Fanfic / All That's Left

Japan never really recovered from the chaos of the Dawn of Quirks, and somehow only got worse after All for One died. Vigilantes and villains everywhere, a government that can barely keep things stable, and now quirk suppressing and erasing bullets are in play. And in the midst of it all, a green-haired teenager called the Quirk Healer comes into play, whether he wants to or not...

All That's Left is a My Hero Academia fanfiction created by Mirrond. It is the sixth in the Curious cases of family bonds or lack thereof series.

As of 27 March 2024, the story is completed at 71 chapters and 300,252 words.

For other works by this author, see Cure to Evil, Ties that Bind (MHA), Dead on Arrival (MHA), Exiting the Stage and Answering the Call.

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This fanfic contains examples of:

• Adaptational Superpower Change:
  • Izuku does not have One for All. Instead, he has a different Quirk that allows him to restore Eraserhead's lost Quirk and modify Hagakure's Quirk so she can turn it on and off at will.
  • Hagakure can actually turn her invisibility on and off, thanks to a session with the Quirk Healer.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul:
  • Eraserhead and Ms. Joke are married instead of being acquaintances like canon, but they pretend otherwise to everybody else to see if they can figure it out on their own.
  • Uraraka and Monoma had a one-sided rivalry in canon. Here, they were ex-villain accomplices and their shared history stops Monoma's one-sided rivalry with 1-A in its tracks.
  • In canon, there is no indication of Tenya and Tsuyu being anything more than friends. Here, they're dating.
• A God Am I: According to Yoichi's vestage, his niece and Izuku's older half-sister, the original Quirk Singer, sought to use her abilities to become a goddess, as opposed to her father, All For One's, desire to become a demon lord, and even had a full-blown suicide cult centered around herself as the deity, before she was ultimately killed by a truck full of explosives, resulting in her own father opting to Unperson her.
• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: When Invincible leads the Paragons to revolt, Mera is reduced to pleading on his knees to get them to stop rebelling and start helping the HPSC deal with Geten's attack.
• All for Nothing:
  • All Might is salty that killing All for One achieved jack shit in improving Japan, and that if anything, it made things a little worse since there are more people who can move Quirks around.
  • Retroactively, this is the case for Overhaul as well. His enhancements and failsafes against Geten proved utterly insufficient once Geten wakes up, even if he didn't live long enough to see it.
• And There Was Much Rejoicing: In the final chapter, the Numbers throw a party following the death of Geten, celebrating the death of everyone who was involved in hurting them in the past.
• Anti-Climax:
  • The rivalry between the second holder of All for One and the torchbearers of One for All ends before it can really begins when All Might (as a means of 'surrender') gives Aiko a poster showing her having dominated the top heroes, and later convinces her to become a hero herself to thwart any unruly villains who don't acknowledge her. It is noted by the narration to be for the best as Japan has suffered enough from the conflict between the One for All wielders and the first All for One user.
  • Overhaul, before now seen as the biggest threat to Japan (and a recurring major threat in Mirrond's other works), is unceremoniously decapitated in a Mutual Kill with Thunderbolt. Nedzu is actually upset at how quickly he was defeated.
• Back from the Dead: Garaki fully revives Geten in Chapter 67.
• Bad Liar: When Eraserhead catches Jirou, Denki, Ayako and Hagakure vigilanting, Denki tries, poorly, to claim they were just on a walk.
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • Hound Dog says it will be a tragedy if Thunderbolt dies to a villain, but the other heroes in the chat quickly realise he considers it a tragedy because he won't get to do it himself.
  • After Wrath says she'd become the Number One Hero just to flex on everybody else, Ochako makes it seem that she agrees Wrath could achieve it, only to end with saying only Hypothermia could achieve it.
• Big Damn Heroes: Wrath and Zealot of the Numbers arrive to help the heroes during the USJ incident.
• Chick Magnet: Several of the Numbers girls are attracted to Vox. Ochako also quickly becomes attracted to him.
• Choosing Neutrality: Vox the Quirk Healer avoids both heroes and villains, and only broke that rule in Eraserhead's case to restore his Quirk because a mutual acquaintance said he was worth breaking his rules for.
• Citywide Evacuation: The government orders the evacuation of the Island of Hokkaido after Geten begins rampaging and killing indiscriminately.
• Clark Kenting: Lampshaded and played for laughs. While with Jirou, Momo, and Shouto, Aiko takes off her mask and pretends to be a different person. Momo doesn't play along, saying she's not Superman.
• Cliffhanger:
  • Chapter 27 ends with Yoichi identifying Vox as a Quirk Singer, and implied the existence of another one.
  • Chapter 37 ends with Izuku telling Monoma that his copy quirk is now a Class 6 Quirk.
  • Chapter 44 ends with Katsuki meeting Izuku for the first time in years.
  • Chapter 49 ends with Hisashi being revealed to be Revenant.
  • Chapter 62 ends with Garaki noting that Geten is one week away from being ready to be unleashed.
  • Chapter 66 ends with the narration saying that in twenty-four hours, there will be no Hokkaido.
• Compensating for Something: Aizawa thinks Nedzu is compensating for something with the size of the robots used in UA's Entrance Exams.
• Content Warnings: Chapter 56 begins with a warning that rape and sexual assault will be discussed.
• Contrived Coincidence: Blink, a minor hero, through some chance of luck of being told to bug the wrong address, accidentally manages to catch a conversation between Giran and his boss, which happens to include so many big topics of huge interest to the heroes. All Might believes it to be a sign a higher power is acting on their side.
