"Everyone, meet Tomura Shigaraki, leader of the League of Villains." Giran pointed to the man, smirking. It took a while, but he found the most deranged people he could find. And convincing them all was easy thanks to that Stain connection. "Tomura, these are the nine of the craziest-" A few glared at him. "Most skilled." He corrected himself. "Individuals I found."
The man sat there in silence, placing down his glass and looking over the group. "... Names and motives … that's all I ask." Straight to the punch.
"Oh, can I go first! I'm really excited! Is it true Stainy joined!?" The girl in the school uniform raised her hand and jumped all over the place. "I'm Himiko Toga! Stainy drank blood to make the world better, so I want to make everyone more cute by making them bleed all over the place before I become them!"
"Undignified is what you are." The masked kid spoke. "I'm Mustard. My goal is to destroy the privileged and lucky born, take down this unbalanced world and demolish it for an equal order based on pure will, like Stain Wished."
"The Hero Killer carried on a noble quest. I seek to continue his journey." The gecko man spoke next, wearing Stain cosplay and everything. "I am Spinner, and I'll carry on Stain's will by purging the world of fake heroes."
"Same. Heroes need to be burned and turned to ash." The man covered in stitches said. "Dabi."
"I wanted to make some money and bring justice into the world." The masked man bowed. "I am Mr. Compress, and my skills will aid you well."
"My name is Twice, and I was lonely, I don't need friends , shut up, why should I ?" Spoke the only man in a full body skin suit, ironically looking the most heroic.
"It's okay, let it all out, let it all out. Take all the time you need." The person he wasn't quite sure was a man or a woman patted Twice's back. "I'm Mange, I'm here to make people heard. Like Stain did."
"I'm Muscular, I'm here to kill people." A death row, one he feels really proud of finding, even if he would be a bit hard to control.
"Fooooood." Another death row, Moonfish, not as proud. He wanted to run.
Tomura stood in silence, watching them quietly. "So … most of you are here for Stain, aren't you?" Right, last he heard, the man's conversation with the hero killer didn't turn out as peachy as he hoped it would be. Please don't turn them to ash, it was a pain and a half finding this many.
"Even if he's arrested you're carrying out his mission, right?" Dabi asked. "To murder heroes."
"No, it's to murder fakes!" Spinner screamed back.
"Tomato tomato." He could hear blades being drawn.
"Wait, are we not stabbing people we want to stab?" Toga questioned. "Because a lot of you guys could use a good stabbing. It'd make you all look so much cuter."
"Honey, I'm adorable." Mange argued back. "Don't you dare bring a rusty ass knife at me."
"I'm down for a fight if you all are!" Muscular shouted.
Kurogiri gave him a look, and Giran backed up just a tad. Okay, so he might not have given them details. But these two could fix it right? "Young Master, would you like to inform them of your motive?"
Tomura slowly stood up, making his way to the group, hopefully to tell them he was in charge and discipline them. "Stain was never in the League of Villains. We had a difference of opinions, and I wanted to erase his message." He moved past the psycos, walking out the door. "If you came just for Stain alone, feel free to leave. I'm going on a walk to clear my head."
The silence was deafening. "Would you look at that, I think I hear my car being stolen." Giran slowly made his way to the door.
"Giran, don't you bullshit me! We both know you don't have a car!" Kurogiri shouted.
"I can't hear you Kurogiri, going through a tunnel."
"You're standing right in fucking-front of us!"
"Since we're in a bar, how about giving them some drinks." He shut the door and began to book it. The roar of rage could be heard for miles.
==
Iruma handed the boy his balloon back. "Here ya go, make sure to tie it to your wrist. Unless you're super light, then you might just fly away."
"Thank you mister!" The boy smiled. "Hey mommy, I got my balloon back." Iruma smiled as the boy left. It felt nice just to hand out help like that. Now to head back to his friends … strange, he knows they were right behind them.
"And then I jumped … and landed right?" So they had to be where he jumped from. And that was … where? He looked around. Did he jump from the second or third flow? Or were they always on the first floor? Dang it, he got lost like Toru thought he would back at the amusement park.
Which he didn't! He just mistook a turn by the bumper carts. There was a lot of nice smelling food, what was he supposed to do? "Okay, I just need to find a map." He began his trip, wandering around the mall until he found a small spot with a map, a guy with a black hoodie standing in front of it. "Perfect."
