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The large black van pulled up to heights alliance one day. The agents dressed in their black, immaculate suits looking well made and freshly pressed sent a bolt of pain down Aizawa’s head, right into his whole spine. He recognised the HPSC agents, their van and their suits. The question was why were they here.
He had already contacted Nedzu, and he had already responded with his own confusion and anger. Aizawa just did not want to have to deal with this today. They were there the whole day, waiting like a shark behind a reef. It had forced him to ban his class from going out for the day, just in case. It did always seem to be his class that was always focused on.
Especially Midoriya.
For fuck sake if it was something to do with Midoriya again he was asking for a raise. This was frankly getting a bit much. Not that he would ever expel him.
He never should have allowed them to take him after Kamino ward, even if they did think he was the traitor. It still sent chills down his back at how Midoriya described what happened. Not in anyway because it was bad, no it was the opposite. They didn’t even ask any questions, just took his blood and a couple of tissue samples and took him back.
And now they were back.
Then, suddenly, and all at once, he got a text chime from Nedzu. As he bent down to pick his phone from the table a few feet away from the table, the doors to the van opened. The men stepped out and marched over to Heights alliance building. Grabbing his cell, and his capture scarf he quickly made his way down from the staff dorm at the top floor, pulling on his easiset pair of shoes he could find. Running down to the lift.
Glancing down curiously at his phone in impatience.
Tedzu: They want Midoriya for reasons they will not explain. Although they have promised to let me know for why when he is in their custody, I don’t think I need to tell you that he is not to be taken. All Might is also coming to Heights.
“Shit.” Aizawa said. Why was the lift taking so long.
The lights went off and the movement cut off, and his question was answered. They had begun. The invasion will not be televised. “Double shit.”
The man standing at the lift shaft, his hands placed smoothly against the closed metal doors. He could feel the grinding of the wires and gears in the shaft, as well as the pressure on one of the metal overhead panels.
“Tut, tut. No Mr Erasurehead, not today. I’m afraid.” The gas mask that had been secured over his head warbeled his voice, and he stared down at the boy with yellow hair and a jagged black lightening bolt on the side. “Your teacher is very tenatious kid. Seriously, he’s a beast! No, no, stop wiggling – take a nice deep breath, you ain’t the beast your teacher is kid.”
The boy – probably some electric type, he looks enough like the Kaminari clan of heroes that he proably is the youngest – finally stopped struggling against the rubber lined boots, the little sparks of electricity finally fizzling out. His eyes rolled to the back of his head and his hands fluttered down to the floor.
He had been told by their agent that he was easy to supress because of his predilection to self-destruction, but that information was hardly needed. They were good for children, but that was just what they were children. Saying that it did seem that that information was possibly outdated, because the kid kept on launching bolts at him. Eraserhead really was a good teacher, because there was no way a kid like that would have had the ability to shoot electricity bolts when half conscious. Not that it really did anything, the boy was still a little stupid and the fact he couldn’t recognise the rubber boots that were suppressing any effects on him was showing it.
Finally the bolts fizzeled out completely. The kid looked very peaceful as he slept. He sighed in contentment.
It was great! Very fun fight, a little bit of toying, the realisation that he couldn’t breathe. The slow break down of him and his friends. Him making his way to the lift and the kids realiseing there wasn’t really anything they could do.
Like the little Midoriya – who got busier and busier as the others piled onto him. The angry blond one that did not like that at all, and who started shouting when they first started to attack, the colourless odourless gas taking him out quickly as he wasited his breath. If anything it was a good lesson to him to not shout at unknown enemies breaking into their home.
He couldn’t see him now, his eyes tore off the blond and the elevator, and searched the room to see if there was any other children he recognised.
Oh! There the great grand daughter of the Great Extortionist! Some of her fake money is still hanging around somewhere, and outside of Museums where now they have their value. They were all very strong children, but that was what they were. Children.
They had just been able to get the Midoriya kid down on the sedative there UA agent had put into the vents.
Return: mission accomplished, all units retreat.
Izuku woke up with what he might call the worse pain in his neck he had ever felt.
He felt frozen with the harsh pain, echoing up to his brain and right between his eyes and all the way down to his spine. Coiling around his spine like visious vines yanking it out, one vertebra by one.
A high pitched whine blared through the room as he opened his eyes and crawled up to conciousness. Only to realise, as his breath grew harsher and harsher that the whine was coming from him. The low whine cutting off into supressed sobs.
With his eyes open he could see the shapless formes moving above his head. Slowly, slowly growing sharper and sharper in colour and form as the fuzz bled out of his eyes. A hand settled into his hair, gently tugging and moving it.
