One For All Rising
Yoichi was too clever for his own good. Where Hideyoshi started out with brawn and agility, pickpocketing to thuggery, Yoichi had to compensate with his mind. He was all sharp intellect and had a way of empathizing with everyone from all walks of life.
It was no surprise, Hideyoshi supposed, that he'd eventually hacked into enough government and criminal databases to piece the puzzle together. The secret he tried to keep from his brother. That he controlled much of the underworld elements. That he was an architect for human misery (for a greater cause mind you!).
And so a fight ensued, words and actions neither of them would take back. Hideyoshi raged at Yoichi, telling him what an ungrateful asshole he was. He did all of this for a single person, him, his only brother and family left in the world.
"I wish I had died in the Outbreak then. Because even a single drop of blood or an ounce of suffering just for my sake isn't worth it." The silence was loud. All For One's heart beating loudly, his adrenaline up and anger even further up.
Not one of his finest moments, locking away Yoichi in a gilded palace of luxury, servants, and prostitutes. He tried to throw every peace offering at him, from his charitable programs, offering him a seat at his organization to introduce his own vision, to making his own offshoot organization, anything. All were refused.
And then instead of locking him in a gilded palace, he had to lock him in an actual vault when he started to leak away his empire to the government.
Hideyoshi still loved his brother to death. So that's why he decided to finally give his brother a metahuman ability. His traditional, normal healing Quirks so far haven't worked, he had to think outside the box, and lo and behold, the stockpile quirk. Unorthodox Quirk combinations relieved some issues, but always overall put too much strain on Yoichi's body, or eventually failed. He gives, takes, and combines Quirks, but always has to start from scratch. The process is painful for both of them, but Hideyoshi tries to shoulder as much of the pain as possible.
But the stockpile Quirk seemed to do the trick. It also lit a fire under Yoichi. Whenever he sent him mixed pleasurable company, he instead saw them under his brother's orders, helping him exercise. It was funny seeing a hundred fifty-k a night sex worker holding his brother's legs while he did several sets of crunches. Hideyoshi always provided whatever his brother asked for. Weights, workout equipment, protein shakes and more.
But as time goes on, he finds himself more busy with the escalating cold war with the MLA and national government. And soon, he's completely distracted with unaffiliated raiding distractions on his territory…
The fire burned within Yoichi. It was the fire of change that burnt him away to cinders. Yet the foundations and roots became stronger than ever. The fire within was greater than the fire encapsulating the world. It was the fires of justice and righteous anger. It burned every day and hour, and it needed an outlet.
This fire enhanced his actions. A single curl up yielded results like he had done five instead. Five enhanced push-ups equaled twenty-five "regular" push-ups. And still he pushed his body to the limits, nothing was off-limits, everything was given over to the fire. Each day it got stronger and stronger, never decreasing even once. What he was preparing for, he wasn't entirely sure. But when the opportunity came, he would seize it with both hands.
One time, in a particularly agonizing day of energetic haze, he found that had crushed his fifty pound lead dumbbells.
He prepared himself for the day of his escape, ignoring all the petty distractions his brother sent, or reusing him in his own ways. His brother sent countless peace offerings, from nutritionists, trainers, and the occasional escort he ignored.
This prison would be cracked open by his own hands. No one would save him but himself.
Sometimes, you have to be your own savior, your own hero.
All For One eyed the last two surviving partisans with a haughty sneer. What seemed to be their leader, unimaginatively named "Ichi" had the remains of their skull leaking onto his carpet. All that was left was "Ni" and "San".
"Did you honestly think I didn't know about this? All those diversionary attacks on my operations? I let you get this far so I'd have you all in one place. As we speak, your motley crew is being killed. Your people are done for. You've not only lost, you've become extinct. The hanging bodies of you and your allies will deter far more attacks than if I had just silenced you months ago. So thank you, at least you've done me that."
Their faces were bloodied yet defiant, even as they stared towards their end. Despair was barely kept at bay.
Then, they heard a thump. A louder hit. A squeal of strained metal.
