Chapter 29 Why am I on Fire? by Yojimbra

Locating Haru and returning her quirk was easier than I thought it would be. I thought that there'd be some forms, some secrets to be kept, and some promises. But, it turned out that all I had to do was speak at a school and sign some stuff. Naturally, Haru showed up alongside her brother, and I was able to put my hand on her head and then just give her back her quirk.

It put a bit of a smile on my face when it came to this whole thing. If it was that easy to just give someone back their quirk, then it shouldn't be too hard to simply get rid of All for One.

With a sigh, I reclined into the couch just a bit more as I watched Shoko crawl on the ground and play with one of her toys. Fuyumi was blowing bubbles in the yard, Rei had gone out grocery shopping, and Touya was at school. It was a peaceful day that just made everything feel worth it. It was the perfect day to think.

Think about what the fuck I want to do with All for One.

I had argued against Tomura being born with myself right up until they were born nearly a year late. The idea of having a quirk that could only destroy was a hard fit for society. It was hard to see something that could only destroy and think that yes, this person could become a hero. But, I decided to swallow my concerns and see what happened.

But with All for One, it was different.

I could see a world where this quirk was useful. I could see a world where I used this quirk every single day as a part of my job. I could see how the transfer of quirks could help so many people. But, this quirk, this piece of All for One, was just inherently evil. The man had ruined so many lives that to count them would be folly. He had endangered my family and had destroyed others. And this was the quirk that was whispering in my mind so many dark thoughts.

With a weak smile, I stared at my hands. I lived with that darkness before, not by the doing of someone else, but a darkness of my own making. I had been pushed to the brink by my own thoughts and had fought them off. If I needed to, I could hold All for One off.

I heard the car pull into the driveway and saw Shoko's head spin towards the door in anticipation. I reached down, feeling my smile growing with every moment. "What's that, Shoko? Is Momma home?"

Incoherent happy baby noises.

"Papa!" Fuyumi jumped up and ran inside, pausing at the door. Her smile was filled with teeth. "Mama's home!"

"Really?" I asked, standing up with Shoko, "Then let's see if she needs help with the groceries."

"Oooh! If she has any cookies, can I eat some?"

"After I finish them."

"Then there won't be any left."

"That's how it works."

"No fair!"

I carried Shoko high up near my shoulder. The mystified look on her face brightened when we got outside and saw Rei emerging from our car. While traveling by car in Tokyo wasn't inherently necessary, and most of the time Rei didn't bother with taking it anywhere, especially grocery shopping, today she had. Something about a surprise. "Look, Shoko, it's Mommy, what do you—"

"Momma!" Fuyumi squeezed past my leg, nearly tripping on the grass as she ignored the path and plodded on a collision course with Rei. "What'd you bring us?"

"Here, take this inside." Rei handed Fuyumi a bag filled with vegetables.

With her new responsibility, Fuyumi waddled back towards the house, carrying the bag with both hands and trying to keep it off the ground. It was adorable.

"Need a hand?" I asked, walking up towards the car.

Rei's smile went from happy to a slightly annoyed eye roll as she saw Shoko in my arms. "Why'd you bring her out? I needed both your hands, you know."

I grabbed Shoko and forced her onto Rei. "There, I have two arms now."

She rolled her eyes again. Oooh! A double roll, that was rare!

I pushed a bit of hair out of Rei's face and kissed her on the cheek before I looked in the trunk of our car and saw a few more bags of groceries, a few drinks, and a styrofoam container. "What's in the box?"

"Dinner." Rei smiled cheerfully, now holding Shoko on her hip like the pro she was. "Be careful with it when you bring it inside, and you're helping me cook tonight."

The container was filled with liquid, likely water with how it moved, and it felt like there were a few large objects in there as well. Naturally, I was confused as all hell, but that confusion did not stop me from performing the right of passage that was carrying everything in one trip. One bag on each finger, the container safely tucked under my arm, and I was inside before Fuyumi even came out to help again.

