Time To Go (Time To ReGo!)

by StrayCatRunning

Summary:

On a routine training exercise out in the city, Aizawa-sensei and ten students are trapped and attacked by All for One, because he really REALLY wants that bloody quirk back!

Or:

Watching his brand new foster child go down to multiple hits was bad enough, but to see the worst of the worst villains alive simply pick him up and vanish?

Or:

How could anything this simple go wrong, all he had to do was distract the hero and students with a surge of minions, grab the brat in the chaos, then get the quirk at his leisure and then do as he pleased with the world.

Simple!

So why is he now running around in a child's nightmare with no way out?

Or:

All for One really hates incompetent help!!!

This is a slice of a story, and may be added to at some point but imagine if you will…

 

Canon stupid All Might, sly and manipulative, and Izuku is seventeen before he trusts Aizawa-sensei enough to break through the wall of silence that Yagi insisted upon about “their” quirk.

 

And not only Shouta and the teachers were duped, he got Nezu as well, because Yagi had a team of tech specialists to doctor Izuku’s records, and adapt his back story so no one took a deeper look at the late blooming quirk or the student either. He even got an actor to teach Izuku how to look and behave more normally, saying it was to help hide the quirk, but instead it was to hide the abuse, both of his past and his present.

 

Because being made to hide the pain was abuse, even if Izuku didn't realize it.

 

Nezu knew some indeed of the story, mostly how the villain was dead, and that Izuku was being helped by the primary authority on the quirk, so Izuku got all of UAs education, but not the extra help he should have been getting because Nezu trusted All Might, and Izuku was a REALLY fast study in looking and acting normal.

 

So when this story starts Izuku’s been living with Shouta and Hizashi for about six weeks, finally starting to settle in.

 

And while he and Katsuki have worked out their past differences, Izuku in no way has laid the demons in his past to rest yet.

 

The trauma here is about ten percent worse than in canon (finding your dead by suicide mother and hitting the system quirkless at six will do that) and All for One has set a trap, and caught Shouta and ten kids out in the city, and now, the story begins!

 

 

________________________________________________

 

 

 

It was a simple quirk.

 

Not powerful, not strong, not clever….

 

Yet here he was, deep in an affected mind, swearing to find the owner of Traumatic Mind Palace and make them regret their ancestors being born as he tore them shred from splinter as they choked on their own blood!

 

Looking up at his surroundings, he sighed and continued his hunt, somewhere in the chaos was what he sought, and once he found it all would be well.

 

***

 

Tears tracked down his face in an endless rain he looked at his hands and whispered “Owie.”

 

Cause they were all bent and hurting and one of them gripped a ball tight tight tight but it was made of spikes and he couldn't let it go!

 

Trying not to look at the blood dripping the same way his tears did, only more sticky, he tried to get up but his legs didn't work.

 

Giving up totally he tipped his head back and wailed, a high siren scream of deepest heartbreaking distress!

 

It went on and on and on and on as no one came for him, but why would they, no one ever came for him.

 

***

 

Finding the source of one sound in the cacophony of noise was proving frustrating indeed, especially with all the ….. Stupidity in the way but he eventually found it, a shattered bedroom, everything within tattered and destroyed as it dripped off the walls like running paint and in the debris crouched his target, helpless and finally in reach!

 

Lips pulling back he gave a silky laugh and said, “Deku, at last - ”

 

He would have gone on with a satisfying bit of monologuing but the figure looked up and shook its head and said muleishly, “Nuhuh, not Deku, mmmmm Izuku!”

 

“EEEE ZUUUU KOOOO!”

 

“I know is hard but I’c’n heps you learn it, is not too harded to do.”

 

Feeling his own brain trying to reboot at the words, he studied the hero student, unworthy vessel of One for All and….. suddenly didn’t know what to do.

 

Licking his lips he tried again, but the surging power of the quirk effect he was trapped in was clearly being wildly powered up by the quirk he’d been hunting for so long, and mental quirks were dangerous.

 

Suddenly it wasn't a simple little trap-you-in-a-mind-scape and let your nightmares chew on you for an hour or two because….

 

Power.

