Chapter Text
“He did it! Deku defeated Shigaraki!”
The pain and heat radiating from the jagged stump on her forehead pulsed in agitation at the deafening cheer of the crowd around her, yet Eri couldn’t help but join in.
Deku-san had done it!
Her smile was radiant as she watched the clouds part from Deku’s final punch, both on the screen and above the horizon at Mount Fuji.
Now things could finally go back to normal. With apple parties and practicing songs and-
“Wait, what’s going on?”
Eri paused, staring at the screen in confusion as Deku began to fall to the ground, body limp.
Wasn’t he supposed to float down and land safely? Even if he was super exhausted…
The brightness of the shelter dimmed as the helicopter camera turned away, but everyone could imagine the thud of a body hitting the ground below.
Oh…
Twenty years later
Eri huffed as she pulled her coat tight around herself and secured her hoodie, a chilly May night breeze rushing up to meet her as she left the combini.
Alright. Food bought. Now to get back to her apartment and spend all of tomorrow inside. Maybe play with her old guitar to keep her mind off the crowds and noises outside.
“Mommy! Mommy! I’m faster than Ingenium and- oompf!”
Eri swallowed a yelp as something small ran into her the moment she passed the street corner, causing her hoodie to fall off in the stumble.
She’d never grown very tall with age.
“Sorry Miss!” She looked down to see a child with big, brown eyes staring up apologetically.
As she heard rapidly approaching footsteps, the small child’s eyes wandered to the horn sticking out her forehead.
“Mom, mom!” he yelled loudly, eyes wide. “It’s one of the Deku Three!”
Eri froze up as the kid’s mother finally caught up with them.
“Oh Daiki, don’t bother the nice young woman. She’s just…” But even the mother trailed off when she recognized her.
“O-Oh my! You are-”
“It’s fine,” Eri said hastily, her eyes scanning the thankfully deserted road. “I hear it a lot.” She didn’t these days, but only because she went out of her way to avoid it. She just hadn’t expected a child to run into her at ten in the evening.
“Ah, yes, of course,” the woman floundered, the desire to ask more clear in her eyes.
Eri wasn’t gonna stick around to see if her self-control would hold. “A-Anyway, I gotta go before the milk spoils.” She tugged at her bag, silently pleading for the woman to be courteous about it.
“But mommy,” the boy whined, tugging at her coat. “I wanna ask her stuff. You told me-”
“It’s very late, Daiki,” the mother admonished, glancing at Eri again. “And I’m sure she’ll be around for the anniversary tomorrow.”
Eri felt her eye twitch, and she gave her best approximation of an ambiguous shake-nod, before turning ninety degrees and heading off, crossing the street in a direction that would not be taking her any closer to her apartment.
Beyond a final, shouted goodbye from the boy, the rest of Eri’s journey home, now extended by several minutes from the detour, ended anticlimactically with the shutting of her apartment door behind her, followed by a thud as she slumped against it, dropping her bag.
There was a very good reason she took days off this time of the year, and it was not to attend the ‘festivities.’
She grimaced as she took off her coat and brought her dropped bag to the kitchenette. Festivities. What a joke.
Her memories of De- of Izuku Midoriya had turned few with time, that less than one year between him saving her and then saving everyone else one final time became a smaller and smaller portion of her life the older she got, but she knew for certain he’d be saddened to see what Japan had become in his absence.
Back then, in that time where all of Japanese society had come close to collapsing in its entirety, where the only hold-outs had been barely put together shelters built by hero schools, surrounded by lawless ruins as far as the eye could see, the sight of Izuku Midoriya taking out the one behind it all had been the one thing the downtrodden had needed to lift themselves back up when the dust settled.
If only it could’ve stayed that way.
Rather than a person people could aspire to be, to see walking around the streets, smiling and being an amazing person, more than just a hero, Japan instead got a martyr. And in its lonely, devastated, desperate state, it had latched onto it even harder than they had All Might, and never let go, even after everyone had rebuilt and returned to a new status quo.
Instead of a role model and a leader, his image became just another unbreakable ideal, and all of Izuku Midoriya’s peers, who would’ve made up the greatest generation of heroes, were left shattered and grieving over the loss of their heart right at the finish line, even two decades later.
Nowadays, pressure on heroes had only managed to increase since the days of All Might, with ever greater standards and expectations. Izuku wanted to build a world where anyone could see the crying children hidden under the surface and reach out to them, a place where nobody relied on a single pillar to hold up the peace. Now he’d just become the next in line, and unlike All Might he wasn’t even present to do any heavy lifting.
And he’d been right to want things to change that way, because things in Japan weren’t sustainable, though the decline was slow and gradual enough almost nobody could tell the water was heating up. Izuku’s friends and the old guard of heroes had picked up the slack at first, as perfectly as you could hope for. As had been expected of them. But the old heroes had to retire eventually, and though the vaunted ‘next generation’ had kept everything going in their stead, very few people attempted to join the field nowadays, the expectations too high and the training too grueling for any sane person to keep up with. Anyone looking for fame, power, or money tried their luck in other fields nowadays.
All the while the ‘next generation’ tried their best to live up to their late friend’s image, getting older and inching towards forced retirement with every ‘anniversary’ of the final battle.
Crime rates had been increasing gradually but steadily in return, and Eri worried for what the next decade was going to bring now that the first of Izuku’s year mates had announced their retirement.
And that mythological image Japan had, knowingly or not, built up around him affected her too. With so little yet such impactful, then overlooked heroic deeds to his name in such a short span of time, the very few people he had saved personally were equally ‘fascinating’ in the public eye; the living proof of his deeds. And the general consensus landed on just three: Kota, Katsuma, and herself. Nevermind that he and Dynamight had saved both Shimano siblings together with class A at their back, and there were plenty of other people, like Shoto, Uravity and Ingenium, who Izuku had saved personally before ‘The Canonical Three,’ but the most important part to Eri, beyond the discomfiture of being dragged into this modern-times mythology Izuku would’ve been mortified of, was that she couldn’t go outside without risking someone older than her making a scene and pushing the thoughts she’d rather avoid straight to the forefront.
That’s why she was more than content with her job as a daycare worker. Those tiny kids had absolutely zero personal connection to the ‘myth of Deku’ beyond what their parents told them. Combine that with their yet to develop attention span and she only had to face hard and unanswerable yet innocent questions for about the first week of a new arrival. They liked her much more for playing guitar and singing them to sleep during nap time.
That, and though nobody knew it, her quirk was perfect for corralling the legitimately concerning amount of power jammed inside those hyperactive bodies, temporarily at least.
But she’d get back to thinking about that after her days off.
Eri sighed, opting to forgo a late night snack or personal hygiene and succumb to the bone-deep tiredness right on her couch instead.
A shout was what woke her up, a cold draft washing over her.
Blearily she opened her eyes, idly noting it was past midnight. Less than two hours of sleep.
With a groan she got up to check on the source of the noise. Well, the joy of days off, she got to attempt and doze off again until she got her healthy hours of sleep.
Or she could rewind her biological clock again if her mind was being too stubborn, but that left her body out of wack for the next day, and unlike her body, her horn was the only thing that couldn’t be rewound. Considering how frequently she actually used it at the daycare, such uses were a waste of her stockpile.
Coming up to the small window, noticing some chips in the paint she should get to fixing sometime, Eri realized she’d forgotten to shut it after coming home.
Sighing at her forgetfulness, she almost forgot the reason she’d woken up in the first place until it returned; the sound of a scuffle happening down below.
More alert than before, Eri parted the curtain fully and peeked out the window into the alley.
“I’m telling you, man, I dun- don’t got it!”
“You’re literally tripping on it, you fucking asshat! Now give the rest back if you ain’t giving us the cash!”
Eri grimaced as she took in the encounter between a disheveled druggy and a criminal, catching a glimpse of a large tattoo peeking out from the latter’s jacket.
Great, yakuza. Despite their predicted, painfully drawn-out extinction, after the Paranormal Liberation War and Izuku’s death they’d taken advantage of the slow but steady decline to rise back to prominence, regaining a foothold All Might had personally uprooted.
Talking of dead people who’d be horrified by the current Japan. Her grandfather was no doubt rolling in his grave. From the few visits her much younger self had somehow managed to wring out of the UA staff, she’d managed to make a fragile, if not short-lived bond with her last remaining family. Back then she thought her mother was still around, hopefully living in shame of what she’d done, but knowing how Chisaki used to operate, and how important keeping her under his control had been, the woman who’d birthed her had probably ended up dead in a ditch or as an unidentifiable corpse in an alley as a precaution long before she got rescued.
The way her grandfather had described his youth, and the stories of how the Hassaikai—Chisaki had added the tacky Shie to the front after his takeover—had come to be during the dawn of quirks had given her a conflicting feeling of…she wasn’t sure. Admiration? Probably not quite. It required a lot of context to understand.
“H-Hey, I need that cash!”
Eri stiffened when the druggie escalated the verbal fight with a swipe of his hand, dropping what he was holding.
Nail blades. No wonder he had no visible knife on him.
It was only when she saw a glint of metal from the yakuza in retaliation that she jolted into action.
“Hey!”
BANG
Both she and the yakuza froze up as the gunshot rang through the alley, for very different reasons, while the third person fell to the ground. Too late.
The yakuza let out a muffled curse as he looked up at her window, before rushing out the alley.
Eri bit back a curse of her own as she ran for the door and bolted down the stairs, rushing into the alley without so much as her coat.
The attacker was long gone by the time she knelt down next to the fallen man, heaving him up and against the wall for better support.
“S-Sir?” she asked shakily, her eyes darting over his body. The gunshot was clear as day against the white print on his shirt, and the splatter decorating the ground made it clear his back had an exit wound too.
The man gurgled, droplets of blood spraying on her shirt.
“D-Don’t worry, just hold on.”
Eri paused for the briefest of moments. Her quirk was still deeply classified, and beyond the discreet rewinding of minor injuries like scuffs and scrapes on toddlers, or rewinding them back to being sleepy if they were being too active during nap time, she’d never shown the power of her quirk this blatantly, let alone to save a complete stranger.
And then she berated herself for even hesitating. Mythology or not, Izuku would never have done so.
The dark alley lit up in a flash of gold as the man’s mortal wound disappeared without a trace.
“Sir?” she tried again as the man’s slumped head shot up, eyes darting across the alley in what was no doubt shock. “Are you feeling better?”
Ever since her horn had failed to rewind Izuku fully back on that fateful day, she wasn’t leaving anything to chance.
The man mumbled something under his panicked breaths, and she leaned in.
“Sir-”
“You’re not getting shit!” the man Eri only belatedly remembered was a schizophrenic druggy shouted frantically, his hand slicing at the space in front of him.
Which she occupied.
Blinding pain shot through her as the force of the swipe sent her sprawling sideways, slamming into a bin.
Eri shakily touched her throat, her hand staining as red as her previously white shirt within moments. The man she’d healed didn’t even spare her a second glance, running off with a jitter in his step as his bloodied nail retracted.
O-Okay, okay. Not what she’d envisioned as her evening. B-But not a big deal.
Trying to ignore the red gushing out her neck, she closed her eyes and tried to steady her breath, reaching for the distant heat thrumming eagerly in her horn.
After a slow, panicked prod, the energy within finally leaked out, and-
Eri gasped in pain when everything came flooding out, the empty alley lighting up a bright gold.
Her attempt at reigning it in, a skill that had been perfected under Aizawa’s tutelage, was met with what felt like a brick wall. Or, more like an incoming avalanche. Her panic spiked, her eyes darting across the deserted alley.
Only then did she notice, in the corner of her eye, a needle sticking out of her arm. In the pain of the initial slice she hadn’t even noticed the pinprick upon falling, but…
What kind of drug had this man been addicted to? Some new kind of Trigger? It-
Her next gasp devolved in a yell as the flow from her horn spiked even more. Forgoing all sense of control, she forcefully tried to infuse it across her entire body, risking a full rewind to who knew how far back. Yet it remained stuck in its current state. Instead, Eri felt a strange pulling sensation on the lethal slash wound, as if her quirk was extracting something from her as fast as she could shove it in.
A previously unseen alley cat entered her vision, curiously approaching the light show.
It yowled when the chaotic aura of gold lashed out, an errant bolt connecting with it, flashing purple and gold.
Eri weakly reached out for the cat as it darted off, its black fur looking more patchy and grayed than she thought it had been.
As her horn continued to pull and pulse violently in its inexplicable deadlock, she let her hand drop, chuckling weakly, though she couldn’t even manage that without gurgling and hacking out blood.
Well…
This was it, apparently.
…
She’d had a shitty life, hadn’t she?
Sure, part of it was her own fault. She could have done more, tried more. Could’ve been braver, more hopeful, more assertive, more proactive, more anything. Just, less jaded.
But she hadn’t. She’d let her aspirations stay in her dreams. She’d taken what she’d been given and gotten comfortable—though in hindsight, it had all been confining in its own way. Just in an attempt to get by and get to the next day.
Maybe the part of her that aspired and hoped had taken a painful hit that day, watching on live television as the man- the boy who’d saved her from her torture landed dead on the rocks for his dreams, just out of view, her impulsive attempt at healing him indirectly only just enough to fix the surface but not the parts underneath.
It had slunk away, and then withered to a shadow as she watched the world he’d saved both move on and not at all at the same time. A world he didn’t get to grow up with or see the fruits of his labors flourish in. The only thing left an idealized image that was its slow ruin.
If even someone as kind and deserving as Izuku Midoriya didn’t get the chance to live his dreams, then was it even a world that allowed it at all?
Heh, getting extra dreary there in your final moments, Eri. At least she’d get to see him soon. Maybe-
She shuddered, her mouth letting out a horrible gurgling sound as her quirk spiked and pulled again, the overwhelming gold, haloed by an ominous purple she’d never seen before, washed out her vision until nothing was left.
Then, the feeling of the metal dumpster and the concrete, the hot liquid gushing down her chest turned into a numb fuzz, fading away as well, leaving only the unrelenting buzz of the rampaging quirk pushing and pulling, and Eri had one last moment to wonder if her life was even going to flash before her eyes before her thoughts would end too.
The strange stasis ended abruptly with a loud whooping noise and an incredible rush inwards as her quirk finally gave out.
And then, nothing remained.
No, her thoughts were still there. Not dead.
How long would it last?
Suddenly, sensation returned to her, a strange knotting and twisting, something pulling at parts of her that didn’t currently exist.
A painfully familiar feeling.
In a shock of sound and light, existence returned to Eri, a scream assaulting her ears.
What would soon be far more of a shock, however, was where exactly she now found herself.
Notes:
My endeavor to make the majority of my MHA works Eri-focused and develop her as a character with agency continues apace. Perhaps a bit more blatantly this time, because I've already written an Eri time-travels premise, albeit under very different circumstances and a very different execution. The one-shot I'm talking about is also some of my earliest work, and is thus heavily focused on quirk exploration and analysis, to the point where the mood and tone take a backseat to Izuku-branded babbling at points. The follow-up I wrote diverted from that, but was more of a vignette flashing quickly through canon.
If you're interested in reading that while I continue writing out the chapters for this though, check out the two fics in Rewind, Again. The only real regret I have right now is that I already used up the coolest title for that one and had to come up with one for this fic on the fly, hence the basic 'Harry Potter And-' style currently in place. With the original one-shot premise idea (which this chapter would only be half of) I had a more crackish tone and thus title in mind, but with the expanded bits it won't really fit as well. The working title is still a little cracky and not very impactful though, so if I manage to think up a better one, be aware that it'll change. I'll definitely keep the cracky chapter titles though.
I don't actually have much to say about the contents of the chapter this time, but I hope I got the bleak tone across. Keep in mind the world as a whole doesn't feel as bleak, it's mainly due to Eri being the POV character here, and a jaded one at that. Seeing her personal savior die on screen right at the finish line and then growing up to see what his image became did a number on her psyche and the people around her, nevermind the developmental problems she realistically probably would've faced thanks to Overhaul's A+ paren—I can't even call that shit parenting for a joke lol.
Also, there's a small little headcanon with Overhaul changing the yakuza's name to 'Shie' Hassaikai. Hassaikai is just the Japanese for the Eight Precepts from Buddhism, with the addition turning it into 'of death,' which sounds a little needlessly edgy for someone more traditional to use, like the old Boss, and more like something Overhaul would do, twisting something decent for his own villainous desires. I'll do anything to make Chisaki as pathetic of a character as I can (though canon did a bang-up job on its own already).
The tags and summary should give you a good idea of where this is heading, despite the little cliffhanger, but I'm excited to show you what's next. Let me know your predictions on where I'm planning to take this! See you next time, where we witness a Vicious Stranglehold.
Chapter 2: Vicious Stranglehold
Notes:
Welcome back for chapter two. Thank you all for the kind words last time! I look forward to reading some more. And I hope you enjoy reading the words I've written in return! <3 <3
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Eri gasped and heaved as the shock of existence continued to overwhelm her, a scream ringing in her ears.
If this was what death felt like, she hoped it wasn’t what Izuku had experienced back then.
And then, as quickly as it came, the overload died down and Eri’s senses cleared.
The first sensation she could categorize beyond the scream was the restraints chafing at her wrists and the cold metal of a hard-backed chair.
The next was her vision, and her reality stuttered as everything froze.
Impossible.
She was here. Deep underground, in the bare medical room at the heart of the Shie Hassaikai’s sprawling complex, where only three people ever set foot. The other two were present too, not looking any older than the last time she’d seen either of them—younger, in fact.
It was a room that had burnt itself into her retinas, eager to show up the moment she let her thoughts wander into dark corners. It was impossible not to recognize at first sight, nevermind the people occupying it.
In the past, Eri had always feared what would become of her if confronted with anything similar to the part of her past she’d rather forget. She’d gotten well-acquainted with the terms trigger—the non-drug kind—PTSD and trauma from the psychologist Mandalay had hired back when she’d come to live with her, the one who’d told her every single problem Chisaki and his ‘tender care’ had left her to deal with.
The only thing stopping her mind from losing itself to terror and flashbacks was the cognitive dissonance she was faced with.
One, the chair she associated with all her pain, the one that swamped her in her memories and worst nightmares, was almost uncomfortably tight around her.
Two, Overh- Chisaki, who’d always towered over her, his cruel emotionless eyes peering down at her from above his mask, was sprawled helplessly on the floor, the scream from before not actually her own for once.
And three, the third person in the room, Chronostasis, had reacted on instinct after whatever had caused O- Chisaki to scream and fall back, and lashed out with his quirk, the arrow-shaped hair nicking her on the forearm. And Eri, too used to rewinding small bumps on the kids she looked after or herself during an errant quirk activation or manifestation, instantly had hers activate, as controlled and restrained as she had trained it to be; a far cry from the curse she thought she’d suffered back then.
Those sources of dissonance were enough to snap her mind out of her spiral, and returned to her a haunting clarity instead.
And with that clarity, the most unexpected thing happened.
Rather than terror, the feeling that bubbled up as she took in the familiar surroundings and people was unbridled, incandescent rage.
In her last moments, after a life of being tortured and then witnessing the one who’d saved her from it die for a country that was now failing anyway, after getting killed on accident for trying to be a genuine hero to someone after an aimless two decades of just living, wasting all the effort people had put in to make sure she even could…
Existence dared to drag her through this bullshit and subject her to this asshole, AGAIN?!
As the memory of Overhaul began to recover, Chrono’s hood ruffled as he readied his quirk a second time.
The building fury poured out as Eri refused to be subjected to the pain her mind intended her to suffer, and golden energy raged down her arm, a lightning bolt escaping her finger and striking her attacker.
In a literal flash, all that remained was a white cloak and plague doctor’s mask.
For the briefest of moments, Eri gaped at the collapsing pile of clothes, but the instant regret was snuffed out as soon as she saw Overhaul scrambling to get back on his feet in her periphery.
“Eri!”
She scowled as she directed her attention to him, getting up from the chair.
When she couldn’t, reminded of the leather restraining her at the wrists, she harshly tugged at her hands.
A loud crack came, and a hand easily slipped out of its restraint. A flash of gold took care of the broken wrist before Eri undid the other straps the easy way.
Overhaul had only just recovered and took a step back at the display as she freed herself and got up, her scowl locked onto her ex-tormentor.
“What did you do?!” he demanded, his eyes darting to the pile of clothes.
Afraid, was he?
It was almost enough to make her giggle.
With all the skill and reflexes trained into her as a precaution by the Pussycats, Eri rushed forward, the unexplained rage pushing her every move.
Though maybe not so unexplained, in hindsight.
Twenty years ago
Eri scrunched up her face as someone knocked on her bedroom door.
“Go ‘way,” she mumbled into her pillow, intent on staying inside for the rest of the day, no matter if it meant missing dinner.
“That any way to treat someone who abandoned dinner to check on you, brat?” a muffled voice came.
Her head shot up. That hadn’t been Mandalay, or Kota-kun, or any of the other Pussycats, or Aizawa.
They were housing UA for the summer again, though this time camp was purely for relaxation, with most people still recovering. And that meant…
With some reluctance she heaved herself off her bed and unlocked the door, turning around and heading back for her bed as the person on the other side opened it.
“So, feeling irritable and down in the dumps, eh?” Dynamight asked as she slumped back onto her bed.
Eri was glad she had her pillow muffling her voice again, because what came out in response wasn’t something she thought anyone’s heart would take well.
Except Dynamight apparently had decent enough hearing, and—based on the barked laugh—thought it was hilarious.
He didn’t address it though, instead walking in.
“Gonna spill what got you acting like a bratty teen?” he asked, smirking. “Though what I really wanna know is what Copycat said to get you acting out at all. Was too far away to make out anything.”
Eri shifted her head, a mix between a pout and a repressed scowl.
“He…” she coughed, hearing her voice threaten to break. “He said we- that we should be happy D-Deku-san died after winning instead of before.”
“Ah, so he was a fucking asshole, okay,” Dynamight concluded, his smirk far more forced and his eyes twitching rapidly. “Good nutshot then, you little shit. His grandkids are gonna feel that, if he can still get any.”
“Keep that kind of language out of your mouth!” Mandalay’s voice suddenly came in through their minds.
“Don’t kid yourself!” Dynamight shouted through the open door. “She lived with the goddamn yakuza for fuck’s sake! Of course she’s heard ‘em all!”
Eri found herself nodding along, only to force herself to stop with an ‘eep’ when she realized.
Dynamight glanced at her and cocked a brow knowingly, something that loosened a brief giggle from her throat.
She had no idea what any of them meant, but she did know they were bad words people said when they felt bad, about something or someone. That last one she knew mainly because the other name people had called Overhaul all the time behind his back had been Overwhore, whatever the second part meant.
That said, she did feel bad.
“I-I should heal him, w-with my quirk, right?” she asked quietly, already getting off the bed. With the heat of the encounter defused, all that was left was shame.
Kota-kun had said he didn’t care, and would’ve added a kick right after if he hadn’t been physically held back, but she couldn’t help but feel bad.
“Nah, let the douche wallow in his misery,” Dynamight said dismissively. “He’ll get over it. Why feel bad over dishing out some instant karma?”
It was said in the same dismissive, vaguely amused tone as the rest, but Eri picked up on the small, genuinely questioning note.
“I- I never wanted to hurt anyone,” she admitted quietly, sitting back on her bedside. “I always thought I had, but then- Lemillion-san and- and Deku-san and everyone said I didn’t, but…now I really did, and-” She looked down at her feet, staring at the red shoes Kota-kun had given her.
“I-I just did it,” she admitted. “It happened before I could think. I-I didn’t- I don’t want-” Deku would be horrified to hear it. It was the exact opposite of who he was- had been.
But Dynamight wasn’t Deku, the exasperated scoff made that clear.
“So you got anger issues. That’s all. More relieved to find out you aren’t all hunky dory after years of torture. Now that’s scary.”
Eri startled, her gaze ripping away from the red shoes to stare at Dynamight in disbelief.
He was still smirking, but it fell quickly.
“That’s what made Izuku scary,” he said, his voice lower than its natural volume. “Years of me fucking him up over petty bullshit, and he came out of it as much a friendly ball of sunshine as at the start.” He scoffed, sitting down on the bed. “Though I guess he did have something wrong with him too, in the end.”
She nodded quietly, understanding what he meant without knowing what his words implied.
It was hard not to feel the same way when almost all of class A tried to hide it, even Dynamight.
“How do I…not do angry things?”
Dynamight barked out a laugh again.
“That’s the fun part; if it gets to that point, you can’t. You’ll just have to figure out how to make sure you don’t hurt the people who don’t deserve it while you deal with it some other way.” Dynamight sighed, getting up. “I had a hard time figuring that one out. And I was probably too late by the time I did anyway.”
He groaned and got back up, casting a glance instead of an outstretched hand.
“Now, you gonna continue moping in here or have some good fucking curry?” He paused, eyes hesitant. “And call him Izuku. With how things are panning out with everyone outside, he’ll need it.”
She wouldn’t understand what he meant by that for several more years, but in that moment, the glance felt as much as an outstretched hand anyway.
Back in the present?
Overhaul stared at her, wide-eyed, and began lunging for her with his hand outstretched.
Eri crouched down, ducking under the lethal attack, and jumped back up, kneeing him in the crotch.
She almost missed his other hand aiming for her side, her own jerking into action to slap it away at the wrist.
