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It starts with simple, small things.
They'd been idly discussing the moral implications of human taxidermy as applied to All Might, when Izuku notices something.
_
"Wait."
Izuku tilts his head as he stares at All Might, hunched over his desk, eyes flicking around the room.
"Did.. do you see that?"
Katsuki, beside him, frowns.
"Kaachan, he flinched."
Red eyes widen and narrow on their former idol;
"Did he now?" Katsuki all but purrs, a malicious spark lighting his eye.
All Might's shoulders tense further and Izuku's grin is sharp as he carefully floats closer.
"One way to test.." he says to katsuki.
He leans down next to All Might's ear, close enough you'd be able to feel him breathing if he were still alive, and screams.
All Might flinches back harshly, listing sideways and actually falling from his chair to the floor, where he tries to fend off his invisible attacker.
Izuku's eyes are wide with shock, staring down at the clearly frightened hero on the ground.
Katsuki isn't much better, staring at the blonde man as he scrambles to his feet, gathers his things in a messy rush, and all but runs from the room.
"He can hear us." Katsuki says blankly.
"He can hear us." Izuku echoes quietly.
They share a glance.
Izuku's shock melts into a sharp grin, intelligent green eyes sparkling as the beginnings of a plan form in his mind.
"Lets make sure he won't forget us, Kaachan."
Katsuki's grin is just as sharp in response.
"Yes.. We deserve to be remembered, don't we, Zuku?"
The grinning pair glide through the door silently, following the trail of their frantic prey; he'll learn soon enough, they're sure.
He can't escape them. Not anymore.
_
All Might's hearing them seems to go in and out, at first.
They make sure to keep their conversations up around him, though; it's fun to watch him squirm.
It doesn't work as well around others either; disappointing, but not necessarily unexpected. They're haunting All Might, not the other heroes on staff.
(Nedzu seems to follow them with his eyes, during his meetings with All Might. They don't acknowledge it beyond slightly uncomfortably long eye contact.)
And then Todoroki joins them.
_
It's been little over three days since Izuku and Katsuki had welcomed Shouto into their haunting.
They'd been having one of their regular conversations; this one is slowly turning into a conspiracy with Shouto's input.
All Might has been looking around their general position suspiciously ever so often, so they know he can hear them; it's usually rare he hears them in the teacher's lounge, the other people usually make it harder.
Shouto, crouched on the edge of Ectoplasm's empty desk, toes at one of the pencil holders at the edge of All Might's desk; to his shock, it slides.
He pushes it again, harder, all three ghosts now staring at it intensely, and it clatters to the ground.
Pencils scatter as the little metal cup hits the floor, the sharp sound followed by little clinks of wood clattering against the tile.
Izuku, Katsuki, and Shouto can only stare.
They share a look, grins spreading over their faces.
"Guess we're getting stronger." Izuku says, eyes sparkling as he watches All Might crawl around, collecting his scattered goods to the teasing of his coworkers.
_
It takes them practice to be able to move things consistently, and even that isn't as often as they'd like.
Nothing too heavy works, and they can't move the things very far.
For now, though, it's enough. They manage to turn All Might into more of a klutz than he had been already, and he still tenses when they speak, still flinches when they scream or put a hand through the back of his neck more often than not.
For months, they work with this newfound chaos.
And then Hitoshi is dead; watching them watch the teachers scold All Might for dropping a mug that Katsuki had pushed.
_
They notice it a week after Hitoshi joins them;
It's subtle, at first.
All Might will do a double take when he looks up at their speaking.
He starts to flinch at their presence, not just their talking.
Hitoshi is the first to test their theory about his newfound skittishness, standing right in the end of All Might's peripheral vision; he confirms that, yes, the man is double taking consistently at where they're standing.
They start to move around more, waving their arms frantically, grinning at him, jumping at him, waving their hands in his face, just to watch him jump.
They deserve to be seen for all they may never be found.
(The other teachers do double takes sometimes; the students startle when one of them complains during class; they want to hope it's possible but for now they keep it close and test how far they can take it.)
_
They slowly add words and phrases for each of their 'moves' for lack of better term; it helps the boredom, making up names for the things they do so they can call out random combinations and act on them in a moment with perfect coordination.
It's almost a game; who can make him jump the hardest? Who can get the biggest reaction with other people around? Who can make him straight up leave the room?
It's a very good distraction; though sometimes they spend a day or two wandering the school, following the alive members of class 1-a and Aizawa; there's not much better to do, when the haunting starts to get repetitive;
It also reminds them why they're so mad; the students of class 1-a are kids; they're students, so full of life and happiness and potential.
Dead kids can't be heroes.
The four ghosts content themselves scaring All Might, trying to improve their stamina for interacting with the world, trying to see if they can get others to react, trying to do things they haven't been able to; anything to keep themselves occupied; anything to get rid of the buzz under their skin.
And then Eijirou joins them.
_
They'd been having a little competition, trying to get all might to jump in the teachers' lounge.
For some reason, they couldn't make themselves heard. They couldn't make themselves seen; it was like the first few days of their deaths all over again, unable to interact with anything in any capacity.
It's.. beyond frustrating.
They try harder, when he leaves the room for call; using all the techniques they'd discovered and put into practice, but still there is no reaction they've grown used to.
All Might makes an off-handed inquiry about the missing persons cases, asking if there's been any headway in the case.
