Chapter Text
It happened on a Tuesday.
Tuesdays were usually boring. Nothing exciting ever happened on a Tuesday. Tuesdays were reserved for catching up on the chaos that Mondays left in their wake, and generally, it was the unofficial paperwork day. Rarely do any crimes happen, something Detective Naomasa Tsukauchi was eternally grateful for.
But, unfortunately, some Tuesdays decide to break the mold.
And today was apparently going to be one hell of a Tuesday.
He almost did not notice his approach. Sir Nighteye, Mirai Sasaki, was certainly recognizable, sure, but only if you looked directly at him. His talent for blending into crowds as just another businessman was invaluable for information gathering, and this fact plus the man’s unique quirk had led to many of their cases being solved without any of the criminals or villains being any the wiser.
But today was, of course, different. And by different, he meant that the straight laced, no nonsense Pro Hero approached his office with a very small child perched on his hip.
Said child clung tightly to the hero’s jacket, glancing around the room warily, leaning in closer to the hero whenever a cop passed by just a touch too close. While still out of range for him to hear, he could see Mirai speaking in soft tones, his words helping calm the boy who looked up at him with practical stars in his eyes.
If the detective did not know any better, he would think the boy might be a relative of Mirai’s. The dark green curls the boy sported were certainly the same rare shade, but the unruly mess of curls was nothing like the pin straight strands of the hero, and rather than golden irises, the boy had an even brighter shade of green than his hair.
But he also noticed how thin and pale the boy looked...
Carefully lowering the child into the chair next to Naomasa’s office, Mirai knelt in front of the boy, speaking softly once again, though the detective could make out a faint, “...will just be a moment…” A shaky nod of his head from the boy, and Mirai rose from the ground, gently restly a hand atop the boy’s head before moving into the detective’s office and quietly shutting the door.
Grabbing his now cold cup of coffee, the detective greeted the hero by commenting, “Something tells me I’m gonna need something stronger than coffee for this.
Sir Nighteye was as straight laced as they come. Despite his appreciation for humor, he was a strict, to the letter sort of hero that never, absolutely never, deviated from his usual moral code.
So, as the detective took a giant gulp of his cold coffee, he can easily justify his reaction to the Pro’s words and the truth that pinged in his head as the man spoke them. “I am currently plotting a homicide.”
The detective spat the disgusting coffee all across his desk.
It was just supposed to be a normal goddamn Tuesday .
Sir Nighteye felt that the blame belonged to Toshinori.
Not that he particularly regretted his actions, but the Number One Hero was the one who started this whole endeavor, so if he was going down, he would drag the Symbol of Peace down with him.
It had all started after the battle. A battle that was decades, no, centuries in the making. All Might had told him the story, had told him the history behind his extraordinary power, the power known as One for All...and the story behind All for One. He had known that the battle between the two men would come to pass, about the sacrifices that might be made, but he had not let himself think about the potential fallout.
Toshinori barely survived. Nighteye had tried to peer into the man’s future, to ascertain whether or not he would survive, but everything was just too jumbled, too indecipherable to read. It left him an utter wreck, nearly breaking him, were it not for the fact that his mentor, his friend, managed to survive despite the odds.
And then the man woke up and immediately tried to drag himself out of his hospital bed, with still healing near fatal wounds, and Sir had his first thoughts about committing homicide.
“Just where do you think you are going?” he asked in a quiet, venomous tone that made the injured hero physically flinch.
“I...have things I need to do.”
He let out an audible sigh as he moved to push the oaf back into the hospital bed. “The only thing you need to do is rest .”
His friend was clearly disgruntled at the idea. “I can’t, Mirai! I’ve already been out too long.” He tried to move around Nighteye, but the sidekick wouldn’t budge. “I need to find him!”
That got Nighteye’s attention. “Find who? All for One is no more, Toshinori. You won-”
“I know! It's not him I’m looking for!”
“Then who?” The man seemed to hesitate, as if he weren’t sure how to reply, but Mirai pressed. “Who is it?”
“...his son. I need to find All for One’s son.”
And that’s when Toshinori finally explained what had happened during the battle. How he had arrived to find All for One in the midst of arguing with a woman, how she was pleading with him, how he soon ascertained that this woman was his wife, and how she had just discovered the horrifying truth about her husband.
How she threatened to never let All for One near their son again.
All Might tried to intercept the two, but he was too far away, too slow, not enough. Sharp spikes pierced the young woman before he even had a chance to save her, and all he had were moments of the woman dying in his arms, begging him to stop her husband, to end his tyranny.
To protect her son.
“Don’t let my hus… that… monster take him. Protect him. Please… protect my child. Protect...Izuku!”
She took her last breath, and the fight began.
Mirai did not need the play by play of the fight, with Toshinori only offering bits about how All for One spoke of how he planned to craft the boy, the child, into his successor. How the child was his, and the only being truly deserving to exist at his side and not beneath him.
