “You did it,” but it is small and hollow in this space. He stops smiling.

It’s a shame, Izuku thinks, that Shigaraki’s Quirk doesn’t work on its wielder.

Izuku sits down in the chair Father once occupied, and the ash stirs around him, but he can’t find it in him to care other than a mental, This is kind of fucked up. He curls up, and accidentally brushes the chair with his hand. The chair arm crumbles under him. When his hand lands on the chair, it disintegrates under him as well, and Izuku makes no move to pull his hand away. The crumbling chair deposits him in a soft pile of dust.

He doesn’t care. This is good enough. There’s nothing left to do now but to wait for someone to discover what he did and kill him. Izuku lays down and lets the world fade away until it’s nothing but ash and cold tile pressed against his cheek.

And then nothing more.

–

“–zuku! Izuku! Wake up!”

Izuku mumbles as the voice pulls him out of the heavy darkness. “Leave me ‘lone,” his voice says, and it bounces loudly in his skull, pulling him further to consciousness. He tries to hang onto the oblivion of sleep, but cruelly, it begins slipping away.

“Oh, thank god,” the voice says, and then Izuku feels a pair of hands hooking under his arms and pulling him up. Izuku lashes out instinctively, and then he flinches back.

“Don’t touch me,” he says hysterically, or maybe it would be hysterical if he had the fear to fuel it. “I’ll disintegrate you. Don’t touch me.”

“Shh. I know,” says the voice. Whoever it is picks Izuku up carefully, bridal style, and Izuku pulls his bleeding hands close to his chest. He looks up blearily and squints.

“Kurogiri?”

“Not quite.”

But it’s so dark in here. “What do you want?” Izuku says. “I killed him.”

“I know,” says the voice.

It doesn’t make any sense. If they know, Izuku should be dead. He wants to ask what happened, what changed, but he’s so tired, and his eyes slide inexorably shut. It doesn’t matter anyways, does it?

“Sleep well,” says the person carrying him, and Izuku slips back into a blissful, dreamless dark.

—

Izuku slowly moves back towards wakefulness. He opens his eyes, feeling too hot and too cold all at once. His head hurts. His hands are stiff with scabs and dried blood. The room is dark, the wooden walls worn; he recognizes it instantly as his room behind Kurogiri’s bar. I’m still holding onto Shigaraki’s Quirk, he thinks. He has to give it back. Izuku swings his legs out of his bed; they feel shaky and heavy as he stumbles towards the door and goes down the hall to Shigaraki’s room. He pushes the door open. It crumbles to ash, the doorknob bouncing onto the floor. Izuku cringes; he accidentally touched it with all five fingers.

Shigaraki looks thin and ill, his blankets draping over his limbs and dwarfing his form. Izuku kneels down by the bed and carefully places four fingers on Shigaraki’s forehead, slowly releasing the hold he has on Shigaraki’s Quirk. It flows quickly back to its rightful owner, and Shigaraki opens his eyes with a gasp.

His eyes dart immediately to Izuku. “YOU,” he hisses in a horrible scream, lurching out of the bed with his hands outstretched for Izuku’s throat.

Izuku rolls out of the way, but Shigaraki catches his jacket, and it dissolves in his hands. I liked that jacket, Izuku thinks, staring blankly at the ash pile. When he looks up again, Shigaraki is looming above him, his hands inches from his face.

Izuku flinches back, already knowing it’s too late to dodge – but no touch comes, and he opens his eyes again to see black rifts opened in the air in front of him. Shigaraki lets out an incoherent scream of rage even as Kurogiri says sharply from the door, “Shigaraki. Stop.”

What?

“He attacked me!” Shigaraki howls, pulling his hands out of Kurogiri’s warp portals. “He stole my Quirk!”

“And evidently, he just gave it back,” Kurogiri says drily. It’s hard to see any movement of his head behind the black miasma he uses to obscure his face, but he seems to tilt his head towards the ashes of Izuku’s jacket.

“What are you doing, Kurogiri?” Izuku says.

