A/N: This was inspired by a one-shot, 'through a dark mirror' by Aliandris. Anyway, feel free to rip my writing apart

--

It all started in China, when a child was born that glowed. Soon after, mysterious powers, called 'quirks,' showed up in people all over the planet. It was complete and utter chaos. Nothing settled until a man with a special quirk that allowed him to take quirks and give them to others showed up. His business protected mutants and those with dangerous and frightening quirks from both themselves and those who would hate them, as he drained their unwanted powers, and also allowed those who wanted power and could use it for good to obtain it. He took away the randomness of the quirk phenomenon. He made it less scary.

In his own propaganda, he presented it as if he took all of the world's problems onto his own shoulders, but also reminded the people that all people should look after the least. From these sayings, he took on the moniker 'All-For-One.'

For a while, it seemed like he was going to bring about a new era of peace and justice, but then a mysterious figure claiming to bear the power of 'One-For-All,' taking his own pain and giving it to all others, or being one master for all the slaves that made up the rest of the human race, or any of the other stories that people made up as time went on and the original events faded into history, but regardless of the name's origin the wielder of this power proved to be a formidable villain.

After he was stopped, it was not long before another, claiming to hold the same power, showed up and rallied the various villains of the world to his cause, and then the cycle would repeat itself over and over again. Each time, All-For-One would defeat the claimed wielders of this mysterious power, fighting alongside the heroes, and later Heroes as it became a government-funded profession with official rules and regulations, of his day.

Being long-lived thanks to a quirk he had taken for himself early in his career, he was able to be a beacon of hope and push back the darkness again and again, until the reign of All-Might, the eighth man to claim the title of 'One-For-All.' Oh, as far as the general public was concerned history repeated itself once more as All-For-One put down All-Might in an epic battle, but those close to him knew the truth; the final battle with All-Might, though a victory for All-For-One, resulted in him becoming so horrifically injured that he would never fully recover even with the aid of healing quirks. He did not think that he would be able to defeat a ninth, and he was certain there would be a ninth.

And so, pulling against an urge he had felt since his son's birth, he finally decided to stop coddling and protecting the boy, instead allowing the kid to become a professional Hero and take up the mantle that he feared he could no longer hold.

Izuku was walking down the street, minding his own business (and what business there was to mind; if rumors were to be believed, then one of his closest classmates had fallen into villainy), when the foot of an enormous woman smashed the building in front of him. Staring up in terror, he realized that what he saw up there was, in fact, a woman using a quirk that let her increase in size rapidly without seeming to lose any strength from having to maintain her new proportions.

A part of him wanted to take out his notebook and jot down the myriad theories that popped into his head over this revelation. The more wise part of him, however, examined the fact that she was clearly using her quirk without a license, was dressed in some threatening white outfit clearly meant to terrify any onlookers, and was not one of the established Pro-Heroes of their time. Between his obsessions and his father's management of the entire system, he would know. Izuku Shigaraki was currently staring at a villain.

Said villain could probably crush him like a bug, and so he suspected that writing down notes would not be the ideal action at this time, or at least significantly less ideal than running and hiding like a maniac. "Hey, Kamui, we've got a runner," the woman shouted as several spears of wood shot into the concrete surrounding Izuku, encaging him.

"Do we really have to take out every one you see, Mountain? Keeping up these traps just for…" the wooden man that created Izuku's current cage shut up when he got a closer look at the boy. "Holy crap, that's All-For-One's brat!"

"Wait, what!" The giant woman looked down on the boy. "Should we…let him go?" She seemed to answer her own question without waiting for her partner's answer. "No, it's time we showed these damn heroes that just because All-Might might be down for the count, doesn't mean we have to be afraid of…" a deluge of green slime slammed into her mouth and quieted her.

"Villains like you should be afraid!" The one who interrupted her threats was a massive glob of green slime with sharp teeth and humanoid eyes the only features to distinguish him from some shapeless blob.

