Chapter Text
“I cannot recommend this course of action,” said Nezu, steepling his paws. “The commission will be looking for you.”
“Legally,” said Aizawa, “they can’t hold me for anything.” He had not, after all, done anything illegal. Anything he’d done in the dreamscape could be written off as, well, happening in a dream.
“The commission does not seem to care about that.”
“I’ve got to look after my students,” said Aizawa. “Even the ones who are idiots. Especially the ones who are idiots.”
“Quite so,” said Nezu. “Also, could you please let Midoriya know that his notebooks are safe? They are quite a monument to the art of quirk analysis.”
Aizawa closed his eyes. He would like to say that he was too tired for this, but the truth was that he was feeling well rested. He still wanted to crawl back into his sleeping bag and never get out. The things he had to deal with.
“ You took Midoriya’s notebooks?” asked Aizawa. “Hizashi and Nemuri were frantic about those.”
“Indeed I did! They were also quite enlightening with regards to understanding the mental development of human young.”
There were so many things wrong with that statement.
“You’re a teacher. You run a school.”
“For teenagers, yes,” said Nezu. “Children Eri-chan’s age remain rather mysterious to me!”
“Midoriya’s development probably isn’t normal.”
“To be sure,” agreed Nezu.
Aizawa gave up.
.
“Has anyone been able to figure out where Midoriya Inko is?” asked Gran Torino.
Naomasa startled from where he’d been half-dozing on his desk. He’d been unable to contact Toshinori and had instead, unfortunately for his sanity, spent much of the evening going over the spiderweb that was Midoriya and Toshinori’s family tree.
“Oh,” said Naomasa. “You really didn’t know she was your daughter? I assumed you knew where she was.”
“Don’t you have a lie detector quirk or something?”
“People always seem to assume that,” said Naomasa. “I don’t know why. But even if I did , you didn’t actually say you didn’t know. You just mumbled something about a ‘two-color brat’ and odds.”
Naomasa could almost see the gears turning in Gran Torino’s head. After all, Naomasa also hadn’t denied anything outright.
“Real cagey about your quirk, huh? I can respect that,” said Gran Torino. “I’d known about the baby. It would have been real hard for Nana to hide that she was pregnant from me at that point. Didn’t know it was the kid’s mom. So, no. I don’t know where she is.”
“Well,” said Naomasa, imagining all the terrible things that could have made an ordinary housewife like Midoriya Inko disappear so thoroughly. The commission, the League of Villains, random weirdos, other elements of the government, the remnants of the Shie Hassaikai, quirk cultists, angry All Might fanboys. It could have been any of those groups or none of them. It was, tangentially, possible that Midoriya Inko had managed to disappear herself, but extremely unlikely. “That’s not great.”
.
“Huh,” said Himiko, brightly, “I would have thought that you’d be against stealing, Mom!”
“Had your supplier been closer, I would have preferred to avoid it, but different actions are appropriate under different circumstances,” said Inko, tugging futilely at the blazer she’d borrowed from Himiko. “You have to weigh the harm your actions may cause against their benefit. Stealing from a shipping center like this causes very little harm to individuals, but is a great benefit to us. Especially if we conduct ourselves stealthily and avoid casualties.”
It was at this point that Dabi, thrown over Machia’s shoulder, startled into consciousness and promptly lit himself on fire.
Inko sighed. She knew that heists rarely went completely according to plan, but they hadn’t even gotten to the planning part.
Ah, well. Time to improvise, she supposed.
.
In Tartarus, a certain villain used a quirk to repeatedly dial a certain, cherished phone number. That the person on the other end wasn’t answering was starting to elevate his blood pressure enough that the technicians monitoring his vitals had started to notice.
.
Izuku wasn’t sure when he’d fallen asleep, only that he must have done so at some point. The space he was in was dark, warm, and had an air of unreality to it. No up, no down, just a faint, steady pressure, as if he were underwater.
The sensation cleared, slowly. Izuku didn’t rush it. It didn’t feel like something that needed to be rushed.
He ran his hand over the textured fabric of the sofa he found himself on. On the other side of the sofa, doodling in a notebook, was his… His quirk, he guessed.
“Well,” said Kazuki, perched on a nearby armchair, “this is interesting.”
“Um,” said Izuku, “how…?”
“I have theories!” said the other him, beaming at Izuku from over the top of the notebook.
