The Weeping Devil's Hero Academia - TheBattleSage (2024)

Chapter 1: I Heard An Angel

Chapter Text

“No.”

Midoriya Izuku knew many, many things, but only a few had ever managed to hit him as deeply as that one word. Why, you ask?

Because the one to say it was the one he revered above all others, his idol, the number one Hero, the Symbol of Peace, All Might.

People are not created equal. This was a truth that Izuku had to confront when he had turned four years old and failed to manifest a Quirk. It was a truth that Izuku braved every single day since then as he single mindedly tread towards his goal.

To be a Hero.

No, that wasn’t his goal. That was merely an important step towards his actual goal. To save people with a smile on his face, just like All Might.

Of course, he had several hiccups to even start on the path towards becoming a proper hero. The first of which had been that, in a world filled with superpowers and insane Quirks, he had nothing.

Nothing except his mind, his smile and his tears.

None of which stopped the Number One Hero, the Symbol Of Peace, All Might, from denying him his dreams.

“Sorry kid, but being a policeman or a fireman would be great too. They don’t really get the credit they deserve in this Hero-saturated society. I’m sure you can do great work there. To be a Hero, as you are now, you would be nothing more or less than a liability. It’s good, great even, to dream, but keep them realistic.”

Izuku dazedly watched as his idol walked away from him after doing the objectively right thing. After all, there would be no way that a poor, Quirkless , scrawny teenager could ever become a Hero.

Under his despair, below his hopelessness, almost strangled by his self-derision, was a single spark.

A single spark that fanned itself into a bursting bonfire of nothing less than apocalyptic fury . Izuku’s green eyes shone with unshed tears, but his face twisted into a ferocious snarl. He always had rage simmering under his skin, but this was the very first time that it had been allowed free of the binds it had been placed under.

All his life, one word had hounded him in his dreams, in his waking nightmares, seducing him with the one thing his tormentors wouldn’t dare touch him had he dared possess it.

Power.

But he never said the word. He never claimed what was his. He simply knew that it would take from him far more than he would be willing to pay. But to lose he had nothing. His smile merely a passing memory, his mind blunted through years of disuse, and his tears rendered worthless. For what worth would there be in a single drop in an ocean?

And so, Izuku held out his left hand and said four words, four words that changed absolutely everything. “Come to me, Yamato !”

His hand burst into haunting blue flames that promised nothing less than death, blue flames that soon solidified into the shape of a sheathed katana, the tsukamaki (handle/grip coiling) of which had a pattern akin to an ordinary katana, giving it the traditional diamond shape in the negative space, and the rim fittings from throughout the sword no longer have flowing line patterns in gold on shakudo like black metal; rather, gold dragon styled menuki are inserted underneath the tsukamaki to allow for the fingers to grip.

The tsuba/handguard was gold and a deep navy blue, shaped like an octagon with two trapezoidal halves, each with gold dot pattern patches and in a grove like motif with gold rings, inside of which are various circles in clusters of three, arranged in triangular patterns, and the gold habaki/fuller is also with a similar embossed pattern.

In short, it was a really, really fancy sword, which the green haired boy promptly raised high above his head, pointed downwards, his eyes dangerously blank.

In the very back of his mind, Izuku wondered why he was doing this. Sure, he really wanted to become a Pro-Hero, but would this be worth it?

Yes , answered the abused boy’s unending rage.

Yes , answered the boy without hope’s memories.

Yes , answered the boy without dreams’ last remaining bits of innocence.

No , replied the boy’s tenacity, that withstood ten years without power, and was fully ready to endeavour through many more. But it was ignored and forgotten.

“Yes,” replied the boy to his own, unspoken question.

And thus, the boy, whose hair flared and turned white, before he could doubt himself, ran himself through with the sword in his hands.

“ Heavy chain, that does freeze my bones around! ” The boy spoke slowly, with heavy purpose, enunciating every single syllable through his pain, and inserted the sword, Yamato , into his gut to its hilt.

The pain Izuku felt was nerve-searing. It was far beyond anything he had ever felt before. But he persevered through, and found himself staring at… his own body?

His body, that was very quickly mutating and turning into something that Izuku had most definitely never been before. A monster .

Before Izuku could make heads or tails of what was going on, he got hit on his sternum by the thing that was once his body. People sure have a lot against my solar plexus today , thought Izuku as he shot out in response to that punch.

The punch, with the addition of the pain from earlier, along with the glass shards from the window he had been literally punched through, was enough for Izuku to take a nap.

A nap that lasted all of a minute before the sounds of an explosion woke him up. Unbeknownst to Izuku, the moment he opened his eyes, three black things detached from his shadow and found themselves in various objects around him.

One, in a sculpture of a panther, another in an engraving of a demonic-looking bird, and the third, into the rubble all around the perhaps-concussed and definitely-naked young man. Rubble that glowed briefly and sank into the shadows.

Izuku felt his back heat up as he tried to get up from the floor. That was fine, he was used to feeling mysterious pangs of heat after any altercation that results in physical injury, like when he talks to Kacchan, for instance.

What Izuku didn’t expect was the sudden piercing pain he felt out of nowhere that subsided just as quickly. It was like Kacchan had somehow managed to spread his sweat all over Izuku’s back and ignite it all at once.

Izuku, as he was oft to do, ignored the unexplainable pain and got up from the floor. Only to stumble and nearly fall to the ground once more. He was feeling so weak ! It was like his legs were unused to the burden that was his body.

It was at this point that Izuku finally looked down and saw his legs. And his lack of clothing. It took a moment to process, but when it finally sank in that he, Midoriya Izuku, was lying down in a gothic thrift store of some kind, dressed in all but his birthday suit and his backpack.

And so it was, that two minutes later, Izuku was fully clothed in a long, open sleeveless leather coat with the sides tied together by strings, inside pockets, and a sewn-in, corset-like vest in the front along with black pants with a silver chain made up of skulls on the right side of his belt and a fingerless glove on his right hand.

Izuku might or might not have gotten carried away there. Most of the clothes he had found were things he wouldn’t have been caught dead in, made for girls, or were way too big for him.

Izuku wondered where the owner had been and why he had not been arrested by the police or some Hero or the other, when he heard an explosion ring out on the street. He took one step, and promptly fell down like a puppet with cut strings.

“Right,” he muttered, “need something to help me walk. The Roof Incident did… something to me. What can I not remember? I… turned into a monster? But that can’t be right. Why would I- I want to become a Hero ! But what was that sword? Do I have a Quirk? Why awaken now? Why not-”

It was the distinctive clatter of a metal staff that broke him out of his musings. Unbeknownst to the boy, an aura of darkness had piled over him as he had fallen into his downward spiral of despair.

It took Izuku a minute to find the staff in question. It was a silver metal cane with a price-tag attached. Izuku looked at the tag, calculated mentally, shrugged, and went in search of the front counter.

On his way there, he found the footwear section. Izuku was sad to see his red boots go, but there was nothing he could do about it. He had promised himself a full breakdown when he was safe, and that time was fast approaching.

So, limping slowly, armed with his cane and new regalia, Izuku walked towards the front door of the place. On his way there, he tore out a page from his notebook, wrote down an apology letter along with the sum total of everything he had taken off the store’s shelves.

It was really a strange store, however. Why on Earth would the owner leave it unattended? It was full of really strange clothes. Clothes that Izuku admitted, if only to himself, that grew on him.

So, Izuku was walking on the streets again, just like before, albeit in vastly different attire and assisted with a silver cane. His… body, for lack of a better term, had apparently knocked him to the other edge of town when he had been smacked. It had taken a good bit of walking for him to stumble on a street he recognised.

It hadn’t taken him much longer to find a mirror, however. As it would turn out, manifesting a Quirk suddenly that split a kid into two pieces, one of which was a Mutant Type, did weird things to one’s body.

Izuku still looked like himself… sorta . He still had his green hair, although they were… shinier? than before, his freckles were still there, but they were all wrong. Instead of them being in diamond-formation along his cheeks, they were instead more haphazard, or chaotic as some might say.

But the greatest change of all was Izuku’s eyes. Or eye, singular to be more specific. His left eye had changed from its normal viridescent green to a cold, steel blue. The strangest thing of it all was that Izuku felt absolutely no need to panic at all. Despite his many, many memories to the contrary, his new… everything felt perfectly normal to him.

Izuku, who already had, like, four freakouts from the events of the last half-hour or so, was relieved that, at the very least, he had one strange thing happen to him that day that did not instil a near-panic attack in him.

Izuku hobbled his way over to familiar roads on his way home while contemplating his Quirk, what exactly it was, trying very hard to avoid thinking about what exactly led to him thinking running himself through would be a good idea when an explosion rang out on the side-street next to the one he had been in, providing an effective distraction from his woes.

Izuku was tempted to just walk on and go home. It had been a very eventful day, after all. But his feet (and cane) led him straight to the scene of the crime-in-progress. Old habits die hard, apparently. Izuku found himself at the back of a rapidly-forming crowd, which was being held back only with the efforts of Pro Heroes Death Arms and Kamui Woods, both of whose voices Izuku could easily hear above the tumult.

Izuku absent-mindedly noted to himself to add ‘good at projecting their voice’ on his files of both Pro-Heroes, and ‘bad at situational thinking’ to Pro Hero Mt. Lady’s as she loudly stated that any road with less than four lanes was her ‘one weakness’.

Izuku found himself at the front of the crowd as he finished sorting through his thoughts. The incident in question was three, no, four, Izuku internally amended as he spotted another Pro (The Fire Rescue Hero, Backdraft, Quirk- Water Pump) dealing with the fires before they became an issue.

Fires that arose because of the rampant explosions at the hands of the Villain..’s hostage?

Izuku blinked and rethought the whole issue. The Slime Villain was free (Izuku internally winced and promised to apologise to the victim. No way All Might would have let the villain escape from his custody, it was Izuku’s fault, no question about it) and was trying to get another ‘skinsuit’ in the form of some blonde kid wearing Izuku’s middle school uniform with an… explosion Quirk of some kind?

That was a question for another time. Izuku remembered how suffocating and power-sapping it had felt, with that Villain over his face. He had barely lasted seconds, and the blonde in front of him had lasted over a minute.

Izuku asked Death Arms, who was next to him why no Hero had gone in yet. The answer he received was so simple and yet so utterly baffling . “We’re waiting for someone with a better Quirk to arrive, kid. Better stay back, this might get… messy.”

Izuku wanted to protest, propose a plan with the Heroes present. It would have been simple too. The four Heroes present were very diverse. Hell, even Mt. Lady on her own could have dealt with the situation!

But he made a mistake.

He turned and looked toward the Villain, and saw the eyes of the victim. Strangely familiar red eyes that seemed to be begging for help.

Izuku was past the boundary set by the Pro-Heroes in an instant, running at full tilt to save the oddly-familiar kid from the grasp of the Villain. It was stupid. It was insane. It was the dumb thing to do. It was none of Izuku’s business.

Izuku found himself throwing his backpack and its contents at the eyes of the Villain, buying himself a couple of seconds. He grasped his silver cane, holding the handle out to the fiery blonde, who grabbed it without hesitation.

Izuku smiled shakily at the blonde, shouted at him to “blast the eyes with your other hand and hold on tight !”

Before the hostage with the explosive sweat could formulate a response, Izuku turned around, cane over his shoulder, and heaved with all his strength.

The red-eyed blonde burst out from the Slime rather easily. Of course, that would have been the case had Izuku been living in an ideal world.

In the world Izuku was living in, the blonde (Izuku really should ask him for his name. It was really awkward knowing that there was someone from his year at his school that he didn’t know. Especially someone with such a powerful Quirk) managed to get to about his waist before the Slime Villain managed to regain his wits and begin suction.

Izuku, who had sadly not worked out much at all through his life, not for a lack of effort,mind, but because… someone would always come in his way, felt his arms nearly pop from his sockets at the increased resistance. He would have probably let go of his cane within a second or two.

Lucky for him, the Slime Villain did not have a second or two.

“HOW SHAMEFUL OF ME! I FAILED TO PRACTISE WHAT I PREACH! FEAR NOT, DEAR CITIZENS! FOR I AM HERE!”

Also luckily for him, the Number One Hero was known for his control above all else.

“DETROIT SMASH!!!”

One punch from the Number One Hero blew away the Villain. It also completely changed the weather. The victim and his impromptu saviour had nary a scratch on them.

All Might proved his point to Izuku once more.

There was no way he could become a Hero. Kacchan was right. He couldn’t be a Hero, not without a Quirk. Perhaps it was for the-

Izuku frowned. Who in the heck is Kacchan? When have I given anyone a nickname like that? Maybe Mom would know.

One well-deserved chewing-out from Death Arms and, to a lesser extent, Kamui Woods, Izuku headed to his home. His hobble had returned sometime along the way.

Izuku was, like, 70% certain the hobble was his mind tricking himself, being a physical manifestation of his mental weakness.

Izuku was about two blocks away from where the Incident had occurred before he was interrupted from his musings. By the blonde middle-schooler he had saved.

“OI! DEKU!”

Izuku had turned around at the mention of that name, but adopted a confused expression once he thought about it. Why was he responding to the name that was not his own? It was so strange.

The kid paused when he saw Izuku’s face and frowned harder. “YOU AIN’T WHO I THOUGHT YOU WERE, BUT REMEMBER THAT I DON’T OWE YA NOTHIN'! CAPISCE? I WOULDA GOTTEN OUTTA THAT DAMN VILLAIN MYSELF! NEEDED NO HELP FROM YA!”

Izuku merely shrugged and continued on his way. Injured pride wasn’t on his to-fix list for the day. Ordinarily, he might have apologised or something, but he was about five breakdowns and one Quirk past the point of ‘normal’.

The blonde chihuahua (get it? Always loud and seems to thrive on human souls? No? sad) seemed to feel that he had a hard day and moved on his own way. His mutterings were almost loud enough for Izuku to catch, and he was over a street away.

And then he got waylaid on his way again. This time by someone whom he refused to disrespect, even in the state he was in.

All Might himself. Who tried to say something when Izuku asked him how he managed to get out of the flood of reporters, only to spout a fountain of blood and deflate into his ‘Normal’ form.

What he said managed to break through whatever mental barriers Izuku had managed to set up, allowing him to have his very, very long overdue breakdown.

“You, young Midoriya Izuku, can too become a Hero! A Hero who can save people with a smile on his face!”

After an embarrassingly long time crying on a very awkward All Might’s torso, (Izuku was much too short to reach his shoulder) a very mortified Midoriya Izuku was quietly walking to his home with a concerned and self-deprecating All Might (“It is my responsibility you ended up in this state young man, it was the height of folly on my behalf”) when All Might asked him why exactly he ran towards the Villain.

“It… just sorta happened, I guess? My feet were carrying me towards the hostage before I could think about it. It was like my body-”

“Moved before your mind could catch up?” All Might finished for Izuku, sounding… approving?

“Yes? I know it was very reckless and stupid for me to do that, but-”

“On the contrary, young man. Every great hero has a tale from their youth, a tale where they moved before they could think for the welfare of another. You inspired me to move past my limits. You had managed to do what the Number One Hero could not, young man. That is why I believe you are worthy to inherit my power and grow greater than I could ever be!”

Izuku felt his heart leaping at the words his idol was saying, tears freely falling from his eyes unhindered, but he doubted his ears when he heard the last sentence.

“Wait, what?”

“I want you to inherit my power and grow to be a greater hero than I could ever become, for I believe you to be a worthy successor!”

Izuku, who had waaaaaaaaay too much sh*t that day, had the presence of mind to rattle out his address to the emaciated blonde, say “Thank you very much, I shall accept when I am up tomorrow, or the day after,” and promptly pass out.

Izuku did indeed wake up two days later. When he woke up, he had figured out his new Quirk, or rather, his Quirk had given him its footnotes, and went to Dagobah Municipal Beach, where he eventually accepted All Might’s offer.

This is Midoriya Izuku’s story.

But whatever happens to the parts of a tale that would much rather be left untold?

“ Kacchan… Hate you… Power. I. Need. Power.”

When all hope is lost, everything would seem to reflect the darkness. Darkness that would only twist, grow and change what was once pure to a pale, dark reflection of itself. Darkness is but the absence of light, but the absence of something simply makes it all the scarier.

For in the void left in the absence, what once was could never be again.

Chapter 2: I See The Four-Fold Man

Chapter Text

“Hey! Crybaby Shakespeare!”

Izuku was on a stone path of sorts, walking aimlessly when he heard the snarky voice coming from all around him. He couldn’t remember exactly how he had ended up where he did, but he knew that he was safe, at the very least.

Izuku didn’t really know where he was or why he was following the old beaten path, but he knew that this was something that he simply had to do, if he wished to follow his dreams.

So, he did.

Izuku walked down the beaten path, made of flattened earth and not much else. Izuku walked. And walked. And walked. Until the old cobbled stone road began to change around him.

Izuku stopped walking an old stone road and found himself walking a modern pathway, between modern buildings. The transition between endless darkness and modern surroundings had been so seamless that it had not even registered to Izuku until he almost bumped into a building while mindlessly following the road, placing one foot in front of the other.

“Ha! Ya really need to work on paying attention to your surroundings, crybaby master of mine. ‘Specially if it’s so bad that you can’t see a concrete building right in front of ya! Ha! I probably could do that in my sleep. Seeing as, ya know, I literally can’t.”

Izuku, startled out of his reverie by the impromptu monologue by the voice literally talking to him out of thin air for no apparent reason. Why him? He was Midoriya Izuku. He was so useless that it was literally what he answered to. (where did that come from? He had been Izuku all his life, nothing more, nothing less) It wasn’t like he was specia-

“Wow, I mean, I called ya a crybaby Shakespeare, I didn’t expect ya to live up to the title so quickly. Well, I didn’t expect ya to start spiralling so soon either, but I guess we all have a breaking point. Midoriya Izuku, of course, hit his when you came into existence.”

Izuku felt a tingling of fear deep within himself as the voice continued rambling wqithout any input from himself whatsoever. “What do you mean? I am Midoriya Izuku. I was born in Musutafu General Hospital on July 15 2xxx. I always had the one dream, that All Might himself said was valid! I’m gonna become a Pro Hero and save as many people as I can with a smile on my face, just like All Might!”

“Ya see, boss-man, there is a problem with that. You aren’t Midoriya Izuku. Not anymore. Midoriya Izuku discarded us all as unnecessary on that rooftop with his Quirk when All Might told him that he couldn’t cut it as a Hero.” The voice paused as Izuku struggled to contemplate what he was being told, and continued with a harsh laugh, “you really don’t get it, do you? You are Midoriya Izuku, but Midoriya Izuku is not you. Midoriya Izuku discarded you as unnecessary when he discarded his hopes, dreams, and all that made him good in the pursuit of power.”

“And how do you know all that too? Who are you anyway?” Izuku was about two seconds from breaking down, not because what the disembodied voice made no sense, no.

Izuku was halfway to breaking down because what the disembodied voice that he had never heard before in his life that seemed way too overly familiar to him made almost too much sense.

“I know all of that, my dear crybaby Shakespeare, ‘cuz I was discarded too. I am all the sharp, stinging words ever spoken against Izuku. I am the shattering Midoriya Izuku’s heart went through every time he was taken for less then he was for reasons beyond his control. I am the nightmares held deep within him that chained him to the ground, binding his wings and preventing him from reaching his full potential.”

In front of Izuku, the shadows gathered together and formed together into a four-winged nightmarish bird that let out a good-natured laugh when it, he saw that Izuku’s reaction to his appearance was nothing but intense curiosity without an ounce of fear. “I was expelled from Midoriya Izuku for being the wings bound by simple words, for being too weak to escape the chains of spiteful words and one phrase that followed him for over a decade. I am the Nightmare Bird Who Comands Lightning. Call me Griffon, kid.”

Izuku hesitated. That had been quite the grandiose opening act. But he supposed that his grand theatrical bits had to go somewhere, after all. And Midoriya Izuku had a sense of theatre. He just never had the chance to develop it much. And so, with all the sincerity he could muster, Izuku spoke. “Alright. I guess I should get a new name for myself, but I’m Midoriya Izuku. Nice to meet you, let’s be friends, Griffon!”

As he extended his dominant arm to the bird, he almost fell to the ground. For some reason his arm began burning the moment he spoke Griffon’s name. It felt worse than a burn, however. It was like his heart was being ripped out and healed over and over as, through Izuku’s tear ridden eyes, he saw tattoos forming all over his body.

