#bnha chapter 420 | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mysteroads · 20 days

Text

Indomitable Will

Summary: Following the events of Chapter 419, Tomura finds he still has some choices to make, and nothing is going to stop him.

Chapter 1: The Broken and The Stolen

He was pain. Just anguish wrapped in silent screams. He wanted to be less than that. He wanted to be nothing. If he stopped existing, then he wouldn't hurt so much. It was agony to know everything he had been was a lie!

Everything? What about them?

Faces swim into view. He can’t take them all in, but details and impressions stand out.

Staples, amethyst scars, and blazing blue eyes.

Eyes like honey and a wide, sharp smile.

Green scales, violet hair, bravado to hide the shyness.

A slashing scar above spaniel brown eyes, a smile so honest only the truly heartless would turn away.

Clever brown eyes, wild hair, a finger in front of his lips to hold in a secret.

Yellow tinted sunglasses, ruddy lipstick, and auburn hair.

Were they a lie? Was the promise you made them a lie?

"NO!"

His denial is a jolt. A shock to a faltering heart. The pain doesn’t ease, but he becomes more than just pain.

Another jolt, this time of panic, comes when he feels hands touch him, panic that eases when he realizes that these hands aren't room temperature dead flesh. They're warm. Alive. So alive they burn, but it’s the sting of frozen fingers thawing in front of a campfire, not the emotional and spiritual agony he can still feel tearing away at him.

“There you are, sugar. Thought we lost you for a second.”

“Jeez, boss man. Way to give us a scare!”

He knew those voices. He knew these hands— big, rough, gentle— He knew them! But he couldn’t put a name to them!

“How about you put a name to yourself first, pumpkin?”

“Yeah, pull yourself together! Scatterbrain!”

Scattered? Yes, he supposed he was. Shattered might be a better word. Shattered after learning he was a lie. Everything had been a manipulation from his birth to this moment. None of his choices were his own. He was nothing but an empty vessel, a suit prepared for a monster to slip into. Nothing nothing nothing—

The warm hands tightened on him, dragging him back from the brink. “You’re not nothing! You chose us, didn’t you? And we chose you! You chose to care about us! That wasn’t All For One, that was you!”

Right. Sens— All For One didn’t have friends. He had pawns.

Focus. Who am I?

Two Names presented themselves, and he could feel the capital letter in the word Name.

Tenko Shimura.

Tomura Shigaraki.

Both Names carried so much. So much it was nearly unbearable, but he’d borne it all before, and he could do it again. Tenko was his core, his foundation, the seed from which he’d grown. Tomura was who he’d grown into. He hadn’t chosen either name, and he wasn’t particularly fond of the men who’d given them to him, but right now… he had a choice.

“‘Tomura’ comes from the verb, ‘tomurau,’ which means to mourn and express sorrow over death and farewell,” he remembered All For One telling him.

Tomura decided that the name fit him. He’d mourned and grieved his whole life, and caused others to mourn and grieve. It was the name he’d had the longest, and the one his friends called him by. He’d keep Shigaraki too, but only because he secretly liked the nicknames his League came up with. Shig. Shigs. Shiggy. Even Shiggy-kun. He'd only let Toga call him that one, though.

As soon as he’d decided what to call himself, he felt himself… come back together. He was a person again, not a ball of misery.

“I’m Tomura Shigaraki,” he told the hands, and felt them pat him approvingly. One even ruffled his hair.

“Good going, Shig! Knew you could do it! You’re the strongest guy in the world!”

“We’re rooting for you, Shiggy babe. Even if you can’t see us, we’re here. Keep fighting!”

His eyes widened. He knew them now. “Big Sis? Jin?” No answer came, except in the sensation of being pushed gently, until he fell into his body… or something close enough to his own skin that he felt relatively comfortable in it.

There was a breeze here, smelling like stardust and tasting like ozone. The ground beneath him was gritty. Was he where the Vestiges had been? It felt kind of like that, where he’d fought All For One for control of himself. No… No, he wasn’t there. Deeper than his inner self too, deeper than where Midoriya had punched through to talk to him. Somewhere adjacent to both, though. Well, nothing for it but to look around.

With an effort, he opened his eyes.

It took all his self control not to scream. He was not alone. There were... things? beings? people? all around him. Some looked human or at least human-shaped; others looked like they'd started out human, but had been broken apart and the pieces reassembled with new parts like Frankenstein's monster on crack; and a few were nothing but smears of color and light.

Rivet Stab and Air Cannon! he realized, seeing one with wings made of jagged red and black spears, and another with little tornadoes for hands. These were quirks! All the quirks All For One has stolen. There were more here than he’d realized. It kinda made sense he’d be here with them. Quirks were a piece of a person, after all, and right now Tomura was a fragment of himself.

