Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Tsukauchi gets the information over his radio like this: 

“There’s three… mutants? Bioweapons? I’m not sure. I can’t kill them on my own.”

“Engaging with the criminals now.” 

“An explosion upstreet…!”

“I repeat, civilians have been kidnapped—”

“Eraserhead speaking, I’ve been teleported on the other side of the country—”

“This is Hawks, these guys aren’t staying down—”

“—hero on site, critical injuries—”

“Seven villains on-site apprehended—”

“Fire’s spreading—!”

“Thank fuck you’re here, All Might, I guess I’m having a bit of an off day.”

“Leave it to me, I am here!” 

“Izuku’s gone.” 

“Haaah!? I told that fucker if he was late I was going to kill him! Where is that shitty bastard!?” 

Kirishima brightens at the sound of yelling and turns to see a blonde-haired kid, close to his age, standing in the middle of the park. “Yo! You must be Bakugo!” 

“WHO THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU ARE!?”

Kirishima smiles. “I’m Kirishima! This is my friend, Mina!” 

“Tch,” Bakugo says. “Where the fuck is the nerd?” 

“You mean Midoriya?” Kirishima scratches his cheek. “I thought he would be with you.”

“Woah, guys, check this out,” Mina says. She thrusts the phone in their direction. It’s an article about a recent villain attack. Hawks grievously wounded, All Might on the scene, and three kidnappings: an elderly man, Endeavor’s son, and—

“Oh fuck,” Kirishima says. 

“Is that your Midoriya!?” Mina yelps. 

Kirishima and Bakugo share a glance, and for the first time, the boy seems utterly speechless. 

The first time he’s attacked, he leaves limping and with gauntlets crusted in blood and ick. He doesn’t know who the men are or what they want from him. 

The second time he’s attacked, he’s more prepared. He realizes that he’s not safe anymore, that he’s a target, and someone has put his name out on the streets. Dead or alive, it doesn’t matter. By then, the Trigger has left his system, and his tongue has lost sensation— but the paranoia and confusion hasn’t gone away. Trigger opened a door in his mind, and someone stuck their foot inside, keeping it that way. 

The third time he’s attacked, he remembers a warm hand against his wrist, and an equally warm voice, whispering: “Reach out for one of my markings. Pull on it. Reach for something to activate.” 

Like pulling teeth, his mind warns, and when he does reach out and yank and twist and pull and heave — when he activates the first marking for the first time, it hurts. The man spasms. 

He pinches the memory in his fingertips. Distantly, the memory unfurls in his head where he’s compartmentalized it in a little box. The man collapses right then and there, reveling in his own marking’s memory—about a son who loves to play catch, who wanted to be a firefighter before he died of rare disease. 

“I love you,” dream-criminal says within the confines in the memory, and the boy laughs and says it back. And the man crumpled on the ground murmurs, “Aikiko”, his face relaxed. 

He runs. 

The next one hurts just as badly, as does the next, but by the fifth person he’s good at easing the memory out rather than yanking on it. Every time, the person stills. Every time, he sees a memory that’s not his spilling out behind his eyes. 

It doesn’t matter, though, because he’s—

Hawks Dabi Dad Mom Sixth Second Aizawa Fourth Fifth Uncle—

He stops. 

There’s something important he’s forgetting. 

He’s thirteen and he’s a killer he’s a kid he’s made too many mistakes to count he hasn’t started high school he’s been fighting for years he’s been fighting for hours he’s he’s he’s—

He’s two years old when his brother is born. 

Apparently, they do everything together. Or, they used to. Second remembers playing and roughhousing and sleeping in the same bed, sometimes, or late-night bedtime stories and a loving mother. 

When Second is five, his parents find out about his little ability, that spark in his fingers that can accelerate things to be faster, to have more force. 

They look at him with something akin to horror and fear. The heir to the family, they whisper. No one can know that their heir is a meta-human. 

When he’s five, they call him “Haji”, and he loses his birth name. He forgets it quickly. When he’s five, they name his first brother the birthright. 

When he’s five, he’s disowned and hidden away. The staff and all the witnesses to Haji’s birth are sworn to secrecy. 

He doesn’t mind. When his parents let him out of the basement, he privately thinks it’s unfair, that he has a meta-ability, that he would be cursed for no reason. He also thinks it’s okay that he’s not the heir, and that he doesn’t really need the luxuries. He sleeps on a small cot in the corner of a servant’s quarters. He works all day and is to never speak unless spoken to first. He thinks, it’s okay not to be the heir and bathed in gold. 

But he sits by the grimy window in the servants’ kitchen anyway, and he watches the sun as it dapples the rolling green hills and lights up the koi pond. He wonders what it would be like, to roll up the cuffs of his pants and to jump right in. What would it be like, to feel the sun on your shoulders, to let the wind curl her fingers through your clothes? 

When he’s six, his mother gives birth to his sister. 

“I don’t understand,” his youngest sister whispers. 

“Life isn’t always kind,” Haji says, because that’s what the Lady of the House (his mother) had told him once. Haji quietly runs a brush through her hair, like he’d seen some of the adult servants do in the basement. It takes a few tries to figure out how to braid it, but when he’s done, his sister laughs and runs to go show Mother, who’s pregnant once more. 

When he’s eight, his mother gives birth to twin boys. 

Haji’s not allowed to be around them, for fear of contaminating the male bloodline with his meta powers. He carves the two boys a matching set of toys and watches them play. 

When he’s nine and eleven, he gets two sisters and one more brother. 

He only meets them once. Once, when his parents were busy with a meeting, he played with the youngest siblings and, ever-so-slightly, used his meta ability to help bounce the kids higher into the air.

The servants gossip. 

Later that night, when the rest of the house has gone to sleep, Haji’s called by his father to an office study, and Haji sinks prostrate to the floor, knees tucked under his chest, forehead on his palms— and the obedience isn’t enough. He’s beaten until his back is caked, crusted with lashings and cooling blood. 

And he’s been beaten before, but never like this, never so that the brands of the crop overlapped each other, and Haji finally cries out, “Stop!” and his father sneers at him for not being a real man. His brother, the rightful heir, Maeno, snickers in the corner. Maeno’s only nine, Haji reminds himself. He’s just a boy. He doesn’t know better. 

“Maeno needs a dueling attendant,” his father says. “He has excelled in his physical training. But, to truly grasp the power needed to survive this new world, he needs experience with… abilities.” 

Haji shrinks. 

“Do you understand?” Haji’s father says. 

“I don’t want to hurt him,” Haji mumbles. 

The crop strikes the side of his face. 

“Do you understand?”

Haji rolls his jaw. “I understand, sir.” The words taste like blood. 

The bar is blissfully quiet when a figure slams open the door and limps to the counter. 

“You made it back,” Shigaraki says idly, glancing back at the bloodied and disfigured form of Arakan. “I thought you were dead for real this time.” 

Arakan spits a glob onto the counter and glares at Shigaraki with thinly veiled irritation. “What’s this about a report that you had Eraserhead in your grasp and you didn’t finish the job?”

Shigaraki, with great control and restraint, pauses his game. Look, Kurogiri, he could be emotionally mature. 

“Eraserhead erases quirks,” Shigaraki says plainly. He doesn’t mention the part where he could have erased far more Aizawa’s arm, but chose not to—there was that soft touch against his shoulder that stopped him. 

Arakan snarls. Shigaraki has heard how painful it is to revive—Arakan doesn’t exactly heal perfectly. Shigaraki can see glass still sticking out of the back of his shirt, and blood cakes the back of his shirt where he fell from the side of the building and died.

“I got your enemy and the kid,” Shigaraki says. “I did my quests perfectly. You’re the one who died.” 

That soft whisper of a touch arrives at his shoulder again. It started appearing two years ago—he doesn’t know what it means. He wishes he could ask Master, but the man is gone. Gone because of All Might. 

Shigaraki feels the sneer instinctively twist his expression. Arakan rolls his eyes. 

“Kurogiri,” he says, “a drink, if you will.” 

Haji trains with his brother. 

And that’s the thing— fighting, he’s good at it. At the end of the first week, Maeno won’t even look at him without bursting into rage. Haji’s older and stronger, so it’s not fair as is, and he doesn’t use his meta ability out of guilt… but the more he has to, the more freeing it feels. It contrasts so starkly with the belt against his back that he remains in a limbo of constant confusion. 

He continues to work with the servants and dreams of grass underneath his feet. 

He carves more toys for his siblings. 

Sometimes, in rare moments, one of his sisters will come down to visit him. They talk about the family, how the siblings are always fighting, how Maeno’s envious… 

“Envious?” Haji murmurs. His palms hurt from where he scrubbed the floors hard enough until the skin was raw. 

His sister, Lilali, looks up at him and smiles. “Haji, you’re stronger, taller, nicer than he is… and you’re supposed to be none of those things. He hates you because he wants the lineage to be his, and he’s worried you’ll take it away from him.” 

“I don’t want it,” Haji says confusedly.

“He’s nine, Haji,” Lilali says, like that explains anything. 

The next time they fight, Haeno brings a real blade with him. It’s coated in a silvery sheen. Haji gets cut and is hospitalized for the next two weeks; the servants can’t identify which toxin it is, but it’s one of the toxins from father’s restricted cabinet. His mother only comes to visit him once. 

It’s the first time Haji fears for his life. 

He follows that tug towards the snake. The cities are too big, the paranoia sinks too deep. He’s drowning. He’s shivering in a corner of an abandoned warehouse, allowing himself a moment to rest. 

Haji meets Grandfather for the first time on his twelfth birthday. 

“Father, my lord,” Haji’s father (tormenter) begins nervously, and Grandfather sends him a cutting glance. 

“Silence.” 

Grandfather’s eyes are stone cold. Haji wishes he could curl into the stone floor and disappear, but he keeps his chin up in fear of the hand that strikes weakness. 

“He is an unruly child,” Haji’s mother says, unflappable. 

“So you’ve said,” Grandfather says. “There is promise. I see that he is not completely irredeemable.” 

“Are you certain—”

“I have spoken,” Grandfather interrupts. The whole room quietens. “He’ll be sent to live with his uncle Umesaka.” 

A different kind of hush follows the words. Haji feels dread and knows the horrors that surround the name Umesaka. The man was known for his brutality. As the second-born, he single handedly killed every threat to the Hassaikai line before they could even take their first breath. It was exactly the role his family wanted of Haji—a quiet, subservient killer, one with no complaints of the family dynamic, who would ensure the safety of the grandest line. 

“There is a man, to the north, who has his own meta ability.” The rest of the room flinches, but Grandfather says the words ‘meta’ easily, calmly. “He is taking advantage of the chaos and power vacuum to make a name for himself. I want you to find him for me. You’ll leave tomorrow morning before breakfast,” Grandfather says, and that’s it. Haji’s entire existence has been resolved, handed off to someone else. 

That night, Haji crawls into bed and cries for a world consumed by uncertainty rather than cruelty. 

All For One’s three Figureheads. 

Politician. Public. Guard. 

“Arakan. Shigaraki. Kurogiri,” Aizawa lists flatly. 

Haji’s uncle is a burly man of great stature. His clothes are perfectly pressed, not a crease out of place. He sports long dark hair slicked away from his forehead. His beard and eyebrows that remain untamed, thick and course. He arrives at the lavish home and doesn’t bother to take his shoes off at the door, nor does he bother to wipe them at the front mat. 

“Umesaka,” Haji’s father says with a shallow bow. “Thank you for coming on such short notice.” 

“For master,” Umesaka says, voice rumbling, “anything.” 

Haji has a small knapsack with two shirts and a pair of pants and very little else. Umesaka gives him a once-over before he’s already nodding, ready to leave. 

“Umesaka,” Haji’s father calls out. 

Umesaka turns silently. 

“Make something useful of the boy, please.” 

Umesaka’s eerily blank expression twitches. “You know nothing,” Umesaka says, and then he’s off again. Haji scrambles to follow after him. 

The soil is soft beneath Haji’s feet. He marvels at the feeling of blades of grass tickling his ankles as he runs to catch up with Umesaka’s large stride. The sun warms his cheek. The water of the creek ripples and sloshes through the rock garden, and Haji’s feet thump against the wooden bridge that crosses over the pond. 

It’s scary. It’s… alive. 

They walk as far to the edge of the property. Sweat beads at Haji’s temple as he slides into the back of the vehicle. He expects to see some type of maid or assistant at the driver’s seat, but Umesaka slides into it himself. 

The trip is silent. Haji tries to contain his wonder, but he can feel his eyes widening at the world beyond from the safety of their vehicle. Once they get into the city, Haji’s head begins to spin. There’s so many people, and, no matter where you look, there’s more. It would be impossible to remember every single face. 

They stop at a large gated property. Umesaka drives through the gates. Still, Haji expects to see attendants in the front garden, or someone to help Umesaka’s coat when he steps through the front door, but there’s no one. 

Haji nervously follows Umesaka. When the door closes behind them, Umesaka turns to face him. 

“Your meta ability,” Umesaka says. “What is it.”

“I can,” Haji says falteringly, “I-I can add more… power or speed to things, as long as I touch them.” 

Umesaka doesn’t react. “Your age?”

“I turned twelve yesterday.” 

“Name?”

“Haji,” he replies. 

“Hajime,” Umesaka says immediately. 

Haji blinks. “Hajime?” 

“Your given name is a disgrace upon your father,” Umesaka says. “What a foul man.” 

Just as quickly as Umesaka had whisked him away from everything he knew, the man’s whole body begins to melt away. Haji watches, shocked, as standing there, moments later, is a tall, bony woman with harsh cheekbones and a long flat nose. 

“My name is Kagei,” the woman begins, equally as cold. “My meta-ability allows me to transform into select individuals. I am your aunt. I married Umesaka about fifteen years ago. You will call me Umesaka in public and in all correspondence with your family.”

Haji’s jaw drops. “B-but… where’s Umesaka, then?”

“Dead,” Kagei replies. 

“How—”

“He hit me,” Kagei says shortly. “He was an awful man, to begin with, and that was the last straw.” 

Kagei killed Umesaka, Haji realizes. He can see it in the tension in her shoulders, the icy glint in her eyes. 

“Do you know how to write?”

Haji flushes and shakes his head no. 

“Read?”

Haji’s shame burns hotter. “Only some things…” 

“Fight?”

Haji shrugs. Kagei gives him a withering glare. 

“Use your words, Haji. You still know how to talk.” 

Haji flushes to the tips of his fingers. “I’ve had mock battles with my brother before. He’s trained in two, maybe three fighting styles. One hand-to-hand, one involving a blade.” 

“Good,” Kagei says. She turns to stalk down the hall, and Haji demurely follows after her as they come into a wide sitting area with ceiling-tall windows. On the other side, tall bookcases stretch across the walls. Haji struggles not to gape. “In one month, you’ll know how to read. In two you’ll know how to write. In three months, you’ll be sent to the local school system, and we can start building you an identity.” 

“Identity?” Haji asks in a small voice. 

“You’ve been given a death mission,” Kagei says easily. She throws her blazer over the back of the couch and begins to undo her tie. “The family does that to its black sheep. If you want to survive, you’re going to have to put in the work.” 

Kagei pulls a slim book from one of the lower bookcases and thrusts it out towards Haji.

“The target’s name is All For One,” Kagei says. “His existence is the greatest threat to your family’s legacy in centuries. You might just dedicate your whole life to destroying him.” 

Haji takes the book silently. The symbols mean nothing to him. The fear comes back now, haunting and deep. 

The rain pours in heavy curtains, soaking him to the bone. The ugly feeling of someone watching him never leaves, so he runs until he can curl in an alleyway and get a few moments of sleep, and then he runs some more, and the rain doesn’t stop, like it’s mourning something. 

Sometimes he stands in the thick of it and lets rivulets pour down his face. 

He doesn’t know who he is, where his friends are, or how to get back home.

The snake gets stronger, and he tightens his grip on that connection, forced and strained beyond reason. Only his grit and will keeps the link going, just enough to follow. 

He’s never used his quirk like this, and it’s driving him insane. 

Two months in, Haji gloomily says, “What’s the point? He’s just going to kill me. I can barely even read street signs.” 

Kagei drags him by the ear to the sink and washes his mouth out with soap for an hour straight. “Say that again,” she says. 

Haji knows a trap when he sees one, so he looks down at his soaked shirt and says, “Sorry.” His ear still stings from where Kagei had dragged him. 

“You give up, and you’re dead,” Kagei says. “Say that you’ve given up.” 

Haji bites his lower lip. 

“SAY IT!” 

“I’ve given up,” Haji says, scared, and then she makes him sprints laps around the garden for the rest of the day, yelling at him whenever he’s slowing down, and then he does that for the next week, only stopping fifteen minutes to eat a quick meal before she’s snapping her fingers again. 

It’s hell. It’s literal hell and Haji goes to sleep with the taste of soap in his mouth, and at the end of the week, he wakes up, eats, and then goes to start running laps again when Kagei stops him. 

She asks, “Are you alive?”

“Yes,” Haji says sourly. 

“Then why the fuck,” Kagei spits, “have you given up?”

Haji stares at her coolly. 