A quiet humming, blurring into speech caught his attention. He quickly shut his eyes again to concentrait. He was speaking in accented English, it was clear this man was not Japanese nor English.
“- callabrated with the oculus component? Boy, keep your eyes open.”
Fat stabby fingers proded with rubber fingers into his eye sockets and eye lids prying them open. The soft hand in his hair never stopped stroking. He came to focus with a heavy set, older man with the harshest cut goatee beard and hair Izuku had ever seen on an older man.
His skin was blending into the white of the bright overhead lights, and his blond white hair was not doing him any favours by also blending in.
“That’s better, keep them open until I say so. We need to make sure the”
A soft thud echoed in the space, and the heavy man was shouldered out the way, and a slightly younger darker skin man loomed over him too. His red hair, caught the light shining like a red halo.
He looked like a fallen angel.
“Don’t give anything away now, he may not seem it but he is aware.” The confusing thing was Izuku was sure that was a scottish accent. Where the hell was he? Did those men in masks take him to England or something?
“No, no don’t worry, you are still in Japan! Have to keep you close! Not that we are allowed to tell you why! I have to say, your english is incredible for someone who lived in Japan his whole life.” The scots man smiled nicely, he had lovely straight teeth – shinging as bright as the other mans face – but the smile warped into something almost mischevious, it wasn’t something Izuku understood, but it did seem like a trap was being sick. “maybe a parent taught you while growing up?”
Izuku nodded but didn’t answer. His dad taught him, but he hadn’t seen his dad in so long. Sometimes he liked to think he was a figment of his imagination. The one person who had never turned on him in any way. Only leaving before he could turn on him.
“Hmm, louds thoughts too.” The scottish man’s eyes swirlled red, his hair relaxing as his quirk powered off. “That is a very sad thought as well. Too bad he left when he did, isn’t it Izuku.”
“Call me Midoriya.”
“Very sad, Midoriya.” There was a pause as the two stared at each other, the grumbling of the older man – clinking metals and tools behind them, before he moved back from where Izuku was laying. “Come on, up you get. Let’s get you settled, this took take a while.”
“Where am I?” Izuku asked as he slowly peeled himself from the table. His hand shook as it laid against his head, the other brushing softly against his neck. There was a large bump on his neck, and despite the pain, Izuku pushed down on it. A sharp yelp at what felt like he was stabbed made him drop his hand quickly.
“Yeah wouldn’t touch that if I were you. They hurt like a bitch.” The young, charasmatic voice of Hawks echoed from the door way, from behind his back.
“Yeah listen to Hawks, he would know.” The scottish man said, in what Izuku would imagine, was the worse Japanse accent he had ever heard. “Off you go,” he spoke thankfully in English, “and stop insulting my accent. It’s unique, a weed amongst a blade of grass. As that fat walrus over there said, not that I trust his Queen’s English education. I think it’s refined. Not that anyone else does. People love to think loudly about preducdice.”
A hand landed on his shoulder, and Izuku had been so enamoured by the man in front of hims accent.
“Ignore him, I do.” Hawks said, inturrupting the tirade, tugging slightly “not that I can understand him. Come on, you’ll be more comfortable this way. You won’t be poked and prodded by strange forign men.”
“Where am I? What, what are you doing here. You’re a hero! Did you save me? Are my friends ok?”
“Listen, come with me, and I’ll tell you what I can.” Before Izuku could demand an answer, and his intention must have spoken on his face Hawks broke him off, a large red feather coming up uncommfortably close to his face, forcing him to lean back over the table. This didn’t seem like a way to comfort a victim after a traumatic kidnapping. “No, you don’t get to demand. Not here, and not now. I am sure I don’t need to explain how painful it would be for you if you try and be difficult. I have been told you like and study heroes. So get moving.”
All of that laxadasical charasmatic image slunk off him as he moved into Izuku’s space. Taking all the useable air with him. A hard layer of menace lowered over them both. Izuku gritted his teeth behind his closed lips, grinding them shut and nodded – not trusting his voice not to crack under the preassure. Nor for tears of frustration to slip out.
And in the moments after his nod the persona flowed back onto Hawks, joyvial and the number 2 hero again. He stepped to the side arm swung out again. “After you.”
Izuku followed, the two men in the lab already turned back to their tables.
The corridor was white the slash of Hawk’s feathers the only hint of colour in the air. Even his outfit was white on white, his blond hair was too seemingly washed out. Izuku followed him into a similarly white room with similarly white accents and similarly white furniture.
He was there, with the bump in the back of his neck, and without access to his quirk, and with the watchful eyes of the number 2 hero staring into him.
