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It’s a normal day for Dabi and then everything goes to shit.
Average mission, hijacking a truck full of insured goods for the sake of Anyone’s coffers. Unfortunately for them, they weren’t the only ones coveting the prize tonight. Nasty guy crashes the truck before they get to talk it out.
A moment later, head spinning and dreading the motion sickness, Dabi watches helplessly as his boss shrinks before his eyes. Yami throws him one last horrified look through the mask of the hoodie before his clothes deflate and he disappears .
The attacker, nasty guy with a quirk Dabi doesn’t fully understand, gets turned into ash when he tries to escape.
Once he’s out of the totalled vehicle, stumbling and cursing his luck, Dabi begins to worry. For a terrifying moment, he thinks he’s going to have to call his other boss - the scary one - and deliver the news: his protegee has been reduced to dust.
He’s saved from a nervous breakdown, and almost gets a heart attack in the process, when a timid, scared voice breaks through the silence of the empty highway.
“Help!”
There’s a child stuck between the seats. Tiny thing with green hair and his boss’s clothes hanging loosely on his body. He fights to get the mask off as he begins to panic and that’s what makes Dabi react.
“Stay still,” he commands, grabbing the kid’s arms and pulling him out of the cabin.
He’s quick to get on his feet and pull off the mask, along with the hood of the hoodie. Even with the chubby face, the freckles and green eyes are a sharp reminder of who this is.
“Where are we?” He asks with wide eyes. “Are you a hero?”
Dabi’s mouth, which has sassed both street thugs and policemen alike, decides to dry.
There’s a fire inside his brain as he tries to figure out how to answer.
The pile of ash that was the asshole laughs at him.
He can’t mess up, because this child just so happens to have the most powerful quirk in existence - arguably -, which also breaks his bones every once in a while.
Unfortunately, smoke leaves his palms as he begins to panic. His boss, ever the observant guy, notices.
His face brightened.
“Is that your quirk?” He asks excitedly.
“...yes.” He shows just a bit of his blue flames at a safe distance. The kid is fascinated.
“That’s so cool!”
The boy tries to get closer, only to trip on his oversized boots.
Dabi’s heart jumped anxiously.
“Why am I wearing this?” He asks, confused.
“...I don’t know. Why did you dress like that?”
“I didn’t! I swear!” His cheeks became red. “My mom dresses me every morning…”
His face tightened and Dabi feared that he might burst into tears.
“Maybe we can ask your mother.”
“Yes! My mom… Where is she?”
“I don’t know.” He said tentatively. “But I have a friend with a phone, I’m sure he’ll let us call her.”
His eyes turned suspicious.
“My mom always says I’m not supposed to go anywhere with strangers.” He took a step back as if he had just realized that he shouldn’t be talking to strangers either.
Dabi resisted the impulse of groaning.
“I’m not a stranger. I’m Dabi.”
“I’m Izuku…”
The phone vibrated inside his pocket
“Oh… Maybe we can use that one…”
“Sure.” He rejects the call but sends his location to the warper. Almost immediately, purple mist begins to swirl near them.
Much like with Dabi’s quirk, the kid stares in awe, but something animalistic must kick in, because he takes one look at Dabi’s calculating gaze and decides to run in the opposite direction.
Dabi doesn’t get paid enough for this, he decides and in a blink he’s crossing the warp gate with a squirming child under his arm.
The sight of the bar is a welcome one, it allows him to relax. The old boss is mean as they come, but anyone with two eyes can see he’s fond of his reckless protegee. He should have a quirk to fix this in an instant and hopefully without any broken bones involved -be it his or Dabi's.
The scene is very familiar, Kurogiri is behind the counter and All For One is sitting on a stool, drinking.
“There you are,” Kurogiri put down the phone as he turned around. “I was beginning to wo-”
“Let go!” Izuku squeaks. Dabi obeys, gaze moving to the big guy, about to explain and ask for a way to resolve this. Except that his eyes don’t meet the usual confident look of a predator who knows themselves to be the strongest in the room: he sees a deer caught in the headlights.
He opens his mouth, ready to inquire but Izuku gets on his feet first. As the boy gasps, the villain drops his glass.
"You're back! I knew the others were lying and that you hadn't left us!"
The stool is knocked down as All For One rises from his seat. Kurogiri and Dabi watch dumbly as the man gets on his knees and embraces the boy.
The revelation kicks him in the shin. Somewhere, Shoto was cackling madly and screaming ‘I told you so!’. Dabi feels like asking for a shot, but his request would probably ruin the emotional moment and the mean boss probably wouldn’t appreciate that, so his lips stay shut.