 

Resisting the urge to say a heartfelt fuck he looked at the hopeful eyes, the falling tears, ignored for now the spiked ball lest he do something inadvisable, he looked instead at the room.

 

A child's room, but the bright colors of his hated enemy had twisted and melted and run into blackening puddles that looked shallow and yet felt deep and dark and dangerous and he shuddered, because whoever said a child was innocent was a fool.

 

Innocent of knowledge they might be but harmless minds they were not, children held all the potential of the entire species in their tiny bodies and this one was no different.

“How old are you?”

 

Praying desperately for something different, anything but what he expected to hear, he damned near wilted when the twisted fingers clenched and then held up five.

 

“Five?”

 

“Unhuh.”

 

Watching the melting remains of the space beginning to creep towards the gleaming figure on the floor he suddenly said, “Right, big five year olds don’t sit on the floor when it’s that dirty, come here.” And simply -

 

Picked the child up.

 

Not the seventeen year old hero student he’d been hunting to kill as messily as possible but a tiny child with broken fingers and he still wasn't looking at the mess of the other hand and he backed sharply away from the rising wave of rotten stinking melted room as it rose up in protest of it's victim escaping, and then ran.

 

Holding the child's head safely against his shoulder he ran from a child's bedroom as if their lives depended on it, because in this frighteningly powered up nightmare quirk, they probably did.

 

***

 

Someone came.

 

Someone came and pickeded him ups and was ho’ding him an' was nice.

 

Not nice enough to not be scaries but nice enough for hi to look around with one eye as he kept most of his face hidden against the man's body.

 

One eye was okay, he could close it fast fast and be safe if any more scaries showed up.

 

Flinching hard as a bellow ripped the sky like lightning he stared with both eyes wide open now because -

 

“DEKUUUUUU HOW DARE YOU LOOK DOWN ON ME FUCKING QUIRKLESS COWARD COME OUT AND FIGHT MEEEEEEE!!!”

 

“Kacchan?”

 

But how’d Kacchan get so big n’ mean? And a flash of his quirk whited out the world and a booooom like thunder and Izuku cried out and hid in the strangers arms because it wasn't sparklers the way his bestest friend's quirk should be and whole buildings were smashing into rubble and he didn't want to look anymore and they were running again as he sobbed.

 

***

Desperately running what he knew about this fucking quirk through his head it was fueled by nightmares, but that one blasting the dream world to rubble was a hero student, was supposed to be this one's fucking friend!

 

How was a friend a nightmare?

 

Then the entire world lept and shook as someone else strode out of the black light sky, All Might, hundreds of feet tall and smashing the world flat with his enormous boots as he bellowed a damned near incoherent stream of endless words, “YOU CAN'T BE A HERO WITHOUT A QUIRK EAT THIS BE REALISTIC EAT THIS YOU CAN'T BE A HERO UNLESS YOU EAT THIS BE REALISTIC MY BOY CAN'T BE A HERO EAT THIS YOU CAN BE A HERO EAT THIS BE REALISTIC MY BOY MY BOY MY QUIRK ALONE EAT THIS!!!” 

 

Waving a strand of hair longer than a bullet train they both stared up in horror as the words fell like an endless avalanche and instead of running again Hisashi tucked the child closer and said firmly, “He's wrong.”

 

Tired desperately sad eyes looked up at him and he said again, “He’s wrong, you can be anything you want to be, a hero, a firefighter, a quirk specialist, a swimming coach, a puppy petter, a mouse breeder, a a a frog jumping judge, guppy farmer, flea circus owner gotta love them fleas!”

 

Getting ever more ridiculous on job titles he almost sobbed his own self in relief when the child giggled and Hisashi didn't scream when he saw their free hand now twining around him like roots, he simply made sure the now parasitic child wasn't hampering his own range of motion.

 

Dreading what was coming next he whispered, “Close your eyes for a bit while I look at something, okay?”

 

“O’tay.”

 

Holding a hand now to block the child's vision and hearing he followed the sound of a raging river, the smell of -

 

Swallowing thickly as he came around a corner, a mountain before them but not of rocks and earth, instead a woman pouring a river of tears out of empty eye sockets blocked out half the sky, salt waters lashing around washing away huge swathes of the dream works, the air stinking....

