Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Complete retirement was, in Toshinori’s opinion, even more boring than he imagined it would be. Having spent almost thirty years as the number one hero in Japan with people to rescue, a hero agency to keep up with, merchandising and advertising deals to work around, and celebrity appearances to make had kept him always busy. All Might gave his all to become and sustain the persona of the Symbol of Peace.

Toshinori was a man not quite fifty years old who had fulfilled his goals and completely lost his sense of self to All Might. All Might, who everyone agreed, should entirely disappear after his retirement and never show up again. Toshinori was left floundering.

There were regrets, of course, but not the ones he expected. Young Mirio, Lemillion, had proven himself to be an excellent ninth wielder of One for All. This was no surprise, Mirai had scouted him and begun grooming him for the role before he graduated UA. All Might had brought him into the agency as a second side kick when he graduated at Mirai’s behest. All Might had the chance to work with the young man himself for two years.

Lemillion had taken to his role of a pillar for the nation with almost effortless ease. With All Might’s wholehearted support stacked behind him just before his retirement, the new hero had became number one on the hero charts in a year. As part of his retirement and his powerful recommendation of Lemillion as his successor, All Might had also given over all of his agency and Might Tower to the young hero to rename and run as his own. With Mirai’s continued behind the scenes work as a side kick, of course.

All Might’s final fight with All for One had been a victory, but a devastating one. All for One was gone, and he had taken Toshinori’s left lung, kidney, and stomach when he went. There were amazing healing quirks in the world to help a man of All Might’s status recover from gruesome injuries like this. All for One’s final misery had been to leave a residual quirk effect behind in Toshinori’s body that made it extremely difficult if not impossible for healing quirks and organ regrowth quirks to ever work well on him again.

Left with non quirk related medical methods, Toshinori began a series of nine different surgeries in the year following to return him to some semblance of a normal life. Between the second and third surgery, Toshinori had reached for One for All, for All Might, and felt an agony he couldn’t describe push back at him for the effort. Nighteye worked on him relentlessly for two weeks before Toshinori agreed that it was indeed the time to pass One for All to young Mirio.

Between the fifth and sixth surgeries, Toshinori was stable enough to be able to grab hold of the small fire of One for All that still remained to him and suffer through the agony of becoming All Might for several appearances with Lemillion to vouch for the young hero and give the world a few months to ease into the idea of All Might’s forthcoming retirement. It was all very flowery, noting the older hero’s understanding that he had succeeded in his goals of helping create peace and that it was his desire to step back and allow a new generation to take over.

After the eighth surgery, All Might made his final appearance before a massive crowd. He again expounded on how the heroes of the future would be every bit as good for the people as he had been, if not more. He bowed his final farewell, smiled his trademark smile, and had not been seen in public since. It was a controversial move with the media and the public, but the world moved on.

Japan’s new number one hero was a twenty three year old kid with all of his life before him and the bright attitude and fortitude to claim it with both hands. Meanwhile, the retired number one was three months out of his last surgery and had lost nearly half of the body mass he had before that final fight.

Toshinori’s excitement these days consisted of scrolling hero news feeds and finding recipes he could cook and eat with spices that wouldn’t cause his digestive track any further irritation than it was want to do on its own. Cooking, he’d discovered, was a surprisingly therapeutic activity.

Gran Torino had stopped in to visit him after each surgery, but he and Toshinori still mixed as well as oil and water after all of these years. Those visits were usually kept short and that was best for both of them. Toshinori didn’t really make efforts to reach out to his old teacher between those visits. Sir Nighteye and Lemillion were extraordinarily busy. Toshinori worked to contact his successor and his friend at least once a week, but these were often more professional than social.

Toshinori had no one else to speak of in his life. He was polite and friendly to the neighbors that lived in his mid range apartment building with him. He exchanged pleasantries with the elderly owner of the small grocery store he frequented and the younger owner of the tea shop he also frequented. Superficially it was fine. He was fine. Underneath it all, Toshinori very much regretted how bored, secluded, and lonely he had become.

The sudden mid afternoon phone call from Nezu, therefore, came as a welcome surprise.

After brief pleasantries, UA’s principle got straight to the point. “I have a project I’m working on that I could very much use your skills to help with, Toshinori. I should warn you, it might be dangerous.”

The mention of something to do sent a jolt of interest through the retired hero. The mention of possible danger brought excitement. How bored had he become that this was all Nezu needed to tell Toshinori to have the man asking where and when they should meet to discuss it?

The following morning found the retired hero seated before Nezu’s desk at UA. The chair beside him was occupied by a dark haired man wearing a long tan trench coat. Toshinori only had a chance at a hello and a raised eyebrow in question before being asked to sit.

Nezu, from his own boosted seat, gestured at each of the men as he introduced them. “Toshinori, this is detective Tsukauchi Naomosa. Naomosa, this is Yagi Toshinori. He was a student of mine at UA many years ago. To be right upfront, Naomosa and I found ourselves on the track of researching the same problem recently. To our mutual chagrin, we find we need outside help in retrieving more information. This is where you come in, Toshinori.”

Toshinori’s eyebrow climbed back up his forehead of its own free will. Nezu had his paws in so many schemes and alliances it was overwhelming to think about. They aligned forces with the power of the press Might Tower had wielded and Nezu’s persistence to push back on various government corruption issues in the past. If the principle had manged to step into the same problem as a detective and then think to call Toshinori for assistance, it stood to reason something similar was happening here.

With a chagrined little smile, the retired hero noted, “I don’t have the pull or the resources I once had, Nezu. I imagine you have the contacts for those who do, however.”

Nezu’s return smile was a frightening thing full of sharp little teeth. “If I need pull and resources, I’ll contact a hero agency. We don’t need that. Yet. We need someone with combat skills, who can keep secrets, and who should not have any familial and friend concerns with suddenly and fully having to relocate. Am I mistaken in thinking these things may describe you?”

Wasn’t that just the most polite low-blow that anyone had dealt to him in years? He chose to ignore it. “Here I thought for a moment that you may have lost your mind and decided to ask me to come here to teach. Instead, you’ve lost your mind and are asking me to do spy work?”

“I knew you would understand,” Nezu beamed from his seat. “Are you interested?”

No one had ever called on All Might to work in information gathering. Then again, they still weren’t. Nezu was calling on Yagi Toshinori. The former hero grinned back. “Yes, I’m interested!”

Tsukauchi spoke up then. “I’m sure you have a good reason to trust this former student of yours, but this job really is better suited to an undercover detective than a civilian. An underground hero, even. No offense, Yagi.”

“So we have both agreed and discussed, Naomosa. Unless you’ve had a breakthrough this morning, we don’t have enough information to warrant formal investigations. You asked what else we could do. Toshinori will be well suited to the role we’re asking of him. He does well with children, too.”

“Don’t tell me that kids are going to be the dangerous part of this you warned me about, Nezu,” Toshinori half laughed, half asked.

The detective overrode the question. “The hiring requirements the client is asking for are very specific. They will ask for proof of the applicant being quirkless.”

Nezu’s terrifying little smile was back. “Toshinori is over forty, quirkless, has a university education, is fully fluent in English and well as Japanese, and has always been very patient with children. He has no family of his own and could move in right away with little interference. He is the most qualified applicant I could possibly think of,” turning toward the retired hero, Nezu advised, “I would recommend you wear slip on shoes for the interview. Naomosa is right, they will ask to see your pinky toe.”

Tsukauchi gaped as he looked between the other two men. For a moment, Toshinori didn’t fair much better. What was he to apply for and who went out of their way to seek quirkless employees in this day and age? It couldn’t bode well. “Are you asking me to go undercover as a babysitter or a nanny or something?”

“We’ll have you apply to be a butler, actually! We can easily find those who will vouch for your academics at UA and abroad in university. I suspect you should still be able to contact All Might to write a recommendation after the years you’ve spent working at Might Tower, yes?”

Ah, that’s how Nezu was spinning this to the out-of-the-loop detective seated beside him. It was a very good cover. As All Might’s civilian name was very tightly controlled information, Toshinori had made himself an official employee badge for work at Might Tower and used it to rent his apartments as well. No one knew Yagi Toshinori beyond the hero agency, but he did have a paper trail of employment, housing, and education. Never mind that he happened to attend the same schools as All Might in the same years. Many students did.

“I think,” he noted with a very flat look at Nezu, “that All Might will have questions if I ask him to write me a letter of recommendation to be a butler. Its a step sideways from being a secretary to a hero, don’t you think?”

Which is to say that the former All Might very much did have questions and was not so subtly asking them right now. Nezu was undeterred. “Yet, between your recent life changing injury and the retirement of your former employer, you are suddenly in a position to be seeking a less stressful line of work.”

The detective beside him huffed a small laugh even as he dragged a hand down his face. “Nezu, you really do know the right person for every job you need, don’t you? You’ve earned that frighteningly powerful reputation you have through networking and skill. We couldn’t have made up a background for someone that matches the criteria as well as Mr. Yagi’s real life does. Recent injury though, are you well enough to use those fighting skills Nezu says you have if you need too?”

The last was addressed to the retired hero. He grinned, “My physical therapist said I am ready to do as I please a month ago, detective. If I need to punch and run, I am up for the task.”

“That’s good to hear. Hopefully, no fighting or running will be needed, but you need to know there is a very strong possibility this will be dangerous for you. If you’re still on board then,” Tsukauchi turned to Nezu, “You seem confident in him. I don’t have any better ideas. Lets debrief him.”

It turned out that Toshinori’s first hunch had not been wrong. Nezu had been hunting something corrupt in the government again. Detective Tsukauchi had been working on connecting a series of white collar crimes to a string of other crimes in the underworld. They both had stumbled on the other’s efforts with one individual. Midoriya Hisashi, the Japanese ambassador to the United States.

Ambassador Midoriya was an exemplary example of a business man turned politician on paper. He had outstanding qualifications, enviable interpersonal skills, and formed diplomatic connections that greatly assisted the Japanese government. He was also a wealthy man with a wife and one young son.

Both Nezu and the detective, through separate lines of questioning, had come up with multiple concerning pieces of information about Midoriya and his dealings. Neither of them had solid proof of any wrong doings. Any paper trails they were lead to mysteriously vanished before they could be used in legal efforts.

“Three weeks ago, Midoriya Hisashi abruptly fired their former butler. The man died in a car accident that night. The following day, he fired the remaining household staff and all security except his own personal security guard. Nine days ago, a formal request to find a new butler went up in the appropriate online venues. A request with a very odd and specific note seeking a quirkless individual.”

Toshinori frowned. “Which is where I come in. That all seems like a lot of firing and a surprisingly timed accident to have no evidence of wrong doings.”

Nezu nodded. Tsukauchi shrugged. The detective answered, “I wouldn’t call the ambassador subtle about these things, he’s just very well connected. Either people don’t know him well and can’t imagine him being a wolf in sheep's clothing, or they know and cover for him very well. There has been more than one lethal but benign looking accident concerning people that Midoriya would benefit from having gone.

“By necessity, a butler needs to be close to the workings of the family they live with. If anyone were to say something they shouldn’t or leave incriminating evidence out, it would be in front of the butler. However, we don’t know if that's exactly what happened with the previous group or if something else caused the mass firing. This might have to be a long term undercover job in order to earn trust and gain access as the ambassador seems very on edge right now. That’s where you come in, Yagi. They need a butler you appear to have the qualifications to match. We need someone who is patient enough to wait months or years as needed to give us the solid evidence to take this guy down.”

The detective frowned in deep concern at Toshinori. “I’m not comfortable sending an untrained civilian into this situation though. Midoriya clearly has no qualms with being the source of lethal accidents.”

For years, Toshinori had been the pro hero and everyone around him had been the civilians. It was so odd to be addressed as such. “Threats of murder are one way to make my life more exciting! I understand the concern, detective. If they hire me, I’ll do my best to make myself as unobtrusive as possible.”

The retired hero was well aware of how the detective spent a long moment looking at his blonde hair, his bright blue eyes, and the fact that even seated Toshinori was a solid foot taller than him. Nezu didn’t give him the chance to comment on it. “Naomosa, Toshinori spent years employed with a hero agency. Even as a secretary, he is not as untrained as the average person off the street. Its settled. Toshinori, I’ll send you the advertisement. Gather the paperwork and referrals. You and I will work on getting a resume to the Midoriya's as soon as possible.”

--

Ambassador Midoriya’s home in Musutafu was a moderately sized mansion. Toshinori’s resume had been accepted. He had been invited for an interview within the week. He knew the references had been checked as an email had been sent to All Might for verification. He stood before the double glass doors after ringing the doorbell and was surprised to have the ambassador’s wife come to answer the door alone.

Toshinori bowed as deeply as his injured side would allow when the door was opened. “Mrs. Midoriya, I presume? My name is Yagi Toshinori. I’m here to…”

The stout, green haired woman interrupted him with a small smile, “Interview for the butler position. Yes, I know. Your picture showed a very distinctive looking man,” the woman paused as she looked up at him. Way up at him. “Please come in, Mr. Yagi. Mind the door frame.”

Toshinori thanked her and ducked as he stepped in. Mrs. Midoriya gestured that he should follow as she lead him through the house. “I will be upfront with you, Mr. Yagi. We have interviewed five people from two staff agencies in the last two weeks. None have met my Hisashi's standards. He is very particular about the staff. Don’t be surprised if you are dismissed today.”

“One should have care in who they trust to help run a household. It makes sense that he is cautious about this. Thank you for the kindness of your warning, Mrs. Midoriya.”

She paused for half a step before offering him a nod and a smile that was a little surprised and a little sad. The woman lead him to a luxurious office space. The desk was a massive and solid wood thing. Bookshelves on the walls filled with books that showed no signs of use. All of the furniture was made of textured leather and smelled like it.

The man behind the desk did not stand or even look up from his computer for several minutes after his wife and interviewee had arrived. The records Toshinori had looked at as he prepared for the job described Midoriya Hisashi as being 5’7” with black, curly hair. In person, just as in all of his professional photos, the man had his curls aggressively tamed nearly flat with hair products. After a period of time too long to not be interpreted as rude, brownish red eyes finally looked up at him. Way up at him.

“I didn’t realize Lurch had applied to be our butler. How appropriate.”

Toshinori’s friend, Dave, had been an avid fan of a very old American television series with a creepy and cooky family who had a very tall and creepy butler. The retired hero instantly knew the reference made and knew by the delivery that it was not a compliment or kindly joke. He smiled as though he had not heard the comment.

“My name is Yagi Toshinori, sir. It is my pleasure to meet you.” It genuinely was not a pleasure, and the blonde man suspected the experience was not about to improve.

The ambassador hummed in an indifferent way. He gestured to both Toshinori and Mrs. Midoriya at the plush leather chairs in front of his desk. “Sit.”

Ambassador Midoriya finally stood then, rounding his desk to lean against it facing his wife and Toshinori. Not subtle was an understatement. The man clearly needed to be the tallest in the room for this conversation. Even with the retired hero seated, it was a close thing. “First, show me your toes. I’ve had two with quirks all ready try to interview and I’m not wasting time on that again.”

Had Toshinori honestly been looking for a new career and with pure intentions applied for this job, he would have stood and left in that moment. Toshinori had long personally accepted what being quirkless entailed. That did not mean he enjoyed meekly allowing someone to humiliate him about it. He had agreed to to being patient and keeping his head down in order to help Nezu and Tsukauchi with their investigation, though.

Toshinori stared at the ambassador long enough that the man gestured to his feet impatiently. “Are you deaf? I told you to take off your shoes and socks.”

The retired hero didn’t have to fake the embarrassed and angry blush that rose on his face as he stiffly bent to the task. First one foot and then the other were set bare on the rich wood of the Midoriya’s floor. With exaggerated slowness, the ambassador studied each pinky toe individually from where he stood at his desk.

The man huffed, nodded, and then returned to his chair. He raised the height of it before sitting. “At least we can progress the interview now. Put your shoes back on, Lurch.”

Toshinori did. Sitting up, he cleared his throat. “My name is Yagi, sir. Not Lurch.”

The smile was predatory, the smoke released from the man’s mouth as he laughed clearly there as an intimidation tactic. The reply was smarmy at best. “My mistake, Mr. Yagi. So. Your resume states you were one of All Might's secretaries. There since he opened the agency, even. Is there some reason a man of your experience didn’t stay on under Lemillion? Tell me why he didn’t want you. Were you payed too much? Had too much in benefits? Grown old and useless?”

The urge to Detroit Smash the man’s nose into the back of his skull was strong. This man was an ambassador? Hopefully he treated politicians and dignitaries with more respect than potential staff. Instead, Toshinori bowed his head and stayed with the story he and Nezu had agreed on. “I was injured in a villain attack several months before All Might retired. After that, I spent a lot of time working through health complications during the recovery. I’ve only been cleared to work again last month. After all of that and with All Might retiring, I decided I wanted to look for a less stressful career in my future.”

“Ah,” Hisashi replied, “Ailing and useless then. As a man whose job was to do paperwork for a hero, what makes you think you have a skill set that would be in anyway suited to be a household butler? By the look of you, I imagine you don’t cook much. The poor fitting cut of that suit? I don’t have high hopes for your style or cleaning abilities either.”

Toshinori clenched his teeth, but he was well past being able to force a smile. “I am a capable cook and I keep a tidy apartment, sir.”

“I can tell you right now we have very different standards of what clean and capable mean.”

The retired hero nearly bit his tongue trying to keep his tone level as he asked, “Have I done something to offend you, Mr. Midoriya?”

The dark haired man puffed a tiny breath of fire. An irritated exhale at best. “Your taste in clothing is abhorrent and the fit is embarrassing. More importantly, you are a quirkless, pointless, individual whose only purpose in life is to serve others. I would have thought All Might would have taught you to mind your place in our society. Yet, you walk in here with your back straight and head held high like you are worth something to me. You are sub human, as anyone who is subservient should be.

“We do have a photocopy of your driver’s license and driving record, which are both points in your favor. Keep your head down, Mr. Yagi, and do the work you are told to do. We might be able to make this work. I can’t tell you that it will be any less stressful than being a glorified receptionist at a hero agency though. Oh, and you will have three well tailored suits when you begin working with us, Mr. Yagi. I wont tolerate whatever this is. Inko, take him out of here and deal with him. I have phone calls to make.”

Mrs. Midoriya remained as silent as she had through the interview. Her own head down and her hands clasped before her. She escorted Toshinori back into the hall and toward the exit. The retired hero was painfully close to telling that shithead politician to go find a street lamp to sit and spin on. He would apologize to Nezu and Tsukauchi after the fact for losing the job opportunity.

The anger must have been somewhere in his expression or lurking in his eyes, as Mrs. Midoriya looked at him quickly before smoothing nonexistent wrinkles in her dress and going back to squeezing her own fingers in her hands. She hustled faster toward the door. Her posture, her fidgeting, all suddenly struck Toshinori as very telling. Something twisted in his middle where his stomach used to be.

Mrs. Midoriya looked very much like someone who needed to be rescued.

If the understanding that dawned on him then made him slow his steps, the little tug on his right pant leg made him stop entirely. There beside him was a small boy with wild and curly green hair, freckled cheeks, and impossibly big green eyes. The information given to him while discussing this project told him this was the ambassador’s son. Midoriya Izuku, six years old.

The boy looked up at Toshinori with a breathless little awed smile. “Mr. Yagi? I heard! I heard what my dad said! You really have bad toes like I do? Really? You’re quirkless like I am? You used to work for All Might? And now you’re going to be our new butler? That is so cool! I’m so happy you came here!”

Young Midoriya was marked as quirkless in his official records. Having heard straight from Midoriya Hisashi about his opinion on quirkless people, he had an awful, sinking, sensation about what it meant for Izuku to live here. Toshinori looked to the boy’s mother in desperation and found Midoriya Inko looking back at him with heart broken eyes.

This changed everything.

--

An hour later and back in his own apartment, Toshinori pulled out his cell phone and speed dialed. Nezu answered his call on the third ring, Toshinori barely gave him time to answer. “That man is a foul, quirkest, and elitist monster wearing human skin. He deserves to go get lost in the Mariana Trench and never be found again.”

“Ah,” Nezu hummed, “You didn’t get the job then? That’s okay, Toshinori, I have no doubt you did your best.”

“No,” Toshinori growled out the word with anger and determination. “I did get the job. I start on Monday.”

Chapter Text

Toshinori hauled his two suit cases and his briefcase from the cab trunk. He offered a hearty thank you to the driver as the man hopped back into his car and drove away. Over the few days before his official start date as the Midoriya’s butler, he had spent a fair amount of time and money on purchasing and tailoring clothing to fit him as the thinner man he was now instead of bulk of All Might. Three suits, as demanded. Several button down shirts, ties, and two sport jackets, and two sets of dress shoes. Two tailored pajama outfits and slippers.

Beyond the clothing, he had his toiletries, his medications, his wallet, his cell phone, and his laptop. This was a fully live-in position. The lease on his apartment lasted through the end of the year and Toshinori hoped that keeping it and paying monthly rent on the place would not raise concerns for his new employer. While the retired hero didn’t actually tend to keep very many possessions for himself, he did have more to his life than was currently packed in the luggage he was wheeling up to the Midoriya’s door.

Toshinori pressed the doorbell and looked up to the security camera as it panned to him. There were two more on the open gate by the driveway. Another on each front corner of the house and on the outside of the garage. One more directed at the garbage cans. No doubt there were more in the backyard, and likely in the house. It would be a lot of surveillance footage for the one security guard to comb through on his own. One of Toshinori’s goals was to determine if the recordings were kept on an on-site database or uploaded to an external service.

It was a matter of moments before the door opened and Mrs. Midoriya was gesturing him inside with a polite smile. “Hello again, Mr. Yagi. Let me show you to your room so you can set your bags down.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Midoriya. And thank you for all of your prompt responses to my e-mail inquiries this weekend.”

The woman’s smile turned a little amused as she walked him through the kitchen and down a hallway toward the rear of the house. She waved him off. “Oh dear, please don’t worry about that, Mr. Yagi. This was all arranged on very short notice and you don’t have any experience as a butler. They were all very reasonable questions.”

Toshinori had spent time even before the interview researching job duties as a butler. Researching what it meant to be ‘classically trained.’ It was one of those careers that unless you were in it, there wasn’t much help on the internet for expectations. Really, it deepened on the employer, the house, the family situation, and the number of staff. Mr. Midoriya had been less than helpful at the interview with the exception of implying that cooking, cleaning, and driving were necessary skills. The retired hero had resorted to e-mailing Mrs. Midoriya those questions. She had given him her personal contact information after the interview and the entire hiring process had been through her.

“On that note,” Toshinori hedged as he followed the woman of the house, “Please understand that I’m not complaining, but you seem to be offering me an above average wage from what I could find on positions like this. I am inexperienced at this, I would be willing to take something lower until I’ve got full understanding of the job.”

“Mr. Yagi, wages take in consideration the amount of work expected. For the foreseeable future, you will be acting as our only household staff. This includes cooking, cleaning, laundry, acting as our driver when needed, and helping watch Izuku when Hisashi and I are unable to. If anything, I’ve offered you a wage that is too low.”

At the end of the hall, the green haired woman pushed open a door to a bedroom. Opposite the door was a glass paneled door that lead outside to the back yard. There was a security camera mounted to the hallway wall aimed in such a way that would catch activity from both doors. Toshinori let his eyes slide by it as he entered the room. Mrs. Midoriya continued where she left off. “I will be willing to renegotiate for better wages once you’ve settled in, Mr. Yagi. This is your room. There are spare sheets and extra blankets in the wardrobe that are yours to use. Please feel free to unpack into wardrobe and the dresser. The desk is also there to use as needed. There is a connected bathroom, through here. The bedroom and the bathroom are yours and are not shared by the family. Please consider this space your own while you work for us.”

The wardrobe was an old wooden standing model that was positioned on the wall to the right of the bed. A stand mirror stood beside it and both of them were between two windows letting morning light from the outdoors in. The bed was positioned against the wall opposite of the door with a bedside table on each side and a lamp on the right one. Next to the entrance door was a dresser and a small desk were positioned against the wall abutting the hallway. On the left wall was a shelf with coat hangers and a door to a small bathroom with a toilet, sink, and standing shower.

This was more than enough space for him and the meager belongings he had brought with. The queen sized bed with its tasteful brown comforter would likely not be long enough for him, but most standard sized beds were not. Toshinori would make do. He bowed his head, “Its a nice room, I’m sure I will have no problems making myself comfortable here. Thank you.”

Mrs. Midoriya had her polite smile back in place. “Of course. If you’ll set your things down, please? I’ll let you come back and unpack them later. Let me give you the tour of the house and start working on the itinerary. Hisashi left earlier this morning to go to the airport and was sweet enough to take Izuku to school for me. We have a few hours before we need to go pick him up. Hisashi will be out of the country until late Friday night.”

Toshinori had asked Nezu if it was at all odd that as an ambassador to the United States, Mr. Midoriya’s family lived in Japan and he himself seemed to spend his time in his official position by preferring to commute from week to week instead of staying in the USA. It was strange behavior, he had been told, and part of what flagged him for Nezu to look harder at for corruption. Regular overseas flights were not cheap. However, it also wasn’t so uncommon that it was unheard of. Meaning, other government officials may give Midoriya the side eye about choosing to travel instead of living on location, but it wasn’t something they would question overly much.

The blonde man smiled and tugged his suit jacket straight. It felt odd, fitting him in this shape. Bulky muscles made cloth sit different. “I have the week to learn my way around the house and the kitchen then to see if I can live up to Mr. Midoriya’s standards.”

The woman winced before turning back to him with an apologetic smile. “I don’t know that you can, Mr. Yagi. I apologize for my Hisashi. We’ve had, well, we’ve had a hard time with staff lately. Its made Hisashi upset and he can say and do unkind things when he’s upset. Between that and his work stress. Well. Please understand it isn’t personal, Mr. Yagi. Please also remember he liked you well enough to agree to hiring you. That means more than you can possibly know.”

The lady of the house lead Toshinori on the tour. Beside his bedroom was the laundry room, next to that a utility room. A door to the attached garage stood just as the hallway opened into the very spacious kitchen and dining area. The attached pantry was as large as his new bedroom. Upstairs were six bedrooms, she opened the door and let him peek into each of them. One belonged to Izuku, one to Mr. Midoriya, and one to Mrs. Midoriya. She didn’t explain why they had separate rooms and Toshinori chose not to ask.

The main floor had ambassador Midoriya’s extravagant office, a sitting room, a living room, a separate dining room for special events, and a game room with a pool table and a built in bar. It struck Toshinori that none of the child’s toys or very obvious fanboy All Might merchandise was anywhere in the house but in his room. The same for Mrs. Midoriya’s clear interest in sewing and fragile little decorations. The home was extravagant, but decorated strictly for Midoriya Hisashi’s aesthetic and prideful presentation and not for his family.

The basement held a wine cellar, two bare looking staff bedrooms with single beds, and several storage rooms. Including, Toshinori noted, a well ventilated room with two computer towers. On-site storage of the security camera footage seemed pretty likely. As for the security cameras inside, there was one on every outdoor door, including the one that was also aimed at his own bedroom door. There was also one on the door the Mr. Midoriya’s office and one on the server room in the basement. He would need to look deeper and with more time to see if there were also hidden cameras. If there were, Toshinori’s bet was they were in the ambassadors office so he could catch anyone snooping. He seemed like that type of guy.

The backyard was spacious. Fully fenced in, the pool, hot tub, and outdoor bar, and entertaining space took up much of the area. There was a section of grass and well kept flowers on each side. Mrs. Midoriya reassured Toshinori that they had a landscaper that took care of mowing lawns in summer months and plowing the driveway in the winter. His butler duties remained primarily indoors, unless they were entertaining others on the back patio.

They returned to the kitchen where Mrs. Midoriya pulled out both a desk calendar and a written list of expected job tasks. “Now, Mr. Yagi. You informed me you still need to have weekly medical appointments as part of your convalescence. Were you able to switch those to either Mondays or Fridays?”

Toshinori smiled and nodded. It was true that his doctors were keen to keep very close track of him and try to prevent medical emergencies from coming out of his injury and multiple surgeries. It was also true that it gave him a prime opportunity to check in with Nezu and Tsukauchi once a week. “I was able to transfer to Musutafu General for appointments at ten in the morning on Mondays. I should still be able to take young Midoriya to school and pick him up on those days if that suits you.”

“Oh, very good,” the younger woman agreed. “Hisashi is often out of the country during week days, as you would expect. I work part time as a nurse in a small medical clinic. I work from eight thirty to four o’clock Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Izuku needs to be to school by seven forty-five and picked up at three fifteen. On days that I work, you will drive for both of us. I will be sure to mark on the calendar what days he has off or early dismissal. The calendar will be hung in the kitchen and you may add notes as you need them. On days I do not work, I have paperwork I complete for the home and occasionally assist Hisashi with his work and phone calls. There will be times when Izuku is left to your care. This is part of your expected duties, however we also still need you to complete the duties listed here by the schedule I have set.”

The schedule was useful, denoting when garbage pick up was, when the lawn care service arrived, regular grocery delivery and other services happened. Obvious things such as dishes, laundry, sweeping, vacuuming, dusting, and mopping were noted. “Not on the list,” Mrs. Midoriya continued, “Is the expectation that you will have breakfast ready for myself and Izuku every morning. Hisashi as well, when he is home. Lunch is only required on days when Izuku is home. If Hisashi or I would like you to make lunch, we will let you know. Supper should be expected daily, served at six to allow you time after picking us up from school and work. If there is ever a time when meal planning or some other general scheduling conflict should come up for you, I would prefer you give me notice to accommodate.”

It was very clearly a full time job that Toshinori had signed on for. He rolled his shoulders and nodded. “Perfectly reasonable. Do you or your family have preferred foods, recipes? Any allergies I might be made aware of?”

The woman pulled a second list form behind the list of duties. On it was a clear recommendation of what meals to serve when and food allergies of the household members. She paused then, and looked up at him. “Hisashi will expect you to take your meals after the family has finished and the dishes are complete. Mr. Yagi, I am not so strict with the staff and would prefer you eat your meals warm as we do.”

He was being given a very carefully wrapped warning. As All Might, he’d taken meals with Might Tower staff frequently. Why wouldn’t he? Honestly, Toshinori hadn’t even considered eating protocol for the staff. It was helpful to know. It was also helpful to know that Mrs. Midoriya didn’t subscribe to that kind of less-than treatment. “I appreciate you telling me this. I didn’t realize that was even something I should be concerned about.”

The green haired woman’s little smile hid beneath understanding eyes. “You’ve never worked as household staff. Pardon my saying so, but one look at your records show you were also not raised in a wealthy household. I will try to warn you about these things and my Hisashi’s expectations as I think of them. I apologize if I miss one here or there. Hisashi will not be understanding of your background on this.”

“Ah. Ambassador Midoriya was raised in a wealthy household then.”

“Very wealthy, and surrounded by staff,” the woman tilted her head, “I was also raised in a wealthy household. I insisted on going to a local university and holding a regular job and I have somewhat of a better grasp on what everyone else sees because of it.”

Toshinori was aware of that about both Midoriyas. Tsukauchi pointed out that having both families with wealthy backgrounds, both single child, and both with the parents dead suggested the corruption the ambassador was exhibiting had more to do with a love of power than a need for cash. “Your kindness does your work credit. I will do my best to follow any advice you give me.”

Mrs. Midoriya, as quiet and reserved as she had come across in their two meetings, laughed softly. “No need to teach you how to be polite, I see.”

Mrs. Midoriya spent the better part of the day coaching Toshinori on where various supplies were kept and when and where to use them. Preferred laundering, folding, and putting away of laundry. Making beds, fluffing pillows. Where all of the utensils, cutlery, food, and seasoning was stored in the kitchen. He was also told of a credit card being made for him with an allocation of funds for gas in the vehicle and additional shopping for groceries or supplies as needed if they were above and beyond what came with the weekly delivery. It was a lot, but it would be something that would quickly come to be routine.

Toshinori was also allowed time to put his own belongings, few as they were, away in his room before the two of them went to pick up young Midoriya from school. He was given a set of keys for the car he was expected to drive them in as well as a set of house keys. The car was a sleek black sedan with tinted windows and a plush interior. It was high end. There were two other cars in the garage, and room for one more that Mr. Midoriya had driven to the airport.

Mrs. Midoriya climbed into the back seat on the passenger side before Toshinori backed out and closed the garage with the press of a button in the car. He felt rather like a cab driver or a professional driver at the moment, with his passenger in the back. All Might had ridden in the back of enough cars a lot like this one to know. “I don’t intend to ride with you often on days I don’t work, Mr. Yagi. Today I need to introduce you to the school so they know you are on our cleared list for individuals who can pick Izuku up from school. I also want to make sure you know the way and pick up protocol.”

Toshinori was directed to a private school across town. Mrs. Midoriya walked inside with him to the office where a copy of his driver’s license was made as an ID and he was asked to give them his cell phone number. As the younger woman took him to the expected waiting area for drivers and guardians, she explained, “If something happens and the school is unable to contact me, they will call you. My Hisashi is so often out of town on school days, I don’t have him as an emergency contact for them.”

It seemed a very trusting thing to do, making someone who had been employed for less than a day an emergency contact for their child’s school. Toshinori wasn’t sure if this was a common expectation of house staff in situations like this. Then again, even if Ambassador Midoriya was out of the country frequently, wouldn’t it still be him as a second contact?

Toshinori and Mrs. Midoriya stood in a covered and designated area for pick-up of the students. Other drivers and parents also waited there. Private school or not, it was clear when the children were released for the day by the sudden up-tick of noise in the hallways as the kids moved out. A head of curly green hair bobbed into view followed by a shouted, “Mom!”

Mrs. Midoriya instantly softened from her posture to her smile on sight of her little boy. “Hello, Izuku, how was your day?”

“Busy! We drew pictures of our favorite heroes and then we wrote stories about them for practice and it was fun!” The boy drew a quick breath before turning a blinding smile on Toshinori. “Mr. Yagi! Momma said you were coming to work for us, but you really did and you really are and that’s so cool!”

Huffing out a little laugh, Mrs. Midoriya cast an apologetic look at Toshinori before turning toward her son, “What did we talk about, Izuku?”

Young Midoriya’s little shoulders drooped with a mumbled “M’sorry.” Abruptly he straightened his back and enunciated clearly, “Its very nice to see you again, Mr. Yagi. Thank you for coming to work for us.”

Toshinori hadn’t noted anything wrong with the first greeting, though clearly the lady he now worked for disagreed. In response to the more formal greeting, the new butler bowed slightly to the boy. “It’s my pleasure, young Midoriya.”

In this case, it really was. Toshinori could all ready see that the little boy would be a bright spot in this undercover job he had been given. They returned to the car where both Midoriya’s slid into the backseat and the youngest chattered about his school day to his mother all the way home. Once back at the house, Mrs. Midoriya shooed her son to go change out of his school uniform. After he had left, she turned to Toshinori with an apology. “I’m sorry. I’ve been trying to coach him out of it, but Izuku desperately wants to ask you about All Might and what it was like working for him.”