Kagei sniffs. “You don’t have to do it well. You don’t have to make every encounter a success. But you’re alive, aren’t you?” 

Haji reaches into that pit of anger in his chest that Kagei suddenly ignited and says, “Yes.” 

Haji turns to run more laps. Kagei hands him a book instead, and, teeth gritting, Haji stomps inside and begins the grueling work of failing. 

It feels like no time at all passes when Haji goes to school and sits in the back and suffers in that constant dread of not knowing anything that’s going on. He hopelessly copies what’s written on the board and doesn’t know what most of it means. 

Eventually, he stops trying. He listens to what the teachers say and he starts to doodle diagrams in his notebook, pictures within pictures, and his teacher sees it and makes a demonstration of him for it, about poor notetaking, and Haji ducks his head and accepts the shame. 

On his way back from school he makes his rounds through the city. It’s easier to memorize places and things. His mental map grows stronger with every loop he takes. Kagei encourages it— his target is somewhere in the city, and the better he knows the streets, the better advantage he’ll have. 

He’s passing through a park when he spots it: there’s a kid, sitting in the grass, a kite in their lap, trying to untangle the knots. Haji’s reminded of one of his sisters, so he approaches quietly, his books still tucked under his arm. 

“I can help you with that,” Haji says softly. 

“Gah!” The boy jolts from where he’s curled up in the grass. He whirls around to look up at Haji, eyes wide, and, oh, they’re a stunning shade of green. “You scared me!” 

Haji blinks. He knows he’s pretty quiet when he walks, but he’d never let himself be caught off guard. “I can untie that, if you want,” Haji says instead. 

“Oh,” the boy says, brows furrowing. “Erm, if you’d like to help me… I mean, that would be great.”

Haji sets his things down and picks up the worst side of the tangle of string. He works silently but quickly, patiently pulling the string out of its knots. The other boy just stares at him. Haji sees that his hands are trembling, and Haji recognizes exactly why he was having trouble— his motor control has been impacted. 

“What’s your name?” the boy asks. He brushes his hair away from his face. It’s black, but Haji thinks he can see strands of white streaked through it. What an odd style. 

“Hajime,” Haji says. 

“Oh. I’m Yoichi Shigaraki.” 

Haji nods submissively, his father’s voice reminding him that speaking more than necessary is rude and a waste of time. 

Yoichi’s eyebrows are very expressive. They pinch together above the bridge of his nose. “Uhm, why are you helping me?”

My aunt wants me to make connections. You reminded me of my youngest sister. I have no friends. “You look like you needed help,” Haji says, which is not a lie. 

“Oh,” the boy says. Then, he smiles. “My hero, huh?”

Haji shrugs. He finishes unknotting the string and then helps Yoichi get the kite into the air, and by then the boy’s smiling so wide that Haji thinks the boy might be mentally ill. 

“I don’t get out often,” Yoichi answers the unspoken question. “My brother, see, he’s pretty protective.” 

“Ah,” Haji says, and then he does get it. The grass rustles around them. The park is full of life. The sun is shining brightly, a single spotlight in a clear blue sky. “I wasn’t allowed outside either.” 

Yoichi turns, and his expression is one of empathy and excitement. “You too? I thought my brother was the only one…” 

“I live with my—” He almost slips and says aunt, but switches at the last moment. “—uncle now. He lets me out.” 

“That’s amazing, Hajime. I’m really happy for you.” 

Haji feels the genuine weight of Yoichi’s words. He doesn’t know how to respond. He doesn’t think anyone’s ever been happy for him. 

“Oh,” Haji says. 

They meet again the next day, and by the fourth meeting Haji has accepted his fate. He has… a friend? He’s not sure, but he’s gotten Yoichi’s phone number and they start hanging out more. Yoichi complains that he’s a slow texter one day, and Haji flushes to the roots of his hair and stammers that he’s still learning how to read because his parents never taught him, and Yoichi gets so mad on his behalf that for the next week he’s in an outrage— so much so that Yoichi’s brother ends up finding out, and Yoichi shows up one day with a stack of books and comics and audio recordings and all kinds of resources. 

“I’m going to kill your parents,” Yoichi says seriously before shoving his favorite comics into Haji’s space. They read together in the sun, outside, by the cafe, near a pond, and Haji learns more about the city and more about Yoichi and his freak of a brother and more about reading. 

The extra practice makes Kagei accept the amount of time he’s not focused on his training. The next year, he tests better, and Yoichi’s ecstatic when he announces that he’s transferring to a better school. 

“I’m going there!” Yoichi says, and he goes to shake Haji until he remembers how Haji recoils at the touch, especially because Yoichi’s much taller than him— and instead he jumps up in joy. “Pipsqueak, you have to come to my track meets now. No excuses!” 

Haji just blinks slowly at him. He’s long since gotten used to the nickname. He no longer cringes. “Okay,” he agrees. 

In his dreams, the bench is empty. Laughter rings within the void. Broken shackles lay scattered about the sidewalk. 

“Hey, Pip,” Yoichi begins one day before class starts, and some of their classmates snicker, but Haji doesn’t mind. Haji is the name his family gave him. Hajime is for Kagei, and he neither likes nor dislikes her, but the name is still a loose-fitting disguise. Pipsqueak, or Pip, is annoying. But he likes Yoichi and so the name isn’t so bad; it doesn’t feel like a brand against his skin. 

“We should go to the science fair. I heard there’s some cool stuff there.” 

Haji nods. They go, and Haji finds the projects interesting, and next semester, for shits and giggles, he rummages through a local dump and makes a pair of suspension boots that help relieve the pressure when climbing steep surfaces. A group of national security agents pass by his table and stare at him in shock, and Kagei comes, surprisingly, to appraise his work. 

“Huh,” she says, a gleam in her eye. “Keep doing that thing, kid.” 

He wins first place, for whatever reason. Yoichi high-fives him so hard his wrist hurts. That night, Kagei shows him an empty office and tells him to make it into his workshop. The other thing she teaches him is to play dumb. 

“Everyone’s looking for extreme talent these days,” she explains. “The last thing you want is attention. Score the top 75% of your class, but no less and no more if you can.” 

Being good at something is a strange and wonderful thing. He ends up making more things than he knows what to do with, but most of his work is meant to help him find this mysterious All For One. 

It turns out, he’s not hard to find when you know where to look. 

Something has broken loose.  

The bottom has opened up, and hands guide it all into his head until its overcrowded, unsure of who he is anymore. The hands cram and cram and cram and he wills it to stop, but the problem is, this thing , this presence that’s never left, the paranoia that runs deep, it twists him into a tightly-wound coil of fear and anger until it’s all he is, and then the same hands unravel him in the same breath, over and over again. 

There’s a brief moment of clarity one night. Then its gone, his own name snatched away by that wretched hand, stealing it from his memory. 

Who am I? He’s a killer he’s a vigilante he has no friends he has allies underground he has everything he has nothing he’s thirteen he’s twenty he wants so badly it hurts he should die he should die he should die die die die die die die die—

Haji’s fifteen when he gets his first lead about a deal happening in the administrative department with All For One. 

He goes to text Yoichi that he has to cancel their plans, but fnds that the boy already beat him to the case— apparently, his brother is taking him on a trip, and he apologizes profusely. Haji replies that it’s fine, that he had to reschedule anyway. 

Haji packs his suit and a motorcycle helmet. Kagei wishes him luck on the way out in her own way, and he’s off. It’s an hour on the train, and the time passes with Haji’s knuckles white with nerves. 

He finds a quiet spot to change where no cameras will spot him, and then he’s racing under the cover of dusk towards the government building where the deal is going down. He gets to the top of the roof and he uses a simple BB to shoot a remote-controlled beetle towards the window and slip through the opening. Haji turns on the radio, which connects to his helmet, and he listens as quietly as he can. 

“—will cause uprisings. You understand how much I don’t want that, don’t you?”

“I’m not asking for trouble,” a smooth voice says. Haji turns on the videography. It’s blurry, as the camera is too small for anything high-quality, but Haji’s not planning to take too much video. It’ll drain the battery too fast. He just needs a picture, a name to a face. 

“You’re building an army of meta-humans.” 

“I’m bringing us together, so that we can remain a community that listens to reason,” All For One says easily. “To splinter apart will just cause ruin and violence between all of us. I want the world to see us as just another kind of people.” 

“I know what you’re—”

Haji doesn’t hear the rest of it, because there’s suddenly a knife plunged hilt-deep into his thigh. He bites back the sound of pain that automatically tries to rip out of him— he has experience. 

“I thought you might come,” a muffled voice says. 

Haji whips around to see a lithe figure in equally dark clothes. A delicate mask covers their face, wrapped around the back of a hoodie to keep it in place against their hair, successfully hiding all identifiable features. A larger cowl settles over their shoulders and head. The rest of the clothes are hard to see in the dark— gloves, black pants, nothing of note. 

“You’ve been snooping where you don’t belong,” the masked individual says. 

“You know me?” Haji asks. 

“You make a pretty big impression.” They draw out two daggers and twirl them in their hands. “Last chance to stop following us.”

Us. They must be a loyal follower of All For One, then. 

Haji draws his fists up to his face as he slides into a fighting position. The masked individual lunges, blades glinting in the streetlamps, and Haji barely dodges one of the blades as they whiz past his ribs. 

They’re fast, light on their feet, and Haji dodges and retaliates and can’t seem to get a single swipe on the other. He uses the metal cuffs of his gloves to slam the edges of the knife away from his skin— and finally, there’s an opening, and Haji slams his fist against the mask and watches it crack under his knuckles. 

He underestimated how close they were to the edge of the roof, and Haji watches as the figure trips over their own feet and, right on the edge of the roof, slips. 

He sees a bright green eye, and he’s reminded of Yoichi, and he panics and does the first thing he can think of. 

He jumps after, grabs onto the figure, and uses the rocket propulsion boots to slam into the fire escape to interrupt their fall— and he wraps onto them and allows himself to take the brunt of the fall. 

It feels like ages when they hit the fire escape, the wall, and then the dumpsters, and then the cold, wet ground of the alleyway between the two buildings. 

“Fuck,” Haji grunts. He can already feel the itching deep under his skin from the contact of the other wrapped in his arms, even without it being skin-to-skin. He shoves the other off of him and checks the audio file from the bug— it’s still recording, but the meeting has ended. 

Haji takes a glance just to make sure that the figure’s alive before he dashes out and drags himself home. 

After he’s pulled the knife out of his thigh, he keeps it locked in a drawer—a souvenir, he supposes. 

Hawks grunts as he knocks on the door to the meeting room. He’s the last to arrive, but no one will fault him. He just got out of an appointment with Recovery Girl, who lectured him about a strict recovery plan. 

It’s Sansa who opens the door and lets him—and his guest—in. Nighteye, Tsukauchi, All Might, Carmine and his team, Eraserhead, and Endeavor are already seated. 

“Hawks,” Nighteye greets. “Who have you brought with you?”

“The biggest pain in All For One’s ass in the last century,” Hawks says. He leans heavily against the table, barely hiding a wince from recovering injuries. “He’s going to help us find Izuku and the others.” 

Hawks’ guest, a translucent figure with a faint red glow, stands just below six feet tall. He’s well-built and has a gun strapped to his thigh. Dark eyes glance at the room. 

“I’ve dedicated my life and death to All For One,” the man says lowly. “Years ago, when Izuku was almost kidnapped, I was the one to stop it. This case is personal to me.”

There’s a beat of stunned silence. Before Hisashi even has the chance to open his mouth, from his left side, Everest is already speaking. 

“He’s telling the truth.” 

“Eraserhead and I can vouch for him,” Hawks adds lazily. 

Endeavor scoffs. “What do we call you?”

“Call me Second,” the man says. “Most people do.” 

Haji limps to school. 

Yoichi’s absent that day, and he gets strange looks for his uneven gait. Luckily, most of the damage that needed stitches and the bruising were beneath his uniform. 

The next day Yoichi shows up, and it’s worse than if he didn’t at all. He hides behind the curtain of his hair all day, refusing to look Haji’s way. Then, when they finally walk to their usual place to the park, he finally reveals the giant black-and-blue blemish on his face. 

“Who did this to you,” Haji says. The anger billows faster than it’s ever done before in his life, and he finds himself blindsided by his own rage. 

“Nothing,” Yoichi says, smile trembling. “Honestly, it was just… bad timing.”

Haji thinks of Yoichi’s insane brother, and asks, “Are you safe?”

Yoichi’s eyes widen. “Oh! Yes, my brother… no, it wasn’t him, I promise. He’s a bastard but he wouldn’t— this isn’t his fault.” 

Now, Haji knows that Yoichi is clumsy. This isn’t nearly the first time he’s walked into school sporting a massive bruise or a twisted ankle— but Yoichi has always also had health issues, and Haji knows that it weakens his physical strength. 

“Can you go to the doctor for it?” Haji finds himself fretting over the puffiness of the skin. 

“Uhm.” Yoichi bites his lower lip. In all three years that they’ve been friends, Haji has never seen him so reticent. “Yes. Well— yes, but no. Uhm. I don’t want you to take this weirdly, but—”

“Yoichi,” Haji says, “you mean more to me than anyone else in the world. Just spit it out.” 

Red creeps up Yoichi’s face, darkening the already-purple bruise. His mouth forms a small ‘oh’. 

Much more calmly, Yoichi says, “My brother is a meta.” 

Haji blinks. “Okay?”

“Metas can’t go to the hospital,” Yoichi continues. “They do genetic testing to see if you have an ability. They’ll document it in your files, and it ruins your life forever. No company will hire you, no school will accept you, it’s just—” Yoichi takes a shaky breath. “I don’t want to lose anyone over the fact that my brother is something out of his control.” 

“I’m a meta,” Haji says. 

Yoichi stares. “What.” 

Haji takes out a yen and concentrates on his meta ability and pushes, letting the coin fly across the park to slam inches deep into a tree. Yoichi follows the coin’s journey before whirling around to look at him, jaw dropped. 

“It’s why my parents didn’t…” Haji shrugs, unable to finish the sentence. 

Yoichi’s eyes light up. “Pip, you absolutely have to meet my brother.”

Uncle slumps against the chains binding him to the chair. Greasy silver clumps fall around his bruised face, obscuring it in deep shadow and highlighting the wrinkles around the corner of his mouth. 

“I already told you,” he croaks, “I have no idea who it is.” 

Arakan watches him from where he leaned against the table pushed against the glass containers housing… something inhuman inside. The glow of the cryopreservation tanks outlines Arakan in an eerie glow. “You don’t have to tell me,” he finally said. “I have a feeling I might already know.” 

“Then you don’t need me. You’re welcome to put me out of my misery.” 

“I still need your quirk,” Arakan counters. “And besides… I want to see your face when I bring him.” 

Uncle’s tells are quiet, but to an eye who’s known him for over a decade, it’s simple to see the slight twitch in his brow. 

“It is him, isn’t it?” Arakan says, smile widening much like a cat who got the cream. “The boy with the gauntlets is the next One For All user. Why else would he be with you?”

“His father interned with me in high school,” Uncle says gravely. “I see him like a godson.” 

“Ah yes, his father, Carmine, the very same underground hero who worked with the current user to bring down All For One,” Arakan says listlessly. “Hm… fascinating… hm… perhaps I’m, hm, crazy, but…” 

Uncle glowers at Arakan. 

“You know, I’ve been trying to get the streets to euthanize him,” Arakan says. “It’s been four days and no one’s managed to get him down for long. They already have a name for him. His quirk terrifies them as much as it delights them.” 

Uncle’s expression hardens. “He’s just a boy, Arakan.” 

“He’s the future face of war,” Arakan says. “Isn’t that what you all signed up for, when you accepted the quirk?”

“He doesn’t have it.” 

“Not yet,” Arakan concedes. “But he will, won’t he?”

Uncle spits out a glob of blood onto Arakan’s shoe. 

“Charming.” Arakan ignores it. 

“You’re not getting One For All,” Uncle says. 

Arakan laughs. “I don’t need to. All For One has already gotten to the boy. He’s gone off the deep end. The boy doesn’t even know his own name—and he won’t, as long as Master keeps messing with his head.” 

An angry flush begins to ride high on Uncle’s cheeks. He clenches his jaw so tightly that Arakan can see the muscles there. 

“Had I known, I would have grabbed him too. But this works out— how long do you think it will take to draw All Might out?”

Uncle doesn’t say anything, but Arakan knows he’s pushed enough buttons to drive the man crazy for the next few hours. Arakan checks his watch— might as well leave him to stew. 

Maybe he’d have more news on the boy by then. 

What a fascinating child, really.  

The updates to Grandfather are completely technical in nature. Haji leaves no doubts, no questions, no asks of assistance. 

Finally, after years of one-sided communication, he gets a letter back. Grandfather congratulates his perseverance. In his elegant script, he writes, ‘We have begun to move our pieces. Be patient, my dear child.’ 

Haji shudders. He tells himself he can’t wait to be done with the whole thing and packs his bag to go over to Yoichi’s home for the night. He’s never had a ‘sleepover’ before, but neither has Yoichi, and they swear to make it a fun time. Haji knows that All For One’s supposed to be having a rally tonight, but he’s already placed his bugs to record the gathering. 