 

Stinking of Jasper.

 

Against the backdrop of the mountain hero student bellowing abuse and All Might booming gibberish he could hear a fight, masc and fem, screaming and hurtful hateful worlds Quirkless no son of mine fatherless whore bitch bastard betrayer your own flesh and blood in an endless loop of rage and pain.

 

Jasper.

 

Overdose levels, a smell unmistakeable.

 

The woman dead and sagging and the fighting raged on but now huge yet dim distant shadowy figures and slamming doors and wailing and endless tears added to the cacophony.

 

Clearly this woman had ended her tears.

 

By the looks of it the child had found her.

 

Dead.

 

Nightmares indeed as the ground erupted to a towering red eyed demon “EXPELLED ALL OF YOU NO POTENTIAL GET OUT Get Out get out - ”

 

Retreating sharply from that one, much smaller and instead of like all the rest this one began to shrink.

 

To reduce in volume and size but he took no chances and hid them away.

 

Quirkless.

 

And the cities background hum wasn't vehicles and trains and feet walking and machines moving, instead it was words, terrible words and even he flinched and grimaced at some of them, turning from the visions of horrors playing out at the edge of sight all around and hid them away as best he could but they were in the mind of the one who’d experienced the trauma creating the nightmares in the first place, not many places to hide in here.

 

Looking now at the hand, the quirk it was made of clutched so tightly the sharp shards of the sea urchin shape of it pierced tiny fingers, thrusting through the back of his hand, spikettes now thrusting into the arm itself and he said after studying it for a time, “I have an idea.”

 

Because he knew in the chaos of this quirk they were trapped in there was always a door.

 

A way out.

 

And he thought he knew where it was but he was fucking not leaving without his brother’s quirk back in his possession.

 

Not because he’d hunted it for so long but because it was destroying the infant in his arms.

 

He might hate All Might, hate all the holders but this kid, this baby -

 

Living someone else's nightmares was better than walking a mile in their shoes it seemed for getting to know them, he didn't want to hurt this kid, not if he could help it.

 

Trusting green eyes looked up and he said, “Your hand, it's hurting so bad but, if you let go and give me the hurty thing the owies will go away.”

 

“Re’we?”

 

“Really and for real.”

 

“Oh,” a tiny hand of horrific damage was held up to him, “H’ep me?”

 

His entire body shuddered as the child's legs now joined the undamaged arm in twining and gripping with multitude of tendrils of pure need completely around his torso now.

 

Desperate hopeless need and he said, “Of course sweetheart, let's have a look.”

 

It was easy.

 

In the end getting his brother’s quirk back was so easy.

 

The child wanted it gone, the quirk wanted to be free, all he had to do was ease each finger open and gently pull the spiked ball free as the child wailed in pain but this was a dream scape, so he simply ate the spiked ball, shifting and buffering it to the side to be dealt with later.

 

For all its power it really was just seven quirks in a tangled ball, he’d handled much worse over time.

 

And the damaged hand was just as easy.

 

He simply kissed it better.

 

Tears and blood and pain all gone the baby sighed and leaned his head against Hisashi’s neck and his free hand now twined around to join the rest as fingers spun out into clinging vines and he had to get them out of here.

 

The child was losing power fast now, losing form and intent and reality.

 

Would die and take them both down into death.

 

But the gate was always a nightmare changed into goodness.

 

Eraserhead, a figure who’d started off yelling about people being expelled, had begun to shrink even before Hisashi retreated.

 

None of the other nightmares shrank, they were bigger faster more destructive louder and more hurtful as the world destabilized faster around them and now he ran for real.

 

The hero would be at the center, was the gate, and it was only his own skill that got them there as the world puddled into leaping waves of tar and sticky malformed hands gripping at them from all sides.

 

“PROBLEM CHILD! I'm here come on PLEASE!!!”

 

A cry of desperate searching instead of rage and he met the dream hero’s eyes and his armful whispered in relief, "Sensei.”

 

As the entire world rose up into mountain high waves of garbage and began to fall Hisashi lunged at the heroes' outstretched frantic hands and simply.... fell through him.

 

Into the brightness of a full on battlefield!