With a chuckle, Toshinori shrugged. “I’m not offended by that, Mrs. Midoriya. He’s welcome to ask away.”

“He shouldn’t be, Mr. Yagi. Its inappropriate to ask personal details of the household staff. Mr. Takemoto, our previous butler, would never answer Izuku’s questions beyond a polite, ‘How was your day?’ You shouldn’t allow him to pester you about this and I will not either.”

Toshinori winced. Was this a thing all families who could afford staff did? Was this just this household? It was all so distant. “Young Midoriya is six, you said? Questions are healthy at his age, and I did notice all of the hero merchandise in his room earlier. I would be far more surprised if he didn’t have questions.”

Mrs. Midoriya shook her head. While her tone was firm, that small smile of hers was back. “Mr. Yagi, I am trying to teach you the expectations of this house. For both yourself and Izuku, don’t indulge him in casual conversation. If he requests help with something around the house, you can assist. If he asks for help on homework and you feel comfortable offering it, you may. You both need to understand the roll you play in our house, however.”

--

Izuku cast longing and curious looks at Toshinori throughout the evening as he cooked and served simple oyakodon for dinner. Mother and son ate at the table in the kitchen. Toshinori sat at a counter to the side where, true to her word, Mrs. Midoriya had no qualms about him eating at the same time they were. Not at the table with them though. Conversation between himself and the family was virtually non existent, aside from formalities.

Mrs. Midoriya took Izuku to bed and retreated for the evening herself with a quiet goodnight. Toshinori finished dishes and kitchen clean up before moving through the home and making sure all doors and windows were locked and the lights turned out before he too went to his room. It was late and he would be expected to get up early to begin breakfast. It was a good thing he never had operated on very much sleep.

Chapter Text

Young Midoriya was capable of being delightfully blunt in that way that all children could be. He took one bite of the omurice Toshinori had made that morning before declaring, “Ms. Kishi’s always tasted way better than this.”

Chopsticks raised partway between his half plate of food and his mouth, Toshinori raised an eyebrow. Mrs. Midoriya, seated at the table with her son, had the grace to look embarrassed. “Izuku! That’s rude. This tastes just fine.”

“Yeah,” came the grumbled response, “but Ms. Kishi’s was better.”

Mrs. Midoriya huffed, before turning toward Toshinori where he sat at the counter. “One of our most recent maids. She also did much of the cooking. She used more seasoning. More salt, maybe? She also tended to cook it with diced chicken.”

Toshinori smiled in amusement at Mrs. Midoriya. “Noted. Young Midoriya, I will try to make it more to your tastes next time.”

The boy exhaled before squaring himself up and responding. “Its okay, Mr. Yagi. Its just different. Momma said everything would be different with Mr. Takemoto, Ms. Kishi, and Mrs. Shibata all not here. This is just different too. Thank you for breakfast, Mr. Yagi.”

Toshinori murmured a ‘you’re welcome’ back to the boy before going back to his own meal. They were interrupted a few moments later when the little boy added, “This is still much better than what momma has been cooking the last few weeks. So different can be okay too!”

The new butler had to cover his mouth to keep from spitting out omelet and rice in his mirth. Mrs. Midoriya looked like she was about ready to crawl under the table. Young Midoriya was unaware of both of them as he continued to eat his breakfast.

--

Having done his driving duties for the morning, Toshinori returned to the Midoriya home to begin his first day of cleaning and maintaining jobs. He began with pulling sheets off of all of the beds, as Mrs. Midoriya had strongly hinted she hadn’t had time for that. Laundry begun, he moved to better explore the kitchen and the ingredients there in. If Ms. Kishi had been doing the cooking, she had done an excellent job of stocking and keeping a fresh supply of seasonings, canned goods, and baking goods. He could find everything he needed for the recipes that had been written on his meal list.

Toshinori swept, mopped, and scrubbed all ten toilets in the house. While he did all of this, he kept an observant eye for hidden cameras and listening devices. He would have to ask the detective if he could borrow a discreet sweep device to do a better job of locating any that might be hidden in air vents or wall plugs.

By the time he had finished remaking all of the beds on the second floor, Toshinori’s side ached. The bending over beds and scrubbing toilets had not done him any favors. Worse was the stirred up dust, though there truly wasn’t much of it. He coughed, pressing a fist to his mouth to prevent the tiny droplets of blood from flying. His medical officials said that could be considered his new normal, and he should expect the cough and the blood to grow more persistent as he aged. Lovely thoughts.

The blonde man heaved a sigh and made sure to take some mild pain relievers before he went to pick up the Midoriyas. Despite the forced conversational distance, Young Midoriya was just as happy to see him at pick up this second day as he was the first. “Hello, Mr. Yagi! Thank you for coming to pick me up!”

Back at the car, Toshinori bent to buckle the boy into the backseat before closing the door for him and moving to the driver’s seat. They drove a short way in silence. Very short. Young Izuku, without his mother there to reprimand him, seemed as though he could not help the question that burst out of him. “Mr. Yagi? Did you ever drive All Might around like this?”

Toshinori laughed one of his booming laughs. He was the only one in the car that knew if he was driving, All Might was too. “No, Young Midoriya, I’m afraid most of my job was paperwork. The only person I drove around was myself until this week.”

The laugh had briefly startled the child, but he recovered quickly. “Did All Might have a driver? Do you know him?”

“All Might didn’t have a dedicated driver, no. He had a favorite he requested through the company though. All Might told me he liked that man because he was always friendly.”

“Oh. Does All Might have to ride around in really big special cars?”

Toshinori considered how his head pressed against the ceiling on the sedan they were currently riding in as he recalled how many times he had hunched in on himself in the backseat of a car. “No. I think he just had to slouch when he got into one.”

“Has,” Izuku corrected in the helpful and knowing way of a primary school student who was just learning these things, “He has to slouch, not he had to. All Might is still here even if he is retired and I’m sure he still has to ride in cars sometimes so its not past tense it present because All Might still rides in cars right now.”

Well, actually, he was driving the car. While just as tall, he was also half as wide and less than half the weight he was when he summoned One for All. Who was Toshinori to argue semantics with the kid? “Of course, you’re right. Well done paying attention in your language classes, young Midoriya.”

The boy, as it turned out, could be easily derailed. He preened at the compliment in a way that made Toshinori wonder how often the little one actually received compliments. “Thank you! I like to write lots of notes about heroes and I need to learn how to write them better so I really pay attention in classes so my notes can be good! Oh, and so when I write letters to All Might they look better!”

Would it be inappropriate to ask young Midoriya if he could read those hero notes? Toshinori imagined they would be adorable. Also, he was curious, about a few different things. “Have you written to All Might before?”

“I have! Momma had to help me write the first few before I started learning how to write them myself. I’ve never heard back form him, but momma says heroes are real busy and that All Might was the busiest of them all. Mr. Yagi, does All Might still get mail now that he’s retired? I can still send him letters, right?”

Lemillion had thought of that before Toshinori had during his recovery. The young hero, cheerful as ever had said, “You know better than anyone how big Might Tower is and how much room there is! We’re keeping your mail room and storage. I’m sure you’ll still be getting fan letters for a long time! It may be the Lemillion Agency now, but it’ll always be Might Tower.”

Toshinori shook himself from the memory and smiled in the rear view mirror at the kid seated behind him. “You can still send them. Keep sending them to Might Tower. Lemillion insisted they would maintain the mail room for All Might after he retired.”

“Good! And maybe now All Might is retired he can have more time to read them. Do you think he’ll read mine?”

Maybe, just maybe, Toshinori would put in a request himself for some unlucky employee to look through and pull any letters sent by one Midoriya Izuku for All Might to personally read. He could make the argument that it was part of the research he was doing on the Midoriyas. Perhaps some vital information had slipped into the child’s writing. Truthfully though, it just sounded cute.

“Its hard to say, young Midoriya. It doesn’t hurt to send the letter either way.”

When Mrs. Midoriya slid into the back seat after work, young Midoriya’s curious questions had come to a halt. Toshinori said nothing to give either one of them away.

--

Breakfast of miso glazed salmon in the air fryer and a bowl of rice was more to young Midoriya’s tastes. At least, he didn’t comment on it as he had the day before. After driving for morning drop off. Toshinori spent his day dusting. Everything. It was immediately clear that none of the previous staff were as tall as Toshinori and also did not use step stools for cleaning. For this, he pulled on a mask, making sure it molded tightly to the top of his nose, and set to work.

At least the coughing fit this set off was into the mask and not on his hand or the floor.

He picked up the youngest Midoriya at school and began the drive toward the clinic Mrs. Midoriya worked at. Young Midoriya seemed to have decided that his brief time alone in the car with his new butler was a loophole he could take advantage of. Toshinori didn’t dissuade him. What questions were asked in the car would stay in the car, as far as he was concerned.

“Mr. Yagi? Does All Might use hair gel to keep his hair all the way up like that?”

That one was a challenge. His mentor, Nana, had used gel to do that once, exclaiming how it made him cute like a bunny. Maybe it was a joke, but somehow it did that every time he called on One for All afterwords. No hair products needed. “I don’t know, young Midoriya. I’ve never watched him buy or use hair products.”

Which was true. He had indeed never bought or used hair products. No matter that his hair now was trying to go a bit wild.

“Did you ever get to go in All Might’s office? He must have the coolest All Might merchandise in there!”

“It was pretty barren. Big windows, modern furniture. He didn’t ever really keep much of his own merchandise. But,” Toshinori waggled his eyebrows into the rear view mirror at the child, “He did sign everything with an All Might pen. You know the ones with the All Might head on the end? Every time.”

The gasp of excitement resounded through the whole car. “What? I have a whole set of five of those pens! I have pens like All Might! That’s so cool!”

--

Thursday was a different thing at after school pick-up. After a day spent scrubbing grout between bathroom floor tiles, Toshinori’s aching knees and back almost matched the ache in his side. The over-the-counter pain relievers were not doing it today. Even so, while he stood a little more hunched than usual in the pick-up area, he didn’t miss the head of curly green hair of his young charge as he speed walked in front of an angry little blonde child. The little blonde boy wasn’t quiet about it. “You gonna run, you stupid Deku? Not like you can do anything else, you no-quirk loser!”

Toshinori’s eyes narrowed and he stood to full height before the boys reached him. Young Midoriya nearly running to get to his side, his little antagonist paused and looked up. He looked way up. Red eyes met blue eyes and the boy took a few steps back. Before he turned to find his own driver at the pick-up area, he leveled one last glance at young Midoriya. “Try not to be so stupid in class tomorrow, Deku!”

The fromer hero longed to have a few words about bullying with the boy. He also knew it wouldn’t be well received from someones butler when that kid was also very likely the child of a rich and powerful family. He focused on his young charge instead. Squatting before the boy, he placed a hand on the child’s shoulder. “Young Midoriya, are you okay?”

The boy stared at the cement under his feet even as his eyes watered suspiciously. He fidgeted with his backpack straps, left hand pausing at a very obviously quirk created burn on the shoulder of the strap repeatedly. “M’okay. Let’s go, Mr. Yagi.”

With a sigh and a groan at his popping joints, Toshinori stood. He reached down and offered a hand to the boy beside him. The child looked at it and him in surprise and hesitated for a long moment before reaching up to take that hand. As though this was not something offered to him often and he wasn’t sure he was allowed to take it. Toshinori gave that little hand a soft squeeze and lead him to the car. He patted the little one’s head and gave him a smile as he buckled the seat belt and closed the door.

The stretch of silence as they drove was longer than it had been the last few days, but true-to-form it didn’t last. “Mr. Yagi, did All Might ever say mean things to you or call you names because you don’t have a quirk?”

The breath left his remaining lung in a woosh. “Of course not, young man. All Might treats everyone the same no matter what quirk or no quirk they have. He was the Symbol of Peace for everyone, not just a few with flashy quirks.”

“Did Lemillion not want to hire you because you don’t have a quirk?”

The child was hoping his favorite heroes would still be heroes even for people like him. Toshinori thought fondly of what a good man Mirio was knowing that there would be no lying to the boy about this. “That wasn’t the case at all, young Midoriya. Lemillion offered me my job back more than once. Actually, it was Sir Nighteye who stressed my retirement from working at a hero agency.”

Wide, wet, green eyes looked back at him from the rear view mirror. “Sir Nighteye didn’t want you to come back because you don’t have a quirk?!”

“I didn’t say that. Sir Nighteye has been a friend to me for years. He was worried about my health and how the stress of keeping up with a hero agency would affect my long term recovery after I was injured.”

“You mean, they all like you just the way you are, Mr. Yagi?”

Toshinori huffed, thinking of the times he and Mirai had butted heads over the years. Thinking of how often he, Toshinori, mentally beat himself up for failures. The laugh that escaped him wasn’t the booming one, it was rueful. “They do, young man. For my strengths and my shortcomings alike.”

He brought the car to a halt where he always did to wait for Mrs. Midoriya. It would be a short while yet before she came out. Toshinori turned in his seat to look directly at the little boy behind him. “Young Midoriya. No matter what that other boy tells you, not having a quirk does not make you useless. You can have friends, you can have excellent grades in school, you can even have an amazing and fulfilling career when you grow up. None of that has anything to do with having a quirk. Please don’t let a bully with a loud mouth convince you otherwise, young man.”

The smile he got back was a little wobbly and a little tearful, but heartfelt. “Thank you, Mr. Yagi.”

When Mrs. Midoriya came out of her work place, Toshinori exited the car to open the rear passenger door for her. He took it as a brief opportunity to warn her that her son had a rough day at school. The woman raised an eyebrow at him as he opened the door for her. By the time he had clambered back into the driver’s seat, he saw the mother touch her son’s backpack strap before pulling him into a tight hug.

“Was it Katsuki again? That boy, I’ll call his mother…”

The little boy sulked into his mother’s sweater as Toshinori put the car in gear and began their trip back home. “Don’t call, momma. He was worse after you called last time. He was just telling me not to answer teacher’s questions stupid tomorrow like I did today is all.”

“No, sweetheart. I don’t care what questions you ask or what answers you give, none of them are stupid. Using quirk violence doesn’t teach you any better either. Katsuki is wrong to treat you like this, you need to remember that.”

Midoriya Inko, the blonde man was really beginning to understand, was a good mother. A very stressed, trying to do too much on her own, mother. It was no wonder the boy clearly adored her.

While young Midoriya and his mother worked on homework that evening, Toshinori silently took his backpack and spent time on the internet learning how to scrub and mend the material of the strap to the best of his ability. It wasn’t perfect, but it did look better.

Mrs. Midoriya had put her son to bed and had retreated upstairs herself by eight thirty that night. Toshinori completed the clean up from the evening meal and associated chores. He made the pass through of the house as he did every night to make sure all of the doors and windows were locked before he went to bed. When he climbed the stairs to the second floor, he was surprised to hear the lady of the house clearly talking to someone in her bedroom. It sounded like an unpleasant conversation.

“I payed that bill and filled out all of the paper work for that, Hisashi! No I… I’m sorry. I’ll get it done sooner next time. I… Hisashi, please. I’m sorry! Please!”

She looked up then, from where she was pacing around her room, and realized Toshinori was watching her from the landing. He could see the tears in her eyes that had nothing to do with him as she met his look briefly before looking to the floor and closing the door. With the kitchen fan turned off and the house silent with the night, Toshinori could hear her softly sobbing all the way as he walked down to his own room.

--

Young Midoriya squealed in delight as he picked up his backpack while getting ready for school. He ran his little fingers over the burnt area, now scrubbed and stitched in a less-than-straight line. “Mr. Yagi! You fixed it!”

“I did. I know it isn’t as nice as it was before but…”

The little boy shook his head vigorously, “No, but this is is better! Its fixed! Thank you, Mr. Yagi!”

As the boy murmured to himself happily, running hands over the stitches and then over the All Might charms and the stitching of All Might’s face on the back of the pack. Mrs. Midoriya offered Toshinori a lopsided little smile. “If you would have asked yesterday, I would have told you not to bother. We can certainly afford to buy him a new one. To see this response though. Well. Thank you Mr. Yagi. You went above and beyond for this.”

The blonde man had to stop himself from a fist pump and announcing ‘Plus Ultra!’ He hadn’t thought of that phrase when it came to a mildly bad stitching job in the past, but here he was. Instead, he shrugged and returned the smile. “No matter how much money you have, sometimes its nice to know that not all broken things need to be thrown away. Sometimes they can be fixed.”

If that came a little close to home about Toshinori’s real life situation, well, that was between himself and the crooked stitches on the child’s backpack strap. Sometimes you needed to know that even after being broken, you could still be useful to others. He had a sneaking suspicion that the little boy might feel that way a little bit too, in his own child-like way.

As it was Friday morning, Mrs. Midoriya remained at home while Toshinori completed the youngest’s school drop-off. Young Midoriya had rebounded admirably from his bad day and instead of asking Toshinori more All Might questions, he chattered away about a school craft project they were working on that day. He was excited to get to color pictures of heroes and match them with their quirks.

“That does sound fun,” Toshinori laughed as he reached through the rear door to unbuckle the boy and lead him into the school. “You’ll show me the finished project when you bring it home, right?”

“Of course I will! And I can tell you all about the heroes too! I mean, I can when mom and dad aren’t around. I can show it to you at the car here though! And I can tell you all about them while driving. Yeah!”

Toshinori didn’t feel in any way bad about his now regular car conversations with young Midoriya. Frankly, he hoped they continued. He did feel a little bad to have to do it without permission. Even All Might was prone to mild rule breaking from time to time. Closing the door, Toshinori turned to escort his young charge to the school. He found the little one looking back at him in deep thought. The blonde man raised an eyebrow after this lasted a bit too long.

“What? Do I have rice on my face or something?”

The green haired boy giggled, “Nooo. I just, umm. Can I, umm…”

Hesitantly, young Midoriya reached up and grabbed a couple of Toshinori’s fingers in his little fist, “Can I hold your hand while we walk in?”

The smile that lifted his cheeks almost matched the boost of warm affection that lifted his heart. Toshinori didn’t have a lot of close experience with children. Certainly, with fans and rescue victims as All Might, but not these kind of moments. This little fanboy child wasn’t looking for comfort from All Might right now, he was looking for something from his very new butler. Something Toshinori was a little hesitant to identify as anything more than the security and protection of a trusted adult.

Patting the child’s hand with the one he still had free, Toshinori reassured, “Any time you would like to, young Midoriya.”

Once he returned back to the mansion, Toshinori began work on laundry. Mrs. Midoriya had informed him she would be in her room working and that he was to knock if he needed anything from her. Meanwhile, his haphazard sewing my have improved the little boy’s bad day, but that didn’t help the lady of the house. The new butler was still very much aware that the woman had likely cried herself to sleep last night and being unable and unwelcome to do anything about it bothered him. A lot.

It was clear that this was not something she would speak of or wanted acknowledged by her distinct lack of eye contact all morning. Which left Toshinori wondering what he could do to make her feel better without bringing any of it up. Checking on ingredients he would need to add to the next grocery delivery, Toshinori had an idea.

He had never baked tea cakes before, but the recipe was easy to follow and the results were light and fluffy. The frosting job was not nearly as pretty as the picture on the foodie blog he’d used the recipe from, but he hoped it would do well all the same. Toshinori dished a plate with a serving of the cake and a tea cup of green tea onto a small serving platter. It was still more than an hour and a half before lunch as he made it up the stairs and knocked politely on Mrs. Midoriya’s door.

“Yes, Mr. Yagi?” Came a muffled response from within.

“I brought you some tea. Staying hydrated while you work is important.”

He heard steps approach before the door was opened, the small woman smiling slightly. “Its paperwork, not manual labor. I appreciate your concern and the tea however. Oh, and the cake. I… thank you, Mr. Yagi.”

He knew from cleaning the bedding on Tuesday that Mrs. Midoriya's sizable bedroom also served as an office space for her. Unfortunate that the ambassador claimed the massive and overly leather and wood space below for his own office area when it was clear that the lady of the house was in charge of household paperwork. The desk that had been neat and organized on Tuesday was a mess that had migrated to filing cabinets, her bed, and the floor today. Toshinori wondered what it had to do with that phone call from the night before.

The new butler made no comment on it. “Do you have any preferences for lunch, Mrs. Midoriya?”

The woman shook her head and took the serving platter from him. “I’m going to be working on this all day. No need to make lunch for me.”

“That’s not what I asked.” Which may have come off a little more reprimanding than a butler should sound. Just because he frequently forgot to feed himself lunch, this week included, did not mean he was about the let the lady of the house miss a meal on his watch.

Both of Mrs. Midoriya’s eyebrows went up. She made full eye contact with him for the first time that day, surprised by the subtle challenge. Suddenly, the corners of her mouth ticked up and a tiny laugh escaped clearly against her will. “Udon would be wonderful. Please let me know when lunch is ready and I’ll come down.”

Toshinori gave her a half bow, she took her tea and cake back into the room and did not close the door this time. He took it as a small win that he had managed to make her smile and laugh even a little bit that morning.

The youngest Midoriya came out of school beaming that day. He held his poster all rolled up under his arm excitedly telling Toshinori he would show it to him at the car even as the boy reached for Toshinori’s hand with his free arm. The child swung both their arms back and forth as they walked to the car and he chatted happily about the classroom having devolved into an argument over everyone’s favorite heroes.

The poster was indeed adorable, splayed out in the back seat while young Midoriya pointed and various parts. The kids had been given the choice of coloring book style drawings of several heroes. They each picked six, colored them and then cut out the drawings to paste on the poster board in their favorite order. On the other side were six cut out words reading things like strength, flight, swimming, and elements. They had glued yarn from each hero toward any of the six words that could describe their quirk.

He was amused to note that the boy had placed All Might at the top, Lemillion at second, and Endeavor at sixth. The quality of the coloring got worse the further down the hero list he went. Endeavor’s hair was a barely scribbled in red while All Might was painstakingly fully colored in and all in the lines. Ah, that lifted the retired hero’s spirits immensely.

When they returned to the mansion, Toshinori chuckled to himself as he began supper preparations and young Midoriya explained all about the heroes and the poster to his mother all over again at the kitchen table.

All efforts to improve the mood of the two Midoriya’s slowly faded away as they ate their meal. Toshinori, seated on a stool at the kitchen counter as usual, felt like a dark cloud had moved into the room with them. Mrs. Midoriya spoke it into words as she finished her meal. “Hisashi will be coming back around eight in the morning,” Turning toward her butler from where she sat at the kitchen table, she elaborated. “He will expect breakfast ready when he gets here. He will expect you to take his bags, wash his clothing, and return all of it neatly folded to his room by Sunday evening. You are not to speak unless he speaks to you first or you have a valid household concern. If he is in his office, do not disturb him.”

There was a warning being offered again. The wording was ominous, just as the atmosphere in the room had become. If one meeting hadn’t confirmed it, every warning given by Mrs. Midoriya since were all red flags about what kind of elitist and shitty person the ambassador was in his own home. She was done warning him, but not done with the room. The mother turned to her son. “Pick up all of your toys tonight, Izuku. You know your father demands a clean floor. I’ll help you lay out clothing he will approve of.”

Now that he knew what he was listening for, Toshinori heard Mrs. Midoriya cry herself to sleep again that night. Mr. Midoriya managed to torment his family while he wasn’t even here. Never mind the other crimes involving overspending and questionable taking of bribery along with unproveable possible murders, the downcast eyes and not-well-hid tears in his own home were enough for Toshinori. He fought the urge to California Smash the man into the sewer system the next time he saw him.

--

The ambassador instantly made himself a pain-in-the-ass from the moment he came home. Toshinori’s rice was under cooked, the fish was over cooked, and had this worthless, quirkless, man never heard of seasoning? The floors were not clean enough and had he even bothered to dust or was he sat on his ass watching daytime TV while no one was around?

All of that was loudly stated in Japanese in front of his wife and child. Clearly, much of this was not new behavior toward household staff, as both mother and son kept eyes to the floor and did not interject. What came as something of a surprise were the little barbed statements that came out in English from the ambassador.

“I’m thinking of installing a bell with a pull rope to summon you around here. How fitting would that be, Lurch?”

“Its amazing how both you and that kid my wife birthed can stink so much of quirklessness. You should buy some dog shampoo to cover that up.”

“You made cake? Have you looked at how fat my wife is? Why the hell would you make cake?!”

While applying for the job, the request had been made for a quirkless individual who was fluent in English. From the online post, one would assume that meant traveling to America with the ambassador and being able to speak the language. It seems it was all about the power trip. Midoriya wanted to have a constant stream of vitriol in both languages and be understood. Clearly an old and quirkless man like Toshinori would have no choice but to accept this abuse to keep a much needed job.

Toshinori suddenly wondered how much the previous staff had been payed to put up with this bullshit. He was doing it for Nezu and Tsukauchi's investigation, what would keep others here? Had the last butler just finally had his last nerve snap when he did something to have Mr. Midoriya fire him? Had he actually quit? No one would know for sure, the man had died the same night.

For the investigation and only for that, Toshinori kept his head down through the whole weekend. He never rose to the bait dangled so freely before him. He scrubbed the dishes with extra vigor after each meal he ate of cold food alone and reminded himself not to piss on Hisashi’s clothing as it tumbled about in the washer.

Late Sunday afternoon as Toshinori came around the corner through the kitchen with a load of laundry in his arms, he walked in on Mr. Midoriya fiddling in the most suspicious way possible with the table salt shaker. Caught, the man looked up at him and didn’t even have the decency to look guilty. “I brought home specialty salt from America. Its a good thing too, because your seasoning is so terrible I don’t even want to feed it to my worthless son without giving it something extra.”

Toshinori offered a wholly noncommittal, ‘Sir.’ He continued on his way to drop off the laundry in Hisashi’s room – he didn’t want anyone else to pack for him and reserved that job only for himself. As he returned downstairs, he caught the tail end of the ambassador answering a call on his cell phone where he walked into his office and slammed the door shut.

Stepping into the kitchen, he fetched two zipper storage bags and snatched the salt shaker from the table. Salt or not, there was something peculiar about the granules of whatever the ambassador had just put into the thing. Toshinori unscrewed the lid, dumped the contents into one bag, double bagged it with the second and pushed the contents into his trouser pocket. Stepping to the sink, he very thoroughly washed the salt shaker and lid multiple times before refilling it from an unopened salt container in the cupboard.

At dinner that night, Midoriya Hisashi encouraged his wife and son to use the table salt. More table salt. The food would be almost palatable with, yes, MORE table salt. The gleam in his eye and the smarmy smile on his face were about as far away from loving as one could imagine.

--

Ambassador Midoriya left for his flight back to America at six am Monday morning. He didn’t ask for breakfast, but he did point to a phone number for poison control on his way out the door stating, “In case your cooking is so terrible it makes someone in this house feel seriously ill.”

Toshinori felt a shudder slide down his spine as the garage door closed and the other man departed. Tsukauchi was right, the man wasn’t subtle at all. A pat to his trouser pocket assure him that the bag of what was very probably poison was still on him and not somehow stolen back and redistributed. He was surprised to see curly hair and bright green eyes peak around the corner from the stairs to the kitchen. “Is he gone?”

The boy was so hopeful, and wasn’t that an awful position for a son to be in concerning his father. “Mr. Midoriya just left, yes.” Was his soft spoken response.

Mrs. Midoriya, he knew, wouldn’t be up for another half an hour. Usually the boy wasn’t either. He stepped around the corner in his full All Might themed PJ’s and his little All Might slippers with an exhale of tension. The little boy approached the blonde butler and did something unexpected. He reached up with both arms in the universal child signal for ‘up.’

Toshinori smiled and hefted the boy onto his right hip. Young Midoriya smiled back at him and then did his best to reach and squeeze Toshinori’s chest in a hug. “Mr. Yagi, if Kacchan isn’t right when he calls me useless, then my dad isn’t right when he calls you useless either. And, your cooking isn’t bad!”

The retired hero found himself both warmed and amused. He realized this little six year old had held all of that in all weekend and was determined to share and lift his butler’s spirits now. It was sweet and thoughtful. He also realized that the kid hadn’t exactly called his cooking good either, but he let that pass.

Toshinori gave the boy a return squeeze and ruffled his hair with his left hand. “You’re right, of course. Thank you for reminding me.”

He moved to set the child back on the floor, but little Midoriya was having none of it. He clung to Toshinori’s shirt and pressed his face against his chest. Toshinori chuckled. “Okay. Have you ever had pancakes, young Midoriya?”

The answer was a resounding ‘no’ and piqued interest. The thing about making pancakes was that the little one would consider a treat while at the same time it wouldn’t be terribly hard to cook them using only one arm. He had finished pouring the last batch in the pan when Mrs. Midoriya came down the stairs sounding more than a little insistent, “Izuku! What have I told you about wandering off before you get dressed in the… morning.”

The green haired woman openly stared at her son and her butler. Izuku clenched his little fist tighter into Toshinori’s shirt and turned the biggest, wettest eyes on his mother. “I couldn’t sleep, momma.”

For a moment, Toshinori sincerely questioned the quirkless claim of this kid. He was quite sure that look could be bottled up and weaponized, sold the highest bidder. It would take out any hero except, possibly, Endeavor. Midoriya Inko wilted under it. “Oh. Well. Lets go upstairs and get you dressed so Mr. Yagi can finish breakfast, okay?”

Much to his amusement, pancakes were a surprise hit with both mother and son. He vowed to go to a grocery store soon and find actual maple syrup for the full effect next time.

After taking the boy to school, yes hand holding was now a thing that happened anytime the boy thought he could get away with it, Toshinori took himself to the hospital for his weekly health check. Never fun, this one was less so because he was introducing himself to a new doctor at the same time. When pushed he did admit to having pain from his past injuries waking him up at night recently after doing some ‘deep cleaning.’ It was recommended he take more rest breaks and take the pain relievers he was prescribed to help him with the pain while he slept.

Toshinori knew all that and wasn’t likely to be changing his habits soon. Taking those prescribed pain relievers and being someones regular driver didn’t really mix well. He resolved himself to purchasing more over-the counter pain medications before he went back to the house.

Before that, he had a second weekly appointment to attend. Detective Tsukauchi met him at a small coffee shop nearby. Toshinori ordered himself a tea as the tired looking detective nursed a cup of strong black coffee. “How is it going, Yagi?”

The older man snorted into his drink. “Which part? The part where the family is pretty much not allowed to interact with the household staff on any kind of personal level? The part where I was on my hands and knees scrubbing the grout in ten different bathrooms this week? Or, maybe, the part where our government friend is so wildly quirkest and elitist that he thinks its fine to call me useless to my face in every conversation we have?”

The detective had the grace to huff a small laugh of his own. “Okay, I earned that. Feel better getting it out of your system?”

“Somewhat,” Toshinori agreed with a crooked grin. He tossed the double bagged substance from his pocket onto the table between them. “I’ll feel better if you can manage to get that analyzed and tell me what it is.”

Tsukauchi eyed it with caution. He raised an eyebrow at the blonde man urging him to continue. “Caught our friend dumping salt out of the table shaker and replacing it with this. He went to his office to take a call, I swapped it out. He stressed to his wife and son to keep adding more salt at dinner last night. He made sure to point out the number for poison control in case anyone got sick when he left this morning. You were not kidding about how not subtle this man is.”

“Did he encourage you to eat it?”

“No. Yes, I know how that looks.”

The detective gingerly placed the bag in one of the pockets of his trench coat. “I have friends in the lab, we’ll get it checked. Hopefully, it really is just salt and that was all a very unpleasant mind game.”

Toshinori looked grimly into his tea cup. “I agree, actually. If it really is some kind of poison, this just turned from spy work into protection detail. Speaking of the spy work though, if I could also have you help me out with a small bug detecting device, that would be great.”

“I should have thought of that myself. You’ll have it at our next meeting.” The detective stood then and pulled his jacket back on. “Yagi, I can’t stress enough how careful you need to be there. I never meant to sign you up to be in a situation where you would have to protect anyone other than yourself.”

Toshinori laughed. “Honestly, Tsukauchi, I’m probably better suited to protection work than spy work. Its fine. I’ll watch out for myself and them.”

--

The very next day while Toshinori was driving back to the house to begin his day’s cleaning chores, Tsukauchi called him in something close to panic. The salt had been replaced with strychnine. It was clear that Ambassador Midoriya had just tried to poison his family through violent convulsions and asphyxiation while laying all of the blame on his brand new, quirkless, butler.

Chapter Text

Toshinori and the family he worked with had settled into some semblance of a rhythm. Weekdays were, for the most part, pleasant enough. Weekends with Mr. Midoriya were a hellish experience for everyone involved. Mr. Midoriya had also attempted to poison the sugar, the orange juice, and the soy sauce in that order on the following three weekends. At this point, the way he managed to let Toshinori catch him in the act every time, it seemed like he was issuing a challenge.

Toshinori considered that possibly the man was so overt with this because he was poisoning some other food covertly. To the point that Toshinori dumped out almost everything that wasn’t sealed and bought fresh. It was looking more and more like he really didn’t care if Toshinori saw him in the act of suspicious poisoning behavior. It didn’t matter, he planned to blame the butler for it if successful anyway. After all, who would believe the useless, quirkless, old man over a well respected ambassador?

The frustrating part was, unless the act was caught on camera, someone was actually poisoned, or verbal or written confession was given by Midoriya Hisashi, nothing could be done. He could be taken in under suspicion, certainly. He could also afford the best of the slimiest lawyers and would be out of police custody in less than an hour.

Toshinori, of course, had no intention of letting either the mother or son in his care be poisoned. He wouldn’t have from the first day he met them. Having lived with them for a month and gotten to know their lives and personalities, he would be desperate to stop any such thing from happening now.

--

Young Midoriya was a chatty, clingy boy when he was allowed to be. Toshinori had no problems with this and made no efforts to stop those behaviors. Mrs. Midoriya had tried to hold firm, but had worn down on her strictness remarkably quickly. It started small, with the woman of the house telling her butler he did not need to open the car doors for her while she was riding passenger.

You wouldn’t think that would amount to much, accept that Toshinori had been chatting with the boy while waiting for his mother at work and didn’t see her right away one day when she jerked the door open that windy afternoon. Right into the duo’s very active hero quirk conversation. The little one had halted mid word, looking panicked. He was directly told not to talk with Mr. Yagi.

Toshinori summoned an overly cheerful smile from the depths of his actor’s soul. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Midoriya. Dreadful winds out there right now, aren’t there?”

Catching on fast, young Midoriya also plastered on a much too bright smile. “Hi, momma! How was your day?”

Mrs. Midoriya looked long and hard between the two of them and their very poor version of an innocent act. Her shoulders sagged, and ultimately she said nothing about the conversation she had walked in on.

--

The boy began asking for homework help from his butler. He sat on Toshinori’s lap so he could see the papers on the table better, obviously. Which was where Mrs. Midoriya found them one evening, Izuku bouncing with energy as he perched on his butler’s knees while Toshinori helped with his math problems. She slid into a chair across the kitchen table with a glass of water in one hand and her chin propped in the other as she shook her head at Toshinori with a resigned sigh. “Somewhere out there, Mr. Takomoto and every properly trained butler before him are all rolling over in their graves at this moment.”

