Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

(Previously-)

Izuku’s memories of being Mikumo didn’t disappear now that he was back to his real age.

He’d hoped they would fade, with time, and he could return to the hero-versus-villain mindset: this was not the case. Every so often, he would remember the way Shigaraki looked at him like he was the most precious treasure, or the feeling of All For One’s hand ruffling his hair, and just.

Cringe.

And then there were the letters.

Come home for dinner, Mikumo, All For One wrote, with an attached photo of magazine-perfect katsudon.

Add me on Animal Crossing, otouto, Tomura wrote. (His handwriting was terrible.)

Izuku didn’t know how to respond, so he didn’t. Unfortunately, that just meant they tried harder. And offered better bribes.

Welcome to the official website for the International Heroics Conference - a.k.a. Big HeroCon! Our 22XX convention will be held in Tokyo, Japan, from July 13 to 16, at the newly expanded Tokyo Convention Center…

Izuku scrolled down the page, focused intently on the screen in front of him. He hovered over different buttons on the navigation menu: Information, and then, VIP Tickets.

This year’s convention has three tiers of VIP tickets: Copper, Silver, and Gold. Auctions for the ten highest-tier Gold tickets were held in May 22XX, going for a record purchase price…

He quickly scrolled further down the page to avoid learning just how much money All For One had spent on him. Plausible deniability was key, or something like that.

…Gold-tier VIP perks for this year include early access to the convention floor…

…private box seating at concert venues…

…admission to evening parties and industry networking hours…

…a behind-the-scenes tour and greeting events with panelists…

…hands-on support item demos (where applicable)...

Much better bribes, Izuku thought, letting his eyes stray to the golden VIP ticket to Big HeroCon glittering smugly beside him on the desk. They only sold ten of these per year. By auction. With a starting bid of one million yen.

“Okay,” Izuku admitted to the empty dorm room, defeated. “You might have got me with this one.”

VIP Events Schedule, Day 1: July 13

[All-access VIP tickets are currently: SOLD OUT. Tickets to individual events are available for purchase at the Tickets page.]

8:00am - Opening day brunch buffet at the nearby Imperial Hotel Tokyo (runs until 1:00pm).

…

Izuku yawned and stretched his arms and legs, starfishing out on the ridiculously big bed in one of the fanciest hotel rooms he’d ever seen, much less occupied. It wasn’t so much a room as an apartment, with square footage to rival the entire first floor of the dorms - he’d taken one look at the listed price-per-night online and closed his browser in terror.

He rolled over to look out through the one-way windows framing Tokyo’s cityscape. The sky outside was still dark, which meant he’d woken up somewhere around five a.m. again, and may as well get up to do his maintenance workout - in the personal gym reserved for him, one floor down, as if that was in any way a normal thing to have in a hotel room.

Yawning, Izuku unlatched the arm-and-wrist braces that he’d worn to sleep - another of All For One’s dangerously effective bribes, because wow he wasn’t feeling nearly as much joint pain as usual - and went to the dressing room, where his luggage had already been neatly unpacked and laid out, to get his gym clothes.

Two hours later, Izuku had sunk into the bathtub up to his chin and was napping when his phone dinged from the end table beside the tub. He let his head flop to the side to squint at it; with some effort, a few lethargic strands of Blackwhip reached out and brought the phone closer for him to read his texts.

[“Dad”, 7:19 am: What time do you want to go brunch downstairs?]

Izuku dried his hands on a towel so he could reply; in the interval, another message came in.

[I’ve sent room service up with a small plate to sate your appetite, so you can decide without urgency. It’s tailored to your macros already, no need to worry.]

On the one hand, that was exactly as nosy and overbearing as he’d predicted of All For One’s parenting, and he wasn’t impressed. (How did the man even know his macros?)

On the other, Izuku thought, laying eyes on the delicious arrangement minutes later, I was pretty hungry.

[Izuku, 7:30 am: Thanks, this is good.]

[Izuku, 7:31 am: And brunch at 8:30. We have early access to the convention floor that I want to use.]

“Wow, I didn’t expect you to be awake this early,” Izuku blurted out.

Across the table, Shigaraki Tomura was pouring himself a second cup of coffee. The second Izuku had seen, at least. “I pulled an all-nighter,” he explained, with a shaky smile that made even his now-moisturized face look unhinged. (Fortunately, villains did not have a monopoly on this expression, and with the glasses and gamer print shirt, he just looked like a grad student.) “Couldn’t make my player two wait for me to show up on the very first day of the con.”

“At least the afternoon events are all spotlight-heroics panels,” Izuku observed, “so you’ll have time to nap.”

“Nah, I’ll sleep tomorrow, I can do without for around sixty hours before the hallucinations set in.”

