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Toshinori loved every rare opportunity to don his homemade villain costume. He might have gone a tad overboard adding all the spikes to his black trench coat. It definitely hadn’t been necessary for him to put in hours making his mask look like a real skull. But he’d had so much fun designing a costume that hadn’t needed to be approved by a focus group first.
Class 1-A had already divided themselves into two groups at his order. He’d tried to create a good balance of fighting strength and quirks. The students chattered among themselves, emboldened by his promise to buy them pizza if they landed even one hit on him.
Under his mask, Toshinori smiled. He had already arranged for half a dozen pizzas to be delivered tomorrow, since larger orders needed to be placed in advance. Of course, he would let his students win. In the wild, wolves would pretend to be defeated by their cubs in order to teach them how to hunt. Likewise, one of the reasons Toshinori enjoyed playing the villain was so that he could give his students a confidence boost by losing to them.
Also, it was great fun.
Getting into character as his villainous alter ego All Smite, Toshinori bellowed, “Come at me, little heroes!”
For a moment, the first group just stared at him. Then he inclined his head, and they attacked.
The first team didn’t do that well, coming at him all at once and getting in each other’s way. Toshinori had expected as much, since it was still early in the semester and the students had very little experience with teamwork. He tried to hint at them that they needed to work together by knocking most of them into a huge pile, but it went over their heads.
When Asui shot out her tongue to cover for Hagakure sneaking up behind him, Toshinori felt extremely pleased. He faked a stumble, planning to let Hagakure land a hit. But Asui missed and accidentally hit Hagakure instead.
Making a mental note to give Asui some drills on control, Toshinori picked up both girls and tossed them into two empty seats in the audience. “Muhahahahaha! No hero can defeat me! I will complete my villainous plan to steal the Tokyo Stock Exchange!” As Toshinori fought his students, he continued his monologue about income inequity in Japan. This would be the subject of a pop quiz later. It was important for young heroes to understand the underlying societal causes of villainy.
None of the other students gave him a good opportunity to fake a hit. The other half of Class 1-A watched raptly as their classmates fell. Izuku took notes. Both little Hisashi and Yoichi cheered as Shouto Todoroki, the last one standing, finally collapsed from exhaustion.
Oh, well. There was still the second team. Toshinori had high hopes that young Midoriya’s strategic abilities would find a way to defeat him. As Toshinori flashed a grin and thumbs-up at his two boys, the Shigaraki brothers both cheered even louder.
Unfortunately, the second team didn’t listen to Izuku at all no matter how he shouted over the sounds of fighting. It was a repeat of the Zerg rush the first time. Toshinori was starting to get seriously worried about the massive delivery of pizzas arriving tomorrow.
At this point, only Izuku, Katsuki, and Ochaco were still standing (and Toshinori hadn’t seen Katsuki for a while.) Toshinori formed his losing strategy.
First, Toshinori ran after Izuku, grabbing the boy’s mask and ripping it off.
Perfect! Time for the big Star Wars reveal! This would give Toshinori a chance to deliver the monologue he’d practiced twice last night. While he was ranting villainously, Katsuki and Ochaco would have time to recover and come at him, hopefully as a team this time. He would pretend not to notice any sneak attack.
“How is this possible?” Toshinori reeled backward, placing a hand dramatically on his forehead. “My beloved son, Izuku! I’ve been looking for you ever since your kidnapping by those despicable heroes. All my evil misdeeds have been for sake of you and our family. I decided to destroy hero society because your mother was accidentally killed by a professional hero during a fight. You were but a tiny baby when they raided my hideout. I feared they might hurt you, but I see they turned you against me instead. Did they even tell you my true identity before sending you to fight your own father? This is unforgiveable! I’ll make Japan run red with blood!”
Izuku burst into tears. “All Might—I mean, All Smite—is my dad! This is the happiest day of my life! Let’s take revenge on the heroes together!” He leapt back-to-back with his teacher and raised his fists.
Toshinori blinked. Young Midoriya seemed to have misunderstood the point of his dramatic reveal. This was supposed to be the young hero’s big chance to declare that he’d always stand on the side of justice even against his own father. Or if Izuku wanted to bring him back to the light like the original Star Wars trilogy, then Toshinori would have cheerfully faked a big deathbed redemption scene. Izuku wasn’t supposed to join the villains!
Maybe Izuku planned to pretend to be on his side and backstab him? That would be a clever strategy, especially when the students had already had their numbers so badly decimated. In his fretting, Toshinori didn’t notice a shadow above him.
“I’ll save you, Da—All Smite!” Izuku pushed Toshinori sideways.
Katsuki fell from the sky and face-planted in the dirt. The boy groaned, then turned uncharacteristically silent.
