Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Izuku was only three years old when he first asked his mom the question she had been dreading.

“Mommy, how come Kachan and the other kids have dads but I don’t.”

She paused thinking over how to answer without telling him too much or outright lying.

“Well, you do have a dad, but he lives far away.”

His eyebrows scrunched together in concentration. “Oh, can we go find him and bring him back?”

She gave him a big hug “I’m sorry little guy. He’s a very good person but a lot of people don’t like him, so it’s not safe for us to see him.”

“Oh…”

Personally, she hadn’t cared about all of that. Back then, she would have followed him across the world as he became the number one hero. But he didn’t want to put her in danger and was afraid of losing her like his predecessor lost her husband. So he ran away to the other side of the world to fight crime in the U.S. while he left her here with their child.

Part of her hoped that her son never figured out who his father was. Maybe it was petty of her, but in her opinion he lost the chance to be a father. She planned on telling her son the truth once he was eighteen and could make his own decisions. Until then, all she could was try not cry when her son dressed up as All Might, because of course that’s his favorite hero.

Like father, like son, her little boy loved heroes with all his heart and swore he would be the number one hero who would save everyone. With a smile that matched the sun, she believed it. That is, until his quirk came in, then things got a lot more complicated.

Izuku was at the playground and Kachan was being mean and punched another of the kids during recess. Izuku didn’t care that he didn’t have his quirk yet and Kachan already had his. He would protect anyone in danger just like All Might. So he stepped in between the two and told his friend to stop.

“Stupid Deku!”

The good news was that Kachan wasn’t hitting the other boy anymore. The bad news was that Izuku was the one getting hit now. As tiny fists and explosions came down upon him he felt something weird. It was like he could sense where the explosions were coming from. It was like a ball of fire inside his friend that wanted to get out. The explosions weren’t very powerful, but they still hurt and he wanted them to stop.

He just wanted that quirk to go away so he could have his nice friend back.

Izuku didn’t really know what he was doing, but it felt right when he reached forward and pulled. Maybe getting rid of the ball would make the explosions stop?

It was like what he saw his mommy do when she pulled things with her quirk. But he wasn’t pulling on Kachan, he was pulling on the little ball of fire inside Kachan. Then the explosions stopped. Instead of feeling the fire inside of Kachan, he felt it inside himself.

“Deku! What did you do to me!?”

He panicked and held up his hands in defense. But this time the explosion came out of his hands, not Kachan’s.

“You took my quirk! Give it back!”

He nodded. He didn’t mean to take it, he just wanted to stop getting hurt. He tried to push it back, but nothing happened. After a few more tries it still wasn’t working, but by that point a teacher had come by to see what at the yelling and crying was about.

Later that day, Izuku, Kachan, and their parents sat in a doctor’s office to see what they could learn about the new quirk and how they could get Kachan’s back. The nice lady in a lab coat had him do a bunch of exercises that were based around trying to give a quirk.

After they’d tried everything from saying a bunch of words like ‘return’ to sharing a drop of blood, the doctor came to the conclusion that they’d all guessed from the beginning.

“Unfortunately, it seems like there isn’t a way to return quirks, at least not one that is easy to discover. Typically the release of any quirk is intuitive to the user, so the fact that nothing worked or led little Izuku in the right direction likely means there isn’t one. Although, it could just be that the method is very unusual and not something we considered.” She crouched and spoke directly to Izuku, who was still clutching his All Might toy. “So if something feels right and you think you know how to give it back then you should let your mom know as soon as possible.”

He gave her a rapid nod, he just wanted this to be over.

She turned to the Bakugou family. “I’m sorry we weren’t more successful, I’ll have the quirk registry updated. You can make an appointment at the front desk to have someone go over him in more detail and make sure there aren’t any other lasting effects. I wouldn’t expect there to be, but we like to be sure when it comes to some affected by an unknown quirk.”

After the Bakugou’s left the doctor sat down again and addressed Inko as she pulled out some paperwork.

“Let’s get the quirk registry all set up. Now, I can see how your quirk influenced this, with the ability to attract objects, but I’m unsure as to why he attracts quirks of all things. Can you tell me about his father’s quirk?”

“I’m not sure. I simply met him at a bar and things went from there. So I’m afraid I don’t know very much about him.”

Inko was used to telling this lie, because it kept people from asking questions or trying to find out who the father was or that she knew what his quirk was. But it was unpleasant to say every time. She had known and loved that man, but she needed to pretend that he was a drunken one night stand in order to keep herself and her son safe from the dangerous life he lived.

She most certainly did know the father’s quirk, in fact, she was one of the very few who did. At first glance there was no relation between All Might’s strength and her son’s quirk, but it made sense if you knew his real quirk. The power to transfer a quirk combined with the power to pull things to yourself mixed into pulling quirks.

She nodded. “I see. That can make it a bit trickier to predict any other aspects to the quirk, but hopefully this is the last of the surprises. The quirk registry will now have both his original quirk and Explosion. He won’t get in any trouble for this since he couldn’t have known what his quirk would be before it activated the first time, but please make sure your son doesn’t do something like this again.”

Inko nodded in agreement. She loved her son dearly, but this was not an ability that could be used lightly, let alone by a child.

It had been about ten years since that day and Izuku was still seen as nothing but a villain. He wanted to be a hero more than anything, but he knew he probably couldn’t. Even if he ignored everyone’s hatred of him, he refused to use either of the quirks he had. ‘Explosion’ would always be Kachan’s, so he wouldn’t use it, it would never be his to use. And for obvious reasons he wouldn’t use his original quirk either.

Which meant people thought of him as both a villain and useless, and that was the worst combination to be. Kachan was determined to become the first quirkless hero and few were brave enough to tell him he couldn’t. And those that did tell him to give up were generally punched repeatedly.

And since everyone knew that heroes fought villains, no one did anything when Izuku was beaten over and over by his quirkless tormentor. But he refused to fight back. The school was waiting for even the slightest show of violence for him so they could expel him. Because it was absolutely no secret that the teachers didn’t want him there, and with his quirk he’d be considered a villain and arrested immediately.

It certainly didn’t help that many saw Kachan as the real victim who was just getting revenge for his stolen quirk. So, in short, his life was awful and he had no one to blame except his four year old self who didn’t know what he was doing until it was too late. All of that built up until one day that was particularly shitty.

“If you want to be a hero so bad, why don’t you take a swan dive off the roof and hope to be one in your next life.”

Those words echoed in his head as he walked home with his head hung low. Was that really his only way out of this? Would his life be like this forever? As he walked under an overpass, thinking about what his life would look like, he heard a clattering sound behind him 

He turned around to see what the noise was when a wave of sludge wrapped around him, cutting off his breathing. He didn’t know what to do and just panicked, thrashing against the powerful slime. He didn’t want to die, so when he felt the long forgotten sensation of his quirk, sensing the other’s quirk as a ball of morphing slime, he started to reach for it. He hoped his mom (and the police) would forgive him.

Before he could grab the man’s quirk he was cut off by the familiar shout of  “DETROIT SMASH'' echoing through the tunnel. The slime was peeled away, leaving Izuku coughing and gasping for breath on the ground.

After too little time, All Might crouched down to jump away, but he couldn’t let him go without asking him something. Which led him to where he was now. Standing on a roof with a skeletal looking All Might telling him to be realistic, that he couldn’t be a hero without using his quirk.

“You need a quirk to survive as a hero, and if you don’t feel comfortable using yours then no, I don’t think you’ll be able to make it as a hero.”

He had gotten down from the building and walked down the street when he heard a huge fight happening nearby. Izuku’s curiosity got the better of him and he ran towards the sound. But when he arrived it was frozen at the horror he saw. The sludge villain that had just tried to kill him was now fighting heroes again. The heroes seemed completely overwhelmed and couldn’t attack back because of the hostage he’d taken.

But the most terrifying part was who the hostage was. Trapped in the slime was Kachan, his friend, turned victim, turned bully. None of the heroes were able to do anything and Izuku could tell he was running out of air. They locked eyes and it seemed like he was calling out for help.

His quirk had ruined his friend’s life, but maybe it could save it too. So Izuku took a deep breath and raised his hand and focused on that slimy and slippery quirk. 

“Don’t worry Kachan, it’ll be ok.” At those words his bully and former friend looked both horrified and relieved since he knew exactly what was about to happen.

Then, for the first time in a decade, he pulled.

The massive slime man quickly shrunk in size and he began to shift from the dark green color to a more pale hue. But something went wrong. As sludge, he had been spread out and twisted in shapes impossible for a human body. But the worst issue was that he wasn’t all in one place. Throughout the fight, parts of sludge had been knocked away in an attempt to get Kachan out. And now, instead of being able to put himself back together, he was a normal man with half of his head resting on the ground ten feet away from him and nearly every bone was twisted and broken in a macabre pile.

But as he saw Kachan take a deep breath of air it was all worth it. He knew it would always haunt him, but if he had to choose between killing a killer and letting Kachan die, then he knew what he would regret the least.

He couldn’t bring himself to worry as All Might placed cuffs around his wrists and arrested him for vigilantism. Kachan would live, and even if this is the price he had to pay for that, he would do it again in an instant. Even if his life was ruined, at least he was able to save one person, able to do one good thing with his cursed quirk.

It wasn’t until they had nearly reached the police station did it really sink in of what he’d just done.

He killed a man.

Oh god. Everyone was right, he was a villain. All he wanted to do was help people. He just wanted to save Kachan. Now a man was dead and he would be going to jail.

They led him inside the police station and placed him in a holding cell to sit with nothing but his thoughts and a pair of modified handcuffs that keep the user from moving their hands, since that's a common quirk activation requirement. Not that he was going to try, all he did was stare at the wall as he tried to process what he’d done.

Chapter Text

Toshinori was nervous, and after decades of hero work, he wasn’t easily shaken.

A civilian saw his true form. Not good but manageable. Then that same civilian used his quirk to save a friend that was dying. Also not good. So, we already have a kid who’s ok with vigilantism and knows his secret. Very not good. While saving his friend, he accidentally(?) kills said villain. A vigilante teen that is willing to kill and knows his identity, borderline disaster. Then to really top it off, he has the same quirk as the man who killed his mentor and nearly killed him. This is way past disaster and all the way to a waking nightmare.

Did All for One have a son? Was this his unintentional debut? How many quirks did he already have? Now he really wishes he got the kid’s name when they were on that rooftop, but he’s out of time for the day, so he has to leave any questions to his friend Tsukachi who will hopefully figure this shit out and give him all the information later on.

After pacing back and forth in his apartment for far too long he finally gets the awaited call.

“Naomasa, what’s going on?”

“Calm down. He’s not in contact with All for One, doesn’t even know who the guy is.”

Toshinori gave a sigh of relief. “But they have nearly the same quirk, the kid's quirk is even worse since he doesn’t need physical contact. He just reached out and took it, who knows what the limits are? So, if it isn’t All for One what kind of quirks do his parents have?”

“Yeah, that’s where it gets dicey. He has no idea who his dad is. Apparently his mom refuses to tell him much more than the fact that dangerous people were after his father, so he stays away from them to keep them safe.”

And that brought them right back to being nearly positive they were looking at the super villain’s kid. But him not knowing his dad gave them a chance.

“Alright, maybe we can salvage this and try and keep him away from villany. Can you tell me about his mother, is she a villain as well?”

“Not from what I can tell. Her name is Inko Midoriya and the only thing that sticks out is just how clean her file is. But I wouldn’t rule it out of the question, she already threatened to remove my teeth with her quirk if I didn’t let her talk to her son.”

“...”

“You ok?”

“...Did you say Inko Midoriya?”

“Yeah, have you heard of her?”

“Oh God… The kid’s name. I never even asked… But please, please tell me it isn’t Izuku.”

He felt like he was going to vomit.

“Yeah, how’d you know?”

It took him too long to respond as he considered how massively he’d messed up.

“Toshinori? What’s wrong? Do you know this lady?”

“Yeah, you could say that. Remember how I told you I had a kid I’d never met. All I knew about him was the name we’d agreed on. I left them because I was scared I would put a target on their back, like with what happened to Nana. We haven’t spoken since before he was born, I never knew what his quirk was or what he looked like…”

“Toshinori, I need you to calm down and breathe.”

It wasn’t until he heard that did he realize he was hyperventilating.

“I met my son today. And I told him he couldn’t be a hero then I arrested him for defending his friend.”

“But… how would your son have that quirk?”

“...The ability to transfer your own quirk mixed with the ability to attract things. You get a boy who can attract quirks.”

Tsukachi paused for a moment. “Well, I guess it makes a bit more sense now on why Ms. Midoriya was very- how do I say this- insistent that she speak to you.”

Fuck. After all these years, this is how they talk again?

“Alright, let her know I’m on my way.”

Inko was kind and friendly whenever possible, but she was also not someone to be trifled with. She marched into that police station like a woman ready to go to war and defend her little boy. But when she heard that All Might was the one who arrested her son, she was prepared to tear that building to the ground. The man fucks off for fifteen years and decides to come after her child and try to put him in jail over a quirk accident? Oh, that fool is going to regret returning to Japan.

As she understood it, the heroes weren’t doing their jobs, her little Izuku was watching his friend die and used his quirk out of desperation, which didn’t go as planned since that was only the second time he’d ever used it. That wasn’t a villain, that was a frightened child who needed a hug and some hot coco not a prison cell. Maybe she was biased, but her point stands.

Then after having the fucking audasity to arrest Izuku, All Might decides to up and leave. Again. She was starting to think that Toshinori was allergic to the consequences of his actions, because he sure as hell avoided them like he was.

For some idiotic reason she isn't allowed to see Izuku yet. She wanted to scream at them that he was a minor and that she would see him now, but she knew that becoming a ‘villain’ in their eyes meant pretty much all rights disappeared.

So she demanded to speak to All Might. After the fifth time she was told no she decided if he wasn’t here in the next hour she’d explain to that head detective exactly how he related to this case and why he needed to get his ass to the station. Or at the very least, tell her where he is so she could drag said ass to the station herself.

She was getting ready to fight every single officer that was in her way when the idiot finally showed up. She didn’t even give him time to speak, just grabbing him by the shirt and dragging him into an open room. After basically forcing him into an empty conference room she realized he was steaming.

“Toshi, why is your body smoking, it only does that when you’re way over your limit.”

His iconic smile dropped and he hung his head. “Please don’t freak out.”

She was about to ask why she would freak out when he deflated into a skeleton of a man.

Inko had been familiar with his quirk and knew that he had both an ‘All Might’ form and his ‘Yagi Toshinori’ form, but it was nothing like this. The shift between the two forms was slight, an inch or two of extra height and a bit more heft to his muscles, it was more like flexing than anything else.

Nearly all of her rage melted away into concern when she looked at his disheveled body “Oh God Toshi. What happened to you?” She wanted to stay angry, but she couldn’t just make herself not care about the oaf, at least not while he was injured in front of her.

He sighed and lifted up his shirt, showing his old wound. “I got hurt really badly six years ago, I lost a lung and my stomach and now I’m only All Might for three hours a day.”

“You idiot. Only you are stupid and stubborn enough to not retire after getting your organs ripped out.”

“I couldn’t stop being the symbol of peace.”

She sighed deeply, “We can argue about this later, or maybe never. Your choices aren’t my business anymore and haven’t been for a long time. What’s important is that my little boy is locked up and no one will let me even talk to him. So what you need to do is go out there, give them a heroic smile, and get me into that fucking room because he just went through something really traumatizing and needs his mom.”

“Um, yeah. I can do that. I probably won’t be able to get you in there alone, but I’ll make it work.”

 He went back into his hero form and they started walking over to the holding cells so her idiot ex could talk some sense into the guards and let her in. Before they even got halfway there, Detective Tsukachi ran up to them with a panicked look on his face and gasping for breath like he had sprinted to them.

“He’s gone. Someone with a warping quirk just teleported him out of his cell.”

Izuku was barely aware of his surroundings as his thoughts continued to spiral, thinking about everything that just happened.

He had been sitting in the cell at the police station, then there was purple mist, and now he was in a warehouse of sorts. But it was still a significant struggle to get out of his own head and pay attention to what was going on.

“-I believe it is reasonable for him to be so out of sorts, from what I understand that was his first kill.”

The handcuffs were taken off of him and he looked up at his three rescuers. A man made of purple mist and wore a nice suit, a very tall man in a suit as well, sitting in a chair hooked up to life support, and a younger man who was dressed casually other than the hand on his face.

“W-who are you?”

The man with the helmet spoke up. “We are the League of Villains, you may call me Sensei, these are my associates, Shigaraki and Kurogiri.”

“But… I’m not a villain.”

Two of them laughed a little while the smoke man stayed quiet. “I don’t mean to be rude, but what do you consider a person who kills someone else on live television?”

“I… I just wanted to save my friend…”

“I understand. Unfortunately the law sees little difference between villains, vigilantes, and anything in between. However, that’s not the main reason I brought you here. You see, I’ve been alive a long, long time, and you are the first person I’ve found with nearly the same quirk, so you can imagine my intrigue.”

Izuku paused as he processed what the odd man was saying. 

“You have a quirk like mine?”

“Yes, although there are a few differences. I require physical contact from the holes in my hands to the other person’s head to take a quirk and I can give the taken quirks to those without one. From what I read in your file it seems like you can only take and you don’t have any physical mutation like I do.” He held out his hands, showing the small hole in each palm.

Everything started to make sense. He’s wondered for pretty much his entire life who his father was, and his mom gave him barely any information on him.

However, he had pieced together a few facts over the years that were suddenly very relevant. First was what she had told him years ago, that it was dangerous to be a family and people were after his father. Dangerous enough that she would tell everyone that it was a drunken one night stand even though that was obviously a lie and she knew his father very well.

Secondly, he figured he had a quirk that would logically create his own when mixed with his mother’s since she didn’t seem particularly confused at what his power ended up being. This was the most important one since it’s a pretty unique quirk that he hadn’t heard of anyone else having and his mom’s reaction proved it wasn’t just a totally random mutation.

Third, his mom told him once that his father was incredibly tall, and let slip that it wasn’t because of a quirk mutation.

Finally, he had very light colored hair. (The hair thing didn’t help right now because of the helmet, but it was good to keep in mind)

The last two he’d learned when he was about eight and there had been an art project to draw who you thought your future self would look like. He’d been asking about what his dad looked like for reference and she hadn’t seen any harm in giving those little details to make him happy.

And now he was talking to a villain who had a near identical quirk and seemed to be at least seven feet tall.

“Are you my dad?”

Chapter Text

All for One was having a great day.

He had been bored watching the news with a quirk that let him interface with screens when he saw footage of a boy stealing a man’s quirk, resulting in a fatality by pure bad luck. Within minutes he had found his identity and quirk registration and decided that he either needed this boy to join them or die, because he knew firsthand just how powerful/dangerous his quirk can be. The last thing he needed was to be challenged by someone who could actually match his strength.

It took essentially no effort to find out where he was being kept and he had Kurogiri bring the boy to him. But now he was standing over a very overwhelmed looking child. Which he supposed was reasonable, a lot had happened for him in very little time. He had just killed someone and now would inevitably have to choose between prison and villainy, so he was expecting any number of things. Tears, violence, insults, a mental breakdown, the list goes on.

What he was not expecting was for this panic stricken boy to ask him if he was his father.

“Excuse me?”

The boy responded with nearly incomprehensible mumbling. But with the assistance of enhanced hearing and a minor mind reading quirk, he understood what the boy was trying to explain.

He had to admit, although the kid didn’t know a lot about his absent father, enough things matched up for All for One had to take a moment and ask himself if he had unsafe sex around fifteen years ago.

Tomura and Kurogiri were struck completely silent by the question and had no idea what to do.

“Kurogiri, please take Tomura and yourself to the bar.” Kurogiri nodded but the boy didn’t agree so easily.

“Are you kidding? There’s no way I’m leaving after that dialogue!”

“Tomura, I am not asking. I would like to speak to Izuku alone for now. Kurogiri, if you would?”

The man nodded once again and created a portal that Shigaraki reluctantly followed him through. “Alright, I’ll go, but I want to hear more about this later, Sensei.”

He sighed and shook his head. He didn’t have the patience to deal with this situation and Tomura’s moods at the same time. Looking at the confused but hopeful child in front of him he pondered how to approach this. After a few moments, All for One decided he should simply tell the truth since that would lay a good foundation for having this child remain loyal no matter where this ends up going.

“Well, to be perfectly honest with you, I don’t know. I know you wish you had a definitive answer right now, but all I can tell you is that I might be.”

“But… How could you not know? It feels like a simple question. My mom’s name is Inko Midoriya, she looks a lot like me, ring a bell?”

In response the super villain removes the large and bulky mask revealing a heavily scarred face with sockets that had no eyes. “You see, about six years ago I was in a brutal fight with none other than All Might himself. I nearly had him too, but I got cocky and for that I received his full strength. It is no exaggeration to state that he punched away a good portion of my head, it took quite the combination of quirks just to keep me alive. A consequence of this is that my memories of anything before that are splotchy at best. So, believe me when I say that I truly have no idea and just because I don’t remember your mother does not mean I didn’t know her.”

Izuku nodded slowly, taking in everything.

“But, know this, even if you aren’t my son biologically, you will have a place here. I will admit that this is a surprise for me as well, but no matter what the truth is, I’m glad I was able to find you before those idiot heroes locked you up.”

At this point the boy was sobbing and his words came out as nearly a whisper “No one’s ever wanted me around before, other than mom…”

He gently placed a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “I understand. I truly do. I was not wanted either. The fear and hatred that once people know about what we can do, what we’re capable of. Society tells everyone that their worth is determined by their quirk, which means people like us terrify them. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about, people turning on you once they know what you can do.”

The green haired boy nodded, a deep sadness in his eyes. Whether or not this kid was his kid, he needed to convince him to join his side, because the other option was less pleasant while there was a chance that this was his child.

“When I was your age I didn’t want to be a villain either, I actually started out more as a freedom fighter. I fought against an anti-quirk government, but they decided my very existence was villainous. So, since people refused to let me be anything but a villain, I decided I might as well embrace it.”

He had dropped a lot of information on him, so he gave the boy a few minutes to process that.

“...I still want to help people. If I can’t be a hero, could I at least be a vigilante or something like that?”

All for One smiled. “Of course. I didn’t bring you here to force you into anything, if you ever want to leave you can, and if you want to stay you are more than welcome to.”

“...I don’t really have anywhere else to go. I’ll try not to be a bother though.”

“If I thought you would be a burden I would not have brought you here. Now, before we move on and get you settled here, I was curious about your quirk, specifically the ones you’ve taken so far.”

“Oh. Um. I only have two, the sludge one from today, and an explosion quirk from when my quirk manifested. It, um, lets me sweat nitroglycerin out of my palms and ignite it. But I won’t use the explosion quirk since that belonged to my friend and I didn’t mean to take it.”

The ancient super villain nodded, “Well, if you ever would like more quirks, I have numerous that I can no longer use due to my current state. For example, Laser Eyes is useless to me for obvious reasons. But that is something that can be handled another day. For now Kurogiri can show you to your room and we can speak further tomorrow, I know there is much we still need to talk about.”

The next day, Izuku sat in the bar with a burner phone his father(?) gave him. Things felt like they couldn’t progress until he knew for sure whether or not they were related. Sure, there were other important things to do, like decide what he was going to do now that he was on the run from the law, or training his quirk after suppressing it for a decade, but this took precedence.

He wished he could just call his mom and make sure, but as the friendly bartender explained, it was probably a bad idea since she was under police surveillance. So he needed to call someone else that knew who his dad was. With the caveat that they weren’t currently being watched by heroes and police that could and would track the call, that narrowed down his options to one person. Mitsuki Bakugou.

She was his mom’s confidant and the only other person he knew for sure had that information. He’d asked her once if his mom had told her, and her response had been ‘Told me?! I was there when those idiots met, but that doesn’t mean I’ll tell you anything you little brat. Your mom has good reason for making you wait until you’re an adult.’

As the phone rang he hoped he could finally get a straight answer instead of just trying to guess. It kept on ringing and when it went to voicemail he hung up and called again, calling was already risky, but leaving a voice message would be outright stupid. After a few rings he got through on his second try.

“Who the fuck is calling me over and over at eight am, on a Saturday ?! If you aren’t dying or worse, you’re about to be.”

He laughed a little, not realizing how nice it would be to hear the voice of someone he knew after all of the craziness that had happened over the last 24 hours. “Hey auntie.”

There was an audible gasp over the phone. “Holy shit, is that you, Izuku? I thought you were still locked up. Which is bullshit by the way, thanks for saving my brat’s life.”

“Thanks auntie, um, well I was in prison, but I was broken out.”

“Who did that, and where are you?”

“Well, you see, that’s why I’m calling actually. I’m pretty sure the person who broke me out is my dad.”

She started laughing loudly, her voice losing the serious tone. “Ha! Yeah, that sounds like something he’d do. That man isn’t really one for subtlety or small gestures. And you called me to make sure he is who he says he is?”

“Yeah, it’s honestly a bit hard to believe.”

He didn’t want to share around the fact that his dad had serious memory issues so he didn’t mention that his dad had no idea either and they were both guessing.

“Well, I can see why they didn’t share your daring escape with the news then. Because if law enforcement has any idea that your dad was involved then they’re gonna have to handle this very carefully. Hell, they might just ignore it completely and decide it’s not worth it rather to go up against him.”

Ok, so she did know how big of a deal he was in the underworld and how much of a threat he was.

“Yeah, I could imagine it would be kind of a mess if they sent heroes to arrest him.”

She laughed loudly again. “Ha! ‘Kind of a mess’ is an understatement, but you’re not wrong. Well, even if he is a bit of an idiot in my opinion, you’ll be safe with him. I don’t know his real name, since he’s touchy about that sort of thing, but yeah, even if it’s hard to believe, your dad really is All-”

The phone disintegrated as Toumura grabbed it from him. “Hey! Why’d you do that?!”

“Because you were talking with some NPC about Sensei like some sort of traitor. The heroes think he’s dead, and if your little friend there starts telling people that he’s very much alive, then they will start hunting him again!”

Izuku hung his head. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”

“Where did you even get a phone? That shouldn’t be in your inventory.”

“Oh, uh, dad gave it to me so I could call him or Kurogiri for help in an emergency.”

“And you use it instead to put everyone in danger! You must have forgotten to put any stats in intelligence, but from the looks of you, you’re not exactly a fighter class either. So what good are you if you’re both dumb and weak?”

The best defense he was able to muster was a mumbled “Shut up.”

“Sure, you caught Sensei’s attention when you killed a guy, but he just found your quirk interesting. You don’t belong here and I won’t let you take my place!”

“Shut up!” Izuku could feel the control on his quirk slipping. Tomura’s quirk felt like swirling dust that would destroy anything it touched, and he could tell it was focused in his hands. He had gone an entire decade without using his quirk once, but now that he had, it was like Pandora's box had been opened.

“Is that all you’re able to say?!”

It had become easy to ignore before the incident with the slime villain, but now that he’d given in once it was so much harder to contain that desire to take all of the cool quirks he saw. And besides, he was already considered a villain, so why should he keep holding himself back?

“SHUT UP!” And with that he made a swiping motion with his hand, as if he were snatching something out of the air.

They both went silent as they felt the quirk change owners.

“Hey! Give that back!”

“My quirk doesn’t work like that, I can’t give quirks, only take them.”

“That’s so dumb, what if you take a quirk you don’t want?” At first he wasn’t sure why Shigaraki wasn’t more upset, but then he remembered that they had access to someone who could transfer quirks, so maybe it wasn't as big of a deal here since his dad could undo this.

“Well, your quirk can’t be undone either. What happens if you destroy something you didn’t want to?”

“Yeah, but I want to destroy everything, does that mean you want to take every quirk like some shitty klepto rogue?”

“Not all of them, and I don’t think that I would actually want to follow through most of the time, I just think quirks are super interesting, I see a cool quirk and I just really want to try it out and experiment with it.”

“Ugh, you’re such a nerd.” He stomped over to the television in the bar like an angry child. “Sensei, your dumb brat took my quirk.”

The monitor crackled to life. “I am aware. I’ve been listening since before you entered the room, Tomura. If the situation had been truly dire I would have intervened, but I appreciate your loyalty and commitment to my secrecy.”

Shigarki normally would have peened at the compliments, but was a bit too focused at the time. “I want it back!”

“I see, Kurogiri, please warp both boys to my location so we can remedy this issue.”

Within moments a swirl of purple mist surrounded them and dropped them off in the room he had been in before, with the life support equipment and many monitors. The old villain waved them over to his chair. They both walked over silently, not wanting to cause even more of a problem. He then reached out and placed a hand on each of their heads before activating his quirk.

Even though it didn’t hurt, he certainly didn’t like the feeling. The closest thing he could compare it to was having a toy taken from him before he finished playing with it. He wasn’t a greedy person by nature, but quirks were just so interesting and what better way to study one than to use it yourself? He still had questions and ideas for the disintegration quirk but had to give it back anyways.

He then heard his father laughing. “Oh, I know that expression, but I’ve never seen it from the outside before. Giving back quirks is never as much fun as taking them, is it?”

Izuku simply shook his head, feeling embarrassed at being called out. “Um, how can you see me? Is it a quirk?”

The man smiled. “We can discuss that in a moment. Tomura, Kurogiri can bring you back to the bar now unless you wish to join our conversation on quirk applications?”

“Ugh, yeah, I’ll go.”

With another swirl of purple mist they were alone again. “So. Unless I misheard your conversation in the bar, you’ve confirmed that you truly are my son.”

Izuku nodded. “Yeah, I was talking to my mom’s best friend. Apparently she knew you as well.”

“In the future I would have preferred that you talk to me before doing something like that. As Tomura already stated, it could have put us in danger, but in this case I believe it was warranted.”

“Yeah, that makes sense.”

“Do not look so guilty, there is no shame in such a simple mistake, simply talk to me first next time. Now, with that out of the way, let’s talk about more interesting things. The main way I see is with a quirk that is called ‘Surveillance’, it lets me hack into cameras and look through them as if they were my own eyes.”

“Ohhhh. So that’s why you always have that monitor on in the bar! You use the camera on it to see what is going on.”

“Correct, it allows me to go about my day without too much issue. I also use an infrared quirk that allows me to sense heat signatures. Those two along with enhanced hearing prevent me from being hampered or weakened by not having eyes.”

Izuku’s face had lit up with joy as he contemplated all the ways those quirks could work together. “Can you sense heat signatures through the cameras you hack into, or do the quirks have to function separately? Would it be possible to regrow your eyes through a regeneration quirk? Nevermind, that wouldn’t work unless you had the quirk prior to your injury since it would only ever heal you to the state you were in when you got the quirk.”

His father’s smile matched his own. “You’re correct on both counts. A regeneration quirk wouldn’t help and I can use the infrared quirk through the cameras, even if they aren’t equipped with infrared capabilities. Now, I have something for you to look through.”

He handed a book to Izuku that was filled with laminated pockets for cards to be stored in. As he looked through it he found that every single card had the name and description of a quirk.

“These are all quirks you have?”

“Yep, I store the information like that so it’s easy to keep track of what I do and don’t have. I’m glad I wrote it down instead of relying on my memory. The last thing I needed was trying to figure out all of my quirks through trial and error.”

Izuku nodded slowly and spoke softly. “You really forgot that much?”

“Yes. I’m over one hundred and fifty years old, and there are entire decades that are completely blank. I never kept a journal or anything, and I kept myself out of any public records, so it’s likely that I’ll never actually know about large portions of my life. All because that bastard All Might took it from me.”

“You really hate him, don’t you?”

“How could I not? Could you imagine the pain of finding out that you had a child and a woman you loved, but can’t remember a single thing about them? Do I have other children? Other past lovers over the years that I’ve forgotten existed? He took my loved ones from me in a way I hope you never have to understand. I raised Tomura since he was barely four years old, and when I woke up from being put back together I barely recognized him.”

“Oh God, that’s awful.”

“That man has not exactly been kind to either of us.” He sighed briefly before composing himself. “Let’s not worry about that for now, we can focus on making new memories instead of grieving the ones lost. The reason I wanted you to look through that is there are plenty of quirks I can’t use anymore, as I mentioned before. Since I’ve been trying to stay under the radar the last few years I haven’t had a way to get rid of them without gaining attention, so I’ve simply held onto them. So, anything with a black x at the bottom that you want is free for the taking.”

He chuckled to himself, “Even if it isn’t marked, I’m sure I can part with a few quirks that you find particularly interesting. Consider it a replacement for the many birthdays I’ve missed.”

Izuku was ecstatic, there must have been hundreds, maybe even thousands of cards in the book, each of them a unique quirk. He was like a kid in a candy shop as he analyzed every single one in the book and threw question after question at his father.

“I know you’re having fun but you need to take a break.”

“What? How come?”

“Well, you’ve been sitting on the floor flipping back and forth between those pages for about four hours and it’s lunch time.”

“What? No way, it hasn’t been that long…” he looked over at the clock on the wall and found that it in fact had been that long.

“Oh, oops. I just got distracted.”

“It’s fine, nothing wrong with it. But I’ll have Kurogiri warp over a sandwich for you.”

“Um, what about you? Wouldn’t we have lunch together?”

“I haven’t eaten food in quite a while. I have a photosynthesis quirk, as long as I drink water and get enough sun from the skylight I put in, then I don’t need to eat.” he looked down at the green haired boy who nodded but seemed a little disappointed. “But you make a fair point, even if it’s less convenient, I think it would be lovely to have lunch together.”

Only a few hours away, a very stressed Inko paced back and forth in her living room. Mitsuki sat on her couch, having thought she was bringing good news.

"What do you mean he’s with his father?!”

“It’s like I just told you, he called me to make sure the guy he was with was really his dad and I confirmed that his dad was All Might.”

“Did he explicitly say he was with All Might?”

She thought for a second. “No, I don’t think he did, but it really seemed like we were talking about the same guy. What’s the issue Inko, we’re clearly not on the same page.”

“The issue is that All Might isn’t with Izuku, he’s hiding in the kitchen because you intimidate him. Which leaves me to wonder, who the hell has my son?!”

Chapter Text

Giran was surprised at the request he received, mostly because of how little he had to do. Normally when he was called upon he had to arrive with information, recruits, equipment, something that warranted his services. However, no matter how odd it was though, he would never ignore the call of his primary patron. Especially since that patron was one of the strongest people in the world.

He quietly made his way into the warehouse that housed the supposedly dead king of the underworld and was shocked when he heard an unfamiliar voice inside, a very young voice at that. The man’s very existence was a national secret, so what was a young boy doing here?

As he walked further into the building he came across a very odd scene. There was a teenager who couldn’t be older than fourteen sitting with the symbol of evil, and they seemed to be playing some sort of card game. Even more shocking was seeing the deformed man with a genuine smile for the first time.

Giran took a few steps closer, remaining out of the child’s view, since he wasn’t sure what was going on yet. While said child was distracted going through a binder, All for One looked up and raised a single finger to his smiling lips. He supposed that meant he was to watch, but not to let himself be noticed by the boy just yet. It also meant that him walking in on this meeting wasn’t an accident. He was meant to be watching this for some reason he didn’t know yet. So he got as close as he could without risking detection and glanced at the cards laid down.

Both had a binder filled with cards, but not a type of card that he recognized. In between them was a single card that read ‘eye lasers’ and smaller script underneath the title that he couldn’t read from his distance. Each of them laid down two cards with great consideration then flipped them at the same time.

All for One spoke, “My combination is ‘Bending Sight’, which lets the user essentially curve their vision to see around corners and such, along with ‘Bird’s Eye View’. All three together would create a laser that could be shot from the sky anywhere the user is familiar with and chase the target. I think I’d call it something fun, like ‘the sky sniper.’, or something like that.”

The boy nodded and pushed his two cards forward. “Oh, that’s definitely a great idea for taking out a single target. As you said, it’s like a sniper rifle, I present to you the nuclear bomb equivalent of laser eyes.”

There was mirth and joy in their voices as they teased and tried to outdo the other. “Oh? Do tell how you managed that? That is quite a high bar for a quirk as simple as this one.”

“First, we add in the quirk, ‘extra eyes’ giving the user the ability to grow additional eyes across their body, though the limit is around twenty five eyes in total. On its own that is a powerful quirk combo, but not nearly enough. That’s where the other quirk comes in.”

Not enough? What hypothetical situation are they considering where twenty five laser shooting eyes is treated as so underwhelming?

One for All picked up the second card and seemed to ponder it for a moment, confusion on his face turning into pure joy. “That is absolutely brilliant, Izuku. Using a dragonfly mutation quirk to give the user bug eyes, which would cause laser eyes to become far more devastating. I have only ever used this quirk for the flight aspect, not even considering the advantages from the peculiar eyes of an insect.”

Izuku. Where had he heard that name before? He felt he had heard news about an Izuku recently.
“Well, you certainly beat me this round. Though I still support the merits of my more focused usage, yours was far more creative and has the advantage of absolute destruction. As always, your prize is a quirk of your choice.”

Wait, what? He figured out quickly that the point of this game was to create the most powerful combination of three quirks, where both parties had to work off of the same base quirk, in this case laser eyes. But he hadn’t realized that they were gambling with quirks on the line.

The boy reached out, and moved his hand as if he were sifting through something only he could see before making a grabbing motion and pulling his hand back. That’s when it clicked for him. This was the boy in the news the other day who had been caught after seeming to take a man’s quirk and kill him in the process.

“Oh? Interesting choice, was it simply because of this round, or had you had your eye on it already?”

“I had wanted a flying quirk anyways, but the realization about the eyes really sold this particular one.”

Four dragonfly wings sprouted from the boy’s back, ripping through his shirt, and his eyes pushed forward and shifted to have typical insect qualities. These new eyes must have given far more peripheral vision because Izuku suddenly spun around and took a rookie fighting stance.

The old villain laughed loudly, “Izuku, this is my good friend Giran, there is no need to worry.”

The boy dropped his stance and the new insect features slowly retreated into his body as he looked awkwardly between the two men.

“Giran, this is my son Izuku Midoriya. He had lived with his mother most of his life for his safety and to keep his existence a secret, but recent events have made it safest for him to stay with me now.”

He had most certainly not been expecting this unassuming boy to be the son of the most powerful man he’d ever met. Sure, their quirks were similar, but it was hard to imagine someone like All for One with something as normal and domestic as a family. He supposed the story made sense though, no one would be checking the suburbs for the son of the king of the underworld, but that safety in anonymity would be completely gone after that news report.

“Um, hi, it’s nice to meet you Mr. Giran.”

“Ha! No need for the Mr, just Giran is fine. I saw that on the news the other day, I’m assuming you weren’t planning on making your big debut so soon.”

Izuku looked a bit sheepish, he’d have to learn not to hide his nerves if he wanted to follow in his father’s steps. “Yeah, I wasn’t really thinking ahead. That guy was going to kill my friend so I just sort of… acted.”

“Nothing wrong with that. Now, was there anything in particular you needed me for today or did you just want me to meet the kid?”

“Well, it’s never too early to start making connections. But before we get into anything, Izuku, I want you to tell me what his quirk is by using what we talked about.”

The small green haired boy looked at him with an appraising eye, but it was almost like he was looking through him. He reached a hand out as if to grab something invisible but instead of pulling back and taking his quirk he just observed.

It was an incredibly odd feeling. As if someone were holding his soul. It wasn’t hostile or aggressive, but very much like being in the cave with a lion that isn’t hungry. Yet. This boy could rip him apart with only a thought, and the only thing stopping him is that he didn’t want to. It was a less than pleasant experience, but he was too good at his job to let any sort of fear or negative emotion show on his face.

Izuku put his hand down and looked over to his father. “It feels almost… hazy. Like a thick fog that settles around your head. Does he have a smokescreen quirk?”

Giran shook his head, “You’re definitely going in the right direction, but that’s a bit too literal, think more-”

All for One raised a hand. “Don’t help him yet, let him figure it out on his own.”

Giran only nodded, who was he to get in the way of a man teaching his son?

The boy seemed to be deep in thought. “It’s like seeing something in the corner of your vision, but when you look nothing is there. Is it something that blocks perception of you so you go unnoticed? Or maybe it blurs the memory of your face? No… that’s too specific. It blurs memories of you! That’s it!”

“Damn, that’s impressive. Yeah, my quirk is called ‘Murky’, it makes it hard to remember exact details within a few minutes of when my quirk is on.”

For a brief moment Izuku looked at him with a mix of curiosity and desire with his hand twitching forward slightly. All for One stepped in by gently tapping his son on the back of the head. “It’s ok to look, but don’t go trying to take something. Unless you suddenly become able to give back quirks on your own, there are serious consequences to you taking an ally’s quirk.”

So that was the drawback. The kid could take any quirk he even looked at with a simple swipe of the hand, but he couldn’t give back anything he took and he’d be stuck with it if he grabbed a bad one. It was also a show of trust by openly speaking about the nature of each other's quirks, a means of subtly reinforcing his previous statement of friendship and trust.

“Speaking of my son’s sticky fingers when it comes to quirks-.” Izuku made a noise of indignation and general disagreement but All for One ignored him and continued. “I wanted to discuss with you procuring some quirks of his own rather than just sharing my underused ones with him.”

“Sure, I’m guessing you want to go about this the usual way? I send you the quirk information of people in the morgues we paid off and have him come visit if there are any worth taking.”

“Yes, that will work just fine, just find one or two to start so we can verify that Izuku’s quirk works on corpses the same as mine does.”

Inko rolled a large whiteboard into her living room where Mitsuki, Masaru, Tsukauchi, Gran Torino, and Toshinori were all sitting.

“Ok, let’s get down to business in trying to figure out exactly who Izuku is with by pooling together what we know. Since he thinks he’s with his father we just need to work backwards and figure out which traits of Toshinori’s he knew about and then see what villains have them too.”

All Might scratched his head, “Well, on the plus side I’d like to think I don’t have too much in common with the criminals of the world, so hopefully it won’t be too long of a list.”

Inko ignored him as she wrote the first few lines.

Somehow knows who Izuku’s father is

Very tall

Light colored hair

Dangerous people are after him

Mitsuki and Gran Torino both laughed at him, “Oh yeah, I’m sure no villains have those traits.”

Tsukachi walked over to the board and wrote down the few things that their investigation had found

Has, or has access to, a warp quirk

Izuku did not recognize them as an immediate threat

Inko turned to him with a questioning look, “Why do you say that?”

“The cameras were only knocked out for a couple of seconds. I’d imagine if someone he knew for a fact was a dangerous villain he would have fought back at least enough for it to take more than the four seconds to capture him. The other reason I say that is if he was truly frightened then we would likely have found a quirkless individual instead of an empty cell.”

Everyone in the room nodded along, finding that to be a logical conclusion.

Has access to police information

Likely part of an organization

“The reason for these last two are due to how quickly he was able to find the exact location of the holding cell, and the number of different people and quirks needed to pull this off in so little time. This is all we have so far that is concrete, so I’ll hand it over to you Mrs. Bakugou.”

“Sure, don’t know how much more I got than you two, but I’ll write down what he said himself, or what I said and he didn’t argue against.”

Was surprised at who his father was

Very powerful, a legitimate threat to heroes

Is treating izuku well

Her husband cocked his head slightly, “I’m not a hero like these guys, so I wouldn’t know, but is that last one really relevant, or even something we can be sure of?”

“If we’re looking through villains, ‘is nice to children’ would definitely eliminate a few. Plus, it means they’re in it for the long game. We’ve known Izuku his entire life, hell, I was the one holding Inko’s hand during labor because someone wasn’t there.” All Might cowered under her glare. “I know what that boy sounds like when he’s scared, and he didn’t sound the least bit frightened or nervous, and it doesn’t exactly take a lot to make him nervous.”

Gran Torino spoke up, “Shouldn’t we account for his quirk? Only include villain’s that have a quirk that messes with quirks or somethin’?”

Mitsuki shook her head. “Look at his biological father. If super strength led to this then why not some other unexpected mutation. Quirks are a confusing as fuck, if lotion skin can lead to explosion hands, then just about anything could lead to Izuku’s.”

Inko sighed as they bickered on who should or shouldn’t be included.

“Am I the only one that’s going to say what we’re all thinking? This sounds like All for One.”

Masauro raised a hand tentatively, “I wasn’t thinking that, who is he?”

“Right, everyone except the Bakugous. All for One is the reason this oaf left me and Izuku in the first place. Long story short, he’s as old as quirks, very hard to kill, very evil, can steal and give quirks, and has a tendency to kill the families of any hero that goes after him. To me it sounds like he matches our description and this is definitely his MO.”

The old retired hero laughed, “Yeah that’s one way to sum the guy up. But the reason he’s not on the list is ‘cause Toshinori killed the bastard six years ago.”

Inko seemed to cycle through multiple emotions before settling on barely contained anger. “So, this man is definitely dead?”

“Yep. He punched off the top half of his head and everything.”

“And there wasn’t anyone just as powerful who took his place?”

Gran Torino clearly didn’t see where she was going yet as he had a big smile of pride “Nope, we took down just about everyone that followed him and tore his empire apart, even with the big guy here on bed rest for a few months.”

She turned and glared at Toshinori with a deep sadness mixed with anger. “So why didn’t you come home? The big bad man who killed families was why you left, and I understood that, I could understand and agree with that choice even if it hurt. But why didn’t you come home when it was done?”

He glanced around, unsure if he wanted to have this conversation in front of their friends. “I… I couldn’t stop just because he was gone. There was so much that had to be done…”

“Six years, Toshi. That’s nearly half of Izuku’s life where you weren’t here. Not because of some super villain only you could defeat, no, that half of his life was entirely because of you. The times I had to comfort a young old boy who thought his father hated him were because of you. Those tears are on your conscience and no one else's. I hope it was worth it, to put being a hero above everything else, no matter the cost.”

Inko wiped the tears from her eyes and walked away into the kitchen. “I need a break. Make sure you look into shapeshifters who could pretend to be this idiot while I stress bake some cookies.”

It took nearly a week to make a break in the case. There weren’t any candidates that fit all of the criteria once they were looked at with any level of scrutiny.

Muscular was correct physically and dangerous enough, but he wasn’t the type to be a part of any sort of scheme. He was a brute, not a manipulator.

Hekeji Tengai was also the right height and hair color, and certainly the type to scheme with an organization, specifically the Yakuza he was part of. But he wasn’t dangerous enough, he was a lacky with shield quirk in a small Yakuza group.

All for One of course still hit every mark, but was too dead to be seriously considered. However, since there was never a body found Tsukachi didn’t agree to take his name off their ‘unlikely but possible’ list.

There was the shapeshifter Skinwalker, but they were a mercenary who lived on the other side of Japan. Finding and hiring them would have taken far longer than the time between the arrest and the kidnapping, but the existence of the warper added them to the unlikely list.

Illusionist was another option but she primarily did corporate espionage not kidnapping. There was Giran, an information broker, but no one knew enough about him to know if he really fell into these categories. Gun-fist was an arms broker who could be their man, but primarily worked in China. The list went on and on. 

About a week or so later, Tsukachi charged into Inko’s house, which had become the unofficial meeting place since there was likely a leak in the police department.

“We got a hit! I had set up a program to ping if facial recognition picked up your son, and we finally got a hit.”

Within a few minutes everyone from their group was at the house sitting in the living room. Tsukachi laid a printed picture on the table.

“Someone had taken a selfie, not realizing that these two were in the background and posted it on social media.”

In the corner of the photo was a fairly clear image of Izuku walking down the street next to a middle aged man, likely in his thirties or forties, standing at about six feet tall, and with very light gray hair.

Tsukachi walked over to the white board that had become a fixture in the living room and circled Giran’s name.

“That man is one of the most influential information brokers in all of Japan. He has a nonphysical quirk and isn’t dangerous on his own, but he has connections to nearly every organized crime group. The man is well known and well liked among criminals and corrupt heroes. Going after this man would be an absolute disaster.”

The detective kept going, barely taking a breath as he explained his theory. “We know he has some sort of memory quirk which could easily explain how he would know that he fit Izuku’s mental image of his absent father. He is definitely both smart enough and manipulative enough to take advantage of that and any other weaknesses he can find. Giran fits every single category and with this photo image we can be reasonably sure that he is our kidnapper and the man pretending to be Izuku’s father.”

Tsukachi took a deep breath after that rant, it was the most they’d ever heard him say at one time. The man looked rightfully proud, he had finally made progress and they now knew who they had to go after.

Inko gave a teary smile. “Don’t worry baby boy, we’re coming to get you.”

Chapter Text

Izuku sat with his dad in the warehouse as they watched the news on the television that they had set up. At Izuku’s insistence, the area was much nicer than when he had first arrived a few weeks ago. There was actually furniture now, like couches, chairs, and tables, along with a lovely rug instead of the drab and cold concrete floor. They also added way more lighting, because while dim lights in a warehouse are a great ambiance for a villainous monologue, it’s really annoying and inconvenient for everything else.

“Izuku, you’ll want to pay a bit of attention to what is coming up next since it relates to you.”

Izuku looked over with confusion, not sure why the news would be about him, he hadn’t exactly done anything noteworthy since he had left home. “Huh, what do you mean?”

“Well, the police tried to put it off as long as they could, but they are doing a press conference on your daring escape from your holding cell. This will actually be a good lesson for you on how to use the press to your advantage.”

“Oh, do you have someone you work for there to try and spin the story?”

“Yes. Well, technically she works for a colleague of mine, but he was kind enough to have her help on this. Which is good because she truly is one of the best at what she does.”

Izuku scratched his head, “And what is she going to be doing? I'm honestly not sure what the goal here is for what we want people to think.”

The ancient villain smiled, clearly enjoying getting to explain the varying methods of manipulation. “Well, I gave her four general tasks. First is that we want you painted as a good person who was forced into a bad situation. Secondly, if they give any indication of thinking you are with me or another group, we want to push them towards thinking you are working alone. I suppose as an addition to that last one, if they act like they think I’m involved, convince them that I am very much still dead. And finally, we want the police to look as foolish and unfair to you as possible.”

“Why those things in particular?”

“You tell me. How would we benefit from the general public thinking this way?”

He paused and thought carefully on it, remaining silent for a solid minute before speaking up. “People won’t turn me in! If I was seen as malicious then people would turn me in to stop me. If I seem kind but was taken by a criminal group, then people will turn me in to rescue me. By presenting me as kind but working alone, people on either side of the law would be way more willing to interact with me without turning me in! And making them doubt the police’s ability to handle my case just makes that work even more!”

All for One laughed loudly like rumbling thunder as he ruffled his son’s hair. “Hahaha! That’s my little mastermind!”

Tsukachi made his way to the podium and took a deep breath. This one was going to be a doozy, but hopefully it would come out ok. They had been trying to keep Midoriya’s escape quiet, but he only had so much pull in the precinct and the information had gotten to the public. So now he had to convince the masses that everything was fine and that they would resolve this quickly. He had the advantage of All Might and a few other heroes standing behind him, which hopefully would give his words more weight and would distract from how little they knew.

He nearly swore out loud when he saw who was walking up through the crowd of reporters. A blue skinned woman that every other reporter stepped out of the way for in a mix of respect and fear. She was known to be absolutely ruthless and could tear anyone apart with a friendly smile by staying true to her name. Curious was exactly that, and wouldn’t stop until every secret was revealed.

“Thank you all for coming here today. As you know, we are here to discuss the case of Izuku Midoriya and his escape from a holding cell. He is currently wanted for his initial crime of vigilantism and homicide, along with the crimes associated with his escape, such as evading justice. Because I am sure you all will ask, yes, he does possess a quirk that allows him to take the quirks from others and use them himself.”

There was quite a bit of clamoring at that but he managed to keep the press conference moving forward regardless.

“In the time he has been on the run, we have not found any evidence of him taking quirks from people. However, we do have evidence supporting the theory that he has been removing quirks from corpses, with multiple morgues having reported that bodies have been found missing mutations that were previously there.”

This seemed to satisfy the crowd that there wasn’t a quirk stealing maniac on the loose who was going to come for all of their previous powers. At the same time, he could tell that more than a few were unnerved that he had the ability to take quirks from the dead.

“At this time, there are many details that we are looking into, which is one reason we decided to wait this long before bringing the case to the public’s attention. What we do know is that on April 17th, Izuku Midoriya was broken out of prison by a criminal organization and has been held by them. We do not know if he is with them by choice or not.”

He pressed a button on a little remote he was given and the picture of Giran and Izuku walking together was projected onto the large white screen behind him. It was a bit blurry, since it was from security footage, but it was clear enough that he had been able to figure out who the man was.

“This man was seen with him and is an information broker named Giran. Based on this evidence we believe it is possible that Midoriya is being kept by Giran, but not by force. If anyone sees either of these individuals, please contact the police immediately as both are considered dangerous.”

The moment he finished speaking Curious stepped forward as close as she was allowed to without being stopped by security. “Detective, do you have a more clear photo of this ‘Giran’ figure? That photo is quite grainy and I am concerned that a lot of people would match the vague image that this gives us.”

He didn’t know where she was going with this, but he had a feeling he wouldn’t like it. “We unfortunately do not have any other photographs of the man. Because we don’t know his actual identity, it is difficult to acquire more clear photos.”

“I see. Since you don’t have any photographic evidence of his appearance, how do you know that this ‘Giran’ matches the man in the photo?”

Saying ‘no comment’ would really undercut his entire argument and make it sound like they just made up a description, so he told the truth without giving too much information. “I have seen him myself during an investigation but was unfortunately unable to arrest him.”

“I see, and roughly how long ago was this?”

“About five years ago.”

Curious smirked for a moment, clearly getting what she wanted from him in the response. “In your line of work you must know how unreliable eyewitness reports can be. So, I would ask you, how credible do you really think your statement is? You said that the man in the photo is this Information Broker with such certainty, but you don’t have anything to back it up. What I see is a blurry photo of Midoriya happening to walk near a middle aged man with no obviously defining characteristics and apparently looks like a man a single detective briefly saw five years ago.”

He tried to formulate a response but was cut off by her next question with a sea of suddenly doubtful and suspicious reporters backing her up.

“Now, another thing I would like to clarify is that Midoriya was broken out of your precinct by ‘a criminal organization’. Which organization would this be?”

Fuck, she really was pointing out all the holes they hadn’t filled in yet. There was a reason he didn’t want this to go public yet. “We are currently unsure exactly who orchestrated or participated in the breakout. The reason we believe it to be an organization would be that too many different quirks would have to have been used at the same time, and used together well enough that random strangers would not have been able to exhibit the necessary timing.”

Curious stared at him like he was a fool. “And from that information you deduced that it was some criminal organization, rather than the boy in that very room, who has the power to have and use multiple quirks?”

He paused for a brief moment as he contemplated how to explain that they were sure he didn’t without revealing the details of the phone call Izuku had with Mitsuki.

“From your expression and silence I’m gathering you really didn’t consider that, which probably should have been your first conclusion. You see, while you’re painting the picture of a young boy being turned into a villain by some secret villainous organization, I’m hearing a very different story.

“A young man grows up an outcast and is treated like a villain because of his quirk. Obviously he can’t take the quirks of his peers, so he trains secretly, taking quirks here and there from morgues. Then one day, a schoolmate is on the verge of death, so he steps in to try and help, no matter the cost to himself. But it goes terribly wrong and he is arrested after saving a life where the heroes around him failed. Now, scared, alone, and branded as a villain and a killer, he uses his acquired quirks to escape without detection and goes on the run where he continues a life of making sure not to harm others and only taking quirks from the bodies of people who can’t use them anymore.

She smiled, knowing that she had gotten to everyone watching, hook, line, and sinker.

“Of course, that’s all speculation. But from the sounds of it, it seems to have as much evidence as what your department had to offer.” Even if it was just a story she’d made up, it was what the people of Japan would believe just as much if not more than the official release.

Tsukachi took a deep breath before continuing. “I can assure you that we have been working diligently to find Midoriya. All Might himself has been taking point on this case in order to help locate and arrest him as quickly as possible. Any discussions of his guilt or exact methods are better suited for a trial.”

All Might stepped forward, taking his friend’s place at the podium. “The detective here is correct. I will be assisting wherever possible and this case is currently my highest priority. And to you, Curious, there is one thing I agree with you on. I do not believe that this boy is evil or some nefarious villain, simply a child who has made a few mistakes. So it is imperative that we bring Midoriya in before he has the opportunity to slip into the villainy I hope he has yet to be tainted by.”

He gave his trademark grin and looked directly into the cameras. “And to you Midoriya, if you are watching this. Know that I will not stop until you are found.”

While All Might being on the case brought hope to many, it brought nothing but fear to one person in particular. His last statement in particular would have been the perfect thing to hear for someone who needed saving. But since he was technically a villain, it sounded a lot like a threat.

Izuku had begun pacing back and forth anxiously. “Oh god, All Might is coming after me. I can’t beat the number one hero. Oh no oh no oh no. This is very very bad.”

“Izuku, calm down. You’ll be ok.”

Izuku still had panic in his eyes but tried to breathe a bit more. “Right. You’re right. It’ll be ok. If he actually finds me I can just take his quirk. Which isn’t ideal since he’s a hero and I don’t want to take quirks from people who are using them for good. But he’s been a hero for a long time anyways, so what if he has to retire a year early? Yeah, I’m sure that won’t have any societal ramifications.”

“Actually we can’t take his quirk.”

He finally stopped pacing and spun to look at his father. “What?”

“Well, it’s a bit of a long story. But essentially All Might has the only quirk that can’t be taken by force.”

He immediately returned to his panicked pacing. “Oh god. I’m gonna die. He nearly killed you and now he’ll definitely kill me. Dying doesn’t sound fun at all. Especially dying by a giant punch to the face. He’s going to punch my head off and mount me on a wall like a hunting trophy.”

He was suddenly grabbed by the shoulders so he would be still for a moment. “You’ll be fine. I won’t let anything happen to you. I try not to include you in anything villainous I am up to because I know you aren’t interested in that, but just know that I already have plans to deal with All Might. And even if I didn’t you’d probably win in a fight against him.”

“Huh? How could I ever be stronger than All Might. He even beat you?!”

“I’ll be honest, he defeated me because I was over confident. I thought I had killed him when I tore his organs out, so I had started to walk away. That allowed him to get a surprise hit in at full strength. So as long as you don’t turn your back on him, you’ll be fine. And remember, he hurt me like that when he was at his prime. I’m pretty sure that he is much weaker now because of what I did to him.”

Izuku was nervous for a moment, because he never planned on sharing the information, but now that All Might was actively hunting him down he spoke up. “Um. Actually All Might is really weak right now. He can only use his quirk for about three hours a day and starts steaming whenever he is running out of time.”

His father paused. “That’s incredibly helpful information. How did you learn about such a thing?”

“Um… he told me before the fight with the sludge guy because I saw him transform into his tiny form. I didn’t tell you before because he’s still a good hero even if he was mean to me. But I really don’t want to die or have my face punched off.”

He was wrapped in a massive hug by his father. “Thank you for sharing. Now don’t you worry, I won’t let him get anywhere near you. You are the most important thing to me in this world and I refuse to let that bumbling fool take you from me.”

Chapter Text

Izuku sat nervously in the small circle of people, he wasn’t really sure this was a good idea, but his dad assured him it would be. So it would probably be fine. Even if he was very anxious about this entire situation, he understood what his dad meant about how he would have to take this step eventually.

There were eleven people there other than him, including the two people who seemed to be in charge. One of the two in charge stood up to get everyone’s attention. She had short brown hair and purple eyes that seemed to scan the room as they flicked from person to person.

As she spoke, it seemed like it was just slightly too fast, like a video set on 1.25 speed. “Hi everyone, it looks like there’s a few new faces today, and I’m so glad you could all make it. For anyone new here, I’m Sakurai. I’m the president of this small branch of QIDD, or Quirk Induced Disorders and Disabilities support group.”

As she spoke her hands moved with the same urgency as her words, in what he assumed was sign language.

“As always, this is a judgment free space where we can talk about any difficulties in life, asking for advice, or even just how your day went if that’s what you need. And what you hear and say here stays here. I’ll get us started, my quirk is called ‘speed read’, it’s a mental quirk that lets me think faster. So, it doesn’t make me smarter, but I process information very quickly. The big drawback is it’s nearly impossible to pay attention to anything that is going at a ‘normal’ speed.”

She smiled and tapped a previously unnoticed earbud in her left ear. “Which is why you’ll usually catch me listening to audiobooks and podcasts about obscure bits of history at double speed any time I’m talking to someone. While I could talk all night about my coworker who thinks listening to things at work is disrespectful and is the slowest talker I’ve ever met, I’ll pass to my wonderful vice president so that we’ll have time to hear from everyone.”

The person to her right spoke up. He was an older man, probably in his sixties and sitting in a wheelchair. His reason for being there was a bit more obvious than Sakurai’s. From the knee down he had what seemed like rockets instead of legs. Which from what Izuku could guess, would be great for flying and awful for everything else.

“Name’s Kinoshita, like she said before, I’m the vice president here. I also do social work, mostly with kids and a focus on those struggling with difficult quirks. The only thing I really have for today is that I’m also glad to see new faces here. It’s always good to see people reaching out.”

“Alright, who’d like to go next?” After seeing a hand raise he nodded to a middle aged man who stood at about two or three feet tall and had purple tinted fairy wings. “Alright, the floor is yours.”

“Thanks, my name is Sano and today was some bullshit. I know she meant well, but some lady asked me where my parents were and if I was lost. Do I really look like a damn child? I was in my work clothes too, so what, did she think that was a child in a business suit who ran away from home to eat his lunch in a park? It’s just so frustrating. Can’t these people just mind their damn business and let me go about my day without some well meaning comment or demeaning attitude?”

The next person to speak had a spray bottle for a head. Izuku was so curious if it actually worked or if the quirk was purely aesthetic (and if it did work, what would it spray??). “It looks like I’ll be moving pretty soon. I’ll definitely miss you all, but I got a job opportunity out in Deika and it seems like they’ll be super understanding about quirk stuff.”

Some people remained silent like Izuku was, but most shared something positive or negative that was going on in their lives. Noguchi was getting ready for the UA exams, which was particularly impressive since his quirk left him blind and deaf, instead relying on his quirk where he could ‘feel’ everything within a few meters of him, including things as intricate as sign language. Physically he had a head that looked like a lego and had faced plenty of discrimination, but that hadn’t stopped him and he was on his way to UA for the support course.