“What,” said Toshinori, sounding slightly panicked, “I thought we were done with this.” He gestured at the cozy room around them, currently populated by the nine holders of One for All, Search, and Izuku’s quirk.
He should probably name it (him?), at some point.
“This… experience will probably have side effects,” said Kazuki, “but I think we’ve been going in this direction for a while. We’ve been able to speak to you in dreams before.”
“Uh huh,” said quirk-Izuku. “This is how it’s supposed to work, I think. I haven’t gotten the best look at it yet, but I will .”
There were so many things that Izuku wanted to say right now. Toshinori beat him to it.
“Is All for One gone?”
“He isn’t dead,” said Souma.
“That’s not what he meant, Four,” said Daigoro.
“As far as we can tell, he isn’t in our minds,” said Rokuya. “He was pushed entirely into his own.”
Kazuki sighed. “Which, unfortunately, doesn’t mean there won’t be consequences to not getting that door properly closed.”
“This is why I said we shouldn’t let anyone in,” said Miranda, crossing her arms. “An attack is an attack.”
“Miranda,” said Nana, leaning forward to look her ancestor in the eye, “tell me you wouldn’t seriously regret killing a bunch of teenagers, even if they were ‘government stooges.’”
“Those are not the words I used,” grumbled Miranda. “You’re right, I would have regretted it. But I regret this, too.”
“If you’d done that, I’d be in pretty much the same position with the government, but my best friends would be dead, so…”
“She’s taking a tough pose,” said Rokuya, leaning over the arms of his chair and the couch to whisper to Izuku, “but she didn’t actually argue that hard when you were first hit by Suzuki’s quirk. It’s more of a devil’s advocate thing.”
“I am so confused right now,” said Search, one of her eyes twitching.
“Well, maybe if someone let me explain my theories it wouldn’t be so confusing,” said Izuku’s quirk.
“Didn’t I absorb you or something?” asked Izuku. Maybe it was all the trauma of the past day, or the fact that he was dreaming again, but it still felt like at least half his brain power was gone.
“Yep,” said the quirk, “but since you’re dreaming and we’ve been apart for a while, you’re seeing me like this.” He bounced slightly on the couch as he shifted into a kneeling position. “Also, I think it might be part of the same problem as the stockpile.”
It was really weird talking to, well, a part of himself like this. As soon as the quirk said something, it was like he’d already known it, he just hadn’t known he’d known it.
“It took you months to start thinking about One for All as yours, and we’ve only been back together for a couple hours. And before that, you’d only used me once. You hadn’t even named me yet.”
“What are you named?” asked Izuku. It might make it easier to refer to the quirk if he had something to call it. It? Him?
The quirk made a face. “Well, Daddy called me Replica, but even though that’s all he used me for, it’s not all I can do. It was so boring being with him, even though his quirk is so cool. I’m glad I’m back and you’ll use me lots.”
Izuku, still not sure what using his quirk would entail, despite the odd impressions flicking through his mind, didn’t say anything. The quirk didn’t seem to notice.
“So, I guess I don’t have a name, yet? You’ll have to decide.”
“Replica,” said Search, slowly. “Because you can copy quirks.”
Izuku’s quirk shrugged. “Yep,” he said, without concern.
“You copied me, too.”
“Yeah, but Daddy doesn’t have that copy anymore, and I didn’t get a chance to copy you again after he gave it away. I was too busy making a new copy of his. All for One is complicated .”
“Wait,” said Toshinori, something between horror and panic coloring his voice, “you mean, there’s another version of All for One floating around somewhere?”
“Yeah. There’s a lot of copies of a lot of things. But I can only hold onto one copy of a quirk at a time. I can only make new ones if they’re removed.”
Izuku nodded. That made sense.
“Where?” asked Toshinori.
“I don’t know. I couldn’t really tell what was going on in the real world or anything.”
“Probably in a noumu,” said Izuku, picking at his lower lip. “I don’t think Shigaraki had it, otherwise he would have used much more than decay, and I don’t think All for One would give it to anyone he didn’t control utterly. Hopefully it won’t be able to use it… Do you know?”
“Nope.”
Izuku sighed as the other One for All users started muttering about here we go again . He hadn’t really thought his quirk would know, because he certainly didn’t. “What did you mean about the stockpile?”
“Oh, I want to hear this, actually,” said Kazuki, leaning forward to rest his cheek on his hand.