  Nedzu: Talk about scoring an unexpected success
• Corrupt Bureaucrat: Ibara's community lost their property because some bureaucrats stole it from them.
• Cover Identity Anomaly: The best proof Marksman have that an impostor impersonated him on his day off besides his own word is that his employees noticed that the impostor dodged talking about important topics he should know that the impostor didn't. Unfortunately, on its own, that simply isn't compelling enough to get people who don't know the Numbers have a shapeshifter to look into the case.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • Ochako's and Wrath's spars are completely one-sided in Wrath's favour. And Wrath was only using ten percent of her power.
  • Wrath lays a brutal smack down on Habit Headgear when the latter interrupts hers and Carmilla's outing with Ochako and her friends with his robbery. Habit Headgear is an A-Rank Villain, and she still brutalised him in three seconds flat.
• Dark and Troubled Past: The full collective backstory of the Numbers is revealed in Chapter 53. The original group consisted of the children of villains who wanted nothing to do with their villainous parents and villainy in general. Dr Garaki helped faked their deaths when Izuku turned to him for aid, but this turned out to be a ruse for him to take them prisoner for human experimentation, a huge betrayal of the trust and faith Izuku placed in the man. Most of the other members of the Numbers were also variously bought or kidnapped by Garaki and Overhaul, if not born in the facility they were trapped in to begin with. The night of their escape was an incredibly traumatic experience to cap off an unspecified amount of time being victims of inhumane human experimentation where they lost two positive adult figures who died getting them all out.
• De-power: There are permanent Quirk-destroying bullets in the black market, which investigating heroes discovered after Eraserhead was hit with one. The only reason Eraserhead recovered his Quirk is because the Quirk Healer is able to reverse its effects.
• Death by Adaptation:
  • Yoroi Musha was killed during the MLA insurrections.
  • During Overhaul's insurrections, the casualties are as follows:
    • From the USJ Incident, Snipe, Ectoplasm, Muscular, and Chronostasis are killed in action.
    • Other casualties from other attacks include Endeavour, Burnin, and the rest of Endeavour's agency.
  • Inko and Kurogiri (who regained his original self) died in the backstory, helping the Numbers escape Garaki's lab.
  • Native is killed by Beast during the ISP-induced riot.
  • Hawks is killed by Geten during his rampage in Hokkaido.
  • Geten is killed for good by the heroes following Izuku's plan in Chapter 70.
• Death Faked for You: Several members of the Numbers were previously presumed dead due to their deaths being faked by Dr Garaki.
• Detrimental Determination: Yoichi discusses the fact that the problem with his family, himself included, is that they didn't know when to quit. Yoichi specifically calls himself out for doing a lot of horrible things to stop his brother that did not work without considering better ways, and it was All Might The Paragon who won in the end instead.
• Didn't See That Coming:
  • Vox is visibly caught off-guard at the idea that Bakugo might actually regret their shared past, even trying to atone by fighting against bullies rather than bullying other people.
  • The Nagata Fire was a clusterfuck because of several factors that Thunderbolt could not predict. He quite reasonably planned to neutralize Toxic Chainsaw by throwing him into a cistern truck. What he could not know was that the truck was smuggling untaxed fuel, which started a blaze. Toxic Chainsaw himself managed to escape injury but a nearby apartment caught fire. Toxic Chainsaw was still trying to put at least a hundred times more people at risk, so Thunderbolt had to prioritize taking him down, but he might have changed his mind had he known that the apartment owners did not comply with fire regulations, so there were far more people at risk from the blaze than he thought.
  • Asa and Cloudburst were not prepared for Rini to suddenly challenge Miruko to a duel.
  • Wrath is surprised when All Might completely agrees with her that the Quirk Restriction laws are too restrictive, and that he always voted for the Hearts and Minds Party. She actually breaks down crying in Uraraka's arms.
  • Nedzu and his entourage are dumbfounded when Koku Hanabata, head of the Hearts and Minds Party and one of the executives of the Paranormal Liberation Front, apparently having the superior bargaining position, wants to discuss the terms of the PLF's surrender.
  • No one, in-story or out, expected Overhaul to die in his second onscreen confrontation, fighting Thunderbolt of all people (who dies beheading him). Nedzu has a freak-out as his plans are ruined, and All Might freaks out when he realizes he'll have to say nice things at Thunderbolt's state funeral.
• Didn't Think This Through: All Might and his allies assumed taking out All for One would make Japan a better place. It was not until later that they realised that all it did was cause a power vacuum that the other villains, who were previously kept in check by All for One himself, tried to fill in, to the detriment of Japan as a whole. All Might himself is salty after realising that.
• Distinction Without a Difference: The Abegawa Tenchu Kai members don't have Villain names, they have Street names. It is noted by the narration that the distinction is academic.
• Do Wrong, Right: The reason Monoma left Ochako's Villain group is because when she tore down a skyscraper belonging to bad guys, she didn't invite him. Subverted. He actually left because he was annoyed the girl he liked, rather than talk to him about what was bothering her, ran off and destroyed a skyscraper instead.
• Despite the Plan: Izuku's original plan for the Numbers to escape Garaki and Overhaul quickly derailed and the only reason they managed to escape anyway is because Kurogiri's brainwashing failed and he helped them all survive.
• Dramatic Irony: In the days following the defeat of the initial attack of the Second Insurrections, the general public of Japan believes the QLF and CRC are permanently defeated but the readers and heroes know that they aren't.