All For One walked towards the door-
His body was pulverized by the speeding vault door, but that barely mattered. From the first clang and impact he had already cycled through self preservation quirks, but much of them were delayed even with tinkering -
As soon as he lifted the massive vault door off of himself, the assailant with lightning fast speed uppercutted him and elbow kidney smashed him. He hadn't bothered to fix his upper skull yet, so his eyes were out. He used variations on echolocation quirks to pinpoint where they were but they were faster than sound!
Whomever this was had hurt him more than any assassin or fight had before, pushing him to the knife's edge of death. As he avoided crippling blows, he activated Blood Memory. It would be able to tell him atleast who he was related to, so he could at least know who's family he killed to try this-
Oh.
A microsecond of stunned silence was all it took for his brother to take the initiative. They crashed to the ground, his younger brother on top as he rained quick and dirty blows to the face, neck, chest and arm pressure points.
Hideyoshi laughed as his brother beat the ever loving shit out of him.
Yoichi, once a sickly and emancipated figure, is now a towering figure of rippling strength. His shirtless attire clearly showcased every tight, powerful muscle on his body.
He lets his brother thrash him around, nor does he try to defend himself. Why would he? He didn't want to hurt his brother. In fact, he was so proud of him even as his own lungs filled with blood.
No longer was Yoichi a feeble, weak mess. This was proof he truly helped his little brother grow up into a formidable force. Hideyoshi wanted to see his brother live and thrive.
At the end of the beating and Yoichi was done, he resembled a piece of raw, hammered meat. He was breathing through his skin and using other organs to live. It was like Yoichi knew he was close to the edge. He beat him within a centimeter of his life.
But he was alive by the "mercy" of his brother.
The brotherly silence was broken by the bewildered survivors. "Aren't you going to finish him off?!" They yelled at Yoichi.
He snapped his eyes towards them and they quickly quieted down.
Yoichi looked at his brother and spared him. "This power was made for justice, not wanton murder. To break chains, to create a better future."
"And." He paused.
"He's my brother, the only family I had left, who took care of me when the world turned itself against us. This is my goodbye and my last favor to him." He freed the other two and ran before his security forces would come back into the area.
"Stop!" He thundered with a Quirk. They halted, and turned around.
"Oh what games we'll play. You're growing into your own man now. Good luck. Leave!" Using the Quirk again, he bade them to flee.
His little brother, all grown up. How proud he was of him.
When his security forces finally got to him, they saw the terrifying sight of his blooded form. He laughed as his own blood pooled around him.
"Sir, we can still pursue them. Torakkā has their scent-" A brave underling stepping forward. Useful, but not now.
"No. You'll do nothing." His thundering tone of voice and stare silenced them all.
"It's time for a little brotherly competition."
Yoichi Shigaraki looked over what was left of his rescuer's company. They had sacrificed dearly to put their best people for a direct assassination attempt against his brother, All For One. They had attacked many of his holdings and strong points, all for naught.
Tales of what he did and his heritage inspired hope and distrust in equal measure. Frankly, he couldn't blame them.
"We've got to underground, regroup and recruit!" They were currently arguing on the next action.
"Are you crazy? After all we went through and the momentum we've only now began to really charge, we leave the neighborhoods to the local MLA chapters?" Some suggestions had more merit than others.
"We should consider giving up. It's hopeless. What can we do against the big three?!" It silenced everyone. Was this truly the end?
A crushing noise broke the silence. Yoichi had a chunk of concrete, powdered into dust in his hands.
He had been silent this entire time, listening to the bickering and fighting. No more.
"What can we do? What you can all afford to do. What you all came together to do. To fight for freedom, to attack tyranny. Hope isn't a ragged band of freedom fighters. Hope is what we inspire in our communities and people. What can we do against the big three? Throw me at them. I'll even get run up on them with or without your support, but I'm no longer staying on the sidelines. You can all choose to reorganize painfully slowly, to fight to the last man on some useless and pointless operation, or to leave entirely. Or, we start to go back to basics."
No one argued as they raptly listened to him. Even though he was the brother of one of their most hated enemies, he had a passion and fire that warmed rather than burned.
"Japan is under a silent three way war. All these trampling elephants are too focused on mauling each other to truly care for their own people or supply lines. So we start from those two basic aspects. They need warm bodies and supplies. Yet they treat their supplies like precious gold and their people like easy yen to spend. Who will they turn to? Us. We'll give them something no one in his country has offered these last few years. Hope. The principles of singular individuals giving their all for the sake of everyone. One For All. That is how we start fighting back. This is how we'll win. We are the pebbles that will herald the avalanche of a fourth option."
