Chapter Text
It starts, as many life-changing events do, on a reasonably normal day.
“Oh, no,” starts Mr. Compass, one of Tomura’s band members and usually the most sensible of them all. Unfortunately, the key word here was ‘usually.’
“Villains ruin everything,” Toga says, eyes tracking the bright red villain-alert warning as it flashes across her phone.
Todoroki Natsuo.
A member of the League of Villains, an organization led by Natsuo and his siblings Fuyumi and Shouto, which apparently attacked Toga’s cousin Monoma.
Also the son of Endeavor, an even more murderous villain.
Also the villain who’s mother’s family name, Himura–was only one letter off from Tomura’s real family name, Shimura. Not that his bandmates were aware of that; he went by Shigaraki Tomura, the name his Sensei had chosen for him. The similarity to Natsuo was something Tomura preferred to keep quiet.
“I hope someone catches him. Even All For One wasn’t able to, when he attacked…what did he attack again?” Twice asks.
“UA, I think.” Spinner answers. He’s glowering at his empty soda can.
“What if one of us caught him?” Magne says.
“And how exactly would you propose catching him? That’s vigilante justice. We’d get arrested if it wasn’t in self-defense,” Tomura points out.
“I think searching him out, getting attacked and then defending also counts as vigilante justice,” Spinner says. “Due to the searching him out part.”
“Are we actually considering this? He’d kill us all.” Twice points out. “No he wouldn’t!”
“Probably couldn’t kill me.” Tomura says. All three stare at him.
“My quirk—I can turn things to dust,” he explains.
“We’re going to need a little more clarification.” Magne says.
“He freezes people in layers of ice so that they can’t breathe and they’re too cold to use their quirks, right? Good luck covering someone with a five-point disintegration quirk in ice, and even if he does, the moment all five of my fingers are covered the ice will become dust,” Tomura says matter-of-factly. That was how it worked, wasn’t it?
“I think you’d die.” Toga says.
“Thank you for the vote of confidence.” Tomura shoots back.
“This is all just hypothetical, anyway. It’s not like Shigaraki’s going to actually go out and try to capture a serial killer.” Spinner remarks.
Shigaraki frowns. Not even his friends know that his adoptive father is the number one hero All For One, and he likes it that way, but sometimes he gets tired of being normal.
“We’ve just got to make sure we don’t go out late if that villain’s around,” Dabi says. “Simple.”
“Do you think he’ll attack? It’s not like we’re hero students,” Toga points out.
“Apparently he murders people for fun,” Dabi shoots back. “And he’s an A+rank villain… I’m pretty sure he’s not going to make sure you’re a hero student before killing you.”
“The heroes will get him,” Compress reassures him.
“Will they?” Twice asks. “Of course they will!”
Tomura makes a very bad decision.
“I’m going back to my apartment now—see you guys later!” he says, waving.
“Be careful!” Toga calls, but Tomura intends to do the exact opposite— he’s had enough of a life that has no effect. It’s about time he starts really following in Sensei’s footsteps. All he’s ever wanted is to help people; he wasn’t able to help his birth family, so he started learning how to help other people with quirk problems instead, and ended up forming the Band of Misfits with Toga, Dabi, Twice, Spinner, Compress, and Magne. He decided to do his best at what he can do, because that’s all any good man can do, anyway. But tonight, there’s a strange fury in his bones; tonight, the worry of his friends shakes him, shakes a boy plucked from the ruins of a house of ashes. And a spark ignites, and Tomura won’t let this spark go.
Tomura’s Foolproof Plan to Kidnap Todoroki Natsuo
Step 1: locate League of Villains
Tomura, backpack full of useful items, prepares to find his target. Now, where would a dangerous villain and his crew be staying? An abandoned building, most likely; Tomura remembered there were a few empty warehouses down by the river. He drives to a space nearby that area as the red sun falls below the horizon, and the road he walks is empty. Coming across the warehouses, he takes out his phone, and switches on an EMF-meter; it would indicate the presence of WiFi or other electronic waves. Following the device’s arrow, he eventually stops before a warehouse that makes the meter spin.
Carefully, deliberately, Tomura clambers up stacked boxes until he’s on the roof; and the roof, helpfully, has a sun window. Through the gift of some god, or perhaps simply narrative convenience, Fuyumi, one of Natsuo’s siblings and a member of the League, is visible.
Step 2: Incapacitate Target
Reaching into his backpack, Tomura pulls out a package of fireworks. The fireworks are tied to a metal box, a collection of wires, and a timer Natsuo has set to count down. It is not a bomb. However, it looks like one, and that is what matters.
He is fully aware of the fact that both Natsuo’s father and brother can create fire and therefore would not be scared of the fireworks, but he’s simply hoping that the smoke and the noise, on top of the not-bomb, will be sufficient to confuse the two for long enough.
He lights the fuse of the fireworks (the burning fuse is hidden in the box), leans over the edge of the roof, opens a side window, and tosses the device into it. Climbing back on the roof, he has a full view of the Todorokis’ panic through the sun window.
“It’s a bomb!” Fuyumi yells.
“Do I cut the red or blue wire?” asks Shouto, concerningly calm as he peers over his sister’s shoulder.
Fuyumi slaps his hand away, frowning. “Someone’s attacking. I’ll find them.”
With that, she races out the door and through the side of the warehouse that Tomura had thrown the fireworks through. When she doesn’t find anything, she instead chases after the sounds of a cat that Tomura had noticed earlier because she didn’t have the simple idea of looking up.
