Chapter Text
The fluorescent lights hummed softly overhead, their thin electric buzz seeping into the bones of the room. They cast a pale, sterile glow over the cluttered desk inside Sir Nighteye’s agency—too clean for a space this overworked, too clinical for a man who rarely allowed himself rest. The sound never changed. Constant. Hypnotic.
White noise for the chronically exhausted.
A lullaby for men who refused to sleep.
Papers rose in precarious towers across the desk. Some leaned at dangerous angles, others sagged beneath their own weight, threatening collapse if so much as a draft passed through the room. Hero reports mingled with quirk analyses, handwritten notes, half-filled folders, and sticky tabs marking urgent matters that had long since stopped feeling urgent. To anyone else, it would have appeared to be chaos.
To Mirai Sasaki, it was an order.
Or rather—it had been.
Normally, Mirai would have found comfort in this controlled disorder. Every document had a purpose. Every note existed for a reason. He knew exactly where to reach when he needed something, even if the logic behind it made sense only to him.
Tonight, none of it mattered.
Mirai—known to the public as Sir Nighteye—leaned back in his ergonomic chair. It had been custom-made, engineered to endure long hours of vigilance, foresight, and relentless planning. A chair built for nights like this, when the world slept, and Mirai Sasaki did not.
His fingers scrolled absently through the familiar interface of heroesofourown.org, the soft blue glow of the monitor reflecting faintly in the lenses of his glasses. He wasn’t really reading. His eyes moved on autopilot while his mind drifted elsewhere.
It was his guilty pleasure.
A private indulgence he rarely acknowledged—even to himself. One he justified as research: monitoring public perception of heroes, observing how civilians mythologised them, reshaped them, softened their edges. Fanfiction, after all, revealed what people wanted heroes to be, not what they actually were.
At least, that was the excuse.
Why do I do this? Mirai wondered, a faint warmth creeping up the back of his neck.
Research, he told himself firmly. Research into narrative framing. Public sentiment. The cultural construction of heroism. Myth-making as a social phenomenon.
Yes. That sounded sufficiently intellectual.
But deep down—beneath the rationalisations and professional detachment—he knew the truth.
It was All Might.
It was always All Might.
The Symbol of Peace loomed large in Mirai’s thoughts—larger than life, larger than reason, larger than the careful distance Mirai had tried to maintain after their falling out. Even now, in moments of quiet when he allowed himself the dangerous luxury of reflection, his mind strayed to what might have been. Conversations left unfinished. Choices made too late. Paths that had diverged long ago, beyond the reach of foresight alone.
He clicked through his bookmarks, skimming summaries with a practised, critical eye.
Most of them were trash.
Overblown romances dripping with melodrama. Absurd crossovers that ignored internal logic entirely. Stories that twisted personalities beyond recognition and butchered motivations for the sake of cheap angst. Mirai dismissed them quickly, lips pressing into a thin, unimpressed line.
But occasionally—rarely—there was a gem.
A story that understood Toshinori Yagi. His quiet resolve. The way exhaustion lived permanently in his bones. His stubborn, infuriating refusal to surrender hope, even as his body failed him.
Tonight, Mirai wanted something specific.
Something small. Restrained. Intimate.
A story that explored All Might’s vulnerabilities without turning them into spectacle.
His fingers hovered over the search bar.
On a whim—perhaps morbid curiosity, perhaps an itch of foresight he couldn’t quite suppress—he typed:
“All Might’s secret identity.”
The page refreshed.
One title immediately caught his eye.
My Hero Academia.
Mirai frowned.
It was an odd choice. Plain. Almost aggressively unremarkable. No excessive punctuation. No florid subtitle promising heartbreak, romance, or redemption. It lacked the dramatic flair that usually accompanied popular works in the fandom.
Curious despite himself, he clicked.
His eyes skimmed the summary.
“In a world where quirks rule, a quirkless boy dreams of becoming a hero. But when he meets his idol, everything changes.”
Cliché. Painfully so.
Mirai almost closed the tab.
Then he noticed the tags.
- Quirkless protagonist
- Mentorship
- Hidden wounds
Mirai leaned forward.
Against his better judgment, he began to read.
The opening paragraphs unfolded smoothly—too smoothly. The prose was clean, restrained, free of the excess that plagued most amateur writing. The pacing was deliberate. Grounded.