"Is that why you took the car?" I asked, watching Rei pull out the largest pot we owned and placed it on the stove. She had put Shoko in her pen again, where our baby girl was bouncing with excitement that mommy was home.

"Yep!" Rei pulled out a pair of scissors and undid the zip ties.

A moment later, it was like a horror movie in my house.

Because Fuyumi freaked out when Rei brought out two mottled brown, still very much alive lobsters. Our daughter ran out of the kitchen and down the hallway. A moment later I heard her door shut for her room. "So, uhh, I guess that we just gave our daughter a new phobia."

Rei looked at the lobsters with a shocked look on her face. "I thought they were cute." She let her shoulders slump. "But, I guess that they're not."

My wife thought lobsters were cute.

What the hell did that make me?

"Okay, well, traumatized children aside, what's with the lobsters?" That was a lot more rich than we normally ate, so I really didn't know what to think about it. "Are you trying to seduce me? Are you trying to seduce me into seducing you, because if there's been signals, I've missed them."

"Oh, no, I know how your buttons work. I was just thinking about what Nezu said." She shrugged and looked at the lobster. "I figured if you could uhh, give this lobster that quirk thing, then we wouldn't need to kill a cute rat."

I looked at the lobster.

I looked at Rei.

I looked at the other lobster.

"So."

She tilted her head in confusion.

"You want me to try and transfer All for One into a lobster."

She nodded yes.

"And then you want to cook it?"

She nodded yes.

"And then you want to eat it."

"It'd be a waste otherwise."

"Rei?"

"Hmm?"

"I love you." Despite her lobster hands, I hugged her tight and kissed her on top of her head. The very idea of giving a lobster All for One, then cooking and eating it was too good to pass up. "But, you do know you just suggested that we eat the equivalent of an evil spirit, right?"

When we pulled away, she just gave me a great big mildly evil smile. "Well, he did try to murder us."

She made an excellent point.

"Alright, evil lobsters for dinner, I'm sure Fuyumi will be happy." I grabbed one of the lobsters and looked at it. "If it starts talking, though, I'm incinerating it."

"Not if I freeze it first." Rei looked at lobster with wide paranoid eyes. Despite the humor in all of this, she was taking it seriously.

"If this works, I'll do whatever you want later."

With a light breath, I grabbed the lobster by the head and felt its whiskers and strange skull-like structure. It reminded me of a lobster villain that I had managed to talk down months ago. It attempted to bite the palm of my hand, but I managed to ignore it's gnawing.

When I had given Haru her quirk back, I had felt something move inside of me. It was easy, simple, and just satisfying to return her quirk, a bit like the sudden relief of no longer having to go to the bathroom. As crude as it was to say, that was just about the only comparison I had for the feeling.

This time, I felt that same feeling. I could feel the weight, I could feel that I had a place to release that weight, and I could move it. Until I couldn't. It was working. Until it wasn't. I could feel my own quirk, I could rip it out of my body and shove it into this lobster if I wanted, but All for One was stuck, lodged up deep inside my body like a stubborn booger that was jammed up deeper inside my nose the more I tried to remove it.

Mentally I roared, thrashing about inside of me as I tried to grab this quirk by its feet and shove it so deep inside this lobster that it wouldn't even be able to manifest until it was already digested.

"Enji, your nose is bleeding." Rei broke me out of that fight as a damp cloth touched my nose.

I moved towards the sink, clutching my nose and watched as several large drops of blood sputtered outward, a headache pounded on my head. After a few moments, the blood stopped, but the sting remained.

With a growl stared at the lobster for a few moments.

"Did it not work?" Rei asked, her cold hand on my shoulder.

"No." I put the lobster back into the container.

"Darn, maybe it won't work on shellfish. Maybe we'll have to try a mammal after all." Rei gave a light frown and rubbed a circle on my back.

"No, no, it's not that." I pointed towards the lobsters. "I could load that guy up with so many quirks; it could be All Might."

Or explode.

Probably explode.

Multiple quirks was generally a terrible idea for like, almost everyone.

"But, All for One itself is resisting. It's putting up a fight."

