Giran was surprised at the request he received, mostly because of how little he had to do. Normally when he was called upon he had to arrive with information, recruits, equipment, something that warranted his services. However, no matter how odd it was though, he would never ignore the call of his primary patron.

He quietly made his way into the warehouse that housed the supposedly dead king of the underworld and was shocked when he heard an unfamiliar voice inside, a very young voice at that. The man's very existence was a national secret, so what was a young boy doing here?

As he walked further into the building he came across a very odd scene. There was a teenager who couldn't be older than fourteen sitting with the symbol of evil, and they seemed to be playing some sort of card game. Even more shocking was seeing the deformed man with a genuine smile for the first time.

Giran took a few steps closer, remaining out of the child's view, since he wasn't sure what was going on yet. While said child was distracted going through a binder, All for One looked up and raised a single finger to his smiling lips.

He supposed that meant he was to watch, but not to let himself be noticed by the boy just yet. It also meant that him walking in on this meeting wasn't an accident. So he got as close as he could without risking detection and glanced at the cards laid down.

Both had a binder filled with cards, but not a type of card that he recognized. In between them was a single card that read 'eye lasers' and smaller script underneath the title that he couldn't read from his distance.

Each of them laid down two cards with great consideration then flipped them at the same time.

All for One spoke, "My combination is 'Bending Sight', which lets the user essentially curve their vision to see around corners and such, along with 'Bird's Eye View'. All three together would create a laser that could be shot from the sky anywhere within a kilometer of the user and chase the target. I think I'd call it something fun, like 'the sky sniper.', or something like that."

The boy nodded and pushed his two cards forward. "Oh, that's definitely a great idea for taking out a single target. As you said, it's like a sniper rifle, I present to you the nuclear bomb equivalent of laser eyes."

There was mirth and joy in their voices as they teased and tried to outdo the other. "Oh? Do tell how you managed that? That is quite a high bar for a quirk as simple as this one."

"First, we add in the quirk, 'extra eyes' giving the user the ability to grow additional eyes across their body, though the limit is around twenty five eyes in total. On its own that is a powerful quirk combo, but not nearly enough. That's where the other quirk comes in."

Not enough? What hypothetical situation are they considering where twenty five laser shooting eyes is treated as so underwhelming?

One for All picked up the second card and seemed to ponder it for a moment, confusion on his face turning into pure joy. "That is absolutely brilliant, Izuku. Using a dragonfly mutation quirk to give the user bug eyes, which would cause laser eyes to become far more devastating. I have only ever used this quirk for the flight aspect, not even considering the advantages from the peculiar eyes of an insect."

Izuku. Where had he heard that name before? He felt he had heard news about an Izuku recently.
"Well, you certainly beat me this round. Though I still support the merits of my more focused usage, yours was far more creative and has the advantage of absolute destruction. As always, your prize is a quirk of your choice."

Wait, what? He figured out quickly that the point of this game was to create the most powerful combination of three quirks, where both parties had to work off of the same base quirk, in this case laser eyes. But he hadn't realized that they were gambling with quirks on the line.

The boy reached out, and moved his hand as if he were sifting through something only he could see before making a grabbing motion and pulling his hand back.

That's when it clicked for him. This was the boy in the news the other day who had been caught after seeming to take a man's quirk and kill him in the process.

"Oh? Interesting choice, was it simply because of this round, or had you had your eye on it already?"

"I had wanted a flying quirk anyways, but the realization about the eyes really sold this particular one."

Four dragonfly wings sprouted from the boy's back, ripping through his shirt, and his eyes pushed forward and shifted to have typical insect qualities. These new eyes must have given far more peripheral vision because Izuku suddenly spun around and took a rookie fighting stance.

The old villain laughed loudly, "Izuku, this is my good friend Giran, there is no need to worry."

The boy dropped his stance and the new insect features slowly retreated into his body as he looked awkwardly between the two men.

"Giran, this is my son Izuku Midoriya. He had lived with his mother most of his life for his safety and to keep his existence a secret, but recent events have made it safest for him to stay with me now."

He had most certainly not been expecting this unassuming boy to be the son of the most powerful man he'd ever met. Sure, their quirks were similar, but it was hard to imagine someone like All for One with something as normal and domestic as a family.

"Um, hi, it's nice to meet you Mr. Giran."

"Ha, no need for the Mr., just Giran is fine. I saw that on the news the other day, I'm assuming you weren't planning on making your big debut so soon."

Izuku looked a bit sheepish, he'd have to learn not to hide his nerves if he wanted to follow in his father's steps. "Yeah, I wasn't really thinking ahead. That guy was going to kill my friend so I just sort of… acted."

"Nothing wrong with that. Now, was there anything in particular you needed me for today or did you just want me to meet the kid?"

