Chapter Text
All for one was not one to forget things. Certainly not important things. Sure, in all his years he had never come across a knowledge or memory storing quirk, but he had few memory enhancing ones, memory wiper quirk too.
Hell he could probably build his own life support machine if need be. The only things that he would forget were frivolous details, like the color of the cat he and his brother had saved once. To be fair, the memory enhancers couldn’t recover his childhood memories, but that wasn’t important.
Despite all of this, he couldn’t help the nagging feeling that he had forgotten something important while he was watching the UA Sport Festival and especially the first place boy. Or at least first place in the first round. He hadn’t really been first after that and he’d just lost to Endeavor's spawn.
He would be keeping an eye on that boy since it seemed like he was the new holder of One for all. He sighed. He really hoped that the new successor would be interesting.
—
Izuku didn’t think he was the main character of some shonen manga that he sometimes read in his spare time. That honour would go to Kacchan. He had even crafted himself a origin story. A boy from a nowhere school achieves his lifelong dream of getting into UA and becoming a Hero.
Izuku had of course ruined this perfect origin story by getting into UA as well, but that had been patched by making them rivals. Izuku would have rather been Kacchan’s best friend but that role was Kirishima’s and there couldn’t be two Kirishimas… Actually scratch that.
The point was that Izuku wasn’t the best friend. Kacchan glared at him like he was one of those snobby entitled rival characters that would make the main character miserable every time they were present. Izuku didn’t think he was entitled, but Kacchan could hardly be convinced. Actually, it probably wasn’t healthy for Kacchan to treat his life like a shonen manga. He would have to mention it to Aizawa.
Being the main character or not Izuku was once again in a black void and once again face to face with a frail, white haired man. This was after his fight with Todoroki, or at least that was the last thing he remembered.
This wasn’t his first time here. The night after he got One for all he had a strange dream. The white haired man had seemed scared and wary of him, but made his way towards him repeating the word brother over and over again and looking suspiciously like his father. Izuku had just chugged it up to being a weird dream. Maybe he missed his father.
The white haired man greeted him and started recounting the story of the two brothers. One a centuries old villain hellbent on controlling the world by giving and taking quirks. The other, thought to be quirkless, opposing his brother and acquiring a power that could be passed down through generations. In an eternal rivalry until one would prove to be victorious.
After that his… uncle? His long dead uncle explained the vestiges and how Izuku would acquire their quirks over time. The vestiges stood in line, eight in total, some more shadowed than others. What Izuku guessed to be All Might being almost yellow smoke and on his right a beautiful woman with long dark hair and friendly eyes.
On his left, however, stood a figure not unlike Izuku whose color matched his hair. Dark, almost black in the center, green on the edges, swaying like All Might’s form. And Izuku was sure that he would be the one explaining this one to the others.
See, despite growing up quirkless, Izuku was sure that he had had a quirk once.
One afternoon after kindergarten Izuku was playing in a park and happened in his haste to touch another kid. Soon after that he could produce sand from his hands. Izuku almost got scared that he had taken somebody’s quirk like his father could and wanted to give it back. Soon though he saw one of the kids in the park producing sand from their hands and found that he couldn’t do it anymore.
Izuku was confused until he remembered that his dad had told him about copy quirks. His dad really didn’t need one, his own words, but his father still had an appreciation for them. They felt like cousin quirks to him.
After Izuku hurried home to tell his family all about his new discovery. He got inside and went to hug his father. But as he touched him, Izuku copied his quirk. He could feel all the quirks around him. The quirks in his father, his mother’s quirk. They all had a distinct feel to them.
He could also feel that his copy quirk wasn’t there. It felt like his father’s quirk had consumed it. And soon the time limit of his original quirk was up.
He couldn’t feel the other quirks anymore, couldn’t sense them. He couldn’t even sense his own quirk. The only quirk he could sense was something deep inside him. Something he couldn’t draw out no matter what.
He didn’t know how to explain this to anyone and soon enough he was pronounced quirkless. Soon after that his mother cracked his hopes of becoming a hero. Soon after that Kacchan started to treat him worse. And soon after that his father left.
He always thought his father left because he was quirkless (although, in that case, his father could have just given him a quirk), but now it seemed more likely that he left due to being the number one villain, symbol of evil. It made Izuku feel better somehow. That he hadn’t been an all out disappointment. Maybe…
His uncle was having a crisis. He was holding his head and his eyes looked a mixture of panicked and confused, shock maybe. Izuku couldn’t blame him. He was also having a crisis about his dad being a supervillain and that supervillain being his nemesis.
All the other vestiges weren’t fairing better either. The shadowy forms of second and third swaying rapidly while the others tried (and failed) to stay composed. Even All Might’s form had arms on his head. And then Izuku woke up.