Chapter 35

Eijirou is doing his very best not to freak out.

He's seen a bit more action than most of the remedial kids; one of the villains showed up at the facility at the tail end of the attack, and Blood King's the only reason he didn't get fried. But one little spot of excitement doesn't change the fact that he's been here the whole time, cooped up safe inside while all his friends have been risking their lives against another invasion. What was the point of getting authorized for combat if nobody was going to let him fight?

He hasn't heard anything from Bakugou, not since the angry texts from earlier, complaining about getting stuck with Todoroki in the test of courage. It feels so long ago now, and Eijirou can't reach him. He can't reach most of them, and because of that he's stuck waiting around for everyone to trickle in from the woods.

It's been slow. All of Class B has made it back, one way or another, and just a handful of his own class are still missing. Uraraka and Tsuyu were the last to get in—Eijirou saw them run straight to Aizawa-sensei, looking frantic, and they've been talking in hushed tones for almost a minute. In the meantime, Shouji's still gone. Tokoyami's still gone. Bakugou and Todoroki are still gone. Midoriya's still gone—and Yaoyorozu's been a pacing wreck, because apparently they were paired up for the test of courage, too.

Eijirou grinds his teeth. He wishes he could be surprised that Midoriya ran off again, but it makes perfect sense.

For a moment it looks like Aizawa-sensei's about to run out when Eijirou spots them. Shouji and Tokoyami arrive, looking drained—Shouji makes a beeline for Aizawa-sensei, and quickly grows a mouth to say something to him. Red and white hair catches Eijirou's eye, and he elbows his way through to Todoroki as gently as possible.

"Todoroki! Hey, Todoroki!" This is a good sign. Todoroki was Bakugou's partner, and he's one of Midoriya's best friends. He'll probably know where they are. "Dude, where've you been? You look wrecked."

It's true. Outwardly he seems as blank as ever, but it's paper-thin. Todoroki looks exhausted, and it's not a comforting look on the strongest kid in class.

He doesn't answer, and Tokoyami steps in. "We…" He shoots a glance back toward Shouji and Aizawa-sensei. "There was… there was a villain. His quirk was strange. They called him 'Compress', and his ability allowed him to create these orbs." He holds his thumb and forefinger apart by about a centimeter. "Maybe so big. And—" His voice catches. "They were not just orbs, but minuscule prisons. And Midoriya and Bakugou…"

Eijirou's heart plummets to his feet. "Did—don't tell me—did Midoriya get stuck in one of those?" He has a handful of Tokoyami's jacket before he can stop himself. His mind punts him back in time, back to the mall, back to Midoriya's hollow eyes and I just don't like being somewhere that's really small, when I can't go anywhere. "That's bad! That's really bad, he can't—" Midoriya probably won't thank him for telling someone about his severe claustrophobia, but… "He doesn't—he hates small spaces, he told me, so—Where is he? Is he okay?"

The look in Todoroki's eyes as he asks that is something that will probably follow Eijirou to the grave.

Neither of them answer him. They don't get the chance, because it's hard to talk and be heard over the high-pitched trilling wail that cuts through the room.

All conversation halts.

There's some shuffling. People part, people move out of the way, and Mika slowly weaves her way through the forest of legs around her, filling the silence with insistent meowing. She moves from person to person, never stopping long, searching each and every corner of the area, until she finally sits down, tilts her head back, and continues to cry.

Eijirou looks up at the sea of faces. The B-Class kids mostly just look confused, but that's only because they don't know Mika. They can't know what this means.

There's open horror on Yaoyorozu's face as she watches Mika wail. Uraraka's crying. Tokoyami won't look at him anymore. Aizawa-sensei looks like whatever Shouji just told him made him age ten more years.

Todoroki's the first to move. He doesn't say anything, doesn't make a sound. He just walks over to her, stoops, and hooks his left hand under her to lift her up. She wriggles, mewling in protest, but eventually lets him settle her against his shoulder with one arm.

She still won't stop crying.

"Police and paramedics will be here soon." Aizawa-sensei's tight voice breaks the spell. His teeth grind so hard Eijirou can almost hear his jaw creak from here. "Two students and a pro hero have been abducted. Your parents and guardians will be contacted. We're sending you all home as soon as possible."

He walks out then, beckoning Shouji to follow. At a motion from him, Tokoyami and Todoroki go with him. Slowly, Mika's cries fade into the distance, and the rest of the students are left in silence.

Bakugou's gone.

Midoriya's gone.

One of the pros is gone, too. Besides their teachers, Eijirou has only seen Mandalay, so who is it—Pixiebob? Tiger? Ragdoll?