Yoichi meets him at the park. They have lunch at the cafe. Yoichi sports another large bandaid on his bicep, but he reassures Haji that he’s being more careful. These days, his episodes are more severe and more frequent. He’s had to quit the track team, which Haji knows is hard for him. 

When they get to Yoichi’s little townhouse, a stark contrast to the loveless home that Kagei owns, the door opens to greet them. 

Standing there in all his white-haired, yellow-eyed glory is All For One. He smiles at both of them, hugs Yoichi, claps Haji’s shoulder, and invites them inside.

“Dinner’s already set on the table,” All For One says cheerfully. “I have a meeting tonight, so don’t worry about when I get home. Try not to stay up all night, yes?”

He’s gone the next moment. Haji stares at the door as it closes. Yoichi laughs at his expression. 

“I know,” Yoichi says. “He looks kind of crazy with the yellow eyes, right?”

Haji feels sick to his stomach. “Yeah,” he mumbles. He’s going to puke. His best friend’s brother is All For One, and Haji’s going to kill him. He might even kill both of them. 

“Man,” Yoichi says, “I’m starving.” 

No matter how much fun they’re having, Haji can’t forget the fact that the room down the hall belongs to his family’s greatest enemy. He can’t forget that this is a home he might destroy. He can’t forget… 

The next morning, All For One walks him to the door. Yoichi yells at him from the kitchen not to harrass Haji— All For One laughs. 

Haji doesn’t even know his real name. 

“Haji,” All For One says warmly, “my brother said you have a meta-ability. Is that true?”

Haji’s mouth is dry. “Yes,” he says quietly. He can’t look All For One in the eye. 

“I see.” All For One raises his hand, Haji flinches, and All For One reaches over to open the door. “... I’m not going to hurt you.” 

“Right,” Haji says quickly. “Right. Uhm.” 

“I understand the world is not kind to people like us. If you ever feel unsafe, Haji,” All For One says, “I am here for you. You are my brother’s best friend. I won’t forget that.” 

It’s so convincing it hurts. 

“Thank you,” Haji whispers. He rushes out the door, head ducked, and he practically races all the way home. 

Run boy, run, the voice says gleefully, and the hand crams until he doesn’t know left and right and up down— Hawks Dabi Fifth Sixth Uncle Second Aizawa Fourth Dad. 

He keeps running. There’s a bone-deep exhaustion and a gnawing hunger, and he runs and runs and runs because he’s scared and because the snake is right there, just a little bit farther—

He’s pushing through a plaza, his hoodie pulled tightly around his face, and then a hulking creature with exposed brains appears from the skies. It topples over a statue, crashing it into a hundred little pieces. 

Before he really registers what he’s doing, he’s picking up as many people as he can and dragging them to safety. (He doesn’t trust anyone, he can’t trust anyone, the sticky feeling of disgust runs deep, he can’t, he can’t, he can’t—) Heroes engage with the mutant (he knows what this is, isn’t it, hasn’t he fought against one before?) and he keeps getting people out of the way. When the hero is slammed through the entrance of a storefront, he leaps into the fray. 

The markings on these ones are hard to reach. They’re not really… a part of the whole. 

So, instead, he reaches into himself, into that part of him he doesn’t know. He envisions a city on fire, toppling buildings, and the screams for help. He crouches, placing the palms of the gauntlets onto the ground. 

He plucks his own soul. The vision races from his fingertips, appearing in a great, crashing vision, partly translucent, a shivering mirage. The mutant shrieks as the buildings appear, layering onto the ones that actually exists. The sensory overload confuses it— it jumps to fly out of the way of falling debris that only exists in the memory, and accidentally crashes instead into the side of a real building. 

The vision fades and crumbles away into glittering mist. He follows the trajectory of the falling mutant and crushes its exposed brain with his gauntlets. 

It’s a weak one, he thinks. They’re not taking me seriously. 

Screams of delight echo from the crowds. A flash of blinding light leaves his vision spotty. A sudden burst of clarity reaches him. He bends in front of the mutant and sees its glassy eyes. 

(Show me what you are.)

He doesn’t know who he is, but he knows what he is. 

He says, “I am the Ninth.” 

He says, “Let him know that I’m coming.”

Yoichi’s bright pink when he looks at the cane Haji hand-made for him. He did his best to make it look cool— he’d carved some of Yoichi’s favorite characters and motifs into the wood. He left the polish for later, in case Yoichi wanted to paint them before he added the glaze. 

“Do you like it?” Haji asks softly. Yoichi’s chronic issues have been worse, lately. The thinness in his arms is more pronounced than ever, and his face is gaunt with exhaustion. Most of his hair is white these days, rather than the few streaks that existed when Haji and Yoichi first met. His intention wasn’t to remind Yoichi of his own disability on his birthday. He’d gotten him other things than the cane, of course, but maybe—

“Go out with me,” Yoichi blurts. 

Haji blinks. “Pardon?”

Yoichi’s flush deepens. He tightens his grip on his cane. “I said, go out with me.” 

Haji stares. 

“Like a date,” Yoichi adds. 

Haji blinks. “Me?”

“Yeah, you. Who else?” Yoichi’s face only progressively gets redder and redder. “I’m sorry, nevermind, I just— I thought maybe—”

And Haji’s heart shatters as Yoichi’s voice warbles. Yoichi has been such a support system in his life, but has also been struggling the past two years. He and his brother have been having more issues than ever before. His studies, too, have been difficult—the school hasn’t been accommodating his many trips to the ‘hospital’—who is truly just a doctor who’s paid to keep quiet up the street. It’s a lonely life. 

“Yes,” Haji says. 

Yoichi bites his lower lip. “Are you sure? You don’t have to say that just to make me happy, you know.” 

“I know,” Haji rushes to assure. “I-I just…” He’s seen couples before. He’s seen the way they hold hands, the way they kiss, the way they do anything and everything together. Maybe the last bit isn’t so far off, but Haji’s not… that. Yoichi will touch him and he thinks of his father’s belt. He can’t be that thing. “I’m not really… good at that kind of stuff.” 

Yoichi brightens, and it’s so soft and warm and happy that any regrets immediately evaporate. “I like you for you, dummy. I’m not asking you to be any different. I’m not asking us to be any different.” Yoichi bites at his smile before he says, “I just can’t imagine my life without you in it.” 

“Me neither,” Haji says. And that’s not a lie. He’s just not sure how they couldn’t remain in each other’s lives while staying friends. “Erm. What do you even do on a date?”

“I don’t know,” Yoichi says nonchalantly, shrugging. “Maybe we could go visit the new cat cafe in town.” 

It ends up being a worthwhile trip, even though Haji gets scratched to hell and back. Yoichi practically glows with happiness. He drops Yoichi off a block away from his townhouse, as not to attract the ire of his ever-protective brother, and then waits nearby for the text confirming that he got back safe. 

The week continues much like that—going out on silly little excursions. And so does the next week, and the week after that, and the week after that. The lull in the chaos brings a new sense of security that Haji wears comfortably. 

It’s a completely normal school day when his Grandfather shows up. 

Haji walks through Kagei’s house only to hear chatter—and Umesaka’s deep, rumbling tone rather than Kagei’s stunted insults. He straightens, but before he can run, he hears Grandfather titter to himself. 

“Haji, is that you? It is only polite to join us for tea.” 

Haji turns the corner from the hallway into the living area. He feels like a man walking to his death. 

“My dearest boy,” Grandfather says when they lock eyes. Haji bows low. 

“My lord,” Haji says to the ground. He hides the tremors of his hands. 

“I’ve heard the news.” Grandfather takes a long sip of his tea and smiles to himself. “To enter a relationship with your target’s brother— an excellent tactic. I knew you were worth your talents.” 

Haji’s stomach drops. He feels his blood turn ice cold. Kagei’s eyes flash, but she says nothing, merely continuing the cold facade of Umesaka. 

“I-I didn’t know you were aware of that development,” Haji says, still bowing low. “I hadn’t mentioned it in the letter yet, in case it proved a useless method…” 

“Hm,” Grandfather says. “Of course. You would hate to waste my time reading useless trials, yes? But don’t be so disillusioned, Haji. You didn’t actually expect me to leave you on this mission alone?”

Haji freezes. 

“I…”

“My agents have been watching your progress very closely.” Uncle places his teacup on the saucer and smiles at Haji, the curl of his mouth steady and cruel. “Take the boy away from his house tomorrow. We will take care of the rest. You won’t have to worry about the silly little problem anymore.” 

“I understand,” Haji says hollowly, and he feels like he’s splitting apart into a thousand pieces. 

The young man with sharp blue eyes rolls a map across the table. Just like the man called Second, he’s slightly translucent, though his color is the same shade as his eyes. 

His name is En, apparently, and he begins marking places on the map at the speed of light. 

“I’ve already determined several possible locations where Crimson Riot and Dabi could be,” the man says. “I know for sure where the Doctor is, though.”

He points to a red pin near the upper right hand corner of the map. 

“There,” En says. “The lab. It’s where he’s been making his creatures— he calls them nomu.” 

“We need to split up targets then,” Nighteye says. “The lab will require a specialized force. The other locations will probably have Touya Todoroki and Crimson Riot in holding.” 

“Is it possible Crimson Riot could be in the lab itself?” Hisashi offers. “There was a reason he was taken— and Riot’s quirk is very useful. Especially if the lab is creating this… nomu, like you mentioned.” 

“It’s very likely,” Second adds over En’s shoulder. “Arakan is over a century old. If he couldn’t find something immediately useful from Riot, he wouldn’t put in the effort.” 

“Arakan was reported to be seen around Riot frequently the past decade,” Tsukauchi adds. “He played the long game. There’s something important enough that he took years to befriend his enemy.” 

“He’s working with me,” All Might announces. “Riot has been assisting me with my quirk.” 

En’s lips thin. “That’s what I was afraid of.” 

“You think he’s trying to get access to your quirk, All Might?” Tsukauchi says. “But that’s impossible. Your quirk can’t be stolen.” 

“It can’t?” Hisashi says. Then his eyes flit with understanding. “That’s why you were the one to fight him. Then why are they trying to lure All Might out if they can’t even take it?”

Aizawa jots the addresses marked on the map on a piece of paper. “They’re probably planning to kill him with the nomu.” 

“It’s not just that,” Hawks says airily. “They’re trying to lure us to our deaths, All Might— but there’s more.” 

“There’s one other way they could get access to your quirk,” Second says darkly. 

Everyone turns to face All Might. Nighteye says, quietly, “A successor, yes. But the nature of All Might’s quirk—”

“Is known to half the people in this room already,” Aizawa interrupts. “They’re trying to lure out someone that doesn’t exist, though, aren’t they? They want to kill them before they’re trained properly.” 

“I’m lost,” Dilute says. “All Might has a successor?”

“Yes,” Nighteye says, at the same time All Might says, “That remains to be seen.”

“It doesn’t matter whether or not you actually have one,” Hawks continues. “As long as they think you do, they’re going to keep pushing your buttons.” 

“Which means,” Endeavor finally says, “we must strike quickly, before more people are involved.”

Haji offers to take Yoichi out for dinner with his heart in his throat. 

He thinks about grabbing Yoichi and running, running as far as he can without stopping. But then he thinks of his little siblings he’ll never see again, and parents who would hunt him to the ends of the earth, so he does as he’s told, afraid and uncertain. 

They go to dinner, have a nice time, and Yoichi remarks how Haji looks nervous, and Haji wants to die on the spot. He makes a little lie about exams and graduation, and Yoichi’s smile brings a twinkle to his eye. Years ago, Haji never talked about graduating or the future at all. 

They’re walking back to Yoichi’s home. Yoichi asks if they can take a quieter route, so they do. It’s not so busy. They end up along a trail that cuts through a deserted plaza. 

Haji sees a flicker from on the rooftop. In two seconds flat, there’s a knife whizzing through the air, straight for the side of Yoichi’s face.  

Yoichi ducks around the knife, grabs its hilt, and throws it right back to the figure on the roof, impaling them smack dab in the thigh. The figure slumps over and falls off the side, tumbling onto the sidewalk. He’s fully unconscious from the fall. 

Haji turns to look at Yoichi, mouth agape. What the fuck. What the fuck. What the fuck? What the fuck. Holy fuck. What the fuck. Did he— fuck?—grab a knife from midair— the fuck—

Yoichi’s expression is darker than Haji’s ever seen it.  His green eyes glint in the night. Before Haji can even process what just happened, he’s walking as fast as he can towards his house, even as he leans heavily on his cane. 

“Yoichi—”

“My brother is in trouble,” Yoichi says. “Those are assassins, I can tell. If they only send the one after me, they’ve most definitely sent a team after him. That was someone who just wanted to clean up their mess.” And then, he continues under his breath, “And honestly, a knife? A knife! Couldn’t have tried to shoot me or poison me, no, a knife.” 

Haji’s still gaping when he finally has the right sense of mind to grab Yoichi’s elbow and stop him in his tracks. “Yoichi, are you insane!? If there really is a whole team there, you’re going to run in there and get yourself killed!” 

“He’s my BROTHER, Hajime,” Yoichi says. 

Haji tightens his grip on Yoichi’s elbow. “I’m not letting you.”

Haji’s seen Yoichi frustrated before, but anger is a whole different beast. A shudder goes through Yoichi head to toe. 

“Let me?” Yoichi says. “You’re not going to let me?”

“I care about you,” Haji finds himself saying. “I can’t watch you go in there and die for a brother who doesn’t even listen to you! Yoichi, you’re still recovering from your last episode, you—”

Haji doesn’t see the blow coming. Yoichi’s knuckles crash into the left side of his face. Haji feels something in his jaw crack. 

Yoichi yanks his elbow out of Haji’s grip and uses it to grab Haji by the face. Haji blinks the stars out of his eyes from the punch, to look up at Yoichi in all his glory, green eyes singing with anger. 

Haji’s always the one who’s angry. Yoichi’s never angry. 

“The alternative,” Yoichi says, scowling, “is to sit here with a boyfriend who doesn’t listen to me either. I’m not glass, Haji! Just because I’m in pain doesn’t mean I don’t know how to throw a punch. Just because I’m in pain doesn’t mean I don’t love my brother!” 

The words echo in the empty plaza. Haji stares, wide-eyed. The grip on his face tightens. 

“I’m going,” Yoichi says. “And you’re going to let me, or you’re going to come too.” 

The grip on Haji’s face is tight. His jaw throbs. Yoichi is still a whopping six inches taller than him, and despite his motor function issues, despite the way his legs twitch, despite his complicated relationship with his brother— he stands tall, shoulders back, chin raised, his entire outline haloed by the yellow light of the streetlamp, brave and ready to tackle the world like it belongs to him. Haji makes the sudden connection between Yoichi and the figure on the rooftop he’d fought two years ago, the one who’d stabbed him in the thigh. 

Oh god, Haji thinks, mortified. He’s not just funny and kind and artistic and athletic, he’s hot too. 

Next thing Haji knows, he’s racing after Yoichi as they run back towards their home. All he can think of is that Yoichi’s risking his life to save a brother he struggles with as much as he loves, and he’s doing it of his own free will. 

Yoichi has a pair of knives out when he gets to his house. Haji follows after him, meta ability prepared, and can already hear the sounds of fighting upstairs. They barrel upstairs, and there, among a group of Hassakai guards, standing in full gear, his blades tipped in poison—

“Maeno,” Haji breathes. 

The boy’s grown into his own frame. He should only be fifteen, but his eyes are hardened. He flicks a glance away from All For One, who sits at the tip of his blade, and towards the staircase where Yoichi and Haji stand. 

“Haji,” Maeno says. “Come to save your little friend?”

Haji doesn’t like All For One. He’s Yoichi’s brother, after all—Haji knows all about his tendencies and strict attitude towards Yoichi’s basic wants. 

But when anti-meta protests broke downtown, All For One invited him to his home. When Haji looked too thin, he cooked and gave leftovers to Haji at the door the next morning. He never asked Haji to prove himself— never struck him— never looked at him like he was a leech that refused to die. 

Maeno moves to attack All For One. Haji moves faster, drawing out the knife hidden in First’s belt and powering his meta ability to its max when he hurls it. It makes contact with the side of Maeno’s blade and shatters it. 

Maeno snarls. “You always were a stain upon this family.” 

The whole room explodes into motion. A bright flash bursts from All For One’s palm, blinding everyone in the room. Maeno lunges for Haji— Yoichi goes for his brother. It’s too much all at once, and the whole house explodes into action, and Haji—

Haji gets stabbed for the troubles. 

Haji’s in the hospital for two weeks before he can move again. 

Yoichi texts him that he should drop by. Haji goes. Yoichi smiles and teases him and steals the knives he hides under his jacket. There’s something wary there, something uncertain between them, and Yoichi doesn’t bring up the elephant in the room: that Haji’s family tried to kill Yoichi’s. 

They don’t get a chance to unravel it. Haji returns to Kagei’s house to find Grandfather waiting for him. 

Maeno escaped the fight. He was one of the very few who did, who wasn’t arrested or knocked out by All For One. Haji knew the blade would drop when Maeno finally reported back to their family, but he didn’t know when or how. 