After just about everyone spoke, the vice president looked over to him. “Is there anything you want to share? There’s no pressure, you’ve just looked like you’re thinking awfully hard for a while now, and this is the perfect place to get it off your chest.”

His initial reaction was to say no. He wasn’t here to talk about his feelings, he’s here because his father sent him as a place to train taking quirks from the living  and thought that Izuku would have luck getting this particular group to consent to that.

But on the other hand, his father didn’t say he couldn’t also talk about his feelings.

“Um, I never really used my quirk until the last couple of months. Before that, I’d never used it since the time it manifested when I was a little kid. I was always scared I would hurt someone and my mom agreed, so I never used it once. But now I’m living with…”

Izuku scrambled his brain for a term that wouldn’t reveal his father’s existence while still letting him tell the truth. “a father figure, and I use my quirk many times a day. And I’m kinda scared sometimes, because it feels really good to use, maybe too good. I’d gone about ten years without giving in once to that feeling of want, but now it just seems so much stronger after giving in.”

There were at least a couple of people that seemed to understand completely and were nodding along.

They probably already guessed since his face was in so many places recently, but it was still a leap of faith in a sense to see how they’d react.

“Um, my name is Midoriya and I can take quirks from people.”

A few people made sounds of surprise but Kinoshita just looked like he was thinking something through. “Out of curiosity, was coming here today your idea, or was it this father figure?”

“Um, it was his idea. He wanted me to start taking quirks from living people and we compromised on finding people who would want their quirks gone.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong on any of these, but here are a few educated guesses. You’d never really interacted with this man before your initial arrest. He lives a life that is dubiously legal at best. He showers you in the affection and acceptance that you wished you received when you were young. He’s currently your only source of food, housing, and communication. And finally, he has been slowly pushing you further and further beyond what you were comfortable using your quirk for.”

“Uh, yeah. How did you know that? That feels really specific.”

More than one person sighed and gave him weak smiles in what seemed like sympathy. “Midoriya, I don’t know this man, so this isn’t a guarantee, but it unfortunately sounds like you’re being groomed for villainy or at least manipulated for this man’s benefit.”

What? That’s ridiculous. HIs father had been nothing but kind, and there was no way he would do something like that to him. Right?

He tried not to think about Tomura and how he was basically the definition of being groomed for villainy. Surely he was different from Tomoura? He was actually his son. Would he really manipulate his own child for power? Then he thought of how he raised Tomura and gave him his last name of Shigaraki. How was that anything other than adopting Tomura as his son and then raising him to be little more than a weapon?

The man wheeled his way over to the green haired boy. “Midoriya, I can see that you’re panicking and probably spiraling in that head of yours. I’m not saying you need to do anything right now, just think about it and maybe look at things from a new perspective. Just make sure you don’t consider him to be your only available option. I know myself and probably a few others in this room would be happy to take you in while you figure yourself out.”

“But… I don’t want to get anyone in trouble. I know there’s a warrant for me…”

“Bah! Warrant shwarrent. Who cares about that? You’re not the first here to have some issues with the law on accident and you won’t be the last. Kids with volatile, discriminated against, and especially addictive quirks tend to get forced into bad spots, that’s just how it goes, and unfortunately it sounds like you got stuck with all three.”

He put a hand gently on the boy’s shoulder and looked into his eyes seriously, “Now, you be honest with me kid. Would this mysterious man taking care of you be mad if you went back without any new quirks?”

That wasn’t something he had even thought about before. But after thinking for a moment he realized that even when Tomura messed up badly he was never met with anger or violence. So Izuku shook his head. “No, nothing like that. He’d probably be disappointed, but not angry.”

“Ok, sorry for all the questions, I just don’t want you in a bad situation and I’d rather ask too many questions when they aren’t needed than ask too few when someone needs help.”

One person who had been pretty much silent the entire meeting spoke up. She had a wyvern based mutation, meaning she had scales, a tail, and horns on the back of her head rather than hair. But most noticeably, she had wings where arms normally would be. “Just so it’s out there, I’d really appreciate it if you went home with a quirk, specifically mine. I never use these damn wings and having hands sounds amazing.”

Izuku wiped away the tears that inevitably show up whenever he is emotional and nodded. “Are you sure? My quirk only goes one way, so I can’t really undo it if you change your mind.”

After a very enthusiastic agreement, he swiped his hand through the air, pulling the ball of light into himself. The woman quickly lost her scales and tail, short black hair bursting from her once bald scalp, and most importantly to her, her wings shrunk and reshaped until they were a regular pair of arms with completely usable hands.

She ran over to the president and gave her a big hug and then quickly moved onto hugging someone else. “Woohoo! I’m gonna hold so many things and give so many high fives! Thank you so much Midoriya, no matter what the cops say, you were my hero today.”

By the end of the meeting he had that Wyvern quirk, one that turned his spit and sweat to nitric acid, a mutation that gave him a minor strength enhancement and tough blue skin but had the drawback of not having eyes, and finally, a snail quirk that gave eyestalks and the ability to generate protective shells but lost the ability to hear.

He’d try to find a way to use them, but if they couldn’t match up to what he’d gotten from corpses he’d just ask his dad to transfer them into a body so that no one had to hold onto them anymore.

Once the clock struck eight and signified the meeting was over people started filtering out. Kinoshita wheeled over to him as he was getting ready to leave. “Hey kid, if you’re able to, I’d like to see you come back next week too. I’m guessing you have a quirk that lets you go unnoticed if the heroes catch on to why people are showing up without quirks.”

Izuku nodded and briefly activated the surprisingly useful quirk ‘chair’, which allowed him to turn into a folding chair identical to the one he had just been sitting on.

“Damn, that’s nifty. Well, I’ll send you off with some homework of sorts. I want you to ask yourself what direction you want your life to go in. Don’t worry about what me, your mysterious father figure, or anyone else wants, just figure out what you want first and then we can make a plan from there.”

Izuku nodded and thanked the man for all his help before leaving.

That night as he laid in bed he realized that what he wanted to be hadn’t changed at all, and those words had been a good reminder. He wanted to be a hero.

He wanted to go out into the world and inspire hope and make people feel safe. He’d still visit with his dad when he could, but would need to make it very clear that he could no longer be complicit in any crimes he was committing. No more working with Giran or other criminals just because it was easier or how his dad did things.

He would make his own path and he wouldn’t let anything stand in his way of becoming a true hero, whether he had a license or not.

Chapter Text

Izuku tried to be confident and hype himself up as he warped over to where his father was. It was line of sight teleportation, which was why his father was willing to part with it, but it still let him get to the warehouse in just two or three jumps.

But the cool quirk wasn’t the point. The point was that he was going to approach his father and discuss his plans to be a hero one day. Well, right now his plan was to become a vigilante, but from there he wanted to look into one of the vigilante rehabilitation programs. They weren’t very accessible, but if you were powerful, beloved by the public, and hadn't committed crimes beyond being a vigilante, then it was possible.

It was a long shot, but he never let that stop him before. He would need to distance himself from criminals and become a renowned and loved vigilante. And that meant he couldn’t keep getting involved in his dad’s affairs, because that would get him branded as a villain immediately if it was known about.

So he made his way up to his dad, prepared to make his arguments and explain his case. Then he saw his dad’s wide smile and his confidence began to wane.

“Hey, kiddo, did you need something?”

“Uh, not really.” Shit. That’s not what he meant to say at all.

“Well, if you’re free, there’s someone I wanted you to meet. I know you like studying quirks, but you haven’t really had a chance to actually test them, and this guy would be perfect for helping out with that.”

“Um, sure. Who is he?”

“He’s an acquaintance that I’ve had for a long time. Not the brightest bulb, but he’s the most powerful and loyal individual I’ve ever worked with. He’s called Gigantomachia and he was my bodyguard. I guess he still would be if I needed him to do something like that.”

“Yeah, I guess we can do that. But I don’t want to hurt him or anything. These quirk combinations are pretty strong.”

His father chuckled lightly, “I will be truly impressed if you can hit him hard enough for him to even register it as pain. He’s essentially indestructible, even I would have a hard time outdoing him in terms of physical power.”

“Oh wow, I didn’t think anyone was stronger than you.”

All for One gave a booming belly laugh, “I appreciate the compliment, but it’s a big world out there.” He pressed a button on his desk. “Kurogiri, open a portal for me to Gigantomachia’s location.” He turned back towards his son. “Maybe when we get back we can talk about whatever you actually came to talk with me about.”

Toshinori took a deep breath as he knocked on the door in front of him. After a few seconds the door opened and he was met with Inko giving him a confused but not unfriendly look. A look which had softened greatly over the couple of months of them working together.

“Toshi? What are you doing here? Did something happen with the case?”

“Uh, not particularly. We’ve mostly just been hitting dead ends.”

She looked at him slightly suspiciously, unsure what he would want if it wasn’t case related. “Alright, well come on in then. No point having you stand out in the cold. I’ll get some tea started while you settle in.”

He sat down and tried to collect himself within the minute or so he had before Inko returned with a few cups of tea. She walked over and sat down across from him after setting down the tea on the table between them.

“So, are there any updates? Are we any closer to bringing Izuku home?”

He shook his head as he looked at the ground. “We haven’t made much progress. We’re running into a big issue where we know where he visits and who he’s interacted with but every single person covers for him. They all deny ever seeing him and refuse to consent to Tsukachi’s quirk, which is their right to do, but it makes everything harder.”

“If you know where he is, can’t you just send heroes in and get him? Where is it, anyways?”

“The last few weeks there have been a lot of updated quirk registries. People with unpleasant or damaging quirks are suddenly becoming quirkless. We can tell he’s been contacting these people through support groups and offering to take their quirks, but whenever we show up or try to use surveillance, he just switches to a different meeting. And as soon as we leave one he goes back to it. So it’s pretty clear that the people there are tipping him off. I tried going myself, and I get less hostility from most villains than I did there.”

After he finished explaining she smiled a little. “I know it’s technically bad for the investigation, but I’m glad he has people looking out for him while I can’t. Does him using his quirk to help people add to his charges?”

He sighed, not liking every part of the system he enforced. “Yes, every time he uses his quirk on someone is another charge of illegal quirk usage.”
“I see, well I hope we can get him back sooner than later so we can help him before it’s too late.”

All Might wasn’t really sure when ‘too late’ was. Even if it wasn’t pleasant to think about, there were very few scenarios where Izuku didn’t go to jail after they found him.

“But that’s not what you came here for, is it?”

He shook his head, “No, it isn’t. Inko, I came here to apologize.”

“I don’t mean to be rude, but you’ll have to be more specific. You’ve hurt me many times and in many ways.”

“I know, and I’m sorry for that. I wanted to apologize specifically for not coming back. Until you had gotten angry at me about it I had never even considered that it was an option. I suppose I had always assumed I wasn’t welcome back and I’m not exactly the man you had loved. I’m quite literally half of the man I used to be and I doubted you wanted a skeleton like me around.”

Inko wiped away the tears that began forming. “You stupid, stupid man. Of course you would have been welcomed back. Sure, I would have still been upset and yelled at least a little, but I always understood why you chose what you did. But I’m a bit hurt that you thought I was so shallow that I cared about how you looked.”

“Let’s be honest here, no one likes All Might for his brains.”

“It’s a good thing I never cared about All Might then. The man I cared for was Toshinori Yagi, not that hero persona you put on for the public. You really thought my affection was based on how muscular you were? Sure, you being strong was a benefit, but it was never important. You can’t eat most food, your health is awful, and you’re as skinny as a beanstalk, so what?”

“I appreciate the sentiment, but I don’t think many would agree with you. I know I’m well past my prime.” He was about to continue when he was cut off.

“Of course you are. You’re coming up on fifty years old, you’re not supposed to be in your prime. I’m not exactly as fit as I used to be either. Just know, that no matter what you say, I truly don’t care about your health issues, and I would have accepted you back without question.”

Yagi nodded slowly as he thought over his words. “I think maybe I need to rethink some things then. Because I also assumed you would want me out of your lives again once Izuku was brought home to you, but after what you just said I’m not sure.”

“Toshi, stop being an idiot. Sure, it’s been very easy to be mad at you for the last fifteen years, but every major issue we had was based on you not being here. I’ve always wanted you here and being a part of our lives, but if you’re going to be here at all you need to commit one hundred percent. No backing out or neglecting this family. Because he doesn’t deserve that, and honestly neither do I.”

There was a spark of hope that he hadn’t completely ruined his chances with the most amazing woman he’d ever met. “Inko, could I take you out for lunch at some point?”

She paused and had a conflicted look on her face. “Ask me again once our son is safe and sound. I know I’m not thinking straight right now and I’m certainly not at my best. So, I think it’s best that any big decisions should wait until then, because I don’t want to do something I’ll regret later.”

Well, that wasn’t an outright no, so he nodded and agreed and hoped that maybe one day they would be able to put their shattered family back together.

Izuku flew through the air as quickly as he could using the dragonfly quirk he had come to enjoy greatly. He zig zagged between trees before shooting straight up, a few hundred feet behind the massive giant that is Gigantomachia.

He could only use three quirks at a time consistently, but he found that he could push it four for a couple of seconds. He flew as fast as he could toward his opponent before dropping the dragonfly quirk and quickly pulling forth three new ones.

Stone Golem was a simple and self explanatory quirk. It was a mutation that made the user very stone-like and incredibly durable. He had gotten it from someone who didn’t want it anymore since it prevented almost all sense of touch.

Gigantification was a common quirk that usually came with other mutations as well. This one let the user grow to about forty feet tall and gave ape-like qualities, which was why it was registered as ‘King Kong’.

And finally, he activated ‘Khali’, which gave him the physical attributes of the Hindu deity Khali, blue skin, increased strength, and most importantly, eight arms.

Since both ‘Khali’ and ‘Stone Golem’ included subtle mutations making the user taller, with all of them combined he stood at a little over fifty feet tall with blue tinted rock skin and eight arms. And with his momentum carrying him forward, this massive form of his slammed into his sparring partner with a deafening boom that shook the forest they were in.

They both rose to their full heights and Izuku was dwarfed by the giant, but by far less usual, since at least now he was over half of his opponent’s size. Izuku was launched backwards by a punch that hit his eight armed block. Even if he knew his opponent was holding back, it still put his defenses to the test.

The teenager charged back in and activated ‘Exponential Punch’. Each punch would be 50% stronger than the last one as long as they were in quick succession and uninterrupted. If he paused for more than five seconds or received a hit in return, then the quirk started him back at regular strength.

This paired incredibly well with ‘Kali’ by punching with four arms at a time. The two four armed swings seemed to barely phase ‘Machia, but the third actually knocked him over. Because by that third swing, the last fist to land was doing over eighty times what it usually would, but those three swings were as long as he could hold four quirks, so he had to drop all of them in exhaustion, but he was happy with those results.

The giant looked down at the now normal sized Izuku and cheered loudly.

“ Good job little lord! That last one made my arm achy for a few seconds! You’re so strong! Just like Lord!”

He found it super weird that he called his dad ‘Lord’, and by proxy called Izuku ‘Little Lord’, but he had come to accept that ‘Machia was like a giant puppy in attitude even if he was a walking mountain.

“Thanks ‘Machia! You did great too! Thanks for practicing with me!”

The giant lumbered over to where his father was.

“ Little Lord is good. I will squish everyone who is mean to him.”

“Thank you Gigantomachia, your loyalty is always appreciated. I care about him greatly and feel much better knowing you would protect him.”

All for One looked over and smiled as he saw Izuku drag himself out of the forest, looking absolutely exhausted but definitely proud of himself.

“You did great Izuku, combining Exponential Punch with Kali was an excellent idea.”

Izuku slumped down next to his father. “Yeah, but it really wiped me out. I wish I could use four quirks without getting so tired. You’re able to use like twenty quirks at once, so four really isn’t that great.”

“Nonsense, you’re making fantastic progress. You’ve only just started training, surely you didn’t think I mastered my quirk all at once. It takes years of training and practice, but you’ll get there. I’m sure you’ll far surpass me one day since you’re already far stronger than I was at your age.”

“You really think so?”

“Of course. Quirks naturally get stronger with every generation, and with your predisposition for taking it seems like you should be able to hold more quirks than I ever could. One day my mere thousand quirks will pale in comparison to your collection. But that’s enough for now, let’s head back so you can get cleaned up and we’ll talk about whatever’s on your mind.”

Izuku nodded and they were warped back home after he said his goodbyes to ‘Machia.

After a shower and a quick lunch he sat down with his dad.

“I want to be a hero. I always have and I still do. And that means I can’t keep helping with anything criminal or meet with any allies of yours. And when I start as a vigilante I won’t be able to ignore any illegal things and I’d stop  anyone doing illegal things, whether or not they work for you.”

“Izuku. It’s fine, I completely understand. To be honest I always anticipated this, I knew you didn’t want to join me in villainy. From what you’re saying, it sounds like you’re aiming for the vigilante rehabilitation program. That’ll be tough since you typically only see that clause enacted once every couple of years or so. You’ll essentially have to become so popular that the general populace will refuse to stand by your arrest. But if anyone can pull it off, I think it would be you.”

Izuku started to cry a little and hugged his dad tightly, “You really think I can do it?”

“I think you can do anything you put your mind to. But there’s one thing I won’t budge on, I won’t have you homeless while you run around fighting crime. Even if you want to function separately from me and my allies, I want to handle your housing so you don’t have to worry about trying to set that up as a minor with a warrant. And I like knowing where you are, just so I don’t need to worry too much.”

“Yeah, of course dad.” He rubbed at the back of his neck. “To be honest, I didn’t really have a plan for that.”

“One last thing on the subject, no matter what’s going on or what situation you’re in, if you need help in any way, I will always be there for you. I trust you and believe in you, but also know that you’re not alone and that I’ll have your back whenever you get in over your head.”

He gave him a big hug and tried not to get tears all over his suit. “Thanks dad, I don’t know what I’d do without you. This entire situation would be so much harder if you hadn’t rescued me.”

After Izuku had left and warped back to where he was staying, Garaki, his trusted doctor, walked into the room.

“I thought your plan was bringing him into villainy?”

“Oh I am. But this situation must be approached much differently than with Tomura or any one else for that matter. He is one of the few people on this planet that could probably challenge and will one day outshine me. So I intend to play the long game.”

“How long are we talking here? He would be a devastating opponent if the heroes gained control of him.”

“I have already given him some potent healing quirks and one of my longevity quirks. So, it could take fifty, or even a hundred years and that would still be fine.”

“Hm, I suppose, but couldn’t you just force him to join you? You’re stronger than he is right now, and you could keep him from getting stronger than you.”

“Doctor, have you ever read the works of Machiavelli? He has been misquoted many times but he was quite the intelligent man, especially for his time. He is famous for saying ‘it is better to be feared than loved’ and many used that as an excuse to rule with brutality since a people’s love is fickle while fear is more easier to create. But, that isn’t the entire quote, his true words were, ‘it is better to be feared than loved, but never be hated.’”

“I’m not sure I follow you, how is that relevant here?”

“Well, if I were to simply overpower him and break his heroic spirit by force, he would bow to my will in fear, but his hate for me would grow and fester. And with that hate, the moment my guard was lowered, he would strike me down. However, if I let him leave and the heroes break his spirit for me, then his hatred will be pointed towards my enemies. And then, if I kill those who harmed my son, now he knows to fear me by witnessing my brutality, will love me for protecting him, and will not hate me, for I will kill the heroes involved before they can tell him I was the one who orchestrated the entire thing.”

“I see, I suppose my intelligence lies in manipulating the bodies of man, not his mind.”

“Ha! Perhaps that is so. But regardless, he will be joining our ranks soon enough. I must simply be patient and allow him to come to me, while keeping a watchful eye of course.”

Chapter Text

Izuku hovered from rooftop to rooftop as he patrolled the city at night. His outfit wasn’t really that special looking, it was mostly just a green tracksuit, so he could move freely. He was comfortable relying on quirks for defense rather than putting the effort into getting and maintaining protective gear. Even though it looked bland, it was actually something pretty special. His dad had gotten it made with Izuku’s DNA woven into it so it would transform with him, that way he wouldn’t be left naked the moment he used a gigantification quirk.

It was a really cool process too, but unfortunately was pretty expensive. If it was cheaper then he’d want to have all his clothes like that, so he’d be able to use his quirks at any time without concern. He continued to look around the city from above as let himself get lost in thought during his quiet patrol.

Since his focus was more petty crime rather than big time villains, he’d mostly been relying on a few trusty capture quirks rather than anything combat based. With most of his quirk strain coming from switching quirks or using multiple at one time, he just kept two active for patrolling and kept a few others in mind for the villains.

Air Walk and Enhanced Senses were for patrolling, while Paralyzing Touch and Spider Web were for fighting.

Paralyzing Touch sounded way scarier than it was, but any other accurate name sounded super lame. All it did was cause cramping in the muscles surrounding wherever you touch. So, even if it was a bit misleading, Paralyzing Touch sounded so much cooler than Instant Cramps or Crampy Hands. The previous user had gladly given it to him since it had a tendency to activate randomly whenever she had any strong feelings, positive or negative, and since it worked through clothing there wasn’t much the previous holder could do other than just not touch people.

Just like Air Walk and Enhanced Senses, Spider Web was exactly what it sounded like. He shot spider webbing from his fingertips and used that as his primary way to restrain people until the police arrived without needing to stick around. That said, he still enjoyed using lots of different quirks to apprehend criminals so he could experiment and practice with them all.

For the last few weeks he’d been making a bit of a name for himself as a vigilante in the slums that were neglected by most heroes. He had broken up a couple of gang fights and stopped a handful of muggings and robberies. He knew he wasn’t able to fix the systemic issues that had led people to commit these crimes, but he was still doing whatever he could to make things a little bit better.

That was the neat thing about helping as a vigilante rather than as a hero, there weren’t any rules restricting how he could help people. Sure, he still fought crime when he saw it, but a good portion of his time went to just helping around town. He used a quirk that let him shoot tar from his mouth to patch up potholes in the roads (it tasted awful but he was happy to help) and another called Mend to make repairs to anything else broken he found. There was a mostly abandoned park that he made beautiful again through Green Thumb and Plant Manipulation. Turning the weeded and honestly gross area into a community garden that could help provide food for those who needed it.

He stood on the edge of one of the taller buildings in town, overlooking the area. He smiled to himself. Even if he couldn’t fix everything, he was proud of himself for all the work he’d put into making life better for those living here.

With his enhanced hearing he suddenly heard, ‘Help!’ called out from a few blocks away. He quickly turned and used his teleportation to get most of the way there by estimating how far it was.

He still had Enhanced Senses on, which left him a little overwhelmed by all the alcohol smells the man in the alleyway was putting off. The only other person there was the woman who had cried for help and was being held in place against the brick wall. He couldn’t use his Spider Web quirk since it would hit both of them and would stick the victim to the wall as well.

He dropped his current quirks and brought forth Silk and Touch Based Telekinesis, which let him shoot over fifty feet of a thick silk scarf and also control it with incredible accuracy and precision. It wrapped around the man and yanked him back, but it wasn’t nearly enough force to knock him over. He realized belatedly that he should have brought forth a strength enhancer or something like that.

The man turned his legs to springs and leapt up to the roof the Izuku was on. Suddenly getting closer, the scarf went slack and the man escaped his binds.

It took multiple minutes to finally get the spry man wrapped up again. The moment the man was immobilized for even a second Izuku activated a third quirk and slapped him on either leg, letting Paralyzing Touch give the asshole bad cramping in both legs. That would keep him from running off while he checked on the lady and made sure she was ok.

He activated Air Walk after dropping the other quirks and was about to drop to the ground when he heard a voice behind him.

“You really need to work on your spatial awareness.”

Izuku made a very undignified squeak and spun around at the words that came from right behind him. He flailed in surprise and fell off the building, which would have been bad if he didn’t have Air Walk active at the time. Which meant he was now sitting down in the air, an act that felt very weird since his brain instinctively wanted to panic at not having any physical thing between him and a forty foot drop.

He finally took in the man that surprised him and squeaked a second time.

“Eraserhead?!?”

“It took you four seconds to get your bearings. Unacceptable.”

“What are you doing here? Your patrol route isn’t anywhere nearby.”

The man huffed in response. “I find it a bit concerning you know my patrol off the top of your head. But the first priority is getting this situation finished up, I notified the police not long after you had arrived at the scene so they should be here any second now.”

The hero grunted as he threw the criminal over his shoulder and started to descend back down to the street level.

“I’ll handle it from here, but I want to talk with you afterwards. Wait a few minutes, I’m sure you can camouflage yourself.”

Izuku knew it would be safest to just run away now, there was nothing he could do to stop him. But also, he was really curious about what the man was going to say. If he really wanted to arrest Izuku he would have Erased his quirk and restrained him before he even noticed the hero.

Worst case scenario, if the hero does try to catch him he would just need to wait until the man blinked before teleporting away. After deciding to stay, he transformed into a lawn chair, the kind someone might put on their roof for stargazing. It wasn’t his best disguise, but he doubted anyone would really think about the random chair too much.

He decided to pretend that the decision to stay was completely based on logic and had nothing to do with how cool Eraserhead was. He was one of the only heroes that fought essentially quirkless and completely relied on his own skills. Now that he knew All Might kind of sucked, Eraserhead was definitely a strong contender for being his favorite hero.

After about ten minutes or so the underground hero returned, looking around the roof for the vigilante he had left behind. Then he stared suspiciously at a lawn chair that he was pretty sure wasn’t there just a few minutes earlier.

“Midoriya, did you turn into a chair, or am I just going insane and talking to outdoor furniture?”

He reverted to his normal form, “Yep, it’s honestly becoming one of my favorite quirks.”

Aizawa simply grunted in response. “To answer your earlier question, I’m so far from my usual patrol because a few of my informants told me there was ‘some brat with a bajillion quirks causing problems’, and I thought that description was probably you.”

“Are you here to arrest me?”

Izuku was suddenly very nervous, was this a set up? He activated Enhanced Senses and X-ray Vision to scan the area for other heroes, but when he didn’t find any he calmed down a little and kept listening.

“I’m not. And from how your eyes just glowed for a few seconds while you glared at the buildings around us, you can tell I didn’t bring reinforcements. This is just a conversation.”

He paused in thought for a moment. “Not that there are any reinforcements to bring. There are very few heroes that would actually try to arrest you. People like myself who think you’re a good kid in a bad situation don’t want to, and the ones that think you’re a villain are too scared that you’ll take their quirks.”

Izuku tentatively nodded. “Ok… what did you want to talk about?”

“Well, if you recognize me and know my patrol route, I’m guessing you know I’m a teacher at UA for the heroics classes.”

Izuku nodded again.

“Well, the reason I’m a teacher is pretty straightforward. I don’t want kids to get themselves killed while they try to save people. So, when I see some fourteen year old brat jumping around town and fighting gangs with some of the worst form I’ve ever seen, I felt the need to get involved. And tonight only convinced me even further, you should have beaten that man in seconds with no issue, and that’s not accounting for whatever quirks I haven’t seen you use.”

His eyes went wide. “You want to train me?!”

“Yeah, yeah, calm down. I just want to teach you the basics so you can keep yourself alive. And since I’m guessing I can’t talk you out of being a vigilante, I can at least connect you with some like minded people so you don’t try and do this stuff alone. That lone wolf martyr bullshit will take you out faster than any villain.”

He pulled out a piece of paper and handed it to Izuku. “Here’s a list of phone numbers, including mine, I expect you to use them. Based on how you look and smell, you’re not living on the streets, which is good. I won’t push on where you’re living, but if there’s a problem I know people who would make sure you have food and housing.”

Izuku was already crying by the time he finished. “Why are you doing so much for me? You don’t even know me?”

“Did you have to know that woman in the alley to help her? It’s really not that complicated, you’re a kid who needs help, that’s enough reason for me.”

Izuku wiped his tears away and smiled. “Thank you so-”

Before he could finish, there was a whistling sound of something approaching at rapid speeds and a deep booming voice.

“I AM HERE!”

Aizawa turned and expected to see the same expression he got when he greeted the kid, which was a mix of hero worship and surprise, but no real fear (probably because the kid could teleport away whenever he needed to). But this time, the kid’s face was pure unbridled terror. And not just fear of capture, that was the look of someone who feared death.

Before the hero landed he quickly whispered to the kid. “Run!” He didn’t need to know why he was scared to respect that there was probably a good reason for it.

What Aizawa didn’t know was that his teleportation honestly took a lot out of him, and he’d used way too many quirks tonight to get far enough to evade someone that fast. The other problem was that he couldn’t pull quirks up instantaneously, it took a few seconds for a quirk to go from his reserves to something he could use. So he turned on the one quirk he still had on standby.

Eraserhead was expecting the kid to disappear into thin air, but instead he turned into a lawn chair again, with the underground hero blocking him enough that All Might didn’t see the shift.

Less than two seconds after they heard the shout, the massive hero landed on the roof and looked around for Izuku.

“Hello sir, I’m looking for a young man, about this tall” He held his hand barely above his elbow in height. “He’s got green hair and might have been seen using multiple quirks. I’ve also been told that another hero is on the scene, if you could point me in his direction.”

Eraserhead scoffed. “I am the hero, you oaf. And I was talking to Midoriya before you scared him off.”

“ What?! If he was here then why didn’t you capture him?”

“I prefer not to harm non-violent children, so I used my words instead. Not all of us punch first and ask questions never. How did you even get here so fast, I can’t imagine you arrived by accident?”

“Since I’m the lead hero on the investigation, the police notify me whenever they get reports of him. And since you made note that the villain was captured by him, they gave me a call immediately.”

“Hmph, well he’s not here now.”

“I see that, so I shall be on my way. Please call my agency if you run into him again.”

And with that, the hero jumped back into the sky, leaving the two alone on the roof.

“Alright kid, do you want to talk about whatever the hell that was now, or some other day?”

Izuku returned to his regular form and looked badly shaken. “Later please. I wanna go home.”

“Ok, do you need any help, or are you all set to get there on your own?”

Izuku wiped his tears away “Don’t worry, I’m fine.” He then transformed into a crow and flew off without saying anything else.

Aizawa doubted that he was anything close to fine, but knew better than to push. He still needed to build trust with the kid, though it was alarmingly easy to get the young vigilante to start trusting him. He really hoped no one was taking advantage of his honest and trusting nature.

On top of all that, he still needed to figure out what the hell was going on that made All Might act so intense about bringing in some random kid. Normally things like wanted vigilante children are firmly in his wheelhouse, not a spotlight hero like All Might. This was even weirder because Midoriya had only harmed someone once and it was clearly unintentional. All that raised the question, why was the number one hero involved? Was it just fear of his quirk? Whatever it was, Aizawa had a feeling he wouldn’t like the answer.

Somewhere, multiple cities away, a teenager was typing away vigorously on his computer, and pressed the ‘post’ button with a small satisfied smile.

The  post in question was on a conspiracy theory page, with less than a hundred followers and an author by the name of Endeavorsucks. He explained in incredible detail why the increasingly popular villain/vigilante by the name of Izuku Midoriya was actually the secret love child of a hero. The hero in question was known as Eraserhead, a secretive man with the ability to erase quirks temporarily. What made this particular theory go beyond just a quirk coincidence was a handful of blurry photos of the hero talking to the vigilante in question and the two not looking aggressive at all, just chatting there.

He personally felt that he had cracked the code and uncovered a deep secret, and a scandalous one at that. Little did he know, his ‘revelations’ would be read by a journalist who thought he might be onto something and that his idea made sense and would look to see if she could make a story out of it.

Chapter Text

Izuku suddenly appeared in the large open room, it seemed like it could have been an airplane hanger based on the size of it and how empty it was. Aizawa glanced up at him from where he had been sitting, grading papers at a small desk in the corner.

“Oh, you’re a few minutes early. Good. Start by doing some stretches and warmups and then we’re going to do an apprehension test, once without quirks and once with. That will give me an idea of what we’re working with.”

And with that he went back to ignoring Izuku and going through the papers in front of him.

“Um, Eraserhead? Are you sure I’m allowed to be here? I didn’t realize it when you gave me the coordinates, but we’re in the middle of UA, and that just feels like a dangerous place for a vigilante to be.”

“Stop wasting time and get started.  I would never purposefully put you or any other child in danger unless I had no other choice. If the rat didn’t want you here then you wouldn’t be. As long as you don’t leave this building then no one will care or do anything.”

The man hadn’t even looked up or paused in his work, which was kind of impressive and also intimidating in a way.

“Uh, yes Eraser-Sensei, I’ll get started.”

After a few minutes he walked back over and was handed a clipboard and an electronic reader.

“Do these ten activities, one try each, then write down your results. Don’t do anything that will break the building. I’ll be keeping an eye on you but I’m already too busy as it is, so I’ll have to be more hands off than I am with most my students.”

It took him a few minutes to get through them all, but he had quirks that were relevant to all of them so he thought he did pretty good on the quirked version. The quirkless version was less impressive.

Aizawa walked over and looked over his results. “Hm, as I expected. Compared to my class last year you outdid everyone by a massive margin when using quirks. But quirkless you would have been in 18th place compared to how they did.”

“Um, this probably isn’t relevant, but why did you compare me to your previous year’s class rather than this year?”

“Easy, that’s because this year they gave me nothing but failures. I expelled all of them and I only plan to re-enroll half of them. Comparing you to my current class would be an insult to your skills.”

“Wow, so you think I’m doing a good job?”

“No. You still did awful, they just did even worse. Your first task will be to build up a solid base of skills and strength. It doesn’t matter what quirks you have if you don’t have the skill to use them. We’re going to focus on you building strength, stamina, and agility. Once you’ve got that down I’ll teach you the basics of combat and only then will we add quirk training into the mix.”

“Oh, wow, that sounds like a lot, should I not be doing my vigilante patrols until we’re done.”

The tired man scoffed and waved him off. “No, but mostly because you’d break any promise of stopping as soon as you saw someone in trouble. Just be careful and try to stick to the whole community service thing while staying away from the big fights.”

“Got it, that makes a lot of sense. Um, can I use a quirk that would help me reach the first goal faster? It’s called Physical Peak, it’s basically a passive longevity quirk that keeps you at your physical peak, which you probably could have guessed by the name. So it would basically make me mature and grow stronger about twice as fast, but I also won’t really age past my late twenties.”

His trainer buried his head in his hands.

“Damnit kid, that is not the kind of information you should share around without a care. You don’t just casually tell people you’re immortal, and certainly not in a place that has cameras. You can use the quirk, but only on the condition that you keep your mouth shut about it, a lot of people would not react well to knowing an immortal vigilante is running around.”

“Oh. Yeah, that makes sense.” Izuku was getting ready to leave when they both heard Eraserhead’s phone go off with an emergency notification.

“Damnit, what is it now?” The tired hero looked down at the beeping phone and scowled. “Fuck. There’s an A rank villain called Muscular rampaging. The heroes there are struggling but luckily there haven’t been casualties yet. This isn’t his first time either, he’ll show up, kill as many people as he can then disappear once he’s satisfied.”

“I know you just told me not to jump into big fights like a minute ago… But could you give me those coordinates?”

Aizawa scowled at him. “Alright, but remember, I’m training you to be a hero, not a martyr. Fight smart and don’t hold back against people like him.”

Izuku nodded and activated two quirks, Bird’s Eye View and Blink (that was the actual name of his teleportation quirk). His eyes went foggy as he became blind to the world in front of him and instead saw through the semi-translucent eyes that were now floating a quarter mile above the location he was just given.

It looked like a warzone, cars were smashed, multiple buildings had caught fire, and in the middle of it all was a tall man with blonde hair and arms covered in skinless muscles.

Izuku teleported about a hundred feet above the man, activating Stone Golem and Acid Touch. The villain had been about to throw a chunk of concrete at a pair of injured heroes but was interrupted by the cannonball that was Izuku. Not only was he knocked into the ground with enough force to create a dent in the street, but there was also a hissing sound as his now acidic sweat ate at the quirk created muscles.

This had seemed like an easy win, or at the very least a very good start to a fight. His opinion on that shifted as he was thrown down the road like a stone skipping across a lake. He came to a stop when his back hit, and badly dented, a police car that was maintaining a perimeter.

With a loud groan, Izuku rose back to his feet. He dropped the acid part and added a Hyper Regeneration for a few seconds to get back in fighting shape. As he ran towards Muscular he dropped the healing and added Exponential Punch and Kaali to his Stone Golem. Two solid swings, totaling at eight punches, pushed the man back and caused him to turn back around to face the foe he’d assumed was defeated.

“You seem a bit small to be one of the heroes. Not that it matters, you’ll show me your blood all the same.”

He then quickly found a big flaw in practicing his quirk combos with Gigantomachia. The giant would gladly let him throw punch after punch without interrupting, but with this villain he struggled to get even two swings in, let alone the three or four needed to end the fight quickly. This led to them trading blows back and forth, which would have been fine except for the fact that this man hit like a damn truck.

As the villain pulled back his arm and wrapped his body with even more muscles he suddenly paused as spears of water rained down on him. The two heroes had gotten up and were providing back up. He recognized them as the Water Hose duo, both of them had water quirks, one produced water and one could control it.

That turned the fight a bit more in their favor, preventing him from keeping his attention solely on Izuku or the remaining heroes. But the villain clearly didn’t like this shift in the fight as he roared loudly and picked up a car and reared back to throw it at Izuku. It would have been easiest to just teleport away, but he knew that there were people hiding in the building behind him. Dodging would probably cause the building to collapse and kill dozens of people.

So he dropped his offensive quirks and brought forth Tough Skin and Snail. His stone body was reinforced by Tough Skin and Snail let him create a hardy spiral shield just before the projectile car made impact.

After blacking out for a second he found himself, unsurprisingly, underneath a smashed and flaming vehicle. His legs and ribs felt broken, plus he was tired. He didn’t have the time or energy to heal right now, but he also couldn’t bring himself to run away.

He craned his neck to the side so he could see the sky. He then teleported one last time so he was right where he had begun the fight.

He dropped all of his defensive quirks and tried to ignore the agony that came from suddenly dropping Stone Golem, which had been dulling his pain so far. As he began to fall he brought forth Dragonfly.

“Muscular, this is your final chance to surrender.” He had to give the man one last chance.

Then Extra Eyes.

“Ha! That’s funny, kid. I’d like to see you try and bring me in!”

Then Bending Sight.

“Very well, all civilians and heroes should avert their eyes immediately.”

Then Laser Eyes.

And with that, he released the full might of the quirk combo he had come to call ‘Death Ray’. A single laser was strong enough to cut into concrete within a few seconds. Two were a formidable quirk. With twenty five eyes it would devastate anything in its path. With DragonFly eyes it was multiplied by about thirty and would rip apart large swaths of the mountain he practiced on. And with bending sight he could focus all of that onto a single target.

When Muscular saw the many eyes glow, he pushed his quirk as hard as he could, creating a sphere of dense muscle around himself like a protective shell. Those nearby who didn’t heed his warning to look away were blinded for hours afterwards, and even people from cities away had seen the pillar of red light that struck the ground. After about five seconds Izuku couldn’t hold it any longer and fell from the sky with his bloodied shirt in tatters. Before he could hit the ground he was caught by a massive hand made of water that gently set him down.

He was more than a little light headed as he looked up at the two battered heroes.

“Hi, my name’s Izuku.”

They both laughed, then winced because of their injuries. “Yeah, we sort of guessed that, there’s not really anyone else who can do what you just did. And thank you, if not for you we probably wouldn’t have made it home today.”

After that moment of kind smiles the smell reached him. After his attack landed the street had begun to reek of burning flesh. He turned and looked at the source, which unsurprisingly was the spot that he had targeted. 

There was a perfectly circular hole in the street that was about four feet wide. It was hard to see how deep it went since steam and smoke was rapidly rising out of it. The place where the attack had landed, and everything within a few feet of it, had been melted down into molten rock.

It seemed unlikely that he was still alive, and the attack was almost definitely excessive. In his defense though, nothing else was working against the villain! However, that did mean he now had a second unintentional villain death on his hands, which he was sure would impact him more once he was home again.

After he let Hyper Regeneration do its job, he started helping the wounded however he could and moving people towards the nearby ambulances. After a minute or two, the woman he was helping suddenly lurched forward and fell to the ground, a red hot piece of broken rebar speared through her.

Izuku spun around in panic to see a smoking and disfigured man crawl out of the molten hole in the road. All of his hair was burnt away, along with half of his face, one of his eyes was little more than a smoldering socket, and his entire body was covered in severe burns. 

“Damn, I was trying to hit you, not that random lady. You’re tougher than I expected, but you really should have made sure I was dead before turning your back to me, rookie mistake.”

Izuku struggled to pay attention to anything other than the woman who suddenly died in his arms. How could he think when her blood was coating his hands and her vacant stare seemed to burrow into his very soul.

Then, the world seemed to pause as his shock turned to rage.

With a swipe of his hand the villain’s quirk was ripped from him. With a much more gentle touch, though it didn’t matter anymore, he pulled the quirk from the woman in his arms.

Izuku’s voice was quiet, but every word resonated with power. “Why? What reason could you possibly have to cause so much pain? You must have had some reason to cause all this death and destruction.”

“Same reason you came to stop me. Because I wanted to.”

Roots exploded from the ground and pulled the now quirkless villain to his knees. He pulled forth the quirk he had just gotten from the woman who died. He wished that he’d at least known her name. He didn’t really know what it would do, but he could feel it had something to do with your emotions and light.

From his hand a pitch black blade of solid light formed as the manifestation of his rage and sorrow in that moment. He held the tip against the man’s throat as he stared down at the defeated villain.

“Does that mean I should kill you? Because I want you to pay for what you’ve done. I want you to die by the quirk of someone you needlessly killed.”

“Ha! You ain’t got the nerve.”

Izuku drew his arm back and aimed the blade at his heart. “Try me.”

As he started to thrust the blade forwards there was the sound of what seemed like a small jet engine. He quickly turned to the side to see a man in a wheelchair quite literally flying down the street at him.

The white haired man he knew from the quirk disability support group came screeching to a stop right in front of Izuku.

“K-kinoshita?! What are you doing here?!”

“I’m here to smack some sense into ya’. Because from what I saw, you were about to kill an unarmed and captured man. So you’ve better put that sword away before I beat your ass myself.”

“But- he hurt so many people just because he wanted to! He has to pay for his crimes!”

“And I’m sure he will. But unless you forgot to mention getting a job as a judge, it’s not your call what the punishment is. I know it feels like it will help, but killing him won’t make the pain any easier. All you gotta do is walk away and let him be arrested properly.”

At this point Izuku started weeping openly. “It hurts so bad though… Why’d she have to die?! Why couldn’t I save her?! If I had just taken his quirk as soon as I got here she’d still be alive!”

Kinoshita opened his arms. “Come here. It’s okay that it hurts, if it didn’t hurt then you wouldn’t be you. But you have to know this wasn’t your fault. You did the best you could and things would have been a lot worse without you. Your mercy and kindness isn’t a weakness, it’s what makes you strong. ”

Izuku threw himself into the man’s arms and cried into his shoulder as the man gently pat him on the back.

“There you go, get it all out. I’m gonna bring you home now, or at the very least get you out of this area.”

With that he flew away from the approaching heroes with a sobbing Izuku in his arms, leaving the remaining heroes to take away Muscular for his many crimes.

Chapter Text

Izuku sat across from his father while they both looked through their respective card books. Izuku felt a sense of pride that he now had his own quirk binder that had a fair amount of quirks in it, even if most weren’t of the same quality as his father’s. He took out two cards that represented quirks he’d gotten within the last few weeks and slid them across the table.

“I’ll offer you Poison Quills and Muscle Augmentation. What can you offer in terms of resistance quirks and capture quirks?”

They both had a lot of fun pretending that the deal was far more serious and official than it was. It was a fun game to trade quirks between them as they tried to get the best deal as possible from the other.

“Hmm. Those are some good quirks, but what use would I have for those? I already have strength enhancement and poison quirks, and the size increase that comes with Muscle Augmentation is a hassle.”

“Well, that’s because these quirks aren’t for you. But they would be perfect for your Zombie Super Soldiers.”

All for One groaned. “I told you we’re not calling them that. They are called Noumu. And the acronym ZSS just sounds like you’re hissing at someone.”

“I just think it’s an apt name. You take dead bodies, reanimate them, then stuff them full of quirks. It’s gross but honestly a cool idea, plus I’m sure I’ll convince you on ZSS one day.”

“At least say Z-S-S. That way it sounds like an acronym instead of a poorly done snake impression.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll wear you down eventually. Now, what about the trade?”

“You do have a good point, both of these are good for mindless Noumu . I’ll offer these two in return.” He slid Conjured Chains and Cursed Blood across the table.

Izuku picked up the cards and read them over. The chain quirk lets the user create and control up to ten chains, each one connected to a metal ring on a finger.

Cursed Blood was a weird one though, whenever your blood was exposed to open air it would burst into a black flame that could burn through anything. However the blood flame would go out as soon as the blood cells died, which was usually less than a minute in open air. Offensively it was only useful in very specific situations. The real benefit was that it came with an unrivaled resistance, near immunity, to fire.

“Also, the Conjured Chains can theoretically nullify a quirk if they are wrapped around the target, but I never put in the time to figure out how to activate that ability since I would just take the quirk instead of suppressing it.”

“You’ve got yourself a deal.” He reached out and they shook hands, allowing the quirks to flow between them before exchanging the cards and putting them into their respective trading card binders.

He heard a chuckle from Giran as he walked into the room. “Damn, it’ll never stop being weird to watch you two give and take quirks like that.”

All for One glared lightly at Giran. “You’re late.”

“Yeah, but it looks like you still made use of the time. Plus, one of my customers was a bit jumpy and kept needing to be convinced this wasn’t a trap. But it all worked out, so if you’re ready there’s a handful of villains that are ready to give up their quirks.”

This was a setup that Izuku was willing to have with Giran since it gave him more quirks and allowed more people with quirk disabilities to live a freer life, even if they were villains. Giran benefited since he charged a finders fee for anyone who came to him looking for Izuku. Even though Izuku didn’t want to get involved with criminal activity, he felt in this case it wasn’t a problem since he was still taking quirks from villains.

Giran would lead them into his little impromptu office for the sake of privacy, then he would take their quirk and send them on their way. It usually didn’t take more than a minute per person, maybe more if they wanted to discuss how it worked. His dad was only there because he was a worrier that didn’t like Izuku meeting with villains without him nearby as backup in case it was an ambush.

The first person was a woman with a full body cheetah mutation. She was known as the ‘Cat Burglar’, Izuku could admit that the pun made him laugh. She was a career criminal and had been a thief for over two decades, putting her in her forties. It was honestly impressive, very few were able to be active that long with ending up in Tartarus. 

He wasn't one to push people on why they wanted their quirks gone, but he could admit he was curious why she would want to give up a top tier quirk like Cheetah, especially since it was so vital to her career. It acted as a speed quirk along with enhancing most senses and giving the user other benefits like night vision and claws. Like many animal based quirks, it can be summed up as, she can do anything the animal can do.

She gave him a wide smile filled with feline fangs. “I’ll let you in on a little secret. I hit it big. Enough to retire and live a comfortable life without ever having to lift a finger again. But as I’m sure you can guess, it’s tricky to get a new identity when you’ve got a face and reputation like mine.”

“Oh, that’s actually really clever. No one will be looking for you as a quirkless person. Well, as long as you don’t think you’ll regret it I’d be glad to help, but remember that I can’t give quirks back, so this is permanent.”

She nodded and shivered at the odd sensation of all her fur receding along with any other mutations. “Thanks broccoli boy. I’m out of here.”

He also took the quirks from a few people that had pretty obvious reasons for being there. First there was a lady with a quirk that let her create and control wooden spears that looked sort of like roots. The drawback was pretty significant though since it gave the user these wooden horns instead of eyes leaving them blind. Since they weren’t really immersed in crime, it was worth it for her to give up that power in return for getting her vision back and being able to start a new life. He’d trade this one to his dad later since he was already blind.

The other person was a teen who wore a full body suit to prevent any physical contact, purposeful or accidental. His quirk was that his touch caused a rash similar to poison ivy. It couldn’t be turned off at all either, since it was a mutation that gave his skin the same properties as the plant. Which just sounded like an awful quirk to have.

The last person was a man with badly burnt skin. Even from a distance Izuku could feel that his quirk was probably the strongest flame quirk he’d ever seen or felt. The reason he was coming to Izuku was obvious just by looking at him, it clearly didn’t provide much if any fire resistance along with those flames.

“I’ll be straight with you. I didn’t come here to have my quirk taken, at least not yet, I just didn’t know how else to contact you and I can’t think of anyone else who could help with this.”

Izuku raised an eyebrow. Okay, maybe the reason he was there wasn’t as obvious as he thought. “I can’t promise I can help with whatever this is, but I can listen.”

“Well, the reason I have such a shitty quirk is I’m the failed product of a quirk marriage. But since my father is a powerful man he’s never faced consequences for what he’s done.”

“...And what do you want me to do?” Izuku had a guess but didn’t want to assume.

“I want you to go all vigilante on his ass and steal his quirk for buying my mother and abusing his entire family.”

“I’m not sure… Usually I just try to contain villains until a hero or the police can arrest them.”

“That’s the fucking problem, he’s the number two hero, so he’s not exactly going to arrest himself.”

Izuku just whispered quietly. “Holy shit.” This was much bigger than anything he had planned.

“Look, even if you don’t believe me or don’t care about me, my little brother is still in that house and probably getting beaten to shit every day. So do your thing and stop a criminal.”

Izuku thought for a moment, he really didn’t want to just go off of this guy’s word before doing something as significant as taking down Endeavor.

“Before I make a decision I want to verify what you told me. Do you have the coordinates for his house?”

The man just laughed. “His coordinates? Do I look like someone who memorizes coordinates? I can find it by looking up his address though, give me one second.”

Once he had an idea of how far it was he teleported as high as he could into the sky without suffocating and then used Blink again to get as close as possible. It took a couple minutes to get to the house, but once he’d been there he could spy on it with Bird’s Eye View whenever he wanted to.

Once he got back he sent Giran away and sat down with Dabi, explaining his plan. With a combination of Bird’s Eye View, X-ray Vision, and Vision Video, he was able to observe and record Endeavor’s abuse without having to leave their base or risk getting seen. They sat together, not saying much for about an hour until they got what they were looking for. Though it was kind of horrifying that it only took an hour.

Izuku solemnly downloaded the video onto his computer so he could release it to the public.

“Not to judge, but did you just turn your finger into a USB?”

“Maybe, but that’s honestly pretty tame when it comes to my quirks being weird. Anyways, I’m going to post this on the internet, and if heroes don’t do anything about it, then I’ll act on it. Does that seem fair?”

Dabi sort of grumbled. “Yeah, I guess so. But they aren’t going to.”

“Well, it’s still worth it to share it so people know why I’m taking his quirk.”

After a moment Izuku spoke up again. “Hey Dabi, if the heroes don’t arrest him and I go to take his quirk, do you want to be involved?”

He looked over, “Hell yeah, I’d love to give the flaming bastard a piece of my mind. Honestly, I had this whole elaborate plan for getting revenge, but then I realized this would be even better than killing him and way easier. So, the more dramatic the better since I won’t be doing my original revenge plan.”

Izuku laughed nervously. “I’m glad you’ve chosen to not kill people, no matter the reasoning. Well, let’s call it good for now and see where it’s at tomorrow.”

Burnin’ was making her way back to work after the absolute PR nightmare that had been going on the day before. Someone had filmed and released a video of her boss beating his son, and it wasn’t exactly easy, or completely possible, to get it taken down everywhere it popped back up. All while making sure it was spoken about as a training session in the media and as nothing else. It honestly didn’t sit right with her, but going against Endeavor would be a bad idea for her career and probably her health.

It didn’t escape her attention that the video was taken in such a weird way. It seemed to be taken from above and through multiple walls. The whole thing indicated that this wasn’t something to be taken lightly and that they would be hearing from this mysterious person again. 

She was about to enter the building to face the disaster once more when she heard shouting behind her. She turned and saw what seemed to be a massive dragon of sorts flying across the sky, it had to be at least seventy feet long if you included the tail.

It had bright green scales and gleaming eyes of the same color. It had powerful looking limbs and wings instead of arms, which she supposed meant it was a wyvern not a dragon, but the middle of a wyvern attack wasn’t a good time to debate the difference between the two. One odd trait was that it seemed to be covered in green fur as well as the scales and had a much shorter face, almost like an ape and a dragon got mixed together.

It landed atop the hero agency, perched on the roof as if that was the perfect place to land, which might have been true due to the helicopter pad. Then, just to make sure it had really gotten everyone’s attention, the massive beast/person(?) shot a stream of fire from its mouth into the sky. Damn, even the dragon hero herself couldn’t compete with this thing between the size and fire breath.

And if all of that wasn’t alarming enough, she suddenly realized there was a person riding the wyvern. Anyone who shows up on a terrifying dragon was definitely bad news. Said person pulled out a megaphone and began speaking loud enough to be heard by the growing crowd that was very interested in what was going on.

“ Oh daaaaad! I’m back! I know you thought you killed me, but you only managed to permanently scar and disfigure me. So now I, your eldest son Touya Todoroki, have returned to wreck your shit. Well, with the help of my friend here.”

Before she had a chance to process all of that her boss came shooting out of the building like a flaming comet that flew directly at his son(?) and the giant mythical beast. The massive blast of blue flame that intercepted his path confirmed that it was almost certainly Touya,

“Hey dad, how’s your day goin’? Because mine’s been great so far.”

“Cease this nonsense at once! You’re both under arrest for illegal quirk usage and damaging a hero agency.”

Dabi looked down at the building below them, which had a few scratches on the roof from Izuku’s landing. “Both of us? You hear that big guy, he thinks he can arrest you. You think they even have cuffs in your size? Besides, this building is barely damaged.”

Izuku then stomped one foot down on the roof, causing the steel beams to bend and shattering every window on the building.

“Ok, now we’ve damaged the building. But anyways, we’re here to provide you with options, you flaming shitbag. Either you turn yourself in for trying to kill me, abusing your family, and buying my mom, or, you can fight us and you will never be a hero again.”

“How dare you mock me like this? My son is dead and you will be joining him soon enough.”

Dabi looked Izuku in the eye as the flaming hero came charging at them. “I have the odd feeling that he isn’t going to turn himself in. Well, take him out then.”

Izuku jumped off the building and flew towards the man while roaring loudly. With a wave of his hand (which is currently a giant wing), Izuku pulls Endeavor’s quirk from him, causing his flames to immediately sputter out. As he began to plummet to the ground, Izuku dove after him and grabbed him in his claws before setting him on the ground.

The once powerful hero stared at his hands in shock and confusion. “Where’s my fire?! Why can’t I feel it anymore?! What have you done to me?!”

Dabi scoffed as they began to fly away. “You’ll never hurt another person with those flames. You sacrificed everything to become powerful, to show everyone you were better. Now you’ll live the rest of your life completely normal and powerless.” 

Chapter Text

After stripping Endeavor of his quirk, Izuku flew off in the direction of his house before he realized he still had a passenger. He looked over his shoulder at Dabi, who was holding on tight to keep from falling. Maybe he should invest in a giant dragon-saddle if this was going to become a common occurrence?

“Where do you live? I can drop you off in the general area if you don’t want to share the exact spot.” He knew a lot of criminals were very secretive of where they lived, and for good reason.

“Uh, I don’t have one? I’m sorta definitely homeless and have just been bouncing around. So you can drop me wherever, won’t really make a difference.”

Well that wouldn’t do. “You’re staying with me tonight. I’m not letting you sleep in the streets when I have a guest room.”

Once they were close enough, Izuku dropped his quirks and activated Enhanced Senses and had Blink ready to go. He suddenly went from being a massive wyvern back to a regular human, much to Dabi’s concern since they were still very high up in the air.

He grabbed Dabi by the hand before they could fall too far and enhanced his vision enough to see right to his very distant front door.

He nearly collapsed on his couch in exhaustion as he stumbled inside. He was not expecting flying around to be such a workout, but it made sense. Regardless of how reasonable it was to be sore, his back muscles hurt in places he didn’t know existed and his arms felt like jello. And on top of all that he used Blink to teleport a second person, which was a huge strain on the quirk, it was really only efficient for moving one person.

Dabi was currently collapsed on the floor and catching his breath. “Never do that again! Why would you just turn back into a human without warning?!”

Izuku did look a little ashamed and embarrassed. “Well, I couldn’t teleport us while I was huge. I hope you don’t mind that I sort of just decided you’d be staying here for a bit without waiting for your input.”

After a moment of silence Izuku looked back over at Dabi to see how he was doing after everything that had just gone down in the last half an hour or so. Said man was currently crying while laughing maniacally, so that was definitely a good sign.

“Uh… you doin’ alright over there?”

In response he got more of the laugh-crying. “Ha ha ha! He’s gone! He’s actually gone! It’s finally over!”

“Yeah, it is. He won’t be able to hurt anyone else now.”

“You know, I always planned, or at the very least expected, to die while killing my father. I always knew my fire was hot enough to overwhelm his resistance, but by the time he died there was no way I’d recover from using my quirk that much. And I was okay with that! I was going to go out in a literal blaze of glory and it would all be over, for both of us.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re still here. That man is a piece of shit and isn’t worth dying over.”

Dabi had flopped down into a chair and stared at the wall for a bit. Izuku wasn’t going to interrupt his process for working through the very sudden shift of his abusive father becoming powerless, it was obviously a very emotional time for him.

After a few minutes Izuku had nearly drifted to sleep when Dabi suddenly spoke up. “I want you to take my quirk.”

“Huh? Um, I guess I can, but how come?”

“Mostly because it melts my skin whenever I use it. The only reason I didn’t ask for you to take it before was because I wanted to be able to kill my father with it.”

It was quickly seemingly like most of his plans or thoughts had been based around killing his father. Izuku was quickly wondering what he would be doing if he wasn’t spending all his time working toward that goal.

“Yeah. If you’re sure. If this is an impulse then I suggest waiting and thinking it over. If you’ve wanted this for a while I can do that for you, but please remember I can’t give it back if you change your mind.”

Dabi gave him a vicious grin. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m still a fan of being able to light people on fire. But I’m willing to do it the old fashioned way so that my skin stops burning all the damn time.”

“Yeah, that makes sense. I can take your quirk and heal up a good amount of your injuries.”

Dabi fully paused and looked over to him. “Wait, you can heal me?”

“Uh, mostly? I can make it way better than it is now though, and you won’t need the staples anymore.”

“Hell yeah, I’m so ready for a life without staples.”

“Um, I can take your quirk now, but I’m exhausted, so the healing will have to wait for tomorrow.”

He pulled the volatile quirk and felt it slip into place. It was so similar in feel to Endeavor’s, but more wild. It was like having a purebred show dog and a feral street dog side by side. Dabi’s destructive power was far greater, but that was a double edged sword, that same power meant it couldn’t do the same pinpoint accuracy as Endeavor’s.

He could already tell that using them together with his new fire resistance quirk would truly live up to the name ‘Hellfire’ that had been given to Endeavor’s quirk.

He heard Dabi start laughing again, but it was less maniacal this time. “Holy shit. Do people feel like this all the time?! I always felt too hot no matter what I did and it was so hard to regulate my temperature. I thought that was just how people felt! This is amazing.”

Izuku smiled at seeing the man finally experience good things in his life. “Do you have any plans on what you want to do from here?”

“Not really, I figured I’d just follow your lead. You know, help you do that vigilante shit and bring evil people to justice no matter who they are.”

“What? You want to work with me?!”

“Sure, it can’t be that much of a surprise. I respect the hell out of what you’re doing and I owe you more than I could ever repay. So I’ll do whatever needs to get done. I saw how you freaked out over the whole Muscular thing. You clearly don’t want to get your hands dirty, so I’ll do it for you.”

Izuku didn’t want to think or talk about what had happened with Muscular. Didn’t want to think about the light leaving that woman’s eyes while he held her. “W-what do you mean by ‘dirty work’?”

“Like I said, I’ll do whatever needs to get done. You’re going up against some powerful people with the path you’re on, there’s no way you can do that on your own or without spilling blood. Anyways, we’re both tired as hell and we can figure out the rest tomorrow.”

Izuku laid in bed, staring at the ceiling, his clock showing that it was four in the morning. Unsurprisingly, going to sleep in the afternoon completely wrecked his sleep schedule and now he couldn’t fall back asleep. He didn’t want to start the day yet, so he was laying there, bored as hell. On top of that, he was still processing everything that had happened the day before.

That’s when he had an idea on how he could spend his time and hopefully get some direction on everything going on. He fumbled for his phone and called his dad, who he knew would already be up since he had a quirk that made it so he didn’t need much sleep.

“Izuku? Are you alright?”

“Yeah, sorry for calling at a weird time. I couldn’t fall back asleep and figured it would be a fine time to chat.”

“No need to apologize, it’s always good to hear from you. Is it fair to assume your mind is lingering on your fight from earlier today?”

“Sort of.” He paused for a moment as he thought it over before rapidly falling into a mumbling ramble.

“The fight itself was fine, but I may or may not have taken Touya, his son, back with me. Well, his name is Touya but he likes to be called Dabi. He said he was homeless and it felt wrong to help him stop his abuser and then immediately ditch him to the streets. His quirk is strong and really cool but it lights him on fire which isn’t cool at all so I took it from him. But he asked me first, I wouldn’t take his quirk without asking even if it was hurting him. So I took his quirk and said I’d heal him, which I will, and now he’s offering to do ‘dirty work’ for me. I’m not even sure what that means in this case, probably murder, but it’s still kinda vague. I just don’t know how I got here and now have someone who wants to kill in my name and-”

He was cut off from further rambling with a low chuckle from his amused father. “You don’t need to worry about this so much. This is a totally normal part of being powerful, especially when you have publicly known ideals. It sounds like this Dabi fellow is looking to be your Henchman and help wherever he can.”

“My henchman? I don’t know… That feels like a really strong term. And it’s certainly nothing that official yet, I just met him today.”

He could imagine his dad nodding thoughtfully. “That’s completely fine. This sort of thing can have whatever title feels right to you both, whether it’s minion, follower, lackey, underling, or even something you make up for a specific cause.”