Toshinori grinned at her. Was it his fault he was not immune to young Midoriya’s charms? The boy had no idea what his mother was referring to and helpfully asked, “If a bunch of people turned over in their graves all at once, do you think that would feel like an earthquake?”

Mrs. Midoriya dropped her forehead onto the table with a solid thunk and a groan. Toshinori reached across and patted her head even as he was just as helpful in his answer. “Can you imagine the size of the tsunami afterword if it was a whole graveyard turning over?”

“Woah,” the little one said in an awed voice, “Dead people waves.”

Mrs. Midoriya thumped her forehead on the table again.

--

Young Midoriya also began a mysterious weekday habit of waking up early and watching their butler make breakfast. Toshinori would help him into one of the stools at the island counter, hand him his morning orange juice, and chat with the boy while he cooked. The little one would sit there in whichever All Might pajamas his mother had set out for him the night before and kick his feet as he chattered happily away.

The first two mornings Mrs. Midoriya had chastised both her son and Toshinori. The third morning she came down the stairs, heaved a massive sigh, fetched her own glass of orange juice, and sat beside her son at the island counter. Somehow, that became a morning habit and all three of them would eat their breakfast at the counter together before the two Midoriyas would go upstairs to change into day wear and prepare themselves for work or school.

--

Some things didn’t change. The ambassador was prone to making frequent and unpleasant phone calls to his wife while he was away during the week. Mrs. Midoriya spent far too many evenings crying in her room alone. This was bad enough. He discovered on accident what he should have known all along. Young Midoriya’s room was next to his mother’s and the little one heard his mom cry often.

The accidental finding happened while he was checking door and window locks for the evening. Sometimes young Midoriya’s bedroom door would be left open a crack. You could see his nightlight within. Toshinori hadn’t expected the shifting light of a TV or computer display at ten thirty at night. He gently opened the door and spotted the little boy laying on his bed with a tablet propped up on his night stand. He had earbuds in and was watching an All Might video.

Toshinori knocked on the door softly, eyes still on the boy. Young Midoriya looked up at him with some cross of desperation and sadness. Taking that as an invitation, the butler stepped into the boy’s room and seated himself on the edge of the All Might themed bedspread. On the screen, he realized, was the recording of his debut in Japan as a hero. Wow, that was some old footage.

Toshinori reached out and gently ruffled those green curls. “You should be sleeping.”

The sobbing next door continued. Toshinori did his best to not acknowledge it. It was killing him on the inside to have to ignore it. Mrs. Midoriya refused any efforts he made to talk about it. He didn’t think she knew the household could hear her crying at night. He didn’t know if it would be right to tell her.

Young Midoriya gave him a tiny and wobbly smile. “Its All Might though. All Might saves people and smiles and makes people happy. He’s so cool.”

“He’s retired,” Toshinori reminded him gently. “Lemillion’s debut is pretty cool too. So is his smile.”

“Lemillion’s smile doesn’t make me feel happy and safe like All Might’s smile does. I don’t care if he’s retired. He’s still smiling for me right now, see?”

All Might standing victorious with his rescued burdens was smiling. He remembered that smile was a brutal one. He’d done his best to rescue everyone from that collapsed and burning wreckage, but some of those people had died before he even reached the scene. It was, like many rescues, an ugly thing behind the cameras. Yagi Toshinori, as he sat on the edge of the young boy’s bed, couldn’t summon a smile at all. Part of him should have been thrilled that the little fanboy wouldn’t give up on his love of All Might. Part of him was upset that his successor couldn’t inspire those same feelings of safety in this little boy. After all, All Might was essentially gone. Lemillion was the future.

Most of Toshinori was upset and angry that, positioned as he was, he couldn’t do more to help this little broken family get away from the emotionally abusive man who held them there with now murderous intent.

He sighed and reached for the tablet. “I don’t think watching All Might is helping you sleep, little one. Do you like the sound of rain?”

Which was how he switched the video player to a twelve hour long loop of rain on a metal roof. Toshinori couldn’t very well leave the boy in his bed listening to his mother cry in the dark. He also stayed where he sat for another half an hour running a hand slowly up and down the little boy’s back until he fell asleep.

--

Things at school were not necessarily improving either. Toshinori was more than a little surprised to have Mrs. Midoriya call his cell phone just before lunch on a Thursday. “Can you go and pick up Izuku from the school office, please? They tell me he was in a fight. They don’t seem to be blaming him specifically, but they are sending him home for the rest of the day.”

Odd, nothing about young Midoriya’s personality hinted at a child who was likely to get into fights. Or, well, quirkless as he was, possibly not so odd. Toshinori hated knowing that as the quirkless person even if the bullying was directed at the boy, if caught it would still be young Midoriya’s fault somehow.

The boy sat with his head down and eyes on the floor when Toshinori entered the school office. He greeted the secretary with a nod. “I’m here for young Midoriya.”

“Of course, Mr. Yagi. Tell his mom to call us if she keeps him home from school tomorrow. Those boys were a little enthusiastic with him.”

Toshinori turned from the woman to look back at his charge. Young Midoriya was peeking up at him through his curly hair, but that wasn’t enough to hide the rapidly darkening bruise and swelling around his right eye. “Hello, young man. Did the school nurse give you an ice pack for that eye?”

The receptionist answered before the boy could. “Oh, Mr. Yagi. Sometimes the boys can get a little rough. Its what boys do. There was no need to send him to the nurse for this. I don’t know what his parents do for punishment, but maybe withhold his lunch or something so he knows what he did was wrong. You did listen to the principle tell you how wrong you were, right Midoriya?”

That entire statement rubbed Toshinori the wrong way. If he were young Midoriya’s parent, he would be lecturing this woman and then barging into the principle’s office to lecture them as well. He was neither parent or guardian though, he was the butler. The appropriately and righteously pissed off butler. He didn’t allow the boy to answer the dismissive woman. Toshinori glanced at the name plate on her desk even as the smile he delivered could be taken as something more of a scowl. “Thank you for your time, Ms. Suszuki. If you’ll excuse us.”

He reached for young Midoriya’s hand as much out of habit as a need to comfort at this point. The boy stood and latched on like Toshinori had provided him with a life line in a raging storm. The butler had to force himself to slow his angry steps so the much shorter legs of the little boy could keep up with him. Opening the passenger door, he turned and knelt before the boy. The little one winced in a way that suggested he thought he was bout to be yelled at again.

“Do you have any other bruises or cuts, young man? Anything that hurts?”

“Umm,” the little boy looked both confused and on the verge of crying again. “They hit my arms and legs too. They’re kinda hurt. And I fell on my back when he hit my face and my back kinda hurts.”

Toshinori began a quick check of limbs over clothing to make sure if there were any broken bones. He’d done this basic check for victims he’d rescued thousands of times. He continued asking questions while he worked. “After you were hit in the face, did you get tired at all? Did you feel like you lost time? Or do you remember everything that happened after that?”

“I ‘member everything,” Was the very soft response.

The butler sighed. It didn’t appear there was anything broken and the boy wasn’t showing immediate signs of a concussion. He picked the child up and set him in the car, buckled him in, and resolved to check the little one over more thoroughly once they got home. It didn’t appear a trip to a doctors office would be needed at this time.

He started the car and headed back for the mansion. The child in the back seat asked tentatively, “Aren’t you gonna yell at me too, Mr. Yagi?”

“Did you start the fight?”

“No.”

“Did you hit anyone else?”

“No!”

“Then tell me, why should I yell at you, young man?”

This seemed to give the boy pause. He sniffled, he hiccuped, and the tears he was holding back started to give way. “I don’t know Mr. Yagi, but everyone else keeps yelling at me anyway!”

“Okay, okay,” Toshinori breathed out. “Can you tell me what happened?”

“Kacchan and his friends were being mean to one of the other kids during our playtime outside. And, and, they were saying mean things and then they were, they looked like they were gonna maybe hit him! And, umm, I couldn’t stand there and let them do it so I went to help him and they hit me instead.”

The man sighed again. He suspected he would be doing a lot of that today. He should have known with all of the hero merchandise and all of the hero chatter, and the boy’s own hand written notes about heroes and quirks that the little guy would have a hero streak of his own. “If possible in situations like that, you should find and tell an adult and not involve yourself, young Midoriya. That said, what you did was very brave and kind for that other little boy.”

The soft hiccuping continued, in the rear view mirror he could see the boy scrubbing at his eyes and wincing as he hit the right one. “Whenever I try to tell something to the teachers they don’t listen to me. I’m just the boy with no quirk, why would they?”

Toshinori grimaced. He would need to discuss the idea of switching schools with Mrs. Midoriya. From the interaction with the secretary today and this comment about the teachers, this private school seemed to have a very quirkest way of treating their students. “Young man, it doesn’t matter if you have a quirk or not. It is your teacher’s job to teach you and look out for you as they would for any other student.”

The reply was sulky and disbelieving, “Sure.”

This sigh felt like it came all the way up from Toshinori’s toes. No six year old should sound that jaded. The rest of the car ride was silent. Once they reached the Midoriya mansion, Toshinori asked the boy to go up to his room and change into shorts and t-shirt so the older man could see the rest of the damage.

Toshinori had taken to baking small batches of little desserts frequently. He found they really did boost Mrs. Midoriya’s spirits and that young Midoriya was a big fan as well. As for Mr. Midoriya and his comments on anyone’s weight, he could go find a volcano and suckle on a lava stream as far as Toshinori was concerned. Still, in small batches there were fewer left overs and whatever there were he froze. Mr. Midoriya never looked in the freezer.

He pulled out one of the little chocolate cakes and set it to defrost in the microwave as he boiled milk for hot chocolate. It wasn’t quite hot chocolate season, but Toshinori was determined to spoil the shit out of the kid this afternoon. Finally, he took out an ice pack, wrapped it in a washcloth, and took the whole works up the boy’s room on a serving tray.

In the room young Midoriya had done as he was asked and now sat on his bed wearing casual clothing and staring intently at his tablet. It wasn’t lost on Toshinori that he was watching the All Might debut video again. After briefly knocking, the man set his tray on the boy’s desk and took the ice pack over to gently press against the little one’s swelling eye as he sat down. It was an unpleasant shade of dark red now.

Young Midoriya was still crying as he looked up from the screen. “Mr. Yagi. Can somebody who doesn’t have a quirk like me ever be a hero?”

Toshinori’s side gave an angry and uncalled for twinge and his remaining lung seemed to try to rattle with his next breath. He exhaled carefully. “I think if you have the drive and the training, you could be an amazing hero.”

Which was true. The little boy was very in-tune with quirks and spent a wild amount of his own time trying to study them. He was a smart boy, he was kind, and he really was quite selfless. He would never be an All Might heavy hitter, but there was no reason he couldn’t be an excellent and capable sidekick in some agency somewhere. Toshinori also felt the pressure of a previously unknown anxiety at the idea. He was looking at a little boy whose arms, legs, and face were covered in multiple forming bruises from a few classroom bullies. The idea of him out in the real world facing actual villains sent a shiver down the blonde man’s spine.

Then again, wasn’t young Midoriya used to dealing with his very own blood related villain every weekend?

Young Midoriya himself sat staring with his left eye huge and his mouth agape at Toshinori. “You, you really think so?!”

“Of course I do, young man. Do you know how many heroes out there have quirks that are not at all useful for combat? Many heroes use their very human strengths to fight criminals everyday. It takes years of training and they have to always be very vigilant, but it can be done. That and support gear technology has improved rapidly over the last decade so that even without a quirk a hero can arm themselves with a variety of protective measures. Truly, there’s no reason that…”

The older man was cut off from his rambling thoughts as he suddenly had an armful of six year old boy in his lap. The kid had his arms wrapped around Toshinori’s neck and was trying to bury his face right into the older man’s clavicle while one knee pressed into the bed and the other dug into his injured left side. Toshinori just barely stopped the hiss from escaping from between his teeth and the tears of pain that suddenly built in his own eyes.

Young Midoriya was busy sobbing almost unintelligible thank yous into Toshinori’s chest and thankfully didn’t notice as the man grasped and re positioned the knee that had dug into him. He took a moment to collect himself as the little one sobbed what he hoped were happy tears. “Mr. Yagi,” the boy managed to choke out finally, “No one has ever said so. No one has ever said I could be a hero too. Not even momma! Kacchan called me stupid, dad said I was too useless, momma only apologized. Thank you, Mr. Yagi! Thank you so much!”

Toshinori sighed. Yes, again. His side was an all consuming ache right then, but he had never seen this small child any happier. It figured the kid would cry as much when he was happy as he did when he was sad. “You’re welcome. I meant it when I said it would take a lot of work though. Now, I brought you some hot chocolate and cake, if you’re interested?”

The boy agreed, and Toshinori spent his afternoon half wrestling a small child into keeping an ice pack on his face. Yes, it needed to be there. No, he couldn’t put it down so he could see his tablet screen better. Young Midoriya was, after all, still a six year old.

When they drove out to pick up Mrs. Midoriya, he let her take over the continued struggle with her son. Later, she thanked her butler. “I appreciate your dedication to taking care of Izuku. I don’t know why it never occurred to me to ask if you had any kind of emergency medical knowledge when I hired you, but…”

“I’ve taken first responder training. I go back for refresher classes every few years. I keep my CPR certification up to date at all times. I have no doubt, as a nurse, you know far more than I do, Mrs. Midoriya, but I feel fairly capable with field assessment and treating bruises.”

“Yes. I can see that. That is reassuring to know. What did the school nurse say?”

Toshinori frowned. “They didn’t send him to the school nurse because, apparently, “Boys will be boys.””

“What.”

“I know. I fear I wasn’t as polite to the secretary as I should have been. Mrs. Midoriya, have you considered the possibility of transferring which school young Midoriya goes to?”

Mrs. Midoriya, who’s round face had taken on a look of an understandably upset mother, suddenly winced and seemed to fold in on herself. “I can’t. Hisashi picked this school. He wont allow Izuku to go anywhere else.”

Toshinori didn’t need to ask if explaining the situation would change Mr. Midoriya’s mind on the matter. He knew it wouldn’t. Truthfully, the man would probably derive some kind of joy from knowing his kid was being neglected and dismissed at school. Mrs. Midoriya seemed to be in a position where she couldn’t turn against her husband’s wishes.

This entire thing was just so convoluted and sad.

--

After the hero question, young Midoriya started sneaking hugs from his butler frequently. Toshinori absolutely knew that the little one was not as sneaky as he thought he was and the Mrs. Midoriya had spotted them more than once. By then, she no longer looked surprised to see these things. She would typically just shake her head and walk away.

There was something odd happening to the rule set here, and Mrs. Midoriya was doing her best to look away from it all. It occurred to him, not long into working here, that the lady of the house was far more worried about what her husband would think if he caught any of the friendly or caring interactions than she was concerned herself.

Holding hands while being walked out of school, chatting away, and sneaking hugs were all one thing. Something new happened one Tuesday night that Toshinori hadn’t prepared himself for. The barely there knock on his door at two thirty in the morning and the softly wobbling question of, “Mr. Yagi?”

Toshinori had always been a light sleeper and he nearly flew out of his bed at young Midoriya’s obviously teary call. He pulled his door open with more force than needed and looked down at the messy haired little boy that stood there. He had an All Might plushie pressed to his chest and his pajama top had slid over his left shoulder. The little boy’s lip wobbled and tears rolled down his freckled cheeks as he reached up his free arm toward his butler.

There was nothing else to do there but reach down and swoop the teary eyed boy into his arms. Young Midoriya burrowed into the older man’s own pajama top, wiping snot and tears all over it in the process. “Mr. Yagi.” This time it came out as something of a plea instead of question.

“My boy, what’s wrong?”

Ah, oops. That came out a little less than professional. Honestly, who could blame him with a snotty and sobbing six year old snuggled in his arms in the wee hours of the morning. “Can’t sleep. Momma was crying again.”

Toshinori winced. This was the first time the kid had mentioned out loud that he knew and it bothered him. Still, that was a past tense. He assumed the green haired woman would have cried herself to sleep by now. The butler was proven right a moment later when the boy continued, “And I had a bad dream.”

One arm supporting the boy’s weight, Toshinori rubbed his other hand gently up and down the kid’s back. He did seem to be pretty warm and sweaty. A nightmare would do that. He intended to settle in to soothe those nightmare fears away when the boy hiccuped, leaned backward, and then promptly vomited all down Toshinori’s front. “And I don’t feel good.”

“Yes, I can see that.”

Toshinori experienced a moment of fear as he worked to clean both himself and the child up. Had he missed some batch of poisoning, somewhere? Should he be waking the boy’s mother and rushing them both to the hospital? Except, when he paused to think about it rationally, Mr. Midoriya had been using fast acting poisons. Certainly none that would have symptoms show up two days later. People sometimes really did just get sick.

The man seated the boy at the kitchen table long enough to go and change his pajamas and take a wash cloth to wipe his own chest. He then carried young Midoriya upstairs, helped him with a quick bath, and found fresh pajamas for him. His next goal was to tuck the boy back into his bed. The little one, as he often did, had other ideas. “Don’t wanna go to bed, wanna stay with you.”

The mumbled demand was pouty and utterly adorable on that little fever flushed face. Toshinori sighed, took the comforter from the boy’s bed and carried him down to the couch in the living room with the TV. Settling the boy on the couch with his blanket, he turned on some cartoon channel, and stood to move away. Young Midoriya reached for him with a disappointed little mewl of a noise.

“I’ll be right back,” he reassured as he walked toward the kitchen.

In the medicine cabinet was a sealed bottle of child friendly fever and flu medication and an ear thermometer. Toshinori fetched both of those, a waste bin, a glass of water, and a box of facial tissues before returning to the boy. The thermometer read 101.5 F which confirmed the fever, but also confirmed it wasn’t concerningly high. The young boy obviously wasn’t happy about it, but he allowed Toshinori to give him a dose of the liquid medication without a fight and sipped some water before reaching out with both arms toward the older man again.

“You’re kind of demanding when you’re sick. You know that, right?” There was no sting in the words as he was laughing softly as he said them.

Lifting the corner of the comforter, he slid onto the couch beside the boy, who quickly rearranged himself to snuggle into the butler’s chest. It did occur to Toshinori that he probably should wake Mrs. Midoriya once the little one fell asleep. However, the young man had reported her late night crying again himself and she could use the sleep as well. Toshinori huffed a laugh and resigned himself to being young Midoriya’s security blanket for the rest of the night.

Before the sun came up, the little one had thrown up again. Toshinori’s old hero reflexes came in clutch as he had the waste bin in catching range even as the first coughing convulsion vibrated through the little boy’s body. Once he was finished, the butler did a quick clean up of the garbage bag and replaced it, made sure the boy drank more water, and wiped his face down with a cool wash cloth. Young Midoriya wasn’t about to let him leave yet, and demanded he lay down again on the couch.

Toshinori woke Wednesday morning with the concerned eyes of Midoriya Inko looking down at both of them as she pressed the thermometer he had left on the coffee table back into the little one’s ear for a quick check. She released a breath as it beeped and held it up. “102,” she remarked. “When did you give him the medication?”

“Three this morning. He threw up about an hour later. Not sure how much of it stayed in him.”

Toshinori wasn’t very sure when it happened, but at some point between then and his wristwatch now reading six thirty in the morning, he had wound up on his back with his feet sticking over the end of the couch with the little boy curled up on his chest like a contented cat. The All Might comforter in its red white and yellow glory was pulled haphazardly over both of them.

Mrs. Midoriya slid a hand through her son’s sweaty curls and the little one didn’t so much as stir. There was something a little sad and a little wistful about her as she stroked the little boy’s head. “This is the first time he didn’t come wake me up when he’s been sick. Did you hear him, or...?”

Toshinori offered her what he hoped was a soothing smile. “He came and woke me up a little after two. I think he knew you didn’t get to sleep until late last night.”

He had tried to say it delicately, but the way the woman’s eyes snapped to his implied she knew what he hadn’t said out loud. Her free hand pressed to her mouth and she squeezed her eyes shut while inhaling deeply. Toshinori freed a hand from the comforter and laid it on her shoulder. “If you ever need to talk, I’m more than happy to listen.”

The woman uttered a little hiccuping sob that sounded almost exactly like her son’s. She shook her head, breathed through her nose, and stood up straight. The smile she pasted on was more fake than his had been as All Might during that last fight with All for One. “I have an at home test kit. Lets see what we’re dealing with.”

Turned down again, Toshinori noted as he tucked his arm back under the blanket and around the child sleeping on top of him. Suddenly, the time on his watch and the light slanting through the living room windows dawned on him. “Oh, I need to make your breakfast!”

A wet little laugh followed behind Mrs. Midoriya as she walked toward the kitchen. “No, you don’t. Izuku wasn’t wrong, you know. I’m not a very good cook. I do know how to make toast and eggs like a champion though. I can make a plate for you too.”

“Thank you. I do need to get up and dressed to drive you to work either way, however.”

She returned as he was saying this with a box kit and nasal swab. She bopped him on the head with the box as she walked by with a little playful smile. “No, you don’t. Someone has to stay home with Izuku. He’s clingy when he’s sick and no matter the reason, he’s decided its you he’s clinging to. I’ll drive myself to work today, Mr. Yagi. You just take care of my little boy.”

Toshinori was stunned. Not by her offer to cook and drive herself. Not by the rather obvious information of the little one’s clinginess. He was stunned because in just over a month of working here, that was the first playful interaction he had seen from her. It was small, certainly, but it was there.

It was a rapid test, and in a matter of minutes it came back with a report of influenza. “These things aren’t super accurate, but they do tend to point you in the right direction. Its flu season, no doubt. We’ve been busy at the clinic with it the last two weeks.”

Toshinori was immensely relieved to hear influenza. It meant that this really wasn’t caused by an unknown poisoning. It also meant his doctors were going to be furious if they ever found out he’d just spent the night right there with a snotty, sweaty, vomiting, sick little kid. A little late now to put that face mask on and quarantine himself to his own room.

Young Midoriya slept more than he was awake for the day, rousing himself to shuffle into different spots on the couch and always pressed tightly to Toshinori. He did his best to get some broth and crackers into the little one. He also learned that Lemillion had licensed a cartoon of himself. It was meant to be some entertaining and educational thing for little kids about young Midoriya’s age. The sick boy enjoyed it. The retired hero cringed in second hand embarrassment. This show was ridiculous even for the man who was famous for his very bad jokes and puns.

That night when Mrs. Midoriya came home, she made a light dinner for the two of them of basic fish and rice. She burnt the fish. Toshinori thanked her for the meal. “Its been taking two or three days for most of my patients to have the fever break. I hope you don’t mind having to move to the couch for the duration.”

Toshinori was at that moment half propped up on the extra pillows the woman had brought them. The little boy was sound asleep on his lap with runny snot and drool soaking into his shirt above his belly button. “Its not a problem. Nobody likes being sick, especially when they’re young. Honestly, my back is enjoying the reprieve from scrubbing toilets.”

The last was meant as a joke and delivered with a smile. Mrs. Midoriya looked him up and down seriously. “I know I said all of the bathrooms need to be scrubbed every week, Mr. Yagi. Honestly, we use four of them at most around here. The rest could be scrubbed once a month and that would be fine. You don’t need to do it all each week.”

“Its the job you hired me for,” he noted with a laugh and a raised eyebrow.

“Its a job meant for more than one person. And don’t you think for a moment I don’t hear how your back and joints pop every time you bend down to get something from the bottom cupboards in the kitchen. If no one has diagnosed you with arthritis yet, I wouldn’t be surprised if its in your future.”

Mrs. Midoriya had leaned down and jabbed a finger into his chest as she said this. Toshinori blushed in embarrassment. Imagine All Might getting lectured about working himself too hard scrubbing toilets. “Really, Mrs. Midoriya. I’m fine to do the work as you asked me to do it. I was joking.”

The lady of the house was very serious. “I’m not, Mr. Yagi.” She smiled then and it perked her cheeks and reached her green eyes. “Anyway, I’ve decided I’m reprioritizing some of your jobs. At least on days Hisashi isn’t here. He would be, well, very upset with how close our little Izuku has grown to you. For a while, I thought I should be too. I don’t know how to say this. I’ve never seen my little Izuku as happy and outgoing as I have in these last few weeks. I don’t know how you’ve done it, Mr. Yagi, but you’ve boosted my son’s confidence in ways I haven’t been able to and I am so very grateful to you for it. I still need you to cook, clean and drive for us. I need you as our butler. I want taking care of Izuku to always come first for you though. I don’t think that will be terribly hard for you, I think you’ve been doing it with or without my consent all along.”

Something heavy lifted from him in that moment. The smothering weight of not being ‘allowed’ to talk to the boy or his mother suddenly removed. Toshinori’s returning smile was as genuine as the one the woman gave him. “Its a butler’s duty to see to the house and the household. I will always take care of young Midoriya and yourself first.”

The woman sniffled and had tears start to slide down her cheeks. She scrubbed at her eyes even as she laughed. “Thank you. Oh dear, you’re really going to start to think that all I ever do is cry. I’m going to bed, don’t hesitate to come and get me if you or Izuku need anything.”

She leaned down, pressed a kiss to her son’s hair, switched off the lights and took herself up the stairs. Toshinori delighted in the warm feeling in his bones as he rubbed small circles into young Midoriya’s sleeping back.

How that shithead Midoriya Hisashi could think murdering these two sweet people was even close to an option was beyond the retired hero. If he had a family like this, he would hang on to them for dear life and never let them go.

That Thursday morning, Toshinori lay on the couch channel surfing as the sun came up. He was doing his best to ignore how young Midoriya’s elbow seemed to be trying to wedge a couple of his ribs apart where it was dug in as the boy lay sleeping on top of him. The little one had thrown up an hour before and had lay there shivering much too long after the butler had cleaned him up. He wasn’t about to disturb the little guy now.

He heard it as Mrs. Midoriya walked down the stairs. He turned his head and watched her slouch into the living room. Her hair was a wreck, her cheeks were flushed, she wore warm looking pajamas, and she was dragging a blanket behind her. She gestured at his feet from the other end of the couch, “Budge over. We’re all three of us going to be here today.”

Never mind that there were two other couches in the living room, Toshinori scrunched up his legs as asked even as he nudged the trash can over toward the clearly ill woman. She flopped almost bonlessly onto the couch and tucked her own legs up beside his before pulling her blanket over the whole mess. “Did you take medications yet?”

“Not yet,” she sniffled and reached for the tissues. “Don’t get up. I’ll get there in a minute. I heard him getting sick this morning, let him sleep.”

The man smiled at her sympathetically and tossed her one of the many pillows that had found their way onto the couch. “What would you like to watch? We have the news, other news, stock market report…”

She coughed and dragged the garbage can closer, assessing it as though she may need it shortly. “Is it too early in the morning for one of those terribly acted television dramas? I’m in the mood for something I can sleep through and still know the plot of.”

Picking up the remote, Toshinori grinned. “Lets’ find out.”

When young Midoriya woke up, he shuffled the boy into his mother’s arms and set to work medicating everyone. Flu medication for the Midoriyas, the regular medications Toshinori was supposed to take daily and may very well have forgotten about the day before. He cared for them through the day and joined them regularly on the couch at young Midoriya’s continued insistence.

It turned out that sad animated movies were enough to have all three of them crying and reaching for the tissues. Mrs. Midoriya dissolved into wet giggles. “I had no idea you were a crier too, Mr. Yagi.”

Toshinori gestured helplessly at the TV screen and the surly and lonely old man on it. “They just gave us the back story about all of the joy and adventures he had with the love of his life and then she died and how am I not supposed to cry about this?!”

The youngest on the couch sniffled and patted Toshinori’s knee. “The talking dogs make it all better later. And all of the balloons!”

With both mother and son ill and having claimed the living room couch, Toshinori really did try to take himself to his own room that night. He found out that Izuku wasn’t the only clingy one in the family when they were sick. Somehow, Mrs. Midoriya was curled up on the couch on his right with her head in his lap and snuggled around his arm like it was a plushie. Young Midoriya was on his left also curled up with his head on his lap, though he held his All Might plushie and not Toshinori’s arm. Toshinori himself was stuck on the middle cushion with his feet propped up on the coffee table in the least professional pose ever known to a butler.

Thanks to detective Tsukauchi loaning him a discreet bug detecting device, Toshinori knew that there were no cameras or listening devices in the living room. The only rooms that were indeed ‘bugged’ were the ambassador’s office, Mrs. Midoriya’s bedroom – that one bothered him a lot, and the room with the computer towers in the basement. No one else would ever have visual proof of this happening.

It was rather sweet though, even if Toshinori knew he would wake up with the absolute worst crick in his neck from sleeping like this.

At around ten in the morning on Friday, young Midoriya had his fever break in a truly sweaty mess. He was still tired and about as energetic as a wet noodle, but it was nice to know the little boy was on his way to feeling better. As the two Midoriyas slept and watched TV on the couch that day, Toshinori continued his care for them and did his best to start catching up on housework. He knew, with no little dread, that Mr. Midoriya would be home early the next morning and would not have any sympathy at all for his sick family intervening with routine.

Toshinori was feeling rather lethargic himself, but thought very little of it. Spending three nights on a couch with sick, sweating, and vomiting individuals sharing the space with him had not done great things for his sleep schedule. By early afternoon he noted his nose was feeling a little stuffy and that if he moved too fast his breathing took on a little wheeze. Toshinori groaned, resigning himself to having most definitely caught the virus that the other two were suffering through.

Still he powered through where he could and decided to make a light ramen to feed the family. Opening the refrigerator, the scent of the food within caught his stuffy nose. Toshinori didn’t have stomach, you wouldn’t think he would feel gut wrenching nausea. Too bad that’s not how that worked. He bolted to the sink and heaved, the tea from a half hour earlier coming up and nothing else. No stomach meant no stomach bile.

Toshinori turned on the faucet to rinse down the mess and didn’t bother with a glass has he cupped a hand to rinse the flavor out of his mouth. Mrs. Midoriya, as sick as she was, had mysteriously appeared by his side and had a hand reached up and patting his back as he turned the water off. She gave him a sympathetic smile even as she looked him over with her fever bright eyes. “Looks like you caught it too.”

“Some super hero who defies all illness butler I turned out to be,” he joked.

She sighed and pressed a hand to his head, as though she was in any fit state to tell if someone else was running hot. “Feverish too. Go to bed, Mr. Yagi. Izuku and I will take care of ourselves for the evening.”

“Not the bed,” young Midoriya whined from where he was leaning on the back of the couch and watching them from the living room. “Come back to the couch, Mr. Yagi!”

Mrs. Midoriya took a deep breath and wiped her running nose as she sagged against the kitchen counter beside Toshinori. “Izuku, honey. Its Friday. Your dad will be home early tomorrow morning. You know how he feels about sleeping anywhere but in your own bed.”

“Oh. Right.” The boy slumped unhappily down the couch cushions.

Toshinori huffed, finding himself also leaning on the counter. “I’ll be okay a little while longer. Do you need me to wash those blankets yet this evening?”

“No, Izuku and I will bring them upstairs with us tonight. Its okay.”

He pushed himself off the counter and started toward the living room. “Then I should clean off the coffee table at least.”

Mrs. Midoriya caught him by the elbow. “No, Mr. Yagi. Take some flu medication and go to bed.”

“But…”

“Go. To. Bed.”

There was no arguing with that. Toshinori walked himself down the hall, opened the window in his suddenly stifling hot bedroom, rolled into bed, and passed out.

When he woke up next, he almost didn’t notice the sun shining through his bedroom windows as a coughing attack lanced through him. Brutally. He coughed so hard he was gagging as he dragged himself to the little on-suite bathroom and planted himself in front of the toilet. He heard the knock on his bedroom door and Mrs. Midoriya announcing she was coming in, but he was unable to respond.

She met him in the restroom with a glass of water and ran her hand through his hair. “Breathe it out, Mr. Yagi. Slow breaths; count them out if you need to.”

He would have laughed if he could spare the air for it. It wasn’t as though Toshinori wasn’t working to control his breathing as it was. Each wheezing gasp between coughs was a battle hard won. Truly wheezing now, not the occasional wheeze from the evening before. Mrs. Midoriya stepped away for a moment, he heard the sink run and then she was back beside him wiping his mouth with a wet washcloth and rubbing little circles on his back. “Did you bite your tongue or your cheek?”

Toshinori’s feverish brain was confused by the non sequitur. Until he looked at the toilet bowl in front of him and the wash cloth in her hands and saw the blood. More of it than a usual coughing attack brought up. “No,” he wheezed and made a sloppy gesture to include both toilet and washcloth with one limp arm. “S’normal for me.”

Finally looking into Mrs. Midoriya’s face, he saw that her cheeks were no longer flushed with fever, but the bags under her eyes spoke of how tired she was. She also looked remarkably alarmed for some reason. “Coughing up blood is not normal.”

Oh. Yes, of course. This time Toshinori made a sloppy gesture at himself. “Villain attack that injured me,” he wheezed, “Did a lot of damage. Only have one lung now. They removed the left one.”

Somehow, Mrs. Midoriya looked even more alarmed now. “That would have been very good information to know before I left you in much too close proximity with my very ill son who clearly had a virus that affects the respiratory system among other things!”

Rising on wobbly legs with the woman’s hand under his elbow for support, Toshinori rinsed his mouth and spit in the sink before taking a few small sips of the water she had brought him. He waved off her concern, “S’fine. I’ve had the flu before.”

“After you lost the lung?”

“Yes.” He realized he shouldn’t tell her that lead directly to his first experience with pneumonia as well.

“Uh huh,” she noted with a trace of sarcasm as she helped him back to and then into his bed. “Anything else I should know?”

Toshinori shrugged and then gestured at his middle. “Lost my stomach and left kidney too.”

The woman pinched the bridge of her nose between her fingers and puffed out a sigh as he wheezed into the quiet room. “I’ve watched you eat often enough to realize you had diet restrictions, I thought it wasn’t my business to ask why. Maybe it still isn’t. You are a stupid man. Selfless and impossibly kind, but stupid.”

He winced and glanced up at her with a wounded look. “No,” she huffed, “Don’t you give me the kicked puppy eyes. I know your doctors warned you about how those kind of health problems leave you incredibly compromised in case of illness. If something goes through the family again, we will all wear masks and you will quarantine in your room if at all possible until it passes.”

Toshinori wasn’t sure if he was currently being lectured by the nurse or the mother side of the small woman in front of him. Possibly both. She was right, he couldn’t deny it. He also knew if at any point in the future young Midoriya came knocking on his door and sick in the middle of the night, Toshinori wasn’t about to turn the kid away.

Mrs. Midoriya passed him a flu medication capsule and the water glass with a shake of her head. He took it sheepishly. There was a shout from down the hall just then, “Inko! Its lunch time, woman! Where the hell is our lunch?”

The woman shook with a full body flinch. Toshinori was suddenly more alert than he had been since he woke up. The wheezing got a little worse as he moved to lift himself to seated position. Mrs. Midoriya pushed him back into his pillows with a gentle hand. To him, she said, “Its okay.” Toward the hallway she yelled, “I’ll get is started in a moment, Hisashi!”

