Superhuman Gifts
Chapter Seven - One for All
Hello World! This is chapter 7!
I told you I'd get to One for All eventually!
(Disclaimer: It's not like I want to own Boku no Hero Academia or anything! BAKA!)
Izuku wordlessly stared at the crying girl who had appeared on his doorstep.
After a few moments he spoke, "All Might? H-he's-"
Apparently he had the wrong choice of words. The girl started crying harder, large tears pouring down her cheeks despite her best efforts to wipe them away with her hands.
Izuku ushered her inside, not wanting to leave a sobbing girl in front of his door at 2 AM.
"Here, sit down." He directed her to the living room where she sat down on the couch.
He rushed into the kitchen and grabbed the tissue box sitting on the counter. He then prepared a cup of hot chocolate, a tried and true method to calm people down, before returning to the girl and handing it to her.
She accepted it, "Thank you…"
Izuku nodded and placed the tissue box on the table in between them. He sat down and waited.
After the girl had stopped crying she handed him an All Might signature. It was a little crumpled but it would still sell for about 500 ¥. The penmanship was good and in the bold black marker that All Might carried around to sign fan's notebooks, shirts, faces, and various other possessions. One notable deformation was one of the corners had a bit of red on it. If it was All Might's blood…
"750,000 yen." Izuku concluded.
The look on the girl's face said that he did something wrong.
Izuku realized belatedly he hadn't checked the back, a message could raise or tank the overall price. If the message said something like, "Happy eighth birthday, Kacchan!" then the price would drop. On the other hand, if it said, "Meet me in the storage shed at 10." in All Might's handwriting, the price would skyrocket.
Izuku flipped it over and realized that the message on the back effectively made the piece of cardboard priceless.
"Dear Izuku,
If you are reading this then it means that I am most likely dead. I'm writing this letter as an apology and as a request.
First off, I believe that I told you that you cannot become a hero. I am terribly sorry, but I have made a mistake. I watched as you saved the blond boy from the sludge villain. You, a young quirkless middle schooler, saved a victim that 4 pro heroes and the number one hero could do nothing against. I was wrong, you can be a hero.-"
Izuku stopped reading, not because he wasn't curious about what came next, but because his tears of happiness might damage and lower the value of the signature. And he still needed it as a family heirloom.
After the flow of tears had stopped, he continued.
"I also need to apologize about the lies I told you. I am not truly limiting myself to 3 hours a day. I am strictly limited to 3 hours a day because of health problems. I am getting weaker and need to find a successor. That brings me into my third topic.
The girl who brought you this letter is named Ochako Uraraka, she's a kind girl who is aiming to be a hero just like you. She is also my successor. This brings me to my request. I want you to train her in my place.-"
"WHAT!?" Izuku stared at the words on the page, "Why me?"
"I'm sure you're wondering why I'm asking you. There is a villain who would kill her if she was discovered to be my successor. Everyone I know who could train her is already marked. Everyone except you. In your fight you showed a thorough understanding of an unknown quirk and a knack for heroics.
If anyone can help her understand and control her power it's you.
-All Mi"
All Might's signature was squeezed into the last corner of the page, apparently he had run out of space while writing his long winded letter.
Izuku reread the letter and tried to understand what it meant.
"So Uraraka is being chased by a villain because she is All Might's successor and she needs a teacher. All for the potential teachers are being monitored by said villain so she can't work with them, which leaves her with me, a person no one knows has any connection to All Might whatsoever. But what does successor even mean? Is she his daughter or something? Come to think of it, he called Nana Shimura his predecessor. But if-"
"Um…" A quiet voice interrupted his muttering, "Are you ok?"
Izuku looked at the girl, whose name was apparently Ochako Uraraka, "Don't worry about me, I always mutter! It's a bit of a habit."
Ochako shook her head, "I'm not talking about the muttering, I'm asking about the tears…"
Izuku reached up and touched his face, surely enough, there were two thick lines of tears rolling down his face.
"What…" He tried wiping them away, "That's strange… I thought that they stopped..."
He sniffed.
"Is it true?" He decided to ask.
"Is he really dead?"
He stared at the words on the page again, ignoring the tears falling onto the newly anointed heirloom.
"But… He's All Might! The number one hero! The strongest, fastest, coolest hero ever!"
Ochako nodded and joined him, "It's impossible to beat him! He always wins in the end.