Eijirou feels his back hit a wall before he even registers backing away. He was useless in this. Right from the start, he was utterly useless—all because he wasn't strong enough, wasn't smart enough. He couldn't pass the final, couldn't cut it in remedial class—he just plain wasn't good enough. If he had been, if he'd done well enough to earn just one night of play…

He could have been out there with them. He could have helped. He could have fought for them.

Having to ask a child to put out fires caused by villains is, in Shouta's opinion, one last stab of failure for the night.

Mandalay watches Kouta closely, ready with a gas mask from Yaoyorozu in case her nephew shows signs of respiratory problems from the smoke. She keeps him to the edges, making sure he only keeps the fires from spreading rather than trying to put them out entirely. Once the fire crew arrives with the police, she'll have him stop.

Luckily, the fires have died down on their own since the villains left—Shouta wonders if Dabi's quirk makes them more powerful in his presence. The looped path through the woods is completely clear of gas and mostly clear of flames, so they move in to search the area and douse more of the flames.

They round a bend, and Mandalay halts, bundling Kouta behind her as she calls out a warning. "There's someone ahead! The villains must have left one of their own behind."

Two of them were left, Shouta knows—Kendou and Tetsutetsu took down one, and Tokoyami took out another. "Probably the one that made this gas. Kendou from Class B told us about him."

"It's not," Kouta says, and Shouta almost jumps. The boy hasn't said a word since Shouji delivered news of the abduction. He hasn't cried, and he hasn't talked to anyone, until now. He's clutching his aunt's combat skirt, watching the still, crumpled form lying in the path ahead. "That's him," he says. "He tried to kill me. M-Midoriya—" He has to pause for a moment before he can finish. "Midoriya stopped him."

Shouta motions for Mandalay to stay back while he checks the villain. If it turns out he's playing possum, then erasing his quirk and taking him out again will be quick and easy. With his quirk and capture weapon ready, Shouta nudges the villain, then turns him over with his foot.

He draws back with a sharp gasp.

"Keep him back," he warns Mandalay. "It's not pretty."

"It's okay," Kouta says softly. "I already saw it."

He hears Mandalay gasp sharply—even from the distance, she can see the villain's face. "Kouta, that's—"

"I know," Kouta says. "I know, I saw him—on the news, after…"

It's him, Shouta realizes. The villain who killed the Water Horse heroes two years back. The face and the scar are unmistakable, once he looks past the blood.

"Midoriya came." Kouta's voice is tiny and muffled in Mandalay's skirt. "H-he came and the villain hurt him but he kept fighting him, and then he—he—"

In spite of Shouta's advice, Mandalay creeps closer, enough to see how the blood encrusting the villain's face centers around his right eye. He hears her breathe in sharply through her teeth.

"He couldn't see," Kouta says. "So we led him into the gas. But Midoriya got hurt. He got hurt because—he was saving me, and—"

"This isn't your fault," Shouta says.

"But—"

"It's not." This villain isn't going anywhere; once the police get here, they can take care of the rest. "I know it's hard to understand. I know it hurts. But you aren't responsible for what other people choose to do." Besides—if it's anyone's fault, it's his. He was the one who let Midoriya run back into villain-infested woods, just to pass a message a few minutes faster than he could have delivered it himself. He was the one who wasn't cautious enough, who didn't take enough precautions even after the first attack, even after what happened in Hosu.

It's really the pinnacle of his failure, that it's left a ten-year-old boy feeling guilty for being saved.

The police arrive, fire crews arrive, paramedics arrive, and buses arrive. Three villains—two beaten senseless, one drugged and permanently blinded—are taken into custody. The fires are quelled, the wounded seen to, and the rest sent home.

Because of the test of courage, almost half of Class 1B fell victim to the gas. Of Shouta's own students, only Jirou succumbed, but plenty more need medical attention. Yaoyorozu and Tokoyami overused their quirks, leaving her undernourished and him exhausted. Uraraka and Asui have lacerations, some of which need stitches. Shouji nearly lost a limb to the villain Moonfish. And Todoroki—

He practically has to herd Todoroki onto one of the ambulances. Even if he hadn't spotted the telltale swelling of a broken wrist, Shouta knows an acute stress reaction when he sees one.

Midoriya's cat pitches a fit when the paramedics won't let her go with him. She follows the ambulance, yowling in protest, until Shouta catches her. She doesn't quite scratch him, but he feels claws catch in his sleeve until he brings her up to the folds of his capture weapon.

She won't stop crying.

Thankfully, none of the police officers comment on the unhappy cat in his arms. They look far too nervous to question things.