“It sounds like a lot of responsibility. It sounds nice, but what if I mess it up?”

“Getting your first henchman can be a bit overwhelming and stressful, but it’s a completely natural thing. Powerful people almost always attract followers who want to join something bigger than themselves. Even if you are a little younger than I was when I had my first henchman, I don’t think you have anything to worry about.”

“You really mean that?”

“I do. And this Dabi fellow seems like a great option for your first one. He sounds like he’ll be loyal and competent, and those are the most important traits in any henchman, or whatever you end up calling it. I’m sure you’ll have entire spy networks before we know it.”

Chapter Text

The next day Dabi walked into the kitchen to find Izuku making breakfast.

“Ok, I gotta ask, why on Earth are you so trusting? I thought about it all night and I can’t figure out why you would let some homeless villain you just met into your home, especially while you’re alone? And from what I could tell, there really aren’t any safety measures in place that would keep me from stealing your shit or attacking you while you slept.”

“Uh, good morning to you too? And to answer your question, you haven’t given me a reason not to trust you.”

Touya was blown away by the simplistic logic that would get the kid killed one day. “Really? That’s it?”

He seemed to blush a little and look at his feet. “Well, there’s another reason, but I don’t know how to say it without sounding like an asshole.”

“Just spit it out.”

“It’s just… you probably couldn’t kill me even if you tried. I have a couple of passive defense quirks on all the time. So, even in my sleep, it would take quite a lot to even injure me, let alone kill me before I wake up.” He was over-stating it a little bit, but the combination of Physical Prime and Tough Skin covered most of his bases and two passive quirks didn’t wear him out to leave active while he slept.

Dabi seemed to pause in thought. “That’s actually a fair point. I’d probably be more trusting too if I had god-like powers.”

Izuku just shrugged, not really sure how to respond to that and went back to finishing up breakfast. A few fruits were telekinetically pulled in through the open window from the yard where his garden was. Izuku grabbed a floating apple before tossing it over to Dabi.

“Why are you throwing fruit at me?! And why is the apple glowing?!”

“That’s the healing quirk I have, it’s called Enchanted Fruits and Vegetables. Any time the user touches a fruit or vegetable it gives an effect to it depending on what plant it is. Apples accelerate healing a little. One apple is enough to heal a minor injury like a scraped knee or bad bruise. So… you’re going to have to eat a lot of fruit for this to make a big difference.”

“Damn, you got some weird quirks. You take down the ol’ bastard with your ape-dragon move that turns into a straight up kaiju, and now you’re healing me with magic apples.”

“Yeah, sounds about right. Got this one from an old guy who wanted to enjoy all those foods before he died. A lot of the effects are negative so he had to be super careful with what he ate, plus a side effect is that the quirk drains it of all flavor.”

Dabi had already taken a bite while he was talking and nearly spit it out.

“Oh god, it’s like biting into styrofoam. I can see why he was willing to give you such a powerful quirk, that was awful. How many of these things am I going to have to eat?”

“If it makes you feel better, most of it will be in smoothie form.”

“Blech, I guess we’ll see if that’s better or not. Out of curiosity, how many strong quirks do you actually get, because it seems you mostly only get quirks people want gone.”

“Um, for quirks that are strong on their own, maybe a couple a week? I get a fair amount of the better quirks from corpses, but once someone dies the success rate of taking their quirk drops fast. The sooner you get to them the better, but usually it’s a fifty-fifty shot if you can get there within a day or so. Because if they’ve been embalmed then the chances are basically zero because it disturbs the body too much and replaces too many things with synthetics.”

“Wow, that was a lot of unexpected but very interesting rambling. Why not just take a ton of quirks from all the villains you catch or go shopping for quirks in a prison? I’d imagine those things would be a buffet for your quirk.”

“It just feels wrong to take them without consent. I don’t know how to put it into words, but quirks are a part of a person’s body, so it feels like I’m an organ harvester. Ripping parts of people out for my own benefit. I refuse to use it as anything but a last resort, because it should never be taken lightly to do that to someone.”

“That makes sense I guess. I never felt that way with mine, it always felt like a burden and a curse rather than some part of me. But that’s probably more to do with my shitbag of a father and the fact it kept lighting me on fire.”

Izuku nodded as he put chopped up fruit into a blender. Once it was done, he filled a very large glass that was placed in front of dabi. Dabi stared at the drink, which was glowing with an alarming kaleidoscope of colors and had absolutely no smell, then back up at Izuku.

“What’s this gonna do to me?”

“Um, it will accelerate your healing, numb your pain receptors, increase your energy, heal burns specifically, reduce scarring, prevent infection, and remove any toxins currently in your body.”

“Holy shit kid, that sounds like a fuckin’ miracle drug. Yeah, I know there’s the downside of it’s nasty and I’ll need a bunch of it, but still. It’s weirding me out that you’d just give this sort of thing away for nothing. What’s in it for you?”

“Would you believe me if I said I was just being kind?”

“Not in the slightest. If you were giving this out to every bum on the street, maybe. But why just me?”

“Well… I have the notes from the previous user of the quirk, and he noted what plant did what, which is super helpful. But he didn’t make any note of how potent things were or how they worked when combined other than the fact that the fresher it is the more powerful the effect.”

“Gotcha, you needed a willing guinea pig to experiment on who was already severely injured so you could test different things and monitor the results.”

Izuku stared at the floor. “Experiment sounds so mean though. More like, a trial run, or just think of it as free food that will do something that’s almost definitely good, we just don’t know how much good.”

“Hey, don’t get me wrong, I’m totally fine being your test subject, I just don’t want to agree to something before I understand it.” After taking a large gulp Dabi had a very unpleasant expression.

“How is it?”

“Imagine water that’s way too thick, has a grainy texture, and is sticky. So, overall it’s pretty terrible.”

“Well, I put in ingredients for their effects not based on the consistency and texture.”

Within a few minutes Dabi was staring blankly at the ceiling. “Was one of the things in the smoothie magic mushrooms, because I feel high as hell.”

“Oh, that would be the kiwis. That’s what is numbing you so I can remove your staples without excruciating pain.”

“That’s neat. I’m a big fan of not being in pain. De-staple me you tiny green god.”

“I think that’s a compliment, but I’m definitely not a god, please don’t start a cult around me. Let’s head outside so we don’t get blood all over the house.”

Dabi followed him into a fenced off backyard (while he kept sipping at his nasty smoothie of health).

“Oh, you should take out any piercings so we don’t wreck those.” After a few seconds Dabi had taken out his many piercings and nodded at Izuku.

With the activation of his Weak Telekinesis quirk, every staple went flying out of Dabi’s body at once before his skin could heal over them. Even with the numbing effects, it definitely still hurt, as was clear by Dabi shouting out. “Motherfucker!”

“Sorry! We needed to get them out, and it seemed best to get it over with quickly.”

“Yeah, yeah, it makes sense. But damn, that hurts like a bitch.” He stared down at his damaged skin that was already beginning to heal over the tiny pinpricks that the staples left behind. “You’re lucky this nasty ass smoothie is actually really impressive.”

“You rest and keep drinking it, I’m gonna get some more fruit for the next one.”

Izuku walked around his yard, which was more like an orchard at this point. He let his mind wander as he took care of the various plants and picked the needed fruits. He was glad that Dabi was going to be helping him, but having him do any fighting would be problematic since he was used to having a powerful fire quirk. If only he could give him a new quirk. It was so frustrating that he couldn’t give them like his father.

He thought about the whole ‘henchman’ thing his dad had talked about. He would want his henchmen to be as strong as possible, right? At the very least he should give him a weapon to compensate for the lost quirk. It would be nice if he could stay with the fire motif, since it would be weird if a guy named Cremation was using an ice spear or something like that.

He ran through his quirks in his head and wondered if any of them could let him create a weapon that could stand in for a quirk. After a few minutes he had a great idea and ran back over to Dabi, who was very shocked to see Izuku sprinting towards him.

“Dabi! What are your feelings on swords!?”

“Uh, I guess they’re cool? I’m not sure where you’re going with this.”

“Ok, I’m going to make you something really cool. If I pass out you just have to make sure the blade doesn’t touch anything.”

“What?! What does that mean?! Why would you pass out?!”

He shushed Dabi with a wave of his hand. “Quiet, I need to focus.”

He made sure to plan everything out beforehand since he’d only have a few seconds at most.

He’d need Cursed Blood, Blood Spikes, Preserve, Stone Golem, and Detachable Limbs. Most of them were pretty self explanatory names. Blood Spikes let you make spikes out of your blood. Preserve let you take dead organic matter and prevent it from decaying, the effects were long enough that the limit hadn’t been found. Detachable Limbs let you detach body parts at will, and was given over to him because they also come off with a hard tug and take a week to regrow.

He activated the two blood quirks first and created a spike made of blood coming out of his palm that had a black flame coming off of it. It was a little over two feet long and was shaped like a very thin pyramid, with flat sides and came to a sharp point.

He closed his hand around the blade that was still attached to his palm and activated Stone Golem and Detachable Limbs. He pulled off his now stone hand at the lower wrist. Normally, all of the active quirks on the detached limb would disappear within a minute as the hand died. But before that happened he activated Preservation, which luckily worked because the hand wasn’t attached to a living creature, even if the cells hadn’t died yet.

For the first time, he managed to use 5 quirks at once and was incredibly proud of himself. Well, he was proud for about 3 seconds, then he was proud and unconscious from overuse.

Izuku felt himself rousing to the feeling of being kicked while hearing his name shouted.

“Izuku fucking Midoriya, if you don’t get up this goddamn second- oh good, you’re awake.”

“What the hell Dabi? Why are you yelling at me?”

“Oh, yes, clearly I’m the asshole here. You gave me a lightsaber made of blood! Which is cool as hell, but I noticed something super interesting about it. It doesn’t turn off!”

“What, it’s not a lightsa- Actually, I guess it sort of is since it can burn through anything, and the shape is pretty close. Except my design is more of a pyramidal shape, rather than conical or cylindrical. Plus the fire isn’t actually that hot, it’s just that the quirk spreads regular flame to whatever it touches, so it wouldn’t be able to slice through metal-”

“Izuku! Focus! I’ve been holding this thing for over an hour and trying my best not to burn anything else down.” He gestured to a few trees that were burnt husks of what they were when he’d closed his eyes.

“Um. I didn’t think that far ahead. Give me a second.” He needed something completely fireproof that could hold a sword. The first idea was something made from his body with Cursed Blood activated, since that was his only real go to quirk for completely fireproofing something.

“Oh! It’s not perfect but this should do it.”

He focused for a second before pulling a length of silk from his body. He held it out to Dabi who tested it by poking it with the problematic sword. Luckily, it didn’t burst into flame like everything else had. So after a moment of wrapping it up in the protective cloth, Dabi fell back into a chair.

“Holy shit, I was so scared I was going to light myself on fire on accident. Why did you even make that?”

“Uh, well, it was a gift for you. You don’t have a quirk anymore, so I thought a powerful weapon would be a helpful replacement.”

“So you gave me an improvised lightsaber? Not complaining, just working through your thought process.”

“Um, yeah. That was the idea.”

Dabi looked over the weapon now that the dangerous part was covered. “I just want you to know this is the most badass thing I’ve ever seen. The handle is literally a human hand turned to stone. Weapons made of human body parts weren’t my thing before, or even something I thought about, but this is absolutely my new aesthetic.”

Izuku activated Regeneration for a few seconds to grow his hand back and replenish the blood he used to make the blade of the sword. “Thanks! I’m glad you liked it. I’m gonna go take a nap in a bed instead of the dirt.”

“Yeah, I can confirm that the dirt isn’t the best place for naps. I might follow your lead. Uh, where should I put the definitely-not-a-lightsaber?”

“Um, just leave in the living room if you want. It’s yours now.”

Dabi smiled as he looked over his badass weapon. That was when he noticed it didn’t hurt to smile for the first time in nearly a decade. It wasn’t a big difference yet, but his scars were a little lighter and he didn’t need staples to keep his perpetual wounds closed.

Things were definitely starting to look up for the arsonist.

Chapter Text

Izuku teleported into the UA gym where he met Eraserhead the week before, so it seemed like this would be their consistent meeting place. Eraserhead was already there waiting for him, it looked like he was grading papers and reading essays that were heavily marked in red pen.

He was excited to keep learning from Aizawa. They hadn’t met up since the week before so he was looking forward to showing off his new quirks and getting more lessons. Since Aizawa was an expert in capture techniques, he was probably the best teacher for the job too.

He quickly jogged over to the tired looking man. “Hey, Aizawa Sensei! What are we going to work on today? I got this new chain quirk and I thought you might be able to teach me how to use it as a better version of the silk scarf I’d been using before.” Izuku quickly pulled out the chain quirk in question to show what he was talking about.

His teacher just pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed loudly, as if Izuku’s very presence gave him headaches. “Nope. I am not dealing with you while you have this much energy. You’re going over there and lifting weights until you can’t keep going. Then you’re going to run until you can’t keep running. And no quirks but Physical Peak for either. Once you’ve done both of those tasks you’ll come back over here and we’ll actually start the lesson.”

Izuku paused for a moment. That was certainly not what he expected for today.

“Did I stutter? You’re too energetic and are still pretty scrawny, so consider this two birds with one stone. Now, don’t talk to me again if you still have the strength to stand.”

As Izuku started to make his way to the weight lifting machines he heard Aizawa call out one last time. “That said, don’t forget to stretch, pace yourself, and take water breaks. If you get injured during training this simple you’re expelled.”

Izuku was very tempted to point out that the threat doesn’t work if he isn’t enrolled, but decided not to test his luck.

After over an hour of lifting things and running laps, Izuku was panting while sitting on the ground near where Eraserhead’s table was.

“Good, now that we are at the same levels of energy and general exhaustion, we can have an actual conversation.” He dragged over a chair that Izuku was very thankful for. “It’s been six days since I last saw you, and in that time you’ve created more chaos than most people do in multiple lifetimes. I’m not saying you were necessarily wrong, but we are going to have to address it.”

Izuku nodded and remained quiet for what was clearly going to be a lecture.

“The first thing we need to discuss is your fight with Muscular.” He paused when he saw Izuku flinch at the name. “I can tell this is a hard topic, but we can’t just ignore it. I told you not to hold back against him because he was a dangerous threat. I should have been more clear in my expectations. When I said that I thought it was clear I meant that you should take his quirk immediately, rather than get into a slug fest with him and fire giant death lasers.”

He sighed and sat down next to Izuku, speaking much more softly. “There’s no nice way to say it. Someone died because you drew out the battle.” Izuku was nearly shaking at his words. “I’m not angry, and I don’t blame you. I’ve made decisions that killed innocents on many occasions. All you can do is learn from it and focus on the people you did save.”

Izuku wiped away his tears and nodded.

“Well, that’s enough emotions for now. The other thing we need to talk about is taking Endeavor’s quirk. Good job kid, I always knew he was a piece of shit.” Izuku gaped up at him in shock at his words, not expecting him to agree with that choice so quickly.

“Only one thing that needs to be brought up is why didn’t you call me? I gave you my number for a reason. If you ever plan to do more than a basic patrol, contact me. I want to look out for you, but I can’t do that if I don’t know what’s going on. Ok?”

Izuku definitely looked nervous and stared at the ground. “I… I know you’re helping me and probably won’t turn me in. But what if I told you I was going after someone and you told other heroes about it? You’re a hero and I know that means you have split priorities.”

“I understand. I hope in time I can prove that you can trust me. I’m not upset with you for being careful.”

Izuku nodded. “Thanks. For everything.”

“Yeah, yeah, you damn problem child. Now that we’ve covered the talking stuff you’re going to learn how to do better knots.”

He then spent the next ten minutes going over the correct knots to use in order to restrain a criminal so that they couldn’t escape, but also didn’t injure them. “Cutting off circulation can cause serious issues, especially if your opponent is unconscious or can’t communicate the problem. So you need to do this right.”

After going over it a few times and having his work corrected over and over, Aizawa nodded and sat back down at his desk.

“Ok, now that you aren’t doing completely awful, you’re going to do that over and over until your hands cramp up.”

“W-why do I have to practice something simple so much?! I already know how to do it?”

“Sure, you can do it right now when nothing else is going on and there isn’t a time limit. But in the field you’ll need to be able to do it perfectly in just a few seconds all while people are trying to kill you. So, this is you building muscle memory and getting faster, so when it actually is important, it won’t be an issue. And once I think you can do this without issue I’ll start teaching you how to do it from a distance with your capture weapons.”

“Oh, that actually makes sense. Did you have to do this kind of training too?”

“No. But I should have. Would’ve saved me a lot of trouble down the line if my teachers had been as tough on me as I am on my students. Now, less talking and more tying.”

Izuku had been at it for about thirty minutes or so before the man paused and looked at his phone and looked very serious.

“It looks like I’ll have the chance to prove you can trust me earlier than I thought. If I could offer you the chance to learn about the investigation for you, would you take it?”

“Uh, yeah, that would be so helpful. Could you really do that?”

“Second question, do you trust me to keep you safe? Answer me honestly.”

He barely had to think before answering. “Yeah, I do.”

“In that case, stand by that wall, turn into a bench that matches the others, and don’t turn back until I tell you to. You have ten seconds to get into position.”

He did as he was told, making sure to perfectly mimic the other wooden benches in the gym. He hadn’t been in his transformed state for more than twenty seconds when the large door to the gym opened. To his horror, and sudden understanding of Aizawa’s questions, All Might himself strolled into the building.

Aizawa wasn’t completely certain of his decision to let Midoriya stay, but he had a gut feeling it would be beneficial in the long run. He would have shared what he could learn with Midoriya anyways, but this was the best way to make it clear that Aizawa wouldn’t turn him in and that this information was valid.

Overall, this was the most efficient way to give his student as much information as possible without giving him a reason to doubt any of it.

“All Might, I assumed you would be leaving campus after talking with Nezu. Unless I said something during the staff meeting that made you think I wanted to talk?”

“Ha ha! No worries, I simply wanted to have a chat with you about something.”

Once the man closed the door, they were ‘alone’ so he switched to his weaker form.

After a few moments of awkward silence Aizawa spoke up again.

“Well? I haven’t got all day. I know teaching is new to you, but I’m actually quite busy and have another hour of grading before I’m done. So there better be a good reason you searched the campus to find me.”

“Ah, of course, my apologies. I simply wanted to discuss the case of Izuku Midoriya with you.”

“I’m not on that case, all I’ve heard is what’s on the news or rumors from other heroes. So I highly doubt that I’d know anything that the head of the investigation doesn’t already.”

“There have been some concerning rumors and I wished to simply confirm some things.”

“Of course, rumors are known to be a great use of my time. Ask away then, I’m sure none of this will be stupid.”

“I can see why you would be skeptical. First let me explain why this is important. Early into the investigation, Izuku Midoriya contacted a family friend to inform her he was safe, from their conversation we believe that he is currently with a man pretending to be the boy’s father and is using that angle to manipulate them.”

“Why not just have the actual father make a public statement that the man he’s with isn’t really him?”

All Might scratched the back of his head. “That’s where things get a bit complicated. The pregnancy was the result of a drunken tryst, so it’s harder to refute claims. All the information that young Midoriya would have about his father was that he was tall, had light colored hair, a potentially similar quirk, along with implications that it would be dangerous for people to know that they were related.”

Aizawa sighed in frustration, “How do you know he isn’t with his actual father? And you still haven’t said anything that’s relevant to me.” He paused for a moment. “Wait one second, am I one of your candidates for someone pretending to be his father since I hit everything except the hair?”

“There have been multiple cases where you’ve been seen with him, and you must have noticed that many news stations also believe you are related even without the information of him being with his supposed father.”

“Let me get this straight, you think that I’m harboring a fugitive and pretending to be his father in order to control this child for some unknown reason.”

“I’m not accusing you of anything, I simply want to cover all possible options.”

The man simply sighed in frustration. “All Might, I am a happily married gay man, so if I was trying to convince some teenager I was his father, I’d have to explain quite a bit to my husband. Besides, where would I even keep a fugitive child? I live and work at UA, not exactly the best place for a vigilante to hide.”

“Oh, um, I see. Those are some fair points that I will take under consideration.”

“Do you actually have any suspects on where he is, other than me and one blurry picture of an information broker?” All Might Paused, hesitant to give information on the case. “You know damn well I know more about the underground than you do, if you actually want my help at least tell me what you’re working with.”

“No. At this point our only lead is Giran. But we’ve gained further evidence that the two of them work together at the very least. We have a hero keeping tabs on him in hopes that we can use him to catch bigger targets, but since he does all of his business in secure buildings that might not work out.”

“That makes sense, but I would consider someone like Giran a more important target than Midoriya anyways, so don’t look so pathetic about that.”

“Yeah I suppose you’re right, it’s starting to seem like that man has his hands in a lot of different things.”

All Might moved like he was about to leave but Aizawa cut him off. “Before you go, I’ve got two questions for you. First off, why do you care so much about this case? Because your words don’t match your actions.”

“Why would you ask such a thing? Of course I care about saving a young man in need!”

“You see, that’s exactly what I mean. In all your reports and speeches you keep saying you’ll ‘save him’. This isn’t a hostage situation. You keep acting like you’re going to rescue him, and it’s just confusing, because I can’t figure out what on Earth you are rescuing him from, other than a life outside a prison cell.”

“I promised his mother that I would bring her son home.”

“Do you just go deaf when you hear things you don’t like? The moment you ‘save’ him, he’s going into the deepest pits of Tartarus. This isn’t some cut and dry case where you can save the child and capture the villain. So make up your mind, are you trying to save Midoriya the scared child like you say, or are you trying to capture Midoriya the vigilante like you’ve been acting?”

All Might went quiet, so Aizawa took that as permission to continue tearing into the man.

“You see, this is always the case with teen vigilantes, they don’t fit your black and white ideals. Midoriya’s not the first and he sure won’t be the last. So I’ll repeat the question. Why do you care so much? I see a new teen vigilante case every month or two, so why are you putting all your time into this one when I’ve never seen you help with any of the other runaway kids with ‘villainous quirks’ who want to do good in the world? Not whatever line you’ve fed his mother or the press, I want the truth.”

“I truly do want to save this boy, to bring him in now before he gets in too deep and I can still argue for a lenient punishment. But… I’m also concerned that if we don’t intervene now, we could have an unstoppable supervillain on our hands.”

“So it really is just all about his quirk. It’s not about the good or bad he’s done, or who he is as a person. It all just boils down to you being scared of a quirk that could be All for One 2.0.”

He took a step closer, puffing up into his All Might form. “How do you know about him?!”

“Oh come on, I’m an underground hero who can nullify quirks. Of course I know about the Boogeyman. Hell, if you’d lost 6 years ago the commission probably would have thrown me at him next and hope my quirk worked on his.”

“I see, I didn’t realize other heroes were aware of him and the threat he posed.” He shrunk back down, at least a little embarrassed at his outburst.

“The daylight heroes probably don’t, but any hero that’s had to work undercover with influential villains would need to know about him since he impacted any relevant villain organization. But that brings me to my second question, how are you so sure you’d win? You’re chasing down Midoriya with reckless abandon to try and catch him, but what will you do once you actually do find him?”

“I’m not sure what you mean? I would turn him over to the proper authorities of course so he could stand trial.”

“Maybe that question was too complex for you, so I’ll break it down to the two options I see available. Either you have some way to prevent him from taking the quirks of not only yourself, but every other hero and prisoner that would be nearby during his incarceration. Which would be tricky since we don’t have a way to suppress quirks. There’s a reason Tartarous has machine guns pointed at their prisoners. So I’m assuming you must have some sort of plan to either stop his quirk or place him somewhere so remote and inhumane that he’ll never have the chance.”

Aizawa finally stood up from his desk where he’d been lounging the entire conversation and got right in his face. “Or, you’re going to go with the more simple, and much more likely strategy of killing him before he can take anymore quirks. That’s what you did with All for One right? And since you seem to be so scared he’s the second coming of that man, I’m assuming your strategy has remained the same?”

All Might backed up slightly from the rage filled teacher that was advancing on him while stuttering through his words.

“Well All Might? Which is it? Because I’ve thought long and hard about this topic, and I can’t think of anything else as options for you. So until you can tell me a plan that ends in something other than torture through permanent solitary confinement or the murder of a child in cold blood, I wouldn’t tell you a damn thing even if I did know something. You preach justice, but you don’t think anything through and people get hurt because of it.”

Without any good response to that, All Might left the building.

Aizawa took a deep breath, he had gotten more emotional than he had planned to. He walked over to the bench that hadn’t been there that morning and spoke softly, assuming correctly that Izuku might not have taken that very well.

“You can come out now. It’s safe.”

He very suddenly had his arms filled with a sobbing teenager. He was normally more distant with his students, but he could admit that Midoriya was a special case. He gently patted the sobbing boy on the head. “It’s ok. I’m sorry for losing my temper, I shouldn’t have said most of that while you were watching. I should have kept in mind how frightening he is to you.”

The boy started hyperventilating and shaking in his arms.

“It’s alright. I’ll keep you safe. Just focus on me.” He quickly pulled out his phone and called his husband. 

“Heyo! How’s it go-”

“No time to talk, I’ve got the kid with me and he’s having a panic attack, how soon can you get here?”

His usually joking partner suddenly had a very serious tone, “I’ll be pulling up the back entrance in about five minutes. We’re bringing the little listener home right?”

“Yeah, I’m not letting him go anywhere alone right now. I’ll see you soon.”

It wasn’t much longer until they had a very frazzled and exhausted Izuku wrapped up in blankets on their couch while their cat Bastard watched over him.

Chapter Text

Hizashi walked into the living room and kept his voice far quieter than usual so as not to spook the boy. “Hey little listener, are you up to eat some dinner? I made some curry.”

Izuku looked down to the cat curled up in his lap and then looked back up at Present Mic, who seemed to quickly understand the problem.

“Don’t worry about disrupting her, I know she seems really comfy right now, but she’ll be moving on her own once she realizes it’s dinner time.”

Izuku nodded and patted her on the head. “You ready for dinner kittycat?”

“Oh, I guess we didn’t mention it, she’s deaf, so she won’t respond to your words, but she reads body language well enough.”

In that moment, as if to prove his point, Bastard the cat saw Aizawa grab the can opener in the kitchen. She shot off of Izuku’s lap like a bullet, knowing that Aizawa holding the can opener meant it was probably food time.

“See what I mean? She’s a little menace, but we love her. You’ll probably meet the rest soon since few things can keep them from dinner time.”

Izuku looked up at him in interest, “You have more cats?”

Hizashi laughed loudly. “Oh yeah. My very scruffy and lovable husband,” Said man grunted in disagreement with the description. “brings home the strays he finds on patrols if the shelter is full. We’ve got five of them already, but most of them are pretty anxious around new people since they were rescued in one way or another.”

As the cat food was placed in their dishes all the cats came out of their respective hiding spots and started eating with a ferocity that would make you think they had been starved. Aizawa crouched nearby the felines and pointed them out. First was the all gray cat, “You already met Bastard, she’s called that because she would fight god if given the chance and has a love of chaos. She also has a bit of a protective streak and has probably already adopted you in her mind.”

“The two orange cats are Shoebox and Mochi. They’re siblings, the bigger one is Shoebox. I found them both in a shoe box, hence the name.”

Hisashi gave a big smile as he set out their bowls of curry. “I named Mochi, because Shota over here is the worst at naming, but he all but refuses to let me name the cats.”

Aizawa ignored his husband and pointed at a small black kitten. “This is Nibbler, he’s our most recent addition, he’ll chew on anything and everything within reach, especially your feet if they’re unprotected. He’s very jumpy though since he lived in an abusive house before this.”

Izuku nodded, paying attention with incredible focus as if this were the most important information he’d ever heard in his life.

He then gestured at their final pet, an albino one that was on the line between being a kitten and a cat. “This one is called Shadow.”

Izuku cocked his head in confusion. “Shadow? Is it an ironic name, the others seemed pretty self explanatory.”

Present Mic chuckled. “It’s a pretty accurate name actually. She kept getting returned to shelters because she has a quirk that lets her turn into an black orb that floats around. She usually only does it if she gets spooked, but if you walk around at night you might catch her floating around the house, so don’t be too surprised if she’s there if you need to use the bathroom.”

Izuku paused mid bite of food. “Uh, why would I be in your house at night? I figured I was leaving right after this?”

The two heroes looked at each other.

Present Mic scratched the back of his head. “We weren’t going to bring it up until later, so that’s my bad, but we're both really worried about a kid as young as you living alone.”

Izuku moved back a bit, so it would be easier to run if he needed to. “Where are you going with this?”

Aizawa sighed. “I’ll be incredibly blunt with you. We have a couple spare rooms and we want you to live here with us. Will you at least sit and listen long enough for us to explain why?”

He settled back into his seat a little. “I guess so… But I’m not living alone anyways.”

“Oh, I didn’t realize that Little Listener, I shouldn’t have assumed. Who are you staying with?”

“Uh, I’m staying with Dabi, um, that’s the name Touya Todoroki likes to use.”

Aizawa nodded. “Then my point stands. You are a child who should be living with adults that care about you, not some teenage villain that’s barely older than you are.”

“He’s not a teen, I think he’s around 20 or 21.”

“Ah, yes, clearly much better. You shouldn’t be living off in the middle of nowhere with a man you barely know. It’s just not safe, and it’s an awful environment for you to be growing up in.”

Izuku paused. “How’d you know I live in the middle of nowhere?”

Hizashi gave him a soft smile. “Listener, It took us less than two hours to find your address when we were worried about you after the Muscular incident. So that’s a second way that it isn't safe. The last thing we want for you is to have villains or heroes knocking down your door. UA is far more protected and we can show you how to cover your traces better.”

“I- No, I can’t stay with you!”

“Why not, problem child?”

“Because you’re heroes! And I’m some villain and best case scenario you’ll lose your jobs if anyone finds out that you’re helping me. Training me was already risky, but this is just asking to get caught!”

Aizawa locked eyes with him. “Is that your main concern?”

His confidence leaked out of him quickly. “Uh, yeah. I guess it is.”

“That’s good to hear. Because that’s not an issue.” Aizawa stood up for a moment to grab a folder, setting it in front of Izuku.

When he opened it up he almost burst into tears when he realized what it was. These were the application forms for the vigilante rehabilitation program.

“You don’t have to decide right now, but know that we’ve been working with Nezu and all you’d have to do is sign. If you are a candidate it’s no longer us harboring a fugitive, it’s us meeting the requirement that applicants be kept under surveillance. I want to make it clear though that even if you don’t choose to go with this program you’d still have a place here.”

Izuku started crying openly, quickly moving the papers out of the way so they didn’t get wet. “T-this is so nice! All I’ve ever wanted is to be a hero. Why would you do something like this for me? You barely know me.”

Hizashi went over to him and gave him a big hug. “Well, you don’t have to know someone to want good things for them. Besides, I’ve been hearing my wonderful Shota talk about you for weeks now, so I felt it was important for you to know that we are an option and that we’ll always be here for you.”

“Um, the rehabilitation program requires you to cut contact with all criminals, right? And they tend to not let people in that work with villains…”

“Kid, what are you trying to tell us? If it’s about that Giran guy that All Might was talking about, there’s no real issue there. Practically every underground hero works with information brokers.”

Izuku shook his head. “If you guys are going to trust me like this… I want you to know the truth about who my dad is. Just, please don’t hate me after I tell you.”

Aizawa snorted. “That’s the big thing you were leading up to? We already know your dad is All for One.”

“Huh?! You know?!”

At his surprised shout a few of the cats spun to look at him, Bastard looked around to see what they were all reacting to, and Shadow jumped into the air, morphed into a black orb, and shot out of the room. Neither hero seemed particularly concerned about this, so he didn’t address it either.

Present Mic lightly shoved his husband. “You shouldn’t have cut him off like that, it was clearly a very big and emotional reveal for him.” He turned back to Izuku, “He’s right though, we did know about that. Anyone who knows about his existence would be able to piece it together pretty fast.”

Aizawa nodded. “I knew even before we first spoke. Warp quirks are as unique as they are rare, and that line of sight teleportation you use to get around is from someone who passed away fifteen years before you were born. So it was pretty obvious you got it from someone who was far older than you and could also take quirks, it didn’t take a lot of thought to figure out who it was.”

“You- you knew who my dad was and still wanted to train me?”

“I would never judge a person based on who they’re related to. I’m not going to demand you cut off all contact with your father, that would be cruel and excessive. But I do want you to keep in mind any discovered interaction with a villain after you’ve signed that paper could jeopardize this chance at being a legal hero.”

Izuku felt torn in two. Half wanted to stay with his father and spend his days experimenting with quirks and still helping as a vigilante. But on the other hand, this was everything he had been fighting for.

“I’m not trying to frighten you, I just think you deserve all the information up front. If you want to take time to think about it, you can.”

He nodded and almost jumped out of his seat in surprise when the orange tabby, Shoebox, crawled into his lap and stared up into Izuku’s eyes.

Hizashi laughed. “If nothing else, you have to move in here because the cats have already adopted you.”

Izuku looked up at them with tears in his eyes. “Is- is it ok if I talk to my dad about this? I know he’s a villain but…”

Aizawa nodded. “But he’s still your dad. We understand kid, you don’t pick your family. Just don’t forget who you are and who you want to be. I can understand how you feel at least a little, my father was somewhere between a vigilante and a villain, but that’s a story for another day.”

Izuku gave him a tight hug and kept crying into his scarf. He wasn’t sure exactly what part he was crying over, it was more that he just had too many emotions and they had to get out somehow.

After spending that night cuddling with the cats and sleeping in their guest room (that they insisted would be his room), he went to talk with his dad and explained the offer that was made.

The ancient super villain gave a gentle smile. “Izuku, you know I support you becoming a hero. I’m not sure why you seem so worried about telling me.”

“It’s just… I’ll be required to give a report of my time as a vigilante and a lot of things won’t make sense without you. Things like where I got each of my quirks and where I got any funding.”

“Hmm, I see. So it likely wouldn’t be possible for you to be accepted into a hero program without both acknowledging that I exist and then disavowing me. I think I understand your concern, but this isn’t an unsolvable problem.”

Izuku nodded slowly, “Are you sure? I know you take your secrecy very seriously.”

He waved his hand dismissively. “Only because I am in such a weakened state. In the past I don’t believe I put as much effort into it, it was the government that hid me, not me hiding myself. So, that’s issue number one, are there any other roadblocks we should consider?”

He thought for a moment. “All Might is a big issue. Most other heroes either respect the work I’ve been doing or fear my quirks. The main person arguing for my arrest is All Might, and few heroes are willing to openly go against something he’s said. His influence and popularity make it career suicide to disagree with him, so a lot of heroes might oppose me being in the program just because he does.”

“True, but keep in mind that dealing with that might solve the other problem for the most part. While I’d prefer to be healed back to my old state, even if I remain injured, All Might is the real concern with being known to the public. In the past the Hero Commision has been content to leave me be as long as I’m not causing chaos, the One for All users are usually the only ones to actively chase me down. So removing All Might would likely resolve all your concerns for becoming a hero.”

Izuku shifted uncomfortably. “That makes sense.” Even though all of his experiences with All Might had been very negative, it didn’t change the fact that he brought hope and peace to a lot of people. The man was his idol until a few months ago, and the idea of helping to deal with him didn’t sit right with him. Especially since his father’s version of ‘deal with him’ probably meant murder.

“Can I think about this? I know it would make things easier, but I’m not sure if I actually want him gone.”

His father hummed in response. “Of course, I would never force you into this. I don’t know if it will impact your decision, but you should know that Tomura is already working on a plan to take him down.”

Izuku nodded and teleported out of the warehouse. He didn’t have a real destination in mind, he just found himself wandering around, after a few minutes he turned into a crow and just flew mindlessly.

After at least an hour or so of flying, he realized where he had subconsciously gone. He was back in the neighborhood where he’d lived most of his life. He perched himself on the edge of the building across the street from his mom’s apartment. He briefly activated his X-ray vision and could see that his mom was home.

A large part of him was tempted to just go in and talk to her. Sure, it would be a big risk, but she wouldn’t turn him in, right? She clearly hadn’t told All Might who his father was, which hampered the investigation, but that might have just been to protect herself. It was so complicated, and he just wanted to hug his mom and have her tell him it would be alright. He missed her so much and was about to fly over when someone knocked on her door.

He was a bit too far to get a good look at them, so he activated his Enhanced Senses, immediately releasing a loud ‘Caw!’ in response out of surprise at what he saw.

He couldn’t believe his eyes at first, but that was definitely All Might in his small form walking into his mom’s apartment! What was he doing there?! Did she know that he was All Might?! Was he there to threaten her because he actually knew All for One was his dad?!

He flew closer and perched on the windowsill so he could hear them more clearly.

Izuku was shocked beyond words when what he heard wasn’t talking. Were those kissing sounds?!?!? Maybe she didn’t know it was All Might and he had tricked her??

“Sorry I already used up my three hours today. I know how much you like my larger form.”

By the time he heard his mom’s giggle in response he had already started to fly away. He squawked very loudly and angrily, causing a few people in the street to look up and wonder what that crow was so upset about. He felt so betrayed! How could she?!

He was just so angry and confused and hurt and probably even more feelings he hadn’t identified yet. Izuku landed on a roof a few minutes away and turned back to his human form so he could text his dad. ‘I’m in. I’ll talk to Tomura about the plan tomorrow.’

After the moment of anger and rage passed, he shifted to sadness very quickly. He started sobbing on a roof, but he wasn’t really sure where he was. He heard footsteps coming in his direction so he panicked and turned into a lawn chair. After a few moments he heard a deep sigh that he recognized as Aizawa’s.

“Izuku, I know that’s you. I heard crying on a rooftop so I came over to check it out since I’m on patrol. And since you’re the only person I know who can turn a sobbing person into a chair, it’s not exactly fooling me.”

He quietly shifted back into his human form, tears still running down his face.

“What’s wrong kid? Did something go wrong when you talked with your dad?”

Izuku shook his head, it made sense why he’d guess that but it still felt like a rude assumption.

“I’m not a mind reader, I need you to use your words.”

Izuku shifted back and forth and looked away before speaking incredibly quickly, as if maybe saying it fast enough would make the information less awful. “MymomisfuckingAllMight!”

Aizawa took a moment to process the sentence that came out like a single word before his eyes widened by a fraction. “Huh, that is not what I was expecting at all. That would make me cry too.”

Izuku laughed a little at that. “Um, can I come back with you…? I don’t really wanna be alone tonight, and I think Dabi is out doing his own thing right now.”

“Of course kid, you’ll always have a place with us. Bastard seemed to take a real liking to you, so I’m sure she’ll be thrilled to have you back.”

Chapter Text

Izuku sat with father in the warehouse. He had tried to talk to Toumura about the All Might plan, but he just kept trying to explain it in video game terms, and Izuku felt like he knew even less than before he’d asked. Which was almost impressive, since he didn’t know anything beforehand.

“I’m just not sure how Toumura expects to pull this off. It’s a lot easier said than done to defeat the symbol of peace.”

His father laughed loudly. “It most certainly is, I can confirm that from experience. But on the plus side, we’ve had this plan in the works for a while now. I hadn’t told you before now so you’d have plausible deniability.”

“Oh, what’s the plan?”

“Well, it’s not particularly complicated at the moment. But All Might is set to be at some charity thing in a month or so and we’re going to warp in a handful of Noumu that are specifically designed to counter him. Then, if they can hold him still then Toumura will grab and disintegrate him. And to make the whole thing easier we’ll use up as much of his time as possible beforehand by orchestrating numerous small villain attacks across the city that morning.”

Izuku thought it over for a bit before speaking up. “I want to get involved but I don’t want to throw away this chance to be a hero either.”

“Hm. That will certainly be more tricky. What are you thinking?”

“I won’t directly attack him, but I’ll get the civilians out and make a barrier around the fight. It will keep the fighting from spreading and keep civilians from getting hurt, and if anyone asks that's the reason I’ll give. But the main reason will be to stop him from getting backup. If and when he loses I’ll step in and save the day, stopping the terrifying monsters and forcing Tomoura to retreat. And all of this together will make it clear to the public that I’ve decided to fight against my evil father.”

All for One wiped away imaginary tears from his eye sockets. “I’m so proud. My son’s already learning to manipulate the masses.” Izuku was then wrapped in a massive hug and swung around a little.

Izuku just giggled and pushed away from him, “Knock it off. You’re so embarrassing.” He paused and looked up at his dad. “You really think it’s a good plan?”

“Well, most of it was my plan first, but I guess your additions are alright.” He gave a wide grin. “I’m kidding, that is a brilliant plan and I doubt I could have done better myself. It’s not too complicated but not so obvious that you’ll be doubted. Your strategic abilities are nothing to scoff at. Whether you face the world as a hero, villain, or something in between, you’re going to be absolutely fantastic.”

Izuku smiled and hugged his dad back. “We’ll get rid of him and then everything will be better.”

All for One sighed, “I really don’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth, but in the last 24 hours you went from being very unsure about facing him at all to now wholeheartedly helping with plans to kill him.”

Izuku looked to the side nervously.

He tapped Izuku’s forehead lightly. “I don’t mind. I just want to know what’s going on in that head of yours. Did something happen that made you change how you feel?”

Izuku was more than a little anxious about how his dad would react to the information, so it came out as a jumbled mess. “Well, um, you- uh, you know how Inko is my mom? And how you’re my dad? And those things together means that my mom cared about you a lot from how she talked about my dad in passing? We -uh, we don’t really know how you felt because you lost a chunk of your brain, but we’re assuming you cared about her too because my mom’s great and I exist.”

He raised a nonexistent eyebrow in question. “Yes? We both already knew all of those things. I’m really not sure where you’re going with this? Did something happen to Inko?”

“So, if I suddenly found out that my mom was currently doing sex things with a person that wasn’t you, then that would be cheating, or at least not very nice.”

All for One frowned. “Ah, I was wondering if she had moved on. I can’t blame her, we haven’t spoken in at least 6 years and it’s very likely we haven’t interacted since you were born. I don’t remember how close we were, so it’s really not my place to judge how she lives her life.”

He paused for a moment as he tousled his son’s hair. “I can see how that would be upsetting for you, but I don’t see how that has anything to do with All M-” His entire body froze and seemed to ooze bloodlust while keeping his voice eerily calm and collected. “Oh. I think I see what you were trying to tell me. Am I correct that All Might was this man?”

Izuku nodded. “Uh huh.”

“I see. I believe I understand why you suddenly wish to kill him more than you previously did. If you’d excuse me there’s something that I need to attend to.”

“Oh, um ok.”

He tapped a few buttons on his chair and one of Kurogiri’s portals suddenly opened up and he walked through it.

Izuku sat there awkwardly for a few moments before realizing that his dad wasn’t coming back anytime soon. It was weird as hell and not like him at all. He hoped his dad wasn’t doing something rash.

He pulled out his phone to check the text he’d gotten from Dabi while talking with his dad.

‘ Hey, just so you know I brought a few vigilantes to the house, one of them has a super addictive quirk and could probably use your help with that.’

Well, that wasn’t alarming at all. He would talk to his dad about what happened later, but for now he should probably address whatever Dabi was up to. After some quick teleportation he showed up at the house and walked in.

“Dabi, what’s up with the weird text? Who’d you bring-”

Before he could finish his sentence, a girl about his age lept at him with a knife in one hand and a straw in the other.

“You must be Izuku! You look super cute! But you’d be cuter all bloody.”

He touched her wrist before she reached him and used his Touch Based Telekinesis to hold her in place. She was unable to move an inch and was hovering in the air except for the hand holding her.

At this point Dabi walked over to them with a grin. “I see you’ve met Toga. She’s got a blood based shapeshifter thing going on that’s made her addicted to blood and crave it all the time.”

“Yeah, that makes sense. Toga, do you want me to take your quirk? It would mean you wouldn’t crave blood anymore and it wouldn’t make your mind all cloudy.”

She pouted. “But I love drinking blood, that’s the only thing that makes me feel happy. Well, that and becoming people.”

Wow, this was a more serious case than what he’d dealt with before. From seeing her quirk it looked like it functioned almost like a drug, and left her to fall down a blood soaked spiral.

He looked over to Dabi. “And you said she was a vigilante?”

“Well… About that, I would consider her a vigilante, but the police maybe wouldn’t.”

“Dabi.”

“Ok, ok, she might be a serial killer, but she mostly goes after pedophiles and rapists. Her M.O. is to hang out in alleyways in her middle school uniform and wait until some dude tries to assault her, then she sucks all their blood out. I honestly don’t know if she does that for moral reasons, or just because it’s easy pickings, but I’m willing to believe it’s because she’s a cool vigilante.”

He sighed. “Okay Toga, I want to apologize for this, I normally only take quirks in an emergency or when they ask me to. But your quirk is clearly hurting you and those around you, and I want to give you a chance to find out who you are without this twisting your mind.”

“Hey! Put me down! You’re not being cute at all!”

He reached out and pulled the quirk out of her and put it deep within his collection, intending to leave it untouched, so as not to deal with these drawbacks.

Her fangs receded and her eyes shifted so they were less catlike. Her eyes then went wide as she gagged. Izuku quickly moved her outside and stepped out of the way as she vomited out the blood her body couldn’t process as food anymore. She started to just sob and vomit as she collapsed onto the ground.

Izuku had never seen such a violent reaction to losing a quirk, but he supposed this was a particularly severe quirk addiction. He’d helped a few people with similar things before, but never so severe that they became a serial killer to feed their quirk.

After a few minutes she passed out and they brought her inside to set her up in a bedroom. They both then walked into the kitchen where there was a man with a lizard mutation.

He sighed deeply. “Dabi, who’s in the kitchen, and is he going to try and drink my blood too?”

“Nah, this is Spinner. Me, him, and Toga all want to fight against hero corruption and get rid of false heroes.”

Izuku decided not to think too hard about whether or not that was a good idea. “Alright, well, you can keep using this place as a base of operations I guess because I’ll be moving out anyways.”

“Wait what? Why are you leaving?”

“It’s part of me becoming a hero, I need to live somewhere more in the books than this. It looks like it might actually happen.”

“Damn, I’m happy for you kid.”

Spinner nodded. “You are a true hero, but if you fall to greed then I will come from you.”

Izuku tried not to chuckle at the threat since the man was weaker than him by magnitudes. “I respect your conviction, but I wouldn’t recommend trying it.”

There was a buzzing sound and Dabi checked his phone. “Holy shit, turn on the news or something. A mountain just exploded!”

Izuku gave him a weird look but went and turned the TV on and to a news station.

“ We’re coming to you live from Mt. Ontake where the top third of it was seemingly obliterated no more than twenty minutes ago by what seems to be numerous destructive quirks.”

The camera panned up slightly to better frame the destroyed peak that had black lightning flashing across it.

“At this time there are no reported casualties, as those on the mountain had begun to flee after hearing the cracks of thunder from the black lightning we can still see.”

It looked like there was a vicious battle going on with the numerous explosions and rippling shockwaves, but Izuku knew exactly what it was. It also explained why his dad had suddenly left during their conversation.

His dad was pissed beyond measure and was taking it out on that mountain. Now that he thought about it, it wasn’t surprising that he would need to blow off some steam after the revelations that Izuku shared. As Izuku figured it would, the ‘attack’ ended after a couple minutes, since that’s how long his dad could be active off of life support without causing damage to himself.

Spinner looked over in concern. “What was that? Do you have any idea what that was?”

“Oh, that was just my dad. He was having a pretty bad day.”

His eyes went wide but just nodded as he considered just how powerful this boy and his family were.

All Might and everyone else in his and Inko’s inner circles sat in her living room with concerned eyes as the destruction unfolded on the television.

“It’s him. All for One is alive. I recognize those quirks.”

Tsukachi looked over to him, “Are you sure? If you’re right, then he’s been pretending to be dead all these years, why would he reveal himself now?”

“I think he’s challenging me. No one outside this room would know those quirks, and it’s no coincidence that this is happening right as we were starting to close in on Izuku. We found out where villains go if they want to give him their quirks and we were getting ready to raid the location the next time he was there. This feels like a threat, telling us to back off of Izuku.”

Tsukachi nodded. “That makes sense. Maybe he thinks that revealing that he has Izuku will force you to be more cautious and slow down any plans we have?”

All Might nodded. “And on that front he succeeded, now that we know who Izuku is with we can’t rush in blindly. Him being with All for One instead of Giran changes the situation a lot. We’ll also have to be careful with Izuku himself, who knows what kinds of manipulation and brainwashing he’s been exposed to.”

Inko tried and failed to hold back her tears that poured out like a waterfall. “My poor little Izuku.”

Toshinori gave her a smile as he placed a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t worry, we’ll get him back.”

Chapter Text

You could turn to just about any news station in the country and you’d probably find them talking about the same thing. Sure, they might call it different things, or focus on a different part, but it was the same story. That story was rooted in the fact that Izuku planned to join the rehabilitation program after All Might was taken down, and from that point on he wouldn’t be able to do any more vigilante work and wouldn’t be joining heroes for three years.

What the news was reporting on specifically was that for the past week he’d been going about his vigilante activities far more intensely than ever before. Instead of staying in a couple neighborhoods and doing little things here and there, he was taking down entire organizations one after another. Villain organizations had been growing quietly ever since All Might became less active, and now Izuku was stepping in and wiping them out.

The fact that villains feared him made his work a lot easier. He’d show up, beat the villains, probably take some quirks, then demand to know who they worked for/with. He had become a lot more ok with taking people’s quirks, especially those that were using them to hurt others. If the crimes were more minor then he wouldn’t resort to that, but as he kicked down the door of the Creature Rejection Clan, he had no such hesitation.

They had gotten his attention by kidnapping a family that all had various fox quirks. When he had scouted the building beforehand with Xray Vision he’d found out that the parents had already been ritualistically murdered in a brutal manner and he could spot people caged in the basement. He had no mercy for these people.

With the quirks Cheetah, Spider Web and Speed Boost he was able to easily dodge around every attack and sprint through the complex while also restraining all of them. He ducked underneath a barrage of nails that were shot from a man’s wrist and yanked the quirk from him. He quickly moved onto the next member wearing their signature skull masks, this one wielding ceremonial daggers, still dripping blood from their most recent victims.

Not a single one of them stood a chance against him and none escaped. Once he’d captured all of them he scanned the building with Xray Vision to find the entrance to the basement. He switched out his webs and speed for Slow and Steady, which let him increase strength at the cost of speed, then ripped open the trap door and moved down into the basement below. There were six cages with children inside, all with various animalistic quirks. The quirks seemed to be a horse, a crab, two foxes, a cat, and a hummingbird.

He pulled the locks off of their cages so that the kids could get out. He dropped all the quirks but Cheetah, since he thought that it might be calming for them given the circumstances. Izuku quickly texted Aizawa with a quick update of the situation since he’d gotten into the habit of notifying Aizawa and Yamada whenever he did a raid like this. He then turned to the little kids around him, most of them looked to be between four and eight.

He felt a very tiny tug on his green cloak. “Are you a hero, mister?”

Izuku crouched down in front of the little girl who was the oldest. She had long black hair, hooves for feet, and a horse head. “I’m not exactly a hero, but I am here to save you. Can  you tell me your name?”

“I’m Hina.”

“Hi Hina, I’m Izuku, do you think you could help me out? Right now we need to get everyone outside.”

She nodded and helped corral everyone and got them to follow him. “Ok, everyone hold hands and move together.”

One little boy who couldn’t be more than five cried out and held his crab claws up in the air. “But I don’t have hands!” 

“That’s ok, you can hold claws too.” This seemed to settle the group and they made it past the webbed up members without too much issue beyond more crying, which was to be expected.

Once they were outside he brought them to the dirt road that was a couple minutes walk from the building they were kept in.

“Okay kids, I need you all to wait right here. If there’s a problem just yell and I’ll be over, I just need to take care of something real quick to make sure that they won’t hurt any other kids.”

He used Shape Stone to turn a nearby boulder into a statue of a dog, then he activated Animate on it. “Protect the kids while I’m gone.”

The stone black lab barked in understanding and stood guard of the kids that were very interested in the dog that he’d just created. As they focused on the dog, Izuku went back inside and walked right up to the leader of their branch. He ripped the man out of the webbing that had held him and pulled his mask off. He pinned the man to a wall and held his Mood Blade to the man’s throat, the quirk taking the shape of a black saber.

“Ren Nakamura. You were a bit harder to find than most. You used your fear amplification quirk to control those around you and made it so no one wanted to rat you out. Now, you’re going to tell me everything so my next search doesn’t take as long.”

“Ha! Fuck you and all the other animals. They aren’t even human, so why should we act like they are? We won’t stop until all of those abominations are dead!”

Izuku switched around the quirks he had active. “If it weren’t for your quirk making your subjects so terrified of betraying you, I might have gotten here in time to save those people.”

He watched as the man’s former quirk, Fear, took effect and the man’s pupils began to expand as fear coursed through him.

“Tell me exactly where your other branches are, any allies, and anyone in law enforcement who’s been working with you in any way.”

The man looked to the side and shook his head. “No! I won’t tell you anything.”

“Hm, if that’s the case there’s an interesting quirk combination I wanted to test once I learned about yours. You see, I took down this drug smuggler who had a similar quirk, it was also called Fear, but I plan on calling it Phobia so I don’t get confused. I’d explain it, but I think you’ll figure out what it does pretty fast.”

He released Mood Blade and brought forth Phobia, a quirk that let him spray a gas that made a person hallucinate their worst fears. Normally he wouldn’t use such a quirk on a person, and certainly not alongside a fear amplifier, but he’d done enough research ahead of time to know exactly how awful this man was. If he hadn’t come to rescue them, those kids would have been sold to human traffickers, and that’s not even addressing the parents that were murdered.

Izuku really didn’t think of himself as a villain or anyone evil, but people like this really brought out the worst in him. They would bring out the worst in anyone. He let the green mist waft over the man and asked him again, maybe a bit more aggressively this time.

“Tell me! Where are the traffickers you were going to sell these kids to! And which heroes were keeping you safe, because there’s no way you made it this long without inside help!”

The man started thrashing and he had to dial back Fear before the man had a heart attack. But he got the answers he was looking for, and that was all that mattered here.

After getting what he wanted, he tied the man back up and went outside to check on the kids. They were all behind the dog who was growling at the police officers that arrived on the scene. Whenever they tried to approach the kids it would snap at them to make them back up.

“Down boy.” The dog calmed down a bit but still seemed wary. He walked up to the officers. “I’m the one who got these kids out of there. They were taken by the CRC, all of the members of this branch are restrained inside a building just down that way.”

He noticed the cops giving him dirty looks. At first he thought it was because they hated vigilantes, which he supposed he could understand from cops.

“Fine. What’s your hero name so we can make our report?”

What? How did they not recognize him? Then he remembered that he’d kept Cheetah on in order to make himself a more relatable face to the kids. The only thing that would really give him away was his tracksuit and the fact that his spots were green instead of black. They didn’t give him that dirty look for being a vigilante, they did it for being a mutant.

“Can do, it’s Cheetah, can I have your names and ID numbers? I have to make reports too.” He really hoped that it was a true statement, because he had no idea if heroes had to make note of which cops were on the scene.

“Whatever, cat . Just get out of here so we can do our jobs.” They handed him their ID’s and all the pieces fit together. No wonder they had gotten here so much sooner than expected. He recognized these two from their leader’s list of people who were working with him. These cops weren’t called by Eraserhead, they were called by the CRC, and they wanted him to leave so they could free their allies and take back the kids.

He delivered a quick blow to each of them, launching them back towards their car. He then webbed them down against it. One was quirkless and the other had a quirk that let him read faster. As he pulled the quirk from him he decided he’d call it Speed Read.

“How dare you! You’re supposed to protect people, but instead you use your power to hurt those that need help the most. People like you really might be the worst kind of villains.”

The kids were all huddled together as the dog nuzzled them as well as it could. He sat down with them as they waited for actual law enforcement to show up. He kept using Shape Stone on the dog so that it looked truly lifelike. If you didn’t know to look for it you’d think it was just a dog with dark gray fur until you touched it.

The dog took a liking to Hina, but he didn’t want the other kids to feel left out. Plus, he figured they would need a buddy in the years to come. From what he knew about the animation quirk, it lasted longer the more lifelike it looked and the more durable the material was. He didn’t know exactly how long they would last, but it would probably be comparable to an actual pet.

“I’ll have to leave soon, but I can leave you some friends that will keep you safe even when I can’t.”

At their requests, he made them two cats, a scorpion, a fox, and a border collie. He looked down at the animals. “Alright, I have a very important job for you. I need you to protect and care for your person, and listen to what they tell you.”

It didn’t take too much longer until heroes and cops showed up, with the Wild Wild Pussy Cats taking point.

“Hey kid, name’s Mandalay. Eraser told us that you rescued some kids, but we don’t know much beyond that.”

He eyed her cautiously, unsure if he could trust her or not.

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to try and arrest you or anything like that. My cousin is part of the Water Hose duo and you saved her life, that makes you good in my books.”

He nodded but still felt a bit suspicious after everything that just happened with the quirkist cops. He stepped away for a second but kept his eye on the hero team while he called Aizawa.

“Kid? Everything ok?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. I just wanted to make sure I can trust Mandalay. There were already some cops that were loyal to the CRC.”

“Smart of you to verify. Yes, the Pussy Cats are good friends and I trust them, they would never let harm come to those kids.”

“Ok, thanks.”

He walked back over to where Mandalay was smiling, “I take it I check out?”

“Yeah. I found these kids in the basement of a Creature Rejection Clan hideout not far from here. From what I saw it seems likely that all of their parents were killed by the CRC already. All of their members are restrained inside. I also got information from their leader on who they worked with, which included the cops webbed to their car over there. I’ll send a complete list of their allies to Eraserhead later.”

“Wow, that’s a lot. Well, I’ll make sure these kids make it to safe homes if we can’t find their parents.” She paused as she looked at the various stone animals. “Did you make those? Pixie Bob can do something similar, but not with that much detail.”

“Yeah, I thought the kids could use little protectors to help them through whatever comes next.”

She nodded and ruffled his hair. “Yeah, you’re a good kid.”

He smiled and said goodbye to the kids before teleporting away. His next target would be one of their allies in hating people with mutations. This group took it a step further and hated all quirks. Regardless, the Shie Hassaikai would fall before him like all the others.

Chapter Text

Izuku prepared for the upcoming battle as he floated a few hundred feet above the Yakuza stronghold. He brought forth a quirk that he’d had for a while but never had a reason to use. He activated Bell and a massive bell took form in front of him. Just before it fell he activated Heavy, making the church bell even heavier than before. It plummeted downwards and struck the Yakuza mansion like a mortar and punched a hole right through it and into the tunnels below.

He lowered himself down towards the panicking criminals. “The police and heroes will be here soon. If you want to surrender, now would be the time to do that. If you want to fight me you can, but I will take your quirk if you do.”

They were clearly a loyal bunch, because not a single one surrendered and they all charged at him and began to attack. He pulled all the nearby quirks to himself and let webbing fly from his fingers to secure the various Yakuza. A few were strong enough he had to restrain them with his chain quirk instead, but it didn’t really make a difference to him.

He descended further into the tunnel system and used his X-ray vision to figure out where the fleeing members were. He saw a few people in the distance, with one clearly being a child. They’d gotten pretty far and he didn’t want to waste time trying to navigate the maze or pausing to break every wall.

He switched his quirks around and brought forth his fire combination, with Cursed Blood, Cremation, and Hellfire.He made an orb of fire in his hand, the two flames not quite mixing at first, showing as distinct red and blue.With a bit of focus he began to combine them. He let the two fire quirk twist around each other, Hellfire’s control tempering Cremation’s volatility without weakening it. The resulting flame was a vicious thing. An indigo fire that hungered for destruction but had the precision of a scalpel. 

He let the ball of fire grow more and more condensed as it spun before releasing it as an incredibly focused beam that melted through the concrete like it was butter. All that was left behind was a tunnel with melted stone pooling on the ground. With a quick use of Blink, he teleported down his impromptu hallway and had managed to catch up to them in just a few seconds.

Their leader, Overhaul, stood there holding a little girl in his arms and a handful of his goons around him. The moment they started to attack he yanked the quirks from everyone except the little girl. His chains then shot forward and wrapped up the villains before they could try to run away with the girl.

He reached for the little girl but she shrieked in fear. “Don’t touch me! My curse will make you go away!”

He looked at her and at her quirk as well, trying to get an idea of why she was so worried. Izuku was shocked into silence by the indescribable beauty of her quirk. It was so powerful, the kind that would make the rules of reality bend to its whims. It seemed to be a stockpile of sorts with energy stored in her horn, but beyond that he couldn’t guess what it did since it was so different from anything he’d seen before.

He activated Confession, which he’d gotten just a minute or two ago. He turned back to Overhaul. “What is her quirk and why did you take her?”

“She has the ability to rewind time on living things, causing them to revert to a previous state. We have no way of stopping it once it activates other than making her unconscious. It won’t remove current memories, but if used too much it can revert someone out of existence. I purchased her from her mother and have been using her flesh and blood to create  a serum that will destroy quirks.”

Wow, that was a lot to consider. No wonder her quirk was like nothing he’d seen. It was a time manipulation quirk. The closest thing he’d ever heard of was the hero Nighteye, but what was seeing through time compared to being able to control it?

He had to pull himself out of his thoughts. The quirk was undoubtedly amazing, but he needed to focus on helping her first. He reached for her again. “Don’t worry, I have a power that keeps me safe. So you can’t make me disappear.” That wasn’t exactly true, but he could take her quirk if it got really bad.

She was more receptive this time when he reached down and lifted her up into his arms.

“Hey there, I’m Izuku, what’s your name?”

“...Eri.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Eri. I’m going to bring you somewhere safe far away from these bad men.”

She nodded against his chest and he was about to teleport them to ground level when he had a thought. She could heal any wound, even if it was years old. He thought about whether this was wrong or not for a moment before deciding to commit to his decision. Izuku leaned down and kissed her on the forehead, letting the quirk Rest flow through him and caused Eri to enter a peaceful and deep sleep.

With a familiar combination of Bird’s Eye View and Blink he teleported right to his father.

All For One looked up in pleasant surprise. “Oh, Izuku, I wasn’t expecting to see you today.” He paused for a moment as he noticed the girl in his arms, “And it seems like you brought a guest with you.”