Toshinori really knew he was sick if he managed to forget it was the weekend and that fire breathing son of a horse apple was home. Footsteps stormed down the hall toward them. “Oh, are you finally getting that lazy, useless, butler out of bed? Its about time he got up and started the job we actually pay him to do at some point today!”

The man stopped at the doorway. He stood there with his slicked back black curls, his angry reddish eyes, and smoke curling out of his mouth looking like the glorious and steaming pile of shit he really was. For once, Mrs. Midoriya didn’t duck her head and look meekly at the floor. “Mr. Yagi is clearly ill, Hisashi. He’s not getting out of bed to make you your lunch or do the chores. I stopped to make sure he took some medicine before I started cooking, He has. If you’ll move out of the doorway, dear, I’ll go to the kitchen and start on your meal now.”

She stood then, and pushed past her husband. He continued to stare at Toshinori in an angry and confrontational way. Mrs. Midoriya walked back, closed the door in her spouse’s face, and then he heard both of their footsteps walk back to the kitchen with Mr. Midoriya’s irritable ranting following the whole way.

The retired hero felt spectacularly bad that his getting sick had left both mother and son without their protector to take the brunt of the ambassador’s foul temper for the weekend.

Toshinori woke in fits and bursts over the next day and a half. He repositioned himself to ease the pressure in his chest, he twisted about to ease the coughing as various bouts of it hit him. Mrs. Midoriya came in every so often to check on him and make sure he took the fever and flu medication along with the medications he was supposed to take daily. He didn’t see Mr. Midoriya again and was not upset about it. Mrs. Midoriya told him that the ambassador was taking a red-eye flight back to the USA and would be leaving again very early Monday morning.

Somewhere around midnight, the butler woke up hearing Mr. Midoriya grumbling and rattling around in a near by room. There was a stretch of silence followed by a loud pop. Mr. Midoriya swore, rattled around some more, and then went into the garage. Toshinori heard the car start as he drove away. The ill man lay there wondering what the ambassador had been trying to find or fix in the utility room so early in the morning. He didn’t think about it long before he fell back asleep.

Toshinori woke up again much later in the morning. The breeze from his still open window and the light from the morning sun both caressing his feverish face. He stifled a small cough and rolled over to look at his phone. Seven in the morning. It was quiet, he repositioned himself to go back to sleep.

It took way too long for the red alarm to start ringing in his brain. There was no way this house should be quiet at this time of day. There was no way Mrs. Midoriya would not have woken him for his medications by now.

Actually, what HAD Mr. Midoriya been doing in the utility room?!

Years of being a hero had Toshinori’s fevered senses on high alert. A burst of adrenaline moving to ease his wheezing breaths and stabilize his shaking legs as he nearly toppled out of his bed and ran for the door. He slammed it open and pelted down the hallway. The utility door was wide open. There was a large hole burnt into the side of the furnace in a way that couldn’t have been an accident.

Stepping back from the room, Toshinori realized the house really was too hot and it wasn’t just his fever talking. He spotted the covers taken off of both the fire alarm and the carbon monoxide alarm, batteries removed. Had the ambassador tried and failed to burn the house down and make it look like an accident? No. His quirk was fire breathing. If he meant to burn the house down at midnight, Toshinori would be standing the ashes of it at seven in the morning. No, the burn hole was there on purpose. The furnace was running at much too hot of a temperature on purpose.

Toshinori hated how his fevered brain was taking too long to put the pieces together. He hated how his thoughts were beginning to jumble, as though something more than the fever was at work. It was almost as though… His eyes drifted to the disabled carbon monoxide alarm again and he sucked in an involuntary breath.

Shit. Shit!

Toshinori didn’t know he’d kept his cell phone in his hand this whole time until he was dialing emergency services without further thought. He was taking the stairs to the second floor two at a time and ignoring how his lung protested the effort even as operators picked up on their end. “I’m calling to report a suspected carbon monoxide leak in a home. There are… there are three of us here. I’m going to check on the other two. I may need help getting them out.”

He rattled off the address between his wheezing breaths as he staggered through young Midoriya’s door. The boy was curled up under his blankets. Toshinori leaned over and roughly shook the child’s shoulder. “Young man. Young man! Izuku! I need you to wake up for me!”

The boy was still breathing, but in short and gasping little breaths. He didn’t respond to the calls or the shaking of his shoulders. Toshinori didn’t take the time to think about it any further than that as he tossed the boy over his shoulder fireman style and ran for Mrs. Midoriya’s room. The response and the condition he found her in was about the same. The retired hero didn’t really know if he could carry both Midoriya’s out as he was, but he would be damned if he left either of them behind. He briefly considered trying to grasp at One for All, dismissed the idea just as quickly. He was too sick and too short of breath to even be able to hope to hang onto All Might’s form the few moments it would take to leave this house.

With mother and son each carried over a shoulder and the emergency operator still on the line of the phone he had pressed into young Midoriya’s back, Toshinori awkwardly staggered his way back down the stairs. He set the woman down long enough to fumble the front door open, and then dragged her outside by the collar as he continued to carry the boy until he collapsed in a wheezing and gasping mess on the front lawn.

Toshinori confirmed with the operator that he had managed to get the three of them outdoors even as he heard the wailing of sirens coming closer to the house. He really hadn’t meant to pass out, but his sick and injured body had given everything it could and the last thing he remembered was cool grass under his cheek as the sirens continued to grow louder.

--

He really hated waking up in a hospital. Toshinori knew that's exactly where he was by the scent of the room and the feel of the bed under him. The nasal cannula poked into his nostrils, the IV drip in his left arm, and the pulse oximeter on his finger were all pretty solid clues too. Toshinori coughed reflexively as he opened his eyes.

Which was about when he recalled who was his emergency contact. Torino Sorahiko sat with his cane across his knees and an even more disgruntled than usual look on his wrinkled face. “What the fuck, Toshinori.”

“Hello, Torino,” it came out as a horse gasp and had the blonde man fumbling for the cup of ice chips he spotted on the tray next to him.

“Don’t you ‘Hello’ me, boy. I’ve always known you were a slow learner, but it amazes even me that you managed to get confused about what being retired means.”

Toshinori didn’t have the chance to respond before Torino was out of his chair and standing beside the bed. “Had a talk with a nice detective while you were napping. He asked me to let him know when you came around, has questions for you. So do I. Butler sure as hell was never something I saw on the menu for you.”

After sucking on some of the ice, the blonde man had better luck with his response. “Everyone of you told me to retire from hero work. So I did. I never agreed that I wouldn’t do something else instead.”

“Really. See, it doesn’t sound like you left hero work. All reports are saying you identified the carbon monoxide leak, you contacted emergency services, and you carried that mother and son out of the house by yourself. With a lung full of pneumonia. Dumbass.”

Ah, it was an IV drip of antibiotics. That made sense. “I knew two people were suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning and you, what? Expected me to just leave them there?”

Torino huffed. He didn’t feel the hero pull as strong Toshinori did, but he had to understand. “Of course not, boy. I hope it was worth it though. No idea why you picked butler as a retirement job. Really no idea why you’d choose to work for that asshole ambassador.”

Toshinori furrowed his brow in confusion. “You know him?”

Torino made a face like he wanted to spit right there on the hospital floor. “Nope. Don’t want to. Read what he said when he was called about the emergency. ‘Must have been that sick and useless butler who turned up the heat because he couldn’t stop shivering. How irresponsible.’ See, I know that ain’t true. You’ve always run hot when you have a fever. Probably had the window open in that forty degree weather. Probably why you didn’t have the level of carbon monoxide poisoning those other two had.”

The blonde man winced. “How are they? The other two?”

Torino rolled his eyes. “Fine. Pushed oxygen for them. Cleared out the poisoning. No lasting damage. Stop deflecting. You’ll be retiring from this job now too, right? Not like you need the money.”

Toshinori sighed. “Nope. As soon as they let me out, I’ll go back to it. The butlering.”

“That man obviously set this up. Blamed you for it. Why the fuck would you go back to working for him?”

“I’m not doing it for him.”

Torino narrowed his eyes and pounded his cane on the floor. “No matter if you’re rescuing two people or a thousand, hero work is still hero work, boy. You just told me you’d agreed with us about retiring from that.”

Toshinori slid an innocent smile on his face. “I’m going back to being a butler. Which generally involves cooking meals, doing laundry, and scrubbing toilets.”

The old man scowled at him. A knock sounded on the hospital door. Torino gruffly answered, “Come in.”

The door opened and Toshinori was delighted to see both Mrs. Midoriya and young Midoriya step into the room. “Mr. Yagi!” The little boy shouted gleefully. “You’re awake!”

Mrs. Midoriya winced. “Izuku, honey, keep your voice down. We’re in a hospital. Hello, Mr. Yagi. And, uh, sir.”

Torino grunted in return before turning and marching toward the door. He paused at the threshold and pointed his cane threateningly at Toshinori. “Boy, you call me when you’ve decided to walk your ass back out of crazy town. And stop landing in the hospital, you hear me?”

The door didn’t slam behind him, but it felt like it should have. Little Midoriya made a face. “Who is that mean old man?”

“Izuku!” The mother gasped, looking scandalized. “That’s clearly a… uh… friend? Of Mr. Yagi’s.”

“Torino is, huh. I guess he’s kind of my father figure. Sort of. He’s gruff, but he means well. Never mind him. I’m so glad you two are okay!”

Mrs. Midoriya smiled. “So am I. It was such a close thing. I’m told you saved us both! Without you there… I don’t want to think about it. The police officer that talked to me this morning said it doesn’t happen often, but sometimes furnaces can have their heat switch malfunction and just burn a hole right through the tank. I don’t know if you knew that's what happened, but that was what cause the carbon monoxide leak.”

Well, now Toshinori was very confused. He knew Torino wouldn’t have lied about what he read from the ambassador’s phone call. He also knew Mrs. Midoriya would have no reason to lie to him. Which would imply this story was being twisted somewhere else and whoever was doing it was doing it in a hurry.

Mrs. Midoriya huffed a laugh that sounded a little too close to a sob as she reached for and held onto his right hand. She was careful of the pulse oximeter on his finger in the process. “You scared me so much, Mr. Yagi. I knew with what you told me that you were compromised, but I didn’t think you would slide into full blown pneumonia so quickly! I am so sorry I wasn’t more attentive to you, I might have noticed it sooner if…”

“Its fine,” he rasped back at her with a crooked smile. “It was at least a little self inflicted as I seem to recall you warning me about.”

“It really was, but I still wish I could have gotten you to a doctor and on antibiotics sooner.”

Young Midoriya had a grip on the hospital blankets on the bed, “You slept for a whole day, Mr. Yagi! But you don’t sound so funny when you breathe now and momma says that's a good thing.” The child turned to his mother, “Can I get on the bed? Mr. Yagi is awake and I want a hug.”

“Izuku, sweetie, Mr. Yagi still doesn’t feel well.”

Toshinori laughed softly and squeezed the woman’s hand. “Help him up. I could use a hug too.”

The woman sighed, smiled, and rolled her eyes at both of them. She slipped her hand from his and picked her son up onto the bed. “Careful of the wires and tubes, Izuku.”

“And careful of where you put those knees, my boy,” Toshinori preemptively winced as he defended his left side.

There was a giggle from the squirming child who fell into his chest for a surprisingly gentle cuddle. “You were right, Mr. Yagi. Being quirkless doesn’t mean you can’t be a hero. You don’t have a quirk and you saved momma and me. You’re a hero! Thank you, Mr. Yagi.”

Mrs. Midoriya’s eyes went wide and she leaned into the bed, pressing one hand to her son’s green curls and the other into Toshinori’s right forearm. “Izuku, you talked to Mr. Yagi about becoming a hero?”

“Uh huh! He told me I can be. He says I’ll have to work really hard to do it but that's okay. I’ll work really hard! I want to be a hero like Mr. Yagi!”

Toshinori grunted with the force of the emotion that hit him right between the ribs. The kid admired All Might. The kid admired and studied quirks. The kid had just declared he wanted to be a hero like his quirkless butler, Yagi Toshinori. “Young Midoriya…”

He realized Mrs. Midoriya was struggling with the same problem, even if it was likely different emotions behind it. Her lip wobbled and her voice cracked as she said, “Mr. Yagi, Izuku, I think I could use a hug too.”

The blonde man spread his right arm wide for her as the green haired woman leaned down across the bed and wrapped both her son and her butler in an embrace. Toshinori pressed one hand to her back and the other to the boy’s and hugged them both fiercely.

--

Toshinori was expected to stay at the hospital one more night for observation. After that, he would be released and would finish his course of antibiotics by taking tablets. He had strongly recommended to mother and son that they order take out for dinner as they left the room. He was still riding high on the emotions of their visit as someone else knocked on his hospital door.

Detective Tsukauchi didn’t wait for a greeting before he let himself in. “Its good to see you awake, Yagi. I can’t say I’m happy about the direction our mutual project just turned in.”

“Detective,” Toshinori greeted as the man took up the seat next to the bed. “I can’t say I expected that would be the next kind of poisoning he would go for.”

Tsukauchi shrugged. “It follows a certain twisted logic. By all accounts you were too sick to cook. Poisoning the food really would look suspicious if he didn’t have you to blame for it.”

“Torino mentioned Midoriya tried to blame me for this one, too.”

The detective nodded. “He did. That leads me to another problem that Nezu and I suspected, but this has very much uncovered. As of talking to you right now, that entire conversation both verbal and written had been scrubbed from the case file. Photos of the furnace and of the alarms have been doctored. The case was opened as suspicious yesterday and somehow ruled as an accident and closed today. Nobody gets case files turned over that quickly. At least, not legitimately.”

Toshinori groaned. “The ambassador bought a cop.”

“You got it. Lead officer on the case, if I had to guess. I’m digging into it. Meanwhile, I asked a friend for a favor and was allowed to walk through the crime scene yesterday before the cover up started. It was obvious the furnace had been melted through from the outside. It was obvious the thermostat was set to 88 F. It was obvious the that the covers were off and batteries removed from the fire and CO alarms. There was absolutely nothing accidental about this case. I’m guessing you saw all of the same things and that lead you to specifically stating the carbon monoxide leak in your phone call with emergency services.”

The blonde man sighed. “I did. I also realized I heard him in the act before he left for his flight yesterday morning. I admit I was not of a mindset to know it and do something about it right then.”

“That fever you had going from the flu and the pneumonia probably had you laying in bed cooking your brains out. That open window saved your life. Saved the Midoriya’s too. If your room had been as closed up as the rest of the house, all three of you would have died there yesterday.”

With a frown, Toshinori confirmed, “I know. That one was way too close, Tsukauchi.”

The detective leaned back in his chair with a noisy exhale. “Working some twenty odd years at a hero agency really wore off on you. I have to congratulate you for your fast actions and calm response in an emergency. I spoke with the woman you were talking to on the emergency line and she tells me she thought for sure you were a cop, a firefighter, or a hero just by how calm and efficient you were at keeping her appraised of what was happening at all times. All of that being said, if you want out of this, Yagi, neither Nezu or I would hold it against you. You almost died yesterday.”

Toshinori gave the detective a very flat look. “If I turn in my notice and quit as the Midoriya’s butler tomorrow, what happens then?”

“You go home and sleep for a week like you deserve.”

“To the Midoriyas,” the retired hero clarified. “They, what, go out and hire another quirkless butler? The ambassador uses this new man as his next fall guy? The new guy won’t know he’s in danger, wont know that Mrs. Midoriya and her son are in danger. Do you think any of them would survive more than a week or two?”

Tsukauchi grimaced, squeezing the bridge of his nose between his fingers. “Look. You’re not wrong and we both know it. Not to sound like a broken record on this, because I’ve been reminding you of it every week for the last month, but Nezu and I never brought you into this to become a bodyguard.”

“Until those two innocent people are safe from that shitstain of a man, a bodyguard is exactly what I will be,” Toshinori declared with conviction.

“That would be considerably more reassuring if you weren’t laying in a hospital bed receiving oxygen and an IV drip.”

Toshinori huffed and turned to look out the window. “I am not going to let those two be killed, Tsukauchi. I am very serious about that. Can we do anything about proving this cover up and using it to get dear respected ambassador locked away for several lifetimes in the near future?”

There was a deep sigh from the detective. “Wouldn’t count on it. Best case scenario is I find evidence to nail our corrupted cop and the cop goes away. Maybe. They had someone at the house replacing the furnace today, fixed the alarms as well I’m sure. In that scenario, the case would get thrown out before it went to trial against Midoriya. The evidence has been tampered with and who can say if that same corrupt cop hadn’t done it to frame Ambassador Midoriya?”

“So, we keep going as we are.”

“For now, I’m afraid so.”

--

Said respected ambassador arrived home early Friday morning very sick with influenza. Toshinori, still recovering from his own bout with illness, had absolutely not a smidgen of sympathy for the man. For Mrs. Midoriya, who was dealing with his toddler like outbursts, but not Hisashi. If Toshinori took unholy joy in radically over salting the ambassador’s miso soup broth, well, that was between him and the kitchen cupboards.

Chapter Text

The following few weeks were fairly normal. Mostly. Midoriya Hisashi had stopped all attempts at poisoning as far as Toshinori could tell. He wondered if the man’s bought-and-paid for corrupted cop had told him to lay low for a while.

That didn’t mean he didn’t try anything, though.

The late season surprise warm Saturday that had the ambassador suddenly encouraging his wife and son to go swimming in the back yard pool right this moment was more than a little suspicious. Sure enough, there was an electrical cord ‘accidentally’ draped into the water. Toshinori went to the utility room and turned off the breaker for the wall the other end of that electrical cord was plugged into. When mother and son both waded into the pool, the ambassador looked comically disappointing by the lack of anything happening to them.

For the moment, Toshinori was enjoying a relaxing Thursday evening scrubbing up dinner dishes and the kitchen counters before he went to bed. Young Midoriya had a scheduled day off of school that Friday. More importantly for the household’s general relaxed behavior that week, Mr. Midoriya was spending two weeks abroad this time and would not be in any way home for the weekend. The butler was considering taking the other two out to the park, or to the movies. Something fun.

The peace of the evening was shattered by an ear piercing scream from upstairs.

Toshinori dropped the sponge in the sink and wiped his wet hands on his trousers even as he was sprinting around the corner and up the stairs. He was bellowing before he reached the landing. “Mrs. Midoriya! Are you okay?”

Young Midoriya, all ready changed into his pajamas for bed, had his own door pushed open and was staring toward his mother’s room with wide and terrified eyes. Toshinori didn’t bother to knock, announced broadly that he was coming in as he slammed Mrs. Midoriya’s bedroom door open. The green haired woman stood wrapped in a bath towel with her hair still dripping wet and was backing away from her en-suite bathroom with horrified eyes. She pointed through the bathroom door as Toshinori burst in. “There was a man! Watching me through the bathroom window while I showered!”

They were on the second floor and the yard was fully fenced in with a gated entrance. There weren’t going to be any accidental peeping toms happening here. Toshinori had himself positioned between the terrified woman and her bathroom in moments even as he was pulling out his cell phone to call emergency services. The window was empty.

Toshinori swung around toward the bedroom, extending his free arm out in front of Mrs. Midoriya while backing himself and the woman back toward the bedroom door and the stair landing. The operator for the emergency line picked up and Toshinori gave her is name and the address. As he began to relate the problem, He saw a man float up to Mrs. Midoriya’s bedroom window. It was hard to see in the dark, but he appeared to be floating there sitting on a soap bubble.

“There is an an unknown man looking into a second story bedroom window,” Toshinori dutifully reported into the phone as he pushed Mrs. Midoriya a little more urgently. “Appears to be early twenties. Pale skin, black spiky hair with green tips, has two eyebrow piercings on the left eyebrow. Using some kind of bubble quirk to float up to the windows.”

The man in the window pressed his face to the glass and licked it in a deranged kind of way. He then pressed a knife to the glass and grinned. The butler gripped the woman by her still wet elbow and hauled her out of the room, slamming the door behind them. “The man is armed with at least one knife.”

Toshinori found the boy standing right there, his eyes still huge and his face pale. He nudged the boy with his foot and never once let go of his nearly frozen-in-panic mother. “Follow me, young Midoriya. Right now.”

The operator reported to him that police had been dispatched as he heard the glass break in Mrs. Midroyia’s bedroom. He hurried his two charges down the stairs. “Tell them this is now a home invasion. He’s broken into the window. There are three of us in the house. I’m moving the other two with me to the attached garage right now. I’m going to drive them out of here.”

Young Midoriya was aware of what was being said and moved through the kitchen with determined little steps. Mrs. Midoriya was still in a state of shock, but allowed him to guide her along without question. He snatched the keys from the wall as he pulled them both into the garage and closed the door firmly behind them. Toshinori very nearly threw both mother and son in the back seat of the black sedan. He slammed the door, and jumped into the front seat himself as he switched his phone to speaker and set it in the drink holder beside him.

Ignition started, Toshinori pressed the button to open the garage door even as he shifted the car into reverse. The door rolled up and they saw a man with impossibly long arms and a studded leather jacket jumping up and down and laughing behind them. Mrs. Midoriya wailed and wrapped herself around her son. The boy whimpered. To the operator, Toshinori informed, “There are at least two people involved. The second one is at the garage. Blonde hair, leather jacket, some kind of arm length mutation quirk. Also armed. Two knives.”

Toshinori depressed the button in the car that opened the gate to the driveway and floored the accelerator. The expensive sedan leapt backwards and Toshinori didn’t bother to take his foot off the gas even as the second intruder slammed into the bumper, over the trunk, and rolled off the passenger side. He spun the car out into the road and rammed it into drive before they could be hit by oncoming traffic.

Toshinori continued his report to the operator in a steady tone. “The second intruder may be injured. I’m driving east, toward Chestnut. All household members are safe and uninjured.”

“Please go to the local police department, Mr. Yagi, and await further instructions there.”

“Yes, I will. Thank you.”

The phone call cut off and Toshinori looked to his two frightened passengers as he continued driving at a now normal pace. “We’ll give the police some time to catch them and then we can go back home. It will be okay.”

“Thank you,” came Mrs. Midoriya’s meek response from the back seat.

At the police station, Toshinori took off his suit jacket and slid it around Mrs. Midoriya’s shoulders. The bedraggled woman stood there still wet with no shoes or slippers and wearing nothing but a towel. He then bent down and picked up young Midoriya who had his pajamas, but also no shoes. The boy settled on his right hip, Toshinori wrapped his left arm around the smaller woman’s shoulders and guided them both into the precinct.

Where they were asked to wait for several hours on an uncomfortable bench, but were welcome to have as much coffee as they would like.

Young Midoriya snuggled in between Toshinori and his mother and did his best to soothe her in his own child like way until he fell soundly asleep. Mrs. Midoriya sat silently slouched and looking absolutely miserable. Arm across the bench behind them, the butler gently squeezed the woman’s shoulder. “You’re welcome to sleep for a while as well, if you would like.”

The green haired woman huffed a laugh with no humor as she gestured at herself. “While wearing this? I don’t think so.”

“I promise to glare as frighteningly as possible at anyone who judges your bath towel, Mrs. Midoriya.”

The little laugh that followed held some genuine humor. “Oh, well. In that case.”

She still made no efforts to get comfortable or sleep. Still looked impossibly upset. Toshinori sighed. “Would you like to talk about it?”

“About what? About that man watching me shower while I was fully naked and alone? About how he broke into our house with a knife and could have so easily hurt Izuku, or me, or you? About how he wasn’t working alone? About how I’m not sure I’m ever going to sleep peacefully again after all of that? Which part would you like me to talk about, Mr. Yagi?”

Toshinori raised an eyebrow and a shoulder in a helpless shrug. “Ah, any or all of the above?”

The woman pressed the heels of her palms to her eyes. There was a hint of a smile in her voice as she commented, “You’re really not very good at this.”

“Sorry. I know.”

“I appreciate that you keep trying anyway.”

Toshinori hummed and squeezed her shoulder again. He was at a loss about how to help her. The woman let out a long sigh and leaned back against the bench and Toshinori’s arm across the back of it. Tugging his jacket tighter around herself, she asked, “So where did you learn to drive like that?”

“Would you believe it was while I was in America? I have some wild college stories I could tell you!”

--

They were given the all clear to return to the house somewhere around three in the morning. Toshinori wasn’t about to send the two Midoriyas to their own rooms to sleep after the scare they had. He stood beside her bedroom door as Mrs. Midoriya changed into pajamas and escorted her down to the living room where the three of them made a messy pile of limbs on the couch under the little boy’s All Might comforter.

A tired little Midoriya had climbed the stairs with his mother and the butler as she changed. He came out of his room when his mother did, a sleepy grin on his face and the comforter held in his arms. “Its going to be okay, momma. Why? Because I am here! With my All Might blanket. All Might and Mr. Yagi will protect us tonight.”

It wasn’t very comfortable, Mrs. Midoriya with her back pressed right into the couch, little Midoriya snuggled into her arms, and Toshinori nearly falling off the edge off the couch cushions on the outside and wrapped around the both of them. He didn’t mind as much as he should have. After all, the little boy had said it himself, All Might and Toshinori would protect them.

Mrs. Midoriya was awake and making phone calls about getting her window repaired and the security alarm checked by eight in the morning. Toshinori made a stack of cinnamon swirled pancakes for the mother and son and a scrabbled egg for himself. While she had finished her phone calls, the butler nearly had the drag the lady of the house away from her nervous pacing to get her to sit at the counter and eat breakfast with the two of them.

“They can’t come to fix the window until Monday,” the woman announced as she nervously bounced her knee and picked at her pancakes. “I can sleep in one of the other rooms. It will be fine. I just don't like having that window broken open like that. I wonder if we can block the door from the hallway for the weekend.”

“Or,” Young Midoriya piped up with his mouth full of pancake, “We could all sleep on the couch all weekend!”

Toshinori winced. It wasn’t that he wasn’t a fan of the family cuddles. As it turns out, new as he was to the idea, he really liked them. It was just that he was fairly sure the little boy was the only one among them that managed to sleep well that way. Mrs. Midoriya’s matching wince said the same thing even as she gently reprimanded her son, “Izuku. Don’t talk with your mouth full.”

Toshinori’s mind flashed to the hero news he’d been reading at the police station while scrolling his phone last night. To an event being held tomorrow. “Or,” he said thoughtfully, “We could go somewhere else for the weekend. On a little trip.”

Young Midoriya’s face was a cross of confusion and disbelief. “Are we allowed to do that?”

Mrs. Midoriya was shaking her head. “Hisashi won’t allow any funds for hotels or over night stays. He believes its a waste of money when everything we need is right here. I’m sorry Mr. Yagi, but we can’t go anywhere for the whole weekend.”

Midoriya Hisashi, the man who blew through government money like it grew on trees with his frequent trips back and forth between America and Japan. That man was worried about wasting money? Only if it wasn’t being spent on himself, Toshinori suspected. “Have you two really never been on a vacation?”

The green haired woman poked at her pancake as her son continued to look confused where he sat beside her. “Hisashi used to take me to America with him sometimes right after we were married. After I became pregnant though. Well. Izuku and I haven’t gone anywhere we couldn’t drive back the same day from since.”

As though Toshinori needed another reason to dislike the ambassador. All though, in this case, maybe no vacations at all would be better than a vacation with that demeaning individual. “I was thinking we could get a hotel room in Tokyo for the weekend. I’m sure you’ve been there, but day trips aren’t quite the same as making a weekend of it. I lived there for years, I could show you two some interesting sights.”

“Mr. Yagi, I just said I’m not allowed to spend money on…”

“My treat,” Toshinori said with a grin. “I’ll pay for the whole weekend. Lodging, meals, souvenirs. Its on me.”

Mrs. Midoriya stared at him with her mouth agape. The piece of pancake on her fork fell off with a plop back onto her plate. “Oh no, Mr. Yagi. You’re my employee. I absolutely could not impose on you like this. No.”

“Well,” Toshinori drawled out slowly, “There seems to be some kind of a hero presentation happening tomorrow. Talking about working together and quirk compatibility in hero fights and rescue situations. I thought maybe…”

Young Midoriya bounced in his seat and nearly tipped his stool over. “The one with Lemillion and Fat Gum, and Ryukyu, and Gang Orca? That one? Really? Momma can we go? Can we please?”

Mrs. Midoriya pursed her lips and turned a glare on her butler. Toshinori, in turn, offered her the most innocent smile he had ever worn in his adult life. He knew the moment she caved, her shoulders sagged and she released a heartfelt groan. “Fine, but YOU will be the one to deal with all of his hero chatter. That’s not on me.”

A compromise that Toshinori was more than willing to make.

The butler made fast reservations for a hotel room with two beds and a pullout couch at a reputable hotel not far from Might Tower. He thought about taking them to the apartment that was technically still his, but he also knew what kind of a dusty mess that would be after a few months of neglect. The hotel would be clean and provided breakfast in the mornings.

Mrs. Midoriya helped him with the dishes while young Midoriya jogged around the kitchen excitedly talking about heroes as though someone had juiced him up with an energy drink. As the boy lapped the kitchen for the fifth time, the woman sharing a sink with him nudged her butler with her elbow. “This is your fault,” she laughed quietly.

The little boy hardly stopped talking even as Toshinori accompanied Mrs. Midoriya to her room to clean up the broken glass and tape some cardboard over the window while she packed. Even as she then packed a bag for her son. The chatter didn’t stop as the little one plopped himself on Toshinori’s bed and watched him pack too.

Toshinori eyed the camera above his room and thought of the hidden ones in Mrs. Midoriya’s room as well. He wondered again how much access the ambassador had to the security footage while he was gone. Wondered what the man must be thinking about bags being packed and the car driving away and not coming back for the weekend.

The butler packed all of their belongings in the trunk of the sedan and then buckled a still chattering young Midoriya into the back seat. Mrs. Midoriya surprised him as she opened the front passenger door and seated herself beside him instead of in the back seat with her son. He raised both eyebrows in confusion. Mrs. Midoriya jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “There is no way you are sticking me back there to sit next to him when he’s like this. If I wasn’t scared of the idea of driving in Tokyo, I’d offer to drive us there and make YOU sit in the back seat with him.”

Young Midoriya didn’t stop talking until he dropped off to sleep mid word on their drive.

--

Apparently no one had ever made katsudon for young Midoriya and when Toshinori bought it for him from the outdoor food stand, the boy immediately announced it was his new favorite food. Toshinori and Mrs. Midoriya were seated on a bench late that Friday afternoon at a park near their hotel. They had unpacked, eaten, and were now letting the little one burn off energy on the playground equipment.

“Hisashi has a rule about only eating healthy in his house. No fatty meals, no desserts. That’s why fried foods like katsudon aren’t on the meal list.”

Toshinori frowned and grunted. “Okay, I don’t even know how many times I’ve broken that rule that I wasn’t aware of.”

Mrs. Midoriya pressed a hand to her lips and giggled like a guilty little girl. “I’ve noticed you rigorously stick to the list when he’s home, so I didn’t say anything. Anyway, I really like your cakes.”

“That’s kind of you,” the butler replied with a lopsided grin of his own, “I only started to learn how to bake them a couple of months ago.”

“Oh, I could tell. You’ve gotten much better with your baking and cooking since you’ve come to work for us. I have to admit, I miss the charm of the uneven frosting on your first attempts.”

“Oh sure,” Toshinori bemoaned dramatically, “Your son is unhappy when I don’t know what I’m doing with the cooking and you’re unhappy when I finally do know what I’m doing with the baking!”

The green haired woman bent double in a fit of giggles over Toshinori’s exaggeratiated declaration. He started laughing with her. As she recovered and scrubbed the happy tears from her cheeks, she smiled at Toshinori. “Thank you for this. For the trip, the unhealthy food, the laughter. You were right, we needed to get out of that house.”

The butler gave her a gentle smile in return. “Sometimes you need the chance to step back from a problem to realize it really isn’t as big and scary as it looks.”

“And sometimes you need a butler who is much too kind and much too relaxed in his professionalism for his own good to show you the same thing.”

Toshinori’s smile shifted and became a little sad. “I assume most people have friends for that, Mrs. Midoriya.”

The green haired woman reached out a hand and patted his knee. “Friend. Butler. In this particular case, Mr. Yagi, I don’t see a difference between those two things. Do you?”

Heart beating a happy staccato in his chest, his shoulders relaxed in the moment, Toshinori smiled. “No, I don’t.”

--

Young Midoriya had declined sleeping on the pull out bed in favor of burrowing in with his mother that night like a particularly needy baby monkey. The bags under her eyes suggested that hadn’t gone well for her. “He tossed and rolled around all night. You take him tonight.”

“Yes! I get to sleep with Mr. Yagi!”

The boy giggled and flopped onto Toshinori’s lap where he sat on the edge of his bed buttoning his shirt. The blonde man couldn’t put a finger on when exactly this little family had become so comfortable around him, knowing it was something that had grown with time and experience. He thoroughly enjoyed it though. He freed a hand long enough to tousle the little one’s green curls. “Just don’t drool on me and we’ll call it a deal.”

The child slid down to the floor and wrapped his arms around Toshinori’s shins as he kicked his feet in the air. “I won’t!”

Toshinori laughed. Maybe it was just the late night dango doing it, but he had never seen this little boy so happy, silly, and energized. If Mrs. Midoriya insisted, he would accept the blame for a happy little six year old acting his age all day long. It made him painfully aware of how reserved the child typically was in his own home.

Mrs. Midoriya shook her head and giggled. “I am going to need so much coffee to keep up with you today.”

“Mmm,” The little one bounced himself back up from the floor to lean into his mother as she stood at the dresser putting up her hair. “Can we go down for breakfast now? Do you think they make pancakes?”

Toshinori stood and pulled on his sport jacket. He poked the little boy in the side on the way by earning himself a giggle. “They make something better. Something I’ve never learned to do. They make fluffy souffle pancakes.”

Those little green eyes went big and his little freckled cheeks puffed out as he said, “Ohh, what are those?”

“You’ll just have to order them and find out!”

--

The hero presentation scheduled that day wasn’t at a venue. It was a large blocked off section of street in front of Might Tower. Toshinori did his best to bury the pang of longing in his heart as he looked at it. Not a longing for the building, a longing for the hero career he had very actively been part of until a little over a year ago. No matter how he tried to convince himself he didn’t miss it, he was fine, he knew he was lying to himself.

The little boy currently squirming around where he was seated on Toshinori’s shoulders was doing a lot to soothe that ache. He wasn’t a hero anymore, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t still needed. Little fists dug into his hair as the boy leaned forward to watch the stage set up excitedly. “Its a good thing you’re so tall, Mr. Yagi! I’m gonna be able to see everything!”

The gathered crowd was massive, as expected. An event in front of Might Tower that included Japan’s number one hero? Packed wall to wall with people. Mrs. Midoriya stood at his left side and grumbled as she was jostled by someone else's elbows for the umpteenth time. “At least one of us will.”

She paused in her grumbling to look up at her butler. Way up at her butler. “Pardon me. At least two of us will.”