Izuku, in spite of his rising panic, stared in awe. It was the uncreatively named Sludge Hero! Number 31 in rankings and rising rapidly! Now he really wanted to take out his notebook and write down any observations, but the life-imperiling situation around him was still a bit of a distraction. As Mountain got the slime off her mouth, she started to shout "Kamui!" before realizing that her partner in crime was already two steps ahead of her.

Unfortunately, he wasn't making any real progress. Every wooden implement he created just pierced right through Sludge Hero's gelatinous flesh without seeming to cause any notable harm. Rolling her eyes, Mountain stepped forward, realized the buildings surrounding her were restricting her movement, and responded by kicking them until they collapsed. It took time, enough time for Sludge Hero to grip onto Kamui's arms, slide up them, and completely engulf the wooden villain. "L

"I have your comrade under my control, villain, and if you care about him at all, then surrender so the poli-" Mountain kicked him. Kamui went flying out, gasping for air and shouting about what a 'bitch' his partner apparently was. "You could handle that," was her only reply. "Now, let's throw out the gunk."

--

Stain was torn. On one hand, Sludge Hero clearly needed assistance. One the other, he had already deduced that Mountain and Kamui's rampage was a smokescreen planned out by Backdraft so he could rob the local banks without arousing suspicion (the lost money could be blamed on the chaos caused by the ruined buildings, after all, and Mountain and Kamui could always play it off as if they were just threatening the area, not stealing, so would there even be a proper investigation?), and he felt that it was his duty as a Hero to take out the real criminals.

There was, of course, the very minor and largely irrelevant issue that he was on probation for excessive brutality (which was absurd, as crippling the current Ingenium was the only way to keep that long-standing crime family down for good) and thus he shouldn't be doing hero work at all at the moment, but wasn't that when being a Hero really mattered? When society said you shouldn't, wasn't that when you should?

As he drew his blades to provide Sludge Hero with some backup, he finally saw Backdraft casually strolling about with an excessively large sack of money, which he was going to reluctantly leave be for now (the other two were clearly a much larger threat) until he noticed the girl.

--

Himiko Toga had slipped again. 'Control your unnatural desires. Control your creepy urges,' she thought, 'come on, it's easy. It's normal.' She had been doing so well, too, until she brought up the possibility of maybe, just, maybe applying to UA to her parents and maybe, just maybe, taking up a profession where she was allowed to actually use her quirk…her father had screamed about how disappointed he was in her.

There was no way she could be a Hero, and she needed to accept that. Her mother, on the surface, had been kinder. She, with tears on her eyes, had put an arm around HImiko's shoulder and cried. "I wish things could have been different," were her only words. Kinder on the surface. Far crueler than any of her father's shouts in reality. Her mother didn't want things to be different. She wanted Himiko Toga to be different.

So here the girl was, lost in her thoughts, in an alleyway by a local bank, when two villains started wrecking the neighborhood. She should have gotten out of there as quickly as she could, and she definitely would have, if her lifelong curse hadn't shown itself.

An injured civilian stumbled out of a ruined bank, broken, bruised, bleeding. It was so beautiful. She found her mouth watering in spite of herself. 'Dammit, this is why you can't be a hero,' she thought, 'how can you rescue people when you can only think of'...

"Please, help me," the man gasped out, stumbling toward her. "I need…an ambulance…a doctor…something."

He tripped and fell onto her, some of the blood leaking out of him getting onto her face…it was heavenly. "Now, to just kill off that one teller that oh so kindly ensured the vault would be open whether Mountains foot helped or not, and…". "I've got the damn plan down, you annoying geezer. Next time I want to be the one blowing up banks." "Maybe you will if today's performance was typical. Now, where was that teller?"

Himiko thought quickly. This man in front of her was clearly the 'teller' they spoke of. He was going to die. Unlike her, his life had some form of meaning. He probably wasn't some psychotic freak.