• The Dreaded: The Numbers are a group of kids that terrify the local Villains and Vigilantes. Anyone that messes with them disappear without a trace. Such is their reputation that one guy who found out after he robbed a street vendor that the vendor has a Number working for him returned the stolen property three days later while begging him to not let the Numbers make him disappear.
• Dying as Yourself: As part of the Numbers' backstory, Kurogiri's brainwashing fails and he remembers his past as Shirakumo Oboro, the hero student, and spends his last moments being a Hero by helping the Numbers escape from Garaki and Overhaul.
• Equal-Opportunity Evil: The heroes speculate the Paranormal Liberation Front to be the villain organisation that appeals to people of every Quirk status, including villainous Quirks, Complex Mutant Quirks, weak Quirks, and even Quirkless.
• Entertainingly Wrong:
  • When Bunny tells Miruko she was made to be better than her, Miruko and Gang Orca immediately assume reasonable, but incorrect, things about her current caretakers when the truth is that her current caretakers rescued her from her creator.
  • After the Numbers are moved to U.A. grounds, the other U.A. students speculate about their background, with some theorizing, not unreasonably, that they are the children of politicians that were moved to safety.
• Exact Words: Ochako tells her friends that she's on a long-term potentially dangerous mission and when questioned, she tells them she was given the option to opt out. While that's true, she does not mention the opt out was only available after the first part of the mission, not before.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Beast is a monstrous villain with a long history of violence, murder and sexual assaults. However, one line he never crossed is hurting a child. He doesn't oppose other villains hurting kids, but it rankles him a lot when those same villains talk shit about Beast for his sexual assaults to the exclusion of all the other crimes he did as if that's the only thing he's done.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • Monoma thinks Midnight shouldn't be a teacher because her aesthetic and behaviour are inappropriate.
  • Black Knight was once considered for the Paragon Program, but Mera rejected him due to his instability, calling him a "school shooter waiting to happen".
• Evil Power Vacuum: All for One's death left a power vacuum in Japan's Villain society that Yoichi's vestige feared would be filled by even worse people.
• Failed a Spot Check: To Aizawa's annoyance, two of his best friends failed to notice he married Emi a year ago while All Might whom he knew for a few months at best caught on.
• Fictional Disability: Reassambler has Quirk-Induced Cenesthopathic Schizophrenia, which has the same symptoms as ordinary schizophrenia, but is caused by the way the holder's Quirk interacts with their brain instead of the usual causes. The drugs used to treat mundane schizophrenia also rarely work on the Quirk-induced version.
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: Nighteye says that it doesn't matter what kind of tragic backstory Purity has, it does not justify her becoming a hate terrorist who burns down the orphanages with the demographic she hates inside.
• Full-Circle Revolution: The vestiges in One for All discuss the fact that society went full circle when it shifted from Quirkless oppressing Quirked to Quirked oppressing Quirkless. They're not happy about this.
• The Gadfly: Both Eraserhead and Ms. Joke pretend to not be married just to mess with their friends.
• Godzilla Threshold:
  • Security Level Crimson is a strict and severe level of operational security where being found in violation of the protocols can cause the offender to be charged in an accelerated private trial where punishments start with the permanent loss of the offender's Hero Licence. It allows the investigators to not report anything to their overseeing government while still being allowed to requisition resources and information. This level of secrecy is meant only for the most extreme and delicate of investigations where any leak could spell national disaster, and invoking it for any less can result in severe punishments for the invoker. In Japan, it has only ever been invoked for operations against All for One before Nedzu invoked it for his investigation into the Numbers when it became clear that they were far far more that just a bunch of homeless kids.
  • After the second insurrections start, Nedzu is desperate enough to stop Overhaul's faction that he outright hired Clockwork Tower, a villain organisation, to help.
• Happily Adopted: Invoked. Aiko and Eri give All Might a number 1 dad coffee mug to show they want him as their adoptive father.
  • In Chapter 71, it is implied that All Might has paternal feelings for Eri and Aiko as well, in a rather Implausible Deniability kind of way.
• Head Desk: Yoichi bangs his head into a desk in the vestige space when All Might giving Aiko a poster is enough to halt the second formation of the All for One vs One for All rivalry in its tracks. When All Might convinces Aiko to be a hero instead, Yoichi bangs his head through the desk and into the floor.
• Heel Realization: Ochako mentions that Katsuki deeply regretted what he did to Izuku after he disappeared.
• Heroic Sacrifice: The entire reason that all the Numbers were able to escape Garaki and Overhaul alive is because Mischief and Kurogiri gave up their lives to make sure the kids could live.
• I Have Nothing to Say to That: Katsuki claims it is a rarity for women to tell men what they actually want. When Ochako tries to dispute that, he immediately points out her roundabout way of trying to get with the guy she is pursuing and Ochako can only be silent because she realises she can't dispute it.
• Horrible Judge of Character: Garaki completely misjudges how Geten would take being given power instead of working for it. This results in Garaki's death, along with every other remaining antagonist save Geten himself.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: When Mera receives very bad news from Nedzu regarding the Crimson-Level investigation he's doing, Mera considers straight up doing cocaine.
• If Only You Knew: Ms. Joke jokes about the possibility of All Might's real self being thinner than his public persona, not knowing it's completely true.
• I'm Taking Her Home with Me!: When Eri smiles at Ochako and uses All Might's catchphrase, Ochako finds it so adorable she wishes to take Eri home with her.