The little boy continued as though he hadn’t heard his mother. “And I get to see Might Tower too and that’s so cool because it was built for the All Might agency and All Might used to work here and that’s so cool!”

Toshinori couldn’t help but laugh at the little guy’s enthusiasm. Young Midoriya rocked forward and back and then seemed to realize something else. “Oh, and Mr. Yagi used to work here too! That's even more cool!”

Once the presentation began, the little boy was too enthralled to keep up his chatter. There was oohs and ahhs with the rest of the crowd as the heroes came on stage and little mumbling moments if they mentioned something young Midoriya hadn’t all ready known. He threw his hands up with the crowd’s collective cheer when Lemillion took the stage.

Mrs. Midoriya had grasped a handful of Toshinori’s sport jacket in an effort to not get pushed around as much. He caught her watching the big screen projector mounted above the stage, too short to see the heroes themselves. Her eyes were big and sparkled almost like her son’s did. Under the shouts of the crowd, he heard her wonder aloud, “Wow, that really is Lemillion. THE Lemillion. Oh, he really is quite handsome, isn’t he?”

Toshinori snorted. That tracked. Put a muscular hero in a spandex suit and a cape and watch the fans fawn over them.

He was not expecting Mrs. Midoriya to be as invested in the presentation as her little boy. Toshinori counted it as a win and gave himself a mental pat on the back for coming up with an idea that appealed to both Midoriyas. They both clearly needed more fun and joy in their lives. Apparently, more hero events too. He would keep that in mind.

Predictably, once the event ended and the heroes were caught up in interviews, the crowd became chaos as it departed. Toshinori locked his hands tightly on young Midoriya’s legs and looked down at Mrs. Midoriya. “Don’t let go of my jacket and follow me closely, I know a route that will get us out of this crowd in a hurry.”

As All Might, he’d had to ditch fans and reporters in the area surrounding Might Tower more times than he could count. He knew every short cut like the veins on the back of his hands. After a few turns and creative maneuvering around the crowd, Toshinori had them on a quiet back street a few blocks away. All three of them breathed a sigh of relief. “Wow,” young Midoriya exclaimed as Toshinori set him back down on his own two feet. “That was a lot of people.”

“It always is at events like this,” Toshinori agreed.

Mrs. Midoriya shook her head in wonder. “I have no idea how the heroes get away from the press and the crowds after something like this!”

“We find the quiet back alleys and side streets like this one, mostly!”

The cheerful and boisterous voice that sounded from behind and below them had both the Midoriyas jumping in shock. After all, they had just heard Lemillion give a long speech, they knew what his voice sounded like by now. The hero in question had his head and shoulders poking up through the side walk, he set his hands on the concrete and made a big show of pulling himself the rest of the way through.

Toshinori knew for a damn fact that’s not how Mirio’s quirk worked, but the old hero in him approved of the showmanship all the same. Both of his green haired companions were staring in starry eyed fan shock.

Toshinori bowed slightly and smiled at his successor. “You put on a very informational show up there today, Lemillion.”

Lemillion sputtered. “Mr. Yagi! I haven’t seen you in actual months and then when I do you think you’re getting way with bowing to me? Because, nope! You know I’m a hugger!”

Which was all the notice Toshinori got before the younger man had him wrapped in a bear hug and bodily lifted off the sidewalk. “I know you’ve been keeping up with all the weekly meeting notes and e-mails and you answer all my texts when I send them, but I’ve really missed seeing you in person Mr. Yagi!”

Toshinori felt his ribs make an unhappy creaking noise and he was quickly signaling to Mirio that he was tapping out. “Kid! Need to breathe!”

Mirio laughed sheepishly and put him back on the ground. “Oops, really sorry about that. I’m just so excited that you’re here! You had to go and take a job in Musutafu and I don’t get over that way for hero work often so I don’t get to see you. Actually since your here, can I borrow you this afternoon? Sir Nighteye is about to meltdown over a network issue we haven’t been able to resolve for the last three weeks. I’m sure you can fix it.”

Toshinori snorted, “Kid, if its part of the technology infrastructure and Nighteye hasn’t fixed it, I sure won’t be able to.”

The hero leaned back and scratched his head. “Yeah, no. Its more of a personnel and how to dig up very old paper files issue.”

Toshinori laughed. “In that case, I probably could help. But,” his eyes drifted over to his current employer and her son. They had shifted from looking star struck to looking stunned. Mrs. Midoriya looked like someone had hit her with a bat and she had completely forgotten how to breath. “I’m afraid I’m a little busy today.”

Mirio looked over at the mother and son as well. “Is this the family you’re working for now?”

Toshinori nodded, “It is. This is Midoriya Inko and Midoriya Izuku. Do you two need me to introduce Lemillion or…?”

Young Midoriya looked like his mouth failed to start a few times before he finally squeaked out, “Mr. Yagi, you really know Lemillion. You know Lemillion in a hugs way?!”

Mirio knew a fanboy when he saw one and never failed to play into it. Good kid. He knelt down to the boy’s level and placed a hand on each of his shoulders. Conspiratorially he said, “I know, its crazy right? That I’m lucky enough to know THE Mr. Yagi well enough to hug him? To text him whenever I have questions? He’s so cool! I can’t believe it either!”

The little one’s eyes grew impossibly wider as his gaze bounced back and forth between the hero and the butler. “Woah.”

Mrs. Midoriya was suddenly fanning her face and looking peaked. “I think I might need to sit down.”

Lemillion had a hand under her elbow and a big smile even before she finished the sentence. “Tell you what, if you guys let me borrow Mr. Yagi for a little while, he and I will give you a tour of Might Tower in return. There’s an entrance just around the corner. We can get you all inside and rehydrated quick as can be. What do you say?”

Toshinori didn’t know how someone could be pale and also blush right to their ears, but Mrs. Midoriya was managing it right at that moment. “That would be lovely, thank you,” she said faintly.

The retired hero shook his head with a smile. “You were going to rope me into this one way or another, weren’t you?”

“Whats that saying about opportunity knocking and opening doors? You’re here and we need you.”

They took the side entrance and the long tunnel that lead up to Might Tower. Mrs. Midoriya seemed to recover herself as they walked. Mirio took the three of them straight to the cafeteria where he told the two Midoriya’s to order whatever they’d like. “I don’t know how long I’m going to need to steal Mr. Yagi from you, but I’ll try to keep it quick, okay?”

Toshinori dug the little boy’s current hero notebook and his pencil out of his jacket pocket. Young Midoriya wanted to bring it with to keep notes and asked his butler to hold it for him while they were in the crowd. He set the notebook on the table in front of the child. “You can start making notes about what you’ve learned today while you guys wait, okay?”

Lemillion skipped going through the lobby, heading straight to an employee only door in the hallway adjacent to the cafeteria. “Not going past the receptionists,” Mirio said with a wink, “If those ladies spot you here everyone in Might Tower will know about it in ten minutes flat! I want to see the surprise on Sir’s face when you walk into his office with me.”

The younger man was right. As Yagi Toshinori the secretary, he’d technically worked with the agency for years. He was known to disappear mid workday frequently, forget or run extremely late to meetings, do an overall terrible job of keeping up with his paperwork, and somehow never once get fired for it. Toshinori imagined that many of ‘Mr. Yagi’s’ coworkers only put up with him for his obscure little known facts and knowledge about agency workings and his seemingly direct way of getting information to All Might. There was a reason All Might had more than one secretary AND Sir Nighteye keeping track of everything else. Hero work had always been Toshinori’s first priority.

Sir Nighteye was indeed surprised when Toshinori followed Mirio into his office. It was rare to catch the man in a moment of open mouthed shock. Mirio thought it was hilarious and was slapping his knees laughing after Toshinori’s little wave and greeting of, “Hello, Mirai.”

“All Might. I shouldn’t be surprised that even now you can’t be bothered to let us know ahead of time when you plan to show up.”

“That’s on me, Sir,” Mirio replied jovially, “I don’t think he planned to come in here today. He brought that family he’s working for to the presentation out front. There was no way I could miss Mr. Yagi when I saw him out in the crowd! He was trying to sneak away afterword, so I slipped the interviewers to go and old-man-nap him!”

Toshinori pulled a face at his successor. “’Old-man-nap?’ Don’t make me send that meme about the old man yelling at the clouds to you again, kid.”

“Oh, I thought you’d go for the ‘Get off my lawn!’ one.”

The retired hero gestured at the floor, the office, all of Might Tower. “Can’t do that here, Mirio. Pretty sure this is your lawn now.”

“Speaking of your new career,” Mirai interjected as he pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Explain to me in person this sudden desire to become a butler of all things.”

Toshinori had justified his complete stepping away form any in-person meetings at Might Tower these last few months by deciding his roll as a butler was a 24/7 kind of job. In truth, he did not want to face Mirai and answer this question. Over e-mail he had explained to both his successor and former side kick that he’d decided to become a butler as a kind of relaxed and mindless retirement career. He never once mentioned it was an undercover job at the behest of Nezu. In person, Toshinori suspected it wouldn’t take long for Mirai to suss out there was something very fishy going on.

The retired hero plastered on a smile and resigned himself to dodging and misdirecting like he had done for years with the press. “You asked me to retire from any and all hero work. Which, I get it. That's fine.”

It wasn’t fine. It would never be fine. “I was going out of my mind staring at my own apartment walls though, Mirai.”

“You were barely three months into recovery from your last surgery and decided that, what. Doing someone else's household chores was how you planned to keep yourself from boredom?”

Toshinori shrugged. “At least this way I’m looking at a different set of four walls than my own.”

Mirio laughed and gently elbowed him in the ribs. “Oh, come on, Mr. Yagi. No need to be coy with us. That family has the most adorable little boy and he is over the moon enamored with you. I could see it plain as day in just the short time I talked with them! Butler is just a fancy way of saying you went into in-home child care and you’re clearly enjoying it!”

Toshinori blushed. That wasn’t why he’d become the butler, exactly. Didn’t mean Miro was wrong about how the older man felt about it though. “Well…”

The current number one hero rolled his eyes and grinned at Nighteye. “See. All Might’s still just a big softie.” He turned a warm smile on Toshinori and reached up to pat his shoulder. “Kids are good for healing the heart, you know? And they keep you feeling young. You look happy, Mr. Yagi, and that’s all I care about. I sure as heck was surprised to read the butler thing too, but it seems to be working for you.”

The retired hero saw when Nighteye relented and turned to hug his successor tightly. “Thanks, kid. Really.”

For being so kind and worrying about his predecessor. For accidentally helping him deflect Mirai’s often pointed questions. All of it rolled into one heartfelt hug. Mirio returned the hug far more gently than the first one and patted the older man on the back. “You can really thank me by looking into the networking problem I asked you about.”

Toshinori laughed as Mirai started to grumble unhappily for being reminded of his little problem. “Okay, okay. Tell me what you’re looking for.”

It took Toshinori less than ten minutes to find the files they needed and direct them to the right people to contact to resolve the issue. Mirai looked both irritable and mortified that he hadn’t thought to look there himself. Mirio was still laughing has he walked back down to the cafeteria with Toshinori. “You see? This is exactly why we need you to come in more often!”

They approached the table with the green haired mother and son. “I get it, kid. In home butler is an on all the time kind of job.”

Mrs. Midoriya looked up at their approach and heard the conversation. The little boy was engrossed in his hero notes. “Oh, Mr. Yagi. We would be okay without you for a day here and there if Lemillion needs your help here!”

Young Midoriya startled up from his notes, his big eyes turning on the hero and his butler. “Lemillion!” He jumped out of his chair holding his notebook out hopefully to the hero. “Can I have your autograph please?”

Of course Mirio agreed, and then took the lead in a personally guided tower of Might tower all the while smiling and joking with Toshinori and the two Midoriyas. Toshinori was a little surprised to be stopped by multiple staff members who expressed their happiness to see him. At some point, young Midoriya had reached up and taken his hand. Toshinori was used to this by now and thought very little of it. The front desk staff had the time of their lives with this. “Mr. Yagi! You never told us you had a son!”

Toshinori blushed from his toes to the tips of his ears. Mrs. Midoriya beside him burst into laughter even as the little boy who started it began looking around in confusion and asking where Mr. Yagi’s son was. “Mrs. Tannata! I don’t have a son! Young Midoriya is, ah, a family friend.”

Well. That hadn’t come out sounding at all suspicious, had it? Toshinori had to just about drag a cackling Lemillion and Mrs. Midoriya on to the next part of the impromptu tour. Ultimately, Might Tower was divided mostly into office space and R & D departments which really wasn’t all that exciting to a six year old so they didn’t go through all of the floors. The little boy was awed by the mail rooms and far too excited to see the number one hero Lemillion’s office. “You have All Might things!”

“Of course I do,” Mirio had agreed with excitement, “All Might is the best! You know who has all of the coolest All Might merch? Sir Nighteye. Limited run things, misprints, original concepts. He has everything! Hey, we should head back to the first floor. Guess what? Might Tower has a huge All Might store built in. And a Lemillion store too, if you’re interested?”

For a moment, Toshinori was concerned his small charge was about to rollover and die the happiest fanboy death any fanboy had ever had. It was a shame that Lemillion’s phone chimed loudly just then. The look on his face told Toshinori instantly is was a ping from the hero network. Mirio hummed. “I’m sorry guys, looks like I can’t go with you there. A hero’s work is never done! I’ll have to have Mr. Yagi finish this out for me. It was super great to meet you guys and I hope you liked the tour!”

Miro knelt before young Midoriya and put his hands on the boy’s shoulders again. He tossed a look up to include Mrs. Midoriya as well. “I have a huge favor to ask from both of you though. Okay? I need you both to take good care of Mr. Yagi for me. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but he’s kind of a big deal around here. I care a lot about him and I’ll feel a lot better if I know you’re looking out for him.”

Young Midoriya puffed up his chest and looked determined. “Momma and me will take real good care of Mr. Yagi just like he takes care of us. I promise! Thank you for everything today, Lemillion. You’re so cool!”

Toshinori lead the Midoriyas down to the merchandise shops. He hadn’t been back to the tower since the Lemillion store had opened. As a newer hero, there wasn’t the variety of merch that the All Might store had, but as the number one hero it was a close thing. Mrs. Midoriya was strict in allowing the little boy to only pick two things from each store even though Toshinori had told her he wasn’t very worried about the cost.

It took a long while in The All Might store. The boy finally landed on a new articulated action figure and a nightlight that displayed an animated grinning and winking All Might on the wall when plugged in. It didn’t take quite so long in the Lemillion store. As young Midoriya tried to figure out which Lemillion action figure he wanted, Mrs. Midoriya had wandered off. Toshinori smiled to himself about it as he had absolutely figured out who the woman’s favorite hero was.

The green haired woman returned a few minutes later with what looked like a coffee mug hidden in her hands and a sheepishly hopeful look in her eyes. “I really hate to ask this. I really do and I will pay you back for it later, but can I ask you to buy this for me?”

The coffee mug was uncovered and held up for Toshinori’s inspection. He felt his cheeks and ears turning red again. The mug was designed to have fully 3D sculpted chest and abs on the front and a very round and muscular butt on the back. The handle was formed by a cape blowing off the side and back around. Lemillion’s bold yellow ‘1000000’ was plastered across the pecks and the entire mug colored in the hero’s costume colors. The sculpting and paint work were very detailed. Very.

“Mrs. Midoriya, you know I’ll buy it for you. Of course. But, ah, this?”

The woman grinned and retracted the mug to run her fingers suggestively over the backside of it. “Mr. Yagi. Don’t you go judging a middle aged mother’s little fantasies.”

Toshinori scoffed. “Middle aged? How old are you, Mrs. Midoriya?”

She laughed. “Well that's a rude thing to ask a lady. You did just agree to buy me this mug though, so. I’m twenty eight.”

The butler groaned. “Young. You’re so young! If that’s middle aged, what am I?”

“That depends. How old are you?”

“Forty nine.”

The woman looked at him assesingly before a playful smile spread across her face. She reached the hand not holding the mug way above her head as though forming a plateau. “As we age, we all find ourselves climbing this hill of life. Mr. Yagi, I do believe you are at the top of it and starting your journey down the other side.”

“Mrs. Midoriya,” he huffed and tried to look insulted even as the laughter bubbled up his throat. “That was both the kindest and cruelest way anyone has ever told me that I’m ‘Over the Hill.’”

“Don’t ask questions you don’t actually want answers to.”

The older man snorted and rolled his eyes. “About the mug, I don’t know where you would like me to store it?”

Subtle. He had a feeling Mr. Midoriya would in no way approve of that Lemillion merch in his house. The lady agreed. “Oh, no. Hisashi would hate this. I’m taking it to work with me so I can have a little perky pick-me-up to start my mornings with!”

Little Midoriya ended up picking out an action figure he liked and Lemillion bed sheets. “This way I can have both Lemillion and All Might to keep me safe while I sleep.”

That evening, the little one chattered away about meeting Lemillion and seeing Might Tower. Young Midoriya also crashed out early, as promised, tucked into his butler’s bed. Mrs. Midoriya sat in her pajamas brushing her hair on her own bed. Toshinori had the hotel TV on quietly relaying the hero news for the day as he sat on the comforter and carded a hand through the little boy’s hair.

“I’m never going to get over this,” the younger woman suddenly spoke, “I’m never going to recover from the shock of you personally knowing Lemillion. I mean, I knew you worked at Might Tower. I knew you had to have known both All Might and Lemillion. But... There’s knowing and then… Well, Izuku said it best when he said you know him well enough for hugs! My butler is on casual texting terms with Japan’s number one hero. Are you just calmly answering questions for him while you’re folding the linens?”

Toshinori chuckled. “Lemillion sends me more memes and funny cat videos than questions, honestly. If I’m texting him while folding laundry, its usually just reaction emojis.”

Mrs. Midoriya made an exasperated sound and then grabbed one of her pillows and threw it at him. “That doesn’t make it better!”

That night, the retired hero slept hard even if he didn’t sleep particularly well. Young Midoriya flopped around like a fish. At one point, Toshinori found himself with a six year old’s foot under his chin, an All Might action figure rammed into his ribs, and a little boy’s face buried in his hip while he drooled. Because yes, the kid drooled. Despite all that, Toshinori felt like his heart was happy and full. He was content.

Chapter Text

Mr. Midoriya was furious that his family had dared to leave house for two nights without his permission. Toshinori had gotten that fairly early in the week when he had heard snippets of phone conversations between Mrs. Midoriya and her husband. For once, the woman wasn’t crying when she hung up from those talks. She was fuming.

It bothered Toshinori a lot that his efforts to make the family feel more comfortable after a terrifying home invasion had ultimately made things worse for Mrs. Midoriya. To the point that he felt driven to apologize to her.

He approached her about it on Friday while young Midoriya was in school. “Mrs. Midoriya, I am sorry. I’ve heard parts of the conversations you’ve had with Mr. Midoriya this week. My suggestion of leaving last weekend seems to have only made things worse for you with your husband. That was never my intention.”

“Don’t you dare apologize to me for last weekend, Mr. Yagi! Don’t you dare. I don’t remember a time when Izuku and I have ever had so much fun. I was so scared after that break in. I was terrified. You just, you just casually saved us again and then gave me the chance to forget all of it and be happy for once… Mr. Yagi, don’t apologize for that!”

Mrs. Midoriya was a crier. Her son had definitely inherited it from her. She cried when she was happy, she cried when she was sad, she cried when she was angry. Toshinori felt he could be forgiven for being confused about which emotion it was spurring those tears right now. Her fists were clenched in an angry way, but her eyes looked unfathomably sad. He was at a loss of how to respond to her. How to comfort her.

Suddenly, the woman released a wet breath and stepped right into his space, her arms came around his waist and she pressed her face into the shirt on his chest. Toshinori stood still for a moment in pure surprise, but he wrapped his arms around her in return as she began to sob. She grabbed fistfuls of the back of his shirt and keened into his ribs. He ran a big hand up and down her back and murmured meaningless, yet soothing, things to her.

“Why,” she sobbed, “Why did it take six years before Izuku got to have a fun family weekend? Why hasn’t he gotten this is whole life? Why won’t Hisashi let us do things, let us be happy? Why doesn’t my husband love us?!”

The breath rattled in Toshinori’s remaining lung as he closed his eyes and bowed his head. “I really don’t know, Mrs. Midoriya. Its not right, any of it.”

She hiccuped into his shirt, made no effort to let go of him. “Our families moved in the same social circles. Our parents both agreed we would be a good match. I met Hisashi and he wasn’t kind, but he was handsome and charming. I thought… I thought I could learn to love him and he could learn to love me. I thought it could be like in the fairy tales. Like in my fantasies. Only, the longer we were married, the less charming he was, the less he pretended to care. The more he demanded full of control of everything. I wasn’t something to love, I was something to look pretty on his arm for social events and do his bidding at home. When Izuku was diagnosed quirkless, that’s when Hisashi got mean.”

The woman paused to sob, gasped for breath, rubbed her nose into his sternum. Mrs. Midoriya was a snotty crier just like her son, Toshinori’s mind unhelpfully and distractedly noted. “You probably think I’m a terrible mother.”

“I really don’t,” the butler was quick to assure her.

“You should. I should have divorced him two years ago. I should never let him talk to or treat my son like he does. And, and I really do want to divorce him, Mr. Yagi! But he… he threatened that if I ever divorced him he would do everything he could to ruin Izuku’s future. And Hisashi is the kind of man with a lot of power and a lot of friends and he could make that happen. So I, I’ve stayed. And its terrible here, for both Izuku and I. But I keep hoping that if we can just make it through until Izuku graduates… Maybe then… Maybe then he can finally have a real life.”

That explained so much. Toshinori knew from day one that Mrs. Midoriya was a woman beaten down by her circumstances and her emotionally abusive husband. He had learned since then that there was a fire in this small woman and it burned hot. It made him wonder why she put up with everything she did. The fact that Hisashi had used her son as a threat against her did not come as a surprise.

The older man slid one hand into the woman’s hair and held her even more tightly against his body as though he could protect her and shelter her through shear willpower alone. “He’s put you in an awful and unenviable position, Mrs. Midoriya. If there’s anything I can do to help you and young Midoriya to get away from that man, know that I will do it.”

There was another half sobbing hiccup. “I know. Thank you. But I’m also worried that Hisashi will find a way to hurt you too for trying. More than the things he says to you must all ready hurt.”

Toshinori rumbled out a humorless laugh. “The thing with being old is that I have had the misfortune of being called so much worse by people who are so much better than Midoriya Hisashi. Mrs. Midoriya, I do know a few heroes and a few police officers who would be able to intervene here. If you and I both testify, it would be enough to get you and your son into witness protection, at least.”

He felt her desperate and hysterical laugh vibrate through his core. “I want nothing more than to imagine Lemillion sweeping me off my feet and carrying Izuku and I away from this place. I’ve fantasized about it daily for a long time. And then I found out last weekend that you really know him, you really could ask him to do that for us. That he would do it for you. And I wanted to cry all over again because, Mr. Yagi, Hisashi has friends that make things like testimonies and people that stand against him just go away. No questions asked. Japan’s number one hero is right there, I could ask for his help, but in the end with Hisashi’s reach even Lemillion can’t save us.”

Toshinori winced, squeezed her tighter for the briefest of moments. She was likely right. The ambassador had bought a cop. Was it such a stretch to think he could have bought an underhanded lawyer? Bought a judge, even? He had certainly paid for those thugs that had broken in last week and Toshinori had no doubt he had paid them to kill his wife, son, and his butler. The former hero knew the only way this little family would be safe was if he completed his job and got Tsukauchi and Nezu the information they needed to put the ambassador away for good.

His silence must have stretched too long. Mrs. Midoriya pushed herself back from him, but not all the way. Adjusted her grip from the back of his shirt to the sides. “Why did you ever take this job, Mr. Yagi? Why are you still working here? Hisashi has done nothing but treat you like the scum of the earth even during that interview. You are clearly used to so much better. Why did you agree to be our butler?”

“I never agreed to the job for him, Mrs. Midoriya. I agreed to it for you. I saw a woman and her young son asking for help and I found I could not in good conscience walk away.”

Her lips tried to smile, fell, trembled with the rest of her body as a fresh batch of tears traveled down her cheeks. “You are a stupid man, Yagi Toshinori. A sweet, kind, incredibly selfless, stupid man. And I don’t know what Izuku and I would have done if we had never met you.”

Toshinori pulled her back in, hugged her tightly and swayed back and forth with her. He would hold her until she had no more tears to cry. “I don’t know what I would have done without the two of you either.”

--

In person the next day, Mr. Midoriya was angry and snappish to everyone in the house. Toshinori was targeted frequently, but the little snide remarks were overtly nasty and mean. Young Midoriya made the mistake of just generally being in view while his father was in the room and the man went off. “Izuku! What the hell are you doing in here?! You have far too many toys in your room, you should be there too. I don’t want to see your useless, quirkless, face in front of me today! Leave, stop wasting my precious air!”

The butler was ready to flatten the man with a Missouri Smash on the spot. Young Midoriya bolted for the stairs, terrified tears rolling down his face. Mrs. Midoriya snapped. The woman gripped her husband’s elbow and hauled him out of the entry hall and into the sitting room beside it. Mr. Midoriya’s shocked face was worth it.

Toshinori followed at a discreet distance. As much as he wanted to go to and comfort young Midoriya, everything in him screamed that his presence would be needed here if this went sideways. Mrs. Midoriya had her finger jabbed into her husband’s chest by the time the butler had reached the doorway, her pose and tone furious. “You will NOT talk to my son that way, Hisashi!”

Hisashi recovered from his shock quickly. “I will speak to MY son however I please. Useless little shit that he is being raised by an even more useless and coddling mother. Just like when I tell you you aren’t allowed to go anywhere, I’m well in my rights to do that too, you ungrateful woman!”

“Don’t you start on that again,” the small woman growled. “You told me I couldn’t spend our money on overnight stays. Guess what, Hisashi? I didn’t! Check all of the accounts! Nothing spent from any of them. Not even mine, that I work for and earn the money myself to use!”

The ambassador’s face crinkled in ugly rage. “How dare you talk back to me?! I own you, bitch!”

The man’s hand came up ready to strike as he opened his mouth and yellow centered flames burned past his lips. Toshinori moved. He was between the woman and her husband before the arm finished its downward swing. The former hero gripped the man’s wrist and twisted so that both Toshinori and the ambassador’s arms were in the line of that fiery breath and not the green haired woman it had been aimed at.

The fire scorched the butler’s right arm from a few inches above his elbow all the way to his hand. His suit coat burnt and melted in that awful way that polyester does and scorched right through the shirt underneath. The flesh on his hand turned red and parts began to blister immediately. Toshinori held his ground, as his was not the only hand and arm being burnt.

In the middle of it all was Mrs. Midoriya screeching, “Hisashi, DON’T!”

It took seconds. Mr. Midoriya shouted in rage and pain. He hauled himself backward and the butler let him go. The man drew in on himself, his own right arm curled protectively to his chest. “You quirkless piece of trash! You utterly useless pile of shit! How dare you burn me?!”

The butler lowered his own arm to his side. Made no move to to imply he was in any pain at all. “I am not the one with a fire breath quirk, sir. Your work this week must have been very stressful indeed for you to loose control of it like this. It almost looked like you meant to burn your wife. If that was the case, I would be obliged to call the police and report you.”

Hurt, angry, the other man snarled. “Don’t think I don’t know how you’ve interfered with all of my plans for months. A fucking secretary. A fucking useless, quirkless, paper pusher. Don’t start thinking of yourself as strong and special now, Lurch!”

Toshinori held up his right arm, the singed fabric still smoking and the skin burnt an angry red. “Should I call the police now, Mr. Midoriya?”

“Fuck you!” The response was some awful cross between a howl of pain and anger. The man stormed past his butler and his wife. Stomped up the stairs to his room, loudly slammed and locked his bedroom door.

The retired hero relaxed his shoulders, released a breath, and turned to the lady of the house. Her eyes were huge, horror etched across her features. Toshinori reached out to her with his left hand. “Mrs. Midoriya, are you okay?”

The breath the woman sucked in rattled as though she were the one with only one lung. “Am I okay? Am I okay?! Mr. Yagi! Coat and shirt off right now, come with me!”

The woman half stripped him herself, tossing his jacket and his button down shirt carelessly to the floor and dragging him in his undershirt to the kitchen sink. She switched the water on to cold and shoved his right arm under the stream without giving him much chance to think or protest. “These burns are bad. Partial to full thickness, multiple blisters, several inches of skin involved. I’m taking you to the hospital right now. I’ll personally call the cops on the way!”

“Don’t call the police, Mrs. Midoriya. You told me yesterday of your husband’s ability to make testimonies disappear. Am I wrong in assuming a report of violent quirk abuse would disappear too?”

The woman’s breath hitched on a sob. “You can’t ask me to ignore this. He’s hurt you. He hurt you badly!”

“I’m not asking you to ignore it. I’m asking you what involving the police will do in the long run. Do you think your husband would spend more than a single night in jail for the crime of burning a quirkless old man? I’m not saying we ignore this, Mrs. Midoriya. I’m saying we need to build a solid case against him. I’m also saying I know one very particular detective I’ll call about this myself. Now, if you could use my phone to take several pictures of these burns and my burnt clothing, I would appreciate it. Then we’ll just wrap these up and…”

Mrs. Midoriya shook her head intensely. “Pictures yes. Home care for this, no. This is too much skin and too deep of a burn not to be treated by a doctor. We’re going to emergency care.”

Toshinori looked at her determined and worried eyes and sighed. “We bring young Midoriya with us.”

“Of course.”

All of the hero training in him made him ask, because he knew even villains should be cared for when injured. “What of your husband and his burns?”

For that moment, Mrs. Midoriya’s face was as emotionless as stone. “What of them? Quite honestly, Mr. Yagi, I don’t care.”

The former hero pulled his cell phone from his pocket and handed it to her. She dutifully took pictures of everything he asked, removing his arm from the cold water only long enough to take those pictures. She then ran upstairs and fetched a still crying and bewildered little Midoriya. “Momma? What’s happening?”

“We’re taking Mr. Yagi to the hospital. He has a very bad burn that needs to be seen by a doctor.”

As she said this, she ran multiple washcloths under the cold water and wrapped the burn in them as best she could. Mrs. Midoriya ushered her son and her butler to the garage as she grabbed the keys for the black sedan. This time, Mrs. Midoriya nearly threw Toshinori in the back seat and then hastily buckled her son in.

“Mrs Midoriya? I assure you we have time to stop at the stop signs and traffic lights,” he called to her from the back of the car through gritted teeth. She seemed to be trying to break a speed record getting to Musutafu general hospital. Little Midoriya held onto his seat belt in a wide eyed death grip.

The three of them walked into the emergency clinic, checked him in, and sat down for what might be a longish wait on a busy Saturday afternoon. Mrs. Midoriya was chattering about everything and nothing to her son to try and distract both of them, he suspected. Toshinori fished out his phone and sent a text to Tsukauchi with all of the pictures of the burns and a request to file a quirk assault complaint. He knew he couldn’t do it through the local precinct. Hisashi's bought-cop would bury that faster than a dog buries their favorite bone. While the assault wouldn’t be enough to nail down the ambassador alone, it would be one more thing they could add to a pile of grievances stacked against him.

It took some time to be seen. By the time Toshinori was in a room with a doctor looking him over, the cold wash cloths were no longer cold. The blonde man could not deny the fiery ache from his elbow to his hand which became worse as his adrenaline wore off. It wasn’t wrong to compare it to what trying to use One for All felt like these days. Except, the burn was concentrated on one limb and there was no chance to release it and let the pain fade like he could the quirk.

Amid treating the burns with creams and medications, questions came up about the cause. Intentional quirk harm? Yes. Did he plan to file charges? Yes. He would have the detective he was working with call them. They made appropriate notes and pictures in return. The doctor strongly recommended that Toshinori use the prescribed pain medication he had on record as it would help give him relief for the first few days and the worst of the pain.

Mrs. Midoriya fairly pounced on him as he returned to the waiting room. She noted the wrapped arm, the cooling gel packs he held to it. “I thought they had a burn healing quirk specialist on staff here?”

Toshinori turned a smile on the little boy who followed her, gripped her shirt in his hands. The smile he directed back at the woman was a little weaker. “They do. For various reasons, I don’t respond well to quirk healing. So, ah, burn cream prescription and allowing the time to heal it is.”

“I’ll assume they also recommended you take that pain medication that you have and refuse to use, yes?”

The butler blinked at her owlishly, “How did…?”

“When you were ill,” she pointed out, “I looked at your medications to give you what were prescribed as daily. I saw the few there for pain that are prescribed for as needed. For all of the times you have very stubbornly overworked yourself into a painful looking state, those bottles were full. When we get back, you’ll take them, Mr. Yagi. No arguments.”

Toshinori frowned. He’d forgotten about Mrs. Midoriya medicating him. Should have known she would have had to read all the bottles to see what was prescribed in which amounts and at what times to be taken. More importantly, with the ambassador hurt and angry in his own home, taking those medications that made the former hero feel drowsy and out-of-touch would be a very bad idea. He needed to be alert now. “Ambassador Midoriya…”

There was a hint of a victorious grin that twitched her lips up and smoldered in her eyes. “Left. I received the text while you were getting care.”

The green haired woman reached up to grab his elbow with one hand, took her son’s hand with the other, and marched them out of the hospital and to the car. On the way she continued. “He texted me saying he was very suddenly called away to America and would be gone for a few months. Months! Do you know what that means, Mr. Yagi?”

“He knows I intend to report the incident.”

Mrs. Midoriya’s little grin grew bigger. “And its frightened him. I would guess he called Claude to come and pick him up. They will still have taken Hisashi’s car to make it look good. Hisashi knows people who know people and I have no doubt he can find some underground doctor or quirk healer to tend to him. Even so, he knows he needs to lay low for a while.”

Toshinori agreed. Then mentally backpedaled at a name he recognized, but couldn’t recall from where. “Claude?”

“Hisashi’s security guard. I suppose you’ve never met him. They usually meet at the airport and he flies with Hisashi to America. Hisashi says he feels safer here than there, that he only needs security when abroad.”

That answered that. He had been told about a single security guard. Having never met any such person in months, he thought maybe that person had been fired too. Apparently not.

If all of this was true, if the ambassador really did plan to stay away for a long duration, it would come as a relief to the little family. Toshinori also knew that did not mean they were safe. He suspected that villain was about to start hiring all of his dirty work done. Toshinori would have to keep his guard up.

Young Midoriya crawled into the back seat of the car and his mother buckled him in. She shooed Toshinori to the back seat as well. The little boy was watching and listening to everything going on and being said around him. He may not understand it all, but he seemed to understand enough.

Back at the mansion, Toshinori walked with the other two through the entire house to verify that the ambassador had left. The man’s room showed a few scorched marks on the walls, on the shower curtain, on his bedding. There were signs of a hasty packing job. Mr. Midoriya’s car was indeed gone from the garage.

The relief was palpable among all three of them. A shiver ran through Toshinori, a side effect of the large burn and roaming in cold weather with just his undershirt and trousers. Mrs. Midoriya caught him at it. “Izuku, honey, go get your All Might blanket and bring it downstairs.”

