"Is Uncle Izuku really All for One's son?"

Four years have passed since Tochi's surprise visit to I-Island, and the Shield family is currently in Tokyo to collaborate with local middle and high schools in some lessons about Quirks study and development.

Sake Iida, the industrious twelve-year-old daughter of Tenya and Mei Hatsume, after listening carefully to the speeches of those specialists who have come to her middle school, have chased them down the corridors during the break to ask them that burning question, being part of the circle of people close to her parents.

Distraught, Melissa has pushed her to a place sheltered by indiscreet eyes and ears; Izuku doesn't usually pronounce on that tragic discovery, which at that time has forced him to reconsider all his past.

"Don't tell me you went back to that point!" the blonde woman has said to that girl with light, very short purple hair and lively, sea-green eyes, shielded by eyeglasses, a trait inherited from her father.

"Here... I was curious to spy on the family trees of my parents' dearest friends, and so..."

Classical Sake: the curiosity for the strangest questions is in the Hatsume DNA, apparently, and Bakugou himself still wonders how a precise and meticulous type like Iida has been able to keep up with that kook Mei.

There is horror in the girl's eyes, a horror that only Katsuki could barely touch, having lived a youth near the First Hero, wondering every morning why Deku's father never showed up, and getting only empty answers in return.

The Explosive Hero decides to speak frankly to that girl, endowed with a power very similar to Tochi Midoriya's, with the variant of being able to jump into time instead of space. At twelve, her limit is a century ahead or back.

"Yes, Izuku is the son of All for One. One of his powers allowed him to manipulate those who had the same genetic code."

"Was Uncle manipulated like a puppet?"

Katsuki's fierce eyes narrow, thinking back to that distant time when the painful truth had surfaced in front of everyone, and everyone had been dismayed. Izuku himself had changed, the shock had clouded him and demolished every trace of serenity in his heart. He had even started calling him 'Katsuki' instead of 'Kacchan'.

"Izuku suffered, but got up as he always does..."

A smile is painted on the man's lips.

"... I have always found it an irritating feature... knowing how to smile even when there would only be crying, or getting angry... in that moment I thought he would've never come back to it and I was worried..."

"And... how did you get him back like before?" Sake asks him.

"With a moral and material shake: I slapped and then shouted at him."

Melissa must restrain herself from bursting out laughing: her husband has an unusually comic way of expressing his experiences of anger and frustration.

Sake withdraws.

"Oh…"

Kacchan's beautiful face returns peaceful and his hand rests on the grader's shoulder.

"That time I told him not to think of the man who generated him with the sole intention of stealing his Quirk when he was born, only to abandon him as soon as he realized he didn't have one; he had a father, and it was..."

"All Might!" Sake exclaims, joyful.

"Exact."

Toshinori Yagi is now deceased, consumed from within by that serious wound that could no longer be healed; however, his soul has risen lightly in the sky, surrounded by the affection of his former students and the one who would have become his adopted son.

Sake doesn't remember the day of All Might's funeral, which has taken place ten years earlier, but has been told to her by Arianne, who was then seven years old and held her mum's hand with sympathy, well aware of how much that beloved and lamented figure had done for her parents.

Arianne has also spoken to Sake about her grandfather David and his farewell letter to his youth friend, a letter bathed in warm tears, read in front of the gigantic crowd.

Sake has been satisfied with that answer, and has returned to her class hopping, with the same easygoing pace as her mother.

"I still don't understand Iida's choice..." Bakugou murmurs, bringing a hand to his chin.

"Really? They're a nice couple!" Melissa chuckles, then goes back to serious mode.

"Anyway... what effect has dusting off that old story done to you?"

Katsuki looks up at the ceiling and covers his eyes with the palm of his hand, sighing.

"It's as if I have lived it for the first time too. I can't believe that Mrs. Midoriya let herself be duped like that, and she never understood who she married."

Melissa looks down, defeated. She takes her husband's hand, the man who won her with his energetic and over the top way to do, as well as with the steadfastness of his values.

"You don't always get to know who you love... My mother seemed the sweetest and quietest woman in the world, but my birth sent her into depression... she couldn't do anything without my father's help, not even warm my milk. She died when I was four, when she discovered that I wouldn't have had a Quirk. She manipulated paper, she could make it take many different shapes and animate it. She threw herself from the balcony of our apartment imitating the butterflies she loved to create for me... but she couldn't fly like them..."

That shattered memory, of which she never spoke in depth to anyone, pierces her lungs with pain and Melissa begins to cry. First calmly, then strongly.

Katsuki hugs her, resting his chin on his wife's shoulder, waiting for the sobs to stop shaking the woman's delicate arms.

The I-Island Hero has been able to see his mother-in-law, Gwendoline, only through his wife's bedside photos, or on the headstone in the middle of one of the island woods. The woman's grave is tidy, but exudes a sense of coldness, of impersonality, since Dave has never been able to completely forgive her. Melissa's interventions are of no use, that sepulchre keeps being the image of a shining but now unattainable love.

Melissa is slowly calming down, and Katsuki's mind slips over his son Kory, a buoyant eight-year-old boy who has been denied of a Quirk. Tochi's suppositions to her friend have come true: Kory is similar to his mother.

The blond-haired man has often thought of himself as a teenager, and with the mentality of the time he would never have accepted a child without Quirk. He would have seen it as a defeat, a personal failure.

Katsuki felt a surge of shame in having his child straight in front of him, who with sad eyes looked at him and at the same time tormented his hands, shortly after the discovery of his absence of Uniqueness.

"Dad, are you angry? Did you want me with a Quirk?"

Katsuki remembers having gasped when he heard that question.

"Many children say that one is weak without the Quirk. I'm weak?"

Teenage Katsuki would have screamed without mercy: "Yes, you are weak!"

But that time had already passed, so the father of family had ruffled his blond hair tenderly:

"Kory, Mom doesn't have a Quirk either, but she's not weak at all. She is intelligent and loves her job, her students would be lost without her. Does it seem cheap?"

Melissa has calmed down. She wipes her last tears, then smiles at her husband; it is a forced smile, but nevertheless bright.

"Let's go..." she says, "... The students are waiting for us."