Grandfather nods to Kagei, disguised as Umesaka, and Haji’s manhandled into a car on the front of the property. It’s not as rough as she could have been, which Haji supposes is her only way of saying sorry for the whole ordeal. 

“They’re going to try to break you into another one of me,” Kagei says, still as Umesaka. “Don’t let them break you.” 

Haji expects that he’s going to be killed. Instead, they drive him back to a familiar place. Rolling green hills slope into glittering koi ponds, and a large estate sits at the top of the greatest hill, well-manicured and covered in flowers. 

Haji expects the rough treatment. He expects to get beaten within an inch of his life. He doesn’t quite expect the isolation. It’s no longer the basement where he resides where he gets to be with other servants, but rather, a small room, barely the size of a storage closet. 

Mother has passed since Haji left, something he was never told. It makes Haji’s father’s temper worse. Especially as he has seemed to age faster than Haji ever expected. 

Maeno comes to his little cubby to torment him. “Fight me,” he’ll demand. Haji shakes his head. There’s no winning. If he leaves his room, he faces Father. If he stays, he faces Maeno. 

It’s Grandfather’s visits that change Haji’s life again. 

Scowling, he thrusts a pen and paper onto the desk. “You are on an engineering scholarship program. You are out of the country. The only form of communication is through mail. You are going to tell your little friend—” Here, Grandfather sneers. “—that you’re safe, and that there’s no need to stir up a ruckus. We’ll wean him off with a few letters at a time.” 

“Yes, sir,” Haji says. He hides the fluttering of hope in his chest. 

“You may tell him to send his… responses to this address, so that we may deliver it properly to you abroad. That is all you will tell him.” 

“Yes, sir.”

Grandfather’s scowl deepens. “You have brought disgrace onto this family. Now, with your little games, you have brought the very enemy onto our doorstep. You must convince that child to no longer care for you.” 

“Yes, sir.” 

Grandfather stalks out of the room and slams the door shut behind him. 

Haji has all day to suffer over the contents of the letter he’s going to write. It has to convey that he misses Yoichi to the boy himself, but remain disinterested in the watchful eyes of his grandfather. He also can’t rile up Yoichi that much, in case the boy decides, once again, to run headfirst into danger without thinking of the consequences—he has to pretend he really is safe and happy, then. 

Haji agonizes over the first few drafts—all mental, so as to not give more ammunition to his family—before he writes the first letter and sends it off to his grandfather. 

He immediately gets a response. Grandfather is furious. Yoichi talks about everything and nothing, but Haji immediately detects a hidden inside joke. The more he reads it, the more he detects other things, too. By the end of it, Haji’s not sure if he’s overthinking or if Yoichi truly is on the run, but he responds with an equal level of hidden code. 

On the run from what? His own brother, maybe? 

Writing becomes his whole life. He has a small journal that he jots his feelings into, and his recollections of everything he knows. He began writing in the diary on and off years ago. It holds some of his favorite designs and blueprints, as well as to-do lists with his plans against All For One. The more time he has to settle and simply… think, the more time he thinks about the world, and about what he wants to create, the more easily the designs come to him. 

The blueprints used to be forced. He’d had to make them to get what his Grandfather wanted. Now he can make… whatever he wants, and that’s freeing. 

All this time to think also means time to think about Yoichi. Yoichi, who’d asked him out, who’d smiled at him, whose eyes glittered green and gold, and Haji suddenly realizes he’s a fucking idiot. He’s a goddamn idiot and he didn’t even realize how much he loved Yoichi until there was a void in his side where he no longer was. He tortures himself over that idea of Yoichi’s unconditional love. 

When he’s not writing, he’s facing consequences from Father or Grandfather, or avoiding Maeno’s barbs. He trains in his little cubby because it gives him something to do. 

Sometimes, his younger siblings, especially Lilali, will come and bring him extra meals than the frugal ones he’s given. He finds their companionship, despite their dramatic personalities, to be full of life and free of worry. Eventually they even start to bring books. Haji devours them at an enormous rate. Lilali laughs and tells him that he’ll be finished with the whole library soon. She ends up bringing down her violin to practice, often ‘forgetting’ to bring it back up to her room, and sometimes the ‘books’ are really music sheets hidden between historical novels. 

It’s the fact that First never stops writing, even months later and Grandfather orders him to stop responding, that gets Haji. 

Haji gets his fifth letter in a row without a reply back. An old servant knocks on his door and hands it to him with pursed lips. She knows exactly how dangerous this situation is and how much this means. 

“Perhaps another response would do good,” she offers. 

Haji ducks his head and says to her shoes, “Of course, with Grandfather’s permission.” 

He’s reminded of a particular week— when he couldn’t stop tasting soap and had to run until his legs were on fire. 

Grandfather forbids it. Four more letters come in, on the dot. Haji reads them, and confirms that Yoichi does not seem to be planning anything drastic, nor does Yoichi suspect Haji’s in danger. Grandfather orders that his attendants scour the letters anyway to see if there’s something they’re missing— and they don’t find anything. Everything hidden is a reference to something only the two would know. 

“Then why,” Grandfather grits one night during their ‘sessions’, “does he keep responding?”

Haji lies with his forehead placed on the back of his hands. The muscles in his back twitch from the pain of fresh lashes, but he remains as still and calm as possible.

“The same reason he went after his brother that night,” Haji says softly. “He loves, even without the expectation of anything in return.” 

“You made an enemy of him,” Grandfather says, pacing his office. Haji’s shins ache on the floorboards, but he wasn’t allowed to remain on the carpet, for fear of staining the threads red during their sessions. “He will stop at nothing to destroy us. That’s why he hasn’t given up!” 

Grandfather slams his fist against the desk. Haji represses his wince. Haji’s not sure if he’s made an enemy of Yoichi or not, but he knows the boy… and he knows that Grandfather has completely misinterpreted the whole thing. 

Haji is suddenly grateful that he got to leave with Kagei all those years ago. If there is one thing that Yoichi taught him, it was that not everything had to be transactional. He’s not sure how he would’ve turned out if he remained his whole life in this house. 

What Haji says instead is, “We never broke up.” 

It’s an intentional jab at the hornet’s nest. He finds himself doing that more often. 

Grandfather halts in his tracks. His whole body straightens. 

Haji readies himself for the blow before it comes. 

The video goes viral. They watch it on repeat at least three times during their meeting, and everyone remains dead silent as they watch Izuku Midoriya summon an illusion with his quirk, punch a nomu, and call out its master. 

His pupils are red like he’s still borrowing from Second’s mind. There’s an instability to his walk. When he moves, the crowd gives him a wide berth. 

“That answers the question of where Izuku is,” Hawks says. 

“With the help of video footage,” Dilute begins, “I’ve been able to track down his movements across Japan. He seems to be heading a general direction while maintaining stealth in order to avoid fighting.”

“Someone wants him dead,” Tsukauchi adds. “Word on the street is that there’s a reward for anyone who can put him down.” 

“Where is he now?” Hisashi says, tone cutting in its impatience. 

“It’s impossible to say,” Dilute murmurs. “He’s avoiding being seen—or someone else is trying to prevent us from following him. If it weren’t for this video going viral, I wouldn’t have been able to track him down… Intentionally or otherwise, he keeps on dropping off the map.” 

“Is someone messing with the public safety cameras?” 

“Is that even possible, is it possible to manipulate that much footage to such a large degree?” 

“They have far more resources than we ever imagined,” Aizawa says darkly. “Where’s he heading to?”

Dilute is quiet for a moment as he zooms out of the map on his screen. The projector follows his movements. “... There. This is a good general area he might be going for.” 

“The lab’s there,” En notes. 

“We need to get there before him,” Eraserhead says. “How long before the strike team’s ready?”

“We’re finalizing it now,” Tsukauchi says. “I can get the team ready tonight.”

“Let’s move then.” All Might stands, and everyone at the table scatters to prepare. 

It happens like this: 

Haji knows that, when his letter is handed off to the servant, it ends its way into the servant’s corridors with the rest of the mail from the staff. In one big haul, every week, a servant will tie the basket of mail to the end of a moped and drive down the edge of the property, where it will be placed for a truck to pick it up and deliver it. 

It’s the only method Grandfather allowed. The trucks are too noisy. 

Haji also knows that the manor is deadly quiet at the hours between one and three am. At three, the chefs begin to stir. At one, the cleaning staff finishes their last projects. 

Haji also knows that, at that time, there is no technical way to track if he’s been outside of his room. They’ve placed a tracker around his ankle, but Haji’s already hacked and smashed it ten thousand ways to hell, so it’s easy to take it off when he wants to remain discrete. The guards are on shift, but they are much less active at night than during the daytime hours— at least, they’re less preoccupied with guarding the servants’ quarters during the nighttime hours. 

It’s difficult to create a timed explosive with the things lying around the house, but he manages. He takes his time, not risking more than he needs, especially with only an hour to work every night. After a year and a half of hell back home, he sets his little plan into motion. 

At a ridiculous time in the night, the explosive goes off. While everyone else runs outside, Haji runs towards the quarters where the mail sits, waiting to be delivered the next morning. He has to break through several locks in the process—outgoing mail has to be watched to see if any family secrets are being slipped to rivals—which is the whole reason he set off the explosion in the first place. His rummaging around would’ve woken up the whole house otherwise.

He has his journal and another letter wrapped in an innocuous package. The package is addressed to a PO box, since Yoichi has warned him that he’s been ‘moving around a lot’. AKA, no permanent address, AKA, maybe on the run. 

He stuffs the package at the bottom of the mail that’s already been ‘watched’ and then restores all the digital and physical locks before he evacuates the premises. 

Father is furious. He has no idea where the explosion came from— all incoming mail had been processed, so it couldn’t have been that. Grandfather only came to the manor once every few months, but it had been his office that was targeted. 

The blame shifts to Haji. Haji calmly explains about the ankle tracker. The blame then shifts, surprisingly from Haji to Maeno. 

Maeno purples, he gets so angry. He’s always angry, but this is different. He’s defensive, volatile, and oh. Maeno’s an envious person. Of course, they’d think it was him vying for his own birthright. 

Haji doesn’t get a response to his letter and journal for over four months. Every day without word from Yoichi crushes him. He finds himself thinking… what’s the point? It doesn’t really surprise him, of course. The letter explains his complicity in All For One’s near brush with death. The journal is just as damning. 

Then Umesaka arrives. 

Grandfather allows Umesaka to visit Haji. There is no bad blood between the two these days. Umesaka has always been loyal. 

But the glint in Umesaka’s eyes is so much like Kagei that Haji can’t help but smile, if only slightly. 

“You look different,” Kagei says. 

“I do?” Haji doesn’t exactly examine himself in the bathroom—they like to watch him even there. 

“Stronger. But tired.” Kagei throws something onto Haji’s desk. It’s a lumpy package. 

“What’s this, sir?” Haji asks. 

Kagei gets a terrifying slight smile. “A birthday gift.” 

Haji glances from the package to Kagei. His brow furrows. It’s not his birthday— not that he really had one, before Yoichi and him celebrated a random day in December. In fact, it should be the month of—

Oh. It’s Yoichi’s birthday. Yoichi got this for him. 

“My meeting with the Master will last until eleven. If you need me for anything,” Kagei says, “you should try to see me before then.” 

It’s ten right now. Kagei’s meeting is until eleven. The problem isn’t being able to escape the house— the problem is how to escape the grounds. Haji knows if he takes two steps out from the front porch, they’ll alert guards and the dogs will be sent next. 

It didn’t used to be so heavily guarded, but now, with the fear of All For One’s retaliation on the rise, Haji’s essentially caught between a rock and a hard place. 

Except Kagei has a car. And she doesn’t bring any guards with her. And that would honestly be a perfect getaway vehicle. 

Kagei leaves quietly. Haji rips open the package. 

It’s a small bag, barely the size of his fist. There’s a knife. It’s the same knife that Haji’d kept as a souvenir all those years ago. Carved into the side of the blade is a coordinate point. There are also three protein bars, a water bottle with fluid IVs, and a set of keys. 

Well. Damn. 

Haji wraps the bag tightly around his chest, stuffs the blade in his boot, and then walks out of his little cubby space. 

A few servants give him a look, but nothing substantial. Haji takes a deep breath. 

Okay. He can do this. He can just… outrun everything standing in his way. 

“Haji?” 

Haji flinches and turns to see Lilali standing there, a stack of books in her arms. 

“Oh,” she says, her eyes widening. Then she draws close, whispering, “I know a secret passage that goes under the koi pond.” 

Then she walks away without a word, stealing a glance over her shoulder, and Haji follows. 

His escape is relatively quiet. They don’t notice him missing until just a moment too late. When the guards change shifts and do their usual look into his room, finding nothing, it takes them ten minutes to find out he’s not with Father or Grandfather either. 

The house explodes into pandemonium. 

Haji runs to Kagei’s car and hops in. They’ll assume he hotwired the car to get out and escape. They don’t need to know that Haji drops off Kagei’s car, unharmed, at her house. And then he runs, and runs, and runs for his life. 

When he finally gets to the coordinates, it turns out to be a small cyber cafe. But it’s clearly been ransacked. Haji knows the signs of All For One’s havoc— and he knows that this was his doing. 

Shit. Shit. Shit. 

Haji pulls his scarf tighter around his head. He has no home, no work, no connections… and Yoichi’s gone. 

He has all of Yoichi’s letters in his pocket. He still has two protein bars and half a bottle of water, and that’s… well. That’s it. 

Shit, Haji thinks, and then marches into the crowd. 

Haji gets a job through pure luck and an annoying amount of interviews. 

He works in a mechanics shop, and he pulls crazy hours that have the boss worrying about him until Haji confesses he’s homeless as fuck. The next week the boss leads him to an empty closet which Haji was sure had been full of screws and paint buckets, but now has been converted into a small living space. 

“We needed a break area anyway,” the man says gruffly. “There’s a curtain to keep your stuff separate from the rest of the area until you find a better place.”

So Haji lives, works, and breathes mechanics. He does so many jobs that his boss starts talking about their improved work speed, about renovations, about, well, maybe they should look into getting into more complex contracts… and what about that raise you were thinking about, kid? Yeah, you’ve got the look in your eyes, even if you didn’t say it. 

His boss allows him to use the company name to order specific or bulk items for cheap. He ends up with a dozen patents under his belt, attached to an anonymous name and a secretive bank account. He finally affords a small studio flat where he can start working on spyware and other inventions to protect himself from All For One and his family. An old motorbike, abandoned at a dump, becomes Haji’s passion project when he’s unable to go out to search for Yoichi himself, relying only on the whispers of his bots. When Haji takes it into the shop for the first time, his boss whistles, claps him on the shoulders, and then says he’s proud of him. 

Haji’s so startled at the declaration that he slinks into the bathroom. His face crumples, his hands shake, and holy shit, what the hell is wrong with him? He doesn’t cry, but it’s a close thing. 

Late nights become Hai’s norm as he stalks the streets, rediscovering All For One’s network. Spying leaves him simultaneously exhausted and satisfied. 

It’s sixth months after Haji’s escape from his family when he finally finds out about the vault. 

It takes three weeks for Haji to prepare and to confirm his suspicions. Sick to his stomach at the thought alone, he tells his boss he’s taking Saturday off. 

His boss’ jaw drops. 

“Unless you need me—” Haji backtracks. 

“You can have Friday through Tuesday off,” his boss says. “I don’t think you’ve ever asked for a break before in your life. Please. Seriously. It’s on me.” 

That Friday night is a muggy night. The motorbike rumbles underneath his palms. He keeps the helmet visor down over his eyes to keep his identity as quiet as possible. 

He slinks into All For One’s playground. He’s better at the missions than he was as a kid. Four hours later, blood crusted on his gloves, a battered shoulder stinging, and warnings of All For One’s imminent arrival ringing in his helmet’s audio system, Haji finds the vault door. 

He clicks an automatic decoder onto the keypad and waits heartstopping minutes for it to calculate the combinations. When he hears the positive click, he rushes to swing open the vault with a grunt. 

His hair’s completely white now. 

That’s the first thought Haji has as Yoichi turns to look at him, completely afraid, one green eye haunted. 

Haji holds a hand out, still panting. Down the hall, the sounds of yelling orders, crashes, and fighting continue— Yoichi gasps and takes Haji’s hand. He sways when he gets to his feet. Haji, ignoring his phobia for a moment, hauls Yoichi into his arms and makes a mad dash for the exit. 

Yoichi’s far too light in his arms. He doesn’t say a word as Haji breaks from the lowest level of All For One’s base. He activates the gauntlets to help him climb over the gate—there are shrieks behind him. The system-wide crash Haji had activated, and the destruction to the power generators, are probably coming back online. 

Haji runs for his fucking life, finds his parked bike, gets Yoichi settled behind him, and says, “Hold on.”

“Wha—” Yoichi says, voice cracking in its dryness. Then he chokes on his own yelp when Haji activates the extra boosters and tears away from the building, engine roaring.

They drive for hours, circling until Haji finds a safe way to get around all the cameras and patrols. When he drives the bike into the mechanic shop late that night, finally coming to a stop, Yoichi trembles slightly. 