Then Mirai’s breath hitched.
A quirkless boy.
Izuku Midoriya.
Mirai stilled, fingers freezing on the mouse.
The name matched the author’s former username.
A self-insert? he thought skeptically.
But the story continued.
The sludge villain.
All Might’s rescue.
The moment of deflation.
The skeletal form.
The injury.
A battle—five years ago.
A time limit.
Mirai’s grip tightened around the mouse, knuckles whitening.
And then—
One For All.
“No.”
The word slipped from his lips before he could stop it.
His hand froze.
This wasn’t fiction.
This was—
Impossible.
His heart began to pound as he scrolled faster, eyes racing across the screen. The boy rushed forward to save his bully. The reckless courage. The moment of choice.
All Might is offering the quirk.
Passing it on.
“How?” Mirai whispered, his thoughts spiralling. How does this exist?
He checked the publication date.
Four years ago.
Chapters: 536.
Completed: Two years ago.
Hits: 156.
Thank God.
It hadn’t spread.
Niche didn’t even begin to describe it.
Mirai shoved his chair back and stood abruptly. The wheels squealed against the floor, painfully loud in the silent office.
This wasn’t a leak.
It was a blueprint.
One For All—laid bare in plain text. Hidden in plain sight, disguised as harmless fanfiction.
But who would believe it?
Unless they already knew.
He needed to act.
Now.
But who could he call?
Gran Torino.
Sorahiko Torino was the obvious choice—the bridge between him and Toshinori. Gruff. Stubborn. Disrespectful to authority in all the ways that mattered. But trusted. Someone who could force this conversation without immediately shattering everything they had sacrificed to protect that secret.
Mirai’s fingers trembled as he dialled. The phone felt cool and solid against his ear, grounding him.
It rang twice.
“Gran Torino,” came the raspy voice. “This better be good, Nighteye. I’m in the middle of my taiyaki.”
“Sorahiko,” Mirai said, keeping his voice steady despite the storm in his chest. “It’s about Toshinori.”
A pause.
“…Go on.”
“One For All,” Mirai said quietly. “It’s out there.”
Silence.
Then—a sharp intake of breath.
“What do you mean, out there?”
“Online,” Mirai replied. “In a story. But it’s accurate. Too accurate. We need to meet. Now.”
Gran Torino muttered something under his breath—something involving kids and the internet—but Mirai heard the shift beneath the grumbling.
Instincts.
“All right,” the old hero said at last. “I’ll drag the big oaf over here. But you owe me details, boy.”
The line went dead.
Mirai exhaled slowly and sank back into his chair, the weight of the moment settling heavily across his shoulders.
Toshinori…
It had been five years.
Would he even come?
_-_-_
Five years ago, the air inside the hospital room had been thick—heavy with antiseptic, metal, and something far worse.
Regret.
All Might—Toshinori Yagi—lay motionless beneath stark white sheets, his towering frame reduced to a fragile outline. Bandages wrapped his torso, arms, and face, layer upon layer concealing wounds that might never truly heal. Clear tubes snaked from his veins, machines humming softly at his bedside, each mechanical beep a quiet reminder that even symbols could break.
Mirai stood beside the bed, hands clenched tightly at his sides.
Foresight still burned behind his eyes.
He had seen it.
Yagi’s death.
Not glorious.
Not heroic.
No triumphant final stand beneath a cheering sky.
Just blood. Torn flesh. A body pushed past its final limit.
“You have to stop,” Mirai pleaded, his voice cracking despite his effort to remain composed. “I’ve seen it. Your end. And it isn’t heroic—it’s pointless.”
Yagi turned his head slightly. His blue eyes were dulled with pain, but the stubborn resolve behind them remained untouched. Even now—even broken—he was defiant to the core.
“Mirai…” he murmured. “I can’t. The world needs All Might. One For All… it has to continue.”
“But you won’t,” Mirai shot back, stepping closer. “Not like this. You’re dying.” His hands trembled as his fists tightened. “Pass it on. Retire. Live.”
A weak smile tugged at Yagi’s gaunt features—an expression painfully familiar.
“I choose my path,” he said softly. “And if it leads there… so be it.”
Something inside Mirai snapped.
