Chapter Text
Buck ‘Hoss’ Hanley, who had been tucked away in a tiny Japanese barbecue joint and enjoying his early lunch, froze. His chopsticks hung in mid-air, the piece of savory beef clenched between them slipping away and plopping onto his plate. His eyes were glued to the television screen in the corner of the restaurant, where a grave-faced news anchor reported on mute, the subtitles appearing so quickly that Hoss could barely read them—but the bold words pasted across nearly half the screen were easy enough to make out.
‘Sudden Attack on U.A, 7 Injured! Perpetrator At Large! Possible League of Villains Connection?’
Hoss stared at the screen, unable to blink as his hand went slack and the empty chopsticks clattered to his plate as well. After the two heartbeats it took him to comprehend what he was seeing, he cursed under his breath and fumbled to pull his wallet and phone out of his pockets, dropping a handful of cash he didn’t bother to count out on the counter and thumbing Mr. Crater’s emergency contact at the same time.
The line picked up as he rushed out of the restaurant, blood pouring through his veins like sweet, black gold. “Mr. Crater, it’s Hoss,” he uttered breathlessly, absently wiping some sauce off his mustache with his other hand, “have you seen the news?”
“I have. It looks like today’s the day.” To anyone else, Mr. Crater might have seemed entirely unaffected, his tone as cool and mild as it always was, but Hoss could hear the undercurrent of trembling excitement—solely because the same emotion was burning under his skin like a wildfire.
“I can be at the HPSC Headquarters in twenty, I’ll coordinate everyone else—”
“Not so hasty now, Hoss,” Mr. Crater interrupted him, sounding amused by the cowboy’s enthusiasm. “We’re not moving right this second. I’m looking into the incident now, and it seems the Noumu was targeting someone specific; a student of U.A., by the name of ‘Izuku Midoriya’.”
Hoss faltered for half a step, confused by the sudden turn in the conversation. “M’not seein’ how that’s relevant, boss.” He dodged around a few chatty pedestrians, his hurried pace down the sidewalk slowing incrementally.
“A few months ago, the Hero Public Safety Commission held a private exam for a boy of the same name, which had to do with some issue regarding the volatility of his Quirk.” There was a moment of pause, where Mr. Crater audibly smiled into the receiver. “Inside sources tell me that he was also the target of the League of Villains during the ill-fated U.A. training camp overseen by the Wild Wild Pussycats, and was abducted by them. As you’ll remember, this was swiftly followed by the Kamino Ward Disaster, where the enigmatic All For One showed himself for the first time in years.”
“So this kid is important somehow?” Hoss clarified, digesting the new information and trying to parse out the relevant bits. “A person of interest?”
“Indeed. I was also informed by Seven that a former villain was used in the private exam, someone you’d recognize. A certain ‘Andrew Rikter’, moniker Hellmouth.” For a moment, Hoss saw nothing but red. That yellow-bellied, pain in the ass, hero-loving bastard had been a thorn in Hoss’s side for years back in the states. “While I don’t believe Rikter is directly involved, I do believe he had a hand in spurring the increase in the HPSC’s internal investigations as of late.”
“Mouthy little bastard,” Hoss spit, shaking his head to try and reign in his temper. “Alright, so the Midoriya kid is high priority–what’s next, Mr. Crater?”
“I trust you, Hoss. I trust that you will do what is necessary to make our vision a reality, and I trust you to be both objective and loyal. That is why I’m going to make a difficult request of you.”
The thunderous pace of Hoss’s pulse roared in his ears as the world narrowed down to the invisible space between himself and Mr. Crater, the electric nothing bridged by the slender phone in his hand. “What do you need, sir?”
Hoss could feel Mr. Crater’s smile through the receiver. “I need you to track down and monitor the League closely, and report to me on their activities. If I’m right, they will take drastic action in the next few hours—I need you there to witness and react. Be discreet and be swift, look for any and every opportunity to undermine them without direct conflict, and most importantly… find out anything you can about Izuku Midoriya’s whereabouts. We cannot allow the League to get their hands on him again.”
“What about the HPSC, boss?” It was a rote question—Hoss already knew Mr. Crater wasn’t the type to leave any loose ends, but it was only right of him as a subordinate to ask.
