#except for how i started playing again right as the shadow milk missions event ended

[catscidr]

genshin burning the kitchen down trying to cook while leakers show the worst characters ive ever laid my eyes upon, effectively ruining my hype and hope for better patches in the future, is killing my motivation to write for genshin im sorry. i miss my wife (nod krai could not come out any sooner)

[five-rivers]

Long Night in the Valley Chapter 11

“Where are you going?” demanded Shigaraki, scratching his neck in agitation. 

Touya Dabi looked lazily over his shoulder.  “I’ve got something to do in town.  Might as well avoid a second trip, right?  You all go on back.”

“Aw, Dabi, you’re ditching us?” asked Toga.

“Yup.  See you back at base.  Let me know if you manage to wear down the giant, ‘kay?”

“Wait, wait, does that mean—Does that mean he has a way to get out past all these guys unnoticed?  Pfft that guy doesn’t know anything!  What are you talking about?  You’re gonna get caught, Dabi!”

Dabi ignored Twice, just giving the League of Villains a lazy wave over his shoulder before making his way down off the roof via the fire escape. 

Yeah.  He had a way out.  More importantly, he had some curiosity to satisfy and chaos to sow.

Time to bother a certain little birdy…

.

Hawks was in the middle of directing the clean-up team when he got a text.  From a contact labeled ‘boyfriend.’ 

The person in question was not, in fact his boyfriend.  Why, then, did he have him labeled thusly?

Because the person calling him was, in fact, the villain he was milking for information, and that did not fit well into a contact list.  On top of being suspicious. 

(Oh, and he lived in anticipation of the moment someone noticed the name of the contact and reported it to the press, causing his expensive commission-funded PR team to drown in delusional fangirls.  It was the little things in life that made it worth living…)

(In his opinion, they deserved it for making him go through with that frankly traumatic series of photoshoots right after he turned eighteen.)

Hawks…  Considered ignoring the call.  Today, to be honest, had sucked.  He’d been informed the former #1 hero had been kidnapped, ordered to hunt down a (questionably innocent) teenager, and lost a fight with said teenager.  Adding pretend terrorism to that might just be the straw that broke the camel’s back. 

Except…  People’s lives depended on the intelligence he was collecting.  He retreated to the shadows of a nearby alley and answered the phone. 

“I’m sort of busy right now,” he said. 

“Yeah?  Busy getting your teeth kicked in by All Might Junior?” Dabi cackled. 

“If you called just to make fun of me, I’m hanging up.”

“Do you really think I’m that petty?”

“Yes,” said Hawks. 

“Aww, that burns, chicken wing.  What if I told you I had a tip?”

“Oh, yeah?” asked Hawks.  “About what?”

“C’mon, you know you have to pay for it.”

Hawks covered the phone receiver while he sighed.  “What do you want?” he asked, more composed. 

“Just a ride out of town.  Didn’t think you guys would be this antsy today.  Did the kid kick your hill over, too?”

If Hawks had been religious, he’d be praying for patience. 

“Just you, or are your friends here, too?” asked Hawks as he tapped in a Heronet request for everyone to be on the lookout for the league of villains on his other phone.  “I can give everyone a ride.”

“Nah, just l’il ol’ me,” said Dabi. 

Yeah.  Hawks hadn’t expected Dabi to own up to his crew being in town.  Even if they were. 

“I’ll see what I can do,” said Hawks, texting the hero commission.  Maybe they’d see fit to cut their losses as far as the spy gig went and—Nope, they were approving his request regarding Dabi.  “What about that tip?”

“Here’s half of it,” said Dabi.  “Get your guys to scrape some of the runt’s blood off the sidewalk and run a DNA test on it.  I hear he’s related to someone interesting.”

Hawks closed his eyes.  If Midoriya was related to All for One, it would be the metaphorical nail in the coffin for him.  Having your life and future ruined because of who your parents were…  Hawks hadn’t exactly experienced something like that, but he’d felt the fear of it for quite some time.  

(Despite everything, he still wanted to be a hero.)

“Thanks, for the heads up, dude.  Where should I pick you up?”

.

“You really need to check in on your safehouses more often,” said Izuku as Toshinori reapplied the bandages around his ankle.

“I know.  I was busy.  I’m sorry.  I haven’t exactly been helpful in all of this, have I?”

