Izuku smiled as he and Katsuki took in the sight of the park. Countless memories of childhood overwhelmed his brain as he took in all the familiar wide-open spaces. On this particular day, they were blessed with a warm sunshine and a gentle summer breeze to contrast the auburn-colored leaves of the September season. This made their current plan much easier to execute. As soon as the pair got away from their respective parents, Katsuki dropped his backpack by a tree and began to do his classic warm-up stretches. Izuku reached into his own bag and pulled out a pen and notebook.
"Alright Kacchan, since we're a bit limited on time and proper equipment, I think we should start with the basics. We can do some pushups, sit ups, jumping jacks, maybe some crunches or wall sits if we're feeling confident, and then end it with a jog to test endurance. I'll be taking notes on everything for analysis later."
"I wanna do some pull ups" Katsuki grunted. "Just gotta climb the swing set and use the bars up there for a grapple."
"If you can do that without making both our moms panic, absolutely." Izuku had started stretching as well to prepare for the afternoon.
"Hey, Nerd. I know you're probably gonna say we need to go easy on the first try or whatever, but this is the first time I've been able to work out in at least a decade. I want a little extra challenge to get back in the swing of things."
Izuku didn't like the grin his friend gave him. "What'd you have in mind?"
"… And when I mentioned him settling down with a girl, the way he looked at me… I swear, it was the same face my own father made whenever somebody mentioned mom."
"So to be clear, you're telling me you think our kids are time-traveling pro heroes from the future? Are you sure you're good?" Mitsuki's eyebrows knitted in concern for her best friend.
"I'm fine, 'Suki. I just don't know what to think anymore. He said he was joking about the whole thing, but the doctor said he was as smart as an old man, he made jasmine tea yesterday, that picture he drew was phenomenal!"
"So the kid can heat water and read box instructions. And you were a pretty damn good artist yourself back when, that just means the kid's a chip off the block, Ink. I admit, my Katsuki's been acting funny too, but it's pretty early to jump to ideas like them travelling through–"
Mitsuki's comment was cut off by a gasp from her husband. "Boys, don't hurt yourselves!" He shouted. "You need to be careful horsing around!"
"Okay, Uncle Masa!" Izuku called.
Both women followed Masaru's gaze to see Katsuki doing one-armed pushups with Izuku sitting on his back. Inko pulled out her phone and snapped a photo, storing the scene as evidence for her theory.
After what looked like an impressive amount of pushups for a four-year-old, Katsuki laid flat and allowed Izuku to climb off of him. Izuku wrote something down in a notebook, then handed it to Katsuki and got on the ground to do pushups himself.
Both women sat on the bench with their mouths agape, watching Katsuki take a seat on Izuku's back and yell "Palm off the ground, nerd! With your knuckles like I did!"
Masaru looked over to Inko. "So… About that time travel theory. Clearly there's a lot of oddities with both Izuku and Katsuki, but as far as I'm aware there's no way to prove the story one way or another. I think the best thing we can do for right now is sit back and see what they try to do, then confront them if things start to get too out of control."
Inko kept her eyes focused on the boys, who were now doing wall sits against a tree. She really felt out of her depth in this scenario. Parenting was already difficult enough, now the universe wants her to deal with this? "I get your point, but I don't know if I can do that. I can't just sit back and pretend nothing's wrong when there's a secret like that lying around. We've got this small party tonight, and it might be good to talk to them about it there."
"And ruin the celebration?" Mitsuki asked. "Can't the kids- or, old geezers, whatever they are - enjoy some cake in peace?"
"If this story is true, dear, Izuku never really got a quirk and there was nothing to celebrate." Masaru replied.
Mitsuki scratched her head. "Well in that case, I agree with Inko. I don't like the idea of sneaking around our sons or spying on them, and I like the idea of them doing it to us even less. Let's just bring up what we know over dinner, and maybe we can help them do... whatever it is they're trying to do at this point."
He sighed. "If you both really feel this strongly about it, I'll go along with it; but please try to approach the situation delicately."
The three sat in silence after this and watched as Katsuki and Izuku did pull ups from the top of the swing set. How'd they even get up there anyway?
After a an hour of exercises, the boys had collected all the data they wanted from the day.
Izuku let his hands swing around freely before settling into some cool-down stretches. "My arms haven't moved like this since the first Sports Festival! Feels amazing!"
"That's your own fault, Deku. You wouldn't stop crushing your arms like dorito bags!"
If Dynamight wanted a verbal spat, Izuku could humor his old friend and rib him the same. "At least my spine worked to the end, buddy."
"Oh, the 'chosen one' wants to run his mouth? Bold talk from someone whose bones sounded like a firework show every time he stood up!"
That was clever, Izuku gave him that point and simply continued stretching.
"You know Katsuki, we still have an hour or two to kill before we go back to the house. Wanna check out some of the other stuff on this old playground?"
"Sure. Start with the merry-go-round."
"Fine by me. I'll push the first round."
