Work Text:
Shiro Tamaki was sitting at his new desk in the Saitama police department, getting familiar with a few of the common forms and reports he was likely to encounter and use in the future. The sounds of keys clacking and papers rustling around him filled him with a sense of joy. After the long and arduous hiring process, background checks and interviews, Tamaki was finally in a place he could make a difference with his quirk.
A quirk which he’s been called a monster, a future villain and so many other names over. Finally getting a unique job within the police was like a giant ‘fuck you’ to all those who doubted him.
The sound of approaching footsteps snapped his mind back to reality.
“Hey newbie, your needed over in processing room four” said an older man, one of the senior officers assigned to watch over him during his probationary period. The man still seemed wary of Tamaki, as did nearly everyone else in the department, but Tamaki paid it no mind. He’ll prove to them all that they have nothing to worry about him, after all actions speak far louder than words.
“Sure thing, sir. I’ll head right over.” said Tamaki, standing and grabbing his phone, then heading off to where he remembered processing room four was from orientation.
As Tamaki walked, he pulled up his phone to review the procedure for quirk processing one more time, and promptly ignored all the people that moved out of his way. With his short, pure white hair bounced with each step as his sapphire eyes flicked between his phone and the area ahead. He also made sure his primary quirk slot was free.
Arriving at his destination rather quickly, he slipped his phone back into his pocket, and glanced at the file attached to the door.
‘hrm, Teshima Sadao ... age: 26 ... quirk: ignition ... accused of arson, larceny, illegal quirk usage’
Nodding his head, Tamaki opened the door and saw a slim, ragged man covered in tattoos with quirk suppressing cuffs attached to an large metal table. Tamaki noted that the mans fingertips had a more reddish hue than the rest of his body. A large one-sided window sat in the otherwise empty beige room.
“Hello Teshima Sadao, my name is Shiro Tamaki and I’ll be the one processing your quirk today.” said Tamaki, pulling into a seat opposite the cuffed man.
“What the hell do you mean by that, twiggy?” Said Sadao, squinting his eyes slightly as he considered this skinny dude opposite him.
“A new initiative has been started, whereby and individual with a severe enough sentence shall have their quirk removed from their body. If, by chance, you are later found to be innocent of your crimes then your quirk shall be returned to you post-haste. Completion of your sentence will also result in the return of your quirk. Any questions before we begin?” said Tamaki, having practiced this speech many times to himself in the mirror at home.
Sadao’s face became pale as Tamaki talked, and by the end was trying to wrench his hands free of the cuffs to get away from Tamaki.
“What the fuck, man! You can’t take my quirk!” Sadao said, both angry and fearful.
“According to your file, you wanted a lighter sentence. So its either this, and you get house-arrest and community service, or you keep your quirk and go to a high security prison. Which will it be?” Tamaki said, doing his best to keep his nerves in control.
At this, Sadao stopped struggling and hung his head. Contemplating for a moment, his thoughts drifted to family and his desire to be with them overcame his fears.
“Alright. ~sigh~ Will it hurt?” said Sadao, after a moment of silence.
“Nope. All you will feel is slightly dizzy before momentarily blacking out. Are you ready?” said Tamaki, leaning forward slightly.
Sadao nodded, and Tamaki reached over and put his hand on top of Sadao’s. Tamaki activated his quirk and Sadao slumped forward, eye’s glazing over.
Tamaki closed his eyes, and sank into his mental quirk-space. Tamaki appeared in a large warehouse looking structure filled with shelves. A few of the closer shelves had some box-like containers evenly placed on them, each with a different colour shining forth form the center, while the rest were empty. In front of him, at the center of the mental-warehouse, was a pedestal and just beside it was the outline of a human figure.
Reaching out his senses into the figure, Tamaki found the quirk source, which looked like a ball of reddish light to his mental sight, inside the head with red lines connecting the source to all the parts of the body. Large lines connected the quirk source to the finger tips, and Tamaki started with those. Line-by-line, Tamaki pruned each link and felt them receed into the quirk source.
