Chapter Text
Gran Torino leaned on his walking stick as he watched Midoriya Hisashi get back into the car and close the door. His old eyes followed the plain black vehicle as it slowly pulled out into the street and accelerated away, down a long, sweeping avenue that went out towards the pristine glittering lakeside. The elevated rim of I-Island loomed beyond it.
He’d gotten answers to every question he had wanted to ask. Midoriya Hisashi, while standoffish and not entirely what he had expected, still made sense in his head. All the little errors and problems had been neatly sorted away.
Too neatly , the old man thought, narrowing his eyes. He stared at the distant, shining black scarab that was the car as it turned off the main road to take the scenic route around the lakes.
The old hero had learned to trust his instincts. And he had also learned to trust Izuku. The kid’s insight was phenomenal. And the old man’s thoughts couldn’t help but stick on something the Izuku had said in passing to him weeks ago, when they had been talking about quirks while the kid cleaned the beach.
“My mom’s quirk is so cool,” the teen had said. “It’s not real telekinesis. It breaks all the rules of how telekinesis powers work. I think it’s doing something completely different, actually. It’s an amazing power!”
It wasn’t unusual for a child to think their parents' quirks hung the moon and stars in the sky. That was pretty common. And the kid was a walking little ball of sunshine with hardly a pessimistic bone in his body. He’s the last person in the world who would insult somebody’s quirk.
But he was honest to a fault, too. Midoriya Izuku wouldn’t insult someone’s quirk, no. But he’d also give a factual, if extremely upbeat, assessment of what it was and where it stood in the grand scheme of things.
The kid had figured out that his mother’s quirk was more than met the eye. Assuming Hisashi wasn’t lying, which was a big if. And assuming his own theory about the housewife’s ancestry was more or less correct. Then Izuku was most of the way towards independently realizing a conspiracy of the Japanese government that was so under-wraps that even an old timer like Torino had never heard about it.
Which is why the kid’s words about his father echoed through the old pro’s head. Why they seemed to stick with the man in a way he couldn’t quite shake off.
“My father’s quirk? It’s fire breathing. It’s such an incredible power, dad could have been top class pro! It’s a fire quirk with no weaknesses!”
No weaknesses. Those were the kid’s exact words. No weaknesses.
Torino watched the car shrink down as it sped away, swooping smoothly across the pristine boulevards of I-Island. Long years of experience on hero patrol let him accurately judge it’s speed even moving away from him at a distance. It was following the speed limit on the dot, he was sure of it. Torino watched that car like it held some terrible secret.
No weaknesses.
In his decade as a pro hero teacher, Torino had probably taught over a hundred hero students with some kind of fire quirk. He had taught Todoroki “Endeavor” Enji, the strongest fire user in the world. Thankfully, the man hadn’t been in UA at the same time as Toshinori, or there would have been a fight. They had just barely missed each other, Toshinori graduating right before Enji joined.
Gran Torino had seen the best of the best. The very cream of the crop, the apex of three whole generations worth of quirks.
He had never, not even once, seen a fire superpower he would have described with the words ‘it has no weaknesses.’
“It’s a fire quirk with no weaknesses!”
Fire quirks were seen as valiant and heroic by broader society. A strong, flashy, and straightforward power, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the likes of super speed and super strength. An honest ability. A ‘good’ power. But fire quirks were dangerous . There had never been a flame user born who was fully immune to their own power. They could burn themselves to death if they weren’t careful. They could burn others to death even more easily. Control was the watchword of training a fire wielder. Finesse. Delicacy. They needed precision and moderation drilled into them, or else they ran the risk of burning out or turning themselves into a living bomb.
Torino had seen both happen before. He’d be happy if he never saw either ever again.
Fire quirks may be seen as honest superpowers by society, but they were riddled with weaknesses and drawbacks. And the kid knew that.
“It’s a fire quirk with no weaknesses!”
The car was nothing more than a speck of moving glitter on the horizon, the black color no longer discernible in the distance. But old eyes that had spent years scanning the Tokyo skyline from a bird’s eye view didn’t let it out of their sight. Torino watched that speck of glitter with the intensity of an old eagle eyeing down a patch of woods that hid a lurking predator.
Two words, fire breath. And then a vast, empty stretch of white, as any sort of elaboration had been completely cut out of the man’s paperwork. Just two little black words adrift in a paper ocean.
No weaknesses. No weaknesses, the kid said.
Izuku could be wrong. Nobody was perfect, and the kid was hardly unbiased. It was his father, after all. And everything Midoriya Hisashi had said checked out. The salaryman had repeated things Torino had known were true, and the things Torino hadn’t known still held the ring of truth. They sounded right, it sounded correct. That was how things were done, behind the scenes. A lie would have been prettier, would have made the government look better. Midoriya Hisashi probably hadn’t been lying, at least not about the major details. He would double-check what he could when he got back to Japan, but he was very sure what little he would be able to find would corroborate the man’s stories.
No weaknesses.
Hell, even if the man had a world class quirk, it’s not like Hisashi could use it anyway. He was a bureaucrat, not a hero. He didn’t have a license. His quirk shouldn’t matter at all. No, it all checked out. And Izuku could also just be wrong. That was the simplest answer. Every question the old man had going into this had been answered.
So then why did Torino feel like he had just been finessed? Why did it feel like he had just sat down at a rigged game of cards, been fleeced, paid his money, and then walked out with empty pockets like some kind of fool?
All rational logic said that Hisashi’s quirk shouldn’t matter. He was a spook, a ghost, somebody who handled the world’s dirty laundry. But he was a paper pusher at the end of the day. A bureaucrat who handles significantly more valuable paperwork than quarterly budgets and payrolls, but a bureaucrat nevertheless.
But if that were true…
No weaknesses. Two little words, fire breath, floating alone in a sea of white.
But if that were true, why redact his quirk at all? Why, for that matter, was any of his info redacted, when it didn’t really need to be? Disaster containment and tactical response was an important job in the WHA. A very important job, even. But it wasn’t a job where somebody needed to be vanished into the air, either. Some of the events he oversaw may have needed to be kept a secret… but why the man?
The old man’s gut clenched. Midoriya Hisashi’s long explanations made perfect sense and neatly answered everything. Except it had told them very little about the man himself, even less about what he really did… and it didn’t explain at all why the Japanese government had nearly unpersoned him.
Somehow, they had talked with the man for that long, but still didn’t really know anything about him.
Two little words. Fire Breath. And now two more little words. No weaknesses. Four little words that just wouldn’t go away. And those cold, tiger-killing eyes. That confidence he had no right to own. Breathing in that smoke, and never blowing it out. That flicker of red light, for the instant that his emotional control slipped.
Torino’s instincts, which he had honed over years of back-alley hero work and trusted with his life, said that something here still smelled.
“Are you coming, Gran?” Toshinori boomed questioningly in his heroic All Might voice.
The old man leaned on his walking stick, eagle eyes watching the tiny mote of reflected sunlight miles away as it finally disappeared into the woods on the far side of the lake. He stared at the point where it had vanished, as though daring the car to return.
“Yeah,” the old man grunted before turning away. “Yeah, I’m coming, Toshi. Hold your horses.”
The most important part about detective work was reassessment. The ability to pivot from a position that no longer held water. You couldn’t become attached to a working theory, which new evidence could destroy at any time. Getting emotionally involved with your own theories was a rookie mistake.
As the elderly superhero caught up with his towering former student and the two began to converse, Gran Torino discarded his prior assessment of the Midoriyas.
Midoriya Inko was not more interesting than her ghost of a husband.
Not by a long shot.
If it wasn’t one thing, it was another. World-ending threats, runaway quirk thieves, government conspiracies. And somehow Toshinori had managed to pick the one kid off the street who had almost as much baggage as they did. What the hell had they gotten tangled up with this time?
Two guards were standing near a sealed metal door. Both wore the uniforms of their station, military-style harnesses over grey-and-navy fatigues. Flashlights, radios, and spare magazines for firearms hung from their chests, with a large plate of ballistic shielding front and center. A pistol was holstered on each of their hips, and identical compact submachine guns hung from both of their necks on a pair of three-point slings.
On each of their chests, there was a badge of polished silver in the shape of a shield. The lettering ‘WHA DIV-0 PCXC’ was boldly indented on the surface.
The hallway they were stationed in was well-lit, but plain. The steel around them was unpainted, the concrete and metal floor clean and unadorned.
“I hear the Director himself is coming, this time,” one of the guards said. Both men looked similar, but he was slightly taller, with dark brown hair cut short in a military buzz.
“Bull-sh*t he is,” the shorter man said with a slight drawl. Unlike his companion, he wore a security forces cap, his longer red hair tucked neatly underneath it.
“No, I’m serious,” the buzz guard insisted. “I heard it from Pucker and Willy upstairs. The eggheads are due for their shift change, but no protocol for a submarine docking was sent.”
The redhead frowned. “No submarine? What, is he swimming?”
The taller guard grinned slightly, ignoring the other man’s sarcasm. “Nah, even better. Teleportation.”
“You’re sh*tting me.”
The buzzed brunette shrugged at the redhead. “If you don’t believe me, whatever. But we’ll find out a half-hour from now. It’s almost time to get ready.”
As though waiting for that cue, there was a click overhead as an electronic speaker system switched on.
“All personnel, please report to Bay 12 to receive the quarterly inspection. I repeat, all personnel please report to Bay 12 for the quarterly inspection.”
The taller man grinned, showing teeth. “Wanna bet Pucker is right, and it’s teleportation?”
The redhead snorted as he reached up and adjusted his cap, making sure it was on straight. “No way. I’m all out of pocket change after the last blackjack night. Next game, I’m in for bottle caps and bootlaces.”
“You’re no fun,” the brunette said, as both guards began walking down the hall towards their new destination.
“You clowns take that sh*t way too seriously to be calling it something you do for fun,” the redhead rebuked. “I play cards the same way I drink. Recreationally. Not whatever it is you do.”
“What we do is recreational,” the taller man insisted, a note of mock-injury in his voice.
“If it gives you a headache, it’s not recreational, whether it’s a deck of cards or a bottle,” the redhead insisted sourly. “Whatever you want to call it, leave me out.”
The taller man laughed.
Bay 12 was a large square room with a low ceiling. It almost looked like an indoor landing pad for a helicopter, with a raised platform in the middle covered in a series of painted circles bisected with lines and numbers. A raised trim of webbed netting was hung on the platform’s edges, while the space beneath it was filled with assorted boxes and crates of cargo.
Suddenly, a bright white line, almost like burning phosphorus or the filament of a light bulb, drew itself in the air, dead center of the raised platform. It started as a vertical line floating about a foot off the ground, before rapidly growing in both height and width, becoming a smoldering rectangle of neon large enough to drive a truck through, hanging freely in the air.
Almost as soon as the rectangle had fully formed, people began pouring out of it, stepping through as though it was a door hung on nothing. All of them wore white labcoats, and most carried some form of luggage with them; a varied mixture of suitcases, wheeled backpacks, and duffle bags.
The two exceptions stood out starkly, a pair of dark suits in a sea of white coats and burning neon. Like bespoke wolves among sheep.
Midoriya Hisashi observed the room idly as he stepped out of the door to nowhere, Ichiwaka Haruki right beside him. Hisashi’s hands were clasped casually behind his back, and the same easy smile he usually wore was on his face. But his eyes were sharp. As the last labcoat-wearing passenger trickled through the warp door, the burning white window began to close.
The two WHA employees followed after the crowd of scientists, walking down a flight of metal steps to get off of the platform and onto the ground floor. As they did, a line of heavily armed security guards were waiting in a row. They saluted as Hisashi walked passed.
Their destination wasn’t far. Through a door, around a corner, and through another door. In less than a minute, Hisashi and his escort both found themselves in a large observation room, filled with equipment, desks, and chairs.
The far wall was transparent, and several feet thick.
The scene beyond it was like something out of a nightmare.
They were at the very bottom of the ocean. All the way down, countless fathoms deep. The area around the facility was well-lit with high-powered lights, but the infinite plane of void above them made it clear just how far down they were. This was the Hadalpelagic Zone, miles upon miles and kilometers deep. The crawlway underneath Davy Jone’s locker. A place where the light of the sun had never shone, where the temperature would never rise higher than barely-above freezing. Where every square inch experienced a brutal 8 tons of pressure, the weight of mountains and continents leaning down upon them.
It was a crushing and oppressive darkness, alien to all life. This deep, near the very foundations of the earth, there should have been nothing but microbes and thermal vents.
The key words being “should have been.”
Anyone who looked outside that window would have wished with all of their heart that the lights weren’t there. Would have begged for the darkness to take back what artificial illumination had laid bare.
The facility was crescent shaped, like a sickle moon, and it abutted the edge of an enormous underwater lake. A vast pit of unknown depth, filled with hyper-salinated water and heavy chemicals. Hydrogen sulfide, liquid methane, and other, stranger things. Following the laws of density, it sank to the bottom, being heavier than the seawater above it.
But while certainly an oddity, it was not the pit that was so terrible to behold. But rather, what drifted in place above it.
One may have said, offhandedly, that it looked human, in the same way a man looks like an ape.
Or, perhaps it would have been more apt to say, it looked human in the same way a praying mantis looks like a leaf.
A torso floated in the water, or at least something that took the appearance of one. The precise size of it was difficult to firmly grasp, given the width of the lake and the absence of anything visible to scale it against. The only reference to be had were two great chains, like the anchor lines of a battleship, that were fastened to the stony shore and secured around it’s wrists, preventing it from drifting away.
But even without clear context, it was staggering in it’s immensity. Whatever it was, it had once been colossal.
It was oriented upright, with long, dangling arms that hung limply at either side. They were too long, too lanky, they hung too far down to match the biology of a human. The knotted remains of what had once been hands bore too many fingers, rotten and twining together like eerie roots. A sunken, skeletal chest was visible, but the ribs were arranged wrongly. Each one bowing outwards before sharply curving in, almost triangular in shape. There was nothing below the waist, but whether that was intended or a horrific maiming, it was no longer possible to tell, for the state of decay was too advanced. Huge skeletal branches of bone emerged from it’s back like sweeping wings, draped in wan flesh and scabbed over with fuzzy white rot. It’s head was bowed, and whatever eldritch features it’s visage may have borne were mercifully obscured by a slimy, drifting cloud of colorless hair.
At some point long ago, it must have been alive and intact.
Now, it had the tattered, bloated, soft look of a carcass that had long since begun to rot while waterlogged. Strips and bits of it drifted slowly, the flesh having gone shaggy with decay. It was pale, pale white. Not a color any living flesh could ever have. A clammy, corpse complexion, veined through with washed-out streaks of green and blue.
The sulfur-bright floodlights of the facility were merciless in their illumination. Though they were countless fathoms down, at the very bottom of the darkest deep, no detail of the thing was obscured.
It was unnerving to see. There was something deeply wrong about it, something that sent a thread of panic squirming through the spine. A primordial, gibbering instinct, an echo from a past life that tried to seize you by the shoulders and drag you back into the jungle. Back into the trees and caves. Back to the darkness and away from the sunlight and the sky, that were full of watching, hungry eyes.
Back to where it was safe, away from… it.
Away from them.
At some point, long ago, it must have been a giant. Gargantuan, something immense. Outmatching all but the grandest ships, larger than any submarine. Exuding terror both in stature and in presence.
Even now, in death and harsh decay, that palpable aura of grandiose inhumanity remained. A sense of wrongness that made you feel naked in the presence of it. That filled you with shame, and fear, and an inexplicable primal terror. The gnawing fear that eyes which couldn't possibly still exist were somehow looking at you. The dreadful, creeping vision of that motionless head suddenly turning to face you.
That terrible, itching paranoia, that somehow a thing without life or mind, eye or thought, body or heart or soul… somehow still knew you were there. Was aware. Was watching .
If one gazed at it for long enough, and examined their own emotions as calmly as they were able, they would gain an understanding of this thing, this rotten cyclopian hulk.
It was fear.
It exuded always the same sensation one would experience upon the threshold of a terrible dream. That frozen, electric moment of absolute terror before being jarred awake. It was the feeling of witnessing a prone body they were very certain was dead, suddenly sit up. That was the emotion it conveyed. The mindless fright of impossible reanimation. The terror that sends you spiraling back to your bed in a cold sweat.
Somehow, this dead thing manifested a fear and paranoia that should only ever be found in the altered state of dreaming. It was quieter, more muted. Like far away music being played in a distant room. But that unmistakable emotion of animal terror on the instant before waking was omnipresent.
It was the crystallization of the timeless moment of an irrational nightmare, drawn forth from the abyss as a corpse itself.
Would that the darkness had never been peeled back, that the light had never seen such a thing, now or ever again. Perhaps the world would be a happier place.
But it had been seen. And it hung suspended over that cloudy, abyssal pit like an angel of rot contemplating a mud-filled grave.
Midoriya Hisashi ascended a small ramp to the top of a stage on the near side of the room, and rapped his knuckles against the wooden lectern in front of him.
“Ladies and gentlemen, if I could have your attention please. Thank you. I know some of you are quite eager to leave, but we have protocol to attend to. I won’t take up too much of your time.”
Hisashi’s calm words, and the easy smile on his face, contrasted sharply with the looming vision that dominated the wall on his right.
But, in spite of that, the crowd of scientists and military personnel still gave him their attention.
“Reviewing the roster has shown that there are a few new faces here, who have never held this particular posting before. Welcome to Anomaly Containment Zone 2253, codenamed Siren’s Rest. It is one of three sister sites that deal with subaquatic acoustic anomalies, the others being Singing Bones and Pale Ring. A number of you are adjuncts from those sites, so you may already know what to expect. ACZ-2253’s purpose, as I’m sure you can surmise, is the containment and observation of Anomaly 2253. I don’t imagine I have to elaborate on exactly what 2253 is.”
There were several nervous chuckles around the room, which were quickly stifled.
“I won’t waste anyone’s time by going over information you have already been given. You should have already received information packets regarding your duties, expectations, and the rules you need to follow while posted here. As per standard ACZ safety protocol, staff are replenished bi-quarterly, and shift rotations are staggered. So the current research team will be leaving with me today. Security team, your replacements will be relieving you in 2 weeks time. If anyone needs a schedule change, or a new copy of their information packet, please inform the on-site director.”
Hisashi turned to look over to the side, at a small group of more decorated security officers and a handful of senior staff. “Speaking of which, Dr. Mayer, if you would.”
A tall, severe looking woman with golden blonde hair, blue eyes, and pale skin stepped forwards. She wore the attire of a professional businesswoman, a tailored black top paired with a matching pencil skirt that went down to her knees. A set of simple gold earrings were the only visible jewelry she wore, and her glasses were large, with thin silver frames. She wore little if any makeup, nor did she seem to need it, and her bright blonde hair was drawn back into a tight and professional bun. A voluminous white labcoat completed her appearance, and from beneath the bottom hem of it, a small fleshy tail curled. It shared her skintone, and ended in a classic devil’s spade.
Mathilda Mayer would have been beautiful, if she gave any indication that she had ever smiled even once in her life.
“Director Midoriya,” the German woman said, inclining her head respectfully.
“Dr. Mayer, as the designated on-site overseer, you are scheduled to be relieved in four months time. Has anything happened that would require this to change?”
She shook her head. “No sir. The current schedule is acceptable.”
Hisashi nodded. “Good. If that changes, submit a request and we will do our best to accommodate you. Now, tell me the status of the facility.”
Dr. Mayer was a severe looking woman. But even she felt a bead of sweat roll down the back of her neck when confronted with the cool, grey eyes and easy smile of her boss.
Midoriya Hisashi was no one to be trifled with. Everyone who engaged in this particular line of work with the WHA knew that the unassuming Japanese businessman was at the top of the food chain, as far as big fish were concerned.
Midoriya Hisashi was not one of the so-called ‘men in black’ from urban legend.
No, he was the boss of such people. ‘The’ Man in Black.
And he always preferred a more… hands-on, approach, to overseeing special assets.
Dr. Mayer was used to cowing men twice her size with a frown and a glare. But that easy smile of Hisashi’s could make a shark’s blood run cold.
“The status of the facility is nominal, and the seismographic data remains unchanged from the last quarterly report. The structural integrity of the facility remains sound, and the rate of observed wear and tear is consistent with the projected 8-year plan for future repairs.”
Hisashi nodded, that easy smile still on his face. “Good, I’m glad to hear it. And the countermeasures?”
“The active noise control of our hydroacoustic system is still functioning within accepted parameters, and our countersignal remains effective. Our long-range equipment has noted a 1.5% decay over the last 12 months in the ability of our countersignal to keep the primary effect of 2253 contained, which should have been noted in the last submitted report. However, governing intelligence CIRCE assures me that a certain degree of adaptation was expected, and that we should be able to adjust our own signal in response. There have been no aeronautical or oceanic accidents in the last year that occurred under the circ*mstances associated with 2253.”
Hisashi nodded. “I’m familiar with CIRCE’s diagnoses of our 2253 countermeasures. A solution is being worked on. And the lake?”
“No further examples of 2253-A have been detected emerging from the saline compound.”
Unbidden, several of the more experienced members of the staff glanced over at the murky pelagic hole before catching themselves.
The businessman smiled. “Good, good. Is that all?”
Dr. Mayer swallowed. She wished it was.
“No sir,” she said. “Unfortunately, there was an incident with the crew. An acoustics engineer and a member of the security staff both began exhibiting symptoms of Stage 1 exposure to 2253.”
“Oh?” Hisashi said. Dr. Mayer truly was sweating now. “I presume that Procedure 44-Odysseus was followed?”
