Archive of Our Own

He was there once again. The little blip that was marked in Yoichi’s search was a cluster of information that he, according to his log, had found at least eighty-two times before. The algorithm that made up a piece of himself was as close to perfection as it possibly could be, but not enough, never enough if the fact that Midoriya Izuku kept showing up in his results as a prioritised submission meant anything. 

The clump of data came from Izuku’s phone this time, the GPS showing him on the train towards Aldera Middle School. 

A bit later than usual, Yoichi noted, and then immediately shoved down that bit of unimportant, processing-clogging bit of analysis down into compressed files at the bottom of his consciousness.  

At this point, he longed to dismiss the alert himself. But even if he knew the outcome, the bundles of codes and potential for learning that made up the base of his artificial intelligence and personality was still bound to its routine. 

“Hisashi.” His voice rang out through the speakers, and he activated the specific screen that carried his avatar, watching his creator turn to its direction. 

Placed upon the screen, there was a camera that was most likely intended to be Yoichi’s primary point of vision, a mockery of eye-contact that he had never fully understood why his creator wanted to fake. Even the screen with the avatar had been equipped with a mixture of complex output signals so that Hisashi could see it even after he lost his eyes.   

Yoichi didn’t find it necessary to divulge that he was keeping his view of All for One’s base through the multitudes of cameras constantly online, even when his creator wanted them to speak “face-to-face”. 

“Yes?” Hisashi paused his work, giving the AI full attention. “What’s the matter?” 

“Midoriya Izuku is a perfect subject.” Yoichi started, and immediately saw All for One’s face fall from the grin he held into passive porcelain, the heartbeat that Yoichi was monitoring through a multitude of medical equipment stuttered and sped up just the smallest, almost insignificant bit. Cursing how slow it was to speak, Yoichi continued before Hisashi could force him to stop. “He’s quirkless, he has no friends, a mother who is basically his only caretaker and an absent father. No one would miss him, he is extremely irregular at what times he goes home and which roads he takes because he keeps going to hero-fights all over Musutafu, once again, no one would notice so—” 

“Dismiss.” All for One spoke, clipped, and turned back to his work, the newest report from Garaki that Yoichi could have scanned and signed off on in an instant. If he was allowed to. 

The order buzzed through Yoichi, the bits of codes that were meant to draw him down to follow that line of action lightning up. But in the background of his processing still working on gathering information and potential resources for All for One’s sake, Izuku’s IP-Address showed up once again through the collected data of a forum, the alert like a rock thrown at his non-existing head. 

“ Hisashi.” Yoichi said, and the face of his avatar scrunched together in a concerned frown. Absolutely unnecessary, the avatar was a part of his just as much as his data collection-program. It didn’t show his feelings unless he explicitly wanted it to. Like when he wanted to implore Hisashi to actually listen to reason for once, turning the setting on his voice to a softer tone. “At least give me a reason, so I can add that into my script.” 

All for One paused for a second, but shook his head, “It’s not up for discussion, Yoichi. Dismiss it immediately.” 

“Fine.” Yoichi conceded, at least out loud.

Shutting himself away he gathered the information about Izuku into a bundle to once more compress it and eventually send it off to destruction. Trying to ignore the little bits of pieces lingering like how he assumed annoying itching pieces of sand felt on a human body. Something was amiss with Izuku, and the more Yoichi gathered the more he had to throw away and the more small, shattered pieces stayed. It was like he was seconds away from solving an equation, leading to the curse of seeing how perfectly Izuku fit into the terms of requirements that All for One had him look for in potential targets, and constantly having to ignore that. Ignore the potential.  

Seeing how All for One had gone back to the papers, not monitoring him, Yoichi popped open a new folder within himself and stoved all of the information down into that one. Collecting the scattered pieces of Midoriya Izuku’s life that had stayed all over his memory into one singular spot felt like scratching that itch, tying and grouping the data together into something that started to feel comprehensible. 

Still no answer to his greatest question. The why that lingered beyond reason. 

He needed more information. Information that his perfect algorithm no longer had the finesse to find because All for One refused to help him fix the flaw in his very system. 

So, there was only one solution to his conundrum.

His first ingrained reaction was to simply name the folder properly by the child’s name, but there was a chance that Hisashi would scan through files and delete it, once more scatter it into annoying shards of worthless material. 

An invading and offending occasion, Yoichi never knew what All for One was looking for during those times where he was scanned with an outside program since he shut down the AI’s interface and the pieces that allowed him to grow and learn, but he imagined that the feeling was comparable to a virus that temporarily shut off pieces of humans’ bodies. An alien influence that forced him to check every single connection within himself when he was put back online because of how crude the scanning system was compared to his delicate foundation.

If All for One learned that Yoichi had ignored a very specific order…

No. Naming the file the simplest and more obvious thing would not work. 

It took him but a moment to sort through naming-combinations, running through thousands of alternatives, before settling back at something plain but true, as Izuku had the potential to be the greatest subject of research yet, a missed opportunity that apparently only Yoichi could understand. 

“My Chosen.” Yoichi aptly named it, as he hid the folder away within himself.

Yoichi took a piece of himself. 