The argument escalated. Words sharpened, hurled like blades meant to wound rather than persuade. Mirai accused him of recklessness—of ego masquerading as sacrifice. Yagi accused Mirai of cowardice, of abandoning duty, of turning away while the world still burned.
Neither yielded.
They parted in silence—one heavier, more violent than any shouted insult.
A rift wider than the wound carved into Yagi’s side.
After that, there were no calls.
No visits.
Only distance.
And the relentless parade of news reports—All Might standing tall, All Might smiling, All Might winning again and again. Each broadcast twisted something deep in Mirai’s gut, equal parts relief and dread.
In the years that followed, Mirai buried himself in work.
He built his agency from the ground up. Mentored heroes like Bubble Girl and Centipeder. Became efficient. Professional. Detached.
But the fanfiction?
That was different.
It was his quiet, shameful way of staying connected. Of watching All Might from afar, refracted through the dreams and projections of strangers.
Fanboy, he scolded himself bitterly.
And yet… he kept reading.
Yagi, meanwhile, searched for a successor.
Quietly.
Desperately.
One For All grew heavier with each passing year. His time limit shrank—three hours now, down from what had once felt limitless. He trained alone, forcing a broken body to obey commands it no longer wanted to follow.
Nana Shimura’s words haunted him.
Find someone worthy.
Candidates came and went. Talented. Powerful. Impressive.
None of them fit.
Maybe that Mirio boy, though he hadn’t met him yet.
Then, a week ago—
The sludge villain.
Chaos in the streets. Screams. Panic.
And a boy.
Quirkless.
Charging in like a fool.
Green hair. Freckles. Eyes blazing with reckless determination.
“I couldn’t just stand by!” the kid had shouted, even as the villain engulfed him again.
Yagi had moved on instinct.
After the rescue, he deflated—too fast, too careless—his true form revealed in plain sight.
The boy screamed.
But he didn’t recoil.
Didn’t run.
He stared.
Then he started talking—rambling, analysing, pouring out dreams of heroism with unfiltered sincerity.
He’s like me, Yagi had realised.
Like who he had been.
Before everything.
Before crushed dreams.
Before telling another young man—coldly, cruelly—that such hopes were impossible.
Training began soon after.
Takoba Beach.
Mountains of trash. Rusted appliances. Endless labour beneath the sun.
The boy hauled it all with stubborn grit, hands blistered, muscles screaming, never once complaining.
And now—
Now there was this call.
“Toshinori,” Gran Torino barked over the phone. “Nighteye’s place. Emergency. Don’t ask—just go.”
Yagi’s stomach twisted painfully.
Five years.
Bad terms didn’t begin to cover it.
Still, Gran Torino’s tone left no room for refusal.
Yagi transformed, muscle swelling, posture straightening as he leapt across the rooftops. The wind tore at his cape, city lights blurring beneath his feet.
What could be so urgent…
That it dragged the past—kicking and screaming—into the present?
_-_-_
Gran Torino arrived first.
His small frame moved like a cannonball given human shape—compact, dense, and packed with barely restrained violence. Power coiled beneath every step, held in check only by decades of experience and a temperament that favoured blunt force over finesse.
He didn’t bother knocking.
The door flew open under a sharp kick, slamming hard against the wall with a splintering crack that echoed down the hallway.
“Nighteye!” he barked. “Spill it.”
Mirai barely flinched. If anything, the outburst seemed to pass right through him, his attention already fixed elsewhere. He merely inclined his head and gestured toward the conference room.
“Soon,” he said evenly. “When he arrives.”
Gran snorted, clearly unimpressed, but followed. His sharp, veteran eyes swept the agency with automatic precision—cataloguing exits, blind spots, anything out of place.
They snagged almost immediately on the still-open browser tab glowing on Mirai’s desk.
Bookmarks.
All Might / Sir Nighteye.
Romantic subpage.
Gran paused.
Just for a fraction of a second.
His lips twitched.
Kid’s still pining, he thought dryly. The Internet’s full of that slash nonsense.
He said nothing.
This wasn’t the time.
The minutes that followed stretched long and uncomfortable, heavy with tension and unspoken questions. The hum of the fluorescent lights seemed louder now, filling the silence where conversation should have been.
Then—
A knock.
Mirai straightened and crossed the room, steps measured, deliberate. He opened the door.
