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five-rivers · 4 years ago

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Long Night in the Valley chapter 9

“But what if it’s the hospital?” Inko asked, still staring at the phone, cheek cupped in one hand. “What if it’s an emergency with one of your patients? It could be important.”

It wasn’t. Mostly because nothing could possibly be as important as dealing with Midoriya Inko.

Without a doubt, the woman was the most difficult to deal with person in the entire world. It was no reflection on her personality, of course, but rather on her unique position.

Garaki could cope with rabid villains. He had handled heroes cursing him. He could even converse normally with All for One.

But then, compared to this woman, All for One was easy. As long as she wasn’t part of the picture, all Garaki had to do was follow orders. When she did, every interaction became a balancing act between All for Ones previous orders and not upsetting her.

Garaki was too valuable to All for One for the man to kill him, which only meant that Garaki had been on the receiving end of some truly creative punishments in the past.

Also, Midoriya Inko once threatened to pull his pancreas out of his nose if he ever spoke ‘like that’ to her son again. Truly, she was a match for All for One, who had threatened much the same thing only hours later, despite the fact the results presented had been ordered by him.

This was truly a terrifying situation, and he had to face it without even little Johnny at his side. How pitiful…

“Really,” said Inko, “I think you should answer it. Maybe it’ll give you some idea about how we can help Izuku.”

That seemed unlikely at best. Even so, it would be unwise to go against the wishes of All for One’s chosen queen.

He smiled tightly. “I’ll have to step out,” he said.

“Of course,” said Inko, nodding.

He stepped out if the dining room and checked the phone. It was Shigaraki Tomura. Because of course it was. Normally, he would have scrambled to answer, but… He looked over his shoulder, to make sure Midoriya Inko hadn’t spontaneously appeared there.

One way or another, he feared, he was going to die today.

No, he told himself, focus on the positives.

For example, Midoriya Inko seemed to have taken quite well to the longevity quirk All for One had slipped her while they were dating. Very well indeed. He’d already known that, of course, but it was good to see it in person. All for One’s youngest son was now in conflict with the heroes, even if he was still clinging to All Might’s emaciated skeleton. The call from Shigaraki Tomura meant that Gigantomachia hadn’t killed him while Garaki was distracted.

Overall, this day was going wonderfully.

He answered his phone.

“You f—”

Ah, so it was Shigaraki Tomura.

“How did you and Sensei manage to lose an entire-a—” And there he went again. “—ing feral child?”

Wait. Garaki knew about Midoriya Izuku. How did Shigaraki Tomura? “Er, what feral child?”

“The green brat! Except he’s not green anymore. He died his stupid puffball hair white—”

“—honestly, I always thought it was more broccoli—HA! He’s a cauliflower now-!”

“Shut up, Twice! He was wearing a suit, using Eraserhead’s quirk. Did you guys think I was stupid or something?”

“What?”

“Do you not have the news in your crappy lab?”

“Erm.”

“What are you even doing, that it took so long for you to pick up your phone?”

“Well…”

“Never mind. We need a fast travel out of here. This place is crawling with heroes, and the giant boss is going to wake up soon—”

“I can’t,” said Garaki. “I’m not in my lab.”

It wasn’t quite silent on the other side of the line.

“What do you mean, you aren’t in your lab?” A pause. “What are you doing, old man? Where are you?”

“I have to go, now,” said Garaki, feeling oddly detached. The phone beeped as he hung up on Shigaraki Tomura. He opened his news app.

Masterfully, he avoided crying as he read through the top local stories. The real shock was that All for One hadn’t broken out of prison yet.

Oh, and Eraserhead’s quirk, because he absolutely shouldn’t have been able to do that. The quirks of the past users, yes, fine, that made sense. The mechanism between All for One and One for All was presumably sufficiently similar. But Eraserhead’s, that was a different story.

Unless… The remnants…

Garaki found that he was very afraid.