The next moment, the dreary lab was engulfed in gold with purple sparks as she did the one thing she knew she’d do if she ever encountered Chisaki again.
After Dynamight’s advice, Eri could come up with only a handful of people who she decided deserved to deal with her anger. And those were Muscular, for orphaning Kota, All For One and Tomura Shigaraki, for being the masterminds behind Izuku’s tribulations and the reason for his sacrifice, and Overhaul and his confidants, for making her childhood a living hell for absolutely no reason.
Because really, for all that he claimed to be a professional doctor and chemist, he’d gone about his quirk destroying scheme in the worst way possible.
He could’ve swooped in and groomed her, ameliorating her to his philosophy and goals like the little, impressionable kid she’d been. He could’ve experimented on her under sedation until he found the source of her quirk in her DNA and modified colonies of bacteria to produce the drug for him and left her alone. Hell, All For One’s doctor only had access to the final product for a couple months and he’d figured out a way to reproduce them from scratch, without any involvement from her whatsoever.
But instead Chisaki had taken to torturing her for hours on end every single time he needed another batch to experiment with. It had been needlessly cruel and inefficient.
As the flash of light faded away, Overhaul stumbled back, a hand instinctively touching his stomach to heal his caved in scrotum. But much to his queasy confusion, nothing happened.
“What- What was that?!” he demanded, still green in the face.
She no doubt worsened it when she lunged forward, slamming him against the wall and lifting him up, her hand wrapped around his throat.
For what was the first time in her life, Eri smiled cruelly at the memory of her tormentor.
“Your medicine.”
But she wasn’t done yet, no. If she ended things now like she had on accident with Chrono, her final moment would be done. Even if it was meaningless indulgence, she’d had so long to think on what she’d do to Chisaki if she got to face him back then, it’d be a shame to not carry it out.
So, ignoring the way his eyes widened in horror, she kept up her stranglehold as she turned around, jerking Overhaul into stumbling after her by the throat as she marched out the medical room, a woman on a mission.
She had barely turned into the next corridor of the labyrinth before the concrete began to wobble and morph.
Eri scowled, ignoring Overhaul clawing fruitlessly at her clamped down hand, and used her free one to send out a wave of gold across the hall.
Before her, a patch of the ceiling convulsed and spat out a hulking figure with such force it cratered the floor he landed on.
“Who the fuck are you and what are you doing with Overhaul, you br-” The enraged voice that finally let her place the man’s identity as the puppet at Overhaul’s side cut off as she stomped down on his head, stepping on him with no small amount of glee as she heard his jaw and then a rib or two crack on her way over.
There were no further encounters in the underground tunnels, and she exited the area through the door hidden in the back wall of a small Buddhist shrine, entering the above-ground complex. The tatami was much nicer on her bare feet than the concrete.
She had to wrack her brain for the right direction by then, steadfastly ignoring the gagging coming from behind her, before grimacing when she recalled the only route to her destination.
With steeled shoulders and a steady march in her steps, Eri entered the large mess hall, filled to the brim with yakuza grunts.
Her last moments had let her do whatever she pleased so far. She doubted it’d make her stop now.
“Whoa, is that Overhaul?”
“Who the hell’s the girl?”
She cast aside the surprised murmurs, her eyes locked onto the hallway exiting the mess hall on the other side, until someone stepped in her way.
“Hey shorty, what do you think you’re doing?” the large man asked, his voice familiar but his face leaving her with blanks.
Though Eri couldn’t place him, the man’s imposing demeanor shifted into a manic grin. “Because you’re not leaving until I get a fight outta the brat who’s manhandling Overwhore.”
Oh, Rappa before he got his mask.
The only one of Overhaul’s personal lackeys who hadn’t really known what he’d been doing to her. Still though-
For the second time in under ten minutes, Eri kicked a man’s pearls straight back into their clam, a voice that sounded suspiciously like a mix between Dynamight and Kota cackling inside her at the high-pitched yowl.
With her path unobstructed again, Eri marched on, flashing her quirk through her occupied hand as she idly remembered to make sure Overhaul would be conscious for when they arrived.
To her surprise, the rest of the room stepped away to give her a clear route, though whether that was because of Overhaul still choking behind her or Rappa’s yowl devolving into a disconcertingly manic cackle, she didn’t know.
And then, after one final short rewind of her unwilling hanger-on, she finally reached the paper door down the hall, slowly sliding it open with her free hand to reveal the rhythmic beeps and shallow breathing of the man inside.
With a grunt she yanked Overhaul through the doorway, sending him sprawling straight into the bedside chair and knocking off his mask.
She left him to gasp and wheeze there, stepping up to the bed.
Looking down, she allowed herself a moment of silence as she took in the memory of her late grandfather.
Despite knowing it wouldn’t be permanent, a combination of Central Hospital’s medical equipment and his own steely will allowing him to wake up shortly after the final battle, the damage Chisaki had done to his body had left him crippled and battling illness for the last few years of his life; a far cry from what she understood to be the larger than life man who’d led the Hassaikai for decades and kept it together, even with All Might cracking down on all organized crime.
She’d offered to rewind him once, during one of the last visits she’d paid him, the continuing gap Izuku had left making her more reluctant than ever to face further grief, but he’d summarily refused.
He’d allowed others to take advantage of her quirk in his negligence, and so he vowed to never profit off of even a single drop of it, even when it meant his early grave.
Despite her mixed feelings, the current her respected him for remaining unerringly steadfast to his personal code and beliefs.
But this was all just her own mind giving her one last chance at resolution, so letting the memory of the man break the vow he hadn’t even made yet didn’t bother her.
A flash of gold later and the man’s shallow breathing and gaunt figure returned to its former strength.
Not even a moment later, and half-lidded eyes met hers.
“M-Maya…?” he asked dazedly, confusing Eri for a moment before she understood.
“Hello, grandfather,” she returned politely, gently guiding him through his disorientation.
The single clue was enough, his daze clearing as his eyes shot up to her horn.
“Little Eri,” he mumbled, confused eyes taking in every part of her. “But what- how-”
Eri could see his last memories catch up to him in real time, when his eyes widened and he shot up from his pillow.
Her lips twitched into an anticipatory grin as she pointed at the still recovering Overhaul, her grandfather following the movement.
He was only briefly confused by the inexplicably bridged age-gap, but it stood no chance against the fury she’d been awaiting.
“Chisakiiiiiii!” he roared, swiping his sheets aside as his legs swung to his bedside with revived vigor.
Off to the side, Overhaul remained sprawled on the chair, his eyes wide in horror.
“P-Pops,” he choked out, no doubt thanks to the bruise starting to form on his neck.
“You dare call me family after what you’ve done to mine?!”
Huh, maybe her temper wasn’t solely from trauma.
Eri turned her back to the scene, feeling a twisted lightness in her chest as she walked out and shut the door behind her, not that it muffled the shouting.
It was only belatedly that she finally realized the reason behind Chisaki’s needless cruelty.
Had he been…jealous she was the biological family of the man he thought of as his father?
The thought alone made her want to laugh until she cried.
What a miserable, pathetic little man. Take away his quirk and control, and all that was left was a wrecked shell with daddy issues.
“Are you hearing this?”
Eri’s attention snapped back to her surroundings as she realized things hadn’t ended yet. A few yakuza had followed after her from the mess hall, congregating around the bellowing voice of her grandfather.
“Hey, the old boss is back?”
“Awesome! You hear him laying in on Overhaul? Finally getting his just deserts.”
“Hah, that’s nothing on what that woman did to him.”
“What, her? She looks like she was pulled straight outta Cinderella with that ratty dress ‘n shit.”
“The hell? You didn’t see her wrangle Overhaul through the mess hall like he was her little bitchy manservant?”
“Man, shame. She the old Boss’s daughter or something then? Thought she chickened out of the family business.”
The realization the grunts she’d been summarily ignoring until now were staring at her pulled her back into the present. Except…
Why was it still going?
Inwardly panicking on what to think, Eri glared at the offending yakuza grunt, who yelped and shuffled away from her scowl.
No, seriously, why hadn’t things ended yet? She was done. There was nothing more to do here. Yes, she had so many things she regretted not doing, but she was still bleeding out in an abandoned alley with her throat slit. Imagination or not, she had very limited time left alive, and she had little will left to give after fulfilling one last fantasy.
As more yakuza wandered in, gawking at her and the silhouette of her grandfather loudly laying it in on Overhaul beyond the paper door behind her, Eri’s mind began to make some unfortunate conclusions.
Things weren’t ending, because she wasn’t ending. Not yet. She was as right as rain. Her quirk had pulled through, somehow. And that meant-
Oh…
shit
Notes:
Eri, appearing in her own past mid-torture: call an ambulance. Call an ambulance!
But not for me!
(Eri's the one delivering the vicious stranglehold, syke!)
This is the chapter that spawned the entire idea. Just one day thought 'what if an Eri that grew up jaded died traumatically and then time-traveled to her past, appearing mid-overhauling, and instead of shutting down she's just so done with existence she gets supremely pissed and curb-stomps Overhaul and the entire Hassaikai without even realizing it's real instead.' There's one more aspect of the original one-shot idea that has yet to come up, though I've hinted at it here and there, so I'm sure someone can guess in the comments.
In case it isn't the most obvious (which is fair since this is purely from her POV) through a combination of Rewind rampaging on an unknown drug and returning mid-overhauling, Eri appeared in the past in her adult body. The reason Chisaki (calling him Overhaul is confusing when I also talk about his quirk) fell back is from the push-back of unintentionally and abruptly putting together something completely different from what he was expecting.
Here's another glimpse into the post-alt-canon that Eri came from, with a surprisingly useful and empathetic Bakugo. He's one tough nut to write, even if doing so from his POV makes for the most fun thoughts and narration, but I think Izuku finally getting himself killed through his heroic nature would be enough to have a big impact on how he acts going forward. He's absolutely blaming himself for being the cause behind Izuku's nearly non-existent self-worth (though it's unclear how much it was the bullying and how much it was Izuku just being himself).
I once more insert my headcanon that Eri absolutely knows every swear that exists, simply because she's heard them all (and no, until she's older she has absolutely zero idea what any of them mean). That, and that Eri probably wouldn't be all hunky-dory after getting saved and then enjoying a culture festival performance. As some people have mentioned, she'd probably have some developmental problems growing up due to her years under Overhaul (the timeline isn't certain, but it's at least two years if her quirk manifested at four, and in the flashbacks she honestly looks more like a toddler, so around three or younger, meaning even longer. Someone did the math with how much her hair grew from the flashback to her first appearance, and three years old in the flashback fits more with that calculation)
Man, writing Eri casually wrecking Chisaki's shit and not even realizing it's all real was very fun.
As a last thing, I wanted Eri's gramps to mistake her for his daughter, due to her age, and had to throw in some name for him to mumble. Maya can mean several things in Japanese (and it's a pretty name), but it's also the name of the Buddha's mother (didn't know that before) and since the yakuza group is named after the Eight Precepts of Buddhism, it seemed coincidentally very appropriate (which keeps happening whenever I pick names for some reason)
All that said, see you next time, where an Unorthodox Decision is made.
Chapter 3: Unorthodox Decision
Notes:
Welcome back! Didn't post on Friday because I only got the first half finished last weekend, but I hammered out the second half today, so the streak of weekly uploads continues!
Here we have the final third of what I'd consider derived from the original one-shot idea, where the last piece of the premise is set up. This fic will continue beyond it though, even if it will remain on the shorter side. I intend on delivering a fully formed story this time, not an extended prompt/set-up that you can think up the rest for (as the textbooks used to say 'left as an exercise for the reader')
But that aside, I wonder how many of you guessed the last twist in the premise. Let me know in the comments, or what other thoughts you have. I love responding to comments, especially if they're kind <3
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The past-present?
At some point after her world-shattering realization, Eri had lost herself to a daze, the world passing by around her with little to no acknowledgment from her.
“So, what’s happening now?”
After grandfather had finished berating Chisaki—not a memory of Overhaul—until the only thing left was a sobbing, quirkless wreck, he’d ordered the yakuza outside to leave, to secure Chisaki somewhere and corral the entire organization, ceasing any of Chisaki’s operations, and to give him time to talk with her undisturbed.
Chisaki, because the one she’d manhandled so aggressively for ten minutes straight earlier today had not been a figment of her dying imagination, but the real deal.
If Eri wasn’t trying to process much more important things, she’d consider it very therapeutic for her trauma.
Did she regret doing any of what she’d done after appearing here? No. Was she supremely mortified about all the witnesses and apparent permanence of her actions? Her current state said enough.
“Chisaki Kai has been cast out of this family and disgraced.”
“And what now, give him up to the heroes? Some of us are complicit, like it or not. He’ll rat us out. And what if he tries to pull this shit again?”
“He has been defanged very effectively. We can set him up to be caught for some unrelated crime. He won’t go against my orders.”
After that, her grandfather had asked her to come to Chisaki’s- to his old office, where she’d dazedly laid bare her strange circumstances, barely registering when he gave her a kimono to cover up the raggedy, severely undersized and straining dress she remembered being her only clothing in her captivity.
She’d told him the bare-bones of how she came here, starting with what Chisaki had done after putting him in a coma and her getting rescued, before skipping to her death by a druggy in a back alley two decades later, a freak accident with her quirk and an unknown drug saving her life and forcing her clearly adult body to appear in this time mid-overhaul. What followed that had been made more than clear to him by the almost eager yakuza gathered outside his room before he’d shooed them away.
At that point, the thought of hiding anything hadn’t even crossed her mind, not until some of the older members of the Hassaikai had barged in to ask what he was planning on doing next.
And truthfully, out of the people she knew she could approach in her current situation, her grandfather was the only one she truly trusted to act only upon her own wishes, rather than act out on information without her input.
It was a sentiment Eri never thought she’d have all those years ago. It had started a few months after the end of the war, when she’d overheard Aizawa and Tsukauchi talking about her grandfather waking up from his Overhaul-induced coma.
After months of experiencing and seeing only sadness and grief all around her, from herself to class A to the staff and other adults, she’d been ready to face any distraction, even if it was outside her comfort zone.
Twenty years- Uh, several years in…a future(?)
“He’s in here. There’s no glass divider, but stick to your half.”
Eri looked up at the hospital worker, and then at Aizawa-san.
“I think this will be a waste,” the man huffed. Eri frowned and tugged at his pant leg, forcing him to look down at her as she channeled all her sadness into a pleading look.
“Ashido should not have taught you that,” he grumbled, averting his eyes to nod at the worker, who opened the door.
With the way open, Eri shuffled through the doorway, hesitation seeping into her step. Was this going to go alright? She hadn’t thought this through beyond convincing the adults.
Inside, a frail man she could barely remember from her memories sat in a wheelchair, looking out a reinforced window at the morning sun.
When the door had opened, his gaze had shifted in her direction, before trailing down and widening.
“Little Eri,” he said, his eyes surprised and…sad?
Why were those the only eyes she could ever see these days?
“Our presence won’t add anything of value,” Aizawa-san said, glancing at the old man. “Scream if he upsets you.”
The door shut behind her, leaving her alone with her sole remaining relative, in silence.
“I never asked them to see you.”
Eri blinked at the man’s words, staring up at him, though he barely managed to look back.
“…but I asked them to see you?”
Her genuine confusion seemed to shock him into alertness, his eyes blinking rapidly.
“You did…” he mumbled to himself, his shoulders sagging. “I don’t deserve it.”
“But…I wanted to see you.” Though she didn’t know why right now.
“I don’t deserve you wanting to see me,” her grandfather clarified, no longer looking at her. “Not after what I let happen.”
Eri frowned, feeling a sting in her eyes. Why did she think this would help distract her from being sad?
“But- But you tried to stop him,” she argued.
“I did not do enough.” Her grandfather was unyielding. “I knew Kai”—He shook his head—“Overhaul could get overzealous when it came to me and the family, but I’d grown complacent. I thought my words would be enough to keep him in line, but-” He closed his eyes, sighing. “I never thought he’d hide his acts, or turn his quirk on me, if he believed it was for my own good.”
Those last words caught Eri unaware, like an unknowing punch in her chest.
The whimper made her grandfather meet her eyes again, but she hastily looked down.
“That- That’s what they keep saying,” she said quietly, still feeling strangely out of breath. “That De- Izuku-san did his best to save everyone. That he did really good, even if he- even if he couldn’t save himself too. They all say he- he wouldn’t want me to keep being sad about it, because he always fought so- so I could stay safe and be happy, and he did. So- So-”
Another whimper knocked itself loose from her closed-up throat.
“So why can’t I feel happy anymore?”
Her fists clenched, bunching up her green dress as she tried to keep down the tears and rush of hot anger she still didn’t know how to deal with.
This was stupid. Why would someone she didn’t know be able to-
She gasped when a hand pressed down feebly on her head.
Her grandfather had rolled up to her without her noticing, and this time he was looking at her without reservation, giving her his best attempt at a comforting gesture.
And somehow it was enough. The bubbling anger seeped out of her, the tears stuck behind it finding their escape before she could stop them.
With nothing else in reach to try and stem the flow, she pressed her face into her grandfather’s pant leg as she whimpered. It smelled like hospital and old people.
“I’ve heard about that young man,” he said, not mentioning the tears staining his pants. “It’s a tragedy to see incredible people leave us forever when they still had more to do.”
Eri grabbed his leg tighter, another wave of sadness slamming over her.
“I-I hate that everyone looks like they- like they think he’ll come back s-somehow,” she admitted quietly. Always staring at his place on the couch in the dorms. Keeping everything in his room where he had placed it. Putting down an extra plate before freezing in place. Why could they all think he wasn’t gone until they remembered when it was all she had on her mind?
“He won’t.”
Eri gasped, before letting out an audible sob, a sound she hadn’t made since she’d first been tied to the Chair.
Everyone always said other things. ‘He’ll be with you in your memories.’ ‘Live the way he wanted you to live.’ ‘He’s still here, watching over us.’ ‘It feels bad, but time will make you feel better.’ But those simple, blunt words were the first ones that felt real, that she understood.
She’d seen so many people disappear and never return in a fraction of a second, from those who didn’t pay enough attention and let her slip away, to the ones who got too nice with her and even tried to help. She had disappeared so many times, each time wondering if this was the time she wouldn’t return either.
Why was everyone she knew trying to convince her—convince everyone someone dying wasn’t actually that horrible?
“But even though he won’t, and you can’t find it in yourself to see your own future now. You will get through this.”
Eri stilled, her tears ceasing, and she looked up with wet eyes. The certainty and bluntness of those words at odds with what she thought he’d been agreeing on.
“You are a Kayashima,” her grandfather declared, his eyes steely. “We’ve always persevered.”
“A…” Eri’s voice and thoughts stilled, the sadness obscured by the proud statement as she put the words together.
She was very aware that people had family names, and histories that came with those names. But never had she reflected on the fact she had one too.
“I didn’t know that,” she whispered in honesty, something her grandfather seemed to appreciate.
“Then maybe you’d like to know.” He wheeled back, keeping his arms on the wheels and a kind but stern smile on his face; as clear an invitation as any. “It’s about the only thing that’s still in my hands.”
The trepidation from the journey through the hospital was left behind as Eri carefully found her way onto his lap.
“This is something my daughter would have told you, as I once told her, if she hadn’t decided my way of life wasn’t something she wanted anything to do with,” he began. Eri was sure she wanted nothing to do with his life either, but the part of her that had never considered she had come from somewhere wanted to know either way.
“It’s the story of the woman who gave Japan a second chance.”
Eri blinked, wondering where this would go, but quietly settled in.
“During the Dawn of Quirks, the world was hanging by a thread. Some countries handled the chaos and disruption better than others. Japan, along with China and old Korea, were the worst off. I have no doubt that All For One was part of the reason.” He shook his head. “At first, the government tried its best, got the military involved when riots got worse and criminals with powerful quirks began rampaging and fighting each other, when people turned on others and accused them of hiding powers out of paranoia. But at the height of the Dawn, Japan had no government or organized military to speak of anymore, and only powerless citizens and quirked outcasts left to suffer a nationwide apocalypse, where only a select few profited and remained safe. Even the underworld of the time didn’t survive the Dawn, not even the old yakuza.”
Eri shivered, thinking of the times she’d seen beyond the walls of UA during the months of the War. All the ruins and distant screaming. Her grandfather noticed and sent her a sympathetic look.
“The rest of the world, the ones that were still hanging on, had already abandoned Japan. Their efforts were all local or focused on their neighbors. Extreme weather and the sea back then made it near impossible for any foreigner to help Japan. Japan was expected to become a medieval fiefdom of villainy that other powers would have to invade and clean up once they had returned order to their own countries. Japan as a culture would have been wiped out for good.”
Despite the terrible picture he painted, Eri was surprised when his heavy expression lifted.
“But then, a young Buddhist woman appeared on the streets. Nobody today remembers her name, her appearance, or her power, if she had any, but the yakuza remembers her. She grew up in the Dawn, saw the suffering and cruelty of humanity as it turned on itself…and decided to help.”
Images of De- Izuku-san flashed unbidden in Eri’s mind, a surge of fondness rather than sadness surprising her.
“She roamed the ruined streets of Japan and gave first aid to the wounded, talked down desperate criminals and rioters, saved people’s lives and livelihoods, and much more than I could list. That’s what she did, and kept doing for years on end, driven only by her kind nature and her beliefs. And before she realized, the victims, the injured, the criminals, the outcasts, they started following her, started trusting her, believing in her. And when she realized what was happening, she took the help they were offering in return, and began doing something the vigilantes of the time could never have done.”
“What?” Eri asked breathlessly, enthralled with the story.
Her grandfather smiled.
“She returned order to Japan, piece by tiny piece,” was his answer. “She brought those people together into an organization that would look out for each other, and the innocent. The powered outcasts became protectors from the outside. The criminals put hard limits and regulations on the criminal activity running rampant within. The regular people set up shops and did trade, selling their services and rekindling entertainment and leisure. The organization, the family spread out across Japan, taking her beliefs and conduct with them, and bubbles of safety and stability showed up around the nation. Places where the people who would eventually piece Japan back together found safety and hope for the future.”
There was a prideful glint in his eyes as he finished up. “That’s how Japan as we know it got its second chance. And that’s how the yakuza got its second chance too.”
That’s what snapped Eri out of the whimsy of the tale.
Her grandfather eyed her. “You don’t believe me.”
“That’s not what yakuza do,” she whispered. If they had, she never would’ve been- They-
“Not anymore,” he agreed, eyes pained. “After Japan returned to a new status quo, the families lost their purpose. As the woman who founded them grew old and passed away, independent clans formed and started splitting off, returning to the ways of the yakuza of old to earn money and keep afloat, taking advantage of the goodwill that remained until it all eventually dried up. Only one of the founder’s direct followers was disgusted and disheartened by what he saw, and swore to keep her legacy and code alive through his own followers and family. That man was her son, my grandfather, and he named his clan after the rules his mother personally believed in; the eight precepts of Buddhism.”
“Hassaikai,” Eri said under her breath, the word taking on a very different meaning in the new light.
Her grandfather sighed deeply, and Eri could feel his strength waning, hastily returning to her own two feet, still looking up curiously.
“But it wasn’t meant to last,” he said solemnly. “With All Might and the golden age of heroes, even I was forced to rely on more and more scrupulous methods to keep the family afloat. And then, Chisaki- Overhaul took over and twisted everything, gave her legacy a bitter, violent conclusion.” He chuckled darkly. “Shie Hassaikai. What an atrocious name to be remembered by in the end.”
Eri lowered her eyes. Despite everything it had done to her, she couldn’t help but feel sad for the man in front of her for how his group had ended.
Idly, another thought came to her.
“So…the founder’s last name was Kayashima?” She hadn’t understood how him telling her the family name could’ve connected to the story of Japan at the Dawn, but if the founder was his great grandmother, her great-great grandmother…
Her grandfather shook his head, smiling barely.
“My grandfather chose his own family name when he married. His mother didn’t have one. Or did, but took it to her grave.”
Eri blinked. “What does it mean?” And why did he choose it?
He opened his mouth to speak up, but the door to the room suddenly slid open, startling the both of them.
“Alright, we need to get you back to Mandalay before bedtime,” Aizawa-san grumbled, his bags heavier than before.
Eri startled again, peeking out the window to see the sun was no longer visible through it. How much time had passed?
Despite herself, she sent Aizawa-san a pleading look, glancing briefly at her grandfather.
“Perhaps, the story of our name can come another time,” the man admitted after a moment of silence, and Eri couldn’t help but feel her lips tug up at the admission.
Aizawa-san must’ve realized what her smile meant, because he sighed deeply, before extending his hand to her.
“Let’s go, Eri. We can plan another visit some other time.”
A victorious sound escaped her as she nodded excitedly, before rushing over and giving her grandfather’s leg a final tight squeeze.
“Bye, Ojiisan,” she said as she was led out the room, seeing his demeanor lighten ever so slightly before he was out of view.
The present
Of course, her old man had passed on eventually from complications left by his induced coma, leaving her feeling alone in a consistently bleaker world once more, but those few years, and the stories he’d told her, had given her the drive to keep going for the next decade and a bit, even if she never did see a future for herself again, only the present and the past.