“Yes sir,” she said, barely restraining herself from stuttering. “It happened one week ago, so the bi-montly report has not been sent along yet. We followed the on-site protocol, and restrained them before administering the sedatives proscribed by Procedure 44. They have been kept in a comatose state in the secure wing of medbay ever since, under armed guard.”
Hisashi leaned back slightly in his standing position, and swept his eyes across the assembly of scientists and security officers. They were nervous, and rightfully so. They required leadership.
“To the best of our knowledge,” Hisashi said carefully, “the effects of 2253 should not begin to manifest as long as a threshold of at least 90% efficiency on the counteracoustics is maintained. Stringent testing has shown this to be true in the past. However, if we cannot trust what we observe with our own eyes, then what can we count on? As of this moment, ACZ-2253 will be placed under a Yellow threat designation, pending a further review.”
Dr. Mayer nodded as quiet muttering erupted from the crowd of people in the room.
Anomaly Containment Zones were broadly classified by color. Green meant something was functionally neutralized, that it couldn’t cause problems anymore.
For several years, and up until the incident a few days ago, Siren’s Watch had been classified as green. Their hydroacoustic countermeasures always hovered at around 98-to-99% effectiveness, and as long as they didn’t drop below 90%, the situation was under control.
For two personnel to suddenly be affected by an anomaly that was supposed to be neutralized… that was a problem. A very serious problem.
Director Hisashi’s call to escalate the ACZ to Yellow carried serious consequences. They would need to restructure shifts, budget hazard pay. Reports would need to be submitted once a week instead of twice a month. New rules and protocols would have to be put in place.
But it was the right choice, in Dr. Mayer’s opinion. It needed to be done.
The Director was impressive, as always. He was unflappable. Calculating. Cold-blooded.
“Procedure 44-Odysseus will be rolled back to it’s pre-Green state, and inspections will be rescheduled to occur monthly,” Midoriya continued. “Dr. Mayer, I would like an internal audit conducted on both affected personnel, going back 200 hours prior to their subdual. Check where they were, what they did, who and what they interacted with. I doubt an acoustics engineer would be foolish enough to toy with something like a recording of 2253, but there have been incidents in the past.”
The blonde woman inclined her head respectfully. “Of course Director, I will make certain we do everything we can to verify whether or not human error was involved.”
The dark-suited businessman nodded in response, before turning his cool grey eyes towards the rest of the room. “As per protocol, everyone will be receiving a hazard pay bump equivalent to the escalated threat of the containment zone, until such a time as the rating is either reverted to Green or verified as Yellow. I understand this is not what most of you signed up for, but as per Yellow ACZ protocol, shift changes will happen every 2 weeks now instead of every 4, so if you want to leave and be reassigned, you will only need to tough it out for 14 days. I appreciate all of you bearing with us. If any of you wish to write letters or send gifts to your co-workers while they recuperate, the usual Home Office channel will suffice. Your team leads will have the relevant details.”
Midoriya Hisashi stepped away from the podium, and as he moved past Dr. Mayer, he leaned toward her. “Make sure the audit is on my desk within five days. Bring the two personnel out to me, we will be taking them with us when we leave.”
And with that, Hisashi turned his back on the rotten, drifting hulk that dominated the far wall and walked away.
There was a flurry of activity. Checks and tests were conducted, and Hisashi was taken on a brief, hurried tour of the deep sea compound. And in no time at all, the two men in dark suits found themselves back on the raised platform at the rear of the facility.
Beside them were two gurneys, each carrying the body of a man. It was impossible to know what either looked like, since both had been slid into heavy white plastic bags that appeared to have been vacuum sealed around them. Thick bolts and heavy steel wire were slotted through metal-rimmed holes in the plastic body bags, thoroughly binding both men to the gurneys transporting them. Each had a portable air pump whirring softly, pushing air through a hose and into a black opaque mask attached to their heads, while a pair of IV drips slowly fed a clear fluid into each of their arms. The needles clipped and locked into metal sockets on the body bags, maintaining the airtight seal. All across both bags, warnings and medical labels were written and repeated in a half dozen languages. But you didn’t need to speak any of them to recognize the bright, three-sided trefoil of interlocking rings stamped on both of their chests. Red lines, bright and thick, on sterile white plastic. The barbed, universally recognizable symbol of ‘biohazard.’
Whether they were awake, aware, or even alive, it was impossible to say. But they certainly weren’t going anywhere under their own power.
A crowd of outgoing scientists had gathered, shuffling awkwardly and glancing uneasily at the two gurneys that stood front and center of the group. There was a flicker of white phosphorus in the air, and once again that burning neon window yawned open, drawing a door of light to nowhere.
Slowly the crowd trickled through, carrying their own luggage. When only a few stragglers remained, a pair of younger men in identical uniforms stepped over from the other side. They wore caps that concealed their hair, and their eyes were covered in opaque glasses. Both wore armbands with a red cross emblazoned on them, the only real identifying feature either had. Each one grabbed a gurney and pulled it through, disappearing with their medical charges.
Hisashi turned back to look at the small procession of senior staff who had followed to see them off. “Five days,” he reiterated, looking at Dr. Mayer. “We need to know if this was an accident or a shift in 2253’s behavior. A retrofit crew will be sent along tomorrow with additional equipment and supplies, to begin assessing the facility for any changes that need to be made. I need a definitive answer one way or the other before the week is out.”
The German woman bowed her head. “I understand, sir.”
“Good. And it goes without saying, I think, that should any further incidents of 2253 influencing people occur, you are to use the emergency line and inform us immediately.”
Dr. Mayer swallowed. “Yes, Director. Of course.”
The average, unassuming Japanese salaryman turned, and together with his security escort, he stepped back into the blinding light from which he had emerged. Two dark suits disappeared down a corridor of bleached neon. Nowhere-men bound for parts unknown.
He couldn’t keep putting this off. Izuku knew that, intellectually.
He even thought he knew why Torino wanted him to tell Melissa everything. It seemed cruel in a way, but… if he was in her shoes, if their positions were switched, wouldn’t he want to know? Maybe you could argue that he didn’t have a right to know. But he would want to know. One quirkless to another. He’d want to hear it, from Melissa. He would want her to tell him.
If their positions were switched, and All Might was giving her One For All…
Why wasn’t he, actually? Giving her One For All. Was there a reason? There had to be, right? The more Izuku thought about it, the stranger it seemed. She was his niece. She was quirkless. She had dreamed of being a hero. If All Might was looking for a successor, he had one on hand, didn’t he?
“All Might’s successor? Are you talking about Sir Nighteye? I don’t think many people would call him that, though I suppose it is technically true.”
Izuku flinched violently. He hated his mumbling. Melissa just peered at him, innocent curiosity on her face.
He didn’t want to do this. This was a bad idea. He would want to know, if he was her, but-
But he wasn’t her, and she wasn’t him. He had no idea how she would react. It had been so long since he’d had any real friends at all, he didn’t-
He didn’t want to risk it.
Liar liar , a voice inside of him seemed to taunt. It sounded like his former classmates at Aldera.
What would Mina and Kaminari think, if they knew he was getting All Might’s quirk? What would Tooru and Sero say?
What would- what would Kacchan say?
Izuku was very sure he knew the answer to that question. He- a part of him was afraid it would be the same answer for all of them.
The same answer Melissa would give him, too.
‘Why not me? Why you?’
Something inside of Izuku crumbled, and he let out a breath he didn’t know he had been holding.
“Is- is there a place we can t-talk? Privately, I mean. Where there are no cameras or security? I- I have something I need to tell you. P-Please.”
Melissa blinked, taken aback by the question. And the sudden reappearance of the other teen’s stutter. Something cold slithered in her stomach. “Um… yeah? Yeah, I think so. There are some places out in the wilderness areas, past the suburbs. I don’t think there are any microphones or cameras out there.”
Izuku tried to smile at Melissa, but there was a sadness in his eyes that unsettled her. Because she had seen those same eyes before, looking back from her own bathroom mirror. “Can- can we go? It’s important.”
The blonde girl swallowed. “Yeah. Yeah, sure. We can go.”
There was no true wilderness on I-Island. The entire structure was man-made, after all. But significant effort had gone into making certain areas appear natural, and you could find them in the empty spaces between the scenic highways and ivory towers. There were places where the four cities turned to suburbs, and where those suburbs became rolling hills, small farms, and dense clusters of trees. There were wooden fences and corner stores, small isolated houses and fields of golden grain. Places where the sunset bled purple, and the sound of traffic was a distant memory beneath heavy stars and a lazy sun. There, crickets hummed their lullabies at the edge of dawn and dusk, and if one stood still for long enough, distant birdsong could be heard echoing through the leaves.
It was an imitation of the world beyond the facility. Most who came to live on I-Island would never leave it. And so efforts had been made to remove any need to.
But the island ‘was’ artificial, and nothing proved that more than how quickly the two teens found themselves walking through an extremely upscale looking suburb. Just like their trip from Melissa’s lab to the WHA branch office, there was a whole world underground, connecting everything above. And using that arterial system of transport, even the long distances between the four cities and their landmarks melted away in remarkably little time.
The trees around them were broad and towering, the kind of size that only comes with great age. And they had only been minimally cut back to make room for the streets and houses, all of which were expensive multi-story affairs. The sidewalk was made of warm red bricks, and so too were the waist-high walls that traced scattered lines around the properties they walked past. Many of the houses featured elaborate metal gates in front of them, and they all had polished brass plates engraved with the names of their occupants.
It was an expensive, private suburb, meticulously planned out to give the illusion of being nestled in a vast old-world forest. Having been born and raised in Musutafu Japan, Izuku had never seen anything like it before.
They stopped in front of a home that was a bit too big for Izuku to comfortably call a ‘house,’ since it was almost larger than his whole apartment complex. The siding was a smooth cream white with dark red trim, and the building featured bay windows, a third floor, and several balconies and elevated porches nestled cleverly in the eaves. A clean, white picket fence surrounded the property, the pickets periodically connecting to taller brick obelisks.
Izuku didn’t have to wonder why they had stopped. The brass plate reading SHIELD embedded in the side of the brick mailbox answered that question.
“Um, I thought you and your dad lived in that apartment?”
“We do,” Melissa replied. “Every executive on the island gets a house as part of their contract with the corporations here, and papa is a project director, so ours is really nice.”
Izuku blinked in confusion. He glanced at the house and the glinting SHIELD nameplate, then back to the blonde. “I’m sorry, but why do you have the apartment, then? I don’t get it. Wouldn’t living in a house like this be way better?”
Melssa smiled sadly. “I can’t really say for sure, but I believe it’s because of, well. It’s because of what happened to my mama.”
Izuku’s eyes widened, and he waved his hands in apology. “I’m, I’m s-sorry! I didn’t know it was s-something like-!”
“No, it’s okay,” Melissa said, speaking over the green-haired teen. “I don’t mind talking about it.”
‘Not with you.’
“I barely remember mama. But I still miss her terribly. Papa… he was never the same, after she was hurt. He’s still trying to save her, even now. With Uncle Might needing his help less and less, papa has been putting all of his time and money into her. It’s the focus of all of his research now, it has been for years. All of the other projects he works on, the things he consults with, it’s just to get money and resources. To try and save her.”
Melissa fidgeted slightly, her fingers tangled. Part of Izuku wanted to tell her that she could stop, she didn’t have to keep talking. But she didn’t look like she wanted to.
Izuku wondered, suddenly, if she had ever had anyone she could confide in this way.
He certainly hadn’t.
Liar liar , whispered the voices of Aldera in his mind. His own fists clenched.
“Papa, he-,” Melissa trailed off, struggling to find the words. “I don’t know this for certain. But the last time we had a house like this, mama was still with us. I think the reason we don’t live here is because, to him, it would feel like we were leaving mama behind. I don’t think he can bare to live here without her.”
A part of Izuku understood that. He had lived in the apartment building his parents rented for as long as he could remember. It was part of their routine, part of their life.
If his mother suddenly moved into a house somewhere, and his father wasn’t there with them… it would probably feel like they were leaving him behind, too.
How much worse was it for Dr. Shield, with a wife that was barely holding on?
The metal gate to the Shield house swung silently open, and Melissa led the way up it’s brick and stone driveway. Izuku was half expecting her to go inside, but instead, she skirted around the house. He caught a fleeting glimpse of the interior through a bay window, at a kitchen that looked more expensive than his whole apartment. Then they were past it, into a sprawling but orderly back yard. The grass was a lush, emerald green, with a number of neatly trimmed bushes and an immaculate back porch and patio. Tall trees with soft red bark stretched up towards the unseen sky, their leaves glowing a dim green as the sun shone down through them. And the air was cool, the dense canopy above blocking out the heat.
Everything here looked brand new. Izuku’s analytical eyes couldn’t help but note that it didn’t look lived-in at all. It was like the whole house, and indeed the entire property, was simply a prop. A show piece for some advertisem*nt, not a real place that people lived in.
But Melissa marched on. Past the patio and the back porch, through the lawn, beyond the towering trees. And in the very back corner of the yard, there was a gap in the brick and picket fencing of the property. Deftly, like she had done it a hundred times before, Melissa twisted sideways and slipped through. Izuku scrambled to follow her.
The two teens rambled between trees and down an incline. They hadn’t walked far before the sky started to become visible again, jagged slivers of it appearing as the artificial forest of the suburb thinned.
Then the treeline broke, and they were walking across a glen, a narrow valley between the executive neighborhoods and some scattered parts of I-Academy nestled nearby.
Melissa led him to a copse of stubby trees surrounded by overgrown grass and sprawling bushes, and there, invisible to the outside world, was a small shed. It looked half prefab, half built by hand, with a scrappy appearance and mismatched trim. A small solar panel and a radio dish that looked like it was made from spare parts was bolted to the roof.
Melissa produced a key from somewhere on her person, jiggled the latch, and then pushed the door open before beckoning Izuku inside.
It was a tiny, improvised workshop. A bookshelf lined one wall, while the opposite played host to a ratty couch that looked like it had been rescued from a trash heap. A long, low bench stood opposite the door, with a variety of mismatched tools hanging from it. An old, cobbled together computer stood on the corner of the work table, and a small stool was pushed up under the workbench to save space.
As it was, there was barely enough room for both teens to stand.
“What is this place?” Izuku asked.
Melissa grinned. “It’s my secret lab. I built this years ago, back when I thought we were going to live in the house. It’s what I used before I earned the right to have my own personal lab at school.”
She looked down shyly. “It’s also where Beaker and Darby were born. I made them here. On that computer.”
Izuku blinked owlishly.
He had seen better computers in the Aldera science lab.
Honestly, he had pulled nicer looking computers off of the beach he was cleaning.
It was ancient. Once white casing had faded to a pale off-yellow, and the bits of clear plastic had become cloudy and opaque. It was old, and looked to have been repaired from spare parts at least once. It wasn’t a flat-screened device either, but a large oval thing like a cheap television. The keys on the keyboard were visibly mismatched, presumably having been sourced from different incomplete sets. The mouse would have probably been more aptly described as a rat.
She had created an AI in a shed. She had created two AI in a shed, out of scraps .
And she didn’t even have a quirk. She was just like him.
Even though he had understood and accepted why Gran Torino and All Might wanted him to inherit the quirk, he couldn’t help but feel inadequate. They were almost the same age. Sure, the Shields were probably rich, but… money couldn’t account for this . He’d met snobby rich kids before, but none of them had their own AI. She looked like she had made this entire workshop out of trash!
“You’re really amazing, Melissa,” Izuku said quietly, his eyes looking at the computer. She flushed red and looked down at the floor.
‘You deserve this more than me, Melissa.’
The blonde girl swallowed. “Um, t-thanks,” she said, stuttering slightly herself. “So what’s this big secret you want to talk to me about?” she asked, trying desperately to change the topic.
Izuku flinched. Melissa saw.
The truth was, she could think of a few things it might be about.
None of them were good.
‘He’s quirkless too,’ she reminded herself. There was baggage that came with that, there probably always would be. Whatever it was, it was serious enough that he seemed genuinely afraid to talk about it.
And afraid of not talking about it, too. He was afraid of her reaction.
“I-I don’t really want to talk about it, to be honest,” Izuku said softly, staring down at the tangled knot of his own fingers.
‘Then don’t,’ Melissa thought. ‘A lot of things hurt, but that’s okay, we’re allowed to hurt. You don’t have to-’
“-but I would want to know, if I was in your shoes,” Izuku added, staring down at his own red pair. “I would want to know. So I feel like… like I need to let you know. Gran Torino suggested it.”
Melissa stilled. Izuku felt like he would want to know, if he were her? What did that- and Grandpa Torino was involved in this too, somehow?
The teenage girl swallowed involuntarily. She had a bad feeling about this.
“You don’t have to tell me,” she said softly. Doing her best to treat Izuku how she would want to be treated. How he had treated her , back in the lab.
“I think you would make an amazing hero!”
She put her hand on his wrist. His body was hotter than hers, radiating warmth. Her own palms felt cool in comparison.
Izuku stiffened.
“Don’t tell me,” Melissa said. “If it bothers you this much, I don’t want- no, I don’t need to know. I believe you when you say it’s important, but if it makes you this uncomfortable-”
Izuku’s hands clenched. He was teetering on the brink.
‘What are you going to do if the young man says no? He may well decide he doesn’t want to risk their friendship. What then?’
‘Then that’s fine. I’ll accept that.’
His eyes fell on the cobbled-together bookshelf, filled with books that were clearly all secondhand. Featuring topics as varied as Advanced Programming, Organic Chemistry, and Quirk Physics. There was an old, old book, wrinkled nearly to pieces and clearly well-thumbed through, whose worn spine identified it as a guide for building your own computers.
All of this…
It was something he never could have done. Even if they had somehow switched places.
If he had been born Izuku Shield instead of Midoriya Izuku, he would have been a pale shadow compared to what the blonde girl at his side had become.
He made his choice.
Slowly, Izuku turned his own warm palm upwards, and curled larger, stronger fingers around Melissa’s cooler, thinner ones.
“Let me tell you about the day I met All Might,” he said softly. There were unshed tears swimming in his eyes.
Melissa opened her own mouth to tell him no. To say she didn’t need to hear it, that whatever it was, she didn’t care.
‘But I would want to know, if I was in your shoes.’
“... okay.”
And Izuku started talking.
The more he spoke, the more trepidation grew in Melissa Shield’s heart. But it wasn’t the story that disturbed her.
She could have guessed about the bullying. She had known some it would have been physical, as her own had been.
She herself had also been suicide baited, long ago. That tearful night in their California flat had been the last straw that had brought David Shield to I-Island’s door, contract in hand.
It bothered her that it had happened, of course, to him and to her, but this wasn’t-
This didn’t explain anything.
And Izuku seemed to know that, too, because he ambled on past those events like they were inconsequential.
‘Ha? You wanna be a hero so bad? I’ve got a time-saving idea for you. Go take a swan dive off the roof and wish for a quirk in your next life!’
Izuku knew this wasn’t the point of the story, and she did as well.
And that scared her.
‘Uncle Torino put him up to this. He’d want to know, if he were in my shoes. What…’
The sludge villain from the story he had shared during dinner their first night appeared, in all his gross and second-hand infamy. Izuku had been attacked in an underpass on the way home from school, in a time and place he never would have been were it not for the bullies. The teen had nearly died, only for Uncle Might to arrive in the nick of time and save him.
Even with the seriousness of the situation, and the rising tension of her worry, she couldn’t entirely hold back a giggle at her uncle having already signed an autograph into Izuku’s notebook before the teen could even ask. Or Izuku grabbing onto the man’s leg as the hero tried to jump away from the scene, because he needed to ask a question.
It was- it was classic Izuku.
And then her stomach went cold.
Her uncle, that towering musclebound presence that kept the whole world safe in the shadow he cast… wasted away. Reverting back in a puff of smoke to some anemic and shriveled form, like a cancer patient on the last legs of a losing fight.
That… no. How had he hid it for so long?
He could only work as All Might for three hours a day?
That. That just couldn’t be .
But there was a resounding ring of truth to it. And the next words Izuku spoke made it feel all the more real.
‘Can someone who’s quirkless become a hero? Can even a quirkless person be like you someday!?’
All Might, her uncle, Yagi Toshinori… had told him no. He had run out of time on that rooftop, and shown the green-haired teenager the injury he had been hiding for years.
And she should be used to this, she really should. It made sense. But she couldn’t stop her hands from shaking anyway.
They did this to me, even with who I was, her uncle had been trying to say.
Just imagine what they would do to you.
So no kid, sorry. Not without a quirk.
And as Izuku kept talking, the pieces began to slowly fit together in her mind. The information he had shared back at that first night’s dinner resurfacing.
‘He said that Uncle Might was the first person to acknowledge him, to tell him it was possible. But he said no on the rooftop. That means-’
Izuku had been walking home when the explosions started. And without thinking, his feet had carried him to the scene.
It was the same slime villain that had escaped the soda bottle prison, lost in the brief moment where Izuku had distracted her uncle.
A hostage. The villain was trying to devour and possess the same bully that had told Izuku to jump off of a roof barely an hour ago.
Melissa could feel pricks of tears in her eyes. She had all the pieces now. And she finished painting the picture of events, staying a half-step ahead of Izuku even as he explained them.
All of the local heroes were just standing around, because none of them had a quirk that could easily solve the problem. A villain with a decentralized liquid form, grappling with a teenager that was spraying explosions everywhere. A hostage was slowly being killed in front of them, and they did nothing.
Izuku’s body had moved before he even had time to think. Ducking under the police tape, a dozen yards past the line before he even realized what was happening.