"Have you investigated the villains' rendezvous point?" he asks. That was one of the details he got out of Shouji before he was whisked away by medics.

"Well… we found it…" The three officers exchange glances, every one of them nervous.

"And?"

"There's… look, maybe it'll be better for you to check it out yourself." The speaker has gills in his neck that flutter in agitation. "No one wants to stick around there long."

"What do you mean no one wants to stick around?" Shouta snaps. He doesn't mean to be short with them, but he really doesn't have time for this.

"We have reason to believe that the area may be under the influence of a quirk," the gilled officer explains. "It's something psychological, but we aren't sure what it is…" His voice trails off.

Shouta makes to put the cat down, but she clings to him and only protests louder. With a sigh, he changes his mind. "Show me."

It's nearly a mile out from the main training facility, marked out with blackened scorch marks on the ground, and eerily clean-cut branches and undergrowth where a warp gate must have opened and shut. When they get close, the officers' pace starts to slow, and before long Shouta finds himself at the front.

It's not hard to make out why.

The forest is still and empty, and Shouta's conventional senses can detect nothing, but that does nothing to keep back the chills that crawl up his spine. The closer he gets to the rendezvous point, the more he feels it.

It slithers in slowly but inexorably, starting at his spine and spreading like cold poison. Distantly, Shouta remembers a geology lesson from middle school—about how water seeps into the cracks in stone, then freezes, then melts and seeps deeper, until eventually the stone crumbles. It's a little like that—the fear takes hold of him bit by bit, and it's all he can do to put one foot in front of the other to have a proper look around.

It's familiar, that's the problem. It brings to mind things he would rather have forgotten.

Mika shifts in his arms, crawling up to perch on his shoulders. His capture weapon keeps her claws from finding his skin, and he hears her purring. Not happy purring—cats do it to de-stress as well. And Mika is very distressed.

Emboldened by his progress, the police on standby follow him and spread out, carrying out their investigation in stone-cold silence.

"Th-this isn't normal," someone mutters, voice small in the syrupy-thick quiet. "This has to be a quirk. R-right?"

Shouta nods tersely. "I've felt something like this before."

"You have?" The speaker this time is someone Shouta knows. Tamakawa Sansa is a common sight for anyone who works with Tsukauchi, though it's less common to see him with his ears flat against his head, his eyes unblinking and fully dilated, and the fur around his neck fluffed up with fear.

"At the USJ," he replies. "Before I fought their Noumu, I felt something like this. Unnatural fear. I assumed at the time that it was one of their thugs, but none of them had a quirk that fit."

"The only ones that escaped were the warp gate villain and the one called Shigaraki, right?" Tamakawa points out. "Their quirks are already accounted for."

"The existence of Noumu changes things," Shouta points out. "We don't know the extent of their research, and therefore we don't know what they're capable of."

"This looks like something a Noumu might've done," one of the other officers remarks. He's standing by a nearby tree, running his fingers over the trunk. There are claw marks scored through it, cutting through bark and into the softer wood beneath. It looks like something done out of temper—but that's unlikely, because Noumu are mindless.

Midoriya's cat leaps from his shoulder to the ground, meowing as she trots to the center of the scorched area, close to the clean-cut vegetation. Shouta grits his teeth at the plaintive sounds she's making, and wonders if she knows. Cats have good olfactory senses. Maybe she can tell that her owner was here recently.

Without warning, Mika's crying rises to a shriek, and Shouta steps forward and reaches for her with a sigh. She darts out of his reach, still yowling, making Shouta chase her—

He stops.

Shouta straightens up stiffly, and looks to the others to see if they feel it too. He finds the police officers watching him, or watching the cat, all of them with visible relief. Tamakawa blinks at him, pupils shrinking back to normal slits, fur lying flat once more.

Slowly, the fear that pervades the air loosens its chokehold on Shouta, eases, and dissipates.

The one-eyed cat runs back and forth in the dark, tail switching, mewing as if calling for her lost owner.

When Katsuki is finally freed from his tiny prison, he comes out swinging.

His first blast catches nothing—the bastards must have gotten wise and given him room at the front. Katsuki turns on his heel, ready to swing out again at anyone coming at him from behind.

Someone knocks his feet out from under him. He twists, trying to correct himself to keep from falling, but he's disoriented from being stuck in a marble and dragged through a warp gate into… wherever the hell he is now. In an instant he's surrounded on all sides, borne to the ground by the weight of numbers. He vents his quirk on them, blasting again and again until he feels his wrists buckle under the strain, but there are too many, and he's been fighting all evening.

