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It was a few hours until his coffee date meeting with Midoriya, and All for One was scrambling to get ready.
First, he had to figure out what to wear. He’d almost worn his evil overlord armor from decades ago, but soon realized that would be completely inappropriate. Besides, hadn’t he stopped wearing it because it looked ridiculous? (Plus with all those spikes, it would definitely puncture his coffee cup.)
Besides, a coffee da-meeting with a secretary at a fashion company mightnot be the best time to advertise that he was a criminal mastermind.
Instead he opted for a business suit (he never left his evil lair without one). Now, deciding which one was unexpectedly tricky. He’d had meetings like this many times before, but for some reason he worried his normal pick wouldn’t be good enough. So, he wore one a little on that was a little fancier than normal, but not so much as to be ridiculous.
He chalked his bizarre anxiety to whatever mental quirk Midoriya had to have.
In his quick background check he found no sign of government work, criminal connections (aside from that blond friend who had quite the rap sheet in her teens), or anything that would teach someone to intimidate people to that degree. Obviously it was a quirk.
(Granted she was registered with a completely different one, but with her past in foster care and a name like “Midoriya”, how hard was it to believe a criminal relative tried to hide her identity and registered a fake quirk for good measure? It’s not like anyone ever checked the quirk registry…)
This remarkable quirk was obviously what was making All for One strangely concerned with looking presentable and pleasing to her.
(All for One even tried to put on a tie for the first time in decades. He failed again. Wretched thing.)
Soon All for One was out to the coffee shop that he and Midoriya had discussed in their texts.
“Do you really need to do this Mitsuki?”
“Masaru we’ve been over this. As Inko’s best friend, it is my job to make sure she’s safe from any creeps or weirdos dating her (especially since she can a really bad judge of character sometimes). Therefore, I need to watch and make sure she goes out with people good for her,” said Mitsuki.
“Don’t you think spying on their date is a bit…unnecessary though?” said Masaru.
“Nope! It’s the perfect time for me to get a read on them and how they treat Inko! The way you’re going on about this, you’d think I’ve attacked them before!”
“You have,” said Masaru.
“I told you, that guy with the long hair tripping was a total accident that I had nothing to do with!”
“You said, ‘hold on I need to get rid of this asshole’, walked up behind him, at which point he fell in just the right way to hit his face on a table and break his nose, then you hurried back with a smug look and asked me how you did,” said Masaru.
Mitsuki blinked. “Your point?”
Masaru sighed. “Anyway, it looks like he just arrived.”
All for One got a cup of coffee with sugar for himself, and a cup of sugar with coffee for Midoriya.
He sat down at a table and waited. After what seemed an eternity (fifty two seconds) Midoriya arrived.
“Hello Rokubungi!”
“Hello…Midoriya,” All for One said, taking quick glance at her cup to make sure he got her name right.
She sat down with a warm smile. “Thanks for inviting me here,” she said. She took a sip of the unholy syrupy concoction she thought was coffee. She sighed. “Perfect…”All for One felt very pleased at that. Probably just because he’d gotten her insane order right.
“So, how was your week?” he said.
“Fine,” said Midoriya. “I had to stop Mitsuki from punching a guy at work (he kinda deserved it), but that happens all the time. Not much else happen to me really. Just a boring old work week. Oh, there was one time where this one guy was very rude to me.”
“Was he?” said All for One.
“Yeah, turns out he was just stressed because his wife’s in the hospital about to give birth! He was very apologetic afterward, even promised to show me pictures of the baby. Isn’t that sweet?” said Midoriya.
“It certainly is,” said All for One with a gentle smile as he dismissed the various ways to horribly murder this man he’d conceived in the last twenty seconds.
“How about you?” she said.
“Me?” said All for One. He’d forgotten to have an alibi lined up ahead of time! What was his fake job again? How was he supposed to- Wait, even if he didn’t have a story prepared wasn’t he a master liar? And weren’t the best lies mixed with truth? “I had to discipline some people who’d been breaking the rules,” he said.
“Oh, that’s too bad,” she said. “What’d they do?”
“Uh…” Stealing drugs from the manufacturer All for One set them up with. “Misusing company property.”
“That doesn’t sound too good. I hope they learned their lesson,” she said.
“Oh they absolutely did.” For five seconds.
“Well that’s good. I hope you didn’t need to bite their heads off or anything,” said Midoriya.