Izuku’s tiny arms are nowhere near long enough to wrap around the man's huge back, but he still tries. The ancient villain is massive in comparison to the child.
"Dad? You're squeezing me too tight..."
He couldn’t see if his grip softened but the kid didn’t complain again. Instead, he started talking.
“Why didn’t you answer the phone? Mom was worried… We called you a lot.” He muffled on the crook of his neck. “The others kept saying you left because of me…”
Dabi is torn between feeling like an intruder and a spectator to a particularly engaging soap opera.
“I lost my phone in America.” He explained softly. “I’m so sorry about that, Izuku. Do you think you can forgive me?”
“Are you going away again?” He asks warily.
“No. I’m not going anywhere.”
Yami bursts into tears.
-
“What happened?” All For One asks Dabi once the kid has cried himself to sleep. Kurogiri offered a comfortable office chair for him, but the villain kept the boy in his arms, as he feared that someone might snatch him away.
“Nasty guy with a de-aging quirk, I assume, tried to hijack our hijacking.”
“Where is he now?”
“He’s a pile of ash back on the highway.” Dabi eyed the sleeping kid. “But the effects of most quirks aren’t permanent… So it should go away, right?”
The guy had sort of looked like crap. Maybe in his thirties, looking a day away from fifty. If the effects of his quirk were permanent, surely he would’ve been using it on himself.
“We can’t know for sure… It’s a shame I couldn’t get my hands on that one.”
“I thought he had shrunk Yami to death or something.” Dabi was quick to defend himself. “You don’t have a quirk that can fix this?” Even if he didn’t have a quirk that allowed him to age others, he probably had some canceling thing they could work with.
“No.” He said too fast. Dabi’s eyes narrowed. Kurogi briefly paused his polishing. “Maybe you’re right, it’ll go away with time…”
“And if it doesn’t?” They should probably ask on the forum for help.
“Well, I guess we’ll have to wait until he grows up again.”
He looked an awful lot like someone who was hoping that things didn’t get fixed.
Dabi didn’t like this, but he was smart enough to keep it to himself.
-
Shoto’s scream almost deafens him when he calls him later.
-
“That’s amazing!”
Life is funny, Dabi thinks as he watches his brother impressing young-Yami with snowflakes.
It’s day number three of de-aged boss and big boss doesn’t seem to be in a rush to fix the situation; in fact, he seems to be enjoying himself greatly. He had taken a silver lining approach to the whole thing.
They are all at the beach, because hanging out with an ancient villain, said villain’s de-aged son, a questionable babysitter and Dabi’s younger brother is a thing now.
“I wish I had a quirk as cool as yours,” the kid laments.
There’s also that about him. Despite how happy he looks by his father’s side, there’s something very sad in his eyes. Dabi finds it weird, especially when he compares this sad puppy to the sassy fuck-society-quasi-villain teen he’ll eventually become.
As he side-eyes the clingy villain, Dabi wonders if he had anything to do with that. He’d never dare to ask though.
“You’re perfectly fine the way you’re,” the father adds smoothly. The kid reddens and a tiny smile stretches over his lips.
“But still… You need a quirk to be a hero.”
Dabi managed to hide his surprise.
He wanted to be a hero? Mister I’m-gonna-steal-your-quirk?
At least now he knew where he got it from.
“You want to be a hero?” Shoto inquired, though Dabi was sure that he knew the answer, considering how close he was with the other boy.
“Yes! I want to be a hero like All Might!”
Kurogiri choked subtly on his piña colada. Dabi fought to maintain a neutral expression as All For One’s face soured like he had sucked on a lemon.
“Really?”
“He’s my favorite hero!” The kid gushed. “There’s no one as brave and good as he is!”
“I’m sure there must be someone…” All For One smiled through gritted teeth.
“Of course there isn’t!” He stared at his father as if he thought he was very dumb. “He’s the greatest hero of all time!”
How the tables have turned, Dabi marvells. If the kid ever grows up and regains his memories, they’re going to have a few interesting conversations.
Yami slurped some of his virgin piña colada as his old man glared at the ocean. He turned around.
“Do you want some Dad?”
The man’s expression turned impossibly soft.
“Thanks, Izuku, but I have my own.” He showed him his glass.
“Yours doesn’t have an umbrella,” he frowned as if this were an issue and promptly gave him his own. “There.”
He was pulled into the villain’s chest so suddenly that he dropped his drink.
