There were many things Compress was willing to do for his new 'family'. He would steal for them, he would lie for them, he would die for them. Fighting off an army out in the open with no way to trick or distract? He really did not want to do this. Normally he would have said fuck that and gone with the original plan of underground tunneling … but there were too many.
"Should've known things would've gone off the rails. You don't experience this much of a good luck streak without something terrible waiting for you at the end." Magne grumbled as they crashed several MLA fighters into each other.
"Eh, it's better here than it is way back with the police. Here we can be violent without fear of Tomura dusting us." Compress relented. "For example, a magic trick!" He shouted to the crowd.
"Magic is bullshit!" Some random MLA member shouted. That was ironic on so many levels now that it almost wasn't funny.
"In this hand, I have a lighter." He held it up to skeptic faces.
"Oh wow, a lighter, so impressive." A woman sarcastically waved.
"In this hand, a marble contains an oil tanker." He showed it off to horrified faces.
"Duck and cover!" The large crowd tried to run away. Jokes on them, that only made them easier targets.
"Now watch as I use these two seemingly unrelated objects to make several bodies disappear." He let them get a good fifty feet away before tossing the marble and lit light at them, uncompressing the tanker as it was over them. Cue the big explosion of fireball.
"… You are a surprisingly terrifying man." Magne noted as the flames spread.
"A magician's greatest asset is the fact no one pays attention to what they should be looking at." He smirks under his mask.
"Yeah, try telling it to this asshole." Dabi shouted, melting away ice goblin after ice goblin being tossed at him by the guy in the winter coat. "It's a bit pointless to keep going at this, you know! As long as ice melts, you're not going to lay a hand on me."
"I'm keeping you away from Re-Destro and your leader. I'm doing my job just fine, scarface. Also generators tend to burn out more, and your body is super adapted to my cold, isn't it? I'm just gonna wear you down until you suffer a horrible death where everyone can see your frozen corpse for eternity!" The parka villain shouted, creating an ice dragon.
"Kirio probably would've gotten along with this guy." Magne observed. They weren't wrong.
"How the hell are you so good anyway!?" Compress shouted. "Manipulators aren't that strong against generators normally!"
"I did the one thing the rest of these morons never could. Never learn a single life skill other than using my quirk!"
"So you don't know how to read, how to spell, how to do math, how to spend money, literally everything everyone needs to know to live on their own?" Magne questioned.
"Who needs math!? Ice golem plus frozen lake equals you all dying a horrible death!!"
"So I'm fighting a retarded quirk nazi anarchist?" Dabi snorted under his breath. "Really drew the short straw didn't I? I bet Toga doesn't have to deal with this bullshit."
==
"Bullshit. She just kept saying so much bullshit." Everything was just pain. Toga's entire existence was pain to be honest. Hit and yelled at until she appeared 'normal'. Labeled a freak and villain the moment she was able to express real love for the first time, and now she was bleeding out from basically everywhere because of some nosy psycho bitch.
"My life…is not a tragedy. There's nothing to feel bad about." She barely registered where she was at the moment. All she knew was that she managed to crawl into a little corner a rest a little, surrounded by what looked like gardening tools. "The way I love is beautiful. I love what I do. It's not my quirk that makes me love, it's me and me alone."
"Toga! Toga, where are you!?" Oh, Twice was calling out her name. He was a great friend, probably the best one she had. He always made her laugh with everything he said, and he was just so loyal. "Toga…oh Devi, what did they do to you!?"
"I…just killed a bad lady, that's all." She weakly coughed. "I…I became everyone I love…guess I couldn't handle so much love at once." Who knew she could use other people's quirks? "It…was fun…knowing them so well…you….Tomura…Ochaco…Toru.."
"Don't talk, don't talk! Keep talking, I need the background noise! You're bleeding all over! Get up, ya lazy bum!"
"Yeah, I look so pretty, don't I?" She laughed, the savory substance she enjoyed consuming was now getting coughed up. "You think…Iruma-kins would find me pretty like this?"
"You're absolutely stunning! Your face cracks mirrors." Twice always had such a way with words.
"I just wish…I could've shown him…how much…I love him in person…" Her eyes started to get baggy. Her Iruma-kins, the first one to truly accept everything about her. Who never once got disgusted by how she loved people, who never once questioned the how and why she lived the life she did. Shame she couldn't have worn his face again while beating back that bitch.
