Chapter Text
Later, Izuku would say that he couldn’t blame Nana Shimura. As hateful as Tomura Shigaraki could be, he was her grandson and All for One was sprouting out of him like a horror-movie parasite. She’d seen the panic overtake his eyes as his autonomy slipped away. She was a hero. It made sense to use the full force of One for All to pry them apart.
The resulting snap threw Izuku from the vestige world. He knew because every bone in his body screamed simultaneously as he hovered unsteadily above a certain-death drop. Across from him, Shigaraki wasn’t faring much better. Half of his skin hadn’t regenerated back yet and his gaze was hazier than the Pacific coast in June. Don’t move, Izuku pleaded. Please.
Too many lives had already been lost.
However, his prayers went unheard. Shigaraki’s eyes widened for a fraction of a second before he raised a hand. Would they be able to take another attack? Float faltered. Izuku’s stomach swooped as he dropped and then rose several feet like one of those bounce rides at amusement parks. His face had to be as green as his hair. Shigaraki’s fingers twitched and a blast of air sent Izuku tumbling backward.
By the time he reoriented, Shigaraki had vanished.
He spun, searching for a sneak attack, even as the hairs on the back of his neck—standing straight up since the start of the fight; was this the Danger Sense from All Might’s notebook?—began to lower.
A tactical retreat wasn’t as good as victory, but it was certainly better than loss.
Izuku lowered himself to the ground in fits and starts, aiming for the human-sized blurs he hoped were Kacchan, Todoroki, and Endeavor. This time his prayers were answered more mercifully. He tumbled the last three feet to the ground. “Ka…cchan?”
Kacchan wouldn’t wake up no matter how many times Izuku dragged his name out of his ragged throat. Tears built in his eyes. “Kacchan!”
“He still has a pulse,” Todoroki said. “The old man, too.”
They waited, terrified, for any sign of Shigarki’s return. Around them, the battle whimpered on until it became silent. Izuku passed out at the first sign of paramedics.
His sleep was not restful.
At first, he thought, This is a nightmare. It had to be because he currently stood face-to-face with Tomura Shigaraki, who had occupied a great number of his nightmares before. At least Izuku was wearing pants in this one. He couldn’t move or speak, though, which was usually the second-worst variation of this kind of nightmare. Then he saw the black smoke of the vestige world wrapped around his limbs, and when he pulled at it, it proved to be too tangible for anything shy of reality. Terror set in.
To borrow a phrase from Kacchan, Shit.
Tomura Shigaraki was inside One for All.
“What did you do?” Shigaraki hissed, but not at Izuku. At someone behind Izuku.
Nana Shimura stepped forward. Her arm darted out in front of Izuku in a mimicry of protection. It trembled minutely, as did her voice while she explained, “When I split you and All for One apart, you must have been thrown into One for All.”
“You let Sensei steal my body?!”
To borrow another phrase from Kacchan, Fuck.
Enraged, Shigaraki lunged forward the way Izuku so vividly remembered from the USJ attack, fingers outstretched with the intent to kill. Flashbacks of skin cracking into gory mosaic pieces filled Izuku’s mind. Screaming. Horror. Panic. Shigaraki was viper-fast with ten times the bite. Izuku instinctively tried to dodge. Shimura did not. The only consideration she gave to the threat was to block her face, letting the hand strike her forearm instead.
She didn’t shatter.
“You can’t hurt anyone with your quirk in here. We’re all ghosts.”
Undeterred, Shigaraki continued to lash out. She was the only opponent left he could fight, despite there being no meaningful victory to be had. He threw punches and kicks that belied years of training, although his punches transformed into open-handed hits more often than not, reflexively aiming to end the battle by turning his adversary to dust. Mr. Aizawa would have reamed him out for relying too much on his quirk in a fight. Without Decay, Shigaraki’s go-to style essentially became trying to slap his grandmother. Shimura defended herself seamlessly. Not once did she strike back.
“Tenko, stop,” she pleaded out of pity rather than fear.
“Tenko, stop!” roared in the air around them, an echo of Shimura’s words in a distinctly male voice. A section of the void flashed into somewhere else. Rubble. Ruin. Red. A humid breeze that shouldn’t have existed in the void carried dust particles off into the inky expanse, over the edge of a yard turned cliff. Amidst the grim setting, a man with cheekbones like razor blades and now-disheveled slicked-back hair raised a hand in self-defense. The hand flickered at the last second, and instead delivered a slap with so much force that the world rocked to the side. “That wasn’t your grandmother in the picture,” the man declared, face now gnarled by anger and unstained by the dust of a lost home. “That was a monster who abandoned her child! Do you really want to know what heroes are?! They’re people who hurt their own families only to help complete strangers.” Another ringing slap.