He ends up flat on his back on a cold, hard floor, glaring up at the grinning face of the girl holding a knife to his throat. Four clammy fingers close around his face, the fifth hovering an inch away.

"Come on, now," Shigaraki Tomura tells him in a light, coaxing tone. "Settle down, quiet down. Let's not scar that pretty face."

Katsuki snarls and snaps at the nearest finger. Shigaraki laughs, and he feels the pinch and sting of a needle entering his skin. Something like panic rushes through him, and he thrashes in their grip, desperate to force himself up and keep fighting, but his limbs slowly stop obeying.

"Just a little muscle relaxant," Compress tells him. "Potent, but not harmful. You'll even get to stay awake through it."

They drag him up and force him into a chair. Drugs or not, Katsuki fights as much as he can, and with the drugs fresh in his system, he gets a few good kicks in. They shove him down, but he makes them work for it. Straps are secured and locked around him—across his chest, around his arms and legs, and finally a pair of metal clamps secures his wrists to the arms of the chair.

"Had those made special, just for you." The knife finally leaves his throat, and the girl tickles his nose with the tip of the blade. "Don't you feel special, Katsuki? Don't you?"

"Think I can't blast through them?" Katsuki spits.

"Maybe," a third voice says. Katsuki doesn't recognize its owner, and an ugly raccoon face like that is hard to mistake. It looks like it's stapled together. "Eventually. You'd turn your wrists to charcoal long before then." His mouth stretches in a smug smirk.

Katsuki pours as much hate as he can into a glare.

"All right!" Shigaraki claps sharply. "Next one! Compress, let him out."

"Think he'll scream again?" the girl asks, bouncing on the balls of her feet. "I like his voice! It's so pretty."

"One way to find out," Compress replies, and pulls out another marble. It bursts apart, and Deku falls into the villains' waiting hands.

He's not screaming now, but he sounds like he has been. His voice cuts off with a pathetic little whimper and gasp, and he barely even puts up a fight as Compress and the lizard trap his arms.

The scar-faced villain grabs him by the chin and forces his face up. "Clever little move you pulled," he says, and Deku looks fucking pathetic right now but Katsuki still wants to kick this shithead's face in, just to wipe that stupid smirk off his ugly face. "Toga's right, though, that was an awful lot of screaming. Finally run out of steam?"

He lets go of Deku's chin, but Deku keeps his face turned upward, just long enough to aim for his face when he pukes.

He almost makes it, too. He gets the bastard in the throat, at least.

Shigaraki cracks up. If he laughs any harder, he's probably going to piss himself, but he keeps laughing anyway, even as the scarred villain pauses to wipe bile off his neck before punching Deku in the face. The lizard steps forward like he's going to stop him, but Scarface shoves him off with a blast of fire and punches Deku again.

Three punches in, Katsuki has to look away. It takes two of the other villains to haul Scarface off. He gets one last kick in before he finally storms off to the nearest door. Shigaraki's still giggling like an idiot, like it's the funniest fucking thing he's ever seen.

"Don't mind Dabi," he says, as the lizard peels Deku off the floor. "I dunno what he's so moody about. I mean, we won and everything!"

Deku spits blood, but he aims for the ground this time. Katsuki can hear him breathing from here.

The door slams behind Scarface—Dabi, whatever the fuck—and Katsuki strains to move his head and take in the place. It's pretty small, pretty plain. The walls are blank and the floor is plain linoleum. There's only one door, and it looks pretty heavy-duty. There are still a few villains left—Shigaraki, Compress, the lizard, the ugly chick with the club, and the girl. Right now the girl's focused on Deku, playing with the knife in her hands and just… staring. It's honestly fucking creepy to watch.

"Sorry about this place," Shigaraki says with a shrug. "It's kind of plain and ugly, I know. I wanted to stash you two at our actual hideout, but Sensei said this place would be better."

Sensei? Who the fuck is Sensei?

"Oh! Speaking of which!" Shigaraki leans a little on Deku's shoulder, which is kind of a feat because Deku looks like the lizard's the only thing keeping him from tipping over right now. "I told him about you, and I told him we were gonna bring you, and he wants to talk to you real quick. Cool, right?"

"Sounds great," Deku wheezes, because apparently he's gonna be a suck-up about it.

"Yeah, I was hoping you'd say that." Shigaraki glances down. "Oh hey, that's him now."

It's enough effort just to keep breathing, but Katsuki manages to look down in time to see the floor under Shigaraki's feet change. It goes from ugly linoleum to black tar, oily-slick and shiny. Shigaraki starts sinking into it, and yanks Deku out of the lizard's grip and into the black puddle with him.