“He’s so intelligent, so brilliant! He will make a worthy adversary for you, one day. I just need to break him a little bit more to have him fit the mold I’m creating for him. Even if I die today... he will be my legacy. ”
Mirai had known that All for One was sick and twisted and the epitome of evil, but this…
“I have to find him, Mirai,” Toshinori practically begged. “I have to find him before one of All for One’s subordinates do. There is no telling the plans he’s crafted for the child. We have to protect him!”
“I know, Toshinori, I know, but you can’t help right now,” Mirai pleaded. When his friend tried to interject, he continued. “You are too injured to assist, and besides, this is not your area of expertise. You cannot simply run around the country shouting for the boy and expect to find him.”
That, at the very least, got the man to stand down a bit, his shoulders slumping in defeat. “Then what do I do?”
“You get back in that hospital bed and rest. Leave the search to me.”
And thus, after interrogating him for details about the woman and taking only the child’s name with him, Nighteye set out on his near impossible search.
And for a while, it did seem as if it were impossible. He discovered the mother’s identity fairly quickly, her body being dug out of the wreckage in the aftermath of the fight: Inko Midorya. And subsequently, he found the identity of the boy…
Seven year old Izuku Midoriya.
But then, it was as if the boy disappeared. No proper reports were filed, and were it not for the minor blip in a police report that the boy had been collected from his school the day after his mother’s death (how the boy ended up at school without his mother or...father present was another concern), he would have assumed that he had already been taken by All for One’s associates. He spent countless hours grilling the police and teachers involved, but unfortunately, another fact about the child made things...complicated.
“What do you mean ‘he’s just some quirkless kid’?” Nighteye asked in a low, threatening tone.
The teacher at least had the decency to look nervous about the comment, but she just doubled down. “I mean, I just don’t know why you are putting so much effort into finding him…”
“He is a child. An innocent child who deserves just as much help as any other living being, no matter his quirk status. Not that your ability to change your nail color gives you much bragging room.” The woman looked ready to snap back at him, but he cut her off. “Regardless, I will be making sure to pursue an investigation into your school about this blatant quirk discrimination. Now, if you will excuse me.” He rose and moved to storm out of the room, not deigning to give the shell shocked woman another glance. “I have better places to spend my time.”
It damn near broke his heart to see how easily the boy had been shoved aside in the world just because he did not possess a quirk. As if he were not worth anyone’s time. The idea that they might lose the boy not because of All for One’s actions but simply because the world refused to protect an innocent child…
He pressed on with his search.
But finally, finally, after endless searching and a month’s worth of dead ends, he found him. He discovered the boy had been deposited at a foster home and within the hour, he had the foster family’s file on hand and headed out to the address.
And then he suddenly felt the urge to commit homicide for a second time.
“The boy was living in a god damned closet, Naomosa. A closet!” Nighteye was seriously close to shouting, barely restraining himself for fear of the child outside hearing him. “He’s severely malnourished, has not had a proper bath in days, and is beyond traumatized. And those utter wastes of air had the audacity to say he should be grateful that they took him in at all!”
The detective scowled, leaning forward to drag his laptop closer. “Can you give me some names? I can get the case against them pushed through and have them arrested for neglect by the morning.”
Nighteye pulled a whole file from his suit somehow before handing it over. “This is everything on the foster family.”
“Good.” After taking the file, he raised a brow and asked, “I’m assuming you enacted emergency foster protocol for the kid?” All licensed heroes had the ability to temporarily take custody of children in emergency situations, so long as they could provide a reasonable excuse later.
“All Might’s agency is already filing the paperwork for me.” Glancing towards the door, he sighed. “I will likely file for an extension on it as well.”
That certainly got the detective’s attention. “You want to keep the kid?”
“He is a good child,” Nighteye reasoned. “Very smart and intelligent…you should have heard him talking about heroes, his analysis of them was just…” The wistful smile that had grown on his face quickly dropped. “But seeing how he’s been treated for being quirkless, I cannot in good faith simply put him back into the foster system.”
That had the detective nodding agreement. “Yeah, the quirkless face a lot more hate than any other quirk group, surprisingly. It's…the statistics aren’t pretty.” His gaze darted to the boy nervously shifting in his chair outside of the office. “Especially for children.”
“Then he stays with me, temporarily. At least until I find a safe home for him,” Nighteye declared resolutely. Then, he rose from the chair. “I would like to get him looked at by a doctor…”
“Say no more,” Naomosa replied. “I will handle this, you take care of the kid. Just send me their reports, and I will talk to the boy another day about everything.”
Watching the hero leave with a simple nod, he kept his eyes locked on the man as he moved to Izuku. The child lit up immediately upon sight of the hero and latched tightly to the man after being picked up. He could practically hear the excited chatter from the boy as Mirai politely nodded along, carrying the child out of the department as if it were the most normal thing in the world.
The detective let out an amused snort. “Temporary my ass. That kid will be adopted by the end of the week.”