Chapter Text
Six months.
Six months is what it took to be strong enough to inherit the number one hero’s quirk.
So many late nights at All Might’s personal gym and early mornings spent cleaning Dagoba Beach. Long complicated meal plans and combat training sessions. Phone calls with his dad and All Might when their timezones lined up.
And today is the day he’d finally get it.
“Young Izuku, you have done well. I’m so proud of you and how far you have come.” Yagi says, placing a hand on his shoulder.
It was early in the morning, just past seven am, and they were in All Might’s private medical wing in his agency. His father is on a video call, watching as his son finally gets a quirk. Recovery Girl and a few others with medical quirks are on standby for when the transfer occurs. Recovery Girl herself is unpacking several vials of liquid, all varying in color.
“What are those?” Izuku gestures towards the vials.
“Those are how One For All will be transferred to you. The first is a vial of my blood, which you will drink. The next is an anti-nausea medication, then water, then another vial of blood just in case the first vial isn’t enough.” Yagi explains, pointing out each vial as he does so.
“I see… so, is it some kind of DNA transfer? Will I have to keep drinking your blood for a while to make sure it takes?” Izuku starts rambling at extraordinary speeds, asking questions faster than All Might can answer them.
“Hold on,” Yagi chuckles, “Yes, it’s a simple DNA transfer. No, you do not have to keep drinking my blood to make sure it takes. It’s a one time thing, but the extra blood gives us an already prepared second try, or more if you just happen to need more blood for it to work.” He answers Izuku’s questions easily, somehow keeping up with him.
Izuku nods carefully, feeling his anxiety spike. He knows he should be calm for this, but he feels like he’s going to pass out any second.
“Are you ready, Izuku-kun?” Yagi asks, starting to take deep breaths, readying himself to turn into his hero form.
“R-Ready as I’ll ever be, A-All Might-sensei!”
Yagi holds his breath, quickly blowing out as smoke engulfs him, clearing away moments later to reveal All Might. Picking up the first vial of blood, he uncaps it, before holding it out to Izuku.
“Izuku Midoriya, You have come a long way in your journey to inherit our quirk. You have trained relentlessly, fought tooth and nail against everything you were told. You have proven yourself as a true hero.” All Might’s voice has taken on the echoing, ethereal quality that it had when he originally asked him to become his successor. His eyes are glowing a vibrant blue as yellow lighting streaks over his body. He looks healthier than he has in years, his body filling back out and resembling himself closer to his prime.
“Do you, Izuku Midoriya, swear to use this quirk to protect the innocent, the helpless, and those who otherwise would fall through the cracks without you?”
“I do.”
“Do you swear to use this quirk only for good, and to never use its power to hurt another living being who is undeserving of its power?”
“I do.”
“Finally, do you swear to always stay true to yourself, and to who you wish to become as a hero?”
“I do.”
All Might hands the now brightly glowing vial of blood to Izuku, letting his arm fall to his side as he smiles proudly upon his student.
Izuku takes a deep breath before swallowing the vial in one go.
Nothing happens for a moment, and then his world explodes.
“Yound Izu—!”
—
It’s black as far as his eyes can see.
There's nothing. No All Might, No Recovery Girl, No Dad on the phone all the way in America.
Just Izuku, floating in a black void.
“Ninth.” comes a whisper from behind him.
He isn’t sure how, but he manages to turn his body around towards the only light source in the entire void.
Floating before him is the same glowing ball of light that All Might showed him that fateful day. It’s bigger this time, with a small glowing yellow ball of light floating alongside the seven others.
Red. Pink. Orange. Yellow. Green. Blue. Purple. White.
He doesn’t know how he knows, but he knows that he’s now staring at One For All in all of its glory.
“Hello… I’m Izuku.”
“We know who you are, little Ninth.” The Voices emanating from the quirk say.
“What is this?” He asks.
“This is a choice. If you want it, if you want us, then take the light in your hands.” The Voices tell him.
“A-And if I say no?”
“Then we will leave, and Eighth will find a new successor.”
Izuku stares at the quirk for what feels like an eternity. Seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks could have passed and Izuku wouldn’t have noticed. All he could think about was the quirk in front of him. Two hundred years of a legacy passed down for generations since the dawn of quirks.
And he gets the choice to become its ninth holder.
His hands shake as he reaches out towards the brilliant light of the quirk, feeling his body start to burn as he grabs ahold of it and brings it towards his chest.