"He knows, he knows. He knows jackshit! We'll get together and have a fun day as friends! I can barely stand to look at your ugly mugs for a second. You, me, the kid, even the unicorn princess! She still needs her mommy!"
"Iruma-kins….Eri…" Two of the most innocent souls she's ever met accepted her without question. "We…do make quite the family." A Wolfman, a Vampire, and a Unicorn. The crazy perfect family that she wanted to cuddle … "You can join in when the concussion ends … I'm seeing double."
"Oh don't worry we'll hel-" The man stopped talking for some reason. "Toga … you're not seeing double. The voices are outside!" Twice grabbed her, running from more Twices. Is this what it was like when someone lost too much blood?
==
That was a nice nap. Gigantomachia yawned, surprised his skin wasn't warmer. Sure it was winter and all that, but he half expected to be set on fire when he woke up. Not like there was much to wake up to. Without All For One, his life had no purpose until his successor started actually being anything other than pathetic.
Now, where was that successor anyway? A sniff of the air told him … three cities west? Did the spiteful little brat decide to run away? Holy shit, pathetic. "He is Master's Successor?" The runt that couldn't scratch him, the one that just wanted to destroy with purpose? It's been a really disappointing month.
Aside from that brief, miniscule second where the bastard sounded like something inhuman, he couldn't understand what All For One saw in that runt. It was almost as laughable as the demons that occasionally tried to take a bite out of him every once in a while. Sure their powers were weirder or sometimes outright stronger, but in the end they were as pathetically easy to take out as any other human.
Now to travel and beat up the coward, he needed to shape the boy like the Master told him. He tensed his body, bones shifting as claws formed on his arms, as his jaw became his helmet. With a noise that went on for miles and the power to tunnel, he began his trek over to the young master, unseen by the public as a straight course through.
==
Rikiya waited … and waited. The so-called 'League of Villains' has been making their way through his city. According to coms they have been mostly unimpeded, which he expected. If anyone was going to take him on, it would be the psychotic leader. However, since he was psychotic, the latest move made very little sense.
Taking the elevator. He watched as the number slowly approached his floor, tapping his finger against the glass window in boredom. "Well you certainly love taking your time." Rikiya said with a little snort in his voice as the doors finally opened.
"...." The man stayed silent, just approaching his desk slowly. A far cry from the raving manchild Shigiraki was reported to be.
"So, any thoughts on the story, any death threats you'd like to make?" He asked as his skin turned black, the negative emotions boiling over.
"...." More silence, still just walking to the desk before touching it, changing the mahogany based craftsmanship to dust.
"Personally, I think Curious became a little too sentimental towards the brat. Oh, I have no doubt she'd crushed his head to little pieces, but she really leaned into the slavery angle. The last thing we need is the public sympathizing with the useless."
"..." Still no reaction, what was this complete change in demeanor? The man child turned silent and rushed at him, before he grabbed the man with his hands.
"My Quirk is Stress, which unfortunately for you, your little friend gave me so much to work with." Still nothing as he squeezed harder and harder. "Aren't you going to say a single word?" He asked the villain, as he was crushing him with giant hands.
"... Wouldn't remember." Shigaraki stated. "I'm not me, I'm just the guy keeping you busy." The villain grinned, melting away.
"A double?" No doubt one of Twice's copies, but what was the point of having a clone meet him if…
Re-Destro got his answer when the ground below him started to crumble away into dust. Floor after floor soon followed suit, forcing him to brace for impact as he had no choice but to take on the entire impact of the building on top of himself. Mere minutes later, he had rubble and debris burying him in the ground, barely giving him enough space to look up at the figure right in front of him.
"I found an error in your story." The villain spoke up. "The fact you think that some nobody like you can post it and take us on. Such a mistake surely can't fit into something like that, right?"
"...heh…You planned ahead….you're much more clever than I gave you credit for."
"And you're much more bulky than I realized." The man retorted. "Any bits of information you shared with my double you'd like to chat about before I rip your heart out and shove it in your face?" They asked with twitching fingers.