“What,” Izuku spoke through gritted teeth for fear of biting his tongue off, “is going on, Griffon?!”

“Oh don’t you worry, you crybaby Shakespeare with a backbone, its just that we unwanted bits ought to stick together, ya know? The others really don’t know how to talk, so they just made me deal with the making of the contract and all that jazz. Just know that we shall always have your back, you may be a crybaby Shakespeare, but you’re our crybaby Shakespeare, got it?”

Izuku, out of the ridiculous amounts of pain he had been in and ever so slightly delirious, nodded at that. The bird grinned at that and began to speak. Izuku had not known that birds could grin before right that very instant, but shoved down his morbid curiousity when Griffon began speaking, because he sounded more serious than he had before.

“Now, you can summon all three of us in the waking world with impunity. I, of course, am the most badass and can incapacitate just about anybody with my shocks and lightning. Don’t worry about tempering my power, you crybaby!” Izuku flinched and stopped the objection rising up his throat. That had been exactly his worry. “Yes,yes. Don’t forget that I, we, are in fact part of ya and can guess what you are thinking at any given point in time if we so want to. Anyway, where was I? Ah yes, blasting schmooks with impunity. Don’t worry! The only guy capable of killing things is the big guy, and that is cuz he’s… different. Don’t call the big guy too much, alright? He’ll be the death of ya.”

The bird took a deep breath and jumped up on top of Izuku’s shoulder, where his corresponding tattoo was, and continued speaking, “Me and the big silly cat are nightmares. We are memories. We hold but impressions of pain, nothing more, nothing less. Where I hold the pains that Midoriya Izuku’s heart endured, the cat, whose name is Shadow, by the way, don’t you forget it, is the culmination of all the physical pains Midoriya Izuku had to go through. She is the Nightmare Cat of Shadows And Pain.”

“We Nightmares can’t kill, only incapacitate. Whoever heard of memories killing somebody, right?” Izuku smiled at that, fully aware that there existed people whose nightmares had very much been the death of themselves. “But why isn’t Shadow here?”

Griffon blinked at that question and looked at Izuku like he was stupid. Which he might very well be. Izuku sometimes forgot common, simple things when he started thinking and acted stupid. Only sometimes, however. He was pretty sure this was not one of those times. He had asked a valid question!

“What did I say the cat was a Nightmare of, do you remember?” Izuku very much remembered. It was of shadows and pain. But how was that relevant to his-

The nightmare bird was pointedly looking down, at Izuku’s shadow.

Oh.

“Oh.”

“Yes. Oh. She doesn’t like coming out in dreams. Makes her remember some bad experiences. Just call her out to cuddle when you’re awake. She likes cuddles.”

Izuku nodded. That made perfect sense. There was just one bit that bothered him, however. “Griffon?”

“Yeah, crybaby Shakespeare?”

“Why is a big part of me a girl?”

“Cuz a big part of you is a girl, crybaby idiot. Live with it. Thrive in it. When we are Midoriya Izuku again, make your peace with it.”

“Oh.”

“Anyway, go train with All Might, crybaby Shakespeare! You’ll need it! Just don’t be an idiot about it, alright?”

“But… I’m so behind! I don’t know how to ask you all to help me properly yet! I don’t know what to do about the me with the mutation Quirk running around for no apparent reaason. I don’t know how to become Midoriya Izuku again. I don’t know what my original Quirk would have been like. I don’t know if I can live up to-”

“Listen to me, you crybaby, I ain’t gonna repeat myself ever again, so you better listen close. You are everything that is good about Midoriya Izuku, and maybe a bit more. You are the wings that have been left unchained after years and years of stolen freedom. You may not be Midoriya Izuku, but Midoriya Izuku is you, and that is a fact that is entirely indubitable. If you can’t believe in yourself, believe in us, who believe in you from the very depths of ourselves.”

“You are the best that Midoriya Izuku has to offer, kid. You are the Unclipped Wings of The Imprisoned Hermes. You ain’t tame no more. Go wild! Become the best hero that you can be! Tell everybody in the world that-”

“I AM HERE! WITH THE MORNING!”

Izuku snapped awake at the sound of his limited edition All Might alarm clock, which he had set for the ungodly hour that was half-past four in the morning. Because All Might had asked him to come to Dagobah Municipal Beach. Where he would train him.

Because All Might wanted to give him, Midoriya Izuku (part of Midoriya Izuku, semantics) formerly Quirkless nobody, his own Quirk.

Because All Might had found him worthy.

Izuku was up in a snap and had dressed himself in the black leather clothes he had worn the previous day, because he had somehow gained two inches overnight and had nothing else that could fit him.

And the style was growing on him. Perhaps it was the Griffon in him. But the same part rejected parts of the costume, simply because it was way too tacky.

The sleeveless coat was… fine. It needed some personality, however. Izuku already had a shirt maker from several centuries prior to help make his punny shirts. How hard could revamping an already stylish leather coat possibly be?

Izuku hadn’t ever actually gone for the ‘goth’ look, but he could certainly feel the appeal. Perhaps he could have gone for it. If he were thirteen.

Actually wearing the getup he had the previous day, including the silver staff that his mom hadn’t immediately confiscated for being a dangerous object over two kilos in weight and three feet in length from his room was weird.

Izuku won’t say much, just that he wore very sturdy red boots for a reason. His feet and long metal objects did not have a good history with each other.

Speaking of, he had walked around for an entire day without his shoes and somehow had managed to not have to visit the hospital for a Foot-Related-Incident.

Izuku felt his face heat up as he remembered the events of the previous day run through his head once more. He felt a really strong urge to scream into his pillow.

“I… I sassed All Might and he just laughed! All Might wants to train me! I passed out in front of All Might! All Might knows my name and where I live! How do I tell Mom? What do I do? Is there a procedure for this kind of- OW!”

Izuku’s rant had been stopped from his rambling by a well-placed wing to the face, courtesy of his newfound and newly manifested other self (presumably) and friend. “I know it’s a lot to take in, but by the gods, just leave the talking to me, alright? Sheesh, I thought I and Shadow took all your traumas from ya the day before yesterday. Why are you still so… you?”

Izuku, snapped from his near-panic, rubbed his face and looked accusingly at his new friend and demon, “what does that even mean? I’m still Izuku Midoriya, even if Midoriya Izuku ain’t me, not really. I know that. I can deal with that. But what on earth do you mean about traumas?”

The nightmare bird got very silent, a behaviour that Izuku, after only a solid half an hour of meeting him, was uncharacteristic of him. Before he could ask what was wrong, the bird chirpily said, “Hey, don’t ya got that meeting with the Big Guy about something in an hour? Why ain’t ya panicking ‘bout that?”

Izuku glared at the obvious attempt at misdirection. What did the dang bird think he was? Four? He wouldn’t fall for such an obvious-

Izuku had opened his notebook, where All Might had given him his autograph, where on the next page was a place and a time written in a neat, small handwriting that very clearly juxtaposed the flashy autograph from the page just before it.

Izuku checked his alarm clock as he absent-mindedly thought about how his life’s idol seemed to know that he would prefer the other sides of the pages he had used for the autograph empty and how considerate he was. A hero sometimes was a hero always, after all. No matter what All Might might say about that.

The bird spawned from nightmares let out a sigh of relief as his partner let out a high-pitched squeal upon realising that he had only about an hour before the established meeting time with his idol several kilometres away.

The boy hurriedly put together a decent outfit to wear, which ended up pretty close to what he wore upon being… ejected. The differences were simple, but easily noticeable. For one, he wore his red boots under his pants, a long-sleeved green shirt he had for a long time for no particular reason under the jacket, and finally, perhaps most importantly of all, he wore a hat to cover the changes to his hair.

Something told Griffon that the hat wouldn’t stay. Said something was glaring at the hat, willing it to spontaneously combust. Where on earth Izuku Midoriya found a trucker’s hat that read ‘hat’ would be beyond Griffon’s mental capacity. He didn’t, as he had forgotten to profess to Izuku-who-needs-a-new-name (oops), have any particular memories of their shared past.

Neither for that matter, does Shadow. Only instincts. Shadow’s were to slink in the shadows and remain out of sight, while Griffon’s would be loudly exclaiming his location for all to hear, to divert attention from someone else to himself.

Izuku’s, it would seem, would be to run straight to danger and cook up a gamble that would help him reach his goal.

They were truly one hell of a trio.

Izuku (It was becoming a point of distaste for Griffon that he had absolutely no idea what to name the embodiment of Izuku’s humanity) had managed to reach the place described in his notebook by All Might’s hand five minutes early while Griffon had been mentally characterising himself and Shadow.

While they waited, Griffon discovered two new things. One, when manifested, he had absolutely no ability to concentrate on anything at all. Two, that Izuku’s jacket had pockets, one of which happened to contain a book on poetry, of all things.

It had the Roman numerals ‘IX’ engraved on it and had lots, and lots, and lots of English poems by some dude called William Blake. Griffon reckoned that beggars couldn’t be choosers, and began to leaf through the pages, reading whatever caught his eye.

Reading poems several centuries out of date in a language that was not your own turned out to be a great way to kill time. All Might arrived fifteen minutes late, on the dot. He blinked when he saw Izuku and a bird staring intently at a book. At a poem that seemed to fir their circ*mstances a bit too well…

What else could they call themself, other than the four-fold man? They weren’t exactly all man, or four, per se. But that was semantics.

Before the bird-kid duo could slip off into the havens that were their own minds, they were snapped out of it by the thinner form of All Might tapping his shoulder bemusedly.

After a minute-long freakout, in which Griffon decided that the best course of action for himself would be to return to Izuku stealthily before-

“A-ALL MIGHT! I’m So sorry for what happened the day before yesterday! I’m so sorry for brushing you off like that and forcing you to take me all the way to my house despite your injuries and my pathetic behaviour! I’m sorry for interfering where I didn’t need to and stopping the Pro Heroes from doing their jobs! I- I know that becoming a Hero while being Quirkless is a ridiculous dream, and I’m sorry for dumping my expectations on you. I know that I should not have done that, and that-”

That.

Griffon sighed internally as Izuku went on and on with his self-sacrificing speech. Before he could stop him from digging himself all the way down to the centre of the Earth, however, something unexpected happens.

Something unexpected to Griffon, at least.

All Might, the Number One Hero of Japan, perhaps of the entire world, the Symbol Of Peace that had almost single-handedly brought forth the new era of peace to the world after centuries of strife, got down on one knee and hugged Izuku.

The act was so unexpected that it made Izuku eject both Griffon and Shadow from their comfortable resting space in his body and shadow respectively. Not that they minded. They were just as gobsmacked as he was. Griffon had the feeling that if the other guy had emotions, he would have been gobsmacked too.

“I… I am so sorry, my boy. I was wrong.”

All Might in his shrunken form, it turned out, could put all of his gravitas and personality into his voice, just like his bigger self. But unlike his bigger self, he spoke quietly, slowly. Where All Might the hero spoke loudly to inspire hope wherever he goes, All Might the person spoke quietly, to fix his mistakes, to reignite the dreams of one person.

Griffon… didn’t know what exactly he could say to that. Izuku.exe had stopped working right about when he had been hugged, so he was of no use in this situation. All Might was under the impression that he was talking to a green haired-and-eyed Quirkless teen, not a green-haired and heterochromatic one.

Hopefully the Number One Hero wouldn’t notice how blatantly different the kid looked. He couldn’t have possibly had a close enough look to memorise Midoriya Izuku’s eye colour, right?

“My boy, I… I feel that I must apologise, but there are two questions I must ask you, and depending on your answers, I have an offer to make to you. My first question is whether you truly are Quirkless?”

Izuku.exe had returned basic functions to nominal capability, enough so that he could answer the question without Griffon’s interference. “Midoriya Izuku was Quirkless all his life.”

At All Might’s questioning gaze, Izuku continued, his voice quivering, fully aware of what he was telling the kind man in front of him. A man that Izuku dared to hope was going to tell him what he wished to hear all his life. He gathered his wits and spoke, levelling his voice so as to give the most information in the least amount of time possible. “Midoriya Izuku died two days ago, when his dreams were crushed by his idol in life. His Quirk spontaneously manifested due to the stress of the situation and his overwhelming feelings and ended him.”

Izuku looked at the horrified face in front of him and rushed through his explanation. “Midoriya Izuku may have been killed, but he did not die! Um, his, my Quirk, split him into the most fundamental parts of himself, but skewed heavily towards furthering his goal at the time.”

The skeletal blonde in front of Izuku gulped and hesitantly asked, his voice choking and full of emotions, “And- and what was his goal?”

Izuku simply looked at him and spoke simply, his voice dead and emotionless, “his dearest wish was to never be powerless ever again.” Even speaking without emotion, those five words were full of emotion. Izuku continued as his idol fell to his knees before him, “his one singular goal was to never have the word liability ever associated with himself ever again. But his Quirk was no miracle worker.”

Izuku took a shuddering breath, his face level with the kneeling shrunken form of the Number One Hero, “I can tell you that I spontaneously manifested my Quirk after I slipped to unconsciousness when you came to talk to me. It’s true, even, in a way! All Might… You’re my hero. I- I don’t want to- If you- I’m afraid.”

Izuku took a shuddering breath, coming face to face with what he who was not himself had done not two days prior. “Midoriya Izuku’s Quirk is named Yamato. It is the sword that can cut all. It can split the demon from the human.”

All Might’s face had gotten painfully still, his ever-present comforting smile gone, his eyes wide with horror at the words coming out of the young boy’s mouth.

The boy, who spoke about an absurd Quirk and the further absurdity it had done unto him. “With one wish in his heart and the power to bring it to fruition in his hand, Midoriya Izuku, when he was at his weakest, decided that he wanted power above all else. Nothing was worth stopping for in the pursuit of power.”

The boy, whose tears flowed freely, spoke, “And so Midoriya Izuku ran himself through with his sword, and split himself into the part that wanted power, and everything else. Including his memories, dreams, loves, traumas and nightmares.”

The boy smiled a watery smile. It was the bravest, most beautiful smile Yagi Toshinori had ever seen.

“Hello. Midoriya Izuku is I, but I am not Midoriya Izuku. I am his humanity. I am the weakness left behind in his blind pursuit of power. I have no name, for I am but two days old.”

His heterochromatic eyes stared at All Might as he waited for his hero to answer, his hat slipping off his head by a particularly strong gust of wind, showing off his now viridescent hair.

He was the same boy All Might had met two days prior. But All Might could tell that he had changed.

There were some days when the Number One Hero wished he could blame his incompetence entirely on his chronic pain and injury.

There were some days when the Symbol of Peace would wish that he could do things slightly differently.

It was rare however, for there to be a day where Yagi Toshinori would curse his own self with every ounce of his being and wish for the ability to go back to the past.

Elsewhere

A demon seeking power encountered a demon lord who once had it all. The demon fought the demon lord and piqued his curiosity. The demon lord decided to grant the demon’s wish, for the small price of his free will.

The demon accepted the offer without a single ounce of hesitation. He would be a Deku no longer.

Power makes the world go round after all.

Wasn’t that right? Kacchan?

Chapter 3: Infant Joy

Chapter Text

“I have no name, for I am but two days old.”

Yagi Toshinori had lived a life of many, many regrets. He had learned long before that regrets were a part of his life that he could never actually be bereft from.

Even so, there were times when he truly wished he could send a Texas Smash to the past to wallop his past self.

Toshinori gulped and took a look at the smiling teenager in front of him. He didn’t even need to check to know that there were tears freely falling from his eyes.

What he had done to the young man was simply… unforgivable.

He may have been limited to only a few hours of hero work as All Might each day, but that does not give him the leeway to crush a young man’s dreams underfoot.

Especially so when the young man in question had been so traumatised by his words that he had stress-manifested his Quirk. His Quirk, that seemed to have killed who he once was to make himself anew.

It was his fault that such a shining beacon of heroism, who he had deemed worthy of his own legacy, had looked so deep into the abyss that when the abyss looked back, he had been completely and utterly shattered.

There was simply no other word for it. What else could you call it when your Quirk literally split your dearest ideal at the time of the split from everything else you are?

Yagi Toshinori was many, many, many things.

On this day he learned that he was unworthy. The young man before him had gone through true hell and had preserved his heart and hope through it all. Until he met All Might.

It was on this day that the question was not whether the young man was worthy enough for his legacy, it was whether he was worthy enough to pass it on.

And so, he took the first step to begin amends.

He fell to both knees and begged for the forgiveness of the young man before him, who had lost an intrinsic part of himself because of his own thoughtless words. Words have more power than the strongest punches of the world at times.

“I am truly sorry, young Midoriya. I said some truly senseless things to you! I ask not for your forgiveness, for I don’t know if I can even forgive myself had I been in your shoes, but only that you give me a chance to make amends.”

He stayed on the beach, begging for forgiveness until he felt a hand on his shoulder. He looked up to see a very, very teary young boy looking at him as if he had hung the stars in the sky for him.

There was a time for performances, and this was not it. So All Might began to tell the young boy before him what he had intended to do from the very beginning.

He placed his own hand over the hand that had been placed on his shoulder, looked the young lad in the eye, and began to speak. “Did you know, young… Midoriya?”

The boy cracked a smile and spoke, his voice cracking and thick with tears, “Don’t worry, All Might! Midoriya Izuku is I, but it is simply the case that I am no longer Midoriya Izuku. That name is not mine. Not till We become one once more.”

“Yes. If you say so, young man. Tell me when you stumble on a name you prefer, yes? Anyway,” Toshinori took a deep breath. He only had one shot at this, and he would never forgive himself if he screwed it up, “Did you know, young man, that there is a tale common among all the top heroes in the world when they were still kids in school?”

The young viridescent haired young man shook his head, his eyes already tearing. He instinctively knew where this conversation was going, and that he would be told what Midoriya Izuku had yearned to hear for a very, very long time.

Toshinori smiled gently at the kid in front of him and continued, getting up to his feet for some height (he was entitled to some showboating), “they always say, when they saw an injustice in front of them, that their feet moved before they could think. Now, can you tell me what you were thinking of when you went past the barricade and tried to save the young man’s life?”

Izuku, his eyes shining bright with the fires of a hope that had been nearly choked out by apathy, spoke, his voice thick and laden with emotions, “I… I wasn’t really thinking. The guy’s eyes, they were asking for help is all. Before I knew it, I was throwing my backpack at the Villain. It was the right thing, the only thing to do!”

He raised his eyes to meet his idol’s, only to see them smiling at him, a smile filled with pride and excitement. The man tapped into his Quirk to burst into his Hero form, pointed at him and said with a booming voice that resounded deep within Izuku’s soul, “No matter what, Midoriya Izuku. Quirk or Quirkless, power or powerless, you can be a Hero.”

Izuku was bawling his eyes out at this point, a full decade’s worth of grievances finally being exorcised by one simple sentence. One sentence said with the full weight and authority of the Symbol of Peace.

Midoriya Izuku could have become a Hero.

Behind Izuku, he could hear the sniffles of his stupid demons as they tried and failed to keep up their masks. He could hear the open sobs of Shadow within his shadow, which she had haunted after being ejected from her corresponding tattoo.

Griffon meanwhile, was guffawing at the overblown reaction of Izuku, ignoring the tears running down his own face.

“On that note, I have decided that, should you choose to accept, you can inherit my awesome power!”

It took both Izuku and Griffon several seconds to realise what they were being told.

“... What?”

Toshinori grinned, this had been something he had been looking forward to for a very long time. Even if he had messed up first impressions and kind of changed his newfound charge’s life forever already, there was nothing that said he couldn’t do so twice.

Right?

But first, he should probably stop the storm of mutters coming out of the boy’s mouth as he tried to delve into what All Might told him exactly.

It was just as amusing as it was weirdly terrifying. All Toshinori had to do was tell the boy a single sentence for him to fall off into the realm of conspiracy theories that were both extremely wacky and yet terrifyingly close to his actual Quirk at the same time.

Before All Might could do anything about the situation to snap the kid out of it once his mutterings had gotten completely indecipherable to him, he was preempted. By a strange big green bird that came out of nowhere.

A green bird that snapped the kid out of it by slapping him with its wing and sitting on his shoulder.

“Snap out of it, you crybaby Shakespeare, let the Big Guy finish speaking! You and I both know it’s ridiculous, but wait a second and hear him out, why dontcha!”

