Shigaraki Tomura was in a bad mood.
It wasn't the kind that came with shouting or broken furniture. It was quieter than that. Sharper. The kind that made his fingers twitch and his breathing go shallow. He was very close to scratching his neck furiously.
His subordinates had failed.
That, by itself, wasn't unusual. Failure was expected. Planned for, even. What grated was how they had failed.
They had already captured him.
Bakugo Katsuki had been bound, subdued, and cornered. The top candidate of the Sports Festival. The one with short temper and the highest chance to get converted to their cause.
And then—at the last second—he had gotten away.
Not escaped. Not fought his way out.
Switched.
The boy who had saved him had been taken instead.
The runner-up of the sports festival.
Haru Hado.
Shigaraki stood near the centre of the warehouse, hands hanging loosely at his sides, eyes fixed on the restrained figure across from him.
The situation wasn't grim. On paper, it was almost ideal.
Bakugo had been the obvious choice, but Haru was… interesting.
The boy had ruined their plans at USJ. The Nomu had fallen before All Might even arrived. That alone had earned him a place on Shigaraki's mental list, just below a certain green-haired boy.
A quirk that could do that.
Potential like that didn't come around often.
Which made his refusal all the more irritating.
Shigaraki had tried reason. He had tried explanation. He had tried patience in his own limited way.
Every time, the answer was the same.
No.
The restraints had been designed carefully in accordance with his touch-based quirk. No direct contact with skin—only with clothing. Even then, Haru was kept unconscious more often than not. The risk was too high. If the boy destroyed his own clothes, the bindings would become meaningless.
This brought Shigaraki to his last option.
Leverage.
He turned slightly, attention shifting to the other captive.
She had been taken by chance. A coincidence that Compress had found amusing when he was escaping.
Shigaraki hadn't intended to kill her. Not yet. He only needed a reaction.
A scream.
An expression.
He stepped closer, bare hand lifting, fingers spreading as they neared the side of her neck.
"No!" Haru shouted. "Don't—"
Shigaraki paused, smiling faintly. 'See? You do care.'
His fingers hovered, just brushing close enough for the threat to be unmistakable.
The plan was simple. Strip away a layer of skin. Enough pain to make the message clear. Nothing fatal.
A not-so-harmless experiment to gauge his reaction.
Then the boy shook, as if the sight itself stirred something within him.
A blue-black tendril erupted outward, violent and fast. Shigaraki barely had time to react.
The tendril struck him full-on. Pain exploded through his limbs as his muscles forcefully contracted multiple times in a second.
His muscles were damaged as he lost the strength to even stand. He hit the ground hard, breath knocked from his lungs.
"What—" someone shouted.
Another tendril lashed out, shredding the bindings around the girl's chair. She fell forward, catching herself, then scrambled to her feet.
"Toru!" He yelled.
She didn't answer. She ran straight to Haru, dropping to her knees beside him, hands shaking as she grabbed his shoulders.
"Hey—hey, look at me," she said, voice tight. "You're okay. You're okay."
Haru was barely conscious, body trembling, tendrils twitching erratically around him.
Villains rushed to Shigaraki's side, dragging him back, out of the tendril's range. He coughed, gasping, eyes burning with something sharper than pain.
'How? His quirk is supposed to be touch-based, similar to mine. Were those tendrils always part of his quirk?' Despite the pain, his mind still questioned this.
Across the room, the tendrils recoiled slightly, hovering protectively around the two students.
The space between them felt too small.
Too fragile.
Two sides stared at each other, neither moving.
Toru swallowed, forcing herself to breathe. She glanced down at Haru, then back up at the villains.
"Oii," she said quietly. "What now? I don't think we can escape."
Before anyone could answer—
The doorbell rang.
Everyone froze.
Once.
Twice.
A pause.
A cheerful voice echoed through the door. "Pizza delivery!"
Silence followed.
Then the door exploded inward.
Concrete and metal blasted apart as a shockwave tore through the entrance.
All Might stepped through the smoke.
"I am here."
Chaos erupted.
