Chapter Text
Around one hundred and fifty years after the fierce battle against All For One, long after all present heroes and villains had been forged into legend, society had drastically changed. At the moment, it was on the brink of collapse: the Quirk Singularity Theory was proving more and more devastating each day, children being born with natural disaster and thermonuclear quirks, powers increasingly dangerous and unbelievably strong by the thousands. Governments of the world were rounding up these aberrant children and executing them.
Doomsday cults declaring quirks were humanity’s naturally evolved extinction for their sins. Scientists were desperately seeking out quirkless individuals, or anyone with cancellation-type quirks, in hope they could isolate that gene and eliminate quirks all together, or force some sort of limit, at the very least. The world was spinning out of control more every day.
One such ‘quirkless’ child was being hidden away by their family, in hopes that they would not be taken.
They were born to a mother with a quirk that allowed her to see visions of the past, up to three hundred years, exclusive only to watching deceased people. She often got lost in these visions, mumbling about times and people long gone.
Their father had a consciousness transferring quirk; he could possess any living person or creature for an unlimited amount of time.
They had had an uncle with a quirk similar to New Order, one that allowed him to change the very fabric of reality for up to 4 hours; afterwards, he would drop into a coma, length depending on how drastic the changes had been, and the changes would revert.
The child had never known this uncle: he had been executed before he turned six.
It wasn’t like the family was able to take them to a doctor to check for sure—that was far too risky, given their circumstances; but the child was nearly ten, and no quirk had shown up; it was natural, then, to assume they were quirkless.
This assumption was wrong.
It started with a certain comic book.
In the family’s small bunker, TVs and radios would be too loud while they were in hiding. They spoke in hushed tones, quiet little smiles; the family, despite everything, tried their hardest to keep their child happy. For entertainment, all they had were stories, books and playing cards.
The child was reading the comic authored by one of the last surviving members of a certain league, trying his best to spin a story to keep their memories alive. An exercise in mourning, made art.
The author’s note read:
In memory of Tomura Shigaraki, Touya ‘Dabi’ Todoroki, Big Sis Magne, Himiko Toga, Oboro ‘Kurogiri’ Shirakumo, Jin ‘Twice’ Bubigawara, and every other villain who lost their life in the war.
Don’t forget them.
The book was full of heart-pounding stories based on the author’s own experiences, and stories patched together from other witness accounts from heroes, a fellow villain, and civilians who had been willing to speak to the author.
Some parts may have been dramatized, gaps filled in with speculation where they had to be.
But these people—they had all been alive, real, even if the stories were a bit embellished.
And now they weren’t alive; it wasn’t just that they were dead to time, either. It was a story soaked in tragedy. Most of them had died young, and the child had sobbed upon reaching the end, seeing how each story got cut short.
They all ended with death or a life of imprisonment.
That couldn’t be how it ended, right? It was heart-wrenchingly tragic; more than that, it wasn’t fair; why hadn’t the heroes saved them?!
It felt painfully relatable; the child had grown up in the small bunker that was basically a cell, hunted by the government; their parents, between their father’s dangerous quirk and their mother’s fierce protectiveness in not registering her child, had also been hunted.
They craved freedom, desperately.
Tomura wanted to be the ‘hero’ for ‘villains’. This child… they wanted the same thing! All they had ever known was that the despotic government wanted them and their loved ones dead for things outside of their control. But they felt hopeless; they had never seen the outside world for themself, beyond pictures in books. They couldn’t even imagine real freedom. The kind this author said Tomura Shigaraki fought tooth and nail for.
Their mother wiped away their tears with her gentle hands, but the child couldn’t stop hiccuping, tears running down their ruddy little face.
“I w-want them to have a happy ending.”
“I know, baby,” their mother soothed. “But they found kindness in death's embrace. They do not suffer their pain or the pain of society anymore, and they got closure—”
“No! No, it’s not fair! Why did they have such bad lives and s-sad stories and fight so hard, then j-just die? It’s stupid! They should’ve lived a-and…and not hurt so much! They should've been able to change the bad stuff!”