“Not to worry,” said All for One. “I didn’t.” He’d sliced their heads off. Completely different. “Overall though I had a pretty boring week.”
Midoriya nodded.
They soon descended into an awkward silence. All for One quickly thought of ways to break it. Perhaps he should inquire about her quirk! From what he’d seen so far, could it work by inducing nervousness when she’s passive and terror when she’s angry? That would make sense.
He opened his mouth to say something that would effortlessly bridge the gap from the old topic to the new one.
“What’s your quirk?”
Or barrel in like a cannonball. That was an option too.
She blinked at him. “Sorry,” said All for One, “I’m just very interested in quirks. I find them very fascinating.”
“Oh no worries! My quirk is small object attraction. It’s a telekinetic quirk that lets me well, grab small objects.” She held out a hand and gently lifted her phone out of her pocket into her hand.
“Oh. So it’s not a mental quirk?” said All for One.
Midoriya tilted her head. “No? Why would it be?”
“Oh nothing, it’s just that those two the other day seemed intimidated when you lost your temper, and your coworkers seemed slightly…tense when you didn’t have your coffee.”
“Oh that. Mitsuki says I can be quite fearsome when I lose my temper or don’t have coffee. I’m pretty sure she’s exaggerating a little…”
“Probably,” said All for One. Probably under exaggerating that is. “So, about your quirk. Does it have a distance range? You pulled the phone fairly slowly but can it be pulled faster? What’s your dexterity? Can it pull objects out of sight or behind a barrier? Can it…am I rambling?”
“A little,” she said with a bug-eyed look. Oh no, now she’d think he was weird! “I didn’t get all that, but I think it can pull objects from inside other objects. Even inside the human body according to one specialist…”
“Oh, so you could do things like help with surgery, pull an object out of a closed purse, or rip out your enemy’s internal organs!” he said.
“…Come again?” Midoriya said.
All for One cleared his throat. “You know, like in a movie or a comic book?” Please buy that.
“Oh,” she said, nodding. “So, you’re a fan of those kinds of things?”
All for One opened his mouth to say he was when he was younger and less mature. What he actually said was, “Oh yes! I especially love the old Demon Lord comic. Me and my brother first read it when we were young. I loved the Demon Lord himself because I thought his ability to rule the world was cool!”
Had he just-
He’d just confessed his nerdy hobbies. To a living person. Who he was trying to make a good impression on.
Why had he done that?
Midoriya giggled.
IT WORKED?!
“You remind me of Mitsuki. She reallyloves violent video games.” Her smile briefly faded, before being replaced by an inquisitive look. “Hey I just realized something. You asked me about my quirk but I never asked about yours.”
He hadn’t decided on what his “official” quirk would be. He sifted through his quirk stores, at first thinking about what the most logical quirk would be. One that was inconspicuous enough to fly under the radar of most people. His mind then derailed that train of thought (killing hundreds of innocent passengers) before going on the different path of “what would look really cool?”
“Fire breath!” he said. He lifted the lid off his coffee and puffed some flames onto the drink.
“Wow, that’s amazing!” said Midoriya.
All for One resisted the urge to pump his fist. Success!
“Aren’t you concerned that doing that’s technically illegal” Midoriya said.
All for One waved his hand. “Not in the least. Those laws always seemed pointless and stupid to me. Nobody even cared about that tiny display any more than they did when you used your quirk to grab your phone.
Midoriya nodded. “That’s a good point.” She then began asking him about a recent event in the news he was happy to give his opinion of. From that came another topic, and another. They continued talking for several hours.
All for One found Midoriya to be intelligent, a little anxious (which didn’t make much sense. She was clearly better than most of the people around her so she had nothing to be nervous about.), and also oddly gentle-natured considering terrifying she could be. Talking with her was a delight.
Eventually Midoriya noticed the time and told All for One she had to go.
“I have work to do at home. Have a good day Rokubungi!” she said as she was getting up.
“Please, call me Hisashi,” he said.
She gave him a confused frown.
Wait.
He didn’t say the first name of his alias. He’d just told her his name. His realname. The one he hadn’t breathed to a single soul in over a century and had completely buried.
“WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?” he screamed at his brain.
“I DON’T KNOOOW…” his idiot brain replied.
“Hisashi? I could have sworn it was something else…”
“Yes um…Hisashi is my…placeholder name? I uh, really liked it and preferred it to my actual name but procrastinated on changing it?” They still did that right? Where they gave a child expected to have a quirk a placeholder name until they received their quirk at which point they got a new name suited to their quirk? It was all the rage 73 years ago.