“Are you saying you didn’t want to hear about the oth-- Oof!” Rokuya tumbled backward into his seat after taking a pillow to the face.
“Okay,” said the quirk, happily, “so, the stockpile quirk originally belonged to someone else.”
“My half brother, yes,” said Kazuki.
Izuku wished he knew the rest of the story behind that, he really did.
“Which meant that you were pretty genetically compatible with the stockpile quirk, so it didn’t kill you or mess you up physically a whole lot. But that’s not how your quirk, One for All, was supposed to interact with other quirks. You have a different mechanism.”
Images and impressions of that mechanism briefly impressed themselves on Izuku.
“So,” continued the quirk, “you didn’t really know how to deal with it, and it wound up damaging the stockpile a whole lot. From what I can tell…” He tilted his head. “From what I can tell, and I’ll be able to tell a lot more once you let me in properly, the quirk phantom for the stockpile was basically destroyed, and what was left got integrated in the One for All quirk phantom, which is part of you.” He nodded at Kazuki. “Which let you use the quirk more or less okay. But it wasn’t natural, and it made One for All really work hard to integrate it and the extra genetic part. And it had to do that extra work every time it was passed down, instead of passing on the quirks it picked up the right way. I think that also might be why it fades out of the previous holders, too, because from what I see, it really shouldn’t do that, unless maybe the stockpile works more like pouring liquid into a cup, and the pitcher can only pour into one cup at a time and--”
The quirk spoke faster and faster as he went, and Izuku was duly impressed by how much they could get out without having to stop for breath. That probably had something to do with not being a physical being.
“ Any way, once All Might passed One for All to Izuku, that changed, since he still had parts of me in him, and I can directly receive quirks, which meant that One for All could finally work the way it was supposed to and start incorporating the quirks of past users.” The quirk looked very pleased with himself.
“How does that bear on what’s happening between you and me now, though?” asked Izuku.
“You followed that?” whispered Daigoro, loudly. He, too, got a pillow in his face.
“Of course he followed that,” said the quirk. “I’m part of him, and I’m the one that’s saying it! But, the point is, getting a quirk yanked out or shoved in isn’t, you know, normal . It messes up how things are supposed to work. Even if it’s a quirk you’re compatible with. You don’t even know how I work, yet,” finished the quirk with a whine.
That was very true, and also something he had to fix as soon as possible. Once again, he found himself at a starting line that most other people his age crossed long ago.
“How do you work?” asked Izuku, leaning forward. He had a notebook in one hand, and a pen in the other.
The quirk grinned, and it was like looking in a mirror.
.
“Okay, before we wake up, I have another question, for all of you.”
“Go ahead, Izuku,” said Nana, “you deserve answers, especially from me.”
Izuku blinked, recalled some revelations that had come up during the dreamscape… fiasco, he was going to call it a fiasco, and shook his head. “Not those questions, sorry, I’m still processing the fact that you’re all related to me. Any more and I’d explode.”
“Don’t worry,” said Toshinori, patting Nana’s hand, “we’re both very excited about being related to you.”
“Fair enough, please continue.”
“All of us being here, like this, does this mean you’ll still be able to talk in our heads and stuff?”
“No idea,” said Kazuki. “Haven’t really had a chance to try it out.”
“Okay, but if it does, do you think Toshinori and I will still be telepathic with each other?”
“I mean,” said Kazuki, looking between the two of them contemplatively. “He is here. You are here,” he told Toshinori.
Toshinori squinted at him. “Are you trying to feed me a line?”
“Hey,” said Izuku’s quirk, “you know what would make us and Toshinori telepathic with each other? Two copies of Mandalay’s quirk.”
“Oh,” said Izuku. “That would work, wouldn’t it? Can we do that? We can do that, but do we have the time? ”
“If I followed your explanation earlier,” said Rokuya, “it would mainly depend on how unethical you felt like being.”
“We’re not going to be unethical,” said Miranda.
“That’s sure something coming from you.”
“Look, I never pretended to be a saint, okay?”
“Here we go again,” said Kazuki.
Search looked at Izuku, troubled. “You aren’t going to do that, though, are you? You aren’t going to take Telepath.”
“N-no!” said, Izuku, practically launching himself from the couch to wave his hands in negation. “No! We just like looking at quirks. Respectfully.”
