"The more I read these notes, the less sense All for One makes."

"You said you found them helpful."

"Oh, they are, and that's the problem. He did none of this. It's why he failed so badly when he tried to run Japan. There's entire sections where he did the exact opposite of what he wrote. Why would he do that?"

"If I'm ever a 200-year-old supervillain-turned-dictator, I'll let you know, Young Midoriya."

"At least that part makes sense."

"I beg your pardon?"

"I wouldn't be surprised if some of these notes are 200 years old themselves. He must've been working on this database for decades, at least. It's brilliant. There's notes for everything, and it all works. I'm starting to think he planned this."

"Maybe he had a poor memory and wanted to make sure he remembered how to run things?"

"Then why wouldn't he use them for their intended purpose when he did take over Japan? There's something going on here, and I think I need to find out what that is."

The interviews for the general public ended with more than satisfactory new hires, in Izuku's opinion. They weren't people he knew, and he found it hard to really trust them, but he had enough people he did trust to make sure they had oversight. If nothing else, he heard about most departments' activities from the janitorial team. Many of his former classmates - the ones not being run into the ground themselves - had chosen Izuku's office as their designated break room after an initial avoidance of the looming, usually-silent Gigantomachia who inhabited a corner and passed Izuku paperwork. They were heroes, however, and an imposing former villain wasn't enough to keep them away for more than a few days. Several could usually be found there, chatting about the goings-on in the departments they frequented.

The familiar chatter of his former classmates wasn't quite the same without Bakugou's presence, but it was probably better for Izuku's focus that Bakugou was absent. More accurately, Bakugou only bothered Izuku over text and email. His initial rants were mostly about how quiet Izuku's home was and how he was bored. Maybe Izuku should send some of the chatterers to keep him occupied; they seemed to have plenty of time on their hands.

Izuku could've chased them out so he could concentrate, but they were a valuable source of information on the state of affairs, so he let them be. They were how he found out that Kurogiri and Kayama, who'd joined Aizawa in Internal Affairs, were the parties chiefly responsible for quelling tensions between former villains and heroes. He also learned that Shigaraki had ranted at poor, terrified Kouda for three hours straight about how farmers were seen as idiots when in fact their jobs were incredibly complex and - well, Izuku had ignored the rest of the dramatic retelling. It was how the growing number of government workers who'd taken to sleeping at the National Diet Building rather than going home at the end of the day was brought to his attention.

Izuku, after consulting with Aizawa, sent a government-wide email with sleeping bag recommendations. He also sent a note to Finances to increase the budget for coffee and tea. The Department of OH&S - well, Twice - emailed him a well-documented study about how people were more productive if they had time off every week. Izuku forwarded that to the rest of the government too, with a note that departments should be organized so everyone could have a day off every week in rotating shifts. If they had to hire more people for their department, that was fine; applications were still pouring in.

There were a few who refused to take breaks - Izuku himself being among them, as well as Yagi - but the morale seemed to improve slightly at the news. The tensions with the villainous staff members decreased as well. Izuku heard that some departments were now calling Twice their hero. Twice reportedly couldn't decide what to think about that.

The morale also improved when Izuku forwarded carefully chosen and edited excerpts from All for One's database to the relevant departments. According to the enthusiastic feedback, the notes were easy-to-follow, insightful, and remarkably popular. The janitorial crew frequently asked for notes on whatever departments they were shadowing that day. Izuku felt bothered by the fact that he was using advice from a supervillain, but it was the most competent source of advice he had, so he'd take what he could get.

He complained to Yagi about the strange contrast between the All for One's theories and actions. The resulting conversation solidified his decision to investigate All for One's reasoning for… all of this. Questioning the former League of Villains members did little to shed light on the situation, even when Aizawa joined him with his signature terrifying grin (which only faltered when it came time to question a nervous Kurogiri). The answers shed little light on All for One's motivations, though many of his operations came to light. The former villains were overly eager to offer whatever intelligence they had, probably because they thought it would keep them out of prison. Izuku and Aizawa learned about hideouts, operations, caches, and the last known whereabouts of other villains.