“I would have been caught within the hour, if you didn’t pick me up,” said Izuku.  “I wasn’t in my right mind.  But what now?”

“We can still go to Deika, I suppose,” said Toshinori.  “We just, ah…”  He looked up at Gigantomachia and Izuku followed his gaze with a wince. 

Yeah.  That wasn’t going to fly in any reasonably populous area. 

As he watched, Machia pulled a small box out from beneath his shirt.  Izuku blinked.  That was a two-way radio. 

Wait. 

Gigantomachia pressed a button, and the radio crackled to life.  “DOCTOR!” shouted Gigantomachia.  “I HAVE FOUND THE LITTLE LORD AND HIS FRIEND.  WHAT SHOULD I DO?”

Izuku tensed.  He and Toshinori should have realized Machia would have some way of communicating with the doctor.  After all, he’d said something along the lines of ‘call the doctor’ earlier. 

Sure, both Izuku and Toshinori were injured, exhausted, and distracted by events playing out inside their heads, but just because a mistake was understandable didn’t mean it was forgivable.  Or survivable. 

The radio crackled with static.  No response.

Izuku let out a sigh of relief as Machia repeatedly tried to raise the doctor on the other end of the line before breaking down in tears. 

.

“Are- Are you sure we shouldn’t pull over, Dr. Tsubasa?  Your phone is going off an awful lot.”

“I’ve been getting a lot of prank calls lately,” said Garaki, knuckles white around the steering wheel.  “I’m sure it’s nothing.”

He was, in fact, quite sure it wasn’t nothing.  But he couldn’t take a call from the League of Villains, or even Machia, with Midoriya Inko in the car. 

He checked his GPS.  Yes, Machia was staying still, which probably meant that he had Midoriya Izuku.  Hopefully, he had already disposed of All Might, and could, therefore, devote his energy to keeping the Midoriyas from escaping and Midoriya Inko from attempting to kill Garaki once they arrived.  And—

No, he was moving again.  Curse the creature.  How hard could it be to keep one teenager in place?

True, the teenager was the son of All for One and starting to grow into his terrifying legacy, but really. 

“And you’re sure your friend will help us keep Izuku from being arrested?” asked Inko.  She had been asking him some version of this question every few minutes since they got in the car.

“Quite sure,” said Garaki.  He had been giving some version of this answer every few minutes since they got in the car.

“Is he… a lawyer of some kind?”

The picture of Gigantomachia as a lawyer was so incongruous that Garaki flinched and nearly drove off the road. 

“No,” he said, perfectly calmly, not at all freaking out over what All for One would do to him if he involved Inko in a car accident.  He laughed nervously.  Oh, he’d better hope the accident killed him.  Goodness. 

“You have your driver’s license, right?” asked Inko.

“Yes,” said Garaki.  His phone started buzzing again.  He ignored it in favor of checking the GPS again. 

Oh, dear.  He knew where Machia was going. 

This could be… interesting.  He glanced at Inko.  Very interesting.

At least he knew how to get there.

.

“I’m just saying,” said Izuku, who had been relieved far too early in the game.  “I really, really don’t get along with Shigaraki Tomura.  I think we should probably not go anywhere near him.  It’s a really bad idea.”

“But he can call the doctor for you!” said Machia, excitedly as he bounded through the forest.  “Then you can be better, Little Lord!  All fixed up!”

Again, that did not make Izuku feel better.  He squirmed against Machia’s arms. 

.

None of the League of Villains were bad at sneaking.  In fact, they were all quite good at it. 

However, they’d come into the city with the expectation that they would have a quick getaway courtesy of the doctor if anything went wrong.  Which they no longer had.  Because he was ‘not in his lab’ and ‘busy.’  Self-important NPC…  until the noumu got up and running, his whole point was to provide fast travel. 

Anyway.  Between being unexpectedly stranded and the stupidly huge numbers of heroes out looking for the cauliflower brat aka player two (Tomura didn’t have any proof he was actually Sensei’s kid, and until then…), they were going into this stealth mission with serious handicaps. 

(With Dabi gone something like ninety-nine percent of that handicap was Twice and his inability to walk around like a normal person.  Tomura had left his hands at home and Compress just had to take off his mask.  Toga would have the easiest time of it, Tomura could admit, because she just had to shank someone.)