Long enough that she now found herself here, listening to the thugs and criminals who’d let Chisaki run roughshod on everything squabble about what to do now that she’d thrown the entire organization into chaos with a simple—well, one thug had put it best—manhandling.
“Overhaul invested too much into that distribution network to let it rot!”
“And use it to distribute what? That miracle drug only he and his aide knew anything about? We don’t even know how he was making it, or where he was sourcing it from!”
“For your information,” grandfather’s voice cut through the meeting like steel through chilled water. “That source was my granddaughter.”
The room quieted, eyes darting between each other in the silence.
Of course, in a gathering of enough people, one person would be bold enough to speak their thoughts out loud.
“So it’s not a wash yet,” one of them said. “If we approach this carefully, we-”
Wood cracked and chipped as a fist slammed down on the table. All eyes in the room shot to the head of the table, all mistaken.
A seat away from him, Eri breathed heavily, barely noticing the pinpricks of the splinters. That was nothing compared to the heat rushing through her.
These were the people who’d claimed to still be loyal to her grandfather last time?!
“Are you hearing yourself?” she asked incredulously, possibly the loudest she’d talked in years. “This ‘family’ you’ve pledged your lives too was well on its way to becoming an undeniable villain group, and all you care about is sitting back and getting easy money from exploiting an innocent little girl even more, the granddaughter of your patriarch?”
She scoffed, falling back in her chair with a sneer. “Oh what a ‘hard path’ you’re walking.”
The men bristled at her insult, but were unable to respond with words.
“And if it’s up to me,” she continued, glaring them down. “Not a single one of you will lay even a single finger on her.” Because she’d punt them through a wall if they tried to so much as grab her.
“Alright, alright, geez. ‘s your kid, we get it,” one of the men muttered, notably evading her eyes.
Eri’s eye twitched, partly in her effort to stop herself from correcting him—which would end terribly for her—partly because of just how easily a person whose name she didn’t even know was getting on her nerves.
“No, I don’t think you do,” she reiterated, teeth gritting. “You know, when my g- father told me about this group and how it started, I…almost admired it. A place for the outcasts, people to help those who were left helpless. To give them belonging, a family.” She narrowed her eyes. “But all I see right now are low-life thugs who are more than happy to be the criminals and villains everyone already thinks they are.”
One of the older men at the table brought his hand down on the table with a slam, though unable to leave any damage. “I dunno what yer thinking, Missy, but this ain’t the Dawn. This ain’t some feel-good fairy tale where yakuza come out to help the community in a crisis! We need to stay afloat if we want to keep existing and housing the family we got at all!”
“We are in a crisis,” Eri rebutted, before freezing.
Up until now, everything had been so much for her, she’d barely been able to stop and think.
They were heading for one. Because the League of Villains, the Paranormal Liberation War, it was all in the future now, not the past. It was still over three years before she’d get rescued, over three years before Izuku fought to his death to save them all. He hadn’t even been chosen to inherit One For All yet!
“A-And maybe you can’t see it yet,” she continued, words stuttering as her mind kept processing. “But the Era of Peace is too unstable to last for much longer.” The time she’d lived through hadn’t been too different from before All Might, Yagi-san, was forced into retirement. The similarities were almost haunting.
But that time wasn’t here yet.
Eri sat back in her chair, letting her grandfather take over as arguing picked back up again, the men obviously not convinced by her shaky finish. But she didn’t care.
Izuku wasn’t dead yet.
She had a second chance.
She could save him.
…but how?
Would anyone even believe her story? Her own grandfather had been skeptical, and he’d seen the evidence of her otherwise unexplained jump in age in person. Would anyone with the power to help trust her, or be available in the first place? She didn’t even legally exist in this time yet, no birth certificate or registration with the government.
The only things she had were her name, her adult body—miraculously—her power, and her knowledge, and even that last one was lacking.
All she knew was that All For One still existed, that his doctor’s base of operations was located under Jaku Hospital, and that the League of Villains would begin attacking UA in a little under three years, All Might would retire after a fight at Kamino, and the League and a resurging Meta Liberation Army would cause the near-collapse of Japan after jailbreaking Tartarus, which was thwarted by Izuku in a fight against Shigaraki, which ended in both their deaths.
Her quirk was strong, but could it ever be enough to make a difference in a series of events so grand and all-encompassing?
And even if she convinced heroes like Nezu and Nighteye, would they be able to pull it off with her knowledge?
Because if there was anything Eri was sick of, it was being put on the sidelines, reduced to a passive observer. Something that was guaranteed to happen if she got the heroes to mobilize. It was something they were obligated to do.
She wasn’t going to stand by and see Izuku sacrifice his life again from the sidelines. Not this time.
But how?
“Dunno why you’re being so overprotective of your spawn,” a voice cut through her mental anguish. “She can clearly handle herself.”
Another grunted. “Why’d she not want anything to do with us again? Just from today, I thought she was a member already.”
Eri straightened in her seat, ready to argue how her post-’death’ crash-out was not in any way representative of who she was as a person, except-
She stiffened, both her body and mind freezing.
Yes, she only had her name, her power, and her knowledge, but there was one last thing she had right now. Something she’d forgotten simply because he wasn’t supposed to still be alive in her time.
Could she-
Her mind still racing, she glanced at her grandfather, who returned it with concern.
With a simple nod from her, the man ended the meeting and escorted her back to a private room, where she was left alone to stew on the impulsive thought that was now clinging to her.
It was an unknown amount of time later that she returned to her grandfather and told him of her insane idea, something she still wasn’t even sure of yet, and miraculously he agreed to let her try.
Over a month later
A rhythmic thumping sound echoed through the small room as Eri tapped her foot against the floor.
Despite all her time preparing. Despite all the time to come to terms with the kind of crazy, reckless path she was about to take. She was still as anxious and unsure about it as when the idea had first popped up in her head.
It was crazy. But after a month of talking things through and planning, it seemed feasible, logical even.
(Yes, despite only being her minder and quirk trainer back during her time at UA, Aizawa had left an impression on her)
At the start, her grandfather had called her insane, and had argued her on literally every point she made. The only thing they’d agreed on at first had been her need to properly train her quirk.
Yes, after her initial training to gain control over her quirk, the only things she’d truly done with it beyond returning Lemillion’s quirk had been rewinding others and herself on very short scales to undo wounds and quirk effects. Anything beyond that had remained untrained and untested, something she could not allow if she were to follow any of the burgeoning plan, whatever that would turn out to be. She still had no idea how she’d actually managed to destroy Chisaki’s quirk permanently.
So she’d trained, on people provided by her grandfather, who were still trusted by him.
Despite knowing how versatile and overpowered her ability could be, it was only here that she truly understood what she had. And the culmination of it all had been an older man who’d lost his arm in a villain attack over a decade ago.
Knowing that she could quite literally be a source of immortality as the logical end-point of her quirk was something that she’d developed a rational fear of, and that moment would be the proof of it.
So, consider her surprised when, after successfully rewinding the man and returning his arm, a…unique consequence of a larger scale rewind made itself known.
Yes, the man was ten years younger, and had his arm back, but in the days after he started aging at an accelerated rate. After a week he’d already gained several years back, though his arm didn’t mysteriously get amputated by a non-existent force once he aged past the moment of the accident, and it seemed it’d slow down once his original age had been reached.
So no, not a literal fountain of youth. Some people would think she’d be disappointed by that fact, but she was just relieved she didn’t have that amount of power.
But it had also spawned a second idea. One that was part pragmatic, mostly pure selfish indulgence.
After just a couple weeks of experimenting, and after a once more reluctant agreement from her grandfather, Eri took the plunge and rewound her own body to three years old. After her quirk had come in, but before Chisaki had gotten his grubby mitts on her.
In the month that followed, while she returned to her regular age, Eri got to experience a glimpse of what would have been her childhood if Chisaki had been a not terrible person—or non-existent.
It…would still have been a very strange childhood, and that she retained her mind made it impossible to get a full view, but she thought it would have been a strangely decent one anyway. The insane amount of food she’d gorged herself with for the past month wouldn’t have been part of it, but she’d been a very rapidly growing young girl.
But now she was back to her current age, and after long days of arguing with her grandfather—the sight of an old man debating philosophy and deep strategy with what appeared to be a toddler was very comical—she had shaped her intrusive thought into a path to be walked.
Eri sighed again, watching the clock as voices came through from the next room over, and gave herself one more once-over in the mirror.
Her risky plunge into self-rewinding and undoing her time with Chisaki had paid dividends. No longer was she on the chronically short side, having gained almost two feet in height and matching her grandfather’s stature. And the thin surgical scars on her arms and legs were gone, replaced by blemish-free skin.
A whole new person, something that felt almost required for what she was about to start. Little Eri was gone, overhauled into her through a freak cosmic accident of her quirk, a drug and something that seemed almost like a twisted version of fate, and in her place was someone who had stuff that needed to be done.
The fact that Overhaul allowed Chisaki to heal scars and he simply didn’t was one more tally in the ‘how many times I’m kicking your balls in’ section of her diary, though by now he’d been framed for other crimes and turned in to the police. As her grandfather had promised, Chisaki had not said a single thing about the Hassaikai or her.
Eri grimaced as she tugged at the leather of her jacket. She’d grown very fond of the different kimono’s her grandfather had let her wear while she waited out her rewind, though they no doubt had belonged to her mother, and her old hoodies for anonimity were a comfort she missed too, compared to the more bold style she was wearing now.
She did surprisingly really like the feel of sturdy combat boots though. If the doors here weren’t of the sliding kind and made of paper, she would be kicking open every door she had to go through.
But the somewhat uncomfortable appearance was necessary. Unlike her grandfather, she had no years of experience and respect to rely on, so traditional clothing was out, and two, she was a woman—which didn’t matter much in this day and age, but in a sausage fest like the yakuza…yeah.
“As to why we are having this meeting though…There is one thing Chisaki’s coup has made painfully clear to me.”
Eri perked up at the familiar words she and grandfather had agreed upon. Ready or not, now was the time. So with a final jitter in her step she steadied her posture and walked into the hall, heading for the next room.
“And that’s that our family can’t live on as we are. Something needs to be shaken up.”
She came to a stop before the door. Part of her was still screaming to stop and try things another way, but no other way seemed as plausible.
“For that, we need someone young and fresh as its head.”
As the incredulous murmurs rose within the room, Eri slid the door open with a bang, keeping her gaze steady as she entered the conference room with a confident stride.
“That’s why I’ll be stepping down, and let my daughter take the reins for the foreseeable future.”
Eri let herself zone out a little as her grandfather explained he’d take on an advisory role.
Yes, this was crazy and…not a heroic look. But it was her second chance. A miraculous opportunity she had to grab with both hands and no regrets. No more crying from the sidelines and a hastily mutilated horn that wasn’t quite enough. Her second chance at saving the boy who’d saved her wouldn’t be wasted by playing it safe and avoiding doing what was hard and uncomfortable.
If it was up to her, there wouldn’t even be a final battle for Izuku to die in. And if she played this right, she’d have a whole network in the underground to make sure what she wanted became true.
“Hold on, the little brat is taking over?” Eri blinked as her ears registered the voice. Wait, Rappa? Since when was he important enough to sit at any table? “Not that I don’t like her style, with how she manhandled Overwhore into her personal bitch.” He smirked at her as he leaned back. “But if she wants to order me around, she’s gonna have to prove she can-”
Before he could finish his no doubt physical challenge, Eri’s scowl had already finished developing, and a bolt of yellow energy shot straight at him from her finger, cutting him off with a high-pitched yelp as he fell back and out off his chair.
“What’d you do?” one of his neighbors asked, staring at the fallen man with wide eyes.
Eri smirked, letting some much needed confidence ooze out as she put her hands on her hips. Hard-earned too, with the experimentation and training from the past month.
“I rewound his balls to the moment I kicked them in,” she explained casually, more than happy to see the whole collective cross their legs simultaneously. “Now, unless anyone else has any complaints so far…”
She strode forward, sitting down at the chair her grandfather had just vacated. “Chisaki threw a coup and failed miserably, so I’m going to show him up and succeed where he failed.”
A grin was plastered on her face, a false confidence she hoped would turn genuine with time.
“It’s time to turn this ship around and show everyone just what we can accomplish. Not as criminals and thugs, but as a family.”
No matter how she had to act and dress right now, no matter what she had to do to make it happen, she would become Izuku’s hero.
Even if her second chance at being one was looking to be…unorthodox.
Notes:
Title drop!
Now let's rewind to the start of the chapter. Had some trouble doing the start, but was very happy to get it written and move on to the flashback scene. Naturally, people don't get to use Eri's grandfather much in fics, so he's a bit tricky to write. I hope I managed a decent attempt with him in the future.
I also enjoyed writing Eri in a way that shows she had a very unusual (and traumatic upbringing), mirrored in her thoughts on people grieving. She's seen death already so often, she can only see it as a bad thing, and all the people struggling around her and giving her platitudes and trying to comfort her don't understand she just needs to hear someone tell her that she's not wrong to view it as a terrible thing with no positive side. A mixture of world-weariness and childlike innocence. Of course, that's partly what led her to being miserable in her future, but in the moment, her grandfather gave her the blunt honesty she was waiting for.
Kayashima is the family name I made up for Eri, all the way back for Starborn Hero. It originally came together from me smashing together kanji for past and healing. Then I found out that there's a station in Osaka (my decently canon-supported hc for where the main HQ of the Shie Hassaikai is located) which was built around an old, sacred tree. The symbology of 'old embraced by the new' was too fitting for a yakuza that somehow survived far into the era of quirks and pro heroes, and so it's now my perma-hc for Eri's last name (good thing we'll never get a canon answer to that).
The story of how a woman helped stabilize Japan and accidentally resurrected the yakuza after the Dawn of Quirks might sound a little familiar to anyone who's read the original chapter of The Third Legacy, and that's because I lifted it wholesale. Also, if you know the specific main twist of that one-shot, which I've left ambiguous in this current retelling, then you're wondering if the same applies to this Eri. And the answer is, why not? It won't come up or have any effect on the story, but for those of you who've read it it'll be a fun little secret.
Done-with-everyone's-shit Eri is still around and still done with everyone's shit, and not afraid to show it. Perhaps a little OOC (though I think this Eri's alternate future without Deku around is enough justification for it) but it feels very satisfying to let Eri be the one in charge and boss everyone around instead.
As for Eri's little jab with 'the hard path'. An alternate way of calling yakuza is gokudo, which translates to 'the extreme path' which I interpret as 'taking the hard path'. In general I'm not very well-versed with yakuza in general, beyond the idea that 'yakuza' essentially is a 'self-burn' of calling themselves losers and outcasts, with them being part of a 'family of outcasts' as their pride. It's especially seen in MHA with some of the Eight Bullets being outcasts taking in by Overhaul (though in his case the loyalty he's built by saving them is wholly artificial, deliberate and self-centered, because he's a sociopath who can only make things worse). If I've gotten completely the wrong idea, let me know in the comments, but I'm taking the fact this is far in the future and the yakuza of old all died out thanks to the Dawn of Quirks and use it as an excuse for any differences with real-world present day yakuza.
So yeah, the final twist. Eri's gonna become the leader of the Hassaikai and use them to change the future. How unorthodox, huh? So yeah, Eri's gonna pose as her own mother/the old boss's daughter and take on the mantle of leader, hopefully impressing the group and reforming them into a force she can use to make sure Izuku will never have to sacrifice himself to save Japan. I've always seen time travel fix-its where the MC (almost always Izuku) either goes solo or tells the heroes (usually Nezu), but never the MC deciding to become a villain or criminal to get things done. And while most characters would go to the heroes, Eri in the past is in such a situation that this way is more likely to succeed. This is also why I had her return in her adult body. Having a four-year-old (this is over three years before her rescue, almost one year after her quirk manifested) run and boss around an entire yakuza would be too cracky and unrealistic for my tastes, so an adult she stays (posing as her own mom, which she refuses to dwell on).
As for her question, Rappa is at the table because a) I wanted to write that interaction, and b) it's to appease the faction still loyal to Overhaul
That's all for now. See you next time, when things are starting to be set into motion! Though with how things will go from now, some outside POVs will be more appropriate for what Eri is planning. Instead, you'll get to see someone conduct some Uneasy Espionage.
Chapter 4: Uneasy Espionage
Notes:
Welcome back everyone to gasp an actually short chapter, like I intended to write from the start? Well, still over 2k, but since the past chapters have steadily been increasing in length, with the last one over 5k, it's a worrying trend I keep falling for every single time.
Personal character flaws (or are they?) aside, I hope you enjoy this next chapter. And as always, I look forward to seeing what your thoughts are <3
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Sasaki Mirai, Sir Nighteye, couldn’t sleep.
For the past year, sleep had become difficult for him. Even then, sleep had been difficult to come by for a while, ever since his fateful mistake of seeing into All Might’s future, locking him into his terrible fate. A fate that played out before his eyes every waking moment, even though he hadn’t used his quirk on him in years now.
But a year ago, something unexplainable had happened. He had been in the middle of using his quirk on his sidekick Centipeder to confirm a raid would go as he’d predicted when suddenly, the film strip had jittered, stuttered, and cut to black. The next thing he knew, Centipeder and Bubble Girl were standing over him, pulling him up from the floor.
Mirai had feared something had gone wrong with his quirk, but upon making eye contact he once more saw the film strip of Centipeder’s future unfurl in his mind, as if nothing had happened.
Since then, the unsubstantiated fear something had happened with his quirk, of seeing a roll of film cut to black like he’d seen all those years ago, haunted him at night.
And yet, another part of him was equally curious, a flaw of his investigative nature. What had happened in that moment? Had it been his own doing? Or some outside factor? A simple fluke? And of what nature would such a factor have to be to even have an influence on his quirk?
These thoughts were what occupied his mind as he strolled through an Osaka suburb after sundown.
As he passed another street corner, an unusual sight met his eyes.
Further down the street of the otherwise sleepy, quiet neighborhood, a crowd of people were fanning in and out of a surprisingly lively building.
Mirai’s thoughts drifted to suspicion as he made his way over, though the happy chatter coming from the crowd gave him pause.
Potential criminal dealings were not a happy occasion on principal.
Weathering some odd, occasionally judgy glances, Mirai wandered into the building. Perhaps not a subtle move for any investigation, but this spur of the moment gander wasn’t official or by procedure.
To his surprise, the inside of the building appeared to house a large mess hall. People with all kinds of severe heteromorphic appearances were bustling around in a large open kitchen area off on the other side, with others employing liberal quirk use as they dealt out packages of food to the people entering.
Elsewhere, folks had gathered around large collections of couches to chat, with children playing off in a small corner, in defiance of the late hour.
Mirai quirked a brow. Definitely not the usual fair.
“Hey,” a voice addressed him suddenly, though unable to elicit a startle from him. “You not here to give us shit about an off-the-books soup kitchen, are you?”
“I figured that’s what this place’s nature was,” Mirai mused, turning to meet the one accosting him.
He paused at the man’s appearance. Another person with a full-body heteromorphic mutation. An appearance he was surprised to find jogged a memory of his. Of course, people would take it problematically if he stated that those with heteromorph appearances were far easier to recall, but the striking hair color combined with his appearance made Mirai certain he’d brushed past this man- adolescent before.
The other way around was far more likely to occur, of course, with his status as a by now well-known pro hero, and was proven correct fast when the other narrowed his eyes.
“You’re the one who used your quirk on me without permission, isn’t that right?”
Mirai nodded, perhaps a bit too curt. He had bumped into the adolescent—teen then—before his doomsday vision of All Might soured his quirk for him forever, and due to circumstances that were hazy to recall he’d used his once-a-day ability on the teen during the encounter, something that had been more than easy to see when his eyes hadn’t been hidden by light reflecting from his glasses.
Of course, knowledge of his quirk or not, using it on someone without prior notice was an easy way of souring opinions on you, as had been the result.
He vividly recalled the then teen going off on him, assuming he was another member of law enforcement discriminating against a heteromorph in a hoodie loitering around a shopping street.
But then, contrary to his predictions, the man chuckled.
“Man, I had no idea you were seeing my future. Just thought you were some grumpy, pasty business man.”
“Pardon?” That did not sound like the voice of a still disgruntled person, especially not with what his glimpses back then had shown him.
The further into the future he went, the fuzzier his sense of time became, and the more muddled the roll of film became to his senses, leaving only clarity for the most impactful moments. But the things he’d sensed then, a hateful voice inciting violence and culling through tinny speakers, blades of swords, a blood red scarf, mindless rage and screaming, did not leave him with a good impression.
Not that his foreknowledge was in any way basis for arrests, even if it had left no room for doubt for him.
His quirk did not- could not change what it showed.
“I mean, kinda cool, right?” the man continued. “Probably unnerved you more with all the stuff I did the last few years than you did me, huh? Wonder if you saw this too.”
He hadn’t.
Mirai was forced to halt all other thoughts. While clarity only came in significant moments of the person’s future, the sole exception was for future encounters with himself, something about his own presence calling out to the him in the present.
He’d not seen this moment though.
Impossible. That would mean-
“Eh, but you’re seriously not gonna give the people running this place shit, right?” their voice cut through again. “‘s about the only decent place for folks like me to get some grub.”
“The fact you called it ‘off the books’ would require me to investigate properly,” Mirai returned, forcing his words to sound conversational.
“Uh- definitely didn’t then,” the man stuttered. “Good thing, huh?” He huffed, letting his hands rest in his jogging pants’ pockets. “Places like this are damn rare. When I read about some popping up online a couple months back I was so skeptical I actually left my room to see.” He huffed out a laugh. “Good thing I did. Woulda still been in there.”
Mirai wasn’t left with the chance to respond as the heteromorph walked off, making his way for a door that led out of the public area.
His eyes lingered on the door the (he now realized) volunteer left through as his mind churned.
Perhaps he would spend some more of his sleepless night sticking to this area. Even without his quirk, being a pro hero of the investigative kind necessitated developing a kind of gut instinct, one that presently told him to stay and observe. He assumed for shady reasons. The man was right in that places like these were hard to come by for those less kindly looked upon, but that also meant it could easily be a recruiting ground for something far less charitable.
And so Mirai sat down and spent the next half hour people watching. Despite being a notable local hero, blending into the background of any crowd, even one so opposite to him as this one, was a treasured skill of his.
For a while, nothing happened beyond simple chatter and people coming and going, until-
“Hey.”
Mirai’s eyes drifted to the corner where the kids—more lethargically than before—were still playing. An adult had walked up to one in particular, a kid who had trouble keeping up with the others, bound to a wheelchair. The unfortunate reason behind it was made clear by the lack of a leg, a still bandaged stump poking out instead.
“H-Hi sir,” the child said, clearly intimidated by the adult’s above average stature.
“I heard someone would like to see you,” they returned, sounding surprisingly non-threatening as they nodded at a nearby spectating adult—the father, based on the similar appearances.
Despite what sounded like an ominous statement, the child’s face lit up, and they nodded eagerly, which the adult took as an invitation to wheel them out, heading for the same door Mirai’s last encounter had passed through—not to the likely father, as he’d expected.
Seeing this as his sign to look deeper, Mirai took care to remain inconspicuous as he left his observation spot and moved to intercept the duo.
With a carefully calculated bump, locking of the eyes, and a muttered but sincere apology, Mirai hastily left the building through a side exit, his mind racing to catch up with the vision his quirk had provided, as it always did when he hastily watched an extended amount in as short a time as possible.
~~~
From Mirai’s limited third person perspective, the wheelchair-bound child was rolled through a nondescript door somewhere deeper within the facility.
Inside were two more adults, one sitting on a sofa with the sleeves of her leather jacket rolled up, the other putting something away in a bag.
‘Are you sure it’ll be enough?’ the sitting woman said—mouthed; lip reading became an essential skill for Mirai due to the limitations of his foresight—as she unrolled her sleeves. ‘There’s no danger of running out.’
‘It’ll keep things running for now,’ the other said, picking up their bag before noticing the child Mirai’s foresight was following. ‘Oh, they’re here!’
The woman looked up, striking red eyes spotting the child. ‘Thanks for the spot,’ she told the other adult, who took it as their sign to leave, along with the adult who’d wheeled the child in.
Those same red eyes lit up as a smile dimpled her cheeks. ‘Don’t worry, I don’t bite,’ she said, beckoning the kid to roll themselves over. ‘I was told you got in a bad accident a month ago. That must’ve hurt.’
The kid nodded, but since they were facing away from his view, Mirai couldn’t see what they said.
Whatever they said, the woman took sympathy as she knelt to the child’s eye level.
‘That’s very kind of you. But don’t worry. Your father won’t have to worry about medical stuff.’ She glanced down at the stump. ‘Can I?’
The child looked confused, but nodded anyway.
Mirai’s vision lit up in yellow as the distinctive, kinked horn on the woman’s forehead surged with energy. He cursed his lack of ability to close eyes while viewing as the yellow jumped from her hand and engulfed the kid, blinding him for several moments.
When vision returned, Mirai was gobsmacked to see the child had regained their lost leg, not a stump in sight, only some torn shreds of wrapping stuck around their thigh.
The child in turn sat in silence, before abruptly jumping out of their wheelchair and slamming into the woman to give a crushing hug.
What kind of quirk-
The pair startled as another door slammed open, the same heteromorph Mirai had bumped into earlier looking panicked as he mouthed, ‘someone was shot out back!’