“I’ll be executing the coup myself,” Mr. Crater replied with something like amusement in his tone, a distant echo of the pounding anticipation rattling Hoss’s bones. “Tomorrow, we’ll all be waking up in a new world, my friend. So look forward to the Epoch’s End.”
“To the Epoch’s End,” Hoss repeated solemnly, the call ending without another word spoken as he removed the SIM card from his phone and quickly cracked it in half, depositing the pieces in a trashcan as he walked, whistling a jaunty tune under his breath.
It was time for the show.
—
Tomura Shigaraki beheld the inevitable descent of the sun towards the horizon, the last sunset that the world of heroes would ever see. A sickening grin peeled back his lips until they cracked and wept droplets of blood down the corners of his mouth. In the distance, dwarfed by the setting sun, was the black spire of Tartarus thrust upward from the ocean’s waters—the site of his next conquest. Only a single stretch of asphalt led to the prison, heavily guarded by automated turrets and sensors.
Behind him stood his loyal party members, drenched in the shadows of the buildings bordering Tartarus’s Hell-paved entrance. Every piece was in place, and they passed the gearcheck—that Detnerat weapon stash had been a massive power spike, in the form of high-rarity support items, unmarked firearms, and kevlar costume upgrades.
“I trust that everyone remembers the plan?” Shigaraki rasped, his commanding voice spilling forth like a chilling fog. On his left and right both Giran and Mr. Compress stepped forward, clad in black kevlar over their normal outfits, the former holding a Trigger hypo and the latter bearing pockets bulging with marbles.
“Couldn’t be simpler,” Geten muttered, rolling up his sleeve to reveal a slender forearm of snow-white flesh. “This will only last a half hour, so be quick in there, leader.”
“All our troops are accounted for, Shigaraki.” Mr. Compress flourished a handful of marbles clutched between his fingers, before they disappeared back into his pockets with sleight-of-hand. “We’ll begin on your signal.”
“All our doubles are ready and armed! They won’t stand a chance against the guards!” Twice gestured widely at the doubles he’d made of the entire League, all of them heavily armored and armed to the teeth with automatic rifles.
Tomura turned his head a few degrees, and his poisonous carmine eyes met the glassy, feline yellow of Toga’s. They’d provided her with a vial of blood and a uniform from an off-duty Tartarus officer they’d caught a few days earlier, her gaze shadowed by the brim of her too-large cap. She said nothing, merely nodding somberly to his question.
“Feels a little demeaning, not gonna lie,” Spinner complained without any heat in his voice, standing with his arms crossed and the business end of Magne’s magnet pressed to his back. He was practically rattling with every small movement, loaded down with a plethora of knives tucked into every pocket and crevice of his costume.
“Oh c’mon, lighten up a little! This is an important job you know,” Magne cooed, grinning in amusement and looking even bulkier than usual in a padded kevlar vest under her coat. “You’re an integral part of letting our little ice prince show off!”
“Just don’t get too handsy on me, Himura,” Spinner grumbled as Geten approached, slender back pressing to his kevlar-protected chest.
“I don’t believe speaking was part of your role,” Geten hissed back icily, flicking the end of the needle with his finger to ensure it was free of air bubbles. He took a deep breath, eyes frosty and hardened over… and shoved the hypo into his arm, depressing the plunger.
“Alright, get ready to fly!” Magne called, her magnet beginning to glow as she used her Quirk on both Spinner and Geten, creating two opposing polarities. The close proximity triggered an explosive reaction, Geten rocketing into the air as he was repelled by Spinner’s magnetic field. He flew out over the harbor, howling as the wind tore at him from outside, and Trigger burned him up from within.
Geten was a pale blue dot against the orange-streaked sky, a bark of laughter escaping his throat as the Trigger ran rampant through his system, burning like liquid fire and empowering him to stand amongst demigods. He raised his hands as he flew towards the black spire of Tartarus, and bellowed one word:
“Freeze.”
The churning sea answered his call, millions of gallons of water swirling around the prison in great tendrils that became supercooled, a frozen monument that lifted Tartarus from the depths by several meters, imprisoning the prison in a mountain of permafrost that pierced the sky. The harbor froze over, the quarter-mile bridge separating Tartarus from the mainland was engulfed in ice, the very sea itself became a titanic ice-floe meters thick. In the span of thirty seconds, Tartarus and everything that surrounded it had become a frozen wasteland, the prison encased and dwarfed by the glacier that had engulfed it.
