Chapter Text
Now, personally speaking, the Admin knew his choices were, shall we say, less than ideal. Hindsight is a bitch after all. At the time, with the information he had, the Admin had made the best choices he possibly could. He didn't regret his choices, per say, but he could regret some of the outcomes.
Like this one, for example.
This morning, he had been twenty-seven, one of the last people left standing, who had already passed on his legacy to the now-tenth-user. He assumed that her quirk had spiked once OfA hit her system, and, in a panic, she had used her quirk on him. Nothing strange there. Eri used Rewind on him sometimes daily. He was always overdoing things, and his successor was always getting on him to rest more.
The problem, he noted dryly, was that he was somehow in a middle school classroom with a teacher calling him out for wanting to attend UA. The whole class started jeering at him, but he wasn't affected, more annoyed than anything. Last time, he had stuttered and apologized his way through the mess. But just barely a teenager Midoriya Izuku and the well trained, hero-student-turned-vigilante-turned-villian-turned-vigiliante-again weren't the same people. He wasn't exactly intimidated by a bunch of pubescent brats.
What was more interesting, he noted, was that he had One for All currently, even though, by this point, he was pretty sure it was supposed to be with Yagi. He wasn't sure if there was suddenly two copies of the quirk, or if his own would fade back into the embers it should have been, after bestowing the quirk to his successor. If he still had OfA, then...
He pictured his own quirk, the one that had been dormant for too long because he didn't know there were requirements for it. For the longest time, he thought that he was quirkless. He had never questioned anything about his diagnosis because why would he? Yet, it turned out that he was part of an experiment run for All for One. The man wanted to know what would happen if someone fully denied their quirk to the point of never activating it. He was just one of a hundred unfortunate souls with a complex activation requirement. It had taken being pointed out to him, and months of learning, to reach his quirk, and even longer for him to be able to turn code into solid objects.
His eyes glowed harshly, even under the bright classroom lights as the data solidified in his closed hand. A few seconds later, his quirk was being so stubborn, and in his now opened palm laid a, what Eri called, data-dagger.
He stroked the blade, ignoring how the classroom went silent around him, and snickered to himself. Yes, he still had access to his quirk. Lv3 was still active, meaning Hackers Code was still inhanced by OfA. Perfect.
He clapped his palms together, vanishing the dagger, before looking up, keeping his face as innocent as he possibly could. "Who knows," he said, fake cheer dripping from his tone, "stranger things have happened."
With that, he started packing up his school supplies, man that was sad, and headed out, ignoring the screaming of Bakugo behind him. He remembered this day, barely, but he knew enough to know he didn't have the self restraint to deal with the brats.
Instead, he had a plan to make, facts to gather, and an old mentor to question.
Within minutes, he was back at the bridge, sitting calmly on the disgusting ground, and next to the sewer entrance. With a notebook in slightly better condition than last time, he waited, working on trying to organize his messed up brain.
Firstly, and most importantly, he worked with his quirks, testing exactly how much of his power had come back with him. He still had One for All, but it wasn't as stable as it should have been. He could feel it, moving sluggishly, yet powerfully, under his skin. He didn't dare to try and use it, not yet, but he did attempt to call on the other quirks. Superpower itself was a very, very bad idea with his thin noodle arms, but Blackwhip, on the other hand, still responded just as easily as always. He'd always had enough anger for the quirk to latch onto, and enough practice controlling it. Danger Sense had been blaring at him for the last ten minutes, so he wasn't worried about that one, and Smokescreen had always liked him, well, mostly. Float was almost impossible, as per usual, and the others worked with varying degrees of success.
It was weird, he knew he had the majority of his power, but not... not all of it. He theorized that what was missing for him was what All Might had. He knew that the All Might he had met functioned at around 25% of OfA, at best, usually working in the 15-20% range. Of course, for him, All Might's 25% was more like 5%, thanks Stockpile. They had the worst time trying to figure out how much exactly the quirk had amplified back then, even with his own successor, his 25% percent was her own 5%. She had the worst accidents, but, considering the time they lived in he thought it was hilarious. Speaking of, he wasn't sure if either All Might, or himself could pass on the quirk, except to each other. Maybe. Big maybe.
