Toshinori stood in the emptiness of his home, his entire body shaking as he fought to keep hitting the bag in front of him. It was no use, he couldn't keep up the pace, he'd trained for too long in his muscled form and right now he felt as strong as a newborn. Damn it all to hell, how did he get so blind?
It was right in front of him since the very beginning and he just refused to even entertain the idea. His teeth ground in a pointless show of rage as he sent a bone thin fist into the heavy bag.
He had one duty above all others, and he failed. He didn't protect his successor and left him to be manipulated by that monster. Toshi cast a glance at his fists, the skin had peeled off the knuckles, leaving them to bleed onto the floor. It was an injury he would have shrugged off back in his glory days, back when he was the Symbol of Peace proper instead of this dying sham. He could have been able to do it back then, he had the power to stop him and ensure a world free of that bastard's evil. But he was a hero, an example to others, even to his enemies that justice has to be willing to not stoop to the level of animals like All For One, no matter how much it might have lessened the pain.
He knew it was the right thing to do and he stood by it. Yet the day he read the report, when he saw just how much his pupil fell in the darkness he felt for a fleeting moment something dangerous struggling within him to break free. He felt it again those few days ago after he saw the boy he practically raised laugh with the man who took everything from him.
Blood dripped down in splatters as Toshinori balled his fists when he recalled the look in Midoriya's eyes when he pushed him away. There was so much hate and pain in someone who was once so innocent. The sensation returned with more fury than he had ever known when the memory of what they found in the rubble of that cesspit those lost souls had been living in came to add to his despair.
That girl, that sick twisted girl had recorded his pupil...his friend when she took away the innocence of the purest person he'd ever known. He wanted to despise the monsters who took his student and to a point he did, but he still couldn't fully hate those children, no for they were as much victims of All For One's schemes as he was. A final sigh left his mouth as his legs gave way to exhaustion of both his body and soul.
Six of his colleagues were dead while one was permanently crippled with the whole world watching them get slaughtered by a handful of villains. He had to answer for the mistakes UA made in front of an international crew of reporters who wanted in no uncertain terms to understand why such a massive undertaking was done without government approval and how the people who were supposed to protect them managed to die by a group of untrained criminals. He even succeeded in nearly getting Young Togata killed because of his eagerness to have this nightmare end.
Yet all that seemed less damaging then what he was told in those last moments before he was defeated.
"Thank you for bringing my son to me."
A cold sweat went through him as he cradled his head in his hands. It all made sense now and he was so blinded by Midoriya's potential that he dismissed the times where his mind would make the connection. The boy was too kind to be linked to that monster no matter how much his smile reminded him of that man or how his chin seemed a bit too strong or his eyes too green for him not to be reminiscent of the bastard in some way...or how his laugh chilled him to the bone in the few instances of him hearing it.
Inko refused to even humor him about it and struck him on the face when he brought it up, but her tears told him more than he wanted to know. His first instinct told him to search even harder for the boy so that he could keep him away from the demons surrounding him while the logical part of himself told him to wait until the right moment to strike when the folly of the villains brought them out of the shadows where he'd be waiting.
A tremor set in his arms as he popped his still bloody knuckles. He was too damn weak, too damn timid and too damn cowardly to save his student and with his body dying as he sat here Toshi realized he may not get a second chance if it took as long as the first. He wanted to blame his shortsightedness for everything, that if he chose to accept the one idea that lingered at the very back of his mind from the beginning then maybe he could have been able to get there sooner by understanding All For One's reasoning. However he didn't feel guilty about that part, not when he could still salvage his ward's virtue and hopeful future. Now he wasn't so sure.
What could he do now that his successor was firmly in the palm of that man? He knew there was still good in him despite the blood on his hands, maybe that spark might be enough to chase him from going further down the path to ruin. Toshi had seen the light in many individuals who may have been believed to be beyond saving but he knew that it was rare for such traits to overcome the trauma and impulses of a life of pain and crime.
Still, he hoped in some idyllic part of his mind that Midoriya would come back on his own, that at any moment there would be a knock on his door and he'd see the boy he failed on the other side sobbing as he asked for help. His fists slammed on the hardwood for his foolishness, that couldn't happen with All For One manipulating the whole ordeal. He wanted nothing more than to scream at the world for taking his loved one, for the cruelty it inflicted.
He didn't, he couldn't when it would achieve nothing save for rendering him even weaker. The only thing left for him to do was to look at the reality of the situation. Toshinori stood up slowly on his trembling legs as his body leaned against the wall for support while he made his way to the living room with every step echoing off the space in his home.