The slime villain only had one visible weakness. His giant lidless eyes, floating in the ooze of his body like a pair of milky bubbles.
Izuku unslung the backpack around his shoulders, and mimicking the throwing technique of some local hero she had never heard of, he slung it right into the blob monster’s eye.
Buying precious seconds. Grabbing the blonde bully and pulling away.
All Might had appeared, her uncle pushing himself beyond his own limits. Blasting the villain away for the second time, saving both teens from a killing blow.
The police and heroes swarmed in. Izuku was lambasted by the heroes when they found out he was quirkless, even though none of them had done anything to help.
While the other teen, the blonde with the explosion quirk, was praised endlessly.
Because of the explosion quirk. Of course.
Izuku had left, finally beginning to make his way back home. The sun was setting, and-
“Young man. I came here to thank you. And also to discuss your question from earlier.”
“Wha-”
“If you hadn’t told me about your life, if you hadn’t run into that fight, I would have been nothing more than a worthless bystander watching from the crowd. So thanks.”
“But it… it was all my fault to begin with. I interfered with your work, and spoke out of turn. Even though I’m quirkless-”
“I’m not done. You told me you didn’t have a power. So when I saw this timid quirkless boy try to save a life… it inspired me to act, too. There are stories about every hero. About how they became great. Most have one thing in common; their bodies moved before they had a chance to think, almost on their own. That’s what happened to you today, yes?”
Young man. You CAN be a hero.
Izuku was a good storyteller.
Good enough that, even though Melissa Shield had known from the start that this couldn’t possibly be what the confession was about, he still managed to lower her guard. To make her half-forget the reason they were there.
“You’re the one who’s worthy to inherit my strength.”
Melissa blinked.
“... What? What does that mean?”
“I didn’t understand it either, at least at first,” Izuku said. He was staring down at the tops of his bright red shoes. She could feel a faint tremor in his fingers where they were holding hands.
“There’s a lot of debate about what All Might’s quirk really is,” the green-haired teen continued. “He never gives a straight answer when he’s asked, he won’t even say it’s name. He does it in every single interview that brings it up, he’s famous for it.”
Melissa swallowed. This was it. This was why they were here. She could feel the tension twisting in her stomach. I would want to know, if I were you, he had said. Grandpa Torino insisted she be told.
Something bad enough that Izuku didn’t think they would be friends anymore, when the conversation was over.
“It’s- it’s just a quirk,” she insisted. Whatever it was Izuku was about to say, she wasn’t going to let it change anything. “Even if it’s weird or has some unusual traits, that’s a given for a top hero. It doesn’t mean-”
“It’s a transferable quirk.”
“What?” Melissa asked, uncomprehending. The words the other teen had just said, they made no sense.
“Your uncle, Mr. Yagi. He was… he was born quirkless. Just like you and me.”
Melissa opened her mouth, before closing it again. This was making less sense the more she heard! “Uncle- Uncle Might isn’t quirkless! ” she insisted, confusion clear in her voice. “That’s impossible!”
And it was. It was completely impossible, no, it was something beyond impossible. The strongest man in the world, quirkless? A man with tornado punches and earthquake kicks, who could fly just by swinging his arms down and pushing against the air? It was absurd.
“He was a quirkless vigilante, when he was our age,” Izuku continued. His voice had a dull tone to it, something resigned and calculatingly bland. It was a tone Melissa herself had assumed often, when quirklessness came up with her peers and teachers.
It was the tone of someone who had withdrawn. Who was speaking words not to communicate, but to get the conversation over with.
“He got into a lot of trouble, apparently. He didn’t elaborate when he told me. But from the sound of it, he was suicidal. He didn’t care if he lived or died. He just wanted to make the world a better place before he left it. He kept insisting that our generation of quirkless had it worse than he did, but from some of the things he said, I’m not so sure.”
Melissa was slowly shaking her head, unaccepting. Izuku kept talking to the laces on his shoes.
“He was saved from criminals by the pro hero who would become his mentor. Her name was Shimura Nana. She trained him, put him on the path to be a real superhero. And then, before she died, she revealed her biggest secret to him. She was the heir of a quirk that went all the way back to the Dawn. It was a strength stockpile that could be transferred from one person to another. The more it was used, the stronger it became. And because it was handed off directly, instead of being inherited through birth, it never reset. She had received it from her mentor, and now she wanted Mr. Yagi to take it. To become the next person to carry on the legacy.”
“That’s not possible. Quirks can’t- they can’t do things like that!”
And for the first time since he had started talking, Izuku turned to look at her. Tears were swimming in her own eyes, but Izuku’s were flat and dull.
“Why not?” he asked simply.
She heard his words, she wasn’t distracted. She was paying attention. But it was like they were far away, distant and muted. Like she was drifting along underwater, and Izuku had spoken to her from somewhere higher up and beyond her sight.
‘Why not?’
“We don’t even know what quirks are,” Izuku whispered. “Why should anything be impossible?”
“But- but a transferable superpower? Quirks are- they’re genetic! It’s genes, DNA! A quirk is something you’re born with! A superpower that you can just hand over… that can’t be real!”
And yet even as she said it, words from earlier that day echoed in her memory.
‘Whether quirks are genetic or if the DNA is a symptom and not the cause is debatable. We still don’t know what quirks even are. The evolutionary theory itself has been thrown back into question now because of quirks.’
“One For All… is a quirk that is passed down from teacher to student,” Izuku said. His voice was distant and quiet, almost like he was talking to himself. “It is a superpower that can be given away. I never imagined such a thing was possible until the day I met All Might. But after the incident with the Sludge villain… he decided he wanted to give it to me.”
There was a beat. Neither teen knew how long that terrible pause lasted, it could have been a second or a year. It felt like something was breaking, and they both knew it.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. There were unshed tears swimming in his own eyes, now.
“But that-”
But that’s impossible, that doesn’t make sense, her uncle wasn’t quirkless and… did it really not make sense? Or did it explain a thousand little things about him she had never noticed or paid attention to before now?
“We were-”
We were going to become the first quirkless hero. Together, you and me. My armor, my dream, I could have given it to you, and-
And you don’t need it. Why would you? How could anything that I give you ever matter, compared to my uncle- compared to All Might’s quirk?
Now at last, Melissa knew what Izuku had been afraid of.
“I would want to know, if I were you.”
“Papa, papa! I wanna be just like Uncle Might and Star when I grow up!”
“I’m sorry, but it’s not going to happen,’ Dr. Tsubasa said, leaning back in his chair.
And then, finally. The question Izuku had known was coming. It slipped from Melissa’s lips almost like an accident, a sloppy arrow loosed by fumbling fingers.
But it still found it’s mark.
“Why?”
He knew what that meant.
Why you? Why not me?
Izuku let go of Melissa’s hand, and his fingers curled into fists. “I’m sorry,” he said again, his voice starting to shake.
I don’t know why not you. I’m sorry it was me.
Izuku had been right. It really was the question everyone would ask, in the end. Why wouldn’t they?
After all, they were right. Why should it ever go to him, when everyone else was so much more deserving? Was so much more clearly the right choice?
Melissa Shield fled.
And Izuku let her go.
It was a wild flight, blind and reckless. She was running on autopilot, one foot in front of the other. Not thinking about where she was headed, or why.
She just needed to go. She had to get away. She couldn’t stay there anymore, in that little shed in the underbrush.
She couldn’t sit next to the first other quirkless her age she had ever met, and fall apart at the seams.
What she felt wasn’t quite fear, and it wasn’t true anger, either. It wasn’t even real sorrow.
It was something much more raw and deep. And it hurt.
‘Why?’
She wanted to scream the question from the rooftops. She wanted to rewind time and take it back, before she died of shame for having the callous audacity to ask at all.
Izuku had known exactly what she had meant, with that one word.
How could he not, when he had lived her life?
Why you? Why not me?
Every student in I-Academy would have asked the same question. Even the ones who already had good quirks. Especially the ones who already had good quirks.
But she wasn’t them, she had told herself. She was striving to rise above them, to be something better. She was going to have to give up her dream, and she had accepted that. Really, she had. But not her dignity. Never her dignity. They could have her pride over her cold, quirkless corpse.
She didn’t need a quirk, and she didn’t want one either.
She wasn’t like them. She wasn’t .
Liar liar.
She didn’t know where she was running, she could barely see through her own tears. She wasn’t even sure which of the two of them she was crying for.
But old habits die hard. Without realizing or paying attention, her feet had carried her along the old, nearly-vanished path she had once taken between her improvised lab and I-Academy. She had retraced her old path to get to school.
And if there was one universal truth, it would be that scavengers and predators are always drawn to injury.
“Well, well, well. Look who it is. The nil.”
Today, there was blood in the water.
Melissa was standing in the middle of a sports arena, with tall bleachers made of plastic and glinting metal. The mounting rows of seats were raised up on a series of four concrete boxes arranged in a square around the field. From long experience, Melissa knew that inside those four boxes, and beneath the seemingly natural grass field, was a gymnasium filled with training equipment, along with a nexus of the I-Academy transport line.
Above, a field with seats for spectators and commentary. Below, a high-tech training facility for students in the Hero Course, with only a flight of stairs between them.
But it wasn’t her surroundings that had stopped Melissa.
It was three other girls standing in a loose group, leering at her.
She knew their faces. She knew their names.
They were from the Hero Course.
Rose Otronombre Espinosa. Sylvia Vertloin. And Auriel Nieglanzen.
Sylvia was the shortest of the group, with dark blue eyes and straight black hair cut into a bob. She was a psychic, her quirk allowing her to create extremely slippery bubbles of mental energy that drained the stamina of anyone who touched them.
Auriel was the tallest. Her long, somewhat homely face contrasted strongly with her metallic golden eyes and hair, which hung down to her neck in a heavy curtain. The color was a tell for her own quirk. She had been born with a Midas touch, a five-point activation ability. Anything she touched with all five of her fingers, she could transform into solid gold. Doing it again would reverse the process. Living things she transmuted were unharmed by her ability, being put in a kind of suspended animation. It was ideal for capture and subdual.
They were both strong. Both star students of the I-Academy Hero Course.
But neither could hold a candle to the queen bitch herself.
Rose Otronombre Espinosa was the top of her year. She had leaf green eyes, pale skin, and rose-pink hair that was thick and soft. It hung down to the small of her back, with two smaller clumps coming off of her temples that curled so uniformly they almost looked like springs or drills.
She had styled her image and hero persona after magic girls in pop culture and cartoons, and she looked the part, with a frilly dress-skirt variation of the Academy uniform.
The sneer on her face certainly didn’t suit that image, but then, not many people ever got to see it.
Melissa was one of the privileged few.
“I’m talking to you, nil. Do you need me to speak up? Deafness is a quirkless thing, isn’t it?”
The two hangers-on giggled. Melissa warily eyed Rose’s hand. It was palm up, the girl idly toying with what looked like a chunk of pink glass.
That was her quirk. No one in the I-Academy Hero Course was weak, and certainly the other two girls weren’t. But Rose’s ability was in a league of it’s own.
She could freely create and manipulate a substance that was unique to her. A pink, crystalline solid, like rose quartz or pink diamond. It was clear as glass, and as hard as steel. She could conjure the material from nothing, and freely manipulate it’s structure and form using a substance-specific telekinesis.
With a gesture, she could frost you over with her crystals. With a thought, she could form armor and weapons. She could create walls and barriers, projectiles and bullets. With two chunks attached to the bottom of her feet, she could even fly.
It was a power befitting a magic girl-themed heroine. It was also incredibly dangerous.
It had all the strength of a top-tier ice quirk, but none of the associated drawbacks. Every quirk that could manipulate energy or temperature ran the risk of harming the user. Fire wielders were never fully immune to their own flames, nor were ice users totally inured against the cold.
But Rose’s crystal quirk didn’t have to play that game at all. It was more akin to glass manipulation or metal telekinesis. All the strength inherent to ice shaping, but with none of the drawbacks. It couldn’t give the user hypothermia, nor was it countered by fire or water abilities. Some said it was stronger than an ice quirk. Rose certainly seemed to believe so.
In a society that held elemental abilities up as the gold standard of strength and heroic character, Rose possessed a non-elemental quirk whose power and utility had eclipsed that high bar. In an international school of powerful quirks, Rose was at the top of the pile. Queen bitch of the elite mountain. A strong quirk, straight A’s in her classes. She excelled in the Hero Course. A rising star with a bright future.
And Melissa Shield was the only student in their year who consistently managed to beat Rose in grades.
In other words, Melissa Shield was a target.
“What are you doing here?” Sylvia leered. “Don’t you know this is the training field for quirks? Why would you ever be here?”
Auriel grinned. “Look on the bright side. We don’t need to bother getting a dummy out to practice on. Today, a dummy came to us!”
The two hanger’s on tittered. But Melissa was too experienced with this game to waste energy focusing on either of them.
They weren’t the decision makers here.
Melissa couldn’t entirely hide the flinch as the pink glassy shard floating in Rose’s hand suddenly spun around and snapped to her, pointing like a lodestone.
The rose-haired girl smiled. It almost looked sincere. “They raise a good point, nil. Why are you even here? This facility is for training quirks. You know, that thing normal people have.”
Melissa swallowed slightly. She’d been subjected to enough bullying in her life that she knew one kind from the other.
There were always exceptions. But typically, boys roughoused and got physical. Girls, by contrast, were mean . For all of Auriel’s threats, it was unlikely any of the three would actually try to hurt her. Rose liked to keep her hands clean. And indirect bullying was harder to prove, and thus less likely to tarnish her own reputation as an honor student.
They could spread whatever rumors and gossip about her that they wanted. Melissa was beyond caring. But she knew that the longer she was in their presence alone, the more likely something stupid or unexpected would happen.
“I’m just passing through,” the blonde teen replied demurely, doing her best to avoid eye contact. “I’m headed towards the labs. That’s all.”
“The lab her daddy got her,” Auriel stage-whispered. Sylvia giggled.
“Towards the labs, hm?” Rose said, nodding along in agreement with Melissa, like neither of the other girls were there. “That makes sense.”
There was a pause, and Melissa took it for dismissal. She turned to begin to walk away, but before she could take a single step, there was an audible ‘thunk.’ Melissa lost her balance, and fell over.
Embedded in the ground, right where she had been about to put her foot, was a shard of pink crystal.
“Except it doesn’t,” Rose continued, her tone conversational, as though she had never stopped speaking. “It doesn’t make any sense at all.”
The crystal user was smiling, but there was a spark of something dreadful in her eyes. A glint of malicious glee that Melissa knew meant trouble.
Rose tilted her head. “Passing through? From where? This is a dead end.” She looked around them with a slightly exaggerated turn of her head, as though she was trying to locate some hidden road she had never noticed before. “There’s nothing around here but some highways and fields.”
She turned back to face Melissa, and that was when the blonde realized her mistake.
She had given Rose an opening. Something to grab on to and exploit.
“You’re lying,” Rose declared, and her two groupies gasped in mock shock. “You’re a liar, Shield, just like I always tell people. And I think you need to come clean. So since I’m feeling generous today, how about you tell me what you were really doing here, and I’ll let you go?”
Auriel and Sylvia tittered, and Melissa slowly pushed herself up from the grass field until she was standing again, her palms dirty.
She was in trouble, now.
I-Academy was a merit-based institution, but it was also cutthroat in it’s own way. Students were often given challenges and expected to invent their way out of them, especially students in the science and engineering tracks like Melissa was.
There was no better example of this than the fact that you needed to already be established, with good grades and a reputation, before you could ‘earn’ the right to a private workspace.
How do you earn that right, when you have to work in a place where people can steal or sabotage your work? That was for you to figure out. One way or another, you needed to produce results. That was I-Academy.
Building her own little shack out in the woods wasn’t against the rules, per se. But it wasn’t within the rules, either. Like so much of I-Academy, it existed in an open-ended grey zone of ‘solve your own problems.’
Rose had caught Melissa in a lie. And she couldn’t tell the truth. Because if she did, she knew her old lab would be razed to the ground by this time tomorrow.
There was no rule saying she couldn’t have it. And there was no rule saying other students couldn’t destroy it, either.
It shouldn’t matter, she thought, as her lips twisted slightly. She had a private lab now. She didn’t need that shed, or anything inside of it. The worst that would happen is Rose slandering her some more, which she didn’t care about, and maybe a reprimand from the student council, who were a bunch of mediocre busybodies that could all go for a long walk off the short side of the island.
Sacrificing a tool shed in the woods full of dirty books to get some bullies to back off was a fair trade. It made sense. It was a logical move.
… it was a logical move, to throw her dignity under the bus. To sacrifice something she cared about. The birthplace of her two greatest accomplishments in life.
But that was my first, and last setback.
“What I do in my free time isn’t any of your business,” Melissa shot back, teeth gritted.
They had already killed her dreams. If they wanted her dignity too, there would be a fight.
And by the dark gleam in Rose’s verdant eyes, a fight was exactly what they were going to give her.
The girl faked an offended gasp, raising her hand to her mouth. “Oh my!” she said breathily. “Here you are, in a place you have no reason to be. Lying and refusing to answer questions, even when we’ve been nothing but polite and kind. Acting belligerent. Hostile, even.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I’d expect nothing less, from something like you.”
The two other girls leered, the words ‘ nepotism ’ and ‘ why is she even here ’ whispered between them. Then Rose’s face became beatific. “But, fortunately, I have an idea. In the spirit of the academy, even! After all, aren’t self-improvement and physical fitness values we all share?”
The angelic mask cracked, and the edge of a cruel leer shone through. “Run a hundred laps around this field, right now, and I’ll vouch for your sincerity and good intentions.”
As she said the words, a semicircle of oblong pink crystals formed over Rose’s head. Their blunt tips oriented ominously towards Melissa.
“What? You- you can’t be serious-”
There was a whistle of air as a crystal zoomed past her head and missed her right ear by inches. She flinched violently backwards, and almost fell over again.
“You heard me, nil” Rose said calmly. “A hundred laps. You’d better start now, if you want to have a chance of finishing before midnight.”
A cold stone fell into the pit of Melissa’s stomach. Of course. She should have seen this coming.
Rose was too smart by half to leave physical evidence of bullying. There was no chance of her being pushed into a toilet or having her face ground into the dirt.
But public humiliation, especially self-inflicted? That was right up Rose’s alley.
Sure enough, out of the corner of her eye, she saw that Sylvia had already fished out her phone and begun recording. Auriel muttered something to Sylvia that Melissa only half-heard, but it sounded like a wager on if she would soil herself. Sylvia smirked, and in a slightly louder voice, replied ‘only if her cow tit* don’t get in the way and trip her first.’
“Well?” Rose asked, her smile growing wider. “Hurry up and run. Exercise is what this facility is for, after all. This will help you build character. Or do you need more motivation?”
It was a universal truth, that scavengers and predators would always be drawn to the scent of blood.
But-
“Hey!”
If there was another.
Another universal truth.
“Yeah, you!”
Surely it was this.
“W-What do you think you’re d-doing!?”
There was no world and no circ*mstances, no place or time. Where Midoriya Izuku would not step in the way if he saw someone who looked like they needed help.
The green-haired teen stood there, panting slightly from the run. His hair mussed, sweat on his face. His clothes crumpled.
Melissa’s heart fell through her stomach and down to her feet.
This was the worst possible outcome! Izuku had no idea what he was messing with. Rose wasn’t playing around! She would absolutely go after both of them, numbers wouldn’t protect them from anything!
Melissa Shield thought this, because she did not yet understand Midoriya Izuku.
Auriel and Sylvia were whispering to each other, their words actually muffled now that they genuinely didn’t want to be overheard. Rose tilted her head to the side, a calculating look in her eyes.
And then the mask flowed into place, and she smiled. “Who are you? I don’t believe I’ve seen you around here before. Are you a new transfer student?”
Izuku’s fingers curled into fists, and he took a slow breath to steady himself. “I mean it,” he said, ignoring Rose’s questions. “Leave her alone. Go away, right now.”
Rose’s lips twitched slightly in amusem*nt, and Melissa felt cold. This was a mistake. Izuku was making a huge mistake, and he didn’t realize it. This wasn’t a situation you could just escalate , not when it was Rose Espinosa involved. Rose had ins with the student council and the faculty, you couldn’t push things to a higher level than she could!
“Izuku, I don’t think-”
“Oh, is that your name?” Rose asked triumphantly. “Izuku? So you are an exchange student then. Or a guest.”
She smiled that angelic smile of hers again, looking every inch the highschool princess. “Listen, I don’t know what you’ve been told. Some people,” she said, rolling her eyes “have a gross misunderstanding of the bylaws of this school. We all help each other, out here. Sparring, competitions, rivalries. It builds character, yes? It’s very sweet of you, standing up for what you think is right. You’re a real cutie, I like your eyes. But I promise you, we’re all dear friends here, and-”
“I know what I saw,” Izuku replied, cutting her off. “This is your last chance to walk away. I mean it.”
“Izuku, don’t, her quirk-”
“Wow Shield, did you suck him off or something?” Auriel leered. Sylvia cackled at the crude comment before adding her own.
“Was that what was happening in the bushes over there? How unsightly! Is that who this is, you weirdo? Your boyfriend ?”
The edges of Rose’s kind smile twitched slightly in dark humor. Melissa flushed beet red, choking with shame.
Under most circ*mstances, Izuku would also have caved under such harsh words.
But in a phenomenon that Bakugo and the others at Aldera Primary were already familiar with, Izuku was a different person when somebody else’s safety was on the line.
“I’m the person telling you to knock it off and leave her alone, that’s who I am!”