“Move in!” Shigaraki shouted a heartbeat later, Mr. Compress letting fly his dozens of marbles to unleash a roiling army of Noumu, their sickly grey and cadaver-purple flesh mixing together in a tide of howling, gnashing teeth, and exposed brains. Too late, the running lights of Tartarus flickered back on as they activated emergency power, turrets rising out of the ground and peppering the tide of Noumu before being immediately overwhelmed.
The front door slid open as several dozen armed guards emerged, flanked by two identical twin brothers whose Quirks gave them massive miniguns that sprouted from their arms. A small army of heavily armed robots poured out from behind them as well, adding to the torrent of lead. They roared orders and fired a hail of bullets, not even noticing as Toga slipped in behind them, disguised as one of their own. Countless weaker Noumu absorbed the torrent of lead, broken bodies trampled underfoot by their more advanced brethren as the line slowly advanced, the lifespans of the men fruitlessly attempting to hold them back measurable in minutes.
The presence of multiple near-high end Noumu amongst the mob was more than enough to handle all the resistance Tartarus could muster. Countless bodies, of both metal and flesh, were shattered and flattened by the unfeeling, unflinching Noumu. The twisted corpse-puppets marched forward inexorably.
Tomura watched without expression as the last feeble rays of sunlight were swallowed by the storm-laden horizon, the distant rumble of thunder accompanying the cacophony of rattling gunfire and bloodcurdling screams, both human and bestial. He stared at the carnage, dispassionate, momentarily returned to a small, too-warm office with a rickety fan and a humming PC tower. He felt a delicate throat beneath the tip of his shoe, and heard that grating, stammering voice.
“Would it make you happy? Or is it because it would make your Sensei happy?”
The massive, imposing vault doors of Tartarus began to crumble into dust under the grasp of his copy, and Tomura felt no triumph. There was just a cold burning in his veins, twisting and constricting, an amalgamation of surety and uncertainty so tightly entwined that they were indistinguishable. But Tomura had no time for regrets, real or imagined—it was already done.
He just had to clear the level, and beat the boss.
“When Toga kills the backup power, move in and clear out the trash mobs,” he ordered in a chilling voice, a dark fog that rippled over the horde of Noumu and his loyal party members both. To his right he felt a powerful chill, eyes twitching over to behold Geten lifting himself out of the frozen harbor, ascending on a floating platform of glittering ice. “Good work,” Tomura praised, watching Geten take short, measured steps toward him, eyes visibly bloodshot. “Looks like your buff is wearing off. Your part’s done, so stay in the back and…” Uncontrollably, a smirk pulled at the cracked corners of his mouth, “cool off.”
Geten gave him a piercing glare, gritting his teeth as he shook off the frost and snow clinging to his parka. “Spare me your stand-up routine—I’d rather take a bullet.”
Tomura barked out a nearly delirious laugh, turning with his hands stuffed in his pockets to enter the gaping maw of Tartarus, at the heels of his loyal followers slaughtering every meager resistance standing in their way. The interior was about what he expected—spotless, clinical, and utterly hopeless in its design, bathed in blood-red emergency lights. The hypocrisy of heroes was always blatant, but here it was most apparent—this wasn’t a place to contain villains, it was a place to bury them.
He turned his gaze to find a ‘guard’ approaching him, feline pupils glinting from underneath the ridiculous hat they wore. “Power’s out and cells are open,” Toga reported in her stolen voice, subdued and unenthusiastic. Something was definitely wrong with her, but he hardly had the time to figure out what.
“Where is he?” Tomura replied shortly, an age-old itch building under his skin, like the delicate prickle of needle-footed ants infesting his body. The sooner they got out of this tomb, the better.
“Bottom floor. There’s a high-security elevator that runs on emergency power, it can take you right to him.” There was a moment of hesitance on the unfamiliar face, golden eyes darting away. “...Are you going alone?”