“Huh, I heard about those, I just didn’t think anyone was still doing that,” said Inko.
Should have pretended to have a middle name, he thought. “My family is weird!” he said.
“Oh I didn’t mean that in a bad way! I was just curious!”
“Don’t worry, my family is weird. For many reasons. Trust me.” said All for One.
She relaxed. “Ok.” She smiled. “In that case you can call me Inko.”
“Inko,” he said. He liked that name. “Doyouwanttodothisagain?”
Her cheeks became the color of roses. “I’d love to.”
They arranged another meeting time. All for One quickly pulled out his phone and entered her first name into his contacts so he wouldn’t forget. As they were walking out, Inko stopped.
“Hisashi?” she said, her voice taking on the quality of honey laced with deadly nightshade.
“Yes?”
“On second thought, I’m going to stay here. I need to say hi to a friend …” All for One followed her gaze to see the very loud blond woman, who was looking similar to All for One’s enemies when they noticed him aiming at them.
“I can stay here for moral support,” said All for One. He wanted to watch this.
“You don’t have to. I can handle this just fine.”
The blond woman and the bespectacled man she was sitting with both stood and hastily tried to exit. All for One hooked his arm around Inko’s and hurried her to the front door to cut them off. They reached the door just ahead of Inko’s prey.
“Hey Inko,” the blond one said with the fakest grin All for One had seen in months. “Fancy seeing you here…”
“Hey Mitsuki. Hisashi and I were just leaving when I saw you. He’s leaving but I think I’d like to stay and talk with you…”
“Goodbye Inko. Good luck,” said All for One.
“Goodbye Hisashi. Thank you for the coffee. It was wonderful.”
“You’re welcome,” said All for One as his cheeks began to heat up. He awkwardly waved as he walked out to find a convenient hiding place to eavesdrop.
You’re calling each other by first names now?!” Mitsuki said. Her tone was indignant, Inko knew her well enough to know that beneath all that she was terrified. Good. Inko told her not to do this.
Inko turned to Mitsuki with a small smile that was most definitely not hiding her inner fury. “Mitsuki, would you please explain why you were here at the exact same time as me and Hisashi?”
“Uhhhh…me and Masaru were on a date. It being at the same place yours was a coincidence.”
“Oh I see,” said Inko. “And is there a reason you were watching me while on your date?”
“We just noticed you!”
“So that’s why instead of waving, you immediately looked away and pretended to be looking at something else?”
“Uhhhh…”
“Masaru,” said Inko turning to him. “Is any of that true?”
Masaru squeaked as Inko glared at him. He desperately looked back and forth between Inko and Mitsuki. Something they all knew he wouldn’t need to do if the answer was yes. Inko turned back to Mitsuki.
“Mitsuki? Your alibi just collapsed.”
“Look I had to! You’re my best friend and I couldn’t not make sure he wasn’t just pretending to be nice to trick you!”
“For Pete’s sake, have any of the people I’ve gone to coffee with ever turned out to be secretly horrible?”
Mitsuki and Masaru both nodded.
“…Ok maybe one or two, but still! You had no right to spy on me!” Inko said, jabbing a finger at her friends. After a moment she added. “You didn’t see any red flags did you?”
Mitsuki sighed. “No.. In fact, he was more nervous than you. And the only drug he slipped into your drink was the unholy amount of sugar you asked for.”
Inko glared.
“But still! I don’t like him!” said Mitsuki. “And he smells weird too…”
“So in other words,” said Inko, “you spied on us for nothing. After I told you not to. And probably planned to injure him to make him go away-“
“Actually I was hoping that you’d scare him off before you drinking your coffee.”
“Mitsuki, I’m not thatbad before I’ve had my coffee,” said Inko with an annoyed huff.
Mitsuki gave her a deadpan stare. “Then why’d you have a cup of coffee before even coming here? Don’t try to deny it. We can tell.”
Inko felt her face flush. “Tha-that’s not the point! The point is that you had no right and-”
Outside, out of sight, All for One watched with the help of some wonderful surveillance quirks he’d stolen. While the blond woman had almost managed to throw Inko off, Inko quickly regained the advantage and was now berating her for her breach of trust while the woman cowered in terror.
All for One watched the show with a contented sigh.
This was a good day…