“Well,” Yoichi says. He clears his throat, goes to get off the bike, and promptly stumbles. Haji helps right him. Yoichi tries to stand tall, but his mouth quivers. “That was… very nice of you, uh, sir. But if you expect to simply sweep me off my feet, you’ve got another thing coming. I’m not going to play a pawn in your game with my brother.”

Haji blinks. “What?” 

Yoichi flares with muted frustration. He runs his hand through his greasy hair. “That’s what you all want, isn’t it? To use me like a little piece in your game to win at… at— at politics, or something, I don’t know!” Yoichi huffs. “I’ll kill you if I have to. Thanks for saving me, but I’m not going to—”

Haji pulls his helmet off. “Yoichi, what the hell are you talking about?”

Yoichi stops in his tracks. He looks down at Haji’s feet, then back up to his face, then down again. 

“What the fuck,” Yoichi says. “Pipsqueak? Is that you? What the—”

Yoichi grabs Haji’s hand, and Haji flinches but lets him anyway. Yoichi stares at the hand he holds in both of his. 

“You were a foot shorter than me the last time I saw you,” Yoichi says, aghast. “While you were growing into a beast the last two years, I was eating ramen bowls and sleeping in train stations. Or… vaults, I guess.” 

Now that Yoichi’s mentioned it, Haji finally realizes that the angle is odd. He’d chalked it up to Yoichi being far thinner and smaller in his clothes that dwarf him… but that’s not it. He’s tilted his head back to look up at Haji, which he never had to do before. 

Yoichi reaches out to touch Haji’s face. Haji flinches. Yoichi draws back. Haji grabs Yoichi’s hand in his own and brings it back to his cheek. 

“Sorry,” Haji says. Sorry it took so long to save you. Sorry for being jumpy. Sorry for not loving you enough. Sorry, sorry, sorry. 

Green eyes stare up at him, growing glassier by the moment. Yoichi’s shocked humor draws quietly like a curtain, and only then does the little wet hiccup escape his mouth. 

“You came back,” Yoichi chokes. 

“If it was up to me, I never would have left,” Haji says. “And I’m not going to let anyone make that decision for me again.” 

Yoichi’s lower lip trembles. He pushes his hand from Haji’s cheek, the other coming to card through the nape of his neck, locking his fingers together. With a gentle push, Haji’s head pushes down. Yoichi rests his forehead against Haji’s—and for a moment, Haji’s stomach lurches, worrying if Yoichi would push further. His skin already crawls with the feeling like fireants, and he’s sick in the stomach. It’s worse than it use to be, before the two years of isolation from physical contact, except for the end of a belt. 

But there’s the relief too. Yoichi’s here, his warm skin gentle against Haji’s neck, and he lets it happen even as his stomach tumbles, and Yoichi pushes no further, just keeping them there, together, twined in the empty space of the mechanic shop. 

Yoichi shudders, and for a moment Haji thinks he’s going to let the tears go. Except Yoichi’s not crying, he’s giggling, which means he’s about to make a bad joke. 

“At least we’re homeless together now,” Yoichi says. His voice is still watery, but it’s the renewed glint of hope in his eye that reminds Haji that somewhere, deep down inside, Yoichi’s still the same boy as the one Haji’d left two years ago. 

Haji sighs and turns to look up at the ceiling. “We can’t have one moment.” 

“What? It’s true!” 

“It’s not,” Haji says. “I have an apartment a block away.” 

Yoichi blanches. “Why’d we park in this garage then!?” 

“Because I work here.” 

Yoichi blinks up at him before his expression morphs from teary-eyed to pouting. “Are you serious? I rotted in a vault while you got an apartment, a job, and hot? This is so unfair.” 

Haji’s so caught off-guard and so giddy on seeing Yoichi again that he bursts into laughter. He’s not sure he’s ever done that before, and Yoichi gapes at him.

“And you got romantic, too. Ugh.” Yoichi turns to march away, face red.

“Yoichi—”

“Shut up, I’m mad at you,” Yoichi says, and he’s lying because his hand is tightly linked with Haji’s like he’s afraid he’ll disappear if he lets go. 

Haji huffs. “The exit’s the other way, dear.” 

Yoichi’s blush darkens considerably. Haji watches it color the tips of his ears. “I knew that,” he squeaks, tugging Haji the opposite direction, and when Haji laughs again, he says, “Shut up! I’m still mad at you!”

It takes months before they know each other again. Yoichi’s weak, and needs Haji’s help, and Haji’s happy to give it. His boss doesn’t mind him taking weekends off. He asks Haji what changed one day, and Haji replies he’s taking care of a childhood friend. 

They dye Yoichi’s hair a few times, for fun. Haji shows Yoichi his workshop and cleans out a space for Yoichi to do his art. Yoichi charms his way into a job a train ride away, and Haji forces him to carry a tracker with him wherever he goes, and Yoichi calls him an idiot and carries it anyway. 

All For One rages down the countryside at Yoichi’s disappearance—Haji’s family rages up the cityscape. They clash, and Haji doesn’t care. Lilali starts going to school in the city, and he sends her a letter, and they meet up and have coffee. Lilali asks where he’s living, and Haji doesn’t tell her, and she smiles in understanding. 

They get a cat named Kichiro, and Yoichi’s never been happier. 

Haji reads news late into the night and wonders when it will all crash around them. Yoichi places a cup of tea on the coffee table in front of him and reminds him to sleep. 

Yoichi teaches Haji how he’s still able to throw knives, even though he’s sick and getting sicker. Haji realizes most of Yoichi’s knives were confiscated, so he gets some new ones and carves them in his workshop, like he’d done with Yoichi’s cane years ago. He thinks Yoichi appreciates the artistry. 

Yoichi asks about the violin. They dance around the subject of family for a while until they mutually decide to talk about it. 

Haji’s is pretty simple. He tells the story while sitting on the rug in their living room, the cushions of the couch to his back. He rests his cheek against the inside of his elbow, and leaves the end of his pinky to just barely touch Yoichi’s knee—the only amount of contact he can stomach. 

Haji’s family is straightforward in their cruelty. 

All For One is… not. 

“He gave me a meta ability,” Yoichi says distantly. 

Haji’s head shoots up in shock. “What?”

“He said it would help with my constitution.” 

Yoichi’s quiet for a few minutes before he adds, “I think… I used to think I was going crazy. But then I remember, a long time ago, my brother mentioning that abilities carry vestiges of their previous owners.” 

Haji’s brows furrow. “So… the owner of the meta ability he gave you is there?”

“... He used to be. But he’s gone, now.” 

Haji’s missing something. “Do you know why?”

Yoichi stares at the opposite wall blankly. He’s battling himself to say it, Haji can tell. 

“I think,” Yoichi says, “All For One’s vestige was also passed, along with the original vestige of the quirk. I used to hear them in my head. But I think they destroyed each other.” 

Haji taps his finger on Yoichi’s knee. “There’s something you’re still not telling me.” 

Yoichi takes a deep, shuddering breath. When he smiles, there’s nothing but deep sadness there. “The previous owner of the stockpiling quirk… I knew him a long time ago. It was a cruel joke from my brother.”

There’s more there, so much more, and Haji knows he can’t push, and Yoichi doesn’t say anything more about it. So, instead, Haji says, “You’ll let me know if you hear this… remnant in your head, right? He can’t hurt you here.” 

Yoichi’s smile warms, and that distant look in his eye eases. He pokes Haji on the tip of his nose. 

“I’ll let you know if I have any problems,” Yoichi says. “But I think he’s gone for good.” 

The snake is still alive when he jolts awake. 

It’s nearby, he can tell. Just a few blocks away, exactly where he had left it last before giving his body much-needed rest behind some dumpsters in an alleyway. 

His second thought, past that, is to actually look down at himself. He looks at the gauntlets that hum on his forearms. Then he looks at his clothes—worn out and dirty, blooded in a few places where he wasn’t careful and cut himself. 

He feels bruised and battered and so so tired. 

The hand that was cramming his mind is gone. Like a thousand pound weight has been lifted, he finally looks at himself. 

He’s Izuku Midoriya. He’s thirteen. He has friends and family who care for him. He was supposed to visit Katsuki, Kirishima, and his friend. He has no idea what day it is, just that he’s been hunting for what feels like forever—

Izuku panics and lurches when he sees the steel-armored fist nearly crush his skull. He rolls to the other side of the alleyway and is greeted by three hulking figures near the entrance, blocking off his exit point. 

Shit. Shit, shit. He can feel his legs trembling underneath him. He raises the gauntlets instinctively. 

“We sure this is the one?” a woman with oily hair says. “He looks like he’s about to piss himself.”

One of them goes to respond, and Izuku reacts with his gut telling him this is his time to strike. 

It’s pure gut instinct that he punches the closest one in the jaw and touches the woman with his bare elbow to one of the markings on her shoulder. He sees the woman’s eyes light up, and he sees as she sees—her first tattoo, done by her best friend, Marimo. Izuku barely ducks the steel fist coming his way. He watches as the woman stumbles and tries to shake her head, her eyes glassy, but Izuku keeps his tight hold on the memory. The last of the three goes to aim his palm at Izuku. Sharp bands of light begin to form into glass-like projectiles. Izuku curses, the man goes to clench his fist—

Whhhhp. 

The last man screams. The light projectiles waver and disappear. A silver blade is embedded into his thigh, just above the knee, and Izuku watches, transfixed, as two more knives embed into the back of the steel-fisted man, who goes crashing to the ground. The woman is still entranced in her own memory. 

Izuku looks at the knives and recognizes them. They’re intricately carved. 

“Looking for something?” 

Haji nearly jumps two feet in the air and whirls around to look at the store clerk, who smiles at him brightly. 

“Erm,” Haji says. 

The store clerk laughs. “Let me guess, a ring for the special lady.” He pats a glass case. “This is our customer’s favorites. Let me know if you need any assistance.” 

Haji flushes but nods respectfully. This is his third store. Most of the rings he’s looked at are either too dainty, lacking in artistry, or painfully expensive. He’s starting to be tempted by the thought of just making his own, but he’s already making the other half of the matching set, and he can’t afford to screw up making it, or worse, Yoichi finding out. He finds the case the clerk pointed out is very much the same as previous stores. He wanders closer to the edges of the store and pauses as one catches his attention. 

It’s not so showy with tons of inlaid gems, but it’s still beautiful in its craftsmanship. Haji immediately thinks of Yoichi wearing it, feels himself melt into an embarrassing puddle, and then spends the next ten minutes frozen, staring at the ring, thinking about whether or not he’s going to buy Yoichi a fucking ring, for fuck’s sake, you blithering idiot—

“Yoichi would love that one.” 

Haji jumps again, but he’s already reaching for the holster at his hip at recognition of that rumbling voice and its coy tone. 

All For One grabs his wrist to stop him. “Now now, Haji, no need to cause a mess. The poor clerk is just doing his job.” 

Haji feels sweat begin to drip down the back of his neck. “What do you want,” he says quietly behind gritted teeth.

“I’m going to buy your ring for you,” All For One says simply. Haji’s jaw drops. 

“Why? What the hell do you want?”

“Consider it returning a favor, for saving my life all those years ago,” All For One says simply.

“That’s not what I asked.” 

All For One smiles. “Why would I be against an expression of naive love for my brother? I saw this coming from miles away; had I truly been afraid of it, I would have stopped it.” 

Haji glares daggers at All For One. “Don’t toy with me.”

“I’m not,” All For One says delightfully. “Let my dearest brother have his puppy love. Let him be loved. I still have a place for him, when the time comes. Sir— yes, you at the counter— how much for the item listed CA-32? I’ll pay full price if my dear friend here can leave with it today.”

Haji leaves shellshocked and with a small discrete bag in his hand. 

“Invite me to the proceedings,” All For One says. 

Haji turns to see All For One walk back into the crowd, and a moment later, he’s gone. 

Izuku’s heart pounds in his chest. He stands, frozen, as lithe footsteps draw closer and then pause. Then, peering around the corner is none other than First, his eye wide, the other hidden behind a curtain of pale hair. He's wearing a casual shirt that he almost seems to drown in.

“Ninth,” First breathes. He looks both ways down the street before he slinks in, moving around the figures lying prone on the ground. His figure is a ghostly white and fades wispily at the edges. His eyes are kind, his posture warm and inviting. His expression melts into relief. “I made it just in time.” 

“First?” Izuku speaks around the feeling of cotton in his mouth. “You’re— you’re actually here—” Izuku’s voice cracks. He stumbles closer, and First’s small smile widens. 

“Of course I came,” First says, soothing. “I would never let you go to face this on your own.”

Izuku chokes back a sob. “Wh-when did you even—?”

“Just an hour ago,” First says. He holds his hand out for Izuku to take. “Come on, let’s get you back before anyone else comes for you. I’m sure Second’s been so worried about you.”

Izuku sags with relief. He wipes his face on his shoulder and nods. “I—” Words fail him. He stands there, swaying, hunger and thirst and fatigue fighting for presence in his mind.

First’s smile saddens. The hand he reached out for Izuku to take falters before he goes to put a hand on Izuku’s shoulder—

Izuku’s stomach swoops, and before he registers what he’s doing, he’s snatched First’s hand around the wrist. The gauntlet creak from the pressure. The other flares to life, and he points it at First’s face without even registering the motion. 

The proceedings are quiet. 

Haji invites his sister. Yoichi doesn’t invite anyone. They exchange rings, go for a nice dinner, and walk to a nice bridge to watch a fireworks display. There’s no way to make it official, what with them both being men and with Haji’s meta ability. Yoichi won’t let go of his hand, and Haji lets him, because tonight is special. Lilali takes tons of pictures on her nice camera. 

When they get back to their apartment, there’s a gift sitting on the counter. Yoichi goes rigid beside Haji. 

“Oh,” Lilali says. “Did someone drop by a gift? That’s sweet.”

“I did,” a rumbling voice says. 

All For One stands from his seat on the couch in the living room. Yoichi’s grip tightens until it’s borderline painful. Haji steps in front of Yoichi, only for All For One to wrap an arm around both of them. 

“Congratulations,” he says. “I should really go, though. Your cat seems to have an intense dislike for me.”

“Does he?” Haji says. 

“Yes. He ruined my shoes.” 

Haji glanced to the entryway where an unfamiliar pair of shoes sat. He vows to keep an eye on that in the future. 

They were going to move anyway. It was Haji’s gift to Yoichi. Haji thinks they need to get their stuff packed and leave tonight. 

All For One leaves with little more than another set of congrats. When the door closes, Lilali says, “I’m guessing we don’t like that creep.” 

“We don’t,” Yoichi agrees. 

They open the box and find nice, mundane things. A pottery kit and some fine jewelry. They take it outside and burn it, pack up, and leave. 

The new apartment has more room for Kichiro anyway. They spend the night trying to set up the cat trees and laughing at each other until the wee hours of the morning. 

“Good boy,” Yoichi says, scritching the underside of Kichiro’s jaw. “Good boys shit in their bad brother’s shoes.” 

Kichiro snuffles and rolls around in Yoichi’s lap. Haji’s never seen either of them so happy, even despite the circumstances. Yoichi keeps touching his ring. Haji feels giddy and warm, his new violin—Yoichi’s gift to him—packed away in his room. 

Yoichi pokes his foot with his toe. “I think we should go to that new coffee shop tomorrow,” he says, and Haji smiles blindingly and agrees. 

First startles. He clearly tenses, ready to run, but instead takes a deep breath. “It’s just me, kid.” 

Izuku wants to let go. He wants to, but he can’t, and his stomach is still sinking. Alarm bells ring shrilly in Izuku’s head. 

Just let go, Izuku thinks, but then he really takes a moment to think. 

Yoichi’s eye watches him carefully, still not moving. “It’s going to be okay, Ninth. You can let go.” 

Yoichi’s eyes are glassy when he kisses Haji for the first time, just two years after they exchanged rings. 

Haji makes a sound of surprise, stumbling from where he was about to open the door to their apartment when Yoichi pulls away. 

“What?” Haji asks. His face feels like it’s on fire, his lips two pinpricks of hives and uncertainty. “Chi, what the—”

Yoichi just smiles up at him. “Have a good day at work.” Then he turns around and walks unsteadily down the hall, back into the apartment. 

Haji watches after him, hurt and flabbergasted equally. 

He manages to get the door open, this time. 

The whole time at work, it’s all he can think about. He keeps on reaching up to touch his face. He hopes he hasn’t broken out into hives. His boss notices and tells him that he should go back home and get some rest.

Haji goes to argue and finds that he can’t. He packs up his things quietly and heads back home sullenly. 

It’s with dread in a pit in his stomach that he drags his feet to his apartment. He takes his time to unlock the front door. When he gets inside, all the lights are off. Kichiro comes racing towards him, bell tingling. She begins to mreow as she paces between his legs. 

The thing is, Kichiro would never do that. Not unless Yoichi wasn’t home, and not unless he wasn’t home for a long time. 

“Yoichi?” Haji asks. Then calling louder, “Yoichi!?”