“I need all of you to clear the other floors. Don’t forget Geten’s boss, either,” Tomura responded in an indirect answer, already stalking towards the marked elevator, disintegrating the heavy doors that would prevent anyone else from entering. He felt Toga’s gaze on his back as he stepped into the steel box, before she melted away to follow his orders.
Achingly slow, the elevator crawled down into the dark waters of the bay, the cable grinding audibly as Tomura was taken 50, 100, 300… 500 meters deep. There was only one cell at the bottom of the pit, separated from the elevator by an interview room with a foot-thick plexiglass window. Every door crumbled into dust under his touch, anticipation spreading through his limbs like frostbite. Automated turrets hung from panels in the ceiling like limp puppets, and a heart monitor was just barely audible behind the cell’s nigh-impenetrable door. It took actual effort for Tomura to break through it, focusing and pushing his Quirk to eat away at the layers and layers of tough alloy and blast shielding—
—And revealed a figure suspended above the floor, cast in deep shadows. “Tomura. My pupil. You’ve come for me.” Sensei’s smooth, deep voice filled every cubic centimeter of the room, a physical presence that unstuck the gears in Tomura’s limbs, even as the man himself hung strapped and suspended to something like a surgery table, his chest and head covered in a mess of wires and tubes and life-support machines. His right arm was missing entirely, the stump of his shoulder wrapped in layers and layers of gauze.
For the first time in months, Tomura could draw a full breath. There was a serenity to be found in the shadow of the world’s most dangerous villain—a darkness where those who lurked within could never be touched, even by the brightest light.
“Sensei,” he rasped, something childish and painful knotting up in his chest, like his lungs had been tied together. Grainy, colorless flashes of memory ran behind the back of his eyes, of a warm hand reaching out while he was in the depths of despair, giving him a name, giving him purpose. “I’ve come to get you out of here.”
Filmy white teeth appeared in a broad smile, one that would make the hearts of lesser men race with terror. “You’ve done well, Tomura. Truly, I am moved by your efforts. Unfortunately… I cannot come with you.”
The finality struck Tomura like a stake driving him into the earth. ”What… do you mean?” He blinked rapidly, carmine eyes scanning All For One’s face for any sign that it was untrue, that it was some sort of test.
A rueful smile spread across All For One’s ruined face, teeth wet and gauzy in the low light. “My body has come to ruin, young Tomura. I can no longer sustain myself as I had before—the damage dealt by All Might and Living Nightmare,” his lip twitched, just barely, “was too much for me to heal from.”
Tomura stared blankly at his mentor, the words he’d spoken rotating around and around, again and again, Tomura’s mind desperately trying to reorder them to mean something else. His original enemy awoke beneath his skin as he frantically thought, the itching spreading like every nerve had been ignited into searing white flames at once, his hand trembling and fingers twisting into wicked talons aimed at his burning throat, to dig and tear—
A hand that had dismantled the old world and rebuilt it in his image wrapped around Tomura’s wrist, holding it still with his fingertips an inch from his own neck. “Come now, Tomura… how many of those role playing games have you played? You know the old mentor always dies before the end.” All For One’s wicked mouth curved into something warm and kindly, a perfect facsimile of grandfatherly love that made Tomura’s heart clench violently in his chest. “It’s alright, Tomura. Though my body may die, I will not be gone from this world. You will embody my desire, won’t you? To unmake this farce of civilization?”
The shadow of Father’s hand wrapped around Tomura’s pulse, squeezing and wrenching with the pain of grief. He could remember vividly the cold grasp of it, but not why. He stared into the molted skin fused over All For One’s eyesockets, breaths coming quick and narrow. Slowly, so slowly, he nodded his head.
“...It will be done, Sensei.”
The gentle grip around Tomura’s bony wrist suddenly began to tighten, like bands of iron fitted directly into his skin. “There is one last gift I can give you, Tomura. To my chagrin, not everything I planned came to fruition—your body cannot handle the enormity of my collected Quirks, entwined within All For One. But there remains a modicum of my power that I may pass on…”
Tomura let out a muffled shriek of agony through his clenched teeth as tendrils emerged from the hole in All For One’s hand, piercing into his skin and forcibly grafting new information into his very DNA—he trembled violently but did not pull away, even as fire lanced through his veins.
