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“Have you finally gone blind, or did you not see the sign out in the front?” Izuku hisses at his newest visitor to his little café opened in the middle of Tokyo.
He stomps to the front door, making of a show of violently flinging it open and ripping the little sign that had been perfectly placed eye-level for the average customer to see—a little picture of a white-haired man with a smiley face and a big red anti-sign layered on top of it.
“In case you’re illiterate and need me to spell it out for you, this means,” he points to the illustration, “no immortal criminal psychopaths whose names happen to be ‘Midoriya Hisashi’ allowed in here. That’s the only rule, and you’ve just broken it. You’ve just broken it.”
“This place is filthy,” Hisashi casually comments, blatantly ignoring Izuku’s hysterical attitude. “Are you taking care of this establishment by yourself? I can lend a few workers, if need be.”
“No, dad,” Izuku says the word as if it physically burns him to pronounce the word on his tongue. He sits down, shoulders tense, resigned. “I’m fine all by myself. If you want to do a favor for me, then get out.”
“Can’t a father visit his son at least once every few millennia?”
“Maybe, if you didn’t have ulterior motives every time you did,” Izuku grumbles crankily, “Just the sight of you gives me a headache. I mean, we both know the reason why you’re here.”
“To see my son,” Hisashi feigns a warm tone, “because I missed him.”
“You’re here for business,” Izuku accuses, wagging a finger at him. “And you’re lucky there’s no customers right now or your ass would be on the other side of the country right now.”
“Well,” Hisashi says in the tone where Izuku knows the man is about go off, and that’s a bad sign entirely, “I do find your recent… occupations to be rather lackluster—”
“I’m not going back into the hero industry, period. Villain or hero, I want no fucking part in any of it. I don’t want to touch it with a ten-foot pole, if you or uncle try to drag me into your messes even the slightest, I’m moving to another country, just like mom did,” Izuku darkly rambles. “I’ll move to fucking Antartica if it makes the two of you leave me out of whatever squabble you two are having!”
That makes Hisashi do a double take, pausing with a neutral expression on his face to think. “…Have you not kept contact with Yoichi?”
“No? What happened? Oh my god, is he dead? Finally?” Izuku feigns shock, not because he truly wants Yoichi to be dead, but because he’s been part of an on-going family bet to see who would be the first to bite the dust. It was only really between two candidates, Hisashi and Yoichi, and his uncle was rather displeased to discover that his own nephew betrayed him, him, the side of “good” and bet a good deal of prized possessions that he would be the first among them to die.
“No, he’s given up,” Hisashi doesn’t hide the disappointment in his voice. “For good, this time, apparently.”
“Wait? You mean he quit? This is same Yoichi we’re talking about here, the one that led an entire army of heroes and endured fifty-five days of battle just to prevent your world-domination plans from succeeding, the same Yoichi who was willing to—”
“—walk across five mountains barefoot with nothing but the clothes on his back to convince a hermit hero to come back with his nonsense speeches of justice and heroism—you do not need to recite the entire history, we all know the lengths brother would go for his fake ideals,” Hisashi says. “He sent me a postcard from New Zealand as a letter of resignation.”
“Well, good for him, honestly,” Izuku scoffs, “I can’t believe he did the same thing over and over again for two-hundred years. I got bored after a decade, but good for him that his moral high horse kept him going for so long.”
“Do you ever grow tired of being so…” Hisashi trails off, expression turning grimmer. For once, the man is speechless, unable to form the exact words he wants to say his ever-growing cynical son, the comments he wants to make about all the pointless banter and snappish personality his son’s adopted, but what could he possibly say?
“Alive?” Izuku sarcastically supplements, a look for spite thrown at his father’s way. “Sometimes. Are you done now? Can I go back to living my daily life, or do you want to continue convincing me to ‘join the family business’?”
They stand in silence, Hisashi not moving to leave, but Izuku not making a move to kick him out like before.
This family was doomed from the start, Izuku thinks bittersweetly, and of course, it wasn’t going to last two hundred years. Physically, maybe, but time only wears people down, even their bodies aren’t physically worn down. It takes a mental toll, and they’re not insane, well, at least Izuku and his mom haven’t grown insane (the same can’t be said about his father and uncle), but it’s tiring nonetheless.