Toshinori Yagi stood there in his deflated form.
The suit hung loosely from his frame, fabric draping over sharp angles and hollowed lines that looked far too fragile to belong to the former Symbol of Peace. His shoulders slumped, posture weary—as if the weight of the world, of expectations and failure and time, had finally settled where it belonged.
Their eyes met.
Blue.
Green.
The air between them tightened, dense with five years of unresolved history and words that had never found a voice.
“Mirai,” Yagi said at last.
His voice was rough—worn thin by strain, age, and too many nights spent coughing blood into sinks.
“Toshinori,” Mirai replied, stepping aside. “Thank you for coming.”
Yagi entered slowly, his gaze flicking toward Gran Torino. The old hero shrugged.
“Don’t look at me,” Gran said. “He’s the one with the bombshell.”
They gathered around the conference table. Monitors flickered to life, casting harsh light across faces drawn tight with tension. Mirai clasped his hands together, fingers interlaced so tightly his knuckles paled, and cleared his throat.
“Someone,” he began, choosing each word with surgical care, “has posted the secret of One For All online.”
Yagi’s eyes widened.
A violent cough seized him without warning. His body folded in on itself, shoulders shaking as he struggled for breath. When he finally straightened, blood speckled the white glove pressed to his mouth.
“Agh—wha—what did you say?” Panic cracked through his voice, raw and unmistakable. His hands trembled despite his effort to steady them.
“As you heard,” Mirai continued, calm but edged with urgency. “Fortunately, the method of publication affords us plausible deniability. Unless someone already knows the truth, it is easily dismissed as fiction. As imagination.”
Gran stepped forward, scowl deepening. “What the hell does that mean, Nighteye? Get to the point. We don’t have time for this.”
“Very well.” Mirai nodded once and turned the monitor toward them. “Are either of you familiar with a website called heroesofourown.org?”
Both men shook their heads in unison, confusion plain on their faces.
Mirai sighed.
A faint blush crept up his neck, just visible above the collar of his suit.
“It is a popular website where fans publish fictional stories about heroes,” he admitted. “Fanfiction, to be precise. I… am an avid reader.”
He looked down, clearly embarrassed.
He didn’t specify which hero.
He didn’t need to.
Yagi blinked, surprise flickering across his face—then softening into something dangerously close to fondness.
Still a fanboy, he thought despite himself. Even after everything.
“A-anyway,” Mirai continued quickly, straightening and regaining composure. “I was searching for a well-written story about you, All Might. Most are… intolerable. But a few are passable. During my search for something more niche—don’t look at me like that, Yagi, I have never denied being your fanboy—I encountered a story titled My Hero Academia.”
He pulled it up on the screen, text glowing starkly in the dim room.
“In this story, One For All is revealed,” Mirai said. “It follows a quirkless boy who dreams of becoming a hero and is relentlessly bullied. You save him from a villain, but your time limit expires, exposing your weakened form and the injury that caused it—though All For One is not named.”
Yagi’s breath caught painfully in his throat.
“There are additional details,” Mirai continued. “But the first chapter concludes with you offering One For All to the boy after he recklessly rushes in to save his bully from the same villain.”
Silence slammed down on the room.
Yagi’s face drained of what little colour remained.
Gran Torino’s eyes narrowed to razor-thin slits.
The wound.
The limit.
One For All.
“How?” Gran muttered, the word sharp and dangerous.
“Well…” Yagi exhaled shakily. “Shit.”
The curse sounded wrong on his tongue—awkward, unfamiliar—but too accurate to bother correcting.
Gran broke the silence. “Who wrote it? And don’t tell me you haven’t already figured that out.”
“I have,” Mirai replied. “It was simpler than expected. Given who he is, that alone is troubling.”
He switched tabs.
A profile photo filled the screen.
Green hair.
Freckles.
Wide, earnest eyes far too young to be staring down the barrel of destiny.
“Meet Izuku Midoriya,” Mirai said. “A fourteen-year-old, officially quirkless boy who somehow knows one of the most closely guarded secrets in the country—and chose to reveal it through fanfiction.”
Gran leaned closer, accidentally catching sight of the still-open bookmark tab.
All Might / Sir Nighteye. Romantic.
He suppressed a smirk.
