Chapter Text
Yuuto Shigaraki, younger brother of Hisashi Shigaraki (aka All for One), woke up on a park bench over a century into the future. The timer on his wrist gave him twenty minutes to live.
He blinked up at the clear blue sky and blinding sun and tried to remember how he’d gotten into this mess.
His older brother had an assassin, a woman whose quirk let her send people forward in time. They always returned shortly afterward, dead without a mark on them. Untraceable murder.
The glowing red letters embedded on Yuuto’s wrist ticked down to 19:29. He supposed that meant he had nineteen minutes and twenty-nine seconds until he was snapped back to the past, killing him in the process. His head spun. He retched, though he had no food in his stomach to come up. The trip through time had taken a toll on his already-weak body.
Memory returned in flashes. He’d jumped between the woman and her latest victim. A look of total horror had flashed across her face as her quirk hit him. She probably knew that All for One was going to rip her to shreds for accidentally killing his younger brother.
“My brother is an asshole,” Yuuto said out loud. He already knew this fact, but it gave him great pleasure to announce it to the world. Often several times a day.
Then he got to work trying not to die.
He stood up. His feet felt numb. He grabbed the arm of the park bench to steady himself.
Two children played on the nearby swing set. The girl leapt off the swing and took flight, flapping her bat wings. Their mother looked up from her phone, then her arm elongated like elastic to drag the girl back to the ground.
So quirks were more common in the future. Not unexpected, but a relief. In Yuuto’s time, the government had been dragging people with quirks off to death camps. He’d attacked countless caravans to stage rescues. Good to see people using their quirks openly now, although he still had no intention of revealing One for All without finding out more about the current political situation.
The timer on his wrist now read 18:45.
Limping over, Yuuto asked the woman if she knew anyone or anything with the power to erase quirks. This longshot was frankly his only hope. He got lucky. She told him about a professional hero (professional hero? That was a thing?) named Eraser Head. He was a teacher at U.A. Hero Academy. (They had schools to train heroes? Without a doubt cool, but also, what the hell had happened in the future?)
Unfortunately, Yuuto’s wallet had nothing but a few loose coins, a credit card a century out of date, and a metro card which was most definitely not going to work.
Yuuto wasted two minutes debating the ethics of stiffing a taxi driver. On the one hand, heroes didn’t steal. On the other hand, he was about to die, and by any rational framework of ethics, his life had to be worth more than a cab fare.
He hailed a taxi, jittering with nervousness the whole trip. Upon arrival at U.A., his timer read 6:12. He dropped all of his coins on the cab seat, babbled, “I’m extremely sorry! Please believe that it was a matter of life or death!” then fled before the driver could demand the rest of his fare.
Yuuto would feel guilty about stiffing the taxi driver for the rest of his life. He spent years trying to track the man down to repay him, but never found him. Ironically, one of his centuries-old coins turned out to be extremely rare, and the taxi driver sold it for enough money to pay for all three of his children’s college education.
Shota Aizawa was heading home from work up when a strange man grabbed him by the shoulders and half-shouted, “Eraser Head, right? She showed me a picture.”
Aizawa blinked. “Who’s ‘she’?” He removed the hand, using no real force, because the youth looked rail-thin and so frail a breeze might knock him over. Long white bangs fell over one eye. His other eye blazed brilliantly green. He wore jeans and a ragged, dirt-stained sweatshirt. He looked like an older teenager, barely more grown than one of Aizawa’s students. This roused a protective instinct in the teacher. He asked, “Do you need help?”
“Oh, yes, absolutely,” the stranger said with clear relief. “I’ve got, oh, it looks like five minutes to live.” Before Aizawa could react, the youth continued, “I need you to use your power to erase the quirk affecting me.” He waved his wrist, where a red timer glowed against his skin, ticking down second by second.
Aizawa had never heard of such a quirk, but he didn’t dare fail to take the situation seriously. “I’m sorry, I have to look at the person using the quirk to erase it.” He tried to think of another solution—quirk suppressant handcuffs? Even if that might work, were any close enough?
“I’m dead.” The youth dropped to his knees in despair. “Such an unheroic way to die! I wonder if it’s too late to find that taxi driver and apologize. Wait. How could this quirk still be affecting me if I’m separated from the user by more than a century?” He started to mutter to himself. “Maybe it parasites off my own quirk factor? But it works on people without quirks too. Of course, my asshole brother can give quirks to people born without them. I’d been wondering why the time travel ability only worked on humans, not objects or even animals. If I’m the host, erasing me should work.” He shot to his feet. “Please use your quirk on me!”
