Chapter Text
“DELEWARE… DETROIT… SMASH!!!”
And with that declaration, the villain Muscular found himself buried in a wall. Izuku’s arm was in agony of course, but he has always been good at smiling through the pain. He turned to face Kota and-
A nondescript blue marble falls to the floor where Izuku once stood. A masked man in a flamboyant top hat reached down to collect it. The villain turned to the shaking child and made it disappear with a sleight of hand trick.
“I’m afraid this show is no place for such a young child! Run along now, and stay away from the fire.”
The masked villain leaped off the cliff as the crying child fired a truly pathetic shot of water in a futile attempt to rescue his hero.
“I think that went pretty well. We’re a disgrace to the villain title!”
“Shut it, Twice. You know I thought the whole point of recruiting more skilled party members was for them to be MORE competent than the NPC street rabble. Care to explain how we managed to fail to kidnap even one of our targets? Or how we lost THREE ENTIRE PARTY MEMBERS on our FIRST mission?”
The remaining league members stood around the bar as Tomura scolded them. Twice and Spinner at least had the decency to look ashamed. Magne and Dabi decided to scowl and brood at Tomura’s criticism. Toga disappeared into her own world the moment the league got back, fantasizing about the only two hero students she actually confronted. Compress reacted by acting extra smug and assholish. Shigaraki disintegrated the glass Kurogiri was polishing in frustration, provoking a long-suffering sigh from the man.
“Hey you stupid looking mad hatter ass wannabe rogue theatre kid NPC, you lost two hero brats by showboating. Are you trying to get yourself dusted for teamgriefing or are you just a skilless noob?”
The NPC in question had the nerve to smugly chuckle before delivering the line he was probably practicing in his head for the last minute.
“Another tenant of magic, every action taken seemingly without purpose always has its payoff.”
The magician lifted his top hat to reveal a single unassuming marble.
“I took a bit of a detour to check up on Muscular, and I got my hands on a very interesting ‘hero brat.’”
Holding the marble up for all to see, Compress returned his hat to its place atop his head and dramatically declared, “Behold! The crazy bone breaking kid himself, fresh from putting our crass strongman through a mountain, Izuku Midoriya!”
Compress proceeded to procure and toss two marbles into the air, which popped into rainbow confetti. Kurogiri let out another even more depressed sigh before warping the dust buster into his smokey hands and getting to work cleaning up the glass dust and confetti.
Shigaraki actually paused his temper tantrum to think for a second.
“Huh. Not bad, Compress, but I’m still pissed about how overdramatic you were about it. You just barely escaped NPC status. It’s not ideal, but we can make this work. Get the restraints ready and someone go find a splint.”
The league all looked at each other, waiting for someone else to do it. Kurogiri thankfully warped away to fetch a splint for the kid.
“Alright, fine. Dabi, you get the restraints set up.”
Dabi groaned and stormed off. Spinner and Toga loudly and obnoxiously started geeking out about “the hero kid acknowledged by Stain.” The world seemed absolutely determined to push Shigaraki to his limit today.
“Alright, let the brat out. I swear to god Toga stop salivating. Spinner you cannot ask him to sign anything, his arm is mangled. We’re all going to be serious and intimidating for the few minutes it will take to make our offer, is that too much to ask? Compress, go.”
At the boss’ order, Mr. Compress dropped the marble and released a very disoriented green child. The magician wasted no time restraining him, good. Shigaraki approached menacingly.
“Welcome to our base, hero bra-”
“Oh my god you’re SOOOO cute all bloody and broken-”
“Mr. hero student sir, it’s an honor to meet someone Stain approved of! What was he like in person?”
Shigaraki let out a primal screech of rage and dove at the offenders, swiping madly. After a few minutes of chasing, Toga was put in a marble for her own safety as Spinner clung to the ceiling while Shigaraki threw things at him.
“JUST A FEW MINUTES! THAT’S ALL I ASKED FOR!”
“Tomura, perhaps you should refrain from losing your temper in front of your guest?”
“SHUT IT YOU MISTY FAST TRAVEL NPC.”
Tomura eventually calmed down and turned to speak with the brat, who was now wearing a splint.
“So, you’re probably wondering why I kidnapped you. You see, you’re here so that I can give you a special invitation-”
“You’re trying to find recruits, right? Probably based on watching the sports festival, considering you were targeting Kacchan and these hand restraints look pretty similar to the ones that got used on him during the awards ceremony. I’m still trying to find out which teacher okayed that by the way. We’ll be having words.”
This meeting just kept going wrong. Shigaraki habitually started scratching at his neck in frustration, scanning around for something unimportant to decay to appease the itch.
“Huh, is that part of your quirk? Definitely not backlash, since it didn’t start until a few seconds after you started decaying everything in the room, and it’s rare that backlash is that delayed. An instinct compelling you to use it then? You do seem to look for something to decay after you start scratching.”
“I’ll decay you if you don’t shut up you-“
“The odd part is the lack of adaptation to avoid that crackling skin. Is Decay a random mutation or did it run in your family? Random mutation quirk users tend to not have bodies adapted as well to their quirks in the first few generations.”
“Don’t talk about my family!”
“Oh hey, that bar stool you just decayed fell apart way faster than Eraserhead’s arm. Can you control the rate? Is it only when contact is initiated or can you speed it up after? Ooh, that would be so useful. Either way it’s useful, especially if you do something like making it fast in one direction and slow in others to tunnel through objects or something.”
“Are you insane? You’ve been kidnapped by the league of villains! You weren’t this chatty at the mall!”
“Oh hey, is the five finger requirement exclusive? Can you use four fingers from one hand and one thumb from the other? Do two pointer fingers count as one finger or two? Well actually, are you sure it’s even five points? True ‘five point’ quirks are actually pretty rare, and the few times I’ve actually seen a true five point quirk, it’s come with visble finger or hand mutations. Your hand doesn’t look mutated, are you sure the five point thing isn’t just a psychological way to exert control over a quirk you don’t see as controllable without it?”
Shigaraki screamed while repeatedly punching the wall.
“Shut up shut up shut up SHUT UP SHUT UP.”
Compress saw the impending disaster and walked over to the prisoner.
“Sorry to interrupt your truly spectacular performance, but I think we should take this elsewhere, lest you find yourself reduced to a pile of dust.”
Compress marbled the hero student restraints and all and left to find a less populated room in the base while Spinner very carefully tried to calm down Shigaraki before his breakdown had the chance to turn violent.