Work Text:
The base idea is A Hat in Time getting mixed with My Hero Academia, specifically focusing around a Reincarnated Snatcher in the BNHA universe. Who becomes a Villain/Vigilante without really meaning to.
(It’ll make sense when I explain, I promise.)
We know Snatcher is a ghost (and the fandom collectively agrees that he’s also the Prince), so it’s not too much of a stretch to imagine that eventually Snatcher would decide/choose to move on.
Maybe he’s tired of ruling the forest. Maybe something’s happened to the forest to make him staying seem unneeded. Maybe Vanessa’s finally passed away (she’s powerful, but I don’t think she’s immortal? Not terribly important) and he doesn’t need to protect the forest from her anymore.
Whatever the reason, he’s found his peace and moves on.
Cut to another planet/world/universe in the future where he’s been reborn into the world of Quirks, but doesn’t have one himself. But he does have powers of his own.
Magic!
It could be an HP-style community, it could be video game-style magical world hidden in a non-magical one or something else entirely. But, either way, Snatcher has magic and has actually been taught about how it works and how to use it.
(And maybe he’s been having issues? For it seeming Dark when he really gets into using it?)
He’s gotten stuck in a bad/not great situation, being forced into a loveless relationship and getting forced into a role/box he doesn’t want to be in. He wants out, but he’s either dismissed or too polite/nervous/trying to not get in a worse situation (harking back to his origins as the Prince) that he can’t get out.
Eventually, the pressure reaches a point where something in him snaps, and he lashes out with the Dark powers he’s been trying to keep hidden.
After which he passes out, and ends up remembering his past self as The Prince and as the Snatcher. He sees that he’s getting shoved into a parallel of his life with Vanessa and goes “Oh peck no.” and gets his butt out of there.
So he plunges into the non-magic world, which is full of powers and Heroes and makes it surprisingly easy to bend in. At first anyways.
He quickly finds he’s got a few problems since he lacks a lot of the documentation/records mundane people need to have. So he uses his magic and his knowledge of (his current world’s) law to forge the documents he needs. He manages to contact other magic-people to finalize his works and builds a believable fake identity that's close enough to his actual one to pass under the radar.
He even gets the right papers to get him into Law School. (So he can actually finish it this time.)
But, somehow, knowledge of what he did gets out.
He gets contacted by one of the people he knew (whom he’d trusted enough to tell that he was getting out of there) saying that someone wanted him to do the same for them.
He (reluctantly) agrees to do it and tells them to give the pseudonym “Snatcher” to the person looking for him. And creates a disguise to keep his real identity from being recognized. His disguise includes a mask of the permanently smiling face he’d had as a ghost.
It slowly escalates from there, until the “Soul Snatcher” becomes a whispered name in the Underground. Someone that you can go to escape whatever you’re stuck/trapped with now.
(He has limits/standards. Only helping the people he wants, which are usually people stuck in similar situations to his own. AKA people trying to Abusive, controlling environments, or trying to bring people who’ve screwed them over to justice. It makes him a vigilante, of sorts. But he can also be pretty terrifying/cruel too. Especially to people who try to lie to him, or are the criminals he’s been asked to help reveal.)
(His title also became “Soul Snatcher” because of the rumored “cost” to his work. He doesn’t actually take souls, but he gets metaphorical/poetic about what his customers have to pay so that he can be sure that they won’t try to rat him out. He actually comes from an Equivalent Exchange view, but based more on what he’s doing means to the person in question.)
(Like getting a new Identity means “killing off” the old one. So it gets worded as “A life for a Life.”)
He crafts two separate personas to keep from being caught by Heroes or the Police.
Prince- His harmless-seeming, good-natured self. The nice guy who was studying law, and always ready to lend a hand to his neighbors. He’d absolutely do pro-bono cases for people in dire straights and really sticky situations. He’s the kind of person everyone likes/trusts. Very Pro-Quirkless due to being “nearly quirkless” himself.
His “Quirk” lets him breathe life back into wilted/dying plants.
(I got the idea for that from a fanfic where Snatcher, when he was alive, had the power to make plants/flower grow when he touched them.)
(Feel free to use your own ideas for his powers if you don’t like this idea.)
The Soul Snatcher (or just Snatcher)- Basically his flippant, forceful self from the start of AHIT. He’s a bit of a showman, but also very crafty and very obviously out for himself. He can be sly too. Making contracts tends to feel a lot like making a deal with the devil. (He kind of has an Ursula-vibe to his act.) But he’s also very harsh and can be downright cruel to people who break their contracts or try to betray him.
He uses most of the same powers he had as a ghost, and sometimes the magic/energy he uses can coat his body and change him to look like his ghostly self.
(His powers stayed with him because of how he used them back then, and the souls he’d absorbed/eaten. It kinda became a permanent part of his own soul, and carried over because of that.)
(There’s also a side effect of him being very light-sensitive when he uses them. If he actually changes to become ghost-like, the light can even hurt him. This is mostly because of how shadow-like he is.)
Thanks to the personas, he’s able to keep his two identities separate and is relatively assured that no one would be able to connect the two together. Meaning he can live however he likes without trouble.
Even then, he tries to steer clear of the Heroes and Villains, seeing both as more trouble than they’re worth.
(But that doesn’t mean he ignores the various laws surrounding them. As a Lawyer, there’s no guarantee he won’t get hired for a case involving them.)
He could get involved with Izuku as Prince, either as a neighbor or as a case. (Maybe Inko gets tired of all the crap her little boy’s been put through and hires him to sue the school for discrimination? It’s a thought.) And he takes the quirkless kid under his wing to help him out.
(Maybe Izuku could remind him of Hat or Bow? Not majorly, but just enough that he wants to look out for him.)
Or he could have some close calls with Heroes looking to capture the Soul Snatcher and eventually he gets caught. And somehow ends up as an insider/informant for a hero/hero agency.
Or it could be both!
Maybe with Nedzu figuring out that he was escaping a bad situation, that he was helping others do the same, and that he possibly wasn’t even a legal citizen for the area. Maybe even mentioning that it would deal serious damage to his identity/reputation if it got out that he’s Snatcher. And the harm it could do to people he knew/was helping/had helped.
So he reluctantly goes along with it.