He replayed the video of the incident. Mentally calculated the trajectory of All Might and the younger Midoriya. Perhaps… perhaps rather than taking a phone call, he should be making one.

“’S like Ragdoll,” explained Izuku, as the pair of One for All members limped through the forest. “Shiretoko-san, I mean.”

“Mhm,” said Toshinori, lifting Izuku over a spot that would give his sprained and swollen ankle some difficulty.

“Even though she can’t use Search anymore, there’s still remnants. She can- She can keep track of a lot more objects at once. Her organizational skills, visual acuity… Some things have actually improved, now that she’s not using that part of her head. The point is, not all of the support structures disappear when the quirk does. And I think- I think not all of the quirk itself goes away, either.”

“I’m not sure I follow you on that part.”

“It’s—It’s a, um. All for One, I think, physically, obviously, there has to be psionic component as well, the way it works is by destructively copying the quirk and the quirk factor of the target individual. It’s like—Like if there was a copier in a shredder? I guess? Can’t copy without destroying the original. But, yeah. There has to be a mental component. So, my—So, what, I mean, I mean what I—Hmmnnng.”

“My boy?”

“My head hurts.” He swiped ineffectively at his sluggishly bleeding nose.

Toshinori pressed his lips together, concerned. Izuku rarely admitted to feeling pain, no matter how beaten up he was. This must be serious.

“We have some painkillers,” said Toshinori.

“No,” said Izuku. “I’m okay. What was I-? I was saying… Quirks. My quirk when he—There’s still remnants, and the emergent behavior—” He took a deep, shuddering breath. “The bits left behind when he took my quirk, with One for All—assuming that’s what happened, and they’re not wrong—they let me access the past users’ quirks, and also since Saito-san’s quirk seems to interact with quirk ghosts, at least partially, it can use that to pick up Aizawa-sensei’s quirk. Probably could get the others’ as well, although I’m less confident about mutant quirks like Iida’s.”

For a moment, they let the conversation lapse.

“I think we’re handling these revelations very well,” opined Toshinori.

“I know, right?” Izuku giggled like someone at the edge of a very tall cliff. “Anyway, One for All uses more of a passive copying mechanism, but I’d guess there’s something wrong with its writing mechanism, unless the stockpile quirk just takes up all its time, or something, or there was a problem with interpretation? Or, or! The others are wrong about me ever having a quirk, and it’s really just One for All finally processing and writing in the other quirks. Maybe because I’m genetically closer to One than any of the others?” Izuku’s breath caught.

“Izuku?”

“Toshinori,” he whined, “it hurts…”

“What does?”

“Everything,” said Izuku. “My head. My eyes.” He’d mostly relied on Toshinori’s vision while navigating through the forest. Since using Aizawa-sensei’s quirk, he’d barely opened his eyes.

“We’ve made some distance since we landed,” said Toshinori. “Why don’t we rest for a little while?”

“We can’t,” protested Izuku. “We’re still too close.”

“Izuku, you’re suffering from quirk exhaustion.”

“Oh,” said Izuku. “Oh. I guess I never felt—Never felt it before? Because I’d just break my bones first.”

Toshinori visibly cringed. “If I understand what you just said correctly,” he said, taking Izuku by the shoulders and guiding him gently towards a fallen tree, “what you did back there with young Aizawa’s quirk was akin to running a race with a broken leg.”

“W-well, I mean, only if—only if—they’re right about it being my quirk. And n-not just something One for All can do.”

“Mm,” said Toshinori, dubiously. “Even then, it isn’t something quite natural for you, is it? And this right after receiving Float.”

“It,” said Izuku, frowning, and letting himself be directed. “Actually, it felt… Good? Right before it started hurting. Like… satisfying, almost? Like when I used One for All for the first time… Well, before I realized all my bones were broken.”

“It wasn’t quite all of them, was it?”

Izuku shrugged. He blinked slowly as he sat down on the log. “It’s cold.”