“Welcome, Ninth.” The voices say warmly, and he suddenly feels like he's being hugged.
Thousands of colors he can’t possibly name explodes around him as he feels his body burn with the force of the quirk changing everything about him, right down to the very cells that make up his body. His head is pounding. His limbs feel like they’re going to blow apart. He feels like he’s going to explode.
And the world goes white.
—
From the outside, it is a much different picture.
—
Izuku downs the vial of blood, and for a moment, nothing happens.
Then his head snaps back, eyes glowing white as his body lifts from the floor. His body contorts in all sorts of unnatural ways, his joints audibly cracking and snapping as he moves. Green and white lightning surrounds his body, arching between his limbs and hitting the ceiling and knocking out the lights.
The scales on his body seem to spread, covering most of his visible skin now. His throat glows as he begins to scream, small sparks flying from his lips. With one final scream, his body contorts one last time,the lighting goes out, the glowing stops, and his body drops to the floor, now dead weight.
“Young Izuku!” Yagi rushes over to the fallen boy, but is pushed away by Recovery Girl and the rest of the medical staff. He doesn’t know why this happened, his own transfer wasn’t like this!
“Yagi-san! What the fuck was that?! You said he’d be fine!” Hisashi yells from the laptop they had set up for him.
“Hisashi-san, I-I don’t know! My own transfer wasn’t like this! It took hours for me to see any form of response from the quirk, and it wasn’t anything like this!” Yagi shouts, hovering as close to Izuku as he dares.
“What the fuck happened then?! You said my son would be perfectly safe, and I want to know why this happened!” Hisashi keeps yelling, having stood up behind his desk.
“As I said, I don’t know! R-Recovery Girl should be able to tell us more, but…” He trails off, going silent as he watches the medical staff check over his successor.
“Calm down, both of you! Izuku-kun is perfectly fine. He will be a bit sore, yes, but he will be fine once he wakes up. The quirk seems to have simply taken note of his mutations and pushed them to the extreme. I won’t know for sure until I can get a scan done, but from those sparks he produced, I’d say your boy has working fire breath now.” Recovery Girl says, interrupting their panic.
“Oh thank god.” They both say, sighing in relief.
“Yagi-san, I think it’s time I transfer back to japan. This… I can’t be this far away if my son’s quirk is going to react like this now.” Hisashi says, falling into his chair. He sits clutching his chest, trying to slow his heart rate.
“I-I think that would be wise, Hisashi-san…” Yagi falls into a chair himself, taking out a handkerchief as he starts to cough up blood.
—
Four hours later, Izuku is still asleep. He’s laying on one of the cots now, covered only by a thin sheet, as his gown had been destroyed during the transfer. He’s incredibly still, almost eerily so; the only sign of life being the slow rise and fall of his chest as he breathes.
Yagi and Hisashi had not hung up after Recovery Girl assured them that Izuku would be fine. Hisashi was scared enough by it that he had called out of work, opting to stay home and stay on the call with Yagi as long as it took for Izuku to wake up.
“So, Hisashi, you never told me what you do outside of being a support worker at an American hero agency.” He takes a sip of tea, having ordered it at some point in their conversation.
“I’m a quirk analyst. I specialize in villain quirk analysis and hero team up matches for raids.” Hisashi sips on his own mug of coffee, having gotten up at two am to see his son get his quirk.
“I see where Izuku-kun gets it then! He’s so smart, you must be so proud of him.”
Hisashi laughs, setting his mug down on his desk. “Unbelievably so. Izuku… He’s been through so much. I’ve put off returning to Japan because this job here in the states pays more, but there’s been several times where I almost broke and transferred back home.”
“I take it seeing Izuku-kun like that, with his new quirk, was the straw that broke the camel’s back?” Yagi looks over at Izuku, taking his hand in his own much larger one and rubbing his thumb along the newly scaled knuckles.
“It was… is. It is the final straw. I can’t be an ocean away when things like that happen, what if… what if next time I can’t— I’m not—” Hisashi tears up, choking around the lump that’s formed in his throat.
“What if you aren’t there if he dies?” Yagi knows it’s a harsh sentence, but he also knows how Hisashi feels.
“Yes. Izuku is my whole world. I don’t know what I’d do if I lost him.” It’s almost a whisper, but Yagi still manages to hear it due to the high quality speakers on the laptop.
There’s a soft groan and both men immediately stop talking, eyes shooting towards the bed.