The more he thought, the more he pulled more of himself together and the more solid he felt. As he became more present, his vision sharpened and something else came into focus: All the quirks were wrapped in chains the ugly, red brown color of dried blood. His eyes lingered on those chains, following the links up as they stretched into an infinity of roiling dark, then back down to the mass of stolen quirks.

Stolen and broken, he thought. Just like me.

A smile began to grow on what he assumed was his face.

These are my kind of people.

"Hey!” The quirks turned toward him, and his smile turned into a grin. “You guys interested in a co-op?"

They stared at him. Or, he assumed they were staring. Not all of them had eyes. He could feel the weight of their attention, and not all of it was friendly. That was fine. He, Dabi, and Toga had tried to kill each other right out of the gate, after all. What was a little murderous intent between allies? He tried to push himself up off the ground and that terrible pain lanced through him again. This time, at least, his screams weren’t silent.

Shaking, he looked at himself. Ghostly barbed wire wrapped him from head to toe. It even pierced through him in places, digging into his body, the thorns dripping poison that smelled like honey and ate away him like his mentor’s words. How fitting. With every drop of venom, he listened again to All For One.

“Poor Tenko Shimura… Benefitting from my guidance every step of the way but amounting to nothing!” “Not a single one of your choices have been your own.” “The tragedies. The ordeals. The rejection. The validation. All granted by me.” “I sought a seedbed fertile for hatred to grow.”

This time, Tomura didn’t let the pain overwhelm him. He let it fuel him. Gritting his teeth in a rictus smile, he fought one arm free of the barbed wire, seized the sickly metal, and began to tear it from his flesh. Panting, he pulled and pulled, yanking when he had to, tears mixing with blood until he laughed from the pain. “You want hatred, Sensei? Oh, I’ll give you hatred! I’m such a good little student! I always listen to what you teach me!”

With a final wrench, he pulled the last length free and tossed it away. He was so tired. So very tired. But he wasn’t going to lay here and stop existing. He’d tried that. It hadn’t helped.

“Don’t give up,” he giggled, and forced himself upright. “Stand up and begin again! Ain’t that right, Sensei? Good lesson. Liked that one. And I did it plenty of times without you! Got lost once or twice, but I found my way again. So what if I needed help? You needed plenty of help when All Might turned your face into a potato and ruined your lungs. I wasn’t the one sucking on life support. At least the people with me actually liked me, you ballsack looking motherfucker!”

Looking up again, Tomura found a quirk standing in front of him. It looked like a cat themed magic girl. It took his muddled brain a second, but then he remembered. “Hey, Search. Nice kitty.”

It? She? Looked at him, hands on her hips, then tapped the chains wrapping around her body.

“Huh?”

She tugged the chains until they rattled, then gave him what felt like a pointed look. Ah. Okay, he understood now. They’d passed murderous intent and were now in cooperation mode. Reaching out, he grabbed the chain with both hands. One link was as long as his middle finger and thick around as his thumb! How was he supposed to get this off without hurting the quirk? He didn’t have Decay here. He had to try though.

As he ran his hands over it, he realized that the chain felt… brittle? Like it was rusty. Carefully, he began to twist and flex it, link by link, until one began to crack. Eagerly, he worked faster, bending it harder, even trying to pull it apart. Then, unexpectedly, it snapped in half! That single broken link was a catalyst, the others breaking apart in a chain reaction until Search was free!

She jumped up and down, clapping her paws as her form became clearer and clearer, until she really did look like that cat themed hero. When she’d finished celebrating, she got up on her tiptoes and kissed his forehead— which was gross because he was all bloody and sweaty, and also because it made him blush. Then she took his hand and her body shifted, twisting and growing thinner until it became— a red thread?

It was possibly the most beautiful thing he’d seen in a long damn time. A single thread of a glorious red stretching up into infinity, dark as garnets and blood, glowing like a sunset’s reflection on the sea.

His favorite color.

Wrapping the thread around his wrist so he wouldn’t lose it, he turned to the next quirk. It was exhausting, and seemed to take forever to find each weakened link, but he wasn’t about to quit. With every quirk he freed, a thread was added to the one around his wrist. The thread became a string, then a cord, then a braid, and then a rope. He could feel tension building up between him and whatever was at the other end. Tomura could guess what— or rather, who was at the other end.

He was looking forward to finding out for sure.

There was a tense moment near the end when he reached the quirks that had belonged to One For All. “Well?” he demanded, looking at them, counting silently. There was one missing, and he didn’t know if he was disappointed by that or not. Tomura wasn’t sure if he could handle seeing his grandmother right now.

The quirks looked at each other, then nodded, and let him put his hands on their chains. These ones, at least, were thin and flaking already. Newly forged, if he had to guess the reason. They broke easily, and five more threads were added to his rope.

Then there was only one.

