Chapter 1: The King, the Prince, and the Cavalry
Izuku Midoriya couldn't hear anything. The crumbling buildings around them, the helicopter above, even the far-off screams were silent. Nothing could break through the thick, viscous barrier of dripping blood, each droplet washing over his five senses like a gunshot. His mind felt like an abused drum, wishing nothing more than for the next beat to never come. It did, and it wouldn't stop anytime soon.
"I-I'm so, so, so, so sorry… Th-this is my f-fault…" Izuku sniffled. Izuku did his best to wipe his tears away, but it only smeared more blood on his face. Giving up, he threw his whole body against the wound, putting everything into slowing the blood loss. He only succeeded in bathing himself in red. The recipient eased him off, never betraying how Izuku's attempts were meaningless.
"None of this," the large man coughed, blood trickling out of his nose, "is your fault, my boy." Izuku tried to apply pressure to All Might's wound again, his tears doubling, but the man refused.
"Y-yes it is! If I hadn't gotten in your way… if you hadn't protected me, you wouldn't have gotten hurt!" Izuku cried out. It was true. The battle caught him by chance. He'd been wandering a shopping center while his mother explored a new woman's store, not paying attention. It'd been a normal, tranquil day. Shoppers were bustling, the food court smelled heavenly, and workers looked bored. Nobody had prepared for, let alone suspected, that All Might's greatest battle would intrude on their day.
The scale of the fight was unimaginable to little Izuku, who'd only left his prefecture twice and had only ever seen C-List heroes battling evil. The origin of the fight could've been dozens of miles away, even a hundred, knowing the distance All Might could travel. The All Might toy in Izuku's back pocket burned. Izuku hiccuped, choking on his own tears, as the greatest hero, perhaps ever, looked at him with maybe the most kindness someone could muster.
"No… this is the villain's fault. Don't worry, young man… He'll never hurt anyone again." The hero said, a smile plastered on his face. It wasn't the wide, toothy grin that looked at him from six different angles in Izuku's room. He'd never seen that kind of smile before. Its depth and meaning was foreign to him. Izuku's tears slowed. If All Might could smile with a gaping hole in his stomach, perhaps… he'd could be brave.
"You saved me though! You might've gotten out of here safely if you had just let me…" Izuku couldn't bring himself to finish the statement. He didn't want to die, but he'd rather do so than watch his idol gored through the stomach by that monster.
How was that villain so strong? What he did to All Might was unthinkable. The villain had what seemed like hundreds of quirks, all of them designed to kill or maim. Blazing hot explosions, concussive winds, bullets that grew from his skin, and even flight were used against the hero, yet All Might won in the end.
His victory came with a hefty cost, however: the hole in his chest could swallow his mom's purse. Izuku felt tears leak out of his eyes again as he looked at it. It was all to protect him, a stupid, stupid kid who wandered into a battle he had no business with. All Might coughed up more blood. He didn't know what to do; bandaids and kisses were the extent of his knowledge. At most he could apply pressure, but All Might wouldn't let him. At a complete loss and full of guilt, Izuku slipped into the older man's limp palm, threading their fingers together.
It seemed to have the desired effect. All Might gave his fingers a squeeze, letting out a brief, wet, hum. It only made Izuku feel worse; why was he being comforted when he wasn't the one hurt?
"I have… no regrets. I saved you. I defeated my nemesis. If I could go back and do it all again, I wouldn't change anything." All Might's voice grew coarse, straining with the effort of speech. He never let it stop him, though. He never let anything stop him.
"Except for one thing. My quirk… the ability to slowly gather strength over time and give it to a new host. One for All. I have nobody to give it to, no successor, no son." All Might whispered to himself. The man's eyes, once a brilliant moon, were waning. Izuku hung on every word said, imprinting the speech directly onto his soul. No one had ever known All Might's quirk, and if he was the first… or last, he would listen with reverence.
The dull eyes slid over to the little boy holding his hand. Izuku said nothing as his savior gazed at him with an intense glint in his dying eyes. Izuku didn't think he had the guts to match the dying man's gaze, but he pushed on. Be brave, he told himself like a mantra. Remember how it felt to watch the villain maim him and for All Might to fight through it. Remember how he wanted to be like that; to be dependable, strong and mighty. To inspire, to help. Remember how he wanted to be a hero like All Might. Be brave.
He poured everything he wanted to be through his eyes, and though it was close, it was enough. Izuku held the contact. All Might's grin shifted into something different; another foreign expression. Wolfish and somber, grave and wild. It had the adrenaline of a warrior and the reservation of a judge. Izuku felt like he was looking at a king.