In moments the agony was gone, Tomura releasing a gasp as though he had never taken a breath before. The iron bands around his wrist softened, until they could be recognized as flesh again. Tenderly, All For One raised Tomura’s hand, directing pallid, spidery fingers towards his own throat.
“Time and again you have defied my expectations, Tomura. I know you will continue to accomplish much in my absence.” All For One smiled, that terrible flash of teeth that brought contentment to Tomura’s blackened heart, now shadowed inexorably by grief. Slowly, gently, Tomura’s cold fingers were brought to wrap around All For One’s throat.
—
In one moment, Kaina Tsutsumi took a measured breath of stale air, buzzing white light blaring down at her from the fixture in the ceiling of her cell. In the next moment the solid steel beneath her rumbled, a biting cold suffusing the air and the light sputtering out, absolute darkness pierced by blood-red emergency lights and silence filled with shrieking klaxons. Only seconds later… the lock on her door was released with a hiss of steaming hydraulics.
She remained perfectly still, breaths slow and even as the dark bowels of Tartarus beyond her cell became a riotous madhouse, prisoners realizing they could escape their cells and use their Quirks without repercussion. Flashes of light and panicked yells followed as guards fired into the swelling crowds, only to be cut down by the hordes of imprisoned villains rushing towards their freedom, killing everything in their path.
Kaina waited a few moments before she rose from her cot, approaching the door of her cell and swinging it outward with hardly any effort. She followed in the wake of her fellow escapes at a light jog, even as she tried to analyze the situation. Tartarus had stood for over a century without a single successful prison break, an unbroken symbol of the hell that awaited villains deemed too dangerous to be rehabilitated. Kaina knew the moment she was marched through those imposing gates that she would never see the sun again.
But something had changed. Everyone knew that the infamous All For One had been captured and imprisoned in Tartarus some months ago, despite their jailers’ best attempts to keep things quiet. She could only imagine that this was an effort the man himself had somehow orchestrated to free himself. Whatever came next would undoubtedly dwarf the current pandemonium.
But even as she ran towards freedom and mused on the inevitable downfall of Hero society, she couldn’t help but notice an open cell whose occupant remained. He was small, skinny, sickly—not unusual for a prisoner of Tartarus. But it was the distant, empty hopelessness in his eyes that caught her attention.
Deciding to indulge her curiosity, Kaina slowed to a stop and peered inside. “...You realize we’re free now, don’t you?” She inquired without inflection. He gradually raised his head, dense with overgrown black hair, his eyes a toxic yellow like spilled chemicals. His skin looked raised and irritated, red with hives like he was having an allergic reaction to something.
“...Doesn’t matter,” he rasped, looking through her. “I can’t save him anymore.” Grief twisted in his voice, like thorned brambles tightening around his throat. “They took it from me… he took it from me…” Behind bleak grief was a smoldering rage, a phosphorous glow that refused to extinguish despite the unending deluge of hopelessness attempting to drown it.
“What’s your name?” Kaina asked, eyes narrowed and drinking in every detail of his face, trying to place his identity.
“...Kai Chisaki,” he eventually replied, the words dropping from his lips like dead flies. A bell sounded in the back of Kaina’s mind, but she showed no visible reaction to hearing his name.
“Overhaul, right? The former Yakuza boss.” In turn, Chisaki gave no reaction to her words, merely staring, emptily, at the space behind her. She let out a short huff, stepping inside to grab him by the collar of his jumpsuit and yanking him to his feet. “C’mon, we’re escaping. Whatever regrets you carry, you can worry about them once we’re out of here.”
He blinked once, some awareness returning to his gaze, pupils darting down to her hand which, while tangled in the loose fabric of his prison uniform, did not touch his bare skin. He watched her, unspeaking, and she saw the flash of deep, analytic intelligence light up his dull yellow eyes before he gave a short nod.
Satisfied that he wouldn’t remain down here to die, Kaina released her grip and continued running, hearing his footsteps accompany hers a moment later. The further up they got the colder it became, her breaths visible and the fabric of her jumpsuit doing little to protect her from the unnatural chill.