“Yeah, her name is Eri. I just rescued from the Yakuza I told you I’d be taking down today.”

He nodded slowly. “Why bring her here? Is she hurt?”

“Actually, I brought her here to heal you.”

“She has a quirk that can heal wounds such as mine? I’m unsure what kind of quirk she could have that would make you so certain this would work, I’ve tried many quirks and their combinations.”

“She has a time manipulation quirk. She can revert any living organism to a previous state.”

His father leaned forward and placed his hand on her forehead in order to look more closely at her quirk. “My, I haven’t seen a quirk like that in a very long time. That just might work. Bring her here please.”

“Oh, I should also take any quirks you got in the last seven years so you don’t lose them.”

His father nodded and put his arm on Izuku’s shoulder, letting over a dozen quirks flow between them and into his son.

Izuku smiled and placed her in his arms. All for One formed one of his fingers into a black spear that thinned out until it was more like a needle. He cut into her arm as shallowly as possible, the usually violent quirk being restrained so that she would have no wounds afterwards. Under his breath the ancient villain muttered. “Forced Quirk Activation.”

The little girl suddenly started glowing a bright yellow and he immediately felt the change occurring. Months being pulled away every second with scars becoming less and less healed as his body grew closer and closer to the day of his injury.

Izuku watched with bated breath as his father clearly grew worse and worse. Scars turned into wounds and grafted skin ceased to exist. For a single moment a large portion of his head seemed to just disappear, leaving his brain exposed and blood oozing everywhere. But just as quickly as it appeared the wound disappeared again. And not just that, every injury and scar was gone.

His father deactivated the quirk and summoned a bed from thin air and placed Eri down on it. He rose to his full height of over seven feet tall with his platinum white hair swaying as wind seemed to whip around the warehouse at the sheer pressure coming off of him. A powerful hand ripped out all the life support systems, tubes and needles ripped from his body, quickly healing the holes they left. Crushing the medical equipment in his hand, the massive man took a deep breath.

He paused for a moment after a long exhale. The man laughed with a deep and booming voice that was so much clearer than the gravelly voice he’d grown accustomed to. “I missed that. Breathing with my own lungs. The feel of air without any tubes or pumps.”

He took another deep breath and turned to Izuku with a wide smile and bright red eyes. He moved forward faster than eyes could track and wrapped his son in a tight hug.

“You actually did it! My amazing boy found a way to save me when I had all but given up hope that there was a way.”

Izuku giggled and hugged him back. “I’m so happy it worked!”

“And look at you!” He held Izuku’s face and moved him around so he could get a proper look at him.

“Daaaaddd.”

“Don’t whine about it, I haven’t had a chance to see you with my own eyes until now.” He ruffled his hair playfully. “You really do look so much like your mother. You might have my bushy hair, but just about everything else is just like her.”

Izuku looked up at his dad and paused when he saw a deep and angry frown as he subtly wiped away tears.

“Everything ok?”

“Yeah… Uh, just remembered the first hundred and fifty years of my life. And well… not all of them were good ones. I’ve lost a lot of loved ones over the years, and it hurts in a way I can’t explain to realize I’d forgotten that they had even existed for the last six years.”

He gave Izuku a strained smile. “I think I’m going to need a little bit of time to get my thoughts in order. You should make sure Eri is brought to a good home. She has done something for me that I will never forget, and if she ever needs help, I would move mountains and bring down nations to make sure she gets it.”

He nodded, not phased by his father’s dramatics. “Sure dad. I’ll take care of her.” He teleported away and arrived at the Aizawa household.

Hizashi saw Izuku suddenly appear outside their house, which wasn’t too odd on its own. However, there was also a little girl wearing what seemed to be rags, so he called out to his husband.

“Shouta! I know you’re napping, but our kid just showed up with a smaller kid in his arms.”

He heard a groan as Shouta got up. While that happened he opened the door for the two kids.

“Everything ok, little listener?”

“Um, yeah. I think so at least. I found this girl being held captive by the Yakuza, they were using her blood to make a bioweapon that could remove quirks.”

“Is she ok? She seems concerningly unconscious.”

“Yeah, it was a scary situation, so I used a quirk that made her fall asleep. It only works for as long as the person needs to sleep, so she’ll wake up once she feels rested.”

Aizawa shambled into the room. “That is the most amazing quirk I’ve ever heard of and I’m definitely helping you test it later. Now, Problem Child, why did you bring her here instead of to the police or a hospital.”

“Well… It’s just that I don’t really trust most other heroes, and I’m worried people would try and take advantage of her quirk and she’d just end up in the same awful situation. She can manipulate time, like, make people younger.”

Hizashi sucked in a surprised breath. “I can see why you’d be worried. She’s like a tiny fountain of youth.”

Izuku nodded. “Apparently her mom sold her to the Yakuza, and I just don’t want that to happen again.”

Shouta patted him on the shoulder, “Don’t worry kid. We won’t let anyone take her.” Aizawa made eye contact with his husband where they seemed to have a silent conversation. He sighed deeply. “Alright, I can’t promise anything long term yet, but I’ll look into us taking her in as temporary guardians for now, we can figure out the rest later.”

Izuku gave him a big smile. “Thank you so much! Um… is it ok if I’m here more often so that I can be with her?”

“Problem Child, all we’ve wanted is for you to be here. We just didn’t want to force you to live here full time and scare you off.”

Izuku nodded and hugged them both, appreciating how accepting and loving they were. It wasn’t long until she woke up and looked around with groggy eyes. At first she panicked when she didn’t recognize where she was, then she spotted Izuku.

“Hey Eri. You’re safe. Just like I said, I got you away from the bad men.”

She latched onto him with a tight grip and eyed the other two people in the room with suspicion.

“Don’t worry, they’re good people.”

Even with his words she hid behind Izuku and didn’t let go of him. Izuku was the only one she’d ever seen fight Overhaul and come out alive, so she thought he must be super strong and nice to do that.

Hizashi knelt nearby so they’d be at eye level. “Hi there Eri. My name’s Hizashi, but my hero name is Present Mic, so that’s what a lot of people call me.”

She peeked out a little from behind Izuku to look at Hizashi, but stayed firmly behind the only person her mind had determined was safe. Izuku looked down at her and smiled. It would take a lot of time and work, but he knew this was a good place for her and he’d do everything he could to make her happy.

Chapter Text

Izuku sat with Eri on the couch as they watched television. Over the last week of him living there pretty much full time with Eri they had both settled into their new homelife. Plus, the cats had grown very familiar and protective of both of them. Bastard in particular, as the oldest of the cats, would guard Eri’s sleeping body most nights as if she were one of her kittens.

Right now they were watching a baking show, with Eri watching the various cakes and desserts being made with rapt attention. As the episode ended, Eri’s eyes lit up with joy as her favorite contestant had won. She hadn’t smiled yet in the time she’d been living with them, but it was still clear when she was happy.

He chuckled and ruffled her hair. “We’ve still got a little time before they get back from work, so we can watch one more.”

He started scrolling through the channels, looking for another of the numerous cooking shows that aired throughout the day. He paused when he saw a picture of himself on the screen. It was a news station, and from the picture they had they were discussing a fight that he’d had that morning. The picture was of an absolutely massive version of himself, with his entire body made of water and standing at least a few hundred feet tall in the ocean with a drug smuggling ship in his hands.

“Wowww. Is that why you were all wet during breakfast?”

“Yeah Eri. I was out stopping bad people. They’re all in jail now so they can’t hurt anyone else.”

She gave him the biggest hug she could. “Thank you for stopping bad people and saving me.”

He hugged her back as he tried (and failed) to not cry. They ended up watching the news for a few more minutes since Eri was thrilled to see her big brother on tv. He smirked a little when they reported on a new group of vigilantes that he recognized as Touya, Spinner, and Toga. It was nice to see them out fighting for what they believed in. In this case they were exposing the wrongdoings of politicians and heroes that were corrupt in one way or another.

Himiko had only joined them on their corruption fighting excursions in the last couple of days since the quirk removal process had been harder on her than he’d ever seen before. He’d had to leave her with Doctor Garaki since she almost died from the very sudden withdrawal from her quirk. It was definitely a mistake on his part to not consider how hazardous it was to remove her quirk in such an extreme addiction situation, but luckily she had pulled through.

They went back to watching baking competitions until the two heroes returned from work. As soon as they walked in the door Eri ran over and hugged their legs, since she couldn’t reach much higher than that.

His attention was pulled away as his phone buzzed. He hadn’t really talked to his dad since the man told him he needed to think and teleported away, so he was a little surprised when he saw a text asking him to come over so they could talk.

He looked over at Aizawa and felt a little weird to ask but it would be worse to just disappear without explanation. “Hey, I’m going to go meet up with dad for a bit if that’s ok. I don’t know how long it’s going to be though.”

“Sure, kid. Just text us if you won’t be back tonight.”

He smiled and teleported to the mountain where Gigantomachia lived. Izuku looked around for his father, unsure as to why they were meeting here instead of the usual spot.

“Dad? You here?”

After a minute of looking around he spotted his father staring at a flower.

“Oh, sorry Izuku. I was just enjoying myself looking at all the wildlife. You don’t realize how much you’ll miss looking at trees and flowers until you can’t anymore.”

“That makes sense. Was that what you called me out here for?” Honestly, he wouldn’t be even slightly upset if it turned out that the entire plan was just a nature walk.

He got a loud belly laugh in response. “No, but that does sound nice. I wanted to show you something that I keep hidden here. In fact, Gigantomachia is stationed in this area to protect it. I would have shown you sooner, but sadly I had forgotten it existed until a week ago.”

“Oh wow. That must be a pretty valuable something.”

“Well, more like many somethings. But you’re right that they are valuable.” He began to walk towards a rocky cliff face on the side of the mountain. “Follow me.”

He floated up into the air and hovered at a spot about fifty feet in the air and placed his hand against the stone. The jagged rock receded, revealing a tunnel that bore into the mountain. Izuku joined his father and briefly used the dragonfly quirk to fly up and into the entrance. After a few steps into the tunnel the rock slid back into place, disguising the entrance once more.

There were tiny floating orbs of light that lined the path and gave it a very mystical feeling. They reached a sudden drop as the tunnel turned downwards at a ninety degree angle. After a quick float down, they reached a very large and imposing metal door.

“Izuku, my son, you are one of a very select few that have ever been here. I call this place The Vault.” The name definitely fit, since the entrance looked like an old fashioned bank vault.

After he imputed a few different codes, the door to The Vault opened up and revealed a sight he wasn’t expecting. Izuku stared, slack jawed at what was inside, glancing up at his dad with a silent question.

“Yes, these are all exactly what they look like. Although I haven’t been able to indulge the last few years, I’ve always been a collector at heart. Someone I once knew very well would joke that I was like an ancient dragon, hoarding anything of value in the center of a mountain.”

The inside of The Vault was an absolutely massive and expansive area that held countless items that all looked like they were probably all priceless.

“Dad?! Is that the Mona Lisa?!”

“Yes, yes it is. As I’m sure any history book would tell you, the world was a very chaotic time during the quirk wars, and many pieces of history were either destroyed or simply went missing. I may have been responsible for quite a few that fell into the latter category.”

Izuku’s eyes were in absolute wonder as he went from item to item. He almost wept in happiness as he found a gorgeous library filled to the brim with ancient texts. But what stuck out the most was the architecture of the library.

“You- you saved the books.”

“I can tell you recognize what this was based off of. This library is entirely made up of books that were nearly lost in the rampant destruction that happened in the US. I wasn’t able to save them all, but I managed to collect about half of the Library of Congress before it burned to the ground over a hundred years ago.”

The world had been driven into countless civil wars and revolutions within the first fifty years of quirks coming into existence. They were all summed up as being ‘the quirk wars’, as the entire world tore itself apart. And as was always the case with wars, history was destroyed. Museums and libraries were leveled, sometimes purposefully, sometimes just because of bad luck.

Sure, there were digital copies of everything, so very little knowledge was lost, but the books and items themselves were lost on a scale that would make any history lover weep. Or at least, it was assumed that they were lost.

“I suppose this entire place is a healthy mix between robbery and rescue. Sure, the most moral thing to do would be to donate it all back to a museum now that things are stable, but there’s just something about having all of these things hidden away that’s beautiful in a way I can’t explain.”

Izuku understood exactly what he meant. Maybe there was some deep instinct within the quirk that wanted nothing more than to just take and take and take. To hoard everything from quirks to jewels to antique airplanes. He wondered if one day he would have his own hollowed out mountain of valuables collected over the course of a century.

They continued their way through and came to a secondary vault-like door, but this one wasn’t locked. They strode into the room and Izuku was shocked to find that nothing of value was inside. It was an open area the size of a small house but instead of ancient texts, this area held simple furnishings, like a couch, a bed, a simple kitchen.

His father sat on one of the couches and waved Izuku to sit next to him. “Come here my boy. Ever since you restored my memories, the plans we made will have to change, for the better in my opinion. But in order for it to make sense I need to answer a question I’m sure you’ve had since you met me, but that I couldn’t answer until my mind was returned to me. Why I became a villain.”

Izuku just nodded. It was true, he had been wondering that. His father never seemed particularly evil or malicious. Was he a bit greedy, absolutely, but villainous? Izuku didn’t think so at least.

“When I was about your age the world had already started falling apart. Nothing extreme had happened yet, but the world now knew of quirks and started growing paranoid that everyone around them was secretly a ‘meta-human’, as we were called back then.”

He smiled and ruffled Izuku’s hair. “I started out a lot like you did, the first quirk was an accident, but after that I was only taking quirks from those that didn’t want them. When the first anti-quirk laws were getting enacted I was an activist, protesting in the streets for meta-humans to have equal rights.

“As the fear and anger grew worse, people started lashing out at anyone they thought had a quirk. People started disappearing and cops didn’t care if you got attacked or killed, hell, they encouraged it. And that’s not even looking at the government run experiments that they conveniently leave out of your textbooks. All of us metahumans came to realize that if we wanted to survive we’d have to stick together and fight for ourselves instead of expecting anyone in power to do it. And that was how the first ‘villain organization’ took form.”

He nodded along. He remembered his dad mentioning something about how he was initially a freedom fighter. Honestly, it made a lot of sense, anyone who commits a crime with a quirk is legally a ‘villain’ and suddenly a minority defending themselves instead of just laying down and dying counts as a crime where you don’t get a trial.

“Especially back then, most quirks were just for show and didn’t actually help in a fight. So we made a team that would defend our people and fight back against the government that thought we were sub-human.” He gave a sad smile as he reminisced over the memories from over a century ago.

“In the beginning our ‘revolution’ was just five friends wanting to fight against a cruel world. I’m probably the last person who even remembers their names, since our existence was all but scrubbed from history. But you’d probably recognize their quirks. Fire Breathing, Physical Peak, Claws, and Body Swap.”

Those were all quirks that his father had listed in his binder, he’d even given Fire Breathing and Physical Peak to Izuku. Claws was a very simple quirk, it was a mutation that replaced their nails with claws, almost like a raptor. Body Swap was exactly what it sounded like, you make contact with the target, putting your consciousness into their body and theirs into yours.

He chuckled as he looked down at his son. “It may surprise you, but I wasn’t actually the leader when things got started. I was still a teenager when we made our little team, so even though I was the strongest, I was most certainly not fit to lead. That title belonged to Suzuki Yua, the original holder of Physical Peak.”

“It’s been speculated that she was one of, if not the first metahuman to exist. But even though she was seven years older than me, and five older than the glowing baby, she didn’t even know she had a quirk until she was twenty six and doctors had started doing X-rays of everyone’s feet.

She was one of the greatest athletes that had ever graced the olympics. She had multiple gold medals in both gymnastics and martial arts. But when it was discovered that she had a quirk, all of her awards were stripped from her, and she was turned into propaganda of how meta-humans would hide and deceive ‘regular’ people.”

He sneered angrily. “Completely ignoring the fact that her quirk by its very nature didn’t make her stronger than a quirkless person, all it did was keep her in top shape and prevent any degradation. And it most certainly did not give her any ingrained skill, she had spent her entire life training to be the best, just to be treated like a fraud and a cheater.”

After taking a deep breath, his mouth curved into a soft smile as he spoke about Suzuki. “I will have to show you videos of her later. Her gymnastic routines were truly a thing of beauty, but they were nothing in comparison to watching that woman take out entire strike teams with her bare hands. She led us into battle countless times as our group got bigger and bigger. I helped with recruiting by giving quirks to those that wanted them and were willing to join.”

His father gave a sad sigh. “Somewhere along during the half a decade spent fighting by each other’s side, we fell in love. We actually held a town hall hostage so we could get our marriage officiated. I was twenty five when our beautiful baby girl was born. Her name was Maiko and I don’t think I’ve ever loved something like I did that little girl.”

Izuku looked up and saw his father wipe away tears, he had a bad feeling that this story didn’t end well.

“While all of this had been going on, my brother and I had grown further and further apart. He hated what I was doing and got angry every time I used my quirk, even if it was consensual. Yoichi was idealistic and was furious at me for resorting to violence and murder, completely ignoring the fact that metahumans were being gunned down in the streets. I suppose one day he truly had enough and gave away our base’s location to the police, who passed it on to the military.”

“You see, nowadays they would have sent heroes and cops after us, but we were considered a terrorist organization made of metahuman monsters. So, instead of heroes in spandex, we received a missile strike that leveled the entire building to rubble. I was the only one sturdy enough to survive the explosion, and that was the day I found out I could take quirks from corpses. After I buried my best friends, my wife, and my two year old daughter, I locked my brother in this very vault and swore to destroy the so-called ‘heroes’ that the government created to stop me.”

Chapter Text

All for One sat and organized the quirk binders while Izuku had run off deeper into the vault, eager to explore the many treasures within. It would certainly take a while for him to look at everything, considering the entirety of the vault took up about half the mountain they were in. Having Izuku admire and complement every single thing he had collected filled him with pride and was a real ego boost.

They had traded quirks back and forth for about three hours to make sure they both had the best combinations for everything that would be unfolding soon. He shuffled around all of the quirk cards into categories that would seem arbitrary to an outsider but made absolute sense to him. He also spent a little bit making new cards for the quirks Izuku had picked up recently but hadn’t cataloged yet.

After a few minutes he heard a distant metallic clinking sound accompanied by a giggle. He smiled to himself and went to see what Izuku was up to. If a stranger looked at the two of them they might argue that the hero hopeful and the supervillain were the furthest things apart. But when you looked closer, it was clear that they were more similar than not.

They shared a fascination with the world and all of the things it held, and it takes such a small push to turn fascination into greed. He could see it when Izuku spotted a particularly unique quirk, the burning desire to take everything that they want and never let it go.

He was sure a large part of that was the very similar quirk. It was always a question of what came first, the personality or the quirk? Did your personality shape what kind of quirk you’d get, or did your quirk shape your personality? Because no one could deny that the two were closely tied.

His own personal theory was that quirks had some small level of sentience, though not in the same way people did. But there was some part of a quirk that influenced its user. He saw this especially in people that used their quirks as often as possible, getting warped by their power, for better or for worse.

So really, whether or not Izuku remained a hero would boil down to one thing. Would heroes be willing to feed his growing appetite, or would they try and force him to be content with what he had? And one would only need to look around this very vault to know how voracious that growing desire to collect would become.

He made his way towards the laughter and smiled at what he saw. It was the largest single room in the vault and held an old shipwreck from the early 1700’s. The ship had been split in half when he found it, so he’d arranged it so each half was on one end of the room, and the numerous Spanish doubloons that had been inside were made into a pile in the middle. He had then added additional gold and jewels to the pile far beyond what was found in the ship to make a very impressive mound.

From what he could see, Izuku had activated the quirks Naga, Wyvern, and Growth (a minor gigantification quirk). He had curled up on the top of the gold pile as a fifty foot long emerald green snake with wings, a dragon-like head, and spines running down its tail. He was also clearly enjoying himself from the sounds of laughter and coins being pushed around.

“How did a mighty amphiptere get into my lair?!”

He activated a handful of quirks that when used together allowed him to become just about anything, he referred to this combo as Polymorph. Growing into a towering silvery white dragon that was about the same length. However, while Izuku’s was a thin and lithe creature, his was muscular and bulky. Even in his very large size he still was dwarfed by his gold mound, the diameter of it about a hundred feet across.

Izuku was clearly still getting used to moving with a snake body as he shimmied his way over in excitement, but even without practice that form was clearly built for speed. “I didn’t know you could turn into a dragon too!” His voice was a little lower and had a bit of a raspy hiss behind it.

In return he gave a chuckle, his voice in such a large body came out like the deep rumbling of a kettle drum. “You really think you’re the only person who thinks turning into a dragon is a fun idea? Besides, of any mythical creature, dragons certainly fit us.”

Izuku looked away, it was hard to read his current face for emotions, but he was pretty sure it was shame.

“You don’t need to hide your nature from me. I understand more than anyone that deep desire to hoard that which interests you. It is up to you whether or not you accept it.” He picked up a massive handful of jewels and gold and let it slip through his fingers. “I obviously chose to embrace that feeling, but that doesn’t mean you have to.”

Izuku looked up at him with wide hopeful eyes. “You don’t think I’m bad for having that feeling? For wanting power and quirks and cool stuff?”

“Of course not. Everyone wants things, in fact, the most esteemed and influential people in society are those that are greedy for something. CEOs want money, politicians want power, celebrities want attention, heroes want admiration and respect. It’s all the same thing.”

He sat in silence for a moment. “I guess that makes sense.”

“Now, the only thing I will not waver on is this. Do not be a fool that casts his trophies aside once he has them. If there is something you want, you must enjoy it to its fullest once you have it.” He then clapped his massive hands twice.

At first Izuku couldn’t tell what he had done, but after a few moments he felt warmth begin to radiate up through the mountain of gold below them.

“Is- is this a heated gold pile?”

“Like I said, if you’re going to take something, enjoy it to its fullest. And I can’t imagine a way to enjoy a pile of gold more than to put heaters in it and lay on it as a dragon.”

Izuku followed his advice and coiled up against his father’s chest, letting himself sink into the warm coins. He looked up as his dad with big eyes.

“Hey dad, do you think you could tell me more about Suzuki?”

His eyes swirled with many conflicting emotions, between wanting Izuku to know about her but also the pain of discussing his dead wife. After a few moments he gave a slow nod with a gentle smile.

“Of course, what did you want to know?”

“Um, how about how you met?”

He gave him a very serious look. “Very well, I will tell you, but you must never tell anyone of this.”

“Oh. Of course, why’s it such a secret?”

He gave an overly dramatic sigh. “I fear that I would never be taken seriously again as a villain if people knew how much of a lovesick fool I was. I would lose all my hard earned reputation if anyone found out I met my first love by walking into a wall because I was so distracted by her beauty.”

Izuku smiled wide and settled in for the story.

Hideaki Shigaraki walked through the grocery store and did his best to keep to himself. He had dyed brown hair and was wearing a beanie so no one could see his white roots. He hated the colored contacts, so he just wore sunglasses this time to cover up his unnaturally red eyes. On top of that he had to always wear gloves to hide the small holes in his palms.

Technically, the color of his hair and eyes were just albinism, but it got him too much attention, and he was clearly a meta once you looked closer. He and his brother both had the same mutation where they had white pupils, which logically should make them blind, but they could see just fine.

He was luckily at least that he was tall for his seventeen years of age. Standing at 6’1 with a beard (also dyed brown) he looked a bit older than he was, which was very good. Everyone knew that only those who were 23 and younger had the potential of carrying a meta ability with the likelihood of being born with a quirk going up each year. This meant the younger you looked the more suspicious people became, even if there was less than a five percent chance of being born with a meta power.

He knew damn well that one look at his eyes would make anyone realize he was a meta, and he really didn’t want to get banned from another grocery store. It was such bullshit, he shouldn’t have to hide who he was. There was a part of him that wanted to laugh at them though, if they thought his no-pupil eyes were scary then they’d probably shit themselves at what his power actually was.

At first he’d thought his ability was just to identify what abilities other people had. Their abilities showed themselves to him like a glowing ball of energy, and from how it looked and acted he could make a general guess. He’d figured out his true power by accident after bumping into a man with three eyes while thinking that it looked cool. He’d been filled with a feeling of want, instinctively grabbing the confused man by the forehead, not realizing why he was doing it until afterwards.

He’d reflexively given the power back, but that didn’t change that he’d figured out what he could do. He had three meta powers at this point, all taken because their owners didn’t want them. One could make his hair grow rapidly, which was pretty useless but still cool. Another made his skin tough and rubbery, it was a nice subtle defense if nothing else. His absolute favorite, and first purposefully acquired meta power, was fire breath. Hideaki had spent hours practicing shooting bursts of fire out of his mouth just to feel the heat and power from that ability.

Ah shit, he really needed to pay more attention to his surroundings, some old lady was staring at him. That’s what he gets for being part of the meta generation he supposed. He went around grabbing the basics, his job at the junkyard didn’t pay for much more than that. It wasn’t a great job, but not many places willingly hired metas, so he took what he could get.

He had been making his way down the aisle to grab a new bag of rice when a woman walked by him. She was probably about 5’2 or 5’3 and had jet black hair in a bob. Hideaki barely contained a gasp when he saw her.

Her meta ability was the most gorgeous and intricate one he’d ever seen. While most were isolated in one part of the body or another, hers was everywhere and seemed to seep into each and every cell. He couldn’t even guess what it did, but it was subtle and blinding at the same time, somehow doing everything and nothing at once, a perfectly coordinated dance between a trillion microscopic dancers.

By the time the whispered ‘wow’ made it past his lips he’d been staring at this stranger for three entire seconds. Before he could even consider apologizing for how incredibly rude and weird he was being, he walked full force into a stand holding chips, sending everything on it flying.

As he tried to right himself with pinwheeling arms, he managed to step on a bag of them, causing his foot to slide forward and remove any semblance of balance he’d been holding onto. This sent him careening into a pillar that he smacked his head against. After a few moments he tentatively started to stand back up.

The woman he’d been staring at walked over to him with concern in her voice. “Oh my god, are you o-” Her words came to a halt as he turned to face her, belatedly realizing that his glasses were laying broken on the floor.

His red and white eyes were fully on display and with a glance he saw the old lady from before already making a call, which was probably the police. Nope, he was not getting arrested and shipped off to a lab. The government had promised to only experiment on meta criminals, which meant getting arrested on any charge, regardless of innocence, was a death sentence at best.

“Fuckfuckfuckfuck.” He quickly got himself together and hurried out of the store with a hastily grabbed bag of rice. Yes, he knew it was stealing, but they were dangerously low on food and he wasn’t risking his brother starving over this bullshit.

He had gotten about a block away when he realized that the random lady was running alongside him. Oh right, she was a meta too, so anyone calling the cops was probably a bad place for her to be as well. And based on her following him she probably didn’t know the area.

He ducked into an alleyway and pulled at her arm. “This way.” After a few quick turns they reached their destination, the back door of a cafe. He was out of breath and panting while she seemed to be completely fine. Maybe that was her ability, even looking at it again he couldn’t figure out what it did.

She looked nonplussed with him, her arms crossed and a scowl on her face. “Name’s Suzuki. Why do you keep staring at me like that?”

“Uh, because your ability is super pretty and I’m too dumb not to get distracted? Let’s go inside to talk, the owner of this place is a closeted meta who will happily let us hang out in the back until the cops give up.”

“Wait, what? You can see powers?! You can tell me what my ability is?!”

“Yeah.” He said, like the liar he was.

“Alright, let’s go.” And with that she led the way into the quiet coffee shop.

Izuku laughed loudly. “You can’t be serious. Your first words to your future wife were basically, ‘you’re gorgeous and I’m dumb, let’s be friends.’ I can’t believe that actually worked.”

His father gave a playful shove that made him tumble through the gold pile. “I am serious. You can see why this must remain a secret. Besides, those weren’t my first words to her, that honor goes to the word ‘wow’, because I didn’t know what to do when near a pretty lady with an equally pretty quirk.”

“What happened after that?”

“That’s a story for another day. It’s getting pretty late and I don’t want your heroes thinking I’ve abducted you.”

Izuku pouted as he dropped his quirks and shifted back to his human form. “Um, I probably won’t see you until the plan happens, will I?”

“Yes, but that’s really only a few days. We can talk as much as we want once everything is handled.”

He gave one last hug. “Alright.”

He scrunched his eyes in concentration, then confusion.

He laughed a little. “The vault prevents teleportation, so you’ll have to go outside first.”

“Oh, ok. Love you, dad!”

“Love you too kiddo, I’ll see you in a few days.”

Chapter Text

Izuku sat in the living room with Aizawa while Hizashi was in the kitchen making some lunch. Today was the big day, the plan was going to go into action and this would theoretically be his last day as a vigilante. He had tried to keep that to himself, but the two heroes had seen right through him. They didn’t like that he didn’t share what he was going to do, but they did their best to respect it and support him.

Eri had been put down for a nap with a quick kiss to her forehead. He didn’t know how this would go, but he had a feeling it wouldn’t be something Eri should watch. It wasn’t unusual though, Rest was probably the quirk he used the most in the house, making sure everyone got enough sleep. It was especially helpful because they found out it prevented dreams, letting Eri rest without nightmares.

Despite his best efforts to keep it hidden, they’d figured it out when the news mentioned the big event that All Might would be appearing at on the same day. Aizawa had looked down at Izuku with focused eyes that were hard to read. “So, you’re planning to crash his party?”

He looked to the side and shook his head. “More like stop the actual party crashers. Try not to worry though, um, any fighting I do will probably be, uh, kinda staged. I won’t be in real danger.”

Aizawa nodded slightly. “I see, you’ll save All Might, making you look like the ultimate hero and last line of defense going forward. I can’t say I fully approve, but the plan makes sense and is pretty solid. Just be careful, alright?”

He smiled and gave him a big hug. “I will. Thanks for being understanding, even though this isn’t exactly legal.”

He got his hair ruffled in response. “Kid, almost nothing about you is legal. You can’t scare us off that easily. You don’t have to go into the details, but I have two rules for you.”

Izuku nodded slowly, “Um, sure. What are they?”

“Number one, you come back to us after you’re done with whatever this is. And number two, stay true to who you are. You’re a good kid with a good heart, don’t be afraid to stand by what you think is right.”

“I’ll do my best.”

That had been a few days ago. Now they both waited, watching the news where they were giving live coverage of the park where the event was happening. Portals began to open and menacing villains walked through them. People were frozen in fear as dozens of villains infiltrated the area. The last individual to come through was a towering man in a business suit with a blood red tie and black helmet.

“I apologize for interrupting this lovely get together, but I’m afraid I have important business. My name is All for One, and I won’t be leaving until All Might is dead at my feet.”

Izuku stood up from the couch. “That’s my cue.”

“Remember the rules kid, I’ll see you soon.”

He smiled up at Aizawa, “I’ll see you soon.” And with that Izuku teleported away, Aizawa watching him appear a few seconds later about fifty in the air, with every camera turning to see what he’d do.

Izuku floated in the air for a moment as he took in the situation. He had purposefully not been given most of the information on the attack so his reactions would be more genuine. The entire area had quickly turned into chaos. He looked over and saw All Might staring at him with an intense look that he couldn’t interpret.

“You handle the main ones, I’ll handle the evacuation and the small fry!” He didn’t wait for All Might’s response and quickly flew down to the edge of the crowd and near an open street.

He used Growth and rose up to be about fifteen feet tall and Bass Boost in order to be heard.

“Everyone! Evacuate this way!” His voice was unnaturally deep and echoed across the park.

Luckily, people seemed to be following that order and were moving towards him. He began flying around with Dragonfly and using one of his telekinesis quirks called Psychic Hand to lift up anyone that was in danger of getting trampled in the stampede.

There were about a hundred small-time villains from the portals scattered around. He swapped around a few quirks so he just had Dragonfly and a few plant manipulation quirks. As he raised his hands up into the air, the grass below followed his direction and began to grow and wrap around their legs. It wasn’t the strongest restraint by any means, but it would certainly slow them down enough to give civilians time to reach safety.

He suddenly caught sight of movement hurtling towards the crowd of fleeing people. He shot forward to intercept with the addition of Speed Boost. He just barely managed to brush his hand against it before it went hurtling by. The projectile, which he now realized was a large stage light and the metal beam it had been attached to, turned it into a fine powder as Overhaul activated. With that, it rapidly lost its momentum and wafted down like a stainless steel snow.

He brushed himself off and took to the air once more and looked to see where that had come from. “ Good catch, Young Midoriya!” Ah, it had been launched during the fight between All Might and a couple of Nomu while his father just watched from above.

He shot out lengths of chain and began tying up whoever he could and moving them to the edge of the park where they wouldn’t be in danger of getting crushed in the fight. There weren’t any that really put up a fight, they were more of a distraction than a serious threat, but they would certainly be able to harm civilians if left unchecked.

Even at his high speeds and moving five to ten at a time, it had taken a couple of minutes to get all of the criminals detained and out of harm’s way. He then flew around and grabbed any stragglers, people who were either injured or too panicked to evacuate with the others.

He landed next to a little girl who seemed to have a hurt ankle from tripping. Normally he’d stop to chat and try and comfort her, but time was definitely a factor here. He didn’t necessarily have a healing quirk, but he had a combination that did the trick just as well.

He activated Regeneration and Injury Absorption, letting him transfer her sprained ankle to himself, where it was rapidly healed by the self-healing quirk. It hurt to have his ankle suddenly sprained and un-sprained, but it was manageable and worth it to help people.

He flew her over to a small time hero he spotted helping the civilians and passed her off with barely a few words. “She got separated from her parents, I healed her but she seems pretty shaken up.”

The hero with goat horns just nodded and took her into his arms. “Understood.”

It was a weirdly good feeling to have people listen to him so instantly like that, to be treated with respect as a person with authority and power. There had been well over a thousand people in the park, so he was proud of himself for getting all the villains arrested and everyone evacuated to a safe distance within ten minutes. He flew back over to see what exactly the situation was with the big fight that he could hear was still raging.

He finally paid real attention to the two nomu that were beating All Might into the ground, trying to identify which quirk combinations had made the final cut.

The first was a hulking mass of black skin and external muscle. It didn’t take a genius to recognize Muscle Augmentation, which in this case was boosted by Physical Enhancement, doubling the already monstrous strength and speed. For defense it had Shock Absorption and the same Regeneration quirk he did, since his dad had made a bunch of copies of it.

The second foe that the number one hero had to contend with was built to weaken him, making it much more possible for the other to win in their contest of strength. It had Vitality Stealing, making itself bigger and All Might weaker every moment they were in contact. To make sure it couldn’t be pried off it had a combination of Vice Grip and Octopus, giving it a powerful crushing force and the ability to transform into an octopus of equal mass. To top it off, it also had Regeneration, making it a very tough enemy to kill.

Together, this meant that All Might was getting squeezed by a rapidly growing octopus while also being repeatedly punched by the muscular behemoth that was even larger than the hero himself. Izuku certainly didn’t like the hero, but he couldn’t deny he felt a twinge of guilt as he was overwhelmed. It was Izuku who had told him that All Might’s greatest weakness was his stamina and ability to hold his form, and it was Izuku that provided the quirks that would exploit that chink in his armor.

His next move should be simple and straightforward. He’ll fight his dad until the two Nomu defeat, and in all likelihood kill, All Might. Maybe if it had just been one of them the hero would have won. But with him being weakened and attacked at the same time, it didn’t seem like he had a chance. On the other hand, if he pulled the quirks from the noumu first, All Might would have a pretty good chance of coming out of this ok.

He was definitely having some reservations, sure All Might caused a lot of problems in his family, but it was hard to argue that he was a bad person. The man did a lot of good in the world, even if he wasn’t perfect. It seemed like this was his last moment to make his choice, as a powerful claw strike headed directly for his old wound.

Izuku was about to get involved and yank their quirks away when he heard the telepathic voice of his father slip into his mind.

“ Not yet. ”

That was certainly enough to make Izuku freeze and do nothing but watch. He wasn’t trying to actually go against his father, was he? Their fight was only pretend, so he should still listen and follow him, right? He tried to make peace with whatever would come next and trust that his father knew what was best here.

At the last moment All Might spun to the side, causing the octopus Nomu to take the hit instead, carving deep lacerations through its body. In that brief respite where it was stunned and hadn’t healed from the powerful blow, All Might tore the creature off, ripping off a few stubborn tentacles in the process. With his power no longer being sapped, he threw all of his strength at the other monstrosity. They traded blows with such speed and force that it created a whirlwind, keeping him from getting closer without using strength of durability modifiers.

His father seemed completely unaffected by the gusts of wind and sudden shifts in pressure, but it certainly gave Izuku an excuse not to get involved yet. He was still a bit shaken from his father’s words but pulled into focus as a final blow launched the creature through the air and away from the now decimated park. Steam was rolling off his body, which Izuku knew meant he was on the verge of poofing into his small form. He raised a fist high in victory.

As he looked at the quickly retreating image of the Nomy flying through the air, he saw it suddenly turn an even darker color then disappear. That same black sludge appeared right next to All for One, who was laughing loudly as the Nomu was easily retrieved.

“Really? That was your big plan? Just punching it as hard as you can and hoping it doesn’t come back? I’m starting to think I’ve been overpreparing for this battle.”

“Ha! I’ll remind you that punching something so hard it goes away worked well enough that you disappeared for the last seven years.”

With All Might’s full attention on the masked villain, he didn’t notice the now healed octopus wrap a tentacle around his legs. This reactivation of Vitality Stealing was what it took to finally push him over the edge and dissipate his larger form. When the steam quickly cleared, all that was left was the frail Yagi Toshinori buckling under the massive tentacle of the thirty foot tall octopus monster.

“Oh, how the mighty have fallen, All Might.”

Izuku didn’t know exactly when his father wanted him to step in, but he wasn’t waiting any longer. He refused to let anyone else die because of him. He shot forward once more and yanked away their quirks while his father was speaking to/taunting the hero. The two Nomu shrunk down to more human sizes and collapsed to the ground, returning back to their once lifeless states.

As the Nomu deflated, his father gathered a ball of red energy into his hand and launched it towards the barely conscious hero. Izuku Blinked in front of the hero and activated Statue, which made him nearly indestructible, but would be deactivated by the slightest movement. The energy blast exploded against him, leaving another crater in the park, but both of them were unharmed.

His father’s masked head seemed to stare directly at him, a menacing aura radiating off of him. “I see you’ve made your choice.”

It was definitely unpleasant to have that malice in his direction, but he just kept reminding himself that it was pretend. “All Might, I know we stand on very different sides of things, and that you want me arrested. But I don’t want you dead, so I need you to trust me at least a little.”

The hero weakly nodded in response, coughing up blood as he tried to stand.

“Right now I just need you to stay behind me until I have a chance to teleport you to safety.”

The two multi-quirked fighters stared each other down, waiting to see what the other’s first move would be. As if it were a quickdraw, Izuku pulled seeds from a pouch at his hip and threw them on the ground. In that same moment his father retaliated by summoning forth massive stone hands that began to rise from the ground and surge towards him. Accompanying this wave of limbs was a strafe of the red balls of energy that tore through whatever they hit.

Izuku dropped to the ground, dodging one of the incoming blasts and decided it was time to show off to his father just what he could do now after months of training separately under Aizawa’s guidance. After training both his body and quirk he’d gotten his stamina to the point he could easily use four quirks at a time for a few minutes before he couldn’t maintain it.

He brought forth Green Thumb, Plant Manipulation, Leaf Spike, and Vine Whip. And on top of that, the seeds he’d thrown were ones he’d specially made with Gene Splicing,  a quirk that let him modify plant DNA. This particular one was primarily based on a wisteria vine, mixed with blackberries, roses, kudzu vines, and a bit of yucca for fire resistance. It was the kind of plant that would make you think Frankenstein got into botany.

With the power of three different plant quirks boosting their growth, powerful vines burst from the ground like something from a fairytale. Each was nearly two feet thick and had massive thorns that were able to cut through steel (he’d checked).

The leaves weren’t particularly large, but they were numerous and very tough. Which meant when those leaves were hardened and shot forward like bullets with Leaf Spike, they blew apart most of the incoming stone hands and forced his father to briefly go on the defense.

It took less than five seconds for the evacuated park to become a mythical jungle as writhing plants took over everything in their path. As the terrain was completely altered he turned back to face All Might, who was still coughing up blood.

“Alright, that should give us a few seconds.” He grabbed the scrawny hero and teleported them both to the roof of a tall building that he could see. He couldn’t stop himself from considering the role reversal, since less than a year ago it had been All Might leaving him on a rooftop.

Without waiting for a response he took a running leap off the building, activating Dragonfly and dropping the others. His father had caused some sort of implosion, pulling most of the vines into a super compressed ball, which was then launched at Izuku’s flying form.

With a quick use of Heavy, the incoming plant projectile plummeted to the ground before it hit him or any of the buildings behind him. To return fire he activated the combo he had used on Muscular. Dragonfly, Extra Eyes, Laser Eyes, Bending Vision.

He’d had a bit more practice this time around though, which meant instead of being a giant pillar of light, it was a beam concentrated down to be no wider than his fist. By the time the quirks had slipped into place and fired off the destructive blast, his father countered by activating Mirror Image, flooding the field with illusions of himself and making it far more difficult to find and target his actual body.

This back and forth went on for nearly half an hour, each of them firing an attack that could decimate armies, only for the other to find a counter to it. All for One sent stone blocks at him, he used Sculpt and Overhaul together to instantly turn them to statues that would fight for him. He shot chains that were liquified and left as puddles to fill one of the many craters left behind.

Izuku was exhausted and didn’t have any more strength to give. He collapsed against a stone lion that he’d created a few minutes prior but hadn’t had a chance to animate. When they’d made the plan for him to fight against his dad, he’d thought it would be fun in a way. It was a rare chance to go all out and show off his many quirks against someone who could take it.

But it wasn’t fun. It was just terrifying. Every attack could potentially kill hundreds if it was redirected wrong. He tried to stand back up, to keep fighting, to prove to his father that he could hold his own. As he got one shaky leg below himself he fell back into the dirt. He’d lost.

As his father walked towards him with a menacing aura, he actually felt afraid of him for the first time. He’d never seen the villainous side of him, only ever witnessing the nerdy dad that told him stories and chatted about quirks. But now he was looking at All for One, and Izuku did his best not to give in to the soul crushing terror that seemed to come off the man in waves.

A sudden blur burst through the air, forcing his advancing father back.

“I appreciate the assistance, Young Midoriya, but we’ll take it from here.” Standing before him was All Might, back in his muscle form after taking half an hour to regain some of his strength. But what was far more significant to him was the crowd of heroes rallying along with him. Hundreds of heroes of different ranks swarmed forward and stood between Izuku and All for One, willing to protect him no matter the cost.

Part of him wanted to scream at them that he wasn’t actually in danger and that they should leave before getting hurt. But he had grown less confident in his safety and couldn’t deny how comforted he felt with having people actually show up as backup.

He was vaguely aware of seeing his father teleport away in a swirl of black goo, of people cheering and shouting. As he fought against the mounting exhaustion, he felt calloused hands lift him up.

“It’s alright, problem child, you can rest now.”

He couldn’t quite manage to keep his eyes open. “‘Zawa?”

“Yeah kid, we’re going home.”

Chapter Text

Alright! This isn’t a real chapter, but it is helpful info. Since Izuku is giving up crime and becoming a hero student he won’t be getting any new quirks for a while. With that in mind here is a comprehensive list of all quirks Izuku currently has (even’t if you haven’t seen them used yet). 

As a side note, Izuku got way more quirks than this, but a lot of them were either not good enough or given to All for One. These are just the ones he decided to keep.

Taken quirks:

1. Slime body: A mutation where you are made of icky slime instead of icky flesh
2. Hellfire: all that flamey stuff Endeavor can do
3. Transform: Y’all know toga’s quirk already.
4. Speed Boost: Doubles your speed for one minute, can train up how often you can use it
5. Slow and Steady: Allows you to increase strength to insane levels, but the stronger you go the slower your body moves
6. Nail Gun: The user can shoot nails from their wrist
7. Fear: Amplifies any existing feelings of fear
8. Phobia: Sprays a gas that makes you see your worst fears (totally not scarecrow from batman)
9. Shape Stone: Can change the shape of stone, sort of like instant sculpting
10. Animate: Can bring animal shaped objects to life. The more sturdy and lifelike the object is the longer the animation lasts. They are completely loyal, but personality is based on species
11. Growth: User can grow up to triple their normal size
12. Speed Read: Reads very fast
13. Bell: Can create bells of various sizes between your hands
14. Rest: Kisses make people immediately fall asleep, they will not wake up until they have gotten all of the rest their body needs. This quirk does not do anything if the target is well rested.
15. Eagle head: mutation to have the head of an eagle, which comes with a powerful beak and crazy good eyesight
16. Metallic muscle: muscle fibers are metallic, making user very strong and durable
17. Redirect: can redirect the momentum of something within eyesight, the further away and the more force behind the thing requires more energy (reader suggested)
18. Overhaul: y’all know this one, he takes stuff apart and puts it back together
19. Chronostasis: You probably know all of these, so it feels silly to write out descriptions
20. Mimic: But I’m still going to write something here so you know he has them
21. Confession: In case you didn’t notice, he doesn’t have 2 of their quirks
22. Vitality Stealing: AFO kept Sloshed since you can’t use it without getting drunk
23. Larceny: AFO also took Barrier, because Izuku wouldn’t be able to use it well
24. Crystalize: But AFO has enough practice with mental quirks that he masters it easily
25. Food: I don’t know what else to put here, but leaving it blank looks weird
26. Strongarm: The next five are still from 8 precepts, but from random henchmen
27. Resilience: Gives the user a large egg shaped body that is more durable than the average person. (based on the egg looking dude from the very beginning of the raid)
28. Leaf spike: can sharpen and fire leaves from living plants, (strong enough to pierce metal riot shields from what little we see)
29. Air Horn: turns the tongue into a horn that releases a sound blast, (essentially a much weaker version of present mic)
30. Bronze skull: the top half of the skull is made of solid bronze, making it tougher than bone.
31. Skin deep: turns items into tattoos to store them, the size remains the same, so nothing large (reader suggested)
32. Water Body: Can turn body to water and absorb other water nearby to grow larger. Max size is about ten times normal height
33. Vine Whip: can control and increase the growth of pre-existing vines (reader suggested)
34. Soup Blood: instead of blood the user has tomato soup, it regenerates near instantly preventing user from bleeding out (this was suggested by my cousin)
35. Ingredients: when looking at food you instantly know everything in it. Great for detecting poisons and secret recipes. (also suggested by my cousin, I think he was just hungry)
36. Iron stomach: Can consume anything without getting sick and can still get nutrients if it’s organic. (you guessed it, another from my cousin)
37. Statue: User becomes nearly indestructible, but cannot move while active
38. Violent Empathy: Physical violence causes the user and target to gain information and perspective from the other. They will understand their hearts, hopes, dreams, emotions, fears, and weaknesses. You only receive info/understanding when you are on the attack (the villain had used this as a way to interrogate prisoners) (reader suggested)
39. Bass Boost: allows voice to be very deep and loud
40. Physical Enhancement: User is twice as fast and strong as they would naturally be.
41. Muscle augmentation: Muscular’s ability to do the big punchy stuff
42. Shock absorption: the power to receive the big punchy stuff
43. Octopus: transformation that lets user turn into an octopus of the same mass
44. Vice grip: an incredibly powerful grip that can crush most things, includes near indestructible hands (reader suggested)

Quirks gifted from dad:

1. Laser eyes: eyes that shoot lasers. (totally not like superman)
2. Bird’s eye view: astral projected versions of your eyes appear ¼ mile above a place you have been before. Cannot change altitude. Blind while actively using quirk
3. Extra eyes: can grow extra eyes across the body, limit of 25.
4. Bending Sight: can curve your vision.
5. Dragonfly: mutation that gives 4 dragonfly wings and insect eyes
6. Blink: line of sight teleport, it has a greater strain more times you use it in a row. Requires direct eyeline, no glass/mirror/camera.
7. Regeneration: the same quirk copy that they gave to the nomu that heal crazy fast (2 copies taken from nomu)
8. Physical peak: keeps your body at its peak. Don’t age past your late twenties and be resistant to most diseases and drugs. Also prevents issues like atrophy and arthritis. 
9. Tough Skin: what it sounds like, skin is more durable and is very hard to damage.
10. Plant manipulation: can control any existing plant within a given radius (radius determined by training) (totally isn’t poison ivy without the weird sex pollen)
11. X-ray vision: can see through things (totally not like superman)
12. Conjured chains: can conjure 10 chains, the chains come from the metal ring mutation on each finger. Can theoretically nullify the quirks of targets wrapped in the chains (totally isn’t Kurapika from hunterxhunter)
13. Cursed blood: blood bursts into black flame when exposed to air. Fire spreads instantly to anything it touches. The spread fire is normal fire, but the initial black fire can’t be put out. Black fire goes out when the blood cells die. This also has a mutation where the user is 100% fireproof
14. Weak telekinesis: can manipulate 10 pounds at a time, has to be within feet, can move numerous objects as long as you are under the weight limit.
15. Heavy: Can temporarily double the weight of something. How long it lasts is based on training
16. Dominant hand: Briefly switches someone’s dominant hand from right to left or vice versa (reader suggested)
17. Air Walk: You can walk on air, (Lady Nagant’s second quirk in canon)
18. Parroting: can copy someone’s voice once they hear it in person (reader suggested)
19. Quirk Amplifier: can boost the power of someone else’s quirk, does not affect self
20. Ocean Hydrokinesis: Powerful manipulation of water, much weaker if not saltwater
21. Resonate: Allows you to match the pitch of any item's resonating frequency by looking at it. Minor increase in user’s natural volume.
22. Fire lance: focus nearby flame into a spear shape that can be controlled. This spear is hotter and stronger than the initial fire
23. Babble: can understand and speak any spoken language (Totally not from hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy)
24. Weapons master: user has knowledge on how best to use a weapon as soon as they touch it, does not give skill to do these moves, just the knowledge on how to do them
25. Psychic hand: create an invisible hand that can float through the air and is as strong as the user. Quirks requiring contact with hands typically work through this hand as well.

Quirks from corpses:

1. Chair: the best quirk to ever exist, allows user to become any type of chair
2. Khaali: 8 arms, blue skin, added strength and height
3. King kong: gorilla mutation all the time and a gigantification quirk of up to 40 feet
4. Exponential punch: each punch in a row adds 50% to the punches power. Resets if you’re hit back or 5 seconds pass between hits. (Totally not Combo Star from 7 deadly sin’s Derieri)
5. Hair color:  can change hair color at will. (reader suggested)
6. Spider web: shoot spider web from your fingertips (Totally not like spiderman)
7. Silk: can create silk fabrics
8. Mend: if something is torn or cracked, it can be instantly fixed. But any missing material cannot be replaced with the quirk. (totally not the spell Mending from D&D)
9. Green thumb: your thumb is literally green. Putting your thumb into the ground causes plants of your choice to grow there no matter how fertile/infertile that area is
10. Touch based telekinesis: exactly what it sounds like. Telekinesis but you have to be touching the item. 
11. Crow: you can turn into a crow. Can still talk while a bird (Totally not like Qrow from RWBY)
12. Mood Blade: Create a sword made of light, the color/shape/sharpness depends on your feelings. 
13. Vision Video: Allows you to record what you see, also gives you a usb finger mutation so you can upload these videos.
14. Gene Splice: can alter seeds from plants permanently to create new species. (reader suggested)
15. Axolotl: axolotl mutation, gives advanced healing and gills, otherwise just aesthetic changes (reader suggested)
16. Blood spikes: Turn your blood into spikes. These spikes are incredibly tough. Drawback is blood loss is a real issue.
17. Preserve: can prevent dead organics from decaying for a very long but undetermined amount of time.

Quirks given with consent:

1. Wyvern: scales, tail, horns instead of hair, and arms become powerful wings
2. Snail: eyes are on eyestalks, can create shells on command. Causes the user to be deaf because snails don’t have ears
3. Acid Touch: sweat and spit is a potent nitric acid
4. Stone golem: your body is made of stone. Very durable but have basically no sense of touch. (Totally isn’t like The Thing from the fantastic four, except gray instead of orange)
5. Poison Ivy: Skin has the properties of poison ivy, giving a rash to anyone that touches you.
6. Enhanced senses: your senses are enhanced. Can’t change how enhanced so it can be easy to become overstimulated
7. Freeze Tag: can cause muscle cramps with a touch. Activates easily (especially when emotional), clothing in the way weakens but doesn’t stop it.
8. Cheetah: Can do anything a cheetah can, has cheetah based mutations with the eyes, ears, and fur. (Totally isn’t Cheetah from DC)
9. Cremation: All that flamey stuff Dabi can do.
10. Enchanted fruits and vegetables: Any time the user touches a fruit or vegetable it gives an effect to it depending on what plant it is. The prior user gave a notebook explaining what different plants do, so there’s not too much trial and error needed.
11. Detachable limbs: Can detach body parts by pulling on them, but any harsh tug will remove a body part and it takes about a week to grow back.
12. Naga: Snake scales all over and a long tail instead of legs
13. Injury absorption: can take on someone else’s wounds for yourself, doesn’t work with scars or healed wounds, can not be used to regrow anything missing.
14. Soundproof: user cannot create sound, and absorbs nearby sound, making the general area quieter the closer it is to the user, causing user to be deaf and mute.
15. Pain share: anyone within a given radius feels (but does not receive) any wounds that the user has. (reader suggested)
16. Mantis Shrimp: Has a colorful exoskeleton and has a club instead of hands. Also has mantis shrimp eye stocks and sees far more of the color spectrum (reader suggested)
17. Spring legs: instead of legs the user has coiled springs. Making jumping very easy, but walking very hard. 
18. Mermaid: Has a mermaid body and hydrokinesis, can breathe air or water but cannot be out of water for long periods.
19. Translucent: user is completely see through. (Hagakure’s grandmother)
20. No pain no gain: The more injured the user is, the stronger they become. Gives a rush whenever activated, user is at risk of becoming addicted to the quirk. (Totally not metal bat from one punch man)
21. Poison quills: user is covered in short spikes (under 1 inch), each has properties of an anesthetic
22. Taser teeth: user’s teeth have an electrical charge, user is resistant to electricity
23. Electric ice: user freezes any conductive material they come in contact with. (user wore rubber clothing to restrain quirk)
24. Scissor hands: User has razor sharp scissors instead of fingers (totally not edward scissor hands)

Chapter Text

The last ten months had been like a constant emotional roller coaster. Everything had been so chaotic and hectic, just about everything in her life was getting shifted around. She’d gone from coming home to Izuku and (occasionally) missing Toshinori to missing Izuku and coming home to Toshinori.

To be honest, she felt awful about herself every moment she was happy and content. Because even if she couldn’t do anything about it, her baby boy was out there going through who knows what and probably being manipulated and shaped into a villain. They’d put together that Izuku had been convinced that All for One was his father and it seemed likely that he was trying to turn Izuku against the heroes, or at the very least against All Might.

The idea that the two most important men in her life might fight each other broke her heart in ways she couldn’t put into words. But there wasn’t anything she could do about it. It was her day off from working at the hospital, so she just sat in the living room watching the news. She’d started doing that more and more since Izuku and Toshi tended to show up on it, so it was a good way to keep up with what they were doing and making sure they were safe.

The moment she turned on the television she saw Toshi doing battle with mindless beasts while her sweet little Izuku got everyone away from the danger. The whole time there was the villain that had announced himself as All for One. She’d heard so many terrifying things about him, but she’d never actually known what he looked like, not that she really knew now since his mask was in the way. It was odd to finally see the villain, she’d known about him for a long time, but he’d always been more of a concept than an actual person, and he definitely lived up to his reputation.

Then, after about fifteen minutes of everyone watching on the edge of their seats, the unimaginable happened. Toshinori lost. Well, unimaginable to the rest of the world. She imagined it every single time he went out, his time getting shorter and his body getting weaker.

The cameras all turned to show her son stepping forward and taking on the villain, saving All Might. But she saw the fear and hesitation in his eyes and remembered that, from his perspective, that awful man was his father. She was ashamed of herself for thinking even the mightiest of villains could make her little boy any less heroic. Even though he was clearly scared, he stood his ground and fought back.

It was near impossible to tell what was happening, everything was happening too fast to stay in focus and the entire landscape changed over and over. The park went from grass, to a vine forest, to a pit of fire, to a field of hands, then back to regular dirt and stone.

She gasped loudly as Izuku swayed on his feet, trying to continue but completely out of strength. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she feared for the life of her son. But before everything could go horribly wrong, a horde of heroes led by Toshinori forced the villain to retreat. Despite how catastrophic the fight looked, there were no casualties as far as anyone could tell.

All the cameras nearby focused on Izuku, who had gone pale, collapsing into the arms of a nearby hero(?). He was then picked up by the hero/homeless man that had caught him. The man then got into a car with a giant albino rat and drove away. No one tried to stop them, so hopefully they were heroes, she never could remember all the different heroes out there.

But that didn’t actually answer the question of who just drove off with her kid. After a quick google search she found out that the ‘giant rat hero’ was the principle of UA. Which was good because he wasn’t just a random person, but bad because she had no idea what that school wanted with her kid.

On the plus side, now she knew where her kid was and who to talk to until she got to see him. If that meant banging on the doors of UA itself, then so be it.

Her attention was drawn away by her phone making the tone of her receiving a voicemail, which was odd since it hadn’t wrung. It wasn’t a number she recognized, but she listened to it just in case it was important.

‘Hello there! If you, Inko Midoriya, are receiving this message that means Izuku Midoriya has been successfully relocated to UA. This message also means that any legal and/or medical issues have not been sorted and you will not be able to see him yet. You will be called within a week once I’ve finished resolving his status as a criminal.”

Well that was a very odd message, even if it was both helpful and optimistic. Would it really be possible to keep her baby safe from the law? She supposed she could wait a few days, but if she didn’t hear something within 48 hours she would absolutely be calling.

She had been thinking things over when she heard a knock at the door, it was probably Mitsuki checking in after seeing everything that just happened on the news. To her surprise it was Tsukachi.

She took a step back to let him in. “I wasn’t expecting you to come over, I figured you and everyone else would be busy with Toshi’s real form getting revealed.”

He sighed deeply and sat down in the living room. “Oh, we are. But this took priority. We got a new witness that shared a lot of information on where Izuku was for the last year.”

Her eyes lit up. “That’s good right? Why do you look so conflicted? Was he somewhere awful?!”

“Calm down, Izuku was and is fine. But that’s really not why I’m here. I’m here to give you the benefit of the doubt because we’re friends and my quirk isn’t actually perfect, it only works if the person knows they’re lying.”

Now she started to get a bit nervous. “Um, I appreciate it, but I can’t really imagine what I could have done to get this reaction, so it’s probably not true?” She didn’t sound or feel very sure since she had no idea what she was being accused of, but she also couldn’t think of doing a single criminal thing in her life.

“I really hope so. About an hour ago a man came into my office and honestly said he was Izuku’s father. Which means one of two things, he wrongly believes he’s Izuku’s father, or you cheated on my best friend and he’s not Izuku’s biological father.”

She was stunned into silence. She was motionless for nearly half a minute before responding with sorrow in her voice. “That was not a mistake I ever expected to come back to bite me after all these years. By any chance, is it a man named Hisashi with a fire breathing quirk?”

Tsukachi was obviously angry on behalf of his friend and took a moment to compose himself. “Moral judgements aside, why on earth didn’t you bring this up when we were all scrambling to find out who could be pretending to be his father?”

“To be perfectly honest, It never even crossed my mind until you just brought it up. I know that sounds fake, but it was a single drunken night a decade and a half ago, plus, I knew Toshi was the father since fire breathing and my weak telekinesis would never create quirk stealing.”

“Do you know what Hisashi’s last name is?”

She paused, surprised by the question. “I honestly can’t say that I do.”

“It’s Shigaraki. As in, the son of Hideaki Shigaki, which is apparently All for One’s actual name.”

“What?!”

“Yes. The story I was given was that Hisashi is a businessman that had little to no contact with his villainous father. But when he saw Izuku getting arrested he put things together and requested that All for One rescue his newfound son. Izuku then primarily lived with Hisashi and his adopted son Tomura. Hisashi came to the precinct today hoping to warn us of the big attack, but was too late for us to use the information.”

He stood up from the couch and moved to leave, “I know you and Toshinori would both probably want to keep this under wraps, but it’s too relevant to keep out of the official reports.”

He had left before she’d gotten her wits together enough to actually say anything in response to that sudden dump of information.

Inko sat patiently, knowing exactly what was coming. She had taken at least a few minutes to look through the internet to figure out who on earth this Hisashi Shigaraki person actually was. She would have loved to leave that man in the past, but since it seemed like she’d have to interact with him going forward she might as well know more about him.

From what she found out he was the CEO of a pharmaceutical company with a focus on quirk research. Inko kept looking for scandals or signs that he was as evil as his father (she really really hoped she hadn’t slept with someone evil). From everything she saw he was just a man trying to do good in the world, donating to charity and giving medicine to children’s hospitals. She couldn’t find any scandals, which wasn’t too odd, no one really cared enough about some niche medication development company to go looking for one.

She was relieved that he didn’t have a spouse, current or past. She didn’t want to deal with another layer of drama and she didn’t think she could handle the idea of being replaced by another mom. At least he didn’t seem like an awful person, but she was still reeling from the information that Izuku was potentially All for One’s grandchild.

After she’d looked up a fair amount she put on a pot of tea and waited. It wasn’t long until there was a familiar knock on her door, always sounding a bit hesitant, like he was nervous to put more than the bare minimum of force into it.

“Come in.”

And in walked a very uncomfortable looking Toshinori Yagi. She could see he was already fidgeting with his hands and looking everywhere in the room except at her. She sighed and put out two cups of tea on the living room table.

“Have a seat Toshi, I know we have a lot to talk about.”

He nodded slowly and sat down, still not quite looking at her. “Honestly today has turned everything upside down. My weak form was revealed to the public. Izuku is safely with heroes but All for One got away. And as if that wasn’t enough Tsukachi told me that All for One’s son spoke to him and is claiming to be Izuku’s father. Tsukachi said he already confirmed it with you.”