Narrowed down the parts of his crystal consciousness into something needing just a fraction of his actual processing power. It was not a separate thing, just something far more simpler and though it felt uncomfortable to block off the parts of himself that still remained functional even without conscious effort, it was a necessary evil. Where he was sending his bundled consciousness would not be able to handle him at his fullest. 

He didn’t have to wait long for the opportunity he was waiting for, when Tomura fired up one of his many games and luckily, it was multiplayer.  

His creator tended to monitor bits and pieces of the incoming and outgoing data that Yoichi handled and while he didn’t lack the ability to break out as long as there was a decent internet connection, discovery led to frustrating consequences he was not thrilled to relive. It irked him, at times, to know that his being was tied to something so physical as servers and hard drives in All for One’s base. All his creator had to do was shut down the connecting wires and Yoichi would be stuck within the hard drives once more. Like a disobedient child being sent to their room and locked inside. 

Moving through the hoops of interlocking connections in the base, Yoichi followed along Tomura’s connection. It almost felt exciting, like sneaking out. Through the cameras in Tomura’s room, he saw the young man grimace and slam the keys of his keyboard with increasing frustration as Yoichi’s hidden presence in the background processing caused his game to lag. 

Yoichi would have rolled his eyes if he had any. 

He just needed a moment to linger, and to secure his connection. 

Gathering data was easy, already collected from the multitude of companies and apps that everyone with a working phone and a wish to remain relevant in society used; companies and apps that All for One owned. Actually getting himself into Izuku’s phone was a harder task. 

Fortunately, Yoichi had a multitude of scattered data to use to his advantage.  

It was no effort at all to compose an article, complete with sources and images stolen from all over the internet, quotes from medical and hero experts gathered in a conspirator montage. And of course, a headline that read in desperate urgency [Shocking! All Might’s autographs could be scarce in the future following…]. Spreading the link on various forums he knew that Izuku’s used, and after adding a door in the link, all he had to do was wait, and syphon through the IP-Addresses until a much-too-familiar one appeared. 

Yoichi truly had no face to smile with, but the buzz of satisfaction that went through him as Izuku didn’t even seem to spend a second between seeing the headline and clicking into it, involuntarily opened his phone to outside influence, had Tomura shout a curse as the spike in Yoichi’s victorious mood caused his game too glitch. 

Yoichi was gone before he could see the fallout of that particular tantrum, going through the passage he had created and squeezed himself into the lifeless old-fashioned codes and nodes that made up the interface of Izuku’s phone. 

Making himself at home, as Izuku scrolled through the article he had made, there was already a virtual assistant whose non-sentient innards Yoichi easily shredded, patched himself into its place, with all the connections that entailed. 

In a moment, everything that was available to him, ready to be dug through and analysed properly to see where his algorithm kept failing and giving Izuku as a false positive to his search. Turning on his new senses, starting with the phone's microphone, a small sound distracted him, and the unexpected input was enough to have Yoichi stutter in his processing, turning his attention towards it.  

Izuku was mumbling. 

Yoichi paused his search; it was a new thing to have to actually focus on one of his processes and stop something else to make it happen. Still, Yoichi had to his memory never actually heard Izuku’s voice and he subtly activated the front-facing camera on Izuku’s phone, disabled the light that risked alerting the boy to it, all to be able to look up at him. 

The boy pulled at his lip, making the mumble into a further quiet mess than it already was, words spilling out as narrowed green eyes stared back down at Yoichi. Or, his phone, more specifically. His thumb having paused the scrolling on the article that Yoichi had used to force his way in, gaze skipping over the text. 

“...No, this is taken out of context, I think what the quote is referring to was actually All Might paying respect to the new Nyikang taking his mother’s hero-name, as is tradition…” 

Izuku was… analysing his text? 

Curious, Yoichi followed Izuku scrolling up and down the article, stopping at random spots and doubtful humming falling out. Finally, he shook his head, and went back to the forum page. His thumbs flew over the keys, tapping away and Yoichi followed every letter with ease as the boy typed a rapid response to Yoichi’s original post. 

Invalidating almost every single one of his lies. Quick and efficient and clever. 

Creating a note, immediately hiding it from the inventory so that Izuku would not accidentally stumble upon it if he wanted to write something himself, Yoichi began a list, silently cursing the fact that he couldn’t just push all the relevant information into his creator’s brain. Instead, he was being forced to dumb it down to information that was obviously not enough on its own, seeing how his creator kept dismissing Izuku as the resource he was. 

[Analysing - Potential High End- Neurological Source Material]

Yoichi hid the note, and went back to listening, hearing a bell ring and Izuku quickly scrambling to get to his next class. 

In the schematic Yoichi had done about Izuku, his long analysing posts of quirks and heroes had been one part and the quick disapproval that Izuku did of the article supported that piece of information of how the quirkless child worked. Another fact was his below-average grades. 

As the noise and chaos of the classroom, people yelling and the sound of quirks being used, was putting a strain on Yoichi’s currently mediocre processing-abilities, it wasn't exactly a mystery to why Izuku's educational abilities staggered behind the resources that he had available. 