The last was particularly interesting. For example, Himiko Toga was one of the few original members of the League of Villains that hadn't reappeared alongside All for One during or after his coup. Izuku and his friends exchanged a lot of theories regarding her location in their months of hiding. As it turned out, she had annoyed All for One about a year and a half ago and was kicked out of the League. No one knew how she'd annoyed him so badly. The best explanation was from Dabi, who said that she'd been loudly daydreaming about what she wanted to do to Izuku about an hour before All for One called her in for a chat and announced that she'd been dismissed from the League. No one had seen her again. Twice added that he'd nearly left over it, but it was water under the bridge now.

Izuku couldn't bring himself to feel sorry for Toga - she'd killed a lot of people - but he was vaguely uneasy at the prospect of her running around somewhere, or turned into a biological nightmare. He was even more uneasy at the subtle implication Dabi threw his way by knowingly pointing out the timing of the "dismissal". Izuku's sanity was much happier believing that it was a coincidence. All for One surely didn't feel strongly enough about Izuku to… to get rid of one of his own lieutenants? He probably just got annoyed with the yammering itself. If Izuku was actually an evil overlord in charge of the League, he'd definitely have murdered one or two of them at some point over their inane chatter.

Yeah, he'd handed Japan off to Izuku, but that was more of a curse than anything with all the work it was turning out to be. Maybe All for One just didn't want to bother with making an effort, and passed the task on to his worst enemy (or that enemy's successor). That was easier on Izuku's sanity than the thought that the man was willing to get rid of his own people for… what. Being creepy or vaguely threatening about Izuku?

In the end, Izuku was left with more questions than answers. Examining the database also failed to turn up any real clues on All for One's thought process. Which left finding the man himself and asking what he was thinking.

Izuku should probably do that anyway. All for One on the loose seemed like a recipe for disaster, sooner or later. Aizawa agreed that they needed to prioritize finding All for One's whereabouts, along with Doctor Dalma Ujiko, his favorite producer of biological horrors. They'd start by sending some people from Intelligence to investigate the hideouts revealed by the resident villain crew. That left nothing further for Izuku to do on that topic; he was far too busy to chase leads himself.

He was so busy with reforms - and putting together a model for new anti-Quirk-discrimination laws - that he almost missed his mother's messages that she wanted him home for dinner at some point. Apparently his father, Hisashi Midoriya, had showed his face again - about two weeks after the general interviews ended. According to Bakugou's report, the man had walked in the door like he'd just stepped out for a shopping trip and then refused to leave in spite of Bakugou's best efforts. Izuku had to admit that he was slightly impressed; Bakugou's best efforts were not easy to refuse. Inko might have been left homeless from the resulting explosions if she hadn't made Bakugou leave while she talked with her husband for several hours, and afterward she seemed perfectly happy to let Hisashi Midoriya come back home after over a decade of absence.

Inko insisted, in response to Izuku's questions, that he visit home if he wanted answers. Bakugou was more forthcoming. Bakugou and Hisashi were at each other's throats whenever Hisashi was home, and if Izuku didn't know better, he'd think the man was intentionally annoying Bakugou. It was certainly working; Bakugou's messages contained a level of expletives that Izuku hadn't seen since Bakugou's feud with Monoma in their third year at UA. Izuku was pretty sure Aizawa's interference was the only thing that had prevented bloodshed then. Since Aizawa was busy with the government, Izuku should probably visit, if only to prevent a murder.

He needed to make sure his mother was alright anyway. Considering the timing, it was obvious that she had a gold-digger of a deadbeat husband who she just let swan his way back into her life like nothing was wrong. There was no way Hisashi Midoriya was back for any decent purpose, not if he only showed up after Izuku became an adult and was put in charge of the country. In the meantime, he sent Bakugou a message telling him not to kill the man until Izuku got a chance to talk to him (he'd do his own killing, thanks), but tacitly approving any petty harassment Bakugou could offer. He penciled a dinner appointment into his overstuffed schedule.