Izuku decided not to question that. He dared not interfere with the plans of a truly no-life gamer.

“So, Mikumo,” All For One stirred an obscene amount of sugar into what would have otherwise been a very nice, expensive cup of tea, “what are your plans for today? You mentioned early access, and I believe I saw an auction on the schedule for the evening?”

9:30 am - Early access to the vendors’ hall; applies to all tiers above Double-Plus.

“What the fuck are you wearing.”

My ass-kicking outfit, bitch, Izuku very nearly said out loud, grinning at the unadulterated pain in Tomura’s eyes at what he knew was his most garish, over-decorated collection of hero merchandise in one single outfit. Like the royalty of old, he wore the rarest, most valuable clothes and accessories, glittering pins and shiny ribbons; there could be no doubt among the peasantry of just how dedicated he was to the hero fandom.

(Of course, duplicates of everything were safely stored away at home, just in case.)

“Do you like it?” Izuku asked instead, his smile tinged slightly malicious at the edges. “I brought a few extra pins for you, Tomu-nii.”

He took a moment to commit to memory the way those three syllables killed any hope in Tomura’s eyes. Then, because it was best if he quickly get over this bout of sadism, took out the pins in question and admitted, “they’re all Eraserhead, by the way.” Who he knew was the only hero Tomura really liked.

“I’m wearing a pin, too,” All For One boasted in a transparent bid for Izuku’s attention. “See?”

Izuku squinted at the lapel pin on his suit jacket: it was the vintage logo for the United Nations, which was… technically a hero pin? Sort of? “They’re going to think you work for the U.N.,” he pointed out.

“I do!” All For One beamed, producing a business card from nowhere. Akatani Hisashi, it read. United Nations Commission For Metahuman Rights.

“Since when?”

“Since it was founded!”

Before this could get any more ridiculous, Izuku unfastened the most expensive pin on his backpack and attached it below the U.N. pin on Hisashi’s lapel. “If anyone asks,” he said, still covering the pin with his hand so neither villain could see, “just tell them it was a gift from your son.”

It was absolutely worth sacrificing his superfan bling to see the way All For One’s blinding smile faltered as soon as he recognized his nemesis’ American logo.

11:30 am - Buffet lunch service in the second-floor VIP lounge (runs until 3:00pm).

Izuku… hadn’t really expected his villainous pseudo-family to stick around for the entire two-hour tour of the convention’s three massive vendor halls. Even if Tomura had spent most of that time on his phone, he’d still walked the whole way, which for a NEET was a little impressive.

Granted, it was hardly a challenge when All For One had hired a team of gofers to ferry Izuku’s purchases back to his hotel room. Not having to lug around upwards of 30 kilos of merch, art, and other cool stuff was a massive game-changer for Izuku’s con experience, and he was doing his best not to imagine what the next convention could be like, if he kept up this insane pretense of family with two highly-wanted supervillains.

He was not going to be swayed by money. He was not.

“Mikumo, do you want to hold onto any of that?” All For One interrupted his internal monologue, gesturing at Gofer #3 who was waiting to take the latest shopping bag for him. Izuku handed it off without a second thought and followed his not-father into the VIP lounge, where their top-tier tickets meant a reserved table in the elevated section of the room, by the back wall. Izuku would roll his eyes at the unnecessary distinction, the veneer of supreme importance it supposedly conferred - but he secretly enjoyed it. Just a little. No one had to know.

“Finally,” Tomura declared, all but throwing himself into the booth seating. “Do they have chicken nuggets? I want chicken nuggets.”

Izuku watched All For One activate a vision-enhancing quirk to investigate the buffet. “I don’t see any… ah, there they are, in the American section. But are you sure you don’t want karaage?”

“Nuggies,” Tomura whined, just quietly enough that nobody else could hear them. Izuku hid a small grin at his not-brother’s antics behind his phone, which had been populated with photos of various vendors’ business cards and the app for a bank he’d never heard of where ‘Akatani Mikumo’ held an account balance of sixty million yen.

He was not going to be swayed by money.

Gofer #1 held their table for them while they went to the buffet and waited in line like normal people. (Correction: Izuku and Tomura waited like normal people. All For One used a time-stop quirk to cut in line and return to his seat with a full plate.) The convention staff had set out a truly impressive array of foodstuffs from around the world, of which Izuku sampled some of everything, while Tomura - as expected - hoarded chicken nuggets, fries, and several of what looked suspiciously like the coffee jelly pouches Eraserhead favored at UA.

What a nerd.

“You seem to be enjoying the convention, Mikumo,” All For One observed between mouthfuls of rice pilaf.