They passed numerous bodies, both unlucky prisoners and prison guards, either riddled with holes or crushed into pulp, blood frozen into slick crimson sheets. They were not waylaid on their ascent, the outside world growing closer with every step. Kaina did not dare to hope—she simply moved towards her goal with single-minded focus. The stench of blood and gunpowder grew thick, the air was impossibly frigid, her ears popped as the pressure of the ocean lessened with every passing moment—
And Kaina stepped out into the open air for the first time in years. Littered with corpses and blood and lashing rain, the courtyard of Tartarus had been transformed into an unrecognizable battleground. Fires burned along the walls and towers, casting deep shadows across the unruly mass of escaped prisoners spilling outward. A living wall of Noumu was the only thing keeping them contained, several members of the League standing by behind the twisted bodies. Tensions were high, a number of the more unstable prisoners pacing and approaching the Noumu, on the edge of testing their luck against the malformed creatures standing in the way of freedom.
The black sky cracked with deafening thunder, a torrential storm rolling in from the sea with unprecedented speed, drawn in by the great vortex of cold unleashed by the creation of the Tartarus-slaying glacier. The broken gates of the pitiless gaol spilled open one last time, flashes of searing white lightning the only thing illuminating the dark passengers.
A hush fell over the crowd of prisoners as Tomura Shigaraki emerged from the shadows, head bowed low with Geten, Toga, and the bedraggled ReDestro trailing behind him. A great distance was left between them, for in Shigaraki’s wake was a funeral shroud in the form of four great, twisted black limbs sprouting from his back and dragging along the ground, warped and spectral with flickering edges, like liquid darkness forced into a cohesive shape.
The prisoners parted without a sound, footsteps splashing in the rain as Shigaraki strode forward, eyes shadowed by the wet, limp strands of hair covering his face. The Noumu moved like a single organism as he approached, bodies bent and lowered to provide a fleshy staircase for him to ascend, their bodies nothing more than convenient objects. At the end waited his Noumu—the All Might killer, its massive black hands held aloft as if in reverence. Shigaraki sat upon the upturned palms, phantom limbs hanging from his back like the broken wings of a dead bird as he took his throne.
“...All For One is gone,” he rasped, his dry, slithering voice the only thing that dared to break the silence, the sky itself muted for his decree. “But his will remains.” His shadowy hands twitched and rose, gesturing outward grandly, their twisted fingers framing his bowed head in the skeleton of a crown. He raised his head and gazed out over the crowd of murderers and monsters, carmine eyes glinting between strands of stringy hair. A crimson necklace of punctured flesh circled his throat, oozing fresh blood in thick rivulets. For a single instant, his bloodied gaze locked with one of burning cerulean, smoldering in the depths of a face composed primarily of scar tissue and staples. Shigaraki’s expression did not shift—it remained as hollow as his voice. “Go now, and destroy everything.”
The wall of Noumu parted from their lockstep, opening up a path to freedom. The crowd of escapees howled into the night, flooding forth to leave behind the shattered remains of their prison and wreak havoc on the unsuspecting world beyond. Hell was empty, and all the devils roamed free.
Kaina was not so hasty. She waited for the bulk of the stampeding prisoners to thunder towards the shoreline before stepping forward herself, Chisaki following at her heels like her own shadow. She kept one eye locked on Shigaraki, his bloodied gaze turned towards the sky, and hurried to pass without being noticed.
The bridge disappeared under her feet in what felt like moments, the dizzying sight of Tokyo’s skyline a hazy silhouette in the distance, growing ever closer. She slowed to a careful walk, breathing deeply the humid air, closing her eyes for all of an instant to feel the icy rain strike her skin.
The smallest of sounds was enough to alert her, and in less than a second she had whipped around, her right arm configured into a deadly biological rifle and her left hand ripping free a lock of hair to twist into a bullet, aimed directly at a pitch-black alleyway lit only by the dull cherry of a cigarette.
“Whoa now, darlin’. Watch where you’re pointin’ that thing. Wouldn’t want someone to get hurt, now would we?” A deep, accented voice emerged from the darkness along with its source, a tall, sturdily built man wearing some horrible combination of practical black combat gear and cowboy attire, including a large stetson. An American, she thought with mild displeasure.
“State your name and purpose or die,” She retorted evenly, voice as ironclad as every muscle in her body. It would take a fraction of a second to load her rifle and blast the stranger’s head into a smoking stump.