Oh, this was a mess. Thanks, kid.
Would it be cruel to wish she was here instead?
Actually, yes. Fuck, she was like five or six, at most, right now. Which meant, she was with Overhaul. Double fuck.
Could he save her himself? Like this? He kinda... doubted it. Sure, he was powerful, he was the Admin, the one who was able to out think any problem, but if he couldn't even use his quirks, well, not fully, how could he rescue her?
Supposing he did manage to, then what? Go home and introduce her as his successor to his mother? Ah, nope.
Fuck, now he had to decide which side to help again, didn't he? He really, really didn't want to deal with heroes again. All of them were pieces of shit, except for Yagi, who was and always would be, his favorite person ever.
Did he really have a choice though? When he sided against the heroes, the NOMU destroyed pretty much everything. No one could control them, and no one could tame them. They were too self sufficient, and had gained the ability to breed successfully, getting more and more powerful.
He knew that there was only a fraction of the world's population still alive in his time, and knew that part of the reason why... well, was him.
He didn't regret it. No, the Admin knew better than that. He never regretted his actions, only the results of them. Because the HSPC needed to be torn down. They had needed to stop being so divisive, saying people had heroic or villainous quirks only damaged the population. People needed to be able to help others without fearing legal repercussions. That wasn't even including the shit they did to Hawks. Or, well, were doing to Hawks. Fuck. Yet another issue to figure out later.
And UA wasn't any better. He thought it was, when he was actually a middle schooler. But now, he knew better. Nedzu was a paranoid piece of shit that loathed humanity and never missed a chance to destroy someone, even if they were a student under his care, who had done nothing more than analyzing quirks. Aizawa was weak willed, too dependent on Nedzu to actually think, no matter how logical he might have been.
Fuck, all of the teachers had turned their backs on him for something he had been doing since he was four. It was made worse when he realized Nedzu knew about OfA, and knew exactly where his quirk had come from, yet he allowed everyone to abuse an innocent.
No, he hated heroes, loathed them, and honestly, he liked the Villians much better. Shigaraki was a lot smarter than people thought, especially after AfO was killed, he was brutal, efficient, and still such a damn geek. Kurogiri was always respectful, even if he was creepy as hell, since he was, well, the original NOMU. Dabi was sarcastic to the death, and Toga was fun to be around. They were, in a word, nice.
Sure, they had been suspicious, but they had come to him after being expelled. They had healed him, looked after him, and helped him become something better. How sad was it that the Villians treated someone who wanted nothing more than to be a hero better than the heroes themselves did.
It wasn't an immediate thing, he considered himself a neutral power for the majority of the last decade and a half, but there was a few years when he went too deep into villiany, to the point that the League of Villians themselves told him to calm the fuck down. Which, he admitted to himself, had been weird as fuck. An intervention from the League of Villians, asking him to tone it down by at least half of the insanity.
If there was one thing the Admin knew, it was that he was always effective, be it as a villian or vigilante, he was damn good at what he did. Yes, a part of him did wonder if he would have been just as good of a hero as he was a villian, but, there was nothing to be done at the time. Yes, part of him wondered if any of his classmates would have had different fates, if he could have, or would have, helped any of them live.
To be fair, he didn't loathe all of them. Tokoyami was cool, so was Monoma. Both of them were interesting, partly because they were wanna be underground heroes, but mostly because, well, they were less likely to judge based on stupid shit. Fumi and Neito were cool, for heroes. The rest of them? Or, well, the ones that made it to graduation? Not so much.
Poor, poor Aizawa.
His once hell class of 1-A, with twenty potential heroes became something much, much worse. One expelled and falsely accused of being a traitor. Two actual traitors. Five dead before the end of second year. Another three gone before graduation. Nine of them had made it to graduation, but only six of them were actually able to go pro.