Somewhere beneath the blood and bruising on his face, Deku looks like he's ready to throw up again. For a split second his dazed eyes meet Katsuki's.

"K-Ka—" he starts, and the black ink swallows them up before he can get another sound out.

The girl villain squeals. "Oooh, I can't wait 'til he gets back! He was really cute, wasn't he?"

"You're only saying that because Dabi bloodied his face," the lizard sighs.

"He was cute before that, too!" The girl pouts, then turns to beam at Katsuki, and fuck if that isn't the creepiest thing he's ever seen. "You're not too bad, either." The tip of that blade skims up Katsuki's bare arm, and he decides then and there that she's the first one getting napalmed in the face. "Who knows? Maybe you'll grow on me. We've got time." Her eyes glitter at him. "We're gonna have so much fun together."

It's crowded in this place.

It was crowded in the first room, and when Izuku's feet touch solid ground again, he breathes a sigh of relief when he finds himself no longer pressed in by suffocating walls of cold, spectral bodies. Shigaraki's painful grip on his arm eases, and Izuku does his best to stand up straight. That little beating from Dabi didn't do him any favors; he's lucky he managed to turn and take the kick with his back instead of his injured ribs.

It's not the kind of room he expected. The only forbidding thing about it is how poorly lit it is, but that has never been a problem for Izuku. It's not as drafty as the room they just left; in fact, it's comfortably warm, at least partially carpeted, and backed with the gentle whir of machines.

It looks like a hospital room, Izuku realizes. It has the bed for it, its height and slant adjusted to allow the occupant to sit up. And, looking at said occupant—

Izuku's stomach turns.

The man is bathed in shadow, but not nearly enough to hide him from Izuku. For a split second Izuku thinks he must be looking at a ghost, because surely no living person can look like that and still breathe. He checks the eyes, just to be safe—except he can't. Because the man sitting before him doesn't have any eyes.

"Sensei," Shigaraki says—and his voice sounds odd like that, eager, almost bright. Like he's a kid showing off a finished project to his favorite teacher. "The mission was a success. The vanguard squad brought both of them back."

"You did well." Sensei's voice is deep, his tone eerily distorted—probably from the wires and tubes stuck into his throat and face. "I hope you don't mind me borrowing your prisoner for the moment. You've told me so much about him, and I couldn't help being curious."

While they talk, Izuku looks past the disfigured man on the bed to the second figure stepping out of—out of thin air, almost.

At first glance, he isn't much to look at. Just a hunched, slender man with a mop of poorly combed hair that obscures much of his face. Izuku can see this one's eyes, though. This one's dead.

"Boy," the living man says. "Come closer, will you?"

Izuku takes as small a step as he dares. He can feel his own heartbeat in his ears as he looks, not at the eyeless man, but at the ghost that hovers at his side. He locks eyes with the spirit, until he's sure that he's looking back, then raises his hand in a trembling little wave. "H-hello."

This gets the spirit's attention. He stands a little taller, uncurling out of his slouch, and steps forward—

raises his hands—

and signs.

Can you see me? He echoes the words out loud, and his speech sounds strangely clumsy, like he knows how the words are shaped but has no way of checking his work to make sure.

"I must say," the man in the bed remarks. "It is very much a pleasure to meet you, Midoriya Izuku."

"U-um, yeah," Izuku says, and tips his chin in the littlest nod he can manage. He keeps his eyes fixed on the ghost. He wonders if he can lip-read. "S-so, um, I guess you probably know who I am, but… wh-who're you?" His voice cracks.

Do you know Morse code? The spirit asks him. Or sign? If you are who I think you are, then you're in very great danger.

"I would hope you had guessed by now," says the man in the bed. "If you haven't, then both I and my student have gravely overestimated you."

And—he's right, for all that he doesn't know that Izuku wasn't talking to him. He knows exactly who this man is.

It's not a moment of realization so much as one of acceptance. Izuku has known who this man is since before he walked in, since the moment Shigaraki grabbed his arm and told him he was going to meet Sensei. It's a strange feeling to be crushed beneath this understanding, because the man before him is in a hospital bed, crippled and blind and hooked up to life support.

This is the man who hurt All-Might. This is the man who murdered Ms. Nana.

With his left hand—the one opposite where Shigaraki is standing, Izuku finger-spells. I know. Can you help me?

I'll try, is the reply. He won't kill you—not yet at least. Once you're away from him, we'll talk properly.

"Tomura," All For One says. "Might I speak with your prisoner alone for a moment? I'll send him back to you when I'm finished with him."

Shigaraki shrugs. "Sure. Okay." The moment the words are out of his mouth, he sinks into blackness again, and Izuku tries not to sway on his feet.