He gets the distinct impression of Kurogiri lifting an unimpressed eyebrow. “I’m mediating a conflict between members of the Villain Alliance.”

“Members of the Villain Alliance,” Izuku repeats, and laughs disbelievingly. “Are you – are you kidding me? I just murdered my father. I just murdered Sensei.”

This time, when Shigaraki tries to kill him, Kurogiri opens a portal that sends him tumbling into the wall. Shigaraki screams and curses, but doesn’t try again.

“You did,” Kurogiri says calmly. “But the Villain Alliance is not disbanded just for that. We simply need a new leader. Until then, Izuku-kun, you are the one who knew the logistics behind funding and managing our base the best.”

Izuku looks at him. Then he says, “That’s a stupid reason to keep me around; you know enough to figure it out without me. What do you really want?”

Kurogiri sighs and mutters something under his breath that sounds a little bit like damn precocious children. “I have my own reasons. Just know that in the meanwhile, you may stay here without reprisal from other members of the alliance. That includes you, Shigaraki-kun.”

“He killed Sensei,” Shigaraki snarls. “I don’t care what you say. I’m going to kill him. And who put you in charge, anyways? I’m the one Sensei chose to be his successor, not you! You can’t tell me what to do.”

“Kurogiri is an actual adult who knows what he’s doing,” Izuku says.

“Shut up!”

Kurogiri reaches up and pinches the bridge of his nose, presumably. It’s hard to tell. “We can discuss arrangements more later. Why are you out of bed? You have a fever.”

“Oh.” That would explain why Izuku feels so shitty right now. Why does he have a fever, though? He hasn’t done anything lately that would put him at that kind of risk –

Except sleep on the cold floor of a medical lab for who knows how long. Izuku grimaces, and then he remembers – “Kurogiri, who brought me back here?” Pause. “Why?”

Kurogiri, once again, somehow manages to give off the impression of raising an eyebrow. “You seem quite certain that everyone here is ready to throw away their connections. Kaminari brought you back. He has been quite worried about you.”

There’s something reproachful in Kurogiri’s tone, and Izuku doesn’t even know where to begin making sense of that, let alone the fact that – Kaminari came looking for him. Kaminari found him in Father’s lab – and how? Father never told anyone its location besides Izuku and Shigaraki – and Kaminari still brought him back here?

Izuku doesn’t get it.

He still doesn’t get it when Kurogiri herds him out of Shigaraki’s room and back to his own, or when Kurogiri tells him to go back to sleep, or when Kurogiri closes the door behind him and leaves Izuku sitting all alone in the dark.

–

When he sleeps off his fever, another seven hours have passed. The Villain Alliance has been without a leader for nineteen hours.

And Izuku, for whatever reason, has not yet been killed. He’s alive. And as long as he’s here, then – he should take responsibility for his actions.

First he goes back to Father’s lab and looks through all the files and papers there. There are books on Quirks and Quirk biology, and more medical textbooks than he can skim in a night; he sets those aside and instead turns his attention to the connections, contacts, and projects that Father had set up. He looks through the books – for the equipment, for the properties they use, for the fake companies and bank accounts they front. The money and supplies have to come from somewhere, Izuku knows – because he’s the one Father usually sends out on these errands.

So Izuku maintains Father’s network. Nothing he does really changes from before – except that he’s the one making all the final decisions, now.

Kurogiri periodically checks on Izuku to see how the progress is going. At first, Izuku gives Kurogiri summaries of what he’s working on, and tries to give the big decisions to Kurogiri. And sometimes, Kurogiri shoulders the responsibility. But he also asks Izuku for his thoughts and opinions on the current situation, and sometimes he only gives his thoughts and leaves the final choice to Izuku.

Izuku isn’t sure if Kurogiri is leading him, or if he’s being pushed into leading Kurogiri.

Kaminari hangs around, sometimes. Izuku doesn’t really know what to say to him, so he doesn’t say anything to him at all. He just ducks his head and looks at his papers and finds an excuse to leave the bar. He can always feel Kurogiri’s judgment and Kaminari’s gaze when he does that.