Kurogiri found himself unable to move as he found his body restrained by threads? before he was knocked out.
Dabi was the next one to get knocked out as Gran Torino hit him on the head. The rest of the villains were similarly restrained as Kurogiri.
"We are saved! All might is here! Wait, there are top heroes! Best Jeanist, Edgeshot, Kamui woods, Mount Lady..." Toru shook Haru excitedly.
"Idiot! What did I tell you about not saying such things during such a situation? You just raised a flag." Haru retorted.
As if world itself agreed with Haru, suddenly both of their bodies dissolved into black goo.
"NO!" All Might jumped at them, but they were already gone.
***
All For One's voice was calm.
That, more than anything, set Shigaraki on edge.
"You rushed," All For One said mildly. "Again."
Shigaraki clenched his jaw. His body still ached where the tendril had struck him. "He's unstable. Dangerous. You felt it too."
"I did," All For One agreed. "Which is why this outcome isn't a loss."
Shigaraki turned toward him. "Then why—"
The air detonated.
A wall of pressure tore through the ground. Villains and debris were hurled back in the same instant.
All Might's silhouette punched through the cloud.
"ALL FOR ONE!" Anger coloured his words.
All For One didn't hesitate.
His hand rose, fingers curling as multiple appendages came out of them, before inserting into Kurogiri's body, which jerked violently. Black mist erupted from him, warped and unstable, forced into shape by something that was not his will.
A portal tore open above him.
Dabi was hurled into that portal by another appendage.
"I will hold him here. You leave with your friends and them." All for one pointed at Haru and Toru.
All the villains turned toward them.
Toru reacted first.
She ripped her gloves off mid-motion. Kicked her boots away as she ran. Her body vanished into empty air without slowing.
"Haru! Get on my back, now!"
Haru didn't question it. Not only was his head throbbing furiously, but he was also physically weaker than she.
He lunged forward and grabbed onto her back as she ducked low. His tendrils snapped outward, acting like a shield, ready to eliminate anyone who came close.
Then, something inside Toru shifted. As if the limits of her physical body were lifted.
"Can you do that thing that helps you become faster?" She asked.
Haru replied with his actions.
"Reality Warping Series: Featherless Current."
Something changed in the air around them, as if it were welcoming them.
This was one of the moves Haru had started learning when he did his first hero internship and had mastered it recently, just before Final exams.
It allowed him to remove the air resistance from all the air close to them, making their speed faster.
Just then, Twice clapped his hands.
The space fractured.
Villains multiplied—not him, but everyone else. Copies spilt forward in a loose wave, feet slapping against concrete, movements messy but aggressive.
"Toru—left!"
She twisted just as the first Shigaraki clone lunged. Haru's tendrils snapped out, not striking, but touching—brushing arms, necks, torsos.
The first clone seized up.
Its limbs jerked violently, joints locking at impossible angles before it collapsed, body folding in on itself as a puppet with its strings yanked wrong, before it dissolved in mud.
Then another.
And another.
But there were too many.
Magne's clones pushed forward with them, heavier, deliberate. Haru's tendrils lashed, intercepting them just before they could use any of their quirks.
The length of Haru's tendrils was 5 meters, and Magne's quirk range was around 4.5 meters.
Each of the tendril's touch was enough. A second of contact, sometimes less, and the clone dropped, muscles spasming, ligaments tearing under forces no human body was meant to generate.
Still, the pressure didn't let up.
Twice kept feeding the field.
Toga's clones didn't rush blindly. They spread out, skirts fluttering, knives already leaving their hands. Steel flashed through the air from multiple angles—low, high, wide arcs meant to limit movement rather than kill outright.
Unlike human bodies, which could be hijacked to cause self-harm by rapidly contracting the enemy's muscles or other body parts, Haru couldn't do that to a knife.
At least, he couldn't do anything about it in a short time.
He twisted the air instead, just enough to nudge trajectories. A knife skimmed past Toru's ribs instead of burying itself there. Another clipped her thigh, shallow but bleeding. One scraped across Haru's forearm, opening skin.