~~~
Mirai blinked as he finally processed that part of his vision, which had been overshadowed by the miraculous quirk use, no doubt perfect in recruiting people to a cause. Which meant-
No wait. He-
“Hey, you nosy fucker! Knew you were up to something!”
Mirai startled, a part of him already resigned as someone who looked far more like your typical criminal sneered at him, the gun already pulled out and the finger on the trigger.
BANG
“Dude, what the hell?!”
Mirai fell to the ground, his eyes spotting the same heteromorph from his vision gaping.
“Kayashima-sama said-!”
“Fuck what she says!” the thug interrupted, swinging his gun angrily. “Her pacifist bullshit is gonna ruin what little Overhaul has left us with! How anyone can think she’s better is-”
The man was cut off as the heteromorph punched him in the face, leaving him flying into the nearest wall, where he slumped over, knocked out.
Mirai was vaguely aware of the other person rushing off, no doubt to perform his part in the vision he’d processed a little too late.
What a…surprise end for him. Compared to the one he’d seen for All Might, his own was going to be…surprisingly mundane.
Well, he’d never seen another interaction with All Might in the man’s future, perhaps he should’ve known all along.
“Right here!”
The darkness encroaching on his blurred vision retreated as his head shot up, more people rushing back into the alley.
Despite his glasses having fallen off in his tumble, he could clearly recognize the near-white hair of the woman from his vision. One side covered her forehead with bangs, while the other half remained clear, the large horn defiantly keeping the hair back and to the side. The color was a stark contrast to the black of her leather jacket and tights.
Red eyes narrowed as they scanned him and the alley.
“Take care of him,” she murmured, brows lowered in a scowl.
Ah, it was a secret yakuza operation. How unexpected, to have stumbled into something that was clearly much larger than what was shown on the surface. Of course he wouldn’t be allowed to live.
Mirai let out a humorless chuckle.
And yet, to his surprise once more, the yakuza beside her nodded and left for the knocked out thug instead, harshly pulling him off the ground and forcefully dragging his limp body away.
“I’m sorry,” the woman said as she knelt down, her blurred form taking up his entire view now. “I really thought I’d weeded out all the trigger happy ones by now.”
She glanced down at the warm, sticky red spot staining his button-up.
“Stay still please,” she said, her hand hovering over his stomach. “There’s no exit wound. This’ll be harder.”
Gold thrummed to life, an electric hot buzz filling his torso.
Mirai could only take his eyes off the woman to gape down at his stomach, where something metallic was slowly pushed out by resurgent tissue, until not even a mark remained as it rolled onto the ground.
Impossible.
This didn’t even act like any healing quirk he had knowledge of.
It was like- like the bullet had never even hit him.
His eyes shot up again as he realized.
Even with the genuine haziness of his lacking glasses, it was like something about this woman made that metaphorical third eye of his fog over too.
“Y-You,” he croaked, his mind still catching up to the fact his body was fine once more. Her.
The woman smiled sadly, glancing at the heteromorph, who’d remained at her side. “Thank you for averting this disaster, Iguchi-san.”
He froze up, before saluting. “N-No problem, Kayashima-sama!”
She shook her head at the overly reverent title, before grabbing Mirai’s glasses off the pavement and placing them back in their place, clearing his vision.
“I’m sorry about this,” she said, her expression a far cry from the yakuza Mirai had heard stories of. “But I’m already far enough into this plan to switch gears now. I hope this works the way I intend it to.”
Mirai blinked, mind already puzzling on what her mumble meant, before her horn flashed once more, blinding him in gold and purple.
Mirai blinked as he suddenly found himself sitting slumped in an alley.
With a groan, he stumbled back up onto his feet, his eyes scanning his surroundings, before finally gazing upwards.
Based on the moon’s position, he’d somehow lost several hours of the night. Had he fallen asleep?
No. He wouldn’t have let his lack of sleep get so far as to affect his reasoning. An ambush mugging? Had he been knocked out in the process, by some quirk? There was no visible injury beside the obvious loss of consciousness he’d suffered.
His hands were already wandering, quickly confirming his suspicions when he couldn’t find the familiar weight of his hyper-dense seals in his suit pockets.
The kinds of things fans thought held any value…
Still, someone must’ve found him after he’d been knocked out and saved him from real injury, dragging him somewhere remote but too shy to stay around.
Mirai sighed loudly, a startled rat scuttling off, and composed himself, walking out the alley with a steady gait. No use in pursuing this if all he lost in the end were some replaceable seals by an overzealous fan slash criminal. Perhaps he’d see if he could find this good Samaritan sometime in the future though. Part of him felt it was important.
“You don’t get to die so easily, Sasaki Mirai,” Eri mumbled as she stared down from the rooftop, watching Sir Nighteye walk down the street.
“Not tonight. Not in two years.”
She had not expected to encounter him yet, despite being based in the same city, but part of her felt like it was fate.
She got to save one of the people who’d died for her last time, hopefully it was an omen for how her plans were fated to unfold this time.
Notes:
With this chapter we shift to outside POVs as Eri carries out and develops her plans (which remain secret to you guys for now to keep up some suspense), and the first POV goes to Sir Nighteye!
Yep, no 'no beta we die like Sir Nighteye' tag for this fic (though in recent times I've fallen out of the habit of adding those 'no beta' tags, which is still very much true for every single one of my fics btw tho).
Anyway, had fun writing a bit more of a calculating, rational type of POV, however you'd describe the way someone like Nighteye would narrate/view the world. Switching up character voices is one of my favorite parts of writing third person limited (especially when you switch POVs between two characters who couldn't be further apart in personality; very jarringly fun).
Felt a bit cheeky, having to play a version of the pronoun game for most of the chapter with a certain character. I wonder who of you guessed Nighteye bumped into Iguchi Shuichi aka Spinner before the actual name drop (perhaps let me know in the comments? cheeky wink).
This chapter may have given you some glimpses of what Eri is planning here, but since we're sticking to outside POVs for now, guess whose POV we'll be in next chapter (or what POVs will appear in the future
guessing Izuku is a freebie).Nighteye's quirk is probably one of the more...interesting ones about what it implies for how the MHA universe functions at a basic level, one that I won't be theorizing about (except that Eri arriving basically made it replace the metaphysical film reel with another one entirely). I do like the idea that Nighteye doesn't tail any suspects, as that would be highly suspect. Instead he activates his quirk on them and then lets that do the rest (iirc he has to keep maintaining eye contact—or at least have the other in view—to keep navigating and watching their future, so I made it so Nighteye has trained himself to scan and take in as much of a vision as possible in as short a time as possible, faster than he can actually register, and has trained his mind to hold onto all of it and let him process at a normal speed after the vision has already ended).
As a side-note, I once headcanoned (decently supported by canon) that Nighteye's agency (and the main compound of the Shie Hassaikai) is based in Osaka, which is also where the Kayashima station thing from a previous AN comes from. If you want the full write-up for the reasoning behind it, lemme know and I'll paste it in a reply.
The ways Eri can apply Rewind beyond simple injury rewinding grows. Go and add 'rewinding someone's memories away' to the list. Though she hasn't really used it very liberally before this point, beyond some minor experimentation or two. More to add in the future. I'll leave out how she got Nighteye a fresh button-up, but it probably involved genuinely knocking him out after the memory erasing and a good tailor on standby (I just really wanted the Men in Black esque scene to play out without too much fuzz, alright?)
But that's all for now, see you next time with some Two-Faced Counsel.
I thought of this 'tease the next chapter title at the end of the AN' gimmick way too late but I'll retroactively insert it into my previous ANs anyway
Chapter 5: Two-Faced Counsel
Notes:
Welcome back to another chapter. Not surprised I managed to get this one up, since I finished it all last weekend. Let's see if I can do the same again or if it'll be a Saturday upload next time.
Got nothing else to say except, thanks for the kind words! Always look forward to them when I get ready to post, so if you have something to say or ask, go and leave it down below <3 <3
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
“Toga Himiko, to the nurse’s office.”
Seriously?
The tinny PA system rang again, as if to dash any hope.
“Toga Himiko, to the nurse’s office.”
Himiko groaned internally as her friends tittered, joining in with her own giggle.
“Girls, it’s not even the principal’s office,” she said as she stood up from the table. “It’s just that stupid quirk counseling thing.”
“Ugh, good thing my parents don’t care about that stuff,” one of her friends replied, slumping in her chair. “I heard the guy they have doing it is soooo stuffy.”
Himiko rolled her eyes, silently agreeing anyway. “Keep my spot warm, okay? This’ll be quick like always.”
With a final peace sign and a grin she calmly walked out of the school cafeteria. It was only once the double doors closed behind her and the only thing ahead of her were the quiet school hallways that her expression fell into a scowl.
Until the announcement over the PA system early that morning, she completely forgot the twice a year quirk counseling check-up sessions were starting, a ‘privilege’ a prep school as prestigious as hers got to enjoy.
Almost nobody cared for it, and several had convinced their parents to sign slips excusing them from it for ‘privacy concerns.’
Her parents obviously wouldn’t do such a thing, not when they were the ones who hired the ‘stuffy counselor’ to keep returning twice a year in the first place.
At least it was always over quickly. Just some basic, boring questions to see if she wasn’t doing anything…unusual—not that she was anything other than normal anyway, obviously—and then it was back to classes with her and one set of satisfied parents who got told she was still a good girl.
Again, not that it mattered to her. She was normal. So whatever stupid things her parents got up to wasn’t important.
Coming to a stop before the nurse’s office, Himiko breathed in, put on her gentlest soft smile, and walked in.
“Good afternoon, Yamashi- huh?”
Her polite greeting was cut short when she wasn’t met with the portly, sleazy-sounding man with jars for glasses—the exact opposite, actually.
Sitting on a wooden stool was a slender woman her mother’s age, with near-white, well-maintained hair, a majestic, kinked horn, and a well-groomed suit. The professional look was only dashed by the sturdy-looking combat boots the suit was paired with
“Oh, hello,” the woman greeted, looking up from her notepad with piercing red eyes and striking a polite smile. “Sorry for interrupting your lunch. I guess some of you had to be the unlucky ones.”
“Who are you?” escaped Himiko’s mouth before she could stop herself.
Before she could reprimand herself for being so blunt, the woman chuckled.
“Not the usual face. I’ve heard that a lot today,” she said jokingly, glancing at the much more comfortable chair opposite the stool. “The one you’re used to couldn’t make it, so you’ll have me instead.”
Himiko eyed the unknown woman warily, before shoving the strange feeling down and sitting on the chair.
“I’m Kayashima Eri,” the woman introduced herself, giving a brief bow. “Uh, I’m new to this, so excuse me for the inconvenience.” She gave Himiko a cursory glance. “And you’re Toga Himiko?”
Himiko nodded, returning to her cutest smile. “Yep, that’s me! Nice to meet you. Kayashima-san!”
The woman’s smile widened, and Himiko congratulated herself for getting the pep back into her mood. It wouldn’t do her any good to act weird. That this Kayashima was inexperienced meant her parents had simply made a desperate last-minute hire instead of some genuine replacement, so everything she said would definitely get back to them.
Still, not that it mattered to her. It was all the same in the end. Some basic questions, which she’d answer exactly as her parents were hoping to hear, and she’d be back to her regular school day.
Though maybe this time would be a bit more tolerable, by the looks of things.
“Alright!” Kayashima returned to checking her notepad, pulling a pencil from her breast pocket. “Well, first things first. You’re Toga Himiko—already answered that.”
Himiko bit her lip to avoid a super rude giggle as Kayashima checked something off with her pencil.
“Second, your quirk is registered as…Cat-Like Bones, which you inherited from your mother along with some vestigial mutations and gives you a flexible and dexterous skeletal system?”
She answered the trailing tone with a nod, her tongue absentmindedly tracing the sharp points of her sizable canines.
“Yup! Bummer though. My mother can turn into a cute house cat, and my little sister gets to be a lioness.” Though everyone loved her tricks on the bars and her cheerleading. And she’d figured out how to get herself to purr, which scored the most cuteness points by far.
Kayashima looked up from her notepad with a cheeky smile. “She very prideful?”
Himiko slumped back with a theatrical groan. “When she’s not being the most annoying little sister, she’s super cute.” And her hair was a constant mess to deal with.
She had no problem with airing that complaint. After all, lions were supposed to be prideful, and it was an endearing quality for others to coo at. The perfect little daughter for her parents to spend their time with when they weren’t watching her.
“She sounds like a handful,” Kayashima concluded, scribbling something down. “So, if I’m getting your quirk right. If it fits…”
“I sits,” Himiko completed, before freezing up.
So embarrassing! Did someone her mother’s age even know about those memes?
As if to prove her wrong, Kayashima laughed heartily.
“Well that paints as clear an image as possible,” she said. “Don’t worry, I won’t ask for a demonstration.” She coughed, crossing her legs professionally. “Now, I just have this basic list of questions and I’ll be out of your hair.”
Himiko nodded, part of her thankful they were returning to the routine she was used to.
Just some well-placed yeses and noes and she’d be done for another six months. Hopefully forever, if graduating middle school meant her parents would finally let up.
“Have you made any new discoveries with your quirk?” came the first question.
Exactly as always.
“No.” Though she wished she knew-
“Do you think your quirk is experiencing or might undergo any puberty-induced changes?”
“N- What?” Himiko blinked.
Kayashima looked up from her notes. “Oh, they never asked- Well.” She coughed. “Quirks can experience changes during puberty, to fit your growing body, but when it does happen it’s usually…hormone related.”
Himiko let out a noise of understanding. “No.” Though seeing Saito-kun bleeding had made her feel- No, that was just because he’d been defending someone and heroes are the coolest. Definitely.
It wasn’t- No.
Red eyes stared at her for a moment, before Kayashima returned to the list.
Himiko sighed quietly. Not a weird question, just one that wasn’t appropriate to ask until now.
“Have you experienced any discrimination at school or in public due to your quirk?”
Huh? “N-No?” What could people even see wrong in flexible bones? Not blood- Not-
“Do you feel isolated due to aspects of your quirk?”
“…no.” Himiko shook the thoughts out of her head. “Uhm, what are these questions?”
Kayashima paused. “Oh, just very general stuff. Thankfully I’ve only gotten a few yeses today. But no shame in answering that way.” She casually went on while Himiko was left feeling something twist in her stomach.
The next several minutes made her insides only twist further upon themselves, a cold sweat breaking out as her answers continued to be met by more slightly off questions.
“Do your parents slash guardians make you feel like you can come to them with quirk related issues?”
“I- Y-Yes.” No. No!
“Do you feel like your quirk-related needs are being met by your parents slash guardians?”
“I-”
“Has your quirk made you experience any body dysmorphia in the past?”
“N-No, I-”
“Do you-”
A crack echoed faintly.
“Who are you?”
Kayashima looked up, and Himiko belatedly realized she’d risen from her chair to accuse her. Her polite face had dropped, leaving her suspicion and building nervousness exposed.
Oh, shit.
Himiko couldn’t stop her heavy breathing as she realized what she’d just done. Her ears were filled with the tinkling sound of small bits of glass falling to the ground like droplets of rain.
In return, Kayashima’s gentle demeanor was gone like the wind, leaving only a blank, calculating stare.
“How-” Himiko stumbled over herself. “Why are you asking these questions?” Why were they so specific? Why did each one feel like a calculated punch to her stomach? This was nothing like normal!
“These are general questions quirk counselors are supposed to ask,” Kayashima said, her voice eerily flat. “But you’re right. I’m not a counselor.”
It was only then that Himiko understood.
She wasn’t the only one who’d entered this room wearing a second face.
Kayashima’s stern, cold look thawed as she put aside the notepad.
“I am sorry I had to ask them like this. If I tried easing into things honestly and gently I don’t think I’d ever break through that mask of yours.”
Himiko inhaled sharply, wobbly knees forcing her back into her chair.
“W-Who are you?” she asked again, anxiety flooding her.
Her parents were gonna know. They’d know she hadn’t changed at all. How did she know?!
“Last year, I inherited my grandfather’s organization,” Kayashima—if that was her name—answered conversationally. “It took me a while to clean everything up, but one fringe part caught my attention.”
She leaned forward, eyes gleaming. “In the past, there were some dealings with a quirk counseling agency. With some well-placed money, they’re more than willing to fabricate documentation related to quirks, to hide or misrepresent people’s quirks, to give worried parents a decent but unverifiable power to put on their child’s ID instead of ‘not applicable,’ among several other shady practices.”
She sighed, piercing red eyes locking with Himiko’s.
“Or to make a child’s newly manifested quirk appear more tasteful to society, even if that involves disciplining children into keeping up the ruse with…reprehensible methods.”
Himiko shivered as her very mask was cut apart and dissected with ruthless words.
This…This couldn’t be someone on her parents’ payroll.
“The only reason I came here is for you,” Kayashima explained coldly, before sitting back and picking up the notepad as if nothing had happened. “So, care to answer truthfully from now on?”
Care to-
“Why don’t you answer for me if you already know everything?!” Himiko returned loudly, sneering.
And the woman did. “Your quirk works with ingested blood,” she answered bluntly. “But that’s all the agency had on record. What is it? What does it do?”
Himiko stared at the woman, uncomprehending.
“I-” Yet somehow, despite the sudden, hostile situation, words tumbled out.
“I-I don’t know.”
That was the very first time Himiko thought she saw an honest reaction from Kayashima, eyebrows shooting up in surprise.
“You don’t-”
“You thought they’d ever let me try?!” Himiko interrupted rhetorically, pushed by the anger twisting in her gut. “I don’t know what my quirk is!” The bones she’d inherited vestigially from her mother were enough of a quirk. It was suitable enough, quirky but endearing, and not- not-
“All I know is it’s abnormal and freaky and weird and cursed and- and…and I’m better off never using it.”
Himiko had lost sight of the other person in the room, her head hung and her eyes only seeing the cute skirt of her uniform, her hands clenching its folds.
And that’s why she was surprised to hear the other voice speak up again.
“I thought my quirk was a curse.”
Her head shot up. Kayashima had left her stool, standing a few steps closer to her.
“When it first came in, it killed my father.” Himiko was forced to blink as the blunt statement hit her head-on. “My mother gave me up right then and there to my grandfather, told him I was a cursed child. He wasn’t able to raise me, and the people who took over agreed with my mother. Me being a curse was the only thing I was ever told when I grew up.”
At that moment, while processing, Himiko’s twisted stomach made things worse by emitting a loud, embarrassing growl.
She’d missed out on breakfast that day, and this meeting was far from a quick one.
Kayashima smiled sadly.
“When’s the last time you had a full meal?”
Once more, Himiko was let bewildered. Thoughts of holding onto the shards of her mask were long gone, lost in the confusion and shock.
“I- Uh- last night? A-At six?” What did that even-
Yellow overshadowed the sterile white light of the nurse’s office as a golden bolt shot out of Kayashima’s hand, slamming into Himiko.
Himiko’s hand shot to her stomach, where the sudden electric heat of the lightning was morphing into an unexpectedly warm, comforting fullness.
“What was that?”
Kayashima’s smile widened at the plain curiosity, eyes crinkling.
“I can transform any living thing into a past version of itself, or parts of it,” she explained simply, as if it sounded simple to begin with. “I made your stomach and intestines go back to the time it was digesting dinner last night. A neat trick, I think.”
A neat-
“Your quirk’s not a curse at all!” Himiko exclaimed indignantly.
“Is yours?” she shot back, still smiling.
Himiko was forced to pause. Was she still being played?
But if she was- it sounded genuine, so…
“I-I don’t know,” she admitted, surprised she managed to answer this stranger who’d turned her whole day upside down without so much as a by your leave. “But drinking blood- That’s not- It’s not cute at all.” It was freaky and weird and-
“I’m not so sure. You’d be a big hit on the goth scene,” Kayashima joked, yet she sounded completely serious anyway.
The absurd statement was enough to force out a snort and a giggle.
What a stupid, ridiculous, bizarre mental image.
“I know it sounds hard to believe,” Kayashima continued, surprising Himiko when she got down on one knee, meeting her at eye level. “Especially when it’s like everything’s all the same out there. But there will always be a place somewhere with people that will make you feel like you belong. I was just lucky to bump into one such amazing person when I was still little.”
“Y-You’re just saying that.” Himiko had to bite her lip hard to not let out any uncute sounds, a metallic taste slipping into her mouth.
“Did you know there are government-backed programs out there meant specifically to supply quirks with special needs?” Kayashima asked, rhetorically of course, because the obvious answer was no. “It’s not talked about much by the general public, but there are organizations out there that run them.”
Himiko stared at her, uncomprehending.
“There are?” The words came out too fragile, but it only seemed to make Kayashima happier.
“I help run a few, so I think I’d know. You can drop by if you get the chance and see for yourself.”
Despite clamping down on the meager remains of her nonexistent mask with as much effort as she’d ever mustered, Himiko wanted to cry then and there.
But no. That wasn’t-
For the umpteenth time that lunch break—if it was still even lunch at all—Himiko was caught off-guard when Kayashima suddenly extended her hand into view.
“What- What are you…”
Kayashima smiled. “Even if I’m not licensed, this is a counseling session. You’re supposed to figure out your quirk during one, so…” She rolled up her sleeve, exposing the head of a partly finished dragon tattoo winding up her arm. “Want to find out?”
Himiko stared at the bare skin, ready to protest, but her mind and mask were already left in shambles from the last few minutes of emotional roller coaster. Before even the slightest of effort could be made, a predatory growl rumbled within her throat and she pounced before she could realize, fangs eagerly digging into the wrist.
Hot, metallic blood not her own came flooding down her throat, overwhelming her taste buds. She didn’t pull away in horror, or scramble to reassemble her mask, or worry over exposing this ugly, uncute side of herself. All her mind could think of was the sweet, sweet euphoria taking her over, and the almost impossible thought that ‘she asked me to do this. Someone let me.’
She didn’t even register the gold washing over the skin, brushing past her and playfully zapping her lips, leaving them tingling, nor the hot, salty drops flowing down her cheeks.
By the time her senses fell back down to Earth, Himiko found herself falling back in her chair, panting heavily with a face full of red, feeling like she’d just been caught playing with herself in public.
And yet, the first thing she saw as her vision cleared was Kayashima’s smile as she unrolled her sleeve, gold sparks fading away.
Right. School. Lunch. Blood. Fake counselor. No mask. Her quirk…?
She didn’t even think as she focused on the blood pooling in her stomach, churning happily, and let it loose.
A heat blossomed in her stomach, one that leeched into her veins and rushed throughout her body. Said heat then pushed even further, pressing on her bones as they showed off their flexibility and shifted and stretched around it. The heat broke through her skin, which thickened and turned waxy in the heat, bubbling up and shaped by the hand of an invisible sculptor.
And then things settled, and rather than being covered in wax, Himiko felt like she’d zipped herself up in the world’s most comfortable sleeping bag, as skintight and snug as it felt thick.
Himiko remained still, marveling at the feeling she’d somehow missed out on all her life, lifting an arm to see if she could even move at all. The limb felt both too long and just right as it came into view, with skin that was paler than she was used to and a surprising amount of toned muscle hidden underneath, covered by…a familiar suit mismatched with her uniform?
Her eyes shot up, realizing she matched Kayashima’s eye level perfectly now, not to mention the near-white bangs peeking in from the corner of her eye, or the strange feeling of stretched skin around an extra weight stuck to her forehead.
She turned into other people?
“I guess that’s what you need the blood for,” Kayashima commented, smiling as if she’d just won a three week vacation to the Caribbean. “How does it feel? Weird? Comfortable?”
Himiko met identical eyes with the woman who she’d changed her opinion on too many times in barely a lunch break, and felt a different kind of heat try to push through them.
“P-Perfect,” she admitted wobbly, sight turning blurry again. A part of her was fascinated by how clearly her quirk had come from the combination of her parents-
The pleasant warmth shut off as a bucket of ice poured down her spine, the comfort sloughing off like the literal, graying wax falling on the floor of the nurse’s office.
“My parents,” she whispered. “They’ll hate this. They- I can’t believe I- They’re gonna know!”
There was no way to clean up the mess around here! Nevermind that she- That she-
She could not go back to before now. Not now that she knew what it felt like to let herself be who she was and sit in someone else’s skin. She’d shut down if she even tried, but then it was inevitable that-
“Oh, I don’t think you’ll have to worry about their…opinions.” Kayashima stated, her face carefully blank. “I thought your family name sounded familiar at first. Your father’s the chief of police around here, right?”
Himiko swallowed, nodding shakily.
“He can make a perfect wax statue of whoever he’s taken genetic material of, even if he’s never seen the person. Perfect for detective work,” Kayashima continued.
Once more she nodded. A perfectly normal and highly respected position in the community that- Stop it!
To her surprise, a predatory smile crawled its way onto Kayashima’s face.
“So trusted by the community, and yet I find out he’s perfectly fine with accepting bribes to…fudge things with his quirk, giving criminals real alibis and even framing people at their say-so.”
…what.
Himiko looked, actually looked at the woman who’d been posing as a quirk counselor not on her parents’ payroll, and thought about every idle comment she’d made, about her unspecified organization and its shady deals, the half-finished tattoo on her arm, the easy way she’d masked her true intentions at the start, the stereotype of cops being on payrolls of another organization.
“You’re yakuza,” she breathed out, watching the predatory smile turn into a leery grin.
