"We've gotten the results back from the genetic tests that were ordered on all three villains. Unfortunately," Tsukauchi sighs, "I don't have any good news. The closest genetic match we have on file for Shigaraki is Nana Shimura, pro hero Soar. It has to be assumed that he's the son of the son she gave up for adoption. Tenko Shimura, reportedly dead in the attack that killed the rest of his family and destroyed their house. There was very little left of them and the house looked like it had been turned into dust, so it was probably a quirk awakening accident."
All Might looks very pale. "Nana's grandson…"
"The Nomu shows genetic material of three separate individuals, but the main one is that of a former small time thug with a strength quirk. I don't have to tell you why that's bad news, I presume?"
"No. I'm afraid I agree with you on this matter." Nedzu says and sips his tea. "And the last villain?"
Tsukauchi winces. "Kurogiri is apparently a better version of the Nomu. We have nothing on record to identify one of the two individuals used in his making, but the other you might know of. A former UA student who reportedly died in the line of duty, Oboro Shirokumo."
Nedzu's teacup rattles loudly as he sets it down abruptly. "That. Is a problem. I need to inform three of my teachers of this development. They were close friends with Shirokumo and have the right to know."
All Might nods. "Understandable. And it's probably best that more people are made aware of the threat that we now face, even if we cannot give them the full story."
"Are you sure this is wise?"
"No, but to not tell them would be worse. I need the trust of my teachers and they would never forgive me if they found out later that I did not tell them. Also, I believe that we should tell the entirety of my hero staff about All for One, so that they may better protect the students. It is statistically unlikely that this will be the only attack on the students."
Tsukauchi sighs again. "You have a point. I'll trust your wisdom in this."
"As will I. What will be done with Nana's grandson?"
"He will be given mandatory twice weekly therapy and remain incarcerated for the foreseeable future. Kurogiri will likewise be required to attend therapy. Their therapist will be someone trained in undoing brainwashing, as both of them show evidence of at least minor brainwashing but more likely heavier than that, given that Shirokumo was a hero student." Tsukauchi explains.
"That seems adequate." Nedzu acknowledges.
~
Shouta sucks in a sharp breath at the news, Hizashi slaps both hands over his mouth and makes a strangled sound and Nemuri hisses. And really, that's probably the best reactions he could expect of them.
"Are we sure about this?" Nemuri asks.
"Unfortunately, yes." Tsukauchi replies.
"Is there-" Shouta swallows hard. "Is there anything we can do to help?"
"Well, you might be able to with Erasure. We have a theory that Shirokumo's personality may be intact under the combined quirk personality, so if you were to use Erasure…"
"We might be able to speak to Oboro?"
"Yes."
"Let me know when you want to try." Shouta replies without hesitation.
Hizashi makes another strangled noise and Nemuri pats his back soothingly. "We'll come too."
"Not to interrupt, but this All for One guy, what precautions are we taking against him?" Snipe interjects.
Nedzu injects some cheer into his tone. "That is a very good question, Snipe. I'm open to suggestions."
~
Aizawa sensei glares at them to get them to settle down and his eyes skims over each student in turn as he waits for them to do that. Then his gaze stops on Izuku and he reaches over and scribbles on a pad of paper and tears it off and holds it out. "Midoriya, you're excused from homeroom. Go see Recovery Girl about your arms."
Izuku almost cries in relief. His arms seemed fine after USJ, but he's spent the last three days off school with them swollen and painful, icepacks barely lending any relief. He leaves his bag by his desk, because he doesn't think he can stand to lift it again so soon, takes the hall pass from Aizawa sensei and slips out the door with only a little struggle to open it.
Recovery Girl tsks when she sees him. "It's too early for Heroics class. What did you do?"
"I don't know. Um. They've been like this since I got home after USJ."
She frowns and bustles over. "Oh, I do not like the look of that. Did you not get a proper check over at USJ?"
"One of the police medics looked at me, but I thought I was fine. So they just told me to take it easy and ice any bruises that showed up."
"Careless." She says in mild disapproval. "Follow me. I want to get x-rays to see what I'm dealing with and make sure it's not something more complicated than I'm able to treat."
"Oh. Okay."
Forty five minutes later, he's lying in a bed, waiting until the pictures finish developing and she has a chance to study them. It feels good, or as good as anything can when his arms are throbbing. Honestly, he's been tired since USJ. His hit points haven't come up since then and neither has his stamina. He's been stuck at HP: 173/198 and STA: 41/72. Possibly because of his injury? He hopes that's the case, at least. He also hopes that it's something Recovery Girl can treat, because the fact that she's worried that it's not has him freaked out a little bit.