"One For All" worked fast under a new direction. They made ingroups with community organizations, pseudo neighborhood watches, and the rabble everyone else ignored. Vigilantes with powers fought the small-time gangs trying to encroach under the chaos of the country.
These isolated communities of metahumans needed One For All as much as they needed manpower. Even small-time criminals who fought for no purpose and no flag could be reforged and reused for a greater cause.
They started out small. They burned government offices full of metahuman registration records.
Then they escalated to sabotaging government supply lines, which sounded grandiose at first, but was diminished when one realized they cut the tires of trucks. It became far more spectacular when they started to bomb railways.
There were the all out running gun battles against government sweeps and purges, allowing both targeted metahuman and regular human dissidents to escape.
However, Yoichi did not forget where he came from, or where his morals were. When parts of the group became more extreme, more personal with their violence, he put a stop to it.
So their efforts became more humanitarian. Smuggling families to safety, fighting increasingly larger battles against the government and Meta Liberation Army for the people. Not just fighting and killing for the sake of wounding the other factions.
One For All and his first allies became legends and "heroes".
All For One in his war room marveled at the relative devastation his brother had wrought. He had taken a bloody swath across several cities, taking territory, munitions, and freeing a variety of civilians from the government run camps. He gave a bloody nose to everyone it seemed, and this was just the beginning.
He couldn't be happier with this outcome. Hideyoshi could envision it now. His brother as the ultimate leader of the light, himself as the ultimate leader of darkness. Yoichi being forced into making a deal with him, necessitating the use of an alliance to not tear the country apart.
Perhaps this idle fantasy could even become a reality. He could keep his brother by giving him all the power in the world, and he would assume his place under him. Hideyoshi could live without being the top dog as long as his brother called the shots. Being a co-ruler wasn't so bad, doing the unpleasant things his brother could never do, bless his righteous soul.
He began a campaign of feeding. Fattening up his brother with leaked information on his organization, the government, and MLA. Putting the right people and equipment in the most vulnerable places so Yoichi could grow his own organization, even sacrificing the outer and unimportant parts of his own faction. All of this to throw off Yoichi's suspicion, give him the confidence necessary to grow his own network.
The war between the now dubbed "One For All" and All For One had now truly started.
Yoichi's natural charisma and personal power rallies the "unaffiliated" to him. It seems they're fighting government oppression and their concentration camps, his own shadow empire, and the remnants of the Meta Liberation Army. Even without their leader, they put up a strong fight.
Hit and run attacks, spontaneous running gun battles and unrestrained quirk uses heighten the conflict. It's still not as awful as what's happening on the mainland. Being an island nation with a mostly homogenous population helps.
Strangely as the fighting intensified, and more Quirks were taken, All for One's appetite increased. Must have been the stress getting to him.
As America has completely pulled out, sea raiders from various burning nations target Japan. Japan is also viewed as a safer place, spurring immigration.
All in the meanwhile, All For One doesn't pursue One For All too much, wanting to give him the time to develop his own empire. He restricted his strikes to only the very outer edges of his brother's organization.
It was in one of those meetings with his subordinates that their uneasiness finally prompted them to ask him. Why did he let his brother roam free?
"They've only been attacking our shell games and low level dealers. They aren't important in the grand scheme of things. Let my little brother feel like he's doing something."
His brother didn't share his own line of thinking, but between his informants and bait, Yoichi hit only the "unimportant parts" of his underworld empire. Who cares that a major drug producer was arrested when he's on the board of a major pharmaceutical company and flooding the market with cheap opioids?
He was on the boards of several different drug and key manufacturing companies. From cancer medication to computer goods, he had a steady stream of income that helped give him an edge over all of the old timers who were too comfortable in the underworld. With a vote and a nudge, he could jack up the prices of common cold medicines, then sell cheaper black market items, diluted products just below the market rate. His double dipping ensured regardless of where the scales tipped, he made a profit.
His apartment interests destroyed in a running government battle? The government practically paid him back in damages, paid him in rebuilding, and paid him to house displaced people.