Toshinori grabbed one of Izuku’s flailing hands and pulled him back into a seat between himself and Nana. “Yes, Izuku’s a very respectful young man.”
“And I will get you back to Ragdoll, if she’s okay with me using, well, that quirk on her, and I’m able to actually process it, I think it should…” He trailed off, looking for his quirk. He’d forgotten about it’s representation, for a moment. But the quirk was no longer sitting on the other couch.
Izuku looked down. The backs of his hands were covered in neat lines of dark freckles.
.
It took Aizawa longer than he would have liked to actually get the time to drive out to the Wild Wild Pussycats’ campsite. As much as he would have liked to rush right out as soon as he got Nezu’s blessing, or as close to Nezu’s blessing as he was likely to get from the rat, it would still be stupid, illogical to rush out while the hunt for Midoriya and Yagi was still so hot. Not to mention whatever was going on with the League of Villains, who had been sighted stealing Vlad King’s car of all things.
(That brief sighting had been used as more evidence that Midoriya and the League were somehow involved, even though it was Yagi who had originally stolen the car.)
Plus, Aizawa’s students still needed support and guidance. Social media skill aside, they hadn’t ever launched this kind of PR attack against anything, much less a powerful branch of the government.
… Of course Aizawa hadn’t, either. He had a Tunglr account solely for posting and finding cat videos, and Trill, because a stupidly large number of villains posted their crimes there, but that didn’t mean he was active on either platform. He wasn’t an… influencer.
Still, the students kept asking for his opinion, so he was obligated to help. It may or may not have given him warm fuzzies in his chest, like when the alley cats had started coming up to him when they fed him, instead of hiding until he left.
Anyway, moving on.
He spent the next few hours after speaking to Nezu disgustingly energetic and somehow still overworked, put Eri to bed, started to head out to the car and was immediately ambushed by Recovery Girl, who wanted to make sure his quirk was working properly after whatever Midoriya had done, which involved fielding attacks from his students.
After that, Recovery Girl had given him a kiss on the forehead. He’d just enough time to hear her say something about how she hoped he would ‘adopt a respectable sleep schedule after all this’ before he passed out.
More than a little cross and exasperated with himself, he left the first thing the next morning. After driving off Midoriya's friends, who wanted to come with him.
Getting out past the surveillance that the commission had put into place and the reporters that had parked all around UA was a joke. Getting Hizashi to lend him his car was harder.
The drive was boring.
When he was almost there, he saw some suspicious marks near the side of the road, and stopped to look down. It was very difficult to see, but he suspected that he had found the final resting place of Vlad’s car. Clever of Yagi. Or Midoriya. Either of them could have thought of this expedient, if imperfect, method. The ruts the car had left as it went over the edge were unfortunate. Viewing the site from above might also reveal what had happened, and Aizawa had little doubt that Hawks and other flying heroes would be casing the area.
Aizawa got back into the car.
The campsite looked much the same as it had during the summer, except for the loss of leaves on the part of many of the trees. The buildings that had been damaged in the attack had been repaired. There were leaves caught in drifts in the lees of some of the buildings, and others were swept across the parking lot by the wind.
Aizawa squinted, then glared. There was a great deal more red left in those leaves than his drive so far would have led him to expect.
Knowing that turning back would be counterproductive, Aizawa parked and got out of the car.
Aizawa and Hawks stared at each other from across the parking lot. Red feathers danced in the wind, half-hidden by long-browned fallen leaves.
“I don’t know how he got one of my feathers,” said Hawks, “but I’m guessing it isn’t Dabi you’ve come to visit.”
“Why would I be visiting Dabi?” asked Aizawa. “That’s illogical.”
“I know, that’s why I said--”
“Why would Dabi even be here in the first place?”
“I gave him one of my feathers,” started Hawks.
“Why would you give one of your feathers to a villain?” asked Aizawa.
"To track him," said Hawks.
"Yes, but why would you give Dabi, a known villain, a feather to track him when you could simply take him into custody?"
"I've been assigned to track him back to the others--"
"Assigned? How illogical, but I shouldn't expect anything better from the Commission. To begin with, why would Dabi, knowing you can track your feathers, take one? That's even more illogical than You giving one to him in the first place.”
"He didn't know I--"
"If he didn't know you'd be here, how could he possibly be meeting you?"
Hawks and Aizawa stared at each other. Aizawa could see the glaze of confusion in Hawk's eyes.