The thump of her cane announces her return. "Well, Midoriya, I have good news and bad news. The good thing is that your bones aren't broken and you don't seem to have torn any ligaments. The bad news is that both arms have multiple fractures. I imagine your muscles are very strained, too, given the swelling I'm seeing. Whatever you did at USJ was too reckless, kid. Don't make a habit of this."
He flinches. "S-Sorry, but people would've died if I hadn't."
She tsks again and kisses his forehead.
Abruptly exhaustion washes over him.
"I know you want to live up to that idiot's legacy, but you don't have to be him. Get better control of it before you permanently injure yourself."
Izuku gives her a surprised look, then yawns suddenly. "I-I will. Um. When my quirk lets me use One for All again, that is. I'm still not strong enough for it yet, so it only unlocked it temporarily for USJ and gave me a basic idea how to use it. I think I'd be a lot worse off if it hadn't. I was only using 35%."
Her brows lift. "Interesting. Good to know that your quirk has some common sense. Kami knows that Toshinori doesn't have any."
A light blue pane pops up in front of her.
Thank you for the compliment. And for taking care of Izuku.
She smiles after a moment of startlement and shakes her head. "You're welcome."
Izuku finishes reading the pane backwards and yawns again. "Is it okay if I take a nap?"
Recovery Girl takes something out of her pocket and shoves it in front of his nose. "Eat those first and then go ahead. My quirk uses your stamina to heal you."
He takes them gingerly and discovers that they're two bags of gummies, like from the exam. "Oh, thank you! Stats."
Izuku Midoriya
Level 10
Exp. 7254/12000
STR: 39
VIT: 33
DEX: 15
INT: 49
WIS: 53
HP: 198/198
MP: 0/0 Locked.
STA: 12/72
StP: 0
"What's this?" Recovery Girl asks, sounding curious. She moves to stand beside his head and look at the pane better.
"It's my stats screen." He blinks and blinks again as something occurs to him. "Wait. You can see it?"
"Am I not supposed to? I must say, this is rather handy. Can you see other people's stats too?"
"Um." He blinks a few more times, trying to focus enough to answer. "Last time I tried to show my stats screen to Principal Nedzu, I couldn't. I agree. And no. I can't do that until I get my intelligence to 75. I think I might have to level my Analysis skill to 75 first, too."
Showing all screens to a trusted number of individuals is part of a level reward. Leveling Analysis is recommended but not strictly necessary.
"Oh, Find-san says it's because I leveled up at USJ. And leveling analysis is optional."
"Find-san?"
"My quirk." He says and starts eating the gummies.
"Ah." Recovery Girl says mildly, then makes a noise of surprise as his stamina starts climbing as he eats the gummies. "Look at that. Looks like I can let you go back to classes."
He pauses. "Actually, I'd like to take a nap, because the boost is temporary and my stamina will be worse off if I do stuff between now and it wearing off."
"Fair enough. Enjoy your nap." She says and stumps off to do whatever she does when she's not treating patients. "Oh, and come talk to me once you get your intelligence to 75."
Sure, why not?
Izuku starts eating gummies again.
~
By the time he yawns his way into English class, he's missed three full classes and is late for English. He shoves the doctor's note Recovery Girl wrote for him at Yamada sensei, feeling hazy. He probably should've napped longer, but he couldn't go back to sleep once he woke up.
"Hey, listener! You okay there?"
"'m fine, Yamada s'nsei." He mumbles, zombie-ing over to his desk.
Yamada sensei gives a stifled laugh. "Whatever you say, listener."
"Sensei, the fucker missed the announcement." Kacchan says, which makes Izuku squint at him in confusion.
What announcement and why does Kacchan care?
"Announcement? Ah. Right. Midoriya, the Sports Festival is being held in two weeks, so be sure to train for that. The other classes are riled up, so you're likely to have some stiff competition this year!"
Izuku squints at Yamada sensei until that stops being hash in his brain and starts making sense. "Oh. Okay. Thank you, sensei."
"You're welcome, listener. Now you want to turn to page 40 in your English book, to the middle of the page. We're taking turns reading aloud."
He blinks blankly, then bends and takes his book out of his bag, glad that they don't change classrooms to take different classes, because otherwise he'd have a problem.
~
"That's He wants eggs." Hikage comments.
"No, it's She wantsa eggos." En argues.
"You're both wrong. It's She wants Eggos. Eggos is some kind of pre-quirk food that was popular in the US at some point." Yoichi corrects.
"All of you are leaving out a word. Bloob berries?"Nana points out in exasperation.
"Bloob berries. You heathen, there's no such thing as boob berries!" An unknown speaker shouts.
"It's not boob berry, it's-." Ghost Might sighs.
Izuku winces as the noise level in his head rises. "Would you all shut up!? It's She wants blueberry Eggos!"