“A yakuza matriarch. Very abnormal, I’ve heard.” She winked.
She’d been in a room with a top-ranking, bona fide crime lady for- for twenty minutes?!
“My father’s been taking bribes from the yakuza?” Himiko asked, her mind reeling.
…what was normal even supposed to be anymore?!
Kayashima giggled, a far cry from what she now knew of her true character. “Not anymore, but if I show up with you and remind him after school—still have to finish the job I took over for today, of course—I’m sure he’ll remember who’s holding his leash.”
“You want to blackmail my parents?” It was- It was-
“If you want me to.” Kayashima gave her a curious look. “I wasn’t so sure about you when I came here at first, but this has been an eye-opener.” She quirked a brow. “So?”
“Yes,” she breathed out, the euphoria from before taking center stage once more, and she smiled the biggest, widest grin she was capable off, exposing her still bloodied fangs to the sterile air of the nurse’s office.
“She was right, you do have a strangely cute smile,” Kayashima mumbled.
Whoever ‘she’ was, Himiko couldn’t be bothered to care.
And just like that, the life of the perfectly normal, super cute school girl came to a long-awaited end. And still, Toga Himiko felt like the cutest girl in the whole world.
Eri stood at the street corner, staring at Tsu Preparatory school’s entrance, her mind swimming.
A single day had never left her feeling so conflicted.
Going in, after some subordinates had succeeded in waylaying the original counselor, Eri had thought only of what she’d wanted to achieve today. One less person for Shigaraki to recruit. One less person to become an unexpected threat. One less person to get in her way when she made her real moves.
In that meeting, she’d known everything there was to know about Toga Himiko, and she in return had known nothing of Kayashima Eri, as unfair an exchange as possible.
She’d known exactly what buttons to push, which actions to take, all to leave the teen feeling so wholly and completely indebted to her she’d never go down her original path.
It was right out of Chisaki’s playbook: engineer a situation to induce artificial, one-sided loyalty to be used and discarded for later, and Eri absolutely despised herself for deciding to resort to it. The best she could do to carry it out was to detach herself from it all and follow her script. A cold, calculating perspective that watched every question hit blow for blow.
And then- then that teenage girl had broken down in front of her, something she’d been aiming for, calling herself cursed while at the brink of tears, and Eri had thrown the rest of her plans in the trash without a second thought.
She’d been acting as the matriarch of the Hassaikai, so focused on constantly maintaining her role as the one at the top and pushing the Hassaikai into the shape and roles she needed it to be, that she almost forgot what she came here to do.
To be a hero.
To Izuku, of course, the one thing that drove her since the moment she came back, but- How could she even try to be a hero if she made a girl that was so similar to her in certain ways break down for her own goals?
So, everything after that singular moment had been her, just her. Not ‘Kayashima-sama,’ just Eri the lonely woman and daycare worker.
Despite healing unfortunate people whenever she got the chance, she had nearly forgotten how it felt to just be herself and help, with no intentions leading her from the background.
Going in, she hadn’t planned to offer Toga her blood, or to come visit the local branch compound, or to come along and directly threaten her parents in person. But right now, she couldn’t regret her course of action whatsoever.
After years of only stories and vague memories of television screens, Toga Himiko had been just another character in the story leading up to Deku the Hero’s death, a twisted girl that tragically couldn’t see what she could have without resorting to tragedy and death. But those teary eyes, those words…
Toga Himiko was a person now, someone who hadn’t been backed into a terrible corner and made the wrong decision just yet, and Eri would do her best to be her hero too now.
“Kayashima-san!”
Eri smiled as the mop of straight blond hair came walking up to her. The friends surrounding her eyed her strangely as she exposed her fangs with a wide smile.
“Toga-chan, is that…the temp quirk counselor?” one of her friends, a tall mousy girl, asked.
“Oh yeah, don’t worry!” Toga smiled more. “She wants to have a talk with my parents. Gonna be super fun!”
“Fun…” another in the group trailed off dryly, none of them noticing the fanged smile slip into an excited smirk for a moment.
Ah, maybe some of her future self was already here to stay. Oh well.
Eri turned around and began her walk for the Toga residence several blocks down, letting Toga wave her friends off and skipping after her. A small smile graced her lips as she thought of the conversation awaiting her. Sometimes, admittedly, being a little villainous to those deserving of it could feel as freeing and satisfying as being someone’s hero. She knew the appeal well by now.
Fun indeed.
Notes:
And Eri's preparation for her main plan continues…
This chapter feels like the prime opportunity to really show off how the years without Izuku have changed Eri as a person. It was also the perfect time to at least touch on how being the leader of the yakuza has changed her further. It's been well over a year since she came back and became the head now and needing to play the role of the leader (and having to at least tolerate some of the more morally gray stuff to keep things in line) has had a toll on her, one she didn't notice build up. That'd be a pretty depressing direction to go into though, the well-intentioned MC becoming a villain, and I already tagged this as having a happy ending, so who better to confront Eri than the other person who's forcing herself to wear a mask to the point it damages her irrevocably?
That's also the reason for the Eri POV at the end there, though it wasn't planned until I got to writing it. We do need the occasional peek back inside her mind, especially since it's been a year in fic-time.
Speaking of, this takes place close to middle school graduation for Toga, after her obsession with blood has been reignited by Saito, about a month or so before Izuku encounters All Might in the new school year. Her being in that unstable state is mainly why she broke down so quickly with just a little prompting too, just to make it easier for myself. Maybe things shifted from the 'pretend quirk counselling' into full-on breakdown and motivational speech a bit too quickly, but from the moment Eri introduced herself you already knew where this was going, so I kept up the pace.
Some headcanons I have is that part of Toga's flexibility and cat-like attributes is from inherited mutations, in this case from her mother, and that the flexible bones of a cat is what she had to pretend her quirk was. Something tragic I realized is that, if her parents never let her indulge in her desire for blood, then Toga probably never knew what her quirk actually did until she snapped. That's also why she was so much harder to catch. Her transforming ability wasn't documented, and not even her parents knew she could do it.
We also hear that Toga is 'the eldest daughter of the Toga family,' which implies she has at least one younger sibling (tho I've seen several fic writers pick up on that), so in this she has a much littler sister who turns into a big cat (though still small for now to match her age).
More headcanons. If you know me (or read Starborn Hero), then you know I like thinking up what parent quirks could make a canon character's quirk. In this case, Toga's mom has a cat-morph quirk, with Toga inheriting the cat-like bones and fangs and eyes (tho the mom only has those in cat form), and her father can sculpt wax statues from genetic material. The sculpting wax from genetic material and morphing ability then combine into what Transform is, along with the flexible bones being how her insides can still fit if the one she turns into is smaller or larger than her (the quirk copying part is then a pure mutation from awakening it). Some other uses of her quirk I made up is that the genetic material in the blood forms the base, but her mental image is what actually shapes that base, which is why Toga adds the clothes of who she transforms into. After all, age and wounds etc. aren't encoded in DNA. If she trained and kept her focus, she could probably transform into someone without the clothes (only keeping her own) or turn into them at different ages (so kiddie versions or hypothetical older versions) or with different hairstyles. In this case, if Toga doesn't know about a tattoo or scar or birthmark or something then it wouldn't show up, and if she doesn't know how they usually wear their hair then it'd come out similar to her own hairstyle (imagine her licking some random blood in an alley as for why she wouldn't know who the blood is from).
All the quirk hypotheticals aside, it was interesting to try and get into Toga's mindset before she fully snapped. Did I do it well enough, or was it not quite all the way there for you?
See you another time for an Impromptu Job Interview, where Eri continues setting up her plan, and we flash forward to the point things finally kick off.
Chapter 6: Impromptu Job Interview
Notes:
Another week, another chapter. Fun fact, the whole 'Eri's horn wasn't enough to save Deku' thing that's the main divergence point from canon was covered in the anime earlier today! (season 8 episode 7 for those of you from the future) In case you anime-only's had no idea what that whole thing was about, now ya know! Bit of a shame my weekly updates couldn't have the final chapter line up with this episode, but I hadn't even planned to have this fic be updating alongside that specific episode of the anime, so it's a neat coincidence either way. Honestly though, I feel bad for having that innocent, heroic sacrifice and defining character moment not work out fully in the end for the purposes of this fic, but you can probably see why this Eri was so jaded and now so determined to succeed in the first place.
Funny coincidences aside, I hope you enjoy this next chapter (I'm surprised I'm managing to stick to shorter chapters so far) and leave a comment if you have something to say or ask! I look forward to 'em, especially if they're kind <3
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
“Fuck off, you faker!”
“No you, faker!”
“You’re all fakers, fakers!”
“AAARGHHH!!! SHUT UP, PHONIES!!!!”
Bubaigawara Jin—was he?—was forced to watch as he, him and himself continued to bicker and argue. Coherent thoughts had left the building sometime yesterday—the day before—before that?
He’d long lost track of which of his voices belonged to him. It had been so constant he could barely even distinguish his inside voice from those shouting in his ears. Or were there multiple inside his head too?
Yes? No?
Did anyone even care? Any of him? How many more were lazing about outside the abandoned apartment complex, carrying on with their lives like his personal hell didn’t even exist?
Did he even care about his personal hell? The ropes binding him to the rickety chair barely even registered as they chafed against his torso and wrists. Why care if he was just another clone?
No. No! He was the real one, definitely! They almost sliced up his frontal lobe and tied him to the chair. So many of him couldn’t have all picked the wrong guy.
He only ever made mistakes though. So…
A sudden, loud knock at the door managed to overcome the constant squabbling of the other hims.
“Did someone order?”
“With what money? One of us probably took it all!”
“Uh, yeah, you? You made a sneaky clone to sneak off with it, didn’t you?!”
“I’m the one who made you, idiot!”
“Nuh-uh! That was me, dumb ass!”
Unlike the other hims, however, Jin stared at the door made of rotting wood.
It was probably more hims, right? Though why would he knock?
“C-Come in.” His voice was scratchy, from disuse and not having had any water in days, something he was going to regret almost immediately.
The squabbling had returned to full force though, one even having stabbed another to shut them up, who was already collapsing into sludgy wax along with the smattering of hims descended from him.
Somehow, the person knocking heard, and the doorknob rattled. Locked, of course.
Jin sighed, his throat itching-
The old wood shattered as a black combat boot kicked the door open, showering the hims in splinters.
“What the-”
Jin coughed up his lungs as the newcomer walked in, the boots paired up with jeans, a black turtleneck sweater and a leather jacket layered on top.
“Whew.”
“Hey lady, who do you think you are, waltzing in on private time?!”
Piercing red eyes scanned the room filled with clones. Jin was confused to see them fill with guilt as they landed on him specifically.
“Hey, I asked you something! You here to take us in?!”
The him in particular rushed up to the woman.
Those previously remorseful eyes narrowed and hardened, and with impressive choreography she lowered herself and swept her attacker off his feet.
Unfortunately, the returned aggression got the other hims off their asses to attack her as well.
The first incomer was met with a sudden flash of light. Jin and the other hims looked on in shock as that him began to melt away, the spot where the bolt had hit him looking untouched despite him falling apart from it.
It did not deter the others though, and Jin was given a show of how he didn’t stand a chance against this complete stranger.
Though finally she got caught off-guard mid-grapple and neck-snap by the first downed him, nearly getting herself sliced by another him as a consequence.
The woman scowled and stomped her boot down. “Enough!”
Jin was forced to close his eyes when a literal lightning bolt pierced the whole room, hitting every single one of him except himself.
And just like that, the room was finally silenced, leaving only a giant, already evaporating puddle of sludgy wax.
Jin stared at the pool in morbid fascination, unable to look away until two legs blocked his vision.
Oh, yes, right.
He looked up at his…he didn’t know. Though another him was more than happy to chime in with his own answer.
“Mommy?” slipped out.
SMACK
Jin tried and failed to rub his aching cheek as the woman’s glare faded.
Bad him! Why was there still more than his own voice in the room if this lady evaporated them all?
“You’re…a surprisingly hard man to find, Bubaigawara Jin,” the woman said, her animosity turning into that strange remorse again as her exhaustion disappeared in a literal flash.
“You were looking for me? Who the hell are you, lady?” Whoever decided to stick around in there, shut up before she zaps us too!
And stay out of the narration, inner thoughts!
Another flash of emotion Jin didn’t like came and went from the woman’s eyes.
“You’ve built up a reputation as one of the most rampant criminals in all of Japan,” she continued as if he hadn’t even asked his question, tucking a stray lock of white among the silvery hair behind her ear. “But avoided most attention from law enforcement by sticking to petty theft. Until your daylight chase, nobody even knew what your quirk was, just that you were somehow everywhere all at once.” She frowned. “And then you disappeared without a trace three days ago.”
Ah, three, not two?
“Again, what do you-” Jin bent over as he started hacking up his lungs again.
Before he knew it, the woman was crouched down before him, her hand lighting up gold.
“Wait-wait-wait, hold up!” He reeled back, something that remained hard to do when tied up and fighting the urge to keep coughing. “The real me’s probably out there with all the stolen cash! It’s him you want!”
He’d seen what the sparkles did to all the other hims!
“I did see one of you running away with a safe outside,” the woman said, her hand still alight. “But he crushed himself with it and turned to sludge.”
Before Jin could say more, the woman pressed her hand to his head, a wave of warmth flooding him.
Melting melting-meltingmeltingmelt-
It took a moment to register, the woman’s warm finger trailing up his forehead along the days-old wound the caked up blood was hiding, but he was not, in fact, turning gloopy in the chair.
“H-Huh?” he asked dumbly, barely noticing his throat no longer felt parched, nor his stomach ready to feast off itself to digest something.
“I knew I finally had the real deal,” the woman announced undeterred, leaning in. “Don’t lash out while I untie you.”
“Of course I won’t!” No looking the gifted horse in the mouth. “But I should!” Because she wasn’t answering shit!
And wait, so he was…
Well, duh! He knew that the whole time, of course! Yeah, no doubt setting in at all! Dumb ass.
The woman sighed as the last of the rope loosened, falling to the hardwood floor, and stepped back away. “This was a bad introduction,” she said. Yes. “My name is Kayashima Eri, and I wanted to talk with you.”
Jin narrowed his eyes as he jumped off the chair. Only now did he notice the absolutely majestic, ridged horn jotting out the woman’s forehead. It curved back, following the shape of her skull, before kinking up to make for great lethal headbutting material. A smaller nub branched off the curved part, too small to be a full horn but turning the entire thing into something antler-like.
“About what? I ain’t saying shit!” Very important to make that clear beforehand. Not that he had any secrets to spill…
Oh, right.
“And why’d you look for me anyway?” Besides cops and pro heroes, nobody else had any reason to ever seek him out.
“I didn’t set out looking for you in particular,” she answered, sounding like she totally did. “But- Well, first of all, what do you know of your family?”
Jin squinted his eyes at her as he squashed the urge to rub his aching butt. Wasn’t there something about too much sitting causing thrombosis or something?
“That they’re all dead and I’m gonna die miserable and alone.” This lady really knew how to hit where it hurt from the get-go.
“Yes, your parents died in a villain attack years ago,” she confirmed. Again, proving his point. “But you’re wrong about the rest.”
“I think I could tell the difference between being orphaned and being left with an aunt or uncle,” Jin spat, old feelings bubbling up.
The lady, Kayashima, wasn’t bothered at all, sighing and sitting down on his hard-stolen bed. That had taken the lives of at least six clones to haul up the stairs and through the door!
“I can’t blame you for not knowing, but you do have an uncle, on your mother’s side. They both did their best to erase all signs of their relation after he kicked her out. It only came to light when he was arrested for corruption, falsifying evidence, perjury, and several other crimes last month.”
Jin perked up. So he wasn’t the only idiot criminal in the family, hah!
Also, “What?!” And also, “Who cares?”
Jin huffed as he gave up the fight with his sore behind and fell back on the chair, ignoring the concerning crack it made.
Kayashima nodded. “You’re right. I wouldn’t want anything to do with him in your place.” And then, the most world-shattering pause entered the picture, followed by, “But he married and started a family.”
Okay? So…
His brain stuttered.
“I have a little cousin?” he whispered. Who was it, and were they as miserable as him? No, they had to be better off.
Her smile widened as she raised a finger. “Two little cousins,” she said, lifting a second, before turning serious again.
“Though their mother has been arrested too, on charges of child abuse and quirk suppression.”
Jin found himself jumping off the chair. “Whaddaya want from me? I’ll beat her up!”
This was starting to sound way too familiar to his own middle school days.
“Not the best thing to do right now,” Kayashima said, not staring all too disapprovingly, based on the twitching of her lips.
He paused, lowering his fists. But then…
“Look, lady, if you’re here to ask me to do something else, I’m not the guy for the job.”
He couldn’t even take care of himself, and that was with a bunch of himself doing the taking care of himself!
“I can see that,” she answered bluntly, glancing at the grimy room. “But there are already people I…trust, lining up to foster.”
“Then what do you want from me, woman?” He did not appreciate going in circles after the shit he just got bailed out off! Good distraction though.
Kayashima grinned in the face of his outburst. “To do what you’re probably already thinking of. I want you to be a friendly face who sticks around—Himiko’s already wanting to meet you—and do some jobs for me when you aren’t.”
Jin narrowed his eyes. “No sane person with any scruples left is ever gonna hire a wacko like me.” He froze, staring her down. “You’re not a government worker.” Or from law enforcement.
Her eyebrow quirked up. “Will that make it less enticing?”
“Hell no!” he blurted out. Doing petty theft hadn’t been the thing he regretted. Just himself! Uh- other himselves. And that was just a very recent thing!
Kayashima smiled and held out a hand. He could almost feel tension leaving her shoulders as he enthusiastically shook it.
He just got bailed out of his own mess and was moving up in the world, baby!
“…what’d I just apply for?”
She smiled cryptically, turning around and leaving through the remains of the rotted door.
Eh, fuck it! Better than this hovel!
~~~
Hearing the frantic footsteps following behind her, Eri felt the last of the tension leave her. She’d underestimated how difficult it’d be to find Twice—Bubaigawara after his quirk rebelled, not accounting for all the stray clones making it so much more difficult for her network to pin down his actual location. Even only three of the nine days she could recall he’d gone through initially was too much. Though whether he was naturally on the erratic side with his speech or if it was a consequence of those days was unknown to her.
On the other hand, finding him before his reality check wouldn’t have made it likely for her to get through to him, as much as she disliked letting harm come to someone to make something else possible, though finding him on the first day had been the goal.
Something equally unknown to her had been the surprising connection between the two potential League members, but that was neither here nor there anymore now.
When she got back she’d finally put together a more casual wardrobe though. She had the reputation among the Hassaikai to wear anything she liked now. If she heard someone not a kid accidentally call her ‘mommy’ one more time she was going to lose it.
…though she probably should’ve expected it.
She shook her head, spotting the chauffeur who’d driven her here standing further down the street. Now that the more involved parts were done, all she had to do was keep things running and wait until it was time.
A year later
“UNITED. STATES OF…SMAAASSHHHH!”
Eri sat quietly, the soft flickering of the old television the only source of light in the dark room.
“It’s happening then?”
She blinked, finally noticing the person standing in the doorway.
“Hello, Ojiisan.” She smiled quietly, though her eyes returned to the screen, the camera’s view currently obscured by a tornado of dust and debris. “It is.”
Rather than reply further, the man sat down on the couch next to her, the both of them watching the television in silence as the reporter on the helicopter frantically tried to narrate what was happening below.
“Next…it’s your turn.”
The finger pointed straight at the camera, carrying a poignant message that would hit every citizen in the country and beyond, but one person in particular far more. Eri’s eyes instead were zeroed in on the Iron Maiden being wheeled into the transport van in the background.
The tension that had become the baseline of her life at last began to seep out her shoulders as the thick doors closed shut.
Finally.
A bone deep sigh shuddered out of her as she slumped into the depths of the couch cushions.
She knew her presence, the deliberate changes she’d been making would ripple out, possibly making everything impossible to predict, like the events leading up to the Kamino fight, but this moment had been vital to everything. And she’d been banking on the fact All For One had planned on leaving Shigaraki to fend for himself until he was aided by the doctor, making sure he would make it into Tartarus one way or another, to be broken out along with every other top-class villain months later.
A brilliant, convoluted plan nobody could see coming, but one with a vital, exploitable downside if even one person with the willingness and power to oppose it was aware.
“It seems you finally get your chance,” her grandfather spoke up.
Eri smiled back at him. Everything from the past two years had all been to prepare, to increase the chances of success as much as possible, all the while keeping her presence as unobtrusive as possible and avoid changes that would be too big, despite getting involved with several people that were present for vital events. And her grandfather was the only one who knew all of it. Obviously, as he had been the one to argue with her at every point she’d been laying out her plans.
She’d thought of and prepared other ones, of course, in case things were too changed. She wasn’t going to get blindsided and assume that wasn’t a possibility. But those were so much more worse than this. And now…
Now that the cat was away, the mice could come out to play. And play she would.
“Uh, Eri-sama?”
The grandfather-granddaughter duo broke out of their silence at the tinny intercom.
“Yes, Shuichi?” Eri answered.
“She’s at the front entrance again.”
With a frown, she wished her grandfather a good night and left for the visitor’s room upfront.
“Himiko, didn’t you come for blood yesterday?” she asked in lieu of a greeting as she walked in. Not that she minded, her quirk let her replenish her blood on demand.
The teen pouted, her legs kicking up as she lounged on the couch. “I’m no addict, Eri-chansama.” Eri suppressed a grin at the unholy mashing of honorifics only Himiko ever used, before glancing at the red peeking out from her high school uniform.
“You couldn’t resist playing with your little sister again?” she asked with a disappointed frown as she readied her quirk.
Himiko’s pout grew as the thin slashes evaporated under the wave of light. “But Shinoko’s the cutest imouto!”
“And a big cat, not a small cat,” Eri chided, unable to hide her smile now as she sat down.
“But- But!” Himiko sat up with a grin as her features turned waxy and shifted. Not by much, her cheekbones widening a little as her hair turned strawberry blond, curled, and more voluminous—like the teenaged version of her little sister. “I almost shifted into a lioness myself like this! Imagine how awesome that’s gonna be!”
Eri sighed fondly as the appearance shifted back. Originally she’d known very little of Himiko’s family, even without the fact few people brought her up in the old future. But she was glad her intervention had saved the sibling bond that had no doubt been completely severed before.
“But enough about my cute sister!” Eri startled as Himiko jumped up and pointed harshly. “What the heck was tonight?! I recognized Jin-kun’s voice! And that jumpsuit is so uncute!”
Eri coughed awkwardly, her ears picking up someone walking down the hall.
“How about you ask-”
“Honey, I’m hoooooome!” Jin came barging in, almost immediately adding, “Don’t smack me for calling you that!”
“You!” Himiko shouted. “What’re you doing in some loser villain group?!”
“Important stuff!” He paused, tearing off his mask. “Didn’t you already know I did shady stuff for Eri-san?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Himiko whined. “But I coulda made a great villain too!”
Eri sighed as Jin gave an encouraging thumbs-up and an ‘absolutely!’
“Jin,” she spoke up, letting some authority seep in. “Couldn’t you have let a clone slip out to tell me how things were going?” The fact she’d had no idea how the attack on the summer camp had played out, especially with Muscular and Moonfish there, had been her biggest source of anxiety until a local nurse in contact with the Hassaikai told her every student bar Bakugo Katsuki had made it to the hospital.
“Eh…” Jin looked down, shuffling his feet. “You know I keep clones of myself to a minimum.” He almost instantly perked up again. “But I did my job! Nobody got hurt on my watch…too badly.”
“And you managed to slip away pretty fast too,” Eri praised. The fight had only concluded less than an hour ago, with the much diminished League of this future making their escape early into the main fight after the rescue.
“Anyway, so what now?” he asked, a bit too eager if you asked her. “We all split up to stay low, so…”
“Now, nobody does anything unless I ask you to.”
“Ooh, ooh! What about me?”
Eri turned and frowned. “Especially not you, Himiko.”
“Why not?!”
“Why am I not letting you do illegal, dangerous stuff?”
“Well, when you say it like that…”
Eri shook her head, looking away to hide her grin as Jin chimed in, enthusiastically promising to help Himiko come up with a fake villain persona and starting a spirited back-and-forth.
She had another month or two before the jaws she’d been setting up were set to snap shut. But until then, there was one last kink to take care of.
And once more, after a year of sitting back and curating things as they ran their course, she’d be making sure of it herself.
This time though, she wasn’t convinced things would end with a simple conversation and an outreached hand.
A small part of her was looking forward to it.
Notes:
Eri, who's been wanting to use her combat boots to kick open a door since chapter 3 and finally encounters a reasonable situation and a perfectly breakable door:
Anyway, our next member of the League Eri meets is Twice! Of course this was going to be the focus of the next chapter after covering Himiko, especially since their origin stories seem to somewhat line up in the timeline. Care to guess who the next one is? (I promise it won't all be repeats of 'come in to save villain from defining villain origin and have them join her.' The next one, in fact…)
In general though, Eri's had it decently easy, making use of her future knowledge paired with the network of people she has expanded around Japan through her yakuza to make up for the gaps in her knowledge. That said, her knowledge is surface level and the details that turn out to be pretty important are spotty at best and impossible to look up when they haven't happened yet.