After all the lines were pruned, Tamaki reached out and grabbed the quirk source, then pulled it over to the pedestal. Once the quirk source was on top of the pedestal, a container formed around it. It was similar the others, in the general shape of a cube, but each face look to have many square sections cut out of it. Each cut was incrementally smaller as one approached the centre, creating a kind or stair-case like look towards the centre of each side. At the very centre of each face was hole where the red quirk source could shine through.
[Looks kinda like this, just without the symbols on the outer edge. Sourced from the Stargate wiki.]
Nodding to himself, Tamaki left his mental quirk-space and opened his eyes again. Seeing that only ten or so minutes had past made him feel great. To think that process once took hours to do, he’d improved his speed by leaps and bounds.
With his free hand, Tamaki wipes a few beads of sweat off his forehead, and noticed that with ignition in the primary quick slot, his fingertips gained the reddish tint. Looking at them briefly, his quirk started filling him with the basic information on how to use it.
<Name: Ignition – Type: Emitter/Mutation – Function: [Emitter] Contact-based thermal generation and transfer. [Mutation] Fireproofing on fingertips, high fire resistance otherwise>
Humming to himself, Tamaki mentally shifting the quirk container from the pedestal onto one of the shelves, the tint leaving his fingers a few seconds later.
Nodding in approval, Tamaki removed his other hand from Sadao, the man startling awake after a moment.
Blinking a few times, Sadao squinted at Tamaki, before shifting his vision to his hands.
“So its done then, huh?” asked Sadao, feeling a chill in his fingers for the first time in many years.
“It is. As I said before, your quirk will be returned to you either after you sentence is complete, or if you are proven to be innocent. An officer will come by shortly to brief you on the terms of your house arrest, and subsequent community service. Any last questions for me?” Stated Tamaki, clasping his hands in front of himself.
Sadao just continued staring at his hands, even through the quirk suppressors he felt the heat they once produced. Now his fingers just felt cold and numb. He eventually shook his head, once he registered the question.
At this, Tamaki stood from his chair, and turned towards the door.
“Well then, have a great rest of ... erm ... well, I’ll see you again at some point.” Tamaki stammered, looking back briefly, nodding his head uncertainly before heading out the door.
Returning to his desk, Tamaki woke his terminal and began filling out the required forms for quirk processing. At the moment, the only method he had for submitting the form was to email it to one or all of his senior officers, as well as the records and evidence department heads.
After checking he filled the form out correctly three times, he sent it off and look over at the clock. He realized that his first shift actually ended a few minutes ago, and he felt pleased at a successful first official day on the job.
Putting the terminal to sleep, Tamaki got up grabbed the coat hanging off the back of his chair. He walked towards the main lobby of the department while slipping the coat on. Briefly nodding to the receptionist at the main desk, who nodded in return, and promptly ignoring the wary junior detective in with a tan hat and overcoat who was arriving, he left the building to go get some grub.
Feeling like celebrating a bit, Tamaki decided to stray from his usual route and headed in the direction of one of his favourite western style restaurants. The quickest path was through some alleyways he’d been in many times before, and on the way he thought of what to get. With the thoughts of extra tasty bread sticks on the brain, he was completely unaware when someone latched onto his arm, and pulled him towards a shadowed wall.
Once his mind caught back up with reality, he realized he wasn’t being pulled to the wall but into it. The shadows seemed to ripple and form around his body as he entered the wall.
Before he could even attempt a token resistance, he found himself in a dimly lit room, with light being cast from only one side. In front of the light sat a monster of desk, too dark to see what it was made of, but it blended into the darkness well.
Remembering that he was likely being kidnapped, again, he looked over to his assailant. The man was tall, had white hair like himself but had menacing ruby red eyes. He was also clothed in a very expensive looking suit that fit him perfectly. The man was smiling at Tamaki, as one would to a new favourite toy.
The man release Tamaki’s arm, before walking towards the desk with a pleased hum. The man turned and faced Tamaki in front of the desk, the light behind casting his shadow over the entire room.
“I’ve been waiting for this day for quite some time. Your a hard man to track down, Shiro Tamaki, and an even harder man to get alone.” said the man
Tamaki didn’t like where this was heading, so while trying to keep his nerves under control, he casually clasped his hands behind his back. At the same time, he mentally brought the ignition quirk to his primary quirk slot.