Startled silence around him makes him look up. All his classmates are staring at him.
"Er, Midoriya? Are you okay?" Ashido tries.
"Sorry, kid." Nana apologizes softly.
"Um." He flushes. "Yes. Sorry. It's just the, um, voices in my head are really loud today and it's distracting me. I didn't mean to say that out loud."
"Ah. Gotcha. We all have those days." Kaminari consoles, nodding his head wisely.
Izuku stares at him a moment, then ducks his head and goes back to translating his problem into English. He completely misses Yamada sensei's concerned stare.
~
"Young Midoriya, would you like to eat lunch with me?" All Might asks, again with a tiny looking bento in hand.
"Kero." Tsu says, looking startled at his sudden appearance.
"Um." Izuku looks at Momo, Tsu and Ochako. Momo and Tsu give slight nods and Ochako gives him a friendly shove.
"Go on and eat with him."
"Okay." He agrees and follows All Might to the same nook they'd sat in before.
"We didn't get to have our talk the other day." All Might says, deflating into his skinny form and opening his bento.
"Right." Izuku agrees, opening his own bento. "So I got this new skill called Ghostly Communication and it lets me talk to the ghosts of the former bearers of One for All. Um, including you. Nana Shimura says 'Hi', by the way."
"Nana?" Yagi's eyes are wide with emotion.
"Yes, um. That's not the important part though. My quirk says that there's a 96% chance that the first, they go by numbers, is my uncle by blood. His name's Yoichi. And he wanted me to tell you that there's a chance that he's alive and I should ask you to tell me about him. Something about it being safer to know than to not know, if he's alive."
Yagi full out blanches. "That's… That's a lot to take in, my boy."
"So, um, can you tell me about my biological father?"
All Might sighs, looking old for a moment. "It's an old story that starts back at the dawn of quirks. Once, there was two brothers and-"
Ten minutes later, it's Izuku who is pale. "So, to recap, my bio dad is a centuries old supervillain and you tried to kill each other six years ago and you thought you'd succeeded until the USJ happened?"
Yagi nods. "Sorry this is insensitive, but I'm sorry I didn't do a better job of it, because now I've accidentally put a target on your back. He killed his own brother, so I don't think he'll hesitate to kill you as well if you don't give him One for All like he wants."
Izuku sighs and buries his face in his hands. "I cou't e'en 'f I 'ant' to."
"What was that?"
He lifts his head. "Even if I wanted to, which I don't, I couldn't give him One for All. Find-san absorbed it and the vestiges and it can't be passed on or taken."
"That's… I didn't think that was possible." Yagi admits.
"Yeah, well, Find-san is an 'acute mutation' of both my parents' quirks and sentient. One for All has the vestiges in it, but I think it was? is? only semi-aware in its own right. So it sort of makes sense to me."
"He didn't kill me until after I got out of the vault and gave the quirk away." Yoichi points out.
"Uh. Uncle Yoichi…says that he might just keep me if he knows he can't get the quirk. Provided I don't escape."
"If he realizes you're his son, that is." Yoichi adds.
"If he knows I'm a relative." Izuku repeats obediently.
If you unlock dungeons, no one can keep you where you don't want to be.
He blinks at the message. "What?"
It unlocks interplanar abilities for me. I can't unlock it until you're strong enough to survive a basic dungeon, though.
The sheer possibilities in that statement are enough to send his mind reeling.
"Is something the matter?" Yagi asks, as if this entire conversation isn't the matter.
"Actually, no? I forgot to tell you. When Find-san absorbed One for All, I got new tabs in my player overview. They're currently locked, but one of them is called Dungeons. And Find-san was telling me that if I unlock it, he can use it to let me escape situations like being caught by All for One."
Without prompting a pale blue pane pops up in front of Yagi.
Izuku Midoriya
Quirk: The Player
Stats.
Inventory, limited. You now have twenty inventory slots. Level reward.
Information search.
Skills.
Displays, limited. Locked. You can now show certain displays to other people. You can now show all screens to a number of trusted individuals. Level reward.
Spells. Locked until INT 75.
Dungeons. Locked until INT 100 + WIS 100 +STR 50 + VIT 50 + DEX 50.
Crafting. Locked until Dungeons are unlocked.
Quirks. Locked.
"Spells? Dungeons? Crafting? Quirks?"
"Oh, yeah. The vestiges said something about quirk singularity and me getting their quirks. I think."
"My boy, you live a complicated life." Yagi says, shaking his head.
"Ah ha ha, yeah." Izuku agrees and turns his attention to polishing off his bento. There's no way he can meet any of the unlock requirements easily and soon, so he's just going to…not dwell on it and do his best.