Chapter Text
February 4, 21XX
Gifu Prefecture
~19:00
“Are you sure you don’t want to change your hero name to something with more personality?” Pinky asked Shoto, “It’s not very memorable.”
“I'm not trying to be memorable, I’m trying to prove a point, and it’s not as though I need a different hero name, the one I have gets the point across.”
“It’s your legal first name, Shoto.”
“Yes, it is.”
“You two coming?” Called Firefly, their work study mentor. They had started lagging behind in their conversation and would soon get left behind as a corner was turned on the patrol route. The two of them sped up.
It was surprising when they found out that they would be working together under the same mentor, but when they gave it a bit more thought, it made sense. Mina had recently started using her acid as a combustible to add more light or warmth to a space, and wanted to get better at using it as a weapon without the risk of causing major harm. Shoto wanted to work with a hero who used flames in battle, but had a low overall casualty and destruction rate. Firefly could help both of them with their goals, and was happy to have two extra people on hand, working in a less patrolled area. Her quirk was a chemical-based fire quirk that ignited when two parts mixed, similar to that of an actual firefly. This meant that she had to learn how to be carefully non-lethal and avoid property damage early on in her career, making her the perfect choice for both of them.
Up ahead on the patrol route, the three of them noticed a fire. Quickly running towards it, they were able to tell that it was a mixed-use building, having a botany shop at street level, and apartments above it.
As they rushed in, they noticed that most of the flowers and lower level had already burnt, luckily, there was no one in the shop, seeing as it was likely the origin of the blaze. They headed up into the apartment levels, checking rooms as they went, directing anyone trying to get out to exits other than the botany shop.
With only Shoto being able to safely use his quirk, they had to go slower than they would have liked, but eventually everyone was evacuated, and the three of them headed back through the building to ensure that no one was missed. As they headed downwards, the three of them started to feel disoriented, assuming it was smoke inhalation, they continued on, knowing that the quicker they finished up, the less the smoke would damage their lungs. The closer they got to the shop, the worse they felt, feeling like they were developing migraines or going to be sick. Reaching the shop, they continued forward towards the door before Firefly noticed something, the flowers being sold were mildly poisonous. This generally would not be a problem, lots of flowers are a bit poisonous when consumed. Unfortunately, this was not a ‘generally’ time, the amount of poison in the flowers that were burned (which was most of them), combined with the smoke, anyone who was breathing in the building would have been exposed to a poisonous gas, which could cause major damage.
As they left the building, Firefly directed her students towards the ambulances on the scene to alert them and get medical care before running over to the firefighters to tell them about the gas. Upon getting back to the ambulances and alerting her agency of the issue, the three of them were taken to the hospital, having the most smoke and gas in their systems.
February 11, 21XX
Gifu Prefecture
3:00
Dabi thought this would be a simple mission: get in, get the kid, get out. That was all it was supposed to be. Toga and Twice had already cased the place, the parents were teachers, and the kid was shy enough that her not being constantly in the same room as them was normal enough. There was minimal security in the building, which was admittedly a bit weird considering why they wanted the kid in the first place, but it wasn’t like the commission cared much in the first place, so they hadn’t worried too much about it.
Apparently, they should have worried about it, though, because for some godawful reason, Eraserhead was in the building staring him down. Why he would be in the building was beyond Dabi, the man had students, and it was the middle of the school week (the exact reason they chose tonight to break in). It should have just been the kid and the parents sleeping away the hell that was dealing with children, but now Eraserhead was here, which, fuck? That’s not good? Dabi didn’t exactly bring backup, once again, this was supposed to be in-and-out. Not in, Eraserhead kills him and hides his body in a back alley to finish rotting before the cops find it, and the kid’s location gets changed.
Dabi blinked. This was not what one would consider a good move when in the middle of a staredown with a professional staring contest competitor.
~23:00
Hagakure was excited. Originally, her costume was incredibly minimal and also an affront to anyone with an opinion on anything ever. Now it was Much Better. She had clothes that could turn invisible if she wanted them to, and armor to match. Most importantly, she had a bat. A metal one, which, in her humble opinion (which could not be argued with because once again, she had a metal bat), was better than any overpowered quirk, and if Bakugo tried to argue with her, she would give him a proof of concept.