“I hate to say it,” said Mr. Compress, “but I think our burnt friend might have the right idea.  Splitting up will give us better chances.”

“No way,” whined Toga.  “We’ve got to stick together.  Right, boss man?”  She hugged Tomura’s arm until he pushed her off with his knuckles. 

“There’s a car down there with the keys still in the ignition,” said Twice, pointing down into an alley.

They all leaned over the side of the roof to look at the car.  It was old-fashioned.  Antique, even.  Someone clearly put a lot of care into keeping it clean and running. 

The keys were, indeed, still in the ignition. 

“A sting?” suggested Mr. Compress, uncertainly. 

“Nah, they don’t use cars like that for stings in this city,” said Tomura, revising his opinion on whether or not Twice was a handicap.  “They use, like, sports cars.  Who here can drive?”

“I don’t have a license,” said Toga.  “I was too young when I ran away from home.”

“I didn’t ask who had a license.  I asked who can drive.”

“I can drive—Badly!—I drive fine.  Hardly ever crashed—depends what you mean by ‘crash.’”

Tomura scratched his neck.  He wasn’t touching that with a ten-foot pole.  “Compress, tell me you can drive.”

“I never learned how to use a stick shift.”

He pulled his bloody fingernails away from his neck.  “Okay.  Here’s the deal.  Twice, if you crash us, I’ll kill you.”

“Sure thing, boss!” said Twice, saluting.  “Not if I kill you first, jerkface!”

This was going to be a long drive.

.

“We’ve got a new message from the HSPC,” said the producer, sliding a piece of paper onto the presenter’s desk.  “Read that as soon as we come off the commercials, okay?”

“Got it,” said the presenter, putting her headphones back on.  She read the notice. 

Members of the league of villains have been sighted in Musutafu and are believed to be present in connection with the kidnapping of Yagi Toshinori, also known as All Might.  Please exercise caution…

.

The commission investigators had been waiting for at least half an hour before any of the UA staff even deigned to greet them.

“It’s about time,” said Abe. 

“Sorry,” said the teacher waving.  “You can’t come in.”

“Excuse me?”

“The campus is on lockdown because of what happened at the testing center,” explained the teacher.  “We can’t open the gates without Nezu’s authorization, and he was called away to deal with an emergency.”

“What,” said Ito, dropping his cigarette and grind it under his heel.  “Seriously?  This is the emergency.  One of your own teachers got kidnapped.  All Might got kidnapped.  Don’t you care?”

The teacher snorted.  Abe and Ito stared at him through the bars of the fence, taken aback. 

“I’m sorry, it’s just—”  The man snickered again.  “Midoriya kidnapping Yagi.  That’s certainly an image.”

“Midoriya is a trained in combat and has three dangerous quirks.  All Might can’t even use his one anymore.”

“Yes, yes, I’m not saying it’s physically impossible.  But—”  He started laughing.  “Possible and likely are two different things.  Excuse me.  I never introduced myself.  I’m Lunch Rush, and if you ever saw those two at lunch time together, you’d have a very clear picture of why this whole situation is absurd.”

“Maybe you can show us the tapes, then,” said Abe.  “After you let us in.”

“No, sir, I’m afraid I can’t.  Even if I had access to them, there are students in those videos!”

“So?”

“Minors, you see.  Without written parental permission or a court order we can’t show them to anyone not affiliated with the school.  Now, I must be going.  I have a culinary arts class to teach!”

He was still chuckling as he walked away.  “Midoriya kidnapping Yagi, oh ho, I knew I’d get a kick out of actually hearing someone say that seriously…”

.

“Wow,” said Twice, “this car gets terrible gas mileage.”

“Are we going to run out?” asked Toga.  “That’ll be exciting!  I’ll have to flag down some generous motorist to give us a lift~”

“Yes!  Not soon!”

Compress leaned forward from the back seat and started fiddling with the radio, barely staying on each channel long enough to tell if they were playing music or news.

Tomura groaned and covered his face with his hand.  He contemplated whether it was worth letting his pinky drop just to escape this. 

“… League of Villains?” 

Compress stopped changing channels.