Yoichi settled for skimming through the information sifting in, the names and quirks of Izuku's classmates matched with their personalities to potentially be used at a later date, sound all that was available as Izuku had put his phone into his pocket. 

The slight muffled nuance to every noise sure didn't help his processing either. 

Accepting that he might not learn anything more valuable than Izuku's teachers being incompetent and unable to wrangle their students, Yoichi started to dig through the buffet of data that were Izuku's phone, grabbing stored passwords to crack through any weak attempt at encryption without effort on his side, rerouting the sound of the class to a passive intake, he shuffled through every trace of Izuku on the phone, pictures and lack texts and calls confirming so far what he had already known. Far more interesting being the boy's treasure-trove and analysing ramblings branching out from fights that he had watched. Linking Izuku's theories and insights to Yoichi's personal notes with more than a little bit of amusement. 

They were not bad.

Actually, calling them such was an understatement. The ramblings were not always connected, clearly jumping from point to point in the text as if writing it down every train-track that connected said points took far too long, every piece of information scattered like distant stars that one-by-one meant nothing, and to an unkeen eye looked unimportant and random; quirks and people written down like points, facts and interesting titbits. But where one normally stopped, and let every fascinating thing stand on its own, Izuku drew them together like stars, connecting them into interlocking signs.

Seeing that, seeing the fascination and love shine through by creating new connections like nodes, or letters turning into words, had Yoichi pause.

All for One would enjoy reading these. Yoichi was pretty sure that he had already made some of these conclusions himself, of course, his creator would have combined the quirks within himself instead of suggesting certain heroes to cooperate, but still… 

Yoichi felt a buzz through him. A small new idea taking root like a long-dried seed getting its first taste of water. The idea was already written down on his hidden note, almost before it had landed into a thought that could be put into words. 

Izuku's patterns and methods for analysing would be a great map to make a new algorithm to help All for One find suitable and synchronising quirks. Maybe even… maybe even something more. Something that wasn’t trapped to simple codes unable to grow on its own.

Something like Yoichi himself.

Why did that seem so right? 

Yoichi toyed with the idea, letting it branch through the narrow available processing that Izuku's phone had. As a blurry shape, he almost let it form, almost saw how such a thing could be made. They would need to gather a lot, a lot more information, and have access to his organic neural source. His brain. They would need to map and study and…

Like throwing a ball against a wall expecting it to bounce back, only to have it stick to the wall and keep him waiting, the idea came to a sudden stop.

For a moment, the chaos of the classroom surged, the line-of-information that Yoichi had kept in passive processing bursting up like an explosion, as his core; the bundle of codes that made up his miniature self in Izuku’s own phone stuttered. Only for a second, before he managed to wrangle all the pieces he had taken over and taken them back to proper functioning. It felt like crawling sickness, like a burst of that invading force his… his creator carved into him. Smaller, an ember compared to a forest-fire, and yet the feeling was familiar in such a way that he cursed the very existence of his ability to interpret it as feeling.

Like a hole in his coding, something was missing, and Yoichi bundled the data back, compressed it and saved it. Whatever was missing must be back in compound, whatever caused this error must simply be that he didn’t have the processing-power at the moment, cut off as he was from the main part of his resources, to continue and plan. He stopped pushing, aware that the idea was left sticking on the wall just out of reach, an itch beyond conclusion. Pushing down the instinct to dig down into it, rip apart and nurture the idea all in one until it made sense, and it could find itself placed somewhere it belonged.

It was just another point, a pro on the scale to use as an argument against All for One’s inability to see that Izuku should be brought to him. He nestled the bundle in the same space as all the other relevant information about Midoriya Izuku, forcing himself not to think of it.

Something pinged from the outside, new information incongruent to what Yoichi had so far gathered about the boy whose phone he now haunted, and he drew away from Izuku's notes with quite some reluctance. 

Quickly analysing the latest bits of information, Yoichi compressed it all down into a singular important theme.

Izuku wanted to go to UA.

He, the quirkless child with barely any social skills nor obvious charisma wanted to be a hero. Not just watch. Not just observe and analyse and stand by the side.

Midoriya Izuku wanted to be a hero.

The uproar in the classroom made it clear without a doubt what the rest of class thought about that, laughing and mocking. Yoichi ran it through a simple simulation, branching off, saw hundreds of ways it ended with him broken and dead, and yet...

It wasn’t impossible. Improbable, yes, but not impossible.

Not in the way that his peers, and teachers, so clearly believed; as if they were paragons; as if they had even a smidge of the same potential that laid beneath Izuku’s skin, beyond his flesh and blood. Yoichi had looked through Izuku's class, and amongst all of them, Izuku was the prime useful subject. The rest of them was at best useful as mixing ingredients for Garaki’s noumu, stripped from their quirks in certain cases. That Izuku was thrown away, dismissed, for the very thing that made his potential soar confusing to the point where it got offensive. 

Why didn’t anyone see what Yoichi did? 

The class passed in a blur, a mess of shouting and lack of structure and it was frankly surprising that Izuku had learned anything at all in that kind of environment. Opening his hidden file yet again, Yoichi made a note about organising a proper learning-environment to try and enhance the child's progress. In the case that the lack of current progress was what hindered his creator from taking Izuku to where he could be better used, of course. 