"Oh," Rei let her shoulders slump, and she looked back towards Shoko for a few moments. "Well, I guess we get to have lobster anyways, so that's something to look forward to. Maybe we should see if anyone can watch the kids tonight."

"Huh? Why?"

Rei walked over, pushing me down by my shoulder while she bounced up to whisper in my ear. "I just remembered lobsters are an aphrodisiac."

Now that was the real aphrodisiac.

XXXX

"You're going to burn them all alive!"

Knowing that this was someone messing with me, knowing that this wasn't because of my own mind, because of my own doubts, knowing that this was because of a bitter man that didn't know when to accept defeat, made it so much easier to deal with.

I stared at the burnt, charred skull I was holding in my hands and smiled. "You know, if you're going to do this, you should do it when I'm not having amazing post-coitus cuddling with my wife because she forgot lobster made people horny."

If the skull could, I'm sure it would have blushed. Instead, a stunned silence fell over my dream, and the fire vanished, giving way to a shapeless room that reminded me of where All Might and I confronted All for One. The skull crumbled to ash in my hands, and I saw him.

Or, rather part of him. Most of his body was gone, leaving him mostly just as a torso, his left arm, and his head, with the rest vanishing beneath a thin layer of shadows that clung to his body like a bad hair day. He smiled at me with all the charisma of a used car salesman.

"Fine then," His tone was somewhat lively, "Let's make a deal, shall we?"

"You fuck off and die, and I don't find someway to shove you into the most humiliating form I can possibly think of?" I scratched my beard and remembered my grandmother's pomeranian the week it had to get all its hair shaved off. Yeah, that'd do.

He gave me a cold laugh and shook his head. "No, no, think about it Enji, I know what drove you to have your little family, it was how you were going to beat All Might."

Ahh.

He was running on outdated information.

Very outdated information.

"Pass."

"Come again?"

"I said pass," I leaned back and found myself now sitting in a pretty comfortable chair. I smiled, just how much power did I have over my own mind? "I don't need to surpass All Might, I'm quite happy with being number two on the billboard, and I don't mind if I go any lower."

"What?" All for One looked at me with wide eyes, "But that was what you always wanted! That was what drove you! Think about it! With my quirk, you can—"

"Surpass All Might? You're aware he's like, my best friend and the godfather of my kid, right?" I waved my hand at the notion and imagined Rei snuggling up next to me. A dream version of Rei appeared next to me, cuddled up in her pajamas and looking extra cozy. "I don't want to beat All Might."

Technically I never did.

Old Endeavour, probably, but I think he'd be too stubborn to accept anything that this guy had to offer.

"Then what do you want!" The angry spirit of an old angry man flailed his arm at me, his face was red with anger.

I smiled and leaned further into the chair. How often could I be so smug to someone that had at least a century on me? "The one thing that you can't give me."

"Which is?"

"A peaceful life with my family."

The dream came to an abrupt and fiery end.

The bright early morning light filtered into our room and made me very aware of the sensation of Rei leaning onto my chest.

"Enji," she said softly, placing a cold hand to my cheek. Her silver eyes could make the moon envious. "Are you okay?"

She leaned forward again, her bare chest pressed against mine as I felt the nakedness of her body once again. "You were talking in your sleep. Again. Did you have another nightmare?"

I smiled, grabbing her by the waist as she all but laid on top of me. "I did, but this time I had a secret weapon that let me tell him to fuck off."

"Ohh?" Rei asked, her cheeks a light pink. "And what was that weapon?"

"You." I leaned up to kiss her.

I expected just a tender good morning kiss that we had shared so many times, or maybe a 'last night was amazing kiss' that we tried to share frequently. Instead I got a kiss that made last night look tame.

She pushed me down, the blanket sliding from her body as she sat on top of me.

With a smile that could melt a glacier she pulled some of her hair out of her mouth and smiled. "Is it wrong that kind of turns me on?"

I laughed, rolling over with her in the bed and kissing her again, and again, and again.

There was nothing that All for One could give me.