Weaponized confusion like this was more Nemuri's thing, and she usually only used it to make enemies hesitate for long enough to take them out, which Aizawa couldn't do to Hawks. Not unless he wanted to be a fugitive, too. Was it too much to hope that Hawks would get confused and leave?
"Are you here to meet up with Midoriya or not?"
It was too much to hope.
"I'm here to pick up something of the school's. The summer training camp didn't end as planned. Why are you here?”
“I just told you.”
“No, you asked me if I was meeting Dabi.”
Hawks opened his mouth, shut it, and furrowed his eyebrows. “Huh. You’re right. I did. You know, you’ve really screwed up my attempt at being dramatic.”
“How embarrassing for you.”
This was not the way Aizawa wanted his first post-dream-coma conversation with Hawks to go, given what Midoriya had suspected about his treatment, but he didn’t have the luxury of being nice when his student’s welfare was on the line.
“You’re really mean, you know that?”
He did. “Is there a point to this, Hawks?”
Hawks grinned. “Nope! Just looking for Dabi, covering all my bases. Hope you find that thing you’re looking for.”
Hawks took off vertically, scattering leaves in all directions and leaving Aizawa staring at the sky in disbelief.
While not rivaling yesterday in terms of sheer stupidity, this was inching up his list of ‘days that sucked.’ It was nowhere near the top, of course, he was an adult with a violent and often fatal job, and before that he’d been a child training to do a violent and often fatal job. Bad days came with the job description. He had enough bad days that the dates alone would fill an entire phone book.
It didn’t stop today from sucking. Nor did it stop the creeping feeling that he would be experiencing many more particularly bad days in the near future.
He knocked on the door. Tsuchikawa, Pixie-bob opened it.
“I’ll take you to him,” she said.
.
The campsite infirmary had been built with training both hero students and pros in mind. The key word here was training. The infirmary was equipped for relatively minor issues and emergency first aid, not surgery, not Yagi's ongoing health problems, and definitely not whatever was going on with Midoriya.
Whether even an entire, fully-equipped hospital could figure out what was going on with Midoriya, much less treat it, was a different question.
Regardless, when Aizawa was let into the infirmary, Midoriya was awake and sitting up in one of the beds, hands flying animatedly as he spoke to Kota. Yagi was in the next bed over, awake but not participating. The rest of the Wild Wild Pussycats were there, watching the interaction with slightly guarded expressions.
"Aizawa-sensei! You're here!"
"Young Aizawa," said Yagi, warmly, "I wasn't sure you'd be able to come. Is everything well?"
Aizawa felt his eye twitch. Objectively, logically, there was nothing terribly objectionable about the scene in front of him. Midoriya and Yagi had clearly been trying to update their disguises since the broadly televised fight with Hawks. This was not only advisable and commendable, but necessary.
All the same, Aizawa didn't see why they had to update their disguises like that.
"Wow," said Kota, "you all look like you could be related."
Midoriya blushed all the way to the roots of his straightened and black-dyed hair. Yagi, evidently seeing something in Aizawa's expression, removed the long black wig he had been wearing.
"We're just doing it to mess with Dabi," said Midoriya.
"Why is everyone obsessed with that pyromaniac today?"
"Everyone? Is Todoroki doing okay? Maybe I shouldn't have said anything…"
"He's fine," said Aizawa, resolving to look more closely at whatever Todoroki was doing to cope with Midoriya's revelation.
(Or conspiracy theory revenge for all the 'All Might's secret lovechild' nonsense. Honestly, now that he was awake and seeing things in the cold light of day, Aizawa was holding out hope for that, even though Midoriya didn't seem like a particularly vengeful child - Aizawa’s momentary fear for Bakugo yesterday aside.)
.
Shouto sneezed. "Someone is talking about me," he announced.
"Come on, that's an old wife's tale," said Kaminari.
"Fuyumi is neither old nor a wife."
The clicking of keyboards came to a stop.
"Um, Todoroki--"
The door slammed open and Uraraka, Tokoyami, and Dark Shadow slid in. Uraraka whooped loudly, Dark Shadow cackling uproariously behind her. She hoisted a telescopic camera in the air.
"We've got aerial photos of all those jerks spying on us! Do your magic, Kaminari!"
Shouto returned to his own project, an expose on how the commission purposefully put pressure on heroes and families of heroes to participate in eugenics projects, using his own family as an example.