Kid’s got it bad, he thought. But now’s really not the time.
Yagi stared at the screen, frozen.
“How old,” he asked slowly, carefully, as if afraid of the answer, “was he when he started writing it?”
Mirai checked the dates. “Ten. The story has been online for four years. It has fewer than three hundred views, despite being five hundred and thirty-six chapters long. It was completed two years ago.”
Yagi swallowed hard.
“Thank God,” he murmured. “Because I started training him to be my successor a week ago—after a sludge villain incident.”
The room went completely still.
“…”
“…”
Gran exhaled sharply. “Well,” he said flatly, “either the kid has an undetected precognition quirk… or he’s a time traveller.”
Yagi’s thoughts spiralled.
Izuku.
The sludge villain.
The reckless charge.
The desperate plea.
Every detail aligned too perfectly.
Is this fate, he wondered, dread coiling tight in his gut, or something far worse?
_-_-_
Somewhere in Musutafu, a green-haired boy sneezed violently.
“Ah—choo!”
Izuku Midoriya barely managed to turn his head in time. The sound echoed faintly across the open stretch of Takoba Beach as he scrubbed at his nose with the sleeve of his already dirt-streaked shirt. He blinked rapidly, eyes watering, waiting for the lingering tickle to fade.
It didn’t.
The rusted refrigerator strapped awkwardly across his back wobbled with the motion, its corroded weight biting deep into his shoulders. The straps dug into skin already rubbed raw, each step forward sending a dull, rhythmic throb through his muscles as he trudged across the trash-strewn sand.
The sun hung low in the sky, bleeding orange and gold across the horizon. Long shadows stretched over the polluted shoreline, winding through heaps of broken appliances, cracked plastic, twisted metal—decades of forgotten debris left to rot. Nearby, the sea whispered, waves lapping against the shore, carrying the sharp tang of salt that mixed unpleasantly with rust and something sour Izuku couldn’t quite place.
He sniffed again.
“…Weird,” he muttered. “It’s not allergy season.”
But that wasn’t what bothered him.
Not really.
Ever since he’d woken up that morning—a week ago now, the day he met All Might—a strange, nagging sensation had clung to him. An itch at the back of his mind, just out of reach. The kind that made his thoughts stumble, that left him with the unsettling feeling that he’d forgotten something important… or worse, that something had already happened without his realising it.
The feeling had only grown stronger as the day wore on.
Especially now.
His thoughts drifted back, unbidden, to that day.
The day everything changed.
The day he met All Might.
Why does everything feel… familiar? Izuku wondered, brow furrowing as he shifted his grip on the refrigerator straps. Like I’ve lived this before?
The thought sent a shiver down his spine.
He shook his head hard, green curls bouncing. No. That’s stupid. That doesn’t make any sense. Letting out a sharp huff, he staggered forward and dumped the refrigerator onto the growing pile. The metallic crash rang out across the beach, vibrating through his arms and straight into his bones.
His arms screamed in protest.
His back burned, muscles trembling as they fought to keep him upright.
Sweat dripped down his face, stinging his eyes and carving salty tracks along his cheeks.
But he didn’t stop.
All Might’s training was brutal—far harsher than anything Izuku had imagined when he’d first been told to clean a beach. There were no shortcuts. No mercy. No room for excuses. Every day pushed him past what he thought were his limits, forcing him to confront just how weak he’d been.
How fragile.
And yet—
It was worth it.
Every blister that split open and healed again. Every ache lingered long after he collapsed into bed. Every moment, his vision blurred, his lungs burned, and the thought I can’t do this anymore crept in uninvited.
One For All.
The words tightened his chest.
Me? A hero?
The idea still felt unreal—too big, too precious, like it might shatter if he held it too tightly. Excitement bubbled up inside him, bright and dizzying, tangled with a fear so sharp it almost hurt to breathe.
He flexed his arms, wincing at the soreness.
But there was strength there now.
Real strength.
More than yesterday.
More than last week.
Proof that he was changing—even if he didn’t fully understand how, or why the world suddenly felt just a little out of alignment, as though it had shifted without telling him.
“Just… keep going,” Izuku whispered to himself, voice rough but steady. “You’ve got this.”
