The coordinates had led them to an abandoned rail yard on the outer edge of a city whose name none of them had bothered to confirm. The place was exactly what it looked like from the outside: three decades of industrial neglect concentrated into rusted infrastructure, collapsed loading bays, and weeds that had grown tall enough to obscure anything below shoulder height.
The moon was out but thin, and the nearest street lamp was far enough away that it contributed nothing useful.
Shigaraki stood in the middle of the central clearing between two gutted freight carriages, one hand in his pocket and scratching his neck with the other. Compress had positioned himself near the mouth of the loading bay on lookout while Rappa sat on a piece of collapsed railing, unbothered by the rust transferring to his clothing.
Dabi was leaning against a freight car with a cigarette he hadn't lit. He didn't particularly want to smoke. He just needed something to do with his hands while he thought. Deidoro .... Was laid out drunk on rappa's shoulder.
"He said forty minutes," Compress remarked, checking his watch. "It has been fifty-three."
"I know." Shigaraki didn't look up, remembering the word Giran had used when introducing him.
"Twice has a different relationship with time than most people." The broker said while lighting yet another cigarette. "You'll come to notice the more you work together. All in all, things will probably work out fine."
'Dammit.' Shigaraki scratched harder. Their current location was secure, as far as he could tell. Off any grid, no ambient surveillance, no populated zones within visual range. Still, he didn't like being in an unfamiliar place like this.
"He better be here," Shigaraki muttered, mostly to himself. Luckily, the worst case scenario didn't happen. Twelve minutes later, a figure appeared at the gap in the perimeter fence, sprinting as if he were being chased. Behind him, a shorter figure kept easy pace.
"TWICE IS HERE! TWICE IS THE WORST NAVIGATOR IN HISTORY! TWICE FOUND IT IMMEDIATELY!" Twice announced as he ducked through the fence gap. "Also I brought someone. Don't be weird about it."
Behind him, a blonde girl wearing a yellow sweater over a uniform skipped over. She looked around, took inventory of the faces present, and smiled.
"Hi!" She pressed both hands to her cheeks. "This is so exciting. I've never joined a villain organization before. Well. Officially. There was one time that was sort of unofficial but it only lasted four days and one of them was in a coma so I'm not really counting it." She dropped her hands. "I'm Toga. Himiko Toga. I like blood and love, which are basically the same thing if you think about it the right way. After all, life is hard enough alone as it is, so I wanna feel loved wherever I go."
Her gold eyes moved across the group and settled somewhere just past Shigaraki's shoulder with a look of warm high enthusiasm. "You're the leader, right handyman? I'm so excited to be joining your league of villains."
Silence. Rappa looked at her. Then at Twice. Then back at her.
"Twice, who is this?" Shigaraki asked.
"Hmm? Isn't that obvious enough? Or maybe it isn't obvious at all." Twice planted both hands on his mask."WELL, .. This is our new recruit I picked up."
"Seriously?" Dabi said, stubbing out the cigarette butt.
"A whacky middle schooler is joining us now?"
"Hey, What's wrong with youth?"
"Not much. But now I'm seriously reconsidering my joining you guys if you let this kid in."
"Oh come on!" Twice yelled indignantly. "She can definitely be useful, right Shigaraki? No she can't!!"
"Yeah. Of course I can." Toga nodded vigorously. "I'm really dedicated. After all, I don't have any ulterior motives. If anything, I just wanna help people live in this dumb world. Just like someone I saw on television recently. A very interesting someone. I want to find him, and talk to him, and probably take all of his blood. Not in a bad way. In the best way." She smiled again, radiant and completely sincere. "Is that alright?"
"Great." Dabi drawled. "Here I thought all she would be was a dragging pain. Turns out she's a psycho too."
"I'M VERY NORMAL!" Toga declared proudly.
"SHE'S ABSOLUTELY NOT NORMAL!" Twice shouted at the same time.
Shigaraki closed his eye for a moment and scratched harder.