“I saw their lives,” their mother said with a far away look in her eyes. It had been her comic before she had gifted it to her child, after all. Naturally, she had used her quirk to see the real story as well. “They had beautiful moments. They had each other. For a short while. Their quirks, and that society, they were hurting them a lot, but they did find peace, despite all of their regrets and missteps.”
“I hate that! I wish they could all b-be together with their friends and g-get to do it all again without t-that stuff hurting them, and not die! The meanie families and meanie heroes can't win! I just want them to be okay!” they sobbed.
It was a wish so innocent, so gentle that only a childish mind would have said it. They didn’t care about the atrocities, the lives lost otherwise, or the complexities it might take to make this happen; the author, after all, had done a wonderful job at portraying the group’s humanity. It was hard for a child so young to conceptualize them as real people; they were used to sweet fairy tale books, where characters always got happy endings. All they knew is, in that moment, they wanted that for these people, too. They had seen themselves in the story, in spirit. The force of that want was strong, stronger than anything else they had ever felt—it was all-encompassing.
They barely heard their mother's soft suggestion that they could sit down and make up a new ending together, like a lovely daydream. Because they didn't want something fake.
The mother startled when their child started to glow. The father broke into a run from across the room- recognizing his late brother’s quirk; but it wasn’t just reality-bending. It had morphed with the parent’s quirks into something new, something stranger, within the child’s genetics. A quirk so specific that it had taken years to properly be realized and activated.
Nozomi Kiko; Quirk: RETCON
When the user of this quirk has a strong desire regarding deceased individuals, they can ‘wish’ it into reality, bending time and space to shunter up to ten people’s consciousness’ into the past to redo history. Depending on the user's wish, physical changes may also take place.
It will only affect people the user has strong feelings about; no others in that time will be aware of the future history, only the targets, so they may ‘redo’ their story with late-life knowledge, retaining memories of up until the point in which they died. If using the quirk on multiple people, the quirk will place them in the earliest starting point in which they were all together, when possible.
This quirk takes a more severe physical toll depending on the number of people or the distance in the past they are sent, and any modifications to their physical person the wish might create, causing the user to drop into a death-like coma.
They are able to watch their wish play out in their dream during this coma’s duration to see their wish come true.
This story is the dream of that child.
Katsuki Bakugo was taken by the League of Villains. They had him chained to a chair like a damn animal, but then, stupidly, let him out. He wasn’t a moron; fighting them all, especially without knowing all of their quirks would be stupid, even though he was pretty confident that they wouldn't kill him. He needed to be smart here, needed to think of a way to get to the door. He’d never admit it, but a surge of dread and panic had run through him after the hand bastard had asked the TV for help; if Handy wasn’t the boss and was deferring to someone else, who the hell was the big bad here?
As it turned out, he didn’t need some kind of distraction. In the span of a few seconds, a few things happened:
Every single villain in the room dropped onto the floor. Just— simultaneously, stopped talking, then dropped, hard. Like their strings had been cut. He might have suspected it was some sort of trap, had the patchwork bastard not been bleeding from the fall.
“What the hell?” He muttered. His eyes flickered to the TV, expecting some kind of typical villainous monologue.
There was silence. Nothing happened.
He took a careful step towards the door, keeping his eyes on the villains, just in case.
They didn’t move.
Before he could even reach the door, a knock sounded. A corny joke about pizza deliveries, then All Might literally crashed through the wall.
“Everything is alright now, because we are here-!” All Might declared. He stopped. His smile faltered: a rare sight, as he looked over the villains' bodies, strewn across the room.
“Young Bakugo,” he started, very carefully. Katsuki bristled.
“I didn’t kill them! They all just-! Just... dropped dead on their own!”
It sounded stupid and defensive to Katsuki, too. Unless…
“Wait, was it a heroes quirk? Stopping them?” He’d never heard of a hero like that. He was annoyed to think it, but Deku would probably know that sort of thing. Damn nerd. There were quirks like Midnight’s that let her put people to sleep. But there was no gas, and it was so targeted… and he recognized every hero that entered the bar; he knew it couldn’t have been any of their quirks, but maybe it was someone outside?