With this wonderful metal bat, she was going on patrol with Eraserhead, who was much less scary once she found out from his husband that most of his creepiness was actually him playing practical jokes. In fact, it made Ms. Joke, who joined their patrol with Night Hide, a lot funnier now that she had realized they were doing a bit and not showing an example of workplace harassment. This was good for Night Hide, given that he was working with Ms. Joke to learn how to get laughing responses for his quirk. This was not good for Hagakure, who was with Eraserhead specifically to get better with stealth and sneak attacks, neither of which she could do while laughing so hard she felt like a Joker knockoff.
Given the four of them were scaring off criminals with Hagakure’s mania, Erasurehead wasn’t too pissed off about the interruption, but they did have to split up about halfway through their patrols to continue their routes. A relief to Hagakure and any criminals and civilians without hearing loss within a five-mile radius. As the night continued on, criminals showed face less and less until Eraserhead decided that they should play a game (which definitely wasn’t how he phrased it, but it was basically just hide and seek with no hiding places, so Hagakure was definitely in the right to call it one). Any time he looked in her direction, she would turn on her suit’s invisibility as fast as possible for stealth practice. Usually, Eraserhead was more worried about losing a student, however, her beautiful metal bat would ensure that she could be found. He promised that later, they would practice making sure the bat didn’t give her away, in a less dangerous environment than roof hopping to find criminals.
Eventually, they finished up patrol and headed back to Eraserhead’s apartment, where they were staying for the week. Eri was staying with Nezu at UA while Present Mic, Eraserhead, and Shinso were busy with work studies, though why Shinso was staying with Ms. Joke when he lived so close to her patrol routes and could just stay at home was beyond her.
As they entered the apartment, Eraserhead noticed something was off and signaled to Hagakure to go invisible. Slowly moving through the rooms and checking them as they went, the two of them ended up in the living room.
Upon entering the room, it was immediately clear what was wrong. The window was open, letting in a faint breeze, the room smelled faintly of smoke, likely a remnant the fire that happened nearby around a week ago, and the homicidal maniac known specifically for having no chill: Dabi, was standing there staring down Eraserhead.
Hagakure, remembering she was still invisible and clearly not the villain's current focus, decided to do something about the staredown.
Incredibly carefully, hiding her moving bat the best she could, she shifted behind Dabi using the (honestly pretty accurate) logic that no one would think to look behind them if they were faced with a pissed off Eraserhead.
Upon getting behind him, Hagakure realized that 1. She had a metal bat 2. Dabi didn’t know he was behind him and as such, could not defend against said metal bat, and 3. Eraserhead was canceling Dabi’s quirk.
These things in combination meant that she and her metal bat were safe from Dabi, and that Dabi was not safe from her and her metal bat. Two things that were preferred in the field of heroics, ‘safety and the power of incredible violence.’
With the power of not being in danger and in fact, being the danger, Hagakure suddenly understood Bakugo, all that power at the tips of her fingers and nowhere to put it would have made her a bit of an angry asshole.
Luckily, Hagakure didn’t need to become Bakugo 2.0, she had a place to put her massive amount of power. No need to beat up her friends when villains were so accessible and clueless as to what was coming for them. Then again, maybe that was why Bakugo was going into heroics? Was she going to become like him if she used her power so violently against others for no other reason than revenge or anger? Hagakure didn’t want to be lik-
Invisible Girl hit Dabi with the bat.
She had gotten so caught up in morals that she had almost forgotten how fun incredible violence was. It would be best to never consider the moral standpoint of heroism again if it caused a reaction like that! Hagakure was a good person, and that was that, if anyone said otherwise, they could taste her bat.
For now, they had to bring Dabi to the hospital for his burns and definitely not the massive concussion she definitely didn’t give him with her rage-filled swing.