“Hey!” Ochaco squawked from the other end of the field. “What about the plan?” From her hand position, she’d been the one to drop Katsuki from the sky. It had been a good plan—it had almost worked. Toshinori would bet Izuku had thought of it.
Izuku ran forward and swept Ochaco’s feet out from under her with a kick. Then he tossed her onto the pile of defeated students. “Nothing personal.”
“Unfair,” Ochaco croaked. “We were told we had to defeat All Might! No one said anything about beating Deku!” She made it sound like the second task was significantly more risky.
Toshinori leapt on this chance. “Indeed, it is unfair! Since there are two of us now, the entire class should attack us at once.” He gestured at the half of Class 1-A sitting in the audience to come forward.
They leapt to their feet, cheering at the chance for a rematch. Toshinori deliberately turned his back on Izuku as he met the charge, but Izuku didn’t hit him from behind. Odd, what could he be waiting for?
Tenya ran the fastest, shouting, “Izuku, you’re not following the rules of the game! We’re not allowed to switch sides!”
“Aw, you’re right.” Izuku sighed. “I guess I’m a hero again.”
“Really?” Tenya stopped with a hopeful look on his face.
Izuku sucker-punched him. “Nope, still evil,” he said cheerfully as Tenya collapsed to the ground.
Momo rapidly created a dozen syringes full of sleeping serum and fired them off. Fumikage’s Dark Shadow swelled up and attacked. Toshinori easily blocked both, while pretending to not notice Mina sneaking up to melt the ground behind him.
“Look out!” Izuku shoved Toshinori away as the ground crumbled. “Phew. That was a close one!” He beamed.
At this point, Toshinori realized an unfortunate truth: young Midoriya didn’t seem to have any intention to betray him at all.
Oh, no! What was he going to do? Toshinori couldn’t possibly eat all those pizzas by himself! No matter what, he had to find a way to lose!
From among the pile of defeated students, Denki stood up. “I’ll try to get close enough to zap him if someone covers me—Shouto? What are you doing?”
“I’m recording a video for my conspiracy theory blog.” Shouto used a fallen classmate as a stool to climb up the tree and shoot a video of Izuku and Toshinori together. Holding up his phone, he mumbled, “The similar quirks…the same facial expressions…the feralness…it all makes sense! Izuku is All Might’s lovechild! They even look alike.”
“Gosh, do you really think we do?” Izuku adjusted his bangs, trying to create two hair tufts.
“This will be my greatest theory yet!” Shouto cried.
Groaning, Katsuki got to his feet. Dirt covered the front of his shirt and his crimson eyes burned with murder. “SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIITY DEKUUUUUUUUUUUUU!” Hands smoking, he charged.
Izuku laughed mockingly. “You can’t beat me unless you have the whole class helping you, Kacchan?”
“Huh?” Katsuki froze mid-stride. “Like hell! I’ll destroy you on my own! All the shitty extras, get off the field!” He sent explosions at his classmates to drive them away.
“What are you doing?” Shoji shouted, backing away with all his arms smoking. “We’re on your side!”
“The only side I’m on is my own!” Katsuki bellowed. “Get lost!” His explosions increased in magnitude as his classmates refused to back down. Toshinori was forced to knock several members of Class 1-A off the field just to stop them from getting burned.
Katsuki’s rampage knocked loose a tree branch. It plummeted toward Mineta’s head. The branch was heavy enough to cave his skull in, but Mineta stood wide-eyed and frozen in terror, not even trying to dodge.
Toshinori leapt into action, yanking Mineta up by the back of his collar and tossing him into an empty audience seat. He made a note to self to get young Bakugo into quirk-counseling and anger management. This wasn’t the first time the explosive boy had fought too rough with his classmates. Toshinori also made a note to have a serious conversation with Mineta. He’d heard Mineta brag about wanting to become a hero for money and a harem, so someone needed to tell him about the fatality rate among young heroes (a statistic that rarely made it into the news) and nonjudgmentally assure him that there was no shame if he decided he preferred a safer profession. But there was a lot of shame in harassment of his female classmates, he needed to knock that off.
Izuku ran ahead of Dark Shadow. Then he dodged sideways, successfully luring the shadow into one of Katsuki’s blasts of light. Then he nearly punched Koda, but Toshinori jumped in his way in time. Izuku had not yet seemed to notice that the battle had largely shifted to All Might trying to save Class 1-A from himself.
During the brief moment when Izuku’s fist had aimed at his teacher before he’d stopped himself, Toshinori had a flashback to his final battle with All for One. He shuddered. Then he told himself that the flashback had probably come from all of young Bakugo’s explosions. There had been a lot of fire during that battle. It made logical sense.
From the tree, Shouto narrated the fight. “Katsuki Bakugo just defeated Fumikage Tokoyami, who’s supposed to be his teammate. He seems to be on the villain’s side—or perhaps it would be more accurate to call him a patsy.”