Shigaraki is still seething with hatred. He wants Izuku dead. This is the only thing that really seems to make sense to Izuku these days. But Kurogiri always calms him down, turns his murderous intent aside, and instead tells Shigaraki that Izuku is still needed.

In fact, sometimes Kurogiri sits Izuku and Shigaraki down and asks Shigaraki what he wants to do now, with the Villain Alliance. Without Father’s guidance, they are all searching for direction. For the most part, the conversations go a little something like this:

“I’m going to take the noumu and kill All Might,” Shigaraki hisses.

“The noumu are stable, but they’re not ready,” Izuku says. “We don’t have anyone with the medical know-how to integrate the different body parts properly. And at any rate, the noumu are a wasteful project; it costs too much money and time. We should be focusing our attention on our human resources.”

“The noumu aren’t ready because you killed Sensei,” Shigaraki snarls, and lurches across the table to attack, and then Kurogiri has to step in and stop them from getting into a fight.

They never get much done, those conversations.

It makes Izuku wonder why he’s doing this, as the days go on. Why he’s still with the Villain Alliance, why he’s still working so hard to make sure everything goes smoothly, why he’s so… compliant. Because he doesn’t know what else to do, maybe. Because he doesn’t know where to go. But – he’s still alive. He thought he would be dead at this point, but he isn’t, and – Father isn’t here anymore. He doesn’t have to stay. 

He could do anything.

…

A few days later, instead of returning from one of his self-assigned tasks negotiating with a party of interest, he takes the train to his old home in Musutafu.

It’s almost exactly the same as he remembers – old, sun-faded streets and slightly run-down apartment houses scattered down the side – but at the same time, it’s not. He walks gingerly down the sidewalk as if at any moment it could come alive and eat him. Everything feels soothing and jarring at the same time, as though he turned away for a moment and when he came back, everything was three degrees off from where it was supposed to be.

Mom’s apartment still has the same faded green-patterned curtains on the windows, the same vases on the windowsill. Izuku can’t quite bring himself to walk across the street up the stairs and knock on the door. Instead, he stands on the sidewalk, agonized with indecision. Can he just – could he just – is it really so easy?

Is coming home really so easy?

His foot, poised to take a step forward, retracts and returns softly to the ground. There’s a lump in his throat. What if – what if Mom doesn’t recognize him? What if he tells her who she is, and she doesn’t believe him – and then, if she does believe him, then – the questions. Where has he been, and why hasn’t he come back before now, and – why didn’t you kill your father earlier – or maybe even, you shouldn’t have killed your father at all–

– and even if he does get his happy ending, what’s to stop someone from finding him again and dragging him back into the criminal underworld?

He clenches his fists, feeling the nails dig into his palms. Father was right. He shouldn’t have come back. Mom has already mourned her lost child, she must have moved on by now. Izuku, here – all he’ll be doing is stirring up trouble.

But he wants. He so desperately wants.

He’s so wrapped up in his own thoughts that he doesn’t even notice anyone approaching him until they snap out, “Hey. Who the fuck are you?”

Izuku’s flinch is carefully suppressed through years of practice. He slouches into a deliberately relaxed pose and shoves his hands into his pockets, giving a calculatedly lazy glance to the side. He’s greeted with spiky blond hair, suspicious and narrowed red eyes – the realization hits him in the chest. This is Kacchan, grown up, taller than him and wearing a flannel shirt with jeans that sag.

“Just passing by,” Izuku replies, moving his lips to smile pleasantly at his childhood fr… well, he’s not really sure if they were friends. Maybe they were.

Kacchan scowls at him. “Well, pass by faster. Don’t fucking stand around and stare at people’s homes. Shit’s creepy.”

Izuku isn’t sure why, but his first reaction is just to laugh in Kacchan’s face. Creepy. Heh. He has done far worse than benevolently loiter in a neighborhood. This doesn’t even register on his radar. Kacchan, thunderous, takes a threatening step forward, but Izuku holds up a hand to stave him off and says, “Sorry, sorry, no, you’re completely right. I’ll just be on my way, then.” He smiles at Kacchan, then turns to walk away.