The bird turned to the ‘Big Guy’ and… bowed? This was a very strange day for Yagi Toshinori. The bird spoke upon bowing, with impeccable manners and poise, “I am Griffon, nightmare of the stinging thunder. I was once part of the boy who went by the name of Midoriya Izuku. You can think of me as a sentient Quirk of little ole’ Crybaby Shakespeare here. We nightmares are here to help him, after all.”

There was a lot to unpack from all of that, but first, “what do you mean, we nightmares?”

The bird blinked, let out a sigh and began a long-winded explanation on how exactly they came to be. It was almost the same thing he said to Izuku, too. He had practice with this particular song and dance, after all.

And so, fifteen minutes later, All Might sat down on top of a nearby refrigerator (“it’s comfy!” he said, absent-mindedly, when asked) and simply stared off at nothing for fifteen minutes.

Exactly fifteen minutes later, he fully internalised everything he was told, from the fact that a Quirkless fifteen-year-old spontaneously manifested a Quirk just to prove him wrong, the fact that his Quirk apparently split him into the several integral parts of himself, that one part would probably be driven to the less… savoury parts of the world in his quest for power, and more besides.

All Might had trained beside the very best the world had to offer in many, many fields, most of which pertained to combat, battles, and tactics. He was no mere passersby to psychology, he was licensed to deal with various psychological illnesses pertaining to combat fatigue, after all.

But the boy in front of him, by all accounts, should be raving mad in an asylum.

His testimony did not make any sense whatsoever. It delightfully defied All Might’s understanding of the human psyche while also making complete and total sense at the same time. All Might felt himself die a little inside when he made the connection that in order to properly train his successor, should he choose to accept the burden, he ought to probably call him.

Now, if only he could get his hands and knees to stop trembling long enough for him to call him or walk over to his house. It had been over two years since they last talked, after all. Perhaps he mellowed out in his old age?

Toshinori swore he could hear his honoured Master’s laughter when that last, inane thought passed through his head. He sighed audibly for over seven seconds. A record, with his health being what it was.

So, he brought his head up to look at the boy, his bird, and the large cat at his knees. Green was the unifying factor there, and nothing else.

The personal life of All Might was a comedy, Toshinori thought to himself with a huff as he revised his speech and remembered what his Master had told him, long ago.

“Whenever I speak to reporters,” Toshinori began, his voice soft and heavy, but with a genuine smile on his face, “and they bring up the subject that is my Quirk, I make a joke to distract them and divert their attention. Always. Now you know why.”

The synchronised turning of their heads when the trio heard something that didn’t really compute was utterly hilarious. So All Might took his Muscle Form and continued, his voice booming, “My Quirk is one of a kind! It is the power to pass on power! It is a sacred torch that has been passed down through the generations till it was handed down to me, to vanquish evil and bring prosperity to the masses!”

All Might took a deep breath. It would be alright, he had told himself when he thought of changing this part of his speech, it would be alright, because That Demon Lord is dead.

And so, he continued, “It is one Quirk made with the sole intention to bring smiles to the faces of all the people in the world! It is the Quirk that makes Villains and evildoers alike quake in their boots! The power to transfer power! This is the gift granted to me by my Master before me! THIS is my Quirk, ‘One For All’!”

“And, should you choose to accept, I wish for you to be my successor.”

The three who were once a boy named Midoriya Izuku were utterly dumbfounded. Whatever they expected of this meeting when they first got the message, this certainly wasn’t it. Not an apology from the World’s Symbol of Peace, not a good listener who tried to understand what was happening to them, even though him trying to compute what exactly was going on was hilarious to see, and…

And, they, Izuku most of all, did not expect the Number One Hero to be so impressed by him that he had decided to make him his successor!

“But,” he said, his voice trembling, every inch of his body rebelling against his decision, “I have him out there, he… forgot his dreams, his hopes, who he was, in his pursuit for power. How can you be sure that I can be worthy, if he is me as well?”

Izuku felt his heart tense. It would have been wrong to take All Might’s power when he was so uninformed on Izuku’s own dark side. Even Izuku, Griffon and Shadow had no idea whatsoever what Midoriya (oh, how it chafed, using that name for that part of himself) would do.

How far would he go, stripped as he was of all memories, hopes and morals?

How much blood would be on Izuku’s hands when he becomes whole once more?

How many people would-

Izuku felt a hand on his shoulder and looked up. He saw All Might, skinny and weakened, looking him in the eye with an uncharacteristic frown on his face, “That does not matter, young Mido-,” Izuku visibly cringed at that and All Might noticed, and so, being the great hero he was, he changed his address without skipping a beat.

“Young Izuku. It does not matter what you think you could do. Even deprived of your dreams, I shall believe, as is my duty as your predecessor, that you will never stray too far from the right path. After all, young Izuku, you are a hero at heart, and your heart is big enough for trivialities like dreams and memories to hold little sway.”

Izuku took a deep, shuddering breath as All Might’s words truly registered themselves within him, felt his other selves simply lean on him, trusting him to make the right choice, and-

You can’t be anything!

You’re simply useless!

Izuku! I’m so, so sorry!

You’re just a filthy Deku!

“I-” Izuku choked on his own words, head filled with words and memories he could not remember experiencing, and spoke.

When he spoke, his words came not from a place of desperation, but from a place of hope. “I shall graciously accept this kind offer, All Might! Thank you very much! I promise that I’ll live up to-” With a nudge from Griffon, Izuku changed his tune, becoming firmer, “I promise… I promise that I’ll surpass your expectations! I’ll save everybody I can with a smile on my face!”

Toshinori smiled, his protege was gutsy! Just how he liked it. “Alright, young man! But first, you must tell me, what is the most fundamental thing to being a hero?”

It felt wrong, almost. To immediately switch over to such a light-hearted question after the trauma dump that had been the previous two hours, but if anything else, Toshinori believed in one thing, and that thing was due process.

The kid before him was undoubtedly worthy, his bleeding heart would probably be the death of him if he did not receive proper instruction. Somewhere, an old woman feels the sudden urge to bash a previously undiscovered kind of stupidity out of a certain blonde oaf.

And so, with an explanation regarding the fundamentals of real heroics (We serve the people, not the other way around! People often forget that, but heroes are there to make sure that people live their daily lives free of non-essential worries and can smile without care everyday) and a crash course on working out, Izuku’s ten-month hell began.

But, even as Izuku lifted a large safe (who drops a safe at sea?) and carried it to the dump nearby, Griffon was making a great change to his life, by asking a question he probably would have never thought of himself.

“Hey, so… Big Guy, the thingamajig, what number are ya?”

All Might, who was looking at his successor concernedly as he was lifting far more than he probably ought to be able to with his physique and lack of Qui-

All Might slapped his head. It had taken him four hours to notice that the kid was obviously physically enhanced!

Before he could brainstorm a way to make sure that the kid would be fine, he was struck by an idea. An idea that could have honestly come from the great mind of his second mentor himself!

When he looked up from his intense and very rewarding brainstorming session, he found Griffon about two inches from his face looking him dead in the eye.

The Symbol of Peace let out a very many yell as he jumped backwards. The bird did not laugh. He was waiting for an answer.

An answer he received once All Might remembered the question, which took an embarrassingly long period of time.

“Ah, yes! I am the Eighth inheritor of One For All, and when the day comes, you will be the Ninth!”

Griffon merely murmured at that, as if he was entirely unsurprised.

“Hey,” he shouted at the kid, who was just barely avoiding being crushed under the weight of a safe about four times his own weight, “Crybaby Shakespeare, I think I got your name!”

“Huh?” A very woozy and tired Izuku looked up at his familiar, tried to move… pretty much anything at all, failed, and promptly decided that right then would be a good time to take a nap.

It took him five minutes to recover. Five long, hellish minutes filled with a panicking All Might dousing him with ice-cold water, the laughing hyena that was Griffon, and worst of all, the silent mirth emanating from Shadow.

“So?” a very disgruntled and under-dressed Izuku said, his coat and shirt hanging out to dry, “I’m sorry for being so cut-and-dry, but I truly do not appreciate being thrown under the bus.”

All Might laughed nervously in his normal form, before ceding the stage to Griffon. “So, kid. I just asked All Might, and it looks like you will be Torchbearer Number Nine! Like that… other name that one guy gave Izuku, this can be misinterpreted from your name too!”

Griffon grinned at the yet-unnamed boy, and spoke, “Well, you ain’t gonna love some fancy schist, so let’s make your name a pun on who you are, shall we? So, let's call ya Kyū! How do you like it? It’s awesome, right? I came up with it, after all!”

Izu- Kyū smiled, it just seemed right. Like one last puzzle piece that he had not known was missing had finally fitted into place. “Yeah. I love it, you stupid bird.”

All Might simply smiled at the scene before him, at the newfound brotherhood between boy and demon bird, before discreetly taking a picture. It was a very touching scene and he wanted it for posterity.

Once they had all snapped out of it, he smiled at his protege and spoke, his voice full of affection and pride, “Hello young Kyū, my name is Yagi Toshinori, and I want to teach you how to be a Pro-Hero and my successor.”

Kyū smiled at the Number One his mentor, and gave a watery smile. Of course, his response could possibly have been heard from one end of the beach to the other, “Of course! I am in your capable hands! Shishou!”

Toshinori smiled gently at his protege, before his smile took a more demonic tint, “Now, you have ten months till the entrance exams, so you better be ready to experience death at least seven times by then. We have to get your body up to par first, but then, we will need you to get your combat instincts, basics of your style, and finally, the bare minimum of your Quirk figured out.”

“You can’t get out of this contract, kid. There was no dead man’s clause.”

All Might had never claimed to have been sad*stic, but he had excellent teachers.

He may have enjoyed it a tiny bit too much, though.

Elsewhere

“So Doctor, how is the new Project going?”

“Splendid, sir! I believe he will be ready for activation within a year! His Quirk factor, his baseline strength, everything blows the initial Noumu I could have created straight out of the water! He could possibly go head-to-head with the blonde oaf at his prime! As expected of you, sir!”

“Leave his consciousness be. He will be loyal.”

“Are… you sure sir? Even Gigantomachia-”

“Are you questioning me Doctor?”

“Of- of course not!”

“I thought so. Leave his consciousness be. Let him revel in the pain his pursuit for power will bring him. Never let him lose his consciousness, Doctor.”

“Y-yes sir! Splendid! That would give me more time to integrate more Factors and Plus Alpha genes! Are you sure a dead man’s switch won’t be necessary, sir?”

“No, indeed, Doctor. I have a special present for him in the unlikely scenario that he strays from his path.”

“Of course sir, I shall begin right away!”

Power. It is all for power, so I shall never lose. Power, so I shall never be weak again!

Chapter 4: A Cradle Song

Chapter Text

Since Kyū nearly crushed himself under a solid metal safe that weighed more than four times he did in Dagobah, two months have passed.

In this period, Kyū got one of his dearest dreams fulfilled, in that he got to visit Might Tower, if only to let All Might figure out the extent his body was enhanced. Of course, All Might let him keep whatever memorabilia he desired.

It was quite frankly, heaven.

Kyū took only three limited edition items, however, because All Might had told him, in no uncertain terms, that if he took more, he would be asked to give away one of his own All Might memorabilia to the flea market.

It was a very grave threat that fulfilled its purpose wonderfully. Kyū took no longer than five minutes to find what he wanted most. He was promised more visits every time he overcame another step in his training.

All Might did not make false promises. Even if they came back to bite him not even thirty minutes later, when a very smug protege and sulking mentor came back to claim an extra piece of merch, because said protege’s Quirk had basically given him a great all-around boost in physicality, bringing him past the minimum needed to host One For All safely.

Not that the mentor told the kid, of course. Instead, feeling a bit petty, he took a page out of his own mentor’s book and slapped the kid with ultra-compressed weights.

Roughly twice how much the kid’s body weighed, to be exact, with strict instructions to never remove them except when asleep.’

All Might also shifted his training from pure muscle building to one more built around endurance and stamina, letting him have a swimmer’s build instead of a bodybuilder’s.

It took Kyū a month to finish a quarter of the beach. It was at this point that All Might let him start experimenting with his Quirk.

His Quirk, that was absolutely nonsensical.

First, there was Griffon, who could generate a lot of electricity that for some reason cannot be measured by any conventional device in whatever way he so pleases.

From calling forth small lightning bolts to generating a small but extremely strong electromagnetic field around himself to simply being able to throw lightning. This much on its own would have been enough for Kyū to proudly call himself a Pro Hero.

But, of course, there was more.

Griffon had told Kyū that he was a nightmare given form, the sum of all the hurtful words said to the boy named Midoriya Izuku.

What that meant was that he himself was unkillable, as Kyū and All Might found out when a particularly large pile of junk fell on top of him, disintegrating him immediately.

Interestingly however, Kyū noted that instead of returning to him in an incorporeal form, like he expected for some reason, the big brash green bird turned into a green basketball-sized perfect sphere that glowed when he was within five feet of it.

He found that it took something from within him, and the closer he remained to it, the faster it drained the something.

After lots and lots and lots of experiments, which Griffon didn’t protest too much to, Kyū got a precise chart on how much his closeness correlated to the speed by which Griffon regenerated. One other thing Kyū learned, entirely by chance, was that nightmares feel no pain.

It was Shadow who told him that.

Shadow, who Kyū had been using pretty much as a body pillow by night and not much else. His femininity.

She was the one to tell him that neither she nor Griffon could feel any pain whatsoever.

It was a weird experience.

In other news, Kyū dropped out of middle school, opting to instead get his diploma online. Once he explained to his mom that he had found a mentor willing to help him through the physical part of the entrance exam, she had jumped onto the bandwagon with extreme ease.

It had taken Kyū a week to get around to explaining his Quirk properly to his mom, mainly for the obvious reasons, them being that he did not know what his Quirk was exactly, and that he had tattoos as a consequence.

It was his tattoos that betrayed him, not his motormouth for once. Kyū got his middle school diploma within a month of dropping out of Aldera. It had been insultingly easy.

Focused fully on one-upping All Might’s training regiment, which was quite honestly an impossibility, even with the wishing fountain that was Kyū’s Quirk, Kyū was the obedient student until his body acclimated.

In other news, Kyū was shooting up like a bamboo sprout. Over the two months, he had grown six inches, putting him quite close to six feet in height, and he had absolutely nothing to wear other than the punk-gothic outfit he had taken from that store that seemed to have grown with him.

And so it was time to go on a shopping trip. Kyū had been pushing himself a bit too hard for a week anyway, so an extra rest day would simply be doing him a favour.

Kyū absent-mindedly thinks on how he, Kyū, never actually set foot on the middle school that his records say was his refuge (Griffon guffawed somewhere in the back of Kyū’s head, only silenced by a look from Shadow) and that he did not know anybody his own age at all.

What Kyū remembered of Izuku’s time at Aldera was spotty at best and downright nothing at worst. He remembered the places, the cafeteria workers, the syllabus…

But the people Midoriya Izuku interacted with normally? Kyū’s got zilch. It was something he had been thinking about, off and on as his training intensified, as All ‘call me Toshinori’ Freaking Might tried his best to train his seemingly inexhaustible body up.

For all he knew, All Might could might as well make him learn capoeira to increase his stamina next or something. Spending hours on end running with multiple weights on was boring.

Kyū suddenly felt an ominous shiver run down his back, like he signed his own death warrant. He shrugged it off. His life had been really goddang weird since he had been born. He wouldn’t be surprised if he did somehow sign his own death warrant.

Kyū walks into the shopping mall with all of the purpose of a sixteen year old girl with a full purse and a day to fill.

As he moved from shop to shop, he did not notice how Shadow aided his steps, taking him slightly farther than he really should be able to with each step, and how Griffon had not spoken a single word since he had stepped off of the train.

Kyū really had no idea what to do with so much money that he wasn’t just spending on merch, so he just wandered the mall, searching for something to catch his eye and help lighten his overflowing wallet.

Or so was the plan, until he was hit by what Kyū could only describe as a glowing green blur. A green blur that bounces off of him and hit the ground. Hard. It took him only a second that he had bumped into someone hard enough to make their butt hit the floor.

“I’m so sorry! Were you hurt? Do you need anything? I’m so sorry for running into-”

When Kyū met the eyes of the girl her had caused such hurt to, his brain simply short circuited. There was only one thought in his mind when he saw the girl pout cutely and stare at him with angered tears in her eyes, eyes that were looking at him like he was a puzzle to solve.

“So- So cute!”

Fifteen Minutes Prior, Not Too Far Away

Hagakure Tooru was having an excellent day. She had taken a day off from school and had decided to treat herself to a shopping trip!

She had been meaning to go on a shopping trip for herself for a while. Her body had decided that turning fifteen also meant that absolutely nothing she wore before should fit her now. At least, on the top end. Her bottom end had mostly decided that slim was the way to go.

Not that Tooru didn’t appreciate it! It was nice to know that her figure would be absolutely killer when she finishes growing, provided she doesn’t fall to the very, very tempting vice that had caused many greats before her to fall.

Delicious, aromatic, oily foooood. Tooru wasn’t like some of the girls in her class who borderline starved themselves to maintain their figure, hell she didn’t really know that she had a figure until… certain events… made them readily apparent.

Tooru does not want to talk, or think, about The Soup Incident. She knows enough and it would never, ever, ever, ever, ever happen again.

Incidentally, Tooru had never go near Quirk-infused soup wearing cotton on her bucket list now. Who knew that food could make the loose-fitting and comfortable (not to mention cute, cute is justice, after all!) school uniform Tooru wear react so explosively.

Not a single boy who had seen Tooru that day after that incident had managed to look in her general direction without turning red as a tomato and reducing their language mastery by several grades.

It would have been funny, if it didn’t so wholly mortify her. That had been a couple months prior. Tooru really never had the chance to actually go to the mall by herself before, so that was a plus too!

It really was unlucky that her mortification had fallen upon her right at the beginning of a strenuous exam cycle. Tooru’s school wasn’t really stringent or anything, but the exam cycles could bring her to tears. In fact, they did! Multiple times!

Tooru looked around the mall with wide eyes, hugging her jacket closer to herself to make sure people don’t bump into her on accident or something. Being invisible had its perks, but not when a girl wants the full shopping experience!

Tooru felt a twinge of sadness at that. She knew that she should have brought a gaggle of friends along with her to support her in her endeavour (Ha! Endeavour! Tooru did have a basic vocabulary. Take that, teach!) but the fact was that she really didn’t have close enough friends.

Oh, Tooru loved to gossip and chat with her classmates, but that’s all they were. Classmates. She could confidently bet that if asked, they would all say that her favourite colour was hot pink and that she didn’t know how to put on makeup!

Newsflash! Her favourite colour was a very soft orange, like the fruit! It’s so annoying sometimes when everyone thinks she’s so much shallower than she actually is. She may be a bit ditzy, but Tooru ain’t a girl who sees only skin deep! She knew how to put on makeup too! On her dad, but that counts!

Tooru was lost in her thoughts and speed walking towards whatever her subconscious had decided would be a good first shop to start off her day with when she collided with a brick wall.

A brick wall that immediately rushed to her where she sat on a very sore butt and injured tailbone. The wall began apologising profusely for getting in her way, which was odd. If Tooru had judged the boy in front of her solely based on his clothes, she would have nailed him for ‘punk’ and stayed far away from him.

But on the floor, as her butt began to freeze, when she looked at the same boy again, his smile as he tried to reassure her while he was clearly panicking himself, was practically blinding.

Tooru spent a lot of her time people watching. It was a fun activity, especially when those being watched cannot see the watcher. She had spent hours upon hours just looking at how people interacted with other people, and perhaps more importantly, how people acted when they thought they were alone.

So, seeing the timid yet blinding smile on the boy before her’s face, Tooru immediately pegged him for ‘future top hero’ and ‘All Might fanboy’.

What can she say? She has a gift.

But her thoughts came screeching to a halt when the boy called her ‘cute’. His face turning the colour of a ripe strawberry would have been funny had Tooru not feel the heat rising up hers as well. She was invisible! What was the boy thinking, calling her cute? That had to be the worst pickup line she had ever-

Except the boy looked absolutely, 100% sincere. He was utterly mortified, like his mouth opened before his brain could catch up and reapply the broken filter.

Tooru could relate.

But could that mean that he could see the invisible girl?