The shame and the stuttering, the fear and the uncertainty, they never left. But in moments like these, they were overshadowed by something else. A thing that rose up seemingly out of nowhere, to tower over that doubt and self-depreciation like a lighthouse emerging from the fog.
It was what kept getting him beaten after school. It was what drove him to meddle in fights that didn’t involve him. Trying to stop them even when delinquents were involved and quirks started coming out. It was the thing that put a nameless terror in Bakugo’s heart, that ominous sensation that drove the explosive blonde to believe in impending death.
It was the instinct of self-sacrifice. An inextinguishable spark of bravery in the face of injustice.
Bakugo wouldn’t have bullied Izuku, had Izuku not so aggressively risen back up, over and over again, when people were in danger. Had Izuku not been so thoroughly and utterly incapable of minding his own business.
If the explosive blonde could have been there, could have intervened… to someone like Bakugo, what happened next was entirely predictable.
But Melissa Shield didn’t know what Bakugo knew.
And neither did Rose Otronombre Espinosa.
The pink haired girl chuckled throatily, a more refined and dignified sound than the waspish giggles of her hangers-on. Melissa wouldn’t be surprised if she had practiced it in a mirror. “My dear, I think we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot. This is an exercise field. There’s a gymnasium and quirkatorium under our feet. People come here to exercise and push themselves, usually with friends. Goading each other on, isn’t that normal? It happens all the time.”
One of the pink crystals in her orbiting halo shot away in an arc before whizzing past Melissa, causing her to flinch slightly.
“Melissa here was just about to run some laps while we cheered her on. Would you care to join us?”
Izuku’s pupils dilated, his hands shaking.
Rose closed her eyes and smiled beatifically.
That was a fatal mistake.
Because when she finished her smile, and started to open her eyes again, all she saw was a battered set of knuckles, frozen in an instant of time half a foot from her face.
She saw a pair of knuckles, and the sun setting behind a black shadow that seemed to have blazing emerald eyes.
Her nose flattened with the fleshy crunch of breaking cartilage as Izuku followed his mentor’s advice and punched, not at her face, but at a point some distance beyond it.
And had anyone with intimate knowledge or familiarity of All Might been there, they would have recognized the precise spacing between planted feet, the twist at the hip, the boxing form that put your whole back behind the blow and swung your fist like a weighted stone at the end of a whip.
It was the ghost of the punch that had splattered the Sludge Villain. Copied at a glance, and imitated in desperation.
And like the villain it had defeated before, it sent Rose Espinosa flying. Wholly unprepared and caught completely off guard, the blow of a boy who trained by hauling car engines on a beach lifted her off the ground and sent her sprawling backwards, skidding across the manicured field.
And that’s when Melissa Shield saw it.
Streaking through the sky like a comet, bright and fast over the peak of her frozen, bloodsoaked mountain.
You’d miss it if you blinked, but there was no mistaking it for what it was.
For a single blazing moment, Melissa Shield saw what Toshinori Yagi had. The reason why her uncle had chosen him.
The hero Izuku already was. The hero he might one day become. Two visions, superimposed over each other in a flicker of imagination. Shining off of his back like the corona of a shooting star as he stood in front of her.
And it was in that moment she knew, with a warm and bitter feeling in her heart, why it had to be him.
‘People are not born equal. That’s the hard truth I learned at the age of four. But that was my first, and last, setback.’
She had spent all of her life wishing for something, anything, to happen. To change.
Izuku hadn’t. Izuku wasn’t wishing, or praying. With eyes squinted and teeth gritted, he answered his own prayers. He was the wish, he brought the change.
He had never given up. Never. He swore that quirklessness would be the only setback he ever had, and he meant it.
And she-
And she.
‘You did,’ the voice whispered. ‘You did give up. You gave up a long, long time ago.’
There was a moment of absolute, total silence on the field. Rose’s own green eyes stared up at the clouds, glassy and uncomprehending. Fresh, bright red blood dripped onto the grass, turning dots and splotches of the vibrant lawn a rusty brown.
Melissa Shield was crying. In sorrow, horror, or laughter, she wasn’t sure. But tears were streaming down her face.
They were screwed. Absolutely and totally screwed. But whatever came next, it was worth it.
It had been worth it, to see this.
“You-” Rose whispered hoarsely, still looking poleaxed.
“You broke her nose,” Melissa hiccupped breathlessly.
Auriel and Sylvia were gaping like a pair of preppy fish.
As it turned out, there was something else that was broken as well.
“You-” Rose repeated, her shoulders starting to shake.
The facade.
“YOU-” the girl screamed, clenching her fists around clumps of dirt and grass. There was a tinkling crash, and a ring of pink spikes as tall as Rose’s own leaping height burst out of the ground around her like crystal thorns.
Melissa grabbed Izuku’s arm and began tugging him. “We have to go! We need to run, right now!”
And then-
“Oh wow, what’s going on out here? A spar?”
For the second time in as many minutes, time stopped.
Melissa Shield knew that voice. And even though he had only seen it once in a picture, Midoriya Izuku knew that face.
A bit taller than the typical teen their age, with a curvy, compact build. Her bubblegum pink hair matched her eyes, and looked vivid compared to the pale and washed-out rose pink of Espinosa’s spiral locks.
She wore exercise spats, a tank top, and a bright smile.
It was Hannah Boss. Seiiko Boss’s daughter.
“Two on three is a bit unfair though, don’t you think?” the girl said, rolling her neck with an audible crack. She held one arm out straight, wrapped the other around it, and twisted at the waist, clearly stretching. “Mind if I jump in? A 3v3 sounds pretty fun! I’m already warmed up and everything!”
Rose Espinosa was part of the elite of I-Academy. She was number one not just in her year of the Hero Course, but their year in general. She held the top spot. But that was by averages. All factors calculated, then final scores totaled.
Melissa Shield, who was not in the Hero education track, beat her out in grades.
And Hannah Boss, who was in the advanced track of the Hero Course, beat her out in pure combat potential.
Rose was a monster in a fight. She could do things with her quirk that defied the laws of physics, and made many of her peers seethe with envy.
But she had never beaten Hannah, not even once. And everybody knew it.
The magic girl may be a monster, but the plastic tomboy was a demon.
And nothing proved that more than this moment, where Rose Espinosa, on the brink of an absolutely cataclysmic meltdown, stopped.
Three versus three?
That was a joke.
Hannah Boss could have fought all five of them at once.
Hannah Boss could give a firing squad a head start and win, with her bare hands.
A lip quivered. An eyelid twitched. And with impressive speed, the facade painfully wrenched itself back together.
“We weren’t sparring, just talking,” Rose said amicably, climbing to her feet and cupping a hand over the lower half of her face.
Hannah Boss was a muscleheaded bimbo tomboy with a one-track mind that resided mostly in a garage somewhere. But she wasn’t blind .
“Talking, huh? About your broken nose, I’m guessing?” Hannah asked. Rose twitched, and her two lackeys swallowed heavily. “I must have missed something pretty exciting. Care to share?”
“Nothing happened,” Auriel said a little too quickly, her heavy golden hair rippling.
Hannah tilted her head, eyes clearly on the fresh blood slowly seeping from between Rose’s cupped fingers. “Doesn’t look like nothing.”
“We were talking about exercising together, and there were some issues with demonstrating quirks,” Rose said, doing her best to look dignified with a bloody hand over her nose and a rapidly forming black eye the size of an apple. “No harm no foul, these sorts of things happen. Not everyone has great control over their powers, after all. That’s what these facilities are for. We were just leaving.”
Melissa Shield pursed her lips. Rose was trying to flip this back on them, making it look like she was the dignified victim of a quirk accident! That bitch. But it was good in a way, Izuku was just a guest, and-
“I don’t have a quirk,” Izuku said, raising his voice loud enough to make sure it was overheard. “I didn’t hit you with a quirk. I hit you with my fist.”
Rose Espinosa froze, while Auriel and Sylvia’s heads snapped to look at him incredulously. Hannah co*cked an eyebrow in interest.
Melissa nearly choked on her own spit.
‘What are you doing!’ she mentally screamed. ‘Just let her walk away!’
Had Bakugo been there, Izuku’s provocation would have earned him at least one punch to the side of the head, possibly more.
Several different emotions filtered across Rose’s face in rapid succession. A spark of blinding, incandescent rage flickered in her eyes, before being immediately smothered.
“I see,” she said smoothly. “Ladies, we’re leaving.”
And with that, one of I-Island’s top hero students turned her back to them, and began walking down the concrete stairs to the gym and transport nexus below. Carrying an injury the school doctor could heal… and a grudge.
“She’s not going to just let this go,” Melissa whispered, mostly to herself. Rose was a social predator with the muscle to back up her schemes if push came to shove. Someone ignoring her pleasantries and co*cking her clean across the face was new and frightening territory. The blonde teen was keenly aware that today wouldn’t be forgotten by the Spanish girl.
“Wow, that was pretty cool!” Hannah Boss said loudly, without a hint of shame. She exuberantly slapped Izuku on the back, almost causing the young man to fall over. “Did you really punch her in the face? Not many people can do that! You must be strong!”
“Y-yeah?” Izuku answered hesitantly.
“Wanna fight?” Hannah asked, her eyes sparkling. “Wait! What’s your name?”
“N-no!”
“No?” Hannah asked, quirking her head to the side. “That’s a weird name, but kind of cute! We should hang out and fight some time, No!”
“It’s not that I’m ungrateful or anything,” Melissa said. “But, um. Why are you here, Hannah?”
The pink-haired plastic girl looked at the blonde blankly before suddenly snapping her fingers. “Oh, yeah! That’s right! I forgot! I was looking for you, actually!”
Melissa blinked. “Um, for me? What for?”
“The password to your garage got changed!” Hannah exclaimed, sounding personally offended that any password would ever even think of changing. “I was trying to get in to check out your new car project, but got locked out!”
She clasped her hands together in a pleading gesture. “Please, pretty please? What’s the new code? You can tell me, can’t you?”
“Y-Yeah,” Melissa stuttered, steadying herself. “It’s volcanic sequoia 862. All lower case, no spaces.”
“Eight six two, of course!” Hannah exclaimed. “I’m so dumb. Thanks Melissa!”
And with a huge grin and a pair of finger guns aimed in their general direction, Hannah Boss disappeared. Leaving Izuku and Melissa alone on an empty pitch.
There was a moment of silence, and the ocean wind rustled manicured grass in soft waves.
“I’m sorry,” Izuku said.
Melissa felt like she was actually choking. “S-sorry? Sorry for what!?”
Izuku, looking rumpled and distressed, stared at her. “You’re crying.”
Melissa blinked uncomprehendingly, and then swiped at her own face, staring uncomprehendingly at the moisture that came away on her fingers.
She giggled, sounding slightly hysterical. “It’s- it’s been a pretty rough twenty minutes.”
Izuku swallowed. “Yeah,” he said softly. “Yeah.”
They stood like that for a moment.
“... we should probably call someone.”
“Yes,” Melissa agreed immediately. “We- we really should.”
The sky was a dark orange, with streaks of red bleeding away into purple twilight. The first few stars were beginning to appear. The sun had turned crimson, half of it vanished beyond the hazy mirage of the horizon.
Melissa sat on the top of a metal tower that stood next to the stadium. It housed broadcasting equipment, used to record and transmit professional footage of any events that were held on the field. It was a long way up, but there was a ladder with a fall cage, and the catwalk at the top had strong, sturdy rails.
She sat on the metal floor, her feet dangling over the edge. Her arms were crossed and resting on the lowest bar of the safety railing, and her legs swung back and forth slowly.
Most would consider it a strange place to be. She doubted any of her classmates or acquaintances would ever dream of looking for her up here, but then, that was the point.
As a quirkless, she had experience locating the last places anyone would think to find her. She hadn’t used that particular skill in years, but it was like riding a bicycle. You never really forgot.
Some trauma, she supposed, stays with you.
They had called her father and uncle to meet them there not too long ago, and agreed to stay put. It-
It probably wasn’t fair to Izuku, for her to give him the slip like this and climb up a tower. It wasn’t right.
But she just needed to be alone. To process things. To… to deal with it.
‘I would want to know, if I were you.’
Izuku. He had the same dream. They shared that.
She wondered if she should feel angry. Some part of her felt like she should, but-
Could I have done that, if it were me? Could I have faced him, and confessed that All Might had chosen me?
She closed her eyes and sighed, the cool ocean air blowing through her hair.
Maybe? She didn’t know. Probably not.
She should feel angry, or sad, or bitter, but somehow-
Somehow she didn’t really feel anything.
She just felt empty.
She had asked him, to his face, why. He knew what she had meant. They both knew.
Why you? Why not me?
She had dared to ask him why, and then.
And then he-
It happened from one moment to the next, almost between breaths. Rose tilted her head back slightly and smiled, closing her eyes.
And Izuku covered the distance in a blink, teeth gritted, fist co*cked back.
She had asked him why she hadn’t been chosen. And then he punched Rose in the face. He broke Rose Espinosa’s nose.
The blonde teen let out a short, hysterical giggle.
And then she heard a shift of cloth, like the rustling of clothes. A faint cough..
“How long have you been up there?” she asked without looking.
A voice above the teenage girl snorted. “How long? Kiddo, this place is free use for quirks. I beat you up here. Thought you could use the peace and quiet, though. I know how calming high places can be.”
There was a metallic thump as the old man swung down from his perch, landing on the catwalk next to her. Sorahiko Torino grunted as he sat down by her side, crossing his arms and letting his legs dangle off the edge like hers.
There was a moment of companionable silence.
“So how much did he tell you?”
Melissa laughed humorlessly. “How- how much more could there be?”
“Live as long as I have, and you’ll learn not to tempt fate with questions like that,” the retired hero shot back. “But it sounds like he told you the general gist, huh? One For All, a transferable quirk. Did he mention Toshi used to be quirkless?”
There was a pause, and then Melissa slowly nodded. She could feel unshed tears swimming behind her eyes.
Strange, she didn’t feel sad. Why was she crying?
“You’re upset,” the old man observed. “You realize now that you could have gotten a quirk. All Might’s quirk, even. I imagine some part of you even feels like it should have been yours. That you were the obvious choice. You resent being passed over.”
Torino’s voice was calm and even, no hint of accusation or condemnation. Even so, Melissa flinched like she’d been struck.
“N-no!” she choked out, her hands going to cover her mouth. “No, n-no, I- I wouldn’t, it’s not-,” her voice trailed off.
Torino sat there quietly as the girl cried, his walking stick lying across his lap.
“I-” Melissa sobbed. “I just-”
She turned away, her shoulder’s shaking.
“Yes,” she whispered.
The old man looked at her for a long moment, saying nothing, before slowly nodding. “Good.”
Melissa felt like she was choking on air. Good? How could her wishing she could take the power away from Izuku be good?
Torino looked at her for a long moment. “You two kids. You’re the same damn way, the both of you.”
“What- what do you mean?”
“You and Nana, Toshinori and him. For once, I’d like to teach a real bastard. I think it might be easier.”
Melissa swallowed, and shook her head slightly. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand-”
“Don’t be sorry for-” Torino said, before cutting himself off and sighing. “Don’t be sorry. It’s not the sort of thing I can explain, at least not in a way that will mean anything to you now. Just know that you’re not a bad person for feeling envy. Everyone does.”
“How- how can you believe that?” Melissa replied. “I… I asked him to his face why him! That’s- that’s a terrible thing to say!”
Torino slowly closed his eyes, and settled both of his hands around the walking stick lying crossways in his lap.
“I’m an awful hero, you know?” he said after a moment. Melissa blinked in shock, unprepared for the change in topic. But Torino kept talking.
“When I was your age, I thought I was so smart. I had it all figured out. I didn’t give a rat’s ass about superheroes or saving people. I had a quirk, and I wanted to use it. Not even just for it’s own sake, either. I wanted to train it, practice with it. Become strong enough that all of the people who made fun of my weak quirk would lose to me. I wanted to beat them up, to make them pay for mocking me. So I scammed the system, got in, and passed my tests. I thought I was the smartest bastard in the room when they finally gave me the paperwork to finalize my hero license. Because I had done it; I had won. That little square of plastic meant that I could use my quirk in public as much as I wanted, and nobody could stop me. I’d do the absolute bare minimum to keep my license, I’d train my quirk. And then one day the punks who used to push me around would wind up with a bunch of broken bones in an alley somewhere. I retire after a few years, and collect a fat check from the government for my community service while I drink beer and watch television. I had it all planned out.”
The sea wind blew softly, ruffling invisible fingers through both of their hair. Her’s, long and straight, honey-blonde. His, spiky short and grey with age.
“I was an asshole,” Torino summarized. “Honestly, I’m kind of shocked nobody ever punched my face concave. I probably deserved it.”
Melissa opened her mouth, then closed it again. She swallowed. She hadn’t been expecting to hear something like this at all, certainly not from the man who was the closest thing she had to a grandfather.
“What… what changed?”
“Shimura Nana,” Torino replied, his own voice taking on a wistful note that Melissa had never heard from him before. “There’s an old joke, how in stories the main character running away from the call to heroism never works, because the call knows where you live. Nana was the call that knew where I lived. She befriended me against my will in school, dragged me into a partnership with her. She laughed at me when I couldn’t come up with a good hero name. Forced herself into my business at every opportunity with that goofy, stupid smile on her face. And before I knew it, I was working with her agency. Taking being a hero seriously just because she was, too. She stole me away, I got lost in her flow. I was gone before I ever realized I had been taken.”
There was a pause. “She was the person who carried One For All before Toshi had it. The Seventh wielder.”
“I heard that part,” Melissa confessed. “Izuku mentioned it.”
Torino chuckled. “Yeah, he’s thorough like that.”
There was another pause. “So, after hearing all that, do you think I’m a bad person, Melissa?”
“No!” Melissa said suddenly, with more force behind her words than she intended. She blushed. “I mean, n-no. No, grandpa. I don’t-, it doesn’t make you a bad person.”
“Really?” the old man asked, quirking one of his bushy eyebrows. “Are you sure? Think real careful now.”
Melissa swallowed. “No, grandpa. You’re not a bad person. I mean it.”
The elderly hero looked at his niece for a long while, his eyes searching hers for something she didn’t understand.
“Good,” Torino said simply, before reaching out and booping the teen under her chin with his thumb. “Chin up, then. Because if I’m not a bad person, then you certainly aren’t.”
Melissa flushed and looked down at her knees.
“It’s funny, really,” Torino continued, looking out across the horizon towards the sea. “I never imagined that scrawny vigilante Nana fished out of a dumpster would one day become the kind of person who could deter crime by reputation alone. These days, the mere mention of All Might’s name stops criminals in their tracks. The shadow he casts is taller than mountains.”
He rolled his head against his shoulders. “Nobody saw that coming. Not even him, I think. But you know what?”
“... what?”
“Even back then, I knew he would become a hero. I knew it the first time I laid eyes on him. Quirk or no quirk.”
Melissa was silent.
“I know it doesn’t mean much, hearing that this late. From me, of all people. But even back then, I’m pretty sure somebody could have been a hero without a quirk. It would have been an uphill battle the whole way, the government probably wouldn’t have liked it much. You’d need a grappling hook, a gun, and a whole lotta guts. Probably a good set of kneepads, too. But it could have been done.”
Torino snorted, half to himself. “Honestly, the way people go on about meta-strength and quirk escalation, you’d think quirks is all we have. But with the way technology is going, I’m pretty sure we could get an orangutan with a jetpack a hero license, these days.”
Melissa’s careful frown couldn’t completely smother the giggle. Torino cut eyes to the side at her.
“That- that would never work,” Melissa said, trying to compose herself. “You couldn’t train it, and it wouldn’t be able to fill out any paperwork.”
Torino huffed. “Kid, I don’t think half the heroes I knew were literate OR housebroken. They didn’t fill out their own paperwork, either. The monkey would probably smell better.”
This time, she couldn’t hold it in at all, laughing into her hands. Torino grinned as her spirits lifted.
“I imagine you probably have an important question for Toshinori right about now, huh?”
Melissa breathed out, letting the laughter fade away. She felt a little better now.
“...no,” she said after a moment. “Not really.”
Gran raised an eyebrow. That was unexpected.
“Is that so? You don’t want to ask him why he picked Midoriya, and not you?”
Melissa closed her eyes.
People are not born equal. That was the hard truth I learned at the age of four. But that was my first, and last, setback.
And I’m sorry that you’ve decided to become a support tech. Because I think you would have made an amazing hero!
Melissa closed her eyes, and in the darkness, she saw the memory of that comet passing over her lonely mountain in the sky. A blazing corona that granted it’s own wishes. She saw the light of that inextinguishable ember reflecting off of the ice in her heart, blazing as a pair of knuckles flew into Rose’s face, heedless of the consequences.
“No,” she said simply, her eyes still closed. “I know why he picked Izuku.”
Your body moved before you even had a chance to think, didn’t it! Almost on it’s own? Young man, you CAN be a hero!
Torino raised an eyebrow. “Oh? Do you now? You really think so?”
It’s the gutted skeleton of something that could have made a quirkless into a superhero. Back when I still believed in fairy tales.
It was my everything. But then I grew up. I moved on. I accepted reality.
“Yes,” Melissa said simply.
She knew why.
Torino huffed in resignation, before putting a hand on one of his knees and pushing himself to his feet, his walking stick held firmly in the other.
“Well, that’s all good for you, kiddo, but I want to ask him the question, even if you don’t. I’m interested in hearing his excuse.”
“That’s fine,” Melissa said, her voice soft as she stared out over the twilit horizon. “You can go on ahead and ask him. I already know what answer he’ll give, so I’ll just stay here.”