She just nodded, unsure what to say.

“Can I ask why? Did I do something wrong? I know I wasn’t the most attentive partner back then…”

“If you want me to explain it I can, it doesn’t excuse it, but I can at least explain.”

He finally raised his head and looked into her eyes, the sorrow within them nearly broke her heart.

“It only happened the one time, though I suppose that doesn’t really help anything now. I had just been so angry with you, it was our anniversary and you canceled the reservation we’d made months in advance. There had been some breakthrough in an investigation and you said it couldn’t wait, so you made your way to America and spent the weekend with David.”

She sighed. “I didn’t know what to do with all those feelings, and it felt wrong to get angry at you for saving the world. So I dealt with it by going out and getting drunk at some bar I don’t remember the name of, and then Hisashi found me crying at the bar about my boyfriend. And well… I’m sure you can guess what happened from there.”

He didn’t speak so she kept going, not able to look him in the eyes. “To be honest, I probably wouldn’t have been so upset if it hadn’t been David. You two always seemed to have a thing for each other. I guess I was always paranoid that you two were sleeping together since you seemed to go visit him so often.”

Toshinori’s eyes suddenly went wide, a deer in headlights was an understatement. Well, that certainly wasn’t the expression she was expecting. He had a look that was a mix of surprise and guilt. He wrung his hands out a few times as he collected himself.

“Well, uhh, in the spirit of being open about bad choices we made about a decade and a half ago…”

Her response came out in a whisper. “No way.”

“I’mMelissa’sfatherbutshedoesn’tknowthat.”

She blinked a few times, processing that garbled sentence. Even if it wasn’t the most important part, the first question out of her mouth was, “Wait, Dave is trans?”

That clearly wasn’t the response he expected either. “Yeah? Sometimes I forget how little you two interacted. It wasn’t a secret but he didn’t advertise it either.”

“Let me get this straight, you have two different secret love children, assuming that Izuku is yours. If there are any more, now's really the time to share.”

“No, just the two. Once it’s possible we really need to do a paternity test.”

Inko had started laughing and crying into her tea. “Our lives are such a mess. How did this all turn into such a soap opera?”

He moved closer and wrapped his arms around her and held her close. “I have no idea. My guess is a lack of impulse control. Do you think we can still make this work?”

She nodded with a smile. “We both made mistakes, but that was a long time ago and going forward we’ll be honest with each other and do better. Hopefully nothing else crazy happens anytime soon.”

Toshinori laughed, “Good luck with that. In my experience something world shattering and mind blowing usually happens once every week or so.”

Chapter Text

The next few days after his fight with his dad were a whirlwind of legal things. He had to fill out tons of paperwork, talk to people over and over about what he’d been doing the last year, and now he was preparing to meet his mom for the first time since he’d killed the slime villain. He was dealing with that last bit by not thinking about it too hard.

Apparently going from a vigilante to a hero student had a lot of steps and a lot of forms to sign, and since Nezu had gotten it all prepared in advance they were doing it all at once. Legally, Aizawa and Yamada were basically his parole officers that made sure he didn’t go back to his villainous ways. But they were also his temporary guardians since he was a minor and was living with them.

The fact that the government was relying on Aizawa of all heroes to keep him out of crime was sort of hilarious. Eraserhead frequently worked alongside vigilantes and information brokers, plus he hated the bureaucracy of hero work enough that he was probably one time wasting form away from just quitting and becoming a vigilante himself. That said, they probably accepted him as Izuku’s keeper because they doubted any other hero would be a real threat against him.

It was the afternoon and Eri had been put down for a nap so he was just hanging out in the living room with Aizawa when Hizashi walked in from the kitchen after cleaning up from lunch.

“Hey kiddo, I wanted to ask you how your talk with the detective went this morning. I know we said that we’re okay with you hiding some bits to the police, but I just remembered that he was the one with a lie detection quirk and got all worried about you.”

Aizawa gave a lazy glare at his husband, barely looking up from the dishes. “‘Zashi, that was four hours ago. If it went wrong don’t you think it would have come up by now? Clearly he handled it just fine on his own, wouldn’t be shocked if you had a dozen anti-polygraph quirks or something else ridiculous.”

“Oh, um, it went well. Lie detection quirks are actually super easy to get around if you’re prepared for them. No quirk needed.”

Now Izuku was the recipient of the perpetual glare that was Aizawa. “What do you mean it’s easy to get around? Tsukachi is notorious for being near impossible to trick.”

“Um, my dad and I had talked about it. He said the way to get around just about any lie detection quirk wasn’t to find a way to lie, but to find a way to make your words true.”

“Kid, that makes no sense.”

Izuku scrunched his face for a bit as he thought of a good example.

“Okay, so if I told you ‘dragons are real’ that would be a lie, but if I say ‘in the book I’m reading, dragons are real’. I’m still saying the same thing, but by adding context it no longer sets off a lie quirk. Now, wait one second and I’ll show you why that little trick becomes super important.”

They both watched as the excitable teen ran off to his room. The voice hero leaned over and rested her head on Shouta’s shoulder. “It’s so adorable when he gets all excited talking about quirks and how they work. I don’t understand any of it, but it’s still so cute.”

Izuku came running back into the room holding a binder and with a big smile on his face. He presented it to them, letting them see the title of ‘The Last Ten Months’. When they opened it up it was a breakdown of Izuku’s cover story in bullet point format. It covered just about every day he was gone and offered a very comprehensive story on time spent with the fictional Hisashi Shigaraki rather than the supervillain All for One.

It was interesting and likely useful to have it written down so he wouldn’t get his stories mixed up, but he had no idea why it would help someone get around a polygraph quirk. He was about to ask but held back since he saw the enthusiasm in Izuku’s eyes and just nodded at him to continue.

“Ok. So if I told Tsukachi that I only interacted with All for One a couple of times in the last ten months that would normally be a lie. But with this book in existence, it’s now the truth.”

Hizashi scratched his head. “Try one more time buddy, I’m still lost. This feels like a riddle and I’m awful at those.”

“I’ll write it down to make this easier.”

He grabbed a piece of paper and a pencil and wrote out In the last ten months I only met All for One a few times .

“This is a lie. But when we do this.”

He made a few extra marks and showed them the paper again. It now read, In ‘The Last Ten Months’ I only met All for One a few times.

“Even though these sound exactly the same out loud, the second one is genuinely a true statement. In this book, titled ‘The Last Ten Months’, it states right here that I only met him a few times. No quirk needed, just a bit of wordplay.”

Hizashi just stared at him for a second. “Wow, sometimes I forget how smart you are, little listener. Did you come up with that all on your own or was that your dad’s method?”

“Um, not really. That idea was pretty much all me. He gave me that hint about finding a way to say the truth, but the way he does it is saying the context or the word ‘not’ at a frequency people can’t hear. You could probably do that too, just shifting super high or low part way through a sentence.”

Aizawa just patted him on the head. “Every time you talk I feel more and more glad that you’ve got a good heart. We’d all be in trouble if that big brain of yours wanted to hurt people.”

After just sitting together for a few minutes and watching tv (they avoided the news since it was all about Izuku or All Might), Aizawa’s phone buzzed. He looked down at the text with his trademarked glare, which they were seeing a lot of that day. He then groaned and rubbed his temples.

“Alright problem child, Tsukachi was the last hurdle so you’re now officially in the rehabilitation program and not a criminal.”

Izuku was very confused. “Um, that seems like good news? Why do you sound so frustrated with it?”

“I’m not frustrated, just preemptively emotionally drained. The reason is that family can now visit you with our supervision, and the detective informed me that your mother will be here within the hour.”

Izuku shot off of the couch and stared at him. “What?! She’s coming here now?!”

“Yeah. In the future we can set up a schedule rather than her just showing up randomly. But for right now the only way to keep her from showing up would be if you felt unsafe around her or we had reason to believe she would ‘cause harm to your rehabilitation’. And from what you’ve said, neither of those apply.”

He was absolutely not ready to face his mom. He hadn’t seen her in nearly a year. He’d become a criminal. She started dating(?) his father’s nemesis. She never wanted him to use his quirk both now he’s been using it all the time. Oh god she probably hates him and is rushing over to yell at him.

He took a few nervous steps back and turned into an armchair in the corner of the room.

Aizawa sighed. “Yeah. I kinda figured that would be how you felt about it. But try not to worry about it too much, from what little I do know, she cares about you a lot.”

Present Mic moved and sat near him. “Little Listener, if you really don’t want her here just say the word and I’ll find a way to make that happen. But you’ve gotta talk to us, you know? I can’t read your mind so you gotta tell me what’s in that big brain of yours.”

The chair seemed to shift slightly as he spoke. “...No. She can visit. I’m just scared and nervous…”

“How about this, you take a few minutes to calm down and relax with the cats, and we’ll let you know when she gets here. Does that sound like a good plan?”

“Uh huh.”

“Alrighty then.” He then scooped up Shadow, who was nearby, and plopped the cat down on the chair version of Izuku. Even with his perfect disguise, the cats all seemed to know it was still him so they would migrate to the stressed out boy and curl up on his lap/seat to comfort him. Bastard seemed to be able to sense his distress no matter what form he was in and began nuzzling her head against him.

A few minutes passed when Eri got up from her nap and walked into the room with sleepy eyes. She saw the extra chair in the living room and immediately knew what that meant, Izuku had gotten nervous or spooked and became furniture. She didn’t really think it was weird, it was just a thing Izuku did. Hizashi would sing and bake when he was stressed, Shouta would pretend to nap in his yellow sleeping bag, and Izuku would turn into a chair.

She walked over and patted one of the arm rests. “I hope you feel better soon.” She then sat in front of the chair/Izuku and just pet Shadow for a bit.

It took a little under ten minutes for him to be ready to be a person instead of a chair. “Okay, I think I feel more ready to talk to her now.”

The two heroes nodded, glad he felt a bit more prepared. Eri just looked up at him, “Who’re you talking about?”

“Um, my mom. I haven’t seen her in a long time and she’s coming to visit today.”

“My mom wasn’t very nice. She gave me to the bad guys for money. Is your mom nicer?”

Oh gosh, Eri was the cutest little girl but sometimes her words were heartbreaking without her realizing. “Yeah, my mom’s way nicer than that, don’t you worry about it.” He ruffled her hair a little, causing her to giggle and smile up at him.

It wasn’t long until he heard someone clambering up the steps to their house in a rushed manner. The doorbell was pushed four times in a row before Aizawa had gotten over to the door with a heavy sigh. “Yeah, yeah, I’m coming.”

He opened it up to a very frazzled looking Inko Midoriya. “You’re Midoriya right? Tsukachi said to expect you. Come on in.” He spoke a little more quietly for a moment so the kids wouldn’t hear him. “Try to dial it down a little bit though, both the kids are pretty jumpy.”

She hadn’t really processed anything she was being told. She hadn’t been able to see her baby boy in ten months and had been forced to wait an extra couple of days for the paperwork to be sorted. So it would be an understatement to say she was feeling impatient and single minded when it came to getting to Izuku.

“Izuku?!” She went rushing into the apartment looking for her son, calling out for him. The hero swore under his breath as she ignored his warning and instead started making an almost panicked call for Izuku. He could understand it and could forgive her being very emotional and not completely rational, but at the same time he knew she was going to startle both Izuku and Eri.

When he walked into the living room with her he spotted Eri hiding behind a chair/Izuku in the corner. Bastard had noticed someone else was in their house and was standing guard between her kids and the newcomer.

“Where is Izuku?! Why isn’t he here?!” At the loud voice Shadow turned into a black orb and hovered next to Eri, taking cover together behind Izuku.

He heard the panic in her voice and tried to calm her down. “I know you want to see him, and he is here, but you won’t be able to talk to him until you can stop yelling. If nothing else you’re freaking out the cats and our daughter.”

She took a deep breath and nodded, spotting the little girl that had taken cover behind a chair. “Right, of course. I’m sorry about that, I just need to see that he’s okay with my own eyes.”

While she wasn’t looking, Izuku turned back into a human and started moving over to her. “Mom?”

It came out like a question, but he wasn’t sure what he was asking. Maybe it was all the questions that logic told him were false but he still harbored in his chest. Did she hate him for being a criminal? Was she proud of the good he did? Did she care that he could be a hero now? Did she still love him?

She quickly wrapped him in a tight hug. “Izuku, my sweet baby boy. I missed you so much.”

“I missed you too mom.”

He couldn’t help himself from smiling as she took a step back from the hug and started looking him up and down for injuries or any other sign that he wasn’t well.

“Have they been feeding you enough? Are getting eight hours of sleep every night? Because you have bags under your eyes. And my goodness, look at how much you’ve grown! Is it normal to grow a foot in ten months? We’ll definitely need to update everything with your doctor. I bet no one took you to the dentist the entire time you were gone either. You’re supposed to do that every six months.”

He just smiled and let her manhandle him a bit as he was fussed over. It was her way of showing she cared.

“Well, we’ll just add that to the list of things to do. We’ll need to talk to your regular doctor, make sure all your shots are up to date before you go to UA, do the bloodwork for the paternity test, and now we need to set up an appointment with the dentist too. You might be able to throw buses now, but that won’t protect you against cavities.”

He had to stop and think that through for a second. “Wait, why do we need a paternity test? I thought everything was confirmed by Tsukachi?”

“Well, sort of. All it really confirms is that Hisashi Shigaraki is very sure he’s your father, not that he actually is.” She sighed softly. “I hope you don’t think less of me for this, but there are two potential fathers in this situation. One is the man you were with the last year, Shigaraki Hisashi. The other is Yagi Toshinori, better known as All MIght.”

Aizawa just stared at the two of them, Inko looking a bit nervous to reveal this and Izuku looking absolutely bewildered and shocked, and slowly sipped his coffee. “Wow, I didn’t see that one coming.”

Chapter Text

In a UA meeting room there were seven people impatiently waiting. It was an odd group to say the least, but what family isn’t a bit odd?

At the head of the table was Aizawa, who drank his coffee with a smirk, clearly having way too much fun with this. He might deny it, but he was a man that thrived off of drama, and this was the true holy grail of drama.

Next to him was his loving husband Yamada who was worried and nervous on behalf of their ward. He swatted Aizawa on the arm and whispered aggressively at him. “Stop smiling like that. You look like you’re either crazy or just an asshole, so knock it off.”

Izuku sat between Yamada and his mother. He was basically vibrating with nerves. So many things would be impacted by what happened next and he definitely wasn’t ready for that. But there was one person that made his worries lessen in the moment.

On Izuku’s lap was Eri who refused to let Izuku leave without her. She had started calling him her big brother and was going to protect him like he did for her. She could tell he was anxious so she would be his hero this time. This meant that while sitting on his lap she had her hands on her hips and was glaring suspiciously at everyone else, sort of like having a puppy as a guard dog.

Inko was pointedly not looking at anyone. Because regardless of what the results are, she was still the woman who managed to sleep with both the symbol of peace and the son of the symbol of evil. She felt like a fool but there was nothing she could do about it now but hope that the father was the man next to her.

That man next to her, Toshinori, was also an emotional mess. His entire life had fallen apart very quickly. His weakened form had been revealed to the public and the world saw him defeated by his nemesis. On top of that, the son he’d been trying to find might not actually be his. He also didn’t trust this ‘Hisashi’ fellow in the slightest. He didn’t know what his game was, but he could tell he wasn’t being completely honest even though he passed every test Tsukachi had for him.

All for One had a calm facade as he played the part of Hisashi Shigaraki. Honestly it was taking all his effort not to laugh. He was pretending to be his own son in order to remain in contact with his actual son. It was all very ridiculous. He also needed to prepare himself to act surprised, since he knew exactly what the results would be, having secretly done the same test months ago.

When the doors opened and Nezu walked in they all looked over to him in varying levels of anticipation.

“As requested, here are three separate paternity tests all completed by separate offices to ensure that neither party interferes with the results. All three got the exact same result, every lab even triple checked to make sure there was no doubt.” He paused for dramatic effect and jumped onto the table, throwing the results into the air. “They were all inconclusive!”

Toshinori rose to his feet in shock. “How is that even possible?!”

“I’m glad you asked! Since quirks and DNA are intrinsically bound, any attempts at testing his DNA registers him as over a hundred different people. To make it even more convoluted, it reads you as nine, and Shigaraki here as two since neither of you were born with your quirks. Unless we were able to strip all of you of your various given quirks, it would be near impossible to find any concrete evidence of who the parent is.”

The room was silent for a few moments before Izuku turned to All Might. “Well? That’s all you were here for right? Feel free to tell people that I wasn’t actually your kid and go back to pretending I don’t exist, I’ll gladly back up that story that the test showed you weren’t my father.”

Toshinori knew he would have to be patient with his son(?). He had hurt the boy in many ways and would need to work at gaining that trust. It would be hard work but he couldn’t let him be won over by All for One’s child.

“I know now that I made a mistake in putting so much distance between us-”

“NOW?! You know it’s a mistake, now ? It took you fifteen years to realize abandoning kids is bad?! And call it what it is! It wasn’t ‘so much distance’, it was abandonment.”

“I know you’re angry, but I did that to keep you safe. My enemies would have come after you to try and use you against me.”

“Oh, I am calling such bs.”

Eri wasn’t a hundred percent sure what was going on, but she definitely understood that they didn’t like the skinny yellow man and that he’d been mean to her big brother. She did her best to help by glaring angrily and pouting at the skinny man.

Inko frowned, “Honey, I won’t fault you for being angry at him, I certainly was. But that is the reason he left.”

“Sure, that was the reason, but it’s a stupid reason. First off, it assumes none of your enemies had been watching you while you dated my mom and then struck while she was undefended after you left. Secondly, it makes the weirdly humble assumption that you wouldn’t be able to keep her safe. Having you on speed dial probably made her the safest woman in Japan until you left. And finally, lots of heroes have kids and they have the same concerns, so they live in neighborhoods together and send their kids to high security private schools that are made for this exact reason.”

Izuku was practically seething with rage at this point. “But that’s just why the idea was dumb, here’s why you’re a liar. If you actually gave a shit about my safety and were doing it to be selfless, then why the f-” he paused as he remembered the little girl on his lap. “-frick didn’t you know what I looked like? But no, you looked me in the eyes and had no idea who I was, because your idea of protecting is just an excuse to do what you want.”

He stood up and marched out of the room and looked at Nezu before he left. “Can you reschedule the quirk test from tomorrow to now, I really want to explode some mock cities.”

He got the standard cheery smile in response. “Of course! That should be easy enough, they wanted to see you as soon as possible anyways.”

After Izuku marched out he was quickly followed by Aizawa and Yamada, who were presumably taking him and Eri back home. After the doors were shut Nezu turned to the three remaining parents and smiled.

“I think that went rather well, all things considered. There was a good chance I’d have to replace this wing of the school by having all of you in one room together. Hisashi, I’ve noticed you’ve been rather quiet this whole time.”

“Oh, that’s because I never cared about the test, I’ve been raising him the past year and consider him my son regardless of genetics. For me, knowing his biological parent is more about curiosity and medical reasons. I don’t know about Yagi’s family history but I know there are a few hereditary disorders that we should keep an eye out for in case he’s mine.”

Toshinori muttered under his breath, “Oh, like being an evil maniac?”

Hisashi gave him a glare that is normally reserved for dealing with petulant children. “No, I meant that we have a history of kidney troubles and immune system disorders.”

Inko nodded, glad for there to be an opportunity for a shift in topic. “We can probably schedule a meeting between you and his doctor so you can add your family history to his medical files.”

All Might didn’t state his concerns out loud, but internally he was worried that he might be too late to reach Izuku. He had his suspicions that Hisashi and All for One were the same person, and it wouldn’t be able to prove since he got past Tsukachi’s quirk.

Izuku just seemed so angry and was apparently planning on taking that anger out on a fake city. If he kept being influenced by All for One/Hisashi, how long would it be until he took his anger out on real cities? He’d have to keep an eye on the boy and do everything he can to lead him back to the light and take his rightful place as the boy’s father. He may have been gone for a while, but that was for a good and heroic reason, surely Izuku will come to understand that in time.

A few eager quirk counselors and agents came on behalf of the Hero Commision so that they could record what his quirks could do and have official documentation rather than just taking his word for it. Well, the official reason was paperwork, the unofficial reason was to see just what this kid was capable of if he cut loose. Anyone worth their paycheck at the Commision could tell that even in that crazy fight he had with his grandfather he was holding back for the sake of protecting people and buildings.

But what if he didn’t? What he stopped caring and just wanted to destroy? This was them trying to find out just how bad it would be if he turned on the heroes and if it would be possible to stop him if he did.

Izuku smiled as he walked up to one of the testing centers that normally would be used for over a hundred testers at once, but today would be just him. This was the second part of what his dad had talked to him about. He’d done good things so that they knew they could respect and trust him, now he needed to remind them that they should respect but also fear him. He needed them to know that if they fought him they would lose.

He’d already given the information on all his quirks a few days earlier. However, he did alter the definition of Physical Prime at Aizawa’s suggestion, so that way they weren’t aware of his immortality, they thought it just helped with building muscle and added to his growth spurt. While just about everyone else had one or two pages for their quirk registration form, he had a decent sized book.

They spoke to him through an intercom system since they were staying in the observation area along with Aizawa, Yamada, and Eri. “Okay, if you’re up for it we’d like to see what you can do with some combinations of those quirks. There are numerous robot villains in the mock city of testing site D, we want you to defeat them as quickly as possible.”

He nodded. “Are there any people in or around that testing area? I don’t want someone getting caught up in it.”

“No, all of the testing areas have been cleared, there won’t be anyone within a few miles of you. We don’t want you to have any reason to hold back.”

Izuku unintentionally gave a villainous grin. He’d been remaining calm and not lashing out the entire time they’d been waiting since the meeting had ended about half an hour ago and was honestly proud of his own restraint. “Good.”

He strode forward to the very edge of the cityscape and took a deep breath.

He’d start with the couple of blocks closest to him.

Bass Boost, Air Horn, Resonate . Or as he had come to call the combination, “ True Sound! ”

A horn appeared in his mouth and unleashed deep rumbling noise. The city itself began to shake and vibrate, walls started to crack, steel beams were bending and twisting, and before long, the mock city in front of him began to collapse. It took less than ten seconds for everything within about a thousand feet to be turned into rubble.

Now it was time for the mid range attack.

“ True Fire! ” The naming convention was simple but self explanatory. Whenever he found a handful of quirks that did similar things and boosted each other to crazy heights he’d put ‘true’ at the beginning. He wouldn’t do it for most combo moves though, only for moves of his strongest caliber. And honestly, calling out a cool name before doing something badass was just fun.

Hellfire, Cremation, Cursed Blood, Fire Lance.

The flames roared out of his body, bathing the world around him in purple light. It had taken hours and hours of practice at merging the two fire quirks together, but he’d finally reached the point where he could call forth the violet flames seamlessly. The raging flames twisted, forming into hundreds of spear shapes as he applied Fire Lance to it. Fire Lance was a powerful flame quirk on its own, based around compressing a pre-existing fire and shaping it into a lance that could be launched like a missile.

Each lance was about six feet long, a foot a its thickest and tapered at both ends. He sent the first wave of them and watched as the remaining citiscape exploded. The force of the explosions alone flattened the building, the violet flames washing over the rubble was just just overkill. One spear that size was powerful enough to turn concrete and steel into molten slag, and he could make about fifty every second.

A massive robot rose from the ground but wasn’t able to take a single step before hell rained down on it and turned it to scrap. With the entire mock city destroyed he stopped, but he still wanted to do more. He was told not to hold back, so why should he?

He’d put a lot of practice into the components of this combo, so he might as well show it off. “True Light!”

Laser Eyes, Dragonfly, Extra Eyes, Bird’s Eye view, Enhanced Senses

Holding five quirks at once was still difficult and he wouldn’t be able to hold it long, but he wouldn’t need to. Over testing center A, the furthest from his location, twenty five semi-transparent bug eyes showed up above the mock city and immediately started to bring destruction from above. Enhanced Senses added to it by boosting his vision, which he’d found boosted the power and range of Laser Eyes.

The hundreds, if not thousands, of red beams of light cut the city apart. The damage wasn’t as absolute as it was with the other combos, but this one could be used against anywhere in the world with a limitless range. All he had to do was visit a place once and he’d be able to bring destruction down whenever he wanted. His very existence was a threat to the world and they knew it. It would take him under thirty seconds to level a city from the comfort of his bed if he decided to.

He would never do it. The idea of hurting so many people was sickening. But now they knew he could , which means they’ll hesitate a lot more before trying to manipulate him or hurt his loved ones. He didn’t want to be a repeat of his father’s tragedy.

He looked back towards one of Nezu’s cameras. “Is that enough?”

Nezu’s cheery voice responded, he must have joined the others that were watching.

“Indeed it is! I’m sure Cementose will be pleased at the overtime pay, but quite peeved at the overtime the repairs will require.”

Chapter Text

Izuku had gotten to school early with Aizawa and was the first person in the classroom but he was okay with that. He was nearly vibrating with excitement and nerves. He had finally made it! He was a student at UA! He was going to be a hero and no one was going to stop him.

The first person to show up was a tall boy with black hair and a stern look. Out of curiosity he looked at his quirk and was intrigued by what seemed like some sort of mechanical leg quirk. He walked over to where Izuku was sitting with an outstretched hand.

“Hello, my name is Iida Tenya from Somei middle school. Although I disagree with the school allowing your attendance I will respect their decision.”

What the actual fuck. Who introduces themself like that? “Uh, hi?”

The teen then went to his seat as if that were a totally normal and successful conversation.

A few other people came in but seemed to mostly keep to themselves, then this girl with long black hair walked in and he openly gasped. Granted, if someone asked what she looked like he probably wouldn’t be able to tell them.

She blushed and looked away from him, causing him to be a bit more self aware.

“Oh gosh, I’m so sorry. Your quirk is just so amazing. What even is that? Matter manipulation? No… that’s not right, not manipulation… Creation! That’s it! You can create matter from your body at disproportionate rates, allowing you to fully break the law of conservation of mass and bring matter into existence.”

The only other single quirks that could match its beauty would probably be Rewind, Physical Peak, or Overhaul. These were the level of quirks that could go against the very nature of the universe, bending time, immortality, rebuilding matter however you desire.

A girl with pink skin moved over to sit on the desk next to his, “Wait, you can see quirks?! That’s so cool. What’s mine?”

“Oh, ummmm, it seems like a mix of acid creation, acid resistance, and ph manipulation.”

“Yeah! Random question, do you have any quirks that make you pink?”

“Uh, yeah?” He activated Axolotl, his skin turning pink with their signature whiskers growing on the side of his head just in front of his ears.

“Hell yeah! Pink buddies!”

He dropped the quirk after a few seconds, “Plus I suppose I could turn into you, which would give me pink skin.”

“Oh my god, I just met you and I already have so many ideas. At some point we’re going to class with both of us looking like me to prank the teachers.”

“Uhhh, ok?” Izuku was so overwhelmed by the very loud and very close girl.

Clearly noticing his inner panic, a boy with a durability quirk and red hair came over to them, pulling the girl a few steps back to give him space. “Mina, you’re comin’ on a little strong, bro. You gotta tone it down a little sometimes.” He turned to Izuku. “Hey, I’m Kirishima, I see you met my friend Mina.”

“Um, hi. I’m Midoriya, but it seems like everyone knows who I am already.”

“I hate to break it to you, but I’m pretty sure the entire world knows about you.”

He gave a shy laugh, “Yeah, I guess that makes sense…”

Before they could keep talking a familiar voice cut through the conversations in the room.

“DEKU!”

“K-kachan?! I didn’t know you were at UA too.”

“I fuckin’ told you I was going to go here and that I better not see your ass, yet here you are. Are you saying you thought I wouldn’t pass the exam?”

“No- no that’s not what I was saying…” that was absolutely what he was saying. For all his bluster he could admit he’d had his doubts that Bakugou would make it into UA without a quirk. Granted, if anyone could pull it off it would be Bakugou.

As Bakugou marches towards him Kirishima quickly moves to interfere. “Hey bro, I don’t know what the deal is between you two, but this is not the place to throw down. Plus, I don’t mean to be rude, but we’ve all seen videos of the guy turning into a dragon or firing giant death lasers. Are you positive that he’s the guy you wanna fight on day one?”

“Shut the fuck up shitty hair, I’ve been dealing with him since we were kids. He didn’t scare me then and he doesn’t scare me now. Doesn’t matter how many quirks he has, he’ll always be a coward and a villain.”

Aizawa walked into the room, immediately scowling at the nonsense that was already going on. They didn’t know it, but he looked vastly different from every other year he’d been a teacher.

He still wore his baggy jumpsuit but his eyes didn’t have dark lines under them and he looked genuinely awake. Izuku’s Rest quirk had done wonders for him and the man had been consistently getting a full night of sleep. With that came him actually having the energy to have his hair washed and pulled back into a ponytail, but he left the scruffy unshaven look because his husband thought it was handsome.

“The first class hasn’t even started yet and you’re all already causing problems. Get in your seats and quiet down.” After everyone settled down he pulled out a bag of gym clothes. “Get changed and be out in the field, we’re doing an apprehension test.”

The entire class shuffled down the halls. Izuku spoke shyly. “Um, the locker rooms are down this way. He didn’t tell us where to go but since I’m a ward of the school and all I’ve had a chance to explore a bit…”

A girl with short brown hair smiled at him. “Thanks, I feel like it would be easy to get lost here.”

He did his best not to gasp like he did at the other girl, but this quirk was also amazing and he wanted to spend all day looking at it and picking it apart. It was something to do with gravity, but his quick glance wasn’t enough to tell him what exactly it did.

His class had such amazing quirks. He’d never say it out loud but he wanted them. He could feel his hand twitch a little as he wanted to reach out and snatch them. Creating matter, manipulating gravity, communicating with and controlling animals, not to mention the arm duplicating one that would pair so well with the ones he already had.

He just kept repeating the words his father had told him on more than one occasion, look but don’t touch.

They quickly made their way to the field outside where AIzawa was waiting for them. “Alright, we’re going to do simple exercises that you would have done before, but now I want you to use your quirks.” He tossed the ball to the brown haired girl who could alter gravity in some way. “Uraraka, I want you to throw this ball as far as you can.”

He watched in amazement as her quirk worked its magic, blocking any gravitational interaction between the ball and the rest of the universe. Not only that but it retroactively stopped the effects of gravity that were already there, the force of an item moving downwards suddenly halted as if it had never had weight in the first place.

He barely even registered people talking excitedly and then being threatened with expulsion. All these quirks were just so beautiful. But they weren’t for him. It would be so easy for them to be his though.

“Midoriya, you’re up. Throw the ball as far as you can without leaving the circle.”

He nodded slowly. “Does it have to be a ‘throw’, or do I just need to make the ball go that way?”

He sighed. “Just make the ball go as far as you can.”

With a flash of Overhaul the ball was reshaped into a pigeon and then with Animate it began to fly away.

Aizawa groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose. “You can bring the bird back, I’m marking that down as infinity since I know that the bird would fly for years if you told it to.”

Before it got out of earshot Izuku called out to it, telling it to return. The orange and metallic bird perched on his shoulder. While most of the class seemed impressed or shocked, Koda seemed outright alarmed.

The boy started signing frantically, unfortunately it didn’t count as a spoken language and Babble couldn’t translate it. He looked over to the exasperated Eraserhead that he knew did know sign language.

“Problem child, apparently his quirk is treating that bird the same way it would a regular bird. Is it just in the shape of an animal, or did you make an actual bird out of rubber and steel?”

“Um, from what I’ve gathered it’s smarter than a regular bird, doesn’t need food or water, and this one will probably only live five years or so since I didn’t put too much work into the design. Other than that though, yeah, it’s a bird for intents and purposes, it thinks and feels like a bird so I guess that makes it a bird?”

He groaned. “This is why I call you a problem child. In the future, don’t create sentient life without getting explicit permission. And yes Koda, you take in the bird because there is no way I’m bringing it home to be terrorized by the cats.”

After a few bird sounds that came from the quiet boy, the orange and silver pigeon looked up at Izuku as if to ask permission. “Uh, yeah, you can go be with him.” With a hop and a few flaps of its wings it landed on Koda’s outstretched arm, looking content.

The rest of the tests went by without too much fanfare, almost all of them had Izuku in first place with Yaoyorozu in second since they both had the most versatile options. For the grip test she made a vice, allowing her to get an impressive score. For Izuku, with Vice Grip plus Slow And Steady, he was able to crush the machine into scrap metal.

Once they’d gotten most of the way done Izuku started feeling bad about always winning. For the toe touch he didn’t use a quirk at all and felt better about finally placing in the middle of the class. He did the side to side steps mostly quirkless but added in Physical Enhancement so he only number two, letting Mineta keep his first place since this was the first one the tiny classmate had done well in.

“Midoriya. You’re going to redo the last two exercises and if you hold back again I’ll expel you on the spot.”

Izuku pulled in on himself in embarrassment as everyone looked at him. He sat down at the spot for toe touches again and activated Slime Body. Aizawa marked down another infinity, which was what made up most of his scores.

“Now the side steps. I know you can move faster than Mineta, if you get less than him I’m sending you home.” At first Izuku thought this was a logical ruse, but the look in his eyes showed he was serious.

“But… Everyone else is trying so hard, it feels wrong to keep winning…”

Bakugou screamed at him in response. “Are you fucking kidding me?! This is why I always hated you! You could strongest fucker on this planet but you’re too much of a coward to use any of it! Go home and make space for the people who actually want it!”

How dare he! To suggest Izuku didn’t want it, that he hadn’t worked for this. He glared back at Katsuki and stepped over to the markers for the steps. His body took on characteristics of a cheetah and his legs morphed as they coiled like springs, the quirks they couldn’t see were Physical Enhancement and Speed Boost.

Aizawa was a bit worried but genuinely curious to see how well he would do now that he was fueled by anger rather than focusing on not making people upset. Just before the timer started they all heard him mutter. “ True Speed .”

The moment he clicked the button on the timer Izuku turned into a blur. He was clocked at going about four hundred miles an hour as he shot back and forth. Mineta’s previously impressive score was blown out of the water as Izuku came in at nearly ten times that.

Once the timer ended it took him another five seconds to slow down. While most students would look triumphant, Izuku just looked sheepish.

“Sorry, I got a bit carried away. Kachan just made me upset.”

Mina just let out a whistle. “Damnnn, I almost forgot how incredibly out of our league he is. You have been holding back, haven’t you?”

“Oh, um, I just don’t want people to feel bad about themselves- because you’re all doing so amazing.”

Aizawa came over to him, “Midoriya, you can’t let yourself be limited that way. In your work as a hero you’ll need to do your best, and it’s okay that your best tends to be far more than what others have. Would you let someone drown because you don’t want your fellow heroes to feel outdone?”

“Of course not!”

“Then train with the same mentality. Everyone is at different places but I expect everyone to give their best effort no matter what. Got it?”

Izuku just nodded.

“Good, because I hate having to give motivational speeches. Now, everyone is going to go do long jumps.”

Chapter Text

Izuku was antsy and it wasn’t exactly hard to tell. He was fidgeting and bouncing his leg up and down as he sat on the couch. Hizashi came over and sat with the nervous boy and gave him a reassuring smile.

“Hey little listener. I know you’re worried but it really is going to be fine. And even if it somehow goes terribly, it’s not the end of the world. It’s just dinner.”

“It’s not just dinner.” He looked to the side in embarrassment. “You three have become like family to me. I don’t know how to handle you fighting with my other family.”

“Oh, there’s nothing ‘like’ about it, Kiddo. You’re part of this family. And with us getting along, you don’t need to worry about that. We’re grownups, if we disagree then that’s between us. It’s our job as mature adults to handle it without putting it on the kids.”

Izuku still had a slight look of doubt, but the hero understood it would take time for Izuku to learn that he didn’t need to carry everything on his own shoulders. He was just a kid and they would do everything in their power to let him actually live like one, even though he had god-like abilities.

The reason for Izuku’s nerves knocked on the door. After a moment a grumpy Aizawa, with Eri following close behind, made his way over and let their guests enter. In walked his dad and Tomura, for once dressing like normal people, rather than being in their respective villain outfits.

Hizashi walked over to the super villains with a smile. “So, you must be the Shigaraki’s.” He looked at the older of the two. “We met briefly at that meeting a week or two ago, but I don’t believe your son was in attendance.”

“Ah, yes. This is my adopted son Tomura. Tomura, this is Hizashi Yamada and Shouta AIzawa, they are the heroes that have been taking care of Izuku the last few months.” He chuckled for a moment. “I never realized just how similar our names are, Hizashi and Hisashi.”

Tomura smeared slightly at the mention of them being heroes, but didn’t say anything past that. At this point a little girl stuck her head out from behind Aizawa’s legs where she’d been hiding. “Hi… I’m Eri. Are you my new big brother?”

He looked down at her with confusion and frustration. “Why would I be your brother?” He gestures at the two heroes. “I’m definitely not their kid.”

“...But, big brother Izuku said you're his big brother. And if you’re his brother and he’s mine, doesn’t that mean you’re my brother too?”

“You don’t want to be my sister. Last time I had a sister I turned her to dust with the rest of my family. That’s why Sen-” he paused for a moment, “dad, took me in. So, unless you want to go poof like they did, find someone else to be all friendly with.”

Izuku was definitely surprised by that change. Had Tomura finally gone from calling their dad Sensei? And on top of that their dad seemed totally okay with it as well. He’d definitely have to ask them about that later, but he was really happy that their dad had been treating Tomura more like a son and less like a project.

Eri nodded slowly, but didn’t seem dissuaded. “I made my family go poof too. When my horn gets glowy the people I touch disappear forever. Well, my mommy didn’t go poof, but she sold me to the bad people and Papa said that means she isn’t my mommy anymore.”

Hizashi nodded with a smile, glad that she’d remembered their talk about how family members that sell you to the Yakuza aren’t your family.

Tomura stared at her for a while, clearly not expecting them to have that trauma in common.

He looked her up and down with curiosity in his eyes. “Huh, I guess you are kind of like me. We have the same hair and eye color, we have quirks that killed our families and destroy what we touch, we needed saving but the heroes didn’t help us. You’re like the young version of me, since you got rescued by Izuku but I got rescued by his dad.”

“Does that mean I get to be your little sister?”

“Sure, whatever. But I don’t want to hear you getting all excited over stupid heroes.”

She gave him a tiny smile before pausing and giving a little shrug. “Um, I don’t really care about most heroes. I just like my daddy and my papa and their friends since they take care of me and are super nice.”

Tomura thought that over for a moment. He supposed he only hated the heroes that ignored kids in need like him, so if they actually did take care of dangerous kids that were alone, then they were alright in his book. But he would still keep an eye on them in case they turned out to suck and he needed to kill them. Plus, since she didn’t seem to like other heroes too much she could help him murder all the heroes they didn’t like.

“That makes sense. You’ll make a good player two.”

“Player two? Oh, like a video game. Are you good at those?”

“Of course, you little brat. I’m the best at video games.”

She pouted at him. “I’m not a brat…”

“Yeah yeah, did you have any games?”

“Uh huh. Can you help me get past this one part? It’s super hard and I can’t get to the next part.”

“Probably, what game is it?”

“Uhhh, it’s the one with Barbie and you have to save the farm from the bad guys.”

He had a look of deep concentration, the way he always did when video games came up, which was the only thing he cared about more than hating heroes and pleasing All for One.

“That describes a few games. Does your farm sit on a cloud or is it on the ground?”

Eri was clearly excited about the idea of someone else caring about her fun game. “It’s in a cloud!”

“Okay, do you actually do farming in the game, or do you mostly just fly around doing quests with your pegasus?”

“Pegasus! I named her snowball! We do all kinds of stuff together and it’s super fun!”

“Okay, then that’s Barbie’s Horse Adventures 27, Return of the Sky Kingdom. There’s a few parts where the quests have a sudden difficulty jump with the escort missions, but I can show you how to beat them.”

Eri clearly didn’t know what most of those words meant but was also happy that her brand new brother was going to help her and Snowball save the day. They both went off to her room to play videogames as the remaining four people in the room were dumbfounded by how well they got along. Izuku pondered the fact that the only difference between the two is how they were treated by their saviors.

Izuku made sure Eri ended up in a safe home she could thrive in, but his dad was admittedly not as attentive to Tomura and let him fester in his anger without seeing a problem with that. It really would have been so easy for that sweet little girl to have been set on Tomura’s path of rage because of the cruelties life had given them.

Aizawa just blinked slowly as he watched the two leave to play horse games. “I don’t know what I expected to happen, but it definitely wasn’t that. He must be a big fan of video games if he’s even familiar with obscure games I don’t even remember getting her.”

All for One simply chuckled. “That he is. Honestly, I struggle in getting him to care about anything else. He was homeschooled and is definitely intelligent, but he doesn’t really have any aspirations or plans that work long term.”

Hizashi seemed like he was on the verge of tears. “It’s bad enough Eri went through all of that, but the fact that there’s another child in the same circumstances is heartbreaking. There’s something to be said about Tomura’s frustration at heroes, there really are a lot of people that need help that we can’t reach for some reason or another. Most often it’s just because we don’t know that they need it.”

Izuku gave him a deep hug. “It’s alright, no one expects you to be perfect.” He paused as he realized that a lot of people expected heroes to be perfect. “Well, that might not be true, but at the very least I don’t. You do your best to help and protect people, and I think that’s enough.”

Izuku didn’t see it with his back turned, but All for One’s smile had gotten a bit more strained during that heartfelt moment between the two. He didn’t want Izuku to have such deep trust and understanding with these heroes. But he wouldn’t do anything to interfere, that would only frame himself as the enemy. That said, he didn’t mind the idea of leading the villains while Izuku led the heroes, neither side knowing that the two were working together and subtly taking over the world as father and son.

Aizawa looked at Izuku for a moment. “How about you go hang out with the other kids until dinner is ready so the three of us can talk.”

“Um, sure.”

“And don’t even think about trying to eavesdrop with super hearing, I will know, and you will be in big trouble.”

Izuku blushed and quickly made his way to Eri’s room, because he had definitely been planning on doing that. Eri gave him a big smile and sat on his lap. They didn’t chat much outside of what was happening in the game but he still had fun just watching them play the confusing horse game and he felt like all three of them were a family even if they didn’t have the same biological parents.

As Izuku left the room Aizawa turned and stared intensely at All for One.

“Let me make something very clear. I do not like you and I do not trust you. You’ve been a decent parent to Izuku and you’ve cut back on nearly all criminal activity, so I won’t do anything for now. But I want something to be well understood.” Aizawa’s eyes began to glow an intense red.

“If you start hurting people again, I will kill you. Because even if it would make Izuku hate me, I won’t let you create any more orphans.” In a flash he had the tip of a knife pointed directly at the villain’s heart. “Am I understood?”

The ancient villain managed to remain completely calm, even though he couldn’t access his quirks and his life was being threatened. “Should I recognize you beyond our last meeting? Your eyes seem oddly familiar…” After a few moments he snapped his fingers in realization. “Oh, that’s what it is. You’re part of that family with the meta-quirks, they all had black eyes that turned red when angry and most of them could block or alter quirks in some way.”

Aizawa pressed the knife a bit harder so he’d be able to feel the sharpness of the blade on the verge of ripping into his flesh. “I said. Do. You. Understand?”

“That’s what this is about isn’t it? I’ve killed a good portion of your ancestors, probably someone close to you too by the way you’re looking at me. So go ahead, stab me in the heart while I’m vulnerable, get your vengeance, give in to that rage.”

“I really should. After all the people you’ve hurt I should just kill you now. But I won’t. Because that kid thinks you can change, that you’ve been turning over a new leaf.” He blinked and let his quirk fade. “So you better prove him right, show the world how your power could be used for good. Or, you can return to your old ways, and I’ll be there, ready to gut you like a fish.”

He sheathed his knife and started walking into the kitchen to finish up dinner when he paused. “And for the record, you killed my grandfather, he was that thorn in your side that used chains.”

All for One just gave him a pleasant smile. “Fascinating, I hadn’t realized he’d had children. Anyways, I plan to stay on this side of the law for the foreseeable future. Living as Hisashi the businessman, quirk researcher, and father of two has actually been quite pleasant so I doubt you’ll need to gut me anytime soon. With that out of the way, do you two want any help with dinner?”

Chapter Text

Izuku was keeping his face calm and collected as he sat in class on the second day. He refused to blow this opportunity and appreciated the head’s up he’d received from the heroes taking care of him. This felt like it was a test, so he’d pass it with flying colors and become the hero he’d always dreamed of.

“Um, are you doing alright, you look weirdly focused?”

He spun and looked at Uraraka in surprise, not having noticed her walking up to him. “Oh, um, it’s nothing. Let’s just say… I don’t really get along with our heroics teacher but I also can’t afford to act out, so I’m staying calm and collected. Clearly I’m super calm!”

She looked disbelievingly at his wide smile and waving hands. “...Uh huh. Well, I’m sure it’ll be fine. Who’s the teacher, anyways?”

As if to answer her question a particularly colorful and loud hero burst in through the door.

“I am here, coming through the door like a normal person!”

Most of the class cheered at the sudden introduction of the most popular hero, but Uraraka was busy looking at Izuku in shock at the fact that the hero that stressed him out so much was All Might. She considered that All Might had been the one leading the investigation against Izuku, but now that he was in the rehabilitation thing, surely the hero was friendly with the boy?

She kept an eye on the green haired teen and could see him gripping his desk like a lifeline. She guessed she really didn’t know what it would be like to live on the run and then to be taught by the man who chased you down.

“Alright everyone, suit up!”

Briefcases came out of the wall and they all went off to get changed.

Izuku got dressed almost instantly by holding the outfit in front of himself and then teleporting into it and letting his previous outfit fall to the ground. He’d been getting really good at Blink since he probably used that one the most next to Physical Peak.

He suddenly stood within his green vigilante tracksuit, the only real change was a red belt that was filled with useful things. There wasn’t anything particularly exciting about it, but his outfit would never be the most interesting or eye-catching thing about him.

As they met up he had a lot of fun looking at everyone’s outfits. He could admit that he used Enhanced Senses to get a better look and let him see the finer details, which was exactly the moment it stopped being fun. Izuku’s voice cracked and came out in a squeaky mess as he shrieked in shock and surprise.

“HaGAkure!? WhY are you nAked?!”

“Huh?! You can see me?!”

He’d turned off the quirk and covered his eyes for good measure. “Yes! That doesn’t answer the question of why you’re not wearing clothes at school!”

“I can’t exactly be stealthy if people see floating clothing.”

“Then get some quirk cloth?? The support department provides it on request as long as you supply the needed hair.”

With everyone looking at him in shock he explained what quirk cloth was, surprised that few of them seemed to know what it was. There was lots of sudden banter over possible new outfit ideas, especially from those that were disappointed with what they got.

All Might then walked over with his typical fake smile. “ No time to daddle! It’s time to get started on your first heroics class of the year!”

They were led over one of the fake cities that the school had and All Might read off of a script to give them a scenario. The whole thing was so ridiculous, however, through amazing restraint he only rolled his eyes twice.

He’d managed to not directly interact with the man so far and intended to keep it that way. As soon as his name was called for being on the hero team with Uraraka, he Blinked over to the building to wait until it was time. After a minute or so Uraraka caught up with him.

“Wow, you really don’t like being near him do you?”

“Yeah… Things are complicated and also he’s an asshole.”

She stared at him for a few seconds before shrugging. “I guess that’s why they say to never meet your heroes.”

It was such a relief that he didn’t have to justify himself. She just fully believed him right off the bat and didn’t blame him for any disagreements with their nation’s favorite hero.

After a few minutes of chatting he realized he should talk to her about their assignment.

“Um, do you mind if I kind of do everything?” He paused for a second. “Oh goodness, I could have phrased that so much better!”
She just laughed in response. “I sort of figured you would. After Aizawa’s whole thing about you not holding back for our sake he’d probably get you in trouble or something if you didn’t do your best just so I could do more.”

He nodded and gave a shy smile, glad that she didn’t dislike him for being so much stronger than his peers.

“Alright heroes! You may now enter!”

It was over in roughly 5 seconds.

In seconds one and two he saw the location of the bomb with X-ray Vision. Seconds 3-4 was just enough time to destroy the outer wall on the third floor with Overhaul and Psychic Hand. And in that last second he used Blink to appear right next to the bomb with his hand already on it. There was a pause for a few seconds before an almost hesitant call of “ Heroes win.”

He jumped down to where Uraraka was and teleported them both back to where the class was waiting. All Might had a bit of a frown as they returned.

“That wasn’t very sporting of you, my boy.”

“First off, Aizawa told me to do my best and not hold back to spare someone else’s feelings, and I put his directions far above yours. Secondly, don’t call me that, I’m not ‘your boy.’”

He stepped closer and started to put his hand on Izuku’s shoulder. “Alright, Izuk- Gah!” The large hero yanked his hand back and shook the bad cramp he’d gotten in his hand on contact. On top of that there may or may not have been a rash beginning to form from him activating his poison ivy quirk.

“Keep your hands off me, and I expect you to call me by my last name like any other student.”

That was enough for All Might to leave him alone for the rest of the class. All his classmates kept glancing over at him but he just kept to himself at the back of the room and wasn’t in the mood to explain the disaster that was his relationship with All Might.

The moment the class was over he Blinked back to the locker room to get changed quickly. He felt so on edge and antsy as he sat through math class. He could tell that his classmates didn’t really know how to talk to him, and honestly he felt the same. He just felt so separate from everyone else. Even the students that could match up to him even a little just underused their quirks to an extreme.

At one point Bakugou started screaming at him about having a rematch so he just activated Soundproof and waited until he was done. He went home as soon as he could, turning into a bird and flying over any crowds that were in his way.

He found himself pacing the living room when Aizawa got home. The man took one look at him before beckoning him outside. “Alright, I guess we’re doing this now, let’s go.”

He followed out of curiosity, but was definitely hesitant since he didn’t know where they were going.

They’d been driving for about a minute when Izuku got the confidence to ask. “Um, where are we going?”

“To a friend’s place.”

“Uh huh… Why?”

“So you can talk to him about something.”

Izuku nodded slowly, processing the vague answer. “And which friend is this?”

“You’ll find out when we get there.”

He just huffed and sunk into his seat as they drove. After a few more minutes they ended up at a neighborhood he didn’t recognize.

Izuku was very tentative as he followed Aizawa out of the car. “You’re being weird, why are we here?”

“We’re here so you can talk about your feelings with someone more qualified than me.”

Izuku didn’t like the sound of that one bit but found that he couldn’t teleport away with Aizawa’s red eyes glaring down at him.

“You’re not getting out of this that easily.” Aizawa wrapped him in his scarf and pulled him along as he knocked on the door.

Within a few moments the door was opened to reveal Kinoshita, the man he’d met months ago at the quirk support group he’d been using to find people who wanted their quirks gone. He’d always been a friendly presence, if a bit blunt.

“Hey kid, your new guardian called and said you’d been dealing with some quirk problems that I’d be more suited for.” He looked over Izuku’s shoulder. “I’ve got it from here, I’ll call you when he’s ready to head back.”

The grumpy teacher just nodded and closed the door behind him as he left.

“Uh, how do you two even know each other?”

“He reached out to me early in the investigation, after I’d been seen intervening during that mess with Muscular. Once we’d both determined that the other really did have your best interests in mind we stayed in contact, mostly just to keep an eye on you when the other couldn’t.”

He supposed that made sense. His mind had started to wander a little. Izuku had seen the older man fly in the past and he really could move surprisingly quickly for a man in a wheelchair when he activated his rocket legs. But the thing that made him so fast was the same reason he needed that wheelchair, because rocket mutations for his lower legs aren’t really usable for walking.

Maybe he could convince the man to part with the quirk? He barely ever used it and he wouldn’t need the wheelchair anymore. Izuku would have to hide it of course, since he couldn’t show off any newly acquired quirks since he was supposed to be following the law now. But it would still be nice to have it even if he couldn’t use it in front of people.

“I still don’t know why I’m here. You said it was for quirk problems but my quirks are working just fine.”

“Well, Aizawa tried to point me in the right direction by telling me something I’d figured out long ago.”

“What’s that?”

“Your right hand twitches whenever you want to take a quirk and have to stop yourself from grabbing it.”

He immediately clutched his hand to his chest, feeling ashamed that he had such an obvious tell. Was he going to get yelled at for wanting to take quirks again?

“It’s alright, you’re not in trouble and it’s not a character flaw or anything like that. What you’re feeling is totally normal. You used your quirk a lot for nearly a year, and now you have to suddenly stop, and stopping cold turkey like that is very difficult.”

“No, no, no. I don’t want to take quirks, that would be wrong and against the rules and and and-”

He suddenly felt a hand lightly gripping his arm. “Izuku. Focus on me. It’s ok. Now, we’re going to sit down, and talk about how you’ve actually been feeling lately, not whatever you’ve been telling everyone else. Clearly you need to get some shit off your chest that you think isn’t acceptable to say in front of people.”

Izuku sat down and let himself think over if he actually wanted to take him up on the offer. He’d talked with Kinoshita in the past and he’d always been understanding and kind.

“Come on, what’s on your mind?”

He threw his hands up in the air in frustration. “She makes sticks!”

He looked at him in confusion. “What?”

“There’s a girl in my class who has the power to create matter. She can make constructs as big as a cannon and has no real limits on what she creates. And she uses that power to create bow staffs and batons! She has one of the most amazing quirks I’ve ever seen and she uses it to make sticks!”

The old man immediately joined in with him, encouraging him to rant. “That’s such a waste of potential!”

“Yes! I know I’m not allowed to take quirks, but I could do so much more with it! That quirk deserves a user that will use it properly! Everyone is limiting themselves for no good reason! One kid controls animals but won’t use it on bugs, which are the most common animal by far! Another classmate only uses half of his dual fire-ice quirk, even though it actively harms him!”

“I can see why that would drive you crazy.”

“And don’t even get me started on Kaminari!”

Kinoshita cocked his head slightly in interest. “Who’s Kaminari?”

“He’s got an electricity quirk that’s the most powerful one I’ve ever seen by far, but he mistreats it so badly. He uses his quirk to shoot lightning in every direction through the air and then fries his brain in the process. He could do the same things with one thousandth of his power if he’d just use one of those metal sticks Yaoyorozu leaves everywhere!”

“It’s so hard to watch it without wanting to give that poor quirk a better host. I should be the one to have it, I would treat these quirks with respect and use them to their fullest! Every time they misuse their powers I just want to take them so badly.”

After his rant was over Kinoshita gave him a smile. “Feel better now that you got that out?”

He paused, realizing he did. It had been bugging him so badly the last few days but suddenly felt more manageable. “Yeah… Sorry.”

“Don’t you dare apologize for having feelings, this is why Aizawa dropped you off here, because he knew you needed someone unrelated to this that you could vent to. Now, instead of just trying to repress those feelings you’re going to embrace them.”

“Wouldn’t that just make me more likely to take quirks?”

“Nope, because we’re going to use those desires for good. You and your quirk want you to take quirks and make them as strong as possible. So instead you’re going to befriend these people and teach them how to be as strong as possible. It’s all about changing a mindset. Think about it like outsourcing, instead of making the quirk strong and keeping it yourself, you’ll be helping your friends grow those powers and have them hold onto them to keep them safe. Hopefully that will still scratch that itch from your quirk and make it easier to not give in.”

He nodded, liking that idea. “Yeah! I’m going to make so many friends and I won’t stop until my friends are the strongest heroes ever!”

“There you go, kid, that’s the spirit!”

Chapter Text

Izuku was sitting in class and relieved when they were finally finished for the day. He didn’t necessarily dislike his classes, he was just so bored. He could instantly translate any spoken language, which made his English class so much easier since he really just needed to learn pronunciations. On top of that he already knew the math they were going over, so overall he just didn’t have much work he needed to do.

And don’t even get him started on the hero courses. Any sparring or exercises were over in seconds, making them useless for training purposes. He mostly just worked on mastering his numerous quirks so that he could use each one instinctively without having to pause and waste precious time in a fight thinking over what does what.

As he got up to leave the intercom spoke up, Nezu’s cheery voice entering the room. “ Midoriya, please come down to meeting room seven.”

Uraraka looked over to him with some concern. “Do you know what that’s about?”

He shook his head in response. “No, but it’ll probably be fine. Nezu is a bit chaotic and loves drama, but he’s a good hero.”

She gave him a smile as she went on her way home. “Alright. Well, I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Regardless of what he told his new friend, he was at least a bit nervous of who or what he’d find in the conference room. He did feel a bit better about it though since he wasn’t called until classes ended, because if it was really serious or someone was hurt then he would have been called down in the middle of class. It was probably something to do with one of the many ongoing investigations that his brief vigilante career was relevant too. 

With that in mind he expected to find a detective or some hero, but when he entered the room he was shocked to find a random teenager. She seemed like she was a couple years older than him, with long blonde hair and bright blue eyes. She wasn’t in a UA uniform, but she seemed like she was probably a student.

“Uh, sorry. Wrong room.” He stepped out and looked at the room number again, confirming that, yes, this is where he was told to go. He stepped back in feeling more than a bit awkward.

“Um, I’m Izuku Midoryia, are you who I was called down to talk to?”

She nodded. “Yes, oh goodness, I hadn’t really expected to get this far, so I’m not really sure how to explain it.” She spoke with a thick american accent and wore a wide smile.

He activated Babble and spoke in perfect english. “We can speak like this if it’s easier.”

“Oh! I didn’t know you knew english, that would be great. Anyways, I suppose the best way to do this is to be as direct as possible, I’ve never been great at subtlety.” She took a deep breath and composed herself.

“My name is Melissa Shield and I’m apparently your sister.”

Izuku was stunned into silence for a few seconds before responding with a dignified “What???? Why did my mom hide you from me?”

“My bad, I’m your half sister. Your mom only found out about me like, a month ago.”

He nodded slowly. “Then who’s your dad?”

“David shield.”

That was undoubtedly super cool, but not helpful here. “Um, so your dad is the David Shield, which we’re definitely talking about later, and we don’t share a mom. Are you positive we’re related?”

“Well, my other dad is apparently All Might.”

“Oh.” He was quiet for a few seconds as he processed that information. “I guess that would do it.”

“My dad only told me a couple weeks ago. Apparently your situation convinced them it was a good idea to make sure I knew the truth. I only know what my dad told me, but he said there was someone pretending to be your dad?”

Izuku’s face scrunched up, angry at her words but knowing it wasn’t her fault at all. “No. That’s not what happened at all. Hisashi Shigaraki is my dad, the paternity tests were messed with by my quirks, so we don’t know if I’m related to him or All Might.”

“Huh, I don’t think uncle Toshi would lie about that, maybe it was just a miscommunication. But anyways, I had just really wanted to meet you.”

“...Uncle Toshi?” Izuku was more than a little horrified at the implications of All Might being both her uncle and her father.

She blushed and shook her head. “He’s not actually my uncle. I just called him that since he was such a close friend with my dad.” She paused for a moment. “I guess looking back it was kinda obvious they were more than close friends.”

“Okay. So, you’re my maybe-half-sister? Where are you and your dad staying while you visit?”

Melissa fidgeted in her chair. “Well, you see, funny thing about that. My dad didn’t come with me and doesn’t exactly know where I am.”

“Wait, you ran away from home and your first stop was your secret half-brother?”

“I didn’t run away. It’s just… It’s complicated.”

“Okay… That’s definitely not concerning at all. I’m sure we’ll figure something out. On a separate note, my little sister is going to be thrilled to meet you and watching her get excited is just the cutest thing.” To prove his point he showed her picture of Eri trying to get an entire caramel apple in her mouth.

“Aw, that’s adorable. What’s her name? Do you have other siblings?”

“Her name’s Eri, and yeah, I have one other. His name is Tomura. He pulled up a picture of Tomura and his dad, with the former looking very grumpy about the entire thing while his dad looked thrilled since it was one of his first days with his face and memories back.

“Wow, I can see the similarity. I guess red eyes and white hair run in the family and you’re the outlier?”

He chuckled at the reasonable assumption. “Actually, me and my dad are the only ones related by blood. Tomura’s adopted and Eri isn’t his daughter at all, she’s the daughter of my guardians.”

She looked completely baffled and just stared at him for a few seconds. “What exactly is your family tree?”

Ten minutes later she looked over the chart they’d made on a whiteboard in the room. “Ok, I think I get it. So, you basically have four dads, with us sharing one, a mom, one adopted half sibling and one by blood half sibling, me, and one sibling with the same guardians as you.”

He nodded slowly, “Yeah, that sounds about right. And then when you add in the generational quirks it gets even more complicated.”

“Huh, what’s a generational quirk?”

“I think it’s supposed to be a national secret or something, but you’re his kid so you should probably know.” After another twenty minutes a secondary chart had been made.

“Wow. That would mean not only could Toshi be your dad, but if the quirk transfer is treated like parenthood since it’s DNA based, he’d be your…” She did some further math while looking at the complex family tree. “Second cousin five times removed.”

He wanted to correct her that it would actually be first cousin six times removed, but that would mean explaining that Hisashi Shigaraki was a disguise and he was actually the son of All for One, not the grandchild.

“See, basic stuff.” They both were silent for a moment before laughing over how ridiculous his family was.

“We should get going, I don’t want my family to worry.”

They both walked out of the room to find his favorite blonde hero waiting for them. “Hey little listener. Who’s this you were talking to?”

“This is Melissa, my surprise maybe-half-sister. And Mellia, this is Yamada Hizashi, he’s one of the guardians I told you about. Where’s Aizawa?”

He then realized he hadn’t switched off the quirk. “Ah, sorry about that. I can go back to Japanese if that’s easier for everyone.”

“No worries kiddo, I wouldn’t be a good English teacher if I couldn’t keep up. And speaking of my amazing and grumpy husband, he left to get Eri from school and should meet us at the house once he’s got the little princess.”

Melissa looked over at the teacher curiously. “You don’t seem surprised that I’m his half sister?”

“Honestly, the kid has so much family drama I half expect to find out that he’s his own son, somehow. I’m sure this is jinxing it, but I honestly doubt much can shock me at this point.”

It wasn’t long until they had gotten back to the house with Aizawa arriving just a few minutes later. He walked into the house with Eri in his arms, twisting around and hitting his shoulder as she tried to get out.