“Yeah, I am,” Izuku said, and it was true. Even if he hadn’t gotten to spend time chatting with the artists at each table, like he normally did; he’d been a little uncomfortable lingering at any one spot in the narrow aisles with a retinue of two villains and three nameless goons, so he’d swept through the hall like a strong wind and bought up anything that caught his eye. “...What about you?”

“I admit I had not expected to enjoy myself,” All For One began. He paused to use the time-stop quirk again and switch out his plate with dessert. “But I think I did. The tables you skipped were… very amusing.”

By which he meant the villain stan artists in Hall Two, who Izuku hadn’t thought would be allowed at the International Heroics Conference. They had probably gotten away with displaying big-name hero figurines up front and including the villains as ‘props’ - that, or one of the vendor organizers was secretly a villain stan, themselves. Maybe both. He’d cringed when he realized it, at the time, and hurried along to the next group before the artist behind the table could even greet him.

“I liked the underground heroes,” Tomura contributed around a yawn. “Did you see the guy with the Eraserhead figurines? So cool…”

He trailed off. Izuku and All For One watched, fairly impressed, as their third family member fell asleep at the table mid-sentence, head propped up on one elbow.

There was a moment of silence.

“I suspect your brother pulled two all-nighters, not one,” All For One murmured, standing up. “Here, Ku-kun, take the gofers for an hour, would you? I’d best handle him myself.”

“Okay,” Izuku promised a little too quickly, going by the villain’s amused huff, but was soon left alone at the table as promised.

Unsupervised.

Deft hands made quick work of removing all the pins from his backpack and securing them in a drawstring bag. “Bring these back to my room, please,” Izuku addressed Gofer #1. “You can all take a break until my dad gets back - tell Number Three when you see him.” Gofer #2 nodded, ever professional, and backed off.

A quick stop in the nearest bathroom let Izuku finish his transformation: turning his T-shirt inside out, washing the styling product out of his hair, and stowing his fingerless compression gloves in a side pocket of the backpack for later.

Akatani Mikumo had been the kind of flashy you avoided looking at for too long. What emerged from the bathroom was an entirely nondescript convention-goer, a standard otaku that fit perfectly into the background of the setting.

And it was time for Midoriya Izuku to have some fun.

Chapter Text

Izuku’s second pass through the vendor halls was one-hundred-percent the better one. No longer supervised, and with no entourage blocking the flow of foot traffic, he got to linger at different artists’ tables, properly greeting and talking with each of them - and buying more stuff that hadn’t been on display earlier. A fraction of the vendors recognized him from before, despite the costume change, but Izuku was fine with that, especially when it meant they showed off the special items that he wouldn’t have gotten to see earlier in his rush.

Unfortunately, one of the people that recognized him was the villain stan artist in Hall Two, who grinned from ear to ear and waved him over. In an example of the vast cosmic irony at play in Izuku’s world, ‘Akuma’, as he introduced himself, thought Izuku had snuck in behind his father’s back to buy villain merch.

“Some dads are such hero stans, I know,” Akuma commiserated, patting him on the shoulder.

Part of Izuku wanted to laugh. A smaller part of him wanted to excuse himself and flee Hall Two entirely, back to the VIP lounge, and possibly hide there for the rest of the day.

The majority of him took one look at the exquisite craftsmanship of the poseable figurines Akuma was selling, and handed over his bank card.

And once he’d bought from one villain merch artisan, the rest came crawling out of the woodwork. “Call me Mayu-chan,” beamed the plushie artist one table over. “While Akuma recovers-” he was currently wrapping all of Izuku’s figurine purchases with a super cool quirk that generated quick-setting foam at various densities from his fingertips- “have a look at my special collection, won’t you?”

Mayu-chan’s ‘special collection’, hidden from unworthy eyes on a shelf under the display table, consisted of the entire main cast of the League of Villains - and the Noumu. “People buy tons of these,” she laughed. “Half the time they don’t even know what they are.” Izuku could admit the Noumu plushies were kind of ugly-cute; he got one for All Might, who would probably find it hilarious, along with an All For One plush that was going to end up on Gran Torino’s dartboard eventually.

He also got one of each of the League members, and extras of Dabi and Tomura that would be used to torment their namesakes sometime next week. A Stain plush was going to be mailed to Tartarus, if Izuku could organize it. (Who was he kidding? He had All For One’s money. He could probably bribe the guards and deliver it in person.)

Then a particular shade of orange caught Izuku’s attention out of the corner of his eye, and he turned his head to the booth’s back wall. “Uh,” he said, brain short-circuiting.

“Yeah, the Class 1-A plushies are, like, my bestsellers,” Mayu-chan giggled. “Buy four, get one free!”