"Well, it's never too early to start making connections. But before we get into anything, Izuku, I want you to tell me what his quirk is by using what we talked about."

The small green haired boy looked at him with an appraising eye, but it was almost like he was looking through him. He reached a hand out as if to grab something invisible but instead of pulling back and taking his quirk he just observed.

It was an incredibly odd feeling. As if someone were holding his soul. It wasn't hostile or aggressive, but very much like being in the cave with a lion that isn't hungry. Yet. This boy could rip him apart with only a thought, and the only thing stopping him is that he didn't want to.

Izuku put his hand down and looked over to his father. "It feels almost… hazy. Like a thick fog that settles around your head. Does he have a smokescreen quirk?"

Giran shook his head, "You're definitely going in the right direction, but that's a bit too literal, think more-"

All for One raised a hand. "Don't give him too many hints, let him figure it out on his own."

Giran only nodded, who was he to get in the way of a man teaching his son?

The boy seemed to be deep in thought. "It's like seeing something in the corner of your vision, but when you look nothing is there. Is it something that blocks perception of you so you go unnoticed? Or maybe it blurs the memory of your face? No… that's too specific. It blurs memories formed while it's active! That's it!"

"Damn, that's impressive. Yeah, my quirk is called 'Murky', it makes it hard to remember exact details within a few minutes of when my quirk is on."

For a brief moment Izuku looked at him with a mix of curiosity and desire with his hand twitching forward slightly. All for One stepped in by gently tapping his son on the back of the head. "It's ok to look, but don't go trying to take something. Unless you suddenly become able to give back quirks on your own, there are serious consequences to you taking an ally's quirk."

So that was the drawback. The kid could take any quirk he even looked at with a simple swipe of the hand, but he couldn't give back anything he took and he'd be stuck with it if he grabbed a bad one. It was also a show of trust by openly speaking about the nature of each other's quirks, a means of subtly reinforcing his previous statement of friendship and trust.

"Speaking of my son's sticky fingers when it comes to quirks-." Izuku made a noise of indignation and general disagreement but All for One ignored him and continued. "I wanted to discuss with you procuring some quirks of his own rather than just sharing my underused ones with him."

"Sure, I'm guessing you want to go about this the usual way? I send you the quirk information of people in the morgues we paid off and have him come visit if there are any worth taking."

"Yes, that will work just fine, just find one or two to start so we can verify that Izuku's quirk works on corpses the same as mine does."

Inko rolled a large whiteboard into her living room where Mitsuki, Masaru, Tsukauchi, Gran Torino, and Toshinori were all sitting.

"Ok, let's get down to business in trying to figure out exactly who Izuku is with by pooling together what we know. Since he thinks he's with his father we just need to work backwards and figure out which traits of Toshinori's he knew about and then see what villains have them too."

All Might scratched his head, "Well, on the plus side I'd like to think I don't have too much in common with the criminals of the world, so hopefully it won't be too long of a list."

Inko ignored him as she wrote the first few lines.

Somehow knows who Izuku's father is

Very tall

Light colored hair

Dangerous people are after him

Mitsuki and Gran Torino both laughed at him, "Oh yeah, I'm sure no villains have those traits."

Tsukachi walked over to the board and wrote down the few things that their investigation had found

Has or has access to a warp quirk

Izuku did not recognize them as an immediate threat

Inko turned to him with a questioning look, "Why do you say that?"

"The cameras were only knocked out for a couple of seconds. I'd imagine if someone he knew for a fact was a dangerous villain he would have fought back at least enough for it to take more than the four seconds to capture him. The other reason I say that is if he was truly frightened then we would likely have found a quirkless individual instead of an empty cell."

Everyone in the room nodded along, finding that to be a logical conclusion.

Has access to police information

Likely part of an organization

"The reason for these last two are due to how quickly he was able to find the exact location of the holding cell, and the number of different people and quirks needed to pull this off in so little time. This is all we have so far that is concrete, so I'll hand it over to you Mrs. Bakugou."

"Sure, don't know how much more I got than you two, but I'll write down what he said himself, or what I said and he didn't argue against."

Was surprised at who his father was

Very powerful, a legitimate threat to heroes

Is treating izuku well

Her husband cocked his head slightly, "I'm not a hero like these guys, so I wouldn't know, but is that last one really relevant, or even something we can be sure of?"

"If we're looking through villains, 'is nice to children' would definitely eliminate a few. Plus, it means they're in it for the long game. We've known Izuku his entire life, hell, I was the one holding Inko's hand during labor because someone wasn't there." All Might cowered under her glare. "I know what that boy sounds like when he's scared, and he didn't sound the least bit frightened or nervous, and it doesn't exactly take a lot to make him nervous."