"Shh, hide," she told him, "I'll stop them from finding you." The teller, in a presumed daze, did not question her. He just stumbled away as she licked at the blood on her face, relishing the taste ('at least I can die doing what I love, she thought, and doing some good at the same time. Is this what it feels like to be a hero?').

Her quirk absorbed his blood into her body, causing her to morph and warp until she was an exact replica of him, clothing included.

"Hey, there you are, you bastard, what were you thinking, trying to get away from us!" The younger of the two boys, with his spiky blonde hair that wasn't too dissimilar to her own, grinned as sparks started to appear on his palms.

"Don't waste time gloating; finish him off," the taller of them, dressed in some grotesque parody of a fireman's outfit, admonished the boy before lifting a hose (was it part of his body? Was that his quirk?) and charging up a stream of pressurized water to blow her/him apart…right as a large knife flew past him, slicing into his arm.

Some Hero that Himiko only vaguely recognized jumped down to where the knife landed and immediately licked it. Fireman suit stopped moving, which evidently confused his shorter companion.

"Yo, Backdraft, what's up? Let's kill this guy!" The Hero with the large knives rushed at the blonde boy, which the boy, to his credit, responded to by flaring up those sparks into full-blown explosions. They weren't fast enough. With remarkable skill and speed, the Hero leapt around the kid's bursts, which made the kid angry and led to him letting out even larger explosions, then, as the Hero got up close to the boy, unleashing one that allowed him to…fly away?

"Don't forget this day! I'm going to be the number one villain, and I'll get strong enough to beat you into oblivion!" Even as he shouted threats, his explosions were made to propell himself far away from the scene of the fight.

"Damn," the Hero responded, "he's moving too fast. I can't get to him without risking Backdraft getting up." Looking directly at Himiko/Bank Teller, he smirked. "You did good, girl."

--

Sludge Hero tried to crawl up Mountain and force himself into her mouth, only to immediately be spat out. "Okay, I can't puppet someone's body if their mass is too much larger than my own, good to know," the Hero started talking to himself as he landed on a small fire, set by the damage the two villains had caused earlier, and immediately put it out through mere touch.

Seeing that gave Izuku an idea. "Sludge Hero, protect me!" He shouted out.

"I'm trying, kid!"

"No, I mean I have an idea of how we can beat these two. Get me out of this cage, suck me inside of you, and then head where I lead!"

More because he was getting increasingly desperate than because he was actually prone to trusting an untrained teen, even All-For-One's son, with strategy, Sludge Hero dodged and weaved around Kamui's branch spears and Mountain's feet as he gripped the child and absorbed him into his viscous body.

Izuku was struggling to breathe. That, admittedly, wasn't something he had considered, but as he pointed Sludge Hero followed, right over a gas main that the two rampagers had exposed earlier, and then…there!

Kamui stabbed right into it when Sludge Hero created holes in his body to dodge the wood user's next attack, leaking highly flammable material into the air. Sludge Hero, now seeing exactly what the kid was getting at, shouted, "I wouldn't cause any sparks if I were you! I can handle it just fine, but you two…" Kamui looked terrified. Mountain just laughed and kicked a pile of debris filled with solid concrete blocks and metal rafters at them.

--

As Stain was tying up Backdraft so that the villain wouldn't escape as soon as his Bloodcurdle wore off, he began to wonder if the explosion kid from earlier wasn't still around, as a massive fireball engulfed the sky not two blocks from him. It was enough to make one wonder whether Endeavor had come out of hiding.

The visual from looking in its direction and seeing the falling, extremely injured body of that mountain woman made Stain realize that it was simply a matter of Sludge Hero deciding that desperate times called for reckless measures. He would reserve judgment based on whether the Hero had actually checked for civilians before deciding on such a plan. For now, he had to speak with the shocked young girl.

"You risked your life to save another. What was your actual plan? Did you think you could take those two?"

She looked down awkwardly.

"My plan was to die instead of him. I had no way of defeating them, and I don't think he had a way of outrunning them. The only way I could think of for him to live was if they thought he was already dead."