It’s even more tiring when year after year, his father always comes, without fail, to visit him and convince him to “join him”. At first, Izuku was purely convinced that Hisashi was trying to use him and his brain and knowledge to his own advantage, that perhaps, the man truly wanted to take over the world for his own benefits.
Over decades, Izuku slowly began to realize that his father was just, maybe, lonely. His father could easily take over the world, even with Yoichi’s opposition, but he might’ve been waiting for either him or his mother to join him to take over the world together. Time has only made all of them drift away past surface-level contact with each other, and maybe it’s because they know each other too well now, and it’s sad.
“I don’t hate you, you know,” Izuku says, “but I can’t say or do anything to make you feel any better about yourself.”
“I’m sorry I’m not like you,” Izuku adds, “I’m sorry that I’m a dull, boring person in your eyes. I’m sorry that all I want is to be left alone, live a lazy life by myself and choose to not want to torture people or kill them or maim them or whatever it is your psychopathic tendencies lead you to do. And I’m so sorry,” he emphasizes sarcastically, “that I don’t want to help you steal quirks or help you take over the world. You should leave, now.”
(The thing Hisashi will never admit is that the only part about Izuku’s speech that hurts the most is the myself part and only the myself part.)
Izuku’s stayed sixteen for the past two-hundred years, and there’s not any antidote that could fix that. His father is the reason he, his mother, and uncle have all stayed the same since that incident where Hisashi declared that they are worth keeping alive for all eternity, and nobody quite realized how literal the man was being until they noticed the lack of changes in their body.
What happened after was a civil war inside the family, with Izuku, Yoichi, and Inko on one side of the coin and Hisashi on the other.
Nothing came out of it.
That’s when his mother stopped fighting overall, and went off, far away from Japan, to find something. Izuku’s not sure what she was looking for, but she seemed to be doing well for what photos she’s sent him, and good for her seems to be a recurring phrase that he keeps conjuring up in association with his mother. Sometimes, they’ll talk over the phone, but those occasions are far few in between.
Gradually, he lost interest too, and quit himself, but he wanted to stay in Japan. He just had to stay away from whatever family feud was happening as best as he could. Sometimes, it worked. Sometimes, it did not.
Izuku would often be the “middle child” dragged across the line from both sides, pulled apart by his uncle and father. Eventually, he got sick of it all, and tried to disown both of them.
“My uncle just quit being a hero,” he tells a café patron who notices his glumness and had curiously asked what was on his mind. Izuku shakes his head, trying to get his thoughts together. “It’s… strange because he lived for that kind of stuff. He made it his personality, which got annoying quickly, but now he’s… stopped. I don’t know what he’s going to do now.”
Both Yoichi and his father. What are they going to do? How are they going to fill in all this newly found time?
“I don’t know why he quit,” Izuku answers when the patron asked a question back. “I think he got tired after all these—” Decades. Centuries. “—years. He never gave a sign he would ever get tired of it, though. I guess I should talk to him, it’s been a couple of—” Years. Which, in their dictionaries, is not much time gone by. “—months.”
“Then again, I don’t think he wants to talk to me…” Izuku adds, uncertain. Yoichi knows where he is, and if his uncle wanted to talk to him, he would’ve done it. Instead, the man fled the country with no letters, no messages, no clues, nothing. Just a postcard from New Zealand to Hisashi.
“I didn’t know the man that well,” the manager of the hero agency that overlooked Yoichi explains. “He just gave a call one day, said ‘I quit’, then disappeared to who-even-knows-where. A bit cowardly, if you asked me. He was always weird.”
Nobody asked¸ Izuku thinks. “Do you know someone who does know him? Maybe someone who worked closely with him?”
“That guy was a loner type. Didn’t mind working with others, but hated having to rely on other people,” the man explains, which sounds very in-line for Yoichi, “he was close to his father. Looks and acts exactly like him! Couldn’t believe it when I compared the photos of ‘em, they could be the same person.”
That’s because they are the same person. Izuku can’t believe Yoichi gets away with being the same hero in multiple eras just under the excuse of, no, I’m actually his son, rather than a real explanation. Nobody even questions it past tabloid reporters, which is crazy. Society is fucking dumb as shit.
“Alright, thank you,” Izuku says politely. For being absolutely useless, piece of garbage corporation.