.
"So," said Aizawa. "After everything that happened yesterday, I think I need an explanation."
Yagi started to sit up, and was pressed down firmly by Chatora.
“O-oh,” said Midoriya, eyes darting around the room as his hands fiddled with his hair, “yeah. I mean… I guess I owe you that, after everything… It was pretty confusing in there, wasn’t it, sense?”
"We can leave," said Sosaki, beckoning Kota over.
"No, no," said Midoriya. "There's- There's something I need to ask you- well, Shiretoko-san- later, and it'll make more sense if you hear everything."
Shiretoko frowned. “Something you need to ask me? ”
“Mhm,” said Midoriya, nodding. “It isn’t- It isn’t a bad thing, I think.” He pushed his hair out of his face.
A fact that was occasionally taken advantage of by underground and undercover heroes was that a major change in hairstyle tended to distract from other small changes to a person’s appearance. In Midoriya’s case, small changes included an expansion of the pattern of freckles spread across his cheekbones. It wasn’t, quite, like what his quirk’s freckles had looked like, but it was much closer than it had been.
“It- This might take a while,” said Midoriya.
“I’ll get a chair,” said Tsuchikawa. She didn’t move.
Sosaki frowned at her. “Ryuko, you aren’t using Earth Flow, are you?”
“Maybe,” said Tsuchikawa, not meeting Sosaki’s eyes.
“Oh!” said Midoriya, eyes sparkling. “Your quirk! What does it feel like when-?”
“Midoriya,” said Aizawa.
“Kota, how about you and I go. You can have my chair, Aizawa-san.”
“But, auntie-”
“Remember that discussion we had about secrets?” asked Sosaki, as she led Kota out. The door clicked closed behind them.
“So,” said Chatora. “You had an explanation for everything that happened yesterday?”
“Oh. R-right. Right. Um.” He fidgeted. “I’m not sure where to begin,” he said, bowing his head.
Aizawa sighed, surveying Midoriya’s posture. He might have been putting up a brave face - mostly for Kota, right now, if Aizawa didn’t miss his guess - but he wasn’t well, something that was becoming progressively more obvious.
“Think back to our class on after action reports,” said Aizawa.
Midoriya looked up at him, biting his lip. “Alright,” he said. He glanced at the Pussycats. “We already told you a bit of what happened yesterday, and why.”
“Your quirk has an aspect that interacts poorly with other quirks, yes,” said Shiretoko.
“And you were there for that, Aizawa-sensei. The part you don’t know about…” He looked at Yagi, who nodded encouragingly. “All for One had a brother.”
“Is that someone we have to worry about?” asked Tsuchikawa.
“Not in the way you’re thinking about,” said Midoriya. “He’s dead. But his quirk had some similarities to All for One. It was sort of, um, an inverse of his quirk. All for One can give and take quirks forcefully, but his brother’s quirk, One for All, is a quirk that lets its users to pass it on, and any other quirks they have, but only willingly.”
Aizawa saw the moment when the Pussycats put this together. So, evidently, did Yagi.
“I was the eighth holder of One for All,” he said. He coughed a little, speckling a tissue with blood.
“And I’m number Nine,” said Midoriya. “This is where the explanation gets into some really theoretical quirk mechanics.”
“Well,” said Shiretoko, “after learning about a quirk that can steal quirks and a quirk that can be given away, it can’t get too much weirder, right?” The corner of her mouth wavered, showing the lie of her facade.
Midoriya nodded. “If you say so. The thing is, quirks have two parts. A physical, genetic part,” -he waved one hand- “and a mental, spiritual part.” He shook the other hand. “If you’re missing either part, the quirk doesn’t work properly. They need to be together.” He clasped his hands together. “All for One and One for All have to interact with both parts in order to work. All for One creates a mental connection with his victims in order to steal the mental part--”
Shiretoko flinched. Midoriya noticed and cringed.
“Sorry,” he said.
“No, I’m fine, keep going.”
Midoriya looked troubled, but continued. “And, um. All for One - the quirk - uses a destructive copy mechanism to ‘transfer’ the physical part. It’s kind of like what happens on a computer when you move a file. It actually copies itself, then deletes what was in the original location. Meanwhile, One for All works a bit more slowly and the physical part reproduces itself in a new user, sort of like a retrovirus, while the mental parts are shared between users. But the mental part of quirks is, well, it’s mental!”
