Chapter Text
Note: I have had the origin of Quirks and the ramifications of the Quirk Collapse mentioned in cannon planned out since basically the start of the fic. Any sort of political things that have happened IRL in the past three years have absolutely nothing to do with anything in the story.
-Rain of Sins-
-Shifting Winds: Ch 6-
Eve was sleeping again, she hadn’t had a “normal” dream before, so she had no idea if she could just instinctively tell when she wasn’t awake, but it was easy enough to recognize the feeling of something else poking the back of her mind.
Once again she was in the weird impossible-room, with strange not-corners, and windows that looked out into nothing. This time she wasn’t caught off guard or scared of what was happening to her, she was calm and in her right mind.
Unfortunately this time was much worse than the previous time, due to one single reason.
“I want my father.”
The lab scientist shifted awkwardly on her feet.
“You don’t have a father. There was no sperm donated in your creation, and no female gave birth to you, so by definition you don’t have any parents.”
“I don’t care, I want my father.”
“If you could please just answer some questions-”
“I’m not saying anything unless it’s to my father.”
“Please, I’m just-”
“I want my father.”
The poor lady who was just doing her job sighed in defeat after hours of exactly zero progress.
“It’s as Mr Midoriya said, the subject is acting irrationally and responds unpredictably to logical prompting.”
“IT’S NOT UNPREDICTABLE!” Eve shouted, about to pull her hair out in frustration. “I JUST WANT TO SEE MY DAD!”
“Advising more time to stabilize before attempting contact again, and to send an adult male next time, the subject appears to have problems with women. Cutting connection.”
Eve picked up the nearest object, a chair, and hurled it at the scientist as the room around her fell apart.
-Rain of Sins-
“The senate is in uproar after the most recent attempt to make a governing coalition collapsed. The “Japan First Front” fell apart just after achieving a third of the seats needed to install a new PM, with yet another leader proving unable to wrangle the dozens of smaller parties to work together.”
The old radio droned in the corner or the luxurious dining hall.
“I-Itadakimasu!”
Ochako clapped her hands in thanks for the meal before picking up silverware worth more than her TV and taking a bite of the food in front of her.
The meat was delicious. It was perfectly seasoned and slow roasted to perfection. It has just enough fat and juice to it to add flavor and keep the meat juicy without making it soggy and unpleasant.
It was easily the most expensive meal she’d had in years.
It tasted like wet chalk in her mouth.
Across from her, The Sovereign of Sin, in his full Villain getup, did not mirror her thanks for the meal. In fact, he showed no interest at all in the food, and his plate sat far enough away that he would have to physically pull iit closer if he didn't want to eat it at an awkward angle.
His focus was entirely on the man at the head of the table.
All for One was sipping his wine, and acting like there was nothing suspicious at all about the random meeting he had summoned them to, out of the blue.
“Excuse me, uhm… Is there a reason for this?” Ochako tentatively raised her hand to her eye level, as if she were in a classroom.
“Yes, I would like to know that as well. I had to pause important work to book a last minute flight back to Japan.” Which was genuinely annoying to do, since using Adam to warp back would have only taken seconds, but would have shown some of his cards to AfO.
“What wrong, little Sovereign? Is the food not to your liking? I understand my Puppet might have a Numb sense of taste, but surely a man of your supposed wit could enjoy a meal as fine as this.” All for One gestured to the empty chairs at the table. “With so many pawns incapacitated and Tomura out of play until he proves himself, I just wanted a nice get together, where our remaining members could get acquainted and get used to working with one another.”
It was entirely obvious that this was complete bullshit, All for One wasn’t even trying to make himself sound convincing, but it was also equally as obvious that he didn’t care at all. There wasn’t exactly any way for either of them to call him out on it.
Izuku looked at the empty seat beside him.
“Where’s Ujiko? If this is a meeting for the remaining members of your circle, shouldn’t he be here?”
“He’s busy.”
The scientist frowned. He didn’t like that answer, but he was more occupied with trying to think of what All for One’s plan was (with mildly more success than Ochako). All for One wanted him to know about this girl, he wanted him to have to plan around her, but why? Why not keep her hidden from him until the last moment when he needed her?
It didn’t make sense.
Was All for One trying to set him up against UA? No, there was something deeper at play.
So what was it!?
Izuku shook his head. Whatever it was, he would deal with it when it popped up again. Staying here was just playing into All for One’s hand, and wasting his time.
“Is that all? There’s nothing else you need from me?”
All for One stared at him with cold red eyes as he slowly took a sip of his wine.
“No.”
“Then I’ll be taking my leave.” Izuku said curtly as stood up from the table, and left the room, his food cold and completely untouched.
All for One watched him go with amusement.