In this case Eri was keeping an ear out for when Twice/Jin's clones finally rebelled against him, because he'd be too caught up in his success to be open to her words and just dismiss her. Except then it turned out far more difficult to actually find out where he was held captive. I'd like to think that his clones were a lot more widespread during those nine days, many leaving the apartment he was hiding in and making more clones to do stuff for them, meaning you have a bunch of small groups of Jins running around the country. The reason none of them remained at the end is that I assume each clone is dependent on the one that created them existing. So if a clone higher up in the chain is taken out, all the ones 'descending' from them immediately collapse too. And the two clones Jin himself created happened to stick to the apartment and got taken out by the others.
The idea that Jin and Himiko are somewhat related is purely headcanon. I think some people would say it diminishes the bond they made in canon, but if they never know about it then it doesn't change anything. I'm just a guy who enjoys quirks, or coming up with ones that could belong to the parents of canon characters, like I did for Himiko's. Of course, the main thought behind them being related is that they both have quirks that at their base create perfect copies of someone else with a wax-like sludge that collapses when it can't be maintained, but by that logic you could argue many people are related. I already made Himiko's father create wax figures of other people, so imagine his estranged late sister having some similar power (maybe general wax golem generation and manipulation like Abominations from The Owl House) combining with a father that has something measuring/replication related (like perfectly being able to recreate an object by hand from just measurements). Also, Jin was completely right in clocking that the relation wasn't the real reason Eri was looking for him.
I changed Jin's speech quirk so he doesn't directly contradict himself, but still jumps erratically in his dialogue, as an in-between thing (and because it's a fun gimmick).
Last we get our long-awaited flash forward to main canon, where Eri's plan finally gets to unfold. I've personally never much enjoyed time-travel fix-it stories where the MC decides to do nothing to 'keep the timeline intact,' because either it becomes a long-form canon rehash (where some anticipated fix-it moments get hamfisted into going like canon instead) or the MC looks like an idiot when their presence obviously changes everything. I tried to not make myself a complete hypocrite by having Eri go out and make changes anyway, while trying to ensure the main things she needs to have happen happen anyway, and it also helps this isn't long-form and a full rewrite of canon.
Anyway, Jin has still joined the League, though as a spy for Eri (ironic, given he was the one who unknowingly let in a spy in canon) and to make sure the crazies she couldn't/didn't know how to stop coming to the Training Camp attack didn't kill anyone. Himiko isn't being asked to do anything, because Eri still has lines she sticks to, even if she has been forced to adopt a more practical and gray mindset. Don't worry though. At her heart she's still the girl who wants to help. It's just hard to express that from outside POVs when she's in the middle of important plans she has to carry out. I try to give some peeks into her POV every chapter, but the premise of this fic and the time passed since canon means she's pretty divorced from her canon character anyway. I hope you enjoy reading this version of her either way though.
Final note. If you look up top you can see I figured out how many chapters the rest of my plans will cover. Hopefully I can keep up the weekly updates for the remainder.
And that's all for this time. Next we get to the final hurdle before Eri's plans can come to fruition, and she carries out a Trial Run.
Chapter 7: Trial Run
Notes:
Welcome back, a little late, to this week's chapter! I'm more confident I can finish the next one despite having little time this weekend coz I have some days off next week. Was actually surprised there were no comments on last chapter, but I figure there'll always be a dud once in a while. Very happy with this chapter though, since we're gonna explore how Rewind could be used during a fight. Hope to see you in the comments at the end, and as always, thank you for reading <3 <3
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
“Garbage, trash. All of you.”
Dabi stared down the gutter trash filling the warehouse dispassionately. Taking in more recruits for the League was a pointless task. None of them mattered to him. Nothing but his own goals mattered, and he’d tolerate Shigaraki until he got what he wanted.
The bottom-tier scum glared at him, though none even tried to make a move. Worthless.
“But do me a favor and be my kindling.” He lazily raised his hand, smoke wafting off his skin as his quirk built up for a blast.
His aloof expression hid the spark of glee as bright blue engulfed the warehouse, taking the discarded recruits by surprise.
The sight of burnt corpses was one of few things that held a positive twist to him these days, if only as a pale imitation of the desired sight of the charred remains of Endeavor, his legacy, and his cursed family.
Except the wall of flame ravaging the warehouse met something more than useless flesh. Gold mixed and fought through the streams of his blue inferno, streaming out through weak spots.
Feeling the flesh on his palms begin to itch, Dabi growled as he cut off the stream, watching the blue wink out alongside the gold.
From the collection of shivering, unexpectedly intact, sparking goons, a person stood behind them.
“Dabi,” they—a woman, spoke in the same aloof tone he used. The piercing note of her voice startled the corpses-to-be into motion, fleeing and clearing his path to a tall, horned woman with long, flowing hair of silver and white strands weaved together. “You’re…an unsurprisingly easy person to find.”
His eyes narrowed at the dismissive tone, glancing at the remnants of blue embers escaping through the high windows of the warehouse.
“I don’t make it a thing to stay away from the spotlight,” he returned, unimpressed. Staying hidden wasn’t any use to him now that he had a path to his final destination.
The woman raised an equally unimpressed brow in return.
“No, yours is needlessly burning people to death for existing, I can tell.”
Dabi despised that the snide statement managed to cut him, his eye twitching for a moment.
“Why’d you find me?” he asked curiously, taking in the red eyes and the dragon tattoo spiraling down her bare arm. “You’re the leader of that worthless yakuza I’ve heard about, huh?” He scoffed, putting on a smirk. “I was told to recruit for the League, but you’re useless. An overly flashy quirk that just heals? I bet you came to recruit us to do your dirty work instead. No thanks.”
To his annoyance, the woman—Kayashima, though not that he’d use the name or alias he’d overheard in seedy bars and tight alleys—didn’t fall for his taunt.
“No, I’m here to take you out of the picture-”
This time, Dabi scoffed with heart. This worthless woman came here with some healing sparkles to stop him from doing what he had to do?
Well, if she was worth what he’d heard, maybe she’d survive to run off in fear and lick her wounds. Otherwise, oh well.
And then, the next two words ensured he’d give this insignificant woman his all, no matter what.
“-Todoroki Toya.”
All plans of idly killing or driving away this woman evaporated from his thoughts as a panicked, primal fury took over.
His staples pulled at his skin as he let out an inhuman snarl, heat pulsing against his scarred flesh.
She knew!
She’d ruin everything!
He rushed forward, an inferno blasting the entire warehouse ahead of him.
But that wouldn’t be enough. No playing around with someone who somehow knew. He had to get in close and blast her to ashes with his hand on her face.
And so he ran into the flames, to where he knew she’d be immolated, his hand outstretched to grab her face.
His sudden bloodlust and outreached hand halted in their tracks however, when the latter was instead grabbed tight by the wrist. Tight enough to lock his arm in place.
The blue flames parted to reveal the woman, unharmed and fizzing with gold that surged from her sizable horn.
“Did you know, even before quirks people could perform superhuman acts of strength, speed and stamina,” she said, her arm barely trembling as she kept his twisted with a firm grip. “It’s called hysterical strength. But it can’t be used too much or too long before it damages the body.”
Dabi stared at the woman, uncomprehending, before breaking out in a snarl again.
“The fuck does that have to do with anything?” he questioned furiously as he tore his hand from her grip, already aiming his other hand for another blast.
His desperate urge to get in close showed its downsides though, as the woman had the time to react and return the favor, her fist slamming in his gut.
He was forced to cough up his lungs as he was flung back, gaining air before slamming into a brick wall.
That felt like getting hit by a higher-class strength quirk! That girl was toned, not a brick shithouse!
“Not my problem if you don’t get it,” she said, staring him down as he tore himself from the damaged wall. “Didn’t you say you knew who I was? Then you know what my quirk is.” She took a step forward, quirking a brow as her lips twitched. “Though you do seem like a simple-minded guy, so it’s understandable you can’t see beyond the surface.”
This bitch!
A stream of flames was sent her way.
She dodged to the side, sending out a blast of gold in retaliation.
Dabi didn’t bother mounting a defensive, launching another attack instead while she was preoccupied.
What he didn’t expect was for the harmless bolt splashing against his torso to feel like a second punch to the gut, forcing him off-balance.
“Any hit I land, I can make hit again whenever I want.”
He snarled, dodging another bolt headed for him and slicing the air, sending a thin blade of fire at his opponent.
She grunted, her tank-top and hair charring from the heat, but a flash of gold made it all disappear.
“And I think that use is obvious.”
Dabi’s vision reddened at the casual dismissal, more flames flooding the warehouse. He twisted his arms, forcing the flames to jettison out and spiral together into a tornado that encompassed the woman entirely.
No longer trusting his fire alone, he drew a barely-used knife from his pants and jumped through the wall of flame.
Inside, the woman infuriatingly awaited him with a coat of gold flowing around herself, having the audacity to not even be sweating.
“Burn already!” he yelled, sending a focused blast with his off hand as he went in for a slice. The warehouse air wobbled and distorted like the insides of a blast furnace at full strength.
“I don’t think so,” the glowing woman returned, jumping away from the knife. “I stayed in a freezer earlier today.”
The fuck did that-
He threw a fireball at her feet, forcing her in a dodge at the same time as he threw his knife.
The woman’s eyes widened as she saw the knife head straight for her throat, and the aura surrounding her flared up.
The next moment, the knife bounced off the skin of her neck.
“What the fuck!” Dabi screamed in rage, throwing out indiscriminate fire.
“I’m lucky to have subordinates with quirks that enhance other people.” His opponent danced out of the way, no longer shivering, which he hadn’t even noticed before. “Slash resistance, denser muscles. Useful but short-lived after activation, usually.”
“I don’t care!” He so fucking didn’t anymore. About this woman and her cryptic bullshit! This wasn’t in the plans! And she dared to be so dismissive of his-
The woman harrumphed as she stalked around him. “Your boss would appreciate it. He’d call it save-state jumping, I bet.”
A moment later, Dabi’s eyes widened with glee as the woman seemed to lose her balance on an unstable part of the by now decimated, half-melted warehouse floor, and he took the chance to blast her face-first like he wanted from the start, and then snap her neck for good measure.
His mistake.
The woman’s stumble turned controlled in an instant the moment he over-extended himself. Not that his fired-up palm wouldn’t strike her either way-
And then she disappeared in a flash, and it was Dabi’s turn to stumble.
He only barely caught a glimpse of the woman, suddenly no older than a tween, crouched below him in clothes that barely hung onto her.
The next moment, her even more oversized horn flared with gold again, and an adult, glowing fist that had ceased existing moments earlier re-materialized into the underside of his jaw.
The blue of his fire tornado snuffed out as he flew across the empty, decimated warehouse, landing in the smoldering embers of what used to be metal shipping containers.
Before he could comprehend the insane sight he’d seen or jump back on his feet, something was thrown at him, landing before his boots.
It was a tree branch, its leafs still fresh and holding together, the base jagged like it had been ripped off just earlier that day.
It was struck by a bolt of energy a moment later, and the next, Dabi found himself completely immobilized, forced back up onto his feet by something solid and massive pressing into him.
When the gold washing out his vision disappeared, the only thing he could do was gape.
A tree?!
It was nearly enough to make him laugh like a lunatic.
Nevermind whatever the hell she was doing, her idea of immobilizing him was wood?!
Dabi glared at the woman as he pulled from the furnace in his bones-
But froze. There was nothing but an empty, arctic chill where his quirk should be.
“I feel arrogant for not doing that from the start,” his opponent said as she walked up to him, eyeing him warily. “But I had to know. Was I good enough to survive someone out to kill me on my own?”
Dabi snarled, ignoring the terrible cold eating at him as his arms struggled against the thick, split trunk of the tree that had instantly grown around him.
“I’ll burn you!”
The woman straightened her posture after another second of no counterattacks, looking down at him with ease.
“The last two years have surprised me at every opportunity,” she said, almost conversationally. “But you don’t.”
A flicker of heat graced his rapidly-beating heart as the woman narrowed her eyes.
“You don’t deserve what I’m about to attempt, but I can tell your quirk is already coming back.” The sharp gaze turned pitying and strangely impressed for a moment. “Your will really is the only thing keeping you walking.”
Dabi snarled, ignoring the way his hair clung to his forehead and the wood pressed on his body.
“So what are you gonna do?” He stretched his mouth into a wide grin that made the staples keeping his cheeks together fall out. “Snuff me out? Kill me and dump me in the ocean?”
“It’d be easiest,” Kayashima returned coldly. “But going into this, I knew I needed a trial run.”
This brought Dabi up short. Without any words to utter, he watched as the woman’s hair began to float and billow eerily, like lightning was building in the sky above, revealing the multitude of smaller horns jutting out from under her locks.
~~~
Outside the warehouse, only the bravest of the criminals who’d felt themselves burn alive minutes earlier had remained, eyes glued to the flashes of gold and blue coming from the dirtied windows near the roof.
“Are we staying?” one of them asked aloud, still shivering. “I’m not sure I want to stick around for when the fight ends.”
“I am,” another said, staring at the warehouse, where the battle of colors had ceased after a final clash of blue and gold. “Can’t help but believe the rumors after seeing it in person. If that woman’s the one walking out, I’m walking away with her. Fuck what I’ve been doing until now. Can’t believe I nearly got myself killed by some lunatic.”
There were several nods.
Though everyone was taken off-guard when the warehouse was overtaken by light one final time. An intense gold and purple burned their retinas as a scream rang in their ears, echoing still, seconds after it had passed.
A week later
“I thought you’d be here.”
Eri tore her eyes away from the darkened room that used to be her personal torture chamber, now repurposed for something more important.
“You seem somber for someone who’s on the verge of succeeding,” her grandfather said solemnly, standing in the light streaming in from the open door.
The contents of the room were a testament to that. The proof it was feasible.
She nodded, unable to deny her grandfather’s words, but kept silent.
“It’s because ‘what comes next’ feels more grounded now than ever, doesn’t it?”
Eri shut her eyes.
“But what can be next?” she questioned softly, afraid to disturb the silence. “It’s- It’s not like I can go back to being a seven-year-old girl who just got saved by her hero after I’m done. I haven’t even met him yet.” The broadcast of the Sports Festival was of no help either, just more of the same—a throwback to when it was one of the few pieces of media she had of Midoriya Izuku after he died.
Not even a pleasant one, watching him mutilate his fingers to save his classmate from himself.
It was strange, to know that passing her last birthday meant she’d lived for twice as long as this Izuku had. An Izuku who’d never remember what she did.
Her grandfather sighed, closing the distance and putting a hand on her shoulder.
“You’ve grown into a strong woman and heir I couldn’t be more proud of, Eri.” She opened her eyes, smiling weakly at the rare direct praise. “But your question—that’s something you need more than just your old man for to answer.”
Eri sighed, looking away. “There’s no one else.” She’d made sure of that.
“There could be…if you trust them.”
Her eyes shot back to him.
“Ojiisan?”
He simply smiled, a grandfatherly smile she didn’t see much. “I asked them to gather upstairs.”
“I can’t just- just tell them,” she returned, averting her eyes guiltily. Was he making her?
“Then tell them about the plan only. I already know you trust them enough for that. Who knows, they could be of great help,” her grandfather argued, still smiling, before gesturing for the open door. “It’s up to you to decide how much further your trust goes.”
Eri hesitated, glancing back at the dark room, before reaching out for his hand.
Even though her grandfather had left it all up to her, a part of her had already made up its mind long before he’d pointed it out. Better late and face the music than never, and it’d be oh so tempting to keep it all behind her once it became the past.
~~~
“And then I somehow came here, in my adult body. Since then, I’ve been working through the Hassaikai to prevent the worst from happening again.”
In the end, it really had been impossible for her to continue hiding the truth from the people her actions had impacted the most.
The gathered trio of theoretical League members stared at her in silence.
“So, I understand if you don’t trust me with anything anymore.” Eri lowered her head. “But please, let me finish what I started before you-”
“Do what?”
She raised her head as quickly as she’d lowered it, her eyes snapping to Jin.
“Whaddaya think I’m gonna do? Ruin what you’re doing out of spite?”
“Y-Yes?” came out weakly. “I- I made you think I helped you out of selflessness, but it was just to make things easier for me.” She grimaced, before gesturing at both him and Himiko. “The cousin thing, the quirk counseling agency, that was all just pretext, lucky coincidence. I didn’t ‘stumble’ on you, I targeted you!”
“So what?” Himiko replied, looking at her strangely. “Oh no, how could you?!” she whined, dragging her hands over her face. “Instead of being here and living with my adorable otouto I could’ve been slumming it on the streets, half-mad, half-thirsty, before joining some uncute villain group, get my heart broken, see my best bud slash cousin melt to death in my hands and decide killing myself is better than living after helping start a war?”
Eri grimaced at the blunt tease.
“That’s not- There’s so many people I could’ve helped! Other things I knew about. I could’ve done something!” The bullying she knew Izuku had suffered. The heroes Stain had murdered. Natural disasters and disastrous villain attacks. “And all I could get myself to do was plan and meddle for you two. I-” She jerked to the side, gesturing at Shuichi. “I didn’t even set out for him! He just…walked in one day!”
Himiko snorted as Shuichi let out an indignant, “Hey!”
But of the three, Jin didn’t look impressed at all.
And then he grinned.
“I knew you were screwed in the head like the rest of us, lady.”
Eri blinked.
“What?”
Jin scoffed, crossing his arms.
“Getting raised by UA musta messed you up big if you think we’re gonna act all righteous for choosing not to save everyone and being selfish.” He jerked up a finger. “I for one am pretty fucking happy you got me outta that room.”
“And getting my asshole parents locked up!” Himiko chimed in. “Who do you think we are? Paragons of justice?”
“Well, I for one am a perfectly normal gamer,” Shuichi interrupted with a huff.
“See? He admits it too!”
“What’s that supposed to mean?!”
Eri let out an ugly snort, much to her surprise.
Somehow, in this moment, it was almost easy to see just why a group like the League must’ve felt like the one place they could feel whole.
“You three…” she trailed off as they halted their squabble. “You’re way too trusting.”
“More like pragmatic,” Shuichi returned, squinting at her. “Just like you are.”
Okay…fair, but-
“Wait a minute!” Himiko’s shout startled the others, and Eri feared she was going to face backlash after all.
Himiko pointed an accusatory finger in her direction. “You’re younger than me!” Eri blinked- “What are the cutest trends gonna be in the future?”
Huh-
“Oh shit, you’re right!” Shuichi butted in. “What’re the most surprise hit indie games I can be an early backer of?”
“What about the stock market?!”
The room paused as they all stared at Jin.
“What? I’m being pragmatic. Unlike you guys!”
…
“Boo, insider trading’s so uncute.”
“At least ask about sports betting or something.”
“Don’t…” Eri was honestly left speechless, and very much repressing the urge to laugh—half from relief, half from mirth. “Don’t you at least want to know what I’m planning?”
Himiko shrugged. “Not if I don’t get to play a part in it.” She paused, before exposing her fangs in an excited grin. “Unless I do now?”
“No!” Eri stopped herself as she realized something her grandfather had already pointed out. “A clone at most.”
“Good enough!”
“I definitely want to know,” Shuichi said. “You must’ve been planning this for years. I remember the nurse who visited almost every month to draw blood when I joined.” He crossed his legs. “What kind of plan makes you confident you and a small yakuza can stop a centuries old boogieman and multiple villain syndicates in one fell swoop?”
“When you frame it like that, I’m intrigued too! Go on, spill the tea!”
Eri stared at the trio, feeling…strange. The acceptance and easy dismissiveness, it felt surreal.
Then again, her grandfather had seen it so easily. Maybe her worries and the encroaching deadline had made her blind to the obvious.
Maybe her standards for herself were too high. Too heroic.
And despite what she wanted to accomplish, she couldn’t exactly call herself heroic for her methods, now could she?
Speaking of…
Eri breathed, wondering how to explain a plan years in the making.
“First, I have been waiting for a very specific moment.”
Notes:
I figured Dabi was never going to be the one to be turned away from his path to villainy. Unlike Spinner, Twice and Toga, he was already out there burning criminals and complete innocents to death before Eri even appeared in the past. Just too hardheaded and incapable of changing things around (like daddy dearest). His will to see Endeavor and his legacy burn is canonically the only reason he's even walking for most of the story.
Good thing for Eri though, she needs a bit of a trial run, for multiple reasons.
On to that, I hope you enjoyed seeing how my Eri used Rewind in her fight, though I did have her allude to it all (maybe she was a bit too boasty, but riling Dabi up was to make him sloppy). In a neater list though:
1: healing her injuries mid-fight. The most straight-forward application. In canon it's probably not the clearest whether it's a valid strategy since we don't have concrete numbers on the amount and regeneration of her stockpile, tho I figure it's on the lower side to bring down her OPness, but there's an explanation for her seemingly much larger stockpile in this story than what she has in canon (it's been set up in the first chapter, and you can see more hints towards it in the numerous descriptions other people have given of her over the past few chapters)
2: related to the first part, allowing herself to use hysterical strength without limitation, which I figure is even more effective when the base human body is even more durable and stronger than pre-quirk era times. Eri did have to train herself to shift into the 'life or death' mindset needed to access hysterical strength on command, though bloodthirsty underlings like Rappa (or Mimic begrudgingly sticking around and trying to off her for taking down Overhaul) are more than acceptable 'training partners'
3: undoing and repeating injuries her opponent has suffered. This wouldn't actually give them twice the injury, but having them suffer the actual moment of injury again can be debilitating
4: returning her own body to times she was in specific, time-limited circumstances, like the time her body was in hypothermia to endure the heat of Dabi's flames, or when her body was being affected by specific quirks (for example, she could also mimic Erasure if her opponent had actually been affected by Aizawa at a time she knows of)As a sub-point, I've made it a thing in past fics that Eri's Rewind doesn't actually turn back time on a living thing, but instead uses its energy to transform them into a past iteration of them. This does mean her quirk can somehow travel through a person's personal timeline and view it, but some metaphysical aspects are unavoidable. So, instead of rewinding someone and permanently undoing the stretch of timeline from that past to the present, the transformation to that past point in time is just the next present moment in their full timeline, meaning, in short, Eri can Rewind back through previous rewinds. So once she's rewound someone to a specific point in time, that specific state is now in the direct past (just a few minutes back at most during a battle) and she can rapidly swap between states she's brought to the present with little energy, hence why she said Shigaraki would call it save-state jumping. In addition, if she recently rewound herself to being a younger age and then rewound herself to before her last rewind, she then has easy access to a much smaller form to navigate a battlefield with and surprise her opponents
5: regenerating entire trees from a branch. We've seen Eri regenerate lost limbs, both with Izuku and with lizards she was seen training on in the show, so I made her just a little more OP by having her be able to do the reverse as well. In this case, tree branches can continue to live for an extended period of time after being removed from a tree (that's why grafting is possible), and so Eri can rewind the fresh branch back to when it was still part of a full tree (instead of rewinding the tree to remake the branch) with the actual tree still existing elsewhere, though this takes a big chunk of stockpile (think E=mc2).
She can't use this to literally clone entire people or animals by severing a limb and then rewinding a person back onto the limb. The limit to it is that her quirk requires a core that can be considered the identity of the living being to center itself around. In the case of people and most animals, that's the central nervous system, the brain in particular. Trees and plants don't have this, so they're fair game for duping. Animals like sponges, starfish, jellyfish etc. can also be cloned in this way.
Another plant I considered for offensive use were bamboo shoots, of which Eri would have roots burrowed all under the arena, but that requires home-base advantage.
And with that I've reached the character limit. Next time we see what finally happens When Mirrors Meet.
Chapter 8: When Mirrors Meet
Notes:
Welcome back to the climactic chapter of this little fic of mine. Not the last one, we still have the epilogue after this, but I'm just glad I've managed to keep up the update schedule with weekly writing. Feels just like the good ol' days of when I somehow kept up a weekly schedule over 700+k words for Starborn hero (don't fucking ask how I managed that along with my fulltime study).
Fingers crossed that I can keep it up one last time for the epilogue. Dunno what I'll do after I'm done with this though, but that's something to worry about when I get there.
Anyway, thanks to everyone who's left a comment so far, and if you have questions or anything else to say, please do so! I very much look forward to what you have to say <3
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
“Eri-san, Eri-san!”
Eri startled as the paper door slid open, filling the dimly lit office with bright light from the hallway.
“Jin?” she asked, wiping crust from her eye. Apparently she’d fallen asleep at her desk last night. “What is it?”
“My clone!” he said, gesturing wildly. “The one tailing the mist guy, he offed himself in the exact way I asked him to! I felt it!”
She narrowed her eyes, before remembering exactly how that sentence made sense.
“Couldn’t you have asked him to call back?”
Jin shrugged. “You know none of me like having more of me around all the time. And it’s instant!”
Eri shook her head. No use arguing about it.
“Kurogiri’s been captured then?”
Jin nodded. “By that old pro and the plain detective. I’m sure of it!” He coughed, lowering his excitement. “That means it’s finally time, right?”
She nodded. “It is.” She hesitated, glancing at the latest reports laying on her desk.
Everything was ready.
She fished her phone from a drawer and dialed a number.
“Shuichi?” she asked as the dial tone finished.
“Yeah, what is it?” From the sounds of his voice, he was in the middle of a game of his.
