Chapter Text
Katsuki couldn’t breathe.
It was like his memory and breath were tied up in the same moment.
He was walking, blood dripping from his arm. He had to do this. Had to keep fighting for his comrades who fought by his side. They had to be taken to safety and he was still standing. That's all that mattered. He felt as if his entire body was on fire, like his quirk was exploding inside of him. It propelled him faster. Dodge. Faster. Pain. So much pain.
He wanted to prove to everyone that he could do this. That no matter how far gone everything seemed, nothing was going to stop the heroes. But there was something deeper too. Flashes of memory went to Izuku and that smile. He was always in pain and yet pushed through all of it. An old pro at this. Izuku had to give his all for the others…. Katsuki could keep going for just a moment longer. He would pass the fight to Izuku as one would in a boxing ring. That would be the only time when he could lie down and take a nap for a century. That would be when he could finally catch his breath… Not now. Tomorrow? Maybe. But right now he had to-
Shigaraki’s attack slammed into his body and it was as if time itself wanted Katsuki to suffer.
His body rag-dolled across the field as thunder rolled in the distance.
He was already bloody, bruised, broken. His arm was already broken and limp at his side and there was blood everywhere from every stage of this fight. Though something was different about this attack. It no longer hurt.
The full force of Shigaraki’s punch was stronger than Katsuki’s adrenaline. He only could catch a glance of what had happened, but there was a fist that not only broke skin, but broke through his entire chest cavity. He rolled to a stop as the others also failed their attacks against Shigaraki. There was no way of knowing how many times he hit the ground in the tumble. It didn’t matter anyway since Katsuki didn’t feel any part of it.
He took a shaky, heaving breath, but he felt as if he was breathing through a straw. His brain was on high alert telling him that he was drowning. Drowning in his own blood it seemed. His head was spinning, his arms were aching, a rib was puncturing his lung, oh and the gaping hole in his chest too. His eyes stung. He tried to tell himself to blink but as the seconds passed on, even that felt impossible to do.
There was someone shouting over him, but they were just a haze in front of dark clouds and fresh rain drops. The figure could have been calling down a bottomless pit at this point. Katsuki's body was growing numb. His last attempt at a breath was failing.
He heard once that life flashed before your eyes when you died. They didn’t say that it was a jumbled mess. Sixteen years wasn’t a whole lot of life to live. He had thought for years about the people who would be shouting his name when he was a pro. School pushed him in ways he didn’t expect… to the point that he was even thinking of dumb things like college, traveling, or wondering what hooking up with someone would have been like. You know… life stuff. Though regret was the largest emotion that hovered in his memory. All that he did to Izuku, to his friends, his family, and All Might. Why did he hurt them so much? He always kind of lived for himself, in the now, and at the end of it all… the people he wanted most to be there... weren't. Best Jeanist wasn’t exactly the last person he wanted to see.
The moments felt like years as he tried to hold on. When he got through all of this and had the nap of the century, he was going to seek that atonement his guilty conscience wanted. But most of all, he wanted to finally get All Might's autograph.
Just one more breath. That’s all he needed. He needed to hold on and see Izuku one last time.
Just.
One.
More.
Breath…
////
“Yes…” an ominous laugh fell out of a middle aged man’s too large yellow tooth grin, “yes…Just keep digging!”
A man with wiry gray hair stood like a willowy tree in the middle of the graveyard. His hair stuck out from behind a mask that covered his eyes with eight spider eyes carved into it. A hooded robe hung over his thin frame making him seem more clothes than man. There were even weird trinkets sewn on the bell sleeves and train of the robe ranging from pocket watches to bones and bells. He paced back and forth, swaying his jingling bell sleeves as twenty perfectly rectangular holes were being dug out of the ground in front of him.
“Our new friends must be welcomed with the enchantingly beautiful night sky over them!”
A red hued moon hung low in the sky. They were in the cool rolling hills of cemetery "Haven Hills" overlooking a sparkling city in the dead of night. Dead. Ha! The more global their world became, the more western style cemeteries became the norm in cities across Japan. This location buried their dead. The poor abandoned dead from grieving families who couldn't let go. They could have been with their ancestors in the family shrines, but for whatever reason, they were here. It would be such a shame for such a man like himself to leave them alone forever!
The laugh came again as the man passed by some of the holes. He hopped like a crazed jester in the presence of his digging minions. There was one minion in each hole wearing the same type of robe as their leader. Though only their master would wear the trinkets on his garb. Each bowed to the man if he passed within a few feet of them. He waved his bony hand with grace letting them continue their work. There was so much to do before the ritual!