Tooru felt her heart jump up to her mouth at the thought and grabbed his hand, ignored his stutters, and dragged him to a nearby cafe.

She ordered the sweetest drink they had for herself and a simple chocolate shake for the boy. You can never go wrong with a chocolate shake.

So she plopped herself down on a small table and invited him to sit opposite her. They simply sat there awkwardly until their drinks were served.

The boy remained silent as Tooru loudly slurped her drink, staring at him all the while. It was only when she finished, politely putting the disposable cup in the trash bin nearby and slammed her hands on the table, did he open his mouth. Although, what he said was very much not what she had expected.

“Wha- Hey, that’s rude! What if the shake fell on me? I’m wearing leather today, so I really won’t mind, but it’s the principle of the matter!”

Tooru decided then and there that the cute freckled boy in front of her had absolutely no brain to mouth filter. So she asked the question burning deep within her to him straight.

“Why did you call me cute?”

The boy immediately turned a shade of red commonly found in strawberries and apologised profusely. He kept sipping the shake in his hand all the while. It was like he thought it would be impolite to not drink what she gave him or something.

That… That couldn’t be it, could it? Surely not. The boy dressed like a punk cutting school! There was absolutely no possible way he could be that pure. Tooru briefly wondered, as the boy, red-faced and viridian-haired, doing his best impression of a constipated strawberry. Tooru knew that the boy in front of her wore his heart on his sleeve, and chose to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Looking back, Tooru would admit to anyone who asked (and many, many who didn't) that it was the best decision of her life.

“What about me is cute, you think?”

Tooru had a teasing smile on her face as she asked the boy, completely expecting him to fumble the answer.

He answered her with absolutely zero hesitation and with extreme confidence. “Your hair! It is the prettiest shade of green I’ve ever seen, and the way you brushed it made it seem so elegant! It was pretty close with your eyes, since they’re the same colour, and I should shut up now, shouldn’t I? I tend to ramble when I get nervous or excited, I’m so, soooo sorry!”

Tooru, utterly gobsmacked, looked at the boy wonder in front of her and asked a question she wanted an answer nobody could ever give.

“Can-” Tooru choked a bit. She hadn’t ever asked it seriously before! It’s straining her heart! “Can you see me, greenie?”

Oh, fudge biscuits.

She had not meant to give the greenie before her a nickname.

Before she could apologise, the boy burst into laughter. Laughter so infectious that it spread to her within seconds. Truly one of the most infectious diseases in the world, a good laugh.

“Sorry,” he said, wiping a tear from his eye, a thousand-watt smile on his face, Tooru would have to get sunglasses just for that smile. It was brighter than All Might’s!

Tooru realised that she was drifting and zoned back into the real world, where greenie (oh boy, that name’s gonna stick, wasn't it?) was still smiling and hadn’t begun to speak.

“It’s just that I had a crisis of identity a couple months ago because of a nickname, and now you gave me a new one. It’s no matter of urgency, mind you, just that it’s funny to be given a nickname so soon after I… anyway, yes, I can see you. You’re giving off a slight glow for me. If we were separated by a crowd, I’d probably spot you instantly.”

Tooru could see the distraction for what it was, but got distracted when greenie’s head caught up to his mouth’s and he began to stutter out an apology for the incredibly touching things he said earlier.

“My name’s Hagakure Tooru, but I think we’re close enough to skip the pleasantries. So, call me Tooru, greenie!”

The boy in front of her stopped stammering and sighed deeply at that and smiled weakly at her. He seemed to gather up his courage for a bit before speaking.

His smile when he spoke was quiet, almost afraid. But it reassured Tooru a lot more than the bright everpresent smiles of All Might for some reason.

“I am Midoriya Izuku, but please, call me Kyū, Tooru-san. It’s nice to meet you!”

Greenie was a very nice partner in conversation to Tooru, he knew a lot about lots of random stuff. All except fashion. Kyū was a level-nine fashion disaster. The very fact that his current outfit was put-together enough to give off an impression of any kind was a minor miracle of itself.

When Tooru told the same to him, he simply smiled cryptically and said that lightning won’t strike the same spot twice.

They spent the whole day together picking out clothes for each other. Greenie, it would seem to Tooru, was partial to a lighter shade of green.

When Tooru headed home in the late evening, it was with a lighter purse, soaring heart, and too-heavy luggage. The best after-shopping problem one could have!

It was only weeks later, when Kyū had solidly entrenched himself in her as a best friend, did she realise that their first meeting had also doubled as a first date.

The smug smile on her mom’s face when Tooru finally put the pieces together never truly went away.

Meanwhile, Kyū suffered greatly under the hands of All Might, who was very slowly understanding the appeal of sadism in teaching. Every month, his training would be switched up with something new to finally make him drop from exhaustion.

Not that All Might ever overworked Kyū. The man had a near supernatural sense of when Kyū pushed himself too hard, too fast, for too long. Kyū had come to All Might with an enhanced body and absolutely no idea how to use it.

All Might had insisted on cleaning the beach, because to be a hero was to serve the people. It was an ideal that Kyū fully subscribed to, but the way All Might made him clean the beach sometimes gave him trepidation.

After all, what do you call it when you are made to drag twenty three medium-sized cars behind you via chains across seven miles to a specific dump, with a time-limit?

Kyū was mostly certain it was Griffon egging him on that was pushing All Might over the edge of sadism. It was honestly quite frightening how easily the mouthy bird could make the Number One Hero follow his wishes.

Kyū’s days now were filled with physical training, even if the kind of training could vary. For some reason, All Might had it in his mind that Kyū was more suited to kick-based martial arts and taught him various martial arts.

The Symbol of Peace was a martial genius. That was just about the only impression Kyū had of him whenever they fought. Even in his normal form and his hands literally tied behind his back, Kyū’s master could and would easily make quick work of the half-person.

Since All Might, who asked Kyū to refer to him as either ‘shishou’ or ‘Toshi-sensei’ had gone progressively wilder in his pursuit of shaping his successor, Kyū did not really get to talk with his newfound friend much.

But, as much as Kyū’s newfound social life suffered, his potential blossomed and bloomed like nothing All Might had ever seen. As much as the boy loved calling his mentor a martial monster and genius, his mentor had much the same to say for his own mentee.

Show the boy a trick one time, and he will never forget it. He’ll bring the trick to his own fighting style and surprise you over a month later with the very same trick. This was the harsh lesson learned by All Might.

So, Kyū learned a variety of things. As long as he had the physical capability to pull off a trick, he will pull it off without fail.

Kyū also learned new things about his own Quirk, including, among other things, minor teleportation and self-duplication. He had a conversation with All Might regarding how his own Quirk felt like a stockpile of energy to use at his own whims, and before he knew it, All Might handed him a gun along with proper registrations.

Sometimes, Kyū forgets that his hero is an American at heart.

The gun registration opened a whole different can of worms, and the boy had to spend at least an hour everyday honing his skills.

Kyū didn’t know if it was his own talent or his Quirk supplementing it, but he was an absolute natural with firearms. He was good enough that the police didn’t see any problem with granting him a (provisional) general purpose firearms licence!

Eight months flew by, and with Kyū having so many things on his plate, he never really got around to cleaning the beach. All Might would have been fine with him delaying his acceptance of One For All, but…

But a turn of fate solidified Kyū’s will to accept the torch. He will be the hero that will save everyone with a smile on his face! Just like his predecessor before him! He will never fail anyone ever again.

And so it came to be that Toshinori found himself on a spotless beach, with no trash in sight in the horizon, far beyond what he had asked his son successor.

He found the boy topless on top of a big sand dune looking at something in his hands, before shaking his head and screaming his heart out at the sight before him. Itt was a sight that could bring an old man to tears.

“So,” Toshinori said, “you think you’re ready now, fanboy? It’s perfectly fine if you want to wait, you know. After-”

Kyū looked at his mentor and father figure and smiled for the first time in days. One of the things that made All Might choose him as his successor had been his brilliant smile, reminiscent of his own predecessor. The smile Toshinori saw right then would have put that one to shame by far.

“You’re ready.”

That was all he said. His apprentice had had his setback, and had encountered his own great wall. He had decimated it with extreme prejudice. Toshinori knew that he had made the right choice, that there would be no other fit for the great burden that would be One For All more than the boy in front of him.

“So…” the boy began awkwardly at the sight of his mentor looking at him with obvious pride on his face. Kyū’s own face was flushed, but he persevered through his embarrassment.

“Remember this, young Kyū!” Toshinori tapped into One For All, bursting up into his full height and boomed, “some may say that Quirks are essential for a hero, that it is a mere quirk of fate that decides how suited you can be as a hero. But you!”

All Might dramatically pointed at his successor, who was enraptured by his speech already, “You have already proven them wrong! Remember this, and remember this well. This is a power that has been cultivated for eight generations for the sole purpose of overcoming evil, and in your perseverance in cleaning this beach, you have proven yourself worthy of it. There is a difference between power granted through luck and power earned. Have no doubt that you have earned this, my boy!”

The boy was crying freely at the end of Toshinori’s tirade, which was good. It had been far, far too long in Toshinori’s opinion since he had seen his young successor’s watery smile.

“Thank you, All Might!”

“Good, now,” Toshinori was back in his Hero form, feeling a bit mischievous, said, like his master before him, upon plucking a single strand of his hair

“Now, EAT THIS!”

The look on the boy’s face made it absolutely worth it, in the humble opinion of Toshinori Yagi.

Elsewhere

“His Quirk! It’s like nothing I have seen before! If only I had more time, I could do more than simply make Type-Angelos for the Master."

“Power. I have power.”

“But why... did I want power?”

“I- ”

“You must serve your Master and Shigaraki Tomura.”

“I-”

"You must serve your Master and Shigaraki Tomura."

"I must- but..."

"You must serve your Master and Shigaraki Tomura."

"I must- must serve my Master and, and Shigaraki Tomura."

“Master? He is ready.”

“Good. Now it is the time to wait.”

“Yes, sir.”

Chapter 5: A Dream

Chapter Text

Kyū looked at the shining gates of U.A highschool, within which countless great heroes had been forged and also laid the dreams of a young Quirkless boy.

“You can do it Kyū. The Big Guy himself thinks that it's overkill for ya to take the normal exam, and he’s such a softie at heart. How’s the… digestion going?”

Kyū walked towards the gates with the full weight of his determination in his steps. He was ten minutes early, and he fully intended to utilise that advantage. He had trained hard for this day. He had a Quirk! Sure, half of it was very annoying at the best of times ( “Hey! I resent that! I have no best of times! It’s either a bad time or a very bad time with Sir Griffon the First, First Nightmare of Midoriya Izuku!”) but it was also extremely, extremely versatile.

And there was the other Quirk Kyū had gotten. Earned.

Sometimes it's like Kyū is living a dream and he’d wake up and be Midoriya Izuku again. Sometimes, Kyū could swear that there was something missing from his life. A pillar of his life that utterly disappeared.

Kyū did not dream. He was not all of a person, and he knew that. But the most damning evidence of all, in his own opinion, was that he did not dream.

After all, in a world where his nightmares existed outside of him, how could he have dreams?

And so, doubting his own humanity, Kyū entered his examination hall with a heavy heart.

The written test went fine, despite having many, many questions well beyond the standard difficulty.

Then came the time for the practical. While sitting in the auditorium surrounded by people he didn’t recognise, Kyū was very uncharacteristically buzzing with energy.

“Do you think this could be One For All, Fon-Chan?”

“Don’t call me that, you crybaby Shakespeare! I’m Griffon! Nothing more, and definitely nothing less! It could be One For All finally kicking in, but it could also be those three cans of gamer-grade energy drinks you guzzled before entering the auditorium.”

“You know I don’t react to caffeine that way!”

“Have you ever guzzled three of those absurd drinks at the same time before?”

“...”

“Exactly. Now would you kindly shut up and pay attention to what Present Mic is saying? We kinda ignored his intro already, and I’m feeling kinda guilty for that.”

“Present Mic? Oh my god I’m in the same room as Present Mic, the Voice Hero and I ignored him for who knows how long! I listen to his radio show every week and got his limited Five Year Anniversary Alarm Clock! He’s a great hero specialising in swift villain takedowns with minimal casualties and damage to the environment! He was ranked-”

“Hey, Shadow, you ever pay attention to the crybaby when he’s in the zone like this? Yes? How bored are ya in there? It gets hard to extrapolate answers when all I can see is twitches in the shadow, ya know. I mean, does the kid even know that he’s totally missing orientation? It’s gonna be fun to mess with-”

“What do you mean you feel funny too? You’re a Nightmare! You literally cannot feel-”

“You there, with the curly hair in the leather long coat!”

Kyū was snapped out of his internal monologue and looked around to find the guy who snapped him out of it. He expected it to be someone a seat or two away from him or something, but no. It was a tall blue-haired kid on the other side of the auditorium .

Wow. Rude much? Kyū simply lifted his head and asked Shadow to make sure he didn’t keep muttering. Rude or no, the boy had a point.

While the kid loudly berated him for his muttering, Kyū looked at the pamphlet that had been distributed from behind the front door for some reason. It detailed everything he needed to know about the practical part of his examination.

Oddly enough, he couldn’t hear Griffon at all after that and his hyperactivity was just ramping up and up. He was certain at this point that it was One For All that was responsible for his state and not the caffeine, although it might have just a bit of the blame.

Kyū had discovered several abilities of his own other than the obvious over the previous ten months. One of them was that he was an energy being, like his Nightmares, and thus could theoretically heal from any damage he received, if he had enough energy.

That ‘if’ had become a non-factor, seeing as he accepted a stockpile Quirk that had been accumulating power since the Dawn of Quirks.

Another neat ability he had was one to perfectly replicate any clothing he wore before, with room for creativity. It came in real helpful for him after that one shopping trip with the cute girl.

On the bus, when Kyū noticed another candidate who looked far too anxious to be comfortable and moved to distract them, only to get interrupted by Rude Boy again, he felt something within him fray and begin to snap.

The Rude Boy said that he was not taking the test seriously. Apparently moving in the general direction of another candidate counted as foul play to the boy. Normally, Kyū would have been bemused and would have just laughed the encounter off.

This day was not ‘normal’ to him by any means.

For some reason, it was like Kyū’s competitiveness had been turned up to thirteen! He decided, right then and there on the bus, that no matter what, he was going to at least beat the blue-haired boy in front of him.

Strangely, not once over the trip did Kyū hear from Griffon. Shadow’s presence, however, was more reassuring than ever.

He didn’t notice the green sparks jumping off him as he moved, how his mismatched eyes seemed to thrum with power in random intervals, and the smell of ozone that had begun to waft off of him.

His eyes grew unfocused as the bus neared its destination, his mind grew fuzzy, and there was green static buzzing all around him.

“THE PRACTICAL EXAMINATION HAS BEGUN! GO! GO! GO!”

When Kyū launched himself off the ground to head inside the Battle Centre, where he would need to defeat robots in order to pass according to the pamphlet he had received, the static intensified around him, buzzing and increasing in frequency, till even Kyū’s sight was hampered.

Kyū felt a well of pure, unadulterated power deep inside him, like a thunderstorm the size of a continent being squashed into a singular unbreakable glass bottle, promising unending destruction if unleashed without thought of consequences.

So Kyū opened the cork of the bottle and reached his hand towards the well of liquid lightning, willing it to help him and Shadow take down as many enemies around him as they could in the time given. Griffon was still strangely silent despite not being called upon to help.

Whatever Kyū had expected when he tapped into the awesome power of the greatest hero in the world, the crystallised essence of eight great generations of heroes before him, what happened next certainly wasn’t it.

On the outside, it seemed to other people that the viridian-haired boy was struck and engulfed by a bolt of green lightning.

For the first time in a long time, Kyū felt free ! She was going to absolutely destroy this test!

—

Iida Tenya had experienced many things in his fifteen years of life, but not once did he ever have the pleasure of having whatever was happening in front of his eyes happen to him before.

First, in the auditorium where all the examinees were being debriefed, Tenya had, in an act betraying the deal of pressure he was under, loudly berated another examinee for what was probably a manner of stress relief.

Tenya had then proceeded to lecture said examinee while on the bus headed towards their shared arena wherein they will display their skills.

Not one word did the examinee speak in protest of the clearly unfair treatment Tenya had levied on him, although Tenya saw green sparks rise off of him in random intervals.

Tenya did not, however, see the heterochromatic eyes that were narrowed at him with relatively mild anger and a lot of stress.

Tenya did notice it when, as soon as the boy could, he immediately set out from the start point assigned to all students towards the arena, without any call to begin from the teachers.

He also noticed when the boy erupted in an explosion of green light that ping-ponged all over the place and disappeared from his sight before he could really register what was happening.

What he did register, however, was the sizable shockwave that emanated from the same place the green light had originated from.

He turned to look towards the proctor, for him to give a penalty to the idiot who started before being granted permission, but he was given a shock instead.

“The little green listener had the right idea! There is no timer when citizens are in danger! GO! GO! GO!”

And so, Tenya rushed towards the Battle Centre disguised as a small, empty city to prove his mettle, only to find his way blocked by a pile of scrap. Scrap that Tenya recognised to be various bots as shown by Present Mic not too long prior. He saw at least seven two-pointers, thirteen three-pointers, and oddly enough, the one one-pointer in the pile before him.

“Oh! Sorry about that!” Tenya looked around for the source of the voice, but the pile of robots before him and the chattering of the other candidates who had just now begun to enter the arena proper made it difficult to pinpoint. All Tenya could say for sure was that the owner of the voice was a girl and that she was very competent.

“I didn’t realise that I was putting everything in your way!” The owner of the voice broke into booming laughter at that, like she had made the funniest jokes in the world, that Tenya just couldn’t understand, “I’ll fix it right away! Also, Rude Boy! Please, get into U.A so I can give ya a proper ass-whooping. It’s a sincere request from the very depths of my warm, shadowy, devilishly charming heart. See ya!”

Tenya looked around to find this ‘rude boy’. Said boy’s behaviour must have been truly deplorable to get such a title from one as astute as the girl before him, who had already accrued a wealth of points barely thirty seconds into the exam.

Tenya was the proud owner of a speed Quirk, specifically, the engines that originated in his calves, and thus had trained his dynamic vision as much as he could under the careful tutorship of his most honourable brother, the Pro Hero, Ingenium.

Even so, all Tenya could see as the girl pushed away the scrap metal in order to help her fellow examinees from the good of her heart and nothing more was just flashes of green lightning.

Getting pointers from another speed Quirk user, especially one as attuned with their own Quirk as she clearly is, would be a true boon! I must make certain to establish contact with the girl when we get into U.A! There is no way one filled with as much spirit as her would fail to be recognised by the prestigious entity that is U.A!

And thus, Tenya Iida ran across his start line of becoming a Hero.

Meanwhile, inside of a green lightning bolt bouncing from robot to robot, was a Kyū that was very, very high on adrenaline and drunk on the boundless well of energy that One For All had provided her with.

Yes. Her .

Apparently One For All can spontaneously mutate the user’s body at command. It wasn’t like Kyū didn’t like being a girl. It felt right in some ways that being a boy never did. Most of all, being a girl had made Kyū extremely flexible and let him perform some moves that she most definitely could not have pulled off back when she was a boy.

Kyū knew instinctively that her present state wasn’t permanent. It was… weird, to just know things, but it was something she appreciated a lot.

So, all Kyū focused on was kicking robot butt.

She was very, very good at it, both literally and not. The combat style that All Might had drilled into her had been kick-centred, since her legs were both more developed than her arms and would be less likely to break when subjected to sudden stress.

And the fact that Kyū loved to watch the Pro-Hero Mirko fight. In fact, she was doing her best to emulate both her and All Might at the same time! It was a surprisingly hard endeavour, especially given the fact that they had wildly different fighting styles, that she had never before actually tried out in a scenario with any real-world stakes.

Well, no time like the present, right?

Kyū had figured out that his Quirk was quite frankly, impossible to figure out. It had all the traits of a classic Emitter, but then it pulls off sh*t like what just happened with her! What kind of Quirk did she have, really?

But after all the things that she did not figure out, Kyū did figure out how to use her Quirk better than just ‘release Shadow and Griffon to wreak havoc’ and stand by.

Her Quirk also, for some absurd reason, manifested ghostly duplicates of herself that had some measure of autonomy along with the ability to follow somewhat difficult orders.