Yagi mumbled something about not comparing their legacy to viruses. Midoriya didn’t seem to hear him.
“Once you’ve established a connection between the mental parts of quirks, it isn’t a big jump to expand that connection. That’s why Toshinori was affected by the dreamscape quirk, too. The problem is, All for One can do that, too.”
Shiretoko hissed through her teeth and her hands clenched in the fabric of her pants. “You’re not saying he’s in my head.”
“No!” denied Izuku, quickly. “Even if that is something he can do, it shouldn’t matter to you anymore. I’m getting to that. Um. Where was I? Right. All for One and One for All have had a lot of interactions. So, there’s a mental bridge there, too, but it usually isn’t strong enough to do anything.”
“But the dream quirk changed that, didn’t it?” asked Shiretoko.
“Well, yeah, that, and, um. Before One for All, I didn’t have a quirk, but I wasn’t naturally quirkless.”
“I thought the black tentacles were your original quirk, actually,” said Tsuchikawa, tilting her head.
“Oh, no. I mean, if I were you, I’d think that, too, but no. Blackwhip belongs to Five. The fifth user. Lariat. Banjo Daigoro. Sorry, everyone has a lot of names.
“But the bridge is the real reason I was so… unhappy about Suzuki-san not telling me how to get everyone out of the dreamscape.” Midoriya fidgeted, then looked up at the Pussycats. “We wanted to minimize the time All for One had to get into our heads. It didn’t do any good. Suzuki-san was too stubborn, the commission actually attacked me, and All for One got in anyway. But a mental connection like that is a two-way street, and that’s where you come in, Aizawa-sensei.” He turned his big, apologetic eyes on Aizawa. “Sorry, I don’t actually know everything that happened while we were fighting him.”
Aizawa sighed and took pity on Midoriya. “I infiltrated All for One’s mental landscape and retrieved the mental components of two quirks.”
“Wow,” said Tsuchikawa, “that’s actually too concise.”
“It’s what happened,” said Aizawa. What did they want, a play-by-play?
“You actually brought back three quirks,” said Izuku. “But, um. One for All can’t be received by someone who isn’t compatible, so it’s always looking at people’s genetics and stuff. Combined with what was left of my original quirk, past interactions with All for One, and all that stuff, I have those three quirks. Sort of. They aren’t entirely, um. Plugged in yet. So to speak.”
“You have Search, don’t you?” asked Shiretoko, quietly.
“Ye-yes. Yes, Search was one of the quirks.”
Aizawa nodded when Shiretoko looked at him for confirmation.
“So, what, you’re asking permission to use it?”
“No,” said Midoriya. “I’m asking for permission to give it back to you. The other quirk that was brought back was a copy of All for One.”
Aizawa had been expecting that revelation, but the way the air itself seemed to freeze was still unnerving.
“A copy?”
Midoriya twisted the edge of the blanket in his hands. Aizawa actually thought he heard a string snap.
“Yes,” said Midoriya. “A copy. Not- Not a perfect copy, it--” He took a deep breath. “The third quirk was my original one. Its name is Notebook, and it can make an imperfect, basic copy of a quirk, as long as the person who has the quirk is willing.”
Notebook. Of course it was called Notebook. Why did Aizawa want to put his head through the wall on learning that? Oh, right, because he’d actually seen Midoriya’s already terrifying physical notebooks.
“That’s very similar to All for One and One for All,” said Chatora, carefully.
“Quirks of relatives often are,” said Midoriya, clearly bracing himself.
“Relatives?”
“What do you think One for All is looking for, in terms of genetic compatibility?” asked Yagi, drawing attention back to himself. “We’re all related to some degree. Much to our displeasure.”
Tsuchikawa barked out a quick laugh, then covered her mouth with both hands.
“I understand if you don’t want me to,” said Midoriya earnestly, once again focused on Shiretoko. “I get that you wouldn’t want to go through that again, that copy hasn’t been used before, and I have no practice in it--”
“That isn’t really a negative thing, Midoriya,” said Aizawa.
“-- but if it were me, I’d want my quirk back. I did want my quirk back, so--”
Shiretoko held up a hand. “I need to know what you mean by willing, first.”
“In terms of Notebook?”
“In terms of Notebook.”