He stopped and looked up towards the sky. The moon was larger than ever and framed perfectly by trees on either side. It truly was a wonderfully most perfect evening! He laughed with his whole body and shot his arms up into the air looking like a strange party wizard than a villain.
“I, Re:Vive, am the one who can bring back the dead!” the man said loudly with his arms flailing and sleeves falling down to his bony shoulders. A power sparked on his fingers like a fire cracker. The minions cowered and knelt in a mix of panic and reverence of their leader. It wasn’t clear if they were reacting to the power from his fingertips or from what he claimed. Some clapped, the smallest one with a strange bird mask was dramatically bowing over and over. Re:Vive waved away the loyal servants with a motion of his hand.
“Our family is going to grow larger today. These will be your new brethren. Gods and goddesses that left us far too early just like all of you once were.”
He stopped at a hole when the follower’s shovel hit something wooden. Re:Vive smiled and squatted down over the hole as a casket began to emerge.
“Poor little goddess, gone before her time,” he said in this haunting sing-song tone. He looked up to the squared off stone that marked the opening of the growing hole. It read “here lies Miss Moon, the heroine of the night”.
“And with her real name left unknown to the world-” Other thunks’ followed, one by one down the line of holes the followers were digging up. The man jumped to each hole with anticipation. He made sure to read each of their names from the gravestones that marked each hole.
“Another poor goddess,” thunk, “and a poor young god.”
The last one he walked to was at the far left hand of the group. The smallest bird masked follower was inside, panting as he was having trouble digging his hole. He shuttered at the disappointing glances from his leader looming above him. Daring not to look at the glares of the man, the smallest continued scooping and dumping dirt frantically.
Suddenly, a shadowy figure appeared behind Re:Vive, wearing a mask and cloak just like their leader. He bowed down on one knee to Re:Vive.
“My Liege, the police are quickly on their way. It appears they also have a hero and sidekick with them.”
Re:Vive looked to the man boredly, “Oh, authorities, always ruining rituals before they have a chance to be fully prepared. I had candles too to add atmosphere . Everyone,” he clapped his hands, the sleeves jingling as he went back towards the center of their work, “our new brethren will just have to manage some dirt and grime. We must have the bathhouse ready for them later.”
The followers left their posts and Re:Vive motioned for them to circle around him.
“The end is not the end in a world of gods and quirks! The dead will rise and join us! The superhuman world that once was before, will rise again with these by our side!”
The spider eyes behind the mask began to glow as the sparks and wind began to flow around him lifting the man into the air. The followers chanted and shouted as the sparks turned into lightning directed at every dug or partially dug hole. The power took much out of the man as he dropped to one knee, but he kept pushing.
Red and blue lights lit up the night sky and sirens sounded, but they were blocked off by the sparks and wind. Four police cars skidded on the road and entrance to the cemetery. The closest ones drew their weapons as the hero and sidekick landed close by the police in a flash of light. Re:Vive's power was picking up into tornado-like winds, trees and the cars being pushed in the wind. The hero man and the female sidekick nodded to each other and jumped into action, quirks ready to attack the fiends.
The hero tried to stop Re:Vive’s ritual by attacking the robed followers. Some limply fell which the sidekick's plant abilities were able to trap on the ground. But others were stronger and fought back. Each one was chanting: “our brethren will join us!”. The hero shuttered at the strangeness of the moment letting out a bolt of his quirk in the direction of the strange wizard man. It failed and a large man with a bison face tried to pounce in retaliation. Thankfully, he was foiled by a gunshot that grazed his arm.
“This is insane!” An officer gasped with his hand gun drawn at the group, helping the hero's back.
“You’re telling me!” The hero gasped for air and then smiled, “but nothing a million volts can’t handle!”
The hero lifted a hand into the air and a blast of power escaped his hands. Four followers that were raging closest to them were suddenly stopped in their tracks. Re:Vive didn’t even seem to notice, let alone care of the fight beyond him. He was dragging the spirits of these lost souls out from the beyond!
Just as he was about to make headway, lightning rained down from above into one large blue bolt. Re:Vive’s mask shattered from his face and he immediately grew still as the spark went through him. For a moment, it almost looked like you could see his skeleton. It was an instant knockout. Re:Vive’s face seemed stuck in a perfectly creepy smile as he fell face first to the ground.