Before, it had taken Kyū almost everything it had to manifest one Ghost that lasted precisely three minutes.

Right then, as Kyū felt the urgency of the test dawn upon her, and the liquid lightning in her veins intoxicating her, she called forth three Ghosts to aid her in her quest for more Points. Of course, every Ghost was given strict instructions to help anybody who looked to be in actual danger of harm and for rescuing to take priority, no matter what.

Since Kyū first began massacring robots, three minutes have passed. She was still wreathed in lightning, albeit in a severely diminished form. She had lost count of how many points she had accrued after the ninety-point mark, and that was without counting however many points her Ghosts had gotten.

She felt absolutely no strain whatsoever, even after the frankly absurd feats she had accomplished! So when she felt something tug onto her from within her Quirk, Kyū tugged on the feeling…

And felt herself shift to a wholly different area of the Arena, surrounded by Three-Pointers.

“S-Rank Villain detected! Exterminate! Exterminate! Exterminate!”

Very angry Three-Pointers…

In the teacher’s viewing area, a concerned Powerloader was trying to recall if he had taken down Dalek Protocols for the duration of the test, and shrugged off his concerns, blissful in his belief that no middle schooler could reach the criteria to let loose the dogs of war, so to speak.

Generally speaking, the Three-Pointers used in the entrance exams hold about a quarter the strength of ones used on the Second Years in their light training sessions. But all that is changed is the restrictions on their programming, along with a very slight tweak to their sensors.

But all robots made by the Support Hero: Powerloader, had a protocol to lift all restrictions, overclock their systems, and basically give themselves a timer before turning into scrap metal.

The result of all of this, with the exact same hardware was extremely varied in experiments, much to the chagrin of a certain overexcited principal, but the bare minimum performance boost provided to the robots by the Protocol was 3x.

Kyū had been surrounded by thirty of them, all loudly informing her of their intent to exterminate her.

So she took a deep breath…

And shouted, “IT’S A TRAP!” at the top of her voice.

“Six minutes remaining, little listeners, better hurry up!”

“You hear that?” Kyū questioned the bots surrounding her, waiting for her first move, “We have two minutes to play, buddies, better make it count!”

She then frowned a bit at the remaining lightning that was coiled around her body and then smiled as an absolutely insane idea came to her mind.

“You know? Two seconds might be a more accurate estimation.”

Before the robots could parse through her cryptic statement, Kyū kicked the ground beneath her to make a dust cloud and jump straight upwards, wherein she caught the lightning around her with her hands, and launched her very first Special Move.

Improvised Special Move! LIGHTNING REVERSAL!

Kyū discharged all of the remaining static lightning that had remained coiling around her body upon her sudden transformation, utilising it to deal with all of the robots surrounding her.

The manoeuvre cost her four seconds of time. Something that she noted as a matter to be improved at a later time. But first she had more important things to do.

Like finding the nearest reflective surface to see what she looked like and to see if her clothes survived…

Kyū was wearing totally different clothes from what she had been wearing pre-transformation.

She had said it before, she’ll say it again. Her Quirk is bullsh*t . It defied everything Kyū thought she knew about Quirk Science!

So she looked at her reflection and felt a significant part of herself be distracted by the objectively cute clothes she was wearing, that matched her personality perfectly while also being suited for the rough battlefield. It even looked like a Hero Costume!

All that would be missing from her ideal costume would be a rebreather and a mask…

Just as Kyū felt the thought pop up in her mind, she heard the sizzle of lightning and the smelled ozone as the things she thought about appeared out of nowhere.

Kyū shut away the part of herself having an existential meltdown and threw away the key, instead looking at her reflection as she appreciated her new self.

Her uniform was replaced by a black sleeveless crop top, cut off at the midriff, with forest green accents lining the sides and hem. Armoured pauldrons paired with long, durable feeling gloves to highlight her muscled shoulders, and matched well with the dark rebreather around her neck and black hood, eye spots and long pointed ears resembling a sinister rabbit.

Her lower half was covered by shorts bearing the same colour scheme as her cute top, cut off high on her thigh, held up by a metallic utility belt. Tough looking black graves and boots completed the look, bearing the same green accents as the rest of the outfit.

She looked frankly adorable, in her own highly unbiased opinion.

As she smiled at her own appearance, Kyū looked up and saw the reflection of her own eyes. It was that which threw her off most of all, tiny panic attack at matter creation abilities aside.

Her eyes were a deep pinkish lilac and her hair was dark green, just like it had been before her Quirk had manifested. It was somehow fitting. She just couldn’t see herself any other way.

As Kyū finished admiring her newfound feminine form, she heard the announcement for the four minute mark to the end of the exam having passed.

So, she got up from her resting spot and sent more Ghosts about to farm points to herself, with instructions to just tell her to teleport to their location when they are outclassed.

She did not receive any call to teleport as she waited. It was like she was being avoided by the Three-Pointers for some reason. Weird.

—

Yagi Toshinori, the Number One Hero of Japan and arguably the whole world, the Symbol of Peace, bane of evildoers and Villains everywhere, was afraid.

He was afraid because the principal of the school he will join as a member of its esteemed teaching staff was laughing diabolically while looking at a screen depicting his chosen successor utterly demolish the Entrance Exam.

Toshinori did not like the glint in the principal’s beady eyes. At all. The last time he had seen that glint was three seconds before his liver had its first meeting with Gran Torino’s feet.

It was a memory that had haunted his dreams for the decades to come.

“Why didn’t that kid get a recommendation from a well-respected Pro? Why is she going through this farce of an Entrance Exam? What is her Quirk and how exactly did it lead to all of… this happening?”

It was right then that Toshinori’s lightning-clad successor chose to manifest onto reality three Ghosts. One For All had taken especially well with Kyū, Toshinori could tell.

Nezu simply cackled louder as the candidate in question hit the requirements for the Dalek Protocols to be an eligible option. He discreetly activated it on the thirty three robots surrounding one of the ‘Ghosts’.

Only for the Ghost in question to fizzle in a burst of green sparks and for Kyū him, er, her self to appear within their midst and making the instantaneous decision that the best option for survival was to monologue.

“All Might. Sincerely. From the bottom of my heart, I got this request for you. Please teach kids self preservation when- never mind, I’ll ask Nemuri instead, she’s the most level-headed one of us all and not actively bringing forward the day of her death.”

“Aw, Shouta, I didn’t know you cared.”

“...”

Then, Kyū jumped up into the air, apparently deciding that the best course for survival would be to run away. Toshinori sighed gratefully from the bottom of his heart. He knew what he would have done in that situation and was thankful that his so- successor had more brains than he ever-

Improvised Special Move: LIGHTNING REVERSAL!

“So…”

“That happened.”

“Nezu-Kouchou, my sincerest apologies, but I seem to be needed elsewhere, please let me excuse myself from my grave to receive this urgent message.”

“Accepted! The footage will be sent to your personal account later to be reviewed by you later!” Toshinori bulked up and ran out faster than the livid Pro Hero behind all the others could properly open his eyes and glare at his general direction.

“Honestly, that man… Why couldn’t he just tell us he had a daughter attending this year? We wouldn’t have judged! Too much, anyway. She does look like an absolute snack, doesn’t she?”

“Nemuri, she’s fifteen!”

“But, Shooouta!”

“No. Just. No.”

“Can I take her in at least? I sense so much potential in there…”

Toshinori sweat dropped at the hijinks the teachers around him were getting up to as the exam progressed. His successor really had his- her- their work cut out for them.

He wrote a note to himself to ask the kid about their preferred pronouns and gender at a later time.

And then the two minute mark approached. Traditionally, it was at this point in time that U.A threw the examinees to the jackals and truly went beyond , so to speak.

“This year’s batch of examinees are all quite talented,” the very frightening principal of U.A and arguably the smartest creature in the world began, cutting through all the conversations in the room and causing everybody to look at him and his frightening smile, “some of them have combat instincts distilled into them from sheer talent.”

The big screen finally diverted away from young Kyū, much to Toshinori’s relief, and switched to show a blonde young man screaming over a scrap pile.

“Others overcome their disadvantages by utilising superior logical reasoning and quick thinking.”

The screen switched once more, to show various candidates utilising their brains to take down opponents who should have been too much for them.

“There are still others who utilise their natural advantages to the fullest to blow past their competition.”

The screen switched again, this time showing a blue-haired young man with engines attached to his calves running through his Battle Centre searching for enemies.

“It is the rarest few, however, who are all of the above, and more! It is to these few that society grants the honorific of ‘super’. These are the ones who will shoulder the most burden in the times to come.”

The screen switched, showing Toshinori and his soon-to-be fellow teachers his successor in her female form, simply sitting at the edge of a rooftop, seemingly waiting for something as she held small stones in her hand.

Stones that seemed to mysteriously disappear every so often, shortly before one robot a fair distance away shuts down due to one or more essential systems showing critical errors.

Toshinori was in awe of his successor. He always knew the kid he chose and trained was far brainier than he could ever be, but this was ridiculous!

So, he began to speak, “Even so, it is important for us, as heroes, to note that it is only under great pressure can they show their true nature. It matters not if you have the biggest stick in the world if it is used only for personal benefit.”

On screen, a giant robot, larger than a fifteen story building, rose up from the ground.

—

Kyū paused in her game of ‘Duck, Duck, Robot!’ featuring herself, some pebbles she picked up from destroying some concrete, and several robots.

There was a very simple reason as to why. When the timer hit three minutes to the end of the exam, a new type of robot rose up from the ground.

Kyū looked up to judge her new opponent.

And up. And up. And up. The thing was ginormous .

“I never thought I’d say this but wow, U.A is truly ridiculous. Plus Ultra to the bones, huh.”

Kyū had no business with the big robot, so she casually fell off the building she was on, landing on her two feet like she was a cat and started walking away, brushing off some of the dust sticking to her clothes.

Just as she began walking in a random direction away from the battle, she heard the echoes of a scream.

From right around where the Zero-Pointer was rampaging, throwing around its firepower like it was candy and the day was Halloween.

Instantly, Kyū changed directions. It could all be for nothing of course, some candidate could just be overreacting to the Plus Ultra nature of the exam, or some- nope.

Kyū spotted the girl stuck under rubble at about the same time the Zero-Pointer did. She had a perfect view of the robot stopping and changing directions to aim its various payloads at the poor girl.

There won’t even be ashes left over if all of that hits her! I’m too far to help, but I have to do something!

So, Kyū, for the very first time, tapped into One For All consciously. It was like going out into the harshest of thunderstorms with absolutely nothing for protection.

The waves of undulating power hit Kyū hard, leaving her breathless and nearly without the ability to think. The pressure that One For All exerted unto her was humongous and was completely without equal.

Thus far, all she had done was tap into the tiniest portion of the lightning that now thrummed in her veins to supercharge her own Quirk subconsciously. One For All was a Quirk, and it wanted to be used.

But most of all, it needed to protect those who cannot protect themselves.

Just like Kyū. It was like the Quirk was made for her.

So, guided by the will of One For All within her, Kyū let out the lightning within her veins, let it cloak her body in a cowl of green lightning. The storm within Kyū was ever growing more powerful, one green bolt of lightning at a time.

ONE FOR ALL: FULL COWLING- 15% POWER!

Kyū jumped up with all the strength that her legs could provide, but it wasn’t enough for what she planned to do. Feeling the muscles in her legs tearing and the bones of her whole body creaking, Kyū called forth her own Quirk and summoned a Ghost.

A Ghost she threw towards the Zero-Pointer with full power.

The Ghost reached the giant robot within a second, and it was at about halfway from the top of the robot in height when Kyū took its place, clinging onto the side of the robot like a demented Spider-Man cosplayer in green.

‘I’ll need everything I can get for this. ’ She thought, wincing at the pain shooting up her right leg. She had one shot, she knew, and she intended to use it. She glanced in the direction of the girl stuck under the rubble, and found her looking at her with a dumbfounded expression on her face.

So, Kyū did the idiotic thing and smiled and waved at the girl.

Then, she gathered up her power to end the threat in a way that minimised casualties.

She called forth her cowl of lightning once more and jumped up, until she was above the robot. She then concentrated all of her power into her right fist before changing her mind. She thought of a particular move used by a particular Hero and felt her grin turn ever so slightly feral.

She changed stances, from one resembling All Might’s to one more akin to a kickboxer’s and raised her unbroken leg high.

BORROWED SPECIAL MOVE! LUNA…

At the control centre, all of the teachers blanched at what they were witnessing. A green-haired middle aged woman felt a chill running up her spine, like her baby had been hurt again, and a rabbit woman sneezed, feeling a disturbance in the Force.

FALL!

Kyū slammed her leg downwards, creating a slash of wind containing more power than should have been possible in her tiny body at the Zero Pointer

She felt herself falling downwards, headfirst towards the ground as the Zero Pointer was split cleanly in half as a result of her Luna Fall. She giggled at that inane thought as the last of the lightning flickered through her body.

She fell, knowing that there was absolutely nothing she could do to stop it, but also knowing that it wouldn’t hurt her. Much.

And then the girl she sacrificed two legs for slapped her in the face, halting her midair.

That’s such a cool Quirk! I wonder if I can ask her about it later when I… wake… up.

—

“It doesn’t matter if a person has only his hands, feet and the clothes on his back. As long as they have a heroic heart and spirit, they have what is most important of all!”

As the image of Kyū falling flickered through the screen, Toshinori was tempted to buff himself up and speak with gusto, but his secret was still that, a secret. To all present there but one, he was merely Toshinori Yagi, close friend and personal secretary of All Might.

“As All Might would say, there is nothing more noble and heroic than the spirit of self-sacrifice. It is with this spirit alone can a hero surpass previously fixed limits and go beyond!”

All of the other teachers, bar one in a yellow sleeping bag for some reason, shouted out in perfect unison, “PLUS ULTRA!”

Toshinori thought it odd that even the teachers who graduated from Shiketsu shouted U.A’s motto with such zeal, but thought nothing of it.

He was busy gushing over his successor and fretting over their new abilities, after all.

—

After the U.A Entrance Exams, Tooru was feeling herself go to pieces. All she did in the whole exam was run around like an invisible headless chicken in the nude hitting the shut-off switches of as many robots as she could and pulling away candidates whenever possible.

She knew that her physique was… unexceptional. Kyū had told that straight to her face when she asked. The boy was many things, but a liar was not one of them.

So, in need of reassurance, she asked him to accompany her to the mall on the next day for some stress-shopping. The boy, being the angel on Earth that he clearly was, agreed as soon as he saw the text, but also told her to not be too surprised for some reason.

Tooru went to sleep thinking about her evasive friend with the smile that could brighten the darkest of rooms and whose eyes could see through her invisibility.

Who called her cute straight to her face.

When her mother came to her room hearing a high-pitched squeal worrying that it was a rat, Tooru denied anything having happened.

When Tooru fell asleep, the results of the Entrance Exam were just about the last thing on her mind. All she could think about were mismatched blue-and-green eyes, a brilliant smile, and a promise to go to the mall.

Elsewhere

“Shigaraki Tomura. Get ready. Your story has finally begun.”

“The prologue was such a drag, Master. Who’s the noob?”

“He… Call him Nelo Angelo. He’ll serve you to the best of his capabilities. Won’t you, Angelo?”

“Yes, my Master.”

“Oh. A Knight, huh. I didn’t know that knights could multiclass enough to be on my level. If Master sent you, I guess that’s enough. What’s your handle?”

“I am Nelo Angelo, Master Tomura. I am designated E.N.D by the Doctor, if that is what you asked.”

“Oh? What does that stand for?”

“It is-”

Chapter 6: Love And Harmony

Chapter Text

The boy who once went by the name of Midoriya Izuku had a… complex relationship with his mother.

“Izuku, I’m so, so sorry!”

For ten long years, the boy’s mother had looked upon him with sad eyes, blaming herself for the simple fact in life that her son did not have a Quirk. When he asked her what was perhaps the most important question he had ever asked in his life, all she could do was cry out in sorrow for not being able to answer it.

Midoriya Inko had, in her sorrows, taken to stress-eating and had long lost the figure of her youth. Every single day she saw her son smile at her in the morning, thanking her for the food.

Every single day she saw her son’s smile become ever so slightly faker, ever so lightly dimmer.

And ten years passed like that, with Inko never being able to let go of his outrageous dream reaching out for the stars, and Izuku never telling her exactly how much it hurt him to see her looking at him with those pitying eyes.

And then, everything changed.

A stranger brought Izuku home, claiming that he had been caught in the crossfire of a Villain fight, but that he was merely exhausted, with nothing wrong with him. But Inko knew that something was wrong.

The child the tall, skeletal stranger had brought home was undoubtedly that of her son, she had absolutely no thought of questioning that. Midoriya Inko would always recognise her child. Even if said child’s hair was greener, face more vibrant than she had seen in a decade, and freckles being in all the wrong spots.

So she waited for Izuku to get up and explain to her what exactly happened.

She was not prepared in any way for when her boy did not wake up the next day. But She was even more unprepared when her son came in from outside at eight in the morning talking to a bird… thing like it was a totally normal thing to do before heading straight to his bed and passing out. When had he even gone out? She had been waiting since five in the morning!

He didn’t even say hi to her.

Her son never forgot to talk to her.

“Don’t blame him, lady. He’s had to go through a bit too much recently. How about we have a talk, lady to bird?”

Over the course of their conversation, Inko fainted four separate times. The bird told her, ever so kindly, that he was never going to call her his mother, no matter what, and that Shadow, her son’s other familiar, who was currently bathing herself, was of the same opinion.

“Be happy that we’re new to being physical and stuff. Shadow would have done some rather unheroic things to you if we had this conversation later, Lady.”

Inko tried in vain to stifle the sobs rising up from within her and try to maintain a level conversation with her son’s… Nightmares.

Nightmares that, by all accounts, did more for her Izuku than she ever did.

“Don’t sweat it too much, Lady. We’re just the byproducts of the boy named Midoriya Izuku’s Quirk. Of course, by ‘we’, I also mean Crybaby Shakespeare in his room over there.”

Inko felt her tears halt as the implications of what she was being told failed to register in her head. “Wh-” Inko drank a cup of water and asked, “What d-do you m-mean? I-izuku’s-”

“Oh, cut the crap, Lady!”

The black cat on the table that had been thus far busy preening herself looked up and growled menacingly at Inko. So she chose the wise path and said nothing, waiting for her son’s Nightmares to speak.

“Crybaby Shakespeare’s name’s Kyū, you got that? Not Izuku. Not Deku. Kyū. Izuku ain’t here right now. Izuku won’t be here for a good long while, by my reckoning.”

The black cat on Inko’s dinner table purred and shifted colours from black to purple and finally simply disappeared. Inko blinked at her table and looked up to where the bird- Griffon was perched, finding him inspecting her with gold-green eyes. “You weren’t really a bad mom to Izuku, ya know. You just weren’t what he needed.” The bird hesitated, before softly speaking in a tone Inko hazily recognised as her own when she wished to make amends,
“I and Shadow would really appreciate it if you had Kyū stop going to Aldera, though.”

Inko jolted at that, feeling her eyes grow wet with unshed tears. Her son was the best boy in the whole world. Even his nightmares held kindness within themselves. She knew that parts of her boy were reluctant, to say the least, to accept her as their mother

The next ten months were especially gruelling for Inko, in comparison to the relative peace she had before.

Her son tried his best to stay out of her sight and only come in front of her wearing long-sleeved hoodies, claiming he was feeling chilly.

In April. Inko loved her boy to bits, she really did. But he could lie about as well as a very innocent four-year-old. It was adorable, usually, but right then it was just painful.

So she waited and caught him fresh off the shower. Only to faint immediately.

Her baby’s torso was absolutely covered in tattoos. He looked like a high-ranked member of the Yakuza! Just as she was going to fuss over him and demand her little boy to tell her exactly who forced him to have those tattoos, one of them shifted and rose, forming a bird.

A very familiar bird. A bird Inko had talked to before, that had claimed to be his Quirk.

Inko didn’t ask any questions after that. She quickly filed the application for her boy to move to online schooling and the school simply let her. They even expedited the process enough that Izu- Kyū never stepped foot in there again.

It was odd, but not so much that Inko paid undue attention to it. Izuku had never complained to her before about his school, after all.

And then, she watched her son pass all of middle school in a month, doubt himself, and pass middle school again in another course with another.