The little boy, who had been confused and quiet about everything to this point, lit up. “Couch?” he asked hopefully.

“Couch,” Mrs. Midoriya confirmed.

Toshinori was unceremoniously herded to the living room and not given an option. The woman of the house pushing him into the cushions on the far right side. “Sit there. I’ll get some water and your medications. Seriously, Mr. Yagi, you are taking the pain meds. You are very much in pain right now and it is something we can help with.”

Presented like that, he didn’t refuse. For tonight, at least, it would be safe enough in the Midoriya mansion even if Toshinori was feeling a drowsy and loopy mess. Mrs. Midoriya brought a few extra pillows and scooted the coffee table beside the couch even as she asked her butler to turn and lay on the cushions. She shuffled one of those pillows onto the table for him to rest his burnt arm on. The other she tucked behind his back so he was partially upright. The All Might comforter was tossed on top of him for warmth.

It was by all rights too early for bedtime, but the day had proven exhausting for everyone involved. The mother and son both went upstairs to change into pajamas and both returned to the living room. Mrs. Midoriya looked over the situation and held her son back from immediately crawling onto his butler. She pulled her phone out with a huff. “This is ridiculous. Why are we still fighting with this much-too -small couch? I know I saw the other day… there it is. And ordered. With delivery and pick-up.”

Toshinori and young Midoriya wore equally confused looks about that whole one sided interaction. The green haired woman waved them both off. “Don’t worry about it. It doesn’t help right now anyway. Mr. Yagi, don’t budge over. In fact, don’t move.”

Mrs. Midoriya lifted the comforter and crawled over top of Toshinori until she had herself tucked against the couch cushions and wrapped around the older man. Toshinori blinked at her in confusion. The little boy understood immediately and crawled gingerly onto his butler’s chest where his mother could curl an arm over both of them.

“Uh…,” the older man began hesitantly.

Mrs. Midoriya started giggling, shaking all three of them. The little one patted him on the ribs. “You’re hurt and cold, Mr. Yagi. Mamma and I are taking care of you like you take care of us.”

Young Midoriya’s explanation of their current situation was so simple and yet so sweet. “Right. Of course.”

From her position half sprawled across him, Mrs. Midoriya raised her hand and made a series a quick pulling gestures at the coffee table. Her quirk, he realized, as the remote floated up to her reach. “Lets pick a movie to watch,” was all she said.

Little Midoriya was asleep within the hour. Toshinori was drifting in a medicated haze by then. His side, his chest, his arm all felt considerably better. In trade, his limbs all felt a little floaty and his head stuffed with cotton. His eyes were on the TV screen, but he would be hard pressed to tell anyone what the movie was about. He knew enough to know when Mrs. Midoriya began crying and to know he would not be very helpful to her like this.

Still, he would try. His left hand came up in a clumsy attempt at patting her shoulder. He murmured softly, “Hey.”

She was trying to muffle the sounds of her crying into his t-shirt and succeeding for the most part. She whimpered softly against him, “Hisashi has said awful things for years. Made unreasonable demands for years. He’s never once used physical violence before. He really… he was going to hit me. To burn me. Mr. Yagi, I saw it in his eyes. He wanted to hurt me. What do I do?”

“I won’t let him hurt you. Either of you,” Toshinori vowed with all of the force he could muster in his hazy state.

“I know. I’m relieved, but also so worried. I don’t want you hurt either, Mr. Yagi. Its so silly. I thought I was hiring an inexperienced butler. Instead, I’ve hired a man who has become our protector. Our friend. Neither Izuku or I have very many of those. We can’t lose you.”

The former hero huffed a laugh. “I’ve had a man more frightening and more powerful than him try to kill me before and I am still here. Midoriya Hisashi doesn’t have what it takes to kill me now. I’m not going anywhere.”

Mrs. Midoriya scrubbed her eyes. “It must have been terrifying to be accidentally caught in that villain attack.”

“No accident,” he murmured drowsily. His eyes were trying to slide shut one at a time. “Was the target.”

“I’d never considered, but that kind of thing must have happened sometimes working as All Might’s secretary.”

The older man lost the battle, both eyes closed and would not reopen. His floaty limbs decided they should be made of lead instead, incapable of moving. He breathed out, “As All Might…. Yeah.”

--

That Sunday was a little bit hazy for Toshinori. Mrs. Midoriya insisted on keeping him on his prescription pain relievers through the weekend, to be discussed further on Monday. The right side of the couch was designated as his. He was only allowed to get up to stretch briefly and for bathroom breaks. At some point in the late afternoon, the lady of the house announced she was headed out to pick up a takeout dinner. She looked at both Toshinori and her son with hands on her hips before she left. “Izuku, your job is to make sure Mr. Yagi stays on the couch unless he needs the restroom. No chores, no cooking. Mr. Yagi, your job is to stay put. I mean it.”

The little boy had been quietly playing in the living room most of the day. His new action figures held aloft in small hands and flying through the air. Once his mother left, the car gone from the drive way, young Midoriya clambered onto the couch and into his butler’s lap. His All Might action figure clutched in one hand while he moved one of the figure’s arms absent minded with the other.

Toshinori hummed and ruffled the little one’s curls with his left hand. “What’s on your mind, my boy?”

“My dad burnt your arm, didn’t he? With his quirk.”

The butler was aware that this hadn’t been really discussed with the little boy. Mrs. Midoriya seemed to actively trying not to tell him anything. The problem here was that the young man was a smart and observant child. He would have seen and heard enough to put things together on his own. Toshinori wasn’t entirely sure how he was supposed to handle this conversation. What Mrs. Midoriya wanted here. The hazy affects of his medications were not helping. “Yes, he did.”

The boy nodded, his butler continued to gently run his fingers through that wild green hair. The little one continued to fidget with his plastic All Might. “Momma thought I was sleeping and I wouldn’t hear, but I did. Dad was trying to hurt momma, wasn’t he? You wouldn’t let him.”

“He was. No, I wouldn’t allow it. I never will, young man.”

Plastic All Might’s articulated arms were pulled up into a flying position. “Using your quirk to hurt someone else is illegal, isn’t it? I know Kacchan does it sometimes, but he would never do it like this.”

“Its is,” Toshinori agreed. He chose not to comment further on little Katsuki and his questionable quirk usage right then.

“Mr. Yagi, is my dad a villain?”

Oh. Oh, that was a challenge. Wholeheartedly, Toshinori wanted to tell him yes. Midoriya Hisashi was a villain. Not the kind of flashy and super powered ones you saw on televised hero fights. The kind that crawled through the underbelly of society while making themselves out to be something or someone special. The kind that constantly belittled and gaslit his wife and child. The kind that had actively tried to poison them multiple times. The kind that had very likely murdered his last butler.

Midoriya Hisashi was also the little one’s father. That complicated things. “He’s not a nice man,” Toshinori finally hedged.

Young Midoriya arced plastic All Might’s arm into a punching action. “He says villainous things. He wanted to hurt momma. He did hurt you. Mr. Yagi, if my dad is a villain, am I one too?”

The blonde man’s heart went out to the little guy. He wrapped his left arm around the child and tugged him backward into his chest, resting his chin on those green curls instead. “Not at all, my boy. Do you know why? You care. You care a lot. You don’t find ways to help yourself, you find ways to help people around you. Villains don’t do that. Heroes do.”

He felt the little shaking and hiccuping sobs in the little boy before he heard them. Plastic All Might was dropped on the coffee table and little Midoriya turned around to wrap his arms around his butler’s ribs as he cried. “I want to be a hero, Mr. Yagi. I want to be a hero who cares a lot just like you do!”

The butler rubbed circles into the little one’s back. “If anyone can do that, my boy, its you. I have no doubts about that.”

“But sometimes I don’t think of others first,” the little boy hiccuped sadly into his butlers shirt. “’Cause its probably wrong. Momma would probably say its wrong, but I wish it was you that was my daddy and not him, Mr. Yagi.”

One lung, two lungs – in that moment it didn’t matter as Toshinori forgot how to breath. That was heartbreaking. Also heartwarming. The older man’s emotions tangled themselves up and he really was not in the right mindset to fix that. Because in his heart of hearts, well, “Then I must admit I am selfish sometimes too, young man. I find myself wishing you were my son as well.”

When Mrs. Midoriya came home to find her butler and her son in a teary eyed cuddle pile on the couch, she passed over the tissues and changed the channel from the sad animated film that was playing. She served them supper instead of pushing the two to tell her what they had been talking about.

--

That Monday, Toshinori forcefully declined his prescription pain medications. He also insisted on driving young Midoriya to school. It was fine, he’d told Mrs. Midoriya. He had a doctor’s appointment to go to anyway.

His doctor checked on his burnt arm along with the usual check up. They cleaned and re bandaged the worst of the burns. He was told it was healing well, even if the blisters did look particularly ugly and his thumb was so swollen he could barely move it.

Tsukauchi was another matter. The usually tired looking man was wide awake and looking some cross of irritable and concerned as Toshinori slid into the cafe booth across from him. “Yagi. I swear, you text me what happened, you text me pictures, and then you fall off of all conversation for the weekend. Do you have any idea how worried I was?”

Toshinori winced guiltily. “I apologize for that. Mrs. Midoriya insisted I take stronger pain medications than I usually do and I’m afraid I slept most of yesterday.”

The detective looked horrified, “With the ambassador still there?”

“No. He left, stating he was suddenly called away and would be gone for months.”

“He knew you were going to the hospital for that burn. He knew if you didn’t file a report, they would.”

The former hero nodded. “That’s what we think, too.”

“The escalation is concerning, Yagi. He may not be there in person, but I would expect further hired incidents. Keep your head on a swivel.”

“You’re not going to suggest I quit again?”

The detective huffed into his coffee. “Waste of effort at this point. We both know you’re not going anywhere. Though I would feel so much less stress if you would quit finding your way to the hospital over this project of ours. Okay, lets get down to paper work and filing that complaint. If we’re going to spook the ambassador, we should do it thoroughly.”

When Toshinori returned to the Midoriya home, it was to the sight of moving men taking out the three couches from the living room with the TV. They brought in a multi-piece unit of a couch with multiple squares that could be arranged to wrap around the room or set up all together in one big plush looking bed with back rests. Mrs. Midoriya was remarkably proud of herself about this. “Now no one needs to feel like they’re falling off the couch on movie nights!”

Chapter Text

The hired retaliation didn’t show up for a little over two weeks. Or was it just continued murder attempts at this point? Hard to tell the difference. This one was almost subtle. It would have been, if the hired perpetrators wouldn’t have been so obviously up to no good.

Mrs. Midoriya had insisted on taking over dishes and laundry while Toshinori’s hand healed. For a solid week he could hardly move it, and found he was not in a position to argue with her. Cooking became a joint effort. “I feel guilty about you paying me my usual wages right now when I’m so limited in what I can do,” he’d noted with frustration.

Mrs. Midoriya flung a soap bubble at him from the sink as she worked on the dishes. He was beside her drying with one arm. “That’s ridiculous. You were injured on the job, by your employer! You should be payed more and you should be sitting in that living room watching daytime teledramas while you heal. You working right now is because you are being exceptionally stubborn.”

Somehow, she sounded more frustrated than he felt. “My job is to do the household chores. Like this, I’m only useful as a driver.”

Several more soap bubbles were thrown at him, one clinging to his nose before dropping off onto the counter below. “You are supposed to be recovering. You do know you are worth more than the things you can do for us, right? Stubborn.”

He really couldn’t explain to her what this feeling did to him. Toshinori knew he would heal, but for a moment, it felt like retirement from hero work all over again. He felt unneeded, useless, pathetic. Some pathetic old man who was trying his best and even that wasn’t enough.

Mrs. Midoriya elbowed him in the hip from where she stood beside him. A gentle nudge, really. “Hey. Give your arm some time to heal. You’ll be back at scrubbing more toilets than you should in no time, Mr. Yagi. Its okay to give yourself time.”

It was possible that he didn’t need to explain. It was possible that the lady of the house understood just by watching him. A feeling of warm gratitude bubbled up through the guilt. “Yes, thank you.”

Another week passed and most of the blisters had gone away. The stubborn remaining few on his thumb and wrist could be easily bandaged and Toshinori was enjoying the more freedom of movement he had with his hand. He’s offered to make katsudon in celebration. Young Midoriya had instantly been onboard.

Breading and pork were not usually ordered to the house. Toshinori drove both Midoriyas to the grocery store with him that Thursday evening after pick-up to get them. Actually going into a grocery store was obviously not a regular experience for either of them. He lost both mother and son to a giggling fit in the candy isle over the gummie pizzas and ramen bowls.

Of course the gummies were purchased to come home with them. Toshinori wasn’t about to deny either of the green haired people in his life that small pleasure. “When I was in college,” Mrs. Midoriya explained, “Was the first time I’d ever been in a grocery store or a convenience store. Its amazing the things they sell! Generally speaking, for people like us, errands like these are always done by the staff.”

The kind of wealth both Hisashi and Inko had been born into put them in an entirely different world sometimes.

Mrs. Midoriya and her son were chattering happily to each other as they left the store. Toshinori felt a fluttering of one of those gut instincts. An ingrained warning. He looked up and spotted a group of five younger people, perhaps in their twenties. They watched the trio very intently. Eyes drifting from the people and directly to the car that belonged to them. Toshinori hummed in suspicious interest.

Instinctively, Toshinori placed himself between the group and his two charges. They made it to the car without incident. The former hero waited patiently for the other shoe to drop. The group continued to watch them as he buckled the child into his seat in the back and as both he and Mrs. Midoriya took the front seats. The group made no effort to move toward them or act as he started the car and drove out of the parking area. Concerning.

“Mr. Yagi. Is everything okay? You seem a little distracted.”

Toshinori blinked as he lost view of the group from the rear view mirror. He accelerated to match traffic. “Hmm?”

Mrs. Midoriya looked questioningly at him form her spot in the passenger seat. “That really wasn’t an answer.”

“Its probably nothing,” he responded in a distracted way as he watched for… something. Unclear of what.

Cars around them began to slow for the upcoming intersection. Toshinori eased down the brake pedal. A tiny pop noise sounded from under the car, the brake pedal sank without any resistance all the way to the floorboard. The car didn’t slow.

“Shit,” he grumbled in English.

Suddenly alarmed, Mrs. Midoriya exclaimed, “What?!”

“Brakes are out. Both of you hang on tight. This could get a little bumpy.”

Taking his foot off the gas pedal and letting the engine slow them wasn’t going to work fast enough to stop before that busy intersection. Toshinori watched the traffic intently and made a trick judgment call. He hit the accelerator and gunned the car up on to the curb, around the cars in front of them, and through the stop light, timing it carefully between the swiftly moving traffic. Once the car had bounced back onto all four tires instead of two as they came off the curb, he hit the manual override on the expensive sedan and ground the car into first gear. It wasn’t great for the car, but would serve to quickly slow them down.

The car slowed until Toshinori was able to press on the now useless brake pedal and shift the car into park. He had pulled them into a convenient street parking spot. The car stopped just an inch or two from the bumper of a delivery van parked in front of them.

Toshinori sighed and took the key out of the ignition. He searched the car for his cell phone which had gotten tossed in their brief and exciting ride. Mrs. Midoriya, still looking blankly at the van in front of them, reached out with her hand and her quirk to pull his phone off the floorboards and hand it back to him. From the back seat, young Midoriya exclaimed, “Wow! That was just like in the action movies!”

The woman beside him was pale. “What happened?”

Toshinori shrugged, pulling up a screen to call for a cab from his cell phone. “The brake lines broke. Or they were cut.”

“Wait, did you see someone near the car? Is that why you were so alert?”

“No. Saw a group of someones standing outside the grocery store who were way too interested in us. Its fine. We’ll call a cab to get back to the mansion and have the car towed and repaired.”

Toshinori selected their current location. He was given an estimate of seven to ten minutes for arrival of the cab. Mrs. Midoriya unbuckled herself and was reaching for the car door. “It will be a few minutes before our ride gets here, we should wait in the car,” Toshinori advised.

The woman shook her head, all ready opening her door. “No. I can’t stay in here after that, I can’t.”

The former hero sighed. The inside of the car would be fairly safe, but he couldn’t very well force her to stay. He stepped out as well, unbuckling young Midoriya, claiming their groceries, and meeting the woman on the sidewalk. The boy looked between the two of them. “Why would someone hurt our car?”

Toshinori met Mrs. Midoriya’s eyes in a long look. If she didn’t know about the past incidents being her husband’s doing, he could tell she strongly suspected this one was. She released a breath of air. “Sometimes, honey, people do not nice things to other peoples belongings just because they can.”

“And sometimes,” came a gravelly voice behind the former hero, “We do it because rich people like you piss us off, kid.”

Toshinori straightened. He positioned himself directly between the mother and son and the very same group of five people from the grocery store. One of them pulled a piece of what would have been hair on anyone else off of his head. It came off sharp and knife like. He used it to clean dirt from under a fingernail. “Sometimes we do it because somebody out there paid us well for the accident too.”

The butler aimed for a smile he wasn’t feeling. “Well then, accident achieved. We can all go on our way.”

“We really can’t,” noted the man with the knife-like hair. “You see, we were payed for something of a lethal accident. Since it didn’t happen that way, it looks like a lethal gang incident might have to be plan B. I’m not real big on getting my hands dirty killing pampered women, kids, and old men, but the pay is good. Sorry, mister, you chose to work for the wrong family.”

They were being backed into the alley, Toshinori knew. He kept the pace and the space. This would be less than ideal. The lack of walking traffic on this particular street at this time of day wasn’t great either. He crouched into a fighting stance as they breached the mouth of the alley. It had been years since he’d fought without calling on One for All, but he hadn’t had his ass handed to him so violently and so often by Torino back in the day to have forgot the basics of combat.

“Mr. Yagi!?” Mrs. Midoriya was nearly panting in her rising panic. Toshinori turned enough to see she had herself wrapped around her son making them both smaller targets. That was good, he could work with that.

“Stay behind me. Stay low. If something gets passed me, dodge.” These were curt orders, not suggestions.

The retired hero felt generally well enough today that he knew he could reach for All Might if it came down to it. The idea of doing that in front of five goons payed directly or indirectly by Hisashi tasted more foul in his thoughts than fighting them quirkless did. He may be rusty, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t skilled.

One of the young men, a fellow with red eyes and dark hair, launched at Toshinori. His four canine teeth extending rapidly as he leapt, looking for all the world like a dog about to rip out an opponent’s throat. The retired hero swung his grocery bag and the frozen cut pork within with a direct hit to the man’s skull. The attacker’s trajectory and focus shifted, turning him just slightly to Toshinori’s left where he bashed face first into the alley’s brick wall. He didn’t get up.

A rumble of irritation ran through the group. Mrs. Midoriya whimpered behind him. Another young man, this one wearing shorts, began to disfigure and coil his legs until they looked like springs. It took only moments. He was launching himself at the butler and the family before anyone else could say anything. Toshinori deliberately dropped the shopping bag and lowered himself as the attacker was in the air. He brought himself under the man mid leap, twisted his upper body, and launched the spring fiend over his shoulder and into a nearby pile of trash cans.

Springs wasn’t down, but the former hero had no time to address it as another young man, his hair shades of gray died with orange streaks, was making gestures with his hands. A mess of plastic trash lifted from the trash cans and turned directly on the small defending group. Toshinori turned and reached for the metal garbage can lids that had come off when Springs landed even as he spun into a crouch directly in front of the Midoriyas. The plastic trash bounced off of his trash lid shields. Some larger pieces jarring unpleasantly up his arms.

By then Springs was back up and scowling, “Let’s double team him, trash man!”

“Like I need your help, Bounce Boy!”

Toshinori knew he had to rely on that lack of coordination. He deflected a bouncing attack from Springs with his left trash can lid even as Trash Man used his quirk to pull the plastic lids off the dumpsters and liquefy them mid air. He launched this wave of plastic at Toshinori and the Midoriya’s as Springs leapt in again. The former hero grimaced, flung the right trash can lid Frisbee style at the plastic quirk wielder, wrapped one long arm around the mother and son and pulled all three of them into a sideways dive.

Springs and the wave of liquid plastic landed where they had been a second later. The trash lid hit the plastic quirk user right between his eyes, he crashed out cold on his back on the pavement. As he did, the plastic wave solidified, catching Springs arms and spring legs and effectively capturing him. Springs bellowed in surprise, “What the fuck?”

Toshinori had his eyes immediately on the knife hair leader and his last subordinate. The leader was clearly pissed, “He’s one old man, you ass wipes! Hasn’t even used a quirk! ‘What the fuck,’ is right!”

The man growled and began ripping chunks of hair off of his own head, throwing the knife like projectiles at the three they had been payed to attack. Toshinori blocked with his remaining garbage can lid and winced as one of the sharp hairs cut through the metal. The former hero twitched his head to the side and only received a small cut to his left cheek for the effort. Still, if the man could cut through metal, he needed a new tactic.

To his side was one of the plastic pieces of trash he had deflected earlier. Toshinori dared to reach for what appeared to be a broken plastic toy fire truck for small children. Knife hair targeted him even as he picked up the fire truck and threw it at his opponents. Multiple small cuts burned along his right arm from the thrown hair, but the toy did its job, causing both the hair thrower and his companion to dodge. This time the former hero leapt into action, closing the distance between them in four long steps and slamming the rim of the remaining garbage can lid into the throat of the knife hair quirk user. The man choked and collapsed. His companion turned toward Toshinori with one hand out, all five fingers aiming for the blonde man’s shoulder.

The former hero spun out of range. He didn’t want to find out what that unknown emitter quirk was if used on his person. He kicked out at the younger man’s ankle and slammed the metal trash can lid into the man’s elbow. The unknown quirk wielder howled, reached out again with his other hand. Toshinori kicked the man’s right knee with enough force to stagger him and then turned hard and bashed the trash can lid into the back of the man’s head. Finally, he also collapsed to the cement.

Holding the metal lid like the shield and weapon he had made it into, Toshinori paused and took stock of the situation. All five of his opponents were neutralized. Springs, still caught in his plastic prison, was gaping at the hero-turned-butler. “Holy shit, dude. Holy shit! No one told us we’d be fighting someone who fuckin’ knew how to fight! No one told us about no kick-ass grandpa!”

Toshinori huffed and lowered his impromptu shield, dropping it to the ground. He had hoped to make it to at least sixty before punks like this would start calling him grandpa, but no. He walked back to the green haired mother and son, kneeling before them. Mrs. Midoriya was crying fat and fearful tears. Young Midoriya looked equally frightened and awed. Toshinori placed a hand gently on the back of both of their heads. “Are you okay? Are either of you hurt?”

Mrs. Midoriya responded with a very wet sounding, “No. We’re both okay. Thanks to you Mr. Yagi.”

Young Midoriya let the awe overtake him. “Mr. Yagi, are you secretly an action movie star?”

Springs, off to the side, was unhelpful but also enthusiastic. “Yeah, are you!? Dude, tell me what movies you’re in! I have to see them!”

A small laugh escaped him despite himself. Had the boy asked if he was secretly a hero, he would have had to lie right to the child’s face and it wouldn’t have gone well, he feared. An action star though? “No, young Midoriya, I’m afraid I’m not.”

The retired hero did his due diligence by calling the police to report the crimes. He was unfortunately a little hesitant to do so, knowing this area was the same jurisdiction as the Midoriya’s mansion. Knowing that the ambassador’s bought cop would have his hands all over this in short order. Which was why Toshinori also texted Tsukauchi about the incident and pertinent details.

By the time they had everything sorted, Toshinori and his two charges were driven back the house in a police cruiser and the pork was more than half thawed. The butler still made katsudon that night despite it all, even with his fresh new bandages covering fresh new knife cuts. Mrs. Midoriya was noticeably quiet for the entire evening, even as young Midoriya made efforts to reenact the street fight in the living room.

--

The butler was more surprised than he should have been when a soft knock and a pleading tone called for ‘Mr. Yagi’ a little after midnight that early morning. Toshinori slid from his bed and went to his door to find young Midoriya standing there. The little boy’s lower lip quivered and he reached up expectantly toward his butler. Toshinori, of course, obliged the unspoken request and scooped the child into his arms.

“What has you awake tonight, my boy?”

Young Midoriya mewled in agitation, burying his head in his butler’s shoulder before giving his muffled answer. “Dreamed about mean people hurting momma and me. You weren’t there! I was scared.”

“That does sound scary,” Toshinori softly agreed with the boy. “You don’t have to worry anymore though. Do you know why?”

A simple question, one he had boomed out across streets of terrified people in need of a hero for years. This time stated softly, directed with a warm smile at the child who was now peeking back at him from his arms. He got the desired effect as a little grin brightened that face. “Because you are here!”

Toshinori laughed. He raised an eyebrow as he tugged the hood of young Midoriya’s pajamas up with its fun stitched on additions to look like All Might’s bangs. “Really? I see the suit, I see the hair, I thought you were All Might. We don’t have to worry because YOU are here!”

The quiet and childish giggles that followed that burrowed into Toshinori’s heart. “Let me tuck you back into bed, little one. We can find that sound of rain video for you to listen to again, what do you think?”

The child bit his lip and looked up at Toshinori through his eye lashes. “Couch?”

The butler huffed another small laugh. He’d seen that coming. “You have school tomorrow, young man. You should sleep in your bed. You have those Lemillion sheets and that very bright All Might night light to help keep those dreams away.”

“Well, yeah, but, they don’t keep me safe once my eyes are closed, Mr. Yagi. I can’t sleep with my eyes open. You’ll protect me when my eyes are closed too, so I’ll sleep better on the couch with you and be ready for school tomorrow?”

That child’s reasoning was more than a little half baked, but Toshinori knew he was going to give in anyway. He sighed, stepped back into his room to grab his own brown comforter with his free hand, and carried the little one and himself out to living room. The new couch really was much roomier and somehow softer than the old couch had been. Mrs. Midoriya had also ordered a number of pillows for it, and ridiculously plush throw blankets. There would always be something about a comforter in the middle of the night that would win out though. Toshinori switched on one of the dim table lamps, knowing light would help drive way the nightmares, and settled himself and the boy on the couch.

Young Midoriya happily snuggled against his butler’s side and fell asleep in moments.

Toshinori drifted in a light sleep himself. He was determined to wake up if another nightmare should start for his small charge. So it was that his eyes snapped open and he turned toward the quiet noise of Mrs. Midoriya walking down the stairs and turning the corner toward the kitchen at some later time that early morning. She paused, able to see him in the lamp light, but likely not her son with the couch back in the way. She fetched a glass of water and came to them in the living room.

The woman sighed as she found her son exactly where she likely expected him to be. She ran a hand through the child’s green hair, took a drink of her water, and perched on the edge of the very big couch. She gestured at the boy, “Nightmare?”

The butler nodded. “I’m afraid so.”

“I’m not surprised given what happened yesterday.”

“Neither am I. Did you have a nightmare as well?”

Mrs. Midoriya grimaced. “Kind of you to suggest my entire life isn’t a nightmare right now.”

Toshinori frowned, looked between the mother and her son, gently smoothed down a curl she had just disturbed from the boy’s face. “I wouldn’t say all of it is a nightmare.”

The woman sighed and slouched until her elbows were braced on her knees. “I know.”

The blonde man gingerly untucked his comforter from around the child and held it open to Mrs. Midoriya as a silent invitation. She looked at him, smiled sadly, and pulled the blanket back down. “I have too much on my mind tonight, Mr. Yagi. But thank you.”

The green haired woman stood, bent to press a kiss to her son’s hair, and then took her water glass with her up to her bedroom. Toshinori’s frown deepened.

--

Breakfast was a simple fish and rice that Friday morning. Mrs. Midoriya directed him to take her own pale blue little car to school drop off that day. Aside from a good morning and simple getting ready instructions for her son, Mrs. Midoriya was overwhelming quiet. Toshinori was becoming more concerned by the moment about this.

He also wasn’t the only one who noticed. The little primary school student in the back seat seemed much too pensive for a six year old that morning. “Momma really was scared yesterday. I don’t want momma scared. Do you think it would help if I gave her my All Might nightlight tonight, Mr. Yagi?”

“You could certainly ask her. Or, perhaps, you could offer to let her sleep in your room so All Might and Lemillion can protect you both.”

That was a devious move on his part. Involving the little boy and his big pleading eyes to encourage distracting Mrs. Midoriya. He knew for a fact how effective that look was. “Oh. Oh! Then I could protect mom too! That’s a great idea, Mr. Yagi!”

Ah, he felt more than a little bit underhanded about that. If it worked though, it would be worth it. He returned from drop off that day to find Mrs. Midoriya barricaded in her room. He wished he could at least deactivate those hidden cameras and give her the real privacy she likely wanted. Now that the ambassador had outed himself, Toshinori realized he could find and remove those without repercussions. Nothing worse than the man was already attempting.

The butler set to work on his daily chores. He offered tea to the lady of the house at ten in the morning, was politely declined. Not pleased, Toshinori elected not to push. He would be more insistent at lunch. Shortly after that, the green haired woman left her bedroom and took the stairs to the basement. He heard another door open, shut. No further noises. Very unusual.

The man paused in his cleaning, questioned if he should check on her. He shook himself from it. This was her house to move through as she pleased. If she had something she wanted from the basement, she could go there too. She did not need her butler babysitting her. She did need him to feed her. She would likely forget in the mood she was in.

The butler had begun setting out pans to cook lunch a little after eleven thirty, but had not begun it yet when Mrs. Midoriya climbed the stairs and stopped at the kitchen entrance. She had a manila folder held tightly in her arms and a frightfully determined look on her face. She took a deep breath and walked across the tiles toward Toshinori. “Mrs. Midoriya?”

The woman reached for and grabbed his right elbow and began to pull him toward the table. “Come with me, Mr. Yagi. Sit. Please.”

This was really a command more than a request as she pulled out one of the dining room chairs and pushed him into it. Mrs. Midoriya then walked around to pull out the chair across from him and sat as well. The folder was still clutched tightly to her chest. She breathed deeply. She had the look of someone preparing themselves for something terrible. Toshinori briefly wondered if he was about to be fired.

“I have been incredibly naive,” she began, making hesitant eye contact with her butler. “I’ve told you that I knew Hisashi was mean. I have known. I couldn’t miss that. I refused to believe that he would… that he would possibly hire people to kill us. That was too much. Too far. My Hisashi would never. It wouldn’t really benefit him after all. It would even possibly tarnish his professional image and he values that above all else.

“Have you wondered why I work outside of the home, Mr. Yagi? We are a very wealthy family, certainly we don’t need a part time nurse’s wages. I went to university to become a nurse to spite my father. He wanted me to take a business course, or a fluff course on relationship building to boost my future husband’s career. I didn’t seek a job right away. We were married before I graduated. Hisashi took me with him to America at least once a month. Life was too busy. After I became pregnant, that all changed. Hisashi made sure we had a full household staff including a nanny. I was to sit at home, keep up with household bills, and do nothing else. I went to work as an escape from this house. I had three days a week where I could interact with people as myself. I could even help people. I also had my own wages that I could use to spoil Izuku as I pleased without Hisashi’s permission.”

Toshinori nodded. “I have wondered why he allowed that.”

“He allowed that because it looks excellent for his reputation and explains why his wife and child don’t travel with him. His selfless wife working as a nurse. It sells an excellent picture for Hisashi, don’t you think? This is why, no matter what happened around me, no matter what was said to me, I thought I was too useful to Hisashi for him to get rid of me. Even then, I thought it would be a divorce if it happened, not… Not murder.”

The butler winced. He could see her reasoning, but he had also been witness to so many villainous attempts on their lives. “Mrs. Midoriya…”

“Let me finish, please. Its worse than my being naive and blind, Mr. Yagi. Its worse because someone tried to warn me about this nearly six months ago. Our previous butler, Mr. Takemoto, was an almost ruthlessly professional individual. He did not encourage any kind of personal relationships between household and staff or amongst the staff themselves. He was head of the household staff, his rules held firm. His quirk gave him the ability to see dirty things from anywhere on the property; dust on top of bookshelves, a fallen leaf in the pool, a cobweb in the basement. He kept the maids working diligently on remedying all of these things as he found them.

“I’ve realized now that his quirk let him see more than dirt on floors. It let him see dirty paperwork too. Which he had been collecting discreetly from Hisashi’s office for years. He approached me the evening before Hisashi fired him. It was so odd, that interaction. That ridiculously stone faced and professional man was hesitant and clearly concerned as he handed me this folder and told me, ‘Mrs Midoriya, it has come to my attention that you and your son are no longer safe here. You should leave. Immediately.’”

The woman tapped the folder she held. The same folder she had just indicated the previous butler had given her. Toshinori waited with baited breath, realizing he was about to find out what had lead to Mr. Takemoto’s murder. “I am an idiot. I told him we would be fine, that if there were concerns Hisashi would hire people to take care of them. He didn’t say anything more to me about it. When he left, I did look quickly at the contents. I realized much of it was a lot of shady dealings Hisashi had partook in. I knew my husband didn’t always do things above books. I also knew it was best if I turned the other way. I took the folder to the basement, locked it away in a storage container that Hisashi would never suspect and did not look at it again.

“Mr. Takemoto got into a vociferous argument with Hisashi when he came home the next day. Hisashi fired him. Mr. Takemoto died in a car accident that night. It was all very concerning, but plausible from where I stood. Hisashi was panicked though, he fired everyone the next day, all of the household staff. He told me someone had been stealing from his office. He couldn’t prove who, so everyone had to go and he would be immediately installing indoor cameras. I think he knew exactly who the culprit was, he just didn’t know if Mr. Takemoto had told anyone else about the things he had found. Hisashi tore the house apart looking for his missing items, but not the basement seasonal decoration boxes. I realized it was likely whatever was in that folder is what Hisashi wanted. I also realized I should not tell him I had it.”

Mrs. Midoriya took a deep breath and set the folder on the table between them. “I think Mr. Takemoto died trying to protect us in his own way. I was too much of a naive coward to look into the folder to find out why. Until today. Its very clear now that Hisashi is out to murder Izuku and I. I can’t make up fantasy stories to myself any longer. The worst of it is. Mr. Yagi, if I had bothered to actually investigate this folder the first time, I would have known all those months ago that Hisashi was exactly the threat Mr. Takemoto was trying to warn me about.”

The lady of the house pushed the plain folder across the table to Toshinori, gestured for him to open it. The former-hero-turned-butler looked at her hesitantly. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to know. He very much did. He needed to make sure this was a level of trust she really wanted to have in him. Whatever was in this folder was clearly catastrophic for her. “Mrs. Midoriya, I…”

“You should know,” the woman’s look was some cross of exhausted and haunted, “I’ve accidentally dragged you into something that is now life threatening for you when I hired you. At this point, no matter if you know why or not, Hisashi doesn’t intend to let you live long enough to tell anyone else about it.”