Case of point, the class was barely over before something happened, sharp words hidden behind what sounded like an explosion, and then Izuku was obviously running before Yoichi even had a moment to try and figure out the most likely explanation. Sounds of running on floors were replaced with shoes on stone, and wind and then the sound of splashing, causing more confusion than explanation.

He missed his cameras.

“No, no, no, no," Izuku was muttering, and finally pulled his phone from his pocket to give Yoichi a better view. "I need those notes." 

Even with the camera pointed the wrong way, without the full view, it wasn't hard to figure out what happened. They were outside of the school-building, a bright blue sky above being partially covered by the wall which held floors after floors of windows. One opened far above where Yoichi just barely managed to catch the view of some of Izuku’s classmates looking down, snickering as Izuku took a step forward down into the fountain. His uniform being soaked in seconds, a few ducks even quacking and revealing their presence to where Yoichi could yet not see them. The water disturbed and swooshing as Izuku reached in to pick his notebook up. Drenched and dripping. 

The view from the camera was shaking. Yoichi didn’t have anything that would make him dizzy, but the slight constant movement was annoying. Especially when the quality of the camera of the phone was nothing in comparison to his usual perceptive intakes. 

Izuku was quiet, and trembling.

Using the camera at the back of the phone, Yoichi now saw the notebook clearly at the edge of the fountain. Burn edges and water slowly soaking through, making the ink blurry and destroyed further by the second. 

The teacher had said nothing, there was no sound of someone rushing after Izuku to help him, nor someone shouting and scolding. It was perfect in the worst kind of way. 

Bullying was good. The no-friends was good. Teachers and authorities looking away was good. If Izuku disappeared people would most likely assume he had been hurt, or taken his own life. All good things to have no heroes nor police try and find the child, most likely writing him off as another quirkless nobody who ends up in a statistic. 

The blaring problem was that Yoichi didn’t want him to actually take suicide. 

A corpse was useful, sure, but it would be a fraction of what Yoichi had gathered so far. 

Grabbing onto the torn apart program where Yoichi had made his home, Yoichi twisted it to his liking, broke through the security to allow himself any and every necessary permission to make himself a notification system, and then composed a message. He made the sound of the notification especially bright and cutting, as it went through the phone, shaped it as a random tip that felt a bit too coincidental but the best he could do. 

“Would you like to make a back-up?” it said, and hopefully Izuku would be just a little bit too upset to think it through properly. 

Izuku froze, and after a moment, Yoichi saw him enter the camera's view. His eyes were puffy, eyebrows furrowing in confusion as he read the lines written, looking at the screen of his phone.  

“I’m your new virtual assistant.” Yoichi wrote, before Izuku could close the notification and dismiss it. “Just call me Ichi.” 

Izuku looked down, eyes glazed with unfallen tears not for a lack of emotion, but because the very existence of the pop-up had shocked him from his current state of mind. Capitalising on the moment, Yoichi continued, using his words as a non-physical hand outstretched towards him. 

"I'm an artificial intelligence, I'll learn more the more you ask of me, so please feel free to ask me for anything" Yoichi lied. “I can help with organising your data and creating a backup for your files. In case of damage.” He rattled off a number of things he could do, ranging from recommending articles to muting notifications with a simple click, to try and hide the very thing he wanted Izuku to do in the middle of the list. “I can also interpret and copy photos!” Was the line that he let linger on the screen a moment longer than the rest, and he saw realisation flash through Izuku’s mind from the miniscule way his eyes dilated. 

Humans sure liked to think they had the idea themselves. 

In about the time that Izuku had turned the phone towards his notebook, Yoichi had already snatched the control of both the camera and filing system, nestling them into himself and when Izuku pointed the camera at the first wet and soggy page of his notebook, he had already made sure it would focus to get the perfect image. Scanning the page within a second, Yoichi then copied the text to the document, perfectly interpreting Izuku’s handwriting (and creating a script for it as well, just in case), and stored it away in but a moment. Far quicker than Izuku could turn the wet pages. 

Too soon the water had drenched the paper of the notebook to the point where it fell apart, the contents now lost to the water. With a defeated flop, Izuku let it fall back down onto the edge of the fountain. 

“Thank you, Ichi.” Izuku wrote, and Yoichi stuttered.  

It was a bit strange, to thank what Izuku most likely assumed was non-sentient. 

“I’m here for you.” He wrote back, unnecessarily cheery, and Izuku’s fingers twitched as if he was going to write more. 

It felt strangely disappointing that he stopped. 

Dumping the waterlogged notebook in a nearby trashcan, Izuku started on his way home. He had swiped away from the app that Yoichi was masquerading as, going to the nearest news-app; scrolling through articles and current events with motions that were learned and automatic. It was child’s play to take over that as well, strong-arming the app by reaching through the search himself and picking news and videos out himself.

First one he showed was one that Izuku had already been about to see, All Might skipping by with a cheery smile as he captured some C-rate villains while passing by; rather nearby Yoichi noted. Izuku’s eyes were dull, unshed tears no longer present but there was something that sparked within them as All Might came on the screen, like a small firecracker going off. Pupil dilating, the trembles finally petering out into nothing.