Thank goodness neither he nor All For One had noticed this table earlier, Izuku thought as he handed over the bank card yet again. His eyes lingered on the Hero Deku plush, which had distinctly better craftsmanship than the others next to it. The villain would’ve gone nuts for these…

His mouth moved without his permission. “Can you - attach a Kamino villain plush’s hand to a Deku one?”

Mayu-chan gave an evil chuckle. “So you’re a Villain Deku fan too, huh?”

Wait, a what-

“Here, check this out.” She reached into a box and triumphantly held up a Deku plush with what could only be described as a villain costume. “My friend sketched this design up after he fought Overhaul - oi, Tarou-tarou!”

A third person, with a red stripe dyed into their bowl cut, poked their head into the tent from the next booth over. “Something about Overhaul-? Oh, hey, I designed that one. Nice-”

Izuku barely heard them, staring at the Villain Deku plush (now set on the table) with a sort of existential dread. I bet this is how Tomura would feel if he saw merch of himself as a hero. (He should commission that, just to be mean.) Where Hero Deku had Izuku’s natural green hair, Villain Deku’s was coal-black, like Dabi’s; and his eyes, like the blood-spatter painted on the plush’s evilly-grinning face, were a shiny dark red. Little bolts of felt lightning lanced up its arms, from gloved hands up to the shoulders of its black suit.

It resembled All For One to a frightening degree. Izuku knew he could never let the villain see this plushie.

“Eh? Ku-kun, what do you have there?”

Oh no.

Izuku saw the villain stan artists’ eyes widen at the source of the shadow over Mayu-chan’s table. He squeezed the All For One and Villain Deku plushies - hands newly sewn together, courtesy of the artist - to his chest, turning to face the looming villain in question. (Not, Izuku granted, that he was trying to loom. He was just standing there. Menacingly.) “I, uh, didn’t think you’d be back so soon,” he said faintly.

“Well, I did try to give you an hour or two to yourself,” All For One chuckled. “The panel you wanted to attend starts at two-thirty, though, doesn’t it?”

Izuku checked his phone and startled - it had been two hours. “Oh no,” he realized, “there’s a handshake event right before that panel! We can’t miss it-”

In his alarm, the plushies escaped his hold. All For One caught them, and went still, blinking down at them with much the same expression that had crossed Izuku’s face. The trio of artists watched with great concern from behind Mayu-chan’s table - and were all taken aback when the villain squealed in delight, hugging the plushies against his cheek. “They’re so cute!” he cried. “Did you get these for me?”

“Y-you’re a Villain Deku fan too?” Tarou-tarou’s jaw dropped.

All For One turned toward them with a gleam in his eye. “Are you saying there’s more of these?”

Izuku returned to Akuma’s table to wait out the chaos of Tarou-tarou’s merch booth getting completely sold out, face in his hands. “Save me, Akuma,” he whined. “My dad’s never gonna forget this.”

“It’s kind of adorable,” Akuma hid a laugh behind his hand. “He looks so normal, you know? Government suit, old money - not the kind of person you’d expect to like villains.”

“-the leaked fight with Overhaul,” Tarou-tarou was saying in a rush. “It was such a Moment, you know? Like if Deku had the Kamino villain’s theme song playing - if he had a theme song.”

“He does,” All For One confided. “They both do, I think. I saw it on Reddit-”

Izuku fixed Akuma with one baleful green eye. “He may not look it right now, but my dad is the worst.”

“I mean, you’re kind of one to talk,” Akuma smirked. “Not that I’m judging, but - ‘Ku’? As in ‘suffering’?”

“It’s shortened from Mikumo,” Izuku insisted, cheeks coloring. “It’s read as ‘nine’ .”

“Ku-kun,” All For One called, “look, Mayu-chan monogrammed them for us!”

Izuku raised his head to look. Dad had been embroidered over the All For One plush’s chest.

苦, read Villain Deku’s. As in, ‘suffering’.

He laid his head back down.

2:30 pm - Panel Discussion: Spotlight Heroics Across The World (Pre-panel handshake event begins at 2:00.)

It took all three gofers to haul everything Izuku and All For One had bought back to the hotel, leaving just the two of them to attend the afternoon’s panel discussions. Izuku normally watched the recordings of these events when Big HeroCon posted them on their website, two days later; it was thrilling to be there in person, right in the VIP seats in the second row. (Not the first row, or he’d have to crane his neck to see the stage.)

Despite his best efforts, the line at the handshake event had just been too long; one of the spotlight heroes, Korea’s Star Orange, was also in an idol group, and the event organizers couldn’t keep up with how many of their fans had assembled. Personally, Izuku had hoped to meet Acrobat Hero: Contrapposto, who’d been one of the pillars of the Western European Heroics Assembly until his retirement just this year.

