16/11/2021

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The Emperor's Dragon
Fledgling 20

All For One tapped one finger on his chin as he waited for Gigantomachia to bring him Izuku. He'd been watching his son train with Giran from the mezzanine level. It had certainly been interesting.

He'd had no idea that his son found it so easy to attract quirks. But that was now working against him. The ease with which Izuku took quirks meant he hadn't really exercised his quirk. That would have to change.

Gigantomachia squeezed into the room, carrying Izuku. Giran had already left via warp gate and Izuku was beginning to stir. His son recovered fast.

"My Little Dragon," All For One said as Izuku blinked.

"I did it!" His son said in that odd voice that was between waking and sleeping.

"You did!"

Gigantomachia lowered Izuku to the ground and his son stood for a few moments, still resting one hand on the huge man's arm to steady himself before he was sure on his feet. Then he rushed over to sit beside him.

All For One dropped his hand, resting it on Izuku's head.

"It was hard," Izuku reported.

"What did you find hard about it?" Hisashi asked.

"Giran's quirk is like a mist, and it was hard to surround it," Izuku said.

He'd never really thought of the broker's quirk like that but it was an apt description. "So do you think it would be easier with a smaller quirk?" he asked. All For One did not mean smaller to be weaker.

"Maybe," Izuku replied.

All For One ruffled Izuku's hair. "I'm going to hold out two quirks, and I want you to tell me which one you think would be easier to cover, my Little Dragon," he instructed. He pulled up two older quirks. One was hazy like Giran's and one was sharper, more defined, and somewhat tighter. He pushed the hazy one to his left and the tight one to his right.

"That one," Izuku said without even thinking about it, pointing to his right.

"Why?" Hisashi pushed.

"Because I wouldn't have to stretch as much," Izuku explained.

All For One smiled. "Yet we are going to have to stretch your quirk," he replied. "You can already take multiple quirks from a distance, but I want you to be able take them, and knock the person out."

It spoke well that Izuku didn't dispute it. Instead he nodded. "It would make any battle against a group easier," he mused.

Gigantomachia gave a bark of laughter. "You would win, Little Lord," he said firmly.

"But you will need to practice. Just as you practiced with your other quirks, you are going to have to practice with yours," All For One said. "But we will have to be careful," he added, though personally, he didn't mind if Izuku ended up with a few more quirks, they were going to have to ensure that the previous owners were disposable.

"What do you mean?" Izuku asked.

"My Little Dragon," All For One chided gently. "What happened when you tried to return Giran's quirk?"

His son gasped when he made the connection. "I almost couldn't give it back!" he exclaimed. "That's never happened before," he added.

"Why do you think it happened?" Hisashi prompted.

Izuku shifted under his hand, and rested his back on his leg. "It only happened the third time when I managed to surround his quirk, which means it has to do with that," Izuku deduced. "It would mean that when I surround a quirk, it's almost like I'm absorbing it. I wonder if I would absorb a quirk quicker if I kept it that way?"

"That is something we will have to find out," All For One interrupted his son's mutterings.

"Really?"

"Really."

"But what if I can't give a quirk back?"

"It will be okay, my Little Dragon. I will make sure of that," he reassured his son.

Izuku nodded before he sighed, trusting his father.

"Taking someone's quirk, my Little Dragon, is not something you should be afraid of doing. You will find, as you grow, that others will be more than happy to use their quirks on you, so why should you not use your quirk on them?" Hisashi phrased the question to be easy to answer. It was a trick he'd used with others. Agreement on the easy things, leading into agreement on other things. He wasn't trying to trick his son though, it was just the way these things worked.

Again, Izuku nodded. He might not completely see the point of the question now but he would, in time. "Daddy, why haven't we named my quirk?"

It was an unexpected question.

The flippant answer would be to simply say that because Izuku could not tell anyone about his quirk, it did not need to be named, but All For One knew that dismissing his son's questions was not the right thing to do. "There are a number of reasons, my Little Dragon," he said after a few moments, in which he made up those reasons.

Gigantomachia had settled by the door, but Hisashi could tell he was interested as well. That was rather curious. The man was seldom interested in things like this.

"When you name a quirk, my Little Dragon, it is easy to get trapped into limiting what you can do. Some quirks are so simple, that won't matter. Your old friend Kazue's quirk was named Feather Hair, and there wasn't anything else she could do with it, was there?"

"No," Izuku said.

It was good to hear that there was no regret in his voice. He had no longing for her. Not that Hisashi thought his son would. He was longing more for his other friends, Hitoshi and Ochaco.

