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Ah.
The thing is, Toshinori doesn't feel any different, not really. If anything, it's like a weight has been lifted off his shoulders; if anything, he feels relieved. It's a strange place to be, numb but. But, not, and—
He settles back into himself, and breaths, a deep inhale. One, two. Exhale. One, two, three. It hurts, but it's distant with the backdrop of crying and yelling, sirens and the faint whir of a helicopter. The ghost of a hand on his wrist intensifies, bruising and defiant, and when he touches it with his own red tacked fingers, it doesn’t dissipate.
What did you do? he thinks, lips drawn into a frown. What did you do, All For One?
“—ight-san?”
Toshinori jolts, and turns halfway toward the voice. The ruined landscape bleeds into clarity, scattered debris and the clog of smoke and fire, the horrified faces of the police and pro heroes alike. He draws up a smile, blinding and painful, even as their eyes drift erringly from his face to somewhere at his lower left, and then beyond him, lower still. His hands ache to draw into fists, and the grip on his wrist feels like a brand.
It doesn't make sense, the uncertainty and the fear, the disbelief that colors the faces before him. It's over. It's finally over. Seven lifetimes till now, each snuffed out too soon—hey, hey Nana, Nana are you proud?—with countless lives ruined, and. Yes, if anything, Toshinori feels relieved.
“Fear not!” he says, grinning, jaw aching. Why are they staring? “There is no longer an immediate threat to this area!”
A man’s eyes twitch, his skin crystal rough, and Toshinori aborts a hard flinch when something inside of him seems to just. Disappear. Pins and needles crawl across his neck, and he tilts his head, just a little, eyes cutting to the side. A dark shape crouches not too far away atop a crushed car, and their hair flutters, eyes twin bright spots of red.
Eraserhead-kun?
“—Might-san, if, if you come quietly, I'm sure that everything will work out fine,” says a voice, but the sound drifts away. “I'm sure there's a perfectly—”
Toshinori doesn't realize he's tensed, muscles bunching, until he's already leaping through the air. The capture weapon slaps the space he vacated, a bent zag of white, but he doesn't stop. As soon as he lands, his side wet and hot, a second heartbeat in his ears, One For All howls like the Northern wind and sends Toshinori flying.
Shouts follow him, his feet skimming rooftops and glass, but it's automatic. He's not thinking, no fully formed thoughts or ideas. Toshinori leaps and bounds, feet carrying him away as his heart beats like a drum, and he doesn't look back, doesn’t know why. Everything blurs, and light dwindles; the world has turned upside down, and Toshinori doesn't know where he is when he finally stops.
His shoes slip in water, the air wet with just missed rain. The alleyway he’s landed in is damp and cool, cast halfway in shadow by descending sunlight. It’s quiet, wherever this is, and that’s what makes the niggling voice at the back of his thoughts all the more jarring in its sudden and sighed countenance.
Oh my.
Toshinori stills, and it hits him like a freight train, the way his fingers curl, the action stumbled by blood and gore. Oh. Oh. The fragility of skin and bones, the way it tears and rends beneath his strength; it has a distinctive sound in that space of silence between heartbeats. Toshinori remembers the final blow, pain blooming up his side as his inherited foe grinned with scarlet teeth, and then—
Nothing, for an endless second, an eternity, and now… Here. The relief isn’t gone, but a sense of dread and horror sidles up next to a tight bundle of surprise and bemusement. It smooths out, languid and foreign, and it’s almost a tangible touch that sends a tingle up his side. A chill Toshinori hadn’t really felt abates, and when he presses a stiff hand to his side, unbroken but rough skin meets his fingers through the hole in his uniform.
Can’t have you dying of blood loss, now can we?
“What?” he croaks, mouth suddenly dry.
There’s a laugh, hauntingly familiar, and it rings perfectly clear to his ears. Toshinori whips around, eyes scanning the hanging wires and soaked brick and cement, but it’s just him and trash sat out for pick up. He knows, knows he left him behind broken and—
Come now, denial doesn’t suit you at all—Yagi-kun, is it? I do believe the word you’re looking for is Dead.
The memory draws up in a snap, a body mangled—the head a mess of peeking shattered bone and grey, grasping arm separated from shoulder. Toshinori can still feel the moment when fingers went slack against the skin of his wrist, eyes stinging from the excess rebuffed gust. Bile scratches at the back of his throat, gorge rising, and Toshinori deflates as he twists, turns and staggers. A flung arm is the only thing that keeps him from falling, braced against the wall, and he loses the american breakfast he ate what seems to have been forever ago, morning a far off dream, an alien prospect. His stomach roils, heaves with the hammerjack of a fist, and Toshinori’s vision muddies with tears the longer he gags.
Oh, oh. A gibbering laugh works loose his jaw, mouth burning, and his legs feel as if they’re made of jelly.
All For One is dead. Toshinori killed him. He did that—hey, hey Nana, Nana are you proud? —and, above it all, he’s still relieved, still sure that if, if given another chance? He’d do it all over again.