The last few days had consisted of dead heroes, burned hideouts, Nomu in storage marbles, Dabi being insufferable, and a drunken villain who leaked alcohol from his pores.
A crazy schoolgirl barely registered anymore. Only one question mattered. "Is she trustworthy."
"YES! She's absolutely trustworthy!" Twice immediately planted both hands on top of his mask.
"100%! She's a liability!" Twice nodded vigorously, saluting with both hands. "Giran vouched for her himself! She's totally on our side, Shigaraki. She's got a great quirk and an even better personality! She's completely unhinged!"
Shigaraki remained silent for a few moments.
Then ... "Fine."
Toga's eyes lit up. "Really?!"
"You're annoying already," Shigaraki said flatly. "If you become a problem, I'll kill you."
Toga clasped her hands behind her back and rocked on her heels.
"Aww."
"You're really sweet."
Dabi nearly choked. Rappa burst out laughing.
"OH HOW SWEET! SHE'S GOING TO DIE!"
"NO ... NO .. SHE'S GOING TO FIT RIGHT IN!"
Shigaraki ignored them. Instead, he pulled out the cheap burner phone Garaki had used before.
The number was still saved. After a moment's hesitation, He called.
The line connected almost immediately.
"My, my." The old man's voice came through. "So everyone has gathered?"
"Yeah," Shigaraki replied. "What do we do now? This is the middle of nowhere."
"Splendid. There is no need to worry about transportation, my boy. I have already bypassed the logistics for you. Hold on a minute... let me just adjust the transmission frequency... and... there."
There was a short pause on the line. And...
"There." The voice returned.
Everyone waited. However ... Nothing happened.
"...Is something supposed to happen?" Dabi frowned.
Compress looked around.
"The scenery appears remarkably unchanged."
Twice scratched his head. "Yeah Shigaraki, who's this old guy anywa—" He froze the next second, a strange expression appearing across his masked face.
"Huh?" Then ....
BURP.
Black sludge spilled out from beneath his mask. Twice's eyes bulged.
"WHAT THE HELL?!" He grabbed his throat but more black ooze leaked from his mouth without fail.
"Huh?" Toga blinked. Then she slapped both hands over her lips.
"Mmph?!" Dark liquid seeped between her fingers.
"The hell is this?!" Dabi spat a mouthful of black sludge onto the dirt.
Compress similarly found himself in the same state.
"This is highly undignified!"
Shigaraki's eye widened as the same ooze erupted from within his throat. He tried to spit it out .. But it kept coming.
"Doctor." His voice was distorted.
"What the hell did you ..."
The old man chuckled. "Now then. Let's meet face to face and talk properly."
Shigaraki had enough time to form the beginning of a thought before the darkness took him.
The next moment however, it quickly receded as Shigaraki felt his feet hit solid ground.
He coughed a thin trail of black sludge onto a pristine, polished steel floor. Around him, the other members of the League were collapsing onto their hands and knees, gagging and wiping the remnants of the warp from their clothes.
"Gross! Gross! Gross!" Toga wailed, aggressively scraping her tongue with her fingernails as she stood up. "That was horrible! What the hell even is that? It ruined my cardigan! BLEGH!"
"Ugh! It smells like rotten fish! It's delicious!" Twice screamed through his mask. "Oh .. Everything is super glowy right now ... And constrained."
Shigaraki ignored him, his red eye widening as he took in his new surroundings. They were standing in a massive, cold, subterranean lair that dwarfed the hidden locomotive plant they had abandoned in Yokohama. The walls were constructed of reinforced, military-grade blast steel, lined with endless rows of blinking green diagnostic monitors. But it was the inventory that made Shigaraki freeze.
Everywhere he looked, towering glass cylinders stretched into the darkness of the ceiling. Inside the murky green amniotic fluid floated dozens of Nomu.
"More Nomu..." Shigaraki whispered, his voice echoing in the cavernous space. "Then this must be..."
"WE ARE IN A VILLAIN LAIR! This is the best place I have ever been! I hate everything about it! I want to live here!"