A hero couldn’t turn down a sincere plea for help. Aizawa activated his erasure.
The glowing timer vanished. The youth laughed, touching his blank wrist. “Thank you so much! You’re a true hero. I’ll never forget this favor for the rest of my life. I have to go find a taxi driver.” Then he ran off.
It wasn’t the strangest thing which had happened to Aizawa during his hero career.
Imagine that you’re Yuuto Shigaraki.
You’re a man out of time, lost in the distant future. You have no way to return to your own time period and a dangerous lack of knowledge about this strange new world. Everyone you’ve ever known must have died of old age, including your asshole brother, rendering your former quarrel with him meaningless and leaving you empty and sad. (You assume your older brother has died of old age. This later assumption turns out to be a very big mistake.)
You have no friends. No money. No identification. If you go to the authorities, you could be detained as an illegal immigrant or mental patient. Besides, you don’t trust the government. At the dawn of quirks, they did terrible things. You once fought against the authorities to save people with quirks, just as you fought against your own brother after he turned out to be more interested in building power than rescuing victims. You might still be remembered as a criminal. You might be forgotten. You don’t know. But you can’t take that chance.
You still desperately want to be a hero.
As far as you’re concerned, vigilantes sound cooler than professional heroes anyway. In the comic books your brother used to read to you every night, all the heroes were vigilantes. During the darkest days of your childhood when you came closest to death, feverish and unable to sleep because you kept coughing up blood, he read the Civil War series to you. It seemed obvious to you that the heroes rebelling against government supervision were the good guys. (Yes, you often base your life choices on comic books. You might be a bit of a dumbass.)
You have no equipment or allies. This never stopped you before. You decide to steal from the yakuza. Stealing is wrong, but the yakuza are bad guys, and you plan to donate ninety percent of your take to charity.
The yakuza don’t know that hit them.
SIX YEARS LATER (Yes, really, six years later)
Yuuto grabbed Overhaul by his oversized arm and threw him straight through the roof. Bits of plaster rained down. The yakuza landed on the lawn with a satisfying thump. He didn’t get up. Finally, the bastard didn’t get up.
Everything hurt. Yuuto leaned against the wall and suppressed small moans of pain. His leg had been broken—probably broken in two places judging from the bone peeking out. He’d been bruised all over. His breath came shorter, a sign of a coughing attack. He shoved his hair out of his eyes and staggered for the door. He had to find Eri and get out of here, fast. Even a weak enemy could give him trouble right now.
After his fight with Overhaul, the mansion looked like it had been wrecked by a tornado. Spikes stuck through the cream-colored walls and red carpet. An expensive vase lay on the floor, spreading pottery shards across a fallen painting. Gripping the jagged wall, Yuuto used the jets at the bottom of his boots to carry him forward.
Yuuto’s hero costume resembled a shrine priest’s white coat, except tighter fitting for mobility. Green silk lined his shoulders and sleeves. The bell and golden braid at his neck weren’t merely decorations—they released shots of pressurized air to create armor. A white fox’s mask hung over his face, with a long snout and blue-green swirls extending all the way up to the ceramic ears.
Sounds came from the front of the mansion. Some new force had arrived. Shouting. Furniture breaking.
He’d like to hope it might be professional heroes, but he doubted it. Government corruption had only continued to fester over the last century. These days, nearly everyone took bribes from the thriving yakuza.
Got to find Eri.
He forced himself to move faster on his broken leg. He was accustomed to pain, a lot of it. He’d reached the fuzzy place where he barely even felt anything.
A ceiling lamp wobbled, then crashed the floor. Yuuto leapt backward, coughing.
Once he started coughing, he couldn’t stop. He held his hands over his mouth. A trickle of blood ran between his fingers.
Rapid footsteps approached. His blurry vision barely made out the yakuza running toward him. He had to stand up straight or else—
“5% Smash!”
Yuuto hadn’t been the one to say that. His head shot up.
Twelve-year-old Izuku Midoriya sent a dozen yakuza flying down the hallway with one punch. The bedraggled, bleeding lot decided to run away in a different direction instead.