Before that, though, was the press conference.

"My dude, you need to talk to the listeners," Yamada told him over a report. "Me and my man Yagi are keeping things quiet, but they need to see you're still alive and kicking. Last thing they saw was you collapsing on stage and that's just not gonna fly."

Izuku nodded. "The public unrest is really not as bad as I thought it would be, but I can't put it off forever. They probably want to know where I'm planning to take the government from here, right?"

"You get it, S.O.!"

"S…. O…?"

"Makes you sound more approachable than Supreme Overlord, dontcha think? Rolls off the tongue better too."

Izuku covered his face with his hands. "Please tell me you haven't been telling the press that I'm the Supreme Overlord. Or… S.O."

"What else? You know that every radio personality needs a groovin' name!"

Former teacher or not, Izuku was going to kill this moron of a hero, and then he was going to crawl off to die of embarrassment in a hole somewhere.

Izuku didn't kill or fire Yamada, or die himself. Which was unfortunate, because that meant he still had to do the press conference. At least Yagi was with him. He'd finally got around to watching Yagi's press conference, as well as the one Yamada had thrown together shortly after the first round of interviews was over. They said a lot that they needed to. Yagi had even acknowledged Izuku as his successor in confirmation of All for One's words, though he declined any questions about what that meant. But there were some things that Izuku had to say himself, and as his first real press conference since Izuku was instated as leader of Japan, Izuku had to make this count.

"I hate press conferences," Izuku moaned while the makeup team powdered his face for the spotlights and clicked their tongues at his refusal to wear a tie. Yagi was in a chair beside him, with his own team fussing over his appearance.

"They're a necessary evil," Yagi responded in a resigned tone.

Yagi joined the lineup of cabinet ministers behind Izuku, while Izuku stepped in front of the microphone and tried to maintain a smile as he faced the sea of media. It was probably a bit wobbly, but maybe the cameras wouldn't pick that up.

"People of Japan," Izuku began. He took a deep breath. He could do this.

"I stand before you today, as both a hero and a leader. The first is by choice. The second is not. It was as much a shock to myself as I'm sure it was to you when All for One transferred his own self-appointed dictatorial position to me. I am not trained to lead a government, I did not study politics. I'm sure there's plenty of people who might serve Japan better than I could." Izuku swallowed hard. The lights were too bright, there were too many people. He'd always hated this part of hero work, even when he didn't imagine the judgement in every pair of eyes directed his way.

You can do this, Izuku, he told himself. Like Amajiki said when he was scared. Press on.

"So why am I still here? Why haven't I found one of those people and passed the responsibility on to them? I'm sure many of you are wondering if I've gone drunk with power and decided to turn this from an interim government to a permanent one. Or maybe I'm secretly connected to All for One. What am I even planning to do with Japan? That's the question of the moment. To answer that, I have a disclosure to make."

He leaned forward, this next part was important. "Two hundred years ago, quirks appeared and Japan's government declared a state of emergency in response to the riots. Once the riots were over, they never announced an end to it. Instead, they heaped law upon unconstitutional law, denying criminals or suspected criminals due process and imprisoning them as they saw fit, with the brands of "hero" and 'villain' as an excuse to disregard almost every article that deals with criminal justice. They imposed rampant censorship of the press in the name of keeping the peace. They violated the foundational principles our Constitution was founded on because people developed powers they couldn't control. As we speak, I'm releasing evidence for all of this online. You can fact-check it as you please; I certainly have."

Izuku waited for the excited babbling to quiet down, and ignored the shouted questions. Once he had silence again, he continued.

"Because of this, despite not being the optimal person for the job, I have decided to ensure that our mistakes will not be repeated. Before anything else, I choose to be a hero. I will not carry on All for One's legacy of blood and fear, nor will I allow a continuation of the previous government's legacy of secrets and control. I will do everything in my power to protect as many people as I can, and that includes protecting not only their safety but also their right to live freely. Your safety, and your right to live freely. I plan to have every law reexamined, every state department investigated, set right everything that went wrong, if that's what I need to do to restore those rights.