But Kacchan grabs his arm before he can go, turning him back around and staring at him with burning red eyes. He scowls. It’s almost funny, the way it’s supposed to be threatening, when it feels like such a distant and small thing. Izuku raises an eyebrow, lips curling into a smile. “Yes?”

“Where do I know you from?” Kacchan says suspiciously. Izuku bursts into laughter, but quickly composes himself.

“Like I said, I’m just passing by,” he says, amused. “I mean, it’d be quite a coincidence if we’d met before, wouldn’t it?”

He pulls away then, raises a hand in a lazy wave and saunters away. Surely, the body language and confidence will throw Kacchan off.

He can feel Kacchan’s eyes on him as he goes.

–

Izuku can’t go home. Not yet. He needs to craft a plausible excuse, a foolproof background that will hold up against all police investigation. In it, Izuku has to be completely blameless – otherwise, how can he go back to his life?

But more than that – he needs to make sure that the Villain Alliance can’t drag him back ever again. And to do that, Izuku needs to destroy the Villain Alliance entirely.

The Villain Alliance is his mistake, too, in part. It may not have been entirely willing on his part, but he has been helping it grow and maintain power for the past six years. He did this; he’s responsible for cleaning it up before he goes home.

It wouldn’t be hard to throw the Villain Alliance into chaos, he thinks. He’s not the official leader, but unofficially, with Father gone, Izuku is running everything behind the scenes. He knows all of their weak points. Izuku could easily make arrangements to leak that information to the Police Force.

But – if he leaks it all at once, there would be too much for the Police Force to investigate at once, and he can’t trust them to be competent and keep quiet about it. Someone would notice. Izuku would know; he has spies in the right places. Kurogiri would take action, and the Villain Alliance would survive and regroup. Izuku wants complete annihilation.

He could let the entire criminal underworld find out that Father passed away, he supposes, because there will be a period of violence and upheaval as everyone tries to claim the territories that were once Father’s. The fighting will weaken the Villain Alliance. But an outbreak of crime isn’t what he wants, and he doesn’t want any of Father’s people to simply be absorbed into another criminal group, either.

What he needs is a slow demolition that no one notices; the heroes chipping away at the Villain Alliance’s resources until a single strike is all that’s needed to crush it, once and for all. But if the Villain Alliance was weakening, Kurogiri and the others would definitely notice – the other criminal elements in their areas of operation would jump on their weaknesses like sharks.

So to set up the Villain Alliance’s complete destruction, he needs to weaken everyone else at the same time. But how…?

An idea starts to take shape in his head.

It is a terrible, horrible, ambitious and bad idea. It is unreasonably audacious. It will take at least a year to set up, and another to orchestrate it. But – if everything goes right – if Izuku pulls it off – he wins, and he gets to go home.

And the other bonus, well… Izuku smiles thinly to himself. He did used to dream of being a hero. He was disillusioned long ago, but… this, he can do.

Izuku gets to his feet from the park bench he was sitting on and makes his slow, winding way back to Kurogiri’s bar.

–

Izuku throws himself into his work, no longer concerned only with maintaining the bare-bone operations that allow the Villain Alliance to keep functioning. He has heroes, criminals, people and their backgrounds and skills and motivations to check. Before he starts playing the game, he needs to know all the pieces on the board… especially the ones that are his.

The first person he really talks to is Kaminari.

He falls in step with the other boy as he leaves the bar, one day. Kaminari gives him a surprised look, probably because Izuku hasn’t initiated or participated in a conversation with him since killing Father.

“Kaminari,” Izuku says, hands in his pockets and eyes trained on the street, “why did you come looking for me, that day?”

There’s a beat of silence. Then, “Did you not want me to?”

Izuku lets out a slow breath and slides his gaze to the side, looking at the other boy from the corner of his eyes. Kaminari is looking at him with something that looks an awful lot like melancholy, or hurt, and Izuku isn’t sure why. He… the two of them don’t have anything in common.