‘I hope I don’t get fired for breaking protocol like this’ Tamaki thought to himself, briefly remembering all the rules and protocols he had to agree to about the quirks he stored.
“Uh, ok. Um ... who are you and why do you want to meet me? And how do you .. ah .. know my name?” Tamaki said, trying and failing to keep his cool.
“Ah, I got ahead of myself there. You can call me All For One, and I know a great many things about you. After all, its not often I come across another individual with the ability to give and take quirks.” the man said, slightly creeping Tamaki out.
That was all momentarily forgotten as Tamaki understood what the man meant.
“Oh, you have a quirk like mine?” Tamaki asked, a little excitement seeping into his voice. He’d never met someone with a quirk like his!
But then his excitement died down, cause who the fuck gives themselves a name as pretentious as ‘All For One’.
All For One’s grin widened as he said, “Indeed. I too was born with the ability to give and take the innate powers of humanity. The control over quirks and judge to who is worthy of power. And I want you to help me, and we shall become the kings of this world. Speak your price, Shiro Tamaki, and it will be given unto you.”
All For one spread out his hands as he talked, and with a wide smile and open arms, he waited for Tamaki’s choice.
Tamaki fell into a thoughtful moment. Sure, being a ‘king’ in this world meant he could get back at all those who doubted and pushed him down as a child. Also, working with this man could be nice, as he’s had to learn everything about his own quirk the long and hard, and who knows how much there’s still left to figure out.
But, he’d just be proving them all right, wouldn’t he? The effort and dedication in trying to find a path for himself in live would all be for naught. And something about this guy gave Tamaki the chills.
Plus, being a ruler of the world sounds like it came with A LOT of unnecessary hassles.
Deciding then, Tamaki refocused on the man in front of him.
“It sounds nice, but I kinda like the job I have right now. So sorry, not interested.” Tamaki said
All For Ones grin gained a malicious twinge as he said, “That’s unfortunate. But your compliance isn’t necessary.”
The moment All For One finished talking, Tamaki felt his legs give out beneath him as he fell to his knees. His body felt sluggish, barely able to lift his head and see All For One stalk towards him.
“I’ll find a much more willing vessel for a quirk such as yours. Now witness as all you hold dear is stripped from you.” All For One said with a vicious smile, stopping just before Tamaki and extending his hand towards Tamaki’s head.
The moment All For Ones hand touched Tamaki’s head, a red glow appeared around it as Tamaki felt a strange sucking motion inside himself. It wasn’t strong by any means, about as uncomfortable as some excess gas.
The smile on All For Ones face faded, as confusion started to take over. With this confusion, the sluggishness affecting Tamaki faded.
Using this moment of reprieve, Tamaki shot out his hand and grabbed All For Ones leg, activating ignition and burning fingertip sized holes through the pants. Now contacting All For One with his hand, Tamaki activated his quirk, just as ignition disappeared.
Surprise momentarily flickered over All For Ones face, before he slumped over and fell forward. Tamaki had to catch the suddenly falling man while trying to keep contact with his fingers. After managing to awkwardly shrug the man to the ground, while keeping his fingers touching his leg, Tamaki plopped onto his butt.
“You know, your a real hassle. Now I gotta get that ignition quirk back.” Tamaki said to the unconscious All For One.
Taking a bit to find a comfortable spot on the floor, which had some rather nice and fluffy carpeting, Tamaki closed his eyes and found himself once again in his mental quirk-space. The ignition container was, predictably, nowhere in sight, so with a sign Tamaki extended his senses into the culprit.
He had to mentally squint, not that it did anything given this was a mental space and eyes didn’t technically exist here. The outline was filled with so many quirk sources shining the myriad of colours of the rainbow that he couldn’t differentiate where one ended and the next began.
‘How the fuck am I going to find ignition in this mess?’
While pondering his options, Tamaki noticed that he was becoming accustom to the brightness and started seeing some additional details concerning the amalgamation before him.
There were very few pure white lines connecting source to the actual body. The small quirk sources seemed to be just attached to one another, seemingly woven and tangled with a sparse number of lines.
Tamaki reached out and grabbed the first line he saw. Instead of immediately pruning it, he tried tracing it to the source. After shifting the small quirk sources out of the way, he found one end lead to the palm of the left hand. Tracing the other end was a bit more troublesome, as the size of each quirk source seemed to shrink and the density of the sources increased dramatically, causing him to search almost exclusively by mental-touch.