All Might’s slightly wary, confused expression did nothing to soothe him. Especially when All Might clasped his shoulder and said, ‘well, whatever happened, you’re safe now!’
He didn’t feel safe, he felt weirded out by all of this.
Black goopy crap started coming out of every villain’s mouth. He had no time to process it before something unpleasantly slimy crept up his own throat, a feeling like acid reflux, but infinitely worse.
He shut his eyes, coughing and trying to expel the goop from his mouth. Some was dripping out of his nose, and he desperately wiped at his face to remove all of it. Gross.
He was somewhere else in an instant. Among a stretch of rubble and dust. Destruction everywhere; it was overwhelming.
No, definitely not somewhere safe. All Might had been right there, and now he was alone again. At least he was in some sort of clearing now, with room to escape.
The league’s bodies lay around him, still eerily motionless. A man hung above him, suspended in midair, face entirely obscured by a mask. Katsuki could hear him breathing, but otherwise, it was silent. As if he was just waiting on Katsuki to say something first.
He was the scariest goddamned thing Katsuki had ever seen.
“My, my, the heroes must have used very excessive force if they’re all out, hm? But, those are the exact brutes the type you look up to, aren’t they?” The man’s tone was light, teasing. "Still. I'd love to know which hero was responsible for such an instant attack. I'd love to have that power for myself."
…It wasn’t him that did this? Or was he just messing around? Some shitty ploy to get him to dislike heroes? It wasn’t gonna work. He snarled, lighting his hand up in warning.
“They could kill all of them and I still wouldn’t join you,” he snapped, in spite of the sweat beading down his temple.
“Tomura has deemed you important to his plans. Wherever I send them, I will send you. I had hoped to speak to Tomura here, if even just for a moment,” the man mused. “But he’ll simply have to watch the replay.”
There was a sharp gasp somewhere behind him. It was the shitty lizard ninja guy. Katsuki braced himself for a fight, but the guy was just gasping like he had just learned to breathe, hands around his neck.
Then he looked around, at the other villain's bodies, then at him, then at the floating bastard.
There was an absolutely deranged look to his eyes. It freaked Katsuki out; he hadn’t looked that squirrelly at the bar, compared to some of the others, like Shigaraki or the school girl. And weirdly enough, that look was directed more at the man hanging in the air, eyes trained on him as he lowered himself to the ground. Katsuki had to assume he also felt the man's menacing aura, too; but they were on the same side, weren't they? So why did he also look so wary and pissed off? He was backtracking the same slow way Katsuki had been.
“Spinner; good to see you up,” the man said. Katsuki suspected 'Spinner' didn't share the same sentiment that the man's false warm tone indicated.
“What the… Dynamight, All For One? Where…wait, this is…” he shut his eyes, letting out a shuttered breath. His voice sounded weirdly strained and raspy, still breathing funny. “Kamino? Why am I dream’ about this? So annoying, stupid meds, I don't want to see either of these assholes… c’mon, wake up, already…”
Dynamight.
Katsuki rolled the name in his brain. Damn it, it was obviously some stupid name a villain had come up with to, what, insult him? It was a shitty insult, but it was kind of a good hero name.
He wasn’t about to use a name a damn villain came up with, though.
Before he could even retort at being lumped in with All For One under the category of 'asshole', All Might slammed into All For One. Katsuki fell back, unable to stand up against the air blown back from the impact. Spinner was chuckling from where he'd also been splayed on the rubble.
“I haven’t thought about this in forever; usually, it’s about the mountain stuff, this is weird,” Spinner mumbled, raking his hand through his hair. They met eyes, and Spinner offered him a tight smile.
“Hey, before your friends come out to rescue you, do me a favor and blow me up or something. That oughtta wake me up.”
“My friends?” Katsuki froze, looking around. When he didn't see anyone, he thought, What the hell was this guy talking about? It took his brain a second to catch up to what else he’d said. “You want me to blow you up?! Do you wanna die?! Hah, I have no problem with that!”
