Sora buttoned up her vest and slung her bag over her shoulder before checking herself in the mirror, a long deep scar ran down her left cheek, neck, and even though hidden by her shirt now, her chest. Multiple other ones forming a cross shape marred her back too. But those scars didn't get into her.
She had packed her things and said goodbye to her friend who would be staying for another week. Now it was time she sought answers.
" Just... be careful alright. And come back safe."
" I will, don't worry about me, Grandma." Sora smiled softly at her grandmother's words. Although she saw her granddaughter up and about, she was still concerned and fearful for her. She couldn't blame her, especially not after Sora told her all about her father.
That day, Yui hugged her and cried for so long. It was like having her own son back only to be taken away again.
But now, Sora wanted answers. Why did that happen to her father? Why was she targeted?
As she stepped out of the hospital, Tsukauchi was waiting for her outside. " Congratulations on your discharge."
" Thanks, Tsukauchi-san." She put on the best smile she could muster before her eyes fell on the patrol car parked by the curb. It's about time...
" Are you sure of this?" Tsukauchi asked her. " It may be a little rough to handle."
" I'm fine with it," she said taking a step closer to the car. " I need to know. I can't rest without knowing."
And with that, they boarded the car that sped down the streets to the police station...
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" Another interrogation?" The man spoke calmly considering he was bound in maidens.
" It's for us to decide how many and for you to answer," The police officer whose face was akin to a gorilla spoke up. " One of the fallen Nomus had been identified and was found to be Shirogane Subaru, who was thought to have perished years ago in a fire."
" He used that one too? Shigaraki must have been very desperate to let that one loose. Too bad we ended up losing him."
Unbeknown to him, right outside the glass, both Sora and Tsukauchi were standing, watching over the process of the investigation.
" Enlighten us, what did you do to him?"
" It took All For One a long time to locate him. That man did a good job hiding himself, he was the first to ever escape him. But in the end, you reap what you saw and his descendants had to pay for his betrayal."
" What are you talking about, Garaki?"
The older man looked up with a broad smile. " DNA Writer, it was a magnificent Quirk. AFO wanted it badly, but because of its nature, it couldn't be absorbed unless the man himself wrote it in AFO's DNA. Unfortunately, AFO wasn't going to let anyone mess around with him. He trusted no one."
" DNA Writer?" Tsukauchi raised an eyebrow at the unfamiliar name.
" The Quirk our first ancestor possessed. It was from it that Angel was created."
" That man was a faithful follower. He believed in AFO. But one day he fled away, never to be found again." Garaki told them, not even bothering to look at the officer before him, as if he was talking to himself. " Vanished into thin air, no word of him was ever heard. With his Quirk, he could change his appearance, his Quirk, anything about him. We couldn't find him, nor his offspring."
" Then, how did you find Shirogane Subaru? What gave him away?"
" Angel you see, is like a suit of armor hiding the real Quirk behind it. He may have thought it no longer existed since he rewrote everything about him and erased it, but that was impossible. For what was keeping Angel existent was the Quirk factor of DNA Writer itself, that was the logic behind it. The crux of the Quirk was kept hidden away beneath the cover of Angel." The man continued to talk, ignoring the questions he was given. " But, you know, every Quirk has a limit, right? And for DNA Writer, it was time."
Sora's eyes widened at that.
" Even if he wrote the Angel Quirk to be dominant, as his altered DNA passed from one generation to another, it weakened the effect of his original Quirk. And as a result, Angel began to fade away little by little."
For an instant, Sora didn't focus on Garaki, but on her reflection on the glass, on those red eyes she only possessed.
" It began as a speculation, for AFO was interested in Angel as a Quirk, and he wanted to add it to his collection. However, after retracing its origin, we figured it appeared around the same time DNA Writer disappeared. We wanted proof, so we started the fire and dragged the seriously injured man back to my lab for further investigation. And it was then that I discovered the origin of Angel."
" So Shirogane Subaru was alive when you brought him out?" The officer asked.
" He was, barely," Garaki answered." I tried to unearth the original Quirk factor, to pry it out of him, but it was impossible. Despite fading that much, Angel was still so much a strong armor to defend it. The man couldn't take in the harsh experiments and finally, he breathed no more."