February 18, 21XX
Gifu University Hospital
15:00
Natsuo was going to visit his brother to make sure he was ok. That was his goal, he wasn’t going to get distracted by anything. Not Endeavor merch (which he hated to no end, his father and his merch could burn in hell together. The fact that the man had made it to the number one hero position despite his… well… everything, was disgusting), not the fact that his brother was hurt in a fire, and certainly not the fact that his mother was also in the building. No, Fuyumi was wrong, and he wouldn’t get distracted by things that reminded him of their father.
He had done well so far, staying away from the news for the past few weeks, the bastard was making more and more news appearances, almost as though to say ‘I Am Here’ not that it helped anyone, with All Might dead, it wasn’t like anyone was going to appreciate the sudden overbearing presence of a new number one hero, least of all Natsuo.
As he got to the hospital, Natsuo noticed more crowds than when he had visited the previous week, which was weird. Why would people crowd a hospital? It wasn’t like All Might had died here, he didn’t even die in a hospital, so it wasn’t that. Listening to a conversation, he heard mentions of Dabi, the villain who gave his father his scar. Look, Natsuo had a brother to visit, and he would definitely do that, but if Dabi was in this hospital, he was going to go thank him, it was common courtesy to thank people for any gifts they gave you, and man, if the new scar wasn’t a wonderful conversation starter for poking at Endeavor’s failures. First, though, to make sure that Fuyumi didn’t have anything to get mad at him for, he would visit his brother. Maybe he would bring Shoto with him to thank Dabi, consider it sibling bonding, and all that.
Finally making it to Shoto and his classmate's hospital room, he noticed that the classmate was gone. So maybe it was just Shoto’s room now, which Natsuo supposed made sense, Shoto had used his quirk a lot more than she had and would have used more energy as a result, extending his hospital stay. Which, considering Dabi’s arrival at the hospital, was actually greatly appreciated.
“Hi, Shoto,” Natsuo said with the least enthusiasm he had ever felt.
“Hi, Natsuo,” Shoto responded with just as much enthusiasm.
“I heard Dabi was here somewhere. Do you want to join me in thanking him for giving Endeavor that scar?” Natsuo said, having decided that Shoto had been sufficiently visited for Fuyumi’s tastes.
“Absolutely, also, I can be discharged,” Shoto responded with not nearly enough hesitation for someone whose class had been attacked by the man not even a full year previously.
“Great, I’ll go fill out the paperwork for that so that we can leave as soon as we finish up with Dabi. I imagine the hospital staff won’t appreciate our visit, so speed will be of the essence.”
Shoto nodded sagely, “A hit-and-run.”
“Exactly!” Natsuo said before leaving to deal with the discharge paperwork.
15:30
Shoto was ready. They were going to visit Dabi, he was going to thank him for beating the crap out of his father, and then he might punch him for attacking his class. Today was going to be a good day, and he was not going to waste it.
As him and Natsuo headed to Dabi’s hospital room, which was remarkably unguarded, Shoto continued not saying anything to Natsuo, they had already had their 3 total minutes per week of conversation and needed no more to get the lack of hatred and the mild affection that came with being siblings across.
Getting to Dabi’s room, the two of them glanced at each other and entered, completely neglecting to let anyone know where they were or that they were going to have a conversation with a major villain who had every reason to want both of them dead.
Upon entering, Natsuo froze. This was a perfectly reasonable thing to do, as Natsuo had an ice quirk.
Shoto did not freeze and headed straight for the homicidal maniac that had repeatedly targeted him and his class.
Getting closer than anyone with a single millimeter of common sense would recommend, Shoto looked a very bewildered Dabi directly in the eyes and thanked him, giving no further context as to why he was doing so.
Dabi, who was chained down to the bed with quirk cancelers and no way to know what was going on or why, turned to Natsuo, who by all accounts should have no reason to be there, considering that they had never interacted after he became a villain.
“So do you want to explain why I'm being thanked since your brother has never seen a normal social interaction in his short, pitiful life?”
Natsuo, who was still frozen in shock for some reason, did not answer his question and instead looked outside the door with a look on his face that did not inspire confidence in his mental state.
“Touya?” Natsuo asked, which immediately answered any questions about his mental state and inspired new questions for Shoto about what made him think his dead brother was in the room.