He let out a rumbling chuckle, lips turned up in a smile at her threat, cigarette clenched between his teeth. “Fair enough. You can call me Hoss. And you are the infamous Lady Nagant, if my sources are correct. From one gunslinger to another, it’s an honor to meet you, ma’am.”
She said nothing in response to his flattery, eyes flickering to register the nearly invisible holster at his hip, hidden by his serape and bearing a gold-plated revolver. She loaded the round into her rifle with a flick of her wrist, pulling back the bolt with a threatening ‘click’. “What do you want?”
“Straight to business, huh? I can respect that. I got an offer for ya, from an interested party.” His eyes flickered for a moment. “And the familiar face behind you, as well. Nice to see ya again, Overhaul. Shame about what happened to the Shie Hassaikai.”
Chisaki made a strangled noise so quiet that only Kaina’s sharp hearing allowed her to pick it up, and he took a staggering step forward. She narrowed her eyes fractionally—if he was someone Overhaul had dealings with in the past…
“What sort of offer?” She entertained, rifle still trained squarely between his eyes. To his credit, he didn’t look even remotely tense at the other end of her barrel.
He flashed his teeth in a wide grin, pulling his cigarette free and tapping off the ash with the side of his finger. “What you’re best at, ma’am—there’s someone my boss would very much like you to find. And, if necessary, kill.” His gaze shifted over, something sly entering his expression. “Someone you might remember, Overhaul. A little brat from U.A., named Izuku Midoriya.”
It was like all life had returned to Chisaki’s body. The guttering flame of his rage erupted into a roaring blaze, every muscle tightening as he lurched toward Hoss, teeth bared. “Where is he?!” He snarled, and it took a moment of restraint for Kaina to keep her eyes on the potential threat instead of glancing at him.
The cowboy let out a dark laugh, whiskey-brown eyes shining with satisfaction. “Thought that’d get your attention.” He turned back to Kaina, expression still disarmingly friendly. “Here’s the business—find the kid, and whatever it takes… don’t let him fall into the League of Villain’s hands. In exchange you will of course be paid a handsome sum… as well as given a Quirk of your choice, by way of our proprietary, cutting edge technology.”
Kaina’s disbelief at his words was obvious, though she could sense the raw, gnawing hunger emanating from Overhaul at her side. “I don’t expect y’all to take me at my word, of course—I’ll demonstrate.” He extended a hand outward slowly, and a thick, dark, oleaginous fluid began beading from his skin and drizzling to the ground below. “My Quirk, Black Gold, allows me to create a substance similar to crude oil. It’s highly flammable and reaches extreme temperatures when it burns.”
A smirk slashed at the corner of his bearded face, and with a click of his fingers a fireball erupted in the open air above their heads, lashing outward for all of an instant before it was extinguished. Kaina didn’t flinch, but the grip on her rifle tightened minutely at the display. “The second Quirk I was given, Ignite. With a snap of my fingers I can light up any singular object in a twenty meter radius… even a raindrop.” He tucked his thumb into his belt-loops gazing over Kaina and Chisaki appraisingly. “So… what’cha say?”
“I’ll do it,” Chisaki spoke almost without delay, bloodlust dripping from every word. He stepped forward, extending a hand with a reflexive shudder, and took Hoss’s hand in a bruising grip, shaking once before quickly pulling away with a wince of disgust. Just barely, she could make out fresh hives breaking out across his bare hand.
Kaina was silent for a long moment, weighing her options. Despite the League of Villains being responsible for her freedom, she didn’t feel indebted to them—it was merely a byproduct of something else they were trying to accomplish. All For One was dead, and she had no faith that Shigaraki could fill the void he left behind. Hoss was a completely unknown variable, but if he truly had an additional Quirk given to him by some device of his leader’s creation…
“...A Quirk of my choice, huh?” She repeated coldly, even as she disassembled her rifle, flesh and joints tingling slightly as they reformed into her right arm. “I suppose that’s an adequate payment. I’ll be expecting useful intel on the target before I begin my work.”
“Of course,” Hoss agreed magnanimously, extending his hand once more. She took it in her own, giving it the slightest shake up and down before releasing it. “Glad to have y’all aboard,” he smiled, a dark and burning thing, like black oil set alight.
“Epoch’s End is happy to have ya.”