“’S not like I have much else to live for anyway. The books out.”
Katsuki did not like handling emotions. They were rude to just dump on strangers, especially when they were a hero student and a damned villain that had assisted in attacking the other hero students and kidnapping him.
But this guy—his eyes were empty. It was unsettling. What the hell had he been through? Katsuki was still allowed to use his quirk for self-defense, but something about the sheer amount of craziness made him hesitate. Spinner shouldn’t have been so calm; when they were calm, they were really certain they’d win, right? And he still hadn’t seen the guy’s quirk. Not like Katsuki wasn't confident, but if he did anything wrong here, it could inconvenience All Might.
“Well, if you won’t, that’s fine. Maybe I’ll be able to talk to him this time, just for a while, before I wake up?” He looked over at Shigaraki. Affectionately? Wistfully? Katsuki wanted to hurl.
Villains didn’t get to have feelings or… whatever this was.
“You’re not asleep you shitty D-rank villain! You woke up from nap time a while ago! I don’t mind putting you back asleep, though!” He hurled an explosion this way, cautious not to get to close. If anything, he was trying to back up, get the hell away from this situation. All Might couldn’t go all out with him here, after all. The villain didn’t try to stop it, which was kind of alarming. He… actually seemed to have a death wish. He just closed his eyes, letting it happen. He barely flinched. But—he did flinch, just slightly, blinking and coughing through the smoke.
“Why does it feel so real? What the…”
“You’re finally getting it,” Katsuki’s hands lit up again. Behind them, All Might and All For One were throwing each other around; Gran Torino and Endeavor had showed up. If he could get over to them, he could escape. Spinner’s eyes darted to that, then back to him. His eyes were growing wider, chest was heaving.
Katsuki grinned, standing up taller. Spinner was panicking. That was infinitely preferable to the dead-eyed stare he’d had before.
“Finally starting to realize how screwed you all are?! Especially since your buddies are still napping!”
“They’re not napping, they… this can’t be real, I… I.. they all…”
“Shuichi?” Another one of the bastards was up. The wannabe magician. He pushed himself up. His face was masked, and he was moving slow, hand around his midsection. “Are we… at Kamino? ...What an odd dream.”
Dreams, again? Why did they both think that? Was it a side effect of whatever quirk had downed all of them? Like some kind of confusion or disorientation that made them all think they were still asleep…?
“I don’t think… Atsuhiro, somethin’ feels funny about this dream; you seem really real, not like an NPC,” Spinner was babbling. “I think something is wrong—"
Then the patchwork bastard woke up and started screaming.
It was an awful, guttural sound, so loud that everyone snapped around at the alarming noise. His head had been bleeding from the fall at the bar, but this was… it was something more, Katsuki thought. No one screamed like that and started hyperventilating from just a small head wound.
“Bakugo! Come on!”
Kirishima was here, with the others, flying through the sky. Katsuki took the out, relieved to get away from the crazy bastards and away to safety. The last thing he saw was All For One open up the warp bastard’s portal and send the league through it. That guy was still screaming in rage even as he was forced through, trying to fight against being pulled through the warp to run at Endeavor and Gran Torino, spattering his blood everywhere.
Katsuki was convinced he’d hear his screaming in his nightmares.
He passed the info along to the officials and Mr. Aizawa when they spoke to him about how the league dropped all at once, and how two—maybe three? Of them seemed to be having some sort of… weird, collective confusion when they woke up. The heroes confirmed, uneasily, that none of their people on the scene had a quirk that made sense for that to have happened, and none of the league members they had found intel on did, either.
Katsuki also mentioned the fact Spinner—Shuichi Iguchi, the detective informed him of his name, had mentioned some kind of book. No results came up for a book published under his name; it could’ve been that he had written it under a pen name, but then, the only ‘villainous’ or controversial book that had been trending was that decades-old Destro crap. If his reason for being a villain was some book flopping, then this was all very stupid.
But.
Spinner’s uncomfortably sincere, panicked words kept echoing in his mind.
Something is wrong.
And Katsuki wondered, just what the fuck was going on with the League of Villains?