Poor, poor Eraserhead.
Not that any of them actually graduated, oh no. There were no hero schools left by the time he was done with them.
To his credit, he never went after his old classmates, no matter how tempting it was. He was better than that. He'd had the chance, several of them on fact.
And yet, they too had only been children at the time. How could he consider himself a neutral force if he was judging others for decisions they had nothing to do with. Sure. They had made his life hell for a while, but that wasn't exactly new.
It wasn't all Aizawa's fault, he knew that. He couldn't fully blame the man for the loss of his ex classmates, or for what happened to him. Could Aizawa have made life better by believing in him? Of course. But he...
Well, truthfully, he could see why the teacher had been so suspicious of him. Because, he had been a weird child, and an even weirder teenager. He had been a teenager with an extremely strong quirk, and an even stronger mind, yet his actions never matched up. He didn't notice it until his quirk, not one of the quirks from OfA, but he had been subconsciously searching for something, and it was creepy. It wasn't until he settled into himself that he finally, finally, gained some semblance of sanity.
That still didn't make his decisions any easier, though. Okay, he told himself silently, organizing a chart of six columns, let's look logically. Were there any pro's to being a villian again, even knowing how the world would end up?
Yes, he could do an assassination of All for One, break Shigaraki and Kurogiri free, and probably kill the creepy doctor dude too, so that no one would be able to recreate more NOMU. He'd also be able to take down the Yakuza earlier, and get Eri out, so she could have a chance at a normal life. Or, well, as normal of a life as someone raised by villians could get. Which wasnt much of one. See Shigaraki.
The cons, however, were more severe. He wouldn't be able to live at home, not that he could see himself doing so for very long. He needed to be reigned in, he'd have to give up the majority of the life he lived, and...
Well, no, he could be a villian again, but it would be a bad idea long term. Plus, he wasn't invincible, he'd get caught eventually. And if he did, how much worse would the world get?
No, being a villian, being the Black Hat Hacker, again, was out.
He supposed he could go back to being a vigilante. He could make his own rules, play his own games, and have the freedom he found himself loving so much. Being a vigilante was probably the best choice he could have made for himself. It boosted his confidence, helped him discover his quirk, helped him loose that ugly codependent relationships he'd always had, and gave him a chance to thrive in a way being a hero or villian never could. Because, damn it, he liked being neutral.
On the other hand, the same consequences would rain down on him if he was captured, and without a group to protect him, especially when he was trying to rebuild his strength, he was leaving himself open for a lot of messes. After all, when the Admin first took on his role, none of the heroes, or villians, really wanted to take him down. Both sides felt bad for him, and it helped keep people off of him until he could do it himself. Which middle school him could not manage.
That only left one choice, the least palatable of them: a hero.
There were dozens of cons, he knew that, from being stuck under the thumb of either Nedzu or the HSPC, but...
It left him with the most maneuverability. Which, especially when he was trying to figure out how to change things, was going to be essential. He'd be able to see things from the inside of the machine, maybe saving a few lives, maybe not. He'd get a chance to be legal for once, something he'd given up on a long time ago. Also, most importantly, no one would suspect a hero student to be like himself, he'd be constantly underestimated, meaning he'd have an easier time doing what he wanted to do. Maybe he'd gain a chance to increase his own skills, or have a better starting point, instead of having to learn everything the hard way.
It felt like spiders crawling in his skin, and he really didn't want to, but, he'd done worse. Maybe he could go in through the support or business courses instead of straight into the hero exams. Or maybe he could try for multiple spots, and pick something once it was time.
Either way, he noted with a grimace, the slime villian should be here soon, and, hm, he could change that, couldn't he? He just needed to meet Toshinori right now, he didn't need to inherit the rest of his power quite yet.
Or did he?
Decisions, decisions.
He wondered if he could trick Toshinori into giving him OfA. Hm, that could be fun. He didn't need the rest of it right away, and trapping the villian All Might was chasing would make him look good. Hopefully, he'd be able to go without being left on a rooftop with his dreams crushed underfoot. That wasn't much fun.
