Chapter Text
Izuku Midoriya sits with his legs crossed on the cool sand of the now-clean Dagobah Municipal Beach, his back to the wooden gazebo, closes his eyes, and takes a deep breath. In, and out. In, and out. He still can’t believe he just finished U.A.’S ENTRANCE EXAM! Except… he probably failed, didn’t he. He didn’t manage to get any villain points. Deep breath. In, and out. N-! In, and out. After the exam, he ended up stumbling down an internet rabbit hole of how people with strength-augmentation quirks control their power. Simple augmentation quirks like that are the most common, after all. Deep breath. In, and out. In, and Ni-! out. Apparently, one of the most common ways to get that power under control for young children was to meditate, and try and channel the power throughout one’s whole body without letting it escape. Deep breath. Nine! In, and out. In, and…
“Nine!” a voice yells, as Izuku’s eyes shoot open. This… is not Dagobah beach. It’s not a beach at all, from the looks of it. What it is is a room, floating through a timeless, featureless void of black smog. Izuku sits in the middle of a ring of eight thrones, with a white haired, thin man leaning down in front of him. “Wow!” the man says. “We didn’t expect you to get here so quickly!”
“I knew Toshi picked well!” the sole woman in the room exclaimed from her chair, lounging in it with her legs strewn over the armrest.
“He’s got spunk!” a bald man yells from his chair, leaning forward with his hand on his chin, elbow resting on his knee. “Hey kid, want another quirk?”
“Sensei, he can’t take another quirk yet,” another man (this one attempting to bring back the high collar like Best Jeanist) tells the man. “Back me up here, Fourth.”
“Do you want a form of limited precognition?” a man with a vicious scar asks as the collared man facepalms.
“We’re not giving him any quirks!” the first man declares as Izuku surveys the rest of the room. Two people are standing with their foreheads to the wall, decidedly ignoring Izuku, while a wispy cloud of smoke… waves at him?
“Anyways, this is great that you’re here! We can warn you!” the first man tells Izuku, instantly dragging Izuku’s attention back to him.
Warn me of what? Izuku worries, only for no words to come out. What the… he looks down, only to see his body is entirely composed of black smoke. He begins hyperventilating, only for no air to come out, pushing him deeper into his state of panic.
“-ne! Nine! Kid, breathe with me!” a voice yells in his ear, cutting through the mental fog.
I-I-
“Calm down, Nine,” the woman says again. “You’re safe with us.”
“Yeah, and don’t worry about yer body not being here!” the bald man exclaims, only to be whacked over the head by the high-collared man.
“Don’t remind him!” the young man chides his senior.
I-I’m sorry, Izuku apologizes. F-for… For what? Being such a useless Deku? Izuku internally berates himself.
“Nothing to apologize for, Nine,” the first man says, as he stands up to his full height. “We should have explained better!” he exclaims, gesturing around him. “Welcome… to One for All!”
...What?
“Let me explain! This is a metaphysical space within One for All! Apparently entering a meditative state while running the quirk through your body was enough to get you here!” he says. “We didn’t expect to see you here for months, if ever! No previous holder's ever unlocked this portion of the quirk!”
...Ah. Wait, what?
“We’re the previous holders of One for All!” the man says, gesturing to himself. “I’m the first user, Yoichi Shigaraki! But you can call me Yoichi, or First. I don’t like my last name much.”
“If I had to share my last name with a bastard like your brother, I’d agree!” the bald headed man says, before roughly jerking at himself with his thumb. “I’m the fifth user, Daigoro Banjo!”
“Senpai, we were going in order,” the collared man says, before sighing. “I guess we're not. I’m the sixth user, but you can call me En.”
“Hikage Shinomori,” the scarred man offers, saying nothing more. The woman rolls her eyes before draping an arm around Shinomori’s shoulders, pulling him into a side-hug.
“Ignore Fourth!” she says, “He’s a big softy, he just was a hermit for a while and still isn’t used to social interaction.”