“I don’t understand why you’d do it,” he says. “I’ve never… we’ve never really talked. We’re not friends.”

Kaminari frowns at him. “I did it because I like you, Izuku,” he says.

What?

“You’re always quiet and tired, but you do your best. You get things done. I admire that. And besides that, you’re kind. You’ve helped me on assignments before, even when you didn’t have to, and you never asked anything in return. You take care of your own. But you’re always on your own, so I figured I’d keep an eye out for you, too.”

Izuku doesn’t know what to do with any of that, so he just huffs a little bit and says, “You tracked me down to Father’s most secret, hidden, and well-defended hideout just to ‘keep an eye out’? Isn’t that a little much?”

“Your visits never take more than an hour, and it looked like you were planning something. I was worried,” Kaminari says.

It looked like he was planning something. Izuku shoves his hands further into his pockets at that. What signs did he leave behind…? “I killed the leader of the organization you chose to follow,” he says, instead of any of the other questions he wants to ask.

“…Did you think we were going to kill you?”

Izuku doesn’t say anything. That’s answer enough.

“Izuku,” Kaminari says, sounding almost in disbelief now, “everyone in the Villain Alliance respects you for the work you do.”

Izuku snorts.

“No, you listen to me,” he insists. “You take care of your own. You get things done. Do you think people don’t notice that? People may say there’s no honor between thieves, but it’s not entirely true. We recognize you for your strength and ability as a leader. Some of us may not like you, but we sure as all hell respect you. All for One may have been the one passing down decisions, Shigaraki may have been the heir, but you were the one who carried everything out and made sure we all came back.”

Izuku closes his eyes. This isn’t something he’s proud of. “There’s no need to waste human capital,” is all he says. “It was an impersonal decision. You’re reading too much into this.”

“Bullshit,” Kaminari says. “You think I don’t know who requisitions supplies for all of us? You got Hagakure her favorite food and the book she wanted for her birthday. She’s still hounding me to tell her who did it so she can thank them.”

Izuku clenches his jaw as he looks for the right words to say. “Fine,” he grits out. “Fine. If you know so much about me, then you should know how I even came to be part of the Villain Alliance, shouldn’t you? I don’t – I don’t belong here.”

Kaminari smiles slightly, though not out of any seeming joy. “Yeah. You never wanted to be a villain.”

“… I didn’t even plan on still being alive at this point, Kaminari.”

The other boy looks at him, serious and still.

“You’re the one who brought me back,” Izuku says. “I don’t know what I’m working to do anymore. Tell me what you came to the Villain Alliance to achieve. I’ll make it happen.”

“Wha – wait, what? Why me? I mean – isn’t that a little too much?”

Izuku comes to a stop and turns to face a wide-eyed Kaminari. “You were the one who wanted me to keep living. So give me a reason to live.”

“I – I–”

Maybe he’s put too much weight on Kaminari, out of the blue. He hopes not – he’s just trying to fish information from Kaminari, as well as determine their bond and forge a deeper sense of connection between them. But it’s too late to turn back now, and besides, Izuku thinks, if he hadn’t found a reason to keep going in the thought of returning home, he really might have latched onto Kaminari instead.

“–I hate our current state of society,” Kaminari says, finally. “I want… I want to force everyone to question what they’re doing. Confront the corruption within the hero industry. Address the myriad problems running rampant and unchecked among the poor, the ostracized, the downtrodden.” His voice grows stronger, more powerful, as he speaks. “I want to be part of an organization so great and so terrible, it exposes the dirty, crawling underbelly and the rotten core of this society, pretending so hard to be at peace.”

Izuku listens, and waits. And Kaminari looks at him again, his eyes burning with the passion of revolution and the promise of great and terrible things. “I want to change the face of Japan.”

Izuku smiles then, mirthless, but satisfied all the same.

“If that is what you want,” he says. “We’ll change the face of Japan.”