All colors drained out of Sora's face at that moment.
" That's when you decided to turn him into a Nomu."
" In the first place, Angel had so many Quirks written into a single one. It would be a waste not to do so." Garaki looked at the glass as though he could see Sora through it. " However, we were hoping to find another one, one whose defense was very weak to break and get to DNA Writer. We knew he had a daughter, and so I inserted an order for him, that once he's awake he is to find her and bring her to me."
" What made you sure you could get it from her? For all you knew, it may have ended the same way as him. Were you alright with killing a child then?"
" She would have made for another strong Nomu," Garaki smirked like a crazy man as he looked back at the officer. " Plus, that man's eyes. They may look blue but, upon close investigation, I found they were slightly fading into a shade of grey. The Quirk was barely holding for him his daughter should hardly be any better. According to my calculations, Angel would have disappeared with her. It's getting weaker it's all but impossible to pass it anymore. She would be the last one holding onto the origin of DNA Writer."
Sora staggered a step back at that. She felt as though she shouldn't be there, as if Garaki could reach her at any moment.
" Are you alright?" Tsukauchi asked her.
" Yeah..." she took deep breaths to steady herself and looked up again. " Yeah, I'm fine."
" There is this one thing that I want to know. Why want that Quirk so badly."
" With DNA Writer, the Nomus would have been completed. The aftereffects of having multiple Quirks enforced on them would have been overcome." Garaki shouted as though he lamented not being able to get the Quirk then and there. " All those Quirks would have been merged into one, just like he did with Angel. AFO's followers would have been turned into an unbeatable army."
A human that possessed multiple Quirks compressed into one. An army of people like AFO and Shigaraki, that what would have happened if they got their hands on it. Just thinking about it made the hair at the back of her neck stand up on end. Seeing her trembling, Tsukauchi called the end of the interrogation.
" You're sure you're alright? That was too much to take in at once." Garaki'd interrogator seemed even more disturbed than her as he stepped out.
" Yeah... yeah I'm fine..." Sora repeated. " I'm alright now."
" That apart, if what he says is true, then there is a chance you would be targeted again," Tsukauchi told her. " Even though I hardly can think they could get to the original Quirk without him..." He tilted his head towards the room where Garaki was still seated. " But there's no telling what AFO has stored up. We must put you under protection."
Sora looked down, memories of her father overwhelmed her mind. Was it painful? Did he suffer so much? What was he thinking as he faced all of that? Her chest tightened as she felt a great loath for Garaki, she would have liked nothing better than to snap his neck in two.
" You've got to let go, Sora."
Swallowing her tears, Sora shook her head. " It's okay. I don't need that." She looked back at Garaki. " If it was the case, he wouldn't have said all of that and risked getting me further from their reach." AFO seems to be going after Midoriya rather than me.
" ...Alright. I'll drive you back to your school then."
" Thanks..." Sora sniffed.
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As expected, when Yuu took the bandages off his face in front of the mirror a few days later, he was met with a scar over his right eye, one a little deeper and larger but not so much different from Kirishima's.
" I can live with it." He took a look around, the absence of the white ghost was getting at him. He began to worry about what might have become of him.
Yuu was getting restless, for despite being fine now, he was kept there at the hospital while most of his friends like Amajiki and Sora already left for UA.
" Getting used to your face." Yuu snapped back to the door where his brother leaned on the frame.
" You're still around? I thought you would be leaving for UA now that most victims of the raid had been discharged." He said rubbing his right arm.
" I will be going in about a week's time." The man stood straight and balanced his glasses on the bridge of his nose. " I've had a look at your check-up results and everything seems fine. Your broken ribs have completely healed with that granny's healing."
If Recovery Girl hears you, you will be in trouble. He refrained from commenting.
" What I'm here for however is something else." Yuu blinked at the seriousness in his voice." How exactly do you summon your spirits?"
" Eh?..."...
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" I see." The man hummed to himself after Yuu finished explaining how spirits get manifested in their world via his energy. " As expected, you're using your energy directly. That would explain why you took so long to come to when I shared my energy with you."
" Directly?" Yuu questioned. Yuusuke sat down on a stool while his brother slumped down on the bed.