This quirk looked so broken. Hunched shoulders, too skinny with a jutting collarbone and visible ribs, hair all clumpy and unkempt, knobby fingers covering its face like a weeping angel, and its edges were in a constant state of fraying.

Or Decaying.

“You caused me a lot of problems, you know,” he told it quietly. The quirk huddled in on itself even more, trembling from top to bottom. “My family, my dog, my favorite controller… all of them dust. But it’s not like you had a choice either. You didn’t pick me. You weren’t even whole. But… looking back, I think you at least tried your best to keep me safe.” The trembling didn’t stop, but the covered face turned toward him. “Half of the problem was me. I was always fighting you, subconsciously rejecting you. I mean, kinda obvious why, but it didn’t really help me. You know what, though?” And now Tomura smiled again, the memory of Deika City still a shining moment for him. “We were pretty badass once we got in sync.”

The quirk stood up straight, lowering its fingers enough to peer at him with dull eyes the same color as his.

Tomura held out his free hand. “This time, let’s choose each other. I want you. No one fits me better than you. We’re two pieces broken by the same hand, two things reshaped to become weapons and not allowed to become more. No one understands us better than we do. Please, be my partner again?”

Decay skipped shaking his hand and instead threw itself at him, wrapping twiggy arms around his neck and pressing its face against his chest. Tomura bit his lip so he didn’t make any more pathetic noises and hugged his quirk as tightly as he could. “I missed you,” he admitted. “Thank you.”

A breath, then Decay slipped back inside him, settling under his skin like a contented cat. And it didn’t itch at all.

Tomura felt whole for the first time in months.

Looking up, he tugged on the rope, pulling it taut until it twanged and vibrated, and visualized the roiling clouds parting. They did, and with them went the empty, windy darkness around him.

Once again, he was in that weird half-world of vestiges and the subconscious, and before him was the broad back of his former teacher. It was made of broken things, as always.

“Broken things and stolen things and really ugly faces, that’s what little AFOs are made out of!” he sang to himself. The shining red rope led straight up. Well, he was already exhausted, bleeding, emotionally drained to the point of near delirium, and running on fumes.

So, nothing new.

Tying the rope around his waist so he could have both hands free, Tomura began to climb. It wasn't easy, but what in his life had been? Still, it sucked. His bare feet and hands were soon torn to ribbons, the blood making his grip slippery. Legs and arms shook like branches in the wind, so much he was sure they would snap. His lungs burned, each breath a torment rattling through a bone dry throat. The rope was his saving grace. He soon found it acted like a belaying rope at a climbing wall, taking just that little bit of effort from him, keeping the tension when he paused to rest. And, when he accidentally rested his forehead against it, he thought he could hear voices whispering encouragement.

Wishful thinking or not, he would take what he could get. And he climbed.

Then, at last, he was there. “Heh… my turn to get in his head,” he chuckled, then shouted, “HEY! TRY TO ALT-F4 ME FROM MY OWN BODY, WILL YOU?! TOO BAD! I LIVED, BITCH!”

He felt All For One’s shock, his outrage, his fury… and his fear.

God that fear was sweet.

“WHY CAN’T YOU JUST DIE, YOU PERNICIOUS VERMIN?” His teacher’s voice was a rumble of thunder across that weird world. Tomura could tell that his distraction was not a welcome one. Seemed like the heroes were still putting up a fight! He dug his bloody fingers into the false skin, hoping it hurt All For One as much as it hurt him.

“Blah blah, something something, Indomitable Will, remember?”

There was a split second of startled hesitation from All For One, and Tomura took advantage, rushing on, voice mocking and syrup sweet, “Why are you so upset, Sensei? I was always an obedient student, wasn't I? I'm just being what you made me, Sensei!” The monster's pseudo skin shattered, and not just beneath him. As Tomura’s rage swelled, every bloody hand and footprint he'd left on his climb became a conduit for Decay, and it spread with the same ferocity he'd unleashed upon awaking in the doctor's lab.

The sound of destruction was still so~ much~ fun~ to hear.

No hesitation from All For One this time, only fear. As he'd expected, the world around Tomura shook and jerked, a giant hand reaching for him, trying to swat him off or crush him. A casual touch from him and Decay turned it to dust.

Smiling grimly at the sound of All For One’s agonized screams, Tomura concentrated Decay around his hand until he felt like it might come apart. He might not walk away from this, but neither would the thing who killed his family and ruined his life. There wouldn’t even be a sliver of an echo of a memory left behind. He wouldn’t allow it.

“I am a weapon forged from pain and hate. I destroy what I hate, and I hate you more than anything, Sensei.”

Rearing back, Tomura Shigaraki put the full force of his non-corporeal body into the strike, plunging his hand into All For One’s skull, unleashing Decay and with it every ounce of hatred, rage, despair, and hope he had.

“Now, give me my body back already. I have people I need to see.”

4 notes · View notes