“It’s time. Do you…still have contact with him?”
“I do, though he’s been offline the past few days.” Shuichi’s voice paused. “Are you sure you’ll have to do it this way? I’ve been gaming with him and- well, he sounds nice enough, surprisingly. I just- y’know, knowing what I’m leading him into…”
Eri glanced at Jin as she sighed, feeling weariness creep in. There was a reason approaching certain members of the League had been part of her plans from the start, beyond how powerful they ended up becoming in the final fight.
“I can’t promise I’ll manage to make enough of an impact in the one conversation I’ll have.” She wasn’t Izuku. And truth be told, after all this time the safest option was by far the most tempting to take. “I can try, but…”
“Hey, I know what’s at stake,” Shuichi chided. “So…”
“Yes,” Eri said, getting up from her chair. “Send him an invitation. I think it’s time we finally meet.”
Despite everything she’d meticulously changed up until this point, it was time for Shigaraki to have a meeting with the leader of the Hassaikai once again. Just a few more phone calls.
“Contact me again only if her double disappears. She should have enough to last until she’s in the right place, and I trust she’ll get there before long.”
~~~
“Avoid all casualties if you can, but do whatever else you need to get the target. And make sure the package is placed down below without anyone noticing.”
“Yeah, yeah, I hate punching people who won’t be punching back, but I’ll get that old geezer offed, lady.”
~~~
“Make sure those devices go off and you’ll get your proper body back, Mimic. But attempt to interfere with me and mine again after and you can say goodbye to a lot more than your good health. Understood?”
“Y-Yes…Eri-sama.”
A week later
Tomura grunted under his hoodie, looking up unimpressed at the drab office building looming over him. One touch and it’d turn from unremarkable concrete to unremarkable dust.
But a boring suburb in Osaka somehow felt more enticing than the rickety bolt house he’d been hiding away in ever since his League had split up and gone into hiding.
The month since the utter defeat at Kamino had felt almost nostalgically like the years before Sensei had deemed him ready, gaming away in his room with nobody but Kurogiri or the occasional voice of Sensei to interrupt his day-to-day, along with the occasional wander and dusting in alleys around the nation.
But it was still a downgrade. Being on his own again was different from just being on his own.
Those morons like Moonfish, Muscular and Mustard had gotten themselves arrested and jailed during their debut operation—something about starting their names with the letter M made them Morons somehow. And of the people who’d escaped with him through Kurogiri at Kamino, he was sure Compress and Twice had fucked off for good, though he’d gotten one or two texts from the latter still.
And then, a few weeks ago Kurogiri had left as well, telling him there was a powerful lackey of Sensei’s he was tracking down to aid him, with no sign of his return.
Staying in one place, with nobody around, had made him itchy as all hell. Even if he knew it was better to stay low until Kurogiri returned with Sensei’s lackey, or until the Doctor contacted him, or until Dabi finished his task and returned to him with new blood.
Then again, the last sighting of that loose cannon’s blue fire had been a couple weeks ago now too.
So, itchy, tetchy, ready to do just about anything but with no direction or orders, with his only distraction the games and the pseudonym he’d used online for years, and a persistent new guy he’d been messaging since he’d lost anything else to occupy himself with.
And then, two days ago, messages on how shitty other players were and howbullshit the latest boss raid was suddenly turned into something else.
‘Hey, look. I don’t wanna be blunt, but you’re that Shigaraki guy, right?’
‘The hell makes you say that?’
‘You’ve used your mic before, dude. Guess I’ve listened to clips of you online too much ‘coz I can recognize that crusty voice.’
‘And you’re joining me in raids anyway? You can’t track my position, but if you try, I’ll pay you a visit instead.’
‘Dude, no need to go all villain on me in a text haha. I mean, I get it, y’know? Society right now can be absolute dogshit. You have more guts than most to try and act up.’
‘Stop being a kiss-ass. Why are you asking?’
‘Y’know, just letting you know you’re not the only one out there. It’s hard to find a place that feels like they can and want to help. I’m just glad I found one when I did.’
‘Hey, if you want, I can put in a good word, right? I’m sure you’ve heard of her, she’ll probably be interested in you.’
And, despite wanting to dust the pity invite, over a month of returning to isolation had softened him up enough to take the side-quest out of curiosity.
At worst, he could entertain himself and destroy some shitty group who thought they were big shots in the underground.
And besides, at best he got lucky and he could succeed where Dabi was clearly failing and acquire some manpower. If he wanted to build himself up and free Sensei, he’d need it.
Part of him thought this was some shit joke, but when a knock on the building’s door and a static rumble of the small speaker next to it allowed him entry, he was proven wrong.
“Hey, you’re that Shiggy guy, right?”
Tomura’s hand spasmed as he took in the muscly red-head approaching him.
“And you’re some NPC I won’t mind getting rid of.”
The guy laughed, completely unbothered by the idle threat. “Boss lady wants to see you. Just go down the stairs and down the hall until you see some green. Can’t miss it.” The man waltzed past him, shoulder-checking him on the way out.
“I’d deck you for being rude, but the boss lady don’t want uncalled for violence.” He paused in his stride, his legs suffering a tremble. “Word of advice, don’t let her get to your balls. She has a way of hanging that over you.”
Tomura stared down the man as he walked away, taking off his hood in confusion.
What the fuck was he talking about?
Thinking it better to just ignore the weirdo, Tomura spotted a simple set of stairs leading down a level and made his way over.
There was little he knew of the Hassaikai. Sensei had not seemed very interested in the group, so he didn’t either. All Sensei had told him at some point was that the Hassaikai was the last remaining yakuza from the Dawn, which suffered a takeover from a new, young head, which was a short-lived one anyway when the old boss’s daughter returned from civilian life and took it right back.
They were still small-time though, and apparently went in a new direction with a woman at the head. The only reason they even caught the slightest of Sensei’s attention was the double-takeover, something that didn’t last for very long.
Until he’d seen the yakuza’s name in DMs he’d completely forgotten about it as well.
That said, in the aftermath of Sensei’s defeat, rumors about the Hassaikai and its leader had surfaced again. It was obvious they were aiming for a power grab, just like all the other insignificant villain groups in the underworld.
Tomura came to a halt when he turned a corner.
Further down, natural light and greenery spilled into the hallway through an arched opening.
That’s what he fucking meant with ‘green?’
Making his way over, his mind wandered to the alleged woman in charge. Like her organization, rumors about her sprung up in intensity only after Kamino. All he knew was that she was the daughter of the previous head, and that she had a healing quirk that involved golden energy.
That Sensei and the doctor had never tracked her down either meant she’d managed to keep herself on the down low, or that they’d explored the possibility and discovered her quirk couldn’t help Sensei.
That’s what he knew of, along with—Tomura begrudgingly admitted—an intimidating alias used in bars and seedy alleys.
But there is no way they have a fucking garden underneath-
Tomura was forced to swallow his words immediately as he stepped into a fully fledged garden, below ground and surrounded by walls and a ceiling, with only a large grate in the center of the ceiling to let in natural light.
And in the middle of the grass, bushes, and vines, near a large apple tree as the garden’s centerpiece, stood a barefooted woman wearing a traditional kimono, pastel pink patterned sparsely with thin brown branches and bright pink petals.
The woman’s waist-long, snow white hair shifted as she turned to him, a surprisingly similar pair of red eyes meeting his own.
Though Tomura was more taken in by what had to be the reason behind her hushed alias. From her scalp, dozens of ridged horns sprouted. A few were larger, curling back and kinking up, branching out into smaller horns, while the others were smaller and crowded the empty space between, forming a ring of entangled brambles that circled her head like a crown fused to her skull. How her hair managed to flow past and down her back was a mystery to him.
“Shigaraki Tomura,” the woman greeted, her voice airy but firm.
“Lady of Thorns,” he returned, keeping down the derision.
She grimaced, slowly treading over to him.
“I don’t know where that alias came from. Makes me sound regal and prickly.” She reached out with her hand. “Call me Kayashima.”
Tomura huffed, not intending on doing so. Internally he suppressed a manic grin. Was she actually trying to shake his hand? Not only a foreign greeting, but a guaranteed maiming when it involved him of all people?
Keeping his face still, he reciprocated the greeting gleefully.
Oh well, if she really was that stupid and ignorant, then she didn’t deserve to live.
In their grip, Kayashima’s hand cracked and grayed, dust already sloughing off.
But then, gold sparked from the crown of thorns, flowing over her body and surging through him as well.
Tomura yelped, retracting his hand, but found himself unable to, as if the energy coming through her bony grip was an electric current paralyzing him. Instead, he was forced to watch the dusted skin reassemble over the exposed muscle and bone, until he was finally let go, stumbling back.
“What-” he croaked out, watching the woman idly inspect her fresh hand with faint curiosity, not even a tremor or tremble in sight.
As if picking the question straight from his thoughts, Kayashima stared at him.
“I felt worse on the daily when I was a quarter your age,” she stated coolly, before it thawed again. “Sorry for deceiving you, but I’m not taking any chances, and if you really thought I didn’t know what was going to happen…”
Tomura grimaced as his own barbs were turned back on him.
“What did you do?” he growled out.
“I removed your quirk.”
His eyes bugged out at the idle response. On instinct he crouched down and pressed his hand to the ground. Nothing.
“It’s temporary,” Kayashima continued, as if not having just delivered a mental crisis in four words. “I rewound your quirk genes to when they weren’t expressed yet, to when you were four-five. But my energy is generated from nothing, and inevitably disappears when it’s not stored in my horns, so they will ‘age’ back up to normal within the hour. Chisaki had a hard time figuring out how to work around that.”
She sighed, letting herself fall on the grass with a graceful thud. “It was very useful on little kids who had far more power stuffed in their bodies than they knew what to do with.” She glanced back up at him from her seated position. “I used to work at a daycare, you know? I miss it.”
Tomura scowled at her wistful expression. Who was this random woman to act so casual around him?
Any simmering curiosity he’d built up over the past few days had vanished pretty much immediately.
“Why d’you want to see me?” Best get the quest over with quickly.
Kayashima didn’t look him in the eye as she breathed out.
“After nearly three years, I’ve gotten sick and tired of lying, spinning the truth, and pretending to be someone I’m not. I want to get this over with, but I made a promise, so I’ll jump straight to it.”
She breathed in and locked eyes with him, their intense glow a warning of what was to come.
“I’m from twenty years in the future.”
Tomura’s thoughts stuttered, the words startling a laugh out of him.
“No you’re not,” he managed to wheeze out. She’d almost managed to convince him she was some kind of badass there! But no, just a crazy NPC!
“You were born Shimura Tenko,” Kayashima continued.
“Sure,” Tomura interrupted her, still chuckling. “Anyone who heard Sensei talk knows that.” If she wanted to convince him of her crazy talk, she was a complete amateur at it.
“Your given name, Tomura, to mourn, was made up and given to you by your master, All For One.”
He scoffed, his eye twitching. Not like anyone else couldn’t have guessed that.
“But your family name, Shigaraki, you share with him.”
A second scoff never made it out, as Tomura froze.
Sensei had never shared even a drop of information about his origins with anyone, not even the doctor, and there obviously was nobody else left to share that information. That he knew Shigaraki was Sensei’s real last name was a privilege only he enjoyed.
Somehow, not anymore.
The worst part of it was the knowing look Kayashima gave him as he gaped at her, not even smug or gloating.
“Do I have your attention?”
Kayashima didn’t look bothered in the slightest by the threatening growl escaping him, gazing at the apple tree instead. And there was no need to be. She’d effectively debuffed him with a simple handshake and some light show.
If one thing was becoming hauntingly clear, it was that this woman had wanted to be underestimated, and this was her coming out in the open.
So, in his best attempts at keeping some kind of composure, Tomura cracked a grin.
“Must’ve destroyed a lot if someone had to be sent back in time.”
“Not really.” And the eye twitch was back. “Me coming back was a complete accident. And yes, the future looked bleak, but nothing apocalyptic.”
She locked eyes with him again. “You tried. But despite raising a whole army, inheriting All For One’s quirk, breaking him and every prisoner out of Tartarus and laying waste to all of Japan, within the year, you and your master will be dead.”
Tomura snarled. Impossible. Sensei dying?
“Because of the heroes, huh?” he spat. Because of course they fucking would.
“Yes,” she confirmed without remorse. “And even if you try and avert things using what I know. Do things differently. I can’t see how they won’t win in the end anyway.”
The complete and utter trust displayed in her eyes made Tomura’s neck itch worse than ever before.
“So you’re here to gloat?” he said through gritted teeth as his hand reached up for his neck.
Kayashima gave him an indecipherable stare as his fingers raked across his dried skin.
“I came here to convince you it’s not too late.” Gone was the hard tone, softened by emotions he hated more than anything. Hope and pity. “You can still go and choose for yourself. Do more than follow along with the stage play your master has forced on you. Do you even know what you want? Do you even have anything or anyone you’re fighting for?”
“Don’t talk like you know me!” Tomura growled, his nails finally drawing blood. Like she somehow knew he had nobody with him, not even Sensei.
The audacity of this- this upstart NPC!
“When I was young, I rewound my father into a fetus,” Kayashima began emotionlessly. “The kitchen floor and bacteria did the rest, or maybe my mother’s feet when she came running in. Though the lack of nutrients would’ve killed him through starvation if he survived to age back up otherwise.” She huffed. “I was abandoned at the yakuza the next day, where a megalomaniacal sociopath exploited me for my quirk. Tortured and experimented on me every day until heroes found out and raided this place to save me.”
She gestured at the grassy room around them.
“This is where the main fight took place—would’ve taken place earlier this week, just with more exposed concrete. I redecorated.”
She sighed. “I’m actually grateful he tortured and abused me every day.” A humorless chuckle came out, one that made Tomura shiver. “He could’ve done so much worse. Could have told me about the Hassaikai and romanticized its history. Could have pampered me as the last heir and made me feel loved and cared for. Could have blamed the heroes on the downfall of ‘my promised empire’ and how quirks like mine are a sign humanity will be wiped out in a few generations while heroes do nothing. Could have made me fervently loyal to his cause and be his willing lynch-pin to rewinding all of society back to before quirks and heroes ever existed, with me and him at the top of the underworld, holding a monopoly on who’s allowed to keep their quirk.”
She shook her head. “I never would’ve considered running away. Never would’ve seen that being saved by the heroes would let me live a better life. Never would’ve known there was something more I was deprived of.”
“If your next words are ‘we’re the same,’ I’m going to turn you to dust without my quirk.”
The lips of Kayashima’s mouth quirked up. “But don’t you see? We aren’t. And that’s all because of pure luck. I got lucky, was given a chance.”
She got back up, dusting blades of grass off her kimono. “You never were. So before I do anything else, I want to hear how set you are on following your master’s will and designs, or if you’re willing to see if there’s anything else out there for you.”
There was a brief silence as Tomura tried to process and figure out what to say next.
“How the hell are you a yakuza boss?” He grinned snidely. “Did you even dump anything into Speech?”
The expression on Kayashima’s face sank. Disappointed, but not disheartened.
“I figured,” she mumbled. “Truth be told, if someone I trust hadn’t vouched for you, you would’ve walked into an ambush from the start and this would be done already.” She sighed. “But I guess I haven’t exactly tried my hardest.” A grimace crossed her face. “Hard to when my heart isn’t in it. He would’ve tried his best. Then again, I already knew I’m not him.”
Tomura stilled. Despite the weirdly casual conversational tone of this entire meeting up until now, a foreboding chill had crept in without him noticing. A familiar one.
The feeling that filled the room when Sensei decided on how to deal with a lost cause, moments before he acted on it.
Not taking any chances with underestimating Kayashima again, and the destruction sitting beneath his fingertips still eerily absent, Tomura swallowed his pride and turned, dashing for the exit.
Without warning, a golden bolt rushed past him and enveloped the grass ahead. From thin air, thick bamboo shoots manifested, breaking open the dirt and crowding the only exit.
“There’s bamboo roots planted all over this garden,” Kayashima said from where she still stood as he was forced to a stop—practically taunted. “I rewound them all, but they’re more than ready to return and disappear again at my say-so.”
Tomura bared his teeth at her, his hand reaching down into his pocket to press a barely used pager.
“Kurogiri won’t be coming to bail you out,” the woman continued coldly. “I waited specifically for him to be captured.”
He froze, and not just from her tone.
Kurogiri. Captured?
Tomura yelped in pain when more shoots shot out of the ground, not caring that he was standing atop it.
One look made more than clear that several grazed him, and one had manifested with enough force to pierce the palm of his hand. From the moment he shook her hand, he hadn’t stood a chance.
He’d gone into this thinking he’d stumbled onto a useful side quest, or a random enemy encounter, when in reality—
—she had started this game years ago.
Kayashima approached him, her expression saddened.
“I guess it says a lot about me that my go-to for solving problems has become one kind of violence or another.” Her remorseful expression flickered and steeled. “When this is over, no more. I will make sure you can’t harm him again.”
“So what, you’re planning on killing me?” It was the quickest and easiest way to get rid of an opponent, and in the moment, Tomura found he dreaded the idea. Or of anything worse.
“I don’t see how it’ll be any different from that,” Kayashima admitted, her face twisted in a grimace. “I hate the idea of ending a life, despite having done it several times already. Then again-” Her eyes flicked to him and away again. “You never really got to have a life in the first place, did you?”
“Fuck you!” Tomura wrenched at his impaled hand, grimacing at the lance of pain that reminded him that, yes, it really was impaled by bamboo, and it hurt like a motherfucker.
This bitch was calling him a no-lifer?!
“Not what I meant…” Kayashima trailed off, before shaking her head and turning her back to him. “It’s a miracle that I got the second chance I’m living now. A freak coincidence I don’t think I can ever replicate. And though he won’t ever be around the way I remember him, I owe it to him to give you the second chance you never got to have, the one he couldn’t give you.”
Tomura’s attempts at freeing himself ceased when the grassy room lit up.
Several feet away from him, Kayashima’s horns were engulfed in gold, interrupted by small sparks of purple, arching between horns like they were Tesla coils.
“When I came back, my quirk was changed as well. A forced awakening from dying,” she said, reaching out for the large apple tree.
As her hand touched the bark, the purple sparks increased in intensity, blotting out the gold flowing from her horns.
“Normally, the energy—the vitality I give to someone I rewind is temporary. Created from nothing, returned to nothing. Even if some of its effects remain, age inevitably corrects itself, back to the baseline.”
No gold remained, the aura was fully eclipsed by the deep, royal purple, one that crackled erratically as it flowed through her hand and seeped into the tree, before reversing.
“But that changes when I take vitality that already exists in something else.”
Tomura was left to watch, petrified, as the tree began to look drier. Leaves shrinking in on themselves and falling off, disappearing before even touching the ground. Apples rotting and turning to pulp that fell down with wet thuds.
“That energy sticks around. Becomes a permanent baseline to whoever I give it to. Even if I rewind them again, it corrects to the new norm.”
The ominous purple crackled and flared one last time as Kayashima pressed further against the dry, cracked, dead bark. And the apple tree gave way, lost its structure, breaking apart into chunks that collapsed further, leaving only the sight of a dust cloud floating away from the woman, dispersing over the grass and flowers.
Somewhere, part of Tomura wondered if this was some fucked up cosmic karma putting him on the other end of his own hand.
“Though I can’t use it much,” she continued as she turned around to face him again. She slid one side of her kimono off her shoulder. The pastel pink was stained red, and small buds of new horns pierced through the skin. Based on the bumps under the fabric, her other shoulder wasn’t faring better. “A few more times and the next ones will be internal. And they’re about the only things I can’t undo.”
“What the hell are you…” Tomura stilled, eyeing Kayashima in horror as she approached. “No. You fucking wouldn’t.”
“Maybe it would have been kindest to knock you out from the get-go,” she commented sadly, still coming closer. “But even if you don’t appreciate it, I will give you the second chance I was given. For you, for Izuku, for everyone.”
The last thing Tomura saw was a violently sparking hand closing the gap to his face, blotting out his vision with gold and purple.
“If that makes me unheroic, so be it.”
Despite knowing what was about to happen, and the fear and rage flooding his every thought, a small, shadowed part pushed down into the deepest depths of Tomura’s psyche couldn’t help but feel relief.
A loud, maddened, raspy yell echoed through the shoots of bamboo blocking the inner garden from the rest of the Hassaikai’s compound, but it inevitably faded away.
Eri let out a shuddering breath as she collapsed on the grass, the last embers of her quirk taking away the bamboo shoots trapping what had been Shigaraki Tomura.
Despite already having done the irreversible, her mind was adamant on repeating the questions she’d been having for months.
Should she have gone further? Done more? Had she done the right thing? Or something needlessly cruel? Had she set herself up for failure? What would be next? Could she do it?
“M-Miss?”
Eri opened her eyes, taking in the result of her actions.
Oh well, she had to live with it now. She’d known that since she’d first come to the decision. One last thing she could never feel comfortable with.
“Hello there,” she said, feeling the years of a chilly persona melt away as nostalgic days at a daycare warmed her mind. “You look lost. Do you know where you are?”
Reforming a villain groomed for ultimate destruction and hatred by the ultimate supervillain wasn’t something she could ever do. But a lost, scared child with too much power in their body who needed a helping hand?
“Oh, well, that’s alright,” she responded to the anxious, confused nod, getting up from the grass and reaching out. “You look like you’ve gone through something terrible.”
The other stumbled away from her hand, cradling his own with dread that looked too much for anyone their age to hold.
Eri smiled gently, the warmth in her horns flooding her system. “You won’t need to worry about hurting me, I promise.” She extended her hand again, more slowly this time, letting it glow softly. “It’ll be alright now.”
It would be. She’d make sure of it.
Notes:
And now we just have the epilogue left, where we finally jump into the POV of one Midoriya Izuku.
I hope this climax felt 'climactic' enough. I know it probably doesn't hit as hard as it could've if this were a longfic with plenty of build-up and building stakes, but I already knew I wouldn't be able to complete a project like that. And I wanted to preserve the mystery of what exactly Eri was planning, which meant covering most of this story from outsider POVs, which doesn't lend well to a full story following an MC. I'm assuming some will be put off by how easily Eri's had it, with no hiccups to her plans, but I'm adhering to the philosophy of Schrödinger's plan (i.e. if they don't explain the plan, the plan works. If they do, things go tits up) and didn't think the story was long enough to warrant the stakes of having to abandon a plan and finish things in a climactic fight anyway. That said, the plan working does have its consequences for Eri in particular, because the things she's had to do, and how she's had to act for most of it, has been a constant moral struggle for her. I've shown some glimpses into it, and again with her dialogue in this chapter, but the past 3 years have not been fun or a walk in the park for her.
Speaking of though, the full extent of what she's been planning for these 2-3 years will be revealed in the epilogue.
If you're thinking that Eri has been written rather ominously in this chapter, then you'd be correct. Feel free to debate the morality and/or practicality of what she did to Shigaraki, but it was absolutely meant to be portrayed as a rather morally gray thing to do. In a way, she has killed Shigaraki Tomura. On the other hand, she felt she needed to at least give the villain a second chance, like she was given a second chance, but knew it'd be impossible to give the present Shigaraki that chance without the risk of it undoing everything she's worked towards.
Above all else, taking out the threat of All For One, the League and Shigaraki and ensuring Izuku's safety goes above all else in her mind.
Anyway, finally you get the reveal of what the purple is all about. A variant of it has been used before by other people (the fast-forwarding) but I can't remember anyone having Eri's quirk turn out to have a vitality-siphoning side to it (one that was awakened under the influence of an unknown drug with Eri on death's door). I hinted at it in the very first chapter with the alley cat 'appearing' much older after being struck by it, and Eri feeling like something was being sucked out of her as fast as it was returned (she was stuck in a death loop of sucking the vitality out of herself and returning it through rewinding herself, one that eventually collapsed into her consciousness returning to the past, where a moment of her not existing, i.e. mid-overhaul was a point of least resistance for her entry, which unintentionally had her be reassembled into her adult self). The other times she's used it was to permanently remove Chisaki's quirk and to permanently erase Nighteye's last memories.
That the vitality drain happens to look exactly like Decay is a poetic parallel, of course. Not like canon didn't push the parallels between Shiggy and Eri as much as it could anyway.
You're probably wondering why I made it so Eri can't actually perma-rewind people earlier in this fic and now turned it around and gave her the ability anyway, but I had that planned from the start. I couldn't see a way for someone like Shiggy to get a second chance any other way. It has a big drawback though. Eri's horn only generates energy/vitality and stores it in itself, growing a bit more every time, though the horn has a limit to its size. That energy is temporary, so when the permanent energy is siphoned and jammed in, it has no place to go, and the stockpile is forced to expand beyond its limits. The original horn can only grow so much though, so the body's response is to sprout more horns elsewhere.
She has a limited life-time use for it, because eventually the next horns will sprout inside her and pierce her organs, and I've already established the only living thing she can't affect with her quirk is her horn(s) (because that'd be her quirk affecting itself, which sounds like a paradox) so it'd kill her. She's already used up most of her grace buffer by experimenting up till now. Not that she wants to use it more anyway.
Eri not being bothered by decay and her comment about having endured worse was originally put in purely for the BAMFness, but then I realized that, since Decay is literally Overhaul but with the matter manipulation aspect taken out and the destruction amped up, she has literally felt the equivalent of herself being completely decayed almost every day for several years in canon. So yes, she actually has felt worse.