“I was like this before being a hermit,” Shinomori says as he ducks under the lady’s attempts to noogie him. “People are hard.”
“Amen to that,” En pipes up.
“Anyways!” the woman says, withdrawing her arm and standing straight up, hands on her hips. “I’m Nana Shimura, number seven! I trained Toshi to be the symbol of peace.”
Toshi? Izuku thinks, the question clearly coming through on the visible parts of his face.
“All Might,” Shimura explains, “though he wasn’t known by that name back then.”
All Might’s mentor! Wow! Izuku’s inner fanboy immediately goes into overdrive. What was he like as a kid? Was he as cool as he was now? Did he have the same power? Was he just as inspiring? Where did he grow up? How-
“Calm down, Nine!” Yoichi interrupts his mental tirade once again. “We’re starting to run out of time,” he warns, and he’s right, Izuku can see black fuzz beginning to pour in on the edges of his vision. “Anyways, our warning! You cannot use one hundred percent of One for All!”
I… I can’t? Is it because I’m not good enough? Maybe I can get All Might to take back the quirk and fi-
“No, not like that!” Yoichi interrupts. “Nobody can use one hundred percent anymore! It’s too powerful! One for All grows exponentially with each passing year someone adds power to the quirk, not linearly with each successor.”
I guess that makes sense… If All Might has as much power as he does, it doesn’t-
“I’d guess that your one hundred percent is maybe two percent of the overall power in the quirk!”
WHAT???
“But there’s good news!” Yoichi gleefully continues. “We figured out how to split the quirk! Just think about splitting the quirk, and get someone to ingest some of your DNA, and you can pass two percent on to someone else, too!”
So... I can split One for All with fifty other people?
By this point, the black fuzz in Izuku’s vision had covered his entire field of sight, obscuring nearly everything.
“Looks like time’s up! Good luck out there, Nine!” Yoichi yells in farewell, as Izuku’s vision fades entirely. “We’re rooting for you!”
“Should we have told ‘em about the girl?” Daigoro asks his fellow vestiges.
“Nah, I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Seven says. “How bad can it get?”
That was… bizarre . Izuku thinks as his consciousness slowly trickles back into his body. What were they saying? To split the quirk, think really hard about splitting it? Just… SPLIT?
As those final words enter his mind, he feels two sharp pinpricks in his neck. His eyes shoot open as he whips around, surprising a young girl with blond hair drawn up into two messy buns. Her eyes widen as she sees her would-be victim regain consciousness. She leaps back, blood-red lightning unexpectedly crackling around her, flying her far across the beach and into the gazebo with a resounding crash.
I… Did I just give away a copy of One for All?
…
Oops?
…
What’s All Might’s number again?
“The good news, Mr. Midoriya, is that you may have saved a life!” the small bear-dog-mouse-thing named Nedzu, aka the Principal, tells Izuku. “If you hadn’t stumbled upon Ms. Toga at the beach, she likely wouldn’t have survived the winter, based upon her current levels of nutrition!”
“T-that’s good!” Izuku stutters, still in shock at the twists and turns of today. He was in U.A., after all! And he met Recovery Girl! All Might had to rush off for some emergency soon after they got here- some villain attack, downtown, that required him- but he was still at U.A.!
“The bad news is that you accidentally gave a copy of One for All to a criminal, if your story is true.”
“W-What?” Izuku stumbles out, his heart clenching. This was it. All Might was going to ask for One for All back, and tell Izuku that he was worthless, useless, a piece of trash, a Deku! He-
“While this was unintentional, it does present a dilemma. Luckily, I have a solution!” Nedzu says, freeing Izuku from his rapidly spiraling thoughts.
“W-what’s that?”
“We enroll Ms. Toga in the hero course!”
“W-what?”