"Stupid, stupid, stupid. It's all so stupid." Iruma heard the hooded man mutter as they both looked at the map. "They're all just over-obsessed fans of that hero killer. Why do they look up to him? Why is he so damn popular?"
"I don't know, he just seemed scary to me." He answered back. "Say, do you know how to get to the center of the mall? I've never used a map before and whenever I went inside I just walked around until I found what I'm looking for."
"Not really, no, I haven't been here too often myself, mainly to buy…wait, I know that voice." The man paused himself and turned. His hair was a very light, grayish blue and his face looked really dry and wrinkled, along with red eyes that stared right at him.. "You.."
Iruma blinked, looking over his face. "Wait a second …" He placed his hand up, holding it over the hooded man's face as if to judge it. "Shigaraki right?" He smiled, barely registering the twitch of the man's hands. "It's been a while, how've you been?"
The man's hands stopped twitching, looking pretty confused. "You're..not afraid?" Some parts of Shigaraki's expression seemed to be relieved by that.
"Why would I be, you're just here to shop right?" Iruma asked. "And there's no teachers around for you to beat up and me to save, just my friends." He frowned. "Man, they're gonna be mad when I come back. They might actually get that bell."
"You…you're a strange kid, you know that?" Shigiraki asked, before shaking his head. "So you have no intention of fighting me or turning me in?"
"You're not doing anything wrong now, and you're not getting angry and turning things to dust, so no. I know fighting's apart of being a hero, but it can just get so stupid at times. People can get angry at so many little things and it makes them do stupid stuff."
Shigaraki was quiet for a bit, staring at him. "I've been angry at something lately, do you mind if we sit down and talk about it?"
"Sure, no problem!" It felt nice to help people when he wasn't told please, help, or see someone begging.
==
"Okay!" Kurogiri slammed the tray down, done with today. "That's one iced beer." He shoved it into the burnt man's direction, who simply nodded and sipped. "One bloody mary with genuine blood instead of alcohol, because you're a minor and I have standards." A kid couldn't be effectively drunk without worrying about health issues.
"Oh, my favorite!" The girl sipped it happily enough, making her mouth a bloody mess. "Well, Stainy might not be here, but the service is amazing!"
"One glass of Gin." He slid it over to the masked lunatic.
"Thank you it tastes great, your face ruins the taste ." The man was somehow able to drink it through the mask. What the fuck?
"Coke for you." He slid it over to the Lizard.
"I don't trust you enough to get drunk." Fair assessment. He wouldn't trust him either, he hurt friends … where did that come from?
"Red Wine for the gentlemen." Another tip of the hat as he drank through his mask. HOW!?
"The finer things in life are so hard to come by lately." The man spoke, finishing his drink rather quickly. "To think I thought this would be my big break."
"It still could be, if you're willing to overlook the lack of Stain." He suggested. Take it, take it, we need numbers after Tomrua fucked it over and Giran DITCHED US!
"What's the point then? Stain's name was the only thing you had going for you." The other high schooler argued with his own glass of coke, because again, there were some lines he wasn't willing to cross. Intoxicating a kid and killing a kid were fundamentally different. "Without him, no one's going to take us seriously."
"Were you all really so dead set on Stain?" The one eyed giant of muscle asked as he chugged on a barrel of Cider. Kurogiri was going to have to stock up, wasn't he? "This just seemed like the easiest way for me to kill people faster."
"Why didn't you join them at the USJ then?" The magician asked.
"Was recovering, lost my eye to a couple of pros."
The burnt man laughed. "Oh yeah, you lost to a couple of pros that could drizzle out water, didn't you? Man, and here you had people think you were a hot shot."
"Whatever, no name. I've still killed the most pros out of anyone here."
"Foooood." Moonfish was just drinking a bottle of … surprisingly Sparkling Wine.
"Most pros, you just have the highest body count." Wait, he understood that?
"And without Stain nobody here is as cute." The girl complained. "Well maybe that Tomura guy if we get him bloody enough." The giggle was disturbing.
"Oh yeah, fuck that guy. When he comes back, he's dead." The boy nodded. "I'm assuming that's why nobody else has left yet."
"I'm just here to keep the boy pinned." The bipolar … he wanted to be polite and say lady? The lady shrugged. "After a punch you all can have your share."