The thought of calling the Todoroki household came to his mind when he saw his old landline phone, Young Shoto is most definitely in a dark place after the week's events, especially given the fact of his father's untimely retirement from Heroics on account of needing to be wheelchair bound with both his legs being disabled. He supposed that was one of the few things in his control at this point, but something caught his eye when he was about to cross the gap to reach the phone located on the other side of his living room.
It was an envelope laid directly by the front door that was addressed to him, not All Might.
Fan mail was far from unusual given his profession but that was handled by his agency and he was only made aware of it if the sender was of certain interest or was directly asking him for help. This was different, no one save for the UA staff or the police knew his home address, even fewer were the ones that knew his actual name. Picking it up he didn't see any indicators of potential foul play, all it had was his address and his legal name with no return address.
A newfound hope filled him when he considered the one other person who knew his information. Peeling the seal open and pulling the paper out dashed that with confusion.
"Yagi Toshinori,
I haven't much time to make sure this gets to you safely without anyone intercepting it so I'll be brief, I have information regarding your current issue.
I can't reveal this through any way that could be monitored for I know for fact that the people around me are paid for by those that caused the issue and even worse sorts of problems. If you want to know more, meet me at the place where youth thrives on sweet and sour.
-N"
Toshi read and reread the few lines of text again and again until his mind finally put them together. This sounded like a trap if he ever heard it, yet it was also a possible lead to finding his pupil or rather the possibility of one. That alone was worth the risk to him as he tried to consider where the author was hinting to. The only location that came to mind on the topic of sweet and sour was…
The Golden Spider!
That was the one place he and Midoriya frequented during their training, and he always saw the boy order the same thing, their sweet and sour udon. His heart beat like a wardrum, soon he may just be able to find a clue about his boy and right this wrong.
The drive was long, frightening and insulting as Toshi lamented that back in the day it would have taken him a few seconds to reach the place with One For All, but he swallowed his pride when he approached the restaurant. It was a traditional establishment that had all the trappings of antiquity mixed in with modern comforts, he had frequented here back in his schooling days and shown his pupil to give him a sanctuary when the inevitable stress of life got to him and he made sure to always get the table furthest in the back, the same one where a woman was seated with her eyes fixated on the entrance.
Toshinori knew this woman, she was one of the officers under Naomasa. Nura Taru if he wasn't mistaken. She was a strange sort of woman who never spoke much and kept to herself. Apparently this was a relatively new change in the woman since the other officers knew her to be a rambunctious and opinionated lady who never shied from duty until one day she became withdrawn and solitary to the point that she requested a transfer to inactive service.
Her eyes met him for a moment, judging him with the attention to detail of a man about to be eaten. She was scared that much was clear when one of her hands kept fiddling with something in her handbag. Toshi suddenly felt much more uncertain about this, then he remembered he had someone to save. Approaching her in as slow a manner as he could reasonably get away with, he pulled his wallet out and made sure to display his ID to the woman who was clutching an object in her purse while staring at him like he was about to kill her.
"Excuse me ma'am but I believe you may have asked to meet me?"
The woman's eyes bulged out of her head when she read his license, however she seemed to relax a bit and removed her hand from her purse.
"Yes, although I thought you'd be a little more...well built."
"I was and I can gain my bulk back when I need to but the years have been very far from kind."
Understanding shined on Nura's face as she rose from her seat.
"I'm sorry for asking this right as you get here but we need to talk in a more private setting, if you don't mind."
He nodded as he followed after her.
They arrived at what Toshi assumed to be the residence of his so-called informat, although it more closely resembled a mix of a destroyed library and a trash dump with the amount of papers and books laid about in odd heaps that had lingered next to row upon row of filing cabinets. He entered with the intention of finding perhaps one piece of information about his ward, what he found was far more than that. Charts, graphs, reports, pictures and more where displayed on almost every wall with it all being centered around a large cork board that had the pictures of every member of the League of Villains connected by red string that contacted the pictures of anyone from himself to Inko to Eraserhead, even Young Mineta and it was all lead to a picture of Midoriya in the middle of the connected chaos.
Blinking at what he'd seen, Toshinori glanced back at Nura unsure of what to make of this.
"I know how it looks All Might, you must think I'm nuts and I guess in a way I am, but I'm the only one who knows the reason behind this."
"Would you mind enlightening me then?"
He said with as much politeness as he could find as the sheer amount of information regarding his ward began to make him look back at the exit.
She looked around her as if she was paranoid of easedropers in her own home before shutting the door and locking it with a disturbing amount of devices.
"You need to swear to me that none of this leaves here."
"I swear on my honor as a hero."
Nura took one last survey of the room as she inhaled with a great pressure mounting inside her which begged to be let out.
"Izuku Midoriya is All For One's kid."
Toshi raised an eyebrow.
"I know, the bastard told me himself not even eight days ago."