"Can you live your life with honor, in service to others? Do you," he winced, "want to be a hero?" All Might asked. Izuku stared at the man, his gaze pulled to the wound. The answer was yes, Izuku wanted to be a hero more than anything. Yes, he could live with honor and yes, he could live in service to others. But…
"How can I be a hero if I killed you?" Izuku asked, the dam broken and unleashing his tears once more. All Might didn't hesitate with his response.
"Never forget that you didn't put this hole in me, All for One did. I chose this. Just like how… I choose you." With inhuman will and effort, All Might dipped their linked hands into the warm blood spreading beneath them.
"Be the Ninth. I believe in you, young man." With that, All Might lifted their hands into Izuku's agape mouth, pouring his spilled blood into the boy's mouth.
Izuku spluttered and gagged, not wanting to drink blood, but he couldn't help swallowing a little bit. All Might relaxed, allowing their linked hands to drop to the floor. Soon, All Might's chest stopped its unsteady rise and fall and his hand grew cold.
As the helicopter above the two landed, a team of EMTs rushed over to the body. After checking the body and applying pressure to the wound that had long since stopped bleeding, a crying EMT shook her head at her crew.
The Symbol of Peace was dead.
[x]
It took less than a day for the entire planet to know All Might had passed. Fear, outrage, and disbelief came first. Riots came and went. Monuments rose. Violent crime doubled within a month. Within four months, the crime had tripled.
To combat the crime, the Japanese police force doubled in size, while hundreds of part-time heroes applied for agencies across the country. Retired heroes and police came back to work for the first time in years, the most notable of which was Gran Torino.
Mentor of All Might and veteran pro hero, Gran Torino was currently in the newly established Nighteye agency, waiting for a scheduled meeting with Nighteye. Usually, he'd just barge into the man's office and demand his attention, but today Nighteye made it clear he was swamped with meetings and work.
Opening a new agency is a very time-consuming task, but it was necessary. The All Might agency fell through shortly after his death, and Nighteye needed the social weight that an agency gives a hero to function. Without Toshinori's legal business, Nighteye had to start from scratch. Honestly, the boy's efficiency impressed Gran Torino. Within two months, Nighteye had a headquarters and the legal documentation and permit to run an agency. While the Nighteye agency didn't have employees yet, it will soon.
But with the lack of employees, every single document the agency handles goes straight through Nighteye. Gran Torino shivers. When he was young and still wrangling in dozens of villains a day, the paperwork was a nightmare. Not only was Nighteye still an active hero and filing his arrests by himself, he was also managing an entire building complex. It would've driven Gran Torino mad, but the lad pulls it off somehow.
He's reading an article about the recent incarceration surge in a magazine he picked up from the lobby desk.
"Wave of crime, eh?" he mutters. "More like a damn tsunami." Despite only working part-time because of his age, he had already made eight arrests for violent crime this week. In years past, during All Might's era of peace, he'd maybe find two a week. Maybe.
He was about to turn the page when a little bell alerted him that Nighteye's current meeting was over. He groaned, irritated at the thought of standing up, and made his way over to the large office doors labeled "Nighteye."
He placed a gloved hand on the doorknob but didn't open it right away. He took in a deep breath, reminding himself of the gravity of their meeting. He turned the knob.
The room was busier than before, he noted. The last time he was here, there was just a single dark oak desk in a boring room. But now there were plaques and art, with a painting of All Might during his Golden Age behind Nighteye. He nodded at the man as he got close, their partnership going back far enough to make verbal greetings redundant.
As he pulled out one of the two chairs that faced the man's desk, Nighteye raised up a hand.
"Sit in the other chair, if you will." Nighteye said. Gran Torino looked down at the chair he almost sat in and chortled despite the swirling thoughts in his head. There was a whoopie cushion on the seat.
"Still up to your pranks, eh?" Gran Torino asked. Nighteye nodded, not an ounce of fun radiating off him. Sorahiko wasn't surprised. Despite the man's cold stone exterior, he valued jokes and pranks more than anything. In a way, it was something he learned from Toshinori, though Toshi was never one for pranks.
Jokes made people smile, and if Toshi was good at one thing, it was making the people around him smile. Nighteye didn't inspire the same level of confidence, but he made up for it in the best way he knew how: pranks. But they didn't have time for pranks today.
Neither of them spoke as Gran Torino sat in the un-whoopie cushioned chair, sighing in relief at being able to rest his bones. He hadn't stretched today, and his bones weren't feeling particularly nimble.