Stain stared at her. No concern for her own life, just that of others. No hesitation whatsoever before acting. "Have you ever considered becoming a Hero?"

The question seemed to shock her. "My quirk…is too…um…well…"

"You drink blood, right?"

She seemed to be ashamed.

"So do I."

This got her to perk up. "And you're right, you're never going to top the official charts or make the big bucks with such a quirk affecting your image," he spat as he said that word, "but only the unworthy really care about that. If you want to help people, then you have what it takes." He rubbed his chin. "Well, with some combat skills, at least."

"My quirk isn't really a fighting…"

"And Eraserhead's reign of terror taught us what happens to those who entirely rely on their quirks for their combat prowess. Your quirk is useful, and you have the right drive; learn how to fight, and you'll be where you belong."

She was taken aback by this. "You think I can have a job where I…use my quirk? Where I don't have to pretend it doesn't exist? Where I can be…me?"

Stain shrugged. "If you're willing to work for it, and hold yourself to ideals that truly matter, then yes. If you want the money and prestige, then probably not, but I'm not interested in helping someone who only wants that."

"You'll help me?"

"As I said, only if you're willing to work for it."

--

Izuku was gasping for air and holding himself in pain as Sludge Hero deposited him on the street. While his analysis that Sludge Hero's body would protect him from the flames and heat was correct, it hadn't fully protected him from the shockwave. Oh, it had cushioned the blow, but not enough to avoid the pain and tingling completely.

"Hey, kid, I probably wouldn't have done that if you'd told me what you were going for. The danger to the civilians…"

"All the civilians had evacuated the area. I checked before suggesting it." It…wasn't entirely a lie, as he had looked for just that, but Izuku didn't really know exactly how large the explosion was going to be until it happened, so whether or not there were any in range wasn't something he could really say, but All-For-One had always been clear about teaching him that some sacrifices were necessary for the greater good.

"Wow, kid, it wasn't necessarily a brilliant plan, but you came up with it while trapped, not panicking at all, and seeing what you needed in all that chaos…and from what I recall, your dad hasn't let you absorb any quirks yet, so you're basically quirkless, right?"

When Izuku nodded, Sludge Hero whistled. "Kid, if you get into UA, everyone is going to say that it's just because of your dad. They'll claim that there's no way a basically quirkless kid actually got there on his own merits. I just wanted to let you know, that if what I saw today was normal, then you definitely deserve whatever name you make for yourself in the Hero world."

That…genuinely brought a tear to his eyes.

--

Stain was perfectly fine letting Sludge Hero take all the credit for the three arrests made that day. Unfortunately, Backdraft was in a far better condition than Mountain and Kamui (the latter took multiple medical examinations to confirm he wasn't dead, and the medics still weren't certain he would make it), and Sludge Hero hadn't thought to come up with an explanation for how the third villain was stopped or even what he was doing there, so Hero Public Safety Commission figured it out and brought him to task.

The fact that their evidence that he was doing unapproved hero work after being punished for excessive brutality was the lack of brutality against his victim this time only had him grinding his teeth even harder than he did under normal circumstances with these people.

"So, while you did stop a wanted criminal, and quite possibly saved a civilian girl's life, you still violated the terms of your probation. We have rules."

Yes, he knew all about their 'rules.' While he was no Meta-Liberation Party supporter, he also had a very good idea about where they could put those rules and regulations.

"Understood," he spat out. "And I don't suppose you're even going to try and investigate the possibility that the villains might be working together?"

"Is this another rant about how all of organized villainy is secretly being led by a talking mouse?"

"Nedzu is real, dammit!" He calmed himself before continuing, ignoring their amused smirks. "And I am talking about how villains are grouping up together, recruiting more young people, and getting worse in general."

"We know about the problems facing our society. It's why, in spite of everything, we haven't taken away your teaching license…yet. But a brief uptick in crime doesn't justify you acting like our warnings after severing the spine of an already captured perpetrator were a slap on the wrist."