“Um, well. It works through mental connection, too, though it’s temporary, and, um, also has a physical component, although for me it doesn’t require direct contact. I still need to be in-person.” He rubbed at some of the freckles on his hand. “Basically, unlike the other two, it needs a way in, mentally. Um. The person whose quirk it’s recording needs to explain their quirk. The better the explanation, and the more they think about it, the better the connection, the better Notebook can see how the quirk should work. Then, Notebook makes a sort of… fake version of the mental component. A replica, but it’s stripped down. It doesn't have the whole, um, quirk ghost , so it can’t be used the same as the original right away. The Notebook version is like how the original was when it first manifested. Plus, it takes a while to totally integrate new quirks, and it’ll only make one copy.” Midoriya frowned. “And I think that the actual explanation part of the explanation is also important. It’s like when you think about talking, you’re actually subvocalizing? Or when you imagine doing something, your brain does some of the same actions? It’s the same with your quirk. It’s like giving a demonstration. I think.”
“You think,” repeated Shiretoko, dryly.
“He’s had his quirk back for less than a day,” said Yagi. “That doesn’t lend itself well to figuring out all the bits and bobs.”
Chatora made a considering sound. “How long did you have it before it was taken from you?”
“I don’t know. Not long. I was really little.”
“So, the proper question is, how do you know so much about it?”
“Well,” said Midoriya, a glint of frustration in his eyes, “it isn’t like All for One didn’t use it, and what good is a weird mental landscape where you can talk with aspects of yourself if you don’t use it?”
Chatora raised his hands. “It had to be asked.”
“Alright,” said Shiretoko.
Midoriya perked up. “Really?”
Shiretoko nodded. “Like you said, I want my quirk back. But if I can make a suggestion?”
Midoriya nodded eagerly.
“Work out those ‘bits and bobs’ before you leave here.”
“Wait,” said Midoriya, eyes wide, “do you mean--”
“We really have to clear it with Shino, but we did establish this place as a training retreat, and where you’re going, a quirk you don’t understand is a liability.”
Midoriya nodded vigorously. “Y-yes! Thank you for the opportunity!”
“I have a few things to pass on, too,” said Aizawa. Like emergency contacts, access to funds. But first… “For example, what happened to your actual notebooks.”
.
Inko wasn’t going to answer, Hisashi decided, finally. Either she was busy, or away from her phone. Or her phone had been taken from her. If those heroes had laid one hand on his beautiful wife…
Later. Revenge was for later. For now, he’d settle himself, lean back into his prison chair as far as he could, and then call the doctor for updates on the situation. If he didn’t answer, his other contacts would soon be getting calls. Increasingly irate and potentially lethal calls. He had a lovely quirk that allowed one to electrocute others through a phone call.
He’d lost a lot over the past two days, not the least of which were those quirks. His ability to contact his wife, for example. His relative anonymity with respect to his son. But, oh, the thought of Izuku with All for One, One for All, and Replica was downright exciting, and along with the losses he had gained something, too.
Something that would allow him to regain all his most important things.
He doubted it would be smooth sailing from here on in. Even his best-laid plans had their rough spots. But Hisashi had no doubt. He would be victorious, in the end. He always was.
.
You didn’t tell them everything.
The thought, one that wasn’t entirely his, brushed over the back of Izuku’s mind, as he tried to nap. He had told them almost everything. Just… not how he suspected All for One, One for All, and Notebook would interact. How One for All’s compatibility mechanism more or less negated the need to ‘pull in’ real DNA samples, and how it meant that there was no risk of giving someone a quirk that their body couldn’t handle. How having All for One meant that he could keep copying the same quirk over and over again, as long as he could offload the copies somewhere. How he might even be able to copy the copies. How the ‘stockpile’ portion of One for All meant that Notebook’s ‘weak’ archived quirks were unlikely to stay weak…
It was all speculation, anyway. His version of All for One wasn’t even fully integrated, yet.
He laid back on the bed, pressing himself into the pillows. He had a quirk. His own quirk. He had Toshinori - All Might! - with him. His friends, though distant, were supporting him. Even if he couldn’t be a hero in name, he could still be a hero in fact.
He’d lost a lot, sure. But he’d kept the most important things.
There were rough seas ahead of them, though. Without the path of the hero course ahead of him, Izuku had to say he felt adrift. Unmoored. And that vault door, left ajar…
There was a storm coming, and Izuku had no idea how he’d weather it.
This was only the beginning.