Like he cares.
Like he didn't do it himself.
Like he isn't the reason they're dead.
Izuku, in all his anger and in spite of the fact they've been completely intangible for the last few hours, forgets that he's a ghost, that his friends and he are dead and can't truly interact with the living world, and reaches into All Might's chest.
As should be expected, his hand swipes right through his clothes and skin and settles as less than a chill down the man's spine, no damage done.
Anger simmers under Izuku's skin as he reaches again; and again the same thing happens, his hand flying with no resistance through his former hero's back.
He does it again, and again, and again, until he's clawing at him frantically, his friends trying to get him to stop before he works himself into an afterimage.
Izuku reaches one more time, angry and scared and betrayed, desperately reaching for something, anything-
And something reaches back.
Static runs across his body, like he's been shocked, the same current running through the bodies of his friends from where they've got their hands on him, trying to pull him away;
The strangest part is that All Might jumps too.
Izuku steps back, taking his hand from All Might's back,- it's like he'd touched someone with cold hands, the feeling of something warm lingers on his palm- and the man whirls around, puffing up into muscled form as he goes.
"WHO ARE-" The man's voice breaks off in shock, his eyes going wide, and the little group of students watches in detatched facination as he takes a step back, steam erupting from his body.
"You're dead." He says almost resolutely, pinprick blue eyes hardened in resolve, flicking across their faces almost anxiously.
Their anger, momentarily forgotten in the shock of being seen, comes back with a roaring vengeance.
"And you're the one that killed us." Izuku says, snarls really.
Without a thought further, Izuku jumps forward, his friends hot on his heels, fingers clawed and quirks active, eyes all but glowing as they surge towards him.
All Might actually lets out a strangled gasp and scrambles back, hands instinctively coming up to try and push them away as he closes his eyes.
There's a brief moment of contact, the sensation of something hot against All Might's skin, and then it's gone; a wave of cold overcomes him, and he shivers violently, curling down for a little bit before he dares open his eyes.
There's red spots on his wrists; pain lingering in hand-shaped patches on his skin, burning and aching like fresh bruises.
The hall is empty.
"We know what you did."
The words sear against his skin, clear as day and yet he once more sees no one, an almost mocking contrast to the barely there wisps of words he'd been hearing for almost a year and a half now.
"We're coming for you."
The voice is layered, like several people speaking at once.
All Might straightens himself and flees back to the teacher's lounge, heart pounding in his ears and anxiety crawling up his throat.
How do you stop someone that's already dead?
_
The ghosts watch him go, satisfaction at having put fear on their murderer's face all consuming and warm in their chests for several moments.
"Did that really just happen?" Eijirou asks.
"It sure did."
"..How?"
"Yeah, how'd you do that, nerd? What was that shock bullshit?"
Izuku rubs the fingers of one hand together, the other tucked into his side, staring blankly at some air particle only he can see.
He thinks back to the moment he had reached for something; the moment something had reached back..
"I.. think, it was All Might's quirk." he says; it sounds ridiculous, but the more he thinks about it, the more it makes sense.
"Fuck are you on about?"
"How the hell would that work?"
Izuku snaps out of his absent gaze, turning his excited eyes back to his friends.
"His quirk! We've known for a while it's transferable, a stockpiling quirk with a history. He's been trying to find someone to give it to for months now, remember? What if it's stockpiled more than just strength? Strength is so arbitrary anyway, what if it stockpiled a little bit of the whole person that had it before?" Izuku asks.
":. Are you suggesting there are ghosts in All Might's quirk?" Shinsou asks dryly, one eyebrow raised.
Izuku shakes his hands, gesturing wildly as he speaks.
"Listen, it's crazy, I know, but.. the moment I reached in, that last swipe, I was so desperate to do something, I just wanted something, anything,to happen, so I could tell him I was here, that we are here, that we haven't forgotten.. I reached.. and, something reached back: I felt it, like someone was trying to take my hand but slipped away last second; and then we were all visible!"
"Alright, I'm following. I hope the ghosts of the quirk are just as pissed with him as we are, that'd be fun as hell." Shinsou says with a grin.
"If they exist at all, eyebags."
"Yeah, but it would be cool, wouldn't it? Like we had someone on the inside?"
"Just imagine if we can get them to come forward enough to be heard.." Eijirou's smile is all the more intimidating with his sharp teeth glinting in the lights. "Could you imagine the look on his face when his precious master takes our side?"
The others' grins are just as sharp as his; they all know what he's thinking.
All Might would be crushed that he hadn't lived up to his late master's approval.
perfect.
_
Somewhere in the depths of One for All, seven figures stand staring at their window into the living world, gazes focused on the near blurring hallway but attention focused completely elsewhere.
"..Did we really just do that?" Third asks incredulously.
"Absolutely we did."
"How?"
"You know, I don't know.. but I want to do it again."
"..Are you implying what I think you are?"
"Well why not?! If we've really reached singularity, like I think we have, then who's to say what's possible? I mean, look at what we just did! Activating the quirk and transferring power to someone else without Toshinori's say so; We are the quirk, right? Who's to say that we can't transfer if we want to, regardless of what the host thinks? Is it really being taken by force if we're reaching, asking, to be taken? If we're trying to transfer?"
"You're crazy."
"But I'm right."
"Crazy."