–

The second person Izuku talks to, he doesn’t plan on.

Izuku steps into the bar after a long day at one of the Villain Alliance’s fake company’s properties, filling out fake tax forms and checking in with some of the local informants, only to Stain lurking in the shadows by the door. Stain melts out of the darkness, his mask grimy and rough in the dim light. “Hey, brat,” he says, mouth drawn up into that terrible grin of his. “I’ve been waiting to speak to you.”

Izuku eyes him warily, but he still tilts his head towards the back door and heads out so they can speak in private. Stain follows him out into the alley, where the cracked pavement is littered with the hazy dirty shapes of trash and discarded furniture. The sun is setting; the alley is almost entirely cast in shadow, with only the dim, grimy amber light from Kurogiri’s bar to spill out the door and light the street.

“What can I help you with?” Izuku says.

Stain grins at him, exposing the unsettling gleam of his teeth. “Heard you killed All for One.”

Izuku just looks at Stain. He feels – well. Nothing much, just an odd and utter flatness like a metal sheet, in which Stain’s conversation opener is nothing more than a distorted reflection that only touches the surface.

His lack of reaction must be telling, because Stain throws his head back and laughs. “It’s always the quiet ones,” he says mirthfully. “So? Why’d you do it?”

“Does there have to be a reason?” Izuku replies. “I was tired of him, so I killed him. That’s all.”

The other villain seems amused, but he doesn’t press Izuku for more details. He just says, “What next, then?” Izuku raises an eyebrow, prompting Stain to explain, “What’s the Villain Alliance working towards now?”

“Ask Shigaraki.”

Stain grins at him again. “Can’t fool me, brat. You may be keeping Shigaraki around, but you’re the one calling the shots.”

“…At Kurogiri’s discretion. Ask him.”

This time, Stain doesn’t even bother to give any credence to Izuku’s response. “What are you plans for the Villain Alliance?”

Izuku deliberately relaxes his shoulders and puts his hands in his pockets, eyeing Stain. He’d ask why he wants to know, but… well, it’s pretty obvious. Izuku was the one who persuaded him to join the Villain Alliance in the first place; of course he’d be interested in what the Villain Alliance is doing.

“Before I answer that question,” he says, “how did you find out that I killed All for One? I’ve been keeping it quiet. Only the people immediately involved in the aftermath should know.”

Stain grins. “Can’t keep something that big hidden forever. The Villain Alliance has been a little too quiet for a while, and the modus operandi has shifted. There’s rumors started spreadin’ in the underground that the leadership’s changed. I did a little digging here, myself.”

“Who talked,” Izuku says flatly.

Stain laughs and doesn’t answer. “So, brat, what’ve you got planned?”

Izuku regards the other villain, deliberating on what to say. In the end, he settles with the truth – or, as close as he can get to the truth.

“I’m going to change the face of Japan,” he says. “Hero society will never be the same again.”

Stain smiles, slow and wide and horrible, and with that, Izuku knows – he’s got him hooked.

–

The talk with Stain really hits it home: the villains are starting to consider him the successor to All for One, and he intends on taking as much advantage of it as he can. Izuku talks to more people in the Villain Alliance, after that – the key figures, the low-level lackeys, just about everyone he can – feeling them out for their motivations, their goals, their allegiances. He starts moving his pieces, sending people out on new assignments, and setting things up.

The last person he talks to is Shigaraki.

He asks Kurogiri to set up one of the “talks” between himself and Shigaraki. The talks, as a whole, have improved; Shigaraki no longer tries to kill him every time, and instead has settled into a silent, resentful simmer where he refuses to talk to Izuku. Still, though; it’s about time they broke that stalemate. Kurogiri regards Izuku with his strange, blank eyes, but dips his head in agreement.

Shigaraki stalks into the room with a temper, throwing himself into his seat and not looking at Izuku, evidently intent on continuing to ignore Izuku. That’s fine. Izuku says, “I’m sorry for killing the person who saved you.”