 

In his arms lay the broken body of a hero student, barely breathing, and approaching at slow motion speed was that same hero, desperate fear evolving on his face as Hisashi simply waved a shield into place to block him, settled the dying child better in his arms as he decided what to do next and then portled them both to a safe house.

 

A single mental call to stop the battle and send his minions into hiding sorted that entire shit show and he lay the broken barely breathing body onto the bed.

 

He was shaking violently now but he had to focus, had to find a quirk to help, had to find a quirk to heal, had to fix this now and oh, of course!

 

Laughing as he tugged a silly pointless quirk into full power, Rego it was once called, and along with an easy dozen others, all at full power inside of his body, he placed both hands on the child and lit it up, white fire flaring to bonfire brightness as he burned the boy's mass itself to take it back and back and back to a point to rego from.

 

Back and then back again.

 

Back before the horror of All Might turning from a hero into a nightmare.

 

Back before his best friend in the world turned into a nightmare.

 

Back before his mother turned from loving adult to a nightmare corpse.

 

Back before Quirkless destroyed a child's life, turning all the good into a nightmare indeed.

 

And then, in the bed at last on the scorched blankets and blistered walls lay a child.

 

Three at most.

 

Tiny and sleeping deeply, mind and body taken back to a point of beginning again, a place where no one alive but Hisashi himself could have taken him with the quirks he’d used to do it with.

 

Because here no nightmares lived.

 

No memories or nightmares at all of a life clearly lived in such pain that an enemy like Hisashi himself had proven himself to be was gripped onto in desperate need.

 

Smiling as he flopped down and eased himself back onto the floor, he lay spread eagle and finally, finally, let One for All spread out into his body.

 

Smiling in relief he took his brother's hand and they, and all the rest of the crowd with them all joyfully fled away into the light, because it was long past time they left.

 

A simple pause as his brother waited for him, smiling and teasing, and he tugged the not nightmare at all but much loved sensei to his failing flesh and then laughed as he sped away, free at last, leaving his useless body behind, chasing after his brat of a brother who sped ahead whooping, “Come on old man, keep up!”

 

“I’ll show you old…..”

***

 

Watching his student fall almost killed him but Shouta had ten students in the city, all of them fighting for their lives and between one blink and the next as he ran to save this one downed by several simultaneous hits, he slammed into an invisible shield wall, unable to reach the villain who was -

 

Frozen?

 

No, not quite, moving as if underwater but still moving as by agonizing inches he picked up Izuku and sagged to his knees as he gripped and clutched and despite erasure at full power and his damned near screaming as Shouta tried to pound his way through -

 

The villain suddenly looked up, and vanished.

 

Rolling to his feet from the shield disappearing under his as he ran into it again with a scream he stood on the spot….

 

The spot where a super villain simply took his student.

 

Took his student who he’d just….

 

Just

 

Learned the entire story!

 

Quirkless, generational transferable quirk, suicide victim mother, bully and tormentor and horror fosterage placements and….

 

They hadn't even had a chance to begin healing.

 

His kid, seventeen, only just moved in with him and Hizashi, finally in a stable home and receiving mental health treatment and support and love at last….

Gone.

 

Shouta knew he had to get back in the fight but for a long moment he simply stood, unable to process how wrong everything had suddenly become but his delay didn't cost any lives because with a shocking suddenness it was all over, villains turning and running as if their lives depended on it and his students gathering as he began the heart breaking task of getting things started, searches and casualty evac and buildings braced and the search for their missing Izuku begun and then in an instant Shouta was gone too.

 

A stupid Pop sound and reality tangled up around him and then the world returned!

 

This time he didn't roll to his feet because he felt like a battered piece of meat, only slowly managing to rise to his knees and stare at the dead villain on the floor.

 

Clearly dead.

 

And the sleeping infant on the bed, tiny, green curls and naked and beginning to shiver and that did get him up.

 

It was the only thing that could, a student in need.

 

This student of his now clearly remade and yet, the villain was dead!

 

Deciding to take it one task at a time he picked Izuku up and tucked him into his jumpsuit, a few loops of his weapon securing the unconventional baby carry to his chest and then began to pat himself down for his phone, because his ear comms and goggles were both gone.