"Please," All For One says, gesturing at a chair nearby. "Sit."

"I-I'd rather—"

"It's such a small thing, isn't it?" All For One says. "You're injured and in pain, and I would like to relieve that, if only a little. I promise you, I only want to talk."

Izuku steps over and lowers himself gingerly into the chair.

"I've been observing your progress with great interest, Midoriya Izuku," All For One says casually, as if that isn't the single most terrifying thing he's heard since Toga Himiko calling him attractive. "I can see why All-Might chose you as his successor."

Izuku's heart plummets.

"I don't know what you're talking about?" he tries. In any situation that wasn't this one, it might even be considered a joke. But right now Izuku's mouth still tastes like bile, and he feels his throat burn as it closes, until he's gagging and fighting back the urge to vomit.

"Would you like to try again?" All For One sounds almost amused.

"What do you want?" Izuku asks. "I know you're going to try to kill me eventually. So why—what do you want from me? Are you—" His voice catches again. "Are you going to take away my quirk?"

"My dear boy," All For One says, with the long-suffering patience of a teacher explaining a lesson for the umpteenth time. "Has All-Might not told you? That quirk of yours cannot be taken by force. Not even by me. Surely he's told you that by now?"

Izuku grinds his teeth together.

"And I'm not going to kill you, for two reasons," All For One continues. "The first is that Tomura seems to enjoy your company. I didn't expect him to like you so much. Do you know why?"

"N-no." This doesn't make sense. None of this makes sense. Izuku has talked to villains and been talked at by villains—the slime criminal last year, Shigaraki Tomura himself, Stain and Muscular and Compress and Toga Himiko and Dabi. He's felt that menace inches away from him, reaching toward him to grasp at his throat and squeeze, but now it's just gone. He sits before the darkest villain in history, and he can't feel even a drop of the grim killing intent that the Hero Killer exuded in noxious waves. It doesn't make sense, it doesn't make sense.

"He hates All-Might, you know," All For One says, a little sadly. "He resents everything the Symbol of Peace stands for, and you… well, I expect you have quite a lot in common with All-Might, don't you? You would have to be, for him to choose someone like you." He shakes his head. "All-Might is charismatic and selfless, and he was once powerful beyond measure… but he lacks imagination. There are so many ideas that he simply can't let go of. So… it was a surprise to me, if a welcome one, that Tomura found you pleasant company."

"Oh."

"And the second reason is that, contrary to what you most likely believe, I do have standards. I do not approve of the murder of children."

Izuku chokes.

"Really," he rasps.

"Is that so hard to believe?" All For One asks.

"Maybe you should've told Muscular that before he tried to beat a grade-schooler to death for a laugh," Izuku spits out. He only realizes his mistake after he's made it, and presses his mouth shut. The room is dead-silent—the machinery whirs, keeping All For One breathing and his heart beating, but the space still feels choked with quiet.

And then—

"He did what?"

And there's that menace, that low-frequency thrum of well-kept rage. Stain's was heavy, dark smog; All For One's is as thick and fowl as clotted blood caught beneath fingernails. Izuku trembles in the face of it, and his only relief is that it's pointed at someone who isn't him.

"Did he happen to return with the rest of Tomura's squad?" All For One's voice curls through the air toward him.

Izuku shakes his head. At some point he switched his gaze to look at the floor, and he doesn't—can't—raise his head now.

"Ah. Good." And just like that, the menace is gone. It doesn't drain away gradually—it's simply there and gone again, leaving Izuku reeling with whiplash. Which is false? Which is true? Both? Neither?

There's a hand on his shoulder, one that All For One can't see.

Focus, the spirit tells him. He does this, twists things. He makes you question things even if you know they're true.

Izuku's hand shakes. I'm scared.

Good. You should be.

"But to answer your question, I suppose I'm just curious to speak with you in person," All For One continues, and Izuku has to pause a moment to remember what he actually asked. "After all, if fate continues unchallenged, the two of us will be enemies someday. I would like to get to know the child who might grow to challenge me one day." He pauses, while Izuku tries not to tremble. "You're so… earnest, Midoriya Izuku. And your progress really has been impressive, it's such a shame with your condition."

"M-my… condition?" Izuku manages to say.

"Tell me," All For One says gently. "Did you give up your search for your own quirk, when All-Might came to offer you his?"

Izuku goes cold.

Not cold like fear. Cold like a ghost—detached, drifting, on the outside looking in. He stares down, focusing on the imperfections on the floor and the hand on his shoulder.

For the first time since he was dragged through the portal, since he set foot in this room, since he sat down in this chair, he has something.