“They’ve been saying it all along.  I know it’s hard to believe that UA could miss something like this, something like a traitor, but it’s just facts.  The League’s presence in Musutafu confirms it.  He kidnapped All Might for them”

“It all seems awfully coincidental, though, and the commission isn’t showing us any pictures—How do we know for sure the League is in the city?  For that matter, if the League is really involved, how do we know Midoriya Izuku isn’t just another victim?  We never got a full tally of their members.  They could have someone with a, I don’t know, a brainwashing quirk.”

“Yumi, you really need to lay off the late-night conspiracy theories.  We can trust the hero commissioookkkhhh—”

The radio died horribly as Tomura decayed it out of console.

“I am going to commit murder,” said Tomura.  How did this always happen?  How was it always this attention-grabbing, kill-stealing little—

“I guess we have time for a pit stop.  No, we don’t!”

“Don’t you dare stop this car until we’re back at base,” growled Tomura.  He took a deep breath that really wasn’t calming at all. 

“I kind of have, to, I mean, road signs and all…  Uh.”

“We’re villains, dude,” said Spinner.  “You can break a few traffic laws.”

“Hell ye—Not if we want to live.”

“You can follow the traffic signs,” allowed Tomura.  He leaned back his seat, ignoring Mr. Compress’s complaint about squished legs. 

Player two.  Finishing the tutorial and then blazing through a quest like that.  Crazy OP character build. 

He still wanted player two in his party.  He also wanted to knock the brat so far off the leaderboard that he’d never play the game again. 

These were, Tomura acknowledged, somewhat conflicting desires.  He was, at the moment, leaning toward the second, but the first would give him ongoing dominance which would be incredibly satisfying. 

If player two really was Sensei’s kid…

Then Tomura… He’d be like… a big brother.   An older sibling. 

That felt… weird.  But also weirdly like something he wanted.  Ugh, it sounded like a pain.  Stupid story-mode side quest with garbage rewards, except the garbage rewards were the best rewards. 

He hadn’t built his character for social interactions.  He was combat class, high DPS. 

Why couldn’t things just be simple?  Why couldn’t he just destroy what he wanted?

“Heyyyy!” squealed Toga.  “It’s a McDonalds!  We could get murder and fries.”

“Do.  Not.  Stop.  The car.”

.

Machia thundered into the abandoned quarry with all the enthusiasm of a deranged puppy. 

“This is Shigaraki Tomura’s secret hide out!” proclaimed the giant, setting a windswept Izuku and Toshinori down in front of a crumbling, half-collapsed building.  He beamed proudly.  “SHIGARAKI TOMURA!” he screamed at the building, frightening away the few brave birds in the quarry that had yet to leave.

No one came out.  Machia sniffed the air. 

“Oh,” he said.  “They aren’t home.”

“That’s fine,” said Izuku, patting Machia.  He didn’t elaborate.  Most of his brainpower was currently tied up in preventing his legs from folding underneath him. 

“Why don’t we,” began Toshinori before hacking up a large quantity of blood.  “Why don’t we just show ourselves in?  I’m sure it will be more comfortable for young—For the little lord to wait inside.  And perhaps one of them left a phone we can use.”

“The last time you went into a building by yourselves, you were attacked,” rumbled Machia. 

“That is true,” said Toshinori, “but there’s no one in this building.  You’d be able to smell them.”

“Not if they were invisible.”

Izuku blinked slowly.  “That,” he said, “doesn’t sound right.”

He continued to blink as Toshinori convinced Machia that he would, in fact, be able to smell invisible people.  He must have missed something, though, because next thing he knew, Toshinori was steering him into what passed as the building’s door. 

“Alright,” said Toshinori, voice low.  “We’re going to get you cleaned up as best we can, then we’re going to take everything that looks useful and sneak out.”

“Like… food and stuff?”

“Yes.  And we’re also going to see if we can break enough things that they’ll have to take care of that instead of following us.”

“We could just set some things on fire,” said Izuku, who had never considered himself a pyromaniac of any kind, but who had also grown up alongside Kacchan. 

“Good idea,” said Toshinori, who had been the type of fifth grader who made jokes about setting things on fire but had only ever burned his workbook at the end of the school year.  “Let’s see if these guys have running water.”

“You know,” said Izuku, carefully avoiding a bunch of old food wrappers.  “I sort of expected a more impressive evil lair, all things considered.”

“This is average for high-level fugitives, actually,” said Toshinori.  “Especially if they don’t have a lot of connections or cash.”