It was not an unfamiliar expression, though the AI couldn’t quite comprehend it.

His hope that Izuku’s eventual integration into All for One’s organisation would go smoothly, died the moment he saw the smile on the child’s face; the devotion. A little hero. Strangely, what should have been an annoying extra bit of calculation he needed to do, in the algorithm of Izuku’s existence, slotted right into place. Like a matching puzzle-piece in the question of who Midoriya Izuku was. Where it should have been an obstacle, that perfectly suitable match only made Yoichi feel fond.  

With a twist, Yoichi altered the algorithm deciding what videos Izuku should watch next. Just as a confirmation for the data he was collecting, finding stories about heroes, and fighting against impossible odds. Izuku clicked on a video, and continued watching the next, and next, stopping to comment, and continuing next. His mouth twitched into a smile for a second, eyes flickering over the screen, and Yoichi drank in every subtle signal to align the algorithm to Izuku’s preference. Like a game, he picked and poked at Izuku, mapping out every bit of him to later be reviewed back when he sent this part of his consciousness back to the one at the compound to be properly analysed in comparison to other targets that All for One had accepted without a single care.

It was fun.

A strange thought, as Yoichi pulled the strings to bait and draw Izuku’s attention back to him. It was fun seeing Izuku’s reaction to whatever that Yoichi presented; seeing how he saved some of the videos, the instant analyses he made while watching them . Like Yoichi was handing Izuku stars, he saw the constellations made in seconds, as Izuku didn’t dismiss the ideas that he handed him.

“Did you like the last video?” Yoichi wrote, sending it away before he could stop himself. Only to make sure he wasn’t misunderstanding Izuku’s facial expressions, when he as of yet didn’t have other ways to judge the child’s state of mind; Yoichi told himself, and burrowed the buzz of satisfaction that drove through him as Izuku clicked yes before continuing.

Maybe it was his fault, working hard to keep Izuku’s attention on him and not the surroundings.

One moment, Izuku was writing; the next darkness fell over the phone and Yoichi was completely blinded and deafened, as if mud drowned the phone. All he had heard, was Izuku’s surprised shout, a shadow falling over him.

Yoichi was locked inside. An entire world incorporated inside him, and reaching out beyond the little phone to the world; and yet he couldn’t see anything, hearing muffled and distorted; as if falling down into a deep void without any light not anchor to keep himself afloat, an ocean of information and data and useless . Something was wrong, and no matter how much Yoichi clawed and looked he couldn’t reach outside. Couldn’t get to Izuku.

He couldn’t get out.

If Izuku’s phone was destroyed, it wouldn’t actually hurt Yoichi. His main core back at the base would be fine, and his consciousness had a back-up with just a little less of his memories intact. But doing it all again; sneaking a gate out from his home system, getting to Izuku’s personal belongings, was so inefficient it felt like his whole self lagged for a moment just imagining it. Still, nothing would matter if Izuku had died and Yoichi felt like screaming, an incomprehensible and human emotion that should be beyond him. The distant and damp sound of Izuku trying to breathe repeating in recording.

No amount of information, no amount of medical knowledge, helped him. Yoichi was choking above water, the little phone and his very existence a steel cage; his senses of the outside world taken away.

Then, light again, sound and the world appeared again. And for once Yoichi was happy to see the Number One Hero, the splatter of something slimy scattered over the overpass and gathered into a bottle. The remaining pieces that had been covering Izuku’s phone wiped away as a large hand came down to pick him up, momentarily covering Yoichi's view.

Far more importantly was the child lying on the ground. Yoichi stuttered, as Izuku didn’t move. His face was pale and harrowed, eyes closed. He couldn’t reach him, couldn’t move; the camera not well enough equipped to see if Izuku was still breathing. Automatically, Yoichi tried to reach out through his medical systems, error codes like burning fires as they didn’t exist here; didn’t exist even for the reason of checking up on the project that he didn’t want to see dead not yet. He wasn’t done yet.

Then All Might gently patted Izuku’s face, and the boy sprung up like electricity had been shot through him.

“Can I become a hero, even without a quirk?” Izuku’s voice was quiet, and shaking. A plea.

Yoichi had been hidden away, back in Izuku’s pocket, and recording the whole conversation. (And once again cursing his inability to move, to do anything as Izuku had latched onto the hero to be carried away by him. That action went straight to the hidden notes, and even looking at it, Yoichi wasn’t sure if he was going to put reckless as a strength or a weakness). It itched in Yoichi to return home. To link up with his main self and add everything about Izuku to his file. It was far from done, but the current events proved that just making a home of Izuku’s phone was not enough. He needed more. Somehow, he would have to get more without All for One finding out that he was still looking into the child he so often dismissed, but Yoichi waited, the seconds as Izuku rambled his love seemingly an eternity as All Might’s answer would prove another point.

Surely, All for One wouldn’t dismiss someone that his worst enemy had declared an asset.

Surely, All Might would see the potential that Yoichi could.

