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In a rundown bar in the middle of Kamino ward, a battle of fates presents itself.
In the center of an unassuming living room, tucked away behind a bar’s facade, the vigilante Viridian stares down the Symbol of Evil, All for One, unflinching. “Give it here,” he demands, voice perfectly even as he glares at the ancient supervillain with toxic green eyes. “It’s not yours to have, All for One.”
“Oh, serious are we?” the villain coos, removing his mask to reveal a taunting smile stretched across his lips, red eyes gleaming in the low light. “You must really want this prize if you’re calling me by my villain identity.”
“It’s not a prize, All for One,” Izuku hisses in annoyance. “It’s a necessity, dammit! I earned that quirk!” his hands crackle with green electricity, the holes in their palms glowing with an unnatural light.
“Weren’t the quirks of the rest of the bullets enough to sate your appetite, Izuku?” he questions. “You seemed very excited, utilizing Mimic, Barrier, and Crystalize. Do you really want to push your luck?”
He hesitates for a moment, before steeling himself, calling various quirks to the surface, ready to obey his commands. “Maybe I do.”
All for One grins wider. “Oh, is that how it’s going to be? I’ll warn you, little hero, I’m much stronger than you. I’m afraid there’s only one way a fight like this ends.”
“You’re right, much as I hate to admit it…” Izuku trails off, looking through his catalog of quirks and finding nothing that could help him against his father’s monstrous collection. “But even if fighting is meaningless, I’ll fight anyway!” he shouts.
Izuku makes up his mind. “I’m challenging you, All for One! To a Pokémon battle!”
His father’s face goes from grinning to shocked to a lazy smile in the space of a second. “Oh? You really want it that bad? If you insist…”
“Best of three singles,” Izuku quickly establishes the rules.
The ancient supervillain smiles widely. “Oh, how fun,” he drawls. “And what will your forfeit be, little hero?”
“Vigilante, not hero,” Izuku huffs. “Uuh… I’ll track down that tactile telekinesis quirk you haven’t found the time to get around to taking.”
His father nods, offering a handshake. “Agreeable.”
Izuku returns it. The game is on.
Father and son both whip out Nintendo Switch fives, quickly flicking over to the newly remade (for the sixth time at this point) Pokémon red and green. Idly, Izuku comments, “I can’t believe they actually made Kanto good this time around. I played the originals like you told me to and they were awful.”
Drawing on his vast reservoir of incredibly niche internet knowledge only gained through living for well over two hundred years, Hisashi corrects, “Actually, Firered and Leafgreen are remakes too, just made during the third generation of Pokémon games. The originals have been entirely lost to history, though, perhaps with how poorly programmed they were, that is more of a blessing than anything else.”
“Did you have to ‘erm, actually,’ me, Dad?” Izuku questions, flicking through various menus to challenge his father from his spot on Izuku’s friends list.
“Yes,” All for One replies in a deadpan voice, entirely serious. His father’s pettiness truly knows no bounds.
“No using quirks, by the way,” Izuku mentions offhandedly.
“I’d never use quirks in such a holy setting,” his father responds, sounding offended.
As the two load in, having selected their teams, Izuku shoots his dad a look. “That means no memetic boosters, either. It’s no fun when we just try to out-intelligence quirk each other.”
Hisashi curses, deactivating the few remaining quirks that could give him a competitive advantage as Izuku does the same.
As soon as the battle starts, it’s Izuku’s turn to curse as his Tyranitar lead is immediately met with a very angry looking shiny Metagross. Quickly glancing up at his father to make sure he didn’t sneak on a quirk of any kind (and thankfully finding nothing), he decides to stay in and clicks stealth rock.
His Tyranitar then proceeds to eat a meteor mash and wishes he switched out. Oh well. At least he got some pebbles up.
Izuku continues his bulky Tyranitar zen gardening, knocking off his dad’s choice band as Metagross proceeds to hit him with a meteor mash and gets the attack boost, undoing the progress he got from knocking the Pokémon off in the first place.
A set of rocks, an attack boosted Metagross and a mostly dead Tyranitar. Fantastic. At least his dad’s in a terrible spot to switch out of, being knocked off and having to deal with rocks for a while. “That move is so annoying,” Izuku groans, selecting his next Pokémon.
“Not my fault my clearly superior Metagross doesn’t miss them like yours does,” Hisashi taunts playfully, looking incredibly smug.
Correctly guessing that his father won’t switch out, he swaps out into a shiny Swampert that took way too many hours of resetting to get, taking a pitiful amount of damage from his father’s next meteor mash.