Back in the warehouse, Shouto leans over the not-bomb as if trying to extract the mysteries of the world. He is unsuccessful in his endeavor, and calls out: “Natsuo, we have an issue!”
“Did you burn down the kitchen again, Shou? I told you not to go in there!” a voice, presumably that of Natsuo’s, can be heard distantly.
“No, it’s a real problem!” Shouto yells.
“Coming!”
“Hmm,” Shouto muses. “Should I cut a wire?” he wonders out loud.
Experimentally, he crosses the room, grabs a knife off the shelf, and cuts the red wire.
The timer turns off due to being no longer connected to battery power, and he relaxes. “Oh.”
And then the fireworks, their fuse entirely separate from the timer, explode.
Now Shouto is no longer relaxing; he screams in shock, jumping backwards and away from the fireworks, his eyes scrunched up from the brightness.
“What have you gotten into this time?” a voice yells, and finally, Natsuo himself walks into Tomura’s view. Tomura quickly takes this chance to equip himself with a lethal weapon— half a brick in a sock. He swings it, around and around and around, before launching it downwards through the sun window; it collides directly with Natsuo’s head.
“OW!” Natsuo yells, looking straight up to find what hit him; this is convenient, as it places him in the perfect position to be pepper-sprayed.
“OWWWWWWW!” the villain screeches, and Tomura jumps down the now-decayed window. Shouto has recovered from his firework-induced eye pain only to get inflicted with pepper spray, as Natsuo lunges blindly towards Tomura, face twisted in painful fury.
“Got you!” he yells, and the next second a glacier is exploding towards Tomura, who panics for all of a second before the ice falls away into dust around him. Tomura picks up the half-a-brick-in-a-sock and slugs Natsuo in the jaw with it. This time, the villain goes down.
Tomura hauls Natsuo over his shoulder (the villain does not weigh a lot, despite his height) and launches both himself and his prisoner backwards out a window.
Step 3: Bring Kidnappee To Secure Location
Tomura and Natsuo are protected against the breaking of the glass thanks to the backpack Tomura had the foresight to wear, and now the two land in a boat floating in the river.
Ouch, that hurt his already sore back.
With a tug on the boat’s motor, the pair is quickly zipping off. He’s sure the Todorokis will pursue, but for now he’s got time. Four fingers on the tiller, Tomura reaches into his handy backpack and pulls out enough rope to tie the villain up, then sticks heating pads to his body for good measure.
“Have fun creating ice now,” he says.
After driving the boat a little farther, he pulls it to a stop, gets out with his captive, then turns the motor on and sets the boat, sans passengers, off again. As he’s climbing up a hill, he can see the distinct red-and-white hair that is Shouto’s, as well as a head of white hair– Fuyumi– chasing unsuccessfully after the boat. This plan had been going a lot easier than he’d thought it would. Mainly because he had been at least eighty percent certain he was going to get killed.
Finally reaching his car, he deposits the tied-up villain in the backseat, and drives off.
When Tomura’s about halfway home, Natsuo awakens. “What the frick?” he says.
“Good morning. Uh, good night, it’s still nighttime. I’m bringing you to the police station.” Tomura says, watching Natsuo in the rear view mirror as the man struggles and fails to get out of his bindings, comprehension dawning upon his face.
“What the frick?” the villain says, again.
“You don’t swear?” Tomura questions.
Natsuo frowns. “Of course not. None of us do.”
Weird, but it’s not Tomura’s problem. He continues driving.
Natsuo snarls, after a moment. “Shouto and Fuyumi and the rest of the League will find you. And then you’ll be dead. If I don’t kill you first.”
“I’m sure,” Tomura answers vaguely.
“You can’t just drop me off at the police station,” Natsuo says.
“Why not?” Tomura asks.
“I’ll ice the place. I’ll freeze them all.”
Tomura considers this. “Kill me first, then,” he challenges.
Natsuo attempts and fails to escape his restraints once more.
“That’s what I thought.”
When they reach a blockade on the road, Tomura pulls the car to a stop and opens his phone to scroll through the news. “The League of Villains is attacking random police stations, leaving a trail of ice and fire and destruction in its wake,” he reads. Right, they’d figured out he’d escaped them, and where he might be going. Seems like just dropping Natsuo off wasn’t an option, at least for the next while.
“So. What are you going to do now?” Natsuo asks.
“Take you home and hang out there until this all blows over,” Tomura decides, starting the engine again.
“Who are you?” Natsuo questions.
“Tomura Shigaraki.” he answers, out of habit. No reason for the villain to know his real name.
“And why did you capture me? What do you want?” Natsuo asks. He pauses. “Why do you care?”
Tomura considers this, eyes trained on the road ahead. “My friends don’t like you, first of all.”
“Wow, thanks.”
“Well, you were sighted in the area,” he adds. “So I decided to catch you myself.”
“You’re not a hero,” Natsuo notes.
“Not in the least,” Tomura answers, shrugging. “Most heroes are kind of lame, honestly.” Yes, there’s Sensei, who’s definitely not lame and completely justified in his reasoning for becoming a hero, but he feels the majority of heroes have sketchy motivations. “I know there are some good ones, but…we can’t know the truth about them all.”
Natsuo is silent for a long moment. “So, who are you?” he asks, again.
“Personally? No one in particular, really.”
As Tomura pulls into his apartment driveway, he thinks about the ethics of casual conversation with a murderous villain, and then decides he doesn’t care. It’s not like Natsuo got anywhere close to killing him so far.
“Home sweet home.”