Dabi, who was not stupid enough to think that Natsuo was talking to an actual ghost, but was absolutely stupid enough to think that Natsuo found out prior to entering the room, immediately blew any kind of cover he could have had by denying it or just not answering, responded.
“Damn, they took my DNA and told you, huh?”
Shoto, who remarkably was able to connect all the dots of what that cobble of a conversation was, realized three things.
1. Dabi was his dead brother Touya, he had survived burning to death somehow and was now crazy and trying to kill their dad.
2. He was the only one in this situation who could both move and use his brain in any capacity, as Touya was chained down and Natsuo was still frozen.
3. Shoto could respect the father murder thing that Dabi was going for, and he knew from family dinners he was forced to attend that Natsuo did too, Fuyumi didn’t, but she wasn’t here right now, so her vote was null.
With these three things in mind, Shoto made the executive decision to once again approach Dabi, and start getting his chains off.
Dabi, who really should have expected the immediate mutiny towards heroes from his siblings given their shared childhood, decided not to kill Shoto as soon as he got out, in a miraculous show of ignoring his Cain instinct. He did, however, immediately get up and destroy the camera in the room, thereby destroying any evidence of how he escaped. For whatever reason, both the camera security and the guard security in this place were terrible.
Natsuo, who by now had gotten over his shock and loaded up the unspoken plan that had just developed between his brothers, once again checked the hallway outside the door, with no one there, he gestured to them to get going.
15:37
Rei Todoroki was having an interesting day, for one, there was a crowd outside, as there had been for the past week. The nurses hadn’t told her why, not that they ever told her much of anything. For two, the weather seemed to be changing quickly. This would not be interesting to most people, but Rei didn’t have much to do and, as such, had gotten into watching weather patterns, looking at the clouds outside, she decided that it looked like rain. Thirdly (and really it should have been first, but Rei had priorities), there were voices outside her door arguing about whether getting her on their way out was a good idea. Two of them sounded like her sons, and the third sounded familiar, so she wasn’t too concerned, but she was curious about how they thought they would manage to get her out, given her lack of a legal release form.
The voices came to a consensus and opened the door. Seeing who was behind it, she decided that they probably already had a way out without release forms, given that the third person was covered in the worst burns she had ever seen and definitely would not have been let out of the hospital, visitor or not.
Looking closer, she noticed that the burned one looked remarkably like her dead son, and despite knowing that she was fine in the head by now, questioned her sanity.
Natsuo, seeming to notice that no one was going to say anything and being the one who spent the most amount of time around Rei, spoke up.
“We’re breaking out because Touya’s a wanted criminal for trying to kill dad and Shoto a little bit, and got caught. I know you’re not actually insane, and even if you were, it would just even up the numbers of sane to insane in our prison break group, so it wouldn’t matter. Do you want to join us?”
Rei, blinking, decided that she could do with a change of scenery and some more time with her kids decided that yes, she would like to join them.
15:47
Despite the concerning lack of security, the four of them were actually extremely careful about getting out of the hospital without getting caught by guards or cameras, and thus took a bit of time to get to an exit.
Upon getting out, they finally realized that beyond getting out of the building and not getting caught, they actually had no idea what they were doing or where they were going. Dabi, who had by now been told by Shoto that the kid he was supposed to retrieve for Shigiraki, was actually Eraserhead and Present Mic’s kid, was understandably pissed that he had been sent on what was essentially a suicide mission, especially considering that they had literally sent scouts and Eraserhead wore the same clothes when he was a civilian as he did when he was a hero. As such, they weren’t going to the League of Villains for help, not that the others would have agreed with that idea anyway. Natsuo didn’t want to have to explain to Fuyumi why he had freed a wanted felon who had tried to kill their father and kidnapped their mom from the hospital, so they weren’t going home, even if Endeavor didn’t immediately try to kill them. Shoto wasn’t going to sneak them onto UA, because that would be stupid. The principal may find it funny and maybe help them, but the other heroes there would not.
Rei, shockingly, had an answer to the problem of where they should go. Apparently, she had a cousin who, while he had some weird views and was probably in a cult or something, was an ok enough person, and she knew where he lived now.