"He can always finds his way out of a pinch!"
"He always smiles and is the only one who can truly say, It's ok!"
"Because I am-" Izuku's voice cracked, "He's not here…"
The two of them remained silent for the next few minutes, thinking about everything that they knew.
Izuku finally looked back at the letter and ignored everything except for the single line,
"I was wrong, you can be a hero"
Ochako sipped the final bit of hot chocolate left in her mug, she had found Izuku and delivered the letter, there was only one thing let for her to do.
"Midoriya-kun…" She asked quietly.
Izuku broke his staring contest with the letter and looked at her questioningly.
"All Might said… I needed to ask you the story of One for All."
Izuku's eyes widened in recognition, "I thought that was just an urban legend." He looked back at the letter, "So that's what you meant by successor."
"Successor?" Ochako asked.
"Did All might give you anything aside from the business card and the letter?" Izuku asked, "Did anything stand out to you when you talked to him?"
Ochako shook her head, then remembered, "He asked me to drink a drop of his blood, he said it was quirk related.
Izuku nodded, "Then you really are his successor." Izuku stuck his hand into the couch and pulled out a notebook.
This made Ochako pause, "Did you just pull a notebook out of your couch?"
Izuku nodded, "The legend of One for All…"
Ochako chose to forget the notebook from the couch.
"Long ago, when quirks were first being introduced to the world, a certain man rose to power in the villain underworld. This man was called only by the quirk he possessed, All for One. His quirk was the ability to take and give other quirks.
All for One used his quirk to help mutants find a place in society, give powers to the average citizens, and slowly increase his own power. In his eyes, those with power had the right to push their ideals onto those without.
But not everyone agreed with his policy. His younger brother, a frail boy with no quirk, stood up agaisnt him and told him what he was doing was wrong. All for One imprisoned him and pushed a quirk onto him in order to bring him into his newly founded empire.
This is what created One for All. The quirk that was passed onto the brother was a simple quirk that could stockpile power, but the brother already had a similar quirk to his older brother, the ability to pass on quirks. Together they formed the quirk One for All, a quirk that stockpiles power and is then passed on like an Olympic Torch. With his new power intact, the brother swore that one day, he would bring down All for One."
Izuku finished the story but kept the notebook open.
"What does this story mean?" Ochako asked.
"If this isn't merely a legend... Uraraka-san, I think you're the next owner of One for All."
Inko Midoriya woke up and wandered into the kitchen, passing Izuku's empty room on the way. She noticed two mugs in the sink.
"That's strange…" She picked it up, "Hot chocolate…"
She knew that Izuku often drank hot chocolate when he was upset, but he never used two mugs.
She looked over at the tissue box that usually sat on the counter top. It wasn't there.
"Based on the fact that he took the kitchen tissue box he was crying a lot last night. But the two mugs would suggest that someone else was here." Inko studied the mug closely, "This was placed in the sink a little over four hours ago which means that he was up until later then three. That's strange because he was dead tired when he got home today. Which means someone must have woken him up, he's a lighter sleeper than I am."
She put the mug back into the sink.
"The problem with the second person theory is that the only friend that would come over is Katsuki, but he and I both know Katsuki likes black coffee more than hot chocolate, and the chances of him crying as well are insanely low. There would have to be a death in his immediate family for that to happen, and if it did, Izuku would have woken me. But it was also big enough of a shock that he didn't return to his bedroom. Or he might have fallen asleep in the living room."
Inko rubbed her temple.
"There's only one way to find out." She said as she entered the living room.
On the couch Izuku was asleep, clutching his couch notebook tightly. And sitting next to him, tightly wrapped up in a blanket, was the one thing Inko never could have accounted for.
"Izuku brought a girl home?"
She fainted.
Ok, this chapter proves it. I have absolutely no idea how to write a downcast fanfic!
I kill off one of the most important characters in terms of the world building, and I end up making jokes about how valuable his signature is.
Just wow...
I'm sorry for even trying.
Also, you may be wondering why I made Inko so intelligent, but… I mean. Izuku has to get his analytical side from someone! It probably runs in the family like green hair and copious amounts of tears.
Anywho, please review! Especially on this chapter, I need to know if I should give up on trying to make an emotionally draining chapter.
Next chapter, "Attraction of Small Objects"
-TitaniumDragon22