Toshinori sighed, pulled the folder the rest of the way to himself, and opened it. The very first set of papers were legal documents. He skimmed it quickly and found his eyes growing wider by the word. Ambassador Midoriya’s father had passed away at the beginning of the year. The man was primary shareholder of M&D Enterprises which was a massive and international company. It was the source of the ambassador’s current wealth and wealthy background. As these things do, it took some time for the legal paperwork to filter through from the will and expectations after death. The man was stunned, “When the elder Mr. Midoriya passed, he left all of his shareholdings to young Midoriya. With you as his primary guardian and in charge of any decisions and financial gains of those shares until such a time as Izuku comes of age.”

Mrs. Midoriya nodded. She had had some time to get over the initial shock of the reading. “Not Hisashi. He would not inherit and he was not to have anything to do with the decision making. If I should die before Izuku comes of age, the shares would be relocated to board to hold until Izuku does come of age. If Izuku should die before he comes of age, they go to me. If we both die…”

Toshinori heaved a breath, “If you both die, 60% of the shares of M&D Enterprises go to Midoriya Hisashi along with a seat on the board of directors.”

“That’s it. My father-in-law was a strict business man, ruthless in his career. He was so disappointed in how Hisashi treated Izuku and I and he was never shy about telling Hisashi that. I’m sure he did this as much out of spite for his son as genuine care for his grandson.”

“Even if he meant well, writing it this way openly encourages foul plots. Why?”

“I don’t know,” the green haired woman shrugged. “I can only guess that sentimentality got to him about keeping the business in the family. I can’t imagine even he thought Hisashi would resort to murder to get the power of M&D Enterprises under his thumb. I really wouldn’t have, until yesterday. My mistake again. Of course, Hisashi never once told me himself that Izuku stood to inherit everything. You know how he feels about quirkless people. Can you imagine how he must have been horrified at the idea of his quirkless son at the helm of one of the most influential companies in the world?”

“Only slightly less horrified than he must have felt knowing all of that power and influence was not going to belong to him.”

The butler paged through the documents in the folder. There were notes and receipts on twenty six different incidents of paying for everything from thievery to murder. This looked like the massive source of information Tsukauchi needed for his case. Or at least the Rosetta Stone of finding more and related information to go with it. One thing was clear, Ambassador Hisashi had been a very busy and very naughty man. Toshinori looked up from the papers and met Mrs. Midoriya’s eyes. “We need to take this to the police.”

Mrs. Midoriya clenched her fists on the table top, “I have concerns about the police. I don’t know who works for Hisashi where.”

Toshinori smiled, “I have a detective I know who I would trust beyond a shadow of a doubt with this. He’s also who I filled the quirk abuse report with. His name is Tsukauchi. This isn’t his district, but I assure you he would welcome a meeting with you about any and all of this.”

“In that case,” the woman of the house noted with conviction, “I would very much like to meet him.”

--

Some three days later Mrs. Midoriya met with Detective Tsukauchi. She insisted on driving and going herself for this, though Toshinori had offered himself as moral support. The butler received a phone call later that night from the detective himself. “Yagi, did she show you these documents?”

“She did.”

“Then you have a decent idea of how big this is. I’ll get things going as fast as I can on my end. This might be enough to go to a serious trial with. He’s an ambassador though, high status public figure. The legal team is going to want this locked down hard before they try it. Yagi, you and that family are still very much in danger. Stay vigilant. Stay safe.”

Chapter Text

“Let me get this straight,” Toshinori said slowly, “Even though Mrs. Midoriya has given full permission to search the premises, your team still can’t come to the mansion and do just that.”

It had been a few weeks. Weeks that were busy with Mrs. Midoriya interacting with and aiding Detective Tsukauchi in any way she could. There had been a noticeable absence of dire or deadly situations in that time. Toshinori had completed his weekly Monday check-up and was seated across from Tsukauchi at their usual small cafe.

The detective pinched the bridge of his nose. “You understood just fine. Look, I’m as frustrated as you are. Having the wife’s permission to check house should be plenty to get us in the door. If this didn’t have the potential to either become ridiculously high profile or for our friend to find some way to flip the case, we would. As it stands, they want a warrant to enter first.”

“The information we’ve given you isn’t solid grounds for a warrant?” Toshinori asked in astonishment. “There are plainly stated orders for hit jobs in those documents!”

Gesturing broadly, the detective agreed. “I know. I know! Again, it should be plenty. I have no idea why they’re holding up on this. I’m hoping it hasn’t gotten snagged on some other corrupted part of our legal system. That was the point of running it through a Tokyo precinct instead of Musutafu. Right now, its stuck somewhere above my pay grade.”

The former hero slouched in his booth, picked up his tea, and glared into its depths as though that would solve something. “Does Nezu know how this is going? I haven’t contacted him in a while.”

“He does,” Tsukauchi confirmed, “I know what you’re thinking. Nezu can lean hard on government officials to make things happen, but legal is a different scenario. His explanation to me was a lot lengthier, mind you, but that was the gist of it. No help on moving things faster from his corner.”

“Shit.”

“I know.”

Toshinori grumbled. “Seriously, Tsukauchi, it has taken months to get Mrs. Midoriya to this point of intense cooperation. Now, we’re stalled.”

The detective smirked at him over his own black coffee. “Oh, was getting the wife to open up to the police your whole goal with becoming so protective and friendly with her and the kid? Is that why you spent a solid ten minutes last week bragging about the kid’s last school project?”

The former hero blushed. “Of course not!”

The other man laughed into his mug as he picked it up. “Yagi, I’m teasing you. You went and did what we’re told not to do when we go undercover. You became attached. Its for the best in this case. You’ve worked harder to protect those two than anyone should have to. If your continued support has helped that woman find her backbone and give us everything we need to finally take down our friend? That’s all the better. She’s going to need that newfound strength to move forward once the dust settles.”

“She is strong,” Toshinori said with confidence, “She’ll be fine. We just need to make sure she gets to the point where she and her son can work on moving forward without having to look over their shoulder’s at every turn.”

The detective nodded, setting down his empty cup. “We’re working toward that goal. Faster now than we have in months. Be patient, Yagi.”

Toshinori stood and waited for the other man to pull on his long tan jacket. “You say that, but have you gotten into any fights with spring legged punks recently?”

There was a laugh. “No, I haven’t. I did have to use a taser on a guy shooting ear wax bullets at me last week. Does that count?”

“Ah. Apologies. You may have me beat there. Also…”

“Gross?”

“Very gross.”

The two men left the cafe together. It was early November and there was a light dusting of snow coming down as they prepared to go their own ways. It was just cold enough and just messy enough that foot and motor traffic were both slow that morning. “Same time next week?” Tsukauchi questioned.

“Unless one of us says otherwise,” Toshinori confirmed.

A man leaning against the building beside them sneezed loudly. Unexpectedly, the spray from it splattered both the former hero and the detective. They made equally disgusted faces at each other before turning to the man. He was nondescript, burrowed in a long trench coat with his brimmed hat pulled low over his eyes.

The grin that appeared under that hat instantly set Toshinori on edge. The same must have happened with the detective. Tsukauchi began to step forward, “Hey, you! What are…”

The detective’s legs gave way beneath him mid word. His eyes were closed and he was unconscious in the next moment. He fell with no resistance to the sidewalk below. Toshinori staggered, his own body and mind going numb around him. A sneeze delivered sleeping quirk, really? That was new. He was no longer aware when his own body hit the ground.

--

Wherever he was, it was dark, dusty, and cold. The fitted jacket he wore wasn’t doing a lot to keep the chill out as he lay face down on the hard surface below him. Cement? Toshinori breathed in and accidentally devolved into a coughing fit. He could feel the blood on his lips.

The coughing brought other attention to him. There was shuffling and two sets of hands landed on his back. Small and even smaller. “Mr. Yagi! Please wake up!”

“Mrs. Midoriya? Young Midoriya?”

His voice was rasping and his arms shook as he struggled to rollover onto his side. It wasn’t pitch black here, as he first feared, but very low level lighting. It was enough to see two sets of frightened green eyes looking back at him.

“Mr. Yagi,” the woman’s words came out in a panicked rush, “I don’t know where we are! Izuku and I woke up a few minutes ago. Both you and the detective were so still, and I… But you were both breathing. Izuku and I looked around. All of the exits that we could find are blocked. Whatever this building is, the windows are all boarded up too. This is Hisashi, it has to be him! He’s kidnapped us, he planning something terrible!”

There was an unpleasant throbbing behind the former hero’s eyes. He held up his hand in the dim light. “Slow down, slow down. Are you two okay?”

Mrs. Midoriya pulled her son tight to her side even as the little one was nodding, “We’re fine. I mean, no injuries.”

Toshinori couldn’t quite stifle the groan as he sat up. He brushed the blood from his lips and looked around. It was a derelict commercial building they were in, he realized. The windows were indeed boarded up. Any walls that would have made office spaces in the past were removed from this area so it was one massive area with no drop ceiling to hide the ducts and wiring and raw metal supports holding everything up.

“That’s good,” he noted as he spotted the detective laying a few feet away.

The retired hero got himself up to an awkward crawl to reach his current colleague. He reached out and firmly shook the other man’s shoulder. “Tsukauchi. Detective Tsukauchi! Naomosa!”

“We tried that,” the woman rushed to say.

“He was hit with that sleep quirk at the same time I was, he should be coming around soon. Ah, there.”

Tsukauchi had responded with a well timed groan as he opened his eyes into a squint. “What…?”

“Hello, detective. We were both forcefully put down for a nap. We’ve been kidnapped, along with Mr. Midoriya’s family.”

The detective sat up and pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes before looking around. “Is everyone okay?”

“Headaches,” Toshinori confirmed with a look at both Mrs. Midoriya and Tsukauchi, “but otherwise unharmed. It looks like we’re in an abandoned office building. Mrs. Midoriya was explaining that the exits are sealed before you woke up.”

The woman in question was immediately by his side as he moved to stand. She had a hand under his elbow to help support him as the last of the shakiness wore off. Tsukauchi was doing somewhat better, but Mrs. Midoriya paused to help him up as well. “We didn’t get to look carefully yet. We heard Mr. Yagi waking up and came back here.”

Tsukauchi waved them forward and took the lead. “Then lets walk while we talk. Yagi and I met for coffee this morning after his appointment. We were sneezed on outside of the shop. Apparently a sleeping quirk of some kind as we both wound up here after that. Do you remember anything else, Yagi?”

“No. We had no warning, and I went down right after you did.”

“Mrs. Midoriya? How did you end up here?”

The woman shuddered, but didn’t slow her pace as they walked to and around the perimeter of the large room. “A man dressed as one of our yard crew was out shoveling the sidewalk. When he came up to the door, I assumed he had a work related question and answered. He didn’t say anything, he just sneezed on me. Much like you two, I woke up here. You guys were unconscious, but Izuku was awake and terrified, weren’t you, honey? How did you get here?”

The little boy clung to his mother’s hand as they walked. He looked up to her and the other two adults. “They called me out of class at school to the front office. When I got there, I saw dad there. He was smiling like he does around people that aren’t us. He said he was so excited to pick me up early and spend time with me. I tried to tell the office lady that I didn’t want to go with him. She said I had to ‘cause he’s my dad. I tried really hard momma, I even yelled. They both got mad at me then. He made me go to the car and then we drove here. There were some other guys outside, I didn’t know them, but dad pushed me in here and closed the door. I tried to yell more, but no one came. Then some other guy brought you in, momma. Then they brought in Mr. Yagi and Mr. Detective.”

Toshinori grimaced. Of all of the possible situations he had imagined over the last several months, having the ambassador go to his son’s school and pick the kid up himself was not one of them. Being forcefully kidnapped or beaten on the streets or from the Midoriya mansion? He’d considered those problems in the depths of the night while his imagination and paranoia danced like old lovers at a dive bar. In any other school, having a child yelling about not wanting to go with a parent would prompt further investigation. This school, however, would do whatever Ambassador Midoriya wanted regarding his son.

More importantly, that meant that Midoriya Hisashi was very much in Japan right this moment and not overseas as he claimed. Mrs. Midoriya’s horrified look and Tsukauchi’s clenched jaw confirmed they were having the same thoughts. Toshinori broke the silence that followed, “You did the right thing at school, young man. The staff failed you, its nothing you did.”

Tsukauchi backed up his statement even as the man was pressing his hands against the first door they had made it to. “Yagi is right, kid. Its on the school to make sure of why it is a child doesn’t trust leaving the property with someone. This is interesting. I’d say we’re locked in, but the door doesn’t even rattle like it should.”

To prove his point, Tsukauchi slammed his fist against the metal door as though he were forcefully knocking. The thud was unnaturally muffled. He then attempted to jiggle the handle, this sound was also suspiciously quiet. Toshinori came to stand beside the detective and pressed his own hands to the door. He immediately felt something that responded like a springy resistance pushing back. He turned to his colleague. “Barrier quirk?”

Tsukauchi was frowning in thought. The detective stepped back into the vacant room far enough to grab some heavy looking construction debris. He then threw it directly at one of the boarded up windows. It looked like it touched the wood, but it also didn’t. The moment contact was made, the partial brick bounced harmlessly back and shattered as it landed on the cement floor. “An expansive barrier quirk, I’d say.”

Toshinori eyed the length of wall before them with its four apparent doors and multiple windows. “Expansive enough to block an entire room or building, do you think?”

“Let’s find out.”

They kept walking. The little boy asked from beside his mother, “Don’t people use barrier quirks to protect things?”

Toshinori sighed. “If you can use a barrier to lock someone or something out, you can also use it to lock them in. Quirks themselves are not inherently good or bad, my boy. It very much depends on what the user does with them.”

Neither the former hero or the detective were surprised to find that all of the walls around the vacant room had that springy barrier coating them. As they were, they had no way to get out of this. Toshinori closed his eyes and breathed. That wasn’t quite true. He ran mental fingers through the flames of One for All as they still burned in that dying fire inside of him. As expected, One For All burned him back even with the idea of touching it. As it had done since All for One had left his residual quirk effects behind on Toshinori. Two of them. First, quirk healing was no longer effective for him. Second, trying to use One for All caused him intense agony.

Agony would not stop him from rescuing his small found family and his friend.

The detective didn’t know they had a secret option, and was currently going over their next steps. “Not that we have much of a choice, but I say we wait. Holding a large barrier like this must be taxing to the user. We wait it out until the barrier falls and then we find anyway possible to break out of here. Unless I’ve overlooked something… Wait.”

The man put his hand in his pocket and pulled out his cellphone. Mrs. Midoriya was already shaking her head. “No signal or internet connections available here, detective. At least not on my phone. Unless you have it?”

“No,” Tsukauchi confirmed. “Nothing. I wonder if its the same barrier quirk or another person with a signal blocking quirk.”

The man was still frowning over his phone as a chatter and a buzz of static echoed into the room followed by the tinny voice of the ambassador coming form a small speaker. “Inko dearest, have you and that useless butler of ours woken up yet? My friend here says that sleeping agent should have worn off by now.”

All four of them in the room tensed. Mrs. Midoriya spotted it first, the small 2-way radio resting beside one of the metal support posts in the middle of the room. “Should I answer him?” She asked.

“I’ll do it,” Toshinori noted grimly as he strode toward the offending device.

Tsukauchi was suddenly jogging to match his pace. “I can’t make calls out, but I can record everything he says here. We’re going to have proof of this one way or another.”

Good as his word, the detective pulled up the video record function on his phone. He panned around the room and then to the radio on the floor. It issued another burst of static. “Come on Yagi. I know you’re just itching to tell me about how you're going to call the cops on me again. Answer me, you quirkless trash!”

Tsukauchi remained impassive as he gestured to Toshinori to pick up and answer the call. “Ambassador. You know very well that I can’t make any such call when you are blocking the cell phone signal.”

“Oh no,” came the staticky response, “You’ve figured that out all ready? I was hoping to hear your shock for myself. Everything is blocked from calls, texts, to GPS tracking. You four are officially off the grid. And this old school radio is so convenient. No proof of any of this ever happening.”

The old school radio was convenient for one thing; as long as his finger was off the call button, Mr. Midoriya had no idea what if any conversation was going on. Tsukauchi knew it too. “Get him talking, Yagi. About everything.”

Toshinori inclined his head in agreement. “I don’t understand why you’ve kidnapped us, Ambassador. What does this gain you?”

Static. “Lurch, I get everything from this. If my useless wife and utter waste of skin of a son die, I get my father’s power and the freedom to start over with a beautiful wife who will give me sons with quirks! I tried to do it the quiet way. I’d hire some quirkless loser of an old man as a butler. He’d on purpose or on accident poison my beloved family to death. Its a win-win for me. Show the world how quirkless people should be put away for our safety because none of you can get over your quirk envy while also getting rid of some obstacles in my path.

“But you, you fucking paper-pusher, you couldn’t stay out of my way and let me do it the quiet way. You kept removing the poisons. If you would have let me just do it that way, you could have lived through this.”

Toshinori grit his teeth. “I was not about to let you kill your family, Midoriya. I couldn’t always prove what you were doing, but I did know you were doing it. If I had? I might be alive, but I’d be in prison for murders I hadn’t committed.”

“Couldn’t just be an oaf of a butler. That’s all I hired you for. No, you had to keep saving my stupid wife and pointless son from everything. From carbon monoxide poisoning! I could hear your rattling and wheezing breath, you should have been on your deathbed, not carrying those two out of the house! From those two idiots I hired to break in and stab all of you to death. You couldn’t have just let them get on with their work. No! You go and involve the cops.

“And then you had the balls to take my family without MY permission on a field trip to Tokyo. What the fuck makes you think you had any right?! You poisoned my own wife against me!”

Mrs. Midoriya was openly staring, her young son was busy silently wiping at his teary eyes. Toshinori didn’t even want to imagine what they were thinking to hear all of this. They hadn’t known about the poisoning attempts. To hear that the butler had known and had been thwarting them… He cleared his throat and looked away from those emotional green eyes. “You forfeit any rights to these two people the moment you started trying to actively murder them, Midoriya. If anyone here made her see the truth of who you are, its you. You did it all on your own.”

Even the static of the radio connection sounded angry. “If you weren’t there, Lurch, she would have rolled over and died like a good and submissive wife months ago. Its your fault she didn’t. Its your fault I was put in a position where I had to teach her a lesson about her place in the house. I would have never have had to burn her without you there. I would have never been burned! You think you’re some fucking hero? I even had Sargent Takahashi hire actual dangerous thugs to kill you all. You think you’re someone special fighting them off? You are quirkless trash that got lucky, Lurch!”

The former hero made eye contact with the detective over his phone. Nice of the ambassador to name and shame his bought cop. Probably the sergeant wouldn’t think so. “You went to get young Izuku yourself, Midoriya. Someone will think to look at you about this kidnapping and our disappearance.”

There was laughter in the next burst of static. “No they wont, Yagi! I am a sad and sorry father who has been blackmailed by a political opponent. I went to get my son because I knew he was in danger. While I was there, my wife and butler were kidnapped. Oh no, so were my son and I! Their deaths were so awful, and I only barely made it out alive myself! It will be a great story, and I know which of my enemies I’m pinning it on already. I will be a free man and I will have so much sympathy and concern heaped on me, the poor lone survivor. Don’t worry, Yagi, I’ll throw down some Forget-Me-Nots after I’ve pissed on your grave. Might even put in a good word for Tsukauchi while I’m at it and then piss on his grave too.”

Toshinori met the detective’s unpleasant look with one of his own. Before he could respond to the ambassador, the man himself kept going. “I know you’re there, detective. Once I found out you met with my traitorous butler weekly, I knew you needed to go, too. What a shame you got caught up in this blackmail plot of mine. What as shame that you have been poking your nose in places it doesn’t belong! I’m going to bury every piece of evidence you ever thought you had, Tsukauchi. You will have died for nothing. I hope it burns you up inside.”

The former hero thought he had been subtle in his meetings. Apparently not subtle enough. “You will not get away with this, Midoriya.”

“You’re wrong, Yagi. I get away with things just like this all of the time and no one will stop me this time either. No matter what kind of a hero you think you are for my wife and son, there’s nothing you can do about what comes next. Goodbye Inko, dear. Goodbye useless son. Goodbye nosey detective. Goodbye underfoot and always in my way butler. I won’t miss any of you.”

The look Toshinori shared with Tsukauchi that time was panic. Villian's didn’t monologue and give an outro like that if they didn’t plan on their audience to die shortly afterword. A series of ominous rumbling booms shook the building from the basement levels below. Tsukauchi shoved his phone in his pocket and threw himself over Mrs. Midoriya and her son as those same explosive sounds worked all the way up the building and through levels far above them.

The ceiling and the floor collapsed at the same time.

There was no choice and there were no second thoughts. Toshinori reached for One for All. The quirk hit his system with a feeling of lava burning though all of his veins as steam erupted around him and his muscles swelled. His fitted jacket and button down shirt ripped off of his body along with his trousers. The dress shoes self destructed as All Might landed on the lowest basement level floor with one arm full of his three companions and the other raised above his head pushing back against the building collapsing around them.

The noise was cacophonous. All Might was driven to one knee under the weight of the full building above him, but maintained a safe bubble of space for himself and the other three with him. The noise stopped and they were left with nothing but settling dust, darkness, and unnerving silence.

Mrs. Midoriya gasped, “Izuku?”

The little one’s reply almost overlapped his mother’s question, “Momma!”

Tsukauchi was fumbling in the dark, “Don’t panic. Is everyone okay? Yagi?”

There was a sudden light in the darkness making everyone wince as the detective turned on the flashlight function of his cellphone. He turned the light around the small space in the collapsed debris resting briefly on the mother and son huddled together before turning around and looking up at the man crouched over all of them. There was enough light to see all of the shocked faces. The hero turned on his megawatt smile out of habit. The youngest breathed out an awed, “All Might!”

“I am here!” The words didn’t boom as loud as he would normally have said them in consideration for the unstable debris around them and the considerable weight of an entire collapsed building currently resting on his shoulders.

Tsukauchi was clearly more shocked than awed. “In your boxers and undershirt. Yagi, you were supposed to be All Might’s retired secretary, not All Might himself!”

“Both things can be true,” the hero noted a little sheepishly.

“Mr. Yagi?!” Mrs. Midoriya nearly squeaked.

“No!” Young Midoriya was vigorously shaking his head as he clung to his mother’s sweater. “That’s not Mr. Yagi, that’s All Might! All Might, you have to save Mr. Yagi, too!”

Despite his grit teeth, All Might tried to soften his smile a little for the boy. There was no point in denying the truth and making him worry more. “Young man, I am Mr. Yagi. I’m going to save all of us.”

Those big green eyes warred with awe and something else. Something unidentifiable in the dim lighting. “But, you’re All Might. You can’t be Mr. Yagi.”

All Might sighed, “Both things can be true, my boy.”

“Right,” Tsukauchi said with finality, “We’ll all be having a long talk later. Right now, how are we getting out of this? How are we getting out of here while you are stuck there supporting the building?”

All Might shifted his shoulders, trying to judge how quickly this little safe bubble would collapse once he moved. “I’m going to break through and carry all of you with me. Its going to be a bumpy ride.”

Tsukauchi looked less than amused. “That really doesn’t answer the ‘how’ part.”

The hero’s smile widened. “I’m All Might, that’s how.”

All Might abruptly wrapped an arm around all of them again and then delivered a twisting blow to the fallen building debris above them. “Nebraska Smash!”

The whirlwind affect of the move and the force of the punch cleared a temporary upward path that All Might leapt into in the blink of an eye. He slammed his shoulder into the last of the debris between them and the outside world and landed on the concrete beside the fallen building with enough force to crack the sidewalk.

The blaring sounds of sirens were already approaching. Some civilians had ventured out into the snowy afternoon to stare in shock at the fallen building. Around the corner from them and hidden by the debris, All Might heard, “What the hell was that racket about?”

It was Midoriya Hisashi’s voice. The hero set down both mother and son, but kept hold of the detective. “Stay here, Mrs. Midoriya. Tsukauchi, you and I have some villains to catch!”

He leapt over the building debris in a single bound, landing before the ambassador and his three cohorts. The ambassador was in the process of ripping his nice suit and smearing himself with the dust and dirt from the fallen building. Part of his cover story. The hero set the detective beside him, propped his hands on his boxer clad hips and announced loudly, “We are HERE! To stop a particularly dastardly villain from running away.”

“All Might?!”

“Why is All Might here?”

“Oh SHIT, that’s All Might!”

Most amusingly, from the man that had been their sneeze attacker, “Why is he here in his underwear?!”

Mr. Midoriya was panicking. “Don’t tell me you came for that useless secretary! He can’t have meant that much to you! He’s quirkless!”

All Might’s grin was more than a little dangerous. “Funny enough, a person’s quirk or lack thereof is the very last thing I care about.”

In a desperate move, the ambassador turned to breath fire at the hero at the same time his sneezing friend tried to assist with a sneeze. All Might pulled back an arm and delivered a devastating, “Texas SMASH!”

The wind current blew fire and sleep snot backwards over the four men before the one with the barrier quirk could react to protect them. This resulted in a fiery dance to put themselves out before each of them collapsed in a heap on the sidewalk.

All Might threw his head back and laughed as the civilian spectators were slowly gathering. “You won’t be getting away this time!”

Somewhere behind him, he heard the detective let out a long breath of air. “I have no idea what you needed me here for.”

“Well,” the hero confided quietly so as not to be overheard, “I am technically retired. I don’t have a hero license anymore. I need you to formally apprehend these men. I’m riding the line of vigilantism here as it is.”

“I think you Texas Smashed right through that line. I’m going to pretend I don’t know that, but just this once.”

Which was about when the growing crowd began to push forward. An amateur reporter holding their phone up above the crowd. “All Might! Are you coming out of retirement?!”

“No,” he answered firmly, “This was an unexpected incident. As you can see, I hardly came dressed for hero work!”

Tsukauchi was kneeling by their kidnappers and leaving him to it. All Might didn’t dare leave him there alone until more authorities arrived. He felt the fire of One for All scorching him from the inside out. This was so much worse than the speeches he had given with Lemillion all those months ago. He hadn’t had to use the quirk beyond how it affected his appearance. Those leaps and smashes using the quirk now made his limbs and his lung feel like fiery agony.

The crowd didn’t know. “Where have you been!”

“Why don’t you make appearances anymore?”

“Do you have a girlfriend?”

He’d missed a lot about hero work. This was not the part he missed. His smile never faltered and his laugh made a number of the people in the crowd laugh with him. “I’ve been retired, of course! They tell me retirement is when you’re supposed to relax. The only dates I’ve had have been with peace and quiet!”

The questions continued and All Might deflected all of them with cheer. It felt like it took ages, even if it was only minutes, before the police arrived. The hero spotted the two green haired Midoriyas peeking around the corner and watching the spectacle he was making of himself even as he confirmed with Tsukauchi and the other authorities that they had it under control.

“Well, citizens! I am very under dressed for this weather. I’m off. Be safe!”

All Might leapt to an adjacent building top before anyone tried to stop him. From there, he could see where they were. It was Musutafu, but not the same precinct district as the Midoriya mansion was in. That, at least, was a good thing. He needed to get back to Mrs. Midoriya and young Midoriya as their butler to make reports to the police.

It wouldn’t be great for Mr. Yagi to show up in the same boxers and undershirt that All Might was spotted and recorded wearing.

Decision made, All Might jumped his way back to the Midoriya Mansion, darted past all cameras faster than any eye could hope to see, fetched a fresh set of clothing and a jacket from his room, and then jumped back to the other side of the collapsed building. There were miles between these locations, but One for All allowed him to traverse it in moments.

Ducking into a nearby alley, the hero released a breath and released the quirk at the same time. The fire instantly settled back into its comfortable place in his chest, no longer burning him if he wasn’t actively using it. Steam dispersed around his body as his form shrank. All Might was gone, and an aching and cold Toshinori stood shivering in the snow in his wake.

He wasn’t prepared for the coughing fit that took him. He spent longer bent over in the alley hacking up blood and what felt like his remaining lung than he had running to the mansion and back. As he gasped and recovered from the bout, some rueful part of him had to admit that Nighteye’s concern about him and hero work might not have been misplaced after all.

Now very cold indeed, Toshinori pulled on his fresh clothing. It was too clean, so he made his way to the destroyed building in an unwatched place and repeated ambassador Midoriya’s earlier actions of dusting himself thoroughly from the debris at hand. Finally, he hobbled his way up to and behind Mrs. Midoriya and her son where they still stood by the corner watching the police and the crowd.

The former hero coughed into his hand, making both mother and son jump. “We should go over there and give our statements on what happened.”

Those two sets of nearly identical green eyes turned to him. Mrs. Midoriya had her hand pressed to her mouth. The boy starred, wide eyed. “All Mi-”

Toshinori quickly bent and pressed a finger to young Midoriya’s lips. “Just Mr. Yagi, young man. The other part we keep secret. Even from the police. Do you understand?”

He removed the finger. Though the boy looked confused, he agreed. “Okay, Mr. Yagi.”

Toshinori glanced up at Mrs. Midoriya as well. She nodded in understanding and agreement. The man smiled for both of them. He placed a hand on the woman’s shoulder and offered his other hand down to young Midoriya to hold. The little one accepted and the three of them began walking toward the crowd in front of them.

After a few steps, there was an insistent tugging on his hand. He turned his attention to the curly haired boy beside him. “Mr. Yagi? Does Lemillion know?”

The retired hero chuckled. “Yes, he knows.”

“Oh. That explains a lot.”

Chapter Text

After giving their statements to the police, Toshinori, Mrs. Midoriya, and young Midoriya were driven home. They’d have to fetch the car some other time as the keys were buried under tons of building rubble along with the Toshinori’s previous set of clothing. His phone had been left in the car and should be fine. He considered himself temporarily lucky to be without it.

Once those amateur videos of All Might hit the news, both Nighteye and Torino would be breathing down his neck.

The police officers kindly and thoroughly checked the entire mansion and the yard for any untoward people or traps before leaving the family and their butler to their evening. The officers drove off and Toshinori found himself standing in awkward silence in the kitchen with both the mother and son he had charged himself with caring for.

“Ah,” he fumbled, “Would you both like tea? Hot chocolate? Both maybe?”

The former hero was all ready turning toward the kettle to heat water as he asked. Mrs. Midoriya jumped and ran past him to do it herself. “I’m not going to have All Might making me tea in my own house! I’ll get it!”

Toshinori spread his hands a little helplessly. “I’ve been making tea for you for months.”

The woman gave him a look that bordered on a glare. “Mr. Yagi my butler has been making tea for us. Not All Might. I didn’t know you were All Might! It isn’t the same.”

“I am Mr. Yagi,” Toshinori reminded her hesitantly.

“Its not the same! Mr. Yagi is our kind and quirkless butler. You… You’re the number one hero! You are rich and famous and should have a butler of your own!”

The blonde man scratched the back of his head. “Former number one hero. Former hero, really. And it would be remarkably ostentatious of me to have a butler for the two bedroom apartment I rent.”

The woman’s hands were shaking terribly as she tried to run water into the kettle. “Its not the same. I thought I knew you. I thought you were my friend, but I don’t know even know who you are.”

The former hero was quite certain he felt his heart shatter in that moment. He had never meant to hurt her. He certainly hadn’t intended to betray her. Too late, he realized he had done exactly that. To both of them. Little Midoriya was watching the two of them with his arms wrapped around his torso and fat tears bubbling at the corners of his eyes. The sigh that shuddered out of him hurt. He stepped the rest of the way to the sink and gently took the tea kettle from the younger woman’s hands.

“Please allow me to make you tea, Mrs. Midoriya.”

She released her grip and took a step away. Rubbing at her own watering eyes while Toshinori turned the electric kettle on. “Its Inko.”

“Pardon?”

Her green hair was disheveled, she had dirt smudges all over her face and her clothing. They could all three of them use showers. There was a sudden and determined look in her eyes. “We’ll start over. If I’m going to be calling you All Might, then I’d rather you call me Inko.”

“Ah,” he murmured in sudden understanding, “Then by all means, call me Toshinori, Inko.”

She huffed, “Except, you’re actually called All Might.”

The older man shook his head with a sad little smile. “Yagi Toshinori is my name. Toshinori is my given name just as Inko is yours. If you would like me to call you your given name, I’d rather you call me by my own. Not my hero name.”

“And I’m Izuku! You can call me that, Mr. Yagi.”

The little one had moved further into the kitchen, his little fists now clenched at his sides as he declared this. The blonde man was amused to know the spirit of the thing was there even if he possibly didn’t understand all of the ramifications of it. “Okay, young Izuku. Then you can call me Toshinori as well.”

The boy bit his lip. “I’m kinda used to Mr. Yagi.”

Point proven. The smile the man offered to the little one was small, but genuine. “Whichever you prefer.”

He pulled down three mugs from the cupboard, setting tea in two and hot chocolate in the third before adding the now steaming water. Inko’s arms were crossed when he turned back to her. “Let me start from the top, Toshinori. Why are you our butler? You obviously don’t need money for your retirement.”

The former hero passed one of the mugs of tea to her, took the other two, and gestured to the table. “We should sit for this.”

He had all ready betrayed her trust, he might as well come fully clean about everything and make the betrayal complete. At worst, she would be so upset with his actions that she would kick him out of the house. That concerned him as he had no way of knowing if Mr. Midoriya had any other plans still working even though the man himself was cooling his heels in jail that night. If Mrs. Midoriya, no, Inko, wanted nothing further to do with the retired hero after tonight he would ask Tsukauchi to have a police guard posted for the family for the duration.

His request to sit and prolonged silence clearly worried the woman of the house. “Don’t tell me you were hired by one of Hisashi’s political rivals to get information on him.”

Toshinori blinked. “I… what? No.”

“Okay. Its just, the longer you sit there looking like someone has walked across your grave, the more I’m trying to think of worse case scenarios and…”

“Detective Tsukauchi and a mutual acquaintance approached me. They were both looking into your husband’s very suspicious track record. As you’ve noted, the ambassador has ways of making people and information disappear. The detective had tapped all of his legal methods to pin the ambassador to his crimes. I was asked to apply for the butler job to gather information on Midoriya Hisashi so he could be brought to justice. I had the right application qualifications.”

Inko could not have looked anymore wounded if he had sucker punched her on the spot. “This was all just an undercover information gathering job for you. All of it.”

“No,” Toshinori disagreed. “After the way that man spoke to me during the interview, I was ready to walk away and not deal with any of this. Then I stopped to really look at yourself and young Izuku and I realized how terrible this whole situation must have been for both of you. I didn’t lie when you asked me the first time, Inko. I didn’t take this job for Mr. Midoriya, I took it for you.”

The woman pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes and released a small sob. “But, why? You’re All Might. Why would you even be recruited for undercover jobs? You’ve been badly injured to the point of needing weekly medical checks. Why didn’t you stay retired instead of leaping into a mess like this?”

Toshinori huffed a tiny laugh. “To be fair to Tsukauchi, he had no idea I was All Might until today either. Our mutual acquaintance knows though. You can imagine, Inko, that I was not doing very well with being asked to sit on my couch and twiddle my thumbs for the foreseeable future. My acquaintance knew that about me as well.”