• Improperly Paranoid: Downplayed. Izuku is partially in the right to be distrustful of the Heroes, mainly because Nedzu's first impulse when he hears about the strength of the Quirks the Numbers have is to want to turn them into Heroes without thinking about what they actually want for themselves, but most of the Heroes that hears about them really do just want to help them. In Chapter 34, even Izuku admits he may have gone too far with the paranoia.
• In Love with Your Carnage: When Wrath unleashed a brutal beatdown on a villain, Ochako found it incredibly hot. Wrath reciprocates when she sees Ochako crush Muscular during the USJ Incident.
• The Infiltration: Nedzu gets Uraraka and Monoma, formerly the ex-villains/vigilantes Inversion and Magician, to infiltrate the Numbers and gather information. Vox and Wrath realise their spies immediately, but play along to let Nedzu know they're doing fine and they don't need his or the other heroes' help.
• Info Dump: Chapter 2 has the explanation of the Mödel-Lentz Scale, which classes Quirks from Class 1 to Class 5 based on Output Volume, Activation Restrictions, and Adaptability, which is the foundation of the Quirk classification system for all Mirrondverse stories. It was created during the Dawn of Quirks and treated more as a guideline than hard rules since some Quirks like complex mutations can't be easily classified and there is a top secret Class 6 category for Quirks that break the logic of Quirks or the world, but it's useful enough that most hero schools have the policy that they don't accept Class 1 or Class 2 Quirk wielders into their hero programs.
• In Spite of a Nail:
  • Chapter 25 confirms that in spite of the mess caused by the Meta Liberation Army uprisings, Overhaul still managed to develop his Quirk-Destroying drugs, both the temporary and permanent ones.
  • Despite the fact Izuku doesn't go to U.A. as a normal student, Shouto still manages to do his secret-love child theory. He just does it assuming Eri and Aiko are All Might's kids.
• Internal Reveal:
  • In Chapter 6, Present Mic, Midnight and Vlad King are informed that Eraserhead had his Quirk destroyed and of the investigation into the Numbers whose leader restored Eraserhead's Quirk.
  • In Chapter 13, Nedzu brings in Hound Dog, Power Loader, Recovery Girl, Ectoplasm, Edgeshot, and Best Jeanist into the investigation into the Numbers and their satellite mysteries.
  • In Chapter 24, Nedzu is forced to confirm that All for One, the Quirk Thief, actually existed to his fellow heroes who didn't already know.
  • In Chapter 27, Nighteye tells All Might, Mirio, and Gran Torino about there being more people who can take and give Quirks like All for One himself as well as Overhaul's specific plan to kill or otherwise neutralise All Might, and the existence of the Numbers.
  • In Chapter 29, Ochako learns Izuku's mother is her idol Mischief.
  • In Chapter 40, Aizawa reveals he married Ms. Joke to Midnight and Present Mic.
  • In Chapter 41, Miruko and Gang Orca find out about the numbers and Miruko's own genetic daughter as a direct result of said genetic daughter looking for her to challenge her.
  • In Chapter 51, Izuku finds out that Miruko knows about her genetic daughter.
  • In Chapter 54, The investigators finally cotton on to the fact that Geten usurped the position of MLA leader, and that Wrath's father was the previously leader Rikiya Yotsubashi.
• Irony: Izuku laughs over the fact that it's his former bully that understands how him being a late-bloomer affected him. The very fact he developed a Quirk at all threw his entire identity as a Quirkless down the drain and ruined all the hard work he put in in trying to be a Quirkless Hero. Katsuki is the only person to get that. No one else, not even the girls romantically pursuing him did.
• Know When to Fold Them:
  • After learning that the Numbers have a precise Warp-Quirk user and three Disaster-Class potential Villains, Edgeshot declares he'd surrender on the spot if they declare war on Japan.
  • Reload and his MLA unit all surrender to the Japanese government when the Geten revival plan backfires horribly and he starts trying to kill everyone, including them.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Mindblank's Quirk lets her do targeted erasing of any memory she wants.
• Lifesaving Misfortune: Mera having to deal with the Paragons he was overseeing rebelling at a critical time meant he was the one Commissioner to avoid getting killed by Geten.
• Like Brother and Sister: Monoma used to have a crush on Ochako before he started seeing her as his sister. Ochako in turn always saw Monoma as a brother.
• Living Lie Detector: Monoma has a way to defy this trope. He copied Reverso's Quirk, which will allow him to flip Tsukauchi's truth-detecting Quirk and mess with his readings.
• Log Fic: Large portions of the fic are chat messages between adult heroes.
• Loophole Abuse: There is a loophole in the anti-vigilante laws, acting in self-defence. So long as the Villain attacks first, the Vigilante can act to defend themselves. The government knows about this loophole, but they are not interested in closing it since things in Japan are bad enough that Vigilantes are a welcome help.
• Magically-Binding Contract: The Paranormal Liberation Front has access to a Quirk that forces the parties to a contract to abide by the terms of that contract.
• Malicious Slander: Rave was a former promising Idol before her career was ruined due to her rivals accusing her of using her Quirk to save on money for her shows in violation of Quirk-Usage laws. She ended up turning to villainy as a direct result, becoming a high-ranking member of the Paranormal Liberation Front.
• Marry Them All: In Chapter 71, Izuku reveals that he was planning on splitting himself into several permanent Quirk clones so that he can invoke this. Ochako then proceeds to drag Izuku off to find Toga, Wrath, and Hypothermia to have a serious talk about having a more traditional polyamory relationship.