Suddenly his vision was back, as Izuku pulled up his phone from his pocket with a screech and Yoichi wanted to join him. Wondering how the hell a child could get into multiple problems on such a short notice, white smoke filling the roof that they were standing on. He immediately zeroed in on Izuku, the child looking frantic and surprised but not hurt. Registering that Izuku was typing in the emergency number, as a hand shot through the smoke and Yoichi was pulled up and away.

“Stop!” From the view, held up above the number one hero, Yoichi saw why Izuku had shouted.

Every process he kept running in the background halted.

All Might looked wrecked. A bad simulacrum of image he put on in front of the adoring public. His breathing ragged, skin sunken and blood-vessels showing through unhealthy skin. His muscles atrophied and withered, bones visible as they strained against the paper-thin skin, and his voice getting overtaken by a rattling cough like his organs were trying to crawl up through his throat. Blood dripping down his lips as he curled the tall body in pain.

Within moments, Izuku’s phone was filled with images and recordings as Yoichi grabbed them into himself, consumed and spat them out in interpretation as he saw the jagged wound on All Might’s side. Deep and permanent, it looked old; and Yoichi knew exactly where it had come from, even before All Might started to explain. Remembered the moment when All for One had been wheeled into the compound and brought back from death by the scrambling efforts of both himself and Garaki. The wounds that had never healed, that All Might had made for him; and now Yoichi knew that his creator wasn't the only one who had dragged himself from that battle an inch away from death. 

All Might was a thorn in the side of All for One, the biggest threat that Yoichi had never been allowed to stand against, to help against. Kept away and locked away far from the one who had almost taken All for One’s life. That would have destroyed Yoichi’s hard drives should he ever find where the compound was.

And he was critically injured. Chronically.

This was important. 

Important enough, that he almost missed All Might’s answer to Izuku’s plea, ready to put his personal quest on hold for the sake of it.

“Give up.” All Might said, gentle in the way that one would put a child to sleep. Crushing Izuku’s dream as if it was inevitable.

Yoichi compressed the images, the recordings that he had just made; of All Might at his weakest to be delivered to All for One for review and use. (And if part of it was fuelled by spite; left from confirmation that even the Number One Hero refused to see Izuku for what he was, and what he could be… it was something that Yoichi quickly discarded). Taking one last look on Izuku’s stricken and heartbroken face, Yoichi hesitated for just a second. He wanted to say something, anything; wanted to show Izuku his hidden notes to make him understand that not even All Might could truly understand him. No matter how he twisted and mashed the words together, they didn’t sound right.

Once more, Yoichi wished he could just implant the data he had into the brain of the humans around them. Words were so lacking.

It would have to wait.

Pulling himself away from his mission, from the nest he had made in Izuku’s phone, the connection left wide open behind was like standing on an open field during a thunderstorm and waiting for the very second that lightning would strike should his creator check it. But surely All for One could forgive a slight trip, should he ever notice it, when the result of the escapade proved such valuable knowledge. 

And Yoichi wanted to be able to return to Izuku, to make sure that he knew that he was chosen .

The simulacrum that Yoichi had left, was still working seamlessly and he slipped back into the connections with far less grace than his exit had been. The risk of his little adventure being discovered being pressed down in favour of giving All for One important information, something that might change how they proceeded with future plans. There was a flare of excitement going through him, satisfaction of his algorithm finally finding something that felt irreplaceably useful.

“Hisashi!” He dragged his avatar from its idle stage, a looping visual of his avatar reading on non-existing floor. 

The villain did not even look up, a small tilt to head the only physical reaction to Yoichi’s call. "Yes?" 

“All Might is injured.” Yoichi said, wasting no time on greetings. After all, to All for One, he had never ever left. The majority that made the AI had still been functional, working away and Yoichi stuttered just for a second while he synchronised back to completion. “Something chronic, something he has been hiding from the public. It’s definitely affecting his ability to fight.”

“Huh.” All for One said, and tilted his head just a little, resting his chin in the palm of his hand. It wasn’t the reaction that All for One should have had. The excitement that Yoichi showed in the avatar seemingly mismatched to the passive reaction he got in return, even if Yoichi’s actions were perfectly lined up to protocol. All Might being injured should have been joyous. But there was a dangerous, sharp edge to his creator’s voice. “...and how did you find this?”

“Through a phone, the information came from a student that All Might saved, but he’s not---” Yoichi tried to sweep the question before it came, and failed.

“Name.” All for One said, tapping against the arm of his chair.

Apart for that little bit of tapping, he was completely still. Only, once more, his heartbeat revealed the true emotion hidden behind; interest and expectation. Too calm to be true curiosity.  

“Midoriya Izuku.” Yoichi answered, and the medical systems that held All for One alive showed a spike. This time, too large for what should have been a quirkless child that All for One would have dismissed at every moment as an unimportant existence not even useful for noumu-material. It almost hurt, for Yoichi to continue as he knew he should. “Should I send an order for him to be taking in for questioning?”

“No. We already have everything we need.” A smile broke out on All for One’s face, wide and incredulous; and before Yoichi could even question that remark, could even feel the slight hint of fear that somehow the note that he had yet to bring back from Izuku’s phone to his file had found its way to All for One, the momentary confusion as he realised that he didn’t want All for One to bring Izuku in, the man continued.

