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All for One tugged gently at the bonds that restrained him, exploratory.
How very curious.
When was the last time someone had tried this? He sent his mind back over his two centuries of life and found that it hadn't been since his thirties that this had been attempted, during the tail end of the Quirk Wars. Not against All for One, anyway. There were names he had gone by that were subject to such things, but they had long been abandoned.
This was fresh, exciting! Who could possibly have had the nerve? Had the peons of the underworld begun to underestimate him after that, ah, disastrous exchange with that Yagi pest? Internally, he scoffed. The low-level NPCs (Oh dear, Tomura was rubbing off on him) sure did have short memory spans.
No matter. He was always happy to provide a reminder.
But right now? He could bask in the novelty a little bit. It was always fun to give an opponent false hope and then crush it, yank the rug out from under them when they least expected it. He rarely got a chance to do it, what with his notoriety. Well, in the criminal underworld anyway. The HPSC did their very best to ensure that nobody in polite society would ever hear of him, despite the fact that, theoretically, any child could be born with some version of his quirk, and what would they do then? It was a bandaid on a gaping head wound, and hiding ~scary~ truths from civilians had always gone so well in the past-.
“All For One.”
Voice modulator. Under it, probably someone young judging by pitch and tone. Size indicated by his Heat Sensing quirk would also align.
Hm. How did he end up here, anyway?
“I bet you're wondering how you got here?”
Mind reading quirk? That was dangerous. Dangerous but useful, and in All for One's hands.
“I don't have a mind-reading quirk,” He bristled just a fraction at the mockery in the voice, “You're just predictable.”
All for One scoffed, “I'd prefer to call myself consistent.”
“I'm sure there are a lot of things you'd prefer to call yourself,” The voice said, then stepped away, rustling near a workbench(?) to the side.
He sensed… Yes, hints of bitterness, resentment. Emotions he was intimately familiar with.
“Oh? Like what?”
“Decent husband. Loving father,” Dread. A pause, then, “Midoriya Hisashi?”
In just half a second, All for One was Midoriya Hisashi, husband of Inko Midoriya and father to the most intelligent child he knew, quirk be damned.
And Midoriya Hisashi was afraid.
Could he protect himself? Certainly. Easily, even. It was the skill he had the most experience in by far.
But Inko? Izuku? That was why he left. History had proved that he did not excel in protecting his loved ones, and Yagi's sidekick who looked like an accountant had a bloodhound's nose for All For One's particular brand of crime.
“I don't recall anyone by that name, a relative of yours, or something?”
Laughter. Jaded, bitter laughter.
“You could say that.”
?
Hm?
The figure approached him and then-
Blinding pain-
and then-
“Don't open your eyes yet, Hisashi. They're not developed enough to-”
Hisashi was self-employed because he was Not good at following instructions.
“Okay, so-”
Green, curly hair. Narrowed green eyes. The signature spray of freckles across his cheeks.
“... Izuku?”
Potentially-Izuku dragged a hand down his face and sighed, then pointed a finger at him accusatorily.
“You are so lucky mom loves you,” through gritted teeth but what stood out to Hisashi was-
“Inko still-”
“At least once a week, I catch her looking at her scrapbooks, at pictures of you, you dumb, evil, deadbeat bastard.”
Hisashi blinked. Then blinked again. Frankly, when their interaction dwindled to twice a year, New Year's and Izuku's birthday, he had fully expected Inko to move on. She fully deserved to, and she was an incredible catch. So the fact that she stayed devoted to him-
“What did you just do to me?”
He decided not to think about it for now.
Probably-Izuku rolled his eyes with his arms crossed rebelliously across his chest, then glared at him, “There was this bastard called Overhaul using it to torture a child he was manipulating, so I defanged him,” the glare became much more fiery, “You wouldn't do anything like that, would you?”
Hisashi's eyes flicked to the side as he resolved to introduce Tomura to Inko and also investigate how almost certainly-Izuku had gotten involved with the local two-bit Yakuza thugs.
“Would you?” The tone became much more ominous and Hisashi barely resisted flinching.
“... No.”
“That's what I thought,” Izuku sighed and stepped back, “Do you know what day it is?”
Hisashi pulled up one of his most useless quirks, the calendar quirk that he kept around mainly because the concept remained fascinating to him and if he was able to experiment with it and determine if it was dependent on culturally determined calendars and individual knowledge or some objective universal standard.
“July 3rd.”
“Right. And tomorrow is?”
“July 4th.”
“And?”
“Inko's birthday?”
Izuku smiled in a way that tempted Hisashi to pick up a mirror, “Exactly. And you are my present to her.”
“Me.”
“Mm.”
“You kidnapped a supervillain to-”
“I'm having a bonding experience with my father by engaging in some shared hobbies.”
“Like kidnapping.”
“Like kidnapping. But don't tell mom that.”
“I would never,” but, “I thought you were quirkless?”
Izuku huffed another bitter laugh.
“Everybody did. And I'm not explaining it to you either, you don't deserve that.”
“So-”
“We're going to use your evil fortune to buy mom some very luxurious presents to make up for your years of absence while you come up with a reasonable excuse to be back in our lives.”
“All of a sudden I've been transferred back to Japan and my new boss isn't saddling me with so much overtime.”
Izuku looked at him, appraising.
“And Inko really-”
“Doesn't know, no.”
“Are you sure you don't have a mind-reading quirk?”
Izuku smirked.
“Not telling.”