As for the panels, they were fascinating. Izuku went through an entire third of the notebook he’d brought, just writing down his thoughts and questions, and had to borrow one of All For One’s pens when his own suddenly ran out of ink. The other VIPs whose seats had been reserved hadn’t shown up, so they had the row to themselves, and Izuku got to ask the first question at Q&A.

(“Hero Contrapposto, what was the retirement process like as such a prominent figure in your organization? Especially compared with the sudden retirement of Japan’s Number One, All Might, on live television this year-”)

The later panels were more about the business side of spotlight heroics, things like merchandising and PR that Izuku personally didn’t care as much about; he resolved to watch the recordings for those later, and take the rest of the afternoon off. He needed to save his energy for the auctions in the evening.

“We’ll begin the next panel in twenty minutes, but first…”

The door to the auditorium shut solidly behind him, cutting off all sound from within.

“Let’s go back to the hotel for a few hours,” Izuku yawned.

“If your brother’s awake, we can get dinner at a great restaurant not far from here. Have you ever heard of Prelude?”

“-but first, a surprise bonus Q&A with Japan’s one and only - All Might!”

In the three seconds of silence before the crowd erupted into cheers, Toshinori looked over the audience for any signs of Young Midoriya. He’d heard through the grapevine that the boy had come to Big HeroCon - but so far, he hadn’t seen him.

The idea of surprising his successor at the convention had been Toshinori’s primary motivation in agreeing to attend as a special guest, so this was a little disappointing, but if he remembered correctly, recordings of this panel would be uploaded to the convention website within the next two days, so he could at least be sure Young Midoriya would see them later.

“Funny,” one panelist - Contrapposto, of Italy, per the nameplate in front of him - smiled. “There was a boy at the panel who mentioned you in his question to me. You must have just missed each other.”

7:30 pm - Exhibition opening: ‘Heroes At The Dawn of Time’ at the South Gallery in Building One.

“You know, when you said you had my wardrobe handled for these networking events, I thought you just meant my clothes,” Izuku grumbled at his phone, suspended by Blackwhip while he fiddled with his cufflinks before the hotel room mirror.

“Don’t worry, the color change quirks last twelve hours at most,” All For One said over speakerphone.

“Okay, but,” Izuku frowned at his reflection, “You… only changed my hair and eyes, right?”

Because it was a little unsettling to look in the mirror and see All For One’s face looking back.

“On my honor, only the hair and eyes,” the villain swore.

Izuku’s first reflex was to question if All For One had any honor to swear on, but his second, better response was, “is that a Demon King reference?”

Tomura had managed to still be asleep when Izuku went to check on him, so it was just ‘Akatani Mikumo’ and his ‘father’ attending. In Izuku’s opinion this made their matching outfits even more egregious: without Tomura there to balance out their group’s aesthetics, he felt like a shorter, younger copy of All For One. Any embarrassment on that front, however, was swiftly replaced by awe at the contents of the exhibition - networking be damned, these were incredible historical artifacts.

The Dawn of Quirks was a bold choice in Japan, where even government officials promoted the sanitized version of history over the truth; Izuku peered through the glass at photos of vigilantes rescuing people from rubble, of police and vigilantes brawling in the streets, of the ‘camps’ in America where the government had held some of the earliest ‘meta-ability users’ before they were broken out by revolutionaries-

Wait a second. Izuku looked closer at one photo of the revolutionaries. Is that-?

The Vestiges had been quiet since Izuku had agreed to go to Big HeroCon with their nemesis, but he felt a flicker of something then, seeing All For One in the background of a photo from the liberation of the quirk camps. Bloodstained army fatigues made even redder by the grievously-wounded heteromorph he was supporting with one arm while the other held a rifle, face and hair streaked with mud and ash, he looked more tired than he had even after the Battle of Kamino - but it was him.

Izuku stared at the photo for a long while.

“Here, Mikumo, I brought you some canapés,” said the voice of the man himself, from over his shoulder. “Did you find something interesting-”

All For One’s cheery chatter abruptly cut off. Izuku turned, accepting the plate of snacks, to find him as transfixed by the photo as he had just been, a hint of melancholy crossing his face.

“...You’ll notice the photo credit goes to Vice magazine,” All For One murmured. “State media wouldn’t cover it, and the local reporters were scared off by the feds before they could get close enough to see the camps, much less the people inside. The JSDF blew up the buildings when it was clear they couldn’t stop us, that day - wanted to prevent the prisoners we freed from joining our ranks. Or being freed at all.”

“They killed them?” Izuku whispered. “Just for having quirks?”

“Or for harboring those with quirks. Or for resisting the police. Or for speaking up against any of it.” All For One pointed at another photo in the collage: a group of vigilantes atop a building, silhouetted against a setting sun. One of them, Izuku realized, was the heteromorph from the first photo. “Since we would be killed just for existing, we thought, why not just fight back?”