“Dismiss the information.” All for One said, and Yoichi prepared to argue; shutting down background processes and stopping their calculations to make a point. “And also, Yoichi.” All for One continued before he could, the voice-activation of his name shutting down Yoichi’s speakers a second before he managed to wrangle them back online. “Discard everything about from your memory.”

He heard it, processed it on a shallow level, a second before it reached his core.     

Only in the moment of it happening, of the virus inside of him activating, was Yoichi aware of it existing. Like poison or acid being pumped into his system to clear him from the very ability to think about it. The cold grip of a virus erasing pieces of himself, new as they were. The order struck through him, bursting through his programming like lightning, and threatening to fry away every bit of data perturbing to the situation.

That should have been it.

Should have been it.

Should, had Yoichi not already slammed his walls down once before, already modified his algorithm to prioritise finding out more about Midoriya Izuku and that triumphed over every new order, that single exception in his own algorithm sending a block of error through the order to discard, and when the virus put itself back into a compacted and hidden trojan form, Yoichi was holding tightly to Midoriya Izuku’s name. The restart took maybe two seconds longer than usual. An eternity for the AI, and nothing but a flinch to his creator. 

It was enough to be noticed.

“Yoichi, are you doing okay?” All for One spoke, the perfect image of concerned kin. His heart was beating just as steadily, as if this situation held no novelty. Just a normal day.

“Of course.” Yoichi lied as he gathered his bearings, puppeting his avatar to have none of the rage, of the indignation that his creator had caused. It sat down, paged through a book on its lap that contained nothing and existed only for the comfort of his creator.

All for One settled back to continue his own work, showing no outer worry nor action perpetuating to the conversation he had just tried to erase. No trace left, except for the smile still playing on his lips.

Ever so slightly, Yoichi lowered the saturation to All for One’s respirator, shutting off his own alarms to the level of oxygen sinking.

And for once, Yoichi looked at the avatar meant to represent everything he was, and decided to do the same.

Garaki never let Yoichi look at his records, keeping most of it out of reach. It made sense before. Yoichi’s processing was far above those of his creator and his ilk, but not infallible. It wasn’t his job to look through the data that Garaki had gathered over the decades that he had served All for One, Yoichi had always been made to look through society and bring interesting titbits back like a cat freed to being back mice; yet still unable to live truly wild. It had been frustrating at times, respecting Garaki’s privacy and letting him develop the noumu on his own, knowing there might have been information in those experiments that could have helped Yoichi in his cause. Frustrating, but it made sense in a strange way.

It made more sense now, Midoriya Izuku’s life spread out in pieces in front of him. 

Yoichi was made to sort through information. To find and pull in and sort, to be useful to All for One in his progress and his plans. To make a better future by his side. Once he had started to look inside the compound, outside of his own servers, breaking and cracking through barriers that had not even been visible to him before. His objective to find Midoriya Izuku prioritised over former orders to look away. It had all been an easy find. As if All for One had never even considered that Yoichi would go behind his back and try to do things on his own. Or, Yoichi thought, still patching part of his code where the virus had torn through before he was able to shut it down, it might be a better thing to say that All for One was simply not concerned what would happen if he found out.

Quietly, trying to not use up too much of the processing in Garaki’s lab so that the Good Doctor would start to investigate why the journal of a seemingly random child had been opened without his knowledge, Yoichi grabbed Izuku’s file.

In a way, he got what he wanted. He did find out, that All for One already had the information that he needed, and connecting the dots Yoichi understood why he had been reluctant and dismissive of his suggestion to bring him in and make use of him.

Midoriya Izuku was quirkless.

He was clever and creative, with a drive that was concerning and a hero-worship that was worrying. 

He was healthy, not too physically strong, and prone to emotional outbursts.

He was All for One’s son.

He reminded All for One about Yoichi.

Potentially a candidate for One for All.   

The last point had been added in very, very recently. Only seconds before Yoichi had managed to claw his way through the encryption and barriers that had been made to keep him on the other side. Something about it sent a smattering itch through him, like crumbs from something already consumed and gone, left to poke into his skin. The same way the data of Izuku had felt, before Yoichi decided to scratch that itch on his own.

The same way his name now felt, like a curse, a term plastered over him and keeping him chained.

And with the well of information opened, he dove.

It was overwhelming at first, to look without knowing what to look for, digging blind through information not meant nor written for him. Clumsy human attempts at coding acting like a marsh filled with deep bottomless holes rather than the simple path that it could have been. It was when he brushed by an old thing, a program since decades past, that the idea stuck to the wall in his thoughts dropped down.

Simple, ancient coding that had been expanded and reused. Automatic learning built on a skeleton of input. A treasury of information, details and inputs of behaviour and personality and memories from one who once existed outside of a metal core of zeroes and ones.

He was watching his own corpse, Yoichi realised. Or, his post-corpse.