Gran Torino spoke up, "Shouldn't we account for his quirk? Only include villain's that have a quirk that messes with quirks or somethin'?"

Mitsuki shook her head. "Look at his biological father. If super strength led to this then why not some other unexpected mutation. Quirks are a confusing as fuck, if lotion skin can lead to explosion hands, then just about anything could lead to Izuku's."

Inko sighed as they bickered on who should or shouldn't be included.

"Am I the only one that's going to say what we're all thinking? This sounds like All for One."

Masauro raised a hand tentatively, "I wasn't thinking that, who is he?"

"Right, everyone except the Bakugous. All for One is the reason this oaf left me and Izuku in the first place. Long story short, he's as old as quirks, very hard to kill, very evil, and has a tendency to kill the families of any hero that goes after him. To me it sounds like he matches our description and this is definitely his MO."

The old retired hero laughed, "Yeah that's one way to sum the guy up. But the reason he's not on the list is 'cause Toshinori killed the bastard six years ago."

Inko seemed to cycle through multiple emotions before settling on barely contained anger. "So, this man is definitely dead?"

"Yep. He punched off the top half of his head and everything."

"And there wasn't anyone just as powerful who took his place?"

Gran Torino clearly didn't see where she was going yet as he had a big smile of pride "Nope, we took down just about everyone that followed him and tore his empire apart, even with the big guy here on bed rest for a few months."

She turned and glared at Toshinori with a deep sadness mixed with anger. "So why didn't you come home? The big bad man who killed families was why you left, and I understood that, I could understand and agree with that choice even if it hurt. But why didn't you come home when it was done?"

He glanced around, unsure if he wanted to have this conversation in front of their friends. "I… I couldn't stop just because he was gone. There was so much that had to be done…"

"Six years, Toshi. That's nearly half of Izuku's life where you weren't here. Not because of some super villain only you could defeat, no, that half of his life was entirely because of you. The times I had to comfort a young old boy who thought his father hated him were because of you. Those tears are on your conscience and no one else's. I hope it was worth it, to put being a hero above everything else, no matter the cost."

Inko wiped the tears from her eyes and walked away into the kitchen. "I need a break. Make sure you look into shapeshifters who could pretend to be this idiot while I stress bake some cookies."

It was nearly a week before there was a break in the case. There weren't any candidates that fit all of the criteria once they were looked at with any level of scrutiny.

Muscular was correct physically and dangerous enough, but he wasn't the type to be a part of any sort of scheme. He was a brute, not a manipulator.

Hekeji Tengai was also the right height and hair color, and certainly the type to scheme with an organization, specifically the Yakuza he was part of. But he wasn't dangerous enough, he was a lacky with shield quirk in a small Yakuza group.

All for One of course still hit every mark, but was too dead to be seriously considered. However, since there was never a body found Tsukachi didn't agree to take his name off their 'unlikely but possible' list.

There was the shapeshifter Skinwalker, but they were a mercenary who lived on the other side of Japan. Finding and hiring them would have taken far longer than the time between the arrest and the kidnapping, but the existence of the warper added them to the unlikely list.

Illusionist was another option but she primarily did corporate espionage not kidnapping. There was Giran, an information broker, but no one knew enough about him to know if he really fell into these categories. Gun-fist was an arms broker who could be their man, but primarily worked in China. The list went on and on.

Then one day Tsukachi charged into Inko's house, which had become the unofficial meeting place since there was likely a leak in the police department.

"We got a hit! I had set up a program to ping if facial recognition picked up your son, and we finally got a hit."

Within a few minutes everyone from their group was at the house sitting in the living room. Tsukachi laid a printed picture on the table.

"Someone had taken a selfie, not realizing that these two were in the background and posted it on social media."

In the corner of the photo was a fairly clear image of Izuku walking down the street next to a middle aged man, likely in his thirties or forties, standing at about six feet tall, and with very light grey hair.

Tsukachi walked over to the white board that had become a fixture in the living room and circled Giran's name.

"That man is one of the most influential information brokers in all of Japan. He has a nonphysical quirk and isn't dangerous on his own, but he has connections to nearly every organized crime group. The man is well known and well liked among criminals and corrupt heroes. Going after this man would be an absolute disaster. We know he has some sort of memory quirk which explains how he would know that he fit Izuku's mental image of his absent father and is both smart enough and manipulative enough to take advantage of that. Giran fits every single category and with this photo image we can be sure that he is our kidnapper and the man pretending to be Izuku's father."

Tsukachi took a breath after that rant, it was the most they'd ever heard him say at one time. The man looked rightfully proud, he had finally cracked the case and they now knew who they had to go after.

Inko gave a teary smile. "Don't worry baby boy, we're coming to get you."