“…Was upset,” Gigantomachia rumbles, looking more focused than Izuku’s ever seen the giant. Gigantomachia was one of those underlings that never outright hated Yoichi, in fact, he had a bias for the white-haired brother. Izuku likes to think of Gigantomachia as that dog who was ultimately loyal to Hisashi but would never turn against any of the Midoriya Family members. Izuku figures that maybe Gigantomachia might’ve observed Yoichi and had more of a clue than Izuku does, or even the other heroes might have.
“How upset?” Izuku asks, “like, on the verge of having a mental breakdown constantly upset? Or just mildly upset?”
“Hate Master,” Gigantomachia grunts without hesitation, “Angry at him. Yells a lot.”
Izuku rubs his chin.
“Smells hurt. Not blood,” Gigantomachia adds.
God, this family is such a fucking mess. Yes, there’s only his father to blame for that, but that blame doesn’t do anything to fix it.
“This sucks,” Izuku groans, “Do you think Yoichi’s ever going to come back? Or is he just… going to wallow in his depression and spite for the rest of eternity?”
Gigantomachia gives him a look, pointing his large finger at Izuku’s chest, the hard and rocky appendage almost crushing his lithe body, unhelpfully replying, “You.”
“Okay, okay, this is not about me, this is about Yoichi. Yoichi, you big dumb boulder,” Izuku says, “Not me. Not Izuku.”
“Young Master is big dumb boulder,” Gigantomachia says.
“I’m leaving!” Izuku announces, “Put me down! On the ground! Right now!”
The incident where Hisashi-totally-made-them-all-immortal-without-their-consent had happened under dire circumstances. Yoichi was about to die and had passed on a quirk without Izuku’s father’s knowledge and kept it a secret from him—all of them—for the longest time. Yoichi doesn’t like to talk about it, but supposedly, there was a secret romance rendezvous involved.
Izuku had come to gain knowledge of One for All himself, but somewhere down the line, after swearing off anything to do with heroes, he’d forgotten it existed. Power-stacking and passing down quirks, something like that are the basics. Somehow, he didn’t connect that All Might would be the next One for All holder until he hears about Yoichi’s involvement with the man, and that’s when it hits him.
“You’re the next holder! What are we on, now? Ten? Eleven?” Izuku exclaims when he sees the man and the realization hits him like a truck.
He yells in protest when a hand grabs his arm, belonging to a security guard who curses, “damn slippery kid,” and profusely apologizing to the current number one pro-hero. “We’ll get him out of your way immediately,” the guard says to which Izuku says, “Can you not?”
“Wait,” All Might says, hand stopping the security guard from leaving. He doesn’t believe his own ears. “Young man, what was it that you said?”
“I’m trying to do the math mentally in my head right now… was I always this bad at mental addition? Wait, I can just multiply the average lifespan—but that doesn’t account for how unstable the quirk might’ve gotten over the generations—still, I think my final guess is you’re the Eleventh. Am I wrong or right?”
“Wrong,” All Might mutters disdainfully, much to Izuku’s disappointment. He used to be so good at these types of calculations. “You can let him go,” he directs at the security guard, “I need to have a chat with this young man in private.”
They go into another room and Izuku feels out-of-touch seeing the new fancy corridors meant for heroes—it was not—actually a very long time ago when heroes were treated worse than the gum stuck on the bottom of people’s shoes. It was only Yoichi’s and his friend’s efforts that improved things to officialize heroes. Now, it’s practically the air these people breathe. They’ll never know how horrible conditions were for people seeking to use their powers for justice back then.
“I heard you worked with Yoichi before,” Izuku says.
All Might shows no reaction. “Who?”
“Uh… crap, I don’t know his hero name, uh…” Izuku takes a moment to think, “Long, white hair and kinda rambles about justice randomly and out of nowhere—oh, the one monitoring your progress as whatever-number-One-for-All user. You probably know him as that guy.”
“Sempiternal,” All Might recognizes. “Yes, I’ve worked with him before, on a few occasions here and there. What do you need to know?”
“I heard he quit,” Izuku begins, testing out the reaction of All Might. None again. “I was wondering if he was… showing any weird signs before he quit. Did he seem depressed at all or did he do that whole goes-into-spontaneous-speech-about-justice less times than usual…?”