“It is December,” said Toshinori, unzipping his coat. “Let me see here, I had some winter clothing for you in here somewhere… and we should take a better look at your ankle.” He sat down next to Izuku, who immediately leaned towards him, not quite touching.

On impulse, Toshinori wrapped the open edge of the coat around Izuku, pulling him close.

Izuku rested his head against Toshinori’s chest and brought up his knees to hug them. “This’s warm,” he mumbled.

“How about,” said Toshinori, “you just rest for a few minutes. Then we can sort everything else out.”

“Okay…”

“Well,” said Recovery Girl, entering the conference room the hospital had lent them, “no one is in any danger of dying.”

“But?” said Hitoshi, bracing himself for bad news.

“No but. They’re all fine, beyond not waking up, but you all already knew that. So.” She hopped into a seat at the table they’d all squeezed around. “What have you found out?”

She directed the question to Hizashi, who had his head in his hands, his elaborately styled hair almost hitting Jirou and Kaminari, who were seated across from him.

“Midoriya has a sentient quirk and no one bothered to mention it.”

“I’m not sure Midori knew,” said Tsuyu. “It does seem like something he’d mention.”

“I don’t know,” said Kaminari. “He’s, like, weirdly cagey about his quirk.”

Tokoyami crossed his arms. “Hm. He may have been hiding it. Possession of a sentient quirk casts one into the shadow of the commission’s regard.”

“Huh?”

“People with sentient quirks are monitored by the Hero Commission,” said Hitoshi. “Just like people with ‘villainous’ quirks.

“He was not hiding, mes amis,” said Aoyama. “That’s absurd! He was simply a late bloomer, like myself.”

“Does it really matter if he knew or not?” asked Jirou. “Everyone has stuff they’d rather not tell other people.”

“She’s right,” said Kayama-sensei.

“Well,” said Yaoyorzu, “we’re going to try to help him, aren’t we?”

There was a murmur of agreement.

“But how?”

“Overthrow the government?” suggested Jirou.

“Start a social media campaign?” said Kaminari, at the same time.

They looked at each other.

“And you call yourself an anarchist,” scoffed Jirou.

“In my defense, I have never once called myself an anarchist.”

“As much as I like the idea of overthrowing the government, the social media idea is probably more doable,” said Hitoshi. “I mean, there’s only fourteen of us here. What are we going to do against the government?”

“As much as I hate to say it,” said Kayama-sensei, “we do have more resources than just the people in this room. Like the person who sent us to extract you in the first place.”

“You mean,” said Shouji, voice hushed, “the rat god?”

Kayama-sensei blanched. “Where did you hear that?”

All the students, including Hitoshi, pointed at Hizashi, because, really, she should have known that. Actually, wait, one of them hadn’t and had instead buried his face in his hands. That was… Kouda. Yeah. Kouda.

“What’s up with him?” asked Hitoshi.

Mineta snickered. A baleful collective glare was turned on him.

“What?” he whined.

Aoyama sighed. “Midoriya once asked him if he could control our fantabulous Principal Nezu, since Principal Nezu is technically an animal.”

“Ever since then,” continued Yaoyorozu, “he has a crisis whenever the principal is brought up.”

“Man,” said Kaminari, nodding in Hitoshi’s direction, “I bet that if Midoriya was here, he’d be asking you if you could control Principal Nezu, since he’s not human.”

… That was a good question.

“Speaking of Midoriya,” said Satou, as if they hadn’t been doing exactly that all along, “I don’t think we can overthrow the government without him. He’s our plan guy, usually.”

“Even with Nezu?” asked Hizashi.

The members of class 1-A seemed thoughtful.

“Maybe.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” said Mineta, “we’re serious about that? I thought it was a joke.”

“Okay,” said Yaoyorozu, “perhaps we should discuss our other options first.”

“Oh!” said Aoyama. “We could become vigilantes!”

“What… What would be the point of that?” asked Hitoshi.

Aoyama did not have an answer.