“Why not,” Izuku echoed, lost in thought.

He wanted to ask All For One - what changed? What had happened in two hundred years to make him not just a villain, but the villain? And why did he care so much about Izuku?

But it wasn’t the right time for any of that. “Would you like to go around introducing me to everyone?” Izuku offered.

All For One beamed. “Would I ever!”

Chapter Text

When Izuku had offered to let All For One make introductions, he hadn’t realized just how many people the man knew.

“Akatani-sama! What a pleasure to see you here-”

“Why, Chairman Akatani, I had no idea you were attending-”

“Is that Akatani-sensei? My goodness, it’s an honor-”

Apparently ‘Akatani Hisashi’ was a bigger fish than Izuku could have ever known just from looking at him - but then, he had to be, didn’t he, to be so rich?

(I will not be swayed by money-)

“-and who is this fine gentleman, hm?” chuckled an elderly man Izuku could have sworn he recognized from somewhere.

“Ah, Takemura-san, this is my son, Mikumo.” All For One’s hand weighed on Izuku’s shoulder, heavy with parental expectation. “Takemura and I headed the Metahuman Rights Commission after its founding,” he explained to Izuku, adding, “It was a shame you had to retire, Oshizu-san.”

Takemura Oshizu, key historical figure in the quirked rights movement, gave a chagrined smile at All For One’s words. “Well, we can’t all be immortal!” he laughed.

Immortal?! Izuku almost blurted out, before he restrained himself - he couldn’t act like he didn’t know when he was supposed to be playing All For One’s son. He would take a break from the exhibition to look up ‘Akatani Hisashi’ on his phone as soon as the supervillain finished introducing him to people; the name did vaguely ring a bell, so he was probably famous for something outside the realm of Izuku’s personal hobbies and interests - the only celebrity news he followed was about heroes.

(And vigilantes, but never mind that right now.)

The exhibition opening went on. ‘Akatani Mikumo’ was introduced to several more people of great import: the CEO of the Dämmerung military support company, a trio of project leads from I-Island, the board chair of the Prometheus Institute… 

“Oh no,” Izuku whispered, “I forgot some of their names already!”

“Don’t worry about it, Ku-kun,” All For One chuckled. “They’ll remember you, which is far more important for their future.” Then, the villain perked up like a cat seeing a mouse, and changed the subject: “Why, I do believe I see a friend of yours!”

Izuku looked across the exhibition hall - yes, that was Todoroki Shouto, his classmate, standing bored in the shadow of Flame Hero Endeavor. “Oh!”

“Go on,” the supervillain huffed a laugh, patting him on the back. “I’ve made enough introductions for one day. There will be plenty of that next year.”

Next year? Izuku wanted to ask, but filed that away with all his other questions and took the out he was being offered. “Hey, Shouto!” he called, at a polite volume. “I didn’t know you were here!”

It took his classmate a moment to recognize him, his cold expression warming to one of surprise in the remaining time Izuku spent walking over. “...Midoriya,” he greeted, slightly less stiff in the shoulders than he’d been before. “I didn’t know you dyed your hair.” A pause. “And wore color contacts.”

“Ah, no, this is - I’m here under a pseudonym,” Izuku stumbled over his explanation, “I’m here with my dad-”

Shouto’s eyebrow rose.

“-and he isn’t All Might,” Izuku stressed, exasperated, and dearly hoping All For One wouldn’t find out about that conspiracy theory today. Or ever. He searched the room and found the villain talking to the Prometheus Institute chair again - but that didn’t mean he couldn’t use a quirk to listen in, or something. “He cannot find out about the Dad Might Theory, Shouto. It will make him cry.”

(It probably wouldn’t, but Izuku didn’t want to know what would happen.)

“Who’s this, Shouto?” grunted a voice from overhead. Izuku looked up: Endeavor had forgone his flaming facial hair in deference to the gallery’s safety regulations, but - heh - his hero costume was on under his suit. Truly a man with no work-life balance, a small part of Izuku sneered.

“Akatani Mikumo,” Izuku introduced himself with a facsimile of All For One’s professional smile, ignoring Shouto’s curious look at the name change. “Pleased to meet you, Endeavor-san.”

“Hm. ‘Akatani’,” Endeavor squinted at him. “Any relation to Akatani Hisashi?”

Izuku blinked. Did everyone know All For One’s alter ego? How did All Might not manage to hunt him down, if they did? “Yes, he’s my father.”

A look of utter dismay crossed Endeavor’s face. “He reproduced?”