“Izuku?” Yuuto blinked away the spots in his eyes. “You can’t be here. I told you so. You’re twelve.”
“But you were late coming home. I knew something had gone wrong.” Izuku pouted. His nephew looked absolutely adorable in his green hero costume and the rabbit mask—which had been for hero training, not for actual vigilante activity. “I want to save Eri, too! It’s my fault you have less and less time where you can use One for All, because you had to give me the power to save me—”
Yuuto held up his hand to stem the flow of words. “None of that was your fault. You have nothing to feel guilty about.” He wanted to order Izuku to run away, but it might be more dangerous to let the boy leave alone. Someone was breaking into the mansion. Sounds of fighting drifted down the hallway.
His instincts screamed at him to pick up his nephew and run. But there was a little girl in this mansion being experimented on and tortured. Yuuto gritted his teeth. “Izuku, at the first sign of a fight, you need to run away.”
Izuku grinned. “But I did save you back there, didn’t I? Pretty heroic, don’t you think?”
In spite of himself, a smile tugged at Yuuto’s lips. He ruffled his nephew’s hair. “You’re lucky you’re so cute, kid.”
He couldn’t help leaning on Izuku as they walked down the hallway. Izuku fussed over his leg despite his claims that it was just a scratch.
Eri’s door had been blasted to shreds. An arm lay in the hallway—missing the rest of the man.
Unfortunately, he’d reached his time limit and could no longer activate One for All. If he even tried to throw a punch, he was pretty sure it would turn into a coughing fit. The plan was to grab Eri and run.
“Izuku, stay in the hallway, near the window.” Yuuto drew his whip from his belt and peeked through the broken door. The child’s bedroom held a broken chest of toys, a plush purple chair, and a poster bed where Eri lay.
A tall man in a black suit stood over Eri’s limp form. He was touching her face—he was stealing her quirk!
Even before the man turned around, Yuuto knew.
Curly white hair. Shadowed green eyes. That piercing smirk. It couldn’t be, but it was. His older brother, Hisashi Shigaraki, barely looked older than the day Yuuto had been launched through time.
As that cold gaze fell on him, Yuuto’s hand went up to touch his porcelain fox’s mask. Fortunately, it remained in place. His hair was visible, but surely loads of people had white hair? Some people, anyway. Everyone did once they got old enough.
In a voice saturated with darkness, All for One said, “I’m in a good mood, vigilante, after obtaining a particularly valuable quirk. Run, and I won’t chase you.”
Yuuto tried to make his voice hoarser, unrecognizable. “You don’t need the girl any longer. I’ll take her, then go.” He’d aimed for intimidating, but he sounded more like a frog with a nicotine addiction.
His whip shot out and snagged Eri, pulling the unconscious girl to his side. Yuuto expected his brother to try and stop him. But Hisashi just stared. Probably because his voice had sounded so weird. That had to be the only reason. Keeping Eri behind him, he edged backwards.
Green eyes met green eyes.
In the space of a heartbeat, All for One moved. He ripped the fox mask off Yuuto’s face. It clattered in the corner, too loud in the sudden silence.
The two brothers stared at each other’s faces for the first time in over a century.
A fierce joy filled Hisashi’s eyes, then it quickly warped into disbelief. He grabbed Yuuto by the throat and slammed him into the wall. Almost tenderly, he crooned, “You have five minutes to prove you’re not a fake.”
By reflex, Yuuto shouted, “You’re not the boss of me and you can’t make me do anything!”
Hisashi’s grip loosened. “Well, I have to admit you’re off to a great start. That’s exactly what my baby brother always said.”
“Get your hands off him!” Izuku flew into the room in a green blur and kicked All for One in the side of the head.
The villain staggered backward. A trickle of blood came from his nose, and fury filled his eyes. He backhanded Izuku into the wall without hesitation. A broken piece of furniture stabbed into the boy’s arm.
Coughing overtook Yuuto’s body. Horror filled his mind. He fell to his hands and knees. Blood dripped from his mouth to the floor. He desperately needed to rise, but his body wouldn’t obey. Tears blurred his eyes. He could barely make out the shockwave gathering around his brother’s arm, aimed at Izuku.
No restraint against a child, only murder. All for One was about to stomp on Izuku like an ant.
Yuuto screamed, “Stop! He’s family!”