"So naming that quirk doesn't put a limit on it. But a more complex quirk could be limited by the name. Because when you name something, you are defining it, and you are then getting trapped into what you believe it can do, rather than what it can do."

The example that he really wanted to use was one he wasn't sure he should. The former Hero Saberwind's quirk had been known as Baroload but Izuku had found far, far more uses for it as the still inaccurately named Caeli Imperium. "Do you remember the hero Saberwind?" All For One instead asked delicately.

Izuku nodded and then Hisashi heard his son gasp. "Oh! You gave me a quirk similar to her's," he remembered.

All For One didn't bother to correct his son. "And you use it to fly, to pick things up, to push things away, to mold Fire Breath and to do so much more than she was."

"All the videos show her using pressure waves. Do you think she could have picked things up, or flown?" Izuku asked.

"I'm sure of it," Hisashi replied instantly. "So you can see, when she named her quirk Baroload, she was limiting her uses of it. She didn't discover all the possibilities," he told Izuku. He didn't bother to ask how much of an improved hero his son thought Saberwind would have been if she'd learned to use her quirk properly.

"So that's one reason why I have never worried about naming your quirk. So that you weren't limited by expectations given by the name but there are other reasons."

"Hmm," Izuku sighed. It almost seemed as if he was about to fall asleep.

"Are you still awake?"

"Yes!" He chirped brightly.

"Very good. Another reason why I have not rushed to have you name your quirk is I don't want you to become solely known by it."

"What do you mean?" Izuku clearly didn't understand what that sentence encompassed.

All For One sighed gently. "I am known by many names, my Little Dragon. Giran calls me Emperor, does he not?" He asked playfully.

Izuku nodded at that.

"Kurogiri calls me Sensei, as does the Doctor and Tomura," All For One continued. "I have taught them so it is accurate but many others also call me that. But still others call me All For One."

"That's your quirk's name!" Izuku objected.

"It is, but they call me by that name. It's not very nice, is it?" He personally didn't mind. It wasn't like he had extensive dealings with those his quirk name whispered in fearful conversations did have its uses. People didn't quite believe he existed but they feared the possibility of what he represented. That type of mystic could be useful but it wasn't something Izuku was ready to learn about yet. When he was, Hisashi rather thought that Izuku would quickly grasp the implications.

"It's not!" Izuku agreed.

"It isn't, is it, my Little Dragon. I do not want it happening to you. The last reason is a bit of family tradition," All For One said lightly. It wasn't really but he could make it one. "My quirk wasn't named until I was at least forty three."

"You were old!" Izuku objected.

Hisashi laughed at his son. "Quirk naming only became necessary when quirk registration was brought in," he explained. Back then, no one cared what your quirk was named, they only cared if you had one… and then they wanted to register that fact. As quirks became more and more diverse, names and classifications had gained importance but the registration and control of them was more what the quirkless society wanted.

Though, if he was honest, quirk names, for him, had been important before he named his own. When he took a quirk, and did not wish to recall the previous owner, having something to refer to the quirk was useful. He'd had many named quirks before his own had been named.

And he hadn't named his. It hadn't always been known as All For One. It's first name was Give and Take, or as Petra liked to say, Take and Give. The memory was one of those odd ones that stood out.

They were at war. Constantly fighting for survival, recognition and even just basic dignity but for some reason this had been a happy day. There had been time for some smiles, and to relax. Petra had been quirkless but she'd been loyal and he'd given her a minor quirk out of gratitude. She was one of the people who accepted the changes and she'd stood with them to the end. He pushed that memory away, focusing on the happier time.

She'd asked Masao what his quirk was named. The man had a minor heat sensing quirk. It was so minor that if he hadn't been able to feel it, he would have wondered if Masao actually had a quirk. But the man did, and he had been one of the unfortunate ones to be outed as having powers when some moron developed a test. That particular test had been wrong 25% of the time and had caused a lot of problems but it had persisted.

Masao, like Petra, had become one of his inner circle back then, not because of the strength of their quirks, because no one had strong quirks then, but because they were intelligent. The two of them worked well together and had gotten into a variety of places they had no right to visit. They were some of his main intelligence gatherers.

Masao had been surprised by the question. "It's heat sensing, you know that Petra," had been his rather dumbfounded reply.

"Yes! But what's it called?" Petra had insisted.

"Why would it be called anything?" the other man had returned his own question. "It's mine."

"Yeah, but Shigaraki here can take it," she reminded him. "So when he does, what's he going to call it?" she teased.

"He's not going to take it," Masao replied.

Petra huffed. "I know that, but what do you call it?" She kept insisting on the question.

"I've never thought about it," he replied. "What have you been calling it?" Masao returned her question about names.