The green haired lady peeked at him over her hands, her lips lifted in a crooked little smile. “You would lose your mind with nothing to do and no one to care for. That was poor retirement planning.”

“Yes, well,” Toshinori coughed and gestured to his left side, “It wasn’t planned at all. The need for retiring came up with a sudden urgency.”

The gesture turned into the hand pressing against the side. There was no part of him that didn’t hurt right then. His side was a ball of scar tissue and angry nerve endings. He continued despite this. “They warned me that Mr. Midoriya had brought harm to to others in the past even if it couldn’t be proven. They warned me it could be dangerous to work here. They didn’t know that the danger was to yourself and young Izuku.”

Toshinori kept his description light and slightly vague. He was mindful of the six year old at the table with them who needed to know the truth, but didn’t need to know the gruesome details. Beyond what he’d heard his own father say on that 2-way radio earlier that day. “Your husband tried to poison you the first weekend I worked here with intent to blame it on me.”

Inko frowned in confusion before her green eyes went wide. “His obsession with that stupid American salt.”

The former hero nodded. “It wasn’t salt. Er, that is to say, what you two were using at the table was salt. Mr. Midoriya had replaced it with something else and I saw him doing it. I cleaned it out and made sure it was actually salt on the table before dinner. I brought it to Tsukauchi that Monday. He had it tested. It would have been lethal. That was when I first realized that it was the two of you that were really in danger. He tried several other ways, but he was never very subtle about it and I was able to intercept before anything happened to you two.”

Inko was biting her lip as she watched him. “He mentioned the carbon monoxide. That wasn’t an actual accident, was it?”

“No. He removed the batteries from the fire alarm and the carbon monoxide alarms and then used his quirk to burn a hole through the furnace. Then he turned the thermostat way up and let the furnace do the rest of it.”

“You suspected those two home invaders were people he had hired as well.” The woman slouched over her tea. “Why didn’t you ever say anything to me about it?”

Toshinori made direct eye contact with her. “In the beginning, I didn’t think you would believe me. When it came to a time that you would, you were all ready figuring it out on your own.”

“You did lie to us though.” Little Izuku was looking at him with a wobbly little frown. “All Might isn’t supposed to lie.”

He was right, All Might didn’t lie. Not directly. He specialized in lies of omission and general deflection tactics. Which made him ask, “About what, my boy?”

“You said you were quirkless like me. You said you had bad toes like me. You’re All Might! You have the strongest quirk in the world!”

The last was an angry shout as tears flooded down the child’s freckled face. This was a different betrayal than what had hurt his mother. Toshinori had a sudden and desperate urge to reach out and hug the little one. The temper burning in those green eyes said it wouldn’t be welcome just then. It wouldn’t be welcomed ever again if he couldn’t explain himself. The topic of One for All was a dangerous one for people to know about, but Toshinori was a master of skating around dangerous truths.

Toshinori took as deep of a breath as he could, pressed his hand harder into his aching side. “I didn’t tell the entire truth. Its true that my pinky toes look like yours do, young Izuku, because I was born quirkless just like you are.”

That instantly derailed the child’s anger. Confusion swept in to replace it. “You can’t be born without a quirk and still have a quirk, Mr. Yagi.”

The man laughed softly. “As many crazy things as you can imagine, there are just as many crazy quirks in the world. More than you can imagine. There is one very special quirk, for example, that can be passed from one user to the next. It doesn’t matter if they had a quirk before they received it or not. Which is how a quirkless man like myself can actually have a quirk.”

He could see the quirk nerd gears turning in the little boy’s head. “A quirk that you can give to someone else?”

“Yes. Its passed through nine generations of users now and it gets more powerful with each person who uses it. Its a very old and very powerful quirk.”

Inko was equally fascinated by this idea. “You’re the ninth holder of power accumulating quirk? No wonder no one knew the exact nature of All Might’s quirk. No one would believe the truth!”

This is where things got more delicate. Where there were secrets that were not his to tell. “Ah. I was the eighth user of the quirk. After I was injured, I passed it on to my successor. And none of that can be told to anyone outside of this room.”

Inko and Izuku both looked thoroughly perplexed. They weren’t focused on who he passed the quirk on to, as he feared. They were focused on, as Izuku put it, “How can you have passed the quirk on when you were using that quirk today?”

Toshinori gestured weakly with his left hand. “Its complicated. Ah. Hmm. When this quirk gets passed on, it doesn’t immediately leave the person who passed it. When I held the quirk, it was like I was a cup being held under a faucet turned on at full power. My cup was always full. If I took a drink, it would refill instantly. Now that I’ve passed the quirk on, its as though someone has slowed the tap water down. Every time I drink from the cup now, it takes longer to refill. There will come a time when the faucet is shut off completely and I will run my cup dry. I’m not sure when, but soon enough I will be quirkless again.”

Izuku frowned deeply. “Your quirk is running out.”

“Yes.”

“And that’s why All Might retired?”

“Well…”

Inko shook her head. She looked shrewdly at Toshinori, looked long and hard at the hand pressed to his side. “He retired because using that quirk hurts him. Don’t think I haven’t noticed the limp as well. Its an incredibly powerful quirk. All Might is still larger than life when you see him in person. Even in his underwear. I don’t know if it hurt you to use before, but I’m guessing something about your injury has made it so using it hurts you severely now.”

He had promised himself to come clean to her, Toshinori reminded himself as he hunched slightly over his tea. “It… does. Yes.”

“Even so, you used it to save us today. Of course you did. You were willing to get burnt to protect me, why not suffer through your own quirk causing pain to save us as well? Maybe I know you better than I thought, because you really are a selfless and stupid man, Toshinori.”

The older man snorted. Izuku asked the question he could never fully answer then. “But. Who was strong enough to hurt you so badly, All Might?”

Toshinori’s left hand tightened to a stranglehold on the tea mug as his right hand fisted into his shirt and dug into his own scar tissue. He stared intensely into his tea. “Someone who will never hurt anyone else ever again. I took care of him.”

Even now, he could see All For One’s skull smashed beneath his fist. He could see it as clearly as his he could see his own intestines spilling out from his abdomen that day. The injury was worth it. The forced retirement was worth it. Before, he would have said the worth was in avenging Nana. It was in taking down an old evil. Now, it was worth it to know that innocent people like Inko and young Izuku could live in a world free of a tyrant like him.

Inko looked at him with concern, but Izuku slipped form his seat at the table to walk to Toshinori's side. He raised his arms as he looked up at the former hero. “You need a hug.”

It was a statement, not a question. It was also an offer of forgiveness. Toshinori winced through the discomfort as he pushed his chair back from the table and helped the child into his lap. Little Izuku wrapped his arms with considerate caution around the older man’s middle. Toshinori hugged him back. He still ached, but there was something healing for his heart in the gesture. Mirio knew what he was talking about when it came to that.

“Thank you, my boy. I did need a hug.”

The little boy sat back and patted Toshinori’s arm. “It’ll be okay. Dad is in jail for trying to hurt us and we can all go back to normal now. I know I can’t tell anyone that All Might is my butler, but momma and I can know and I’ll have the coolest driver at pick up every time!”

The former hero found himself hung up on Mr. Midoriya and how safe the family really was. He hoped a judge would approve a search warrant now and they could finish gathering all of the evidence they might need to put that man in prison for the rest of his life. He frowned over those concerns. Inko had more immediate matters on her mind. “Are you still our butler?”

Toshinori momentarily short circuited. This was a very good question and he had not thought about at all. “I…”

Izuku, still perched on his lap and caught in his arms looked to his mother in confusion. “Why wouldn’t Mr. Yagi still be our butler?”

“Well, Toshinori was sent here to do a job that wasn’t being a butler. We could argue, with your father in jail, he’s finished that job. I don’t know if…”

The blonde man blurted, “I’d like to stay.”

At the same time, the green haired lady of the house pleaded, “I’d like you to stay on.”

Toshinori shared a surprised look and an awkward little smile with the younger woman. She gestured for him to continue. He shrugged, rubbed a hand up and down young Izuku’s back. “I’m concerned about your safety. Until Mr. Midoriya has been properly sentenced and is in prison, there is always a continued risk. I’d rather stay and make sure the two of you are safe.”

Inko groaned. “Okay, I hadn’t thought of that. I really would like you to stay for the moral support. I imagine Izuku and I will be called as witnesses in an upcoming trial and we could use all of the help we can get. You may be All Might, but after all of this, you are still our friend, right?”

“I would be honored to be considered as such. I’ve grown very fond of both of you over the last few months, and I don’t have many people I could call friends myself.”

Izuku leaned back in against him then for another hug. “That’s because you’re a hero and our butler and the best butler ever who takes good care of momma and I! Number one hero and number one butler!”

Toshinori ruffled those green curls with one hand while he hugged the boy with the other. “Former number one hero,” he gently reminded.

Izuku huffed impatiently as he looked up at the blonde man. “All Might is still the best. Do you know why? Because he’s right here in person making me smile and protecting me and momma.”

The former hero grinned. “Really? Right now it looks like you’re the one making me smile, young Izuku. Are you sure you’re not the hero here?”

“Not yet. Someday I will be though ‘cause you’re going to help me!”

Inko laughed. “How about we wait until some point after primary school for that, sweetheart? Right, moving forward I’ll take over the cooking.”

The older man blinked. “I enjoy doing the cooking?”

“I’m not having All Might cook all of our meals for us!”

“Didn’t we just agree that I’m staying on as your butler?”

The green haired woman sulked. “Well, yes. Fine. I can drive Izuku and myself then.”

Toshinori smiled. “I enjoy driving too. Also, you get done with work after young Izuku’s school day.”

“Okay. Fine! I’ll take over the laundry though!”

“Inko, I really don’t mind any of the butler duties you’ve assigned and I’m happy to continue with them. Really.”

The woman pressed the flat of her hand to the table in a gentle slap. “No, I’m holding my ground on this one. I know you’ve been washing the laundry all along, but now that I know, I am not having All Might washing and putting away my underwear. Not happening!”

--

The man who was once again a butler had thoroughly checked inside and outside of the house for any anomalies and to make sure all doors and windows were locked three times before he sent himself to bed that night. He had smiled to see that Inko had crawled into Izuku’s bed that night and the two of them were a tangled and softly snoring lump under the blankets on his last walk through. After the terrifying day they had, they could do with drawing mutual strength from one another.

Toshinori had intended to sleep himself, but his mind was whirring too noisily to ignore. He worried about having enough evidence to put the ambassador away for good. He worried about anyone else the man had payed off who might try to do more harm to his family or might ruin the legal side of imprisoning him.

It would take time to even get to trial. Inko was right, she and her son would be urged to be witnesses, as would Toshinori himself. It would be a stressful time and he had no intention of leaving the two to deal with it on their own. Their butler would stand beside them and support them in anyway he could through all of it.

If everything went well, Inko and Izuku would finally be free to live the lives they should.

That, of course, lead to a distant worry that was suddenly growing closer. Once everything was settled legally, and assuming that meant Hisashi was gone for good, Toshinori would have no reason to stay at the Midoriya mansion. They could hire a real butler and supplemental staff who actually knew how to do the job. Toshinori could go back to his sad and dusty little apartment. Back to scrolling the hero news networks and reading food blogs. Maybe he would be allowed to drop in and visit Inko and Izuku from time to time to enjoy a lunch and tea made by one of their new staff.

That sounded terrible.

It was true that the idea of All Might becoming a butler as a retirement career was absolutely wild. He would have agreed had it been suggested on a whim seven months before. But, now… Well, maybe what he was doing wasn’t proper butlering. However, this thing he had with Inko and young Izuku, he enjoyed it immensely. The idea of walking away from them and going back to the loneliness of his own retirement was enough to leave a cold lump of dread in his middle. Would he really be satisfied with spending the rest of his capable days doing household chores and being a designated driver? With Hisashi gone, the imminent threat was gone too. But with the wealth and power at play with M & D Enterprises, it wouldn’t be a surprise to have new threats come up. Could the former hero willingly trust those possibilities to hired security or the next staff?

What Toshinori wanted, he realized, was to watch young Izuku grow up and into himself. He wanted to help the child with his homework, find a good martial arts class to enroll him in, and be his cheer leader when he had bad days. He also wanted to see Inko grow into who she could be without having the looming threat of a controlling husband over her. He wanted to meet any future partners she might take and give her a pep talk on her first dates.

Toshinori wanted to stay with the Midoriyas. He wanted that strange little family they had put together. Would it really be so odd for All Might to spend his retirement scrubbing toilets and stealing movie nights with these two wonderful people?

He realized at some point that sleep wasn’t happening so Toshinori made himself a cup of lemon tea in the early morning hours, rearranged the couch so he could lay on it and watch the TV, and settled in to watch a very cheesy horror movie. It really was a very big and comfortable couch and those soft throw blankets were warmer than they looked. An hour or so later, he heard soft whispers and footsteps on the stairs.

The butler turned his head and watched mother and son step into the kitchen and blink owlishly at the light from the TV in the connected living room. Inko shook her head. “I see we’re not the only ones having trouble sleeping tonight.”

Toshinori offered her an embarrassed little grin and a shrug in response. Izuku nodded and carried on into the kitchen. “Drink of water and then couch.”

He heard the lady laugh softly as she followed her son. She fetched a glass of water and the two of them shared it for a drink before the boy and his little footie All Might PJ’s made a beeline for the living room. Toshinori smiled and raised the blanket for the little one to curl in beside him. Inko made it to the couch and paused. After a long moment she shook her head again with a disbelieving laugh. “All Might, though.”

“Also Toshinori and Mr. Yagi. I can include a list of various nicknames as well, depending on who you ask.”

The woman’s smile grew bigger. Her butler raised the blanket a little higher and she accepted the invitation. Inko slid in on the other side of her son and leaned sideways on a slouching Toshinori to rest her head on his shoulder. “I grew up watching you do hero things and give interviews. I should have known that All Might could be sassy because of watching those interviews. I know it now because my butler has struggled since early on to not be sassy.”

“’I grew up watching you,’ makes me feel particularly old, you know.”

The younger woman giggled as she settled in against him and little Izuku. The boy was all ready almost asleep. “Its just the view form the far side of the hill again, Toshinori. Skews your perspective.”

The former hero huffed. “Cruel, and in the middle of the night, too!”

“Its not cruelty, its a matter of coping with the idea that I am currently sharing a couch with All Might and I am probably about to fall asleep on you as well.”

“Ah, coping gracefully, I see.” He wrapped his right arm around her shoulders and pulled both of his green haired found family in closer. “Care to share with me what’s keeping you awake tonight? Nightmares?”

“No. Thinking about the future. You?”

“Same.”

--

Sleep found all three of them. Toshinori just about jumped off of the couch, out from the blankets, and possibly out of his skin to wake up abruptly to Mirio’s grinning face standing in front of the television. The younger man, dressed in casual clothing today, gestured at the three of them on the couch, “This is the cutest thing ever, Mr. Yagi!”

Inko and Izuku woke with a start on hearing his voice, Mirio hadn’t been quiet about it. Meanwhile, the hero was waving over their shoulders and Toshinori nearly groaned at hearing those familiar footsteps behind him. “Look, Sir, have you ever seen him look this tucked in and adorable?”

Inko was busy pulling the blanket all the way up to her eyeballs even as Izuku gaped in surprise and made efforts to escape that same blanket. Toshinori was trying to decide if he could reach up and catch the spirit that had escaped him in his surprise or if it was just going to float away to never be seen from again. Mirai looked as unamused as ever. There was a trick to reading Nighteye though, and right now that man was howling with laughter on the inside. “He used to sleep with a a nightcap to match his sleepwear. If you want to talk about adorable that was it. This is a close second.”

That spirit took off and part of Toshinori’s pride died as it left. “What are you two doing here?!”

Mirio answered helpfully, “Looking for you. Someone wasn’t answering his phone. After what hit the news last night? I’m surprised you didn’t hear Sir’s head exploding all the way from Tokyo! This is a super nice couch, by the way. Cuddle pile!”

Mirio launched himself on to the couch on Toshinori’s left side and wrapped an arm around his predecessor and the two Midoriyas even as he burrowed his face into the former hero’s shoulder. Toshinori released an undignified squawk, Izuku giggled, and Inko squealed like a deflating balloon. The former hero spluttered and turned his eyes to Mirai even as Mirio was busy laughing into his shoulder. “I didn’t answer my phone, so you two decided on breaking and entering as a resolution?”

Mirai pressed his glasses up his nose with a single finger. “We tracked the phone first, of course. The car appeared unharmed and you’ll find it in the driveway now when you are ready to put it back in the garage.”

Toshinori blinked. “You didn’t have keys. Oh, holy heroes, you had Lemillion pop into and unlock the car and then YOU hot wired it, didn’t you?”

Terrible how a man could look so very stone faced and so very smug at the same time. “Of course. Lemillion used his quirk to get in here as well. Technically, no breaking was done as any part of this entering. Now. You. We need to talk about what appeared on the news yesterday.”

Izuku by now had his own arms wrapped around Mirio’s arm and had been giggling along with the still laughing hero. The little boy perked up. “On the news? Do you mean when Mr. Yagi became All Might and saved us? That was so cool!”

Mirai grit his teeth. “Honestly, All Might. You’ve had one secret you’ve managed to keep for almost thirty years and you just let it all go up in smoke like this?”

“Its fine, Nighteye. Only three people saw me change. I trust that both these two and detective Tsukauchi wont say anything. It was tight quarters and short notice, I didn’t have time to keep the secret and keep them from being flattened by a collapsing building.”

Mirio was now laughing hard enough against his predecessor that he was nearly gasping. “In your underwear, too!”

Toshinori blushed, Mirai groaned. “Nothing on the reports said anything about a rescue. Only mentioned the capture of suspects by yourself and the detective you just named. Mrs. Midoriya, excuse us. I need to borrow your butler and he’s going to tell us everything.”

Inko squeaked out what might have been an affirmative even as her eyes never left Mirio’s arm where he had a hand flopped onto and holding her shoulder. The younger hero finally got up, his giggles subsiding, and helped the former hero to his feet as well. Toshinori lead the three of them to the game room at the far side of the house and closed the door. He imagined Inko would be nearly flying upstairs to change out her her pajamas before Lemillion saw her again.

As he had for Inko, Toshinori started at the beginning with Nezu and the detective recruiting him all the way through yesterday’s events. Mirai wasn’t amused anymore, he was some combination of worried and furious. “We agreed you were done with hero work. We agreed. Signing up to do it undercover doesn’t make it any less hero work, All Might!”

Mirio, leaning comfortably against the pool table, looked somewhere toward the ceiling as he spoke. “When All Might was still having all of his surgeries completed and you guys were insisting that he should full on retire, you got upset with me every time I suggested we keep him on the help at Might Tower in some other way. Sir, you and Mr. Torino wouldn’t hear about it. I’m not usually much into I told you so’s, but this one might be it.”

Mirai scowled at his pupil. “If All Might were at the tower, even in a secretarial position, he would catch wind of some incident or another and do exactly like he did yesterday. He wouldn’t be able to step away form the hero work.”

Toshinori shrugged and agreed. “He’s right. I would.”

Mirio, for all that he was full of laughter and smiles at any given time, was a shrewdly intelligent young man. There was a reason Nighteye favored him and he had won over All Might so handily. “And yet, we sent him in to total retirement, and what happened here? He went undercover and spent months thwarting all kinds of mischief and also landed himself in the hospital twice. You can tell him to retire and relax, but All Might doesn’t know how to do that.”

Again, Toshinori offered a self aware shrug. “He’s right. I don’t.”

Mirai eyed his student. “You have a proposition.”

The younger man grinned. “I do. Part time work at Might Tower as Mr. Yagi the secretary. One or two days a week. We keep him in the loop of everything that’s happening and we can keep an eye on him in case he wanders off to find his own trouble again. On top of that, we get his hero license reinstated, but quietly. Officially, All Might will still be retired. Unofficially he’ll be a sidekick under the Lemillion agency and we can cover the insurance. Two reasons: first, if an incident like yesterday comes up, we don’t have the former number one running around in public doing vigilante work. Second, if something big ever comes up where we really could use All Might’s help, he can do it. Erm, your choice if you want your costume or just your underwear, Mr. Yagi.”

Toshinori turned an amused grin on the younger hero for the underwear jab. “I like that idea. I could still be useful to you guys like that.”

The concern was back and haunting Mirai’s eyes. “I can’t allow it. Using what remains of the quirk hurts you. I’ve seen it with my own eyes! I can see that whatever you did yesterday is still causing you pain today. I can’t have you intentionally hurting yourself and sanctioning it, All Might.”

Toshinori rested his hand on Mirai’s shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze to match the gentle smile he wore. Mirai was a good friend, if very over protective. “If yesterday proved anything, my friend, its that I’m going to do it no matter if you sanction it or not. Mirio is offering you a compromise that gives us both some control over how and when I use the quirk. Its a good plan.”

Mirai closed his eyes and exhaled deeply through his nose. “I’m not thrilled. But, it is an acceptable compromise in this case.”

Mirio clapped his hands. “Good! We’ll work out a schedule with you and the Midoriyas on when you can come in. Also, we’ll start the paper work about that hero license thing. In the mean time, there’s plenty of storage at the Tower if you want to move the rest of your belongings out of that apartment of yours and finally drop the lease.”

Toshinori tilted his head to the side. “I’m not moving back into Might Tower.”

“Obviously not. You live here now! Should update your paperwork to reflect the address change, you know?”

Mirai looked mildly confused. “We don’t need to schedule around the Midoriyas for the same reason we don’t need to move All Might’s belongings. He completed his work here, he is no longer an undercover butler.”

Mirio laughed. “Trust a people person on this one, Sir. At least right now? All Might isn’t going anywhere. Now I know where the house is and I can stop by to visit though!”

“Call ahead, kid. Mrs. Midoriya may hyperventilate if you see her in her pajamas again.”

--

Later that morning Tsukauchi called to let them know the search warrant had gone through and a Tokyo police team would be arriving that afternoon to do a full search of the house. Toshinrori sat with young Izuku and Inko on either side of him on the now spread out couch while the search was completed. It was invasive. Mr. Midoriya’s room and office were scowered, Mrs Midoriya’s office space and papers were equally looked through, the ambassador’s computer and the towers in the basement storage room were confinscated.

Toshinori had no doubt that Inko was struggling with the lack of privacy vs the vindication of having all of Hisahsi’s things finally gone through. The good news was Tsukauchi made very sure to have every bug, hidden camera, and not hidden camera in the house removed. He also offered help to Inko to have the recordings from the outdoor cameras routed to a service in her name only.

To distract them, Toshinori ruffled Izuku’s green curls and asked, “How would you feel about attending a new school next semester? One where teachers don’t treat you differently for not having a quirk.”

The little boy blinked. “There are schools that treat quirkless people the same as everyone else?”

“Oh,” Inko exclaimed as she pulled out her phone, “thank you for reminding me to look into that!”

--

Wednesday saw both mother and son returning to work and school respectively. Toshinori’s house cleaning chores doubled for having to go through and straighten everything the police had looked at and in. He also got a text from Tsukauchi requesting a follow up meeting with himself and Nezu at UA the next morning.

The former hero was, once again, the last to arrive to the meeting. Both the principle and the detective greeted him with a smile. Nezu started, “I have to say, Toshinori, well done on capturing the corrupted ambassador and managing to get so much information into police custody. The underwear was an interesting costume choice to do it in.”

Toshinori groaned. “The ambassador demanded fitted outfits for any butler that worked for him. Clothing that fits me doesn’t fit my alter ego well. So, when I called on the quirk, everything that couldn’t stretch just tore. I’m really glad everyone I know is enjoying the underwear heroics though.”

The detective held up a hand. “Woah, this was a conversation I knew needed to happen in person and not over the phone. Nezu knows you’re All Might too? I have a lot of questions. Starting with your pinky toes.”

After everything Tsukauchi and he had been through in the last several months, Toshinori knew this was one more person he owed the truth to. He filled the detective in about the quirk without ever naming One for All just as he had with the Midoriyas. Tsukauchi was rubbing his tired eyes. “That’s one hell of a story and a quirk. Nezu, you don’t seem surprised by any of this.”

The small statured principal smiled. “Of course not. All Might was my student here at UA many years ago.”

“You did say that. Failed to mention the All Might part before this, just the Yagi part. Same guy, different name I suppose. Anyway. As of right now, the Hero Public Safety Commission isn’t looking to press any vigilante charges agianst you, Yagi, for capturing Midoriya and his cohorts. That’s good.”

Nezu nodded, turning knowing eyes on Toshinori. “They had me leaning on one side and Might Tower seems to be leaning on their other side. The HPSC really had no choice in the matter. Rumor mill says the Lemillion agency is filing paperwork to reinstate your hero license. That’s wonderful. While you still have the ability to use that quirk, its cruel to ask you to step away from any work at all it could be useful in.”

Toshinori wanted to ask where the little chimera was while Mirai and Torino were up in arms about his retiring and disappearing completely last year. Which is about when he realized that asking Toshinori to take this undercover butler job had been Nezu’s way of not so subtly pointing all of this out for himself while also taking down a corrupted public figure. Nezu was the kind of guy who won all of his chess games for a reason. “My work will be limited. As far as the public knows, All Might is still retired.”

“Also for the best,” the principle agreed. “It sounds like the backlash of that quirk after your injury is quite debilitating.”

Tsukauchi looked him up and down. “How so?”

Toshinori grimaced. “Using the quirk causes pain like liquid fire all through me. The more I use it, the longer it hurts afterword.”

The detective nodded, looking thoughtful. “You looked pretty stiff on Tuesday. I just wrote it off as whatever you go for weekly medical appointments for. Those are real enough, I know that. As no one knows about All Might’s injury, I have to assume the fight that lead to it is being kept a tight secret. I have to ask, is whoever hurt you still a continuing threat?”

Toshinori appreciated the detective’s acute understanding of the situation and the brevity of the question. “No. The threat was neutralized.”

Tsukauchi’s eyes narrowed, clearly parsing those words for exactly what they meant. The former number one hero had removed or killed someone and it wasn’t noted in any official press or police paperwork. “Okay. Well, about our case. I am both surprised and not at all surprised to tell you that Midoriya kept all of his paperwork. Incriminating or otherwise. What the former butler took from his were highlights of an entire nine part book series. There are numerous charges being leveled at him. Including attempted manslaughter. I have no idea how he can get out from under all of this evidence and these charges, but I know he’ll try. We should be prepared for a long trial. If you can, you should stay living with the family. In case Midoriya has any lingering threats out there for them.”

“I, actually we, planned on that all ready. I’m remaining as their butler at least until the trial concludes and, hopefully, the ambassador gets several life sentences in prison.”

Nezu chimed in with a wave of his paw. “Now that there is such an overwhelming amount of evidence, I find myself in a position where I can offer a push to the right individuals to move things along a little faster and find a judge who has no reason to be lenient.”

Once again, Toshinori reminded himself to never make enemies of Nezu. The principal’s wealth, reach, and network would make him a terrifying opponent. The detective grinned. “After all of this, I’m glad to hear it.”

Tsukauchi turned back to the former hero. “This will sound odd, but I would like to ask if I can call you in the future for other cases. Your instincts are dead on. No surprise from the former number one with years of hero experience. There are times I could really use someone with your knowledge to consult with. No more undercover cases though, you absolutely get much too attached.”

Toshinori paused in surprise. He’d come to enjoy Tsukauchi’s company and humor in their months of working together and found himself quite flattered by the other man’s offer. “I would be honored to help you with any case you call about if I can. Also, Lemillion has asked me to work at Might Tower at least one day a week. Perhaps I can meet you in Tokyo for coffee and tea instead having you drive all the way to Musutafu?”

The detective’s smile eased the tired lines under his eyes. “I would like that.”

Nezu grinned that sharp toothed little grin of his. “Excellent. Toshinori does so much better when he has things to occupy his mind and time. He lives to help others. Speaking of tea, let me fetch you each a cup and tell you in detail how the legal end of the ambassador’s case will go.”

Toshinori and Tsukauchi cast each other an equally amused and trapped look as the principle turned away. There was no escaping this lecture.

--

It would take months even with Nezu’s help for the trial to complete. At Christmas, Toshinori went a little overboard buying both Inko and her son gifts and looking up recipes for a full multi course meal. Young Izuku declared it was the best Christmas ever. Early in January, Toshinori called his landlord about ending the lease on his apartment. Inko overheard the conversation.

“You still had the apartment. Of course you did, you said as much. This was meant to be an information gathering job and out. Now though, you’re canceling the lease?”

She looked remarkably hopeful for someone asking such a question. “It was set to end at the end of January anyway. I haven’t lived there in months and I don’t plan to in the near future. I’ll head over and move the rest of my things to Might Tower this weekend.”

“No you wont. You’ll move them here. You are aware of how much storage we have in the basement, yes? You live here, your belongings should be here too. Izuku and I will help you move them.”

There was that lack of end date on his employment here again. That blurring of lines on if there was supposed to be one. Toshinori graciously accepted her offer and the help moving. He made a weekend of it again for them and they both marveled at the sight of Tokyo in winter.

Inko insisted on going to every part of the trial she possibly could. She and Izuku were each rattled and crying after their respective calls to the witness stand. Mr. Midoriya had hired a ruthless shark of a lawyer that had no qualms about tearing into a story a six year old delivered. It was an ugly trial because of this. Even the best, or the worst in this case, of lawyers would be put in an untenable position by the sheer avalanche of evidence they had against Midoriya Hisashi.

During the time the trial was going, M & D Enterprises reached out directly to Inko. She found herself in with lawyers for them about the transfer of shares and asking her to come once a month to board meetings for input. She was overwhelmed, but surged forward in her determination to keep moving ahead.

Midoriya Hisashi was ultimately charged with multiple offenses. The judge sentenced him to a prison time that would amount to ninety years with no parole and no chance of shortening the length due to good behavior. The man’s reddish brown eyes glared at Inko and Toshinori as he was hauled away, the hate radiating off of him in waves.

The relief from Inko was palpable. She kept it together in the courtroom, but once they got to the parking lot she took young Izuku’s hands and danced around the car while laughing with him. They were free.

That left them with one problem though. One problem that he and the lady of the house had been avoiding since Hisashi’s capture.

--

Inko was as much aware the talk was coming as he was that night. She instructed Toshinori to tuck Izuku into bed while she boiled water for tea. As far as young Izuku was concerned, Toshinori was there to stay. He would be very upset depending on how this conversation went come the morning.

The younger woman surprised him by having the tea set at the kitchen counter where she was seated herself. She gestured at the stool beside her which Toshinori took with a nod of thanks. These talks tended to happen at the table, this was new. “Toshinori,” she began, “I really can’t begin to thank you enough for everything you’ve done for Izuku and I. You’ve been a friend, a confidant, a protector, and an excellent driver.”

This was where a ‘but,’ usually came into a conversation. The former hero issued it for her. “But, its time you hired a butler who actually knows how to do this job and actual household staff.”

The younger woman looked at him sideways while tapping her fingers against her tea mug. “You know, this butler I’ve had the chance to train for myself is the best one I’ve ever had. I don’t want to replace him at all. But, I understand if All Might doesn’t have plans to be a butler for the rest of his retirement.”

Toshinori felt a flush rise up his cheeks. Surprise and embarrassment warring in him. He met Inko’s green eyes with a confused look. “Are you… offering to let me continue on as your butler? Even now? Even with what you know about me? Knowing you’ll need to share me with Lemillion as well?”

She looked back at him oddly. “Am I offering? Toshinori, I would be begging if I didn’t think the very idea of asking All Might to be a butler for real and not just as an undercover position would be an insult to the number one hero!”

“Former number one hero,” he corrected for the umpteenth time. “Its no insult and you don’t have to beg. I would not have believed it myself last year, but I really enjoy this work. An entire job dedicated to caring for wonderful people like yourself and young Izuku? I would be a fool to ask to leave this. I don’t know how well I’ll do as a boss to other staff in the future, however.”

“I don’t intend to hire other staff at this time. Its too much to ask of one person, just as it was before, but I’ll make sure the schedule is less rigorous. Many of the duties don’t need to be completed every week. Maybe someday, in the distant future, when it looks like you need help, I’ll hire a maid. Not now though. Its nice here with just the three of us. I’ll increase your wages immediately. And order a king sized bed for you. I should have done that ages ago.”

The butler, because that’s exactly what he was agreeing to be for the long term, blushed again. “I assure you, money is no concern.”

“No, it isn’t. You are going to be the sole household staff for the largest shareholder of M & D Enterprises, however, and your wages should reflect that.”

“That’s, ah, yes I suppose so.”

The woman reached over and lay her hand on his wrist, looking earnest. “I needed to know if you were staying here with Izuku and I before I asked more.”

Toshinori froze, uncertain of what else she might ask. “Which is?”

“As you know, with Izuku’s new school I have you down as his second emergency contact and guardian in case I cannot be contacted.”

“Yes.”

“I’d like to legally make you a second guardian for Izuku. You would be able to take him for doctors appointments and give permission for treatment. You would be his medical secondary emergency contact. Also, if anything should ever happen to me, Izuku would become yours to care for.”

The surprise that took the older man sent him into a coughing fit. Inko was instantly patting his back and soothing him. Once he had it under control, the butler noted, “I would be overjoyed to except all of those responsibilities. But, Inko, you’re so much younger than me. There will be no need for me to ever be young Izuku’s only care giver.”

“There are no guarantees in this world. Humor me, Toshinori. I am a worried mother who wants to know my son will have someone there who will love him and care for him like a parent should if for some reason I can’t do that for him.”

“You know that I would. Without question. You should consider what happens come a time when you re marry. Perhaps that’s a role better suited to a future husband?”

The woman laughed. “Mr. Imaginary doesn’t exist right now. If and when he does, he’ll have to accept that you will be in charge of my son should the worst happen. There is no other man in the world who can be the father Izuku needs and respects than you. You’ve slid right into the role for my little boy. He would never accept anyone less than his Mr. Yagi and All Might.”

Toshinori chuckled. “Well then. I agree. Does this mean we’re co parenting now?”

“Please,” Inko snorted, “We have been since the first week you started working here.”

“Ah. Fair. You sent me to tuck him into bed tonight to try to guilt me into staying here, didn’t you? Sneaky.”

“Effective?”

“Very. You know I can never say no to him.”

Inko laughed. “Which is a little bit of a problem we need to work on. Izuku is not above taking advantage of that.”

Toshinori turned his head to glance toward the couch on reflex. “I’ve noticed.”

Inko giggled and tapped her fingers against his wrist. “Now that we have the heavy stuff out of the way. On a scale of one to ten, how interested do you think Lemillion would be in dating someone like me? And what can I do to get you to put a bug in his ear about my interest in him?”

Toshinori blushed from his ears to his feet. “No. Absolutely not!”

“Come on. I’ve never had a wingman before and you are positioned perfectly for the job.”

“No, ma’am. I know too much about both of you for that arrangement to end well for me in any way.”

“Ah hah, so I do have a chance!”

Toshinori dropped his head on to the counter to the sound of Inko’s continued giggles. “Oh, good Lord. What did I sign up for?”