"That's fair, as long as I can squeeze his head like a pimple." Muscular weirdly agreed easily.
"Foooood."
"If we get to kill and there's anything left, you can eat his corpse." How did the burnt one understand him!?
"As someone sent to protect the young master, I will not allow this to pass." He now had nine pairs of eyes glaring at him.
"Just keep serving us drinks, and maybe, MAYBE we'll let you live afterwards." The burnt one rolled his eyes, everyone else nodding along in agreement. So he was alone in a bar with nine murderous sociopaths. This sounded like a bad joke Yamada would tel.. who the fuck is Yamada?
==
Tomura sat down, sitting with the one person in the world who could understand him. They were in the middle of eating burgers. This was probably one of the stranger things to happen today, right behind some of the people that came in to work for the bastard. "So do you know Stain?" Everyone did, but he wanted to be sure.
"Oh, yeah…It's funny." Iruma had a tray filled to the brim full of burgers, somehow able to stuff three or more in his mouth at a time without any kind of trouble. It was admirable and terrifying at the same time. "We worked at the same retail store before I went to UA. I just knew him as Akagure back then. Never thought he'd be such a jerk."
"First it was the Yakuza, now it's a famous Hero Killer." He was sure he was looking skeptical. "Do you just have bad luck with villains or something?" Tomura asked.
"Eh, probably, but that's how my life is all the time. Someone asks me to do something, and I do it because it's how I've survived for this long." The boy shrugged. "It's been getting better though, I've barely thought about my parents in weeks, and Rabbit-Sama gives great hugs."
"The fact you can do all that is admirable." He sipped from his soda. "So what are your thoughts on Stain, the fact he's popular, stuff like that?" He needed an opinion like Suzuki's to give him clarity.
"Hm…well he seemed really scary when I first saw him, he was just really loud and angry. In fact, he sort of reminded me of you, except he was dumb. He thought everyone had to be just like Bunny-sensei to be a hero, and that's just stupid. It's impossible to expect everyone to be that nice or hard working."
"I would argue against hard-working." He spoke out. "How can you do anything if you don't work hard, like video games, or sports, or how to torture someone using stomach lining." He was more surprised that Sensei had fifteen separate lessons for that one.
"Yeah, I see what you mean. It took a lot of hard work for me to even be ready for the entrance exam, and I still broke all my bones." Iruma munched on another burger. "Huh, I guess that's why Akagure got so popular. When he started yelling how he wanted to kill fakes, I felt…his determination. What he said was dumb, but I felt he could do what he wanted to do because of his determination."
He wanted that determination too, but he couldn't figure out how to aim it other than ruin heroism. It was vexing. "That drive can get you a lot." He drank some soda.
"What have you been up to?" Suzuki asked, somehow making the fries vanish in a matter of seconds. Freeky.
"Trying to figure out what I'm going to do, watching TV, talking with villains." He groaned. "Problem is they all worship Stain like people worship All Might. It's annoying, I want to kill them but it wouldn't be worth it … they're not my target." The worship was …
"It's frustrating." Suzuki completed his thought. "Akagure sounded like he really liked Bunny-sensei, but I couldn't understand why he thought others weren't heroes. To me, heroes are just people who help, but that doesn't mean they're the only people who can help. I've been helping people way before I knew about Bunny-sensei, and I never was called a hero."
'You don't need to be a hero.' Those words hit a spot he didn't quite understand, but the message cleared his head so much. He didn't need to destroy society, he just needed to hold their eyes open, show them that heroes are useless compared to what people can do on their own. "Thank you."
"You're welcome!" The boy answered immediately. "Thanks for what though?"
"You've helped me realize what I need to do to get everyone to forget about Stain, about All Might, about everything in this damn hero society!" He was laughing. People were staring at him funny, but he didn't care. "Say, why don't you come with me? I'm sure you can give me more helpful advice."
"I mean it sounds fun, but I already put a lot of effort into being a hero." The boy spoke. "Besides, I made friends at UA, I don't want to leave them." Well he tried, there was always next time. "But if you ever want to talk I'm free, here's my phone number, Yaoyorozu gave me one for the internship."
"Thanks. You're a good kid." Suzuki's eyes were so filled with honesty and truthfulness. Too bad he was a hero student. Eh, he seemed reasonable enough. They'd be working together eventually one of these days.