Petra grinned this time. Her emotions had always seemed changeable but he knew she was stable. And now that Petra had brought up the topic, he had been interested in the answers. "You always say it is like seeing heat, so Heat Sight was the first thing I thought of," she admitted.

"Lame!" Masao objected.

"This coming from a man who doesn't have his own name for it," she poked back. "What about Refraction then?" Petra offered the alternative.

He thought about that for a few moments. "Better," Masao admitted. "Not accurate, but better."

"Oh, you want something fancy, like Infrared!" she teased.

The man seemed to think about it for a moment. "Might be nice," he said.

All For One remembered he'd been sitting at an angle such that he could see Masao's smirk but Petra couldn't.

She'd huffed again but laughed. "You're impossible," came the fond accusation.

"So what would you call Shigaraki's power?" Masao had asked.

It had come as a surprise and he considered the question as well. He'd never thought about naming his power. As Masao had said earlier, it was his, and thus didn't really need a name. In literature, no one with, what was then fictional powers, named them, except if they were a certain type of power. Psychic powers had names but they were all based on the type of psychic power the fictional individual had. Telepathy, telekinesis, pyrokinesis were good examples. The other fictional people, with different powers, didn't name them but classified them into a range of categories. Super strength, rapid healing, enhanced senses were common classifications. But there were no names.

Now people were beginning to refer to powers by type but again he hadn't heard of names. Researchers referred to an individual with pyrokinesis or hydrokinesis or something else. They would never refer to that individual by name!

Petra had grinned at him. "That's easy! Give and Take!" She said quickly. "Because he can take a quirk and then give it to someone else-" She frowned suddenly, thinking. "Although, when I say it like that, it should be Take and Give," the woman corrected.

"Should it now?" He'd asked.

"Yep, Shigaraki, it should," Petra had told him.

Masao had shaken his head. "Next you will want us to give him some name like a superhero!"

There'd been a spate of attacks recently and the media had named the attackers. Except they did that. They'd always given repeat offenders names. Especially serial killers. They took a morbid fascination in building them up to be almost supernatural forces.

"No, thank you," he'd refused Masao's suggestion. He didn't need that kind of baggage.

Petra had laughed.

All For One shoved the memory back into the depths of his mind. His trip down memory lane had only taken a moment. The mind was curious like that. It allowed you to recall the entire memory instantly, no matter how long it had taken. That was the first time his quirk had been named but it wasn't why he was sitting here. "Do you want to name your quirk, my Little Dragon?" he asked his son.

Izuku hadn't noticed his moment of distraction with the past and All For One heard him hum as he thought. "It would be nice to have a way to refer to it," he murmured.

"Keep in mind that even if you name it, it won't be recorded, so you can change it later," All For One reminded his son.

"What do you think a good name would be?"

"There are lots of names you could call it," he said softly. He'd discussed this with the Doctor before. "I'm sure you've heard the Doctor?"

"He wants to call it Singularity," Izuku confirmed. "But that sounds sort of scary," he added.

All For One chuckled. "You could always name it All For Me."

Izuku laughed at that. "Since I'm a dragon I could always name it Hoard," he suggested.

"Hoard, Dragon's Hoard," All For One said, trying out the name. It fit with the theme he had set up for Izuku and it fit with his quirk. After all, a dragon did not give up his hoard. Izuku would not be giving up any quirk he took.

Izuku remained silent for a few moments before tentatively asking. "You don't like it?"

With the question, Hisashi realised he was meant to provide an answer. "It does fit," he said noncommittally.

"You don't like it," Izuku declared.

"My Little Dragon, it does not matter if I like it, you must like it," All For One quickly said, realising that his son was waiting for his approval. "Your true quirk name will not be recorded, so even if you change your mind later, you can change the quirk name," he added.

"I like it," his son said.

"Then that will be the name of your quirk and I shall have to make sure that your hoard grows," he added.

That cheered Izuku up and he felt more than saw his son's happy smile.

All For One ruffled Izuku's hair. It would be a magnificent hoard.

-ted-

Izuku's quirk name comes from a suggestion from TheUnhingedAuthor. Naming quirks is a dangerous thing and I can see why MHA does it for registration purposes but do they really need names or just descriptions? It's really just the description but I guess the name came from convention. I don't like naming because it's one of the things that makes a quirk seem separate from a person and it's not. A quirk is a part of a person. The only reason we really think of them as separate is because we are dealing with characters who can take them away.

My discord is on this code: ZX2R5h2cEm FFN will remove links but you should be able to figure that out.

-ted-

Loved it? Hated it? Found a spelling mistake? Let me know please!