Eventually, he managed to trace the other origin of the line to an larger quirk source that pulsed between white and black near the center of the head. Searching a bit more discovered a rather alarming fact, this origin quirk source only had a few dozen lines connecting it to the body.
All quirk users he’d seen before had hundreds, at a minimum.
Seeing no other option for the moment, and not willing to chance the man pulling something when he awoke, Tamaki decided to just remove the entire conglomerate from the man. Quickly pruning the few dozen white lines present, all Tamaki needed to do was slightly tug on the origin quirk source before the whole mass exploded out of the man’s outline.
As the quirk sources rushed out of the outline, each grew in size until they returned to the size he was used to. By the time all of the sources left the man, all Tamaki could do is gasp in awe as he looked above.
If he didn’t know any better, he’d say a simulacrum of a galaxy floated about a foot above his head. It was massive, spanning almost beyond sight in every direction and shining rainbow coloured light all over his mental quirk-space, with the origin quirk source centred directly in the middle, right above him. It was large, nearly ten times the size of all the other sources, and pulsed rhythmically between black and white.
‘Fuck me, this isn’t going to fit in a container.’
Experimentally, Tamaki reached up and grabbed a dark purple quirk source near the centre. With a tug, and a pop, the quirk source came down with his hand. After a moment, a container started forming around the dark purple, and information about it started flowing into his mind as his quirk analyzed it.
<Name: Shadow Step - Type: Emitter – Function: (Emitter) User can use shadows to create portals, requires significant darkness for connection. Requires continuous focus to maintain the connection. Locations are restricted to previously travelled areas>
‘Huh, so that’s how I got here. Neat.’
This little test proved to Tamaki that he could use the quirk sources, he just needed to process them first. Taking a final look around, he resigned himself to the long and mind-numbing journey to process all of the quirk sources. Unless he got lucky, who knows where the ignition quirk source was.
He exited the quirk space, and immediately noticed the feeling of being bloated.
‘So much for the bread sticks’ He idly thought, trying to shake out a bit of the stiffness in his back and neck.
Tamaki looked down and remember the man who he was still touching. He pondered what he should do. Technically the man did kidnap him, so he committed a crime and needs to be taken back to the police department. But remembering that brief moment where the man fell on Tamaki, he was quite heavy.
Knowing what had to be done, he got a better grip on the mans leg, stood and grabbed the closer arm. Testing a bit, he found he could awkwardly drag the man slowly, while at least keeping his head off the ground.
Nodding to himself, he focused on Shadow Step and tried imagining connecting the shadowy wall just behind to a shadowy alcove he remembered beside the police department. He felt a click in his mind, and his bones started to thrum. Glancing behind, he saw the shadows on the wall were rippling slightly, as though it was the surface of a relatively calm sideways puddle.
With a heave and a ho, he slowly dragged the unconscious man into the shadows, and appearing directly in the alcove he remembered. As soon as the man was through, he dis-engaged Shadow Step and tried to shake the numbness out of his legs, before giving up and dragging the man towards the main entrance.
Thankfully no one was in the immediate area, so no new unfounded rumours would start as he dragged the man up the front steps.
Pushing the main entrance doors open with his back, and thoroughly exhausted and breathing heavily by this point, Tamaki barely pulled the man into the main lobby. He turned his head and glanced at the receptionist, who was starring at him bug-eyed.
He gestured his head for her to come over while he caught his breath. She quickly stood up and rushed over, catching the attention of a few of the nearby officers and detectives.
“Oh my god! What happened? Why are you dragging a man?” She loudly asked, clearly confused and worried why her co-worker had apparently knocked someone out and dragged them here.
“Need Help .... got kidnapped ... need him processed” Tamaki managed to wheeze out, still trying to catch his breath.
“YOU GOT KIDNAPPED?” She shouted, stunned.
At her shout, all of the alerted officers and detectives came running over. Many of them were already in a combat stance, ready for anything. One junior detective in particular stood out, hit tan hat and overcoat gone, as he walked right up to the now leaning Tamaki.