“He’s the one you said would betray you? The Sovereign?” Ozhako asked, once Izuku had left.
“Indeed.”
“Do you know what his plan is? Should we do something about it?” She asked reluctantly. “I don’t feel like dying to the guy who took down Japan’s number two Hero, and then hunted him down a second time when he survived.”
“His plan is to carefully distill the most powerful quirks possible, imbue them into living weapons of genetic engineering, and then lease an army upon Japan that will not eat, sleep, or rest until I am dead.”
Ochako found her mouth suddenly very dry.
“Wh-What do we do?”
“...We do nothing about it. In fact, everything is just about done on my end, and I’m waiting for him to finish preparing my gift for me.”
“Your gift? Why would an army be…” The gravity puppet trailed off as it clicked in her head.
“He’s going to make the most powerful quirks in the world, and then deliver them directly to you.”
“Yes.” All for One gave her a horrifyingly genuine smile. “Yes he is.”
-Rain of Sins-
Having to return back to Japan on a dime was annoying, but it did let him pick up a few things before his trip to find the origin of quirks- most notably, the delay let him pick up some extra hands- or rather, extra claws.
Crows bickered and hissed as they were herded into large shipping containers that the adam network would warp out of the country, and could be discreetly sailed north.
The door behind him opened, and Kuin walked up behind him, standing dutifully to his side with a clipboard in hand.
Izuku just sighed. “What is it now?”
“The team trying to contact EV3 is having problems.”
“What project of mine isn’t having problems, Kuin?”
The Queen chewed on her lip and decided to push off telling him how his honest attempt to fix whatever was wrong with the Himiko girl’s head had wound up with her brain dead, and pushed into the rapture program as bio material.
“The rouge project is letting our team connect to her interface, but she’s refusing to speak to them.”
“I told you she was unstable.”
“She’s asking for you, sir.”
“...As I said, unstable.”
-Rain of Sins-
Far north of Japan, on the worlds’ east most edge, on a small rocky peninsula, jutting out from a vast frozen wasteland, sat the sleepy town of Anadyr. At its height before the Quirk Collapse, it was a bustling city, home to over ten thousand residents, but these days it held only a fraction of that.
The port town lay half-buried in snow and ice, clinging to the edge of civilization like a ghost of the old world, a relic of the lawless days when the apocalypse had swallowed everything whole. Rusted shipping containers and forgotten factories lined the port, forming a makeshift labyrinth of alleys and dead ends where thieves and smugglers vanished as quickly as shadows. Snow covered houses half repaired with scavenged metal and driftwood formed the heart of the town.
The town itself felt frozen in time, hemmed in by icy tundra on one side and the steel-gray sea on the other. Docks, broken and sagging under heavy layers of frost, still managed to host a procession of decrepit boats and icebreakers that slowly pulled into port, transporting black market goods and contraband from all across Asia and the Indo-Pacific.
In the frozen husk of sparsely inhabited Siberia, nation states never managed to establish a firm hold, and the Quirk Collapse never truly ended. Towns like these attracted people who wanted to hide from the eyes of society. Pirates, smugglers, criminal gangs, Villains, and worse made this place their home.
Despite its grim existence, the town was vibrant in a twisted way. Makeshift markets sprang up here and there, selling drugs, stolen fuel, ancient tech, and questionable food. Old neon signs, scavenged from some long-dead cities, flickered erratically above bars and pubs.
Inside the largest of these pubs, the “Leaky Oil”, a dozen shadowy mirages hurried around delivering stained cups and stale food to the rotting wooden tables. These marriages were the Quirk of the owner, and mirrored him near perfectly, a short grimy man with elongated ears and wrinkly skin.
This was Hugo O'Dooley, the oldest resident in the town, and the merchant of the most dangerous commodity found on the frozen ports. Information.
The walls of the pub were lined with trinkets and baubles that Hugo collected obsessively. They ranged from garbage to artifacts that some museums might genuinely be interested in, such as the mangled mechanical arm of the last Quirk Warlord that had tried to conquer Anadyr, and a broken metal plate of a naval gun, from the time that the Japanese had attempted a blockade.
This was someone who had seen almost everything that Anadyr had to offer, and had lived through terrible times that few others even remembered anymore, but even he paused to look when the door to the pub creaked open, and a man in a dark coat stepped into his home.
The man who walked in was clad in dark clothing, with a mask on the bottom of his face, a mechanical tail trailing behind him, and was wearing strange technology that you just didn’t see in the wasteland.
Hugo dismissed one of his marriage clones to the kitchen, and personally took up position behind the bar himself to greet the newcomer.
“Greetin’s outsider. What brings you to Anadyr?”