And who was the government fighting in the first place? His own people.
His reach into every faction varied, but what didn't vary was their dependence on him, ironically. By hook or crook his shell game consolidation meant he made more legally in a day than he did two weeks illegally. But his illegal activities help his legal influence reach higher.
It also seems that like himself, his little brother doesn't like the government too. They were both influenced by what they saw in New York City during the Outbreak, how the American government turned on its own people. And the Japanese national government has practically been committing genocide and other unsavory actions. He comes up in the news, daring raids on camps, prisons and more cementing a growing reputation. From his sources, he had united everyone not under his, the government's, or MLA's banner. The disorganized and weak "4th faction" was the fastest growing new power.
It made him so proud.
Let his brother be a hero. The true shogun of Japan was All For One.
Yoichi Shigaraki and his brother may have been on opposite sides of the silent war, but they were alike in their ability to gather others under their banner.
He spread his influence and ideology across a burgeoning network of resistance. Sympathetic citizens and government officials tired of the atrocities. There were the freedom fighters, metahumans who found no home with the MLA or All For One, and delinquents looking for a cause to rally under.
They fought a silent war that will never be featured in memorials or history books. It was a conflict fought for the sake of all people. Yoichi took no names, but his allies saw his efforts and gave him reverent titles. The whispers in the dark, the hollow gazes of families, the hope he inspired.
The lone savior of the beaten and downtrodden.
One For All.
All For One is attending some unimportant raid. It seems like his underlings have been getting cold feet due to actual pushback. So there he was, bolstering the spine of his people. In this abandoned factory, it's supposed to have been inhabited by MLA troopers. Either they defected, or his little brother was faster than his intel. Very impressive. A purple skinned mutant is running to the exit, and he casually sends off a concussive blast at them. But it met an unstoppable force and even reversed.
By none other than his brother. One For All!
He was supposed to be fifty miles away in a podunk town freeing the local government's prison camps and bombing the local railways. Why in the hell was he here? With the battle well under way and several wounds on his brother, he couldn't control the battlefield as easily as he wanted to. Beside Yoichi was Ni and San, from his reports they were inseparable. Yoichi took a drop of his own blood, and rubbed it on Ni's finger.
"Leave me to me brother. The torch is passed onto you. Use it well, and never let the flame die." With that resolute and nonsensical statement out of the way, they fled. All For One let them go. He'd find them later.
As he walked to him, he smiled. "Little brother! If I'd have known you were coming, I'd have brought some wine to celebrate! It's your birthday after all!" And he would have been willing to stop hostilities, if only for an evening. Family time is precious, even if your brother wants to murder you.
His brother does not smile. He does not laugh. He squares up and readies himself to fight to the bitter end. "Violence breeds violence All For One. But as long as you act this way, with injustice and cruelty, it has to be this way." Then he suddenly collapses and Hideyoshi panically runs to his brother-!
And immediately gets punched halfway across the street. He gets up and blasts his way to the factory. Just as Hideyoshi sees Yoichi again, fighting his forces, he suddenly gets impaled on a spike of concrete. He's spewing blood from his mouth and hole in his chest.
The culprit beams up at All For One. "Damn, he sure had some fight left in him. Are you alright sir?"
All For One exsanguinates him slowly, turning up his nerve-sensitivity Quirk to its highest possible power.
After the screams have ended, after his subordinate's heartbeat has stopped, and everyone around him has fled as fast as they could, he gathers up his brother's body. He uses no Quirk. Hideyoshi carries him out of the city, across the train, to their hometown.
No one dares speak or confront him with the volume of blood on him. He finds his brother's favorite spot in the woods. An open clearing, a pond filled with koi fish, and a breathtaking view of the stars.
He digs a hole with only his hands at the base of the tree he and his brother carved their names into. Still he refuses to use a Quirk, even when his hands start to bleed. Finally, he takes off his suit and wraps his brother in it. It was the first suit he ever bought, and always wore as a sign of his own grit and success. Re-tailored time and time again, even specifically finding a Quirk to ensure its durability at all times.
He wrapped his brother in it, put him in the ground, and buried him. He cries long and loud for the last time in his life. He is mourning his happiness and success. Because neither could exist without his brother in the world.