'This should be fun' Izuku thought. He had brought his kids and grandkids to the park in years gone by, but he couldn't remember the last time he actually went for himself and just had fun.
Fun was the clarification there. In long past, he had gone to playgrounds, only to be bullied by Katsuki and the old friend group. It was nice to be here with his first friend again.
"By the way, Deku, this plan of ours to travel around the country might start racking up. Any idea how we'll pay for it if we can't convince the parents that it's important?"
Admittedly, Izuku was used to having his own cars and a handsome fortune from hero work. He hadn't initially considered the ramifications of being middle class again. Still, they weren't totally lacking in skills.
"Well, last night my mom suggested I become an artist. Maybe I could go out on the street and do portraits of people for money."
Katsuki just raised an eyebrow. "You really wanna rely on street shows for a steady income?"
That comment gave Izuku an idea. "Street shows...? Hey, remember back when when we worked with the Jackbolt band? Maybe we can find a guitar and drumset and try some musical entertainment too!" Jackbolt was the punk rock band Kyoka and Denki put together after they started dating. Back when their class had initially put together a group for the festival all those years ago, Izuku wasn't involved in the music portion of the performance; but once they were out of school, Kyoka had continued offering free music lessons to the class as a way to keep in touch with everybody. Because of that, Deku and his wife both knew quite a bit about guitar, piano and vocals. They'd even made some guest appearances in Jackbolt's live shows and sang with the Bakugou's at Denki and Kyoka's wedding. Those were some of the best days of Izuku's whole life.
"You know what? That might actually be fun. It's been a lifetime since I've been able to blast them all away with a good beat."
As Katsuki climbed onto the merry-go-round, Izuku started smiling as he clutched the bars and started to run. Maybe they could have a bit of fun doing this mission too.
Once they'd made it home, Izuku asked his mom for some computer time. She probably assumed they would watch the same 2 hours of All Might videos, but instead the boys spent the time searching names online to look up where their future friends and enemies were. Somehow Katsuki had found 2 maps of Japan in his house and was using markers and pens to keep track of where everybody they found was located. With their combined experience tracking down villains, looking up some families and public officials on social media was comparatively easy.
"So Nedzu won't get the job as Principal for another year and a half, and Aizawa, Mic and Midnight won't be working there for at least 3 to 5." Izuku finished, writing this down in his own notebook. "Unless you want to try our luck with Vlad King or Cementoss, there's nobody over at U.A we know well enough to work with right now."
Katsuki finished adding these names to the maps and leaned forward. "How's that affect your plan then, Izuku?"
"Well actually" Izuku reached for the notebook from earlier and flipped to an earlier page, "I was thinking about that late last night and early this morning. I took the time to make a list of people I'd at least like to talk to and see if there's anything we can do to help the situation." He passed the list over to Katsuki. "A lot of the more important ones here would be good confidants with a lot of connections, so getting them help early achieves secondary goals as well. I know I write pretty small still, but at least we don't need reading glasses for it anymore, right?"
Katsuki grinned at the reminder of the past (or is it future?), then took the list and started reading things out loud. "Okay, right at the top you've got 'League of Villains except probably Garaki and All For One'. Off to a great start there. Oh, you went spent the next couple lines listing them all here too."
His eyes continued scrolling back and forth between the list and the map of everyone's location as he spoke: "There's an address for the clone guy and the bloodsucker, we'll have to hop some trains to get to them. I didn't really see the magnet lady, marble guy, or Eraser's cloud friend on any of the sites we searched, doubt we're gonna get those without getting into a criminal database."
"Right, and if we're gonna be able to talk to Shigaraki, probably also Shirakumo, we're gonna have to find a way to check out All For One's criminal empire."
"If we're getting into that eventually anyway, we should probably talk to All Might at some point. Who knows? Maybe some forewarning might help him avoid losing his…" Katsuki paused at that, then thought it through. "Deku, if All Might never loses a lung, what's that mean for you?"
Izuku sighed. "It means he probably won't need a successor and he'll just keep doing his job until he drops. That was one of the first things to cross my mind when I came back here quirkless. But I've thought about it, and I'm willing to give up a chance at One For All if that's what it takes to save everyone. I'll just have to dust off my resume and find something else to do. Detective Midoriya has a nice ring to it. Maybe Midoriya, Esquire. Or I might actually be able to get a license without a quirk anyway, we'll just have to see how it goes."
That prospect was one Izuku hadn't had to face in a long time. His own kids diagnosed quirkless ended up wanting to go into other fields, so he never had to think about it with them. And after All Might offered him his own quirk, the whole idea of a quirkless hero had admittedly fallen to the wayside of his brain. Something worth thinking more about in the future.
"Sacrificial to the end. Beyond the end, apparently." Katsuki's eyes returned to the list. "Okay I see you've got scarface listed here with the League and his parents next to him. Might be easier to talk to the guy before he gets into his serial arsonist phase, but how exactly are you planning to get his parents to clean up their act? And I do mean both of them, she admitted to doing some messed-up stuff too."