"Correction. This is another one of All For One's secret research bases." a voice interrupted from the far end of the central console, drawing their collective attention.
Sitting on a chair behind a massive diagnostic terminal, was Dr. Kyudai Garaki. A man who spotted a short, stout frame clad in a pristine white lab coat. His bulbous, circular glasses glinted under the harsh fluorescent lights, and a wide, unsettling grin stretched beneath his thick mustache.
"Shigaraki... is this the old guy you were talking with on the phone?" Twice asked, instinctively shifting into a defensive stance while pulling a spare measuring tape from his pocket.
Tomura's eyes narrowed to slits as he adjusted the plaster hand over his face. "Doctor."
"It's been a while, Shigaraki. Are your father and the rest doing well?" Garaki asked, gesturing vaguely to the hands clamped across Tomura's upper body.
"Huh?" Tomura looked down at the pale fingers gripping his shoulders. "Oh... yeah. They are."
"That's good," Garaki nodded, then turned his gaze toward Mr. Compress. "You can remove the Nomu you are hauling out now. Place them at the center of the empty tube spots I have arranged over there before releasing them."
The doctor pointed to a dark corner of the facility where several vacant containment units stood waiting with open valves. "If you leave them forever in stasis inside those little marbles of yours, the cellular degeneration will rot their nervous systems within seventy-two hours. Can't have those precious pieces wasted."
Compress blinked beneath his mask, looking at Shigaraki for confirmation. Shigaraki gave a nod, and Compress walked toward the designated terminal to begin un-compressing the Yokohama inventory.
Toga, who had recovered enough to look around properly, drifted toward the nearest tank with wide-eyed attention. Looking as if she had just seen something extraordinary. "These are the things that you guys use to fight heroes right?" She pressed one finger against the glass. The thing inside didn't react. "I saw them on the mews. They're sort of beautiful in a terrible way."
Dabi looked at her sideways. "You and I have very different definitions of beautiful."
"Why, everyone has different views on what's beautiful." Toga replied pleasantly, and moved to the next tank.
Shigaraki walked toward the center of the chamber, stopping equidistant between the tank rows and the workstation where Garaki was already pulling up files. "Where have you been, Doctor?" He demanded.
"How come you didn't reach out to me and Kurogiri when master died?"
"In hiding, of course," Garaki replied without a hint of shame, attention on his keyboard to monitor the incoming telemetry from Compress's marbles. "I had no desire to announce my location during the chaos of the last week. Too many variables moving at once. The risk of being found before I was ready to be found was unacceptably high."
"Hence why I summoned you here via quirk transmission when I was ready. After all, I can trust you, Shigaraki."
The doctor's eyes flicked over Dabi, Toga, and the others. "Not very sure about the rest of you, though, as this is my first time meeting you. However, since Tomura has decided to bring you into the fold, I have faith that you are all... sufficiently useful."
Garaki lied through his teeth. In reality, he had zero trust in Shigaraki's current judgment.
His willingness to bring this ragtag group into this secondary facility stemmed entirely from the fact that he had already screened their background files through All For One's network and Giran had confirmed their psychological profiles.
Furthermore, this lab was miles away from his primary research facility under Jaku Hospital. If these idiots proved to be a liability, they could be disposed of without compromising the High-End project.
Twice raised a hand. "Quick question. Who exactly are you? Because you teleported my entire digestive system somewhere and back, and that feels like a conversation we should have had first."
"I am a close aide of All For One," the old man continued, spinning his pneumatic chair around to face them fully. "For security purposes, you can call me... Daruma Ujiko. Yes, that's right. That name will do perfectly for now."
"I was All For One's closest scientific advisor and the architect of everything you see in this room." He gestured broadly at the tanks. "Everything the League has used that originated from his infrastructure passed through my hands first. The Nomu. The facility in Yokohama. The intelligence that made Shigaraki's early operations possible." He paused. "You are all, in various ways, working with my tools. It seemed appropriate that we meet."