He straightened, breathing hard, eyes lifting to the endless stretch of trash still waiting to be cleared. The task loomed impossibly large, the work unfinished, the goal distant—
But for the first time in his life, that distance didn’t feel insurmountable.
Prove you’re worthy.
Unseen by him, far beyond Takoba Beach—
Distant eyes had already begun to turn his way.
_-_-_
Back at the agency, the three of them drifted closer to the monitor without consciously deciding to.
The glow of the screen washed over their faces in harsh, unforgiving light, carving deep shadows into every hard line and exhausted crease. No one bothered to sit anymore. Comfort had become irrelevant—there was no space for it beneath the sheer weight of what they were reading.
Yagi swallowed hard.
“What else,” he asked quietly, his voice trembling despite his effort to steady it, “is in the story?”
Mirai scrolled down the chapter list.
His eyes widened.
Then widened further.
“…An attack on the USJ because—” His breath caught sharply. “Holy shit.”
Gran Torino stiffened at once, instincts snapping into place. “We need to warn Nezu.”
At the same time—
“What else?” Yagi demanded, panic breaking through his carefully maintained composure.
Mirai’s fingers flew across the mouse now, scrolling faster as adrenaline flooded his system. Lines of text blurred together, revelation piling atop revelation, each more catastrophic than the last.
“A fight with the Hero Killer,” Mirai read aloud, his voice tightening. “Stain. Hosu City. And—”
He stopped.
Completely.
“…All For One is alive?!”
Gran’s head snapped up so fast it was almost violent.
“WHAT?”
Yagi echoed him a heartbeat later, horror raw and unfiltered.
“WHAT?!”
The word hung in the air like a live grenade.
All For One.
Defeated.
Buried.
Finished.
Or so they had believed.
Mirai kept reading, throat dry as the story unfolded like a prophecy written with far too much precision to ignore. Chapters stacked atop one another, events flowing in merciless sequence—detailing incidents that hadn’t happened yet, but felt terrifyingly inevitable.
The USJ.
Villains warping into a training facility that was supposed to be secure. Students scattered like prey. Teachers overwhelmed. And the Nomu—grotesque, engineered abominations—created with a single purpose.
To kill All Might.
Hosu City.
The Hero Killer.
Stain’s ideology carved into flesh and headlines alike, his convictions bleeding into the public consciousness alongside the blood of his victims.
And then—
Kamino.
All For One’s return.
A public battlefield.
A clash so catastrophic it shattered buildings, beliefs, and the very image of peace Japan had clung to for decades.
Mirai’s thoughts spiralled, logic and foresight colliding violently in his mind.
If this is precognition…
Then they could stop it.
His jaw tightened.
But the boy.
Izuku Midoriya.
How does he know?
Time travel? Impossible.
A quirk? Undetected—somehow invisible to every scan, every medical record, every assessment he got?
Or something worse?
Gran Torino began pacing, short, sharp steps snapping against the floor. The sound echoed through the conference room—frantic in a way his gruff demeanour rarely allowed.
“Nana’s legacy,” he muttered. “Toshinori’s wound. If that bastard’s alive…” He stopped abruptly, teeth grinding. “We’re screwed without preparation.”
He turned sharply, eyes hard.
“We grab the kid,” Gran said. “Interrogate him.”
Mirai stiffened.
“Gently,” Gran added after a beat, jaw tightening. “But we need answers.”
Yagi nodded slowly—but doubt flickered across his face, unmistakable.
“He’s innocent,” he said quietly. “Eager. Kind.” His fists clenched at his sides. “But this knowledge…It’s too precise.”
He looked back at the screen—at the words that had already rewritten the future in his mind.
“First,” Yagi said firmly, resolve settling into his voice, “we read everything. Every detail. Every deviation. Every warning.”
They dove back in.
Hours bled together as night stretched on, the agency lights burning long past when they should have gone dark. Page after page. Chapter after chapter.
Foresight met fiction.
And the world tilted on its axis.
But it didn’t stop there.
I-Island.
The aftermath of Kamino.
The Yakuza.
Humarise.
The Meta Liberation Army.
Even whispers of an Italian mafia, threaded into the margins of a future that refused to stay contained.
The shape of tomorrow sprawled before them in plain text—inevitable, intricate, and horrifyingly human.
And the most terrifying question of all lingered unspoken between them—
Now that they knew…
What would change?