Hizashi looked over with slight concern. “Everything okay honey?”

Eri yelled back. “No, everything’s bad!”

At the same time Aizawa gave a much more calm, if slightly frustrated response. “Yeah, we’re good. Her teacher told me someone didn’t feel like taking a nap today and now that someone is very cranky.” It was actually encouraging for him to see his little girl throw a tantrum like this, when they’d first taken her in a few months ago, she’d never felt safe enough to act out. So even if it was unpleasant in the moment, it was a sign that they were doing good as parents and helping her heal.

Izuku went off to the back of the house, looking for sheets and blankets so they could have her set up on the couch for the night. He hoped they’d be able to set her up with something more permanent soon.

As Aizawa moved further into the house he let out a drawn out and exasperated sigh as he looked over at Melissa who was sitting in the living room eating some snacks. “Hisashi, be honest with me, did you kidnap a teenager? We already have two children, did you really need to steal another one?”

“She does seem like a lovely lady and I wouldn’t mind having more kids running around, but no, she’s just visiting. Why’d your mind immediately go to kidnapping?”

“Because that’s Melissa Shield. Who is currently being searched for along with her father, since both were recently kidnapped by international terrorists.”

Melissa’s friendly and peaceful facade finally broke as tears ran down her face. “I barely got away but I didn’t know where to go. They know my dad’s close to Toshi so they’d be watching him… and I don’t know if he’s strong enough anymore to win. So I tried to think of people I could go to that would be strong enough to keep them away.”

It only took Eri and the cats a few seconds to react to the girl’s distress by cuddling close and hugging her.

Aizawa nodded. “I understand that logic, Izuku is almost certainly strong enough to protect you, but how were you so sure he’d be able and willing to take you in?”

His husband had walked over and answered on behalf of the crying girl. “She’s apparently Izuku’s half sister. How come you didn’t give any sign of this when you talked to him earlier? No judgment, I’m just a bit confused.”

“I- I just wanted to pretend everything was okay and not think about what happened. And I didn’t know who I could trust. The villains were let in by my dad’s friend and they kidnapped him for some device he’s been working on. It- it seemed like they’d been planning to wait until he was done, but he stopped working on it since it was for All Might.”

Aizawa crouched down so he was eye to eye with the teen sobbing on the couch. “You came to the right place. The other heroes on the case will make sure your father is rescued and we’ll make sure no one can get to you. And even if they get past us I doubt there’s many people on the planet that could get past that brother of yours.”

This was when Izuku wandered back into the living room holding a bunch of sheets, blankets, and pillows. “I grabbed the stuff so you can sleep on the couch… Did I miss something? Why is everyone looking so intense?”

Chapter Text

Melissa had been with them for over a day and had just gotten back from a meeting with her father at the school. Aizawa and Yamada were getting some paperwork figured out at the school, so she’d decided to go home before them. She let herself fall down onto the couch next to Izuku and did her best to keep her composure but seemed to be on the verge of tears.

Her brother looked at her after sitting in silence for a bit. “I take it the talk with All Might didn’t go great?”

 She shook her head and was about to respond when Shigaraki Tomura strode into the house without knocking. “Hey noobs.”

Eri heard him coming in and ran over at top speed with a big smile. “Tomu!” She sprinted down the hall and came to a sudden stop, sliding across the floor for the last bit until she was right in front of him. She then thrust her arm up with her pinky out. Tomura acted annoyed, but there was a tiny smirk visible.

He wrapped his pinky around hers for a second before taking his hand back. “Alright, that’s enough of that, Player 2.”

Melissa just looked on in confusion from where she sat in the living room with Izuku. “Uh, what was that? And who is he?”

“Oh, that’s my other half sibling, Tomura Shigaraki.” She nodded trying to remember the ridiculous family tree Izuku had shown her the day before. “And what they were doing is called pinky hugs. Basically, Eri loves hugs and physical affection, but Tomura very much does not like being touched, so they compromise by only hugging with pinkies.”

“Aw, that’s actually super cute.”

“Yeah, the two of them get along so well. But he hates almost everyone who isn’t her. Eri’s both adorable and they have matching trauma, so he’s claimed her as his younger sister and Player 2.”

Shigaraki finally paid attention to the two of them. “Who’s the NPC?”

Eri answered for them, her smile big enough to melt any heart. “That’s big sis Melissa.”

“Looks like an NPC to me.”

Eri whined in response. “Noooo, she’s player four.”

He raised an eyebrow. “How is she even your big sister? Did Eraserhead find another stray?”

She continued to pout, “Me and ‘Zuku aren’t strays.”

“You absolutely are. Don’t get all sad looking, you know I’m one too, we have the same origin story. Anyways, new girl, whatever your name is, why are you here?”

Melissa hesitantly waved at him. “Like she said, my name’s Melissa, I’m Izuku’s half-sister, and Eri claimed me as being sister too.”

“Wait one damn second. Her dialogue has an american accent and her avatar has blonde hair and blue eyes. No way you come from the Midoriya half. You’re All Might’s, aren’t you?”

She nodded. “Yeah, I just found out pretty recently.”

“I’d cry too if he was my father. You should kill him.”

Eri joined in with an enthusiastic, “Yeah, beat him up!”

She stared at him in shock. “That seems a bit extreme. I am upset, but I don’t plan on hurting anyone.”

Before Tomura had a chance to tell her how lame that was, Eri cut in. “What made you upset?”

“It’s stupid. I shouldn’t even be upset about it. We talked for maybe a minute or two before he decided he needed to go be a hero and save my dad, and he left. I have no idea where he went or if he even knows where he’s going or how long he’ll be gone.”

Izuku nodded and patted her on the back. “Sounds like he pulled his signature move. Sorry you got hit by it.”

She paused and looked at him with confusion. “Detroit Smash?”

“That’s actually his second favorite move, his favorite move seems to always be ‘Abandon my Family’. He uses it every chance he gets.”

Melissa chuckled and wiped a few stray tears from her eyes. “This is really weird. I don’t think I’ve ever met people who openly dislike All Might before. I feel like I shouldn’t be upset though. Sure he left, but he left to save my dad, which is really good. If he can bring my dad home then it’s all worth it.”

Izuku gave her a soft smile. “It’s okay to be angry at him even though he does other things right. And I agree that he had a really good reason, but I think he’d have left even if there wasn’t one. He could have been your father at any point in your life, but he prefers to keep his distance from people for the sake of being a hero.”

As she continued to cry, Eri crawled up onto the couch and gave her a hug. “It’s okay, my momma didn’t want me either and gave me away.”

She then seemed to have an idea before running off and coming back with a plate, an apple, and dragging a blanket behind her. She held up the plate of apples to Izuku expectantly.

He smiled down at her and took the plate, knowing exactly what she was asking for. He activated Mood Blade and Weapon Mastery, creating a light blue spectral pocket knife in his hand. With quick and precise movements he easily carved the apple into slices that were bunny shaped. He then took the core and ate it with Iron Stomach active, which always made Eri giggle.

As he was chopping up the apple with the shimmering blade, Eri wrapped Melissa in the blanket before running off again. This time she came back with Shoebox the cat in her arms, placing the orange tabby on her lap. She ran back and forth through the house until she’d manhandled all five cats onto or around Melissa’s body. She then took the plate of apples back from Izuku and handed them to Melissa, who was bundled up and covered in affectionate cats.

“There you go. Now you can’t be sad anymore. This is what my daddy and papa do whenever I get sad.”

She gives the little girl a smile and laughs through her occasional tears. “Thank you Eri.” While it was very comfortable, she didn’t have the heart to explain that it didn’t actually make her sadness and frustration go away.

“You’re welcome! ‘Zuku likes to cuddle with me and the cats too when he gets sad, but he’ll turn into a chair first so they can all fit on his lap with me.”

“A chair?”

Izuku pouted in response. “It’s a quirk I have. And it’s a perfectly normal reaction. Sometimes it’s just more comfortable to be furniture instead of a person.”

The teasing and joking continued for a few minutes before he thought of something. “Hey Tomura, why’d you come over anyways? I’m glad you did, but you don’t really visit unless you have a reason.”

The man scratched his neck for a moment in thought as if he’d also forgotten why he was there. “Oh yeah, I was going to kill you, but then I got distracted by All Might’s spawn and I totally forgot that was the quest.”

Melissa looked horrified at the answer but Izuku had grown accustomed to Tomura’s antics. “Huh, well, did you change your mind? You’re not exactly trying very hard.”

“Meh, I’m not feeling it anymore, the moment’s gone. Plus, you’d probably just take my quirk if I got close, jerk.”

Eri grabbed Tomura’s pant leg and looked up at him with big teary eyes. “Tomu, why do you wanna hurt big brother?”

“I asked Sensei, I mean dad, why he treated Izuku like he was his favorite.” He threw his hands up in the air in frustration. “And then he just explained why Izuku was a better son and said it was to encourage me or some bullshit. I can’t kill him since he’s dad, so I figured I’d kill Izuku instead. He can’t be the favorite anymore if he’s dead and I can go back to being an only child.”

“Wowzers, there’s a lot to unpack there kiddo.” They all turned to see Yamada and Aizawa standing in the doorway, both looking more than a bit concerned.

Izuku was already on the verge of tears, it didn’t take much to make him, Eri, or Melissa cry. “That’s so awful. Why would he say that to you? He’s always so nice and understanding with me.”

Shigaraki just gave a deadpan stare at him. “Because you’re his favorite. Which is stupid because he only found out about you like a year ago. He took me in 15 years ago and only started calling me son when you told him it was weird that he didn’t! You were supposed to be some stupid pet project but instead you stole him from me!”

He grabbed a nearby table in anger and glared at Aizawa when it didn’t disintegrate. “You can and should be upset, but using Decay on the furniture is still against the rules. Go outside if you want to break things.”

“Fine! Let’s go, Player 2.” Eri held onto the back of his shirt and happily followed right behind him as they went to the back yard.

Melissa looked over at him. “I see what you mean now when you were talking about there being a lot of family drama. It’s like a soap opera in real time. Um, no offense.”

“Oh, none taken. My family is ridiculous. We should head out there and join them, I’m worried about him. I can barely believe our dad would say something so mean.”

From behind him, the two heroes were very silent but could absolutely believe that the supervillain was capable and willing to pick favorites among his children and not bother to hide it.

All six of them had gone outside with the two chaotic siblings, partially just to make sure nothing important was destroyed. Eri watched on as her big brother turned a stone to dust and then threw the remains at the ground. Tomura looked over at Melissa and scowled. “You’ve had to deal with stupid bullshit too, so come break shit.”

“Oh, um, I don’t have a destructive quirk like you guys do, or any quirk for that matter.”

“So? What’s that have to do with being able to break stuff? Player 3, make her something to break shit with, since apparently this noob doesn’t know how to do it herself.”

Izuku activated Bell, making a decent size bronze bell in his hands and grabbed a sturdy looking branch off the ground. With a quick touch of Overhaul, he made an ax and handed it to Melissa. “Sometimes it can be good to let off steam. Maybe not all the time, but I think it can be really cathartic on occasion.”

She gave a halfhearted swing, causing the bronze ax to bounce harmlessly off a nearby stump.

“You really are a noob. I can’t believe I have to teach you how to get angry. First, think about all the people and things that ever hurt you. Think about the pain you felt and remember exactly who caused it. Then, you take all those feelings and let them out on whatever is nearest. Show her how it’s done, Player 2.”

Melissa had another moment of confusion of how and why this small child would be showing her how to be violent. Eri went over to the weed-filled rectangle that was once an attempt at a garden and started hitting the dirt and grabbing at the plants.

“Stupid bird-face-people. Stupid Overhaul. Stupid curse. Stupid experiments. Stupid villains that hurt people. Stupid momma selling me and not wanting me and being a bad momma.” Her horn had started to glow, and that glow quickly spread to the plants she was hitting. The brown and half dead plants suddenly became greener before shrinking down until the small garden plot was nothing but dirt with small stones for a border.

The glowing came to a stop and she stumbled over to Aizawa and held her arms up. “All done.”

He scooped her up in his arms and brought her inside so she could take a nap. Hizashi gave Melissa a thoughtful smile. “It might seem weird for us to be okay with encouraging her to get angry. But she spent a lot of her life not being allowed to show anger and going through things she has every right to be angry about. As long as the destruction stays safe and controlled, then it seems like a healthy way for her to cope and learn to accept and direct her emotions.”

She snuggled into his arms and seemed to be one step from being asleep. “And it gets her to actually accept nap time, which is always a win.”

Chapter Text

Aizawa and Yamada sat opposite Izuku in their kitchen, the teen looking more than a bit nervous. He could understand, no teenager wants to be told that their guardians need to have a talk with them. School had just ended for the day and they’d brought this up as soon as they’d gotten inside, mostly because they wouldn’t have too much time before they would need to pick Eri up. And any serious conversation was much more difficult when a curious child was in the house and inevitably would want to be involved.

Plus, Melissa probably wouldn’t be over until the weekend. She’d been officially transferred to UA a week earlier and lived on campus with other students that had special circumstances. But for at least the moment, they had the house to just the three of them (and the cats).

“Um… am I in trouble?” Those puppy dog eyes were powerful but he knew they had to stay strong and be firm or else he’d think there weren’t consequences to his actions.

“Yes.” At the same time Hizashi said the opposite. “Of course not, little listener.”

He turned and glared at his husband. “I’m sorry! He’s just so sweet, I can’t handle it when he gives me those sad eyes.”

“I’m confused, did I do something wrong or not?”

“I suppose that depends on how you answer some questions. The first thing is it looks like you’ve been using your quirks without permission to try and get out of trouble. We’ve found signs of you using Overhaul or other quirks to hide when you’ve broken something.”

He pulled out a few pictures where slight inconsistencies were found around the house. A plate that was in perfect condition rather than being worn down like the others in the set. A cabinet where the wood grain didn’t line up anymore. And the most significant, roughly half a wall that was off color and was missing a crack that was previously there, hidden behind a picture.

“W-what’s so wrong about fixing a few things around the house? I did my best to put things back just like they were, but colors are really hard to recreate.”

HIzashi took over, knowing his wonderful idiot of a partner was falling back on investigation methods and unintentionally talking to their kid like a suspect instead of a child. “And that’s totally fine kiddo. You know we don’t have a problem with you using your quirks around the house as long as you’re responsible about it. The problem is you tried to hide it from us. If something happens we need to know what’s going on, otherwise we can’t help. Can you tell me why you had to fix those things?”

He looked down, an embarrassed blush on his cheeks. “Um, well, a few things I broke on accident because I’m really not used to how strong I’ve gotten recently. With Physical Prime, even without a quirk active I’ve become way stronger really fast, and, um, sometimes I forget that that happened. Like, um, I had tried to open the cabinet but then ripped it in half instead…. And for the wall, I’d been practicing switching between quirks I had active, and then I sneezed with Resonate active and the wall kinda exploded.”

After he finished his mumbled ramble he looked up at them with big nervous eyes that were on the verge of tears.

“That’s alright Listener, I’ve done that a couple times myself, one strong sneeze and there go the windows. You won’t get in trouble for accidents, just tell us next time so we don’t have to guess at what’s going on?”

He nodded.

“Great. Is there anything else we should know about?”

“No? Um, nothing I can think of at least.”

Aizawa looked at him with a fair amount of intensity. “You’re positive? Nothing you might have done purposefully or accidentally you’d like to share?”

“Yes? I- um, I’m confused, where are you going with this?”

“Well, I had an interesting conversation with Powerloader this morning about how some of his tools have been going missing lately.”

Izuku’s eyes widened and his face rapidly went pale as Aizawa pulled out a list.

“Specifically, he was looking for almost a dozen schematics, a few hundred pounds of high quality alloys, a machine for making cloth with DNA spliced into it, an air composition test, entire toolboxes worth of more general equipment, and quite a bit of liquid nitrogen.” The list was folded up and put back in his pocket. “So when he got a brand new state of the art air compressor, he decided to put a tracker on it just in case. Would you like to take a guess at where it led him?”

Izuku nervously shook his head, as if that would make the issue go away.

“No? That’s surprising, since it was in your room with half a dozen other tools and gadgets that definitely aren’t yours. You had about half of that list in your room, and I’m guessing the rest is stashed somewhere else.”

Present Mic gave him a soft smile. “I know it might feel like the end of the world, but this really isn’t a huge deal. We expected there to be a bit of transition from living with villains to living with heroes, and one of those things is no stealing. Honestly, we’re shocked it took this long for you to break rules. All you have to do is return everything to the original owners and apologize.”

He just shifted uncomfortably in his seat and shook his head.

“Problem Child, this really doesn’t have to be difficult. And if, for whatever reason, it really is that important that you have an air compressor and a block of titanium, then we can make that happen. But we’re returning what you stole whether you like it or not.”

Aizawa reached into a bag that Izuku had previously not paid attention to and pulled out a couple of tools that had Powerloader’s name on them, probably to reduce theft, he also grabbed a strange glass container that glowed purple. Aizawa didn’t know what it was, but he figured it probably wasn’t Izuku’s. “We can go over right now-”

Before he got to finish, Izuku’s hand shot out and snatched away the jar and laser-based measuring tool. He lifted his shirt and pressed them to his stomach, turning the items into tattoos with Skin Deep, preventing them from taking them back.

“It’s mine!” With another flash of movement he teleported behind them and took the bag of contreband, hiding it behind his back before his eyes went foggy and he teleported again. The foggy eyes meant he activated Bird’s Eye View, so he could have gone literally anywhere. Luckily, he was back after just a few seconds, without any of the items.

The two heroes looked at each other in confusion. “I don’t want to be mean kiddo, but from what I understand, those aren’t yours. But if I’ve got something wrong then feel free to correct me.”

Izuku’s face was scrunched up in confusion, like he didn’t know either. “I- I’m sorry, I don’t- I can’t think of a logical reason for why these are mine, but they are, and the idea of you taking them makes me really upset and angry I don’t know what’s wrong with me, why do I feel so sure that these are mine?”

“Woah there kiddo, take a breath. It seems like your thoughts and feelings are a bit out of sorts. So, the tools feel like they’re yours. Can you try telling me why? Not with logic, just tell me your gut feeling on why it’s yours?”

He closed his eyes in concentration, the words coming out in a jumbled ramble. “I- because I needed them for a project I want to do. It’s a surprise I’ve been working on. So I took them, and since I took them they’re mine now and I won’t let you take them because they’re mine mine mine.”

Yamada looked over his shoulder at Aizawa, who had a slight frown but actually looked more relieved after that answer. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“I’m not a mind reader so I don’t know. But if you think that this is a quirk side effect, then yeah, I agree.”

“Yeah. I need to go pick up Eri, but don’t let me stop you two from continuing this conversation.”

Aizawa just sighed and turned back to Izuku as his husband left. “Can you explain why you didn’t just ask for what you wanted? The school would likely have provided them to you for this project, even if you wanted to keep this project to yourself until it was done.”

“Borrowing them just feels wrong. I don’t want to give them back. And if they give them to me just to be nice, that means they can be taken when they don’t feel nice. …So I took them.”

He nodded slowly. “I think I understand a bit better. It’s the lack of control and permanence that triggers that reaction. Would it be better if it was an exchange? From what you’ve said in the past, your father gave you quirks as either prizes in a game or trades, so I’m assuming he has the same impulses.”

He gave a brief nod.

“Okay, we can work with that. I think the first thing we’ll need is a list of everything you stole. I won’t push for where they are, but I need to at least know what the items are, that way we can figure out a better option than just taking it.”

Izuku just looked to the side awkwardly in response. “Well… how do you define ‘stole’? What if no one wanted it anymore?”

Aizawa felt like he was going to go gray mid conversation. “Stop trying to use technicalities. What exactly did you take, and where did you get it?”

“You know how you had me do some cleanup at that trash covered beach to build muscle, but we never finished because I was busy committing crime as a vigilante?”

“Yes. I recall. Are you saying you just took some trash? Weird, but not a problem. Why do you look so nervous, what aren’t you saying?”

“I sort of took all of it, and a few other trash heaps as well. Overall, I think I took a few thousand tons of raw material after using Overhaul to alter it into a more useful form.”

He took in a deep breath and rubbed his temples. “Let me make sure I understand this correctly. You’ve been taking various tools and materials, some from the school, some from trash piles, all to create an unknown project along with what is sounding like a lair of some sorts to hold the things you’ve claimed as yours.”

“Um, yeah. That’s about right…”

“I won’t push on where this base is, since that seems important to you. But we really do need those things back. Some of that was very expensive equipment. So here’s my offer, I’ll buy some tools and trade them with you so we can give Powerloader his stuff, he’s very attached to his toolset so he’ll want the originals back. For the more specialized stuff, figure out how long you’ll need it for this project of yours and I’m sure we can make an arrangement that won’t set off those impulses. Short term, we can stick with trading, long term you’ll need to get a handle on that, but that’s a problem for later.”

Izuku just nodded, feeling more than a bit embarrassed about the entire situation. Everyone had helped where they could, but it seemed like each thing was just a stopgap for his growing need to take everything he could. They were accommodating for now, but it was hard not to fear that he would burn through that patience.

Chapter Text

Aizawa gave a deep sigh as he stood at his podium. He looked at his class and could already tell it was going to be an exhausting day. How could he tell? Because Midoriya was with him when they both made their way to the school, and yet he wasn’t in his seat.

They’d both left earlier than usual, he had to get some paperwork done and Izuku mentioned something about finishing up a piece of support gear. But the green haired boy isn’t one to be late to class unless he’s causing chaos, so he felt his concerns were justified. 

After a few minutes of silence Iida stood up while raising his hand. “Sir! Is there a reason we haven’t begun our homeroom yet?!”

“Yes. The reason is that I have a feeling that we’ll be interrupted and I don’t feel like starting a class that will get taken over by something else. Right now we’re just waiting for something unexpected and probably alarming to happen.”

They didn’t have to wait long though. A few seconds later Izuku kicked open the door and ran up to Uraraka’s desk. He was practically vibrating in excitement as he slammed down a box in front of her.

“I made you new shoes and a jetpack!” He pauses for a moment. “Well, I didn’t make the jetpack, my sort-of-maybe-half-sister made it, but it’s still for you.”

While most of the class looked bewildered, Uraka just gave him a big smile, far more used to his antics and having already met Melissa a few times. “That’s so cool! Let me see!”

She opened up the box and pulled out a pair of pink boots and looked them over. They were the same light pink as her hero outfit, but they looked far more like the boots you would see on an astronaut. An extra detail on the side was a multi-colored M that she assumed was a logo of some sort.

“The boots they gave you were awful, they were so bulky and there was no reason to add a heel. And they didn’t even match your space aesthetic! So I made you better boots! Not only are they better boots, but they do something special.”

He took one back for a moment and threw it at the ground with a fair amount of force. The solid looking shoe hit the floor but made almost no sound and showed no sign of damage. “They are shock absorbent and can handle thousands of force without issue.”

“Woah! That’s amazing! How’s that even possible?”

“Oh, it’s not that tricky. I can make quirked items by having certain mutations active, like Shock Absorption, and then make items with emitters that create items from my body. I used Nail Gun to make a pile of Shock Absorption nails, and then used that metal to make the bottom of your boots!”

She giggled in response, “Oh yeah, very straightforward.”

Just then, the door was slammed open again. This time the one coming through was a pink-haired girl pushing a seemingly empty cart. “Am I late!?! I brought the invisible swords!”

In Mei’s excitement she ran into the room with enough speed that the cart nearly tipped over, which would have been very problematic based on what it was supposedly carrying. At the last moment Melissa came up from behind her and grabbed onto it, stabilizing it and preventing disaster.

Aizawa gave a sound of true exasperation, yeah, that fit within what he’d expect. “And why do you have invisible swords?”

“They’re for Hagakure! Well, it’s not just swords though. I was worried about her not having a hero costume protecting her, so I made her an invisible outfit with a little bit of Shock Absorption. It’s not nearly as tough as the boots, but the absorbent silk can still take a hit from Mei with a sledgehammer without issue. We could have made it stronger than that but that would have meant making the fabric much thicker and limited your mobility, which is counter to your fighting style. We also included a black light, since that makes the suit glow, because it’s not as a complete form of invisibility as your quirk, but in this case that’s good because it means you can see it when you put it on but still have it be invisible otherwise. Oh, but keep that a secret because that means black lights could be a serious weakness where people can see your outfit, making you vulnerable in a fight. And that was all we planned to do but then we had a lot of fun making invisible things and since we didn’t know what weapons you wanted to use we goofed off and made a lot of invisible swords  and stuff because we could.”

It was almost impressive to see just how much Izuku could say without taking a single breath when he got excited about something.

Aizawa sighed again and started to think that he was sighing enough it would replace regular breathing. He quietly watched as Hagakure excitedly looked over the new outfit and didn’t care enough to stop her when she sprinted out of the room to go try it on. Aizawa had mostly just accepted that there wouldn’t be a homeroom class that day.

Izuku Blinked out of the room and then teleported back right next to Kirishima, holding out a deep red cape that matched Kirishima’s hair.

“I know you care a lot about chivalry and manliness and protecting people, so I made this for you! It has shock absorption and is 100% fire-proof. It will help keep you safe from sneak attacks, but its main purpose is that you can use it to protect the people you’re rescuing. Oh, and since we could make it way thicker than Hagakure’s outfit, it’s able to stand up to getting hit by a single All Might smash, which is probably way more than you need, but it seemed better to have too much than too little protection.”

There was a big toothy grin in response as he put it on and immediately twirled a bit. “This is so manly!”

Aizawa watched Izuku go from student to student, offering top of the line support gear that most professional companies would struggle to match. The multitude of quirks at his disposal combined with the best support students from both UA and I-Island meant that they were able to create some truly spectacular items.

After a few more items were given, Aizawa was pretty sure he’d put the pieces together. It was only a week earlier when Eri had done something very similar, but instead of giving out quirk powered equipment she used cookies. Specifically, she had been having a hard time making friends in kindergarten, so they helped her make some cookies that she shared with the class. He didn’t let his expression change, but internally he could admit that it was adorable to watch Izuku mimic Eri’s friendship strategies.

Jiro was looking over the headphones she’d been given. They were designed to monitor how much noise she was receiving, and would deploy earplugs that had the quirk Soundproof in them if it went above a certain decibel. This managed to cover one of her main weaknesses, and they had mics in them as well, so they would actually boost her hearing even higher when sound was at normal levels.

She had paused for a moment, looking at the tri-colored ‘M’ on the side. “What’s up with the ‘M’ logo? Are you starting a company or something?”

Mei Hatsume took this opportunity to sprint towards her and get unnecessarily close. “Yes! I was going to create the ‘Hatsume Corporation’ as soon as I graduated, but I was eventually convinced to partner with my fellow scientists to abandon my dreams and rebrand my future company to ‘Triple M.’”

Aizawa heard Mellisa mutter to herself. “Convince her? It was her idea.”

“If you’re all intelligent test subjects then you’ll know it stands for Midoriya, Mellisa, and the most important member, Mei. The color scheme was also my work of genius, using our air colors to create an unforgettable logo that shall go down in history!”

A few people looked over at the calm and collected Mellissa, who was in extreme contrast with the other teenaged mad scientist. She just shrugged and continued organizing the various support items Izuku wanted to give out to the class. “What can I say? She’s a bit insane, but it’s fun to work with someone so passionate about what we do.”

At this point, Mei had jumped up onto Ojiro’s desk and was maniacally laughing while explaining how they would take over the world by selling good products at low prices in order to help both heroes and support civilians with quirk related disabilities.

Yaoyorozu was testing the self-repairing fabric she was given when she looked back at Izuku. “I’m surprised none of these items have been made of platinum so far. Did you need it for a separate project?”

Izuku froze and responded with a highly intelligent “Uhhhhhhh.”

Aizawa cut him off before he could make any half assed excuses. “I wasn’t told you were giving him any materials. What exactly did you give him?” The exasperation never quite left his voice.

“Um, I suppose I’ve given him a fair number of different raw materials in exchange for ideas on how to use my quirk, such as tungsten or titanium, but most recently I gave him twenty pounds of platinum. I was worried about the economy at first, but he assured me it wouldn’t be sold in any way.”

Aizawa didn’t know what exactly to do about that, or what it even meant, but he just assumed it would be added to the list of confusing and suspicious things Izuku had done without explanation.

Before they could delve too deeply into that topic though, Kaminari spoke up, pulling the attention of the class. “How come Bakugou is the only one who didn’t get something?”

Izuku froze for a moment and looked more than a bit awkward. “Oh, um, well. I figured he would just yell at me if I did.”

As if to prove his point, Bakugou immediately shouted back. “Goddamn right I don’t! I don’t need your bullshit help to be the best!”

“Besides… I don’t really want to be his friend since he’s mean to me.”

Kirishima looked over at him, confusion all over his face. “Wait, you gave us this stuff because you wanted us to be your friends? That doesn’t make much sense.”

The awkward look turned to panic, “Please don’t get mad. I wasn’t trying to bribe you or anything like, okay I guess it could be considered a bribe, but I was just trying to do nice things so you’d maybe want to be friends.”

Kirishima scratched the back of his head as he thought about how to phrase his thoughts. “Sorry bro, I’m not great at words all the time. I meant that it was weird to do because I thought we were already friends. I can’t speak for everyone, but I kinda assumed just about everyone else thought of you as a friend too. Why would you need to convince us to do something that we were already doing?”

The rest of his classmates quickly agreed, affirming that they were definitely his friends. It took very little time for Izuku to get completely overwhelmed by their positive affirmations and break down crying.

From that point on, the rest of that day’s homeroom was replaced with a group hug session where most of the class huddled together. Once again, he would never admit to thinking it was adorable or telling Present Mic to start his English class late so they wouldn’t cut off their moment of friendship.

Chapter Text

Izuku sat on the grass with a few of his new friends from class, hanging out for a bit after school had ended. They’d just been told during homeroom that the UA sports festival would be in a few weeks, so the hero classes would be focused on training and building skills so they can show off. Uraraka, Iida, Tsuyu, and Todoroki were at the table with him and were at varying levels of excitement.

At the lowest end was Todoroki. “I don’t really care one way or another. I’d planned on using the festival as another chance to only use my ice and anger my father, but since he’s been arrested it wouldn’t work.”

After having his quirk taken away and with the secrets of Touya revealed, public opinion of Endeavor had dropped at unheard levels and he was arrested not long after. The Hero Association normally protected Endeavor from the consequences of his actions, but this time too many people knew and he didn’t have the strength that was needed to make him worth the effort in the eyes of the government. By taking his quirk away, he went from being the HA’s loyal soldier to a liability and a problem.

Shouto paused in thought. “Would he be allowed to watch TV from prison? In that case I’ll try to lose as badly as possible since he’s counting on me being his legacy.”

In the range of people getting pumped up for the festival and training as hard as possible, there isn’t really a lower option than ‘planning to throw your fights to taunt your imprisoned father’.

Next was Tsu, who seemed mostly neutral on the idea. “I don’t mind it, but I doubt it will make a difference in my career, ribbit . Since I’m going into the niche field of water rescue I won’t have to compete with lots of people for a job and the HA always wants more water heroes, ribbit .”

She wasn’t wrong, since Japan had so much coastline there were never enough heroes to monitor the waters around their country. It wasn’t as glamorous, but they did the important job of preventing smuggling, rescuing anyone from sinking ships, and enforcing fishing regulations. Making it even worse, lots of heroes that could be more aquatic preferred to stay inland in order to increase their rank since there’s not a lot of press on the open ocean to see you being heroic.

But Tsu had never been that showy, so it made sense she wasn’t enthusiastic about competing in front of thousands. That didn’t mean she wasn’t competitive, she would definitely try to win, but he figured she’d probably prefer it without the crowds.

Iida was quite excited in his own way, which meant giving them lectures on how prestigious of an event it was and how his brother had won his own sports festival his first year. “We must all strive to do our very best and show the world our heroic nature as the next generation!” It was a bit much, but Iida wouldn’t be himself if he wasn’t a little intense all the time.

It was a little odd to hear him ramble about how important it was to be noticed and appreciated by heroes to get internships since he planned on going with brother.

And finally, there was Uraraka, who was acting more like it was a gladiatorial match than a friendly school tournament. “I will crush everyone in my path and win! Who’s with me?!” She had an aura of intense determination and pumped her fist into the air.

They gave her a confused but supportive round of agreement.

 After a few moments Izuku looked over at her, “So, what has you so pumped up for the festival? I know you can be kind of competitive, but this seems like even more than usual.”

That said, ‘kind of competitive’ was a hit of an understatement. They’d played Mario Kart together at one point when she’d visited and she had a tendency to turn it into a full contact sport.

Her expression shifted into one far more awkward and sheepish. “Oh, well, um, I just want the chance to get noticed so I can get a good internship next year and join a well paying agency once I graduate.”

Iida looked over with confusion and disagreement clear across his face. “Well paying? Surely there are more important aspects to hero agencies?”

She looked down at the table in embarrassment. “To be honest, I’m becoming a hero for the money. I know it’s a lot less honorable than you guys, but my family is really poor and I want to be able to take care of them.”

Shouto nodded. “That seems honorable to me, but why does it matter if you have an honorable reason? I plan on being a hero out of spite, but I’ll still be saving people.”

That clearly went against anything she’d thought before and Iida voiced his aggressively polite disagreement, but Izuku agreed with it. Having good intentions was nice, but what the person actually did felt more important. He thought of All Might, who spoke of justice and peace, but he’d only been an unpleasant person for Izuku and honestly not the most heroic. So which mattered more, heroic heart or heroic actions?

Their conversation went in different directions but Izuku’s mind kept going back to how everyone felt about the festival, more specifically, where on that range did he fall? The truth was that he really didn’t know how he felt, every positive aspect seemed to have a matching negative.

He’d get to see the other classes using their quirks and it was always fun to analyze new quirks, but they’d probably use them poorly and he’d have to deal with holding back his desire to take them.

He’d get to show off how much more skilled he’d become with all his training and practice, but there were always weirdos that started declaring him to be some sort of god or were just mean, and that kind of ruined showing off to the public and made him want it to be more private.

He’d be competing with his friends, who were always fun to hang out with, but he didn’t want to make anyone look bad by beating them without effort or be rude by not trying his best and letting someone beat him.

It was all so complicated and had too many feelings. He thought about it the rest of the day and tried to explain his many feelings to his friends in a long winded ramble as they were leaving class.

Tsu looked him dead in the eye which she didn’t seem to realize was weirdly intimidating. “Then don’t try to win. Just focus on having fun with your friends and don’t worry about winning or doing your best. Ribbit. ”

He just stood there in thought for a moment. That actually made a lot of sense. He knew he could easily win, and so did everyone else, so did it really matter if he got on the podium?

“Huh, thanks Tsu, you give really good advice. I think I’ll do that, I just hope it doesn’t come off as patronizing or mean.”

She just shrugged. “ Ribbit. It can be a little disheartening training alongside you, but then I remember you’re one of the strongest beings on the planet and I stop worrying about keeping up with you.”

His other friends nodded, clearly feeling similarly but hadn’t been bold enough to just say it out loud.

Uraraka shoved his shoulder a little. “Enough worrying about that, how’s your sister? Still being tiny and adorable I assume?”

“Oh! Thanks for reminding me, I totally forgot something I’d wanted to do.” With that he vanished into thin air. The four of them just looked at each other, silently asking if the others knew what he had left to do, but all of them were equally unsure. That said, none of them were too concerned, it was absolutely the sort of thing they were used to from being his friend the last few weeks.

Kaminari had been on his way home when their class cryptid appeared about a foot in front of him, causing them to immediately collide and fall to the ground.

“Woah! Didn’t see you there.” “Sorry, I missed my teleporting! It can be hard to aim at times.”

They were both quiet for a moment after speaking over each other and finally stood back up. “Uh, are you here on purpose or is this just a weird quirk thing?”

“No, no, this was on purpose. Well, finding you was, running into you like an idiot was an accident. But anyways, I needed your help with something.”

He was less than five minutes from being home and relaxing after a long day of training his quirk at school and had already shorted out once. He had a good guess at what he wanted so he put on a slightly strained smile and verified his assumption.

“What do you need me to power?”

The guy clearly liked building stuff and it was only a matter of time before he needed something (someone) to power his wacky prototypes. He normally didn’t mind being the local battery pack too much, but he mostly just wanted to sleep and recharge (pun intended).

His classmate just looked confused, turning his head to the side like a dog hearing a new sound for the first time. 

 “Um, nothing? I think your quirk is great for being a hero, but not great as a long term power source. Plus, I’m not sure you can produce more than my tooth generator.”

On one hand, it was a relief that the local tiny green god didn’t want to use him as a glorified double A battery. But on the other hand, “What on Earth is a ‘tooth generator’??”

“Um, well, I needed a generator that took up very little space and didn’t have emissions, so I made one out of a few thousand teeth that I arranged in a grid. Oh, the context here is that I have a quirk that gives each of my teeth the output of a taser and another that lets me remove body parts-”

“My guy, please stop talking about your horror movie generator. I really really regret asking about that. Anyways, what did you need from me if not… that.” He didn’t want to associate his power with the grid of teeth that apparently made him obsolete, but sometimes that’s how the cookie crumbles.

“I heard you talking about watching someone streaming video games and wanted to talk to you about video games.”

Kaminari just stared at him for a moment. How was Midoriya simultaneously so terrifying and also a cinnamon roll made of innocence?

“Sure buddy, you’re nearly at my house anyways, and my parents won’t be home for a few hours. Plus they don’t mind me having friends over.” That said, they might have a heart attack when they see the hero/vigilante that saved All Might.

After a few minutes they sat in his room, “Soooo, what did you wanna talk about? I didn’t take you as a big gamer.”

“That’s kind of the problem. I don’t know anything about video games, but my brother pretty much only talks through game references and is also terrible at explaining what they mean. And recently he became a streamer and it's gotten even worse. Every time I tried looking things up I just got even more confused.”

“Woah, your brother is a streamer? That’s pretty cool. And yeah, I can hopefully help with some stuff. What kind of games does he stream?”

Honestly, he felt kind of honored that someone didn’t understand something and came to him for answers. Sure, it was video game knowledge, but that still meant he was trusted to explain the complicated world of gamer lingo.

“Thank you so much.” He gave a smile that was far too pure. “He does fast-running on obscure games. Oh! And my little sister Eri does commentary while he plays.”

Kaminari just stared at him for a moment as he processed the words. “Do you mean speedrunning?”

“Yeah! That’s the one.”

“Wow, you weren’t joking about not knowing stuff. Not that that’s bad!” He quickly corrected.
“I’ll pull up a few of his videos and we can watch it together and I’ll explain whatever you get confused on.”

Chapter Text

Tomura sat in his new home, happy with the result but frustrated at how he got there. His little brother was so helpful and it got on his nerves. Izuku needed help destroying some stuff on a large scale which would take forever with his other quirks, and he was always happy to turn things to dust. After turning some mountain he didn’t recognize into dust his idiot brother gave him a deed to a house. He could guess it was probably because their dad had been talking about Tomura needing to move out to learn independence or whatever.

So now he had a place to live and was the healthiest he’d ever been, also because of his stupidly helpful dumbass brother. The sneaky bastard had run by and kissed his arm like a weirdo, making him pass out until his stats reached full. When he woke up his HP was at max too, every scab on his neck and split lip was gone along with any aches or pains. It was weird to look in the mirror and not have any bags under his eyes or chapped lips.

It definitely felt better even if he would never tell Izuku that under any circumstance. There was no fucking way he would give the favorite son any compliments anytime soon, the dumbass already acted like he was the main character. As he set up a game, there was a knock on the door. He walked over, knowing who it was even before he heard the exciting chatting. As soon as he opened the door Eri came shooting into the house.

“Tomu!”

He gave a grunt in response, but she understood it was friendly and gave a big smile back.

Aizawa stood in the doorway and looked around for a second before nodding. “Alright, I’ll be back to pick her up in a few hours. You both know the rules.”

“Yeah, yeah. Make the place clean before she visits, don’t do crime here, don’t feed her junk food, and don’t play violent games.”

“And don’t go anywhere else, I don’t want to have to worry about where you are.”

Eri looked back at her dad. “Why would we go anywhere? The stream is about to start!”

“Yeah Aizawa, get out of here so we’re not late.”

After a little more glaring, Aizawa left and Eri ran over to his gaming room.

He’d been babysitting her the last few weeks since the hero school shit kept going late to prepare for the sports bullshit. He didn’t mind having her over (even though he’d never admit that either) and was a good commentator.

She sat in her gaming chair (which was just a regular office chair but with a bunch of pillows as a booster) and waited impatiently as he finished setting up the camera and made sure everything was working right.

“You ready, brat?”

“Yeah! Let’s show those noobs who’s boss!”

Shigaraki had a genuine (some might say evil looking) grin in response. He was teaching her so well.

The light next to the camera turned green and the monitor to his left showed the chat and what the viewers saw, on the right monitor was the game he’d be playing.

“Welcome back or whatever, in case you NPC’s forgot to read the title, we’ll be continuing this series of speedrunning various horse games my little sister likes.”

He moved his mouse over to press play when he was immediately interrupted.

“Nooooooo, you can’t start yet. I need to do the intro.”

“Do it quick then.”

“Ok. Here it goes.” She squinted her eyes in thought and incredible focus before speaking. “Hello Internet people, I’m [beep] the best unicorn ever and my big brother who is the bestest at video games. And today we’re gonna. Um. Play. Um.”

Tomura had set up his computer so he could bleep her words whenever she was about to say something she shouldn’t, like her real name. He’d tried to explain why she shouldn’t say her name, but she refused to change her intro that she spent a lot of time practicing so she could say it on every stream.

He looked over and saw her face scrunched up as she tried to remember what game they were playing this time. It was kind of funny since the game was already up and the title was in all caps across the screen. The nicest thing might have been to help her out, but it was hilarious, so he waited a solid minute. After letting her guess just about every other game he pointed at the screen.

She didn’t have a lot of words down yet, since (unsurprisingly) the Yakuza didn’t teach her to read. But luckily, sounding out one of the few words she knew was enough for her to remember the game she asked him to play.

“Princess Unicorn Adventures!”

“Technically, ‘Princess Unicorn Adventures 3, The Missing Tiara’, but I doubt anyone gives a shit. Oh, and the thing that someone said as a joke yesterday is now real because I live on spite and energy drinks.”

He grabbed a tablet and handed it to Eri. “Congrats you’re now a mod. You’ll see the chat there and you can ban people and stuff like that.”

“Yay! I’m gonna be the best mob!”

“No, not mob- you know what. Fine.” He saw the chat quickly fill up with people being alarmed over having a child as a moderator, since any comments section tended to be less than child appropriate.

“Don’t worry, she can’t read. Unless you write shit like, apple, unicorn, cat, uh, what other words do you know?”

“Ummmm, I can write my name! Oh! And I can write daddy and papa.”

He looked in the chat, seeing one person insulting her for not knowing more words at her age. He made a note of the user name so he’d remember to find their identity and ruin their life later on, no one insulted his little sister and got away unscathed.

But that was enough sidequest bullshit, without really announcing it, he started the timer and clicked play on the children’s game.

What followed were three hours of incredibly high skilled gameplay that seemed incredibly out of place in the world of Princess Unicorn. He had spent many sleepless nights finding various glitches and shortcuts that let him speedrun through the game as quickly as possible. He explained what he was doing on occasion but mostly their gameplay discussion was Eri rambling about various things.

As he mounted/dismounted with frame perfect timing mid-jump, he managed to get over a wall and win a race in twenty seconds that should have taken at least ten minutes. Next he clipped through a mountain, skipping almost a dozen steps in the quest line. All the while Eri explained things that were definitely very important.

“Last week Aoi got scared of a bird that flew at her during recess and she turned into sand. She does that a lot. Hana joked about making a sand castle with her. I told her that was mean and not a nice joke. She didn’t listen though, so I told the teacher she was being mean.”

Eri mumbled the next bit incomprehensibly.

“First off, don’t brag about being a snitch. And second, I can’t hear you when you mumble like that.”

She pouted and stomped her foot a little. “I said I hid cheese in her backpack a few days ago so it would smell bad and when she got to school today she smelled like really smelly cheese. And everyone knows cheese smells are the hardest to get rid of, so now her bag will be smelly forever.”

Shigaraki laughed loudly as he kept going through the game. “Great work kiddo.”

After beating the game he officially had the world record, which wasn’t hard since there didn’t seem to be any serious attempts by anyone else.

“Alright noobs, let’s see what happened in chat while I was doing shit.” After a few moments he looked back over at Eri. “Why’s over half the chat banned?”

“They weren’t using the funny faces with their words.”

“Well, you heard the lady. If you don’t use emojis that she likes you’ll get banned.” He’d unban them for now, but it was too funny that it was controlled by the whims of his player 2 to change his mind on her being the mod.

They ended the stream not too much later and let her take a nap for about half an hour since she tired herself out. A few minutes after she woke up (and was once again full of energy) a crow flew through their open window and into the kitchen before turning into his annoying little brother.

Eri quickly threw herself into his arms in a big hug. “Izuku! You’re all done with your extra classes?”

“Yep! But your dads are still busy, so we can go and have breakfast on our own.”

She tilted her head to the side like a confused puppy. “Breakfast? But it’s dinner time?”

“Not in Mexico it isn’t! I found this place that has the best burritos in the entire world!”

“Wowwww, you checked the whole world for burritos?”

“Well, a lot of my quirks burn through calories really fast, which are fancy words that mean I need to eat a lot of food. So I’ve been teleporting around the world, trying lots of local foods, and that’s how I found the best burritos made by this lovely old lady. Technically it’s not a breakfast food at all, but every burrito is a breakfast burrito if you have it for breakfast, and since we’re having breakfast for dinner it’s a breakfast burrito.”

Before Tomura could comment on how dumb that logic was, the two of them had already vanished into thin air.

He was probably going to order a pizza for dinner and start practicing for the next game, Cowgirl Safari, which was based around riding around the wild west and taking pictures of animals.

Unexpectedly, there was a knock at the door, interrupting his thoughts. He walked over to answer it but also took off his two-fingered gloves in case he needed/wanted to kill whoever was on the other side.

Instead some asshole he could/should kill, it was instead an asshole he sort of respected he both couldn’t/wouldn’t kill.

“Eraserhead, your brat already got your smaller brat. They’re in Mexico if you’re looking for them.”

The man just groaned. “Of course they are. That’s fine I guess, I wanted to talk to you anyways.” Shigaraki glared at him, unsure what he could want. “Can I come in and sit down, or are we just going to stand in the hallway?”

“Fine. Make yourself at home or whatever.”

They both walked in and sat in opposite bean bag chairs, much to Aizawa’s annoyance (that was the only type of seat in his living room).

“So, the hell do you want?”

He seemed to think for a moment. “How much do you know about your extended family? Specifically your biological family.”

He scowled in response. “Hard to know about dead people. Not exactly the chattiest. Not that it’s any of your business. If you just came here for that then I’m gonna skip this dialog.”

“Fine. Then let’s talk about Eri’s family until you figure out why it’s relevant.”

Shigaraki continued to scowl but didn’t interrupt.

“Let’s start with her parents. Her mother had a horn that could store and release light. Not particularly powerful, but her father was the head of the Yakuza, so she was powerful in other ways. Eri’s father had a similar quirk to hers, but he didn’t have the storage aspect. So instead of being able to store her quirk’s effect for months or even years before releasing it all at once, he could only de-age people a few seconds at a time. Theoretically he could keep someone young forever, but he’d need to be in physical contact with them at all times and never deactivate his quirk.

“I’m sure you can see how this created Eri’s quirk. But what’s more important is her grandmother and her aunt. You see, grandmother on her father’s side had a quirk that allowed her to control her own age. She was sadly stuck in a quirk marriage where, from what I can tell, they were hoping to get an immortality quirk in the next head of their Yakuza but she stepped in front of a bus before she could be forced to bear more children.”

Aizawa could tell that Tomura was rapidly running out of his already limited patience and he’d need to get to the point of this. But at the same time it was information that he wanted Tomura to have, so he’d just have to get over himself and listen.

“Her only children were a pair of twins, Eri’s father was one, and the daughter was named Nao Nakamura, later to become Nao Shimura.” The lack of recognition made it clear just how much Shigaraki had repressed his childhood.

“She had the opposite ability of her brother, she could age things through physical contact. Again, not particularly powerful since it would take a considerable amount of time to see any clear results. Her husband could send out shockwaves of force through an object by placing five fingers on it. It was quite a powerful quirk. It’s safe to assume that the quirk amplification aspect of his mother’s quirk, One for All, played a part in its strength. And in the boosted strength of yours compared to your mother’s. Creating a quirk that creates a wave of aging so rapid it turns everything to dust.”

Aizawa thought it might be rude to drop so much information at once, but he had to take into account Tomura’s attention span and his tendency for violence when someone goes beyond it or wastes his time being subtle. He sat there for about a minute as he worked through the information he just got, piecing it together slowly but surely.

It sort of reminded him of watching a computer buffer.

“So… those are my parents?”

“Yeah, records say your birth name is Tenko Shimura and it doesn’t take a genius to find that your adoptive father only made those adoption and name change forms official a few months ago, but dated them as if he did it a decade ago. I take it you didn’t know that?”

“I… I knew. I just. Don’t think about it. So. I’m related to Eri?”

“That’s right, kid. You’re her cousin. Which explains why you both have the same eyes and hair, plus the similar quirks.”

“Huh.”

Before Aizawa got to say anything, Izuku suddenly appeared in the room with Eri on his back and a large plate of burritos in each hand. “Heyyy, I’m back with extra burritos!” At the lack of excitement he realized something was definitely off. “Ummm, I feel like I missed something? Do you not like burritos?”

Chapter Text

Izuku sat in the living room reading through an anatomy textbook for the third time while Shadow the cat was curled up in his lap. Speed Read made that process a lot easier though, so it wasn’t quite that big of an accomplishment. Hizashi looked over and smiled as he did some cleaning.

“Enjoying some light reading? I saw you reading another one in class the other day. Where’d you find so many medical textbooks anyways?” There was the implied question of him making sure Izuku hadn’t robbed some poor med student.

“The library has a bunch of textbooks that people donate after graduating.” He looked at his watch, conveniently avoiding any followup questions about why. “I’m off to hang out with Gigantomachia.”

This was actually a great excuse because it was something he did with a fair amount of regularity. The man was sort of like a giant puppy and loved having company, plus he was a great sparring partner.

“Alright, have fun kiddo and make sure to be home before dinner.”

With that he put the kitten on the ground, much to its annoyance, and teleported away. An instant later he appeared in the house he had lived in for a few months. More importantly though, it was where Dabi and some other vigilantes lived now.

He looked over and saw Dabi, who’d grown out his hair a bit and overall just looked so much better than when they’d first met. Between using Enhanced Fruits to heal him and just not being homeless for an extended period of time, he was basically glowing in comparison.

“Hey brat, it’s good to see you.”

“Hey Dabi, It’s good to be back after not seeing you all for a while. Is that new member here today?”

“Fuck yeah she is, do you really think she’d miss out on this kind of chance? Plus the whole group is here so they can meet the guy in charge”

Their little group had grown a bit from when he’d had to leave them behind. Dabi was their unofficial leader and he’d already met Spinner and Toga. But there were a couple new people he would only be meeting today for the first time. They functioned as you’d expect typical vigilantes to, but what made them different was that they reported directly to Izuku.

He hadn’t needed their services much so far, but if he needed someone ‘handled’ and couldn’t do it himself for whatever reason, then they would be there to do the dirty work. He wasn’t even sure how necessary it was to have them available, but he’d rather have them and not need them then the other way around. His father also strongly recommended having henchmen that no one knew were loyal to him and suggested having people like that in as many different areas as possible.

He slowly had come to realize his father was recommending he create a spy network of loyal subordinates, but he’d worry about that later.

“Hey, the boss guy is here. Some creep I’ve never heard of just showed up .” It didn’t take a lot to guess that he was Twice. The man had never done more than petty crime but his mental health issues meant getting out of crime was near impossible. But even if he was clearly a bit odd, his quirk was something to behold. It was up there with Yaoyorozu’s, the ability to create matter from nothing with so few limitations. He didn’t love how slimy and fleeting the quirk felt, but even his classmate couldn’t compete with the raw power this quirk gave off.

To create a fully sentient being, fragile copy or not, was a truly astounding power that left his hand jittering with a desire to take it for himself. With a quirk like that he’d be able to create hundreds if not thousands of himself and help the world on a global level, stopping famines and curing plagues as a one man army.

He had to shake himself out of the daydream and greeted the man before he did something he’d regret. “Yep, I’m Izuku. Nice to meet you.”

While Dabi, Toga, and Spinner had started their little group for social justice and Twice joined mostly just because he was in a bad spot and needed friends, Mr. Compress seemed to be in it for the thrill. That wasn’t necessarily bad, but it did make him slightly more concerned about his loyalty than those that joined for ideals.

Finally, there was the member he was there to meet with specifically. Magne had joined for vigilante social justice reasons too, and had a gorgeous magnetism quirk. Interestingly enough, it worked differently on different genders and made them glow accordingly. Which meant that her magnetism quirk could be used as a gender detector that had apparently had the unfortunate consequence of having outed various closetted trans people by mistake.

“Yo, what Dabi said is true? You really wanna help me out?”

“Well, you’ll be helping me just as much. I’ve wanted to practice using overhaul on living people since I can only learn so much from my own corpses.” He paused for a moment. “That sounds bad, not corpses of people I killed, I mean my own corpse. I just take off my head, grow a new body, and experiment on my old body.”

Dabi nodded along, far more used to Izuku’s antics and generally being terrifying and helpful at the same time. “The short and less creepy version is that he’s willing to exchange illegal healthcare for being a guinea pig, that’s how I got my scars healed up.”

“Hey, you don’t gotta convince me. When a god-like teenager says he’ll do your bottom surgery for free you don’t ask too many questions.” Magne then handed over a piece of paper. “And here’s what you asked for, a full breakdown of the new body I want.”

He read it over a few times. “Yeah, this should be doable. It’s not hard to make a body that’s smaller than the original, it’s adding material that’s tricky.”

“I’m not backing out or anything, but just how painful is this gonna be? All I was told is you’d tear my body apart and put it back together.”

“Well… The quirk is instant enough you won’t feel any physical pain. But it does leave an existential pain of your body knowing it died but is still alive. It’s essentially cognitive dissonance where your mind can’t comprehend that you’re still alive, but it should wear off after a few days.”

Dabi groaned in annoyance. “Can you not be a horrifying cryptid for five minutes?”

Izuku tilted his head in confusion as he got everything ready. “Did I say something weird?”

Izuku realized pretty instantly that he was in trouble when he got home. It wasn’t exactly hard to guess since his mom, dad, and both temporary guardians were sitting there waiting for him in the living room.

“Oh, um. I can go, you’re all clearly doing something and I wouldn’t want to interrupt.” He started to teleport away but felt glaring red eyes hold him in place. “You know what, on second thought I think I’ll just sit down.”

Aizawa sighed and shook his head. “Do you have the slightest idea of what time it is?”

“Um… No?” He honestly didn’t and started to look over at the clock. Oh, it was apparently one in the morning, that would explain the parade of parents.

His mom was the one that spoke up next. “Do you have any idea how worried we were? No one knew where you were and we just had to hope you’d come back. I don’t know what I would have done if I’d lost you again. What if you’d been kidnapped or hurt and we had no idea something had happened? All for One is still on the loose and You’re running around like there’s nothing to be worried about. And don’t even try to act like nothing happened, I can see blood in your hair.”

He wiped at his head in an attempt to clean it off. He wanted to point out that there wasn’t anything to worry about since All for One was in the room and not causing problems. But there was a reason she was the one person in the room that didn’t know Shigaraki Hisashi was actually All for One. He loved her dearly, but she would go and tell All Might immediately and it would turn into a fist fight.

His dad nodded along. “I think the better question is what you were doing. I had called, looking to set up another family dinner, and to my surprise they thought you were with Gigantomachia, where you most certainly weren’t.”

“Uhh, I was with Tomura.” Yeah, that was a decent lie, Tomura wouldn’t have had a reason to leave his apartment today so they shouldn’t be able to verify that.

Tomura smirked as he stepped out from around the corner. “Are you sure about that?” While everyone else looked worried and upset, he just looked intrigued.

“Oh wow, did I say Tomura, I meant to say… uh…” The glares he received made it clear that his chances of getting away with this was pretty much zero.

Aizawa sighed. “You were with your vigilante friends weren’t you? The ones we explicitly told you to break contact with since most of them are serial killers.”

“Ex-serial killers! They don’t do that anymore. They’ve stuck to non-lethal vigilantism since I asked them to.”

“Damnit, kid. Don’t you understand that this is a direct violation of the agreements you signed to join the school? You agreed to cut ties with your criminal contacts, not only on paper but you told us you would as well. You need to actually think through the consequences of your actions. Even if you feel untouchable that doesn’t mean those around you are. We also signed documents agreeing to keep you from going back to crime and would be put in a very difficult situation if you were caught.”

He was caught off balance. “Huh, what do you mean?”

“Hisashi and I are legally required to report any suspicious or illegal activity, we’re essentially your probation officers. So let’s say a few weeks from now it’s discovered that you spent a day with your criminal contacts and we hadn’t reported it. We would likely lose our teaching and hero licenses at a minimum and would be facing jail time at worst, in either case it would take a lot to argue that Eri should remain in our care.”

He sighed deeply and rubbed his temples before continuing. “I’ve never regretted sticking my neck out for you and I’m not starting now, I just need to understand and respect that we’re taking a risk here. Now, I’m going to ask one more time, where were you and what were you doing?”

“Okay, so, um. I went over to the house I used to live at to help Magne since she’s trans but can’t access healthcare. I used Overhaul to give her a new body. Which is apparently really hard to do even though I read a bunch of books about the body and it took like a dozen tries and I had to make her three inches shorter than planned since I lost a lot of the material in the process. That’s probably why there’s blood in my hair. It was successful eventually but very messy since the quirk kind of explodes the person first. And then when I was done with that I helped Dabi next since they apparently didn’t like their body either. So I gave Dabi a feminine leaning androgynous body and that only took about three tries and that was all really stressful so I hung out with Toga and did each other's nails for a while until I calmed down, which is really nice since she used to be really unhinged. She still likes blood and violence, but now it’s a want instead of a need and she’s clearly doing so much better and once we finished doing that I came back home.”

He inhaled harshly after saying all of that in one breath.

Hisashi was the first to speak up. “Wait a second, is that why you’ve been reading all those anatomy books? So you could try doing experimental surgeries on your own without any medical professionals involved?”

Even his dad looked some level of disappointed. “I can respect that you wanted to do a good thing for your friends, but that was a very reckless and irresponsible way to go about it. What would you have done if you hadn’t been able to put her back together correctly? And you’ll certainly have to apologize to Gigantomachia. We went looking for you there first, so he’s very worried about you.”

Now he felt even worse, imagining the giant man all weepy because he was worried something happened to him. He felt pretty awful, everyone just looking disappointed. Except for Tomura, who just looked confused.

“Dabi’s a girl now?”

“Huh? Oh, I’m not sure, I asked them the same thing, but I was just told ‘gender is a construct and I burn down constructs all the time’. So I have no idea what that means and am just sticking to they/them until they tell me to use something else.”

He just kept looking truly baffled. “I don’t get it. If you’re going to make a new avatar, why wouldn’t you go all the way?”

The elder Shigaraki looked over with a raised eyebrow. “What do you mean ‘go all the way’?”

“Becoming a girl. It’s clearly the better option, so why only change some stats?”

Everyone looked at each other, Izuku speaking up quietly. “I don’t think that opinion is as universal as you think it is. I think the majority of people are happy with being the gender they were born as.”

Some pieces seemed to stick together, causing Tomura to get up and just leave the house rather than risk talking about emotions.

Everyone was silent for a few minutes before Aizawa spoke up. “Don’t think that this distraction means you aren’t in trouble. You are very much grounded. We’ve let you have a lot of freedom in going around without supervision and that’s over until you prove we can trust you. That means no more working on secret projects or leaving the house without explicit permission or being accompanied. And let me be clear now, if you try to use clever quirk usage, loopholes, or some technicality to get around this then it will only be extended and stricter. Am I understood?”

Izuku gave a shameful nod before getting hugged. “I’m glad you’re okay, we were all really worried about you when we couldn’t find you.”

This quickly turned into a very large group hug of unlikely co-parents, making it clear how loved he was even when he made mistakes and got in trouble.

Chapter Text

Izuku was downright giddy as he sat in the waiting room with his friends, all of them getting ready for their first sports festival. His focus wasn't on winning or losing, instead he planned on just having fun using quirks that didn’t use as much and maybe showing off a bit. While most of him hoped he didn’t hurt anyone’s feelings, there was a small part that thrived on the knowledge that even if he lost, everyone would know it wasn’t because he couldn’t win.

The whole world knew that if he took a fight seriously then there were very few people on the planet that would have a chance at stopping him. Granted, he didn’t actually like hurting people, so that kind of fight was pretty unlikely, usually using less harmful means of taking down a villain. 

They were about to be called out when Bakugou came up to him and poked him in the chest. “You better take this shit seriously, or I’ll kick your ass.”

Before he could respond, the angry teen grabbed a crowbar and stomped off. He’d been approved to bring a single weapon/tool with him into the tournament since everyone else had quirks. He’d noticed that Kachan used it a lot for practice and hoped he knew how to use it well enough to not seriously hurt someone with it.

Kirishima looked over at him. “What was that about bro?”

“Uh, he’s always had a thing since we were kids about me not trying hard enough. Don’t worry about it.”
Before they could really get into Bakugou’s weird behavior they were called out to the field. It was such a weird and exciting experience to see the sports festival stadium from this side of the field. He’d watched just about every single recording of old tournaments, but it all looked so much different looking up at the stands instead of just seeing it from one of the many cameras around and above them.

The rest of the classes came out one at a time as they were called by a very enthusiastic Present Mic and a grumbling Aizawa who only made a few comments here and there. Once everyone was on the field with them, Midnight moved to the platform in the middle of the arena and grabbed a mic.

“Well, hello there~ Welcome to the first year sports festival. Before we really get going, let’s have some opening words from the vigilante turned hero student that you’ve all been waiting to see.”

