Impervious
The little girl whimpered as she came awake. The air was dark and dusty and made her cough.
She struggled to remember how she came to be where she was when she saw the reason she wasn’t squished.
It was All Might, the Symbol of Peace… and he was stuck under some rubble which meant it hadn’t fallen on her.
She crawled closer. There was blood on his face and in a pool around his face, turning dark and sticky. She was scared. So, SO scared. She remembered why what had happened now.
The bad guys had smashed a building that dropped on a whole street.
The Heroes had tried to force it back but bits had fallen down anyway. Not as much as would have if they hadn’t helped but enough to hurt people, break streets and so on.
All Might had tried to save her and gotten hurt instead.
She could only sit and cry. She didn’t know what to do.
All Might san needed to wake up. NEEDED TOO. People needed him. He needed to wake UP. She patted his face gently, trying to get him to wake up.
Instead she got a face full of blood. It made her cry harder as she wiped her face.
Wake UP! She begged him. Please wake up! She… she didn’t want All Might san to die. She didn’t want to be the reason why All Might san died. Please, please wake up!
She took the blank, unconscious face in her hands and pressed her forehead against his.
There was another cough. Another gout of blood and All Mate san flailed a bit and jerked.
The little girl scuttled back.
All Might san flailed again and began to shrink? He doesn’t wake up though.
She… she tries to pull him out, to save him like he did her but she isn’t strong enough. Despite being smaller than All Might and no longer wedged in by the rubble he’s still a grown up, an adult male and much too heavy for a six year old girl to move.
She can only sit and sniffle… though she hears voices. It takes her a bit to figure out where they’re coming from but since All Might has shrunk, the ear thingie falls out of his ear.
She picks it up and puts it near her ear. “H… Hello?...”
Yagi Toshinary, civilian identity of Pro Hero No. One All Might, wakes in stages. He hurts, badly, and he can taste the familiar and unwelcome tang of coppery blood… there’s more in his mouth actually. He spits it out and discovers his head on something soft… ish.
He can hear a voice, young… definitely a child, above his head. She babbles a near constant stream while she wipes his face off gently with a dusty hanky.
His head is resting on her lap.
It takes him a bit to realise that she’s talking to the people on his ear bud. He opens his eyes but it makes little difference. He can’t see her face clearly but there are tear tracks through the dirt, dust and… is that blood? So much of it.
He raises a hand to pat at it without thought.
The little girl jumps and looks down, brown eyes going wide.
“He’s awake!” the little girl announces to whoever is on the other end of the line. She turns her attention back to him. “All Mights san? I’m so, so sorry. It’s my fault you got hurt so bad. All of the other Heroes are helping people. The nice lady on the end of the speaker thingie says there were lots of other buildings broken and people hurt. Gang Orca san is coming but they said he’s still a bit away. The nice lady said it should be a quarter of an hour but the falling buildings broke the clock on the tower and I’m not really very good at telling time yet anyway.
I don’t know why you shrunk but, if you can, maybe you could wiggle out from the rubble? I don’t think its very solid but I couldn’t pull you out. I tried.”
He coughs again and it takes him a while to get his voice working. “What… are you… doing here, young one? Why haven’t… you gone to… safety?”
“Where would I go, All Might san? There's… no one to take me and I don’t know where I am. With all the bits of broken building nothing looks right and it might be dangerous. The nice lady said I was probably safer staying with you since, even if you were hurt, you’re still a Pro Hero. And, I couldn’t leave you alone. You’re hurt and.. And… even if I can’t help you, I can at least be here. I don’t want to be alone and… and it would be mean to leave you by yourself too.”
Girl Quirk is ‘impervious’, meaning no other Quirk can effect her while it’s active… which is all the time. Not healing Quirks, mind control Quirks or anything else. Sometimes, even things made by Quirks like Ice or Fire or Explosions don’t work on her… though things that alter the world around her like earthquakes and the like do.
It means that All Mights Quirk, despite the fact he practically covered her in his blood, can’t be passed onto her by accident. Sighs of relief all around but the girl is newly orphaned. She ends up becoming Yagi san’s ward.
She doesn’t want to be a hero. Heroes and villains both tend to die fast and she promised her Mama she would look after herself better. After all, Heroes have to win every time but the villains only have to win just once.