The Sovereign took a few seconds to puzzle together the broken and degraded Russian, before responding clearly and bluntly, so there could be no mistaking what he wanted.
“Tell me what you know about the city of Omsk.”
-Rain of Sins-
“The visitor to her most royal majesty may now step forward and pay his respects.”
Four servants pushed with all their might, and the mammoth sized doors to the throne room swung open. But the visitor who stepped forward was not one that the Tsarina had seen before, he was not a rival warlord coming to grovel and beg for mercy, nor was he from one of the surrounding areas to bring the mandated tribute.
Instead the man who stepped forward was like a ghost, a dark figure surrounded in a dark cloud that slithered across the red carpet of her throne room like a creeping shadow. The only part of him she could clearly make out was the top half of his body, his glowing emerald eyes, and the something that moved through the fog behind him.
Her trusty loyal brother stepped forward from beside her throne and loudly did his job as her Royal Herald.
“You stand before Tsarina Veronica the First, rightful queen of the frozen lands, who has decided to grace you with her presence. You may now bow before her royal majesty.”
The Sovereign of Sin did not bow, he merely looked around the room, unimpressed.
Large pillars, tarnished and chipped, rose unevenly toward a ceiling marred with cracks and darkened by mold. Faded banners hung around the room in tatters, looking like they had been entirely sewn back together from scraps of similar looking fabric. Gemstones littered the walls, pried from smashed sculptures and broken churches from the lands that had been conquered
A deep crimson rug rolled down the middle of the room, and along the sides were dozens of massive mutants that were too twisted by their quirks, Izuku could hardly call them human anymore. Some were animalistic, some were insectoid, some were made of inorganic materials, some were lithe and speedy, some were bulky and strong, the only thing they all had in common was the murky blue film that lidded their eyes.
In the center sat the throne, massive and gaudy, encrusted with jewels and polished metals. It leaned slightly, its frame twisted from shoddy construction, and on it sat “Tsarina Veronica”- a deeply unappealing woman covered in such gaudy clothes and thick sheets of makeup that Izuku couldn’t even speculate on what she actually looked like beneath it.
“You may now bow before her royal majesty.” The herald stressed.
Once again, Izuku did not bow.
“You are before her highness! Bow!”
Veronica scoffed and cut him off with a lazy wave of her hand.
Her brother was a loyal pup, but he was also rather bad at everything he tried to do. It was one of the reasons he was the only person in her castle not under the control of her power, frankly he was too incompetent to assassinate her.
(Oh but she did just love the screams he made when she had him punished for thinking about it.)
“You have requested an audience with me, stranger. You stand in the hall of God, and his chosen, royal, autocratic Empress. It was by my hand that the armies of the west and their ‘Heroes’ were thrown back across the great mountains ten years ago. It is by threat of my legions that tribute is sent to my castle from across my lands. It is to my name and picture that the people pray. Who are you to stand before me?”
"My name is unimportant, I am not but a simple scientist. A geneticist born with no quirk, and with no true power beyond my means.” The Sovereign spoke, finally bowing slightly with a slowed hand to his chest. “I have come seeking information on the city of Omsk to the south, and the people that inhabit it. That is all.”
The Tsarina scoffed and raised her nose in disgust at the name.
“That ugly place? It’s nothing but a black smudge on my beautiful white landscape, a pile of ancient guns that misfire a third of the time and fanatical fools who don’t even know how they work. All they care about is their precious purity, ugh as if anyone who could view a power such as mine as a curse could possibly have a brain.
Izuku took his time thinking that over, putting it together with the other clues he had collected so far.
“Thank you, that was all.”
“No, thank you .” The woman purred from her throne. “It’s so rare that we get outsiders here. I think you should stay.”
“I can’t. I’m busy.”
“Ohohoho, I wasn’t asking. You’ve been near me long enough, you don’t get to disobey your Empress.” Veronica waved her fingers at him tauntingly, the many rings glittering under the light as her eyes gleamed unnaturally. “Kneel.”
The Sovereign met her gaze with cold eyes.
“No.”
“Wh-What? You don’t get to disobey!” Veronica roared as she stood to her feet. “ALL BEFORE ME SHALL KNEEL!”
Her anger was so righteous, and her voice was so thunderous, that even the massive mutants flinched under its weight.
…The mutants… flinched.
One by one the massive behemoths looked down at themselves in confusion, and slowly stretched limbs that were under their control for the first time in decades. And more than that, the Tsarina had just given a command, and their bodies hadn’t automatically obeyed.
Veronica’s confident expression melted away as she watched the blue haze fade from her servants’ eyes.
“What are you doing? At attention! Stop moving!”
The Sovereign of Sin raised an unimpressed eyebrow as his cloud of Entropy slowly seeped further around the room.