He controlled the bile at the back of his throat as he responded, "understood. I will try to be more…careful."

It wasn't that he didn't understand their position, as there were certainly Heroes out there that would that didn't have the discernment to know when to get violent and when an arrest was more suitable, but he personally thought that was other people's problems. His convictions were serious, and thus he could trust his own judgment. Experience taught him that that argument wouldn't work with these men, and so he bit his tongue and decided to be satisfied with still having some influence over the next generation of Heroes. He had even heard that All-For-One's kid was competent, which really surprised him. Stain somewhat expected the kid to get in on his father's reputation and end up expelled.

--

All-For-One wasn't really listening when the reporters discussed this year's rankings. It was largely the same as most years. Re-Destro had the performance to get Number 2, but his outspoken politics turned too many against him to keep up in the popularity polls. 'The Boss' was similar; he managed his Hero Agency like an actual agency, doing better than practically anyone on the sides of Hero work that most never saw, like managing villain reform programs and selling quirk-regulator drugs to help out those with less controllable powers, but he refused to give into image at all. He basically thought Heroes should return to the days of policemen and SWAT teams handling everything, and held nothing but disdain for this new-fangled flashy 'comic-book' style work. So he wore nothing but a suit when out amongst the public, and lost so much image for it. That his adopted son was considered one of the up-and-coming sidekicks to look out for, but got that position while explicitly rejecting the Boss's philosophy, did not help matters at all.

Curious would get votes for her media appearances rather than her actual work, then lose them because of resentment from the other reporters that hated how she could get coverage on villain fights they couldn't. Muscular would start another debate about Heroic brutality. A bunch of people would claim Magne's numbers were being inflated to get LGBT representation in the top spots while several others would she was being pushed down from where she actually deserved for the exact opposite reason, and it was all so tiresome.

He maintained the number one spot, because he was, for all intents and purposes, the god of Japan. It was an incredibly arrogant title, he knew, but it was one that he both deserved and only used for good. He was a god in the sense of a moral ideal to look up to and a judge to only fear if one was wicked, not a figure to be blindly worshipped, and he liked to think that he had done a decent job with such an obligation.

So, as people bickered amongst one another as to who would get what number stuck next to their name in the next series of magazines, he almost found himself excited when the meeting was interrupted. That excitement turned to dread when he learned what happened to his son.

--

"Mom, I'm fine," Izuku insisted as the aforementioned woman doted over every scratch and bruise.

"You were attacked by some of the most vicious villains currently operating. You are most certainly not fine!" She responded before applying a band-aid to a minor itch that really didn't need a band-aid. Their little spat was immediately interrupted by the door bursting inward.

"How is my son?" A terrified voice shouted.

Izuku felt a little guilty about that, actually. It was so rare to hear his father sound scared, as the man was normally so stoic and self-assured, partially due to the visage he kept for the public's benefit but also because time had left him with little to truly fear. It made the boy uncomfortable that he was one of the few things that could actually bring fear back to the man.

"He's fine," Inko Shigaraki informed her husband, not even slightly indicating the apparent shift in attitude from mere seconds before, "no thanks to a certain decision to keep him from defending himself."

All-For-One sighed. They had had this conversation so many times before, and Izuku suspected he had gotten sick of it a long time ago. "We don't know for certain whether his quirk is exactly the same as mine, and if it isn't then, as I learned in a lot of incidents that the history books don't like to focus on, giving quirks to someone who wasn't born with them can have a lot of unforeseen dangers. Plus, it would just put a target on his back-"

her stern look, with a pointed glance of her eyes to Izuku's current roughed up state, silenced him. "However, I have been reconsidering this stance. Sludge Hero's report indicates that you showed the right mentality under pressure for Hero work, and while I wish it wasn't proven in such a way, I really am proud of you, and think that it's time, if you still really want to…to start training to become a Pro-Hero."

