Requiem of the Broken

Chapter 61: Rebirth

"I... Always thought I had been driven mad by the war... That I had been so thoroughly broken, so thoroughly shattered that I couldn't be fixed..." She whispered, staring at her hands.

"I... I guess in a way I was..." she said, clenching her hands.

All Might didn't say anything but looked very uncomfortable.

She gave a slight self-deprecating laugh.

"I knew it wouldn't be so easy... There is no magical answer to one's problems... The other me aside... I knew something was missing inside. Something has been missing even before the Angel Project." she admitted, with that admittance came a resignation. The other her wasn't to blame for everything, she was her own separate problem altogether.

"Well... go on then." She finally said, slumping a little in her seat and gesturing to All Might to continue.

"When the war ended, and you had your suit removed, you were the only one left of your group. OFA was still tied to this world, and it started to become whole once more. Doctor Takeo continued to work on the QUEESS, and when you were put into it to try and save your life, OFA was able to come back together and merge back into one singular entity. No longer split, the vestiges were able to form back into their original forms for the most part." All Might said, smiling again.

"Now we come to our request of you." Said the first user.

"Request?" Ochako asked, puzzled.

"AFO needs to die, and so do we. Our time should have ended more than a hundred years ago. The present has paid too steep a price for our failures. We would ask you to take our power and finally end this feud that has been raging since the birth of quirks." The first user said.

"If you agree, then for the next 24 hours, what remains of OFA will be yours. After that, our power will burn itself out completely. Ideally, OFA will be dead, and if everything goes well, so will AFO. We don't want to force this on you however, you've suffered more than enough for the failings of your predecessors." All Might added.

Ochako thought about it for a while, before a final question came to her mind.

"Can Yo Shindo be saved?" she asked.

A sadness came over the first user's face. "No. Maybe, at one point something could have been done, but not anymore. Even if AFO's vestige could be purged, there is no guarantee that anything would change. I don't think AFO is controlling him, just manipulating and twisting what is already there. That was always more his style." the first user said.

Ochako closed her eyes. Thoughts of the war came to mind and she let those memories fill her. The horrors born from that war, the tragedies that befell the nation and its people, the friends and family she had lost, those that survived and who had come together to form their own family after the war ended. Then memories of the other angels came to her.

Inasa, who had always been boisterous but had a mean streak in him. Takako, the youngest of them all and who had latched onto Hikari as a father figure since she never had one growing up. Hikari, was half Japanese half European, the oldest of all of them, and a veteran hero. Tobita was once a criminal turned hero, and a truly kind and gentle soul at heart; in the end, he got what he always wanted. Yo Shindo, cold and calculating, he would use whatever methods available to him to fulfill his objectives but had always respected others who put in sincere effort.

She had fought and bled alongside them and would have done anything for them. She thought her time as an angel was over, a chapter of her life she could stuff and lock away and never think about again. How naive such thoughts had been, how desperate. As she thought more about everything, she realized there was only one real answer. She had one last battle as an angel. A friend she had to save, a cruel would-be tyrant to kill, and an age-old conflict to end once and for all. One last battle, then, one way or another, it would all be over.