"And I want it to be public. I want every dirty secret dragged into the light, so that when I am finished, the new government under our Constitution will not repeat the mistakes of its predecessors. I want everyone to know what went wrong, everything that went ignored, so that we will never again turn a blind eye to injustice and loss of freedom. After democracy resumes, elections are held, and the rights of the Japanese people are restored in full, I will lay down the leadership forced upon me and go back to my duty of protecting peace and justice as a hero, whatever that role looks like by then." It wouldn't be the same - the rankings based on popularity, for example, were one of the first things ditched by the Todoroki brothers - but Izuku had only ever wanted to help and protect people anyway.

"Of course, government reform doesn't happen in a day, and crime does not wait for those reforms. The police are in shambles, the heroes are in hiding. And talk is cheap. The streets need to be safe now, which is why I've prioritized restoring a criminal justice system that operates lawfully. We are still in the process of finishing the reforms, as well as expanding the judicial system enough to allow fair and public trials for everyone, but as of today the prisons and police departments are reopened, with new laws in place to allow everyone who enters them due process.

"In the meantime, the police can not be everywhere, and we're still in the process of organizing reform for the hero system. Which is part of why I've decided on the following." Izuku smiled, this was definitely his favorite part. "Nonviolent usage of quirks, to the extent that they do no harm nor infringe on another person's wellbeing, rights, or property, is permitted to the public. Quirks may be used in defense of oneself and others, provided a case can be made for the necessity of that defense in a court of law. Possession of a quirk considered 'villainous' will no longer be grounds for suspicion of criminal activity, so keep that in mind when gathering your evidence. Anyone who causes harm to others' person or property, with or without the use of a quirk, no matter what that quirk is, will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. The exact definitions of what that entails are available to the public electronically, effective today."

There was so much more that Izuku wanted to say about quirks and their use - the right to one's individuality, the problems of discrimination, the social reforms that he wanted to promote. But this was enough for now.

"As our Constitution says, 'Government is a sacred trust of the people, the authority for which is derived from the people, the powers of which are exercised by the representatives of the people, and the benefits of which are enjoyed by the people.' I hope that it will not be long before those words are truer than they've been in centuries. Thank you. Questions are open."

Immediate pandemonium swept the crowd, and Izuku barely managed to indicate a purple-haired woman in the front row for the first question. "You say you're not working with All for One, but reports say that his former supporters are currently working for you in your new government. Why haven't they been arrested?"

"They know where everything is from All for One's regime, as well as much of the former government, and they are in the process of transferring this information and their duties to the relevant ministries. I have scores of former pro heroes, who also work for me, keeping an eye on them. If they try anything I will know, and they will be in prison faster than they can apologize. Next question. You with the blue scarf."

"Why did you choose to keep All for One's title of Supreme Overlord?"

Izuku really hated press conferences.

At least the press conference was effective, even if he spent several hours seriously contemplating firing Yamada over the spread of that horrible title. Maybe he should start with the former villains. They were the ones who kept calling him Supreme Overlord until everyone else picked it up.

But public opinion rocketed afterward. Yamada and the rest of the PR department declared it uncanny. They'd anticipated backlash over legalizing public quirk use right after several months of villain attacks and quirks used for terror, but… there wasn't? There was definitely some arguing about it on the internet, along with some distrust over whether Izuku really planned to step down, but the media response was overwhelmingly positive. Applications for judges and prosecutioners began to pour in to the understaffed judicial system. Izuku was starting to worry about the state of the National Treasury with all the new hires, never mind the reforms.

Strangely, though, the economy - and resulting taxes - also weren't as bad as projections showed they should be after that same public chaos. Many industries showed signs of preparation for the chaotic times - paying for bodyguards, saving profits, changing their production based on the anticipated needs of an emergency scenario. After that report, Izuku asked Momo to put together a list of companies that showed signs of that preparation. The list was lengthy, and after cross-referencing it with Gigantomachia and Kurogiri, Izuku found that only a few of them had preparations that could be directly traced to All for One's direct manipulations by way of inserting villains into their ranks.