" Energy Share, our mother's Quirk, makes us able to share our stamina, chakra, Qi, life force, whatever it's named with other beings. For me humans, for you, spirits. How it works is clear I guess, our bodies are like containers filled with energy and we're circulating it towards others, but a portion of that container is reserved for our own lives, we shouldn't go past that limit. By training our bodies and meditating, the container can be stretched, allowing us more flexibility with the use of our Quirk."
Yuu nodded, he knew all about that, but his brother seemed to know something he didn't. He continued to rub his arm as he waited for his brother to continue, something that wasn't missed by Yuusuke.
" Does it hurt?"
" Not actually." The boy looked down at it. " It's just, though they're not supposed to exist anymore, I feel pain in my fingers."
" Phantom limb syndrome..." Yuusuke murmured. " Let me take a look at it." And so Yuu rolled up his sleeve so his brother could check on the cut of his arm. " This may sound sudden but do you know exactly how my Quirk works?"
" You see the energy flowing through the body and you can speed healing using your own," Yuu stated.
" To be precise..." Yuusuke's eyes opened and glowed brightly as he gripped his brother's shoulder. " I can see the pressure points in the body and the energy circulating through them. When applying my own energy on those points, I can do multiple things, speed the regeneration of cells, block the flow of blood, paralyze a certain part of the body."
As he stepped back, Yuu blinked when he no longer felt the pain from his non-existent fingers. " You see, as a doctor, I would be required to use my Quirk a lot, however, building my body to be the perfect container wasn't an option for me, I was the kind of person who worked his mind, not his muscles. And if I were to compare them, I would say that your container is much, much bigger than mine. That was the reason why you didn't wake up as soon as other people whom I performed it on."
" Wait..." Yuu narrowed his eyes as he realized it. " ... How did you heal me back then? Supposing yours is smaller, then-"
" Here comes the difference between you and me." Yuusuke poked his forehead. " While you worked hard on building your container and expanding it, I chose a rather smarter way." The man smirked. " I stocked my energy."
Yuu's eyes widened at that. " I figured out while researching alternative medicine as a part of my studies. Just like stocking fat and other nutrition in the body, I focused my energy on one point and accumulated it." Yuusuke pointed at his heart. " That way, I would always have enough to go by, healing everyone without worrying about failing a patient in the middle of an operation. "
Yuu placed his hand around his chin in thought at that. " I see... that's an easy way to work with. But then..." His eyes flung towards his brother.
" That's right, we both are users of energy share so you should be able to do the same trick too," Yuusuke smirked.
Yuu stared at him as though seeing him for the first time ever. " Why are you telling me this?"
Yuusuke's expression didn't change at all as his brother considered him carefully. " However thankful I am, but this isn't something you would usually do for me... Not anymore..."
" You're right. It's not something I usually do." The man smiled as he folded his arms. " To be honest I don't know why I'm even bothering myself to tell you about it. I still don't stand you at all." He shrugged " I didn't like it, the way you struggled against the life our parents tried to make for you, the way you stood against them. I seriously wanted nothing but to ruin everything you've done. To make you break before them and accept the fate they had pronounced upon you."
" That's putting it too bluntly."
" Maybe. I'm not trying to be nice here, nor am I trying to play the caring older brother. But, I've taken a good look at you for the first time that day..." He could still recall vividly Yuu fending off Nomus, not backing off or hiding despite the viciousness and intensity of the fight. " I could see a different you, one that I didn't know existed. Or maybe didn't even acknowledge its existence. And I want to see where this path you're clinging to is leading, that's all."
Yuu's expression was a mixture of bewilderment and... to a certain point, surprise.
" So I will be watching over... what was the name again, Reito? Right, I will be watching over him to the very end, so I could see where that useless scaredy cat would end up in the end," he said smirking at him.
Yuu narrowed his eyes at Yuusuke. " I'll be a hero who would protect what's precious to him."
" Then begin with protecting your own body. Nothing would be left of you by then if you continue like this." Yuusuke pointed up at his arm. " Speaking of that, I may have an idea of what to do about it."
" Eh?"
" That's why I'm staying back for the coming week. It will all become clear soon."...