“You’re that confident of it, huh?” Torino said, co*cking his head to the side.
“I am,” Melissa replied.
“Well, I’m still going to ask him, and I think you should be there. It’s about time we both climbed down.”
“I’m fine up here, grandpa,” Melissa said, turning back to look at the setting sun. “I’ll be around in a bit, when I work up the courage to go down the ladder.”
“Scared of heights then, huh?” Torino said.
She shrugged. “I’ll be down eventually.”
“You know,” Torino said conversationally, “it’s times like these that I have to remind myself that you’re not actually as familiar with me as most of the other people in my life.”
Melissa frowned slightly. “What are you talking about, grandpa? I’m plenty familiar with yo-”
And then in one smooth movement, Torino booted her off the edge, pushing her head-first through the upper and lower rails.
She didn’t have time to scream or yell. The equipment tower was tall, but suddenly it didn’t feel nearly tall enough as she hurtled towards the ground, and then-
And then she turned, curving forwards, the momentum pulling her stomach down into her feet as something grabbed her by the waist and began flying forwards , killing her fall by swinging it in another direction.
They skimmed so close to the grass she thought she could have reached out and touched it, before swooping wide and tilting upwards slightly. She could feel the upward turn eat the rest of the momentum the fall had created, and she landed delicately on the first floor of the stands on the opposite side of the field, just a short staircase away from the grass.
Gran Torino let go of his niece’s waist and stepped back. “Ha! Still got it.”
Melissa’s heart thundered in her chest, as the adrenaline finally caught up with current events.
“What- what was that!? ” she asked, clutching the railing of the front-row seats.
“That was your father asking me to come get you,” the retired pro replied blithely. “I’m happy that you’re in your rebellious phase, those are the best parts of life. But ‘no’ wasn’t really an option on the table, kid. We are having this conversation, you are going to be there for it, and then we are eating dinner at some Italian place Toshinori found. Hopefully with a one ape minimum this time, though I’m not holding my breath.”
A giggle escaped Melissa’s lips, though whether it was humor or hysteria, she wasn’t quite sure. “That was entirely unnecessary!”
Torino snorted. “Was it, now? I’m not getting any younger. Something you’ll learn about old people, we’re very impatient. Probably on account of not having a whole lot of time left. My putting-up-with-bullsh*t punch card ran out of holes decades ago.”
He cast a side-eye at his niece. “Besides, I did you a favor.”
Melissa sputtered. “A-A favor! How was that a favor! ”
But Torino was nonplussed.
“Do you really expect me to believe that you never had a plan for how to do it? That you never came up with a single thing that could have let you become a hero?”
Melissa flinched like she had been burned. The spinning image of a suit of armor loomed large in her mind, along with a certain locked box in her lab.
“A genius inventor on The Island Of Genius Inventors, who dreamed of being a hero all her life. You really expect me to believe you never tried cooking up something that could make it happen? Rocket boots, wings, a flying car. Your father had one of those, when he was around your age. Hell, we just had a conversation about grappling hooks and jetpacks. I stand by that monkey being licensable.”
Melissa started slightly. “I mean-”
The elderly man turned a skeptical eye to her, and she suddenly felt exposed. “Kiddo, I’m old. Not senile. I remember what teenagers are like. I taught them for twenty years. It was only a matter of time before you strapped on some gizmo and tried jumping off of something very tall that your father would never approve of.”
He waved a hand dismissively. “This way, you won’t freeze up. You’ve already had your first fall. The first is always the hardest.”
“It was still highly inappropriate!”
Torino shrugged unrepentantly. “Your father asked me to help you. I helped.”
“That can’t possibly be what he meant!”
The retired hero gave her a wild, monkeylike grin, his eyes glinting. “Then I guess he should have been more specific about what I help you with, huh?”
Laughter burst out of her in a rush of air. Slowly, she let go of the railing on the stands and walked over towards the stairs. Torino, who was standing on the tier above hers so he could look her in the eyes, moved to follow her.
“What was your first fall like, then?”
“I ran off the edge of a skyscraper on a dare. I damn near died. I told you kid, I remember what teens are like. I was an especially stupid one. Now come on, let’s go. I want to shake Toshi down before I forget the things I want to yell at him about.”
It could have been the adrenaline. Or maybe a little bit of Izuku was rubbing off on her. Because the words sprang unbidden from her lips, almost like the question she knew Izuku tended to ask others.
“Earlier, you said that you knew, grandpa. You said that from the moment you saw Uncle Might, that you knew he would be a hero.”
“... that’s right,” the old man replied. He had slowed to a stop, but kept his back facing her.
“What did you see when you saw me?”
She was expecting him to pause for a moment, to consider the words and make a careful response. But his answer was immediate, without hesitation.
“I saw someone who could do whatever she wanted with her life. Who could succeed at whatever she put her mind to. We say that to all the kids, but you were one of the few where it was true.”
Melissa sighed. “Being able to be anything you want as long as you put your mind to it is just a fairy tale, grandpa.”
“It can’t be, because I would be a horrible fairy godparent. I drink way too much cheap vodka.”
He glanced down at his walking stick briefly. “Also, my wand is defective. Pretty sure it came that way.”
“Grandpa, be serious.”
“I am,” he replied. His back was still to her, his voice level and even. “Your life is your choice, kiddo. Whatever future you want, you could have.”
“Could’ve,” she repeated aloud.
Torino huffed through his nose. “I know teenagers can be overdramatic, but that’s just ridiculous. You’re practically a baby still. A zygote. You have your whole life ahead of you.”
His walking stick clicked against concrete as he began stepping down the stairs to the grassy field. “It may feel to you like you’ve lost something, but take it from me: the only reason anything in your life would be a ‘could have’ is because you want it that way. All you have to do is change your mind.”
“... it’s not that simple, grandpa,” Melissa whispered to herself.
His walking stick thumped on the grass as the old hero, still strong enough to lift another person and fly with them through the air, trundled along across a field of dreams.
“Isn’t it?” he called back.
This wasn’t the most awkward meeting Torino had ever seen in his hero career, but it certainly did make him miss the armored vehicle they had spent most of their afternoon in.
The car didn’t smell like chlorine, for one. It also had places to sit that weren’t toilets.
There weren’t many places on I-Island where someone could have a conversation without being overheard by some kind of security tech. According to David, certain private labs and the bathrooms were pretty much it.
So here they were, in one of the unisex bathrooms under the concrete stands. David had fiddled a bit with his phone, and conjured a holographic ticker bar across the entrance saying ‘Out Of Order.’ And Torino had fished an orange cone out of a nearby closet and sat it down on the floor for good measure.
The bathroom wasn’t exactly small, but wasn’t intended to host a conference, either. David leaned up against the far wall near the door, while the imposing form of All Might in casual clothes was standing on the opposite side next to the sinks. Izuku and Melissa stood a self-conscious distance apart from each other, and Torino himself had decided to sit on top of the steel trashcan.
Eh. He had attended worse hero debriefings.
“So,” the old man said, breaking the silence. “We all know why we’re here. Melissa, apparently, isn’t really interested in hearing the answer. Apparently she already knows.”
The blonde girl flushed slightly, but continued to studiously look anywhere except somebody else’s face.
“But even if she’s not concerned about this, I am,” Torino explained. “So please, explain it to me , Toshi. Why did you not choose Melissa to inherit One For All?”
The towering, musclebound blonde swallowed slightly.
He knew what Gran was doing. He wasn’t entirely sure this was a good idea, but he knew what the old man was doing.
Torino wanted the kids to hear this, and was using himself as the proxy.
“I suppose, before we get started, I should show you something,” the hero said, glancing at his niece. “I was badly injured in a fight six years ago. It limits how long I can spend as a hero each day. Did young Midoriya mention that?”
“Sort of?” Melissa said, looking confused. “He said you were injured, and had another form, but…”
“Then we’ll start with that,” Toshinori said, and suddenly a burst of steam engulfed his body.
Melissa yelped and jumped back, putting one hand on a sink to steady herself.
And when the vapor rapidly cleared away, she couldn’t help but gasp.
It was… it was her uncle. She could tell by the eyes, and from his height.
But he wasn’t-
He wasn’t even half of what he had been a moment ago.
It was like all the bulk on him had simply vanished. His plain white shirt, which had been nearly skintight a moment before, hung off his shoulders like a pair of drapes. His pants sagged, his belt unable to keep them from sliding partway down. His neck looked unnaturally long now, without the usual muscles around it, and his face was skull-like, seemingly little more than skin pulled over bone. His bright blonde hair, so similar to hers, had dulled, the two long iconic fronds that were part of his natural cow lick crimping and wilting over.
It was still her uncle. But instead of the laughing giant that was so famous, he looked like he was in the last stages of a losing fight with terminal cancer.
She had heard the words Izuku had spoken, back in her first lab. But this was so far beyond anything her imagination had conjured. She was at a loss.
“What… what is this? U-Uncle?”
“As I said, I was injured very badly six years ago, in a fight that was never publicized. I nearly died.”
“You did die,” Torino interjected. “For about eight minutes, if I recall.”
The skeletal blond smiled slightly. “Right, of course. Anyway, I was hurt, and the fight where it happened was covered up. To understand anything, we’ll need to start from the beginning. Because that fight, and what happened afterwards, were decades in the making.”
Toshinori sighed and hiked his pants up, before leaning back against the wall.
“Why I didn’t choose you, Melissa… there’s two answers to that question. The first requires some background information.” He cut his exhaustion-stained eyes to the green haired teen. “I was going to tell you this fairly soon, young Midoriya, but since we’re all here and this has happened, I suppose we’ll just do this now.”
The skeletal blonde slowly breathed out. “One For All isn’t a natural quirk. It was accidentally created by a man who was born at the beginning of the Dawn of Quirks. His full name has been lost to time, but we know his surname was Shigaraki. He had a quirk that allowed him to give and take quirks from others, and he could use the quirks he was holding like they were his own. He eventually became known by the same name as his quirk: All For One.”
Izuku looked enthralled. “It was a stockpile ability? It could stockpile other quirks ? You, you’re not joking, are you? You’re serious. That’s… that’s unheard of!”
“True,” David Shield said absently. “To the best of our knowledge, there has never been another quirk like it, not in all the centuries since. A small favor to be thankful for.”
“Papa? Did you know about this beforehand?”
“Not the One For All part!” the scientist said hurriedly, raising his hands defensively. “I’ve known about All For One for a long time. A lot of high level people have at least some basic knowledge of him, because he posed such a threat to society. There were real fears that a mastermind villain with the ability to give and take quirks could conquer our entire civilization without even having to lift a finger. Opposing him was a coordinated effort.”
“What’s the connection to the Three Musketeers?” Izuku asked curiously.
It was Torino who replied.
“There isn’t one, or at least, not at first. All For One means the sum of all things gathered under one authority. Shigaraki named his own quirk after his ambition, or at least, that’s what I was told. Naming the other quirk One For All in opposition to it came later.”
Torino frowned slightly. “Personally, I doubt he started out as a monster. The Dawn was rough times. It was probably a quirk for a favor, a favor for a quirk. Plus lots of people back then didn’t want their abilities at all. I imagine he picked up a bunch of stuff for free. People would have paid him to get rid of their powers. But however it started out, by the time the Dawn was over, he had become a demon and cemented his name as All For One. And that’s all that really matters.”
“Power corrupts,” David Shield murmured.
“Anyway,” Toshinori said, trying to get back on track. “Shigaraki had a younger brother, who was born sickly and weak. Shigaraki cared greatly for his brother, but the feelings weren’t really mutual. He stole a strength stockpile from somewhere and forced it onto his brother, in the hopes that it would make him strong enough to live a normal life. But then something unexpected happened.”
The two teens looked fascinated. Torino counted that as a favor, since this could be going a lot worse. Toshinori kept talking.
“It turns out, the younger brother did have a quirk. But it was so subtle that it wasn’t noticed. The younger Shigaraki’s quirk was simply the ability to give itself away. That’s all.”
“Like an invisible dot you could transfer,” Melissa said under her breath, looking contemplative. “A mark or brand, passing itself on.”
“There’s a reason I called it the magical high-five,” Torino grunted.
“They fused, didn’t they?” Izuku asked, connecting the dots. “The strength stockpile fused together with the passing-on quirk. That’s how One For All was created.”
Toshinori nodded. “That is correct, young Midoriya. From the story I was told, a fight broke out between the two brothers, and the older Shigaraki tried to take the strength stockpile back to subdue his sibling. But he quickly found that he could not, he was unable to affect his brother’s quirk with his own. And so the younger brother escaped.”
Izuku was slowly shaking his head. “That… that’s so strange. I have so many questions. Could he not steal it because they were technically brother powers? Was familial immunity involved? Or was it because he can’t manipulate fused quirks?”
“He could certainly take back the Frankenstein quirks he created,” David supplied, his hands in the pockets of his lab coat. “There is a long and disturbing history of human experimentation that followed in the wake of wherever All For One went. The effort of covering it up is older than I am.”
“That just raises even more questions,” Izuku hissed, mostly to himself.
“I wish I had answers to give you, young man, but unfortunately I do not,” Toshinori lamented. “Even those of us who are the closest to the situation only have second and third-hand accounts of what happened. The details you’re looking for… All For One himself is probably the only person who could have known them.”
“Let’s try and keep this on track,” Torino interjected. “Shigaraki created the quirk by accident with his own. His brother ran off with it. And this is relevant to my grandniece, why?”
The emaciated blonde sighed. “Right. Well. The long story made short is, my first interaction with All For One was him appearing out of nowhere and killing my own mentor, Shimura Nana.”
Melissa gasped in shock. Izuku also looked horrified.
“She seemed to sense what was about to happen, though how, I don’t know,” Toshinori continued. “She passed the quirk on to me, and then told Gran to take me and run. To not look back. The next thing I remember was waking up in a bed to news reports of how half of Minato Ward had been flattened.”
“That- that makes so much sense,” Izuku whispered, biting one of his fingers. His eyes were distant. “I think I know that exact incident, there are so many conspiracy theories about it on the internet. Was- was that the Minato Ward Disaster of ‘23?”
“Yes,” Toshinori replied simply. “The Japanese government covered the whole thing up, because All For One was involved. I don’t know how they think he was stopped, though. To my knowledge, no one ever knew how strong Nana actually was. She wasn’t interested in glory or rankings, so she didn’t really show off her power.”
“What did they say happened?” Melissa asked curiously.
“Gas leak.” “Gas leak.” Both Izuku and Torino replied at the same time. The elderly man spoke it with a grunt, and the greenette with a nervous laugh.
The teenage boy elaborated. “It was such an obvious lie, I don’t think anyone ever believed it, then or now. That’s why there are so many conspiracy theories about it. Somebody with a dragon quirk went on a rampage, terrorists blew up the ward after making secret threats to the government. A relative of a top hero snapped and started attacking people. Everyone knows they were hiding something, but nobody could ever figure out what.”
“And the best part is, now that you know, you can never tell anyone about it!” Torino said cheerfully.
Izuku groaned.
“Keep going, Toshi,” the old man said.
“Right, well. The first reason why I didn’t consider you for inheriting One For All, Melissa, is because until six years ago, I wasn’t considering anyone. As long as All For One lived, I couldn’t bring myself to pass it on.”
Toshinori’s eyes grew distant. “I don’t have too many memories of my parents, but I do have some. After they both died, I was bounced from orphanage to orphanage. Nobody cared about the quirkless teenager. Everyone knew I wasn’t getting adopted. The system was just going through the motions, waiting for me to die or get aged out. I know it was stupid, in hindsight. But my time with Nana made me feel like my mother was alive, like she was back with me. And after All For One killed Nana… It was like losing her all over again. I just couldn’t let it go.”
Melissa’s hands clenched tightly. David Shield blinked rapidly before turning his face away.
“You were an idiot,” Torino interjected. “All For One wasn’t human, he was a force of nature. Deliberately picking a fight with him was probably the single stupidest thing you’ve ever done. You went to war with the closest thing this sorry society has to a god.”
There was a moment of silence in the restroom. “I’m glad you did, though. I just want you to know that Nana would have never approved.”
Toshinori laughed hoarsely while rubbing his neck. “I figured.”
“He’s still a person, though,” Izuku said. “Even if he’s old and crazy, there’s still a reason behind his actions. Like, why would he go after Ms. Shimura? That-”
“He hunted all the bearers of his brother’s quirk as a matter of course, young Midoriya,” Toshinori replied. “That’s part of the reason why most of them kept a low profile. I was the first to flaunt my possession of One For All so openly.”
Izuku opened his mouth to say more, but didn’t get a chance to speak.
“He was a psycho,” Torino interjected in a cold tone. “There’s no point in worrying yourself to death about what his motivations were, kid. He was old enough to make me look like a baby, and completely off his nut to boot. He stopped considering himself human before anyone in this room was born, and it would be a mistake to try and understand him in human terms.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense!” Izuku insisted, still frowning. “Everyone has a reason for doing what they do! He may be using completely different logic than we are, like a drug addict or someone who is mentally ill, but it still has to make sense to him! There has to be something to it. There just has to be!”
Torino sighed. “I know it doesn’t make sense, kid, but Shigaraki was never playing the same game you and I are. He thought he was the demon king of planet earth, he bragged about it more than once. It doesn’t get much more megalomaniacal than that. His outfit should’ve included a rainbow wig and a clown nose. You’re barking up the wrong tree if you want a sensible reason for anything he did. There isn’t one. He imagined himself as a capricious and omnipotent god, and he acted like it.”
“So you weren’t considering anyone to be your successor out of fear of what All For One would do?” David asked. “You did say they were being hunted.”
“... that is technically true, but a bit dishonest,” Toshinori said. “If you wanted to spin it as me trying to keep the next person safe, you could. But the truth was, I chose All For One’s death as my calling. As long as he lived, I was never going to pass on One For All.”
“He swore it on Nana’s grave and everything,” Torino said, sounding annoyed. “She would have kicked your ass six ways to Sunday if she had known. She told you to stop being so reckless!”
“I know,” the skeletal blonde said simply.
Torino sighed and closed his eyes. “She made me swear to keep you safe, she begged me. It was the last thing she ever said. And the first thing you do after getting out of the hospital is throwing yourself straight into the fire. You damn gorilla.”
“I loved her,” Toshinori said. There were tears in Melissa’s eyes. David turned his face away.
“... I know, kid. I did too.”
There was a long moment of silence in the restroom.
It was Izuku who broke it.
“When… when we first met, and I saw this form by accident, you said that you got hurt in a fight six years ago. And just now, you also said you weren’t looking for a successor until six years ago. So does that mean…?”
Toshinori smiled. It was an ugly expression, with how skeletal his face was now, but there was something deeply genuine about it. “As sharp as ever, young Midoriya. That’s right. That fight I mentioned, it was my final clash with All For One. All throughout my career, I had been hounding him. Building up my resources and connections, chasing down leads behind the scenes. Chipping away at his empire piece by piece. It all came to a head six years ago. The fight was over almost as soon as it started. We traded blows, you see.”
“Moronic,” Torino interjected. “You let him hit you just so you could hit him, you damn ape.”
“I had to be sure I got him!”
“It was basically suicide!” Torino spat. Then he scoffed before waving a hand in dismissal. “Whatever, we’ve been over this. Finish your story.”
“We traded blows. He hit me in the lower part of my stomach, a little off to the side. My punch took him square in the sternum. His blow nearly tore me in half. Mine disintegrated everything he had above the waist. Just like that, it was over.”
“I- I don’t understand,” Melissa said, still looking somewhat flabbergasted at the emaciated form of her uncle. “Did- did he hit you with a quirk, to do this to you? What happened?”
Toshinori laughed. It was a hoarse, rough sound. Suddenly, the laughter cut off into a cough, and he barely pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket in time to catch a dribble of blood coming out of his mouth.
“Sorry, sorry!” he said, holding up a hand to his niece. “I’m not- I’m fine! It’s just, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that you would think that.”
He turned to look at David Shield, an expression on his face like he was asking for permission.
The scientist pursed his lips slightly before nodding.
Carefully, Toshinori packed the handkerchief away, before reaching down to the hem of his shirt. It had been tucked in when they entered the bathroom, but the very concept of ‘tucked in’ had ceased to exist when he deflated.
“It wasn’t a quirk that did this to me,” he explained, pulling the hem of his shirt up to expose his stomach. “It was all the surgeries to save my life.”
The blood drained out of Melissa’s face, leaving her as pale as a ghost. She stared in horrified fascination at the discolored bullseye, the shockwave of scar tissue and gruesome stitch lines that rippled outwards from her uncle’s side. Izuku had seen it already, and he still flinched.
It was something you would see as part of a halloween costume, or an elaborate cosplay. It was cheap special effects for some C-List grindhouse flick about zombies and human experiments.
It wasn’t a thing that belonged on a real, living human being. The damage was so enormous and terrible that it almost looked fake.
But it had veins and hair, and a hundred other tiny details. It moved when he breathed.
It was real.
Toshinori dropped the hem of his shirt, allowing it to pool back against his slumped belt buckle.
“Getting me back on my feet took months of intensive surgeries, rehab, and care from the best medical professionals on the planet. They’re the only reason I can even walk right now. But all those surgeries, they took a lot out of me. This is what I look like today. I can only be a hero for about three hours a day, now.”
“You need to retire,” David said, an admonishing tone in his voice.
“I’m trying!” Toshinori insisted, hands spread wide. “That is literally what I am trying to do!”
“Try harder!” Torino snapped, waving his walking stick, and Toshinori ducked instinctively, even though he was well out of the old man’s reach.
Both teens choked off their laughter at the sight.