The silence was awkward, but neither of them wanted to have the discussion they had scheduled a meeting for. Nighteye didn't look at him, instead fiddling with one of his gadgets. Every tik from the clock made the tension rise a smidge, but after a minute, it was too much. Gran Torino finally broke.
"What are we going to do about One for All?" he asked. Nighteye gave him an odd look.
"Is there anything to do? I would imagine a quirk would die with its master, not be running around unsupervised." Nighteye said with sarcasm. Gran Torino scoffed.
"You know what I mean. Do we know if it's gone for sure or not?" Gran Torino asked again, but Nighteye wasn't having it.
"He told us everything, Torino. He never once said anything about a successor. I know for a fact he went into that battle with All for One with the full power of the quirk. He never passed it on." Nighteye said.
"You didn't know "for a fact" that Toshinori was going to die, despite looking into his future. Why are you so sure that he didn't give up the quirk before he died? Neither of us were there, he could've done anything." Gran Torino retorted. It was a low blow, but it was true. For some reason, Nighteye's future sight hadn't worked for their battle.
"Shut up! You know for a fact that my future sight is never wrong. His death… wasn't meant to happen. It was an anomaly." Nighteye said. "It wasn't meant to turn out this way..." Nighteye trailed off. The lanky man thread his fingers together and pressed them to his forehead, covering his face from Gran Torino's view. "It wasn't… my fault." All the fight that Nighteye had in him died almost as soon as it was awoken, leaving the room with an awkward air of grief. Gran Torino cleared his throat.
"Look… I know it's not your fault. That's why I'm here, to ask for your help to find the Ninth, assuming he's out there somewhere." Gran Torino said quietly. Nighteye looked back up at him.
"How would you suppose we do that? I don't have the time to go search everybody in the country, old man, and you're getting too old for this." Nighteye said, glum.
"Read my future. All of it." Gran Torino said. That gave Nighteye pause.
"I don't do that anymore. If it didn't work on All Might, it isn't worth risking the future with fake knowledge in the present." Nighteye admitted. "Plus, how would looking into your future even help?" He continued.
"If there is a Ninth, I'd bet it'd be a kid. They're the only people innocent enough that Toshinori might've given the quirk up to in a pinch. He wouldn't risk giving it to any kind of adult, especially since they might have ulterior motives. Kids don't have those, Nighteye." Gran Torino replied.
"So?" Nighteye said.
"So, if a kid suddenly has One for All, where do you think they'd end up?" Gran Torino asked.
"U.A." Nighteye immediately replied. Gran Torino nodded.
"Yep. And if they were to use the quirk in the sports festival, I'd know. From there, I'd track them down and train them. I figure that has a high enough likelihood that if you saw me hanging out with a kid for a long time in the future, we could just track 'em down now." Gran Torino finished. Nighteye looked impressed.
"Far fetched, but possible." Nighteye didn't speak or move for a few moments, lost in thought. Gran Torino studied the boy's face as he wrestled with the pros and cons in his head; suddenly, Nighteye cursed in realization.
"Shit. If a kid has One for All and somehow uses it, he'll blow his limbs off! That quirk has gotten way too strong in the past decade, there's no way a kid could handle it. Gimme your hand!" Nighteye snatched his hand and gave the older man the most intense stare he could muster.
Despite suggesting it, Gran Torino felt uncomfortable with the move. He had never wanted his future seen, it felt like an invasion of his privacy, but it was an emergency. He'd seen Nighteye look into people's futures before, and it was always an awkward affair. For minutes at a time, Nighteye would touch a person and make intense eye contact as he combed over their future. Gran Torino prepared for this long exchange, but had barely settled down from his initial surprise when Nighteye suddenly jumped up from his sitting position and released Gran Torino's hand.
"What, what's wrong? Don't tell me I die in like, an hour, or something?" Gran Torino asked. Nighteye shook his head while rushing to put on a business coat.
"No, but I saw some sort of explosion in your afternoon almost as soon as I started. We need to head down to Musutafu and evacuate before we continue looking for the Ninth." Nighteye replied in a hurry. "Alert the HN to evacuate from the forest south of Aldera Middle School." Nighteye continued. Gran Torino nodded
[x]
Izuku Midoriya was not ok. It was a simple, but hard-hitting truth that Inko had to grapple with every day. There were obvious signs of this of course. One could see him in therapy and make the connection, but one might not understand the level of disconnect between who her baby was before and after the incident. Inko clutched her blouse over her heart at the thought.
She was at her office job- her main job, and was on the clock, but couldn't help but let her mind wander. Izuku had therapy later today, and her pockets were feeling it. After the incident, Inko babied her son for weeks until officially signing him up for therapy. The extensiveness of the therapy that Izuku needed was expensive, but luckily her insurance barely covered it. That didn't mean that she didn't need to pick up a second job, though.
