Chapter Text
Mom told me Dad had to leave before I was born. He was a fire breathing hero stationed abroad. Apparently, a quirk like his came in handy in rainy climates, even if it was primarily for flood prevention. I never met Dad, but I’m glad he’s out there doing his part. At the same time, it was hard not having a father figure at home. Mom did her best and she really is amazing, but it always felt like something was missing. Recently, Mom told me a story from when I was practically still a baby. It was long before the most notable villain and hero face off between All Might and his greatest foe. Looking back, it’s honestly hard to believe that when I was only two years old, things were so peaceful that All Might spent his days on lackluster patrols and sharing himself with the general public to maintain their trust and loyalty.
Funny enough, Mom said it was a time like that when I first met All Might in person. We were out shopping for clothes that would fit me better. Truth be told, I was pretty small for my age group, especially compared to Kacchan, or at least, I was until I turned two. I think that was when my Mom developed her theory behind the terrible twos. She said that potty training was hard enough on a small child without having to deal with growth spurts. It’s one of the first major changes we go through aside from our birth into the world and starting to wean off of a mostly liquid diet to one with more solid foods. Her theory was that the age of two was only really terrible because of the simultaneous major changes, especially for kids like me, the ones who started out as runts and then hit some of the most vicious growth spurts known to healthcare professionals. Not only were my physical milestones delayed (like my height and weight), but in the very beginning, my mental milestones were a bit behind as well. Mom blamed the doctor who delivered me, saying that he forced her to birth me prematurely on the premise that children birthed on or after the due date never developed a quirk. Turns out he had it backwards. At least, he did in my case.
Yeah, that’s right. I was a quirkless wonder.
But I’m rambling in my attempt to give you the background on why this shopping trip was so monumental despite its mostly anticlimactic nature. I had hit one of my biggest growth spurts in my first two years of life and suddenly, all my clothes went from being too big to being too small. Mom dressed me in the only outfit that would fit me anymore- a onesie patterned like All Might’s suit (it was handmade by an elderly woman my Dad had rescued overseas as the letter he once wrote to us told) and a pair of royal blue shorts that were less than an inch away from being too tight. I almost died of embarrassment when Mom showed me the pictures of me sporting that very outfit with a pacifier just barely covering my oversized grin… So I was two, toddling alongside Mom in the mall. We had already picked up outfits from a couple different stores and she knew I was getting a bit antsy. Like any clever parent, she used my weakness against me. Mom knew that I had already developed an admiration for All Might from all the videos we watched together so she promised that if I went to one more store with her and didn’t throw a fit (sadly, I was top of the class when it came to an overtired, growing pain induced tantrum), then she would take me to get the new All Might action figure from the toy store, which we were passing on the way to the last clothing store on the agenda.
Despite being behind all the other kids when it came to the learning curve prior to kindergarten, I knew a good deal when it was offered to me. So I happily agreed and we went on our way. Halfway through our time in the final store before we went to pick out my new favorite toy, I started to get pretty tired and upset at not being able to take a nap. Mom had her arms full so I knew that I wouldn’t be carried anytime soon and the last thing she planned to pick up was a new stroller since I was too big for the old one. I had to remind myself to keep my prize at the foreground. If I could make it at least until we paid for the new stroller and got everything situated, I would be able to nap with small plastic version of my hero in my arms. So I managed to keep quiet, even in the long line to check out. I waited patiently with my oral fixation taking the brunt of my fussiness. Once we were out of the store, Mom offered to tuck me into the stroller until we got to the toy store. She was honestly shocked when I told her no thank you in sign language (we had discovered that sometimes that was easier for me than trying to talk since I tended to stumble over my words). Mom had me hold onto the stroller as we walked, but that wasn’t enough.
When we were halfway to the toy store, there was a large group of high school aged kids that filtered us through their walkway-encompassing group. By the time we made it past them and got jostled between other families and groups of friends, we couldn’t find each other. I had lost my grip and tumbled onto my hands and knees before shifting backwards to sit on my diaper-clad rear (potty training was surprisingly traumatic for me the first few attempts but once I turned three, it was all in the past- to everyone but Kacchan and his friends). I was already crying from the fall, but what I found as I sat and watched the faces of strangers much bigger than me go by sent me overboard. My cries escalated and fast. The more people that tried to help, the louder I got. I hadn’t thought my mom would have gotten so far from me, but clearly I was wrong. Years later, when Mom would recount the story and make the whole thing less fuzzy for me, I would learn what happened that landed Mom so far away. Mom was always a very attractive young woman and many hero agencies had wanted to sign her as a sidekick if for no other reason than her beauty. It was that beauty that drew the attention of a few tipsy and persistent male patrons of the mall with no understanding of the concept of sexual harassment. So there I sat, just barely two years old, with a pacifier hanging from the collar of my onesie, surrounded by strangers, and wailing for my Mom.
That’s when the most amazing thing happened.
As it turned out, the company that manufactured the latest and greatest All Might action figure had paid All Might himself rather handsomely to delay his patrol and go to the mall for the shelving of the product with a bonus in place if he pleased the fans by posing for photos and signing packages. Being the sucker for pleasing people that he was, All Might agreed to show up for a couple of hours and even arrived early to account for the run-ins with fans. What he hadn’t anticipated was me. He had come in the side entrance that was at the end of the mall where my Mom and I had just been for the children’s store that carried the stroller and clothes she had just bought. On his way to the toy store, his attention was drawn to the small crowd of people that had been trying to figure out how and why I was left on my own and where my mother was- and also the cries of my toddler aged self. Lucky for me, he wasn’t about to ignore a legitimate cry for help.
“What seems to have happened here?” All Might had questioned the crowd, which parted to reveal me crying my eyes out.
“This little guy seems to have lost his parents somewhere in the mall,” One guy spoke up.
“Or he might have run too far ahead and got separated,” A young woman theorized.
“I see…” All Might responded, going silent for a moment. Despite all the fuss over my fussing, I hadn’t even noticed my hero was there since he’d been standing directly behind me. “Hello, Little One.”
And just like that, I had rubbed at my eyes, still crying loudly, and come face to face with the one man other than my father that I truly admired and loved. He crouched down in front of me with a huge, soft grin and extended a finger to tuck in my tiny palm. Hilariously, I could barely wrap my tiny hand around half his finger- it was enormous compared to me. Very slowly, I began to quiet down as I looked him over with teary eyes. My actions after that are still embarrassing for me to think about. I lunged at my hero with both hands extended and was rewarded with being held gently but firmly to his chest. But none of us were prepared for the headline that I gave the media that had been following the symbol of peace that day. I managed to embarrass myself twice over with two simple one word declarations- one very babyish and the other very clear and typical of a two year old. I had sniffled and leaned dangerously far back in All Might’s arms (he recently confessed that I had given him his first heart attack that day) and blearily blinked up at him.
“Mine!” I boldly declared, a smile beginning to form on my tear-stained face. “Dada!”
The media had a field day. It wasn’t long after that everyone legitimately started to speculate about All Might having a child. Theories about how I ended up on my own despite supposedly being his son formed. The most popular being that I stayed home with my Mom and got separated while we were out- which definitely wasn’t a lie. Then they started claiming that if I was his son then he was only going to the big toy store event to spend time with me since of course I would have a toy of the man that was supposedly my father. It went on like that for at least a month before the commotion died down. In truth, they only really backed off because All Might dodged the question all the time, which they took as confirmation. From then on, things were a little different for me and my Mom, but not by much. The more drastic changes were yet to come.