He has something. All he has to do is hold on to it.

There's a voice in his head, a woman's voice, and it takes a moment for Izuku to recognize it as Ragdoll's. It takes a good liar. Do you think you can tell a lie without talking?

He raises his head, and it's not hard to look afraid and uncertain and helpless, because that's exactly what he is. It's not hard to look away, and it's not hard to make it look like shame. He feels small, and it's easy to show it.

He doesn't say I'm quirkless. He doesn't say My quirk never came.

He says, very softly, "One For All is my quirk."

"Of course it is," All For One says, with a voice full of gentle pity. "Of course it is. I'm sure that's what All-Might told you. He would have wanted to comfort you."

The floor beneath him begins to shift, and he can see the blackness bubbling up again—not a warp gate, but the tar-like portal that All For One used to bring him here.

"I enjoyed our talk," All For One tells him. "I hope to continue it soon. Please remember—if you try to escape, there will be consequences. You may not be the only one to suffer them."

Izuku looks to the ghost just as he releases his shoulder.

I'll be with you shortly, the spirit signs. I'll tell everyone else about you. It'll be good for them to know.

The blackness swallows him whole and drops him back into the first room. He doesn't bother fighting as he's manhandled into a chair and strapped to it firmly. He can't fight back, because it's taking enough energy to keep from throwing up again.

He also can't help but notice that his bindings are slightly less excessive than Bakugou's. His classmate glares at him from his own chair, but Izuku can tell it's more a curious glare than an angry one.

"Well," Shigaraki says, slouching comfortably in his own seat. "We might as well get comfortable with each other, huh? We're gonna be spending a lot of time together."

Bakugou curses them until his throat is raw. Izuku ignores him, and ignores the villains. Spinner and Magne and Compress are still here, and Izuku tunes them out until things quiet down for the night—even villains have to sleep. Izuku isn't sure he'll be able to sleep, for all that he can feel exhaustion creeping in.

The ghosts are whispering now, eyeing him. Word must be spreading.

A tap on the arm jolts him out of a trance—not quite a doze. Izuku jumps, but the villains watching them pay him little mind; in a place like this, it's not out of the ordinary to jump awake at every little sound.

Izuku's wrists are bound to the arms of his chair, but his hands are free enough to spell.

Hello again, he says as the spirit crouches down before him. Izuku is grateful for it; it looks less odd for him to be looking down than up.

Got the word out. Are you okay?

No, Izuku answers. The ghost smiles sadly at this, hair falling into his face.

I will try to help you, he says. I'm not used to being able to act. It's been so long.

A hero? Izuku wonders. He doesn't look like one. Maybe a civilian caught in the wrong place at the wrong time?

Who are you? he asks.

The ghost blinks at him, looking thoughtful.

That's an interesting question, he says, and smiles again. I suppose, in the interest of parallels, you might as well call me One For All.

The ringing phone startles Inko out of a light doze. The TV is on, volume low, and the couch is comfortable enough for her to drift off. She startles initially, disoriented from staying up late, before she remembers where she is and what a telephone is for.

Stifling a yawn, she goes to answer it.

Her world turns to ashes.

"The League of Villains attacked the training camp," is the first thing Aizawa tells him over the phone.

Toshinori feels his guts lurch and twist, and fights against the sensation of thick liquid crawling up his throat. He can already taste iron on the back of his tongue, and it takes all he has to keep from gagging.

Twice now. That's twice that villains have menaced his students while he wasn't there—three times counting the mall, four counting Stain—

"Is everyone all right?" he rasps. Of course they're all right. They have to be. Maybe he wasn't there, but Aizawa was and Sekijurou was and the Pussycats were—six heroes. At the USJ they survived with two, in Hosu three of his students survived with none, and Midoriya faced Shigaraki all by himself. With six heroes, the villains must have been routed.

"They took Bakugou and Midoriya," Aizawa tells him. He says it bluntly. Impersonally. "Three other students witnessed their capture. Ragdoll's missing, too, so we can only assume they took her as well."

Toshinori chokes.

It comes without any warning, not even enough for him to cover his mouth. Blood spatters his carpet, trickles down his chin until the coughing fit subsides. When it's over his forearm is smeared with red, and he doubts he'll ever get the stain out of his carpet.

"Tell me we have something," he gasps, once he can speak again. "Tell me they left something behind."

"They left something behind," Aizawa replies. "Three of their own, in fact. We're still processing the evidence. All of it will be sent to—"

"Tsukauchi's office," Toshinori interrupts. "Has to be. The League of Villains is his case."

"I'll touch bases with him once the rest of the students are on their way home," Aizawa tells him.