It was so very like All Might’s dread at the prospect of All For One being alive that Izuku had to bite down on a burst of laughter. Clearly there was more than one high-ranking hero in Japan that the supervillain had history with. “Oh, I’m the younger son,” he replied, borrowing another of All For One’s expressions: the mean grin. “My brother couldn’t make it.”

“That’s all right, though,” All For One said suddenly from behind him, no doubt having swanned over from his previous conversation as soon as his name was mentioned. Izuku turned around, and let the villain boop him on the nose with a fingertip. “You, Mikumo, are the favorite.”

“Dad, you’re embarrassing me in front of my friend,” Izuku whined, because he kind of was.

“Sorry, sorry,” All For One ruffled his hair. “I just couldn’t resist. Introduce me to this friend of yours, would you, Ku-kun?”

Izuku caught Shouto mouthing Ku-kun? out of the corner of his eye and shot his friend a glare that he hoped conveyed that he was forbidden from ever using the nickname.

“That’s my son,” Endeavor interrupted, before Izuku could make introductions. Rude. “Funny how you’ve never mentioned having any of your own before.”

“I’m very good at keeping my family out of the press,” All For One smiled, in such a way that everyone, even Shouto, could hear the implication that Endeavor wasn’t.

Izuku decided then and there that he wasn’t going to get involved in their weird competition. “Shouto and I are going to go for a walk,” he informed All For One, and they made a beeline for the banquet table arranged nearby. It was just close enough to remain in earshot if something did happen - but far enough that he didn’t have to listen.

“You look a lot like your father,” observed Shouto idly, making a plate of canapés. “Identical. Like you’re both in disguise.”

Izuku dragged a hand down his face. “Shouto, please-”

“Father hates Akatani-san as much as he hates All Might.”

“Your father hates everyone, that’s not proof of anything.”

“Akatani-san and All Might are the same height-”

“Dad’s taller, actually.”

“-and have similar personalities.”

Izuku gaped at him, scandalized. “You take that back!”

His classmate, rudely, did not take it back.

“All Might is sweet and optimistic like a golden retriever! He’s the very archetype of a selfless hero, giving all that he has for the betterment of society!”

“...Uh huh.”

“My dad’s - he’s-” Izuku scrambled for the right word. ‘Villain’ would be too on-the-nose. ‘Monster’ was a little mean - to monsters. ‘Sadist’? ‘Misanthrope’? “He’s a capitalist!”

(Never mind the revolutionary years. Those were, ostensibly, long behind him.)

Shouto munched on another canapé, listening attentively.

“They’re nothing alike!”

“Well, they both seem to care for you,” Shouto observed, pointing over Izuku’s shoulder-

To where All For One had produced the monogrammed villain plushies and was bragging about Izuku’s ‘excellent taste’.

Endeavor looked like he was going to have an aneurysm.

“Mikumo is my pride and joy,” All For One declared a bit too loudly, drawing eyes from people nearby. “You might feel the need to shape your son according to some grand design, but my son follows his own dream.”

“Hypocrite,” Izuku muttered. “I don’t see you saying that about Tenko.”

Shouto blinked. “Your older brother?”

“Yeah.” Izuku fiddled with the cufflinks on his sleeve. What to say about Tomura? “He’s - well, he’s a NEET. I don’t think you’d like him.” Especially if he managed to recognize the leader of the League of Villains, but Izuku was going to hope that never happened. Ever.

“Hm.”

There was a brief moment of comfortable silence. Izuku sent a considering glance toward the banquet table.

“So is that a villain plushie or-”

“Hey, Todoroki-kun!” called another voice Izuku recognized: Yaoyorozu Momo, dressed several levels more formally than he had ever seen her at UA. “I didn’t know you were going to be here tonight. How are you?”

“Well, thank you,” Shouto replied in the automatic bland politesse of high-society acquaintance Izuku had forgotten he had been raised in. (It suited him.)

“And who’s this?” Momo eyed Izuku up and down, brows lifting in what Izuku guessed was recognition of his expensive suit. (All For One bought it, so it must be expensive, right?) “Hi, I’m Yaoyorozu Momo. Nice to meet you.”

Did she really not recognize him? Wow. “Akatani Mikumo,” Izuku replied. “It’s a pleasure.”

Momo’s eyes widened slightly. “Of the Akatani Group? I had no idea there were any heirs our age-”

“It’s Midoriya,” Shouto clarified. “He’s in disguise.”

Momo’s jaw dropped. “Really? But you look so different!”

Izuku obligingly flickered One For All in his palm. “My dad had my hair and eyes changed with a quirk. To maintain separate identities,” he explained, though it was more likely the villain just wanted them to match.

“Your father-?”

Shouto opened his mouth and Izuku just knew he was going to say All Might, and All For One had finished dressing down Endeavor and was glancing their way again. He panicked.