She caught a glimpse of her reflection on her dark laptop and sighed, picking at the loose skin on her jaw and dark circles under her eyes. She was losing weight from the stress, something she might've celebrated if it didn't hurt so much. She sighed. Whatever she was going through, it wasn't anything compared to Izuku.
Nothing shames her more than her actions that day. Allowing Izuku to wander around a busy mall was bad enough, but being too late to find him before she was forcibly evacuated? She will never forgive herself. She wasn't exactly sure what happened between All Might and her son, Izuku can hardly talk about it, but she knows from the paramedics that he held the hero's hand as he died.
Died. It was such a strange and disturbing thought. He had been a pillar of the country since she was a little girl, and had been the number one hero for almost as long. Izuku had latched onto the man's image, just as she had done when she was his age, but with more fervor. He had the toys, the posters, the merchandise. All Might's iconography was practically printed into her son's very soul. He might've grown out of it one day, perhaps in a decade or so, but he never got the chance. At the height of his admiration, his hero was killed protecting him.
She loves All Might every day for it. He gave everything for her son. If she had a spare fortune, she would give some to Izuku, and then donate the rest to his next of kin in thanks.
But she didn't have a spare fortune, or even enough to pay rent this month. She sighed, booting up her laptop in an attempt to get back to work. She hopes Izuku's doing ok at home.
Off in the distance, an explosion lights up the sky.
[x]
They took Nighteye's car, so Gran Torino got to experience what the man's driving was like. It was terrible. The man sped like a demon, didn't slow for turns, and was only just able to parallel park without hitting someone's truck. As they hopped out of the car, Gran Torino saw a handful of heroes he didn't recognize walk out of the forest to their far left, either carrying or walking hand in hand with hikers who might not have gotten the message all the way out in the woods. Nighteye called them over to them.
"Ok! We have approximately 16 minutes to evacuate the whole area. Be back in this spot before that! We are out of range of the blast here!" Nighteye called out. A hero, a darker-skinned man with dreads and a full body suit with several mysterious capsules around his arms spoke up.
"Is it a bomb? I can defuse, or at least contain the blast with my barrier pods!" Gran Torino gave the man's arms a bit more of a look, but Nighteye didn't give them the time to think about it.
"I don't know, I saw this in a future vision! I only saw the blast, not what caused it. Remember, be back in fifteen minutes! Go go go!" Nighteye ordered. Gran Torino nodded and took a deep breath, directing the air into his legs, launching himself into the forest like an elderly bullet.
For most heroes, fifteen minutes may be enough time to collect a handful of stragglers, but Gran Torino wasn't most heroes. Despite old age chipping away at his stamina and speed, he had immense experience and was still powerful. He could navigate the forest faster than any of the B-List heroes gathered today. In his prime, he was even able to outspeed Nana, the seventh wielder of One for All. Of course, One for All grew exponentially under Toshinori- their speeds weren't even comparable anymore.
Gran Torino found an elderly couple on a small, hilly path immediately. He didn't have time to explain, so he just scooped them up and carried them to safety. It was somewhat funny, Gran Torino had shrunk with age, but the couple were still a fair bit younger than him, and much taller. It was like a child carrying his parents.
He shook his head out of those intrusive thoughts and went back to work. He worked faster and faster, burning through his quirk like he wasn't pushing seventy. A homeless man, a rude blond school, three young women, a pothead (who he gave a stern look), and a few more were zipped from their hike to safety in under ten minutes.
On his ninth trip into the woods, he took a small breather. His quirk, Jet, was incredible, but recently it had become easier and easier for him to become quirk exhausted. For him, that meant that the air in his lungs slowly leaked out, making him short on breath.
He sat on a trail bench for a few seconds, catching what little breath he could hold, when he spotted a splotch of bright red to his right. Quickly turning, he saw an odd sight.
A little boy, no older than ten, was punching some random oak tree. His bright red shoes were filthy, like he had been here for hours. He got up from the bench and made his way over to the kid, knowing that getting them both out of here was going to hurt if his quirk was already exhausted. His phone buzzed in his pocket.
Four minutes remaining.
"Hey kid, the hell're you doing out here, there's an evacuation order!" Gran Torino called out. The kid, who Gran Torino noted had bloody fists, rubbed raw from the tree bark, didn't acknowledge him. Incensed, the older man grabbed the boy's shoulder and turned to face him to get his attention. The boy's expression gave him pause.