Hizashi’s phone started ringing. “Oh, no,” he said, “it’s him. Does he know I’ve been calling him the rat god behind his back?”

“Probably,” said Kayama-sensei, “but I don’t think that’s what this is about.”

Hizashi answered his phone. “Heeeeeyyyyyy, Principal Nezu, what-? Oh! Oh, yeah, yeah, we were planning on that, but we weren’t sure—yeah, yeah, I’ll tell them, and –” He went pale. “You already knew about that, huh? Haha, yeah, yep, okay, okay. See you soon?” He cringed as he hung up. “He wants us all back at school before the commission decides to interrogate us. Also, he said to check the news.”

“It’s just going to be more slander of Midoriya,” said Jirou, looking at her own phone, “why both—Oh.”

“Still can’t believe they think Midoriya kidnapped All Might,” mumbled one of Shouji’s free mouth hands as Hitoshi unlocked his own phone.

“I know. Do you remember when he came into the cafeteria to ask Midoriya to eat lunch with him?” asked Kaminari.

“Which time?” asked Dark Shadow, cackling.

“It was cute, kero,” said Asui. “I have pictures.”

“We can use those for the social media campaign!”

Hitoshi’s news app loaded. He looked up and met Jirou’s eyes. Judging by her pale face, what he’d seen wasn’t a hallucination.

“Am I a dog, a mouse, or a bear?” chirped Nezu as he answered his phone. “One thing’s for sure, I’m Principal Nezu? How can I help you, Mr. Hero Commission President?”

“I’m sure you’re following the news,” said the president.

“Of course,” said Nezu, patting Eri’s head. She’d been staring at his phone like a predator faced with prey since he answered. They had, indeed, been watching the news.

“We need Midoriya Izuku’s medical records and the blood sample you have from him. You should have it ready by the time our investigators arrive.”

“Oh? Investigators?”

“To search Midoriya Izuku’s personal effects for clues. You should also prepare Chisaki Eri, Togata Mirio, and the teachers involved in Midoriya Izuku’s education for questioning.”

“Thank you for giving me a heads up, Mr. President.”

There was a suspicious silence on the other end of the line. “What are you planning?”

“Nothing at all!”

“You aren’t going to win this fight.”

“What fight, Mr. President? Aren’t we both on the side of heroes?”

“If you get in our way, I will make sure your precious school goes down with Midoriya.”

“Oh-ho! Is that a threat, Mr. President?”

“A promise. Public opinion isn’t something you can think your way out of, and UA has been on thin ice since the attack on the USJ.”

“I see,” said Nezu, fighting against the urge to bare his teeth and snarl. “In any case, I will not stand in the way of the law.”

“Good.”

The line went dead. “Oh, dear,” said Nezu. “He really doesn’t understand me at all.”

“What areya going to do?” asked Eri.

“Follow the law,” said Nezu.

Eri scowled.

“Bothering by the book, sir?” asked Togata, who had been hiding in Aizawa’s kitchen, baking.

“Oh, yes. The good heroes who were here earlier had the authority to request a piece of Midoriya-kun’s clothing, but what Mr. Hero Commission President is asking for is quite different.”

“How?” asked Eri.

“They need certain forms and paperwork in order to force me to do so much as let them in the front gate. Which cannot, of course, be opened to outsiders by teachers without my express permission. And if I am involved in an emergency involving one of my wards at the time…”

“That’s me!” said Eri, bouncing on the couch.

“Indeed, it is.”

“So,” she said, “I’ve got to be an em-er-gen-cy?” she asked, carefully sounding out the word.”

“You don’t need to do anything,” said Nezu, “except say that I was occupied with you when the commission representatives arrived.”

Eri nodded very seriously. “Can we watch Deku kick the bad guy again?”

Nezu chortled.

“Did I say something funny?” asked Eri, her face pinching again.

“Not at all, not at all. I’m just imagining how others might react to you calling Hawks a bad guy.”