“Izuku,” he sighed almost dreamily.
“Dad!” He complained. “I dropped it!”
“I’ll get you another,” he promised, face buried in his curly hair. “I’ll get you all the piña coladas you want.”
The siblings shared a look. Kurogiri finished his drink, sparkling eyes saying what his mouth wouldn’t dare to.
He should’ve brought something stronger.
-
“So, any luck?” Dabi asks Shoto later.
They are still at the beach, dipping their feet into the sea while All For One stares into the sunset from a distance, Yami knocked out in his arms.
“Not yet.”
They’ve contacted Anyone’s second - third? - in command and the spider lady was trying to locate someone with an aging quirk to help them return the kid to his actual age.
So far, their attempts to find someone like that had been unfruitful. But Dabi was beginning to think that even if they found someone who could fix the boy, they’d have trouble getting them anywhere near him.
The villain was all over him, at all times. It was a miracle that they were allowed anywhere near him.
“We’ll just have to wait.”
“I guess.” Shoto glanced at the father and son, snuggling on the sand. “Why would Midoriya hide this from me?”
Dabi couldn’t possibly guess.
“Maybe he didn’t know.”
“Midoriya isn’t stupid, how could he not recognize his own father?” He sighed. “I knew there was no way he could’ve accidentally set him free. It was all part of his plan to reunite with his father. Now all that’s left is Midoriya’s mom, I wonder if she’s a villain too-”
Dabi tuned him out, as one does with a brother like Shoto.
He wondered if Kurogiri would charge him for another piña colada.
-
One could argue that it was bound to happen.
It’s almost a week since the kid has been turned into a cuter version of himself when something explodes. This something being a figurine the boy was holding.
It doesn’t break his bones - thankfully - but it does pulverize the poor thing and gives everyone at the bar a good scare.
“Did you get hurt anywhere?” All For One is almost frantic, glaring at the remains of the toy like they had personally offended him.
Yami didn’t seem to notice his father’s tone.
“Dad,” he said with wonder. “I have a quirk.”
“Izuku-”
“I have a quirk!” He practically vibrated on the spot.
He did a little jump, which broke the wooden floor under his red sneakers and only seemed to excite him more.
“I have to go back to school!” There was an odd urgency to his tone, Dabi thought. One that he found familiar, somehow.
“Aren’t you enjoying our little vacation?”
“Yes, but I have to show Kacchan and the others that I’m not some useless Deku! I need to show Mom too, that I can be a hero!” He can see the kid’s shoulders trembling.
Old memories threaten to resurface, but Dabi keeps them away.
All For One goes very still.
“Not having a quirk doesn’t make you useless.” He said somehow sternly.
“I know-” There’s still something desperate in his voice.
“Izuku. You’re perfect , with or without a quirk.”
Dabi feels like that’s not the right thing to say, but it’s probably the message that counts.
“You’re just saying that because you’re my dad.”
“I never lie.” He lied.
Dabi refilled his glass.
“So stop thinking about Kacchan and let’s enjoy our time together, alright?”
The boy looked down, not entirely convinced. At least he had stopped shaking.
Later, on the rare occasion that All For One let go of him, he approached Dabi.
“My quirk is kind of like All Might’s, isn’t it?” He grinned cheekily. Dabi had to squint his eyes at the radiance. “Super strength!”
“Sure.”
“A very dangerous quirk for someone so young.” The villain couldn’t keep himself from joining the conversation. “Wouldn’t you like to have my quirk instead?”
“Sorry Dad, Fire-Breath is not as cool as this.” He says as if it were the most obvious thing in the world and Dabi swallows a snort.
“I bet I could find a cooler quirk.” All For One says teasingly, yet something about his tone sent chills down Dabi's spine.
“I bet you can’t,” Izuku stuck out his tongue good naturedly.
-
All fun things come to an end.
When exactly a week has passed since his boss got turned into a child, Dabi returns from a mission to find an indignant teen wearing clothes that would fit a big toddler and an ancient villain on the floor. A stool was knocked down nearby.
He greets Kurogiri with a hand gesture, regretting that he wasn’t present to witness the change.
“Why the fuck am I dressed like this?” He looks terrifying when angry, and a lot like his father, Dabi notices for the first time.
“I don’t know, ask your mom.”
All For One looks terribly disappointed. Dabi would go as far to say that he looks about to cry.
“You had no luck finding someone with an aging quirk?”
Dabi freezes on the spot.
“No.”
“Can somebody tell me what's going on?!”
“That's too bad.”