It was a tired, haunted look you never really see in kids. Not all kids are bubbly and happy, but even the least happy of them usually look neutral. This kid was different. His eyes were a dull, unhappy green. When they made eye contact, the boy didn't even appear to recognize that there was a person in front of him. Shaking his shoulder from the older man's grasp, the boy went back to punching the tree, leaving it more and more bloody with every hit.
"Did you not hear me, there's some sort of bomb in the forest. We need to get you to your mother." Gran Torino said. This time, the boy appeared to hear him.
"Sorry, she's at work. Guess you should just leave me be." The boy mumbled, neutral at the news of the bomb. This gave the hero pause.
"Am I hearing you right? I can't just leave you be. What are you even doing out here?" Gran Torino asked.
"Punching this tree, hoping my quirk kicks in. I know I have one, but I've never been able to use it. Figured today was the day to try." The boy replied. He paused, then continued. "You can leave if you want. I'll just stay out here." For the life of him, Gran Torino couldn't read this kid, but he wasn't going to let some brat stay behind just because he didn't want to be rescued. He's dealt with hundreds of these idiots throughout his career. People who don't think a situation is dangerous at all, and don't want to be rescued are surprisingly common, usually in natural disasters. He's met plenty of morons who don't think very highly of typhoons.
"Boy, I can't be doing that. Whether you like it or not, I'm taking you out of here." Gran Torino said, picking up the boy and slinging him over his shoulder. The boy starts squirming and wiggling almost immediately, intent to escape from the older man's grasp, but Gran Torino wouldn't let him. His pocket buzzed.
Three minutes.
Despite the quirk exhaustion, Gran Torino took as big a breath as he could and started bouncing from tree to tree, propelling himself towards the city with the unruly child complaining all the while.
"Let me go! Let me go back! I deserve it!" The brat says, kicking and screaming. Gran Torino doesn't have the breath to reply and focuses on getting to the city faster. In the process, though, his grip loosens. The kid uses took the opportunity to jump out of the man's grasp.
"Shit!" Gran Torino yells, despite himself. The kid did the equivalent of jumping out of a moving car on the highway. Now, exhausted and weakened, he has to slam on the breaks and turn around.
By the time he's able to slow to a stop, the kid is already running back where they came. The hero curses as his legs refuse to shoot any air, the quirk exhaustion denying him his powers. He starts to run for the kid like a quirkless plebeian, yelling the whole time.
"Get back here brat, we're running out of time!" He yells ahead.
"Good! Then get out of here! Let me go, I deserve to die here!" The boy calls back, still running strong. Gran Torino doesn't know what the hell the kid means by that, but he can hear a faint crack in his voice. Despite the evident hesitation, the boy was still running strong.
"You don't deserve anything except a damn spanking! Whatever you did, it doesn't matter!" Gran Torino yells, breathless. He's too old for this.
"You don't understand-" The kid was cut off by a root, tripping him at the base of a tree. The old man took this chance to catch up to the boy, but paused when he saw what the boy was doing. Having forgone trying to escape the aging hero, the child was attacking the tree with a scary fervor. He didn't know what to do while he watched the kid try to destroy the tree with reckless abandon.
Blood was squirting out of his fingers as he attacked the tree, desperate for something- anything- to happen. The boy was starting to hit the tree harder and harder, holding nothing back. Gran Torino didn't immediately grab him, reminded of a rabid dog, and caught his breath.
"What," Gran Torino took a moment, sucking in as much air as possible, "Am I missing? You're like ten, whatever you think you did wrong, I forgive you! Please, just come with me to safety! We're already running out of time!" Gran Torino yelled. All he wanted at this moment was to get the kid to safety, but he couldn't do it if the kid was going to fight him. He thought his little speech would've been enough, but it only seemed to fuel the fire as the boy only started to cry harder.
The kid climbed to his feet, still throwing careless blows at the tree. He starts muttering under his breath, which sounded something like a desperate prayer.
"Please please please please please please-" He muttered. The old hero's phone vibrated in his pocket, reminding him of the dwindling seconds they had left.
"We're out of time! Whatever you think you did, you need to forgive yourself so we can get out of here!" Gran Torino screamed.
"You don't get it! I-" The little boy's wild, flailing form started to glow a dull red color as if a lightbulb had gone off beneath his skin.
"Killed-" All the luminosity sucked itself into his left arm as he reared back for a huge punch, his arm lighting up like a signal beam. Gran Torino stared, mouth agape. He'd seen that light a million times.
Oh my God.
"ALL MIGHT!" The kid's golden fist exploded forward faster than a rocket.
He's the Ninth.
When Izuku Midoriya's knuckles touched the tree, everything went white.