Shock played out on her face for a moment until Nura sighed.
"Fuck, all that time goes to waste then. So much for my grand reveal."
She then regarded him with a sudden curiosity as the disappointment subsided.
"Can I ask you something personal All Might?"
The eyebrow was raised even farther by the sensation in Toshinori's gut.
"Alright as long as I get to ask a few in return."
"You have a power that came from All For One and you gave it to that kid, didn't you?"
Toshinori's eyes became the size of saucers when he heard that.
"Excuse me? That's ridiculous, I've never had dealings with that man, save for the occasional duel."
Nura was unconvinced as she moved to one of the filing cabinets and took out a binder.
"I know All Might, I know that power isn't your own or the past eight who used it."
Toshinori couldn't quite keep his surprise hidden as the ledger was thrusted in his hands with the pages opened to a picture that made his heart stop. Inside the binder was a scene depicting nine vaguely human figures rendered in crayon, eight were standing defiantly in front of the ninth figure while a blue line connected them to the one closest to the figure which had a red outline. Each one of the eight were roughly depicted with slight differences that Toshinori didn't recognize for a moment until it hit him.
These were each of the bearers of One For All.
Nura waited until Toshinori had finished absorbing the information to take back the binder from him. Putting it inside its original cabinet she moved to her kitchen and poured a cup of black coffee for herself while motioning a file laid across her desk that she picked out for today.
"If you want to see more feel free to read that."
She said with a voice too tired for someone her age. Toshi flipped through the laminated pages of drawings that depicted scenes of the history between the lineage of the two quirks, including his own induction into the ranks of those few who stood against All For One. As childish as the art was, it delivered the tale well enough that he could understand the progression, save for the last page.
It had a black orb in the middle of the picture that held two figures in what may have been appendages of some kind that drew in a red line from one and a blue line from the other while faces flew into a mouth located in the center of the thing as green eyes above the maw stared out from the paper.
He squinted at the scribbles for a bit longer as he fought to fit this into the puzzle to no avail. Toshinori closed the folder, turning to his host who offered him a cup of the black liquid which he took as his brain became overloaded with questions upon questions.
"So...how did you-"
"I decided to do deep dive into his past once I got the time, his kindergarten teacher was a nice old broad who kept most of her students' work after she retired which made it simple to find when I asked to take it for "Police reasons" thought she did ask why-"
A scowl deepend on the hero's brow as he was given more useless information.
"No not that, how did you figure out my student's connection with that man and furthermore why are you so obsessed with this case?"
Nura took a sip of her drink with more urgency than she would have liked as she allowed a sigh to leave her lips once the brew was down her throat.
"To answer the second part of that question, I was in a bad situation due to my father leaving me in debt to some very bad people, people that he managed to save me from. As for the first, that's a lot more complicated."
"Then explain, I came here to get answers Ms. Taru, not riddles or half truths."
He stated with a hint of aggression that left no room for argument, something the young lady took to heart as she walked into another room with paper shuffling on every part of the apartment from her move to and fro. She returned with a small wooden case in hand and proceeded to open it, exposing a small stack of mail envelopes to the dim lighting of the living room.
"I found out because of these letters Mrs. Midoriya had given over to the police after this whole thing started. See, I noticed a slight similarity of the handwriting to Izuku's, which wasn't hard to believe since his father was the one sending them, but when I did a little digging into his family history there wasn't a lot of documents pertaining to Hisashi Midoriya other than a birth certificate and a few assets under his name. Aside from that, he may as well have been a ghost for all the world's concern. No family other than a wife who married in an unnoticeable event with no one else present and not a single traceable thing except a bank account that magically fills up even after the man disappeared for over a decade, with the only thing signifying his existence being the letters he sends to his wife and a fingerprint on the paper."
She took another swig of coffee before placing a document on the table.
"Even his fingerprints didn't have an owner who was on the national quirk database, but I found out a disturbing trend when I cross referenced the print to all the known individuals on file dating back nearly two hundred years and I got a match. It belonged to a business tycoon who died before my grandparents were born, then I got another match with a man who owned a number of hospitals for over fifty years who died under mysterious circumstances and it kept going that way until it suddenly didn't. Which happened to be the same time you managed to beat All For One."
Toshinori flipped the pages of the paper until he saw something which haunted his dreams ever since he was eighteen. It was the face of his greatest foe smiling as he had his arm around the waist of a green haired woman who seemed completely lovestruck at the sight of the demon. His expression was different from the sadistic mockery he had seen in battle, instead the Symbol of Evil appeared almost as content as the woman with a similar sort of joy that may have been mistaken for adoration.
Nura continued speaking in spite of the Symbol of Peace staring in absolute horror.