There was a hint of nervousness in his voice at the last bit, but Izuku was too overwhelmed to reply. This had been a lifelong dream of his, only stopped by two things. His father refused to allow him to test out whether or not he had inherited his quirk, and no others had shown up, so he was effectively quirkiness for most of his life. It had turned his childhood friend Katsuki Bakugo against him once that same kid actually found himself impressed by All-Might's reign of terror and started developing quirk supremacist ideals that turned him into a vicious bully even before he dropped out of middle school at the last minute to become the 'number one villain.' It had turned everyone else against him to a much smaller extent.

There was something about being both the son of the Number One Hero, and thus theoretically a privileged youth, yet also someone the others looked down on as powerless, that made them resent him. It was like he wasn't supposed to have both features at once. There was something wrong with his place in the world, so they had to correct it through cruelty. Or they were just jealous of the first aspect and able to get away with a lot because of the second, but the relevant factor was that one simply did not become a Pro-Hero without a useful quirk.

It wasn't the end-all-be-all, Eraserhead had taught many a now-dead hero that, but it was important. No one would recommend him to a good Hero School without one, except maybe…well, that was the second factor that stopped his dreams.

His father, based on some warped idea of 'protecting' him, hadn't wanted him to become one. That probably would have stopped him even if he had a confirmed powerful quirk; few were going to go against the word of the Number One Hero and God of Japan.

"What…changed?" Izuku hesitated to ask, as he was afraid it would get the man to reconsider, but All-For-One merely sighed.

"You'll clearly be in danger whether you get into Hero work or not. I've come to realize that now. And also…I'm not at full capacity. The last wielder of One-For-All took too much out of me. I won't be able to stop the next one, and we need strong Heroes for when that day comes about."

Izuku and Inko both looked at him in terror. "You know, dad, maybe this was the last one, I mean, how many powers can these villains make up?"

All-For-One shook his head. "One-For-All is real. This isn't just the experience of a man whose fought it over and over again talking…I can't bring myself to say everything just yet, but one day I will tell you the story of where that quirk actually came from."

"Wait, you…".

"One day, but not today," he interrupted. "For now, you just have to decide. Do you want to face the Nomus and show U.A. what you can do for yourself, or do you want me to get you in on recommendations?"

--

"So, you ran away?" Lord Explosion Murder was not about to be cowed by the green-haired man's posture.

"I assessed the situation and realized that the damn geezers you sent with me couldn't handle real heroes, so I left them to their fate. Those idiots got what they deserved. Besides, couldn't you have looked into my future or whatever and seen this would happen?"

The man smirked. Ignoring Lord Explosion Murder's question, the man instead noted, "Backdraft was an accomplished criminal with several good years of labor under his belt. If he was taken down, then perhaps it was wise of you to leave squawking like a headless chicken. I guess that's what he saw in you."

"I'll kill you!" Lord Explosion Murder responded.

"So hot-headed. You'll never surpass All-Might with that attitude. Not that you would have anyway, but it's nice to have delusions about your future. Trust me, I wish I could have such a luxury."

Sighing, he pulled out some documents. "We'll give you another chance to impress us; you did get away when more experienced outlaws failed, and this next plan will give you an opportunity to test out your leadership skills. You'll be commanding some forces in an operation we've wanted to try out for a while, and you'll be recruiting and testing some members even fresher than you." He threw four folders in front of Bakugo. "Poison Dart Frog. The one the English-language newspapers have started calling 'Date Grape.' And this one cat burglar, no older than you and good enough that she hasn't been caught once. The media doesn't have a name for her, but our sources say she likes the title 'Uravity.' Oh, and apparently Red Riot has attracted an imitator. Persuade these four to come along, and we'll let you call the shots for about, say, 12 others that our employer has interest in."

Bakugo did not like being ordered around like this, especially by someone who always played second fiddle to other villains himself, but the idea of being given henchmen to command did sound appealing…