"Only that I get stronger the more stressed out I am, and you've been causing plenty of it for me for a LONG while." He shot himself up and grabbed the man by the throat, throwing him across the wasteland that was his building. "Your Meta Ability is strong, strong enough to exist in the new world, but in the end, you seek mass destruction, something I find offensive as a creator."
==
Okay, so he was fighting the Alpha, maybe even Beta Build of Gigantomachia. Someone smart enough to get an army, yet strong enough to throw him through a few concussion inducing buildings. At least he thought it was, if the crying boy being attacked by his family was any indication.
"Mass destruction …" He muttered, getting up. "You could say that I plan on destroying society and creating a better world from it. But I went away from the senseless killing of early raids." He spoke, slowly walking to the villain. Rushing wouldn't do him good against someone much faster than him.
"Ah, yes, your latest 'crusade of justice'." The buff man laughed. "This hero saturated society being wiped out, that much we can agree on. Unfortunately for you, that's where our ideals diverge."
"Yeah, because you want to harm an innocent child for … what? Being given a quirk?" He retorted, trying to touch the villain like he touched his father. Distracted by that strange thought his arm was grabbed before he could react, a small crunch heard.
"For being born weak." He crushed his hands. "Research has proven quirks have direct influence on personalities, that's a known fact. So imagine the gall of one quirkless bastard proclaiming to the world we're all the same despite evidence proving otherwise."
He placed two fingers on the arm. It worked on Mon. He saw the decay build, even if smaller. "You really think that? We are the same. We suffer from others, we eat to live, we fight to survive." He was tossed away by the villain. "We're all human in nature."
"You seek to destroy and nothing more. Iruma Suzuki, without One For All, has no purpose to exist in the first place." Tomura and Iruma, two children both ignored by the common filth this society revealed in. How his mother ignored him.
It was like talking with someone taught wrong … someone taught like him. Taught by the fake words of his parents. "I don't seek to destroy … I am my destruction … no death is without purpose … otherwise it's meaningless." His father built his own house that lived under one rule: No talking about heroes.
"But that's all you have. Whether motivated or not, all you have is destruction." The man mocked. "As for me, I was born with a higher calling. The descendant of Destro himself! I alone am meant to carry out his will!" Grandma was a hero that abandoned her son, who became the bastard that was his father. "I am Re-Destro, and I will liberate everyone from the society that forces them to be chained, to be weak!"
Deeper and deeper, the cracks that made up his mind became clearer and clearer. He killed his father because he would've never stopped hurting him. He killed his sister, his mother, his grandparents because no matter how much he was hurting, they excused his father's cruelty. All because he couldn't forget the mom, the hero , that abandoned him.
Tomura despised his old man, but he held the first lesson he ever learned from him close to his heart, even when he couldn't remember: Heroes will hurt their families for complete strangers. But … Why heroes? They weren't the problem. No, the problem was she died protecting others … that wasn't right either. Was it like him, did no one help her even if she was a hero?
'You don't need to be a hero to help people!' The words that guided him so much, that set him on the right path. Even before All Might, the word hero was tainted. The society didn't want to do anything, it wanted to be the safe bystander, it wanted to shove away bad things into a box. But the box was rotting … rotting with entropy . Kirio was RIGHT!! All that altruism would shatter this society because people would abuse the altruism of others!
"Pay attention to your own execution, bastard!" Even the man shooting a laser of pure stress at him, bound to this ideal of fake freedom. After taking the hit Tomura stared at the man … dead set on a goal … to free the world … to fix society … and he laughed. He laughed harder than he had all month. "You think of me as a joke? A joke, no. Never, it's just … you're me." It was all he could think about.
"How dare you!" He shouted. "I have an army, I have years of purpose, I have a superior quirk!"
"You're not me now … you're what I was." He took a step forward. "I was a moron that couldn't see the big picture, obsessed with the ideals of heroes and villains. I had some bad lessons and anger I couldn't place. And you're so small minded."
This angered the bastard like nothing before. "How dare you … I seek to liberate the world!" A mistake.
"You seek to liberate quirks. That's not freedom, that's just a bigger cage … but don't worry." His hand twitched, an itch present as he grabbed the hand on his face. "There was a boy that taught me everything … and I should pass the message forward … be warned though." He answered with a savage grin as his father's last hold on him vanished. "I can get rough."