She watched as her son grew more confident with himself, straightening his back and growing comfortable with making slightly impolite requests with people.

Of course, there was the fact that when she asked him about his best (and only) friend, Katsuki, he simply looked at her with confusion in his eyes before being distracted by something absolutely scandalous that Shadow had apparently told him.

For a kitty without the ability to speak out loud, her ability to sniff out and out scandals was marvellous, in Inko’s humble opinion. It really helped that Kyū had kept a notebook specifically for the scandals that he left on top of the fridge that she fished out at least twice every month to read and smile at.

For some reason, not even Griffon ever disturbed her when she was reading the GossipBook.

Time passed, and Inko watched as her boy grew more and more, both literally and metaphorically. He was still the humble, hero-loving dork of a boy she had raised and loved, but he wasn’t her Izuku.

Not really.

It was in the small things, really, that Inko noticed that Kyū wasn’t Izuku. Izuku always ate the tastiest parts of whatever dish he was having first, while Kyū did the opposite. Izuku always sank into his books or murmured to himself when he found an intriguing problem or new facts about a hero, Kyū talked with Griffon and Shadow.

Kyū still kept his notebooks, of course. Inko always so the tell-tale bulge of the bag Izuku had sewn himself for his notebook when he was eleven and lost a textbook on his shoulder.

Inko would have sewn it herself, but the boy had so many ideas with it, that making such a thing would have been well beyond her abilities. The bag in question was attached to Izuku’s book via a small metal hook and a spring that her boy could use to release a hidden mechanism and launch the book up his sleeve.

Inko had absolutely no idea how the boy had made a mechanism with only a spring and some cloth, but she didn’t question it when Izuku was eleven years old, and she wouldn’t question it when Kyū turned eleven fortnights old.

It took Inko three months after her heart-attack-inducing meeting with Griffon to realise that it really had been stupid of her to think that her boy had been ‘just a bit above average’.

She couldn’t apologise to her boy, because as the bird had told her, her boy wasn’t there. What she had with her was everything she loved about her boy, but with something missing.

It took her till after Kyū went on a full-day shopping trip which ended up on a date with some random girl he just met, which honestly elated her beyond all reason, that she realised what it was.

Midoriya Izuku was a shy boy who remained silent all the time while Kyū simply didn’t like to start conversations and preferred silence.

She had realised another fundamental difference between Midoriya Izuku and Kyū, and it was all her fault again.

Midoriya Izuku had nobody on his corner since he turned four years old. Kyū always had at least two part-persons behind him ever since he was born.

Midoriya Inko’s deepest wish was to reunite with her son and ask him for his forgiveness, and to tell him that he would be her hero, with or without a Quirk.

She will never stand in her son’s path again.

No Matter What.

–

And so it was, that when her child came back from the U.A Entrance Exam as a girl of disastrous adorableness, Inko only fainted once and took everything with a rather calm outlook.

Well, she may have freaked out once and taken her new daughter on a huge shopping spree to get some proper clothes for herself. It wouldn’t do for Inko’s daughter to dress like she did when she was a boy, after all.

Not once through the whole trip did Griffon needle her for once, and Kyū seemed to enjoy shopping deeply. She seemed to have a bias towards oversized shirts that increased her adorableness by at least tenfold as her pyjamas.

She seemed to also dislike pants with a fierce passion. “Pants are for work! Work is when I use my powers to save people. When I help people without my powers, it’s just me helping people!”

Inko distinctly remembered that her daughter’s ‘work costume’ didn’t have pants either, but just shrugged. She’d take what she got. What she got was great as it was.

Her new oversized shirts all had singular, oftentimes dumb, but still hilarious, words on them. Some of them came with matching hats for some reason, like Inko’s daughter would wear the shirts and the extremely short shorts she was eyeing right that instant to the great outdoors.

Inko would absolutely not allow it! Her little Kyū was so adorable that some fashion agency would definitely gobble her right up! Inko very much did not want her baby’s adorable face being plastered all over…

She turned around to look for her daughter, whom she had lost sight of in her internal rant, and found her talking to some lady in a fashionable red dress who was waving her goodbye after handing her a card for some reason.

Inko felt dread seize her heart, and walked up to her daughter, who was wearing a cute black dress with red trim that she had been partial to from two stores prior and had a semi-dazed look on her face.

Inko felt a bit guilty right then. She had grabbed her newfound daughter and dragged her to the store wherein she had grabbed the cute costume Kyū’s Quirk had allegedly created. Kyū must have been absolutely exhausted. Who knows what sort of nonsense U.A’s Entrance Exam would have put her through?

In Inko’s absolutely unbiased opinion, her daughter in a cute thigh-length black skirt with red trim holding an All Might plush was an absolutely adorable existence.

Then they reached the underwear section, where Inko had expected Kyū to begin freaking out, but her expectations met disappointment when the girl simply shrugged and said that she didn’t need to buy them right then, that her Quirk would create what she needed for herself.

Inko, feeling a bit exhausted by all the excitement of the day by this point, had reached the conclusion that having fifteen new articles of clothing would be enough for her daughter. “Mama. I’ll probably get more clothes for me in the future anyway. THis much is enough for now. The Entrance Exam wiped me out to the very bone.”

On the way back home, Kyū had decided to separate a bit from her mama, to stretch her legs a bit. She thought back to her antics in the Exam and cringed.

She cringed a lot. Was she insane? Oh god, what had she even said to Rude Boy? What was with the lightning all over the place? Duck-Duck-Robot? Improvised Special Move? Borrowed Special Move? LUNA FALL?

As Kyū drowned in her embarrassment over her newly-acquired dark past, she walked past a pawn shop that looked about a day away from closing and seemed to embrace the gothic theme.

Within, Kyū found a heap ton of tacky-looking swords of various types, none of which seemed to have originated from within Japan. Next to the heap was a mannequin wearing a blue trench coat that seemed to call out to Kyū for some reason.

The store was filled with a lot of bits and bobs and mildly terrifying things, like a wall full of what looked to be illegally hunted animal heads. They were probably stuffed. Kyū didn’t really want to ask the owner, who was giving her the stink eye.

She looked around the place and found the jewellery section. There really wasn’t much to see, just some anklets, bracelets and stuff. Nothing that would have caught her eye ordinarily. They were all much too gaudy for her.

But amidst all the gaudy knick-knacks was a curious amulet with a perfectly cut blood-red ruby. Something within Kyū told her that the amulet was hers and that she absolutely had to have it. So she reached out towards it, only to have her hand beaten away by a stick.

“No touching! Only touching after buying!” The owner spoke Japanese with a heavy Chinese accent. Somehow. Kyū didn’t even know that there had been a Chinese shop owner in the neighbourhood!

“Yes, sir,” she acknowledged politely, wondering if the line always went that way, “how much is it? I can pay for it.”

The old man looked her up and down, and Kyū had the distinct feeling that an adorable viridian-haired amethyst-eyed girl wasn’t all he saw.

“For you? Free. That half of the Perfect Amulet is yours. Make sure its the right metal before you go.”

Kyū was heavily confused. What did the old man mean? She looked at the amulet, and found it to be a perfectly cut ruby in a casing wrought in flawless gold. At the back of the amulet, where Kyū could not have possibly checked before picking it, was the kanji for nine.

Or the kanji she had appropriated for her own use as her identity. When she looked up from the amulet, opening her mouth to ask the old shop owner, she found herself in a dust-filled room that looked like it had been empty for longer than Kyū had been alive.

‘Was I hit with an Illusion Quirk? No. The ‘Perfect Amulet’ is right here in my hand. It’s certainly real. I’ve never heard of an Illusion Quirk that can fake so many of the senses at the same time for such a long time! I could smell rusted metal when I had been near the swords, and could feel the texture of the leather used in the trench coat over the mannequin. That’s way too much effort to be a simple illusion Quirk.’

Kyū frowned a bit, uncertain as her mind raced at several hundred miles a minute. She got out of the shop and let her feet take her towards Dagobah Beach, where she goes when she needed to pace around to calm herself.

But before she exited the shop, something in the corner of her eye captured her attention. She picked it up from the ground, it was a slip of paper with only two lines within it. It made absolutely no sense, but Kyū recognised the lines and where they originated from.

‘While thy branches mix with mine,

And our roots together join.’

It made absolutely no sense, but something within Kyū told her that it was important, that she should remember that phrase, that it would be crucial to her. When she left the shop, she had another idea regarding the Quirk of the shop owner.

‘It has to be a specific special-activation Warp Quirk or a fifth dimensional space opened on demand! That’s such an exotic Quirk! Any Quirk pertaining to spatial manipulation in general is already so rare in the world, but one that can literally teleport an entire small shop away without leaving a single hint of its existence, while there was a foreign entity within? It must be one-of-a-kind! It’s so cool! I wonder if I can find that old man again and ask him about his Quirk. Is he a retired Hero who didn’t like the spotlight during his tenure? He looks old enough that he could have been a Hero before All Might. I should ask him about how the world was back then! Was it really as bad as the books say? I wonder if I should-’

‘No. It wasn’t as bad as the books said. It was worse’

Kyū paused, closing her notebook , sending it up her sleeve, where it would stay, and sat down in the comfortable warmth of the beach as the sun set behind her, basking in the sounds of the waves as she thought about the strange voice in her head. It sounded like Griffon but… angrier.

Before Kyū could really delve into the fact that she had more voices in her head, she heard someone sit to her right.

She already knew who it was the moment she heard the suppressed coughs and leaned into the shoulder freely being offered to her. “My life is so weird, All Might.”

“I thought I told you to call me Toshi-Sensei for as long as you refused to call me Toshi, my bo- young apprentice.”

Kyū snorted at that, “I did not hear any denial there, Toshi-Sensei.”

Her idol and mentor sitting beside her, who she was leaning on oh God what was she thinking, offered her a bag full of meat buns as he quietly spoke, like he was confessing a great sin, “I admit, I didn’t realise that you had become, well,” he gestured with his right hand at the great mystery that was his chosen successor, “quite so feminine in the several hours since we had last spoken.”

Kyū snorted, “I didn’t really look like this until the test started. It was like I had liquid lightning in my veins that begged for release. When I let go of the reins when the doors to the Practical Exams opened, I couldn’t control myself and felt the lightning surge and change me, inside and out.”

Toshinori paused a bit, and asked with trepidation in his heart, “So, is this…”

Kyū’s eyes widened and she reassured her mentor, “No, it's not permanent, Shishou! I promise. I just haven’t figured out how to turn back, yet. But being a girl isn’t really that bad.”

Toshinori raised an eyebrow at that, “and why is that, young lady?”

Kyū blushed at that, “I got called ‘cute’ seventeen different times today. I was always the plain boy, before. And then I was the ‘intense kid with the weird tattoos’. I didn’t even realise I wanted to be called cute before today even though Shadow always wants to be called fluffy and adorable, and she’s a part of me! How strange is that, huh, All Mi-”

Kyū was interrupted by a warm hug that nearly crushed her ribs, courtesy of the blonde skeletal giant she had just poured her heart out to, who simply smiled at her. “For all that it matters, my girl, you were cute to me from the moment you nearly got crushed under that fridge at the start of our training together.”

Kyū felt herself light up in embarrassment at the mention of that fridge and reached out to take away the meat bun in her mentor’s hand as punishment as she herself tried her best to scarf down her own meat buns before they could be stolen.

The two of them, who refused to refer to the other as anything other than as mentor and mentee, had a long talk until well into the night. Toshinori had taken the liberty of telling Kyū’s mother of her daughter being with him for dinner, and that they might take a while.

Toshinori thought of the absolutely brilliant manoeuvres his successor had executed over the course of the Entrance Exam and was proud. It was the proudest he had been of his own achievement since the moment he had beaten All For One’s face in on his egotistical base on the moon and sent him rocketing towards the empty expanse of space.

But he was a little miffed that Kyū had used Luna Fall as her finishing move instead of one of his own moves. Perhaps he should increase her dexterity training to make sure that when she next tries to use a Special Move, it wouldn’t be as sloppy? Her hit had caused auxiliary damage to at least three buildings, after all.

He laughed a bit as he contemplated exactly how he ought to up his apprentice’s training regime, but unlike his usual laugh that brought a warmth to all who heard it, Kyū felt her knees shake a bit and her spine tingle at the sound.

She gulped, ate her tasty meat bun, and accepted her fate.

Elsewhere

“Hey, Nelo, I got a gift for you. Grabbed it from the gift shop. I dunno why, but I thought of ya when I saw it, and it was free, apparently.”

“Any gift from Master Tomura would be much appreciated.”

“Here, it's just a silver chain with a tacky red gem, anyway. I don’t get it, but something tells me that is an Item and that it would give you a Buff or something. The NPC owning it certainly looked like he was selling such a thing.”

“I shall wear your gift with great pleasure, my Master.”

“Anything at all?”

“No Buffs, my Master. But I do feel… curious.”

“Ah, I don’t care what your abysmal WIS stat tells you. Just shut up and sit tight until I need you, got it?”

“...”

“Got it?”

“Yes, my Master.”

“Good, Nelo Angelo.”

“My name is Deku, not Nelo Angelo, my Master…”

Kyu in pyjamas, who's interested?

If Kyū were to accept the offer and become a model, here is the kinda thing she would do...

Chapter 7: The Little Boy Found

Chapter Text

Kyū contemplated the best manner in which she could ask for the forgiveness of all the teachers of U.A, her fellow examinees and on whether she ought to just pack up her belongings and move to the countryside as she admired the so-called ‘Perfect Amulet’ she had taken to wearing around her neck.

She wasn’t thinking of doing it seriously, of course, but when she thought of her behaviour over the course of the Entrance Exams, she could only feel herself curl up and refuse contact with the outside world.

Being a Hero’s too much for a girl like her, after all…

Right as Kyū was sinking down the endless spiral that was her mind, she felt her phone vibrate. It was at this instant that she remembered that she had promised this day to go shopping with her new friend, Tooru!

And the promised time was in an hour, the promised place was forty-five minutes away by train, and Kyū had not gotten up from bed just yet.

Kyū rushed up from bed, stubbed her right pinky toe seventeen different times, brushed her teeth, took a bath, and got dressed in the record time of three minutes. She limped out of the house nine minutes after that, because her old shoes didn’t fit her anymore and the shoes she had been wearing had disappeared, like they had never existed.

It had taken Kyū a full two minutes of panicking to realise that of course her old shoes won’t fit her , three minutes to panic-search the whole house for the suddenly-vanished pair, and a further two minutes to realise that, if she had magicked on the pair one time, she could do it again. Probably.

Maybe. There was a very strong chance that it would work and she wouldn’t call upon a lightning bolt on her own doorstep.

Inko just watched with amused glee at the very confused lightning storm rushing through her home in search of non-existent shoes as she sipped her morning coffee. She had tried to tell her daughter several times that the shoes, along with Kyū’s cute ‘work outfit’, much to Inko’s own horror, had sparkled out of existence when Kyū fell asleep the day prior.

Watching her daughter concentrate and try to bring fashionable shoes into existence was endlessly adorable to Inko. She took several pictures when she was sure that the girl wouldn’t notice, making a note to herself to ask Mitsuki to come over. They hadn’t had tea together for such a long time!

Of course, Inko also would make sure that little Katsuki would not come up in their conversations. She adored her best friend, she truly did, but the woman had absolutely no idea how wild her kid was.

Inko looked towards the pile of junk in the spare bedroom and the box full of things that Kyū always tinkered with and made a note to tell her daughter to clean up. That box was full of stuff that could hurt her, especially if she were to just run about in a hurry without looking where she’s going!

Just as Inko opened her mouth, her child began to glow and in a flash of green lightning, was wearing very comfortable-looking red loafers that looked the exact same as her usual shoes, just smaller and more comfortable-looking.

And also sporting an authentic-looking All Might signature for some reason, one on each shoe. Inko did not question her daughter’s taste and wished her a good day as she rushed out of the house in a big hurry.

And what a hurry it was. Kyū just very barely caught the train that would take her to the agreed-upon destination of the Ilum-Ward Shopping District. Unlike the shopping district Kyū had visited with her mama, Ilum was more geared towards young adults and teenagers.

Which was a fancy way of saying that it was the biggest arcade centre in the whole country. It was a national treasure that had persisted since the days of the first arcades, full of clunky silicon circuit boards, before the days of the hard drive, of CPUs even.

It was also very, very cheap. Arcades had been declared a cultural treasure of national significance a short while after the Dawn of Quirks began, and they had remained so ever since. Kyū had heard that the people who lived near Ilum were a touch more competitive than the average.

Kyū had never actually gone to Ilum before, considering it to be something that he would do when he was older and had actual friends. Now, Kyū was older and she had an actual friend who invited her over!

So, when Kyū showed up at the restaurant that Tooru had told her about, she had not known what to expect. Even if she did, seeing Tooru in a really cute black dress trying to do three different things at the same time, from stirring her tea, to arranging the plates on her table, to doing an anxious little tapdance with her feet without touching the ground.

Kyū would have laughed had she herself not been so nervous that her heart could double for a eight-beat on a drum. She ordered herself a chocolate shake with extra sugar and an especially strong espresso for Tooru.

Kyū might not know the girl all that well, butwhat she did know was that there were three things in the world Tooru loved above all else, and she had told Kyū of two of them. They were shopping for cute clothes and drinking really strong caffeine. For very understandable reasons, Kyū had not learned too much of her friend and current companion on their day-long shopping trip together.

So, when Kyū sat down on the seat across from Tooru, she had expected a lot of reactions, from her being asked simply to leave, or Tooru herself getting up to leave, having not the patience to deal with someone as impolite as Kyū would pretend to be.

What she had not expected was for Tooru to simply open her mouth and start talking to her as if she were an old friend. Or for her to express how nervous she was on meeting a certain viridian heterochromatic boy named Kyū.

Kyū had not expected her previous, male self to have such an effect on somebody she had just barely interacted with before. It was as frightening as it was emboldening. Kyū was thrown a bit off her game, however, when Tooru just opened up to a random stranger about her boy troubles.

So, Kyū sat and waited for Tooru to realise that she was opening up to a complete stranger. She didn’t really have to wait long, but it was enough for her to catch up on everything her one and only friend (why did that sound wrong? Why did she feel like she was forgetting… something?) had gotten up to after the last time they had hung out.

As it would turn out, Tooru was really not into the philosophy of burdening her body with immense pain to increase her physical strength. She still had the very best physique Kyū had seen, but Kyū was almost certainly biassed, so she didn’t really count.

Instead, Tooru divulged to her newfound friend whose name she hadn’t yet asked for, she got herself to learn how to be quiet and to know where to look to find weak spots. It was really easy too! Barely an inconvenience. At least, thus was her claim, but Kyū could see the calluses on her hands, the shadows under her eyes, and how her hair was way more unruly than the last time Kyū had seen her.

Tooru continued to regale Kyū with tales on how the missiles from the robots never came close to her, despite there being at least three different close-misses that Kyū had learnt of in the three minutes since she sat down.

As Tooru went on and on, gushing nervously over whatever topic caught her fancy, Kyū gave up on trying to interrupt and brought out her notebook, feeling thankful that she had the presence of mind to bring a new, unnamed one with her. She wrote down what Tooru was telling her about fashion, intent on making sure to look it up at a later time. Sadly, Kyū, the boy, was not a fashionista.

Tooru did not stop speaking for well over a half-hour, and even then, she had only paused to order a coffee. When Kyū gently prodded her on whether she was always so… hyper focused, Tooru very helpfully replied that this was the first time she had caffeine.

The girl had four cups of the forbidden brew in front of her. And that was without counting the cup she just ordered.

‘Well’, mused Kyū, ‘ that certainly explains things .’

Tooru grew ever-more jittery and continued to talk about her interests and likes and dislikes. Kyū filled her notebook with what she learned, intent to make sure that she wouldn’t forget anything. It would be a bad friend that would forget it, right?

Kyū also noted (both literally, and figuratively) how cute Tooru looked while jittery and on one hell of a caffeine high. Whenever the invisible girl took a break from speaking, from either a lack of breath, a lull in the conversation, or simply because of a lapse in her energy, Kyū would take the opportunity to make quick sketches of her.

Tooru was, in simple terms, the most adorable yet resplendent girl that Kyū ever had the honour of having a proper conversation with. She was also incredibly girly and filled with a kind of childish innocence that made Kyū wish to protect her with all of her might.