She has three online friends, a natural aka quirkless psychic from a line of them reaching back to prequirk history in Tsunayoshi Sawada, a straight quirkless kid whose analytical abilities were proof that Quirkless didn’t mean worthless and someone she wasn’t entirely sure was human but she didn’t care about that either, they were polite and intelligent and non judgemental and that was what she cared about.
Histories Mystery, Small Might and Noone’s Pet were best friends though they’d only met up IRL a few times.
Being kidnapped by the league of villains was scary but meeting All Might san’s arch nemesis was interesting, if equally scary. She didn’t think there WERE any ‘Villain Quirks’. Everything could be used to a good purpose if people just thought about it a bit.
She goes on a right rant. Mr Dabi, with his too hot fire that hurts him if he uses it too long, he could go into smithing, entertainment, manufacture, glass… all sorts of things. The Mr with disintegration talent. He could have been a rescue hero or help in demolitions or to destroy dangerous or poisonous rubbish. Mr Villain (All for One) oh, the things he could have done to help people. The way people without flashy Quirks or those who don’t have a Quirk at all are treated so badly and its STUPID. Villains usually happen when Heroes fail or simply don’t care.
Poor people who have been treated too badly for too long or people who have been hurt and failed and so lashed out and their society did that. It doens’t take much effort to be kind, to help but people simply don’t want to and it annoys her. The WASTE annoyed her.
One of her friends is Quirkless but his Quirk analysis is amazing but no one would give him a chance just because he doesn’t have a Quirk and that’s dumb. So WHAT if he doesn’t. People without Quirks are still people!
Her rant was broadcast but she wouldn’t know that until later.
One for All was amused by her and talked to her often in her captivity. He couldn’t take her Quirk which also fascinated him.
Curious as to what would happen, he tried switching Quirks out on some of the prisoners. He would take their useful Quirk, replacing it with a useless (according to him) and see what happened. Two out of five survived.
He kidnapped a few Quirkless and tried giving them a useless Quirk. Four out of five survived. He tried removing and then replacing the useless Quirk with a more useful one. Three out of five survived.
This looked like a promising line of investigation indeed. The Nomu had their uses but, if he could actively create soldiers… The shock of having their Quirk taken or having one forcibly added made them very… suggestible. So easy to program.
If he could get his hands on her little friends, the girl would likely be more cooperative.
It would amuse him greatly to have her carry his or Shiguraki’s Heir. If the fool Endeavour could attempt to breed a better Heir, why couldn’t he… and doing so would hurt One for All, Shigaraki, the girl AND Endeavour. Perhaps he should have the split Quirk Todoroki Heir kidnapped and cross bred with the girl.
The Villain Factory had been a step in the right direction but he, unlike those other hacks, could MANIPULATE Quirks, with the Doctor’s help.
If he remembered rightly, one of great grandchildren was Quirkless with only a mother in the picture. He’d have the child snatched.
(The child proved to be very intelligent, with a love of Quirks despite his own Quirklessness. Perhaps he’d cross breed the boy and the girl as well, just out of curiosity…)
She was brave, he knew she thought he was going to kill her but still she sassed him.
Some of her ideas were simplistic but they weren’t wrong.
Villains harm and destroy. Even if they have a good cause, the way they go about things damages those around them. Villains aren’t born that way though. They’re made. By heroes failing. By society being stupid and treating them badly. By pain and damage heaped on them.
Heroes are supposed to be better than that. If they aren’t then they’re even worse than the villains and they need to be both stopped and well, she didn’t know the word but it meant being responsible, sort of. Of, of not just being allowed to get away with it. Of doing their best to help the people they’re damaged and doing better. (Held accountable. All for One told her. And given consequences that effect them for their actions. She’d nodded and agreed.)
Vigilanties… well, most of them WANTED to do the right thing but couldn’t or wouldn’t work within the system… which she sort of got because the system was pretty broken but that was dangerous because EVERYONE worked against Vigilanties and some of the could be as bad or worse than the Villains.
She wished she could do more to help but change, REAL change, had to come from the people. They had to WANT things to be better, to be different and that was REALLY hard.
He wasn’t sure how All Might had found him exactly but the resulting fight was extremely damaging for them both…
(Elsewhere, a little curly haired greenette took the hand of a little girl and RAN. That person was distracted and no one was paying them any attention. If they were going to escape it hadto be NO.)