Hisashi looks annoyed by this turn of events. Excellent. Seeing as there’s nothing he can do to stop it, Izuku clicks flip turn, earning an annoyed click of his father’s tongue as he switches out into Zapdos, thankfully not getting paralyzed by static in the process.
“Are you two playing fucking Pokemon?” a voice rasps from down the hall.
“Yep,” the two chorus, Izuku explaining that, “Dad won’t give me the quirk I want so I'm battling him for it.”
Tomura rolls his eyes, sliding down the banister from the second floor and landing near the couch. “Why can’t you be this enthusiastic about video games when I invite you to play League with Iguchi and I?”
“Because there’s no quirk on offer,” Izuku replies shamelessly, before saying in a much more disgusted tone, “Plus, it’s League. I’ll never play that game. Ever.”
A gravely chuckle sounds from the kitchen, drawing nearer as Dabi enters the living room, sitting down beside Izuku on the couch. “Mini-satan’s got a point there, Shigaraki.”
“Yeah, yeah, shut up ashtray,” Izuku’s brother grouses.
“Wait a minute, did you name your Snorlax ‘Endeavor’?” Dabi asks, “Not that I don’t find it funny, but why?”
Finishing up the turn with a double-edge into the newly switched in Metagross, he quickly selects his next move before the burnt villain can see his Snorlax’s set. As soon as the turn starts, Snorlax promptly explodes, annihilating the Metagross even through type disadvantage.
“That’s why,” Izuku deadpans.
Dabi cracks up, throwing his head back and howling with laughter, falling off the couch and nearly cremating the living room table. His cackling intensifies at the creative string of curses Hisashi utters upon losing his prized Metagross.
Himiko then makes her presence known, materializing on the couch next to him in a disturbing display of stealth. “Wow, Izu-kun, I don’t think I’ve seen Dabi lose it that hard since that interview Endeavor did where we paid that invisible cutie to trip him as soon as he got on camera. What’d you do?”
“Blew up a Snorlax I named Endeavor in dad’s face,” Izuku answers casually, making use of the instant replay feature to show the vampire what he did, causing her to erupt into a fit of giggles.
The next few turns progress in relative peace, with no real progress made on either side, aside from some chip and a few layers of spikes. The next major turning point in the battle is when the Skarmory his father affectionately named ‘Kurogiri’ starts spamming whirlwind and getting major damage on his team.
Panicking slightly as his slightly dysfunctional family gathers around the couch, chanting ‘Kurogiri!’ progressively louder and faster, he finally gets his Jirachi switched in, and lines up a thunderbolt against the menace of a metal bird, knocking it out in a single blow with a critical hit.
“Oh no!” Toga cries, “‘Giri died!”
“Who’ll steal your disgusting energy drinks for you now,” Dabi mocks, poking Tomura in the shoulder.
“I assure you, I am quite alright,” the butler himself says, having warped into the living room seconds earlier at the call of his name.
“Not you, Kurogiri,” Tomura explains, “Sensei named his Skarmory after you, and Izuku just vaporized it with a crit thunderbolt.”
The Nomu still looks slightly confused, but gives his charge a nod, or, at least, as best as a sentient cloud of smoke can nod his head.
“Since when do you use special ‘rachi?” Dad questions, sending in his own Tyranitar.
“I don’t,” he answers, not bothering to switch out and clicking iron head, almost instakilling the Tyranitar, flinching it in the process.
Several of his father’s quirks activate in his ensuing bout of anger, but instead of choosing violence, or perhaps throwing Izuku in a bank vault (not that a vault would be capable of holding him), Hisashi chooses to, instead, slam his head into the coffee table, perhaps with just a hint of strength quirk judging by the way it splits in half.
This does have an unintended side effect of alarming both Izuku’s mother and Kurogiri, the former fretting over her husband, and the latter silently warping away along with the coffee table in order to either get it repaired or replaced.
From there, the game wraps up quickly, with Hisashi’s team quickly falling apart at the hands of Jirachi’s onslaught, especially with no Metagross or Tyranitar to force the pixie out.
“One win for Izukun!” Himiko cheers, giving him a hug.
“What are we cheering for?” Twice asks as he walks into the room. “I hope both of you lose.”
Himiko waves expressively at the man. “Oh, hey Jin! Uncle Hisashi and Izukun are playing Pokémon together!”
“Sounds like a fun time!” the masked man remarks. “Someone’s going to get sent home in a bucket.”
“Who, exactly, do you take me for, Bubigawara?” Dad grouses, sounding slightly upset as he loads back into the menu, moving to challenge him again.
“A massive sore loser!” Twice replies without missing a beat, before waving his hands in horror. “Wait! I didn’t mean that! I’m sorry, boss!”