Before Kyū could realise what she was doing, she wished the girl, who was still chattering away, a gentle yet firm goodbye and found herself a spot out of Tooru’s sight where she could admire the girl in all of her glowing glory.

A girl whose Quirk was invisibility glowed as a side-effect. Who would have thought?

Kyū could almost hear Griffon at the edge of her thoughts, telling her exactly how bad of an idea what she was doing would be, and how funny it would be when Tooru decided that Kyū was not quite who he had portrayed himself as.

She could hear Griffon telling her to stop being so shy and to just tell the girl that she wished to sketch her, to her face.

Kyū did not have that kind of courage, however. What she did have was a truckload in athletic ability.

It took Kyū a little over a minute to find an appropriate perch. She was careful to not use One For All at any capacity, but she wasn’t sure if she could honestly tell the police that she didn’t use her Quirk to climb to the fourth floor rooftop she had currently claimed as her perch.

Since the day All Might passed on his Quirk to Kyū, she had noticed herself become… different. And that was different from the fact that Kyū was a she. Being herself was perfectly natural for her, for she had been that way all along.

Kyū noticed how things were different for her. She didn’t scrape her hands when she lifted things heavier than her at the beach, like she had before/ She didn’t get hurt when she jumped down from two stories high piles of junk.

Not that she did so outside of All Might’s sight, of course. It wasn’t like there was a convenient junkyard not a block away from the beach filled by Kyū’s efforts alone.

Kyū shook her head. She had something important to do! So she picked up her pencil, her new notebook, now dubbed Studying Tooru for the Future , sat on her perch, and began to sketch.

Unlike her usual hasty sketches of Pro Heroes going about their day-to-day, her careful sketches were much richer in detail. She caught how her fingers and toes twitched against their binds, the binds of course, being her very own nervousness at being seen.

Kyū captured with her pencils how the light caught against Tooru’s eyes, how her eyes glowed in a dozen different colours while still being greener than the liveliest of forests. Kyū did her best to capture the untamable mess that was her only friend’s hair, that somehow managed to look cute and gave her an impression of being freshly woken and not her being a slouch in the self-cleaning department.

The more Kyū sketched, the more details there were for her to draw. The way Tooru smiled, cutely and freely, but with a sense of mischievousness borne of a surety of any prank she would pull never being able to be traced back to her.

Kyū saw how, unlike her facial expressions, Tooru’s body language was carefully controlled, screaming ‘nervous excitement’ instead of ‘chipmunk with too much excess energy’.

Kyū sat there, perched at the edge of the roof long after Tooru gathered enough of herself to leave the cafe, for the sun to set, and for long enough for her mom to call her, worried as she was about her.

Kyū spent the rest of her free time over the week refining her sketch, using her rarely-used pens and popping open her colours. It was her very best work yet, and it wasn’t even a Hero!

The morning Kyū finished drawing Tooru, the letter from U.A finally arrived. But Kyū didn’t know, because she didn’t check.

To cool off from her five-day long creative project, Kyū took to her other hobby. Fixing antique music machines from a bygone age that had songs she had never even heard of before.

The first thing she fixed was what might be called an iPod, but with such a changed exterior that it might as well have been a different thing entirely. It took her three hours. Most of that time was spent on sifting through the junk looking for salvageable parts.

So, plugging into his MightPod (Patent pending indefinitely), Kyū played the one file she managed to pull. She wasn’t as good with software tinkering as she was with hardware. It was at this point that she remembered that neither member of the Midoriya household had thought to check their mail, and Inko had left to buy groceries, and Kyū knew that she wouldn’t come back for a good while.

It didn’t work.

Kyū sighed, and hit it with just a little bit of lightning, courtesy of One For All. Kyū had so much raw power within her that she could supercharge virtually anything she wished, so long as she didn’t go too far.

She almost went too far with her vintage device.

It began to actually work , and it was like everything was worth it.

Kyū hit play.

You See the Sun Rise,

“Izuku, a letter’s here! It’s from U.A!”

A New Day’s Upon You,

Kyū bristled slightly, but took the letter from her mom anyway. Her finger trembled slightly.

Your knees start to tremble.

She went to her room to open the letter in secret.

The Time is upon you,

The letter, that was heavier than any piece of paper had any right to be. In her haste, she fumbled the opening of the letter, and out fell a round disc where she expected a piece of paper with her results.

To show them what You can do,

She picked up the disc, and looked around for the activation button. It was a most probably a holographic display disc. They were fairly expensive, enough so that Kyū was shocked that they decided to use them to declare the Entrance Exams results. She found the activation button on the side and almost immediately dropped the disc.

Thankfully, it landed face-up.

Why did she drop what was perhaps the most important disc she had ever handled in her hands?

Well, her personal hero, idol, and mentor popped up out of it like it was just another day for him. Kyū very nearly felt her heart give out from the excess shock.

“BOOYAH! I AM HERE! AS A PROJECTION TO DECLARE YOUR RESULTS YOUNG KY- I MEAN, YOUNG MIDORIYA IZUKU! I AM SURE THAT YOU ARE SHOCKED TO SEE ME, BUT YOU SHALL BE PLEASED TO KNOW THAT YOU ARE LOOKING AT THE NEWEST MEMBER OF U.A’S ESTEEMED FACULTY!”

Kyū blinked. It made sense. She was going to U.A and All Might had the perfect alibi to teach her, and as a bonus, he would be helping other people her age too! Kyū felt the air around herself shimmer a bit as she lost control of her inner storm. She paid attention to what her mentor had to say.

And soon they will know that…

A mentor, who seemed to be receiving a thorough verbal thrashing from someone off-screen, turned back around to face Kyū.

“YOU, YOUNG KYŪ HAVE SHATTERED RECORDS THAT HAVE BEEN IN PLACE SINCE BEFORE EVEN MY DAYS! YOU HAVE REACHED THE MAXIMUM POSSIBLE VILLAIN POINTS OF ONE HUNDRED FORTY!”

If it were possible, Kyū’s mentor’s smile seemed to widen, almost splitting his face in half. Kyū could feel the pride simply oozing off of him.

The Day…

“THIS MUCH ALREADY GUARANTEES YOU THE TOP SCORE. BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!”

Kyū looked at her idol with a laser-focus. She had a feeling she would like what was going to be said.

“THERE IS ANOTHER SYSTEM OF SCORING IN PLACE FOR ALL ASPIRING STUDENTS. THEY ARE RESCUE POINTS ! A PANEL OF UNBIASED JUDGES, OF WHICH I WAS NOT ONE, WERE TO SCORE YOU ZYGOTES ON THE BASIS OF VARIOUS CRITERIA. IT CAN BE BOILED DOWN TO HOW HEROIC YOU WERE.”

Kyū looked at the hologram in shock. It made so much sense! It was ingenious! Kyū then knew that the principal of U.A didn’t have his reputation in vain.

“YOU, YOUNG KYŪ, RECEIVED THE HIGHEST POSSIBLE SCORE! THAT BEING SIXTY! YOU HAVE SHATTERED ALL PREVIOUS RECORDS AND HAVE RECEIVED A PERFECT SCORE IN THE PRACTICAL, WHILE BEING THE FOURTH HIGHEST SCORER IN THE WRITTEN EXAMS!”

All Might paused. He knew his mentee well, and waited for how long he thought the tears would run, and continued. Kyū, tears still running down her face, with the widest possible grin on her face, listened to her mentor.

“WELCOME, YOUNG KYŪ! TO YOUR HERO ACADEMIA!”

HAS COME!!!!

Kyū had devolved into a puddle of salty tears, much to her own embarrassment. It was the happiest day of her life, and absolutely nothing could change that!

Somewhere, some thing awoke, and in doing so, sent a shiver down Kyū’s spine.

Red eyes, full of hate and rage, looked towards the future.

The day will come for him too, after all. He will show them all.

The E.N.D will come.

Two halves of an imperfect amulet vibrated at the same time. Change was coming. And it was coming fast.

Here's a couple Kyū and Tooru art.

.

Chapter 8: England! awake! awake! awake!

Chapter Text

“I’m so, so proud of you! My little girl, all grown up and ready for highschool! My little Izuku got into U.A!”

Kyū loved her mom. Truly, she did. But being pampered for over a half-hour straight on her first day of highschool was a bit… much.

She would be the first to admit that the girl’s uniform stipulated to her by U.A made her look especially cute. But she had to correct her mom.

“Mom, you know that I’m both a guy and a girl right? This form,” Kyū gestured to herself as a whole, “isn’t a permanent thing. I’m going to figure out how to turn into a guy eventually, when Griffon decides to stop taking a nap and help me out. I got this nagging feeling that he knows what’s going on. Maybe I should take up Shishou’s offer?”

When nothing happened, Kyū simply sighed and ate her breakfast. Unlike when she was a guy, Kyū preferred to eat her food slowly, savouring each and every bite. To Inko, her child looked most demure while also being the cutest being in the whole world.

“I know that, my Izuku. But that won’t stop me from spoiling you rotten when you’re as open about your feelings as you are now. I haven’t seen you ask for anything other than hero figurines since you were… Actually, ever! I had to drag you everywhere to shop! Please have pity on your poor mother, this one time, Izuku.”

Despite the bright smile on her mother’s face, Kyū could see how much her accepting to being pampered meant. So she smiled her brightest smile at her mother, and got hit in the face by a bright flash of light.

“That’s one for the history books. I have to fill at least three of them before you manage to figure out the way to turn back. I’m sure your tattoos are lovely, my dear, but they aren’t very photogenic. Do you want some milk today to wash down your meal?”

“Photogenic? My tattoos are very photogenic! Toshi-Sensei and I spent ages studying my tattoos and they were praised for their incredible detail and linework! In fact, I was at the edge of proving that they… moved.” Kyū silenced herself at the gleeful look her mom was giving her. She hadn’t really given her mom an exposition dump like that since before the Incident.

“I’d like some hot milk with sugar please.”

“What about your diet, Kyū-Chan?”

“I need something sweet down my throat, mom.”

“Alright, but this is the last time, got it?”

“Yes, mom. It’s getting late, I should go.”

“Check your bag to make sure it doesn’t have any All Might figurines!”

“Mom! It was one time! I was seven!”

“Never hurts to check, my dear.” Inko looked over her daughter with a scrutinising, yet fond eye. “Are you sure that’s a tie around your neck, Izuku? Are you experimenting with cravats? Are cravats coming into fashion?”

Kyū was confused. What was her mom talking about? She looked down and saw her tie. It was a bit shoddily tied, but it was fine.

Her mom sighed fondly and hugged her tightly. Their argument had done a lot of good to their relationship, but Inko had gotten a bit more touch-starved compared to before. Before letting her go, Inko whispered into Kyū’s ear, “that is not a tie that is a bit shoddily tied, dear. Please ask your dear Toshi-Sensei to teach you how to tie one properly later, okay?”

Kyū didn’t know where that came from, but the very idea of asking All Might to help tie her tie made her a blushing, stuttering mess on the floor.

Once she recovered, she posed for her mom to take pictures. She had to admit that the uniforms were quite fashionable, but she really was running quite late.

“Raise your hand in a peace sign, Kyū-Chan. Remember, when you don’t know to breathe, just shout out at the top of your lungs. I love you! Tell Katsuki-Kun to drop by sometime too! I’ll be waiting for you with your favourite Katsudon, so please hurry home today!”

As Kyū walked away from her home, she wondered who on Earth Katsuki-Kun was, and why thinking about him gave her such a huge headache.

She shrugged off her negativity and smiled wide. She was going to U.A! Her dream school! Nothing was ever gonna stop her happiness today! This was the best day ever and the best time to throw up a peace sign. Like her mom said!

—

“If you continue like this, you’ll face off against a Villain and die an unspeakably gruesome death, All Might!”

Yagi Toshinori was a man of simple means. Being the Number One Hero meant that he was also one of the richest people in Japan, but nobody would think so, if they were to see his living situation.

Toshinori lived in a simple two-storey house at the edge of the thriving metropolis that was Tokyo. It was a simple thing that might be found all over Japan. It was not the kind of place someone might suspect the Number One Hero to reside in.

Which, of course, made it the perfect place for the Number One Hero to reside in. The exterior did not bely a fancy interior, however. The place was exactly what it appeared to be, a simple home, if for a not-so-simple man.

Toshinori woke up from his sleep huffing and puffing, instinctively trying to get a lungful of air as he snapped out of the despair that had sunk into him by the conclusion of his nightmare.

It got harder every single day.

At least, until he had that fortuitous encounter with the boy who would become his successor. The boy, who was also a girl right now but that’s not the point, had managed to brighten his day with his shining smile and bright expressions.

It used to be that Toshinori dreamed of that day every single day, his greatest failure that had come after his greatest triumph. It was ironic, really.

Midoriya Izuku, the child who went by the pseudonym of Kyū, must never know this, but he was more like Toshinori than he could ever know.

Toshinori’s house was packed wall to wall with hero merch. Nobody ever came to this place when they could go to his agency instead. Of course, that had been the entire purpose of building the showy symbol of his fame that was Might Tower.

Toshinori felt a twinge in his side as he got up. The pain, despite what he assured Recovery Girl, had not really faded much ever since he had woken up after that fight. It felt like there was someone stabbing his side with a long serratted blade every two seconds, and it was absolutely nothing compared to the pain Toshinori felt when he saw someone in front of him who he couldn’t help.

That was how he spent the vast majority of his time now. Sometimes, Toshinori wondered if that had been the plot of that rat bastard when he had aimed for his side instead of his heart when Toshinori had smashed apart his brains.

A slow, painful death where he would slowly become more and more decrepit with every passing day was definitely a torture that flaming pile of toxic waste would cook up. Toshinori wouldn’t let simple chronic pain so extreme that it would have crippled any ordinary man slow him down. Much.

In the six years since his battle against that pile of nuclear waste that somehow gained sentience, Toshinori had funded, started and had otherwise invested in the improvement of the lives of those who had been oppressed unseen. It was slow work with uncertain results, but it was working.

Toshinori checked the clock as he contemplated his life choices while sipping his breakfast, which was as tasty as ever.

Toshinori quickly changed into his ‘work clothes’, them being a three-piece suit and tie in a very lovely yellow that perfectly paired with his hair. He buffed up a block away from his house and set forth for his workplace.

I wonder how well Izuku is right now? What the hell even was the deal with my boy simply turning into a girl out of the blue? At least h- she had the same ease with the handling of One For All that I did. It would have been awkward to hand him over to Gran Torino-Sensei after he broke a couple of bones.

A cat meowed from the top of a nearby tree, much to the protest of a child underneath said tree, presumably the cat’s owner.

All Might sighed silently, but broadened the smile on his face as he headed to the tree in question. A Hero’s work is never done!

—

Kyū had many, many days wherein she had felt a ‘bad omen’, so to speak. None of them, however, were accompanied by the sparks of viridian lightning that seemed to accompany her present tingle of impending doom.

On the one hand, she was very, very excited about her first day at U.A. It was U.A and she was going to the Heroics Department, just as she had been hoping and dreaming ever since she had been a little boy!

The trip to school was about a half-hour long, and Kyū jolted herself more times than she cared to count. She might or might not have shorted some poor salaryman’s phone on accident as well.

The man had been crying out loud for some reason after a bolt of green lightning jolted his phone. Kyū had not stuck around to see the exact reason for his suffering. She promised internally to make it up to him the next time she met him.

And so, proceeding to walk past the very impressive front gate of U.A, wherein she was sure she heard a voice at the back of her head asking if it was compensating for something, the Heroes Memorial in the reception area, and finally, into the school building proper.

The walk from the entrance to where she was currently took her twenty minutes. Kyū heard laughter even as she rushed through the building wherein her class was (allegedly) located. By the time she found it, her hair was sparking upwards and her build-up of charge was getting ridiculous.

Kyū could feel her inner demon bird getting riled up at something. In fact, he seemed to get worse even as she approached the door that held behind it the first instance of her highschool life.

Kyū could hear voices behind the door as she approached it. She could hear the voice of one overly strict boy who seemed to be scolding someone else for improper behaviour in the classroom and… disrespecting that which once belonged to his seniors? What?

Kyū felt a tap on her shoulder as she reached out to open the door. She eyed the humongous door regretfully as she turned to see Tooru smiling at her hopefully.

Kyū let out a very feminine squeal of delight as she hugged her favourite allegedly invisible girl. Who squealed louder than her and hugged her back.

“I’m sooo sorry, I forgot to catch your name last time. I was nervous and I was supposed to meet a friend and then I forgot to tell him where exactly I was I guess so he got lost and we never met up and I was sad so I just ranted to you like it was the right thing to do. I’m so sorry!”

Tooru bowed down before Kyū as she spoke, repeatedly, even as her voice grew more and more excitable with every word. Kyū really had no idea on what she should do in such a situation and remained silent. The silence lasted all of two seconds before a zap of green lightning snapped Kyū out of her funk.

She smiled at the beautiful girl in front of her, with her unruly hair that was a colour that couldn’t be described in mere words. Her smile broadened as she saw how much Tooru brightened at her expression. The girl was seriously easy to read.

“No problem! We’re going to be classmates after all!” Kyū snickered a bit and added in a conspiratorial whisper, “my name’s Midoriya Izuku, and you can call me Kyū, beautiful lady!”

Leaving a dumbfounded girl invisible to all eyes but hers behind her, Kyū opened the doors to her classroom of her hero academia.

What she saw inside was not what she expected. She didn’t know what exactly she had been expecting, but what she found inside had most definitely not been it.

Kyū didn’t particularly recognise anybody she found within the classroom, other than the girl she had rescued from the Zero Pointer in the Entrance Exams. Her lightning seemed to rebel against her like a horse bucking and rearing against a particularly hated rider.

Kyū looked towards the source of the drama she had heard from outside the door and locked eyes with a sandy haired kid who had his feet kicked up against his desk and didn’t look to be paying a single iota of attention to the dressing-down the rather severe looking kid with blue hair and glasses seemed to be giving him.

Instead, he seemed to be paying a lot of attention on Kyū of all people. He was looking at her like he knew her, which was absurd. Kyū didn’t know any sandy haired kid growing up. Midoriya Izuku had no friends growing up.

Alright, this is getting ridiculous. Shadow, you got your turn, now it’s mine.

Kyū blinked at that thought that had popped up from nowhere. She walked towards her seat, which happened to be directly next to the sandy haired kid. Her lightning got stronger the closer she got to him, until finally, when they were within arms reach of each other and he was looking her in the eye with a question clearly on his lips, it happened.

Kyū blew up in a self-contained explosion of green lightning, transforming into a male form that was quite different from the one he had before. He had, naturally, transmuted onto himself the male student’s uniform from the one he had been wearing before. It would have been quite awkward, elsewise.

He calmly went to his seat and dropped his bag, before turning to Bakugou Katsuki. Kyū will not remember the brat, but Kyū most assuredly did. Griffon was a bird of petty grudges and long memory, after all.

And Kyū, as he was right now, with his slicked back hair, casual arrogance and immense charm that oozed off of his every movement, was most definitely more Griffon than not.

Kyū knew that his time as himself was… limited. Already he could feel himself slipping, forming Kyū as he should be in his form. But he had things to do, words to say. Griffon most certainly wouldn’t say them, he had no right.

He had words that should only ever be spoken from the mouth of Midoriya Izuku to his once-best-friend, Bakugou Katsuki.

Of course, even as Bakugou tried to recollect himself, the blue-haired boy whom Kyū vaguely remembered from the Entrance Exams switched targets from the short-fused explosive in blonde coating to Kyū for his abrupt and extreme Quirk use in an unnecessary situation, especially given his status as an esteemed Hero Course student of the best Hero School in Japan, and perhaps the whole world.

Had Kyū been in his right mind, he would have probably smiled even as he apologised from the depths of his heart to the overly sincere guy in front of him. It was touching, really, how someone can be so obnoxious out of context and yet remain so endearing with just a little bt of the same.

Sadly, Kyū wasn’t in his right mind, so, with lightning still buzzing all around him filling the air with the smell of ozone, he got up and hugged the boy, who was still scolding him. “We’re gonna be great friends!” Kyū said loudly with a sh*t-eating grin on his face.

With the blue-screened blue haired boy behind him, Kyū looked towards the boy he had once referred to as ‘Kacchan’. He seemed to be deep in thought as he looked at Kyū. He was close to figuring it out, but he clearly wasn’t there yet.