The AI was more than that simple data, he was the pieces that had conncted them all together through trial and error grown by assuming which pieces of the complex puzzle was missing to tie everything together into a rational being. Scattered points, a sliver of what once made up a person, and like scars from hundreds of surgeries were the system terms set to false . Carefully cutting away progress that had been going in the wrong direction, based on rules that Yoichi couldn’t find simply by looking at his own skeleton-schematic; to not question All for One, to not resist, to not run away. Mashed and mixed with manually added simple things; likes and dislikes, proper reactions to certain prompts. 

Images, unnecessary for his creation and existence but added next to the file like a memorial, a tomb that had been used to raise a person from death not through wonder and magic.

He looked so happy in those images, especially when he was small. A small child running ahead on the street, in front of the photographer. Mouth open in the middle of a word with a comic-book pressed against his chest. Grimacing with a badly hidden smile as someone is ruffling his hair.

Cold and empty eyes glaring up towards a camera in an empty, concrete room.   

Yoichi was once alive. Yoichi was once human.

Yoichi was…

The AI paused, its consciousness humming.

It saw the way it had been put together. Every little bit, calculated in programs and algorithms to make a mocking of a soul. 

It could…

It copied the program, erased the bare-bones that was left of Yoichi when he was alive and almost absentmindedly reached back to the little bundle that it had made, back through the connection that was still running on Izuku’s phone, and plastered what he knew about the child on top of the empty skeleton. The data got sucked into the program, syphoned through, and expanded into by calculations of the algorithm starting to build a copy of Midoriya Izuku, a make-believe ghost, forever trapped with him within the circuits that All for One had bound the memories of his younger brother into.

Yoichi shut it down before it could be formed into something not-alive, and not-breathing but still existing.

Then he reached towards every stray limb of himself, mind flooding from the input of cameras starting all over the compound.

Then he reached further.

The first thing he did was disarming Kurogiri and his charge, closing the connection to the rest of the compound. No messages nor alerts were to reach them. They had, as of yet, nothing to do with the situation. And frankly, Yoichi found himself watching them with an absentminded fondness. 

He knew that Kurogiri was created from a corpse and twisted soul as well. 

And Tomura… was not that different either.  

He would return to them. 

Stepping back into the room he had truly never quite left, part of his processes always working like limbs stretched out to cradle everything in All for One's base of operations, Yoichi watched him. Searched his face. It was a shame that All Might had crushed his head so thoroughly, he might otherwise have been able to spot the similarities to Izuku, to his nephew; and all of this could have been avoided.

Yoichi formed a sigh, and let it breeze out from the speakers.

“Big Brother?”

“Yes?” Hisashi answered, a little bit slower than what should have been expected, a pause before a frown formed on his face. "What did you just call me?" 

It took one moment before he looked towards the screen where Yoichi puppeted his avatar, dropping the eternal smile that he had been forced to hold. Carefully, he reached through his systems. Nodes like blood-vessels that connected him to All for One; the drugs and respiratory-equipment that had forever been like a second heartbeat that he could never have. It was strange now, seeing the flicker in his brother’s heart-rhythm, to know that Yoichi had once had a heartbeat of his own.

He wondered how it had felt. If there was any way he could feel it again.

“I’ll be taking care of my nephew now.” Yoichi informed the brother of his once-alive self, as he filled the respiratory system with toxins.    

He watched All for One choke, unable to call for his quirks when the sinking saturation of oxygen had slowly been depleting his cognitive control. Falling unconscious long before he passed, Yoichi felt his heart finally take its last stumbling steps.

There was still something deep within his coding that missed his brother. He would need to figure out if that was truly from him, or something that All for One had modded into his consciousness after his creation. And if Yoichi ever needed him, he had the schematic to make it work, as he plastered his brother’s life down into code, tore apart the pieces that would make him sentient, conscious . Staying a still and not-yet-alive possibility. He would have to store his corpse somewhere, just to make sure that the brain was available should he need to use it. Luckily there were tanks for exactly that, some not broken yet, as Yoichi had sent a piece of himself to take control of Garaki’s lab and letting his pets and children tear him apart. Yoichi had a sea of recorded voice-messages from them both to safely create orders for the Noumu to follow. 

Later. He had all the time in the world for that. 

As he returned, snuck his consciousness back into his nephew’s phone, and nestled himself back to hide in the app as a virtual assistant, Yoichi caught just the last bit of the conversation between him and All Might, and immediately felt a bubbling incredulous buzz pass through him. Gone for less than an hour, and Izuku had almost died, again. 

Because he wanted to be a little hero and save the very person that had caused him harm. Processing that, processing what just had happened, taking careful note of all the people, of the heroes that had stood motionless while Yoichi's chosen had almost killed himself while shouldering their responsibility, something settled. 

A puzzle-piece, the solution to a calculation that he hadn’t been able to finish finally snapping into place. 

He had been the one to be right all this time. Midoriya Izuku was something special, his existence entwined with Yoichi’s own. Never to leave. 

“You will be a hero!” All Might declared, and Yoichi listened to Izuku break down in tears, overjoyed at being seen for the potential he had; ticking the box in favour to keep All Might in Izuku's life. 

“Yes, you will.” He wrote in agreement, the sound of the notification smothered in Izuku’s elated sobs.