• The Maze: The Dagobah Labyrinth is a maze created by the villain Reassembler during the MLA insurrections. Few people know its internal layout which provides natural security to the Numbers that made it their home.
• Might Makes Right: Geten believes the strongest Meta-Ability users gets to make the rules. Interestingly, he is not hypocritical about it, accepting his loss to Endeavor and letting him dictate that that is not how things should work.
• Mistaken for Related: Gran Torino believes Mirio is All Might's biological son. Mirio is quick to correct him on that.
• Moral Myopia: Mustard comments that had an ordinary teacher acted the way Midnight does, they would have been fired in short order, but because she's a hero, she gets away with it. He cites it as an example of systemic hypocrisy.
• Motive Decay: Geten loves being powerful, but only if he put in the effort and earned it. Garaki making him stronger robs him of all satisfaction in his strength and since that was his primary goal in life, he has nothing else to live for. This reduces Geten to a shallow husk that is nevertheless a dangerous villain Japan needs to put down asap as Geten has decided mass murdering people to take away their happiness is an acceptable way of going through the motions of the remainder of his life.
• Mugging the Monster: Gargoyle attacks a soup kitchen in complete ignorance of how suicidal such a thing is when Numbers are there. He ends up severely beaten by Zealot and arrested by the authorities in short order.
• The Needs of the Many: Thunderbolt was caught between a rock and a hard place during the Nagata Fire. He could either save the people in the burning apartment, or go after Toxic Chainsaw who was going to poison a water source that puts a hundred times more people at risk. Thunderbolt ultimatelty chose the latter, not knowing the apartment owners did not comply with fire safety regulations so he couldn't know his risk assessment was off.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • According to the narration, it was partially Yoichi's and his followers' fault that Japan didn't fare well following the Dawn of Quirks in addition to All for One's fault. It was their escalating conflict as each side went further and further that hurt Japan's chances of recovering from the chaos of the Dawn of Quirks.
  • According to the Quirk Cadence Theory, Quirks are shaped by human consciousness, which means if they see powerful Quirks, people imagine more powerful Quirks, which gets inherited by the next generation. For this reason, All Might's lengthy career as a nigh-invincible hero accelerated the Quirk Apocalypse since his long history of amazing feats pushed the boundaries of what Quirks can do in people's minds, leading to the next generation birthing more wielders of powerful Quirks.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Yoichi's vestige hates to admit it, but All for One was unintentionally helping Japan almost as much as he was purposefully hurting the country. He distorted Villain Society to revolve around him. Villains in Japan either worked for him or rendered Quirkless and/or left for dead, keeping some level of control and restraint over them. With his death, nothing was left to keep the villains 'controlled'.
• Straw Nihilist: Geten becomes this after waking up, with the author specifically comparing him to Owlman on Discord. Having defined himself by training his Quirk, only to suddenly be handed quirks he didn't want and couldn't train, he was left with nothing to live for. It reaches the point where he just lets the Americans drop a nuke on him in the hopes it will actually work on him.
• Neutral No Longer: Wrath forces Izuku to break the Number's neutrality to help U.A. with dealing with Overhaul's attack in Chapter 47.
• Nuke 'em: The Japanese Prime Minister grants permission to the United States President for them to fire a nuke on Geten in the hopes it'd kill him. It doesn't work.
• Off the Table: During their negotiations, Izuku warns Nedzu that the labs are off limits and if his people snoops around anyway, all agreements are cancelled without any possibility of negotiation or appeasement.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • The general response of heroes (particularly Nezu) to the discovery of quirk-removing bullets circulating.
  • Monochrome freaks out when she realizes Eraserhead is asking her about the Numbers.
  • All the investigators looking into the Numbers are shocked by the news that the Numbers have five Class-6 Quirk Wielders among their ranks.
• One-Man Army: Geten is so powerful from the modifications Garaki did on him that Japan has to mobilize their actual military just to slow him down.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Class 1-A is shocked that straight-laced Iida tells Ochako to go for Bakugou's throat next time they spar. Iida quickly explains it's because he holds a grudge over Bakugou calling his brother's aesthetic that of a complete loser.
• Open Secret: Ko Yotsubashi never appeared in public and her father never advertised her condition but it was a well known fact she was blind and wheelchair-bound.
• Person of Mass Destruction:
  • Disaster-Class Villains are defined as any villain that can cause mass civilian casualties with a single activation of their Quirk. Mustard of the Numbers has the potential to be one if he ever decides to become a full villain, and he's just one of three the Numbers have in their ranks. Reassambler who made the Dagobah Labyrinth in an instant is an example of an outright Disaster-Class Villain.
  • Garaki makes Geten powerful enough that after he wakes up, Hokkaido is destroyed city after city and he could potentially permanently affect weather patterns. Estimates on when Hokkaido could be re-settled are in the decades, and that's on the more optimistic end.
• Plausible Deniability: Eraserhead uses a roundabout way of contacting the head of the local vigilantes in Musutafu since a licensed hero cannot be seen reaching out to them.
• Point of Divergence: Izuku, Tokoyami, and Ibara being part of the Numbers instead of UA students results in other people taking their spots. Their replacements are Hisashi Fukuda, Imai Mikio, and Inasa.
• Power Incontinence: Stage Two Singularity Quirks are Quirks that are too powerful for the user's safety, either by their inherent nature or due to potential carelessness.