With this in mind, the four of them headed for Deika City.
February 18, 21XX
Tartarus Prison
15:00
"A couple reminders, don't touch the glass, don't tell him anything about things going on outside if you can help it, and if you think that it's a good idea to leave, just tell us. He will use your discomfort to his advantage."
He nods, and they open the door to the cell.
As he enters, neither of them react until the guard closes the door.
...And well, it isn't as though either of them reacts after that beyond one sitting down and the other staying seated.
They stay like that for the next ten minutes, just kind of staring at each other, one prideful (despite being chained to his chair) with an almost holier-than-thou look, and the other with a more resigned look, head against one hand and almost bored looking if you couldn't see the stress in his eyes.
Finally, one speaks up,
"I still feel smaller than you despite. He waves his hand. Everything."
"I mean, look at you, you're chained to a chair, covered in tubes and wires, constantly monitored, in the deepest layer of the most secure prison on the planet, with your only way out being to move a little too fast and take a bullet to the head for it."
One smiles, the other doesn't
"Perhaps, it is the weight of my years."
"None of the vestiges do that."
"Then perhaps not."
The silence begins again, one still smiling, the other not. This time it lasts longer.
"8th is dead."
"Ah"
No one is smiling now, and well, the stress that was hidden behind boredom earlier makes much more sense.
They fall into silence again, one thinking about the death of a great era and man, and the other thinking about the birth of a new one.
Neither of them seem too happy about it. The fact that the subject was brought up at all was astounding, given how illegal it was to share information like that with inmates. And so the subject changes again.
"How are Tomura and his little friends doing?"
He gets a blank look in response. Informing inmates about major events happening outside was illegal. It was likely that the only reason he was able to be told of 8th's death was because no one outside the two of them and some of 8th's friends actually knew what that meant. Small victories.
"Well then, I do hope that your friends don't leave you in some dreadful way. I would much rather a you that cares over one with nothing left to lose, for whatever reason, you holders get much more dangerous when lonely."
The cell doors opened, time was up, and two of the three inmate interaction safety rules were not followed, a new record for All for One, and one he was determined to break, after all, he had one semiregular visitor, time, and nothing else to do with it.
Unfortunately for All for One, a social blunder was made, and while his next visit would break this record, it would also be months later and result in his death.
February 18, 21XX
Outside of Tartarus Prison
15:00
“So, imagine that you are Midoriya, your friends are in danger, and you don’t like that because you have grown an attachment to them that any therapist would call codependence, and therefore, unhealthy.”
“Deku’s friends are in danger??”
“Not currently, but they could be, and in this scenario, they are going to be.”
“Why?”
“Because All for One, the man Midoriya is visiting, has broken out of Tartarus Prison.”
“Why?”
“Because he hates everyone and everything and wants to cause problems because of that.”
“Why is Deku visiting him then?”
“So that he can help his friends out of danger using the knowledge he gains about All for One in the event that this hypothetical becomes reality.”
“Wouldn’t Deku be in danger if he’s near All for One then?”
“Yes, but this is to protect his friends.”
“His friends aren’t in danger though. He’s the only one who’s getting hurt, what if All for One never breaks out?”
“Then only one person will get hurt instead of millions.”
“But Deku doesn’t have to get hurt.”
“...”
15:12
“Let’s try this again. Imagine that you are a bug and you know that there is a larger scarier bug trapped a short distance away from your bug friends and family, along with an entire population of other bugs like you.”
“Oh no!”
“This large scary bug doesn’t like you or any of the other bugs, and as such, really wants to squish you and your friends. He is also a big enough bug that he has convinced some other small bugs like you to help him escape his trappings.”
“Through fear?”
“Through fear and promises that he will like them enough not to squish them when he escapes. Since all of the other small bugs will be dead via squish, the small bugs that are helping him will get more food and resources.“
“Do they not have enough food without the big bug?”
“...Probably not, the small bugs aren’t liked very much among the small bug community.”
“Oh, that's sad.”