“That habit was… inconvenient,” All Might comments. “Last time I saw him, he acted the same as before. No changes. I’m not sure why he left the industry, but many retire out of—”
“Yeah, no need to tell me, Yoichi isn’t like the other heroes, and he wouldn’t retire because of ‘normal reasons’.” Izuku speculates. “Something must’ve happened to trigger a late-life crisis, I’m just trying to figure out what.”
“I’m afraid I don’t have the answers you’re looking for,” All Might says.
“Okay, how about the last time him and his brother interacted?” Izuku tries, “When was that?”
All Might stares at him blankly in response.
“You know… dark overlord, trying to ‘take over the world’, does long speeches about the fake idealism of hero-hood, erm… he probably still has that horrible habit of taking quirks without asking people first, speaks all elegantly like a suave supervillain from a corny millennial flick? Is any of this familiar?”
This time, All Might’s body freezes altogether. The gears in his head start spinning, and working their magic…
“All for One is his brother?” All Might asks.
“Did—did you not know?” Izuku says with shock. Holy. Fuck. He hopes Yoichi doesn’t come back to Japan within the next twenty years or so, because his uncle is going to kick his ass once he founds out Izuku’s outed him. Izuku didn’t realize it was so much of a secret in the first place! So, what if they’re brothers? That’s fine, right?! Why is he keeping it a secret from his own allies?
“Oh no,” Izuku says, “Just—okay, clearly you know nothing—just pretend everything I said in the past ten minutes is fake information—none of it is real—and you know, it’s getting pretty late, maybe I should be getting back home soon—”
All Might stops him with a stern hand on his shoulder, saying tersely, “Tell. Me. Everything.”
Izuku thinks, fuck, this is why he doesn’t get involved with heroes anymore, and now he’s dug his own hole because he’s worried for a deadbeat uncle who he hasn’t even talked to in years, and it’s all going downhill, and he really just wants to go home and water his succulents right now.
“—and then dad visited me recently not only to ask me to ‘join the dark side’ but to also tell me that Uncle’s decided that he doesn’t want to do hero work anymore. Which, if you know him well, is very out of character and I’m just trying to get a good picture of what happened,” Izuku says. “I first went to the hero agency sponsoring him, then to Gigantomachia, and then you. Does that give you everything you need?”
All Might looks at him in horror. The whole story seemed like a nightmare that was never-ending, literally, and how is he even supposed to respond to this horror story in disguise? A man turning his entire family immortal… it’s crazy enough for someone like All for One to try.
“I always thought Sempiternal was a little unhinged, but this is just beyond my mental capacity to comprehend,” All Might says.
Izuku shrugs. “You get used to it. I’ve been over it for centuries. The transition was hard, though, and both father and uncle were never good at life, period. They’ll sink all their time into their obsessions, and then look around two-hundred years later realizing they wasted so many decades to re-enacting comic book storylines they’ve known from when they were kids. It’s the reason why I never caved into coming back to the pro-hero industry nor the underworld.”
“After a certain while, it stops mattering to you,” Izuku says. “But All for One and Sempiternal? They always kept going, it never stopped mattering to them. I don’t know what Yoichi is without Sempiternal, and that’s why… I’m at least slightly worried, as one would be in my shoes.”
“I’m sorry, young man,” All Might says despite knowing Izuku is at least two centuries old now, “but I only know him as well as his colleagues do.”
“Mysterious bastard,” Izuku whispers with a bit of dry humor. “I see. I guess I’ll have to chase him to New Zealand myself if I ever want answers.”
“Your father is a piece of work,” All Might coldly notes, shaking his head, “I have greater respect for Sempiternal after learning the perseverance he must’ve had to keep citizens safe.”
Unlike you, bystander. Izuku reads between the lines perfectly. “Like I said, you get to a certain point in life, and you stop caring. I have my own problems to deal with, and things aren’t as simple as you’d like them to be when it comes to the Midoriya family. We’re cursed, I tell you,” in both ways, “and we’ll just have to see where to go from here.”
“I’d really prefer if you didn’t kill All for One soon, though. I have a bet to win,” Izuku jokes before leaving.
The Midoriya Family, in all of its immortal glory, is a snapshot of a broken family with its relatives distant, bitter, and cynical. The differences of its members slowly peeled away over the course of time, there are unsaid ties between them, because of their history, and because of those ties, there is also poison flowing in the river, and once poison gets in, it’s hard to get out.
(In Hisashi’s ideal world, there’ll be a day when the Midoriya Family reunites once again. Together.)