It’s fine, he tells himself. He pulls up the tracker he has on Yoichi’s watch— something they’d both agreed upon early on. His stomach drops as he sees Yoichi’s location move speedily away from the apartment in the opposite direction from where he works. 

Shit. Shit, shit shit shit shit shit shit. 

He races back outside, making sure that Kichiro doesn’t try and escape, and flings himself down the staircase. The train route isn’t the most direct, if he can ride his motorbike he can— oh god what did Yoichi do? What was he thinking? He wasn’t even supposed to be at work today—

Haji races after after the blinking red dot for hours. He follows Yoichi all the way to the edge of the city, where the roads curve around a park, and Haji abandons the bike where the cops will look for it. And then he runs and runs and runs like his life depends on it. 

He sees Yoichi’s white head of hair at the top of a hill. There’s another person standing there too. He barely catches the end of the conversation. 

“You promised,” Yoichi says before Haji can stop it. 

“Yes, yes,” All For One says dismissively. “I will keep my end of the deal, as promised.” 

Yoichi shudders, and he opens his mouth, green eyes wide— Haji throws a spinning disk with serrated edges at All For One’s face, and that’s when All For One decides to wave his hand and slashes Yoichi into a mangled shell. With his other hand, the disk disintegrates. There’s no fanfare. 

Haji screams and cries over the unfairness of it all, over what’s left of Yoichi’s body. All For One huffs and leaves him there. 

Haji has no idea what deal they made. He has no idea why Yoichi turned himself over. He has no idea and he will have no idea, not for another century, and it haunts him to the grave and beyond. 

Izuku’s mouth dries with realization as he takes a closer look at Yoichi’s face. He runs his tongue over the back of his teeth. 

“Don’t move,” Izuku says shortly. His hand trembles. He wills it to remain still. 

“Ninth—”

“First never would’ve called Haji ‘Second’,” Izuku says. “In fact, he didn’t even know the holders called themselves by number.”

First’s eyes flash. 

“Also, we’re on the outskirts of Kamino ward. All the holders appear at the bench—even Third appeared at the bench when I was kidnapped. It would be impossible for you to get from the bench, track me down all the way to Kamino, and find me here in an hour like you said you did.” 

First’s face grows flat. “Ninth, you’re paranoid, I understand, but once we get you home, we can fix—”

Izuku’s voice hardens. “No, I won’t. I bet it’s no coincidence that the thing screwing with me, shoving a bunch of memories that aren’t mine into my head, just happens to disappear as you appear.” 

First doesn’t move, but his entire demeanor seems to change anyway. 

“Let me take a wild guess,” Izuku says, keeping his gauntlet steady on First’s face. “Since you so kindly showed me from Second’s memories— you and the vestige of the stockpiler in One For All fought. You were severely weakened, but not destroyed completely. Now you’re a vestige who can’t exist on your own, like Fourth, without splitting apart. You’ve bound yourself onto a vestige that can keep you alive— your own brother.”

First’s expression suddenly darkens, which Izuku takes as encouragement to keep going.

“Yoichi was stubborn and kept you contained. You managed to finally take control in the mindscape, and with that control, you’ve been fucking around in my memories the past week. When you manifested with Yoichi’s vestige, you no longer had access to my head, which is why I’m back to normal. You knew I would come for Arakan and end up here, and you managed to get here so quickly because of the same mist gate that teleported me. Does that sound about right?”

Over First’s shoulder, Izuku feels the words to contain and to contaminate vy for control. Now that Izuku can see past the curtain of First’s hair, he can see dark splotches and splits hiding behind there, reaching from his ear across up to his eye. And his eyes, too. It’s hard to tell with the translucence and the faint white shimmer, but his eyes are a shade too light. Izuku wonders if they’d look yellow rather than green. 

First— or rather, All For One in First’s body— huffs. “Well, you are intuitive, aren’t you?”

His voice is suddenly as cold as First’s expression. 

Izuku sneers. “Must’ve driven you crazy, that the puppet you always controlled is the only reason One For All isn’t yours. Decades of time and he’s only slipped now. Well now you have him. Happy?” 

All For One smiles. “Presumptuous too. It was my brother who forced my vestige to remain binded to his own. He was the one to dictate his own cage. And… It’s not the first time my dear brother lost control, Ninth. He did once, four years ago.”

Izuku stills. 

First’s smile turns coy. “Why do you think you had that seizure?”

Izuku’s fist tightens around First’s wrist. 

“Since we’re playing the guessing-intentions game, why shouldn’t you know?” All For One takes a step forward. Izuku steps back. “Four years ago, All Might almost killed me, and I fled to take control of the nearest body who could host me. And who better than a young—” Another step forward, another scramble back. “—defenseless—” Another step. “— little boy who would have One For All eventually?” Another step. Izuku’s hip bumps into the edge of the dumpster. “I wanted to see All Might’s face when he realized he handed off his quirk to me in the disguise of his precious little successor. I wanted to watch the hope die in his face.” 

Izuku presses the end of the gauntlet against First’s throat. “You’ll never get it.” 

“I destroyed your mindscape once before, Ninth. It’d be a piece of cake to do it properly this time. No witnesses, no one to stop me before I’m finished. No All Might to save the day.” All For One’s eyes gleam. “Go on. Shoot me. You’ll have to kill my brother too, if that’s what you want.” 

Izuku freezes. All For One shoots a hand forward and touches Izuku’s face, and Izuku scrunches his eyes closed, expecting the same dizzying sensation of his first seizure—

And he waits. And waits. After two seconds, Izuku opens his eyes. 

All For One stares at him with a dead-eyed expression. He retracts his hand and clicks his tongue. 

“I see,” All For One spits. “That moronic holder…” 

(Fifth presses a hesitant hand over Izuku’s heart. Izuku shudders under the cool, misty feel of his spirit. A warm and searing touch startled in his chest. 

Fifth watches him carefully. His eyes are uncertain and pained, but warm, warm, warm.

“I am always here,” he says in his harsh, gravelly voice, muted to a near-whisper. “And no matter what happens, know that I will always be here to protect you from that feeling.”)

Fifth. Izuku feels the disconnected stinging in his chest. That soft presence in the cavity behind his ribs pulses. Fifth’s protection, a little piece of Fifth’s own soul, wrapped tightly with Izuku’s, holds him tenderly. 

All For One turns away. Izuku knows he can shoot with the gauntlets, but he sees First’s profile, his young face, and knows he can’t. 

There’s a sudden yell that startles both of them. The woman from before, who Izuku had drudged up a memory, was running towards the pair of them, fists raised. She must have broken out of control at some point. 

“That’s our reward, you punk!”

Dark tendrils shoot out from First’s back and impale the woman on the spot. She gurgles and twists in place. Izuku pales in horror. 

Shit, does that mean he has some of his quirks—!?

“Take him, Kurogiri,” All For One says. “I have a vestige I have to kill first.” 

What—

Izuku yelps when the ground underneath him opens up. 

Fucking warpgate! 

Haji’s a walking corpse when he finally gains the courage to go through their old workshop. 

He doesn’t have the heart to take out any of Yoichi’s stuff. There’s a half-finished painting he hangs up. The apartment was spacious for two and too big for one. Haji thinks he can see Yoichi’s ghost haunting the corner of his eye, peering around corners, and it unsettles him so much that he stays at work more. 

His boss asks him if it has anything to do with the day he got sent home early. 

“My spouse died,” Haji replies, and his boss is so shellshocked that he mourns him with Haji. 

“I can’t go back to my apartment,” Haji croaks. “What am I meant to do with everything? Hoard it? Sell it? I—”

Haji’s boss touches his elbow lightly. “Hajime, go back home and rest. Go through what they had, and remember it and grieve it. You don’t have to decide what to do with it all now. But don’t rush to sell everything. You’ll want mementos.” 

Haji goes through the grueling process of failing. 

He feeds Kichiro more than he feeds himself. The feebleness sets in first, then does the sickness. He’s always sick. Kichiro never gives up waiting for Yoichi to come home. She keeps sleeping by the door, waiting for him to step through and make everything right again. 

Almost a week after Yoichi’s death, she sits by the front door and begins to meow. 

Haji, sitting sullenly on the floor, feeling like he doesn’t deserve to sit on the couch, looks up from his book. They were about to finish it when he’d died. 

Kichiro meows again. 

“He’s not coming home,” Haji says, suddenly angry. 

Kichiro meows louder, an ear-splitting sound that’s like a spark to oil. 

“HE’S NOT COMING HOME!” Haji yells, and he slams his fist on the coffee table. Something in the wood splinters. 

Kichiro runs through the flat, scared. 

Haji comes down from his anger in muted terror. He thinks of Grandfather as he examines the coffee table and vows himself never to lose control of his anger again. 

Kichiro hides under Yoichi’s bed for a long time. Haji goes back to trying to read through his tears. The pages pass and he still doesn’t remember anything that’s happening. Kichiro comes out an hour later and, cautiously, she curls up in Haji’s lap. It’s the first time Kichiro ever willingly touched him. He gently cards his hands through her fluffy white hair. When he finally cries, Kichiro rubs her face against his jaw. 

He thinks he’d just end it all, if it weren’t for Kichiro. They grieve together. 

His dreams are of Yoichi too. He dreams of a dark and empty space without anyone to fill it. He wakes up and realizes his quirk is stronger than before. 

It takes three weeks to come to acknowledge why his quirk might be stronger, why Yoichi haunts him in the corner of his vision. It takes eight months for the paralyzed horror and grief to morph into anger. It takes another four for it to crystallize into something concrete. 

Haji repurposes the old gear he used to track Yoichi down. He hauls up a whiteboard and begins to write what he knows. He finds his old pair of gloves and rolls out the blueprints and imagines something heftier, something with a stronger punch. 

It’s not a direction Yoichi would have wanted him to take, Haji thinks, but it gives him purpose. 

Purpose is all he has right now. 

Tsukauchi nods to himself before he turns to address the smaller group of heroes compared to the bigger crowd in the room. 

“Remember,” Tsukauchi says, “the lab and the production warehouse are the main targets. Do not engage until we have confirmation that the team at the secondary location are ready.”

Hisashi glances at his team—All Might, Everest, Chameleon, Eraserhead, Second, Banjo, and En. The Wild, Wild Pussycats, along with Hawks and Endeavor should be targeting the bar. The other three teams have a smattering of heroes from all over the place. 

Hisashi’s old hero uniform already feels like a burden. Banjo touches his shoulder, smiles, and then guides him towards the exit where a car will be waiting for them. 

The man screams bloody murder. 

Haji sighs. He has the man strung up from the edge of the building. He’s precariously held in place by a cord wrapped around his ankle, tied to an apparatus hanging over the side of the tower. Cars distantly honk below them. 

“WAIT, WAIT, I’LL TELL YOU, OKAY!? I’LL TELL YOU EVERYTHING!”

“Start talking,” Haji says. His voice sounds distorted past the motorbike helmet. 

“THERE’S THIS GUY! HE’S— HE’S ONE OF THE MASTER’S FAVORITES. HE WORKS WITH THE GOVERNMENT—”

Haji pushes his hand, holding onto the knife, closer to the wire. “Which department?”

“I DON’T KNOW, I-I SWEAR! LOOK, I HAVE THE GOODS, THERE’S A NOTE IN THE BRIEFCASE WHERE I WAS SUPPOSED TO DELIVER IT TO HIM— PLEASE, PLEASE JUST LET ME GO! I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING ELSE!” 

Haji clicks his tongue. He pulls on the wire and drags the man back over the edge onto the rooftop. He snatches the small briefcase latched to the man’s belt and stalks away without cutting the wire. 

“Wait, you can’t just leave me up here!” the man cries. 

Haji opens the door to the access to the roof and turns. “I didn’t kill you. Call that mercy.” 

The door shuts on the man’s gasps. Haji opens the case to find vials of some kind of green-ish substance. There’s also an empty syringe. There’s a note in spidery writing with coordinates, but even more damning is a letter nestled in the foam. 

‘A, 

These samples should guarantee whether or not they’re fit for the role. An extra has been given for your convenience. Additionally, seeing if the commodity maintains structural integrity on-site after injection is easier than trying to remove the commodity from its environment and THEN doing tests. The truck axles can be overloaded with too much weight, so we want to limit how much product we bring on board.

My pleasure, 

— G’

What the fuck? Haji rereads the letter multiple times and fails to make any sense of it. He huffs and inputs the coordinates into the screen on his forearm. It’s not too far away—the meeting is supposed to happen in two days, and it’s not too far a drive from the apartment. 

Haji huffs. What a bunch of nonsense. It feels like a dead lead in the making already. Dammit. 

Two days later, Haji finds himself in the middle of an opera, pretending to be one of the violinists down in the chamber below. He’s wearing his only good suit. 

He doesn’t really know how he got himself here either. He carried his old violin case to blend in, but someone grabbed him by the arm, saying with relief, “Thank god the substitute is here”, sat him in front of a sheet of music, and told him to play. 

Haji thinks he might throw himself off a building. 

When the theatre lights turn back on and someone calls for a break, Haji races with his briefcase to one of the backrooms. He places it on the desk like the note called for, and then hides in a dark corner. 

Not much later, a man with cropped silver hair steps through, adjusting the cuffs of his suit. Two others, obviously bodyguards, walk a step behind him on either side. 

“Perfect,” the man purrs. He opens the case to make sure of its contents. The bioluminescent green ooze lights up his face. He takes out the letter Haji already resealed, checks for fingerprints (Haji already cleared it)—and holds up a light behind the letter. Suddenly, a coordinate point reveals itself, hidden in the paper. 

“Seems for another busy night,” the man replies idly. “Let’s—”

Haji shoots both the bodyguards with a mild immobilizing anasthesia in the form of a small, barely perceptible needle. Then he takes his violin case and slams the silver-haired man, the smallest of the three, in the backside of the head. Then he snatches the briefcase and the letter and runs. 

He hears yells of ‘Stop that man!’ which only makes him run faster. At some point, a woman sees him and brightens. 

“Oh, hey! You’re back! We’re just about to load back into the—”

“Sorry, you’re going to need a substitute,” Haji rushes, running right past her. 

“You ARE our substitute!” she yells. 

Haji apologizes, and then he’s bolting out the front door. He manages to get to the garage in the back of the building and finds his motorbike. 

Haji’s just thrown his leg over the side of his bike when he hears a gun click. The man he’d struck with his violin case is standing there, his eyes wild. 

“Drop the case,” he says, exceptionally calm. Haji hears someone scream and passersby retreat in hurried little footsteps. 

“Sure,” Haji says. He throws the briefcase at the man, knocking the gun out of his hand. Then Haji roars the engine of his bike and races out of sight. He can hear the man yell in frustration— he must’ve opened the briefcase only to realize that everything important, Haji had taken and stashed into his violin case. 

Haji thinks he’s in the clear until something whizzes past his ear, and oh shit, he’s actually in the middle of a chase scene. He doesn’t know if Yoichi would be proud of disappointed. He doesn’t have the time to think on it because something shoots his rear fender, just missing the wheel. 

Shit. Shit shit shit. Haji glances over his shoulder and sees another car. 

Seriously? On the road? Couldn’t he have just followed him back to the mechanic shop or something? 

Haji curses and takes a sharp turn on the road, just barely missing another car. They play a game of cat-and-mouse for a few minutes before Haji manages to twist around a tight turn, drop an explosive, and watches as it blows out the front left wheel. The car twists out of control and runs straight into a lamppost. 

Jesus christ. 

It takes another thirty minutes for the adrenaline to leave his system and for his hands to stop trembling. He inputs the second pair of coordinates into the panel on his arm. 

It’s a long ride and already extremely late, but he knows if he doesn’t find out what they wanted tonight, word will get out. Haji will miss his opportunity to see what they’re testing for. 

Clouds begin to rumble above his head. He sighs as the first droplet hits his visor. He keeps driving despite the way the rain drenches him until he finally comes unto the coordinates. He stops. He stares. 

An… orphanage?

He thinks about the letter, the vials, and the needle. He thinks about the way the letter phrased it as ‘commodities’, how the ‘load’ couldn’t be too heavy— he thinks he’s going to be sick. He steps off his bike, finds two brothers in the rain, and well, you know the rest. 

Lilali drops by for the first time in years. She’s all grown up now. When she smiles, there’s a glimmer of anxiousness in her eyes. Haji invites her in, and she compliments the place, plays games with the boys, and takes a picture of all three of them sprawled on the couch. 

Just as she’s leaving, she pulls Haji aside. 

“Please be careful,” Lilali says softly. 

“I will,” Haji says. 

“I’m serious,” Lilali says. “Grandfather has announced you an enemy.” 

“It was only a matter of time.” Haji pulls her into a brief hug, and she stands there, blinking up at him in shock. 

Finally, her face melts. “The kids are good for you.”

Haji sighs. “They’re… good.” 

Lilali smiles before she leaves, and they both know it might be the last time they see each other. 

Izuku glares at the wall. The dim light of the otherwise barren room flickers. He’s in some kind of back room. The wires around his chest and ankles shift. The other chair, back-to-back against Izuku’s own, creaks. 

“Why are your gauntlets so damn sharp,” Dabi mumbles. 