"I'll be there," Toshinori says. He can feel another coughing fit coming on, but he swallows it down grimly.

"All-Might." Aizawa begins, and does not continue. His voice is terse, wound so tight that it cracks beneath the pressure. Toshinori can't see his colleague, but he can imagine him gripping the phone until he threatens to break the screen.

Toshinori hesitates. He knows what this tense silence means. There are a million things he could say to fill it, and almost none of them will be helpful. Not to him, not to Aizawa, and not to—

Not to—

"I'll see you then, Aizawa," he says, and hangs up the phone.

He wants to cry. He wants to be sick. He wants to find Shigaraki and Kurogiri and All For One and every single one of their smugly grinning murderers, and make them regret they ever heard his students' names. He wants to find whatever hiding place they've crawled back to, and rip it down brick by brick.

"Bakugou… and Izuku," he says to no one in his empty apartment, sharp and painful as broken glass shards.

The name of his student, his successor, the boy who, in a much kinder world, would have been his true son, should not feel like that. It should not taste like bile and blood.

"I'm sorry," he whispers. "I'm so, so sorry."

He cleans the blood from his arm and leaves the rest to set in the carpet. He has no time to waste on unimportant things. His students need him.

It takes a moment for it all to click in Izuku's mind. He can't help it; he gapes at the spirit, pursing his lips to keep from going slackjawed.

I don't look like much, the ghost signs, looking rueful. Do I?

Not really, Izuku replies, and the ghost shakes with soft, hoarse laughter.

That's what my brother thought, too. That's what he always thought. Maybe he was right.

I think I heard you, once, Izuku tells him. In my head. I was in trouble, and I saw a vision, and… I heard thoughts in my head that weren't mine.

The power inside you is fueled by our strength, One For All tells him. Our will. It carries echoes of us, but not the real thing.

Izuku feels a jolt at how he says it. We. Us. Are the others here, too?

No. I met them all, one by one. Some of them fell against my brother. Some of them died naturally and found their way to us later. But they all left eventually. They had to watch over their students. They had their own families and loved ones to visit. One For All's hands falter. But not me. My brother is all I have left. When he's finally brought down, I'll wait for him, and we can leave together. I've been waiting for so long.

I'm sorry, Izuku replies. That must be lonely.

Another bitter, hoarse laugh. The dead are never lonely around my brother. I'm just the only one who can look at him without losing myself.

Izuku thinks of how crowded this room was before, and how empty the room with All For One was. Does All For One know about you?

No. None of us can touch him. It frustrates the others—that's why they lose themselves. One For All hesitates, looking thoughtful. Don't worry about signing in front of him. He has no eyes, and he only has a quirk that lets him sense heat signatures. He can't detect precise gestures. A bitter look crosses his face. And even if he could, he never bothered to learn it.

Izuku isn't sure how to ask his next question. One For All must see it in the look on his face, because he smiles again.

I am deaf, he says. I wasn't born that way. But I was a sickly child. Too many ear infections added up, and then, when he gave me a quirk, there were… complications. He touches his ear. I was already hard of hearing then. But when I woke up after he gave me that quirk, the rest of my hearing was gone.

That must have been awful, Izuku says, and wishes he could think of something better. His hands fall still, and so do the spirit's.

Izuku looks over to Bakugou. He has no way of communicating surreptitiously to him. Bakugou doesn't know sign, and he's pretty sure neither of them know Morse. He'll have to bide his time, wait for an opportunity.

It won't be like the exam. He won't leave Bakugou behind again. He can't afford to, because this time it will mean leaving him for dead.

He has to be ready.

A quiet tap of his foot makes One For All look at him again. What can you tell me about All For One? he asks.

One For All's blank eyes narrow into a determined frown. My brother may be injured and blind, but he is still strong. He is still ruthless and clever. Be careful how you treat him, how you act around him, or you'll give him something to use against you. His hands curl briefly into fists. But, he is also arrogant. And he knows he's clever. He likes to be clever.

Any weaknesses?

Oh, yes. One For All smiles grimly. The thing about my brother, Midoriya Izuku, is that he is an evil man. And evil men like power over people, so they like to see you in fear. He wants you to know you're helpless. And that means that, more than killing, more than winning, he likes to talk.

Izuku thinks about this for a moment.

Good, he answers. I like to talk, too. One For All blinks. Can you tell me about his quirks?

That I can do. One For All pauses one more time before signing again. Do you have a plan?

Izuku ducks his head so that his hair falls into his eyes, partially hiding his face from his captors. I'm going to let him have the upper hand, he says.

And then, if I can, I'm going to break it.