But that's all for now! See you next time to witness an Unorthodox Reunion.
Chapter 9: An Unorthodox Reunion (Epilogue)
Notes:
Welcome back one final time! I hope you'll enjoy the wrap-up to this little fic I've been writing. I'm actually surprised I got to finish it on a complete weekly schedule from start to finish. Hopefully that means I still got it in me. Still funny to think this was originally just a one-shot. It's still my shortest completed multichapter fic now though, so I guess it is sorta one-shot sized (if this were back in the days of much longer chapters, this fic would only be 3-4 chapters long lol). Glad I changed my mind and made it a multi-chapter.
Speaking of, once I got to wrapping up this fic it seems my writing motivation still wants to do some more. I actually got enough ideas to start writing chapter 3 of A Quirked Connection, which was kicking my ass originally (real shame coz it was the only chapter between what's already written and the much more solid ideas that can carry it almost all the way to the end). Hopefully that means next week I'll get back to posting for that one (or the week after).
But that said, I hope you've enjoyed this fic. Let me know what you think now that it's all wrapped up! Or if you have questions about this AU. There's plenty for me to talk about and not enough room in the ANs to fit it all. And to everyone who's already commented, thank you very much for the kind words! <3 <3
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
“Thank you! Have a nice day!”
Izuku smiled as he secured the plastic bag over his wrist, walking out of the combini.
Alright. Emergency rope bought. Now to hurry back to UA and throw the best performance.
Though, then again—Izuku checked his phone and realized he had far more time than needed.
Maybe taking this walk slow to enjoy some peace and quiet away from the hecticness of the campus would do his mind some good.
After all, despite the good mood brought about by the day, there was a tenseness plaguing Izuku and his classmates that hadn’t fully left since that fateful day at Kamino.
Since moving into the dorms and passing the licensing exam, Izuku couldn’t help but feel like something was…off.
Maybe it was the unresolved tenseness of All Might’s retirement, or maybe…it was the lack of any villainous activity in recent times. The last flurry of anything of note had been over a month ago now.
But what a whirlwind of activity it had been.
That week had started innocently enough. Aizawa-sensei had come to the dorms after classes to announce Gran Torino and detective Tsukauchi had caught Kurogiri. The whole class had cheered. With the mist villain out of the picture, the renegade League was neutered. Their capture had become almost inevitable.
And then, just two days later, Jaku City became the site of a clash between villain groups.
The relative quiet of the mountain city had been upset in the early morning when a group of criminals loudly proclaiming themselves as a ‘neo’ Meta Liberation army launched an attack on Jaku General Hospital.
Mere minutes of chaos later, a second group had come out of the shadows, wearing robes that were the signature of the Humarise cult—some local chapter of it, the police had deduced after the fact.
Miraculously, most of the staff and patients of the hospital escaped with surface level injuries. The one fatality left in the wake of the attack however made the motivations of the groups involved in the clash very clear. Chairman and head doctor Garaki Kyudai was perhaps one of the most famous quirkless people in Japan. That a group that claimed they took after the quirk supremacist syndicate of the Dawn attacked the hospital to get at him, and a group that saw quirklessness as the ultimate blessing moved in to interfere, was no coincidence.
The man had been crushed to death under a wall punched down by one of the members leading one of the groups. After the two groups fled the scene, much of one of the hospital’s wings had been left in ruins. Thankfully nowhere with long-care patients, merely near the morgue.
But that attack was only the first. A few days later, news came in about a toxic gas leak up in the remote city of Deika. By the time outside forces had moved in to assist, all traces of it had disappeared, but the effects were more than clear.
To the shock of the nation, the entire city had been left effectively quirkless, with no hope of regaining use of their quirk factor.
Furthermore, evidence was discovered among the residences of despondent people, of a conspiracy of a genuine Meta Liberation Army, one that included many prominent members of society, who had all gathered on the day of the attack for a meeting, probably spurred on by the no doubt unauthorized attack on Jaku.
The story quickly changed from a random gas leak to a counter strike from Humarise. Their demonstration of a mass quirk-destroying weapon had kicked global investigation into the cult into overdrive, and evidence of similar bombs fueled by Ideo Trigger being developed and planted across the world had led into one of the fastest and most devastating take-downs of a global organization in recent memory.
The next day, Izuku himself had been in for an even bigger shock when he and Kacchan had been asked to join an unnerved All Might early in the morning.
There, All Might had let them in on two world-shattering facts that were being kept under wraps. For very understandable reasons. One, exploration of the demolished wing of Jaku Hospital after an unidentified person with a weather manipulation ability had fled from its depths had revealed a hidden laboratory filled with hibernating Nomu, along with the preserved, comatose body of Todoroki’s eldest brother, Todoroki Toya, long presumed dead. Suddenly, the death of the famous doctor was far less upsetting.
And two, even more worrying, All Might told them that a Tartarus guard had gone rogue two days earlier and shot All For One in his holding cell.
The guard somehow managed to evade all detection and disappeared from the prison without a trace. An autopsy couldn’t even be performed on All For One, as the bullet had managed to kill him on impact, and without him alive to maintain his quirks, his body had withered away before any of the other guards could even secure it.
And since a final sighting of Dabi’s flames two months ago, there had been no sightings of the League since their escape at Kamino.
Since those two attacks, nothing of note had happened. And the silence left Izuku feeling off-kilter. Him and his classmates. Torn between immense relief and deep-seated worry there was another shoe waiting to drop.
Because since when had the world been kind enough to let things resolve without further tragedy?
Izuku only realized he’d gone too far into his head when he meandered past a street corner, and someone ran into him before he could react.
The bag holding the rope was dropped immediately as he crouched down and held out his hand to the fallen person—kid. Even just two years ago, he would’ve fallen over from a collision like this; now he’d barely felt it.
“Hey, are you okay?” he asked worriedly, before locking up at the sight of who’d bumped into him.
Two large red eyes looked up at him from under snowy white, shaggy hair. If not for the baby fat on healthy, smooth skin and the lack of severe eye bags, Izuku would’ve almost jumped back in fright.
“Oh,” the boy began-
“Tenko.”
The boy froze up as another person approached from behind.
Izuku looked up and was met with equally red eyes and white hair. An impressive, intimidating collection of branching, entwined horns enhanced the already tall, toned silhouette cast by the rising sun.
“What did I say about running ahead?” the woman chided, her voice pleasant yet unusual to his ears.
For a moment, Izuku felt something foreboding.
And then the boy’s frozen expression broke into a pout as he looked down.
“That I have to look extra carefully,” he mumbled, eyes darting back up meekly at Izuku.
The woman chuckled, but looked no less stern.
“Next time, that could be a car, or a bike, or a stroller, or a very angry adult,” she lectured, to which the boy—Tenko nodded, cheeks still red.
“Or I could have…” He trailed off, wringing his hands. “Can- Could you do it again, Eri-san? I don’t want to…”
The woman met his worried question with a gentle smile as she closed the distance and pulled him up, surprising Izuku with a flash of yellow.
“You know it’s not a good idea to rely on that forever,” she said as Tenko got back up on his feet. “But today is a big day.”
Tenko nodded sheepishly, before looking at Izuku.
“S-Sorry, mister.”
“It’s okay!” Izuku returned, almost not having expected to be talked to. “I think I hurt you more than you did me.”
He let out a boyish giggle. “You’re very strong!”
Izuku chuckled, the brief moment of fear easily forgotten. This was nobody malicious. The woman’s demeanor, paired with her clothing—an unbuttoned blue cardigan layered over a gray shirt and a green, pleated, knee-length skirt—made him think of his mom even, minus the sturdy, black combat boots that came up to her knees. If his mom had ever worn anything like them, she kept any evidence of it deep within her closet.
“Sorry for him, he can be a handful,” the woman apologized, eyeing him. “You’re from UA, aren’t you?”
“Uh…yes, ma’am!” Getting recognized by complete strangers was still a weird experience, even months after the Sports Festival.
“We’re heading in the same direction then,” she said, her eyes drifting off. Izuku realized Tenko was already wandering further down the street again. Her eyes crinkled. “Would you mind joining us? He’s very excited about today, a bit more than I can handle, even.”
“It’s no problem. I’m not in a hurry,” Izuku returned, smiling nervously.
“Thank you.” The woman bent over and picked up the dropped bag. “I’m Kayashima Eri, but please, just call me Eri.”
Izuku took the bag, noticing red eyes lingering on the scars crossing his fingers.
His brain briefly paused as he registered the woman’s name, something niggling at him, but still-
“I’m Midoriya Izuku,” he returned politely, before smiling. “Glad to be of help, Eri-san.” He’d had Asui—err, Tsuyu-chan beat it into his head that it was nicer to just call someone what they wished to be called rather than sticking to general politeness for long enough for the message to stick by now.
Eri’s eyes glinted with something indecipherable before she nodded and took off after Tenko, a leisurely pace he could easily keep up with.
The journey back up the hill to UA was a silent one, one only broken by Eri calling Tenko whenever he was about to reach a crossing without looking both ways.
After the sixth time, with each shout more exasperated, Izuku couldn’t help but chuckle quietly. Seeing this, it wasn’t a surprise he’d bumped into him.
“Is your son- uhm, always such a handful?” he asked, hoping his blunt question would be taken well.
Eri stumbled mid-stride.
“Ah. No, no. It’s not like that,” she began hastily as she regained her footing, her cheeks turning pink. “I only- he only recently came into my care.”
She glanced straight ahead, a moroseness that let Izuku fill in some unfortunate details falling over her eyes.
“He’s had it rough before then,” she said quietly. “I’m happy to see him so excited though, first time I’m seeing him like this since I met him last month. I was hoping today could cheer him up, let him live in the present and forget the past for a moment.”
Izuku nodded along, before a sobering thought hit him. After the last crossing they’d passed, there was only one destination ahead of them.
“Ah- I’m, uh…” he began awkwardly. “I’m sorry to disappoint, but I’m afraid UA’s Culture Festival isn’t open to the public this year, Eri-san.”
She hummed. “I know. But- Tenko!”
Izuku jolted, only to see the eerily familiar boy heading straight for the main entrance.
He screeched to a halt at the shout, but he got close enough to trigger the UA barrier anyway. Tenko jolted when a loud buzzer sounded out, and thick sheets of metal shot out of the ground, loudly sliding into place.
“S-Sorry!” he shouted back over the sound as he and Eri picked up the pace.
“You know we have to wait outside,” she chided as she got down, hastily checking him for any scuff marks.
Tenko squirmed under the hands roaming his arms, before lighting up.
“We don’t have to wait if I Fast-Forward it!” he declared, grinning and turning back to the thick metal blocking their way.
“Tenko.”
He froze again.
Eri’s stern expression thawed into an amused smile. “Did you already forget what you asked of me before? That, and property damage is not a good first impression with heroes.”
He blinked at her, before staring at his own hands, cheeks tinging red again.
“R-Right.” He sheepishly pressed his hand to the metal, to no effect.
She giggled quietly, ruffling his hair, before fishing earbuds and a phone from her cardigan.
“Here, go and listen to some music while we wait.” She hadn’t even needed to say it, with Tenko eagerly grabbing the two items as soon as they appeared and putting them to good use.
Within seconds, the boy was lost to the world, humming quietly with his eyes closed as he tapped the pavement with his red sneakers. Peeking at the phone showed it was a playlist with video game music.
“What did you mean when you said you knew the Festival was closed?” Izuku asked, unsure of why she was still headed this way if she already knew.
“I arranged for a meeting with the principal,” Eri replied, staring up at the intimidating wall.
“P-Principal Nezu?” Izuku stuttered. “For what?”
“A lot of things.” She averted her eyes. “I’ve done many things I’m not proud of. And with Tenko under my care, I’ve realized something needs to change.”
Izuku looked at her, really looked, mind mulling over several peculiarities, and finally, with a shock, put it all together as his eyes spotted something hidden under the sleeve of her cardigan.
“You’re yakuza,” he said in a low murmur. “The Hassaikai.”
Eri startled, nearly falling over herself as she swirled to face him.
“How did you…The tattoo?”
Izuku glanced at the small bit of eastern dragon peeking out her cardigan, before shaking his head.
“Your last name, Kayashima, I think I recognized it. The family at the head of the clan, named after the station built around an ancient tree in Osaka.”
Eri remained looking startled, though even more discomfited. “That’s…not the kind of knowledge I thought a hero student like you would have,” she said, pulling at the neckline of her cardigan.
“I mean- I searched it up after-” Izuku coughed, looking down as he considered telling her.
Given who she was, he couldn’t see why not.
“When I was still in middle school…” he began. “I got- uhm, pushed around a lot. One time, Ka- classmates chased me down an alley and- uhm, started beating me up.” He swallowed. The memory of the kicks and punches were difficult to dismiss. “I think they went too far, broke a few ribs. They didn’t realize though, so they kept going.”
Seeing the way Eri’s knuckles grew white as her hand clenched, Izuku decided it was better to rush along.
“But then- three people showed up and made them run away,” he continued. “When I saw they were yakuza, I was scared they’d do something even worse to me, but they- they asked if I could stand up, and when- uh, when I couldn’t, I guess they brought me to one of their places and patched me up.”
He looked down, feeling his cheeks warm up.
“I was probably concussed. I asked why they were helping me if they were yakuza, and they just- they just laughed. They said they were just living up to the example set by their boss. One of them even asked if they should ‘call her over’ to heal me. I- uhm, said I could get home myself, and they let me go when I managed to get up and walk out.”
“When I got home, I started looking things up online.” Izuku chuckled nervously. “It was the first time random strangers reached out to help me. It just- It stuck with me. It’s easy to forget, with big hero fights and villain rankings, that everyone is still human.” He kept staring down, making a fist with his hand. “Not all men are born equal, but that doesn’t mean they’re different.”
He smiled, looking back at the person he now knew was the boss they’d talked about. “That’s why I’m at UA. I want to be the best hero, to be someone who listens and reaches out to everyone.”
As his impromptu speech ended, Eri looked speechless for several seconds.
“Those…are mature thoughts to have for someone your age,” she said once she regained composure, eyeing him with emotions he couldn’t pinpoint.
Izuku wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so instead nodded hesitantly.
“Are you here to turn yourself in?”
Eri glanced down at Tenko, who was still lost in whatever music he had playing.
“If that’s what the outcome is, I’ll accept it.” She shut her eyes, her mouth twisting into a painful grimace.
“I’ve done a lot of things,” she said cryptically. “Three years ago, I was just a daycare worker. My grandfather was the previous head, but my mother wanted little to do with the yakuza. One day, I realized someone close to me, someone who saved me when I was very young, was in serious danger, and I had the chance to save him. Right around that time, I lost everything. My job, my home, my possessions, almost everyone who knew me.”
Izuku couldn’t even imagine what kind of event could cause such a tragedy. His hand uselessly reached out as a small tear fled Eri’s eye and trailed down her cheek.
“But if there was one thing I knew I had to do, it was to save my hero. With nowhere else to go, knowing I should do something, I went to my grandfather and took over as head of the Hassaikai, made use of the manpower and organization for my own ends.”
She opened her eyes, giving him a weighty, regretful look.
“I’ve done and tolerated a lot of things since then. Things I never wanted to do. Things I’ll regret for a long time. Things I’ll never be comfortable with. Things that will have had consequences I don’t think I can deal with on my own. And now that I have little reason to continue as I have, I’ve decided I should do what I should’ve done at the start. I’ll suffer whatever consequences your principal and the rest of law enforcement thinks I deserve.”
Izuku stared at her, but couldn’t see the face of someone who was making up a story. He’d seen that kind of face many times before, both in middle and elementary school.
There were many questions this encounter with the woman had brought up, and no doubt only little time remaining before someone from UA came down and brought them in, leaving her to her fate, but only one question felt important enough to be asked.
“Did you save him?”
Eri blinked at his question. Her lips tugged into a sad yet satisfied smile.
“I did.” She looked away from him again, staring down the sea near the horizon. “I’m sure I did. But you can never control everything.” Her gaze lowered, shoulders slumping. “I just don’t know if it was worth it. The last time I saw him was so long ago. And he won’t remember me. Even if he did, I don’t think he’d ever recognize me as the little girl I used to be. I don’t even know what I’d do if I- if I met him again.”
She brought up her hand, staring at it with misty eyes and a furrowed brow. “He wouldn’t have needed to do the things I resorted to doing. He would’ve done it the right way. He would have stayed a good person. Done the right thing. Been the hero. He wouldn’t have even considered anything else.”
Izuku stared at her, watching the faraway horizon as the breeze blew her hair back, unsure of what to say.
The intercom crackled to life next to him.
“Midoriya.”
He startled. “Oh, Aizawa-sensei!”
“Did you somehow get in trouble running an errant?”
“No, no!” Izuku waved his hands around, despite the fact the intercom probably didn’t have a camera. “I just- there’s someone here who has a meeting with principal Nezu, and their- uhm, kid triggered the barrier.”
Izuku could perfectly picture the way the man rubbed his nose based on the grunt coming through the speaker.
“I’ll let Hound Dog know the Festival isn’t canceled. Wait there while I lower the barrier.”
Izuku nodded as the intercom’s crackle died out. The barrier couldn’t be deactivated with a simple switch. It took some time, enough time to catch a malicious party attempting to lower it when it was meant to stay up. A precaution he really hoped would never prove to be necessary.
As he looked back at the two who’d accompanied him up the hill, noticing that Tenko had taken out his earbuds and was staring at him curiously, he realized what he wanted to tell Eri.
“You know, I get it,” he said quietly, staring at his scarred fingers as he pulled them into a fist one more time, feeling the resistance and aches the motion stirred up. “Growing up, I’ve always wanted to be a hero just like All Might.. Like my idol. To take out all my opponents with a smash and save effortlessly with a smile.” His face fell. “But even with power everyone says is just like his, it takes so much effort for me to even get a handle on it. I always overthink when I fight and it screws things up. None of it is straight-forward for me. And…when I fight to save someone, I don’t smile. I scowl and grimace and glare. I’ve seen footage- I don’t look like a hero at all. It’s hard, realizing I just…can’t be like All Might.”
He winced, lowering his hand again.
“But I’m slowly trying to figure out how to be my own hero. To take advantage of who I am. What I stand for. And that’s just how I’ll have to be the hero I aim to be.”
He looked up again and smiled at the albino duo, at Eri and Tenko.
“From what you’ve said. You’ve done everything you could to save someone who means a lot to you, sacrificed your own comfort and life for it, not even expecting him to remember you or be thankful for it, and you’re ready to face any consequences for it. I think-”
He paused, before giving her the brightest, most reassuring smile he had in him. It wasn’t hard. Her story brought it out on its own.
“I think he’s lucky to have you as his hero, Eri-san.”
Tenko cocked his head, eyes flitting between Izuku and Eri, who’d grown unnaturally still.
And then her expression cracked, eyes turned blurry, and as the barrier began to sink back into the ground, she rushed forward.
Izuku, though surprised, accepted the sudden hug without hesitation, and didn’t regret it.
The way warmth flooded him, down to his bones. The way arms squeezed him and soft wool pressed against his torso. For a moment it made him think of a motherly hug.
Except no, it couldn’t be more different.
It felt raw. It felt caring. It felt desperate. It felt so, so relieved and grateful.
It felt…
…like she expected him to be taller.
“Thank you.”
“Midoriya.”
The two separated at Aizawa’s voice, though the last embrace seemed to linger for several moments more as Eri stepped back, leaving him feeling off-kilter.
Aizawa’s tired eyes fell on the trio.
“I see you’re telling the truth. Come with me,” he told Eri. “I’ll escort you two to the principal.”
The incredible vulnerability overflowing from wet eyes disappeared in a yellow flash, and the woman, albeit still not completely composed, gave him a nod, putting a hand on Tenko’s shoulder.
“Say goodbye to Midoriya-san, Tenko.”
Tenko blinked up at her, before smiling brightly and waving. “Bye, Midoriya-kun!”
Izuku nodded and returned both the smile and wave, unable to curb the strange feeling that had overcome him as he watched them pass through the barrier, following after Aizawa.
Hearing an alarm buzz on his phone, Izuku realized he had to get moving too and entered campus.
“Oh.”
He paused before he could leave the main pathway and head for the gym they’d set up in, turning to see Eri looking over her shoulder, smiling gently.
“And good luck with your performance today, Izuku.”
Izuku blinked as she left earshot, the strange feeling returning at full force.
How did she know they were holding a performance?
It was only as the performance was mid-swing, and Izuku was holding onto the rope he’d bought, hoisting the disco ball named Aoyama across the gym, that Izuku finally put a finger on the strange feeling that had stayed with him ever since his meeting with Eri and Tenko.
The aches and tension and weight plaguing his body, ones he’d learned to live with over the months since he’d suffered them, had disappeared, like they’d never even existed. His previously crooked, scarred hand, holding the rope tight, was spotless.
And as he peered down at the excited crowd below and spotted two heads of white hair, one joyous, awed boy that felt suspiciously familiar cheering loudly at Jiro’s singing from atop the other’s shoulders, the other simply enjoying the moment, eyes sparkling happily and contentedly as she mouthed along, as if she already knew the lyrics Jiro had written down by heart, he promised to himself he would find her after the Festival and speak with her again.
For some reason, it felt like it was the least he could do.
Fin.
Notes:
First things first, we finally get to see Eri's plan in full, and it was far more than just enlisting future League members and taking out Shigaraki. Since it was already laid out in full, here's the general list I wrote up in my notes:
1-take over the Hassaikai, establish her authority, and establish an information network to fill in the gaps of her future knowledge
2-start research on weaponizing Rewind
3-recruit/take away Toga and Twice as potential League members (Spinner was an unintended bonus)
4-wait until AFO is out of the picture in Tartarus
5-take out Dabi (and use as a trial run for the full permanent Rewind)
6-after Kurogiri's captured, do the same with Shigaraki
7-set up a false flag attack between 'the MLA' and 'Humarise' at Jaku, killing Garaki and planting a rewound Dabi/Touya, making people believe the doctor had healed him (the truth) and kept him in stasis
8-set up bombs set to release the weaponized, permanent Rewind targeted at quirks (like the quirk supercharge Trigger bombs in World Heroes Mission) in Deika City and have them go off during a meeting of the higher-ups, completely demoralizing, exposing, and disarming the MLA movement, while at the same time pointing suspicion at Humarise and exposing their plans months ahead of schedule
9-have a Twice clone of Toga establish herself as one of the guards with her quirk and shoot AFO with a permanent quirk destroying bullet, killing him
10-every major threat to Japan and the world that we know of in MHA canon has been wiped out in the span of a weekAnd yes, Eri did pull a Chisaki and weaponized her own quirk. It's one of the things she' hates herself for the most. But she definitely got to go much further than he ever dreamed of (since she has her full cooperation, lol). It's revenge in its own way, having her be the most successful at it after denying it from him. It's also one of the many consequences of her plan. Yes, she made sure all traces of the main uses are gone and can't be traced back, but it's inevitable that some things containing her quirk have been snuck out and are circulating the underworld. At least Garaki seems like the only one capable of replicating it, and he's very much dead. But it's like the idea of introducing gunpowder to a world without it. Now that the possibility and idea are out there, there's no putting the cat back in the bag.
Another consequence is the escape of Nine, who was undergoing his operation under Jaku and was awoken and escaped after Garaki was killed. One of several things Eri had almost no knowledge on. She knew a villain that could steal quirks showed up around December of that year, but had no idea they were being given the quirk around this time. So far he's the only loose thread left, and something you can imagine 1-A, Izuku, and Eri will have to deal with in the future.
Shout out to Mad_Nimrod. You said you'd pay me, but I was already set on including that line during Izuku and Eri's reunion the moment I thought it up while writing that original reply.
I had a lot of fun writing Izuku's first meeting with Eri and making it appear like a perfect one-to-one with his canon first meeting with Eri. Did I fool anyone for even one paragraph that Eri wasn't treating little Tenko right? No? Yeah, okay. Side-note (I was going to call it a headcanon but then realized it'd just be canon), thanks to the resemblance, Eri is often mistaken as Tenko's mother, much to her embarrassment. After a while though, once she fully separates Tenko from the villain who got her hero killed, she offers to adopt him, making him Kayashima Tenko.
What becomes of Eri after her meeting with Nezu (where she fesses up about literally everything) is up in the air, honestly, though she'll probably get off somewhat easy. At the very least she got to show Tenko the performance that made her learn how to smile again.
As for why she rewound him to after he killed his family but before AFO took him in, and not to before Decay 'manifested.' That's because she doesn't want to completely kill the person who eventually becomes Tomura, and that event was what started it. That, and it gives him a clean break to continue on from. From his perspective, he just traveled forward in time by 15 years (also what she told him), and if he still thought he had his family, then it'd be a lot harder. That, and he'd eventually figure out he was the one who killed them at some point, and we all know how much keeping secrets can backfire in the future.
Tenko's Decay is called Fast-Forward here, mostly because he thinks his quirk is related to Rewind (despite eventually adopting him, Eri was never able to convince him they aren't biologically related). At least it made it easier for him to come to terms with Decay in a positive way.
No more room left, so thank you all for reading, and check out A Quirked Connection and my other work if you're interested!