What’s blood on his hands but one more sacrifice toward a world where the innocent have one less thing to fear?
… You’re rather more steadfast in your ideals than I assumed. Hm.
Toshinori frowns, exhaustion weighing heavy, and he scrubs the charred sleeve of his costume across his mouth. Ash runs bitter over his lips, and. The voice in his head is sounding less and less like his own than he remembers.
I… have much to think on, but, in another life, perhaps, I think I would have greatly enjoyed your enthusiasm for the world, Yagi-kun.
What, Toshinori thinks, alarmed, the thought barely formed, when the telltale simmer of his quirk rears with a vengeance.
The arm holding him up swells, muscles ballooning, and Toshinori has but a startled second of fear before it moves on its own, hand fisting, and slams into his cheek. He reels, and it’s like he’s uprooted, falling into himself and away from the wheel of a car as something settles into the now empty space. Suddenly, Toshinori’s looking out and powerless, the world tunneled down to a pinprick. There's a hum, all encompassing and considering, and it rattles him like an earthquake.
“You remind me so much of him it almost makes me sick,” says his own mouth, but it’s not Toshinori. Quirk flared fingers flex just in view before nudging gingerly at his face, the wrath of pain muffled as if behind a wall of cotton. “Tricky, and irritatingly difficult to regulate now, this quirk. So much has changed.
Something shifts, fills out, and the far off throb of heat dims entirely. Toshinori withers, tries to reach forward with the idea of hands and fists, but the entity bats him aside like a fly. His vision flickers like an old television, and by the time it settles, the alleyway is gone.
Playground equipment sits cast in the sharp shadows of night, the street light angled from somewhere behind; he’s in an empty park, propped on a bench, leg over knee. From the edges, Toshinori can tell he’s no longer in costume, the crisp lines of pressed slacks in a more darker color than he likes, and he limps closer only to be pressed down and held in place.
“Ah, back to sorts then, Yagi-kun?” Toshinori struggles, disoriented and dizzy, and the pressure builds. “It’s a novel thing, seeing so many shades of green, being this physically young again. It doesn’t quite make up for my mistake earlier, I do apologize; I’ve only recently just acquired this quirk from a rather devious young woman, but it was terribly fascinating—a lucky happenstance, in my case, don’t you think?”
The words give Toshinori the impression of an electrical hum, the buzz of too many bees to count.
It’s really hard to think.
There’s a chuckle, the sound less friendly and more amused than is appropriate. “It’s unfortunate, but I wasn’t quite prepared for the shock of it; you’re wanted, not for murder, mind you , but you’re wanted by all of Japan by now, I suspect.” A pause. “They’re keeping it under wraps, terrified and unsure of what is wrong with their Symbol of Peace; the world might descend into a chaos not seen since the beginning of Quirks if word were to reach the public.”
Another impression, but of blaring television screens and demonstrations in the streets. People strung up and quartered, beaten to death, a hunt akin to that of the Salem Witch Trials; people spirited away and never seen again in a prelude to scientific discovery, and, then, eventually, the beginning of Heroes and Villains as more and more people were born to be extraordinary. Toshinori doesn’t want to admit it, but the memory resonantes. To be mixed, hafu, and Quirkless merely a century and half into the era of Quirks was hard; he can’t imagine that it’s any better, now.
“Oh, how everything manages to change and yet stay the same,” All For One muses because, of course.
It... doesn’t make you right.
That gets a hum. “No, I suppose not, not in your eyes, but here, a thought exercise: say you had a quirk, bird wings, but you don’t want to be a hero, or do anything that relates to it,” he says, and the weight on Toshinori lessens, just a little. “But, you love to fly, an insatiable need. Regulations forbid it, don’t they? But you need to be able to fly, and the idea is akin to forbiding an actual bird from flying because… it could fly into a plane engine. Are you going to forbid all birds from flying, on the off chance of something happening? Could you deny a person that? Could you deny them something integral to their being?”
To Toshinori, his words ring false. The topic is a hot button issue; everything the world is doing now is new with no precedent for reference, and Toshinori has mixed feelings on it all, except. All For One doesn’t really care about that, he knows. The villain killed Nana, and six other people before her, and countless others over generations and generations of time—stolen something integral from who knows how many people. He can’t care; it’s just a ruse.
All For One laughs, Toshinori's voice twisted into a bare facsimile of itself. “You’re more intelligent than your obnoxious gimmick would have people believe, aren’t you?” he asks, and.
Something… slips. The pressure holding Toshinori down disappears, and he takes his roiling rage and grief, binds it tight, and lunges. There’s a startled intake of breath, a whirlwind of black and white, of displeasure and shock. It’s not a fight Toshinori is used to, but one he can match in spades—will and determination. With a wordless roar, he slams into All For One, and the sound reverberates with seven more voices.
Polite facade shattering, the world exploding into color, All For One snarls—
Hey, hey Nana, Nana are you proud?