Hisashi stopped. He looked. He took in Izuku’s curly hair, very much like himself, and his freckles, just like the ones Yuuto used to have when he’d been younger, and those brilliantly green irises. Hisashi’s eyes widened. “Did you have a kid as a teenager?”
Yuuto coughed up another chunk of bloody tissue and managed to say, “He’s yours, you goddamn deadbeat dad, and you owe me six years of child support!”
All for One went slack jawed. Izuku took advantage of this to scoop up Eri under one arm and Yuuto under the other, then One for All-ed his way out of there at top speed.
Back in his apartment, Yuuto breathed into his inhaler, then croaked out, “We have to run.”
Izuku handed him a glass of water. “Does your throat hurt? It sounds like it hurts.”
Yuuto drained the glass, then repeated, “We have to run. We’re leaving, right now. Get the spare fake IDs from the closet.”
Izuku jiggled from foot to foot. “I wasn’t followed. I’m certain of it.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Yuuto coughed. “He’s very good at tracking people down, and I didn’t…if I’d known, I would have done more to hide us.” His vision blurred again. He had two nephews peering worriedly at him. He pinched his forehead, and both Izukus snapped back into one.
“The doctor said you shouldn’t move.” Izuku pointed at the cast on Yuuto’s leg.
Yuuto had first made contact with a doctor who treated vigilantes through Shota Aizawa. He’d maintained a friendship with the man who’d saved his life, although he was pretty sure he’d never changed Aizawa’s initial impression of him as a lunatic hobo. Fortunately, Aizawa had been willing to take Eri in, no questions asked. Yuuto deeply regretted letting Eri’s quirk be stolen in front of him, but it might be for the best. She’d be safer now. Children with quirks useful to the government tended to…disappear.
The underground doctor had a quirk which allowed immediate treatment of injuries. He was no Recovery Girl, but he’d bandaged up Izuku’s arm and had Yuuto’s leg in a cast within seconds. Then Yuuto had shoved the man out of the apartment while he protested that he still needed to give Yuuto an examination. The doctor was right—Yuuto still couldn’t breathe properly. But he feared letting an innocent, uninvolved person remain in case his brother showed up.
Izuku tilted his head. “Who was that man? I know you wouldn’t be scared of just any villain, my many-times-great uncle.” The title was an old joke between them, since he’d always assumed that Izuku must be his brother’s descendant.
Yuuto sighed. “If he’s alive, then I think I’m just your uncle, no greats attached.” He flicked his long bangs from his eyes. “You were originally quirkless, which would be more likely if you’re a second generation—”
“Wait a moment.” Izuku paled, his freckles standing out on his cheeks. “That was your brother? The supervillain one? Wasn’t he supposed to be dead?”
“I assumed he’d died of old age, apparently a mistake on my part. He’s probably your dad.”
Izuku took this news stoically. He’d never expressed any interest in the father he’d never met, and he’d already had time to get used to a supervillain ancestor, so perhaps All for One becoming his father instead didn’t make that much difference. Although, of course, it became a much more pressing problem when your evil relative was still alive. “You think he’s looking for us?”
“I know he’s looking for us.” Yuuto used an elbow to sit up. “We’ve got to get out of the city, tonight. Things can be replaced. I’ll find some more yakuza I haven’t robbed blind.”
Izuku’s eyes drifted to the All Might mug sitting used in the sink. “But…what about our collection?”
More kitchenware with All Might’s face filled the cabinets. Several posters of him hung on the walls. A plushie had fallen off the sofa. The hero’s wide grin beamed from two futon covers.
Both Yuuto and Izuku worshiped Toshinori Yagi, aka All Might, the Only Quirkless Hero. They’d both been quirkless when younger, so it was only natural for them to admire how he’d dedicated his life to fighting against government corruption and quirk-based discrimination.
The Only Quirkless Hero might not rescue people in a flashy manner, but his brilliant detective work had uncovered countless human trafficking rings and the corrupt government officials—and heroes—enabling them. Together, Yuuto and Izuku had written long posts with detailed citations proving that Toshinori Yagi had saved more people than the current top-ranked heroes (a bunch of sellouts) and deserved to be number one. In reality, because of the widespread discrimination against the quirkless, All Might would never be popular enough to rank highly. But quirkless and people with so-called villainous quirks called him the Symbol of Hope.