 

 

 

 

Sitting in a chair once the posse was summoned he stared down at a tiny tiny Izuku, and prayed selfishly that this was permanent, because his kid had horrors in his past no one could ever heal from.

 

Not all the way.

 

Using one finger he uncurled a tiny perfect hand, fat baby fingers clearly never broken and he tried not to cry as he prayed, 'Please let it be real, please let him stay like this, please….'

 

And then the heroes descended and he was headed not for hospital but for UA, giving a nonstop report of the events of the day, having shrouded Izuku totally in his capture weapon so no one even guessed he held a treasure hidden under his clothes.

 

It was important to get to the bottom of this before the world found out.

 

With Nezu on the case though the world might never find out.

 

Because Nezu had trusted All Might, had believed him, and a student suffered because of that trust so given a chance to make it up to Izuku, Shouta knew Nezu would burn the world!

 

 

 

*

Holding the still sleeping child Shouta asked, just to be sure, “Permanent?”

 

The three experts that had just finished examining Midoriya Izuku's still sleeping body sighed as one and nodded, which admittedly was a bit creepy, and said as a unit, voices joined in harmony, “Yes, permanent. What you are holding is a recreated living organism, nothing remains of anything they once lived or were, no cells, no bones, no memories, no emotions that once they were, and all that they are now is the three year old infant in your arms.”

 

“Keep him, love him, make this time better.”

 

Like poking at a wound Shouta asked, “No trauma at all?”  

 

Because he had to know, and they nearly singsonged, “No trauma yet, but from their point of view they have a loving parental pair who are now gone, and their friends are gone, and they are alone.”

 

And then they simply walked out, still moving in perfect sync, and left him literally holding the baby.

 

"Well." Recovery Girl said, "Give him to me and we’ll start looking into temporary fosterage until we find someone to adopt him, I’m sure - " 

 

Surging to his feet Shouta backed sharply and hisssed, “No.”

 

“Back off.”

 

“Better yet, Piss off!”

 

Looking down he said to the one now standing beside him, “If he isn't my own legal child in three hours flat you’ll never see us again!”

And Nezu grinned, all his teeth on show as he said, "It's already done, Yamazawa Izuku has been your officially adopted legal son for twenty eight minutes already, and you are very much welcome!”

 

Laughing in heart felt relief as he turned to meet Hizashi who’d been held up until now, watching the sliding skidding windmilling arms halt, yellow green eyes blown wide in shock, staring at the angelic freckled face of the tiny child in Shouta’s arms and they stood, leaning together, and simply breathed the peace of the moment.

 

All his students had survived the fight and were being tended to sleep-over fashion in the dorms, Oboro and Nemuri overseeing them all so Shouta could ignore them for now, they were safe and well.

They'd all been informed as to the age regression, but that was all they knew, tomorrow they'd learn their friend was gone, and emotional support would be given, but all of that was for later.

 

Later as well, with the link to the dead villain they could shut the entire organization down and finish it for good!

Without the cursed quirk and the hate filled bitter life Izuku’d been forced to live twisting him into the forced cheerful can-do-hero to be, this Izuku would grow strong and loved and was as welcome into their lives as spring after a long bleak winter.

 

Teen Izuku had been just as welcome, just as cared for, just as loved, but this was a brand new start indeed.

 

Hizashi’s arm around his shoulders, new baby tucked in his arms, they went home, a proper family at last.

 

And when they got there they had to laugh, because a mountain of toddler supplies was already waiting for them, including a Hero Nezu onesie that they immediately dressed their still naked new son in, after figuring out, with the help of the internet, how to put a nappy on.

 

 

 

 

Notes:

______________________________

Hizashi didn't realize that the addition of One for All, the mental quirk he'd been stuck in, and using about a dozen quirks at once to save Izuku when he himself was right on the edge would actually kill him.

Figuring it out well in time he could have saved himself, but his brother was there, at last, as well as all the souls he'd inadvertently trapped, not just inside Yoichi with all the past holders but inside himself as well when stealing quirks, and in the rush of their joyful freedom he too decided to just go.

To go with his brother and take the next great adventure with him.