Yoichi and Second banded together to create what was then known as stability and now is known as the knife over the throat of the nation. Villain deterrent, they would say. Mirror image of their creator, the father of One for All. They created this society. All for One knew it was his duty to change it, to morphe it into what Yoichi would have wanted.
The rebellion will not be televised.
All for One did not often take the time to regret things he did. Regret was an emotion that would bog you down and curse you with indisicions and empathy. It was a blue tinted curse in a field of red blessings.
However, as he sat with his head in his hands, this was the very thing he was feeling.
A blue curse, would be the only way he could describe it, and he could feel the smug blanket from the very beginning of this curse. The vice president of the HSPC sat in their chair with what All for One could tell was a small smug smile curving on their lips.
“Ah, I see you got the news? I have to say congratulations to you All for One, your son is a very, very impressive boy. He would be such a great hero. Or could be, I do hope you don’t interfere, that would be very detrimental.”
He desperately tried to keep a hold of his anger, and held it on by a thread. Smoothing his hair back he bared his teeth at the person, even now he could not quite tell what the person sitting infront of him looked like, nor exactly what they sounded like.
Normally All for One was under the impression that having something difficult to attain would reap high reward. High risk, high reward and all of that. However, this was not that. The planning it took to get the person alone was almost worse than having a face carved in.
“As if I would ever bring him into anything willingly.”
“Yes I do wonder how he got that quirk.”
“Quite. So, do you know the details?”
“Of course, all you have to do it go home.”
Of course, all he had to do was go home. As if that was the very thing he avoided, for his family. So his precous wife and son could live exactly how they deserved. He grunted in reply and Kurogiri thankfully understood his intention and warped the person away.
Dear President,
I hear you have my son
Inko, as expected would be leaving him, taking everything she could and cutting all contact with him the moment they and Izuku were free of the HSPC. The surprise of him showing up at her doorstep, unexpectedly, was far overshadowed by the gagged and hooded person following him and the news of who exactly he was.
It was fine, he was fine with it. Izuku had been with the HSPC for far too long. With the warped dream Yoichi had created from his very blood and bones. A few hours after he had settled a knock sounded at the door and the letter that was dropped through the letterbox was both relieving and infuriating, he would have to let the person go without any insurance and trust that they would send Izuku over.
He suppressed his rage, and opened the door. Shoving the person out, barking directions to the safehouse the letter was addressed to.
He just had to wait.
The directions were shouted at him as he could feel the rope binding his hands together and the harsh and smelly paper bag fall away.
It wasn’t like he needed them. As he blinked the spots of light out of his eye and the familiar streets came into focus.
“Go on kid.” Hawks said, his drawl sending bugs up and down his spine. He could hear the apathy in it, and the violent disregard that was hidden by the spot light. “Go see your daddy. He’s going to save you. Go on.”
Stumbling away, his legs were weak feeling and he could feel them shaking. The dirt cacked his face and sweat had turned his shirt hard. The large figure that stood in his doorway was both familiar and terrifying.
This was the man who had nearly killed All Might, this was the man who had cleaned his knees when he fell on them and told him being quirkless would never stop him from doing anything he wanted. He could feel a sob building up in his chest and he bolted to his father.
Hawks couldn’t watch this.
This wasn’t what the HSPC should be, it wasn’t what it was made for. But they would know if he turned away. They would call him a villain sympathiser, just like his father, and they would do worse to him than what they were doing to the kid.
All for One nearly smiled, the relief that was wobbling his lip was enough to prevent that. The impact of Izuku crashing into him was followed by a small click.
His neck exploded from right beside his spine and as he settled fully into his arms All for One could feel both Izuku and the quirk that was the last of Yoichi fade away. As the boy (as his boy) came apart in his arms his vision went white.
There was nothing in his mouth apart from ash and blood. There was no sobbing, no pleading from Inko for this to be over or false or a dream. There was no heartbeat here apart from his.
They were gone.
And One for All burned in a flame of its own creation.
All for One did not, he crawled out from under the wreckage of the broken down family home, pulling his dead wife and son to his chest, and he wept. It was an idea that his family would be safe, that the Commission would protect its own. It was not his fault One for All had ended, it was never going to be his fault.
One for All was a quirk contradictory in nature. It was one quirk designed for all, for every one person. But its human nature that they don’t like to share.
The HSPC, One for All, All for One. The haunted quirk. The three musketeer’s were four, and the Hero Public Safety Commission was the biggest cause of death for heroes in the world.
Izuku Midoriya is a hero. Izuku Midoriya was a hero.
Hisashi Shigaraki is a villain. Hisashi Shigaraki is so much worse.