“Huh,” said Izuku, cautiously opening a door.  “Here’s the bathroom.  Huh.”

There were a lot of hair products in the bathroom.  A lot a lot. 

It’s like the candles budget chart, snickered Six in the back of Izuku’s head.  Help, I’m trying to balance my evil lair budget.  This is what I’ve got so far:  Electricity, 100 yen, building, 1100 yen, furniture, 200 yen, hair styling products, 9,000,000 yen. 

Izuku wheezed. 

But, seriously.  Why did they need this much hair stuff?  Shigaraki obviously hadn’t ever even heard of personal grooming.  Toga had her natural hair color.  Compress didn’t show his face or his hair.  Spinner had a lizard mutation.  Dabi—

It was totally Dabi. 

Oh gosh, based on how most of the hair dye boxes were labeled for temporary use and quick removal…  Haha, was Dabi just… just waiting… just waiting for an opportune moment to dramatically reveal himself? 

Izuku started wheezing again. 

“Are you alright, my boy?” asked Toshinori confused.

“This is Dabi’s hair dye,” said Izuku.

“Hm.  I hadn’t realized he dyed it.”

“I want this hair dye,” said Izuku.

“I suppose we can try to find the brand once we get to a supermarket,” said Toshinori, confused.

“No, no,” said Izuku, still gazing down at the box sitting next to the sink.  “I don’t want to use this brand of hair dye.  I want to use this hair dye.”

“Oh.  Oh,” said Toshinori.  “This hair dye.  Dabi’s hair dye.”

“Yes,” said Izuku.

“To be petty.”

“Yes,” confirmed Izuku again. 

“It has been a long time since I was… petty,” said Toshinori.

“Vlad-sensei’s car?”

“That was convenience, not pettiness.”

“Well,” said Izuku, picking up the box.  “We are sort of… you know… villains, now.  Since we fought Hawks.   I am anyway.”

“You’re not a villain,” protested Toshinori. 

“I mean, from a legal standpoint,” said Izuku.  “Not a moral one.  And, well.  Villains are petty, right?”

“I do not believe pettiness is an exclusively villainous trait, my boy.  In any case, I wasn’t condemning you.”  He put his hands on his hips and looked up at the cracked and crumbling ceiling.  “If we had more time here, we could set up some things that would really annoy them.”

“More than stealing their food, their money, their clothes, and their hair dye before setting their house on fire?” asked Izuku. 

Toshinori scratched his head.  “You know, now that I think about it, probably not.  But does this really qualify as a house?” 

.

“Hey,” said Hawks.  “So, about the other half of that tip.”

“Huh?  There isn’t a second half.  That was just to keep you from ditching me.”

Hawks had met villains who were civilized professionals.  Why couldn’t he be trying to infiltrate a society made up of those types, and not one that included the racoon currently filling his car (technically the commission’s car) with the scent of smoke and charred flesh?

“Well, what about that ‘interesting parentage’ you were alluding to?”

“Oh.  Shigaraki thinks Midoriya is his sensei’s kid.”  Dabi shrugged.  “Honestly… yeah.  I kind of see it.  But you’d think he’d get his kid to work with us instead of whatever is going on between him and Shigaraki, on the other hand…”  Dabi trailed off. 

Hawks momentarily glanced away from the road to see Dabi with an uncharacteristically pensive expression. 

“I mean,” continued Dabi, leaning on his hand as he stared out the window, “the whole hero thing could be sticking it to his old man.  I can respect that.” 

“You sound like you’re talking from experience,” observed Hawks. 

“You still talk to your parents?” asked Dabi. 

“Nope.”

“Heh, you wouldn’t tell me even if you did, would you?”

“Hey, you are a villain.  I’ve got to keep my soft spots covered, right?”

“Right,” drawled Dabi.  “Kid held up pretty well against you, didn’t he?”

“He did okay,” said Hawks.  “He got away, after all.”

“Wonder how he’d do against Endeavor.  One-on-one.  What d’you think?”

Hawks couldn’t help but swallow.  If it were one-on-one, and Midoriya could still use Erasure…  He hated to think it, but Endeavor might lose.  A man with no quirk against a strong enhancer and that black tentacle emitter…

He wondered how long it would be before Midoriya got put on the S-rank villain list.  The paperwork had to be in progress. 