“That’s one,” David Shield said. “That’s one reason why you said you weren’t considering Melissa. What’s the other?”
The strongest man in the world looked over at his niece. Reluctantly, she met his gaze.
“The other reason…” he said, hesitating slightly. “The other reason is that I already offered her One For All. And she turned me down.”
There was a moment of stunned silence in the bathroom. Of all the myriad answers the assembled people had been expecting, that wasn’t one any of them had seen coming.
“What? But I- no you didn’t!” Melissa said, stuttering.
But Toshinori did not falter. Instead, a sad look entered his eyes. “I did,” he corrected softly. “In fact, you were one of the first people I thought of. Do you remember your birthday five years ago?”
“Of course!” Melissa said, still sounding confused and slightly angry. “You came! You always send me something, you always call me too, but you actually came that time!”
“I did,” Toshinori said, nodding. “It was a great party. I’m glad I could spend the time with you. But do you remember what happened after the party? Do you remember our talk?”
Slowly, the anger began to seep out of Melissa, but the confusion remained. “Um. Kind of? You- you asked me about my plans for the future, I think. We talked about some things.”
“We did,” Toshinori said. “More specifically, we talked about careers, and what your hopes and dreams for the future were. Do you remember what I asked you?”
Melissa was blinking rapidly, a sinking feeling in her stomach. Slowly, she shook her head. “N-No. No, I don’t.”
“I asked you if you still had any interest in being a superhero. If it was a path you were still considering. You said no, because it just wasn’t feasible, all things considered.” He paused slightly. “I think we both knew what you meant by ‘all things.’”
“Y-Yeah,” Melissa stuttered, a faint blush of shame on her cheeks.
“And then I asked you, what if there was a way for me to make that problem go away? What if there was something I could do that would allow you to be a hero, no matter what? Would you still be interested then? If I could open that door for you, would you want to walk through it?”
Melissa swallowed hard, her memories of that birthday party slowly coming back to her. She had forgotten about it, it had slipped her mind entirely, but it was starting to return. She remembered the strange line of questioning her uncle had asked her after that party. Almost like he was offering her a career in heroics if she wanted it.
“Do you remember what you said to me?”
Slowly, Melissa clenched her fists. It didn’t stop them from shaking.
“I said no,” she whispered. “I said- I said I was happy with where I was, and that I didn’t think I would make a very good hero anyway. I said that heroics just wasn’t for me.”
Toshinori nodded, a sad look in his eyes. “That’s what I remember you saying, too.”
“But!” Izuku said, unable to stop himself. “But that’s not fair! You didn’t- how could she have known you were offering her a quirk!? That isn’t-”
But it was Melissa herself who cut him off.
“IT IS!” she said, her shout sounding much louder than it was in the enclosed bathroom. “It is fair!”
“How is that fair?” Izuku demanded.
“Because you were wrong!”
Izuku blinked. “I… I was wrong?”
Melissa had a hand over her mouth, and her eyes were closed. “In my lab, you told me that the one thing all heroes have in common, is that they have nothing in common. That none of them are alike in any way. And that’s wrong. There- there is something that all heroes have.”
Torino frowned, his lips pressing into a thin line. David Shield slowly closed his eyes. Toshinori let out a long, quiet breath.
“It’s resolve,” Melissa said. “All heroes have resolve. I’ve seen- I can’t count the number of times I’ve watched heroes get brought here, from all over the world, with terrible injuries. Looking for help, or medicine, or to be rehabilitated. It’s- it’s almost like sitting on a stool in front of a triage tent in a war. There’s new people coming in for help every single day.”
She swallowed. “You can’t be a part of heroics half-heartedly. Almost everyone who gets crippled or killed, it happened because they weren’t taking their job seriously. They weren’t giving it their all. You can’t live here without knowing that. Even a blind person would see it.”
“The leading cause of death among heroes is neglectful conduct,” Torino murmured.
“That’s why it was fair,” Melissa said. Unshed tears were swimming in her eyes, but Izuku was the one crying. “Even if he didn’t come out and say it, Uncle Might was…”
Her voice trailed off, and she sniffed. “If I was real hero material, I would have said yes. I would have been willing to seize the opportunity, no matter what. I lacked that resolve.”
“... that’s still not fair,” Izuku said. “You- you didn’t have all the information, you couldn’t have known-”
Your body moved before you could think, yes? Almost on it’s own!
A pair of knuckles soaring through the air, smashing straight into Rose’s face.
People are not born equal. That’s the hard truth I learned at the age of four. But that was my first, and last, setback.
Melissa smiled, and wiped away the tears in the corners of her eyes.
“Since when does a hero know all the information before they act?” she asked simply, smiling fondly at the other teen.
Since when did you, Izuku?
Melissa Shield had not remembered that birthday conversation, when she told Gran Torino she didn’t need to hear her uncle’s reason. But recalling it now simply reinforced what she had known was true from the moment the other teen had thrown himself forwards to banish a bully she could do nothing about.
She had been right, on top of the radio tower. She had given up, and he had not. Uncle Might had seen the difference, and made his choice. It was the right choice, she was even more sure of it now.
But the other teen was shaking his head. Slowly at first, then firmly, with more resolve.
“...no. No. That isn’t right,” He said. “You should take it. It belongs to you.”
BANG
Torino slammed the tip of his walking stick into the tiled floor with such force that for a wild moment, David Shield thought someone had been shot. Everyone jumped.
“All of you. Stop right there,” Torino said. His voice was calm and even, but there was a sense of authority in it that had been missing a moment before. The old hero wasn’t asking.
Torino turned impassive brown eyes on both of the teens. His face was neutral, without a hint of anger or threat, but both of them stood up straighter. Toshinori fumbled with his handkerchief in the background, having coughed up an impressive spray of blood at the sudden noise.
“That,” he said, pointing a gnarled finger at Izuku, “is exactly what I’ve been waiting for.”
Izuku swallowed, hard. Melissa was blinking rapidly, not understanding.
Those bright brown eyes turned to the blonde girl. She felt like she was being x-rayed, like she had been called down to the principal’s office.
“Your father has known about All For One for decades,” the wizened pro said, his voice still even and strong. “However, he learned about One For All this morning. Toshinori-,” he cut his eyes across to the other blonde in the room, and the skeletal man flinched in pure reflex, “decided to share the secret with your father. He wished to do so while it was still his secret, and his choice with whom to share it. I was present for the tail end of that discussion, and during it, your father said something very true.”
The elderly man Melissa had grown up calling grandpa was shorter than her now, and sitting on a trashcan to boot. But somehow, with both of his hands on the top of his walking stick, he managed to loom over all of them. Even papa and uncle.
She had only seen this a few times before, when a fight had broken out that involved a top pro hero.
The really experienced superheroes had a weight to them, behind their gaze. A gravity they could exert. A forceful presence.
Somehow, Grandpa Torino made that trashcan feel like a throne. Or a judge’s booth.
“Your father said that the world was full of quirkless teenagers who probably dreamed of being a hero. And any one of them could be said to ‘deserve’ One For All. But in the end, there is only one quirk to be given out. There is only one dream that can be fulfilled. All the rest will be disappointed, that is simply the nature of the issue. And he was right.”
Torino narrowed his eyes. “And that is exactly why, starting now, the two of you are the only ones permitted to speak. And we will not be leaving this bathroom until both of you agree on who should get the quirk.”
And then Torino Sorahiko closed his eyes and leaned his head back until it touched the tiled wall, looking for all the world like he was asleep.
“You, you can’t be serious,” Melissa said. “Papa?”
Her father’s eyebrows knitted together slightly. Then, out of the blue, he nodded. Without preamble, he slipped his hands into the pockets of his white labcoat, and took half a step to the side, blocking the door with his body.
“A-All Might?” Izuku stuttered.
But the skeletal blonde slowly crossed his arms and stood up straighter, not saying a word.
Plans change. And they’re teenagers. I always assume none of this will work out anyway. And as I said, I’ll take full responsibility for this anyway if it goes south. I’ve played heel before.
“Papa, you’re joking. Uncle? Grandpa? This- this isn’t real, you can’t be serious.”
But none of the men moved, or said a word.
“It has to be you,” Izuku said. “It makes so much more sense for it to be you than me.”
Melissa whirled around to face the other teen, incredulity on her face. “What? What are you talking about? How on earth does it make more sense for it to be me!?”
“It’s a singularity quirk,” Izuku said, like that explained everything. Perhaps, to him, it did.
“What? What does that mean?”
“All Might was the 8th. Whoever wields it next will be the 9th. Nine consecutive generations of quirks interbreeding, Dr. Garaki called it the Quirk Singularity. It means the quirk is going to be so powerful and complex, it may not be possible to control it anymore. You should take it, because, well. Just look around you.”
Izuku gestured idly with one hand, like they were on a viewing platform overlooking the island, and not inside a stadium’s restroom. “You live here! On I-Island! Where else should the first singularity quirk exist, if not here? There’s nowhere in the world where anyone would have a better chance of understanding the power!”
“Is that true?” Melissa demanded. Her father quirked an eyebrow at her, and said nothing.
“It is!” Izuku insisted.
But Melissa wasn’t having it.
“No! First of all, even if that research is a given, it’s all still guesswork, isn’t it? I don’t know who this- this Dr. Garaki even is! But all he could have had were guesses, because we don’t know what’s going to happen with quirks down the line!”
“But-!”
“But even if he was right!” Melissa said, talking over Izuku. “Even if that is what’s going to happen. Why on earth would it be better here? What you’re talking about- it’s unprecedented! A- A singularity quirk, whatever that is, it’s never been seen before! No one is going to have any better chance of understanding it than anyone else. That’s like saying ancient Egypt would have a better chance of building a space ship than Rome! Neither knows what they’re doing! This is an out-of-context problem! By the sound of it, it was always going to be!”
“Of course it is, but-”
“No!” Melissa insisted, her own voice growing louder. “No, I’m not going to let you spin this back on me! Uncle Might can’t talk-” she said, throwing an accusatory glare at the man, “but he doesn’t have to, because I already know what he would say! If I asked him who should One For All go to, he would say it should go to the person with the biggest heart! He would say it isn’t a power meant for the fastest or the strongest, it shouldn’t go to the cleverest, or whoever has a great quirk to combine with it. It should go to someone with the spirit of a true hero! And that’s you!”
“N-No it-”
“Yes it is!” Melissa insisted. “You ran out into the street without even thinking, to save some kid from your school! Every other hero there was paralyzed by the situation, but not you! Grandpa… Grandpa Torino was right. He was right, about what he said that first night at dinner. You were the only hero on the scene that day.”
“Any- anybody would have done what I did,” Izuku stuttered. “You would have!”
“No I wouldn’t have,” Melissa said evenly. “Half the time when I dream about having a quirk, it’s about using it to beat up the people at my school, not to save them.”
Gran Torino’s lips twitched in a smirk, even though his eyes remained closed.
“Everyone wants to be a hero when they’re a kid,” Melissa said. “That’s normal. Society idolizes heroes. They’re heroes. But just because someone dreams of being a hero, doesn’t mean they can or even should become one. People dream lots of things. And most of those dreams die.”
“But that’s not true!” Izuku insisted, raising his voice. “It just isn’t! Your dreams are yours, they belong to you! They’re worth something, just for that! They’re worth chasing!”
“Why?” Melissa threw back, her own voice rising in volume to match his. “Why would my dreams be any more important or valuable than anyone else’s? I’m not special!”
“Yes you are!”
“Not at the expense of other people!” Melissa shouted, Rose’s face bright and clear in her mind.
She flushed suddenly, realizing how loud she had gotten. Her voice had sounded thunderous in the small bathroom.
“Maybe my dreams were worth something, for their own sake,” she conceded after a moment. “But the fact that I believed they had no value, and still believe it, is why it shouldn’t be me.”
Izuku slowly shook his head. He wasn’t having it. His eyes were swimming with tears, but he refused to back down when he saw injustice.
“Y-You don’t get to blame yourself for something the world forced on you,” he said, his voice stuttering slightly in a hiccup. “They always tell you that you can’t do it. Even when they mean well, they say it.”
Kid… I probably shouldn’t say this sort of thing. But are you sure you don’t want to give up on your dream of being a hero and come here full time?
The only truthful response I could give to such a question… is why would you want to be one?
Melissa flinched.
“The- the world told you, that your dreams were worthless. They- they did it to me, too. But that’s n-not your fault. It’s not your fault they told you that, and it’s not your fault if you listen! Don’t you see? Your v-value, it exists outside of whatever they say or t-think. It always has.”
His voice dropped in volume, almost to a whisper. “Even if you sometimes start to believe them, that still doesn’t make it right. Your hopes and dreams are worth your own time.”
There was another moment of silence. Melissa dusted off the sides of her skirt self-consciously. “I was never going to be a hero, Izuku. I was a stupid little girl, and it was a stupid little girl’s dream. I gave up on it. I gave up on it a long time ago.”
Inside of his pockets, David Shield’s hands clenched so hard his knuckles turned white.
“It’s okay to be selfish,” Melissa said to Izuku. “It’s okay to want this.”
“You-” Izuku wheezed. “That’s my line. You deserve it so much more than me, you deserve to want it more. I’m just some kid who bothered All Might. You’re his niece! You’re a genius!”
“And you’re not?”
“No!” Izuku said, incredulity on every line of his face. “Melissa, you- what you’ve done with smart matter is impossible! When you patent what you’ve made, material science will jump forward by a hundred years!”
David’s eyebrows nearly met his hairline, and he turned to look at the back of his daughter’s head. She had invented what?
“It doesn’t matter what I’ve created,” she shot back. “What matters is that I gave up years ago, and you never did! Don’t you see that? That’s the resolve a hero needs, to never give up! You have it, I don’t!”
“But that’s not your fault! It was never your fault!”
“THAT DOESN’T MATTER!”
This time, her voice did thunder in the confines of the restroom. Her eyes were screwed shut, and her fists were clenched. “My fault, your fault, who deserves what, who did or didn’t have a worse life. It’s all trash! It doesn’t mean anything! Don’t you see that?”
She opened her eyes, and they were bright and pleading.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s my fault or not that I gave up. It doesn’t matter if you were bullied, or if I was. Every- every quirkless person has stories like this! I’m sure most of the worst heteromorphs do, too!” She waved a hand distractedly in Toshinori’s direction. “Uncle just told us about how his old orphanage was waiting for him to disappear or die!”
The skeletal blonde looked shocked that any part of what he had said was being dragged into this, and looked like he was about to say something, before glancing at the still form of old mentor and thinking twice.
Izuku’s jaw worked silently, opening and closing. “I- I know that, Melissa.”
“Do you?” She shot back. “It’s not a contest about who had a worse life-”
“I know that!”
“-and it’s not an argument about who deserves it more, either!” Melissa finished.
The green-haired teen blinked, and Melissa sighed, stepping forwards. She grabbed the young man’s wrists and held them. He looked up at her in shock.
“Papa was right, when he said that any quirkless in the world could ‘deserve’ One For All,” she said. Her voice had become soft and quiet, barely above a whisper.
Slowly, she tangled her fingers into his.
He was running. Ducking the heroes, twenty yards past the police line before he even realized he was moving.
“But that doesn’t change the fact that it should be you.”
Slowly, she pulled him into a chaste hug. He didn’t fight her.
“Were you lying?” Melissa whispered into his ear. “Were you lying, when you said it would be your last setback?”
“You wanted this,” Izuku said, his hands shaking slightly. His voice was pleading. Hers was calm.
“I did,” she admitted. “And maybe you’re right. Maybe a part of me still does. But you know what I want more?”
Izuku shook his head, and Melissa smiled. She wasn’t crying anymore.
“I don’t want to be your setback.”
This had gone on for long enough, in Toshinori’s opinion.
He had agreed with the idea of this confrontation in principle. He had even been happy to see the two teens be so frank with each other.
But this conversation, no, this argument. It had gone on long enough.
Toshinori felt uncomfortable, at the things the teens had revealed. As much as the situation had been engineered, he couldn’t help but feel that much of this should have been private, between the two of them. They were both injured in a profound way, and it hurt him to see them like that. He was certain it hurt David. They were also both likely to be sick with embarrassment later, when the two teens had time to reflect .
He also wasn’t sure how to feel about his own past being compared so directly to their own experiences, when he was very sure both of them had been discriminated against far more.
In Toshinori’s day, the quirkless were simply ignored. They were invisible people, walking along like ghosts in a world that had left them behind. He imagined both teens would have relished that, compared to the alternative he knew was true today.
Quite frankly, Toshinori believed either teen could become a great hero. He saw it in both of them. But his niece was right on the money, with her estimation of who he would say should inherit One For All’s legacy.
It should always go to the person with the most heroic heart. To someone of great spirit, who truly believed in helping others.
He just wished Melissa could see that in herself, too.
But she had made her own choice clear. And so Toshinori decided to act.
There was a part of him that would always be afraid of the wily old man. He knew better than most that going against Torino’s wishes carried consequences. But Toshinori felt like this was the right moment.
There was a hiss of steam as moisture condensed in the air, and a brief scent of ozone in the confined space, and then All Might was once again standing in Toshinori Yagi’s shoes.
“Young lady,” All Might said, stepping forwards from his spot on the wall. “Do you want to be a hero? Do you want my power?”
Melissa smiled, tracks of tear stains reflecting on either cheek. “No, uncle!”
The grinning, golden giant turned his eyes to the other teen. His voice was deep and strong. His presence was towering, it felt like he filled the bathroom on his own.
“Young man. Do you want to be a hero?”
Izuku scrubbed at his own eyes before swallowing.
“Y-Yes!”
The greatest superhero in the world smiled.
“I see. And, young man. Do you want my power?”
It’s okay to be selfish. It’s okay to want this.
“I-”
People are not born equal. That’s the hard truth I learned at the age of four. But…
Izuku’s hands were shaking. He clenched them.
Young man… you can be a hero!
“I-”
I don’t want to be your setback.
“YES!”
His eyes were screwed shut. He couldn’t look at the superhero he had idolized his whole life. He couldn’t look at any of them.
But he didn’t have to.
Because he was strong enough to say yes.
All Might planted both fists on his hips and laughed. The very sound of it seemed to lighten up the room.
“Ha ha! There’s the go-getter I remember! There’s the kid who ran out onto the street!”
Crying and tearful. Terrified and screaming. Knees knocking, hands shaking. But still he had run.
Gran was right, of course. Young Midoriya truly had been the only hero on the scene that day.
The giant man fell to one knee, and there on the bathroom floor, he swept both teens up together in a bone-crushing hug.
His kids were so strong.
He knew, one day, they would shine brighter than him.
And he couldn’t wait to see it.
‘ I wish you could see how much you deserve this, Izuku. How you’ve earned the right to claim this chance, by never giving up. I gave up, even Uncle Might gave up. But you never did. Your spirit was unbreakable. You will be an incredible hero.’
‘I wish you could accept how this should have been yours, Melissa. I wish you could see how smart you really are. And no matter what the world says, or teaches you to believe about yourself… you still could be an amazing hero. You always had that strength.’
‘I wish you could see what I see.’ ‘I wish you could see what I see.’
“You three go on ahead and get us a table,” Torino said, stopping on the sidewalk outside the restaurant. “I have something I need to say to Melissa.”
They were somewhere on the edge of one of the cities, outside of the dense urban sprawls that defined their hearts. Here, the infrastructure was more suburban, the buildings smaller and more quaint. The Italian restaurant his former disciple had picked was small and out-of-the-way, a brick box with metal fans in the corners of the ceiling and tables made out of plastic and chromed metal. Nestled between a convenience store and a gas station, and far enough away from the big cities that their lights were just dim neon glows on the edge of the night sky.
It was exactly the sort of place Toshinori preferred, at least when he was off the clock. That gorilla was a homebody at heart. Torino was sure that if it was up to him, the instant he wasn’t on patrol, he’d teleport to a motel room somewhere and watch Korean soaps under a blanket with a microwave dinner until he passed out and had to do it all again. Toshinori Yagi was a shade of grey away from being a total shut-in, and always had been.
The old man wanted to complain about it, but somehow All Might was the least weird and most put-together professional hero he knew. And that was saying something.
After 80 years on this earth, Gran Torino was of the opinion that getting your license should probably also come with a diagnosis of medical insanity. But nobody listened to him.
A small bell tingled as the glass door opened, and the other three members of their group vanished inside. The elderly pro was certain that some amount of limited pandemonium was about to break out, once they realized All Might was in the building asking for lasagna, but since he wasn’t in there with them, it wasn’t his problem.
There was going to be hell and a half to pay if Cathy managed to gatecrash them again, though. That she-ape could go through pizza like a woodchipper.
“Grandpa?” Melissa asked.
“There’s a couple of issues that have come up, that I need to address,” the old man said, folding both hands over the top of his walking stick.
Melissa’s eye’s widened in horrified recognition, and raised her hands. “L-Listen,” she said, “What happened with Espinosa, it was an accident! I mean, it wasn’t an accident- she’s a bully, but when Izuku punched her, it was my fault, and-!”
“Hold your horses there, kiddo. What is this we’re talking about? Who did the kid punch?”
Melissa slowly blinked. “Is- is this not about the broken nose?”
Torino co*cked an eyebrow. “Did somebody’s nose get broken?”
“N-NO!” Melissa said hurriedly. “Nobody got punched! Everything is fine!”
Gran Torino sighed before rolling his eyes.
“Kiddo, I just got through telling you a story about how I earned my hero license specifically to beat the bean paste out of some punks in my hometown. Why do you think I would care if the two of you were responsible for putting down a bully? Is this other person dead?”