“You heard me correctly! Luckily, one of the spots in the hero course has opened up after some… misconduct from one of the examinees! It turns out that thanks to some well-connected relatives, he had unusually had his record… scrubbed of some sexual misconduct allegations. When I found out about this, well! I committed… an unpleasantness.”
Somewhere, in a hospital room, a spherical-haired boy shudders. He runs over his plan in his head. Find a plane. Fly to Tibet. Become a monk. Hope- no, pray- that the devil doesn’t follow him. Pray more.
Minoru Mineta had no idea that the devil was a mammal of indeterminate species. Not until last week. Now, he will never forget.
Izuku shudders. He has no idea what the super-intelligent animal would consider an unpleasantness, and to be honest, he doesn’t want to know. “S-so you want to put a criminal… in the hero course?”
“Indeed!” Nedzu says, beaming. “What better place to learn than surrounded by examples!”
“Examples?”
“Examples of heroes! The students of the hero course are handpicked by trusted staff members and me, of course, and we only choose the best of the best! It’s how I caught that… potential student, after all! Any member of the U.A. hero course is most definitely trustworthy!”
“O-oh.”
“And besides, Ms. Toga is hardly the next Toxic Chainsaw! She has a few assault charges, but we believe this was due to quirk-induced psychosis- which your encounter with her falls under as well!”
“Is that why she bit me?”
“Indeed! She has a dietary restriction to consume blood, which her parents were neglecting. In fact, I’m scheduled to meet with them tomorrow!”
“Ah. How did you get a meeting so fast?”
“They don’t know we have a meeting yet!” the principal gleefully exclaimed. “It wouldn’t be sporting of me to warn them ahead of time, after all!”
Somewhere, in a nice, suburban home in Japan, a certain Mr. and Mrs. Toga shudder. They had been having such a nice month, too, after that horrible devil that had stolen their daughter had run away. It was probably nothing, they think. Who would care about a demon child like that… thing?
“I care very much about my students, after all!” Nedzu says. “And Ms. Toga is my student now!”
“So what do we do about her having…”
“Nothing!”
“Nothing?”
“Well, nothing drastic. We’ll impress upon her the importance of the situation, and I’ll nicely ask her to keep this a secret!”
“A-are you sure that’ll work?”
“Of course! This is a crack fic, after all! The set-up needs to be finished quickly so the author can get to the main story!”
“...What?”
“What?”
“Y-you won’t send me back?” Himiko Toga tearfully asks the small, furred animal. “I-I d-don’t have to… to go back?”
“Nope!” the mammal cheerfully assures her. “I assure you, Ms. Toga-” Himiko flinches subtly at the sound of that name, something that the chimera picks up on. “Ms. Himiko, then. You’re one of my students, now.” He bares his teeth in the cruel resemblance of a smile. “And I assure you, I take good care of my students.”
Somewhere, in a nice, suburban home in Japan, a certain Mr. and Mrs. Toga feel a sudden urge to get down on their knees and pray. They don’t, of course, since such a thing isn’t normal, and they are anything but abnormal. But still… why the hell were they overcome with the need to pray to this… Nedzu?
“But! Even if you don’t accept my offer,” Nedzu says, his smile softening, “I’ll still make sure you’re put in a good foster home. I don’t want you to feel forced to accept our offer, after all!”
“Y-you’d even let m-me turn y-you d-down?” Himiko asks, feeling her eyes begin to water even more. This day had just been so wonderful… was it just a dream? Would she wake up tomorrow, and still be on the streets? Himiko doesn’t think she could take it, if that was true.
“Of course!” Nedzu says. “I know… intimately,” and he bares his teeth again, “what it’s like to not have a choice in your future.” His smile softens once again, to become the warm smile of an educator. “I would never wish that on anyone.”
“I-I-I accept!” Himiko manages to get out before the tears begin pouring out of her eyes in earnest. “Pl-please, l-l-let me attend your sc-school!” she blubbers, not caring who saw her.
“Of course! Let’s talk terms, shall we?”