Izuku should probably look into that more closely.

Reviewing the economy, according to Mrs. Yaoyorozu, uncovered a few other oddities stretching much farther back. Other countries with quirk discrimination as rampant as Japan and similar economies had much lower employment rates due to the quirkless or those with villainous, mutant or 'weak' quirks not being able to find employment. Japan hadn't followed that trend for the past century. There were definitely people who had difficulty finding employment due to their quirks, but many of the larger corporations had stringent - and similar - anti-discrimination policies in regards to quirks. These companies also had a significant overlap with the list of companies that had been prepared for the chaos.

They also had all hidden their owners through a string of anonymous partnerships, shell companies, and fancy maneuvering with laws. Everything Mrs. Yaoyorozu found so far was completely legal, but the investigation Izuku chose to launch into these companies kept hitting dead ends every time their search came close to identifying the mysterious owners (or owner, as Izuku was starting to suspect was the case).

Mrs. Yaoyorozu was too busy to devote herself to the investigation full-time, so Momo was left in charge of it. She kept Izuku up-to-date with regular reports.

Izuku was glad to take a break from everything for dinner with his mother. Maybe he could punch his deadbeat father in the face while he was at it.

Dinner was awkward, and Hisashi Midoriya wasn't even present.

Inko met Izuku at the door tearfully, and pulled him into a hug that lasted for several minutes. After disentangling himself, Izuku patted her back and asked about the presence of Bakugou and Hisashi. Inko told him the former had been sent home, and the latter was out for business.

"Hisashi says he wants to retire, though," Inko said. She fidgeted. "He said he wants you to have his business."

"He can talk to me himself." Probably just trying to bribe his way into Izuku's good graces. It wasn't going to work, of course.

"I thought you'd say that," she sighed. "He really is busy, though."

"Busy enough to not come home for, what, fifteen years?" Izuku snapped.

Inko looked ready to cry. It was unfair of Izuku to take this out on her. But even if he didn't know Hisashi personally, he knew that no one who actually cared would stay away from their family that long, and Izuku needed to make sure she wouldn't let herself be hurt again.

He led her to a couch and gently helped her sit, nearly tripping over a basket of yarn in the process. He couldn't remember ever seeing Inko doing handiwork. "Mom, I'm sorry, but he was gone. I'm not going to let him… buy his way back into the family, and I don't want you to be hurt when he disappears again."

She shook her head. "Izuku, you don't know him."

"I know what he did."

"But you don't know him." She sniffled. "He explained a lot of things to me about why he was gone, and… I know he left, honey, and that wasn't fair to you, but he's still every bit the man I married."

"But he left." Izuku felt lost. Wasn't she mad at Hisashi for leaving? "What was so important that he had to be gone so long?"

"He should tell you himself. But the business - that doesn't have anything to do with you accepting him or not. Izuku, he and I both know you… don't think of him as a father. You don't have to. But he's offering what he has to you - to his son, our son - and I'd like for you to accept. You can sell it, or Hisashi set it up to run without close oversight from the owner, but it'll be yours. If nothing else, we won't have to be financially dependent on him any more. I know you probably don't need to worry about money right now, honey, but I know you don't want to stay in the government and heroes… well..."

Tended to retire early. Had an unstable profession at the best of times, never mind right now. Might lose their status and a significant portion of their funding soon, due to the rigorous reforms spearheaded by the Todoroki brothers. Izuku wasn't sure how Inko meant to finish that sentence, but he saw her point about wanting financial stability without Hisashi Midoriya. "If you'd started with that, I might've been more interested. Fine. I'll do it."

"Lovely!" Inko beamed, and Izuku would never have guessed that she'd been close to tears a minute ago. She got up and handed him a legal-sized envelope of papers with a contract placed on top of it, along with a pen. "Dinner will be ready in a few minutes." She winked and bustled off toward the kitchen.