What would be fun, however, was proving to himself how much he could remember about some fucking nobody from forever ago. Poor sludge fucker.
In the end, he'd decided on a much, much simpler plan: he'd made a data-jar, which felt weird as hell to say, and kept it in his hands, turning so that his back was to the sewer as soon as danger sense pinged louder than usual. He'd held the jar by his face, and the slime fucker's momentum made it impossible for him to stop once he started getting trapped.
It was over in seconds, leaving him without harm, impressing All Might, who complemented him, and making sure that the Sludge dude wasn't going to get out and hurt anyone else.
Which was good, overall, much better than last time, where he'd been both burned, suicide baited, and suffocated. He was almost embarrassed by how easy it was to take down the Sludge, poor past him.
Also, fun fact, he could only hear the vestiges near All Might, and they had immediately latched on to him as the next successor, which was interesting. They didn't seem to remember anything about the future, they only seemed to know that OfA belonged with him next. All Might had asked him a few questions, before OfA made him 'run out of time', spilling the secret once again.
After promising to keep it quiet, which he would have done either way, and agreeing to meet the man again in a few weeks, he'd made his next choice.
Still, he had changed things, a lot, already, and he wasn't entirely certain what he needed to change, what he couldn't change, and what he could, but probably shouldn't change. That damn list had taken almost a full week to write out.
He'd made a few spontaneous decisions to make himself more appealing for UA as well. For a start, he'd gone and gotten his quirk registered as Hacker's Energy, a twist on his actual quirk, Hacker's Code. He'd made the decision for a few reasons, but the biggest one was an explanation, granted a fake one, that would give him a little more leeway when it came to using the other quirks of OfA. If people thought he could use energy itself, specifically digital energy that he could solidify, then why would they question, say Blackwhip?
He'd also decided to go to his local police station, and ask about firearm safety, and possibly getting a firearm license when he was older. Firstly, it was a skill he already had, because he didn't always want to use his quirks, especially when he was tired or could focus right, so guns became somewhat of a backup to his backup plan. He'd long since found out that using OfA when he was tired or distracted ended up with him breaking even more bones. Of course, because of his shitty luck, the drawbacks from not one, but all of his quirks had a habit of slamming into him if he broke something.
Add that to registering for analysis classes, to work towards getting his analyst license, a few more difficult computer classes so he could work with even more types of coding, a robotics class, a gymnastics class, dropping out of Aldera middle school so that he could do classes online instead, and an annoyingly harsh workout routine that would help him build muscle asap, well, he was on his way.
Some days, he wanted nothing more than to scream into the void. He hadn't realized, originally, why he'd had so much trouble. But now, looking at it as someone who knew his damn quirks, it was a different story. Yes, he really needed muscle mass, in order to use the strength portion, but he could have cried when he realized how much of his intellect, and flexibility, both physical and mental, he had lost training exclusively with All Might. He'd even gotten the beach done with almost a month left, and a good bit of extra cash, this time. All and all, he was okay with his progress, and happily took back the full power once again. Well, kind of. He took the hair, anyways. Yagi, the poor fool, had no idea he hadn't bothered eating it again.
He was pretty happy with his progress actually. Some skills took longer to build up than others, but overall, he was pretty happy with his training. He'd even realized that his quirk progress had come back too, and almost cried. Sure, he'd known some of it had, but when he'd finally had the time, space, and privacy to activate the four known levels of his quirk... well, it had been special to him.
Still, no one knew that inside of his head, The Admin Reigned Supreme, while Midoriya Izuku was simply a mask used to keep people ignorant of his secrets. No one knew that he was something far more than he seemed. He was honestly curious to see how long it took them to figure out the truth: he was playing a part.
Because he was. Midoriya Izuku had been dead for a long, long time. While he used the name occasionally, for now, he had plans to get rid of it once and for all. If that meant that he was the Admin full time? Well, everyone else would have to adjust.