“You’re lucky your quirk is so useful, Twice,” Hisashi hisses, but there’s no real heat behind it.
“Ubers this time?” his father asks him.
He shrugs as Jin flees the scene. “I’m down to wage a weather war.”
As it turns out, there was no weather war to be waged, as his father’s Deoxys-Attack named ‘Evil Clone’ promptly lands a critical hit with the psycho boost it flings at his shiny Groudon he so lovingly named ‘All Might’, killing it instantly.
“You killed All Might!” Izuku cries out in sheer horror. “How could you!”
His brother and father, however, couldn’t seem to care less, the two of them laughing their asses off. Once Tomura’s guffaws die down enough for him to be coherent, he chokes out, “That’s karma for the ‘rachi and you know it, Izu!”
After another thirty seconds or so of Izuku lamenting the death of his prized Groudon, he gets his revenge, sending in Tyranitar and pursuit-ing the Deoxys to death. His father sends in his Kyogre next, but Izuku’s not worried, deciding to just click stealth rock and let the turn pass.
Despite the insane power of Kyogre’s water spout, Izuku just lets his specially defensive Tyranitar berry through the hit, getting up rocks for only around half its health.
“Passho berry? Who the fuck runs S-def passho berry Tyranitar?” Tomura questions, scratching at his neck.
“I do,” Izuku states the obvious, giving his brother a cocky grin as he switches out into Latios (named Hawks), prompting his father to bring in his Blissey.
Tomura squints at Izuku’s screen, peeking over his shoulder. “Are they all named after heroes?”
“Only a few of them,” Izuku defends, switching into his own Deoxys-attack he named Destro, starting to dismantle his father’s team, though, eventually, his father managed to get a Tyranitar into position.
“My turn now,” his father remarks, looking unbearably smug as he selects his move of choice.
Izuku rolls his eyes, elbowing his dad in the side. “Come on, All for One, I even gave you a hint as to what set my Deo-a has with the nickname,” he taunts, watching his father’s eyes widen as the Deoxys explodes, bringing Tyranitar into the red.
Izuku’s father starts cursing wildly, complaining about ‘best of one cheese’ and ‘early generation explosion,’ but the entire League is laughing at him over getting blown up twice.
Spinner wanders into the living room at the sound of their laughter. “Keep it down!” he shouts. “Some people are trying to sleep–wait, are they playing Pokémon?”
“They are,” Tomura confirms. “Sensei took a quirk that Izuku wanted so they’re battling for it. Izuku’s probably going to win, to be honest.”
“Not if I have anything to say about it,” his father interrupts triumphantly as Izuku’s Latios misses a draco meteor and promptly gets frozen by the opposing Kyogre’s ice beam.
“Dammit,” he hisses.
Twice pokes his head back into the room at this moment, looking over Izuku’s shoulder as he deliberates on the next move. “Man, that sucks for you, Izuku. He’s gonna unfreeze turn one.”
“Y’know what, Jin,” Izuku considers, “Maybe you’re right,” he decides, clicking draco meteor again, and, true to the man’s prediction, snaps out of the freeze on the very first turn, even managing to critically hit with its meteor and knocking out the Kyogre.
All for One screams.
Izuku scratches the back of his neck sheepishly. “Uh, no hard feelings, dad?” he asks as he cleans up the rest of his father’s shattered team.
The supervillain glares at his son, terror quirks seeping into him momentarily before he composes himself.
“Well played,” he growls, voice dripping with annoyance.
Izuku shifts nervously. “Do I still…”
Hisashi lets out a sigh powerful enough to topple a building. “Yes, yes, you won,” he groans, holding his head in his hands and ranting under his breath about ‘bullshit hax’ and ‘the agency doing me dirty.’
“Yay! Izu-kun won,” Himiko cheers, shaking his shoulders.
Iguchi asks, “Now that you’re done with your battle, do you wanna come play League–”
“No,” Izuku deadpans.
Tomura sighs. “Dammit.”
Holding out his hand to his father with a smug grin on his face, Izuku crows, “The quirk, Dad?”
Groaning loudly, the supervillain takes his son’s hand, allowing the transfer of the quirk to go through.
Izuku laughs. “Thanks, Dad. Now I need to go give an underground hero an aneurism.”
Hisashi threatens, “You’ll see my revenge soon, Izuku.”
“You’re more than welcome to try, Dad,” he responds, voice dropping with sarcasm as he walks towards the door to the bar, swinging it open. “Until then though, good luck with that Telekinesis quirk. I have a feeling you’re gonna have a hard time finding it.”