Izuku scanned the contract. It was straightforward enough. The envelope slipped out of his suddenly loose fingers and slid to the floor. "Mom!" he yelled. "Did you know that Hisashi's leaving all his legal assets to me?"

"Yes, honey!"

Izuku blinked down at the paper, and after scanning it one more time, decided that Izuku had far more legal loopholes to make use of in this than Hisashi did. He went to join Inko in the kitchen.

"Did he leave anything for you before this?"

"A retirement fund and this building," Inko said placidly. "I asked him to give everything else to you."

"... He owned the apartment building? I thought we were renting."

"He bought it when he came back and found out we lived here. The first thing he did was sign it over to me."

"How rich is Hisashi?" Rich enough to just… buy an apartment building as a peace offering. These were nice apartments, they didn't come cheap. Wouldn't the rent from the other tenants alone be enough to make Inko financially independent?

"Oh, Izuku, you didn't think he was always away for some small business, do you?"

Izuku shook his head to clear it. "But all legal assets. He does realize that if I sign this he wouldn't even own the clothes on his back, right? He didn't add an addendum for personal belongings or anything. This is everything."

"Yes." She turned away from the stove to face him, a pot held between oven mitts. "Izuku, that's the sort of person your father is. He's never done anything by halves, especially when it comes to family."

Izuku waved the sheet of paper. "This isn't halves. I can't accept this. Maybe he left but I can't accept his entire life just because he… he what. I'm his son? He left!" Hisashi Midoriya was supposed to be a power-hungry mooch, not… not someone who just handed over everything just because Izuku was his son. That wasn't how this was supposed to go.

Inko put the pot down. "You don't understand what it is to be a parent, sweetie. You may not consider him your father, but you're his son."

"He can't even be here to tell me himself."

Inko shrugged. "We knew you wouldn't take this well from him."

Izuku couldn't argue with that.

The conversation over a truly delicious dinner was stilted, and Izuku felt sorry that the little time he had with his mother was ruined by the contract that lay at the end of the table away from Izuku. The man might be back, but he was still ruining everything with his absence.

"I can't sign this," he said. "I can't be responsible for his entire life. Tell him to keep some personal belongings and some retirement money for himself."

"Alright, honey," Inko said.

The rest of the evening shouldn't be spent in the shadow of Hisashi Midoriya. Surely they could find something else worth talking about. Maybe the yarn Izuku had nearly tripped over. "Mom, did you decide to take up knitting?"

"Oh no. I guess you saw the yarn in the living room? That's your father's. He said he'd like to try his hand at crochet, he thinks it's relaxing."

Well, he'd tried.

The following Monday Gigantomachia handed Izuku a contract to sign, supposedly sent directly from Hisashi Midoriya, along with a familiar envelope. Gigantomachia seemed strangely interested in the man's signature. Izuku wondered if he should be concerned, since Gigantomachia tended to sort through Izuku's paperwork with a stoic concentration.

Everything was in order. Hisashi had made provisions for personal belongings and a generous retirement fund he'd set up for himself. He'd left everything else to Izuku. That was fine. It was enough that Izuku wouldn't have to decide how much to give back to the man to keep him from mooching off of Inko's retirement fund. Izuku signed the paper, put it in a pile with some others, and left dealing with his new assets for later, whatever those were. They were probably listed in the envelope. If not, Izuku would need to find a lawyer to track down Hisashi Midoriya's legal assets.

That could wait, though. Izuku hadn't wanted anything of Hisashi Midoriya's in the first place, and even if whatever business Izuku now owned was falling apart, it was a lesser problem than Japan falling apart. Which was why he put Hisashi Midoriya and his strange idea of family in the back of his mind, which was bulging at the seams at this point, and returned to trying to coordinate the reformation of an entire country.

Maybe if Momo had a break from her investigation, she'd feel like helping Izuku look it over.