“You want to be the next to die, you shitty fake reporter?” Katsuki charged at the tree.
It was time to eliminate young Bakugo, who at this point was proving more a problem than an asset to Toshinori’s planned defeat. Toshinori grabbed a tree vine off the ground and used it to tie the screaming boy up before depositing him on the sidelines.
Izuku sidled over and whispered, “Psst! I was still using him. Could you let him go?”
Shouto said, “There seems to be conflict between our dynamic father-son duo. In this reporter’s humble opinion, it almost looks like All Smite hasn’t been putting his full effort into the fight. Suspicious…”
Toshinori flinched. If the class realized he was letting them win, that would be the opposite of a confidence boost. “Nonsense, these few remaining opponents are simply too weak for me to bother with.”
“Of course they are, All Smite.” Izuku turned a feral grin on Kyoka, Koda, Hanta, and Rikado, the last ones standing. “We can win without Kacchan.”
“As if, you bastard!” Katsuki screamed, struggling against his bonds. “No, I meant to say I’m not on your side, asshole!”
Since Toshinori didn’t dare risk sabotage again, he could only watch as Izuku handled the last four on his own. Toshinori’s half-hearted help wasn’t even needed.
Shouto squirmed on the tree branch. “This is such a wonderful shot, but the lightening isn’t right. It’s going to come out too dark.” Fire blazed from his left side. “Perfect light! Hey, cool, my trauma is cured now!”
With his hands tied up with his own tape, Hanta screamed, “Todoroki! Your classmates are getting slaughtered here!”
“I know, I’m getting great footage of it.” Shouto adjusted his camera angle.
As Rikado punched, Izuku stepped sideways and tripped the larger boy, sending him crashing into Kyoka. To Koda, Izuku shouted, “You’re about to step on an ant!”
“Oh, no!” Koda froze and looked down. Izuku struck the back of his neck, knocking him out. Toshinori successfully convinced himself that Izuku had probably actually seen an ant because there was no way an adorable beam of sunshine would lie. No chance whatsoever.
His defeated classmates lying groaning on the ground, Izuku strolled over to Toshinori like a cat eager to present a dead mouse. “We won! Did I do a good job? D-d-d-d-d-da…”
Toshinori was too upset about winning to process what Izuku was trying to say. He said, “Very well-done. Your mastery of One for All is far greater than anything I had at your age.” The compliment was sincere even as his mind twisted and plotted. Finally, he spotted one of Momo’s syringes lying on the ground. An out!
Clutching his shoulder, Toshinori dropped to his knees. “Ah! My arm feels numb!” He subtly scooped up the syringe. “This was sticking out of my shoulder. You did it! You landed a hit on me! Pizza for everyone!”
Class 1-A cheered, mostly from the ground.
Izuku bit his lip. “I’m sorry. One of them must have gotten past me. I don’t know how I—”
“You did wonderfully.” Toshinori whispered into Izuku’s ear, “I just pretended to get hit. I’ll take you out for milkshakes after class if you keep quiet, my boy.”
Izuku beamed. “Deal!”
OMAKE TIME!
Omake: Master and Pupil, Version Two
Izuku: A milkshake? That’s too cheap a bribe. The price for my silence is a PS Vita.
Toshinori: …
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Omake: Master and Pupil, Version Three
Izuku: This might be asking for too much as a reward, but can I have an All Might hug?
Toshinori: You can have one any time, my boy.
Izuku: I can? Give me a moment, I need to go beat up Class 1-B.
Toshinori: Wait! Come back! I meant you could have a hug any time you asked, not any time you beat up a class full of hero students.
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Omake: The Children’s Reaction
Yoichi: Villains are much cooler than I realized!
Hisashi: I’ve been inspired to become a villain. I want you both to be my future sidekicks.
Toshinori: Why did a chill just go down my spine?
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Omake: All for One Watches Shouto’s Video
All for One: I’d be teary-eyed right now, if I still had eyes. I’m so proud of you, son! Now that your victory has been assured, hurry up and stab All Might in the back.
Tomura: All Might wears a villain costume better than I ever did…villains are no longer cool to me. I’m going to become a video game designer instead.
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Omake: Reporteroki
Shouto: (Shoving an ice-crafted microphone into All Might’s and Izuku’s faces.) Congratulations on your victory over Class 1-A. Now that you have reunited, what will be your next villainous father-son plan? Your reputation would be greatly increased by taking down the Pro Hero Endeavor. He goes to sleep promptly around midnight, and I can leave the backdoor unlocked for you.
Izuku: Next, we conquer the world!
Toshinori: Young Todoroki, please don’t post this video online. The Hero Public Safety Commission is full of idiots who might take it seriously. On an unrelated note, I thought you were joking about killing your father the first time you said it, but now I’m starting to get worried about what’s going on with your family. When can we arrange a home visit?