• Power Misidentification:
  • The parents of children with powerful Quirks sometimes falsify their Quirk Registry with government support. Eraserhead gives the example of his student Momo Yaoyorozu. Officially, she can only create her matryoshka dolls, but her Quirk is so much more versatile than that. Villains go even further to hide the power of their children, and don't use government support.
  • After Vox analyses Ochako's Quirk in action, he quickly informs her that her Quirk Counsellors grossly misunderstood the mechanisms. She's not quite negating gravity. What she's doing is negating external influences, which includes not just Earth's gravity, but also movement from before she activated her quirk and air friction. The upward movement is because it's not negating the gravity influence of the Sun and Moon.
• Powers as Programs: Overhaul's faction is capable of using drugs to treat Quirks as exchangeable abilities.
• Primal Scene:
  • Izuku catches Ochako and Himiko about to have sex, while Ochako is cosplaying and roleplaying as Izuku's mother. Ochako panics and invites Izuku to join. Monoma yells at Ochako for the whole thing, for which Ochako has no good defence.
  • It happens again when Monoma catches Ochako in bed with Wrath.
• Properly Paranoid:
  • The apartment complex Eraserhead and Ms. Joke live in is owned by retired underground heroes who created a lot of of strange rules as security measures which helps with protecting the underground heroes who live there.
  • The government has very valid reasons to be paranoid of their own nation's heroes. Some of them joined Geten's coup after all, then they discovered the HPSC had the Paragons, whose very existence implied they were planning their own coup, and that Miruko and Gang Orca leads a group called the Table of Rejects who took their sweet time answering Geten's coup because they wanted the HPSC to get done in.
  • Downplayed with Vox's distrust of Heroes. He's partially right to fear that the Heroes would force the Numbers to become Heroes when they don't want to, mostly because of Nedzu, but the other Heroes just want to help them and take measures to rein in Nedzu's impulse every time it comes up.
  Sir Nighteye: I'm not going to mention who was pretty much salivating over the idea of making Vox into a recovery hero when he heard of their quirk. But his name started with N and ended with edzu.
  Nedzu: I corrected my approach already, Sir Nighteye. But I agree that Vox's paranoia isn't exactly all that paranoid.
• Rape as Backstory: Nighteye suspects that the reason Purity hates complex mutants and Beast in particular is that Beast raped her at some point.
• Related in the Adaptation: Mustard is Midnight's nephew in this story.
• Replacement Goldfish: Beast outright refers to Nine as Garaki's replacement All for One. Garaki had put Nine in charge when Beast feels he is unsuited because Garaki can't bear the thought of his All for One stand-in not being so.
• The Reveal:
  • Chapter 15 reveals that the Nagata Fire that Vox held Thunderbolt responsible for and the HPSC covering up his involvement is actually more complicated than initially believed, and that in fact, Thunderbolt cannot be held criminally responsible for anything. He did the best he could with the information he had and the circumstances he was in. If anyone's to blame it's the water company smuggling gasoline and the landlord cutting corners on fire safety.
  • Chapter 24 reveals that Overhaul is planning to make a grand Villain debut, that All for One has a kid that inherited his Quirk, that the Paranormal Liberation Front exists despite the fact the Meta Liberation Army exists concurrently, and that Garaki is trying to resurrect Geten.
  • Chapter 25 reveals that a good portion of the Numbers consist of the children of Villains, and that all of Nana Shimura's surviving family found their way to the Numbers.
  • Chapter 25 also reveals that yet another of UA's Hero Course students is living a double-life, this time as an active villain called Revenant and is also All for One's child.
  • Chapter 50 reveals that Imai is part of the Paranormal Liberation Front and that Hisashi Fukuda is actually Izuku.
  • Chapter 58 reveals that the Paranormal Liberation Front's position is actually a lot weaker than assumed. Their strikes were all smokes and mirrors. They wouldn't survive an actual war because Geten's moronic actions cost the original Meta Liberation Army most of their military strength.
  • Chapter 62 reveals that Shihai Kuroiro of Class 1-B is yet another U.A. Hero Course student living a double-life. He is a member of the Numbers and yet another spy of the school because Izuku was that paranoid. He's also dating Mieko.
• The Scapegoat: Hellmouth was a former hero called Umbramancer who was wrongfully blamed for the failure of a hero operation because her "villainous" Quirk made her a convenient fall guy.
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Zigzagged. Nighteye realizes that the future he sees is one where he acts on the prediction, and to work around that problem when he gets a bad future, he takes a snapshot of the future instead of seeing the whole thing. This still gives him useful intel while being able to play around the circumstances of what he sees.
• Sex Dressed: Ochako dresses in a hurry after Monoma catches her in bed with Wrath, but ends up wearing Wrath's shirt. Wrath invokes it by deliberately dressing in Ochako's clothes, leaving only her clothes for Ochako. At least they got the right underwear and boots.
• Sanity Slippage: Garaki has always been a little unhinged, but Izuku thinks after All for One died, Garaki's inability to properly deal with the loss caused him to become increasingly insane.
• Shame If Something Happened: The Numbers get Marksman to stop looking into them by having one of their own impersonate him and spend time alone with every employee and sidekick at his agency, proving they are perfectly capable of assassinating everyone at his agency.
• Simple Solution Won't Work: Nedzu can't just directly support Marksman's hero agency because the government has (valid) reasons to be worried about their own heroes and they have a PSIA task force monitoring him who would likely react badly to him suddenly supporting a hero in his vicinity.
• Sins of the Father: Defied. All Might makes it clear to Gran Torino that All for One's kids are not evil by default just because of who their father is.