(After all, he’d defeated the number two hero – or near enough – while holding off three others.)

(On the other hand… that building…)

“It’d certainly be a fight,” said Hawks, neutrally.  “Is Midoriya really not working with you?”

“Nope,” said Dabi, not quite managing to pop the ‘p’ with his burnt lips.  “Not saying he isn’t a villain or whatever.  That’s up to you guys after all.”

“Not me,” said Hawks.  “I’m on your side, remember?”

“I remember,” said Dabi.  “Anyway, I only was face-to-face with him that one time in the forest, last summer.  He had a great expression.  Not as great as – Well.  That part doesn’t matter.”

Ugh…  Hawks hadn’t taken Dabi for the kind of killer who’d reminisce about his kills.  Maybe he could – No.  Lose Dabi and he’d lose his lead on the League, and who knew how many more people would end up dead.

He just wished the commission would give him backup on this.  Someone who actually worked with infiltration.  Someone who could help him minimize the damage the League was doing. 

“Pull over,” said Dabi.  “This is my stop.”

“You live around here?”

Dabi snorted.  “Not a chance.  You get to see our base once we’re sure you won’t tattle.”

“Come on, you can’t blame a guy for curiosity,” said Hawks. 

“Sure can,” said Dabi opening the door and jumping out onto the gravel margin.  “I’ll call you.”  He walked off the side of the road into the scruffy tree cover and disappeared. 

“Well,” mumbled Hawks, deliberately ignoring all the elocution lessons the commission had stuffed him with.  “That was useless.”

Except for the tiny feathers he’d snuck into the lining of Dabi’s coat.  But those had limited range and Hawks wasn’t good enough at stealth to follow Dabi without making an idiot (a potentially dead one on top of that) out of himself. 

His phone began to ring, the bugs in the car having shown the commission that Dabi was gone.  Hawks sighed and answered.  Time for new marching orders. 

.

The landscape was much more intact, now.  It was still a battlefield.  Four was dodging bullets and catching grenades to sling them back at his attackers.  He dove to the ground right before a cheerily painted building exploded into splinters. 

Danger Sense, Aizawa concluded.  Some kind of limited precognition? 

“Shigaraki?” said Iida.  “He’s a Shigaraki?  He’s related to—to him?  To Shigaraki?”

“Sensei,” said Uraraka, tugging on his sleeve, “that other man, you don’t think that was, you know, the man from Kamino?  All for One?”

“Midoriya thinks that All Might is related to All for One?” muttered Todoroki, just load enough to hear.  “That – no, that does make sense.  Their quirks are wrong, though, but if there are enough generations, you can’t really predict…  Does that make Midoriya and Shigaraki cousins?”

Todoroki paused.  Aizawa braced himself, both for the violence he was sure he was about to see, and the torture Todoroki was about to inflict on him. 

“Midoriya is related to All for One,” whispered Todoroki. 

.

Shouto didn’t blame Midoriya for trying to hide it.  If at all possibly, he would have hidden the fact that he was related to Endeavor.  Sure, he might have lost some privileges, but he also would have gotten rid of the constant comparisons between himself and his father. 

Much like Shimura Souma had to face. 

It must have been terrible for a young Midoriya to learn that he was related to a man who had so injured his father. 

To learn that he was related to this man. 

(No wonder he based this shade on Shouto, although Shouto didn’t think that Endeavor was quite as bad as All for One.)

There was a sound like cymbals being brought together, then—

Light.

And—

Sound. 

A group of soldiers who had been sneaking up on Four were obliterated by a lightning strike that left behind fire and glassed soil. 

Four got up and did a sort of awkward bunny hop away from the strike zone, blinking dazedly and covering his ears.  Shouto knew he’d be behaving similarly if his dream body behaved at all realistically.  Especially given the risk of being electrocuted due to the charge in the ground…  Or was that just for downed power lines and Kaminari?  He didn’t remember, and apparently neither did Four. 

There was another crash of the cymbals, like thunder before the lightning and the lightning struck again, farther off. 

And then a woman, a few years older than Four ran out from between two of the buildings, cymbals in her hands.  Her graying hair was worn in tiny braids and her skin was dark.  Mixed race – That would have been rarer back then.  She had other musical instruments (drumsticks, some kind of flute, what looked like maracas) attached to her belt, but was otherwise dressed in generic military surplus gear.  There was a massive surgical scar stretching across her throat. 