“Yes, yes, very sad. It’s mostly their fault for being mean to other small bugs, but that’s not important to the current hypothetical. Go back to imagining to be one of the nice small bugs.”
“I am very small and very round and have a nice polkadot pattern on my shell, like some of the bugs I see on my window sometimes.”
“Great. Now imagine that you can go talk to the big scary bug to find out some of his potential plans for if the mean small bugs manage to break him out of his trap.”
“Can I convince him to not squish little bugs?”
“No, he hates small bugs too much for that to be possible.”
“He sounds mean.”
“He is. Would you go talk to the big mean bug to help protect your bug friends?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“The big mean bug can only escape with the help of the small bugs, so I would try to help the small bugs. You said they were hungry so feeding them might help, and if that doesn’t work I could try putting them in another trap.”
“Why would they care about your small amount of food if they have already been promised a much larger amount of food by the big bug?”
“The big bug won’t actually give them food, he hates small bugs too much for that. If I know that in all of my 9-year-old glory, then it shouldn’t be difficult for them to figure it out too.”
“The mean small bugs are super brainwashed and won’t agree with you.”
“Then the trap will work, and the small bugs can work on unbrainwashing them over time in a place where they can’t try to break out the big bug.”
“You’re very stubborn, did you know that?”
15:24
“Imagine you are standing in front of two sets of train tracks. There is a lever in front of you tilted towards the far track, so the train approaching the tracks will continue forward onto it. If you flip the lever, the train will continue onto the track closest to you.”
“So I control where the train goes.”
“Yes. There are people tied to the tracks.”
“What?!??”
“Millions of people are tied to the far track, and one person is tied to both tracks, they will get hurt no matter what you do.”
“Why are so many people tied to train tracks??”
Because All for One tied them there with one of his quirks and is now driving the train towards them.”
“He’s in jail, though!”
“He could break out of jail, in this scenario, he did.”
“He’s going to kill so many people, oh my rabbit.”
“Yes, this is a high-stakes scenario, millions will die if you don’t pull the lever to hurt one person.”
“Okay, so I pull the person off the tracks and pull the lever. The person is on the closer track, so it shouldn’t be too difficult, and I usually have at least one adult near me, so I’ll have help.”
“...hm”
“The train track is now a loop. By pulling the lever and running over one person, you would be able to slow down the train by a significant amount, allowing for a much larger survival rate for the people tied to the tracks. Remember that the person on the track nearest to you will only get injured if you pull the lever, and would even have a higher chance of survival if you did. They are also close enough for you to hear them actively telling you to pull the lever.”
“I attack the train with my quirk, if people get hurt no matter what, I want to try to get rid of the person actually causing the problem to make sure that no one gets hurt.”
15:30
“Imagine you are playing chess.”
“I don’t know how to play chess.”
“Imagine you are playing checkers.”
“Okay, I can do that.”
“One of your pieces is a king, and it can take out another king.”
“Nice, I’ll do that!”
“Taking out the king will lose you the piece for a little while, and the other king might come back faster than your king will.”
“That’s not how checkers works.”
“Imagine that’s how checkers works.”
“Have you ever played checkers before?”
“... that's not relevant.”
“We should play checkers when we get back to UA.”
“Okay, now please go back to imagining.”
“Why would I take out my friend’s king if it could come back faster than mine?”
“Because they have a super king that can… make two moves at a time?”
“Do I have any of those?”
“No, and you can’t get any either.”
“Okay, so I guess I’ll take their super king then.”
“Great, their super king comes back before your king, but that’s fine because your king’s sacrifice has made it so that you are prepared for their super king to come back.”
“Yay!”
“In the real world, Midoriya is acting as your king, and All for One is the other side’s super-king. I am sending in Midoriya to stall the super king that is All for One.”
“That’s stupid, Deku isn’t a checkers piece, he has feelings and can feel pain, so he shouldn’t have to fight the same way checkers pieces do.”
“Well, he’s going to! Because if he doesn’t, people could die, and that would make him sad.”
“What if people don’t die though?”