"From what Enji and the family said in court and told the other pros, the abuse didn't start until after Touya's death. Before that both he and Rei were at least passable, if not a bit negligent. I want to nip this issue right in the bud and make sure that part of the future is never fully realized. Enji might not want to hear a couple of kids give him the business about his parenting, but if we at least do damage control on the older son, we can keep things from snowballing to the point of Shouto and Dabi's scars. We can talk to the other siblings and befriend them a bit while we're at it. You'll notice that Eri is on the list a little ways down as well. I don't think Overhaul is completely redeemable, but maybe if I can get her out of there before her quirk activates and kills her parents, I can protect her from his wrath too. We'll just have to find some way to get her adopted by the Aizawa family again without having a war on drugs first."
"Fair enough. Who's next on your…? Deku what's a 'Gentle Criminal'?"
"Gentle was a guy who got kicked out of hero school because he tried to save someone and made the situation worse. He did some petty crimes, lived as a vigilante-vlogger for a while."
"That's friggin weird."
"Yeah, but eventually he earned a second chance at heroism. He actually worked at my agency as a sidekick for a few months before he got his own off the ground. I'm not surprised you don't remember him offhand, he never got high in the rankings. But he was a good man who helped a lot of people. Maybe this time we can skip over the criminal phase and get into the hero part early. He had a sidekick too, her name was La Brava. Right now she's probably in middle school or elementary, but she'll need some decent quirk counseling pretty soon."
"Right, moving on. You wanna tell me why the Hero Killer's on this list?"
"It's a long-shot, but if I can stop him from going on his insane crusade against heroes and villains, he'll never make that speech about it and get the people to support the League in the war."
"I think you're off your rocker if you wanna try and deal with that psychopath, but I've seen you pull off crazier stunts. What else you got..." His eyes drifted further down the sheet, then narrowed in confusion. "Why are Mind-Warp, Phantom Thief and Grape Juice there?"
"They're there for the same reason Toga's on there, Kacchan, they're victims of circumstances in their own unique way. If Mind-Warp had someone in his corner telling him they believed in him and to start training earlier, he wouldn't have needed to transfer in so late and he might've made a few more friends along the way. With Phantom Thief... You remember the way he used to talk about his life?"
"I remember him belittling trauma victims in high school, and then calling us a few slurs because we were in the Top Ten and he wasn't. That's the extent of my memory with that guy."
"Well, I talked to some of his old classmates about it after his funeral. According to them, the guy believed he was a side character in everyone else's story. He acted like that to make an impression in the chapters he got cameos in. That kind of insecurity and self-doubt doesn't come out of nowhere, believe me. Maybe he'll improve if he finds some better ways to stand out."
"And the small fry? Remember when he got fired?"
Izuku remembered the story quite vividly. It was all over the press for 2 months straight. Grape Juice had been a successful hero for the first few years, then in his early 20's he was charged with multiple sexual harassments/assaults and had his license revoked. Chargebolt and a few others had attempted to talk to Grape Juice about the situation afterwards, but Deku hadn't heard anything about it in the decades since.
"I always felt bad for him, Kacchan. I think at his core, he just wanted to have friends and find love, and he never understood how to channel it, like Toga and Phantom Thief. What all of them needed was someone willing to invest the time in their lives and be a proper role model."
"Therapy. What they needed was a decade of intense therapy, Deku. You've got more old classmates on here. Do those also have a strategy to them, or do you just want to make social calls?"
"Can't it be both?" Izuku grinned.
Before they could go further, Inko called from the hallway: "Izuku, Katsuki, dinner's ready!"
Katsuki started neatly folding both maps, handing one to Izuku and stashing the other in his bag. "I'm not making another copy, so don't lose it."
"Got it. After dinner and cake we'll reconvene and discuss the rest of the people on the list. If there's anybody in particular you want to go after as well, just let me know and we can add it to the file."
Unbeknownst to them, the evening was about to go in a completely different direction.
To be continued…
AN: I wasn't planning to reveal who Midoriya and Bakugou would go after in the initial plot. However there's a large part of the community who have very strong opinions on... certain characters, and I figured it was fair to try and give a courtesy notice of sorts before deep-diving into the rest of the story. One person in particular on the list I mentioned doesn't seem to get a lot of support or development from either fan writers or the mangaka himself, so I'm giving him a shot and exploring how he could actually improve. If redemption stories, characters finding forgiveness, or alternate universes where they didn't become fully evil or messed up in the first place aren't your cup of tea, I'm afraid we may need to part ways here. I'm just always fascinated by people turning over a new leaf and getting into bad people's heads to analyze why they do what they do in the first place. Someday I hope to write a story where the ones who genuinely don't feel remorse and like being horrible do start to redeem themselves, but this particular story needs conflict, so here we are.
To the people who are no longer interested in my story for these reasons, thank you for your time and I wish you well in your future endeavors. Those of you that plan to stay for the long haul, thank you for your patience and your kindness. See you next time!