"I thought that was too conquencidental so I considered that he was one of his lackies who went underground once the big baddie bit the dust but unfortunately that was proven wrong when I ran Izuku's DNA through an ancestry test. His father was born almost three hundred years ago and he's still around, now compound that information with the fact that the organization that took him has direct connections to All For One, the only person who could be that old and still function enough to father a child."
A hand ran down Toshinori's face as he slid the paper away from himself, completely unsure of what to do as he drank in the reality of the situation.
"So you think he orchestrated the whole event just to get his son under his control?"
"No, if that was the case then he would have taken action the first time Izuku managed to appear on TV, my guess is that he didn't know the kid existed until recently and is just now using him to his own advantage. The letter he sent basically said as much."
He blinked for a moment, unsure if he heard correctly.
"Excuse me?"
Nura threw a letter from the top of the wooden case at her guest which was far less aged then the other pieces of parchment.
"He's been writing to her for all this time, even after her son got kidnapped."
Toshi held the paper in his hands with apprehension as his imagination conjured the worst sorts of things which could be written that would shatter his soul, but he powered on with his hope driving him to find a clue about his successor.
"Dearest Inko
I apologize for the absence of my writings as of late but I have had a surprising amount of delays and issues arise from within the company. That aside my darling I also have been personally brooding over my absence from you and the recent knowledge that has been shown to me in regards to the effects of such things.
I cannot aptly put my feelings to justice on mere paper, nor would it do service to you and all the pain I have inflicted on your life, but still I am compelled to try. Thank you for giving me a gift that I hadn't known of, for granting me the privilege of continuing my family through you. As always your majesty and kindness are apparent in all things you create which I may only marvel at the wonders that came from the purity of your soul. I long to hold you once again, to be near you and cherish the warmth you give to the world, but I cannot.
I am sorry. I am sorry for the lies and the pain that must hobble you even as you read this. No amount of money or simple words will ever undo the damage I have caused to you and the boy, yet I would be lying once again if I said I regret it completely. You may have an inkling of who I truly am and someone as kind as yourself must recoil at the thought, and you have every right to hate me and in truth I would not blame you, but my feelings for you were as honest as I have ever been. You were and still are the light of my life and if you wish me dead I will still treasure you all the same for you have given me more than a bastard such as myself deserves.
The boy is fine, granted he has received some cosmetic injuries in his time of employment but he is safe. He grows taller with each passing day as he becomes more settled into his field of work and he makes me proud with every action he takes to better the world in a way that neither you or I could have. I promise you Inko that I will never allow any harm to come to him, that I shall give him the knowledge to conquer this life. For that is the least I can do after the sin I had committed all those years ago when I left you both.
I had no idea you were pregnant at the time, I assumed you were simply emotional at my leaving. I left not for a better opportunity overseas as I told you, nor did I get bored of your company, what made me leave was fear. It was the fear of the contentment you gave me, of the way your soul managed to soften even my dark heart. I was for the first time in my long life, contemplating surrendering this vendetta of mine against the world and settling into the happiness of the mundane with you. There was a moment where I could see our future that was free of all suffering, where I could even bring Tomura into that bright path.
That hate was what fueled me for all the years I've lived and you were the only one who nearly ended it, so I ran like a coward from you and the unknown, leaving you and our son to be tormented by the blights of this society. I left you without my protection and him without a guide and I curse my choices but I shall make the best of them.
Our child will rule this land, my love. I knew in my heart from the first time I saw the fire in his eyes. Your purity grants him the dream which drives him while my ambition powers his actions and when that day comes in which he dethrones me, I shall know our pain was not in vain.
We shall meet again soon my darling, all I ask is for your patience.
-Hisashi"
Vomit rose in the hero's throat as he set the letter down. Never in all the horrors he faced as a symbol of justice did he feel as demoralized as now. What should he do? Confront Inko with this evidence and force her to talk? Inform UA, the police, someone in power to help him handle this absurd situation? Should he even be concerned about this when the damage is already done?
A warm sensation brought his attention away from the turmoil in his mind and to the ceramic mug placed against his skin. Nura was standing with a fresh pot of the drink in her hand as she smiled at the man while putting the glass bowl on the center of the table.
"All Might, we both owe that kid a lot and right now you may be the only one who can bring him back from the mess those fuckers dragged him to. So will you mind helping me to put the pieces of his life back together for him when he does come back?"
Toshinori wanted nothing more than to dash out of this place to find his student and defeat the evil surrounding the people he loves, yet right now he was little more than a dying old man with a strong quirk he could barely use. At times like this, a hero must look at what he can do, not what he should do and as such Toshinori took the drink with his determination stronger than ever.
"Very well Ms. Taru, let's get to work."