That was Izuku’s cue to go up on the platform with her. Typically the opening speech is given to the highest scorer of the general admission portion of the hero exam, but they made an exception in his case. He had asked Uraraka to make sure she didn’t mind him taking her place, and she pointed out that he technically was given the same exam as her, rather than the recommendation exam. If the speaker would be determined by who destroyed the most robots in the exam, then it was Izuku without a doubt.

He’d thought about it for a bit, what he would say while the whole world was listening. He’d considered just saying something basic that amounted to ‘do your best, plus ulta’, but then he decided that wasn’t particularly fun or exciting. He smiled to himself as he approached the mic, he might not admit it to others, but he did love making dramatic statements.

“If you’re waiting for me to give a grand speech about how amazing heroes are and how we’re all the best, plus ultra, then you’ll have to keep waiting.”

There were a lot of gasps at the strong opening and he could have sworn he heard Aizawa groan in exasperation over the speakers.

“Hero as a job title and hero as the noun aren’t synonyms. I think there is a lot of overlap, plenty of professional heroes are heroic, but we can’t pretend that it’s a requirement or that they’re the only ones. Some of the most heroic people I’ve met aren’t official heroes. Being heroic doesn’t have to mean going out in the streets and fighting crime with your fists. It means being kind and inspiring kindness in others. That’s the kind of world I want to bring forth, one where people help each other however they can. Because at the end of the day, it’s your actions that define you, not a piece of plastic the government hands out.” He paused for a moment. “Plus Ultra.”

Just about the entire stadium was shocked in silence as he went back to join his classmates.

Uraraka just shook her head. “Do you really have to be so dramatic all the time?”

Todoroki gave an awkward thumbs up. “I liked it.”

Tokoyami nodded. “What a wonderful banquet of madness.”

Uraraka just sighed. “See what I mean. All of our most dramatic classmates loved it.”

They joked with each other as Midnight said a few words before announcing that they would be doing an obstacle course. All the students were led into a tight tunnel. He quickly noticed everyone getting out of his way so he could move to the front.

He looked around for someone he recognized Mina in the crowd. “Hey, uh, why’s everyone moving away from me?”

“Buddy, everyone knows you’re super strong and no one wants to be in front of you when you do whatever crazy stuff you do next, so they want you in the very front.”

He couldn’t really deny that he had a flair for the dramatic/destructive at this point. “Oh, huh, I guess that makes sense.”

A few more seconds passed as they waited for the race to begin. At the moment Midnight cracked her whip to signal the start, he activated Spring Legs with Speed Boost, launching his body forward out of the tunnel and into the air. He looked back and saw a bunch of his classmates doing something similar. Watching Momo propel herself by creating a metal staff that pushed against the ground was actually really clever and the one time he approved of her using her quirk to create sticks.

He dropped Speed Boost and just bounced from spot to spot, enjoying the feel of Spring Legs even if it was far from his fastest quirk. They hadn’t gotten too far into the race before platforms began to lift robots from the ground. He smiled and jumped directly towards one of the smaller ones, excited to make use of a quirk he hadn’t gotten much practice with.

Right as he collided with the robot he activated Mimic and merged with the green metal. He turned and faced the other bot, reasonably excited to fight robots while possessing one. As he went to charge them he immediately toppled over, quickly learning that inhabiting a robot and knowing how to control one were totally different things. After a few attempts at his objectively cool idea he gave up and left the metal body.

A handful of weaker bots were moving in to surround him and block his path, which he dealt with by putting them under the effects of Heavy. As they collapsed under their own weight he ran past them, just in time for the giant 0-Pointers to join the fray.

He charged at them with a huge smile as he activated King Kong and Growth, becoming a hundred foot tall gorilla with green fur. He made sure no one was underfoot before tackling one of them to the ground and wrestling the giant robot. The other two turned their attention to him as well, creating a veritable moshpit of machinery and giant ape.

He was getting dogpiled by the bots and needed something to help him turn the tide (without being a boring instant-win). As he swung his hand down on one of them he activated Scissor Hands, carving up the mechanical behemoth with blades that were nearly ten feet long. 

After slicing and dicing to his heart’s content, he realized he was still at the very first obstacle of the race while everyone else had long since moved on. While he wasn’t too focused on winning first place, he didn’t want to get disqualified by not being in the first forty.

He quickly dropped his other quirks and activated Crow, becoming a completely normal looking bird other than the bright green eyes. He flew over the obstacle course where he saw some stragglers crawling across the cables connecting islands over a chasm, quickly followed by a large empty field with a warning to watch out for mines.

At first he thought it was a bit extreme but saw that they weren’t actual landmines, which made a lot more sense. Still, they seemed strong enough to knock someone back enough that it let others pass them pretty easily. He swooped down from above, letting himself glide into the exit gate before turning into a human and walking across the finish line.

He heard Mic commentating as he entered the middle of the arena with the students that had already finished. “Coming in fifteenth is Izuku Midoriya!”

Oops, he supposed he wasted more time than he realized at the front end, but fifteenth wasn’t too bad overall. He saw Todoroki come in thirtieth as he calmly strolled into the middle of the arena. It seemed like he was still going the route of putting in minimal effort in order to piss off his incarcerated father. In this particular case, walking calmly was a viable strategy since the minefield stage punished everyone that was running as fast as possible.

After a few more minutes the event was over and they were getting into teams for the second event. Most of his friends were teaming up together and Tsu bluntly explained that they couldn’t show off for hero agencies and sponsors if they were with him. It did make sense though, he’d probably overshadow whoever he was on a team with, which made him a less appealing partner for those trying to get good internships.

He saw a purple haired kid walk over to him with a determined look and looked over his shoulder a few times as if to make sure no one was watching them.

“Hey, would you want to join my team?”

“Uh, su-”

As if not a moment had passed, he was suddenly standing with the purple haired kid, Ojiro, and someone from class B. All of them looked very confused as Midnight declared them the first place winners. Well, all except the purple haired guy, who just looked very determined and was pointedly not looking at them.

He looked around a bit more, trying to piece things together. The event was definitely over and they definitely won, but he had no idea how. 

“Hey, uh, purple guy. Did you wipe my memory or something? I don’t wanna be rude, but you’re the only member of the team that doesn’t look confused.”

Now he just looked at Izuku, completely baffled. “I just brainwashed you and you’re worried about being rude?”

“No, that’s not right.”

“Huh?”

“Brainwashing isn’t the right term. Brainwashing is a long term effect that changes your thoughts and beliefs. This was clearly short term mind control based on verbal cue, which is obviously a form of hypnosis or puppeteering quirk rather than brainwashing, totally different.”

The man just looked confused at having his terminology corrected, but they didn’t have time to continue that talk since the matches were going to begin soon and he was off to have lunch with his friends.

It didn’t take him too long to find Uraraka, Iida, Tsu, and Todoroki in the lunch area. She waved him over to their table with a smile.

“Hey Izuku, I saw you got hypnotized last round but didn’t do anything since I figured you wouldn’t care and would probably just geek out over it once it ended. Besides, all he had you do was telekinetically grab a bunch of headbands and create a circle of fire around the team. It seems like I was right about you not caring too much.”

Which he took as a free opportunity to ramble on about the applications of such a powerful hypnosis quirk in heroics for about the next five minutes. He probably could have kept going when he heard a very familiar voice from behind him.

“Izuku!”

He turned around just in time to catch Eri, who was barreling towards him and giggled as he gave her a big hug.

“Eri!? How’d you get back here? I thought you were watching with Tomura?”

“Papa said we were getting lunch together, but I couldn’t tell you since it was a surprise.”

He saw Hizashi making his way over, chit chatting with various people along the way with Tomura standing nearby and looking generally grumpy.

“And it was an amazing surprise. You’ve met some of my friends before, but I don’t think you’ve met Iida or Tsu. Do you want to try to give an introduction?”

She wiggled and squirmed her way into Izuku’s lap before giving a shy greeting. “Hi, this Izuku, he’s my brother.”

He patted her on the head and chuckled. “Honey, you’re supposed to introduce yourself. They already know me.”

She turned around and buried her face in his chest, saying something that sounded vaguely her name.

Tsu croaked and smiled at the adorable scene, clearly thinking of her own younger siblings.

“Alright, you did great, Eri. Let's just eat some lunch before it’s time for the next round.”

Chapter Text

“Alright Listeners! It’s time for the first one v. one match. You all know the rules, if you leave the ring, surrender, or are incapacitated, you are out! The winners will face each other until only the greatest remain!”

Izuku walked up onto the platform with a big smile. He was so excited to be part of the tournament section! It had been a fun and wild festival so far and he had a feeling it would only get more interesting. He was a little bit worried about his first match though, he’d have to be more careful than he’d planned.

“We’ve got quirks on quirks on quirks in this round, the ultimate battle of cut and paste versus copy and paste! On one side we’ve got Midoriya Izuku, the adorable broccoli-haired former vigilante with more quirks than I care to count! And on the other we have Monoma Neito, with the ability to copy any quirk, so you never know what you’re gonna get!”

Yeah, that’s why he was worried. What if he copied the ability to steal quirks and permanently stole them? So he’d have to keep Monoma from ever making contact and risking his quirks.

Midnight raised her whip in the air. “Take your places. Ready? Begin!”

Monoma dashed forward and split into a dozen pieces, making it harder to keep all of him away. He needed an attack that was AOE rather than against a specific target (he blamed Tomura for any gamer lingo he knew/used).

Activating Air Horn and Bass Boosted, a small brass horn popped out of his mouth in the direction of Monoma’s incoming body parts. A wave of sound collided with him and scattered a large portion of him into the field around them. Monoma reformed and looked quite grumpy about the whole thing and stomped off back to the tunnel entrance without saying anything. He felt kind of bad for winning the fight so quickly, but in his defense he was worried Monoma would try and take his quirks from him.

The anticlimactic fight left the audience disappointed, having wanted to see an epic clash. He had started walking back across the field but didn’t feel like it so he just looked over at the 1-A setting and teleported over to it. Eri was sitting in his seat, waiting for him to come back. Technically she wasn’t allowed in the student section, but who was going to kick her out?

She jumped to her feet and ran up to him while making grabby hands, hoping to get picked up. He laughed and lifted her up onto his shoulders for extra measure. “There you go, now you’re the tallest unicorn out there.”

He hung around his friends for a bit, watching Iida do ‘battle’ with a support student. Even though Iida seemed to be having a very frustrating time it was pretty funny to watch him run around trying to catch the pink haired girl flying around with zip lines and jetpacks.

His attention was pulled away when he heard a mixture of giggling and squawking. When he looked up he saw Eri with a big smile as she pulled on Dark Shadow’s ear tufts. The shadow quirk retreated back behind Tokoyami, shrunken down the same way as when he was around powerful lights.

He looked up at his host while cowering and whimpering. “She’s too bright.”

Eri frowned a little. “Is the birdy okay?”

“Yeah, he’s just taking a break.”

His friends came and went as they chatted with him and his little sister before going down for their own matches. He watched as Tsu bested a lackluster Todoroki, and he was honestly surprised he’d even made it this far since his entire plan was to do badly. It was an interesting discovery that Shinso’s quirk only worked on an understandable response, which meant it didn’t work on Kachan who just screamed incoherently when taunted or insulted.

He had a great time watching all the different quirks being used by class B, since he was already familiar with own class. Don’t get him wrong though, he still loved watching his friends using their quirks too even if he knew them already.

It wasn’t long until it was time for his second match, so he handed Eri off to Uraraka, who was more than happy to hold onto the bundle of sunshine. He walked back to the arena, this time facing Iida. Who made numerous hand motions and promised a fair fight, which felt redundant since he struggled to imagine Iida breaking rules in any way.

For this fight he decided to use a funnier strategy that he could already guess Iida wouldn’t appreciate, but on the other hand it was going to be hilarious. As his friend charged at him at full speed he activated Growth, Metal Muscles, and Muscle Augmentation. Pushing the Augmentation to its limits and curling in on himself, he essentially turned into a giant metal orb.

The final quirk was Bird’s Eye View, so he could watch himself from above and make sure he didn’t accidentally go over the edge. With all of that in place he began rolling at Iida like a giant pinball of doom. He felt the slight vibrations from Iida kicking him over and over to little effect, which is what made this strategy a bit unfair to his opponent, it’s not exactly easy to inflict damage on a giant steel orb.

Iida managed to dodge back and forth for a while but was eventually knocked out of the arena by his rolling around. Izuku dropped his quirks and wobbled as he stood back up. He hadn’t really taken into account just how dizzy he would make himself rolling around like that. Sure, he almost fell down three different times on his way back to his seat, but it was definitely worth it since it was cool looking.

The rest of the second round went by until there were only four of them left. Yaoyorozu had beaten Tokoyami, who he suspected had still been weakened from the brightness of Eri’s smile.  Uraraka had won her match with Shiozaki. And finally, Katsuki had the most impressive battle where he managed to defeat Kirishima.

No one had been expecting the angry quirkless kid with a crowbar to come out victorious over the red-head’s defense. Izuku could admit that he’d underestimated him as well. Bakugou had used the bar of metal like a surgical instrument, striking at the weakest points in his armor until his classmate fell to the ground. Every time Kirishima went on the offense to try and turn the fight around he found himself getting hit in the side or back of the knee with an incredible amount of force, or with the hooked end being used to simply yank one his ankle out from under him.

It was a hard battle and Katsuki was covered in scrapes and bruises, but he won against all odds. But what are odds in the face of the complete and utter refusal to fail?

Izuku wasn’t sure how he felt about Bakugou succeeding. Honestly, any emotions in regards to that ball of rage were a knot of confusing and conflicting thoughts. The solution he found best was to just not think about it at all.

It wasn’t much later that he was called down for a match he was honestly looking forward to.

“This one is bound to be interesting folks! These two might be the most versatile and talented hero students I’ve ever seen, especially for first years. It’s a battle between every quirk you can imagine and every tool you can imagine. Weapons versus powers, only one can stand victorious!”

He looked at Yaoyorozu across the arena and gave her a big smile, which luckily seemed to relieve her of at least some of her anxiety. His classmate looked like she was on the verge of fleeing the stadium all together, and he highly doubted being talked up by Present Mic helped her nerves. He noticed her glance at their ref a few times before realizing what she was worried about.

He looked over at Midnight and waved her over to get attention.

“Yes~?”

“Um, you’ll probably want to ref from further away. If I’m even a little right about her plan you’ll be at risk of ricochet.”

Her eyes widened a bit, “Goodness, you youngsters sure don’t hold back, and I like it.” She joined Cementose at the end of the field who’d already set up a protective barrier. Calling out loudly so they still heard her from the stage, “Ready? Begin!”

He had Shock Absorption and Tough Skin up before the fight even started, then brought forth Cheetah to hopefully close the distance. Cheetah made him fast, but not fast enough. He was about ten feet away once she’d finished making and aiming her first creation.

One of Momo’s biggest difficulties was that most of the most powerful and straightforward objects she could make tended to be lethal. But he’d sparred with her enough that she knew he could take whatever she threw at him and could practice those kinds of fighting styles. That meant instead of trying to come up with a novel solution like a net or some kind of tranquilizer, she raised the barrel of her 12-gauge shotgun and fired it directly into his chest from very short range.

It stung, but didn’t do much more than shove him backwards, stopping his advance. A few blasts directly to his face had him stumble and start to lose his balance. Before she could capitalize on that too much he briefly activated Larceny and took away her weapon, quickly tossing it out of bounds.

He charged back in and dodged to the side when he saw a glow coming from her chest. Instead of a direct attack though a fog came rolling out. At first he was worried about knockout gas but he didn’t think he saw her make a mask to go with it. He used X-ray Vision to see past the fog, just in time to avoid the grenade she’d rolled over to him.

This went on for at least ten minutes as they tested each other’s defenses and counters. Izuku at least was happy to remain in their stalemate, not wanting to use any quirks that would give him a near-instant win. Eventually he managed to close the distance with a handful of close combat quirks and used Freeze Tag on her, making her body lock up with an unpleasant but harmless cramp just long enough for her to surrender.

“That was really amazing! You’ve been getting so good at switching between weapons and styles. I really liked the blow darts and the time you sprayed gasoline. Have you considered making darts from inside your mouth to help with speed and stealth?”

She gave an exhausted smile up at him. “We can try that later, for now we should get off the field.”

“Oops, yeah, that’s a good idea.” He had sort of forgotten where they were. In his defense she was one of his favorite people to spar since she could do so many different things with her quirk (now that she’d moved away from making sticks).

They chatted about what types of poisons were best for darts since she couldn’t use anything that was organic based and that really limited her options. Well, ‘chatted’ is a bit misleading. Yaoyorozu smiled and nodded while he rambled about the pros and cons of different poisons.

Before heading back to the stands they both stopped by the waiting room to wish Uraraka luck. She was a bit nervous, but that was mostly just because it was a tournament that would be shown on national television. She wanted to make her family proud and make a good impression on recruiters so she could get a good internship.

Everyone seemed sure that this was going to be an easy fight, it was one of the highest scorers on the entrance exam versus the quirkless kid. Izuku wasn’t so sure though. Bakugo may be a lot of things, egotistical, insecure, aggressive, violent, rude, etc. but he was also determined like no one else he’d met. Beyond that, he’d made it clear he had no intentions of going down easily and wouldn’t let anyone stand in his way.

Izuku went back up and sat with his friends, Eri jumping back into his lap to watch the last match before the finals. If nothing else he was curious to see what his strategy would be against such a powerful quirk. If nothing else, he did have a solid chance since she needed to get close to use it.

If Bakugou’s previous matches were intense, then this was a display of pure brutality. At first there was a rhythm of her trying to get within grabbing range but also needing to be very careful whenever she entered crowbar range. It was like a dance as they both avoided each other, knowing that it would only really take one well placed hit to take either of them out.

Eventually Uraraka took a risk and managed to dive under his most recent swing and land a full hand on his arm. She paid the price for that success though as she received a powerful knee strike to the face. She stumbled backwards, dazed but looking triumphant, clearly expecting he’d float off. Instead of drifting out of bounds, Bakugou lightly bounced on the ground, testing his movement with only the weight of his trusty crowbar keeping him down.

That left her target obvious to anyone paying even a little attention, if she got her hand on that weapon she’d be the winner. She charged in again, her focus betraying her as he dropped the metal at her at the last second, her eyes following the item as it fell. His body rammed into hers in a tackle that quickly turned into a grapple.

“Nice try round cheeks, but it’ll take more than that to take me out!”

The world watched as they fought tooth and nail, literally, to force the other into submission. Uraraka punched up into his ribs over and over, to the point he was fairly sure the camera nearest to the stage had picked up the sound on her cracking one. He responded in kind by breaking her nose with his forehead and doing whatever he could to keep her from standing up, which would give her a significant advantage while he was weightless.

Izuku vaguely heard people yelling various things about fairness and being nice to women,  but he was far more focused on the battle unraveling in front of him.

Uraraka had finally managed to get up and free herself from the grapple and tried to throw him away from her when he latched his teeth into her arm, keeping himself from floating away. In her moment of pain and surprise he was able to get behind her and get her into a headlock that spelled the end of the fight. But she didn’t give up either, she slowly crawled to the edge of the ring, clearly hoping to throw him out of bounds in some way. She was barely ten feet from the edge when she collapsed and tapped out, not able to hold her breath any longer as she was choked out. 

The match was called and both eventually stood up, Bakugou standing proudly but looking upon Ochako with respect. Both of them were beaten to shit but had given their all to the fight.

Izuku gulped nervously, he supposed that decided who he would be facing in the finals. Now he just had to figure out how to deal with battling his former bully on live television.

Chapter Text

Izuku had thought about this fight a lot. Considered it from every angle in a way that might be considered overthinking by a reasonable person. There were so many ways to go about it and it really depended on what he was aiming to accomplish. Victory would be easy, but most ways to win easily were exactly what his opponent wanted.

He stared across the stage as Bakugou entered the arena. What Katsuki wanted was for Izuku to go all out, to treat him as a serious opponent. The issue with this is that it would vaporize the teenager and leave Izuku with a murder charge. He couldn’t just forfeit either, because while that would piss off Bakugou, Izuku refused to lose this fight.

So, the more quirks he used the more successful Bakugou would feel, but he couldn’t use too few and lose. Because really, all he wanted was for Bakugou to understand him and stop being so mean all the time. And Izuku never hitting back had let him get away with it for far too long. But if his dad taught him anything, it is that there’s a time for patience and kindness, and there’s a time to hit back.

Which is how he got to his current plan, it was probably the most difficult way to go about this, but hey, that’s what plus ultra is all about.

Katsuki stood across from him on the raised platform, glaring at him as hard as possible. “Don’t think you can beat me if you hold back again! I’ll kick your ass just like always, you coward.”

For once Izuku glared back. “If I didn’t hold back I’d vaporize half the city. I’ll give you exactly the fight you don’t want. A fair one.”

As he tried to figure out exactly what Izuku meant, Midnight called for them to get ready, raising her whip into the air. Present Mic was getting the crowd amped up for the match, but neither of them were listening. The moment the whip cracked and signaled the beginning of the fight he activated Larceny and took the solid weapon from Katsuki’s hands before throwing it out of bounds.

“What? Afraid to fight me unless I’m quirkless and unarmed?”

Instead of responding Izuku just charged at him and threw a punch as hard as he could. The angry teen moved to the side but it still clipped his shoulder slightly. When all it did was push him back a bit and stung a normal amount, he looked confused at first and then angrier than ever before as he pieced together what Izuku had said. A fair fight. They would both be fighting quirkless and unarmed in a pure test of strength and skill.

Bakugou had an advantage since he’d been training in quirkless combat while Izuku had started training more recently and mostly focused on his quirks. That said, it wasn’t entirely lopsided. Izuku had kept Physical Prime active for about a year, only switching it out when he was in a fight. It didn’t really cross his mind too much since just about everything else had changed as well, but quirk enhanced puberty had hit him like a truck. He’d grown about a foot taller in the last year and was a wall of solid muscle rather than the scrawny teen he used to be.

The speed that he grew was clearly because of the quirk, but the end result would probably be pretty close to where he would have been anyways. Physical Prime made it easier to get into your best possible shape and stay that way, but that didn’t mean you were guaranteed to be huge, the original holder had been under 5 '3. Even though his mom was pretty short, both possible biological fathers were well over seven feet tall, so his current 6 ‘4 stature was probably to be expected.

However, Bakugou didn’t care how big or strong his opponent was, he saw himself as the best and wouldn’t let anyone stand in his way. He was a scrappy fighter, moving in and out, doing as much damage as he could while avoiding his opponent.

Izuku took a hard hit to the gut, forcing him to exhale. It hurt, but it was also a rush. He had gotten used to fights where every attack could level a building but keeping defenses strong enough that he barely felt it. There was something exhilarating in its simplicity, there were no clever counters or mentally taxing quirks, no quick thinking or grand plans were needed for this, just fists against faces.

“Are you fuckin’ kidding?! I’ll kill you, you overconfident motherfucker! I’ll make you regret holding back all these years!”

Bakugou’s lip was bloodied from an elbow to the face, but he returned the favor by breaking Izuku’s nose with a well timed headbutt. They fell into a rhythm trading hits back and forth, not caring about the consequences to their bodies.

“Take me seriously!”

A kick to a knee.

“I am!”

A punch to the gut.

“Bullshit!”

An open palm to the face.

“Not bullshit, you’re just not listening! You never have!”

A bite on the hand. Who the fuck bites during a fight?

“You’ve always looked down on me!”

Izuku tried to figure out how to make him understand when he remembered a quirk he had but never really had a reason to use. His next punch sent a feeling of rage and inadequacy through him as Violent Empathy took effect.

He saw confusion flash across Bakugou’s face as he accessed a bit of Izuku’s emotions with every blow. More than that, he felt Katsuki’s confusion when he delivered a pushing kick to Katsuki’s chest.

As they pummeled each other on national television they understood each other for the first time in their lives. With every strike, he felt Bakugou’s life as if he himself had lived it.

Responding to everything with anger and violence to cover up any fears.

Keeping people at a distance so you don’t get hurt.

The day you find out your quirk will never come back.

Lashing out to constantly prove your own strength while everyone assumes you’re weak.

Rage at never knowing what you could have been with a quirk.

The guidance counselors all telling you to not even try at being a hero.

Always feelings lesser than those around you, always being told that you couldn’t make it until spite was the only reason left sometimes.

Fear and weakness and hope all shoved down and suppressed until only pride and anger showed through.

And finally you see Izuku standing there, confirming that you aren’t even worth the effort. That everyone was right, you are weak, you’re not a serious challenge, that people feel nothing but pity for you.

Izuku barely noticed when he managed to get a solid hold on his opponent and threw him over the line, ending the fight.

Neither of them noticed the crowds cheering or anything Midnight was saying. They were both beaten and bloodied, he was pretty sure each of them had multiple broken bones and dislocated joints. They just stared at each other, neither knowing what the other saw inside and both on the verge of tears.

They weren’t born of sadness necessarily, it was the nature of the quirk, especially after using it to such an extent. Rapidly experiencing all of someone’s emotions would overwhelm just about anyone to the point of tears.

Izuku held out a hand with a kind smile. Katsuki stared at it skeptically for a few moments before slowly taking it. He’d always thought it was a gesture of pity, a taunt that he wasn’t good enough on his own. But now he could see that maybe it wasn’t a suggestion that he couldn’t do it on his own, but that he shouldn’t have to. Everything that he’d seen during the fight indicated it was the latter, even if that was still very foreign to him.

After pulling him up onto his feet, Izuku activated Hyper Regeneration and Injury Absorption, healing both of them completely.

Bakugou just stared at him for a bit before speaking. “I’m sorry, I guess. Seeing shit from your perspective was weird as fuck though.”

“Yeah, it was really weird for me too, it’s not something that’s easy to put into words. But… I don’t think I can accept that apology right now.” Holy fuck, he actually said it. It had taken a lot of lessons in self respect to get there, but he’d finally acknowledged that he had been genuinely wronged and he didn’t have to forgive someone just because they wanted him to.

“Yeah, kinda figured that.” He paused for a second. “Oi, that shit I saw was real right? That wasn’t all bullshit or something to trick me into not being an asshole, was it?”

“Uh, yeah. It's a quirk called Violent Empathy. It basically-”

“Yeah, yeah, the name is pretty self explanatory, and I already saw how it works. Ugh, I’m getting out of here so we can do the damn ceremony.”

Even though he was acting a bit jaded and aggressive still, Izuku could easily see that it was all bluster as he tried to process everything. It was only then that he realized that using the quirk in both directions meant Bakugou might have learned some things he really shouldn’t know.

“Oh, um, about anything you saw that may or may not be kinda secretive…”

“Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone about your fucked up family tree. But don’t be such an idiot with that quirk next time. Not everyone is as nice as me and now I know way fuckin’ more than either of us would want me to know.”

And with that they both went back through their respective entrances. They were immediately directed to the waiting room while they got everything set up for the awarding ceremony. Ochako and Momo had gotten their first and gave him smiles when they showed up.

Uraraka looked exhausted but all healed up, so he could guess that she had been seen by Recovery Girl after her match. She gave him a big hug and congratulations. “That’s not how I thought you were going to do that, but it was still really cool to watch.”

Yaoyorozu nodded along. “It was pretty impressive, if a bit violent… even by Sports Festival standards. I’m just glad we can just tie for third and I don’t need to do another fight.”

Uraraka laughed, “What? You don’t want me to throw you into orbit?”

“Yes. That is in fact exactly what I don’t want to happen. Besides, you're exhausted and I’ve used up all my reserves, so I doubt it would be a good match either way.”

Izuku loved being friends with Uraraka, but she was a bit battle hungry at times. She was very kind and bubbly, but also seemed like the kind of person that would help you bury a body no questions asked.

After a couple of minutes the PA system in the room called them back to the field. They were met partway by Midnight who led them to the winner podiums. The crowds went wild as the four of them walked to the center of the arena, which had been modified by Cementos.

“Alright everyone! We’ve seen some amazing work from all of our students today, but these four really went plus ultra! And handing out the medals is a new teacher at UA, but you know him better as the reigning number one hero! All -”

Right before she finished, the man himself slammed into the ground. “I AM HERE! To give the awards!”

Over the speakers the audience heard a resigned and concerned, “Ah, shit” from both of the commentators in the booth above. At the moment, everyone was too distracted by All Might and probably thought it was unrelated, but it wouldn’t take too long for them to realize why they had swore.

“HAHA, I only just returned from my mission abroad, but I couldn’t miss this chance to be a part of congratulating these fine students for their accomplishments!”

Izuku was doing his best not to react. He’d had a good day, he got to be part of the sports festival and seemed to have resolved things with Katsuki, and he didn’t want to let that bumbling fool potentially ruin it.

He approached Yaoyorozu and Uraraka, who were standing on the third place section and both were a bit nervous since they knew that Izuku had a bad history with the man even though they didn’t really know why.

“You both fought valiantly today and showed your impressive abilities to everyone here. The world is lucky to have heroes like you to help lead the next generation.”

He then moved over to Bakugou, frowning slightly as he clearly thought something over.

“You did quite well for someone without a quirk. While your drive is commendable young man, I would warn you to be careful on this path. Being a hero is dangerous work even with a quirk and there are many other good-”

“Oi. Fuck off and choke on a bag of dicks.”

“Haha! Such vigor from the youth these days!”

And then he moved onto the final student, holding out the golden medal to Izuku.

“I’ve had a moment to think about some things that you and your mother have said to me. And I’d like to apologize for not being there for you when I should have.”

Izuku was already seething at him, wondering why the hell he was bringing this up in public, let alone while live cameras were aimed at them. The three other winners and Midnight could all see Izuku’s expression and decided they didn’t want to be in the vicinity (blast zone) for if/when things turned for the worse.

“If I want to prove that I’m going to support you from now on and be in your lives again, I can’t keep you as some dirty secret. Besides, you’ve more than proven you can keep yourself safe. So, I just want to say-” He gave a signature huge smile and put a hand on Izuku’s shoulder. “I’m proud of you son.”

The entire stadium went dead silent at those words, then quickly regained their voices when the number one hero went flying backwards, slamming into the edge of the arena and leaving a hole in the steel barrier where he’d landed.

Izuku’s body shifted back from the brief change he’d undergone, the brightly colored shell of a mantis shrimp wrapped in dense exterior muscles. The shockwave from the supersonic punch had damaged pretty much all the sound equipment, but one still picked up the mutter, “True Punch”.

Chapter Text

The entire stadium was dead silent for about five seconds before erupting into noise. Between All Might being sucker punched across the stadium and the revelation of Izuku being All Might’s son, the countless reactions and responses hit the contestants like a wall of sound. Reporters had already started rushing the field to try and be the first to get a comment from the boy. A fair number of heroes were moving in as well, probably since he just attacked a hero on national television.

It didn’t take a lot of awareness to see Izuku was panicking over the sudden attention and the inevitable consequences of having his (potential) father known. He was fuming and freaking out over the man’s actions when Aizawa’s voice over the speakers cut through the chaos.

“Midoriya, this is explicit approval from your heroic’s instructor to teleport home.”

Izuku was grateful for the out, since leaving of his own accord would have only made the situation worse, and he was already worried about what the effects would be. In a blink he was outside the Aizawa-Yamada home and quickly went inside, just wanting to be away from all the chaos.

Bastard the cat immediately noticed something was wrong and followed the boy into his room. Izuku paced back and forth for a bit, trying to think of a solution, but his thinking rapidly turned into overthinking and panicking.

“Oh no… everything is ruined. I punched the number one hero in public, on camera. I’m going to be kicked out of school and sent to jail forever. Sure, he’s maybe my dad, but you still can’t attack heroes and just get away with it. Heroes are going to show up and- Ouch!”

His attention was suddenly grabbed by Bastard biting his ankle and then pulling him over to the bed by his pant leg.

“Okay, okay, I’m going.” He walked over to the bed and sat down, the older cat jumping up into his lap. He pet her head for a few seconds before realizing he’d left his phone on his desk. If Bastard was so determined to cuddle he could at least keep an eye on the news for any updates on the insanity that was his life.

He tried to move her but got a loud hiss and a warning scratch for his attempt.

He sighed as he looked at the stubborn gray cat. “Why are you like this?”

Even though she was deaf, and a cat, he felt like she not only understood the question but responded by turning her head away in a purposefully smug gesture. He tried again after his phone buzzed a few times, but she made her stance incredibly clear.

“I’ll come back and keep petting you, but it might be important.”

“ Mrowwww!” 

He finally accepted his fate and relaxed into the bed while snuggling the cat who’d certainly earned the name ‘Bastard’. Her angry cry had also gotten the attention of all the other cats, causing them to all converge on their location and create a pile of fur on top of him. He might have convinced himself to teleport away from one cat and just accept her anger, but he didn’t dare disturb five very comfortable kittens (he didn’t care about their ages, they were all kitties to him).

Any stress or concerns he’d had were forcibly removed by the rumbling purs and gentle nuzzles.

He didn’t realize he’d fallen asleep until he woke up to the sound of his siblings in the house. Melissa fast-walked into his room with Tomura right behind her with Eri in his arms.

“See, told you the twerp was fine.”

Melissa looked him over in concern. “Are you sure you’re okay? With everything that happened and you weren’t answering your phone…”

“Um, why wouldn’t I be fine? I was really worried about the whole punching All Might thing but I feel a lot better about it after taking a nap with all the cats. Did something else happen?”

“Well… about that. After you left things kinda went from bad to worse to unreasonably dramatic. I know we’re maybe related, but your family is so extra all the time.”

Shigaraki shrugged, “Yeah, dad’s always loved a good ominous monologue. Didn’t realize for a while that was a thing most people don’t do.”

Izuku nodded slowly. “Alright… So it sounds like dad said something he shouldn’t have?”

Eri had started getting squirmy so she was put on Izuku’s bed where she immediately joined the cuddle puddle with Izuku and the cats. He still wasn’t really sure what had happened, but Eri seemed completely worn out and was very content to curl up and rest. He supposed that made sense, they’d gotten up early to make sure everything was ready for the festival and she spent a good portion of the day cheering whenever someone she recognized did just about anything.

He reminded himself not to get too distracted by his adorable youngest sister and looked back over at his other two siblings. The two glanced at each other before Shigaraki sighed in exasperation.

“Fine, I’ll give the dialog. Dad knew that if no one gave a different story everyone would just think of you as that moron’s spawn, so jumped down into the field and got into an argument with All Dumb. So now the secret backstory is not so secret, or at least the version the cops knew, the NPCs don’t know that dad and All for One are the same person.”

Melisa looked over in surprise. “Wait, what?!”

“Keep up Player Four, he barely even uses a disguise.” Izuku didn’t know when Melisa had upgraded from NPC to Player Four, but he was pretty sure that meant Shigaraki had accepted her as a sibling. “Anyways, there’s a fuckton of reporters around the house plus the adults that usually wrangle all of you are making sure you don’t get in trouble for knocking the moron on his ass.”

He decided not to point out that Tomura had to be ‘wrangled’ just as often. “Okay… that’s a whole lot, but what are we doing now? Should we be helping out Shouta and Hizashi?”

“Nope. We’re going to go play Smash and I’m going to decimate you noobs.”

He could agree with that plan. Normally he’d want to help wherever possible, but he had a feeling he’d just make things more complicated if he showed up. The cats finally let him stand up with only minimal hissing and transferred themselves onto Eri.

It had been about half an hour of Izuku and Melissa working together but Tomura was still undefeated, pulling out combos that they couldn’t figure out how to counter. While they were in the middle of a match Tomura spoke up in a very forced monotone voice.

“You can give people new avatars, right? Like you did with Magne and Dabi?”

He was shocked enough that he died even quicker than normal, looking over to see his brother(?) staring pointed at the screen and not looking in his or Melissa's direction. Clearly he they(?) wanted to be as casual as possible about this so he tried to keep his Kirby alive this time as he responded.

“Yeah, I’d need to run it by some parents first since I got in trouble last time, but I don’t see why not.”

Things were awkward for a bit until Melissa broke the silence. “Sooo, is that something you want? What are you hoping to change?”

After a few seconds of thinking, the game was paused and they pulled out their computer. Shigaraki eventually answered with a question of their own. “What changes can you make and what are the limits?”

Izuku looked over to see a folder on the computer that was just filled with dozens of women from video games and some he was pretty sure were from anime.

“Uh, I haven’t figured out how to change colors yet, You’d still be albino no matter what was changed shape-wise. Oh, and the big thing that I can’t do is add mass. So I can’t give you more hair, muscle, or fat than you start with. I can move it around, but I can’t add. Which means, uh… I can’t think of a polite way to say it, but I can’t give you big boobs since you don’t have a lot of excess fat for me to work with.”

Shigaraki just nodded and proceeded to trim the list to well under half. Izuku looked at the remaining ones there to see if there was anything else strictly outside his abilities.

“Um, I can’t give you cat ears or any other animal attributes. That would require reshaping your skull and brain in order to retain your hearing, and I just really don’t have the confidence that I could do that without killing you by accident.”

Izuku didn’t want to think about how many options that ‘no cat ears’ took out of the running.

After a bit of figuring out what exact dimensions were an option, a decision was made and Izuku sent off a quick text to the most forgiving of his three dads to make sure it was okay.

As they waited for a response Eri shuffled out of the room, giving a sleepy rub to her eyes before giving them all a big smile. She had a parade of cats behind her as she climbed up onto Melissa’s lap this time and made herself comfy.

“Did you have a nice nap?”

“Uh huh. I had a dream about apples except it wasn’t really an apple. It was just a cloud that looked like an apple and now I’m hungry.”

“Aw, well we better fix that then.” The older sister patted her on the head and carried her to the kitchen and set her down on a stool while she began cutting up some apple slices.

Shigaraki looked over at him, “How long would it take?”

It took him a second to realize exactly what he was being asked. In his defense, Eri was very cute and distracting. “Honestly, the fact that you picked a character saves me a ton of time since I know pretty much exactly what the end result should look like. Assuming I get it in the first couple tries it would only take a few minutes.”

His phone buzzed and he looked down to see he got a text from ‘Loud Parent’.

Sure, I don’t see a problem. Just don’t leave a mess when we get home.

“Huh, well that went even better than I expected. I figured there’d be at least some pushback.”

Shigaraki seemed somewhere between very interested and a bit overwhelmed at how quickly things progressed. “Let’s change the avatar now, before one of your other million parents try to do something stupid like enforce the law.”

“Hell yeah. Melissa! We’re gonna go do the thing real quick, so you should watch that show Eri likes.”

She stuck her head out of the kitchen and gave a thumbs up. “That was quick, but yeah, no problem. I wouldn’t want her walking in on that, I hear it gets pretty nasty.”

This time it only took three tries, but he still had to shake off the anxiety that came with using Overhaul that way. It was very nerve wracking to disassemble your loved ones and just hope you put them back together correctly.

After spraying down the shower and washing any vaporized human flesh down the drain they were done. Well, he did need to change first since his clothes also got a little misted in blood. It wasn’t exactly the cleanest process, but it worked well enough.

As they went back over to their sisters Izuku looked over at his sibling. “Soooo, I’m guessing that a new name is in order?”

“Yeah.” She paused for a moment at the fairly different voice. “What the fuck? Did you change my dialogue box too?”

“Is that alright? I kind of just assumed you wanted that.”

“Hmm. Yeah, I can roll with it. Feels weird though.”

“Oh yeah, from what Magne told me, it can take a few days for it to actually feel like your own body and voice. Anyways, what name were you going to go with?”

“Tomoko seems like a good player name. It’s close enough that it’s easier for people to remember.”

“Tomoko. I like it.”

Eri ran over and gave a big hug to them both before realizing something was a bit different. “Oh, I get it now! Big sis was tellin’ me I was gonna have another big sis, but I didn’t get it.” She looked confused for a second. “Are you both my big brother and big sister, or just my big sis?”

“Only your sister.”

He could hear the buried nervousness in her voice. She had grown really close to Eri and would be devastated if Eri rejected her new self, no matter how unlikely that was.

“Okay. Can we go play the horsey game? I got stuck again.”

“Sure kiddo.”

Izuku may or may not have wept at the scene, but that was pretty normal at this point. It wasn’t too long before Aizawa got home.

“Ugh, hey brats. I just need to grab some paperwork and then go back into those pits of vipers that call themselves the press and the government.”

He then came to a full stop as he entered the kitchen, seeing Tomoko who was helping Melissa make dinner.

“Why the fuck is there an albino Zelda in the kitchen? Actually, don’t answer that. I’ll deal with whatever is happening here later.”

With that he grabbed what he needed and left without another word.

Chapter Text

Well hello there lovely reader people. As you've probably noticed, I haven't written for this fic in a hot second. I'm not dropping it or anything, I've just been writing a book and that's been absorbing a lot of my writing time. I was going to start the new chapter today but realized I didn't remember everything I'd written and wanted to reread it to prevent plot holes. Which was a great plan, but then I came to an immediate realization as I read the first chapter, the beginning of this fic is like 2 1/2 years old and is very much not meeting the standards I would expect a new chapter to meet.
So now I'm reediting and expanding on the entire fic because I have no self control. So if you see new chapters in weird spots, that's just me doing updates and making the pacing not garbage.

update: those updates are done and the fic is now edited and all sorts of nice. chapters 1 and 11 got split into 2 chapters respectively, for pacing and making room for added scenes. I personally think it reads better now even if the overarching story is the same.

Chapter Text

Hawks stood guard at the back of the conference room with a fair amount of feathers spread around the building to make sure there were no eavesdroppers. He didn’t particularly want to be involved in this mess, but he had a job to do. Besides, heroes that both had the needed clearance level and the ability to detect surveillance created an exhaustive list of himself. So here he was, watching the best and brightest of the Hero Commision work themselves into an outright panic.

Through all of shouting and nonsense, they had generally split into two schools of thought. One side wanted to appease the threat, the other wanted to attack it. Things got more nuanced from there with how those goals would be accomplished, but that was the main argument.

A man with a shark head slammed his fist on the table, he’d become a sort of de facto leader for the aggressive side of the argument. “We can’t wait around and make distant plans, we need to take action now! Every minute we’re silent is another minute we look weak, like we can’t enforce the law!”

The President of the Commision put her hands together and just glared at him. “Then what do you suggest we do? We’re going in circles here. If we do nothing then we appear to be afraid, but if we take action we risk creating a powerful vigilante, or worse, an unstoppable villain. I don’t want to hear complaints, I want to hear solutions.”

Hawks thought it was almost funny to watch the stoic facades that made up their government crumple in the face of a single child. Midoriya Izuku had decked their number one hero and might just get away with it. Normally, attacking a hero, especially one so beloved, would result in being arrested immediately, but they ran into a pretty serious problem when considering that option. They knew they’d fail. They could throw all of Japan’s heroes at him and they still might lose.

So until they had a solution, all he could do was stand back as the various officials, whose names he never cared to know, argued amongst themselves.

A man with iridescent skin spoke up. “Image is important and all, but we need to be honest with ourselves. We are weak and afraid. Let’s just make an official statement that we’re letting him off with a warning because the situation is complicated and hope that he takes it without fighting back.”

“Speak for yourself! We can’t allow him, or anyone else, stand above the law.”

The sparkling bureaucrat stood up and walked to the front of the room, ignoring the man’s taunts. He pressed a few buttons on a tablet and a screen on the wall started playing Midoriya’s quirk evaluation. As they watched hundreds of lasers cut through a cityscape he spoke up again.

“He can do this anytime to any city in the world. Until we have a way to counter that sort of attack, we should treat him like we would someone with nuclear weapons that are already prepped to fire.”

They kept going back and forth as they tried to decide what action to take, if any at all, when a PA entered Hawks’ area of surveillance, walking towards the conference room. The young woman seemed to be holding a phone, so it seemed like a fair guess that it was the reason for the intrusion.

“Madam President, it seems like your assistant has a call for you, should I let her in?”

The woman sighed in frustration but nodded, knowing that she wouldn’t be foolish enough to interrupt without a very good reason. Which meant something else of deep importance was about to be handed to her. The slightly nervous secretary walked in and handed her the phone before quickly leaving the room of very powerful and short tempered l people.

As she picked up the phone she saw the caller ID belonging to the cause, and perhaps solution, to the problems she was currently facing.

“Hello Madam President!”

“All Might. I hope you’re doing well after the incident today, what can I help you with?”

“Hahaha! Don’t you worry, it takes a lot more than that to put me out of commission. I am here to ask for a favor!”

She hoped that he was about to ask for what she thought he would, if he did, that might just let her buy time without losing face. At the same time though, she couldn’t let herself seem desperate.

“Things are a bit chaotic at the moment, so I can’t guarantee anything, but we’ll always do what we can to support our number one hero.”

“Appreciated as always! As you can guess, this is about the little… incident, as you called it. I’m not quite foolish enough to think it can be brushed under the rug, but maybe we can avoid legal action. This isn’t the story of a hero-student returning to a life of crime, this is an argument between father and son. I’m sure it looked serious on the big screens, but I’m not hurt and he knew it wasn’t enough to hurt me.”

She nodded along. “Of course. I’ll talk to our PR department, but we should be able to take control of the story. We’ll frame it as a harmless squabble between two people that are too powerful for their own good.”

As he thanked her and hung up she let out a long sigh of relief. It didn’t solve the problem, but it gave them time to prepare.

“Alright everyone. We’ll be holding back on any sort of repercussions, but now it’s on All Might's request, which will let us avoid the backlash from the public. We’ll be functioning under the assumption that this won’t be the last time he challenges the rule of law and we’ll need to have countermeasures ready. Hawks, did you notice any weaknesses we might be able to exploit?”

He felt bad about it, since he seemed like a good kid, but Hawks had a responsibility as a top hero and was the only person in the room with actual combat experience. All he could do was put on his heroic persona and explain how to kill a child while hoping he was doing the right thing.

“I’ve only spotted two ways he could be beaten, and if you’ve been to any of these briefings before you’ll know that two is a crazy low number.” He floated two feathers in front of himself and gestured to the first. “Option one is mind control. We saw it work in the Sports Festival, but we don’t know for sure it only took effect because he let it, since he clearly didn’t care too much about winning.”

He gestured to the second feather. “Option two is a bit more intense. He can only have a few quirks active at a time, which means a quick strike before his guard is up could do it. If he was around a trusted person and didn’t suspect the horrific betrayal about to happen, then he could be killed before realizing there was a threat he needed to defend against. It would need to be a headshot though, if he’s alive for even a fraction of second then he’d just heal and then we’re all royally fucked. So like, not recommended, but it’s the best I could think of.”

“Thank you, Hawks.” She looked over at one of the important people he recognized but didn’t know. “I want you to research our options for mind control and find who has the quirks we need.” Turning to the sparkling man, “and you’ll work with Tartarous, see if it’s possible to build a cell that would actually hold him.”

He was less than thrilled when the president turned back to face him. “Do whatever it takes to have him intern with you. I want you to get closer to him, support him in whatever he’s up to, that way we at least have a warning before he does anything truly dangerous. You’ll also use this time to get close enough to enact your second plan if needed.”

He nodded, not surprised at her decision, but it still made his stomach churn. He really hoped he wouldn’t have to carry out a hit on a kid, but that was how it went sometimes he supposed. Once everyone cleared out she called in their PR department for how they were going to spin the reveal of Midoriya’s parentage. The Hero Commision had known about both of his potential fathers for months, but she wasn’t looking forward to the amount of work that was going to come from the information becoming public.

With the meeting over, the highly reflective office worker left the building and pulled out his phone. “Hello, Skeptic. I’m reporting in, I was successful in keeping the Commision from taking aggressive action against Midoriya, but they are looking to put contingencies in place to imprison or kill him if needed. I’m leading the imprisonment side of things, so I’ll be able to sabotage it if needed.”

“Good work, come back to base to give your report to Re-Destro directly and get your next instructions.”

Skeptic then hung up, being a man of few words who didn’t like talking to people much, much preferring to quietly work on his computers. He’d always done well to fight for the MLA from the inside, but they were now at a breaking point and Midoriya was at the core of it. The teenager at least partially agreed with their ideologies, and if the all powerful (potential) son of All Might were their poster child, then they could step out of the shadows and take control of the country.

But they couldn’t do any of that if the Hero Commision arrested, or worse, killed him before they could reach victory. His side of the mission would be to hinder the Commision while others would focus on recruiting the boy into their mission for liberation.

The man with a shark head walked into a back alley where a swirling portal was waiting for him. He strode through the open warehouse he worked in, which was much more comfortable since Izuku had helped decorate it. Taking a seat, he let his consciousness swap back into his own body, which had been housing the unconscious bureaucrat while he borrowed the man’s body for a few hours.

All for One smiled at how things had progressed. There would be a slight set-back from All Might revealing his potential parentage, but how could he be anything but proud as he watched his boy punch his nemesis across the stadium? He couldn’t let the world believe that Izuku was actually All Might’s, forcing him to play his card of revealing his fake identity of Hisashi Shigaraki as the other potential father.

The news was in pure chaos and he’d been doing what he could to push the Commision towards pride and violence. He was pleasantly surprised when he saw a member of the MLA in the meeting, it would be a good touch if Izuku were to ‘accidentally’ find out that the only people in government fighting for him were villains rather than heroes. If all went well then the heroes would lash out and attempt to neutralize the teenager, with All for One coming to the rescue as the bridges between him and the heroes burned.

He reached over and grabbed the head of the unlucky office worker, tweaking his memories so he would never know that he’d ever been hijacked. The man had a relatively large amount of power for someone with such a weak mind and poor security, so he’d keep him in mind if he ever needed to infiltrate the Hero Commision again.

All Might laid back in Recovery Girl’s office, putting the phone down on the side table. He had been less than honest with the President of the Hero Commision, but he needed to keep this from getting even more out of hand. Like always, he’d put forth an image of being stronger and healthier than he really ws. Rather than shaking it off without issue, he had two ribs with hairline fractures from a single punch.

It was one thing to lose in a fight against an ancient villain who’d had years of plans and preparations to counter his strengths. It was another thing entirely to be beaten in a single strike that was done in the heat of the moment by a teenager.

Toshinori was torn, at its core it was the same dilemma since he’d become a hero. He’d faced the question years ago of whether he’d prioritize protecting the public as a hero or supporting his family as a father. With his strength and influence it always felt like he’d be selfish to choose anything other than putting his entire self into heroics. Every moment spent on his neglected family felt like giving up on another person who could have been saved.

He’d gotten slightly better at balancing the two, but the dilemma reared its head once again. If he approached this situation like a hero he’d have Izuku arrested before his violent outbursts and disregard for the law caused serious harm. But approaching Izuku as a hero was how they’d gotten where they were. With his time getting shorter every day, he might be able to do more good by supporting his family than patrolling the streets and hunting down criminals.

But for all his glory, fame, and good deeds, he had no idea how to actually do that. None of his friends had children either, they were all much too busy for family. The closest person he could think of was David, but asking the father of your illegitimate child for advice on how to raise a different child you had out of wedlock seemed like a bad idea. He’d likely end up talking to Inko about it, even if her relationship with Izuku was strained at the moment, it was infinitely better than his own.

He sighed deeply and shook his head. For what seemed like the millionth time, he wished Nana was still there to guide him. She would know what to say, how to support his son without accidentally making things worse. Nana was the closest thing he’d had to a parent, and she was long gone. On top of needing to rebuild burnt bridges with his son, that punch he got was a harsh reminder that he needed to find a successor immediately.

The world needed to have a Symbol of Peace, and as much as he wanted to believe that Izuku would become that, it was probably best to have a backup plan just in case he did succumb to the temptations of villainy.

With a heavy heart and aching ribs, he looked over the files he’d prepared and thought over who he'd entrust the future of Japan to.

Chapter Text

Izuku had gotten to class early, like he usually did since he came in with Aizawa and Yamada, watching as everyone else shuffled in. He saw everyone glance at his empty desk and murmur amongst themselves. He wasn’t planning to hide forever, but was it so wrong to put off having to explain everything the news was saying about him? Which led to him being a chair off to the side and in the back of the room where it was least likely to be noticed.

His first plan was to stay home and then teleport in at the last second, but Aizawa shut that down immediately when he’d brought it up over breakfast.

Shouta slowly put down his jelly pack and gave Izuku a light glare. “Absolutely not, we both know just how much trouble you can get into with a few minutes of being unsupervised.”

“But-!”

“I know you asked for permission. But that doesn’t change the fact that you took advantage of Hizashi misunderstanding you to break the rules. It should not have been difficult to realize that he thought you were asking to help your br- sister do cosplay as Zelda, not experimental full body surgery with a quirk that could easily kill someone.”

So yeah, ever since Aizawa found out that the albino Zelda in their house was an Overhauled Tomoko, previously Tomura, Izuku wasn’t allowed to be far from some sort of watchful eye.

Izuku turned back into a human and teleported into his seat right as Aizawa got out of his sleeping bag and stood up at the front of the classroom, making just about everyone’s head turn. Before the barrage of questions could be asked, their homeroom teacher cut it off, completely understanding Izuku’s desire not to be the focus of attention.

“You’re here to learn, not harass each other and gossip. With the Sports Festival done it’s time to prepare for internships. You’ll be spending a week with a hero that either sent a request for you specifically, or one of the heroes has offered to take on any students. Even if you got offers, still look at the general list to see if there’s a hero that would be a good fit.”

Aizawa went to give the handouts to Iida, just by muscle memory since the boy usually demanded to be the one to distribute papers, but found that he wasn’t paying attention and was barely present. He quickly switched and gave them to Asui, who ribbited slightly in surprise but didn’t complain.

After giving them a minute to actually read the general hero list he gave out everyone's list of offers. Most had just a few, but others had a solid pile of letters that had to be nearing the hundreds. Surprisingly, he only had two, which was certainly not what he expected. He was the strongest student, and probably top ten for strongest in the world, so why did so few want to teach him? He opened them up, becoming more confused by the second.

The first was from Hawks, the number 3 hero in Japan (unofficially number 2 since Endeavor was quirkless and in prison now), which was an amazing opportunity. But the hero had never had interns before and barely even worked with sidekicks. If nothing else, the offer felt out of character and was very much not what he expected.

The other was even more baffling. Gran Torino was such an obscure name it took even him, a true hero nerd, a few minutes to think back and remember who that was. He was a long since retired hero that had been mostly unknown even when he was active, focusing on investigating international crime syndicates rather than the flashy combat that got you popular. None of it made any sense, why would no one but a solo hero and a seventy year old retiree want to work with him?

“You can all look those over later, right now we’re doing something every hero needs before debuting.” Aizawa pulled his sleeping bag back on and laid down as Midnight threw the door open.

“Time to choose your hero names!”

Izuku could admit that he was struggling with this task. All the ideas he’d come up with as a kid were derivative of All Might and the ideas he’d had over the last year were derivative of All for One. Both were terrible options now, but for very different reasons.

He only got more and more anxious as his friends said one amazing name after another. He wrote down ‘everything hero’ as his epithet when he heard Momo name herself Creati, the Everything Hero. He couldn’t even be mad, she was an amazing hero who could do anything!

His attention was pulled once again as Iida continued to act very subdued and out of character, just choosing his own name instead of something Ingenium related. He’d have to ask him about it after class. He didn’t remember seeing anything in the news, but then again, he’d really avoided the internet once he realized that it was exclusively talking about his family matters.

“Midoriya? What do you have?”

Oh no, he’d gotten distracted and now he really was the last person to not pick a name.

“Um, well, I was thinking of something dragon themed? Maybe something like ‘Smaug’ or some other famous dragon?”

“Fun idea- but no.” She turned around and wrote in large words across the blackboard. ‘ Copyright’ “Unless you’re trying to get sued, that’s a dangerous path to go on. Even for things in the public domain, it’s best to stay away from anything already popular, it creates an unnecessary mess, and not in the fun way~”

“Uh, how about just ‘dragon’?”

“It might be fine if you’re planning to stay in low ranks, but because we already have a high ranking hero called ‘The Dragon Hero’ you should be at least a little different.”

“Drake?”

“Maybe, but it’s too easily associated with a pre-quirk celebrity who’s pretty… controversial. What’s got you so attached to the dragon theme?”

“Well, I was going to use the epithet, ‘The Hoarding Hero’, which would fit with the dragon idea.”

She pointed at another line on the blackboard, which had needed to be referenced many times for Kachan’s idea, ‘ Don’t sound like a villain’

“Hoarding hero sounds like you’re coming for everyone’s quirks, and that’s a big no-no.”

He huffed in frustration. “Why are you being so hard on my ideas? You didn’t even say no once to anyone but Kachan, and he wanted to be the lord of murder or something like that.”

She gave a seductive pose at first. “Because you’ve been very naughty.” She then laughed and took a more casual pose. “In all seriousness, your hero name will matter more for you than the other students. The entire world is watching, trying to decide if you’re a hero, vigilante, or villain, especially after everything that happened at the Sports Festival. The kid who is the potential grandson of the worst villain and just punched the number one hero can’t call himself anything scary without making a lot of people very nervous.”

He supposed that made sense, and after going back and forth a half dozen times finally landed on Omni: the Infinite Hero.

After that they had Math then English class before being let out for lunch. Finally having his chance to talk with him, Izuku went over and sat next to the abnormally quiet Iida.

“Hey Iida.” He rapidly realized he shouldn’t open with ‘why are you being all depressed’ and needed to say literally anything else. “How's the weather going?”

Well, that technically was something else, even if it left him mentally slapping his forehead for how dumb it sounded. Iida looked at him in confusion, as if he was also trying to figure out what Midoriya was saying. The robotic teen pointed towards the window with his full hand extended in a chopping motion.

“It is raining. But you can never let bad weather hold you back. And before you ask, my brother will be fine. Although he will likely never be a hero again, he is alive, and that is what matters.”

What the fuck, something happened to Ingengium?! He doesn’t keep track of hero news for one weekend and this happens??

Before Izuku got a chance to give a flustered and likely embarrassing response, he was saved by his least favorite paternal figure and potential sperm donor.

All Might came skidding around the corner in a bow position. “Young Midoriya! There are some things I’d like to discuss with you!”

“Well, what is it?” Part of him wanted to just punch the guy all over again, but he could acknowledge that wasn’t exactly a great idea.

“Hmm, this would probably be better with a bit more privacy. But mostly, I want to apologize to you.”

Now that got Izuku’s attention. He’d been mad at the idea of his father for so long, and then that anger got shifted to All Might, which only grew as things got worse between them. The idea that the symbol of peace himself would admit he’d done wrong hadn’t even crossed Izuku’s mind.

“Oh, uhhh, sure. Yeah.” Not his most eloquent, but in his defense he was caught off guard.

They went over to the teacher’s lounge, sitting on couches across from each other.

“I’m not really sure what the right words are here, but I’ll do my best.” The old hero took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I always felt like I had good reasons for the things I’d done, whether that was leaving you and Inko or telling you to give up on your dream, but I’m finding that it doesn’t matter that I had a ‘good reason’. Having a grand purpose or goal didn’t change that fact that you were hurt, and I can’t undo that no matter how much I wish I could.”

Toshinori ran a hand through his hair. “My life has been difficult but simple. Get stronger, stop villains, give hope. When I’m asked questions I usually have all the answers, but when it comes to you and your mother, I have no idea what I’m doing. I was an orphan who never really had a family, the woman I thought of as a mother was killed by All for One. So having a family never seemed real or possible, but I want to try. Even if you can’t forgive me, I want to try and be better, to be the father I never had. The closest thing I ever had to a father figure was Gran Torino, which says something, but I want to do better by you.”

“Wait. Gran Torino?”

Toshinori blinked a few times in surprise and confusion. “I’ll be honest, that’s not the part I was expecting a strong response to.” He then muttered under his breath, quiet enough that Izuku could barely hear and was kind enough to pretend he didn’t. “ I knew I should have practiced with Inko more.”

“Sorry, it’s just- He’s one of the only heroes I got an internship request from.”

For a moment he considered interning with Gran Torino, if just to get to know him. Even if his maybe biological father was a dumbass, meeting and learning your sort-of grandparent seemed like a fine idea. Then he noticed the fear across the hero’s face.

“All Might?”

The man was actually shaking, the image of terror as he spoke about his former teacher. “He’s a- a difficult teacher, but look how I turned out,” He gave a fake laugh that he tried to pass off as his usual bluster. “So he clearly did something right.”

What kind of person can strike fear into All Might of all people? The man was clearly abusive to leave All Might traumatized decades later. Yeah, he would very much be avoiding this almost certainly awful old man.

He didn’t forgive All Might, but he understood it a bit better. Before he was looking at it as the number one hero abandoning them for basically no reason, now there was a lot more context. Izuku knew from his Dad that he’d killed Nana Shimura in self defense after she hunted him across the world, her husband sadly getting caught in the crossfire. Even with the context, he knew that would still be super traumatic for the kid she was raising and really fuck up how he thought about family. And after that he ended up with whoever this Gran Torino guy is, which just added fuel to the fire.

“I’m still mad at you. But I’m not going to punch you again.”

Toshinori gave him a weak but genuine smile. “I guess that’s a fine place to start. I can’t fix the past, but I’m going to keep trying to be a better father to you.”

Chapter Text

Alrighty, I’m about halfway through the next chapter and realized I hadn’t picked who got OFA yet. So I made a list of everyone that you hooligans suggested and started to narrow it down from there.

Gentle criminal

Uraraka

Momo

Monoma

Bakugo

Shoto

Tsuyu

Tsukachi

Shinso

Kendo

Aizawa

Finger guy from middle school

Toru

Shoji

Manga

Yui

Melissa

Kirishima

Stain

Toga

Kamakiri

Nejire

Some mexican guy names Jesus

Nedzu

Mina

Rody soul

Gang orca

Amijiki

Overhaul

Dabi

Eri

Inko

Endeavor

Ryukyu

Mei

All for one

Removing the obvious ones. The straight up evil and the people All Might couldn’t have met yet.

Gentle criminal

Uraraka

Momo

Monoma

Bakugo

Shoto

Tsuyu

Tsukachi

Shinso

Kendo

Aizawa

Finger guy from middle school

Toru

Shoji

Manga

Yui

Melissa

Kirishima

Stain

Toga

Kamakiri

Nejire

Some mexican guy names Jesus

Nedzu

Mina

Rody soul

Gang orca

Amijiki

Overhaul

Dabi

Eri

Inko

Endeavor

Ryukyu

Mei

All for one

Next, taking out the ones I’ve seen the most often, or I’ve already focused on in this or another fic, since I want to do something new with this and give attention to a character I’ve underused.