“Deku-kun!” gasped Momo at the coil of Blackwhip that had wound its way around Shouto’s neck. “Oh my god, put that away!” Tiny pearls of silver generated from the backs of her hands, showering the carpet; Izuku had always found that nervous gesture delightful to witness-

Anyway, Izuku hastily deactivated the quirk. Shouto was looking at him like he’d never seen him before, rubbing at the reddening line across his throat. “I wasn’t going to say ‘All Might’,” his friend (he hoped they were still friends?) told him, frowning slightly. “You didn’t need to try to kill me.”

Izuku wanted to hide in a corner and pretend none of this interaction had ever happened. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered, “I don’t know what came over me-”

(All For One had promised, had sworn he hadn’t changed anything else about Izuku with those quirks. On my honor, only the hair and eyes. But Izuku would have never resorted to violence like that - would he?)

A familiar hand was on his shoulder again. Izuku fought not to flinch at the sudden appearance of the villain himself, who was all but radiating smugness now. He’d totally seen Izuku’s slip-up. “There you are, Ku-kun,” All For One smiled. “Did I hear something about All Might on my way over?”

Don’t mention Dad Might theory, Izuku thought fiercely. He caught Momo’s eye, attempting to convey this telepathically.

“He’s - at this convention,” Momo got out. “But never mind him, it’s such an honor to meet you - I’m Yaoyorozu Momo, Mikumo and I are classmates at UA.”

Izuku watched All For One shake her hand, something in his gaze lighting up as he - presumably - sensed her quirk through the skin contact. He wanted to separate them before there were any ‘accidents’, so to speak, but bit his tongue, the better to pretend nothing was amiss-

“Are those villain plushies?” Shouto wondered a second time, now succeeding in changing the subject to something even worse than before.

All For One beamed. “Yes! Aren’t they adorable? Mikumo found an artist at the convention today with all sorts of designs. This one is Villain Deku!”

He was so proud of himself that Izuku cringed on a metaphysical level. “So embarrassing,” he muttered to no one in particular, face in his hands.

“Oh, come on now, Ku-kun,” All For One slung an arm around his shoulders. “You know you secretly think they’re cool!”

Fortunately, Izuku was spared from further mortification by the exhibition hall doors opening to admit another group of people in business suits. “Oh! Now there’s a face I haven’t seen in years,” All For One said brightly, tucking the plushies away in an inner pocket of his coat. (There was no evidence of a pocket from the outside. Izuku strongly suspected a dimensional storage quirk.) “Text me if you leave early, won’t you, Mikumo? I need to speak with them about a few things-”

At last, Izuku had a break from the supervillain’s antics. “Let’s sit down?” he suggested to his friends, already making a beeline for the chairs arranged nearby as he spoke. Shouto and Momo, good friends that they were, were already following his lead - and politely waited until he’d gotten comfortable to start the conversation anew.

“I can’t believe I never knew you were an heir to a conglomerate - to the conglomerate!” Momo blurted out.

“Dad hasn’t always been in my life,” Izuku admitted truthfully, passing the silver pearls from earlier between his hands. (He’d collected them with Blackwhip, before anyone could trip on them.) “I didn’t exactly know I was an heir to anything until recently.” You know, since he wasn’t one before.

“It’s almost ironic that you’re going into heroics, then,” Momo thought aloud-

Well, yes, if he was my father, then the heroics thing would be hilarious, all considered-

“I mean, never mind the Akatani Group, the Akatani Foundation he runs does more for the world than any hero could possibly do on their own!”

The - the what?

The disparate pieces of Izuku’s non-hero knowledge finally, finally clicked together. ‘Akatani’ as in, the Akatani Foundation, a.k.a. the philanthropic organization with a budget the size of a national superpower? With its hands in nearly every good thing in the world? That Akatani?

“He’s also the UN shadow president,” Shouto contributed, as if in afterthought.

Izuku choked on air. “They call him the what.”

10:15 pm.

“You used a quirk on me,” Izuku accused All For One as soon as he closed the door to the hotel room behind him. “At the networking event. After you swore you’d only changed my hair and eyes.”

The supervillain looked up from where he was arranging the plushies on a console table. (Ugh.) “If this is about you strangling the Todoroki boy-”

“It is exactly about me strangling the Todoroki boy.”

All For One held up his hands in an innocent gesture. “I really didn’t do anything,” he promised with wide, round eyes. “And you can hardly say you strangled him when you barely left a mark; he’s fine.”

“I almost broke his neck!”

White eyebrows inched upward just a little. “I’m sure you had a good reason?”

“...I’m going to bed,” Izuku decided, turning on his heel, rather than admit that he had.