The mutants gradually began moving towards the throne, and Izuku turned and left, toppling a Warlord simply through the weight of his steps.
-Rain of Sins-
The church bells echoed over the hills, as peasants from the nearby towns frantically rushed inside the ancient cathedral that had managed to weather the collapse.
Atop the church, a pastor by the name of Alexander watched the skyline while clutching a scrappy tome that was nearly faded past the point of readability.
“Father! Everyone is inside, and we’ve sealed the doors.” A nun said as she stepped out onto the roof with him. “Now, please, can you tell us what’s going on?”
“...When I was a boy, my father used to tell me that our church was a part of a great town that stretched from here all the way past the horizon.” Alexander raised a hand, as if cradling the setting sun in his palm. “But the people of that great town grew lax in their duty, they became twisted and degenerate in the eyes of the Lord. And so the Lord struck them down, sending pestilence over pestilence over our land as punishment for their decadence.”
A boom of thunder drowned him out, as a small cluster of clouds rapidly began ballooning out into a massive storm.
With every flash of lighting, distant shapes were visible- Wretched forms with abyssal black wings began flocking out of the storm, and swarming overhead like vultures,as they slowly traveled west, crawling across the sky like dark tendrils.
“The Lord has sent another blight. Something wicked this way comes.”
-Rain of Sins-
Ivan crashed through the barracks door, his heartbeat pounding in his ears, as his feet thundered down the broken concrete roads.
Sirens screamed, and anti air guns boomed, launching volley after volley of airburst shells into the dark storm clouds overhead that had enveloped the entire city into a massive snowstorm. The radio was filled with panicked chatter and frantic cursing of troops as the things swept down out of the clouds at them.
Ivan skidded to a stop as he entered the hangar, nearly slipping in his not-quite-fitting-boots. The terminal was ancient, a quarter of the pixels on the screen were dead, and all the keys were so worn away that the letters weren’t readable anymore. But that didn’t matter, because Ivan did not know that it was a “terminal”, he did not know what it was supposed to do, he did not understand how the machine operated.
He input the exact pattern that his commanding officer had taught him- a pattern that had been passed down for over 200 years, and the metal door to the hangar lurched open with a horrible scraping sound as the rusty machines into the roof reeled it in.
Ancient tanks, kept in service through endless cannibalization of one another for parts, stormed out of the opening, their engines sputtering in protest but forced to carry on through the unknown wizardry of the mechanics.
Ivan followed the tanks back outside and into a warzone.
Cannons boomed, rifles cracked, and the soldiers roared in defiance as they fought off the forces of Hell itself.
The leading tank immediately opened fire without any fear of collateral damage, and obliterated a swarm of the beasts that were foolish enough to group up on the ground.
Up on the walls, one man went down, buried under the weight of three different demons, before the grenades on his belt went off, culling the entire group at once. His sacrifice bought the time for Ivan to storm up the nearest ladder and take his place. He fired into the air without restraint, but with great aim, keeping the horrible abominations away from the anti air guns. But while the human shaped ones were difficult to hit with how fast they were going, and the blizzard affecting his aim, the smaller ones were impossible to keep from slipping through
A black bird with blue feathers tipping its wings swept down just overhead, and at it’s call a lance of lightning fell from the heavens an struck a tank, striking the ammo inside and igniting it in a massive explosion that sent the entire turret flying into the air
Ivan along with several of his brothers flinched, faltering for a brief moment, and giving the demons an opening.
Something heavy impacted him, and nearly sent him falling back over the wall, but his training kicked in and he shoved it back with all his might.
To fight was his duty, to die was his honor, to kill was his purpose.
He didn’t show any sign of pain other than clenching his teeth as razor sharp claws ripped into his stomach, and spilt his blood on the floor.
Ivan bashed the abomination over the head with his weapon, driving it back enough to level the barrel and plant three rounds into its head.
Then all at once the demons retreated into the storm, and all the guns went quiet.
All was silent.
Ivan limped to the edge of the wall and squinted out into the blizzard.
“Did ve get them?”
Through the raging blizzard, a single, dark silhouette slowly took form, a smear of abyssal black against the bone-white expanse. Every gun snapped to attention, even the anti-tank and anti-air emplacements creaking as they slowly swiveled to track the figure.
But the figure moved forward, undeterred, walking through the storm as if it didn’t even exist.
Izuku extended his arms, palms upturned, his metallic claws glinting as the blizzard swirled around him, and his voice cut through the howling wind like a hot knife through butter.
"I am the Sovereign of Sin!" He declared, his eyes gleaming like fractured emeralds. "I am here for answers, and you will give them to me."
-Chapter End-