Gentle criminal

Uraraka

Momo

Monoma

Bakugo

Shoto

Tsuyu

Tsukachi

Shinso

Kendo

Aizawa

Toru

Shoji

Manga

Yui

Melissa

Kirishima

Kamakiri

Nejire

Nedzu

Mina

Gang orca

Amijiki

Inko

Ryukyu

Mei

Now, in terms of who All Might would pick, he’d want someone he thinks would choose hero society over Izuku in case it ever came to that

Gentle criminal

Momo

Monoma

Bakugo

Tsuyu

Tsukachi

Shinso

Kendo

Aizawa

Toru

Manga

Yui

Kamakiri

Nejire

Nedzu

Mina

Gang orca

Amijiki

Ryukyu

Mei

Next, they need to have a clearly heroic personality that is already clear by this point in the timeline.

Momo

Monoma

Bakugo

Tsuyu

Tsukachi

Shinso

Kendo

Toru

Manga

Yui

Kamakiri

Nejire

Mina

Gang orca

Amijiki

Ryukyu

Another big one, even though Izuku’s family knows about OFA, All Might doesn’t want that info to spread further. Who’s quirk is unknown enough, similar enough, that they could get away with having a powerboost like OFA?

Momo

Tsuyu

Tsukachi

Kendo

Toru

Nejire

Mina

Gang orca

Ryukyu

Kendo is out for the reasons of it not feeling enough like a crack fic option. Far too reasonable and boring of a choice.

Momo

Tsuyu

Kendo

Nejire

Mina

This feels like a solid lineup where all of them would feel like a solid option that makes sense for All-Might to pick. I thought about just rolling a D4 to see what fate wants, but figured it would be fun to see what all yall want. This is also your chance to argue about anyone you think should have been on the list or was removed unfairly.

Momo

Tsuyu

Nejire

Mina

As you can probably tell, I really didn’t have plans ahead of time, so I wasn’t expecting this to go full girl power, but I’m here for it. Choose your soon to be (extra) overpowered lady.

We got, a literal goddess of creation

The all powerful, probably autistic, froggy, best girl

Nyoooom

The true alien queen

Chapter Text

Izuku sat on the couch with Eri on his lap, playing video games with Melissa and Tomoko. Video games weren’t usually his go-to, but they were a fun way to have all four siblings hang out. The cats would come and go, only Bastard stayed the whole time, since she had decided that she needed to keep an eye on everyone.

Tomoko spoke to Melissa, not looking away from the game for a moment. “So, heard your dad got un-kidnapped. News was pretty quiet, is he fine or did he die or something?”

Melissa coughed in surprise at the bluntness of the question. “My dad was rescued and is actually at UA campus for safety until the investigation is done and I-Island’s security is fixed so this can’t happen again.” She looked off to the side. “But I wouldn’t say that he’s ‘fine’. He was hurt pretty badly and the villains managed to escape with his finished blueprints. So it probably isn’t the last we’ll hear of them.”

They fell into an awkward silence for a bit until Melissa forcibly changed the subject. “So, Izuku. Have you picked your internship yet?”

“Yeah, me and Tokoyami are going with Hawks. I think he’ll be a good teacher for reacting fast and multitasking. My only other option was some creepy old guy or the generic options, and I didn’t really want to go with someone who didn’t choose me. I know I’m a lot to deal with and don’t want to make someone handle that if they didn’t plan on that.”

Eri looked up from her controller (which wasn’t actually plugged in). “I think you’re super great and will pick you all the time!”

Melissa nudged him a little. “She’s right, don’t be so hard on yourself.”

Hizashi meandered in from the kitchen where he’d been cleaning up from dinner. “Hey little listeners, this is the last round, level, or whatever. Don’t want you staying up too late on a school night, and before you say something, yes Tomoko, I know you don’t have school at the same time but the kids need their sleep.”

Although she’d grumbled about it and declared on multiple occasions that she didn’t need it, Tomoko had recently started taking online classes to get her GED since any homeschooling she got from their dad was very unofficial.

This time his loud parent looked right at Izuku. “And you’ve got a really important class tomorrow, so no staying up late.”

Izuku sort of doubted that. Don’t get him wrong, he loved UA, but it hadn’t exactly been a challenge so far.

“Don’t give me that look, I think you’ll have a harder time than you expect, but I won’t spoil the surprise.”

He agreed and started getting ready for bed, which included helping Eri brush her teeth. Not that he had much he could do when staying up late, since he was still grounded from working on any of his personal projects. He’d considered going while everyone was asleep, but they were a step ahead of him. They’d discovered a few weeks ago that his teleporting released a small amount of non harmful radiation. Which was fine on its own, but now there was a geiger counter in his room that notified Shouta and Hizashi if he used Blink.

Part of him was mad and argued it was an invasion of privacy, but on the other hand he could understand that the only thing it did was prevent him from breaking the rules again. It made sense and did its job of keeping him from leaving at night, but he still didn’t like it.

The classes the next day seemed pretty normal up until the practical hero course. Aizawa had them in their gym clothes at the outdoor training grounds, the same place they did their initial assessment on day one. There were a bunch of high-tech-looking mannequins in a line, numbered 1-30.

“So far you’ve been taught how to use your body, mind, and quirk to be as powerful as you can be. Today, you’ll be learning restraint so you don’t fuck up and kill someone. Before any of you complain or say you don’t need it, you should know that you need to pass this assignment if you plan to have an internship.”

The underground hero walked up to one of the mannequins and fell into a fighting stance. “It’s fairly straightforward.” He threw a slow punch that glanced off its shoulder, with no visible change to his inanimate opponent. “Some attacks are too weak to make a difference in a fight.”

He followed it up with two rapid kicks, one to the solar plexus and the other to the side of its head, making the abdomen glow yellow and the head a bright green. “Some are enough to stun or stagger, buying you time and weakening the enemy. But what you want is to end the fight with a decisive strike that leaves them unconscious.”

After a few seconds the colors faded and returned to the blank state.

“However, if you apply too much force to the wrong area you can cause permanent damage and even death.” With far more speed and force this time, he slammed his elbow into the temple, a red glow left behind. Carrying through the movement he spun around and put all of his momentum into a kick to the side of its neck, turning it black.

Most of the students were both impressed and terrified by his casual display of control and power that had nothing to do with a quirk and was entirely based in honed skill. Izuku could admit that he was one of them that was left in a state of awe.

“Before you ask, I know a bunch of you can use your quirks to restrain, and I don’t care. You will always find someone who either can’t be restrained or a situation where you don’t have time for that. Tying hands doesn’t matter against any sort of telekinesis and you’ll need to know how to beat someone without killing them or crippling them.”

Izuku was quickly understanding what Hizashi had meant with this class being more difficult. It wouldn’t matter how strong he was, in fact, even just the added strength and bulk from having Physical Prime active for over a year would make this more difficult.

Aizawa walked back and forth, keeping an eye on each of them as they practiced. A few of the more trained students already had the hang of it, like Ojiro and Todoroki, but the rest of them had a hard time finding that sweet spot between doing nothing and causing permanent damage.

After giving a mannequin seven brain injuries in a row, he turned to his teacher, exasperated. “Is there a trick to this that I’m missing? I can’t figure this out at all!”

“The trick is that there isn’t one. You’ve spent the last year focusing on being as strong as possible. This is a skill that takes years of practice and dedicated training, and however strong you are doesn’t matter here. This is a matter of precision, not power.”

It took nearly a full hour, but he finally started getting the hang of it when Aizawa spoke up again. “Now that you have the basics down we’ll move onto the second part of the exercise. For this part your other heroics teacher will take point.”

All Might landed on the field with a small eruption of dust.

“That’s where I come in! A Smash that cripples one person might not even phase another! Even the most dangerous villains might not be that sturdy, so you need to be careful with your punches!”

Izuku still had a lot of mixed feelings about the man, but he supposed it did make sense for him to teach this lesson. If anyone was a master of when to pull your punches it would be All Might. The hero could level city blocks and change the weather with a single punch, but also had one of the lowest villain casualty rates.

“The best option for measuring an unknown opponent’s strength is with a few test punches! Start with something weak and have each attack be stronger than the last! Another strategy, if they are a melee fighter, is to let them get a punch in to see how tough they are!”

Aizawa cut in. “Those of you practicing pulling your punches go with the American doofus, the rest of you come with me and we’ll focus on how to make sure you’re able to knock out someone stronger than you when your normal hits don’t do the trick.”

The class split up accordingly, All Might teaching them how to mix a testing punch into their fighting styles, while Aizawa showed the rest how to kill a man with just your thumb. At least, that’s what Izuku assumed was being taught across the field.

As everyone else seemed to pick up on it much faster he realized how much he relied on taking people’s quirks and then taking them down while they were disoriented, usually without even hitting them a single time. Sure, he could probably just tie people up most of the time without worrying about it, but there would always be exceptions. He thought of the Slime villain, a man he’d killed because he didn’t fully understand his own power and didn’t have any other way to take him down.

By the end of class a good portion of them still weren’t able to get it consistently, including Izuku. He really hoped they’d have another class to try and master it since he wanted to go on his internship.

“It was a logical ruse. You can still go on your internships since you shouldn’t be around active combat anyways.”

At this point he should have assumed as much. He felt like he was always getting logically rused, but supposed he got it to some extent. It was an important lesson about how easy it would be to hurt someone in an accident and he’d definitely have to keep working on it.

As they all started to disperse and get ready for their next class he saw All Might waving over Tsuyu.

“Young Asui! Please stay after class for a moment.” The class responded with the obligatory ‘oooooooh’, but All Might ignored them. “You’re not in trouble, there’s just something I’d like to discuss with you.”

She ribbited in agreement and went over to him while the rest left for math class with Ectoplasm.

That night, he thought about it more, specifically the difference between All Might’s and Aizawa’s strategies. All Might’s assumed that you were much stronger than your enemy and could take your time doing testing punches and letting your opponent attack. Aizawa’s required years of focused training and pinpoint accuracy that he didn’t have yet. After pondering it for a bit longer he decided to get another opinion.

Within just a few rings his dad picked up.

“Izuku? Is everything alright, you don’t normally call this late?”

“Oh! Yeah, everything’s fine, I didn’t mean to worry you! I can call at a different time if that works better.”

He got a rumbling chuckle in response. “You really are such an earnest boy. Now, did you just call to say hello or was there something on your mind?”

“Well, I mostly called because it’s nice to talk to you, but I also had a question on something. I’ve been having a lot of trouble with an assignment in class and wanted your opinion.”

“Oh? What class was it, history perhaps? Because that’s a subject I can definitely help with, I could probably tell you more than whatever nonsense they put in the textbooks nowadays.”

He did always enjoy his dad telling him stories from the dawn of quirks, but that wasn’t what he had questions on today so he had to stay focused. “Um, it was actually my heroics class.”

“That’s not what I was expecting, but I suppose I’ll help where I can. I do have a fair knowledge of heroics even if it’s from a… different perspective than UA.”

Izuku laughed a little awkwardly. He knew his dad hated heroes for what they’d done to him and his family, and really appreciated that he supported him anyways. “They’re teaching us how to make sure we don’t hit people too hard. And no matter how hard I try I either do nothing or I give the robot brain damage. My teacher suggested I do more testing punches or let them hit me first when it’s a real fight, that way I can get a feel for them, but that just feels so inefficient and kind of dangerous.”

He made the strategic decision not to mention All Might by name to avoid the conversation getting sidetracked. 

His dad hummed thoughtfully. “Indeed, letting your enemy land an attack is a very risky thing to do. Imagine your enemy was someone like Tomoko, that one hit you allow could be your end. In my opinion it’s a trick question.”

“Wait, really?”

“Of course. The easiest way to strike someone and not cause brain damage is to avoid striking their head. Sure, it’s a good skill to have, but if you really need to incapacitate someone quickly and don’t want to risk their death, you’ll want to break their knee, not their skull. Much less risk there. Even in the worst case of overestimating their strength, they can get a prosthetic leg but healing a destroyed head is a lot more tricky, and I speak from experience on that one.”

His father laughed at his own dark humor, but Izuku supposed he had a point. He’d still practice pulling his punches in class, but it was good to have a backup plan and hearing different perspectives was always good.

Chapter Text

Alrighty, you’ve seen the chapter title, you know what’s happening. It really sucks and I never thought I’d be making one of these announcements, but Are You My Dad? is getting put on indefinite hiatus unless something very unexpected happens. It feels weird to end my writing on my most successful fic, but that’s how the cookie crumbles sometimes.

My writing pace has gone from a chapter every couple weeks to every couple months and I think that’s a sign that it’s time to move on.

To be clear, this isn’t just for this fic. I’m planning to finish my other current fic, Necromancer From the Beginning, mostly because it’s far closer to being done than this one. If I end up starting any other fics in the future, they’ll be much shorter, something like 10k instead of over a hundred.

For the why, ironically enough, it’s because life is going really well for me. I started writing five years ago in the middle of covid because it was a good outlet for when I just had too many thoughts or feelings. It was something that made a tough time for me a lot better and was almost a crutch for me. If I was stressed, angry, bored, sad, etc. I would deal with it by writing pages upon pages of nonsense that became my fics.

But now, instead of having hours of free time that I need to fill to not go crazy with idleness, I have awesome friends, a good stable job, a great boyfriend, and substantially better mental health. Even if I’m not probably not going to add to this story, I hope you all know just how much I cherish and appreciate all of you, especially the ones who were there from the beginning when I wrote 20k chapters with god awful pacing and plot holes the size of Texas.

Now, with all that gross mushy stuff out of the way. I don’t want to leave you high and dry when it comes to how the story would go, so I’ll give you all the outline so you can at least have some answers. If nothing, the length of the outline should give you an idea for why I made the call to drop the fic, at my current rate I’d be writing for a few centuries.

If someone finds themself with the desire to pick this up or anything like that, you have my full permission to do so and I’d be happy to chat about any ideas.

Internship arc:

Ch. 43:

• Izuku and Tokoyami go and intern with Hawks
• Have scene of Izuku fanboying over random sidekicks
• Hawks is very friendly and works on teaching both how to fly better since their form is garbage
• Leave hints of Hawks very clearly trying to take Izuku under his wing and get closer since Hero Association tasked him with keeping an eye on Izuku
• Have some conversation with Hawks where the hero killer is mentioned, segue into mentioning that Iida tried to go to hosu but got shut down and is on the other side of japan because aizawa isn’t dumb
• End with cliffhanger that shouto is in hosu because he runs on spite and thought interning with ‘Manuel, the normal hero’ would piss off his father that always wanted him to be extraordinary

Ch. 44:

• Hawks is still teaching and being chummy when he gets alarm that hosu is on fire
• Since shigaraki is being a gamer girl instead of a villain, there’s no nomu attack.
• Attack is by MLA, but izuku doesn’t know that, they just know that a bunch of people on trigger are attacking the city
• Give easter egg of having the mentioned villains be from the usj since there was no usj attack in this fic
• Hawks had Izuku teleport them both into hosu in order to do some heroing
• Hawks fights villains, izuku goes looking for his pal todoroki, finds him getting his ass beat because he’s only using his ice
• Fighting happens, izuku gets paralyzed from going to steal his quirk but then hesitating because of the law
• Insert shouting between friends, todoroki gets his shit together and lights everything on fire, making it very easy for hawks to find them and save the day
• Have internal dialogue of izuku being mad at himself and the government because he could have died from not being allowed to take quirks.

Ch. 45:

• Post fighting talk time in the hospital (because shouto got stabbed)
• Delving into doing things because of spite and shouto starting to take heroing seriously and deciding he wants to save people
• Police man shows up, cops are going to spin it to be izuku getting all the credit instead of todoroki being there at all because izuku had permission to kick ass from hawks
• Have someone say a line about hero association not being able to do shit against izuku even if he didn’t have permission
• Discussion shifts to people being in a bit of a tizzy about the amount of death and destruction and feeling doubts about heroes, not helped by hero killer being caught by a former vigilante
• Add fluffy scene of inko fussing over izuku even though he has super healing
• Starting point of their relationship being less shit

Ch. 46:

• School stuff, insert various hanging out and friendship
• Extra friendship with momo as they do nerdy conversation things
• Give unclear hints at a ‘project’ he’s working on, momo knows but readers don’t know he’s terraforming mars
• Reference the post-internship class where they do a race in the industrial area, and tsu smokes everyone by a lot

Ch. 47: 

• More friendship scenes, focus on shouto and uraraka as they study but have little scenes as he helps everyone prep for finals
• Reinforce the vibes of him wanting his friends/things to be as great as possible
• Have discussion of the attacks happening, revealing to readers that instead of just on hosu, the usj villains on trigger have been doing seemingly random attacks on cities but leaving before too many heroes show up
• People are steadily losing trust in heroes
• All might’s small form reveal not helping with this
• Cliffhanger of finding out that his final is him and bakugo against all might

Ch. 48:

• Obligatory argument between katsuki and izuku as they go to the exam site
• They are on better terms but he’s still an ass
• Katsuki points out that, just like all the other teams, they are being put against their greatest weaknesses.
• Bakugo has no quirk, just a crowbar and more chutzpah than should be legally allowed. So he struggles against raw power. For Izuku, this is basically a one to one of the fight with Muscular. He's up against an enemy that is super dangerous but he can’t go all out because he has squishy allies nearby. Last time he fucked up and lady died, so now he has lots of feelings about the whole thing
• Big fight scene happens. Doesn’t matter too much what happens in the fight, just show off lots of quirks and have bakugo get fairly injured before izuku finally wins against all might. He gets told he failed because he lost sight of the fact that he could have just retreated and was too busy flashing back to the muscular fight to remember he could just leave with bakugo and call it victory.

Ch. 49:

• Softy chapter where he goes to a museum with his siblings (eri, tomoko, melissa), aizawa, and yamada.
• Lots of cute stuff and general sibling interactions
• Remind readers that this is a crack fic
• They see a skeleton of an extinct dwarf elephant (Palaeoloxodon falconeri) that’s about the size of a large dog
• Eri gets super upset because she is 6 or 7 and just found out about dog sized elephants. Her quirk activates and after lots of drama she manages to revert it back to a baby dwarf elephant.
• The implications of this achievement will not be explored, because that’s funnier
• End chapter with Aizawa complaining that they are going to need to move with all the additions to their family

Ch. 50:

• Chapter of cute family stuff and moving into new bigger house
• Uraraka comes over to help move
• Uraraka bonding with various siblings
• Tomoko and eri are besties, melissa slowly being accepted into the group as a true sibling
• Tiny the dwarf elephant being constantly underfoot is a key feature of moving

Ch. 51/52:

• Welcome to total drama island
• In new house aizawa/yamada hosts big dinner with the whole family
• Aizawa, yamada, eri, melissa, tomoko, izuku, inko, toshinori, david, hisashi(afo)
• Nothing plot altering, just lots of drama between the parents
• After most others leave, Aizawa asks AFO how he convinced so many people/tests that hisashi and AFO are different people
• AFO takes the chance to boast about how he used a combination of quirks to turn a cadaver into what is ‘hisashi’ (similar to the nomu creation process) and then used a combo of Body Swap and Multitask(a quirk that basically gives you multiple consciousnesses to put a version of his mind in that body. So he functionally has 2 bodies, one of which genuinely does look like that and only has a fire breathing quirk. 

Hero Association Arc

Ch. 53:

• Open chapter with an interview by Curious with someone whose husband died in the attacks.
• Husband had a super dangerous combat quirk but had died without defending himself, as he’d never been allowed to train it since he wasn’t a hero
• More and more protests (led by trumpet) as people feel like not only does the hero association not keep people safe but it also keeps them from protecting themselves
• On bus to summer camp
• Discussion among students on which side is right
• Rest of chapter is getting settled into camp with lighthearted cooking scene with entire class that is chaotic and fun

Ch. 54:

• Rest of summer camp chapter
• No attack because no LOV
• Water Hose come visit to talk to Izuku because they are super thrilled he saved their lives a while ago
• Brief training arc where izuku trains using more quirks at once, gets to a point where 5 quirks can be used consistently and can push it to 6 for a few seconds
• End chapter with cliffhanger of news that tsunami is on its way to hit some foreign country

Ch. 55:

• Teleports to tsunami location
• Uses True Water, to stop it
• Very dramatic scene with lots of effort and inner dialog
• Gets back, everyone is very excited and supportive as summer camp ends and they all go home
• Cliffhanger where Izuku gets asked by Re-destro to help them out by speaking out against the HA and their regulation of non-heroes doing good with quirks. Calls in the favor that izuku owes them for helping him with the media when he was a vigilante.

Ch. 56:

• Izuku is walking from new house to the recording studio when Hawks shows up and warns Izuku that the HA won’t take it lying down if he speaks against them openly, especially after he technically broke the law already with the tsunami stopping and is on thin ice.
• Make it purposefully unclear how they even knew that he’d be meeting with Curious
• Make it clear that Izuku doesn’t know that re-destro and his buds are villains. He genuinely believes they are just a political group that thinks people should have more freedom around quirks
• He knows they do sketchy stuff on occasion, but sees it more as needing to circumvent a quirkist system (especially towards their many members with mutations) than anything morally wrong. He thinks All for One knows/deals with them not as fellow villains, but because he’d started out as fighting for quirk rights too.
• Izuku is a little shit and does it anyway.
• Give him a monologue on giving people the chance to make the world a better place instead of limiting them because they might do harm. Will rant about all the good he could do if he wasn’t limited.
• Cliffhanger of getting a panicked call from Melissa that Tomoko, Eri, and Tiny (her pet elephant) were taken by Hawks while they were at the park

Ch. 57:

• Starts with AFO’s POV. shows that he’d been working with MLA to have all the random attacks, making HA look awful and feel desperate as hell. Then worked within HA to have them make the call that Izuku couldn’t be worked with and had to be taken down.
• He watches as izuku tears his way through the HA in search of his siblings, add in a couple short combat scenes
• Izuku finds Eri but in his moment of distraction in finding her he gets snagged by dictator
• Inner monologue from AFO as he watches this with camera quirk showing that this is very very much his plan
• HA president does some mocking of Izuku, basically saying that Tomoko would go to prison for crimes committed before becoming full time gamer and Eri would become the next hawks/lady nagant since she would be beloved by the public for healing but can also kill people easily with nothing left behind

Ch. 58:

• Back to Izuku POV, AFO shows up to save the day, freeing Izuku and his siblings (and Tiny the elephant who had been protecting her like a guard dog)
• Teleports eri and tiny home
• Tomoko is doing some light murder of her captors
• Hawks gets in the way of murdering more people, big verbal fight about morality/following orders followed by taking hawks’ quirk
• Make note of the izuku icky feelings from taking the wings from the person who helped teach him to fly
• Hawks is understanding and a bit relieved to be out of the hero/government hitman business
• The president and other head people try to run off but get got (ie murdered) by Izuku’s vigilante buds (dabi, twice, toga, spinner, Magne)

Ch. 59:

• All Might arrived at the ruins of the HQ and sees a bunch of bodies/dust piles
• Turns into a bit of stand-off as All Might has very real concerns that Izuku is being played and manipulated but Izuku doesn’t want to hear it and AFO certainly doesn’t want him to hear it
• Doesn’t turn into a fight, but All Might warns that, even though he loves him, because he loves him, he won’t stand idly by if he goes too far. Basically, “totally cool and heroic that you rescued your siblings, but overthrowing the government agency and killing people is very concerning, please don’t do more of that.”
• Try to make it clear that even if all might is dumb and a fairly shitty dad, he genuinely cares and his concerns are reasonable
• At this point, All Might is fully aware that Hisashi and AFO are the same person, but can’t do anything at the moment
• Knows that if he started throwing punches at a healed AFO he’d lose, and more than that, he’s not 100% what side Izuku would fall on, and he definitely can’t beat both of them
• He knows he can’t win, but thinks Tsu might be able to once fully trained

Ch. 60:

• Recovery chapter focused on the family while giving exposition through watching the news.
• Hero Association and any connected departments are gutted, with Trumpet at the lead of the political movement and Curious pushing support for the hearts and mind party
• A new, and much smaller, hero association is made from the ground up, with MLA members filling most of the important positions (slidin’ go is actually important now)
• President is a politician from H.A.M party, Trumpet staying in the political circle with a goal of being prime minister
• Quirk use in public is now legal if no other law is being broken
• Self defense with a quirk is explicitly allowed
• A lot of the new officials have mutation quirks now, including the Pres who has a squid instead of a head and the vice pres having a fly mutation
• Izuku recognizes her assistant as someone he’d met in the quirk support groups (specifically spray bottle head guy)
• Talk about having better heroes and removing those that don’t hold up to standards because the current heroes have failed the public
• Number 1: Lied to public about his capabilities for the sake of false hope
• Number 2: An abuser who purchased a wife
• Number 3: A hit-man who’d been purchased by the government as a child
• Heroes are left feeling nervous about who does and doesn’t make the cut
• End chapter with Re-Destro celebrating their victory and a (mostly) bloodless takeover of the government

All Might Arc

Ch. 61

• Slow return to ‘normalcy’, which means weird stuff is still happening but with much lower stakes
• Split chapter between playing video games with his sisters and hanging out with Gigantomachia, which includes lots of wrestling and hide-and-go-seek
• Izuku is aware he can never hide from Machia’s nose with excessive distance and teleporting, but indulges Machia since that’s his favorite game
• Try to show that while Machia isn’t a child, a lot of the quirk effects from ‘Dog’ make him a bit childish and very straightforward
• Make it clear that he visits Machia with at least some frequency (this is a surprise tool for later)

Ch. 62

• Family time specifically with AFO
• AFO shares more stories from his childhood, the villain in these stories is always the cops/government (because quirkists), helping Izuku feel okay with everything that happened. Lots of people died when Izuku took down the HA, some by his hands, many by others, but AFO reminds him that for every person he’d gotten killed, the government has killed a hundred more through discrimination/negligence/police brutality.
• Makes it super clear how proud he is of Izuku, make it purposefully unclear how much is manipulation and how much genuine fatherly love

Ch. 63

• Family time specifically with Inko
• Focus on her trying to help Izuku feel like a normal kid
• Worried about all the expectation/responsibility put on his shoulders so young
• Low-key chapter that purposefully ignores all the crazy stuff happening in the world as they go on a walk through town, eating ice-cream at the beach he’d cleaned up, with Inko teasing him about various childhood stories

Ch. 64

• Legal things happen where H.A.M party makes quirks now legally considered a possession not an organ
• This goes mostly unnoticed and undiscussed, seen as just governments doing stupid and pedantic things
• Izuku immediately catches on, this is the MLA making it so that he can legally take quirks from people who consent to it
• Now that quirk usage is legal, and quirks aren’t seen as a body part, taking a quirk with consent goes from being a combo of Public Quirk Usage and Organ Harvesting, to the legal equivalent of someone giving you a shirt they don’t want anymore
• Kinoshita (rocket legs guy), talks with Izuku. Making it clear that if he’s taking quirks again he should make sure he’s not doing it for the sake of scratching the itch to take things/quirks.
• Otherwise approves of the idea. Clearly is concerned that it won’t be great for Izuku’s mental health since it could easily become addictive, but also thinks it’s really good for the many people he helps with severe disabilities from quirks
• Gets a call from Curious letting him know that they’re keeping the other part of the story quiet, which is the fact that they are including quirks in assets that can be seized from criminals, in the same way that weapons are seized from a killer.
• Izuku is given blanket permission to take quirks from any prisoner he wants if they are in for life, but to let them know if he sees a quirk he wants from someone who would be released eventually

(Make poll here to see what quirks people want Izuku to get)

Ch. 65

• Have chapter focus on Triple M, the support equipment company that Mei, Melissa, and Midoriya are making
• Discuss making products not just for fighting, but to assist those with quirk-based disabilities
• Offers to get them in touch with Re-Destro’s support item company, but Melissa feels like it would be betraying her father/his support item company, and Mei scoffs at the suggestion that they could teach her something
• Spend chapter just doing nerdy shit as they design more equipment
• Add in random ideas
• Handcuffs that have ‘vitality stealing’ and ‘freeze tag’ (reminder that quirk cuffs don’t exist in canon or this fic)
• Bullets that have various effects on them (everybody is gangster until they get shot with an invisible bullet made from electrified teeth)
• A robot made of translucent metals with various effects
• Powerloader horrified that the heat/ac has been replaced by flaming blood and a steel rod crackling with blue electricity
• Add in one or two creations based on the suggested quirks
• make Eri some cute and indestructible outfits since they are worried about her after everything that happened
• For example, a cute lil dress that could tank a ‘Smash’ and has an invisible tracker built in

Ch. 66:

• Back to school chapter, second half of 1st year
• Have scene of giving any new gear that seems fitting
• Make it clear that he very much still has the feeling of hoarding friends instead of stuff to deal with impulses and that means making sure his ‘stuff’ is as strong and safe as possible. Not to the same extent as earlier in fic, but very much still a thing
• Come up with some sort of school exercise that makes sense to have All Might teach
• Maybe something like adapting basic martial arts to account for super strength since that will definitely change your stances and tactics
• Show All Might being actively patient with Izuku’s perpetual frustration
• All Might is going through a conundrum as always on whether to think like a hero or a dad when it comes to izuku. Because Izuku is pretty clearly being manipulated and, even if he means well, a villain izuku here is bad. But at the same time, shouldn’t a good parent disregard the potential future threat and be supportive and there for them anyways?

Ch. 67/68:

• Izuku asks to have a talk with ‘the parents’. ‘The parents’ are convened, all a bit concerned for why they were all needed, but do their best to listen politely. Izuku Is super nervous and awkward. Basically asks for permission to work on his project again now that quirk use won’t put the family in danger since the quirk laws were butchered.
• Inko and Yamada fold immediately, not sure why all 5 parents were needed for that.
• When asked what he was doing, he explained that he had been going to mars and had built a base there.
• All Might gives his go-ahead to continue, he finds it fascinating, but is mostly distracted by his arch enemy sitting a few feet away and is doing his best to remain civil. (plus, he’s trying his best to be more understanding and supportive)
• With three of 5 parents giving the ok for him to start teleporting again, he relaxes again. He explains all that he’s been doing.
• Lots of base material from various illegal dumping grounds
• Steel structures made from Overhauling the iron, this also gave him some the oxygen needed
• Used various waste from the garbage piles to become dirt so he could get an indoor forest started
• Added the needed co2 by burning wood, most also from various junk piles
• All for One stares at him for a bit before asking how he’s been doing upkeep and stopping his dome from rusting away
• Izuku excitedly tell him that he covered his dome in platinum alloys to prevent rust (and also because that’s fancy as hell, who doesn’t want to have a giant platinum terraforming dome)
• Explains that his way of getting lots of materials was to make a chair out of a rare material, (typically requested from momo) then he turns into the chair and uses Detachable Limbs to drop off a chair leg before growing it back with Hyper regeneration, essentially creating an infinite material glitch.
• Also made a big wall around the dome to stop most of the dust storms(which also makes it easier to collect dust that can be melted/overhauled down into more iron
• AFO is not convinced and asks how he’s been tending to the forest and collecting the iron dust as it builds up on the wall since he hasn’t been there in multiple months
• Aizawa has caught onto what AFO is suggesting and joins him in lightly glaring at Izuku
• Izuku folds under the dual glare like a paper towel. Explains that he might have created sentient life again, even though he was very explicitly told not to. Goes into full ramble mode. He’d had a ton of leftover metals after using rust to collect oxygen for his dome and decided to make statues with it. Then, when there was just too much work to maintain the massive building by himself he animated them to help out.
• After some additional needling, he reveals that his base may be a bit bigger than he implied, and that over a 1000 sentient beings made of various metals have been living there.
• They also consider him to basically be a god, but that part was very on accident and makes him very uncomfy
• He can make them do stuff, but has no control on what they think
• Lots of parental discussions happen on the ethics and options going forward. Izuku is re-grounded until future notice. And while he will be permitted to return to mars, he can’t do so without a chaperone.
• The discussion of the legality of claiming a piece of mars is tabled for another day
• After things cool down, Yamada asks a last question on how he moved just massive quantities to mars. His Blink quirk only lets him bring what he carries, and it would have been all over the news if a gigantic midoriya was teleporting away garbage.
• Awkwardly explains that he may have stolen a quirk copy from AFO’s resident mad scientist that let him compress non-living material 100-fold.
• AFO is doing his best to keep his cover, mostly just for its own sake at this point, but gives Izuku a glare, making it clear that the theft had gone very noticed, but they hadn’t known who did it.

Ch. 69:

• Meet the big three in class
• Mirio is referred to as ‘future number 2 hero’ instead of number 1 hero like he is in canon
• Izuku offers to stay out of the fight to keep it fair, but mirio insists that he can beat the entire class, with or without izuku included
• Mirio bodies the class but isn’t able to take down izuku, instead it comes to a stalemate where neither can manage to hurt the other.
• Is super impressed by mirio’s ability to strategize mid fight and predict his enemies. Comments that Izuku’s fight style would also really benefit from that training, predicting people properly and knowing what quirk to use in what circumstance
• Explains that he did training with Nighteye, which is weird for him since that was his ‘dad’s’ old sidekick
• Mentions that his quirk is really powerful and interesting (make note of him doing the hand twitch), to which mirio explains just how much of a detriment it is for him. Becomes even more impressed as he realizes that Mirio did basically the entire fight blind and deaf, which makes him seriously consider going with Nighteye

Ch. 70:

• Gran torino shows up to train Tsu on stuff  and end up interacting with izuku
• A bit awkward, and re-affirming that gran torino is a bit of an ass, but an ass that cares and shows his caring by trying to make all might and his successor as tough as possible

• Re-do of class assessment. Froppy ties with him for first, with Momo for a close second.
• Fun little moments of showing off quirks/quirk combos
• Have izuku be at least a little flustered when Momo does cool shit
• Little scene where he is very focused on not looking in her direction during the various stretching ones/the side to side jumps

Ch. 71:

• Gives Aizawa a tour of Mars
• He is picked since he is the least likely to brush off/encourage crimes (all might is excluded because they are a lil’ worried that izuku would leave him there)
• Explores the city and meets the various metal people that live there
• Show the various generations of people, getting more realistic and functional (early gen stumble a bit with shitty joints and can’t talk properly, overhauling them would wipe their sentience though since the Animation quirk is broken when the statue is broken)
• Many have specialized bodies for specific tasks
• Finds that they very much have personalities that Izuku didn’t give them
• Introduce a funny one that is sassy because haha is good
• Aizawa purposefully makes izuku uncomfortable with the fact that they are doing the jobs that izuku told them to do for the amount he told them to.
• Gathers all 1200 of them and gives the ‘order’ to disregard all prior orders. Makes sure that they know what tasks are needed to keep the place from collapsing
• Izuku is worried that they might not actually do the work without the order. Aizawa reminds him that forcing people to work without pay is slavery and very much a violation of human rights
• Izuku agrees to redo how the giant platinum dome looks, because even if it’s less fancy, something that looks like a rusty mountain won’t get attention, and owning a piece of mars is very illegal

Ch. 72:

• Lowkey chapter where eri and izuku are at the park together and eri is doing her best to teach Tiny how to play fetch
• David and Melissa hang out for a bit, after talking for a while they try to convince Izuku to give all might a chance. General vibes of ‘yeah, he abandoned you and was shitty, and you don’t have to forgive him for that, but he’s putting in his best effort and since he can’t change the past, trying to change now is the best he can do.”
• Brief scene of him being awkward as paparazzi try to get pictures of the super famous teen
• Discussion with david who talks about the weirdness of becoming famous (which happened for him when being All Might’s sidekick)
• Overall give vibes of David as a good dad and good person who definitely has a soft spot for All Might but isn’t acting on it because he’s not trying to be a homewrecker a second time

Ch. 73/74:

• All Might POV for a chapter, combo of backstory and content of fic. Given the background of him struggling to balance his own desires and the needs of the many and that he made the decision to put the needs of the many first every time, which unfortunately means he’s a shit dad.
• Readers are feral and I did too good at making them hate this man, try to redeem him a bit so they don’t foam at the mouth
• Have it end with him deciding to retire as a hero officially and rework his priorities, even if it means he won’t be saving people. Basically deciding that he’s done enough and he needs to be okay with not focusing on saving people anymore and be a family man instead

Ch. 75:

• Izuku decides to take up the offer of taking prisoner quirks
• Mostly a chapter of izuku nerding out and being way too excited in a prison
• Is framed in the media as making the world safer be de-quirking prisoners and also improving prisoner lives since they wouldn’t be able to use the quirk anyways and now they can be moved to more humane prisons

Ch. 76:

• New quirk chapter, aim to add 25-50 quirks

Ch. 77:

• Class chapter, lighthearted vibes where he plays the prank of pretending to be Mina with Transform and people try to guess who is the real one
• Aizawa pretends to be upset but thinks it’s funny as hell
• Give focus to the less discuss friendships in class
• All Might asks Izuku to stay after, izuku thinking he’s gonna get shit for the prison stuff
• All Might basically just lets him know that he’s going to stand by Izuku regardless of legality, because izuku is his kid and he’ll be there no matter what path izuku chooses. Even if izuku went full villain/vigilante, All Might wouldn’t throw hands over it and would focus on loving his kid instead of fighting him.
• All Might as an antagonist is ‘defeated’, this time through the power of self-reflection instead of through incredible violence

MLA Arc

Ch. 78:

• Internship chapter. Goes to Nighteye, mostly the same with Nighteye being an ass, but no fight because this time when he asks ‘how will you help the agency’ bullshit Izuku can hit him with with ‘dumbass, I’m one of the strongest on the planet’
• Asked why his agency, because any would take him. Explains that he wants to work on his mid-battle strategy and also maybe wants to get a better idea of the kind of man his father is and working with a past sidekick seems like a good way to do that.
• Talks about hero logistic things and makes sure to align his expectations. Izuku is there to learn the basics, not change the world
• If room left in chapter, add fluffy family scene with Tiny and the cats

Ch. 79:

• Izuku is doing damn good, he’s powerful, rich, has an entire city to his name, and the government is firmly in his pocket.
• Dude is feeling victorious and untouchable
• First half of the chapter is him running his city and interacting with the people there. Solidify a few characters there. Design characters with the understanding that while they have varied personalities they all originated from Izuku, sort of like a warped mirror, creating different images but based on the same original image.
• Second half is going on patrol with Mirio. Lighthearted conversation with Izuku sort of seeing him as a role model and an ideal hero
• Come across a mugging and they immediately surrender when they see Izuku, which gives him mixed feelings

Ch. 80:

• Yamada joins Izuku when going to the Martian city, now named Tharsis after the mountains it’s built next to. Yamada has a big presentation to teach the residents about self determination and self governance.
• They make the very beginnings of their own laws, with a very heavy focus on property rights since they all have a bit of Izuku’s possessive nature
• Is becoming a genuine city with each person having their own home, made primarily of martian steel and very extravagant looks (another trait from Izuku)
• Lots of buildings are being put up outside of the dome, since none of the residents need the oxygen/protection from radiation.
• A lot of the dome is filled with industry/forest rather than homes
• Show that they are becoming more and more independent/varied as time goes on

Ch. 81:

• Family time chapter. Spends time with the cats and Melissa. Melissa makes a comment about being quirkless and Izuku gives her a look of pure confusion. Explains that he can sense quirks and never said anything since he assumed he kept it secret for some reason and wasn’t going to out her. Had been confused because she knew he could sense quirks and no one else was around.
• Asks him what it is, because she genuinely thought she didn’t have one. After focusing on it for a bit figures out that she has what is basically One for All in its infancy, which is just the power to give quirks.
• Only real difference is that it takes a handshake and requires consent from both parties
• After thinking for a bit decides that there’s literally no benefit in having it, she has no quirks to give and no way to take them. Offers the quirk to izuku
• First instinct is that getting quirks is always good, second thought is that if he has the ability to give quirks people will expect him to share his quirks.
• Creates a big inner conflict between the desire to hoard and the desire to do good
• Goes to Kinoshita for advice. Nice time that essentially boils down to telling Izuku that he’s not beholden to helping others and shouldn’t feel forced, however, Izuku is a good kid and he should do his best to follow his heart not his quirk. Decision is that he’ll hold onto the quirk but won’t tell anyone about it.

Ch. 82:

• Learning hero logistics with Nighteye and discussing legality of information quirks and when it’s legal/acceptable to use.
• Purposefully a bit of a boring chapter to give it a sense of normalcy and calm
• Discuss new adult ed. Program that the new hero association rolled out, which is basically the MLA getting their fighting members recognized as official heroes.
• Izuku has the thought of having his vigilante buds use that to become legal crime fighters but decides they work better in the shadows
• Izuku makes a comment about how no one could/would stop him even if he did use his quirks to spy. Nighteye goes off on him about there being rules for a reason and that All Might could have broken laws and gotten away with it because of his power and strength, but he wouldn’t have been a hero if he’d done that.
• Even if Izuku can use his political clout to make things legal, that’s just breaking the law for the rich and powerful. Unless a law is truly unjust, he shouldn’t be looking for ways to get around it/have exceptions made.
• Lots of self searching about the kind of person and hero he wants to be while patrolling with Mirio

Ch. 83/84/85:

• Spends some time with Gigantomachia and then joins his father in the mountain base filled with all his cool shit.
• Light chit chat leading into Izuku asking more about his father’s early days as a freedom fighter, trying to get a different perspective as he ponders who he wants to be.
• Tells stories about the founding members of his team, the ones with Physical Peak, Body Swap, Fire Breath, and Claws.
• Since we’ve already had a bit of backstory for them, the stories will follow Body Swap, Fire breath, and Claws. Basically giving snapshots of them joining the cause and what they fought for
• BS was a lady who functioned as an assassin who had long since lost her original body. Would bump into someone important while already restrained to some extent, swap bodies, allies grab the already tied up original body, BS goes about day causing as many problems as possible before jumping off a roof and swapping back as they fall.
• Fully insane woman after being experimented on for a few years in a government lab. Original body had been killed while escaping so she just jumps from body to body, whichever is convenient.
• Very much meant to be Himiko vibes but even more dangerous and a lot more vengeance and ideals behind her murders
• FB didn’t start with a quirk but wanted to join the fight after his Meta daughter was killed.
• AFO gave him fire breath so he could fight back and join the ranks of the Meta.
• Vicious fighter that wasn’t afraid to spill blood and ash. Fuelled by rage.
• Follow the story of him vs the gov. First ‘heroes’, basically metas that fought on the side of government
• Claws was less a fighter and more a spokesperson, convincing people to join them and rise up together. Was the only one with clear mutations (other than AFO’s hand holes) so was a good option for finding and gaining sway with other pockets of metas
• Talks about his brother, who was visibly a meta with his white pupils and green iris. AFO’s anger at the betrayal but blaming himself for protecting his brother from the horrors the rest of them faced, causing him to be naive and ignorant to the danger.

Ch. 86:

• Prepping for the end of first year and the associated finals
• Friendship time, study group of the main pals
• Aim for silly goofy vibes
• Goes on patrol like normal but comes across a hero harassing someone. Izuku is confused and concerned but assumed that they’d done something wrong to make the hero act like that. The reason was some quirkist response about them being quirkless trash.
• Izuku is big pissed. Dude is genuinely confused, guy is a member of MLA and thought that Izuku was anti quirkless like the majority of the MLA. The new Hero Association had made it an unofficial policy that any complaints from or about the quirkless were buried or dismissed. On top of that, any quirkless who do even a lil crime go to prison with all the de-quirked prisoners that no longer need the specialty equipment to contain them.
• They see him using removing quirks as a punishment for criminals and work hand in hand with all the top MLA members and assume he’s co-leader is not the true leader
• Have it be some level of fight club referenced where he’s demanding to know who authorized this, who let this happen, and the guy is like, ‘is this a test??? It’s you??”
• Since the quirkless were already being discriminated against, it getting worse didn’t make the news, and the MLA kept it quiet for the most part.

Ch. 87:

• Izuku dips from patrol to go and speak with Redestro directly (he knows that the actual president of the HA is a member of the MLA and will do what Redestro says.
• Rolls up ready for a fight, but Redestro is super polite and helpful, which is very much throwing Izuku off
• Izuku makes demands on quirkless welfare and keeping heroes in line, expects to get pushback, maybe even come to blows, but instead just gets the equivalent of ‘you got it’ and then makes some calls right then and there to the HA to have them start drafting new policies and to spread the word unofficially as well to get their acts together and back off the quirkless.
• Izuku is fully baffled at this point, demands to know what the man is up to. Redestro explains that if they had tried to take over the government by force, it would have driven the country into chaos and been close to a civil war. Izuku disassembling the original HA himself and then helping them with the political support needed to take over saved them years of fighting and the lives of tens of thousands on both sides. Out of respect for both what izuku did and his power, he is more than happy to yield to him.
• Dude made the call that getting the government for basically no cost and continuing to entrench their group into the gears of japan is absolutely worth making a few concessions and following izuku’s orders
• Makes it clear that he is at Izuku's service. Anything that the kid wants to happen, wants to change, wants destroyed, they’ll make it happen. If they can’t do it above board with their politicians, journalists, businessmen, or heroes, then they’ll make it happen with their thiefs, their smugglers, and their villains.
• Izuku has explicit permission to use the MLA and their allies as a hammer to reshape the world as he chooses.
• (this is partially because he believes it, and partially because he’s using mind games to disarm izuku)
• Izuku leaves with what he wanted and unchecked power, but feels like he somehow was the one who lost. Redestro has everything he wants and the MLA would be near impossible to fully route from Japan’s bureaucracy, and it will only get worse by the day. And worst of all, he put these villains in power and is seen by many as their leader, not realizing quick enough what was happening.

Ch. 88:

• Izuku fully fucks off for a bit. Throws himself into Thrasis and improving the city. Starts building better and better ‘golems’ (i really need to decide on a term for them) but not animating them yet.
• Spends most of a week building ‘his own gigantomachia’. A giant with a wide variety of quirk effects whose job would be to protect everyone else. Again, not animated, but there in case he needs it.
• Goes home finally after about two weeks and apologizes for being away (he’d told parents ahead of time that he needed time, but nothing more than that)
• Talks with Aizawa about what had happened, filled with shame and overall feelings like a dumbass
• Aizawa just sits and listens, comforting the lil guy
• Tells him it’ll be alright and that it’ll take a while but they can work to fix it, or at least make it better.

Ch. 89:

• Catching up on schoolwork and making up the two finals he missed. Able to take the rest of the finals with his class, but feels a bit overwhelmed with coming back in the middle of finals week.
• Does his best to ignore how much news was generated by not being seen for a couple weeks
• Heroic final is a rescue simulation, each geared towards the various students and what they have as a challenge
• Go in pairs, is put with Tsu, the other powerhouse in the class
• Are given the task of rescuing ‘people’, humanoid robots that fill the role
• Have to rescue the robots during an earthquake and a few buildings are collapsing. To make the difficulty appropriate to the two most powerful first years in their history, the robots are rioters who keep trying to kill each other while the earthquake happens.
• Work on teamwork between Tsu’s raw power and Izuku’s versatility
• 10 ‘civilians’ ‘die’, Izuku beats himself up but Nezu reminds him that this is one of the most difficult simulations, only made worse by there also being a fire or ‘villain’ (a teacher) also trying to ‘kill’ the robots while they all attack each other. They weren’t meant to succeed, they were meant to demonstrate thinking fast and remaining steadfast in the face of unwinnable odds.

Ch. 90:

• Show some of the other students in their exams. Mostly done in the USJ, with everything cranked the hell up

Ch. 91:

• Post finals spend time talking with his various parents about his moral dilemma. Boils down to, he’s unintentionally ended up with a lot of power over a villain organization, does he make use of that.
• Pros:
• He can do a lot of good by controlling the criminal scene. He’d be enabling some criminals but getting rid of the worst of them.
• If he tells them to stop, they might continue anyways, so he might as well stay informed and in control of the situation
• There are a lot of people he can’t reach/help legally, so having illegal options is good
• Cons:
• Even if he helps people, what about the others that got hurt by the criminals he uses. Is he complicit in anyone they hurt, by his order or otherwise.
• Could he still call himself a hero if he has villains essentially on his payroll?
• He already has vigilantes that do work in the shadows. And a corrupt businessman is way more dangerous than a handful of violent idealists that help him out on occasion
• He’s pretty sure at this point that the attacks that undermined the HA were by the MLA and he doesn’t want to encourage that
• This entire chapter would be a call-back to my Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing fic, where izuku makes this call and goes full villain in order to reduce and control crime, this version makes the other call.
• Have him talk to each parent, at least briefly, getting their many opinions
• Eventually decides that he needs to put his morals first. It doesn’t matter if he’d be able to do more, he needs to do things the right way, not the easy way.

Ch. 92:

• Goes to Redestro and basically goes ‘no more crime buddy, your criminal guys have to go legit and so do you.’
• Redestro hits him with that ‘you got it boss’ that gets under izuku’s skin
• Explains that he figured that would be Izuku’s decision and had started that process already. The MLA is essentially gone, they are all just private citizens that support the Hearts and Minds political party, an official and legal party that has massive power/sway now as it pushes for quirk-related freedoms. Any villains have either been legitimized or purged from their organization.
• Redestro is framed in this as a businessman/leader first and a fighter second. He’d rather use his words than fists, so having all this power without spilling blood for it was perfect, he’d just never thought they could reshape the government with throwing hands. By having Izuku on their side politically, the heroes that would have thrown hands were very hesitant.
• He speaks about the future, both the good and the bad, that their policies will create. Use language to make some very clear comparisons to the second amendment stuff.
• Chapter ends with Izuku going for a walk as he ponders whether or not it was all for the best, but feeling like it couldn’t be undone either way.
• The vibes of having ‘defeated’ the MLA but instead creating something much harder to remove if needed is super important. The active villainy is gone, but a political party that is rapidly gaining ground can do so much more damage than a rampaging villain.

Ch 93:

• Hit the readers with more calm times and a bit of a time skip, maybe 10 months so he’s halfway through year 2
• Have this and next chapter basically show what things have been like
• Give some reminder to readers that Izuku with Physical Peak active for 2-3 years is fuckin’ huge. Have Nezu make some comment on him having his mother’s face but looking like All Might did in his teens
• Things look good on all fronts, they’ve quieted down politically as HAM (hearts and minds) keep focusing on entrenching and expanding in the government as they fight for quirk rights in the workplace, making it easier to use your quirk while working without a special license.
• Crime is also down a lot since one of the biggest suppliers of villains and weapons to villains just went legit and had their heroes (former MLA members) arrest the villains/criminals they worked with. This both stopped crime and tied loose ends 
• Class does sparring and shows how badass their class has become.
• Have Izuku and momo face each other and show crazy chemistry and knowledge of each other’s styles, to the point it’s basically a dance.
• Showcase of Izuku being able to semi-comfortably use 7 quirks at a time and Momo fighting like a fusion of iron man and inspector gadget
• Any relationship between them is for the epilogue, but have it be clearly set up

Ch. 94:

• This one looks at Tharsis, the martian city, and shows that it’s bigger than ever. More have been made, but with more consideration and oversight this time. Probably about 1500 statue-people now.
• Surprise the readers by having izuku walk through his city and have a previously mentioned statue-person talking with a regular ol’ human. Human dude is one of a few dozen scientists and other officials as part of an agreement with the UN, who were unimpressed with his claiming of a part of mars
• Science dude is a biologist. Various discussions about science and the health of the forest, specifically shit growing weird because of ½ gravity
• Introduce a few characters, working a teachers who are helping the statue-people with basic stuff (they only know as much about the world as Izuku did when he made them)
• They also need to do various studying for citizenship tests, since a few want to move to earth
• Indicate that he’s continued to work on the giant statues built for combat, just hasn’t animated any

Ch. 95:

• A full Eri being cute for her 8th birthday party
• Kota and OC kids are there being adorable
• No plot, only cute
• Wholesome sibling time with all 4 of then

Ch. 96:

• Final quirk chapter, aim to have between 200-300 quirks listed

Ch. 97:

• Izuku is reached out to by an 80 year old retired doctor who has the quirk ‘Diagnose’. You put one hand on a person, one on a stack of paper and it lists every symptom/disorder/disease/etc. That they have. Dude was like, ‘hey, i’m old and done working, by my quirk is so fuckin good, it should still get used’
• The dude is a very nice old man who likes to ramble about ‘the good ol days’
• Izuku wants to try it out, because it’s honestly one of the most helpful quirks he’s ever gotten
• Goes to his mom’s where they have dinner that night
• General chit chat and good vibes, establishing for readers that their relationship has gotten much better
• After dinner asks if he can try it out and see how it works. She accepts. Quickly grabs some blank papers and uses Diagnose’. Finds out that she has high blood pressure, anxiety, back pain, carpal tunnel in one wrist, and, as a big ass cliffhanger, altered memories.

Ch. 98:

• Izuku and inko are both shook by this revelation
• Discuss what could have been altered. If there are any relevant memories that seemed to come out of nowhere, moments of ‘huh, not sure why I hadn’t thought of that’ or ‘now that you mention it…’ about something that would be worth altering.
• Even though he wants to pretend it couldn’t be the case, he asks if she had a moment like that with anything relating to his villain dad. Since he knows for a fact that he has a memory altering quirk
• She thinks for a second before going pale, mentioning she’d never even thought to bring up or even consider that Izuku had been from another man until Tsukachi wanted to verify that she had truly slept with Hisashi, son of AFO.
• Existential crisis for both of them. Izuku is very hesitant to make that accusation though and ends up going to the bar where the meeting had occurred and looking through their security cameras. The best he could get his hands on was on the parking lot, but he was able to confirm that his mom never showed up that day.
• Izuku kept looking though, knowing that AFO couldn’t add wholly new memories, only alter existing ones
• Found her going to that very bar two months earlier and leaving with some dude who looked vaguely like AFO’s Hisashi persona
• Now has fairly undeniable proof that AFO isn’t his dad and had fully lied about it, going as far as messing with Inko’s mind to maintain the lie.
• Thinks about what to do before deciding that he can’t just confront his pretending-to-be-father, since the man would probably react badly to finding out that the cat was out of the bag. Instead, he would work on prepping for what would almost certainly turn into a fight.

Ch. 99:

• Four chapters of preparing to face AFO
• Prep chapter 1. Getting parents on board
• Talks to All Might first. Has a minor breakdown over giving all might so much shit for accusing him of/being worried about him being manipulated, only to discover that they were all being tricked by AFO. He also openly forgives All Might for the first time, for abandoning him as a kid, because maybe he was right to be super cautious about a dude who would alter a woman’s memories to make her think she slept with him in order to claim her kid as his own.
• Still upset about All Might not coming back when AFO was considered dead, but the dude genuinely didn’t think he had the option to take that shit back. Fully thought that abandoning your family for the greater good couldn’t be undone and he shouldn’t even try
• All Might outwardly supportive but inwardly cheering. His kid is 100%, his basically-wife didn’t fuck his arch nemesis, and his kid is starting to forgive him for past mistakes. A weird situation of bad news that is somehow mostly good news for him.
• All Might offers to keep Izuku out of this fight, Izuku wants/needs to end this himself
• All Might acknowledges that he can’t do much in this fight, but will ‘make some calls’ to get some support.
• Much shorter convo with Aizawa/Yamada to catch them up to speed without repeating too much.
• They are ready to rumble and Aizawa is willing to take lead in order to erase quirks and make everything a million times easier

Ch. 100:

• Prep ch. 2: Getting siblings on board
• Easy mode, get Melisa and Mei to help him build more weapons in case plan A (aizawa carrying the team) fails. They discuss quirk enhanced turrets as both are enthusiastic to help out
• Hard mode, explaining to eri that Hisashi won’t be around anymore because he did bad things, and they thought he stopped doing bad things, but it turns out that he didn’t
• Impossible mode, getting tomoko on board is similar to pulling teeth. Eventually comes around but the most they get is that she’ll only help indirectly. She’s not going to throw hands with basically her dad, but she will stay back and keep eri safe.
• This is intended to show character growth and that she has genuinely changed over the course of the fic, preferring a quieter life where she protects family instead of hunting those she hates

Ch. 101:

• Prep Ch. 3: Classmates/Heroes
• Talks with classmates about it. Makes it clear he really doesn’t want them fighting his not-dad, but it would be great to have backup for dealing with whatever nonsense happens and protecting civilians. The exceptions are Tsu and Momo, who he thinks would actually be a boon when fighting AFO
• Reference aoyama being anxious but izuku not noticing
• Have izuku mention he already spoke with his vigilante pals
• Beginning of logistical plans on where he’ll face him, aiming for as rural as possible to prevent collateral damage
• Second half is talking with Nezu, who says he’ll gather forces on his end

Ch. 102: 

• Prep ch. 4: HAM/Mars time
• Talks with Redestro and the other main members of HAM, making sure he has their support and they won’t switch over to AFO.
• They make it clear that they both prefer working under someone who is ‘softer’ but helps them forward their policies in the light is so much more helpful than someone who hides in the shadows and perpetuates them as a villain organization rather than a political movement.
• Additionally, they follow the strong, and they believe that Izuku will far surpass AFO one day, if not already
• Discusses logistics of having their best fighting members help with kicking ass, but mostly they will be handling evacuations of Kamino ward.
• They ask if he’s worried about someone leaking the incoming mission to AFO but Izuku says it wouldn’t matter. If AFO was willing to alter his mom’s mind, then he almost certainly would have surveillance on her in case it was revealed. It is only because of his pride that AFO doesn’t make the first move, he genuinely wants to see what Izuku and the heroes can pull off.
• Goes to his mars city. Explains the situation to the statue-people, requests, but does not demand, assistance with the upcoming battle.
• Prepare an area a few miles from the dome as essentially a killing field with lots of guns/bombs/traps and surrounded by statue-people ready to attack
• Izuku goes to a bigass warehouse with 60 footer statues made of the strongest most quirk infused materials. All other statues are made either for work around the city or just for their own sake. These 3 are made for war.

Ch. 103:

• Kamino ward gets an evacuation notice as a veritable army of heroes surround the area. Izuku just rolls up and knocks on the front door, and because he’s a cocky bastard, AFO answers like it’s a normal day and starts a conversation like there aren’t over a thousand heroes there. (Not all are super close, most are keeping a perimeter of about half a mile or so)
• Izuku asks him why he did it, why he lied about being his father
• Gets a somber look and says that for over half a year he truly believed Izuku was his son and thought of him as such. Once he had his memories back he knew that wasn’t true, but he refused to lose his family again because of his ‘brother’. And he was a man who would do anything to keep his things/people close to him.
• From his perspective, he was doing what was needed to keep All Might from taking his son from him
• Izuku says he has to surrender and all that jazz, that if he goes quietly then they can still be close. He would visit as often as possible, but he’s crossed too many lines to be allowed to be free.
• Dude just shakes his head and tells Izuku he forgives him and will never forsake him. ‘One day, society and its heroes will turn on you, and when you need me, no matter the circumstance, no matter how you feel about me, I will be there for you, I will always be your safe haven, even if we have to fight today.’
• Izuku is like, ‘I’ll never do that, fuck you’, and gets hit with the ‘You’ll find that never, always, and forever don’t work as well when you can live for as long as we can. I don’t doubt that we’ll have our issues and fight on occasion. But you truly mean to say that over the course of, a hundred, maybe even a thousand years, you’ll never understand the rage and pain that has made me willing to cross any line? I accept that you need to do this, but I hope we can reconcile in the future, even if that’s centuries from now, my son. And I do truly mean that, you are my son, regardless of blood.’
• Make it as clear as possible that AFO genuinely loves izuku and wants to see them side by side in the future as father and son. He doesn’t want to kill Izuku and truly wants reconciliation between them, the same does not go for the various heroes in the area
• Aizawa hits his ass with Erasure and Crust approaches with cuffs (because he’s likely to survive any tricky bullshit) 
• Dude smirks in a way a surrounded quirkless man really shouldn’t
• Imagine that scene from Ultron where he creates a new and better body and introduces it by ripping his previous form in half. Yeah, he does that. The now blood covered AFO in his Hisashi body stands there and unleashes a punch that sends Crust flying, showing the readers that instead of having Tomura go through the get-buff procedure, he did it with his clone body.
• End the chapter with an ominous line about how Izuku wasn’t the only person who prepared for this fight.

Ch. 104:

• Fight begins, AFO looks at all the heroes and various other people there to kick his ass and decides to thin the herd before fighting izuku.
• Stomps his foot real hard to create a dust cloud, breaking line of sight from Eraserhead. Uses Warping to send Izuku a few miles away. He knows that it will only keep him away for a second or two at most but that’s enough time.
• As soon as Izuku disappears he triggers a large amount of explosives that had been buried under the lab and the surrounding streets.
• Anyone without crazy speed or defense was injured to varying amounts by shrapnel filled explosives. Aizawa is alright because Manual is with him and water is a good counter to fire.
• Mt lady takes a lot of the damage, saving a bunch of lives, but, fun fact, explosions kill people. Save for Kamui woods, wood dude does not do well when surrounded by fire.
• Many who survived are out of the fight anyways because being on fire is a big hindrance. Probably 50-100 heroes dead or badly injured.
• Izuku returns about 5 seconds later (he was about to teleport in with Bird’s Eye View and was briefly blinded by the blast, inhibiting Blink until Hyper Recovery fixed it).
• AFO starts to fly off, and makes an ominous comment about the heroes being too busy to help Izuku in the fight to come.
• The water hose team are handling the fires with Manual and tell him they have it handled when Kurogiri portals start dropping Nomu. Like, a lot of nomu.

• For reader’s purposes, because we’re a full year after when the big fight happened in canon, there are 8 high end nomu and the get-buff procedure was completed with full recovery time, instead of the 75% that tomura had. On top of that, dozens of low and middle tier Nomu because, unlike canon, they haven’t been used for fodder in any fights yet. So all the nomu that would have been at Hosu, Kamino, summer camp, the Hood Fight, and the near-high ends from the Jaku hospital.

• Gran Torino takes off through the air to join the fight in the sky, but has to pull back as a bolt of lightning nearly gets him.
• From new portals come Nine(and his crew) and Wolfram(and his crew) along with a whole bunch of Triggered low-level criminals