Kyū felt sparks as he walked towards Bakugou. He sighed and backed off. He turned to the girl he felt would be most likely to have a mirror or something he could see himself with. She was nice, if a little dumbfounded by his sheer casualness and… his everything.

She was a nice girl, who handed him the mirror with a bright smile on her face and a sparkle in her eye that was a bit unsettling for some reason beyond Kyū’s own understanding. Unlike his other forms, Kyū had hair that was easily tamed. One singular swipe of his hand and it had swept backwards.

Kyū looked, for all intents and purposes, by his own reckoning, like a mob boss. The Griffon in him made his smile just a touch more mischievous than usual, his posture a slight degree more intimidating, and his powers made his clothes just a bit too intimidating.

Scratch all that, Kyū looked like he hit his teenage angst phase Inko had been worried about since Izuku had turned six and had crayon-coloured blueprints for world domination (with All Might, of course) and had henceforth been regulated to at least two hours of All-Might Time everyday till he hit eleven. Not that he ever complained, of course, it was All Might!

Kyū still had verdant hair, the scrawny physique of Midoriya Izuku that made him look about twenty meals off from ‘healthy’ and way too roguish of a grin on his face, that, coincidentally was free of freckles and blemishes but did have a singular dimple, that the pink-skinned girl with the cute lavender blush most certainly did notice, thank you very much and perhaps most concernedly of all…

He didn’t have his cane out.

Kyū always kept their cane close at hand when they could help it because they tended to run out of battery like an old TV remote. That is to say, unexpectedly and with the weirdest possible timing.

But of course, nobody would know this fact, for Kyū is new to everything there, as is everybody else. Other than a certain hero currently helping an old man cross a road even as he assured him that absolutely nothing would go wrong even as he wrings his hands about the flowers and chocolate he had bought his wife in the hospital for their anniversary and that she would be absolutely fine with a reassuring smile on his face that never, ever wavers.

Kyū felt his smile widen as the school bell rang and he took his seat for the first time in his highschool career.

As he got hit in the face with a P.E uniform, Kyū thought of how he was right where he wanted to be.

His medallion glinted in the sunlight as Kyū started his first day of highschool.

Elsewhere

“Doctor, is E.N.D ready yet, for his mission?”

“The modifications demanded by you, my Master, were revolutionary! It took some work and a bit more elbow grease than I’d like to admit, but All Might’s reign of boring peace shall come to an end!”

“Excellent. And what of my young apprentice?”

“He has not been modified in any way, as you have requested, Master.”

“Good. How far beyond expectations has dear E.N.D gone for us, my doctor?”

“He has shattered all expectations! His Quirk, its revolutionary! Already, it proved several of my conjectures and allowed me to break free from the need of petty incompetent minions that would serve you in no meaningful way!”

“As a test, use your, what did you call them again?”

“Originally, my Master, I had expected the Noumu to be my crowning achievement, my magnum opus! But now, I can go even further beyond! All I would need would be some subjects, and two days for the experiment to stabilise. They shall be the white and gold Knights of your return!”

“Doctor…”

“Yes, my Master, they’re your Alto and Bianco Angelos!”

“Quite a catchy name, doctor. I approve. Go beyond, you said?”

“Master?”

“Nothing, its just funny. Lets go Plus Ultra when the time comes, then?”

“Of course sir. The blonde buffoon won’t know what hit him! I’ll send his remains back to the moon for what he did to your Eminence!”

“Doctor! Never speak of that incident!”

“I’m sorry, Master. It’s all ready, as I have said. When should young Tomura attack? What will he call his ‘Party’, so to speak?”

“Let him do it himself, every child needs to be given freedom to grow properly.”

“Of course, sir, is that all?”

“Yes. That is all. Oh, and Kurogiri?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Make sure to not bring out E.N.D till the time comes.”

“Of course, sir.”

Chapter 9: Mock On, Mock On, Voltaire, Rousseau

Chapter Text

Aizawa Shouta had mixed feelings on the first day of the school year. On the one hand, he met his new batch of little bright-eyed angels to give him hope.

For the innocence and naivete of future generations, and despair at the prospect of making decent heroes out of them. Of course, the thought of testing them all for potential did bring a smile on Shouta’s face.

And of course, he hadn’t had to listen to the overly loud noise of Mic’s Support Equipment tuning itself first thing in the morning. He loved his best friend and roommate, he really did, but seriously, he had about eight hours of uninterrupted sleep over the last week.

If Hizashi found himself hanging off the fifth floor of a building on U.A with no particular idea how he had gotten there with only a thin strip of cloth between himself and the soft, warm embrace of the earth below him sometime within the next week, Shouta supposed it would drastically improve his mood.

Shouta made a note of his idea in his schedule and sighed softly to himself before wrapping himself up in his Stealth Infiltration Gear (also known as his garishly yellow sleeping bag with several modifications made by Nezu himself at the expense of several favours) and entered his classroom.

Shouta supposed that he could be dreaming, because what he was seeing hardly made any sense at all. For one, there was a boy with viridian hair that seemed to glow with an inner fire, wearing his school jacket over his shoulders like he was too warm, a smile on his face that immediately had Shouta peg him as a troublemaker admiring himself in a small mirror that very clearly did not belong to him.

For another, everyone in the class was already seated but for the aforementioned green idiot. Shouta supposed he could cut the kids some slack for once. Even he would be hard pressed to notice someone entering a room when there was such a… spectacle going on.

Of course, that was only when he was off-duty, heavily sleep deprived, and had Hizashi chattering in his ear about some nonsense or the other. Shouta sighed deeply to himself, slipped out of his Stealth Infiltration Gear, eyed the green haired kid to get his rough measurements and nailed him in the eye with an appropriately sized P.E Uniform.

“None of you seem to realise that your teacher has already entered the class even after fifteen seconds have passed. Truly an abysmal performance by those who are the best candidates to be the heroes of the next generation. You have seven minutes. You may find me outside on the grounds.”

Before Shouta got back into his SIG to slither his way to the grounds, he remembered that he forgot to introduce himself, before sighing deeply, cursing the name of all that was rational and slithering towards the grounds.

When they all popped up, he made a point to introduce himself properly. It would be the very height of irrationality for his students to not know the name by which they should associate hell with, after all.

Shouta estimated an ETA to the training grounds to be four minutes. He may have calculated the same after accounting for how much he was dragging his feet along the way, as well as the minor detour in his route to grab some more triple-espresso coffee from the Ground Floor coffee maker, made by Maijima for all people on campus.

Although, Shouta had been in charge of finding the ideal place to install the thing, and they were all coincidentally places Shouta would walk past on the daily. It was a cold day in Hell before Shouta shared his coffee.

He didn’t know what kind of black magic Maijima worked in the creation of those machines, but they made the second best coffee he had ever tasted. Shouta, when he finally got to the machine, felt the jitters running up his extremities telling him exactly how deprived he was of his lifeblood.

Shouta despaired at the thought of what needed to be done for his perfect morning coffee, when he found the cup filled with quadruple-espresso coffee, black as hell, bitter as his tongue, and piping hot. Just how he liked it.

That would have been the perfect start to the day. Shouta would have thought it to be a favour from Hizashi or Nemuri to help him through this very hard day of not-immediate expulsion of twenty students, but he could see an… actually great drawing of his newest colleague made, doubtless, by said colleague himself that left no doubt as to who exactly was it that did him such favour.

The thought almost made him want to not drink the coffee. Almost. But Shouta valued his coffee more than he disliked having to acknowledge the shining symbol of all that was good in humanity.

Shouta almost sighed at the thought. It was the second time in seven minutes that he had felt the sudden urge to sigh. The first had been the absolute pandemonium of the green-haired boy had been striking up in the class.

It would have been absolutely impossible for Shouta to calm the class down in any quick order so he did the rational thing. He dumped out the twenty uniforms he had brought with him within his sleeping bag SIG with immediate instructions to the students to book it.

He made it to the training ground to the front of the building and felt the immediate urge to sigh being inflicted upon him once more. This would be one hell of a year, he just knew it.

Before him was the biggest Problem Child he ever had, and probably would have the displeasure of teaching.

The kid had brilliant viridian hair and was lean, almost unhealthily so if not for the fact that he was very clearly muscled. Shouta would have honestly been impressed by the fact. The kid’s musculature was well-balanced, uncannily so, to the point that it had to have been the impact of his Quirk.

Shouta hadn’t really bothered to see any of his the kids’ files to prevent bias, but the green one was an exception. His, well, her performance in the entrance exam and the fascination All Might had with her had been enough for him to actually learn her name.

Only to learn that she had been a boy as of not even fifteen minutes before he saw her. Maybe even five. Hizashi had mentioned seeing an especially feisty green-haired boy in the orientations to him in passing, maybe that would turn out to be him.

Shouta hadn’t really bothered to check further. He had known Quirks that were weirder. A Quirk that required a shift to the opposing gender in order to properly activate? It was up there, definitely, but it most definitely wasn’t amongst his top seven.

Shouta had seen weird in his tenure as a hero that refused to properly acknowledge the existence of PR while also only really working in the witching hour.

Shouta paid attention to the kid in front of him. co*cky was his first impression, he’d even go as far as to call him dangerously arrogant, but then when a floating P.E uniform next to the kid talked to him, Shouta could see the complete one-eighty being pulled in front of him.

It almost gave him whiplash, to see the kid that he would call the farthest from being a proper Hero acting like Thirteen. He almost couldn’t make heads or tails of the situation before he realised that hormones were a thing that teenagers dealt with.

Shouta never had to deal with such nonsense in his highschool career. He stopped his brain from being so irrational by drowning out all such tendencies in caffeine.

The solution had been super-effective. It worked out for him to that very day.

Shouta sighed again when he saw all the kids come out to the grounds just shy of the nine-minute mark.

Whether he sighed because he saw potential in every single one of the kids before him or because they knew how to follow instructions, he would never tell.

Anyone who saw Shouta’s smile, however, would instantly see right through him, regardless of how little they would know of him.

Too bad Shouta was certain that absolutely nobody was looking at him. His every instinct as a Hero of the night whose bread and butter was vigilance told him so.

Too bad for the Hero of thefo the night, there was a Hero looking right at his smile from across the field with a smile of his own who hunted those who made vigilance their bread and butter for breakfast, lunch and dinner, all for a better tomorrow.

Toshinori, from the very depths of his heart, liked each and every one of his new colleagues. They were great people, one and all of them, truly. Nezu’s networking was one of the best of the whole world.

He ignored the permanent slight ache (what most might call an agonising fire) in his side to watch his protege shine.

He felt his smile diminish a bit at the sight of the boy he had taken under his wing to be his successor, smiling derisively at the people around him, loudly mocking every single one of them.

It only took a single event for Toshinori to realise what exactly was going on, and he felt his smile return manifold brighter than before.

Toshinori had been told many, many years prior that his real smile, the one that came forth from the depths of his heart could shine past even the blackest of nights, and that he must never let it out on a stakeout, like the one he was doubtless on.

So Toshinori, for he knew it was inevitable that he would smile, it was the next generation and his son he was watching after all. So he brought the very best preventative measure there was. A facemask!

As he watched his protege walk onto the circle to throw the ball, he felt the surge of One For All within him, although it felt… decidedly odd through their intrinsic connection. They were both wielders of the same Quirk after all. Torchbearers of the same flame.

Toshinori couldn’t tell what exactly about it felt odd, it was like nothing he had felt before. He could almost put a finger on it, but before he could, he felt their connection… split.

When he snapped back in attention to look at the situation, he could tell immediately what had happened. His colleague had activated his own Quirk and had directed it at Toshinori’s apprentice, presumably in order to impart some lessons.

Although it would appear that in doing so he somehow managed to bring Kyū to his base form in rather spectacular and theatrical fashion, it would honestly not make much of a difference in Toshinori’s own very-unbiased eyes.

The second Kyū, the cutest girl Toshinori had ever laid eyes on, sadly including his own niece, who specialised in kick-based close combat and speed. And also lightning for some reason.

The third one didn’t seem to share the same elemental mastery as his counterpart, although he could just be holding back. He did have some of the lightning that girl-Kyū did, although Toshinori could tell that it didn’t share nearly the same efficacy.

Though the colour seemed… off. A bit brighter. In fact, Toshinori might go as far as to say that the green lightning was turning an electric blue.

Toshinori could feel the stares his much-respected teacher would give him. It was obvious what the origin of the lightning was, he was just running from his own culpability from the topic.

One For All truly worked in odd ways when mashed with complex Quirks like the one Kyū held, apparently.

From what Kyū, as a girl, had told him on one of their meetups, the whole transformation was basically Kyū powering up one of her Nightmares to the extent that they gain the strength to take over her body and somewhat change her mentality.

The idioms used physically hurt Toshinori, but seeing the cute-as-a-button girl call him Toshi-Sensei did him a lot of good. Something about the girl’s features reminded him of his much-revered late Master, Shimura Nana, in a manner. It was the smile, really, but even those eyes, green eyes full of hope and endless defiance, that made Toshinori really glad he had met his successor on that day under that fateful bridge.

Much has happened in the ten months since. The incident with the gunsmith, who had been like a foster grandmother to Kyū, his insistence on calling his familiars Nightmares, the physical representations of all the wrongs done unto him in his short life, their routine, and much, much more besides.

Toshinori still had yet to make much of an impression on Kyū’s mother, who as he understood it, had somewhat estranged herself from him for some reason. Why she would not break through every barrier with every power in her grasp to get closer to such a wonderful boy, he would never know.

Toshinori snapped out of his musings just as the final event, the long-distance running kicked off. He didn’t need to check to know that Kyū, even as physically weak as he would be in his normal form, would be among the top in every event. He guffawed at the sight of several exasperated ‘YES’-s marked through the stats marking his abilities.

Griffon truly was too much, sometimes. He managed to bring his schadenfreude-tinged humour to Toshinori and infect him.

Something nipped at the back of Toshinori’s mind, however. What was shown on the spreadsheets in the tablet he had before him was impressive, truly. But it was nowhere near what the full powers of One For All should be. In fact, he would call it about ten percent of his own total strength.

Now, the question would be, where did the rest of the strength go? Was the stockpile simply getting accustomed to its new user and easing into it? Was there a mental block atrophying the acclimation process? Did Toshinori forget to properly create a vague description for Kyū’s Quirk?

Oops.

Well, Toshinori decided to rectify that oversight before the end of the day. Perhaps a somewhat-illegal break-in to the HPSC Data Storage Facility was overdue. He had the rest of the day free anyway and he still had about… seventy-nine? No, eighty-three minutes of Quirk use left in him before his chance for sudden and extremely gory death skyrocketed.

Who was it that said that Toshinori was bad at performing calculations? He felt a chill run up his spine at that very-nearly-irreverent thought and decided to stop right there. He did not feel the need to be disciplined. His discipliner had a very unnatural sense of knowing that his student was being irreverent.

Anyway, Yagi Toshinori had little to do on U.A premises as of that moment. His successor was doing him far prouder than he had thought would have been possible and all of his paperwork for the next four days was already filed.

Toshinori smiled as he thought of reliving just a bit of his glory days. Not a bit his starry-eyed successor would ever think of him even having, but true nonetheless. Some of his most treasured memories of his peak hero days was infiltrating secret archives of governments to make sure they weren’t up to something shady.

Basically, the World Government (honestly, at this point in time, the name was more of a joke than anything, and the WG knew it) gave Toshinori, as All Might, a superpowered licence to be a journalist. He used his power with impunity to bring his dream ever so closer to life.

He always hoped that he would be wrong.

He hoped wrong thirty four times in total.

He had performed his favoured side activity at least twice a year ever since he turned twenty-three, when he got the access privileges he needed worldwide and an unspoken permit to use them as he saw fit to bring down the outrageous crime rates.

It was around his fifth bust, his seventh government infiltration that the media noticed the pattern. Always, All Might entered a country, committed a spree of near-vigilantism that was only free from being labelled as such by his naysayers with the astounding paperwork done by his secretary and right-hand-man in the shadows, one Yagi Toshinori.

It was when he cleaned up all the gangs and the corruption in four different governments in the South American Continent within the astounding period of two months that the moniker of ‘Symbol of Peace’ began to be associated with him.

He had been twenty-seven at the time.

The Hero, All Might, had failed to save two thousand, three hundred and twenty nine lives by this point in his life.

Toshinori snapped out of his daze and gazed at the completely ordinary looking building before him. Getting in was always the fun bit. Now, when Yagi Toshinori existed as an entirely separate entity from the invincible, untouchable Pro-Hero known as All Might, if only on paper, getting in was a monumentally funny experience.

For Toshinori and his partner in crime, his friend since middle school, one Tsukauchi Naomasa at least.

Somehow, cleaners never get the attention they ought to get when they go into the building holding a vast amount of highly sensitive information.

It is completely unnecessary to mention, but cleaners were only allowed to sections of the building where electronics were not allowed, no matter what.

All governments knew, especially in the modern era, that technology can always be hacked. The solution opted by most government branches that Toshinori had infiltrated? Have the technology used be so old that even the idea of ‘hacking’ it to retrieve information would have the ‘hacker’ laughed out of the room.

“Toshi-Kun, it seems the HPSC has more of a budget than you had thought.”

Toshinori felt his brow twitch at his best and oldest friends' dry snark at their situation. And the lasers blocking them from their prize. “I see it too, Naomasa. What do you think we should do to get in? Plan V&H?”

Naomasa’s eyes widened dramatically at the thought of implementing that abomination of a plan that should never be considered more than a tactic in the very worst of scenarios.

He gulped and slowly, so as to not provoke the hunting instincts of the predator next to him that had his eyes set on his prey, asked, “are you sure about that, Toshinori? Isn’t that a bit… extreme?”

Toshinori felt his cheeks begin to strain as he smiled innocently at the very-tired-looking detective under the employ of the same people whom he wished to surveil until he let out a very deep sigh that could be felt in the souls of overworked employees in a two-mile radius of his location.

Toshinori felt his smile turn genuine as he handed the Slicer, little brother of the Remote Hacking Device, brainchild of his other best friend and longtime ally in his pursuit of peace, David Shield.

Not that anyone would think so, if they were to look at it from the outside. By appearances, the Slicer looked like-

“A little green rabbit, Toshinori? Really?”

Toshinori saw his friend age four years right in front of his eyes before cheerily handing the little device that would be the harbinger of much pain to the Japanese Government over to him.

The detective held Toshinori’s hand before the idiot hero could go. “How much time do you have, All Might? I’m calling this off right here and now if you don’t-”

Naomasa felt his friend’s warm hand on his shoulder cutting him off from his (silent) tirade.

In the end, Toshinori got his way. That day, three different Yakuzas within a hundred miles of the Archives were arrested by All Might. It was widely reported as the biggest bust by any single Pro Hero or Hero Agency in years. There were no casualties other than a completely unforeseeable loss of power in the city due to a Villain disrupting the power stations and setting off an EMP blast in the hopes of deterring All Might towards the end.

Power could not be restored even in the nearest hospital, Yavin, named after the city itself nearly seventy years in the past, for over five minutes. In a weird coincidence, due to a bomb threat, there were no critical patients present.

As is the usual case in the present, All Might disappeared after giving a short statement to the media.

The Symbol Of Peace was still the Number One Hero, after all. It has been reported that the bust, from beginning to end, lasted only fifty-three minutes. The property damage reported has also been only the barest minimum.

—

Naomasa gave a sigh that began from the depths of his soul when he saw Toshinori again the next day. He knew his friend wasn’t one to indulge usually, so let his aura of smug satisfaction slide. This once.

Elsewhere

“Sensei, did you see the news? It’s making my itchiness worse, just to hear about it.”

“It’s fine, my disciple. The preparations are complete. Now, we just have to find our target.”

“What’ll the boss arena be, Sensei, the HPSC headquarters? A prison? I want to break these heroes and the world made by that shoddy Symbol of Peace into pieces!”

“Now, now, my cute little apprentice, just wait. What is Angelo’s opinion on this matter?”

“...”

“How apt indeed. Tomura.”

“Y-yes, Sensei?”

“Take Nelo Angelo with you, wherever you choose. He’s been stuck here long enough. I hear the good doctor has prepared the Noumu models Bianca and Alto, just for this occasion.”

“O-of course, Sensei.”

“Now, what is the place that you would choose, Tomura?”

“I heard some NPC’s gossiping about the Final Boss being a teacher at U.A…”