“I don’t know, Dabi,” Izuku snaps, “why are we both here, huh? Who’s fault is that?”

“Look, I’m sorry, okay!?” Izuku sees Dabi turn to look at him from his periphery, pulling sharply on the wires around Izuku’s chest. “Why didn’t they take your gauntlets anyway? I just figured you might be able to break out of these wires with one of its super functions!”

“They put an EMP-machine on my gauntlets since they couldn’t remove them, idiot,” Izuku hisses. 

“Well, at least I’m trying to find a way out!” 

“You’re the one who got us here in the first place, for no good reason!”

“I had to let Endeavor know I wasn’t going to take it lying down!”

The hurt crawls up Izuku’s throat. “What about us!?”

“It had nothing to do with you! And anyway, if I had known you were there, I wouldn’t have gone along with it!” 

“So suddenly it’s okay to hurt people if it’s a stranger!?”

“NO ONE CARED WHEN I WAS A STRANGER!” Dabi bellows. 

“I CARED!” Izuku screams right back. “I CARED ABOUT YOU!” 

“IT’S ALWAYS CONDITIONAL, IT’S ALWAYS LOVE WITH A COST!” 

“NO IT’S NOT!” Izuku’s head spins. “AND I’M GOING TO PROVE IT BY GETTING US OUT OF HERE, AND I’M GOING TO KICK YOUR ASS AND CARE ABOUT YOU EVEN AFTER ALL THIS SHIT YOU PUT US IN!”

“OH, SO NOW YOU WANT TO GET OUT OF HERE?”

“YEAH, I DO! AND I NEED YOUR HELP!”

“WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU WANT, THEN!?”

“TO SHUT UP!”

Dabi huffs. Panting, both of them go quiet. Izuku sighs and closes his eyes. He imagines reaching out to that space where only the holders exist. It’s still fuzzy, still beyond his reach entirely, except for that one whirlwind of force, so strong that it denies being ignored. 

Fourth, Izuku thinks. I’m about to give you what you want.

You’d think he’d learned his lesson after the first time. 

After the first time he came back home, only to find Third standing in the foyer, eyes wide and sad as he handed out the notebook and confessed what he knew about One For All. 

Haji’s heart broke then. Now, it speeds up as he tears through the apartment, looking for the two rascals, fifteen and thirteen years old respectfully. He finds the door to his workshop is cracked open, and he expects to see the two curled up in a chair going through his things. 

He opens the door. The papers on his desk are strewn everywhere. There are smudges on his whiteboard, and, uncovered, they reveal the floorplan to the radium reactor. 

Haji was planning to investigate tonight. He heard whispers of one of All For One’s major players that were going to be there. 

Fuck, he thinks. No. There’s no way— they didn’t— oh, fuck, no. 

Haji’s breathing speeds up. He imagines for a moment, that little smile on Yoichi’s eyes before he kissed him. 

(In the future, he will imagine a little boy’s room, empty— a microphone missing.)

“Oh fuck,” he says, and then he runs. 

Izuku feels that demanding presence press against his skin. 

You’re alive, the voice murmurs. I see. 

His attention splits. Someone else joins him at the controls of his own body. The air in the room hums, singing with energy. 

Izuku reaches out—electricity appears in great white bolts, scattering across his gauntlets. 

Dabi jolts. “What the fu—”

The reactor core spins at the center of the large lab area. A tall bridge goes out from the viewing area to the reactor. Scattered bodies litter the ground, all knocked out. Haji gives himself a moment to be proud of his boys before the terror sinks back in. 

Haji sees Kuri and his brother and instantly throws himself bodily over them, just barely managing to block a blade with his gauntlets. 

Here’s the thing: Haji knows those blades.

Haji throws a fist and can’t get inside the man’s guard. The man’s wearing a mask and the whole getup, but his eyes are clear behind the mask. 

“Maeno,” Haji says. 

“Haji,” Maeno replies coyly. “Are these my nephews?”

Haji gestures with one hand, the clear signal for the two to run. “Who told you I would be here?”

“A man who hates you,” Maeno says, and then he’s swinging his blades. Haji knows a single cut will kill him, if the smell of the toxins are any indication. There’s not enough room to maneuver on the bridge—but it also serves as a chokepoint, to prevent Maeno from coming any closer. 

“The only people who hate me are All For One’s men,” Haji says right before ducking underneath the wide blade of Maeno’s sword. “Don’t trust what—”

“You saved All For One’s life!”

“Yeah, well now I’ve spent the past decade trying to kill him!” Haji manages to knock one of the two blades out of Maeno’s hand. He lunges in close to grab Maeno and push him into the guard rail. He kicks one of the blades over the edge. “We’re fighting the same man, Maeno.”

“You ruined my family name. You saved the man that’s destroyed Grandfather, that killed Father!” Maeno pulls a hidden blade from his belt, and Haji scuttles back to avoid getting hit. “Now I’m going to ruin yours.”

Izuku feels the wire begin to ice over, growing more taught. With a breath of cool air, Izuku clenches his fists with the gauntlets and yanks. 

The wire begins to crack. It must’ve been heat-resistant for Dabi’s quirk, but not in the other direction. He does it again, and again, and then Dabi curses and says, “Tell a guy your plan first” and sucks in his gut.

When the wire finally breaks apart, they both leap to their feet and turn to stare at each other. Izuku pants. Dabi sways. 

“Truce?” Dabi says. 

Izuku nods. “We can beat each other up after.”

And then they run. 

Haji suddenly understands what Yoichi meant that night when they went to go save his brother. 

Maybe if Yoichi hadn’t taught him what love should look like, maybe it wouldn’t hurt so much. Haji thinks he might still love his brother. 

“Maeno,” Haji says. 

“Stop TRYING to get me on your side!”

“I know,” Haji says. He knows it’s useless. “I’m sorry.” 

But he’s not going to make the same mistake twice. He knows Arakan, the silver-haired man he fought years ago who still proved to be a thorn in his side, had set them both up. He knows that there’s a device strapped to the far side of the reactor. He knows that Arakan planned to get rid of two birds with one stone. He knows Arakan told Maeno that he’d be there. 

Haji throws down a smokescreen and runs the opposite direction. He grabs Kuri and Third under each arm, and he activates his quirk and hightails it out of there. He can hear the distant beeping of the device strapped to the reactor. 

He hears Maeno’s enraged shriek moments before he throws himself out of the window, and then the whole world upends. 

He manages to keep a hold of them even as the explosion flings them. The boosters in his suit automatically try to soften his fall. Even with the help of his quirk, he still hits the ground with blinding amount of force. He yelps as he rolls once he hits the ground. 

The fire’s still raging, consuming the whole building when Haji can finally hear past the ringing again. First, he checks to see if Kuri and Third are okay. Other than a few scrapes and bruises, they’re perfectly fine. Haji sighs in relief and ushers them onto his bike so they can go back home. It feels like forever when they make it through the front door. 

That’s when Haji absolutely lays into them. 

“Are you CRAZY!?” he yells. Kuri and Third both flinch, but Haji paces as he continues. “Honestly— and when I motioned for you to RUN you couldn’t follow that single, SIMPLE instruction! What was the point of all that training!?”

Kuri holds his hand out. It’s a little earpiece. “I got the comms device to All For One’s government Head.” 

Haji snatches the device. “You are worth more than an infinite number of these things, no matter how ‘helpful’ they are. I can’t believe you two!” 

“We were trying to be helpful!”

“I CAN’T LOSE YOU TWO!”

Then he grounds them for life twice over, wraps them in his shock blankets, and cooks them dinner, fuming the whole time. They say sorry, he says sorry for raising his voice, and then he sits in the tub of his bathroom and cries about a brother he might’ve still loved and the brothers he’s taken under his wing. 

“Fuck,” he says, “I’m not cut out for this.” 

The next day, Kuri calls him Dad, and he freezes on the spot and gets a little teary-eyed and denies his watery eyes vehemently.

It takes Third a lot longer to say it, but he does, eventually. And, eventually, Haji un-grounds them from their life-sentence. 

“Wait,” Dabi says as they run. “Where are we going?”

There’s some kind of commotion happening near the front of the bar, so the two went for the back exit, where there were significantly less people to beat up. Except, after getting into a fight, they found a secret entrance that goes underground, which Izuku has a feeling leads straight somewhere important. Izuku barrels forward without regard. 

“We’re going to save Uncle.” Fourth seems content to leave Izuku with the controls so far, though Izuku gets the impression that that won’t last for long. 

Izuku reaches out for that Snake and imagines holding on for dear life. The connection springs up, faintly tugging on Izuku’s chest. Sure enough, dead ahead in the passageway, the connection pulls him. 

“Are you kidding me!?” Dabi hisses. “Izuku, we should find help.” 

“I already did! Fourth knows, which means he’ll tell the rest of our help!” 

“Who the hell is Fourth!? And since when!?” 

“Stop asking so many unnecessary questions!” 

“I was going to let you beat me up after this,” Dabi says seriously, “but I’ve changed my mind. It’s fair game, squirt.” 

“You’re on!” Izuku says, and they keep running. 

Tracking down Arakan isn’t hard. With the communication device Kuri had snatched, it’s easy to trace it back to its owner. Killing him, though— that’s a lot harder. 

It’s a six hour hunt that finally leaves them in an abandoned train station where metas often fight. Arakan had seemed pretty gleeful at the idea of turning Maeno against him. 

“So it is true, then,” Arakan says. Haji’s hiding behind one of the station’s pillars to avoid the gunshots. He knows Arakan only has a few more rounds. “The boys that disappeared from that orphanage are yours. I did think we were missing a few names on our roster.”

The idea of a roster of missing kids being used for experiments makes Haji’s vision go red. Haji brings out every single invention he has, every single ability to his gauntlets, and for a moment he even considers using the explosives to bring the roof down on their heads— but then he remembers Kuri and Third and gets angrier. 

It’s that thought, after almost seven years of hell, when Haji finally knocks the gun out of Arakan’s hand and grabs him by the throat. He drags him over to the edge of the tracks in the station. 

It’s not pretty, it never is, but Arakan’s especially gross when faced with death. 

“You deserve this,” Haji says, shaking him. “For every single kid you have ever hurt in your stupid little games.” 

“Please,” Arakan garbles. Haji's hand is wrapped around his throat. The man is beginning to turn red as Haji continues to hold him over the edge. “Please.”

Haji pauses. He wonders, but then he remembers Arakan’s earlier teasing, and something in him hardens. “You’ll go after everything I care about.” 

“I won’t,” Arakan says. “I won’t. I won’t go after you anymore. I-I’ll run away, I’ll quit working with All For One, just— please—” His plea turns into a silent grunt as Haji tightens his grip. 

He would. He would let him go. He would, because he doesn’t like being judge, jury, and executioner. He would because if someone gave him retribution for his own crimes, for helping his family, for trying to kill All For One and Yoichi and later saving them, an executioner would bring the blade down on his neck. 

He would, even if the decision bit him in the ass later. He would, except he has two kids at home, and—

Arakan tries to twist in his grip. His hair falls out of its usual ponytail. His face is mottled red and purple, and his lip is bleeding. 

“They said,” Arakan breathes, wincing, “you were merciful.” 

The station rumbles with the incoming train. A train that won’t stop at this station— this abandoned station that no one comes to in fear of getting hurt. It’ll keep the pace it’s at. 

“Please,” Arakan says, one last time. 

“I’m sorry,” Haji says, and he means it. He does. He means it as much as he meant it to Maeno. However, ‘sorry’ and ‘please’ won’t keep them safe. “But that’s not a risk I can take.”

The train’s headlights flash against Arakan’s face. Arakan’s face drops into pure, cold dread. 

The horn blares. Haji lets go of Arakan’s shirt and steps back in a fluid motion. The incoming train careens past the station. Moments later, it’s gone, leaving horrific silence and the sound of blood dripping from the station platform onto the tracks. 

Izuku slips in through the exit of the trapdoor. He lands on the floor quietly. Dabi heaves himself over the ladder and crashes to the ground groaning. 

“Dabi,” Izuku hisses. He hears footsteps approaching, so he quickly grabs Dabi and manhandles him into a room. 

The footsteps are hulking. They make the floor shudder, and they’re uneven in their gait. They wait in bated silence as a large shadow passes through the window embedded in the door. 

It pauses. Something sniffs the air, huffs, and then the footsteps continue. 

“Do you think the guards are those mutant-things from before?” Izuku whispers. 

“Probably,” Dabi whispers back. They glance at each other in fright. Izuku shrugs despite his terror. 

“Well, don’t get caught, then,” he says, and then he dashes back out. 

“Where are we going!?” Dabi whispers. 

“Basement!” Izuku whispers back. He could feel the connection thrumming loudly. 

Arakan was close.

The night Haji dies, he finally gets an answer to his question. 

“Yoichi made a deal with me,” All For One says. “If he accepted my protection, and if he turned himself over to me without a fight, I would never bring harm to you.”

“No,” Haji says numbly. 

“Oh yes,” All For One says gleefully. “But our deal is broken, now, as my brother has decided to change his mind… He no longer wants to turn himself over.” 

“He’s been dead for ages,” Haji says, head still spinning. 

“I guess you never did see him in your own mind. What a shame.” All For One’s hands crackled with energy. “You’ve been a pest long enough.”

Haji dies that night. He dies seeing his youngest, and feeling Third’s hands in his hair, whispering, “It’s okay, I promise, it’s okay—”

Izuku and Dabi crawl up in the rafters of a giant, open space, doing their best to remain silent. Lines of cloudy tanks take up the bulk of the room. In a small space in the center of the room, where controls for the tanks sit, is Uncle, who looks to be barely conscious. It's hard to make heads or tails of his condition. The room is nearly pitch black save for the tanks, which emit a creepy blue-green glow. Dark shadows cast across the floor, leaving a majority of the room enshrouded in darkness.

And there, standing in front of Uncle— Arakan. 

Arakan twitches as Dabi's foot slips and thunks against the rafters as they finally settle. Izuku inhales sharply. Dabi nudges him gently in the ribs, giving him a look that screams stay quiet.

The tanks all gurgle at the same time as oxygen bubbles float from the bottom in a rush. Steam hisses from open vents. Izuku covers his mouth. Arakan suddenly looks at something on his wrist as it beeps. He hums in delight. 

“I see. I have something to take care of. I’ll leave you a little gift, though.”

Uncle flinches and keeps his head bowed. Izuku and Dabi watch as Arakan leaves the room and closes the doors behind him with a resounding bang. Dabi growls under his breath, and Izuku touches his elbow. 

“Uncle first, then Arakan,” Izuku says. 

Dabi rolls his eyes. “Obviously.” 

They slip down from the rafters, jumping down to the iron-sealed top of a tank and then to the floor. Izuku winces at the reverberating sound of shoes on metal, but he approaches Uncle, who’s already passed out. The man is sluggishly bleeding from his side, the blood dripping lethargically onto the floor, cast in a strange hue from the tanks. Before Izuku says anything, Dabi melts the chains holding him into place. Between the sound of the metal hissing as it melts and the two coordinating to prevent Uncle from getting burnt, Izuku doesn't hear the doors creak open. They throw Uncle's arms on each of their shoulders. 

“Okay, now we leave,” Dabi says. 

“Agreed,” Izuku says breathlessly, and that’s the exact moment that they hear a low hissing sound. They move in tandem, jumping behind a tank with Uncle between them. Izuku has a better viewpoint from where he creeps out behind the corner, and he turns to the entrance to the lab to see a creature on all fours. The glowing tanks light up half the creature's side, highlighting the protrusions of its ribs.

Unlike the other mutants, this one looks more hound-like than a person. Ears stick up from their skull, and the curved, ridged spine allows the mutant to crawl on all four feet. Even those look more like claws than hands. 

The being growls before it draws closer. It leaves behind bloody footsteps. Red stringy clumps drip from its mouth. Its markings, muted and fuzzy, draw closer. Its biggest one rests on its shoulder. 

“Oh shit,” Dabi breathes when he finally sees it.

Izuku says, "Dabi, you have to take Uncle and run.”

Neither of them look away from the dog-mutant.

“Yeah, no,” Dabi says, even as his voice wavers. “Remember the last time we tried that? We’re sticking together this time.”

“Fine,” Izuku says, “hide Uncle then. Fuck!” And then he dashes out and aims his gauntlets and feels Fourth suddenly take control of his own body. 

The mutant's ear flicks as it makes eye contact with Izuku, and it roars and leaps closer, its feet shaking the earth with its weight and rattling Izuku’s teeth. Izuku watches distantly as electricity forms, white and bright-hot, and he releases the energy to hit straight to the back of the skull, the only place where the brain is exposed. 

Blood spatters against the glass tanks. Fourth yanks Izuku’s body out of the way, deeper into the maze of tanks, and he hears tanks crack and shatter behind him under the force of the running mutant. 

He turns around again and aims another shot. More brain matter and blood spatters, dripping down towards the ground. Izuku wants to hurl. The mutant doesn’t stop at all, and it jumps in close, its breath horrid and its eyes gleaming, and its teeth wrap around Izuku’s arm, crunching past the gauntlets, and—

Pain. Blistering, blinding pain, so distant that Izuku can’t even register it. He helps Fourth aim another shot point-blank that finally sends the mutant stumbling. Izuku ignores his mangled forearm for the time being and touches the ground. Air condenses into something chilly, forming ice all along the floor and creeping up the mutant’s feet. 