• Shoot the Dog: The Disaster Prevention Act is an old act from the Dawn of Quirks that allows the government to execute dangerous and uncontainable villains without trial. An emergency and desperate measure that no one in modern times likes to talk about but tacitly accepted. Mera wants to invoke that act on Reassembler because his Quirk makes it impossible to properly contain him should the location of his prison be exposed. It gets its pay off in Chapter 66 when the warden of Reassembler's prison literally shoots him when the prison comes under attack by the MLA remnant.
• Shout-Out:
  • A hero wearing a green hooded outfit with a preference for the bow and arrow as his weapon of choice due to how his Quirk works... are we sure Marksman isn't Oliver Queen in disguise, and that Ollie wasn't a metahuman all along?
  • Nedzu paraphrases Obadiah from Iron Man when he says that the Numbers are capable of building amazing gear in what is essentially a cave with a bunch of scraps.
  • Additionally, while looking over Vox's Quirk Cadence Theory, Nedzu claims he's "something of a Quirk Scientist himself."
  • When All Might calls him losing an arm as just a scratch, Overhaul recognises it as a reference to Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Overhaul counters by wondering if All Might will call it a draw after running out of limbs to lose.
  • Juggernaut and Kirishima becoming friends by silently flexing their muscles at each other is based on a similar scene in Fullmetal Alchemist.
• Shrouded in Myth: Before the Quirk Healer showed up at Eraserhead's home, he thought he was a myth on par with the Quirk Thief. The urban legends never even mentioned he called himself Vox until the Quirk Healer introduced himself that way.
• Slave to PR: One significant consideration that heroes and the government of Japan has to take into account when dealing with certain villain groups, like the Inhuman Supremacy Party, is how their actions would be taken. Going into mutant-heavy districts to search for ISP members for example is a huge PR disaster, which is why they never try it. It takes mutant Heroes and those with very positive reputations with the mutants to deal with the ISP without feeding into their propaganda. On the flipside though, the ISP can't attack said mutant or mutant-friendly Heroes without alienating a lot of their own support base.
• Slowly Slipping Into Evil: Nedzu disagrees with covering up Thunderbolt's role in the Nagata Fire. While he was innocent of any wrongdoing, by covering it up to protect his image, signalling that the law didn't apply to him started Thunderbolt's slow moral decay into the man he is in the present when being open about the findings could have prevented his moral decay.
• Small Role, Big Impact: Kurogiri does not appear at all, but his actions were critical to everything working out, and actually having a chance of working out to begin with. In his last moments, he shakes off the brainwashing Garaki and All for One instilled on him, remembered he was a hero and told the Numbers he is going to do what a Hero is supposed to do. Him dying to save them is probably the entire reason the Numbers are willing to even consider trusting and helping the Heroes. The intel the heroes got from looking into the Numbers and the Numbers helping them out is the entire reason Hero Society survived Overhaul's first attack.
• Sneeze Cut: When All Might thinks about what kind of woman he wants and lists the traits he is looking for, the scene cuts to Lady Nagant sneezing.
• Spit Take:
  • Ochako chokes on her mochi when Aiko tells her she has her permission to marry her brother.
  • Said brother Izuku also chokes when Eri tells him Ochako can marry him and the other girls romantically pursuing him.
• Spy Cam: Giran misses a spy camera when he calls Revenant.
• Superpower Lottery: The Numbers are full of kids with powerful Quirks, which is why it is a legitimate concern that either Villains or Heroes would force them to join their side without any regard for their own opinions on the matter.
• Suicide by Cop: Following his revival, Geten welcomes the Heroes attempts to kill him, outright telling the world he no longer cares who wins or loses, as long as somebody is dead in the end. Ultimately, he lets All Might and Lemillion kill him because at the very end, he decides he feared living as an empty husk of a man than he feared dying.
• Super Breeding Program: Several of the Numbers were created by Garaki using DNA taken from various individuals, usually powerful heroes or villains. Bunny for example is the result of combining Miruko's and Stain's DNA together.
• Surprisingly Sudden Death:
  • Overhaul is killed by Thunderbolt, of all people, in his second onscreen confrontation with the heroes, which also resulted in Thunderbolt's death as well. No one on either side of the 4th wall saw this coming, but All Might and Nedzu are not happy about it, if only because Nedzu can't ruin Thunderbolt's career and All Might has to say nice things about Thunderbolt at his state funeral.
  • Garaki, Beast, Nine, and Dabi are almost immediately killed by Geten soon after his revival.
• Stealth Insult: Beast's subtle insinuation that Garaki is a terrible fighter who sucks at battle plans gets chuckles out of Nine and Dabi while flying over Garaki's head.
• Tailor-Made Prison: Reassembler can manipulate any man-made materials, which is why his prison by necessity needs to be built out of only natural materials. His prison is unfortunately less secure as a result and the only thing preventing other villains from breaking him out is the secrecy of the location of his prison.
• The Tease: Himiko tries to tease Ochako with a kiss, but Ochako turns the tables on her by giving her a better kiss.
• Tempting Fate:
  • Ochako is glad no one catches her in bed with Wrath only for Monoma to walk in on them both naked and in bed. Wrath laughs her ass off at the universe immediately punishing her for tempting fate.
  • When Eclipse encounters Stars & Stripes, the former assures herself the latter doesn't know her real name and therefore, couldn't use her Quirk directly on her. And then, Stars & Stripes reveals she does know Eclipse's real name.