“Haruna,” said Four.  “What, what are you doing here?”

‘Haruna’ tucked one of the cymbals under her arm and began signing aggressively at Four. 

“Ye-yes.  But – Your children, they need you.”

More signing.  “I’m not being hypocritical.”  He gestured to the mark over his eye.  “I’m dying anyway.  You aren’t.”

Her face twists, then twists again as she notices more armed men approaching.  She claps her hands, metal sewn into the palms flashing before a slender bolt of lightning cracks across the sky. 

This is when Shouto realizes who she is.  He’d learned about her in art class, of all things.  Thunderclap.  One half of one of the first villain duo to be marked as S-rank, active during the dawn of heroics.  Her birth name was widely believed to be Harmony Trey, and she’d used the alias Miura, but records from back then, even for something that important, were sketchy, and criminals were never good at keeping paperwork up to date in the first place.    

Her quirk was sound-based weather manipulation.  No one knew what had happened to her throat, but the public of the past had been grateful for it.  She could cause lightning strikes with a clap.  What could she do with her own voice?

Something like twenty percent of the early propaganda pieces for the Hero Practices and Standards Commission had her and her partner on them, being defeated or held off by various newly licensed heroes. 

Neither of them had ever been caught. 

Was she ‘Three?’  If so, Shouto could understand why Six didn’t want to say anything, although All for One was much more jarring and—

Hold up.  Thunderclap had been active over a hundred years ago.  If All for One was here, too, then that meant that either:

Midoriya’s subconscious was terrible at timelines (and so was Shouto’s because he’d just accepted all this without question until a split second ago). Or—

All for One had an immortality quirk on top of all the other terrifying things he could do.

The fact that the second one was more plausible was unfair of reality. 

(Shouto liked ‘conspiracy’ theories, but his theories were, for the most part, well, not things that would keep him up at night for fear of nightmares.)

Except she didn’t seem to see them at all, so maybe not.  The rules in the dreamscape had, appropriately, a dreamlike consistency.  That is to say, hardly any. 

“Please,” said Four.  “We don’t both need to die.”

Thunderclap looked like she was about to cry.  But she nodded.  Four turned to face the rest of the small army bearing down on him. 

.

The house looked cozy, thought Tenya.  Sort of like that cabin his family had rented in the countryside a few years back.  The lights were dim but warm.  The smell of food and spices permeated the air.  Children and teens of various ages were draped over furniture. 

In the kitchen, four adults sat around a table.  Four, Thunderclap, a man who was entirely green, and woman with hair so golden it literally glowed. 

As a middle schooler, Tenya had done a lot of research into discrimination against people with mutation quirks and vestigial or tangential mutations.  It had branched off into research into quirk-based discrimination in general.  If this scene was truly set near the dawn of heroics, the green man and the golden-haired woman would have risked being attacked just walking on the street in most cities. 

He looked back through the doorway at the children in the other room.

Both the yellow hair and the green curls were painfully familiar. 

Did Midoriya really think he was related to Thunderclap of all people?  The idea was preposterous. 

Except—

Oh, he was getting just as bad as Todoroki.  Not to mention, even if Midoriya did have a terrorist in his family tree a hundred years ago, it didn’t change anything about Midoriya.  Goodness, Tenya most likely had some less than savory characters in his own family tree, even if he didn’t know about them. 

Four doubled over clutching his head, interrupting the apparently light-hearted story the green man was telling. 

“They’re coming,” gasped Four.  “They’re coming.  Go bags – phone tree – we have to.”

“I’ll get the kids,” said the golden-haired woman. 

.

“Your body is shutting down,” said a man in a doctor’s coat.  “These cracks, they aren’t just on your skin, they’re on your organs, too.  I can’t find any reason for it.  Maybe if we had access to genetic testing…” he shook his head.  “Maybe you can still get it.  Your quirk is concealable.  Not like most of us here.”  He took a moment to tug on one of his long, sheeplike ears.

Four shook his head.  “Too big a risk.”

“Mhm, it’s up to you,” said the doctor, dubiously.  “I’m sorry I couldn’t help you more, Yagi-san.”

“It’s still Shimura.  Yagi is my wife.”