February 18, 21XX
Outside of Tartarus Prison
15:36
Eri thought visiting All for One was a bad idea. If your demon is gone, why would you go visit it? That didn’t make any sense, Shota didn’t want her to visit Chisaki, so why should Deku have to visit All for One? There was no good reason to allow someone who wanted to hurt you near you if it wasn’t so that you could get healthier, like with doctors who actually wanted to help, and Eri was pretty sure that All for One did not want to help Deku feel better. Nezu had a different opinion. Of course, he did, he was the one who brought Midoriya here. If he didn’t think this could be useful, he wouldn’t have let these meetings continue after All Might was dead and unable to share his opinion. The fact of the matter was that All Might had a point, even if he’d used it incorrectly. Midoriya knowing All for One’s morals and thought process was good, but if the man ever managed to escape, there would be no capturing as All Might had assumed, he would die like he should have done in the first place. Midoriya knowing All for One would be helpful, but only in the sense that he could give details about All for One’s plans so that they could track him down more easily.
So yes. Midoriya was meeting with All for One whether Eri liked it or not, Nezu had explained why four times now, and she was still stuck on the fact that All for One was a terrible person and therefore should not be near her hero. Damn Eraserhead for instilling self-preservation and morals into this child, and thank goodness he hadn’t managed to do the same with Midoriya (who only had the one Nezu needed) like he had been trying to for three years now.
Luckily, before Nezu had to explain for a fifth time why it was a good idea to send Midoriya to the literal devil for a safety net, the walking anti-self-preservation advertisement returned.
Good news was that he was unharmed, which was a point to Nezu. Bad news was that he looked like he was about to rain hell upon the prison and had come back way earlier than he was supposed to. Two points to Eri, Nezu could feel her little smug grin from the booster seat in the back of the car.
Eri was, in fact, not smug or grinning. She was concerned for Deku, he looked upset, and while she couldn’t fully see his face from where she was seated, she knew what it looked like when someone had experienced unnecessary grief from someone (Shota and Hizashi liked to complain about Nezu when they got home when he did something that made their lives harder).
Izuku, having been deciding how to break the news to Nezu for his entire walk back to the car, decided at the last second to just be as blunt as possible about what was going to happen, Nezu wasn’t the type of person to care about tact anyways, and it would be easier to get his message across if he wasn’t worrying about stressing anyone out.
“He threatened to kill my friends after asking about Shigiraki. I think he left plans to attack UA for the League of Villains before he got captured.” Midoriya said before even fully entering the car.
Nezu, who was in full agreement with Midoriya about bluntness being the best way to tell people about major problems, finally realized why tact was, perhaps, necessary sometimes and immediately started drafting apology letters to his staff, which he would never send.
Not letting his immediate stress reaction show, Nezu decided to turn this into a learning experience in a desperate attempt to regain control over the situation.
“I suppose we should prepare for an attack then, shouldn’t we?”
Midoriya, having noticed the use of the word we and having developed a remarkably good understanding of how Nezu’s mind worked, realized that Nezu wanted him to be involved in the defense preparations. Having developed some confidence at some point in the last three years, he nodded in agreement.
The defenses that Nezu had developed in response to the League of Villains kidnapping Bakugo would go up, which should be enough. The large walls and movable sections of the school should work to defend students in the event of a break-in and if any section of the school lost contact with the other areas, an alert would be sent out in order to send reinforcements faster than when the USJ had been breached. With all the security changes made to the school in the last two years of relative safety, UA would be completely safe from villains sans Kurogiri, who they had developed the alert system for, so it was completely reasonable to use this as a learning opportunity. The students knew what to do in the event of a break-in already, but Nezu was sure that quite a few of them would enjoy having a larger part in the defense of the school, so that was what they would be doing for preparation: UA would be a fortress of not just walls and security. It would also have a battalion.
As the two of them planned, Nezu got more and more smug. Midoriya had brought back vital information from his talk with All for One, proving his point against Eri’s. He would be using this as an example should the child ever bring up the morals of Midoriya’s meetings ever again. He had won.