Shigaraki twitches, his head swinging around to face Izuku. If there wasn’t a disembodied hand covering his face, he would probably be baring his teeth at Izuku right now. Actually, there’s no way to tell that he isn’t. Not that it really matters. “I’m not sorry for killing the person who took everything from me.”

“You took him from me,” Shigaraki snarls – perhaps the first words he’s spoken to Izuku in days.

“Yeah, I did,” Izuku says. “And it’s too late to do anything about that now. The Villain Alliance has gone too long without a tangible goal to strive for; we need to work things out and get it back together again.”

The other boy doesn’t respond; he turns his head away and crosses his arms, as if to say, I’m not talking to you again.

“Father intended for you to be the heir, didn’t he?” Izuku presses. “I’m trying to work with you, you know. I think it’s about time we have our negotiations.”

“Negotiations,” Shigaraki spits, like a dirty word.

“Negotiations,” Izuku agrees. “Everyone else who joined the Villain Alliance – they had the choice, and they knew what they were signing up for and what they’d get. I’m the only one who never got that. So we’re doing it now.”

“You killed Sensei,” Shigaraki says lowly, in his hoarse and rusty voice. “You get nothing.”

“I’m keeping the Villain Alliance on its feet while you’re throwing a temper tantrum about me killing Father,” Izuku returns. “You owe me.”

It’s the wrong thing to say. Shigaraki shoots to his feet, hands slamming down on the table as he looms above Izuku. The wood is beginning to crumble under his grip. “You owe me,” he hisses. “Making connections? Getting us funds? You could do it for the rest of your life and you would never pay enough to make up for Sensei’s death.”

Izuku feels a flash of rage at that, but he can’t lose his temper here. He takes a deep breath. “I’ll never owe anything for killing Father,” he says as calmly as he can, but it still comes out more heated than he meant to be. “He deserved it. He had it coming.”

“Shut up,” Shigaraki snarls, sweeping his arm across the table and knocking off the glasses of water Kurogiri gave them. They shatter on the floor. No one blinks an eye. “Sensei saved me! He gave me everything! A home! Guidance! Power! And what have you done? You’re nothing but a cheap bootlegged copy! What gave you the right to kill him?”

“Because I hated him,” Izuku hisses in a burst of vitriolic rage, and then he pulls himself up short, because – he didn’t mean to say that. He didn’t mean to be that honest.

But Shigaraki is actually looking at him now, and – and Izuku’s not going to throw that away. If it’s honesty Shigaraki wants, he’ll show him honesty.

“He was always telling me what to do,” Izuku snarls out accusingly. “He always made my choices for me. I hated being here, constrained and confined and always under his thumb. I hated that he used me like a fucking tool and nothing more. I hated him because I was never allowed to be my own person. So I killed him. He can’t make me do anything anymore. I’m never doing anything I don’t want to ever again.”

The words tear out of him, so angry and full of hate, it scares him – like if he gives it any more voice, then it’ll grow out of his control. He stops, mouth still drawn back in a snarl, and he lets out a breath shaky with such a burning hatred he’s afraid to say more.

Shigaraki is still staring at him. He doesn’t move, for a long moment, and then slowly, ever so slowly, he sits back down in his seat.

“I’m staying here, Shigaraki,” Izuku says, when he’s finally wrestled his emotions back under control. “I want to be able to work with you. But I’ll do it because I choose to, and not because you have any power over me. So we’re negotiating. Ask me what I want.”

Shigaraki shifts in his seat, and from between his fingers, under the fringes of his dry white hair, Izuku glimpses an eye staring out at him. “What do you want?”

“I want the Villain Alliance to grow,” Izuku says. “I want to make it greater than it ever was under Father’s rule. I want to make it the most feared, most reviled, and most powerful group in Japan – so powerful, no hero can take us down.”

Shigaraki’s eyes are fully trained on his now, boring into his skull. “How?” he queries, tilting his head and leaning in closer. The shadows in the room seem to dim and descend on them.

Izuku smiles thinly.

“I’m going to tear down the Symbol of Peace.”