That’s when the mutant reaches up to its head, and, with a clawed hand, it touches the back of its neck. 

Izuku sees Dabi and Uncle in the corner of his eye. He goes to say something when a familiar tinkling sound grabs his attention. 

Pink crystals form over the back of the hound mutant’s head, slowly crawling over its injuries. 

Izuku’s face slackens. He glances again at the markings, and his eyes latch to the large one on his shoulder—a lavender-colored design that, if he looks closely enough, is floral. 

The crystals crack and fall away, revealing its brain completely healed. 

If not Uncle, who else would Third haunt?

Izuku’s hand, desperately gripping the wound on his arm closed, shakes. He takes a step back. He can feel Fourth, usually impassible, let go of the controls in shock. 

Who else if not his own body?

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Izuku says. 

The hound mutant slowly lets its hands fall back to the ground. 

“Th-they made you into a nomu,” Izuku says, because, for a moment, it feels like it’s actually listening to him. It’s hard to keep talking though, especially when its snout still drips blood. The ridges along its back flare. Dabi gives him a thumbs up though, and points for him to move to the left—why, Izuku has no idea. 

The mutant stalks forward on its palms and feet, muscles stretching, expanding under dark skin. 

“One For All,” Izuku stutters as he keeps stepping backward. He almost stumbles on his own feet. Tears begin to well up in his eyes. Third is right there, and his body is trying to kill him, and he won’t stop walking towards him— “You’re the third, re-remember? I’ve seen you. I know you. Your vestige—”

The mutant’s whole body shudders. 

“Don’t you remember me—?”

The mutant lunges. Blue-hot fire rushes between Izuku and the mutant, who screeches in pain. 

“The wall to your left is a load-bearing wall!” Dabi’s voice calls as the two run into the sea of tanks lining on either side of them. Izuku can catch glimpses of Dabi a few rows down here and then. “If we can get it to come down, we can stop it!” 

“And kill the rest of us while we’re at it!?” Izuku snaps. His voice cracks as his tears still threaten to fall. 

“Do you have a better idea!?” 

Izuku shrieks as the hound slams through the glass case to Izuku’s left, jaws snapping. A spray of scrapes across Izuku's side.

“NO I DON’T, AND I’M BLAMING YOU IF THIS GOES WRONG!” 

“YOU’RE THE ONE WHO BROUGHT US HERE IN THE FIRST PLACE!” 

“WE ARE TABLE-ING THIS DISCUSSION FOR LATER!” 

Izuku takes a sharp turn. He rushes back towards where he knows Uncle is. Sure enough, Dabi left him propped up against one of the glass tanks. Izuku hauls him over his back in a fire-fighter style. The man groans. 

“Sorry Uncle,” Izuku says, and then he runs as fast as he can. He can hear Dabi cursing, and the room lights up from time to time with bright flashes of blue flame. 

“DABI!!!” Izuku screams. 

“WHAT!?”

“GET OVER HERE!” 

Dabi is not an athletic person, Izuku knows, but he’ll be damned if he’s not impressed with how fast he appears from the maze of tanks. Izuku thrusts his foot out and closes his eyes, ignoring the growls of the incoming mutant. 

He imagines reaching into his mind and pulling out that memory, again and again, and then the rush of green figures explode from his outstretched foot like a wave. 

It’s a memory of Izuku and Dabi running away. 

There’s another memory, too, of Izuku fighting people in an alleyway, or of him fighting the mutant that could fly. There’s some memories that aren’t of him fighting at all, but instead of buildings and streets, all overlaying one another, and Izuku watches as the mutant stops in its tracks and tries to chase after the wrong Izuku, only to get confused. 

Izuku drags a gobsmacked Dabi through the entrance, shoves Uncle into his arms, and marches towards the wall on the opposite end. The memories play in his head, and he feels a headache come on as he tries to concentrate his efforts into confusing the mutant into focusing its efforts on the wall. 

Fourth’s voice chides him. Unruly boy. Half of his control is taken away from him, and Izuku watches as Fourth walks up to the wall on the opposite side. He places the gauntlet on the wall. He can feel the air shimmer and adjust to his will again. The building is old. He forces the air to focus its pressure on select weak points. His breath gets sucked out of him. 

“Get ready,” Izuku and not-Izuku say. Something slams onto the other side. Izuku moves away from the wall and grabs Dabi and Uncle to race down the hall. Fourth’s quirk pulls at the air and forces a small whirlwind to form. 

“Holy shit,” Dabi says. “We’re really about to—”

The hound mutant crashes through the wall, and with the splitting winds, the whole load-bearing apparatus comes down with it. 

Izuku and Dabi watch as the whole roof caves in one solid moment. 

“What is with you destroying buildings,” Dabi finally says breathlessly. 

“That was your idea,” Izuku says, relieved. 

“Damn,” a weak voice says between the two of them. They both jump. Uncle smiles up at them. “Not bad, kids.”

Haji appears in the uniform he died in. 

He looks down at himself, is faintly confused by his translucence, until he remembers that… yeah. He’s dead. 

Also, he’s not in the mindscape, which is extra weird. 

He looks around. He’s at a bench. He has no idea where he is or how he got here. For the next day, that’s all he does, and he finds out its been decades since he was alive, and no one remembers who he was. 

Which is a relief in of itself. 

He gets the impression that he’s supposed to be helping someone, but he has no idea who, exactly. 

And it’s that thought that haunts him for the next decade. 

He just happens, once, to see a young boy with blue eyes scrutinizing him—the only person who’s ever been able to see Haji—and that’s the only clue he’s ever gotten as to his purpose. Those blue eyes disappear into a crowd before he can get the chance to ask him what his name is or why he’s there. 

The decade haunts him. 

And then, one day, he opens his eyes and he’s in the mindscape. 

Oh, he thinks. They must have died. 

The moment they stepped foot into the lab, it was pure chaos. 

Second nearly slips as he dashes into a small closet, and he snatches Fifth’s arm as the man passes and drags him with him. Sixth slides on his heels to a slow stop, his strings whirling about in the air. He does a practiced motion that Second recognizes that he’s grabbing something—probably a nomu—with his strings by the leg and hauling it. There’s the sound of something crashing and a group of shrieks, likely others. 

Fifth uses Blackwhip to grab Sixth and drag him into the other room. Second pushes a cart against the door. They watch as through the misted glass, dozens of nomu crawl through the hallway in shadowed blurs. In the cramped space of what looks like a janitor’s closet, Second can see the faint light from the glass light up Sixth’s eyes. Fifth is nothing more than a foreboding shadow. 

Second’s communication device crackles to life. 

“I have sightings on the Doctor.” That would be All Might. 

“We’re almost done evacuating the third floor! No sign of the hostages. Gah! Where the hell are these shitheads coming from?” Chameleon and Everest. 

The nomu were everywhere. They first came through the vents, from the ceiling, from the floor—they weren’t as strong as the ones from the attack on Uncle’s, but the made up for it in numbers. 

“Carmine and I are containing the damage outside,” Eraserhead says. “They’re starting to come out from the sewer system outside. There must be some source, likely—umph!—underground.” 

Second presses on his earpiece. “We’ll go investigate. We’ll have to go invisible for this round, so don’t expect to hear from us.” 

“10-4!” 

Second goes to turn to Fifth and Sixth when the ground suddenly shakes underneath them. Fifth stumbles into the wall. 

“What the hell was that!?” Chameleon again. 

“Sounds like deeper inside,” came All Might’s rushed response. 

“Uh,” Fifth says. In his stumble, he’d punched a hole in the wall, revealing…

“An elevator shaft,” Sixth announces. “Well, this janitor’s closet was a little sparse on the cleaning supplies.” 

Second helps Fifth tear the plaster away from the wall. He peaks his head in— it’s damp, and it seems to go on for an eternity. 

“We sure there’s a way to exit the shaft down there?” Fifth asks. 

“If need be, I’ll make one,” Second replies, and he jumps. 

Izuku rushes towards the collapsed ceiling. He can just barely see the snout of the mutant from underneath rubble. Izuku grabs a large piece covering its head and pushes with all his might to haul it over. 

“Izuku,” Dabi hisses, “I’m going to kill you. Seriously. What are you doing.” 

Izuku waves him off. 

There’s blood pooling beneath the mutant’s snout and onto its arms where it rests its chin. 

“Third?” Izuku asks. He reaches forward. The mutant snaps at his hands, but he manages to get in close and wrap himself around the hound’s neck, keeping his palms gentle against the sticky underside of its jaw. He breathes in deeply. The mutant’s ear twitches. 

What is he supposed to say? What is he supposed to do? 

Izuku focuses on that marking on its shoulder. It’s more clear than any of the other markings on the other mutants— something about this one is different. Something more aware of itself. It reminds him of Dusty and Shrimp and Loki, something not quite human but not quite lesser either. 

Izuku gently pulls on that floral marking on its shoulder. 

“I’ll help you remember,” he says. 

He’s tired and he’s bloody and he’s bruised and worn out, and he presses his face against the hound mutant’s neck. 

“I’ll take care of you.” He runs his fingers across the side of its snout. “I promise.” 

“I’m so, so sorry,” he whispers. 

And then, gently, he unravels that floral marking, and he pushes his memories of Third into it, and he imagines, all the while doing that, dragging Third from its container. 

Please, Third, I need your help. 

Second brushes the dust off his suit as he forces himself past the rubble and further inside. 

Sure enough, on the other side of the elevator shaft is a dark room with a barely-flickering light. Underneath the overpowering stench of cleaning chemicals is the smell of rot. He sees nomu’s heads dart over to them, but they’re invisible right now— they tilt their heads confused before chasing back into the darkness. 

“We found where they’re coming from,” Second announces. He barely waits for Sixth and Fifth to swing their way into the room before he’s running down a hallway towards the center of the complex—

And runs straight first into a lithe, translucent figure. 

Now, Second’s a lot bulkier than the other, so it’s more like Second bowls over the other guy. Second barely thinks before he’s reaching out to catch them, hands around their middle, and then suddenly he’s face-to-face with a wide eye surrounded by pale lashes, equally white hair curling around thin shoulders. 

Second blinks. 

Technically, he’s invisible right now, which means he has to think hard about being being tangible, unless it’s the other holders, which means… 

“Yoichi,” Second breathes. 

First’s smile blooms cautiously, like a flower after a long, bitter frost. “Pip.” 

“Wait up Sec—” Fifth barges around the corner as First and Second straight. 

“—ond…” Fifth’s jaw drops. Sixth nearly barrels into him. “Oh. Hello.” 

“Oh my god,” Sixth whispers. “If it isn’t the longest, loveliest-doviest reunion in the making.” 

First laughs, a gentle, tinkling sound that lights up his whole face. Second thinks he looks tired. “Hello. I manifested at the right time, it seems.” 

Second feels giddy and light-headed and terrified and sick all at the same time. 

“Izuku,” Second says, still feeling nauseous. “He’s in danger.” He tries to communicate with his eyes, I want to spend eternity here, but I can’t, you know that, right? 

“I know,” First says simply. His eye is still pinned on the others, resolutely avoiding Second’s gaze. “What should I call you two?”

First’s hand brushes against Second’s, and suddenly, he can’t breathe. 

No. He can’t move. 

His eyes try to dart over to Fifth, but his whole body aches as he tries. 

“Fifth’s fine,” the man says, drawing next to them both. “Nice to meet you.” 

Sixth catches Second’s stare and stiffens. His blue eyes whiz back over to First. 

“Fifth—” Sixth warns. 

“Oh trust me,” First purrs, hand reaching out. His palm sparks. “The pleasure’s all mine.” 

Haji manifests again. 

He resigns himself to another decade of loneliness. It’s his part to play, he supposes, a purgatory specially made for him. 

And then, a young boy with bright eyes and curly hair, with a smattering of freckles over his cheeks, sits down on the bench beside him, turns, and says: 

“Sir? Why do you have such a strange glow? And why do sparks come from your eye?”

Haji’s flabbergasted, genuinely stunned for several moments. The boy isn’t put off all. 

The polite thing to do would be to give his name. 

Except—

Haji’s not his name. It’s a brand of shame. Hajime isn’t who he is—it became the name of a vigilante at best, a killer at worst. Pip is too personal, and only belonged to one person. 

“I’m Second,” Haji finally says. “And you are?”

“Izuku,” the boy replies. “You’ve got a funny name, sir.”

And yes, it’s funny and silly and it’s his. Not his grandfather’s, not his aunt’s, not his loved one’s, long dead. 

He’s not playing a role, he’s not worrying about a legacy. It’s just him and this kid, and so he cracks a grin and ruffles the boy’s hair. 

“You think so? Well, you’ve got a pretty cute name yourself, kiddo.”

The kid laughs, and Second thinks, maybe it’s not so lonely after all. 

Third appears in a glimmer of lavender. He looks around, then down at the mutant and Izuku curled around it, and then blanches. 

“Izuku?” his voice cracks. “My goodness—”

“Third,” Izuku says, jumping to his feet, “Fifth’s in trouble.” 

Third’s surprise is visibly shoved off his features. “Understood. Where?”

“Follow me, I’ll explain everything on the way up,” Izuku says, already running. “And get your body to carry Uncle!”

“Hah?” Shigaraki scratches at his neck as Kurogiri and the Doctor continue to guide him down an unfamiliar hallway. “So you’re saying the heroes got our home bases?”

“I suppose you could put it like that.” The doctor sighs. “And all my hard work, prematurely crushed before it began.”

The feeling on Shigaraki’s bicep tightens. 

“How annoying,” Shigaraki says. 

“There is still time to turn things around in our favor, Shigaraki.” Kurogiri opens the door to a mostly barren space. “Master is enacting one of his plans right now. We can still win the game.”

The nomu is inches away from impaling Hisashi when it halts to a soft-spoken command. 

Chills creep up Hisashi’s spine as he turns to the owner of the voice. Standing there, silver hair pulled at his nape, is an older man with a face covered in burn scars. 

“Carmine,” the man says. 

“Do I know you?” Hisashi says. In the background, he can hear Eraserhead still actively fighting. He keeps his guard raised for any blows to the back. 

“No,” the man says. He stands from where he was crouched on some rubble. “But your son does.” 

“Where is he?” 

“Along,” the man replies. “Your son has interesting matter. I want to see who he inherited it from.” 

“My son isn’t a test object, you piece of shit,” Hisashi says. The flames that whisper from his lips are blue. 

The hand lands on Fifth’s shoulder, and for a moment, nothing happens. 

Second watches as First’s expression contorts, as if in an internal struggle. His lips pull into frown. The sparks on his palm flicker in and out. 

“Uh,” Fifth says, “you okay there, kid—? Woah—”

Strings wrap around First’s midsection and pull him backward down the hall, putting some distance between First and the rest of them. A glinting knife appears in First’s hand, and with a flash, the strings, cut, fall to the ground loosely. 

First brings a hand his forehead. His other hand, still holding the knife, swings limply. “Still a pest I see,” he says to himself coolly. 

Second tries to speak and finds he still can’t move. He can feel his heartbeat in his fingertips, fluttering rapidly, and he still can’t move. 

Dark tendrils curl around First’s shoulders, and then he opens his mouth— and then the walls tremble and crack as First lets out a terrible scream, so loud that it causes a shockwave to blunder down the narrow hallway. The ceiling groans. 

Second can’t move. He stumbles to his knees, ears ringing, and his whole body’s numb even though he can feel something dribbling from his nose. 

“SECOND!” 

The black coils spreading along First's shoulders sharpen and aim straight for Second. He manages to push past the paralysis just long enough to bring a trembling arm to guard his face, a shield automatically generating. He can’t guard against all of it though— he jolts as something tears through his arm and abdomen. The pain is familiar and excrutiating all the same.

Shit. Shit, shit shit—

Whhhhp!

First suddenly curses. His blade clatters to the ground. A large knife, made of pink crystal, has impaled the back of his hand. 

The sound is followed by a soft tinkling, which quickly rushes into a roar. A pink wave shoots across the floor before rising to crystallize the tendrils into place, forcing them to a standstill. 

And then, from behind First: 

“Now, now, All For One— first you take my body, now my father’s dearest? That is cruel.” 

Second’s eyes widen. He hears a gasp behind him. 

First—All For One?—curses and whips around. 

From the doorway all the way at the end of the hall, a hulking nomu lumbers in. Blood drips from its snout, its tail lashing. Dabi and Uncle are riding on its back. 

That’s not what grabs Second’s attention. It’s the two figures standing in front. 

Izuku, who just threw the knife, straightens. Electricity jumps around his gauntlets, sizzling the blood dripping down one of his arms. “Sorry for the wait,” he says coolly. 

From behind him, Third hums. “Come for defeat one last time?” He undoes the clip to his cape, and it falls into a heap on the floor behind him. With a wave of his hand, two blades form against his palms. “I will oblige.” 

“Yeah, what he said,” Dabi says, and a wave of fire bursts from his hands.