“Aaand, that's how we deal with that!” The hero laughed as he cracked his neck side to side. Another job well done for the electric hero. The police quickly swooped in and were handling the confused and scared minions. The electric hero walked over to the man and kicked him a little with the side of his shoe. A little smoke released from his body. The hero wondered if maybe he went a little overboard using one of his ultimate moves.
He looked around at the holes scattered in the cemetery and sighed. What a mess. After last year’s cult battle that some group nearly took out half the city, crazy ringleaders were popping up more and more. At least these guys wore pants under their robes. He turned to one of the officers who joined him above the strange smoking wizard man.
“I’ll hand off the clean up to my sidekicks. Let’s take these guys back to the station before they can do… whatever the heck they were going to do.”
The policeman nodded and one by one the robed followers and the KO’d leader were driven off in containment trucks with quirk canceling handcuffs.
The female sidekick that was left behind looked at the holes in the ground and grumbled. It was past midnight and they were nearly done with their shift for the night. Now she may have to work a double?! She moaned aloud and used her plant powers to pull three shovels to her side with a vine like grip. She jumped down into a hole and sighed as her boot heels were sinking down into the freshly dug ground. She took one and started doing what she did best.
“Clean the mess up, Willow. Get the coffee going, Willow. Don’t forget to watch the UA sports festival for new recruits, Willow. Bleh…”
She placed a hand over the mound of dirt and slowly little speckles of grass covered the area. No one would ever know that there was a hole there. She smiled proudly at her work and gave a polite bow to the one resting there and walked over to the next hole to rinse and repeat. In the middle of the second hole she wiped the sweat from her forehead and leaned on the shovel. She looked up to the beautiful gravestone with a motif of an angel and a moon that marked the hole.
“Our apologies for disturbing your rest, Miss Moon,” she said in a sincere tone, “I’ll fix the ground as quick as I-“
Thump .
“Can…”
Willow turned around and looked out at the empty cemetery. Rows of gravestones laid quietly on the lawn beyond the twenty holes. Trees lined the property, bright lamps lit walkways, and then there was the beautifully eerie red moon that evening.
She wasn’t superstitious. Another reason why she was clearly the best fit to do a spooky clean up job in a graveyard at night. She waited and when nothing happened, she went back to filling the hole.
Another moment passed and then there was the thump again. This time Willow froze and waited. She heard it again… it was muffled, but surely, it sounded like someone was knocking their fist on... something?
With her shovel held to her chest as an improvised weapon, she walked away from Miss Moon’s grave and down the path of Re:Vive's strange ritual. The thumping was coming from the last hole on the path and was becoming more frequent.
She inched over to the hole and cautiously looked down to see a half dug grave. The repeated thumping suddenly stopped and she flinched. Was this a joke? A villain? A ghost? That was... silly! Of course not! Sure, people said that these Western style cemeteries were a breeding ground for ghost stories. Revenge from restless spirits left alone to wander the earth around their bodies in the ground. See? Silly!
She looked up to the gravestone that marked this hole. Wilting flowers were at the base and there was a shimmer to the stone which made it hard to read with the near by lamp light. She shifted to the left to get the glare off the head stone.
“Baku-“
The ground below her in the hole suddenly blistered into a boiling hot and red color. Before she could react or let alone finish reading, a giant blast of power erupted from the ground.
In one giant force of wind, dust, and debris, Willow screamed and was thrown through the air right into a tree. Her quirk was able to just barely cushion her fall, but she was unable to move. She moaned and gritted her teeth just trying to do something to move.
She was able to lift up her body enough with the shovel to see a cloud of dust and smoke that surrounded the field. The lamp light barely streamed through with the red moonlight overhead. She coughed at the dust that stung at her eyes and growing back pain. She had to will herself to just keep her eyes open, she needed to call for backup… this had to have been someone related to the crew before and she knew that she couldn’t fight against a strong quirk like an explosion or air blast, there was no way she could do this on her own.
The haze started to disappear briefly and she saw a figure slump through the fog. His form looked hunched as he crawled to his feet from the half-dug hole. He stood, his spiky hair silhouetted against the fog and moon. The next moment, the figure was keeling over and throwing up. She could hear the man heaving and he stood there for a moment as if catching his barrings. He coughed a couple times and moaned in this tired sound and stared up to the sky.
Willow dared not blink in the entire moment. She was both intrigued and terrified. The figure finally shifted from absentmindedly looking at the sky and began walking down the paved light lit path into the night.
Willow was not superstitious…
She was NOT superstitious.
She had to keep telling herself that.
But even she was pretty sure she saw a zombie escape from its grave.