==
All For One readied his Warping just in case. The men were violent and could take on Kurogiri if they felt like it, Giran may have been a bit too successful. This would normally not be a problem if Tomura wasn't a fucking moron .
He had one job, ONE FUCKING JOB! All he needed to do was suck up a little pride and lie to the bastards! But nooo! He was incapable of seeing the silver platter in front of him because one damn heroic brat's words got into that thick skull of his! If this continues, he may have to put all his resources into his final, FINAL project, damn screwing over that steroid bunny-user.
He 'watched' the door open, Tomura coming back in. "Oh, you're all still here?" And here he was making it worse.
"I wanted to watch you burn before we went away, you walked out so early after all." Dabi spoke up. Curiosity of his nature was there, but he let it slide for now.
"And I wanted to watch you be cute, just like Stainy, covered in blood." In his early days that girl might have given him the heebie jeebies.
"I swore to only eliminate the fakes of the world, but I believe I can make an exception." Oh boy, the fanboy was talking. Damn that hero killer, damn All Might, and DAMN that idiot Iruma Suzuki!
"I told you I don't give a fuck." Stop making it harder to keep you alive! "If you all want to worship a fake like Stain, do it at your own bar." It was so silent you could hear a penny drop.
"What the hell did you just say?" The high school boy broke the silence.
"Let me break it down." Tomura strolled through the bar and past the villains like he owned them. "People like heroes, but why?" He asked them. "The flashy quirks? The cool costumes? The friendly fame? The big money?" A beat of silence passed. "It is, thanks to All Might."
"All Might was accepted by Stain!" The fanboy Spinner screamed with scratches of metal.
"All Might is a pillar so high up no one else has to try." Now there was an interesting viewpoint. "He's the one that made everyone think the system was flawless. That you don't need to save people because he will, that heroes don't need to be perfect because he was there. Well you know what, fuck pros entirely." There was a stomp, his Successor taking a table. "You don't need to be a hero to help people!"
"That's ridiculous, of course you…wait.." The Magician was starting to stumble on his words.
"Stain didn't make things better, he made them worse!" Tomura shouted. "Stain made you think that pros needed to be perfect heroes when in reality they're all idiotic humans. We're all idotic humans, but we're shunned, why!?" He stopped his warping quirk, no longer needing it.
"Because we're different." Magne joined.
"Because we're not normal." Toga added.
"Because we're not born special." Mustard said.
" Because we aren't capable." Dabi said with a hint of empathy in his voice.
"And what, they are?" He stepped down. "I'm going to force society to open its eyes as we dismantle heroism in its entirety, and show off that we can do even better than they ever could! I'm going to show the world that their concepts of different and freakish are dumb! I'm going to show the world that worshiping idols that are born talented compared to those working hard is selfish and moronic!!" Tomura let the silence fall. "If you still want to worship Stain, walk out the door, or even fight me … just know I'm the most free person in this room, and I won't hesitate to retaliate."
Everyone stood silent, and All For One couldn't tell if they were in awe or royally pissed at what his successor just said. "I've been aimlessly walking a path to nowhere for so many years." Spinner spoke solemnly. "I won't let this world tell me what I should do anymore. If this is the path to freedom, I'll gladly hop aboard."
"Freedom to be whoever I want." Toga's eyes sparkled. "To love who I want and to love them how I want, no matter how bloody I need to make it. I'm in, handyman!"
"It seems I haven't taken my goals far enough." Dabi nodded. "To the death of heroism." He raised a glass.
"To the death of heroism!" He heard the cheering and drinking. All For One stared at the TV for a while, before he did something he hadn't done in a while.
All For One laughed, harder than he had in years. This metamorphosis was the best possible outcome. He was worried his student was losing brain cells, or worse, becoming empathetic. But this was the best possible solution. "The TV Mocks us! I agree, we look dirty!"
"I look fabulous, but he has a point. Why is your TV laughing at us?" Mange asked with a raised eyebrow.
"Sensei..were you listening the entire time?"
"You have a fucking Sensei? Who would be willing to teach a crazy bastard like you?"
"This better be how you banter and not a genuine insult."
"Ah, apologies Tomura, I've seemed to have forgotten my manners." He smirked. "My name is All For One, and I believe we have many things to discuss about the future." Maybe it was time he brought in his friends from the other side.