“N-No! She’s fine, I’m sure, she’s just-”
“Then it’s fine,” Torino said. “Good job the both of you, congratulations. Violence is not an answer, it is a question, and when somebody else asks you first, you should always say yes.”
There was a beat. “Also don’t do it again, I guess. That’s probably what the school wants me to say.”
Melissa pursed her lips, torn between confusion and consternation. “Then what do we need to talk about?”
“First of all, I owe you an apology,” the old man said, drumming his fingers against the top of his walking stick.
Melissa blinked. “An apology? Grandpa, what-”
“This was my idea,” he said, interrupting her. “I’m the one who told Izuku to tell you. It was ultimately his decision, but I pushed him into it. So if you’re upset at anybody, be upset with me.”
Melissa swallowed. “... Grandpa, I’m not upset with either of you. I- I understand, why you wanted Izuku to tell me about-”
The old man’s walking stick flicked out at lighting speed, so fast her eyes couldn’t even follow it, and rapped her on the side of her custom leather boots. It wasn’t hard enough to hurt, but it stopped her mid-word.
“Wha-”
The old man jerked his head upwards and to the side. Melissa’s pale sea-blue eyes flicked to follow his gesture, and she stilled as she saw a security camera in the corner under the awning, it’s small red light steadily winking.
“...I understand why you wanted Izuku to come clean to me about it,” she said carefully. “But I’m not angry. I promise.”
Torino hummed. “I just wanted to be certain. This one is on me, and the blame is mine. I don’t believe in hiding things among allies, and I thought you should know ahead of time. Late bloomers are rare, especially this late. If we’re right, and he eventually does develop a quirk, I didn’t want it to ruin your friendship.”
He locked eyes with his adopted granddaughter, and she slowly nodded in understanding. “... I get it,” she said. “Was that all?”
“Almost,” Torino said, rolling his head to the side slightly. “I had a few questions I wanted to ask you.”
“Questions?” Melissa said, not having expected that. What could she have to say that her grandfather would possibly want to know?
“Was there a part of you that believed he would fail? Right up until he told you that he would be developing a quirk? What was your honest opinion of his chances, Melissa? Did you think he could do it?”
The girl opened her mouth. But it was her heart that spoke then, in a silent voice that was all the more condemning for being her own.
It’s the gutted skeleton of something that could have made a quirkless person into a hero, back when I believed in fairy tales. But I’ve repurposed it into something real now.
She closed her mouth and swallowed. Truth be told, she hadn’t put much thought into the problem at all. Until their heart-to-heart in her lab at school, she hadn’t even considered the implications of his training, but-
No. No, she hadn’t really thought- she hadn’t actually believed that he-
From the start, she had been thinking about how she could help him make it as a pro hero. How the two of them could do it together.
She hadn’t-
She had never really thought, not even for a moment, that he could somehow do it without her help. Without anyone’s help. That he could do it alone, with just a pair of fists and his own will.
That was impossible.
Melissa didn’t answer verbally. But she slowly shook her head.
Torino put one of his hands into his pocket before leaning forwards, keeping his other hand on his cane.
“The two of you have had rough lives, kiddo. I may have been ridiculed in my day for having a weak quirk, but it’s nothing like being quirkless today. I won’t pretend to fully understand.”
The old man leaned back. “But there’s one thing I know for sure, and it’s something I pushed Izuku into realizing a few weeks ago. It’s not the quirk that makes the hero. It’s the person.”
“Yeah, I know,” Melissa said softly, turning aside to look away. “You’ve said that before, many times.”
“I have,” the elderly pro confirmed, nodding his head. “I even recall you agreeing with me and saying it was great advice.”
He grinned slyly. “But did you ever truly understand what I meant?”
Melissa frowned, but said nothing. Torino stood up straighter. “Either way, I felt like you deserved to know the truth. I don’t like lies among friends and allies. It always leads to more trouble than it’s worth. Toshinori tested you on your birthday, in his own gorilla way. He was looking for a resolve in you. He was looking for something similar to what he himself had at that age.”
“I don’t,” Melissa said sadly, interrupting her adoptive grandfather. “I don’t have what Uncle was looking for.” Her aqua eyes flicked to the camera in the corner, then back to her grandfather. “In more ways than one, it would be a waste of his time to train me. He should focus on Izuku.”
The old man quirked an eyebrow. “Oh? And what makes you say that?”
It’s the gutted skeleton of something that could have made a quirkless person into a hero, back when I believed in fairy tales.
And I’m sorry that you’ve decided to become a support tech. Because I think you would have made an amazing hero!
“I mean that uncle Might was right. I gave up. I lacked the resolve to chase after what I wanted.”
Torino hummed slightly under his breath. Then crooked his finger slightly, and began walking away from the storefront and the camera. Melissa followed him dutifully. They crossed the two-lane highway, and ended up standing in the middle of a large square field. Some distance away, the adjacent field was filled with gently waving fronds of golden wheat, but the one they were standing in was just stubble, having already been cut.
“We don’t know if this quirk is going to work out or not, you know,” Torino said. “One For All has grown stronger and weirder with each passing generation that’s held it. It used to just be a strength stockpile. A magical hi-five. Slap my hand, I tell you you’re worthy, and now you’ve got the power. Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive. Able to jump tall buildings in a single bound. The whole spiel.”
“So Izuku was right, then? About what singularity quirks are.”
Torino shrugged noncommittally. “As you yourself said, it’s all speculation. He’s read the latest guesses from the big eggheads upstairs. Which should probably have surprised me less, in retrospect. Society isn’t kind to people who don’t fit it’s idea of what a superhuman should be, so the two of you seeking refuge in your hobbies makes a lot of sense.”
Torino leaned forwards on his walking stick. “The truth is, it’s not so simple anymore. One For All has shown all the signs of being an 8th generation quirk. It’s becoming unstable. Dangerous. I’ve watched Toshinori parry lightning bolts with his bare hands. I’ve seen him set himself on fire, the same way a flame user would. Hell, I watched him heal a broken arm just by flexing. He can hear people calling for help from kilometers away. All five of his senses have become downright uncanny, but only when he wants or needs them to be. And that’s not even getting into how, when he really pushes and powers up, the world seems to distort and change around him. I’ve watched billboard advertisem*nts adopt his face when he appears on the scene, only to change back when he leaves.”
The old man narrowed his eyes. “That’s not normal. That shouldn’t be happening. But it is. One For All is not what it used to be. Like all late generation quirks, it has become complex. Uncharitably, it could be called downright freakish.”
Melissa swallowed nervously. But Torino kept talking.
“The 9th generation is the singularity. That is what all the scientists and eggheads say. Which means as weird and strange as the quirk is now, it’s going to be even weirder when Toshinori passes it on. In fact, I’m not entirely certain it will even be usable. It could be a dodo of a power, a dud. Something so monstrously strong and excessively complicated that it can’t ever reasonably be used. Realistically, a lot of quirks will probably end up that way, eventually most superpowers will become a liability. There’s no particular reason to suppose One For All would be any different. It’s not special.”
He folded his hands over. “Tell me, kiddo. Why do you think I’m here?”
Melissa blinked at the sudden question. It took her a moment to compose herself enough to answer.
“To- to train Izuku? To help him become a hero?”
Torino tilted his head to the side in casual acknowledgment. “Sure, in general terms, but I’m talking specifics. Yes, I’m here to help him become a hero. But why though?”
Melissa wracked her brain. “Because, um… because you think he’s worthy?”
“You asking me or telling me?”
Melissa paused, and then her resolve firmed. “I’m telling you. Because you think he’s worthy.”
Torino hummed for a moment before nodding. “Eh, close enough.”
He leaned forward on his cane. “I’m here because I don’t think it’s a waste of my time. Which you could say is because I found him worthy if you wanted, sure. But I’m not a teacher anymore, I’m not being paid. I wouldn’t bother teaching somebody for free unless I thought there was a point to it.”
“So you’re here, because it’s not a waste of your time.” Melissa said slowly, like she was counting the words out as she spoke them.
“Yes,” Torino said, his gaze even and calm. “And as I’ve just told you, there’s a real chance that One for All will be a cruddy quirk. It may not work at all. So what does that mean to you?”
The teenager frowned. “It means that you’re taking a gamble? That he’ll need to train extra hard to control the quirk?”
Torino tilted his head back, looking up at the neon-tinged night sky above them. “So I’m telling you that One For All may end up being useless, but I’m still training the kid to be a superhero. That I don’t consider it a waste of my time. And your takeaway here is that I’m taking a risk, and that he’ll need to work harder to control a useless quirk? That’s your answer?”
There was a moment of awkward silence, where the teen stood there in confusion, saying nothing.
Torino hummed under his breath, contemplating the stars.
“Ye-yes?”
Torino sighed.
“Still too early, huh?”
“Too- too early for what?”
The elderly man began walking back towards the restaurant, his knobbly walking stick thumping against the dirt of the field.
“Some riddles only mean something if you figure out the solution for yourself, kiddo. Being told the answer ruins it. Consider figuring it out a long-term homework assignment from me.”
They crossed the small parking lot, and he pulled the door open, revealing the predictable pandemonium of All Might ordering an Italian dinner in the middle of nowhere.
At least Cathy wasn’t here. Yet.
“C’mon, let’s go get some dinner. Lifting you was heavy work, and I’m starving.”
“GRANDPA! You’re the one who kicked me off!”
You’ve got your whole life ahead of you, zygote. You’re still too young for regrets. I look forward to the day you can tell me, with your own voice, why training a kid with a useless quirk how to be a hero isn’t a waste of my time.
Midoriya Hisashi was traveling in an elevator.
It didn’t look like an elevator to the casual observer. There were no clear doors on any of the four sides. There was no indicator of what, if any, floor the elevator was on. Even the controls were just a black, empty panel on the wall, without any buttons or markings. The floor was hatch-patterned rubber. The ceiling was a single fluorescent square emitting sterile white light from corner to corner. And the walls were steel polished to a mirror shine. There was not a single speck of dust or a crumb of dirt to be seen.
For all intents and purposes, the businessman was sealed in a mirrored box. Traveling down, down, down.
Hisashi was unperturbed. He didn’t care about his surroundings at all. Because he was in the middle of a phone call.
“How did they do?” he asked.
“They both performed admirably, Director” the voice on the other end of the line said, rolling his ‘r’s in a distinctly Spanish accent. “Far better than I thought they would, I must admit. When you first asked me to put them through a kill simulation, I questioned the decision. But I think I see now why you wanted it done.”
“Give me details,” Hisashi insisted. “I’m curious about the specifics.”
The voice on the other end hummed contemplatively. “Well, there are three kill sims our current setup is prepared to run. As you requested, I ran them through set 2, the Abandonment scenario. You left the intensity at my discretion, so I dialed it down from the standard 6 to a 3. I knew they were going to die, so I didn’t want to traumatize them.”
Hisashi nodded, and the voice continued. “As expected, they died. The scenario was quite rigged. From the start, combat resolution was impossible, even with a full fireteam, and the Dragon antagonist of Abandonment is quite aggressive. What is truly impressive is how they conducted themselves. I understand that your son has only received training equivalent to that of rookie law enforcement? Ah, sorry, how do you say, a beat cop? Likewise, to the best of my knowledge, Ms. Shield has never been trained in any sort of combat. Yet in spite of that, they both kept their heads under pressure. In fact, they technically won the scenario.”
Hisashi’s eyes widened. It was the first genuine shock he’d felt on his visit to I-Island. “They won? It’s a kill scenario.”
“Yes, yes, of course. They did die. But you can thank your son for the upset. Quite the intelligent young man. The objective was to escape with the black box of the facility they had been deployed to. In this case, I wove the narrative as a space station. They made it all the way to the exit, and then right before the Dragon encounter that killed them, your son hid the data stick inside one of their robotic fireteam members. Given the nature of the scenario, and their proximity to the exit, they technically succeeded in the parameters of the mission, as the logical followup team sent to investigate would find the primary objective immediately, at the same airlock that would be broadcasting the computer-controlled soldier’s distress beacon.”
Hisashi’s shock was slowly replaced with warmth. His lips curled into a small smile. “That’s my boy.”
“He was thinking two steps ahead until the very end. A rare trait,” the voice on the other end demurred. “Their loadouts were also quite logically selected. Ms. Shield went with a ‘when all you have is a hammer’ strategy, and employed it to great effect. Your son, by contrast, chose to play a more tactical and supportive role, bringing extra tools and trading out weight for speed. I feel I learned a lot about both of their personalities.”
There was a pause on the other end. “I also feel I should mention, they succeeded in killing the Dragon. Had the specifics of Abandonment not explicitly granted the Dragon a second life, they would have possibly cleared with no deaths.”
Hisashi’s eyes narrowed in curiosity. “I was under the impression that the Abandonment Dragon was not supposed to be defeatable with any man-portable arms. The point is to run away.”
“That is correct,” the man on the other end of the line said. “Which is why I was just as surprised as you when your son used the environment to kill it instead. The explosion was quite impressive. I had honestly intended for them to die right then and there. Instead, his quick thinking shut down an otherwise unbeatable foe, and bought them another twenty minutes of life. Had the scenario not been rigged from the start, they would have won.”
Hisashi smiled before closing his eyes. “That’s good to know. I’m glad.”
“Did you want me to put either of them down on my list?” the voice asked. “After what I’ve seen, I believe they are both more than deserving of further observation.”
“No,” Hisashi replied. “That won’t be necessary. Neither Melissa Shield nor Izuku Midoriya need to be listed as a Darling, though I can understand why you might have assumed that was what I wanted, given your position as Caretaker.”
There was laughter on the other end of the phone. “Of course, of course. If that is what you wish. They have both clearly caught your eye already, Director, and it is your approval that matters in the end, not my lists.”
“My son didn’t give you a hard time, did he?”
“No! No, of course not. He was quite the joy. We could have spent hours talking about quirks.”
“I’m sure,” Hisashi muttered, though there was a fond tone in his voice. “Did he ask anything you couldn’t answer?”
“He came close,” the voice admitted. “But I was able to redirect attention elsewhere. Neither of them noticed that I never explained my daughter’s own quirk.”
“Small favors,” Hisashi said. “My son is notoriously difficult to lie to. His insight is exceptional, and always has been. It’s an edge I hope he doesn’t lose as he grows up, but it can be troublesome to deal with at times.”
The voice on the other end of the line laughed again. “I’m sure he’s had an excellent teacher! The resemblance was a bit uncanny, I must say.”
“His mother thinks so as well,” Hisashi said with a half smile. “I requested a copy of the session for my son’s current tutors. One made using the special equipment. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Of course not! With any luck, they’ll realize they need to bring him back here to get him trained up properly!”
Hisashi chuckled. “Ever the salesmen. I’ve already wired the money to your account. I understand you waived the fee for the sake of the Shields, so use it to cover maintenance costs on the room, and consider the rest a bonus. I appreciate your cooperation, Caretaker.”
“How generous! And of course, Director. It’s always a pleasure.”
The other side of the line clicked, and Hisashi tapped his smartphone, hanging up on his own end.
There was a shift in the balance of the floor as the elevator finally slowed to a stop, and the unbroken polished wall in front of the businessman split apart along a seam that had been invisible a moment before.
Hisashi stepped out of the small mirrored box into a much larger and more elaborate mirrored box.
It was hard to tell exactly how big the room was, because every square inch of it was covered in dark reflective glass. It stretched out in front of him, going on and on, while the ceiling climbed high like a vaulted cathedral. The room was a perfect cube, but trying to discern the precise size of it was almost dizzying. A strange optical illusion caused by six enormous, seamless black mirrors.
What light existed in the room pulsed and moved behind the glass, the fuzzy outlines of wires and cabling slowly appearing and disappearing. Normally it would not have been enough to illuminate the space, but the walls, floor, and ceiling were reflective enough to make up the difference, bouncing what little light there was to every corner of the room.
Hisashi strode across the space unperturbed, his Oxfords clicking professionally against the inky glass. He was walking sure-footed towards the only real feature in the room at all. A cylindrical pedestal, waist-high and set dead-center in the floor. Embedded in the top was the only object in the space that wasn’t black and reflective; a hemisphere of polished steel.
Without any hesitation, Hisashi stepped up to the pedestal and placed his right hand on the metal dome, fingers splayed. “Hello, Sandi.”
The steel ball glowed briefly. Hisashi’s phone dinged, indicating a connection had been established, and then a large cloud of holographic shapes appeared in the air above him, rapidly forming themselves into something that looked like an abstract geometric eye.
It was the Secretarial Assistant Networked Data Intelligence. A Beta-Core AI that belonged to the World Heroes Association.
“Good afternoon, Director Midoriya,” the car-sized eyeball said in a cool female voice. “How may I be of assistance today?”
“I need access to the I-Island Deep Archives, if you don’t mind,” the man said, keeping his hand on the ball. “There is some sensitive data that needs to be redacted.”
“Of course,” the AI demurred. “One moment.”
There was no sound or visible movement, but directly ahead a normal-looking door smoothly appeared in the far mirrored wall.
“Access granted. Please be aware that you will need to present your full credentials to Andi to make any archival modifications.”
Hisashi waved a hand in thanks over his shoulder as he walked towards the door.
The Deep Archives looked very different from the glass box he had just been in.
The far wall opposite the entrance was dominated by a massive screen, which currently played host to a giant checkerboard of concurrent security feeds. The room itself was curved into a quarter circle and arranged in staggered steps leading down, almost like an amphitheater, with the lowest level only just dipping down far enough to fit the enormous screen.
On each row leading down there were a series of large connected desks, which were each big enough to house multiple computers and two desk chairs. The floor was tightly woven office carpet, and the ceiling was also typical office fare, a drop-down grid of nested insulating tiles.
It looked rather distinctly like a mission control room of some sort.
But the walls on either side of the room were glass. And beyond them was row upon row of computer servers. Both server rooms match the same physical shape of the mission control, tiered steps leading down. They were both quarter circles as well, each one following the curve started by the first room, turning inwards out of sight towards some unseen opposite side.
But the carpet and drop ceiling were gone. In their place was seamless, sterile white. At a glance, it wasn’t clear if the rooms were plated in painted metal or thick plastic, but the walls, floor, and ceiling were lined with something to that effect. And on every tier of both rooms were rows upon rows of computer servers, each one the size of a gas station pump. They were made of interlocking shells of dark metal grills that contrasted the white around them, and their insides glittered with half-hidden lights.
Even though there were enough desks for a small army, there was currently only one other person in the room. It was a mousy young man of average height, with pale skin, light brown eyes, and shaggy, straw colored hair. He had a button nose and a dusting of freckles on his cheeks, and wore a white dress shirt, belted tan pants, and no tie. He was identical to the thousands of other interns and entry level workers that populated I-Island. He wouldn’t have looked out of place in any lab or corporate office.
The young man was surrounded by a veritable nest of paraphernalia that had clearly been brought in from outside. A roughly folded blanket was tossed into the other chair at his desk, while the half of his desk that wasn’t currently occupied was covered in partially empty cups and bits of debris. Behind his chair was a small trash can that didn’t match the décor of the room at all, and it was filled to the brim with even more compacted waste, bits of wrappers and cardboard intermingled with crushed cups and cans.
There was a power splitter resting on the edge of his workspace, and every single plug was occupied by something, be it a radio, a phone charger, or some other gadget. Currently, the young man had his feet up on his desk, and was playing some sort of video game on a handheld device that was charging on the splitter. He was also wearing a bulky pair of headphones, and the volume was turned up loud enough that whatever it was could be faintly heard in the room. A half eaten take out lunch was spread out in front of him, along with a bag of potato chips.
Hisashi walked towards the young man’s desk and stopped beside him. The businessman clasped his hands behind his back, and smiled slightly before clearing his throat.
The young man jumped like he had been electrocuted, and nearly fell out of his chair.
Hisashi chuckled, and steadied the seat with a hand. “Careful there, young man. You might hurt yourself.”
“S-s-sorry!” the younger man sputtered, his Australian accent distinct. “I d-didn’t hear you!” He pulled his headphones off and shoved them under the blanket. “What, um. How can I help you?”
Hisashi laughed softly. “Don’t worry, son, I know how boring these jobs can be. You don’t have to hide anything from me. As long as you’re awake and at your post, you’re doing fine. What’s your name?”
“Um, Michael?”
“Mike then. It’s nice to meet you, Mike. I’m Hisashi, I’m with the WHA.”
Mike’s eyes widened, and he straightened up suddenly in his chair. But Hisashi just smiled. “Don’t worry, you’re not in trouble. I just need to check on some things. Is Andi available?”
The sandy blonde blinked owlishly “Ah, yeah? He should be? But you need an appointment to copy things from the archives, there’s paperwork… and, you know-”
The businessman gave the younger man a half-smile. “Don’t worry, I’m not copying any records today. Just give me a minute and I’ll be out of your hair.”
Mike blinked in confusion. “Um, okay?”
Hisashi walked around the curve of the tier they were on, following it to what was approximately the center of the room. There, in the middle of all the desks, another podium was located on a slightly raised dais.
The businessman reached out, and once again put his hand down on a metal hemisphere.
“Hello, Andi.”
This time, Hisashi’s phone didn’t ding, because the AI he wanted was already present.
The center of the massive screen on the far wall went blank as a chunk of the security feeds were suddenly replaced by a navy blue, abstract eye. It blinked, and then a deep, electronic voice responded in a masculine tone.
“Hello. I am ANDI, the Archival Networked Data Intelligence. Please state your name and the purpose of your visit.”
“Hisashi Midoriya, Records Redaction.”