“Kotaro,” Shimura whispered.
A third slap followed, but not from the memory.
Her distraction had left an opening.
Shigaraki halted his attacks as he seethed, “You made him like that.”
“I was trying to save him.” She tensed her jaw in a clear bid to keep it from wobbling. Her eyes remained fierce. A red mark bloomed on her cheek. “All for One had already had my husband killed to hurt me. It was only a matter of time before he went after Kotaro.”
“Anyone ever tell you that you suck at saving people?” As Shigaraki grew visibly angrier, wisps of crimson mist curled out from him like fingers around a neck.
“It was better than him being tortured,” Shimura protested. “If All for One found him, he would have made me choose between his life and One for All.”
“He would have,” First agreed, appearing for the first time since denying All for One. His resemblance to Shigaraki jarred Izuku. They could have been biologically related instead of the nefarious adoption that made them uncle and nephew. First’s eyes darted Izuku’s way—the only one to pay him notice so far—before somberly adding, “He’s not likely to pause his pursuit now that the quirk has reached its full potential. When he returns, that will be your best chance to retake your body, but you can only do that if we work together. We can help you.”
“Don’t pretend to be altruistic,” Shigaraki spat. “I’m not the kind of person heroes save. You just think that that body will be easier to defeat with me at the controls.”
“You’d rather not get your body back at all?” First challenged with a raised eyebrow. “We have a common enemy here. You and I understand better than anyone else how my brother’s mind works.”
“Clearly, I don’t, since I couldn’t tell that he was planning on possessing me!”
“And I thought I could change his mind about world domination…until he locked me up,” First countered. “You and I didn’t get the benefit of learning from easy mistakes.”
If anything, having someone from the opposite side relate to him upset Shigaraki further. “Don’t act like you know me. You still ended up a hero.”
“No,” First said. “I didn’t. I was a civilian, and even then, people didn’t trust me because of my family. When my brother took you in, I’m sure he learned from his experiences with me in order to make sure that you would bend to his will. That fact that he wasn’t able to overtake you immediately means that you’re more than what he made you.”
Was this a fever dream, or was First giving Shigaraki a pep talk?
“Stop it!” Shigaraki screeched. His eyes turned dangerously narrow as the red mist around him thickened. “You’re trying to manipulate me! Just like him! Must run in the family.”
Izuku swore that First winced at that—an observation supported by Shimura stepping in protectively. “Tenko,” she addressed, and then made one very large mistake.
She put her hand on his shoulder.
Izuku wasn’t sure why she thought that was a good idea so soon after a physical confrontation. It had to have been habit. To restrain. To ground. To comfort.
Shigaraki treated it like a knife to the throat. He scuttled away, screaming, “Don’t touch me!”
“I was trying to—”
“I don’t care!” His hatred bordered on something closer to dread now. “I’ve had your hand on the back of my head for over ten years! I sure as hell don’t want it on me now!”
If it was possible for vestiges to throw up, the pallor of Shimura’s face suggested it was a near thing. Shigaraki wasn’t looking much better. His breath came out in ragged gasps.
“Go away!” he demanded, clawing at his neck and pulling at his hair. Blood welled up under his nails. “Leave me alone!”
On the last word, the mist that had been steadily building around him burst outward like a blood-rain hurricane. The force of it threw Izuku so viciously that the landing left his entire body sore. Since when did the vestige world have such a hard floor? He couldn’t get up, either, with the restraints continuing to sit heavy on his limbs. It took all of his strength just to open his eyes, only to be met with searing light uncharacteristic of the vestige world. Had Shigaraki broken it? Cracked it open like an egg?
No.
No, that was the smell of antiseptic now pushing into his nostrils. Which meant that the lights were hospital lights and the weights on his limbs were…casts. Lots of casts. Shigaraki had thrown him out of the vestige world. Izuku groaned, both from that conclusion and the wholly unpleasant experience of waking. A clatter sounded behind him, along with a familiar cry of “Young Midoriya!” followed by an equally familiar harsh, wet cough.
The sleep-fog did nothing to obscure All Might’s sunflower-yellow hair and willow-tree frame. Izuku blinked until he could also make out the blue of his irises, cast in heavier shadows than usual. Then, he croaked out, “All Might. We…have…a problem.”