• Theory Tunnel Vision: Izuku believes the heroes want nothing more than to forcefully recruit the Numbers regardless of their own wants when the majority just want to help them (he is admittedly partly right in that Nedzu was very excited in trying to make them into heroes and had to be reined in by the others so he doesn't prove Izuku right). This causes him to interpret everything they do as some act to manipulate him and he cannot accept that they're being actual good people.
• Too Clever by Half: Izuku is smart and tactical, but his bias against the Heroes causes him to grossly misjudge their reactions to his attempts to scare them off. Monoma point this problem out to him.
• Too Desperate to Be Picky: Beast thinks the Meta Liberation Army remnants are morons, but in the current state of Japan, they are the only potential allies left for the Inhuman Supremacy Party. If the MLA goes down, the heroes will notice that the ISP is the only major villain group left, and it doesn't take a genius to realize what that means for Beast and his subordinates.
• Took a Level in Badass:
  • Monoma's Copy Quirk undergoes an awakening from an experiment to copy Izuku's Quirksong, which results in the Copy Quirk becoming a Class 6 Quirk, where he can Paste copied Quirks onto others, either temporarily or permanently.
  • Ochako's Zero Gravity Quirk becomes more versatile during the USJ Incident. Instead of just nullifying gravity, she can increase it.
• Traumatic Superpower Awakening: Izuku is revealed to have awaken Quirksong during the chaos of the Numbers escape from Garaki and Overhaul.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behaviour: Ochako and Monoma are disturbed that Immortal is fine with being stabbed by Bunny.
• Uncanny Valley: Part of what fuels the Fantastic Racism against Mutants is that their eyes tend to be unnerving to the non-Mutants.
• Unperson: During the Dawn of Quirks, there was the original Quirk Singer, but after her death, her father All for One erased every record of her since he never forgave her for her betrayal of him.
• The Unreveal: Nedzu figures out which of his students is Revenant in Chapter 44, but the readers don't find out who it is.
• Unstable Equilibrium: Speculated by the heroes as a masterstroke committed by Overhaul. Once they confirm that Overhaul produces Quirk-Destroying Drugs from humans and connect it to the rise in human-trafficking cases, they also connect him to the rise in crime rates. Because of the rise in crime rates, his own kidnappings don't stand out, allowing him to create more drugs, which he puts on the black market which worsens the crime rates, allowing him to kidnap even more people without standing out, allowing him to create even more drugs, and so on.
• Vetinari Job Security:
  • The Abegawa Tenchu Kai have made themselves a source of order and protection in the otherwise lawless zones of Musutafu, meaning the heroes and police cannot simply kick them out as that opens up their former territories to bloody turf wars.
  • Purity is the lynchpin holding the Creature Rejection Clan together. She was the one with the organisation skills to turn the CRC into a proper Underworld Power, and their connections to the biomedical industry was through her. With her death, Nedzu is reasonably certain the clan will collapse.
• Villain Cred: Played with. All of the local villains in Musutafu are scared of the Numbers, but they'll never admit it since being scared of children severely impacts on their reputations. They settle for pretending they do not exist and quietly avoid them.
• Villain Has a Point: A villain to villain example. Beast tells Nine and Dabi that their takeover of Hokkaido is extremely tenuous and the only reason the government hasn't seized it back is because they want to minimize casualties, not because they are scared of them. As things stand, their only hope is Geten and his enhancements. Nine admits he is right, but also says they literally have nothing better.
• Villain Respect: Overhaul admits Izuku always had a mind for analysing Quirks, and his own research made use of Izuku's leftover notes.
• Vocal Dissonance: Ochako and Monoma expect the hulking Juggernaut to have a deep baritone voice and are surprised that he sounds closer to someone of average size.
• Vocal Minority: A small but very noticeable portion of Midnight's fans took her intended message very wrongly, and care more for her looks than her deeds. They also drown out positive feedback to her message.
• Wake-Up Call: The Meta Liberation Army insurrections were a major wake up call to Hero Society as a whole, shaking many previously complacent Heroes into either stepping up to the plate or resigning if they couldn't actually do their jobs. It would've been even worse if Geten hadn't killed their boss and tried to use the old plan with half the pieces having defected.
• We Have Become Complacent: Nighteye hates to admit it but All Might's easy victories against villains previously considered unstoppable created a culture of complacency among Hero Society. This is one of the reasons why they were so vulnerable to Overhaul's debut attack.
• Wham Line:
  • Chapter 37 has Izuku telling Monoma that the latter now has a Class 6 Quirk.
  • Chapter 58 has Koko Hanabata saying he wants to discuss the terms of the PLF's surrender.
• What Is This Feeling?: Bunny does not care when other people praise her, but when Rabbit does, it feels really nice. Everytime she asks someone about it, they all immediately laugh as they realize that Bunny has a crush on Rabbit.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • Nighteye is quick to call out Nedzu for calling the Numbers future Heroes after he was told the Numbers don't want to get involved with Heroes or Villains because that sort of thing proves Vox's fears correct.
  • All Might immediately calls out Gran Torino for assuming All for One's children are as evil as him by default.
  • Aizawa calls out Midnight for not caring that one of their underage students slept with someone they told her to keep an eye on, who is also underage and that her behaviour on official channels regarding that is unacceptable even with her aesthetic.
• White-Collar Crime: One of All for One's most profitable illicit activities was getting the Inhuman Supremacy Party to do targeted riots to manipulate property and stock prices in his favour, and keep insurance premiums up. He also hurt competing insurance companies by having Beast and his organization target those mostly insured by them.

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