Mike stood up. “Um, I’m sorry sir, but I think you may be in the wrong place. This is the Deep Archives, for logging the data from ongoing experiments around the island. Nothing of value to the WHA is actually stored here, and we couldn’t delete any of the data anyway. The servers are all read only.”
But Mike’s eyes widened in shock as Andi responded.
“Understood, Director Midoriya. Please select the datasets you wish to review.”
Hisashi twisted a finger on the metal hemisphere, and a large holographic window popped up in the air in front of him. It was a simple design, little more than an open window, and it glowed the same navy blue as Andi.
Flicking and twisting his fingers while touching the sphere, Hisashi deftly navigated through thousands of security feeds, his eyes sharp and searching.
One by one, he made his selections, and they began to play as he highlighted them.
"David, I have something important to tell you, while it's still my secret to tell-"
"She was the heir of a legacy quirk that could be passed down directly from one person to another, like handing off an Olympic torch from one runner to the next-”
"All for One and One For All? Somebody was a fan of the three Musketeers-"
“Don’t worry, all the cameras on this floor belong to me. We’re good-”
The footage began to play, and as the feeds ran, Michael’s jaw dropped lower and lower.
“This… hold on,” he said. “What-? That’s not-”
But Hisashi kept selecting feeds. And the diorama of secrets continued to play.
“Your uncle, Mr. Yagi. He was… he was born quirkless. Just like you and me-”
"Uncle- Uncle Might isn’t quirkless! That’s impossible!”
“You’re upset. You realize now that you could have gotten a quirk. All Might’s quirk, even-"
Mike mouthed the words quirkless and All Might. Hisashi flicked his wrist and kept going.
“It was a stockpile ability? It could stockpile other quirks? You, you’re not joking, are you? You’re serious. That’s… that’s unheard of!”
“I’ve known about All For One for a long time. A lot of high level people have at least some basic knowledge of him, because-"
“So Izuku was right, then? About what singularity quirks are.”
Finally, Hisashi tapped the center of the metal hemisphere with his index finger. Andi’s electronic baritone responded.
“Data sets selected. Please present your full authentication.”
Hisashi smiled slightly. “Executive clearance code zero zero zero, zero zero zero, zero one.”
The metal hemisphere glowed slightly, and there was a brief flash of light next to one of Hisashi’s eyes. He did not flinch.
“Processing. Executive code 000-000-01 acknowledged. Retina scan acknowledged. Voice pattern acknowledged. Palm print set acknowledged. Identifying Overseer 5 Councilmember Oh-Zero Hisashi Midoriya, Paranormal Containment and Xenoeschatological Countermeasures.”
There was a distant, muffled hum as many of the large servers behind the glass began to spin up from being accessed. “Authentication processed,” Andi intoned in his deep mechanical voice. “Authentication approved. What actions would you like to take?”
“Delete all,” Hisashi replied evenly. “And use stable diffusion programs Orion and Cerberus to stitch the footage back together. I’m authorizing composites and samples from backup servers 223 and 157 to be used for that purpose. Be sure to send a copy of the edits to Blackout for manual review.”
“Acknowledged,” Andi intoned emotionlessly, and the muffled hum of the servers grew a step louder.
Mike’s mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water as he stared uncomprehendingly.
Hisashi reached into his pocket, pulled out his pack of cigarettes, and flipped one out. But he didn’t put it in his mouth.
“Paranormal- what- … but you can’t, the servers don’t work like…” the young man stuttered.
Finally, he seemed to settle on a question. “-who are you?”
The businessman smiled softly. “A liar,” he answered quietly. “I lie about everything. My whole life is a lie, actually.”
Hisashi contemplated the cigarette he held between his fingers for a moment.
“You know, it was the writer Arthur C. Clarke who once said that only two possibilities exist; either we are alone in the universe or we are not. And that both are equally terrifying.”
There was a beat of stunned silence. “Personally though, I think that the worst outcome would be if both of those things were true simultaneously.”
He glanced over at the dumbfounded intern before smiling somewhat apologetically. “Sorry, that’s probably a strange thing to say. But can I ask you a question?” he said, deftly slipping the cigarette back into the box before reaching into another pocket and pulling out a different object.
It was a small clear cube made of glass, or possibly some kind of acrylic. It was about the size of a jewelry box for a ring, and suspended inside was what looked like a perfectly ordinary marble.
“Um-” the intern said, still somewhat bamboozled.
Hisashi flipped the cube open on some invisible hinge and exposed the marble to the open air, making it resemble a jewelry box even more.
“What does this look like to you?” the businessman asked.
Michael’s eyes flicked down to the marble instinctively, like anyone’s would.
And suddenly the world felt like it tilted underneath him.
He blinked. He was sitting in his chair at his desk. Another man was sitting beside him, chuckling appreciatively at some joke he was sure he had just told.
“We’re really lucky you were here paying attention,” Hisashi said, gesturing with a can of beer in his hand. “It would have been a disaster otherwise. Good work, kid.”
Michael blinked, his thoughts slow and fuzzy. “Um. Yeah.”
“Don’t look so down!” Hisashi said cheerfully, a bright smile on his face. “You really saved us, noticing the fault in that security feed!”
“R-Right,” Michael said, blinking several times.
Hisashi sat his unopened can of beer down next to the six-pack that had appeared on the side of the desk. Michael didn’t remember bringing it, had the other man? He must have.
The businessman stood up, and patted the younger intern on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, I’ll talk to your boss and make sure he understands the situation. I’m pretty sure you’ll get a raise out of this!”
Hisashi stretched, putting his arms over his head, before starting to walk back up the aisles of desks towards the door, hands in his pockets. “Well, I just wanted to check in and let you know how much we appreciate your help. A lot of bigwigs in the research department were saved by you today, so be proud of yourself!”
“Yeah,” Michael said, some of the blurriness and confusion fading from his eyes as clarity started to return to them. “Yeah, thanks!”
Hisashi grinned. “No problem!” he said enthusiastically, shooting a finger gun at the younger man. “I’ll see you around!”
The door closed behind Hisashi with a firm click, and the casual, extroverted grin slid off of his face, replaced by cool, even neutrality. His Oxfords tapped on the floor as he walked back across the giant mirrored room.
This time, there was another figure there, waiting for him. It was Ichiwaka Haruki. The dim light of the obsidian room reflected off of his polished head, and his black suit blended with his surroundings, making him look like little more than a floating head and a folded triangle of shirt.
“Director,” he rasped, inclining his head in greeting. “Is your business here concluded, sir?”
“For now.” Hisashi replied evenly.
“Were there any complications?”
“None that I did not expect and come prepared to deal with,” Hisashi said, pulling out the marble box, but not opening it.
Showing his first real display of emotion since visiting the island, Haruki’s sky-blue eyes widened, and he turned his head away quickly, refusing to look at it.
“Isn’t that a bit extreme, sir?”
‘The up-to-date data is a lie. The most current and official theory is that only humans and animals can have quirks. That is a deeply untrue statement.’
Hisashi’s lips twitched in amusem*nt at his bodyguard’s reaction. Tapping the side of the box with a finger, the clear substance turned jet black and completely opaque, blocking any possible view of the marble within. Deftly, he slipped it back into an inner pocket of his jacket.
“No, I don’t think so,” he replied. “Cleaning up after other people’s messes is my job, after all. I knew from the start this trip would end here. It’s hardly the first time I’ve helped that particular legacy keep it’s secrets.”
Slowly, a bright white line of phosphorus burned it’s way across the air next to them.
“Is it fine, to let your son carry the key?” the bald man asked. The inky lines on his face nearly matched the dim walls around them, making his head look like pieces floating in formation.
“No,” Hisashi answered simply. “It is not. I would prefer almost anything else. But forbidding it, or even trying to prevent it, will cause more problems than it would solve. And is unlikely to work anyway.”
He exhaled slowly. “Besides, it doesn’t really matter what hand holds it, as long as it stays away from the dead.”
“True,” Haruki said, as the searing white line began to stretch out into a floating sheet of light. “Besides, wasn’t young Izuku always going to end up involved?”
Hisashi’s lips twisted in a wry half-smile. “Given the company he keeps, that was rather inevitable.”
With a turn and a click, Hisashi’s Oxfords rose up off the glass floor in a step… and never came back down. The nowhere man turned his back on that black mirror full of I-Island’s secrets, and returned to the blinding light from whence he came.
He stepped back into his own world, of convenient lies, strange truths… and stranger things.
An older looking man leaned on a mop as he watched a glittering jet with the ‘All Might’ logo on the side taxi out onto the runway. A flock of cleaning robots orbited around him, whirring and clicking. His hair was a grizzled salt-and-pepper, swept back and tied into a ponytail, and although his overalls looked new, they were still covered with the inevitable dirt and grime of the job.
He grinned to himself, and patted his pocket. Never in his wildest dreams did he think he would ever get an autograph from the All Might! What a day it had turned out to be.
“Hey you kids, quit messing around on your phones!” the janitor barked. “I’m glad you all got to meet All Might, but if you want the extra credit for your classes, you need to actually do the work!”
Several I-Academy students who were working while on vacation started in alarm, before scrambling back to their assigned duties in the nearby hanger.
The janitor smirked slightly. No prize for guessing why they were all on their phones. Bragging to their friends about who they had just met, sharing the selfies they had taken. He couldn’t hold it against them, not really.
One of the students picked up a plastic crate full of debris skimmed from the ocean, and began dumping it onto a nearby conveyer belt under an awning. Trash often blew in from the wind and storms, or formed lumps on the sides of the giant facility. And here on the lone entrance that the island had, keeping the runways and docks clean was a top priority.
There was a clatter as bleached plastic bottles and faded, mostly destroyed paper debris tumbled onto the line, the belt pulling them forwards to be automatically sorted and packed away for disposal or recycling.
And as the trash tumbled down, one curiously undamaged comic book fell on top of a pile, and flipped open to a page near the end.
In it, a tall and thin butler stood, his uniform immaculate. Though he had a dour face, the artist had captured his sarcasm and hidden humor well in the laughter lines around his mouth, and in the crinkling of his eyes. Two small, stubby horns like those of a young goat curled up from the top of his head, and his ears protruded slightly and curved forwards, almost like the cupped ears of a rhinoceros.
“Master Stark, are you certain signing the project over to others is wise? You’ve had your disagreements with Obadiah Stane in the past, and the less said about the Pentagon, the better. General Ross in particular… there’s bad blood, there.”
On a nearby bench, a man whose face was obscured was hunched over a worktable, tinkering away. While clothes and crosshatched shadows hid most of his body, his arms and shoulders were bare, showing off skin that was clearly a cool, icy shade of blue.
In the next panel, he turned to face the butler, but most of his face was still lost in shadows.
“Yeah, I’m sure. This whole thing was just on a lark anyway. I’m tired of my designs being misused, and that’s a user-error if it’s anything. If I don’t like missiles being launched at people? Stop making missiles. Simple. This armor, it’s for Rhody. Always was. He’ll be the pilot. I’m just an ideas guy. No sense trying to be anything else.”
“But you did enjoy the flying, sir.”
In the next panel, the blue-skinned man had paused mid-action, lowering his power tool.
“Yeah. Yeah, I did enjoy the flying,” the man admitted. Then he shrugged. “But there will be civilian models eventually. Probably whenever I feel like making another couple billion for the bank. I’ll go flying then.”
In the last panel on the page, at the very end of the book, the man fully turned away, to look at the metallic human shell he was welding together.
“Besides, Jarvis, I’d make a terrible superhero. You know that.”
The comic book flipped and tumbled as the sorting machine popped it into the “Paper/Recyclable” pile. Somehow, it managed to fall shut and stick the landing perfectly, cover up and exposed to the sky.
In the seconds before it was buried in more incoming paper debris, the spread of the cover was clearly visible.
Stamped across the front in bold red and orange font were the words The Extraordinary Paraversal Adventures of Tony Stark, The Uncanny Iron-Man!
Below it was a full color picture of the eponymous fictional hero. Trails of light streaked off of his feet as he rose into the sky, flying up to reach other shadowed figures that were hidden by the clouds. His arms were spread wide, palms open, and his armor was matte and unpainted. The blazing engine embedded in his chest shone in a stylized white starburst, an 8-sided compass rose.
And beneath the colored cover, off to the side of a stamp that said Australian Comics Coalition , were the words Chapter 1: Origins, part 1 of a 35 part series!
The old janitor grinned as he watched the Mightyjet taxi out onto the runway. He kept looking for a long moment, appreciating such a rare sight, before slipping his headphones back over his ears and returning to his job.
With a twist of a knob, he turned his playlist back on, and the sounds of a soft piano and synth guitar started up, the keys painting a meandering and hopeful melody while the strings strummed along. The singer hummed and crooned smoothly, their lyrics echoing and blending with the music.
‘I’m the king of my own land,’
The jet finished taxing out onto the strip, and the muffled sounds of distant klaxons sounded off, warning any personnel on the ground to clear the area.
‘Facing endless tempests of death, I’ll fight until the end.’
The sound of machines spinning up could be heard, as refueling rods and other equipment pulled back from the plane. Far down the runway, a man with a large yellow helmet was signaling with a pair of glowing sticks, giving the all clear.
‘Creatures of my dreams, raise up and dance with me,’
Right before the plane took off, that old janitor could have sworn he saw a kid’s face looking out of one of the windows on the plane. Strange. He hadn’t seen any kids with All Might when he walked through to board and gave away those autographs.
You could almost hear the musician leaning into the mic, his crooning rising in pitch to a melodic wail even as the drums and cymbals kicked in, punctuating his words.
‘Now and forever, I am your king!’
The glittering plane accelerated down the runway, faster and faster, before lifting up off the ground.
‘Oh angels and demons, come dance with me!’
It was a sight that would never get old, no matter how many times the janitor saw it. Seeing a giant steel bird like that just go up, up, and away. Off into the wild blue yonder, like it had never weighed anything at all.
‘I’m your king, I am your kiiiiiing~’
There was a distant, muffled ‘thoom’ as the Mightyjet went supersonic, pealing away across endless clear skies.
Unknown to any, it would return to I-Island one last time before being decommissioned and destroyed.
And on that return trip, the way of things would change, from what they should have been.
For fate was a river, rushing ever on. Dragging souls along with it’s current.
But unknown and unintended by all, with a smile and a few simple words, a child had cast a pebble into that raging river. And it had fallen in just the right spot to shift the flow.
The change would not be apparent in the months to come. As the seasons turned, that pebble might even be forgotten.
But it is the nature of fire to begat flame. That one candle may light one million others without being diminished.
And with that tiny flickering spark cast out into the darkness…
Destiny had changed.
‘You must retire. The alternative is death. If you continue on this path, sometime in the next five years, you will die.’
‘I’m sorry, but it’s not going to happen.’
‘‘Ha? You wanna be a hero so bad? I’ve got a time-saving idea for you. Go take a swan dive off the roof and wish for a quirk in your next life!’
Toshinori Yagi, the pro hero All Might. The strongest man in history, thrice-crowned in glory, and the most famous man alive… did not believe in a world where heroes couldn’t fight fate.
‘Young man, you CAN be a hero!’
And although Toshinori Yagi did not know it, either then or now… neither did his chosen successor, Midoriya Izuku.
‘People are not born equal. That’s the hard truth I learned at the age of four. But I decided, right then and there, that it would be my first and last setback. I was going to be a hero!’
And high up on the peaks of that frozen mountain.
Up those bloody, spiritual slopes that entombed her heart.
A crack had been made.
And one day.
One day.
‘And I’m sorry that you’ve decided to become a support tech. Because I think you would have made an amazing hero!’
When the world wasn’t watching, in a terrible hour of treason and betrayal. When chaos reigned on a day of infamy, and no one expected anything more of her than what she had already given. She too would make her choice.
‘Besides. I’d make a terrible hero. You know that.’
Toshinori Yagi and Midoriya Izuku believed in fighting fate.
One day, Melissa Shield would, too.
Such was the nature of a candle, and hope, and heroism. Such was courage.
Fire begats flame.
“I’m home!” Izuku shouted, as the door to their apartment opened. It was still early in the morning in Japanese time, but even so, Izuku had been half-expecting his mother to show up at the airport anyway, even though he knew she couldn’t. She had work, and needed sleep, but the green-haired teen still wouldn’t have been surprised. He knew how much she worried.
On the flight back, he had been expecting her to either be asleep or gone by the time they got back, with an outside chance of somehow making it to the hero section of the airport.
The one thing Izuku hadn’t been prepared for was the sound of conversation, and the smell of homemade breakfast wafting through the air.
“Come in, come in!” a voice said. “The tea is already on!”
It wasn’t his mother’s.
Izuku was too distracted to notice, but beside him, Toshinori had gone deathly pale. Torino, by contrast, heaved a sigh before steeling himself, both hands tightening their grip on the knob of his walking stick.
Izuku turned the corner into the kitchen, and saw his mother sitting at the table, fully dressed and sipping tea. A mixed variety of breakfast items were laid out on the table, filling a scattered array of plates and bowls. In the center was their nice kettle reserved for special occasions, resting on a small portable burner Izuku vaguely remembered his mother using once before.
And at the far end of the table, sitting on his old booster-seat from childhood and a stack of books, was a small anthropomorphic animal of some sort, with a prominent scar over it’s right eye. Dressed in a double-breasted vest and navy slacks, it looked like a particularly weaselly teddy bear, or perhaps an especially large and fluffy rat.
“Hello! Am I a dog, a rat, or a bear? I think you’ll find it doesn’t matter, because I’m the principal!”
Izuku was thunderstruck. He recognized their guest on sight. He didn’t think there was anyone in Japan who wouldn’t.
“You- y-you’re Nezu!” the teen stuttered out, shocked. “The p-principal of UA!”
“I am!” the bespoke animal replied cheerfully, pumping one arm in the air with excitement while carefully cradling a small cup of tea that was still slightly too large for him in the other. “And you’re Midoriya Izuku!”
A sly grin crossed the animal man’s face, before he reached behind himself into the stack of books, and produced a horrifyingly familiar sheaf of documents.
“Or perhaps I should say, you’re Sage?”
The green-haired teen seized up, feeling an unprecedented amount of mortification, bordering on an out-of-body experience. He felt like he’d rather be back having dinner with the Shields, projectile-vomiting onto the walls.
“Why,” he asked, the shock temporarily rendering his stutter nonexistent. “Why do you have that?”
Toshinori coughed slightly into his fist, a fleck of blood landing on his thumb. “Because… because we sent it to him.”
Izuku’s head snapped to stare at the towering blond, a look of horrified betrayal on his face. Inside his headspace, Mental Izuku was panicking as Izuku Inc. began melting down.
Nezu grinned, showing a hint of teeth.
“ItwasGransideaIswear-” Toshinori belted out, shamelessly throwing his mentor under the bus as he waved his hands in his own defense.
Izuku turned wide, traumatized eyes onto the elderly pro. “Why?” he managed to squeeze out, his voice having somehow gone full circle and become frighteningly calm.
The old man idly stuck a pinky finger into his ear and twisted it, a well-practiced look of stupidity on his face. “Huh? Wazzat? I’m hard of hearing, you brats! Speak up! Wait, where are we again?”
“I autographed it!” Nezu cheered.
Izuku made a sound like an inflatable baby seal being violently murdered with an icepick.
Midoriya Inko placidly ate her eggs.
Toshinori wondered if it was still too late to get back on the plane and take another vacation somewhere else.
Like Siberia.
With a soft clink, Nezu sat his oversized cup of tea down on a saucer in front of his booster seat, and placed both of his paws flat on the table.
“Now, I believe we all need to have a rather overdue conversation about the path forwards, don’t you think?”
Toshinori had never been to the Tibetan Plateau. Svalbard might also be nice this time of year.
Maybe he could jump to the moon? You know, in a pinch.
If they got young Midoriya a helmet, the teen might even survive the trip on his leg.
The evening crowd at Silver Mountain was loud, but not as loud as Ashido Mina. The pink-skinned girl bounced on the balls of her feet, waving an arm in the air and flagging down her friends.
Sero Hanata strolled up, wearing a sleeveless t-shirt, basketball shorts, and a smile. A thin pair of headphones were hung around his neck, the wire vanishing into his baggy pockets. Beside him, Kaminari Denki was dressed in a similar manner, both having just arrived from a session at a local gym.
“Hey! Are you two hungry? I’m hungry!” the mutant girl declared, seemingly unable to hold still.
Sero rolled his eyes in friendly amusem*nt. “It’s a cutting day for me, but sure, if you want something, we can swing by the food court.”
“Man Mina, is it ever ‘not’ cardio day for you?” Kaminari asked, scratching at his electric-blonde hair.
“No!” the neon-colored girl announced cheerfully.
Sero smirked and leaned over to stage-whisper at Kaminari. “I don’t think we’re getting out of the dance machine marathon this time.”
The two boys laughed, and dutifully followed their energetic co-hero hopeful deeper into the gamsen. “Isn’t Midoriya supposed to be back soon?” Kaminari asked. “We definitely need to meet up with him again. He’s like, the only other person here who can drive stick.”
“He’s supposed to be!” Mina exclaimed. “We definitely need to- ew, what is that?”
The pink-skinned mutant girl wrinkled her nose as a foul odor, like harsh chemicals mixed rotten meat, wafted past.
“Ah, don’t worry,” Sero said, pointing to a nearby pair of taped-off restrooms. “I think it’s just the bathrooms being out of order.”
The three teens skirted the side corridor containing the offending odors before continuing on their way.
Neither they, nor anyone else, paid any attention to the nearby trashcan sitting between the two defunct restrooms.
Nor did they notice the two black balls, each about the size of a grapefruit, that appeared to be balanced on top of it, glinting wetly in the artificial light of the arcade.