Because of his lack of popularity, All Might didn’t have very much merchandise. Yuuto and Izuku had stood in line for hours, visited stores around the city, and spent far more than they could afford on online auctions in order to obtain their collection. It couldn’t be replaced.
The uncle and nephew looked at each other. Their serious gazes conveyed mutual understanding that although food, clothing, and even medicine could be forgotten in their frantic flight, the All Might collection must be saved at all costs.
“I’ll get the suitcase,” Yuuto said, staggering to his feet and reaching for his crutches. “You start wrapping up the most fragile All Might figurines.”
Yuuto had barely opened the closet door when he noticed the silence.
Their cheap apartment had thin walls. There was always an undercurrent of noise, even during nighttime—a fridge humming, someone snoring, their upstairs neighbors’ newborn.
But the building had gone silent as a graveyard.
On his crutches, Yuuto limped over to the window. He hadn’t taken any painkillers because he wanted to keep his head clear, and he felt the effects of this decision with each step. He peeked through the blinds.
At first glance, everything looked normal outside. An elderly woman sat on a bench. A man wrapped in a thick brown coat smoked by the street lamp. But Yuuto had learned how to tell when he was being watched. He noticed the discrepancies: the way the man kept glancing at the apartment building. The slipping of the woman’s wig and the outline of a gun in the bag over her shoulder. A crowd of youths walked down the street, laughing and shouting. Although they seemed to be stumblingly drunkenly, they were circling the apartment.
The building was surrounded.
Yuuto closed the blinds. His heart raced. It had happened so fast. But his brother had had a century to become even more powerful…and probably more of an asshole, too.
He lunged for the bedroom, planning to grab Izuku and run.
There was a knock on the door.
Yuuto nearly dropped his crutches.
His brother, being a melodramatic asshole, ripped the door off its hinges and set it aside.
Hisashi Shigaraki strolled into the apartment as if he owned the place. His eyes locked onto his younger brother with a possessive, hungry gaze. That look had made Yuuto feel warm and loved back as a young child, but these days gave him PTSD flashbacks.
“Sorry about your door, foolish little brother,” Hisashi purred. “You bled enough for me to run some DNA tests. Both of you did.”
Izuku poked his head out of the bedroom. “What happened…oh.”
Hisashi’s vividly green eyes snapped to his son. There was that same delighted and greedy gaze. Yuuto’s stomach sank, because he knew that look. It spelled trouble, in the form of a vault with a thick iron door.
“A pleasure to meet you, Izuku Midoriya. What a lovely child you are. My apologies for inviting myself in at this late hour.” Hisashi patted the broken door. “My darling little brother said something about child support.” His teeth gleamed in something resembling a grin. “So naturally, we need to discuss custody arrangements.”
OMAKE TIME!
Omake: How All for One Recognized His Brother
Hisashi: There’s something oddly familiar about this vigilante…
Yuuto: It’s not my quirk! You’ve never seen this quirk before in your life!
Hisashi: It’s the overpowering stench of stupidity. I know only one person so foolish. Hey, little brother.
Yuuto: Well, this can’t get any worse.
Hisashi: (Notices Izuku) Is this a two for the price of one special sale?
Yuuto: I hate you, Author-chan.
Omake: Hisashi Has Feelings on His Brother and His Son Nearly Getting Killed by Overhaul
Hisashi: I take my eyes off you for a century or so, and this is the trouble you get in? (Eyes the vault with an unpleasant glint.)
Yuuto: It was your goddamn minion who sent me forward in time and nearly killed me.
Hisashi: Oops, my bad. But I did kill her afterward. Slowly and painfully.
Yuuto: I didn’t want you to kill her!
Hisashi: You never want me to kill anyone.
Omake: What if Izuku was Yuuto’s Biological Son Instead of Hisashi’s?
Hisashi: Oh, absolutely nothing changes. It’s extremely common for older relatives to step up in event of a teenage pregnancy.
Yuuto: I’m not a teenager anymore. I’m in my early twenties.
Hisashi: Fortunately, I’d be delighted to raise such a cute child as Izuku. Sometimes I’m such a great brother, I even impress myself.
Yuuto: You have no legal leg to stand on. This is kidnapping.
Hisashi: Oh, you and your adorable talk of legalities. It’s not kidnapping as long as you’re coming with us.
Yuuto: That’s not…wait, go where?
Hisashi: Don’t worry your pretty little head about it.