With stern eyes and complete professionalism, the man asked, “Did I hear that right, you were kidnapped?”
“Yea, this guy got me just as I was ... ah, going for dinner. Could someone cuff and process this guy? I’m the only thing keeping him unconscious. Had to kinda take this guys quirk to escape.” Tamaki said while nodding, having stabilized his breathing.
The looked at him for a moment, then his eyes softened slightly before nodding and turning to the assembly of officers behind him.
“He’s telling the truth. I’ll go grab some restraints” The man said, standing up and rushing off.
One of the senior officers on the late shift stepped forward, saying “I think you can let go of the guy now, newbie. I’m sure we can handle a quirkless guy from here. We’ll need a debrief asap, so head on over to one of the interrogation rooms when you’re ready. You manage to get a name from this guy at least?”
Tamaki nodded, releasing the guy as two other officers stepped forward and lifted him up. Moments later, his eyes snapped open, and started rapidly taking in his environment.
“Yea, called his self All For Fun, or something like that. It was kinda a pretentious name” Tamaki said, taking a moment to stretch his neck and arms out.
At this, the junior detective came rushing back with the restraints, and nearly tripped hearing the name. A handful of the senior officers also startled at the name, glancing wearily at the taller white-haired man. One or two of the junior officers snickered at the name.
“Do you mean All For One?” The junior detective quickly asked, surprised and shocked in equal measure.
Tamaki snapped his fingers at the junior detective, and pointed at him saying, “Yea, that’s it”.
At this, All For One’s eyes snapped to Tamaki, with furry and surprise in his voice he asked, “What did you do to me? How were you able to take my quirk?”
“That’s rich coming from you, who was in the process of taking my quirk. So I retaliated in self defence and took yours. Thankfully my quirk knocks people unconscious when I use it on them.”
All For One squints at Tamaki, before saying in disbelief, “Knocks people out? There was nothing about that in your quirk registry?”
“Really? I’m pretty sure they knew about that fact. Must have been a mistake.” Said Tamaki, now fully done with this conversation, and started making his way to one of the free interrogation rooms.
“Get back here! I will not be brought low like this! Unhand me peasants! ...” Tamaki heard All For One making a fuss behind him, but was too tired to care.
He slowly walked towards the interrogation rooms, and found the third room unused and walked in. Keeping the door open, he walked in and promptly fell into one of the chairs.
Feeling tired and slightly bloated from all the quirks he’d yet to process, he leaned over and rested his head on the cool metal of the table. Closing his eyes, he sank back into his mental quirk-space where the galaxy of quirks still floated majestically above him.
Getting down to business, he managed to process a few dozen before he was gently shaken out of focus. Blinking his eyes a few times, he saw a glass of water right in front of his face. Glancing further up from that he startled and immediately sat upright, as the chief of police sat across from him.
“Relax, Shiro. I’m not here to reprimand you. I just want to get an verbal account of what occurred this evening.” The large man said with his characteristic deep voice, stern but not unkind.
Tamaki noticed the recorder on the table and nodded, and started at the beginning when he left work to get some celebratory break sticks for a successful first day. Then to getting dragged into a shadowy wall, offered a job, subsequent attempted quirk theft and journey back to the department.
“... and thats how I ended up in the lobby. I’m really fortunate that no one checkup on us during the transfer, as it could’ve been easily disturbed.” Tamaki stated, sipping his glass to remove some of the dryness from talking.
“I see. Do you know how many quirks the man had?” the chief asked.
“I can’t really tell you, sir. There could thousands or tens of thousands. I need to process them all to know for sure, and that could take weeks or even months.” Tamaki said, the image of the pseudo-galaxy coming to the forefront of his mind.
The chief nodded, before saying, “So then that will be you main task for as long as it takes. I want a categorical record of every quirk that man had. Your other duties are secondary until this is finished. Go home and get some rest, Shiro. It sounds like you’ve got quite a busy couple of weeks ahead of you.” the chief finished with a smirk, before standing, grabbing the recorder and leaving the room.
“Will do, sir” Tamaki spoke weakly to the empty seat.
He left the police department shortly after, except this time heading straight home.
He had a looong couple of weeks ahead of him. At least he got to analyze near-countless new quirks.