“He’s fighting Deku, so he’s a bad guy.”

“Immaculate logic, young lady,” said Nezu, patting Eri on the head.

Izuku walked through Nana’s misty memories, searching for her and Suzuki.

Hopefully, Nana hadn’t reached through the dream to kill the guy in real life. He didn’t like Suzuki. In fact, he pretty much hated him. But murder was still, well, murder.

He had some things to talk to Nana about.

The far more comprehensive connection he currently had to One for All, thanks to Saito-san’s quirk, meant that he knew far more than he usually did, about One for All, the others, All for One, and even himself. Enough that he was twitching for his notebook and pencil, because he was afraid he would forget once the quirk wore off.

One of the things he knew now was that One for All had usability adaptations. Little things that tweaked the user’s body and subconscious in such a way that made the quirk actually viable. Required secondary powers, to use an older term.

A common one was the heat and burn resistance most fire users had. Bakugou had lighters in his palms to set his sweat off. Tokoyami had amazing night vision. Hagakure was resistant to cancer.

One for All read the DNA of potential recipients, to see if they could handle the quirk. One couldn’t go shoving quirks into random people all willy-nilly, even if the quirk in question was One for All. That’s why the noumu were so messed up. All for One didn’t have that compatibility-checking adaptation.

But since compatibility here was a function of both mentality and DNA… that meant…

“Were you ever going to tell me that we’re all related?” he asked Nana. “Speaking of which.” He pointed at the memory-shade of a young Gran Torino. “How is it that everyone I’m related to is so tall? Why are Mom and I midgets? And where did the green hair come from? I’m having a crisis.”

Nana chuckled, but it was a sad sound. “Thanks for trying to cheer me up, kiddo.”

(The effect would have been better if her boots weren’t stained with blood.)

“Okay, but seriously,” said Izuku, sitting on the railing next to Nana. They watched the memory play out. “You guys all knew. Why didn’t you say anything? I think Toshinori’d be happy to be related to you, even if it’s only tangentially.”

“But would he be happy with the other part?”

“Huh?”

“Being related to him.”

“I think he’d overlook that. I mean, One was related to him, too. So it doesn’t really matter. And I’m…” He faltered. They had yet to confront this particular thing.

“You should talk to One and Four,” suggested Nana, gently. “Their perspective is probably closest to yours.”

“Will I have time?”

“As long as we’re with you, eventually,” said Nana. “This,” she gestured at the dreamscape, “changes things. You know this feeling, now. You won’t forget.”

Izuku nodded. “Should I call you grandma, now?”

“That makes me feel old.”

“You are old.”

“Ouch, kid. But sure.”

“That aside, I do want to know where the green hair comes from.”

Nana sighed. “It’s from me. I used to dye my hair. Then I got a stylist to permanently change it with a quirk.”

“But… why?”

Nana slumped sideways. “The kids at my school… They were always saying, ‘Oh, Nana, you’re so green. Just like your name. Green Vegetable Nana.”

“Name related trauma is something we have in common.”

“Unfortunately.”

“So. Suzuki.”

“Under that rock.” She pointed to a massive boulder.

Izuku sighed. “What are we going to do with him?”

“Your call,” said Nana.

“Does it have to be?”

Gigantomachia shrugged dirt and trees from his shoulders and sniffed the air. The radio around his neck crackled as the doctor stopped transmitting. This, he decided, catching the scent of the Little Lord, was a joyful day.

Only once before had he received the privilege of smelling this scent. That day was eternally carved into his memory. The Little Lord had been so small, but so smart! So cunning! So much better than Shigaraki Tomura!

Machia wondered if he would still be small, or if he had grown up to be as big as Lord! Or even Machia!

Probably, he would not be as big as Machia. Still!

How wonderful!

Machia wondered if the Little Lord would smile at him again. That had been nice.

#bnha #boku no hero academia #fic #my fic #fanfic #long night in the valley

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