“That’s still confusing.”

“The name change thing is western,” said Four, “and I picked Shimura for a reason.”

Aizawa steadied himself against a wall.  The last two shifts had been disorienting. 

“Is there anything else I can do?” asked the doctor. 

“Can you help me tell my wife?”

.

Four was screaming and holding his face.  In front of him was a huge boulder, split in half. 

.

“Hoshino,” said Four, leaning down so that his head rested on top of the golden-haired woman’s.  “I gave it away.  I gave it away.”

“Lariat worked out, then?” asked Hoshino.  Yagi Hoshino, Aizawa had to presume. 

“He’s a good person,” said Four, hoarsely.  “I like working with him.”

“You don’t have to stop.”

Four closed his eyes.  “I think… without it…  I might be able to live here.  At least, visit more often.”

“I’d like that.  I think the kids would, too.”

.

Four, hunched over, clutching his head. 

.

Four, in an alley, fighting men with knives, standing in front of a young woman with clawed hands.  He’d been stabbed in the side. 

.

They were back in the house, watching a news program.  A trainline had been hit by a villain attack.  A ticker on the bottom read ‘mutant metahuman train under attack by Evolutionary gang.’  The reporter’s voiceover was saying something along the lines of this is why mutants shouldn’t be allowed on public transport, they bring their gang wars with them.

Lariat was on the scene.  A man recognizable only by his green skin at this distance fell out of one of the train cars.  Lariat grabbed him with one of his black energy whips and put him back. 

Thunderclap relaxed her death grip on Four’s arm by just an iota. 

“He saved him,” said Four. 

.

A much younger Four leaned against a wooden wall.  He was splattered with blood, his clothing torn. 

“I couldn’t save her,” he whispered.  His hands were shaking.  “Shimura-san—”  His breath caught. 

.

A woman with her hair gathered into a curly gray ponytail sat at a desk, blankly staring at the content.  She wore a grey cardigan and could have been Thunderclap’s sister.  Her eyes were obscured. 

Which meant she probably was, all things considered. 

Which meant that she was the other half of that S-rank villain pair. 

Tempest.

“You don’t have to do this,” said Four.

“I do.  You don’t understand how many people he’s killed.  You don’t understand what he’s done.  He has Haruna.  I can’t—”

The scene sheered away as Tempest turned to face Four. 

.

Do you remember when I first met you?

“Oh, this isn’t a pleasant one,” said Four, voice deceptively mild. 

They were in an underground facility.   The walls were concrete and metal, covered in pipes.  The sounds of footsteps echoed down the hallway, starting and stopping. 

“Although,” said Four, “there were certainly some good points as well.”

A teenage version of Four ran down the hall, frequently looking over his shoulder.  His hands clutched a ring of keys by their blades and a pair of ID cards.  His long, shaggy hair hung in his face, and he kept having to push it out of the way. 

He reached a door at the end of the hall, and started fumbling with the keys, muttering under his breath.  He slid one of the cards through a scanner near the door.  It clicked open. 

First contact. 

There were definitely fewer voices involved in the proclamation, now.  Two men, one woman.  The woman had an American accent. 

Beyond the door, a woman was strapped to the bed, unconscious.  No, not a woman, the same woman who had been at the desk. 

Tempest.  Storm-caller.  A villain who had been responsible for bringing so many storms to bear against Japan that they had permanently changed the coastline. 

“Got to get you out of here before Dad comes back,” muttered the younger Four, untying the straps.  “You need to wake up.  Ah, Narcan.”  He started rifling through a cabinet.  “Narcan, Narcan…  Narcan.  Found you.”

“Don’t look for Three,” said Four.  “She doesn’t want to talk to you.  Or anyone.  Do you know where Jinoshi Lake Camp is?”

“My class went there on a history field trip, once,” said Uraraka. 

“Yeah,” said Aizawa, not liking where this was going at all.  “I know the place.”

‘The place’ being what amounted to a concentration camp for quirked people in the early days of the quirk boom.  How bad it was tended to be glossed over in history lessons, but Aizawa had long been able to read between the lines. 

In the earliest days, the government had tried surgically removing quirks.  Typically by removing the relevant body parts.

“That’s her contact point.  Don’t look too closely.”

Aizawa supposed he knew how Thunderclap got her scars.