February 18, 21XX
Outside of Tartarus Prison
17:17
This meeting was going to be a hellscape, the Meta Liberation Army was just a massive cult with an uncomfortable lack of government oversight, and while that was something the League needed, they still sucked to talk to. With all that fanaticism, they could have caused some actual change in the world, could have made life easier for people like Toga, Dabi, and Twice, but instead, they decided to hide in the shadows of society, barely even doing anything. Compress was deeply disappointed in them, they had no flair and no confidence despite the greatness they advertised.
Despite this, they could still be useful, they had power despite their unwillingness to actually make use of it. If the League could get their hands on that power, some legitimate damage could be done to Hero Society, and things could be changed for the better. Unfortunately, the League hadn’t actually started doing in-person meetings with the leaders of the army until just after Dabi had gotten captured a week ago, so they ended up having to meet up with a society that valued powerful quirks without one of their most powerful quirks on hand, which greatly slowed down the process of producing an allyship.
Compress still thought that it was stupid to leave Dabi captured if they knew his location and could get him out with Kurogiri, especially given how much harder it was making his job of getting the army on board with their plans. Apparently, Shigiraki had a plan that he didn’t want Dabi to hear about rattling around in his skull, but that excuse was sounding less and less true by the day, and Compress was starting to think that he just wanted to get rid of Dabi and chose to send him to Eraserhead to do so.
All that is to say that when Compress stepped out of the elevator on the top floor of the Detnerat Company building, he was not expecting to see Dabi escaped from his hospital room with no signs of injury or restraints despite the number of people that should have been guarding him. He was also not expecting to see one of the hero course kids the League had been targeting for the last three years peacefully coexisting with someone who would have gladly murdered him a week ago.
With all this in mind, Compress should be excused from his choice to completely ignore the situation at hand and instead continue forward to talk to Curious and Trumpet, who were not in the middle of a conversation with someone who should be chained to a bed in the hospital.
Sure, he probably should have told Shigiraki about Dabi’s escape the second he found out, but he had a job to do, and by god was he going to do it and do it well at that. It didn’t matter that he had stated multiple times that he hated these meetings and would rather be doing anything else, this was the most important thing in the world, and he should not be getting sidetracked under any circumstances (according to Shigiraki, who sent him to this incredibly important meeting), and Dabi was clearly not important enough to interrupt this very bland conversation for, no siree.
And if Compress conveniently forgot to tell Shigiraki later, then well, humans forgot things all the time, and with how riveting his conversation with Trumpet and Curious was, it makes sense that he would forget something so trivial as someone he had spent so much time with being at a meeting he should have been at in the first place. Whoever would blame him for such an honest mistake?
And if he decided to talk to Dabi after formalities were over with to figure out what was going on, that was nobody's business but the people currently in the head courters of Detnerat Company.
All that preface noted by Compress’s imaginary lawyer, he headed over to Dabi and the concerning gaggle of white-haired people standing around him.
“So, are we going to discuss this, or are we going to pretend that the hero student and collection of people who have your original hair color are normal?”
“...Don’t tell Shigiraki, I think he’s trying to get rid of me.”
“Oh, nice! No one else has noticed how weird your capture and the subsequent excuses about it are, so it’s great that you have at least.”
“Toga and Twice didn’t notice? They were the ones who were supposed to make sure the plan would go well.”
“No, with how they act, you’d think they would at least point it out, right?”
“They were probably in on it then.”
“How unfortunate.”
“Yeah, anyway, these are the members of my family that I don’t hate with every bone in my body, just most of them.”
He gestures to the others in the group, including the hero student and a member of the Meta Liberation Army, explaining that the reason the hero student wasn’t being shredded was that he had started the process of breaking Dabi out of the hospital with literally no prompting. The kid gave him a blank-faced thumbs up, and Compress looked away.
He also proceeds to explain his entire backstory in a (frankly) undeserved show of trust, which none of the other members of his family seem even in the slightest surprised about (genetic trauma dumping maybe??). Interestingly, he also seems to be telling the Meta Liberation Army leaders about his backstory, which could be accidental, but given the bloodthirst in all of the Himura’s eyes, may have already been discussed and decided on to subtly get back up for a murder. Given Compress’s opinion on the matter, they would be getting backup no matter what.