When Naomasa woke it was with no memory of falling asleep. Jerking awake at the sudden revelation, he found himself safely tucked into his own bed at home albeit mostly still dressed in his clothes from the previous day. "What-?"
"Oh, you're awake." Truth. Naomasa jerked his head around looking for where All for One's voice had come from. "Ah, there is no need to be alarmed!" Lie. "Okay maybe this is but I am trying to fix it!" Truth. "I'm sorry but I was unable to sever the connection between our minds correctly this morning due to your Quirk's resonation with the one that I tried to use." Truth. "I had to knock you out before the emotional feedback loop became debilitating." Truth.
Okay that was a new one. "You're in my head?"
"Correct." Truth. "Now that you are awake I can start to pick apart the connection from my end." Truth. "I'm sorry for the inconvenience." Truth. Well that was relieving at least. "I'm glad you think so." Truth.
Naomasa jerked back slightly at that. He could hear his thoughts? "I thought that would be obvious? You are hearing mine after all." Lie.
Naomasa flinched hard at that. "Sorry, I didn't realize half truths like that register as lies for you." Truth.
He wasn't sure what to think of that. "Why can you hear my thoughts if I can't hear yours?"
"I believe it has to do with how our Quirks work." Truth. "I have to keep a strong mental wall between my mind and my Quirk normally, only lowering it partially to use any mental Quirks while you have to have your mind wide open for your Quirk to work." Truth. "Sorry." Truth. "I will do my best to ignore your thoughts unless you direct them at me until I figure out what happened." Truth.
Naomasa found himself falling back into his pillow only to roll over a moment later to scream into it. How was this his life? A few months ago the most exciting thing that ever happened to him was Eraser bringing him into the Villain Factory cases. Now he had the father of villainy taking up space in his brain rent free. He was beginning to regret having earned the Underground Hero's trust.
The sound of someone pounding on his front door dragged him out of his mental spiraling. Hauling himself to his feet, he quickly made his way over to pull the door open. "Eraser? What are you doing here?"
The Underground Hero seemed to study Naomasa with a puzzled gaze before sighing and shaking his head. "You need to call into the station." Truth. "While I don't blame you for clearly crashing hard after the hours you have been working, you are nearly 4 hours late at this point." Truth. "Sansa was worried you had been kidnapped or something." Truth.
Naomasa felt his face heat up at that. How long had he been asleep? "A little over 9 hours. Our conversation ended at around 7 this morning and it is after 4 now." Truth. Oh right. That was a thing now. Hopefully All for One could fix that before they got used to the connection being there.
"Naomasa?"
Naomasa jerked his focus back to the Pro-hero in front of him. "Sorry. I didn't exactly go straight to bed when I left the station yesterday."
Shouta gave Naomasa a rather concerned look. He must really be worrying about him if he was both using his given name and openly emoting like that. "Call in sick and get changed into more comfortable clothes. You are coming back over to my place for dinner at the bare minimum." Truth. "Then you are going to explain what the hell you were up to this morning that was more important than sleep." Truth.
Naomasa sighed but nodded and gestured for Shouta to come in to wait while he showered and changed. "You can tell him that you are investigating me." Truth. Naomasa huffed quietly to himself as he closed off his bedroom door. Because yeah, that would go over well. "I am not suggesting you explain everything." Truth. "That is my responsibility to my family, not yours." Truth. "Still, I wouldn't be surprised if Inko and her brothers at the very least suspected that I am not entirely above board as it were." Truth. "You can admit to having gotten me to confess to having at the very least a connection of some sort to All for One." Truth.
So that was how Naomasa found himself constructing a careful mental case that skirted the border of lying to his friend with the Symbol of Evil while he showered. What even was his life anymore?
---MiM-MiM-MiM---
If Shouta was being honest with himself, he was really worried about Tsukauchi's一no, Naomasa's一mental health. While Shouta was the last person you would use as an example of a good work life balance, at some point in the last month or so the detective's ability to take care of himself had taken a steep nosedive into the unhealthy. It was to the point that half the time Shouta was dragging him out of the station himself to get him to go to bed.
He couldn't help but feel at least partially at fault either. Something Shouta had realized rather early on in his friendship was that the other man didn't really have any other friends. Sure the man was friendly enough with other people but there was a fakeness to his smile he wore around other people that only really disappeared when he was alone with Shouta. The only people he had seen the man lower his careful guard around had been Shouta's own family and close friends. The loss of trust the man had held in the position of number one hero had hit the detective hard and the man was clearly overworking himself to distract from the pain he felt over it.
Even Hitoshi, who barely knew the man, was starting to worry about him from how often Shouta was dragging Naomasa home following his late night patrols. Honestly, if things don't improve soon, he and Hizashi would probably have to find a bigger place and just have the detective move in like Hizashi had done with Shouta years ago while he was still drowning in grief over Oboro's death. This wasn't healthy.
Shouta was dragged from his thoughts as the man in question stumbled out of his bathroom, newly clothed in what was clearly an old work out outfit. Feeling Shouta's eyes on him, Naomasa shrugged. "I don't really have much casual wear."
"I know. Hizashi and I figured that out from what you have been keeping at our place a while ago. Come on." Shouta gently led his friend from his apartment, stopping only long enough to lock the door behind them. "So do you want to talk about it?"
The detective sighed and seemed to slump into himself once more as he walked beside him. "Not particularly but there is no real avoiding it at this point. I have been looking into your brother-in-law for your sister. She was starting to worry that he was hiding something from her with how he is avoiding coming home and well, it isn't good."
Shouta stopped to stare at the detective as that thought processed. "How not good are we talking?"
Naomasa ran a hand over his face as he let out a sigh. "Symbol of Evil bad."
Shouta felt himself go ridge at that. "He is involved with All for One?"
"You could say that."
"Do you know why?"
The detective ran his hand through his hair. "He claims that everything he has done has been to protect those he considers his family, which doesn't just include you and the rest of your family."
Suddenly Loki's comment from their last encounter about Shouta not having to worry about All for One coming after his family was recontextualized. "He cut a deal with All for One because Mirai was All Might's sidekick, didn't he?"
Naomasa shook his head before continuing the walk, forcing Shouta to resume walking himself. "No, his involvement with All for One predates his even meeting your family."
"So you don't know why exactly then."
"What do you know about his brother?"
Shouta was thrown momentarily by the change in topic before it clicked. "Shit. All for One was helping Hisashi with taking care of his brother."
"That is what he admitted to me when I talked to him this morning."
Shouta raked his hand over his face with a groan. "How the fuck am I supposed to break this to Inko?"
"You don't have to. Izuku has given him a hard deadline of the first day of classes next year to come clean to everyone in your family about all of his secrets that he has been keeping."
"Izuku knows?"
"Izuku is the only reason I was able to get him to admit as much as he has to me."
"How did he figure out what was going on before all of us?"
Naomasa was silent for a moment as he seemed to consider his words. "Izuku isn't actually Quirkless anymore."
Shouta nearly tripped in his shock. "You're not saying一"
"All for One gave Izuku a minor precognitive Quirk called Danger Sense so that stuff like what landed him in the hospital wouldn't happen."
Shouta felt his stomach drop at that revelation. "What did he want for that? All for One wouldn't just give away a Quirk like that for free."
"True but consider it from the angle that All for One was still only fulfilling the terms of his original deal of ensuring the safety of your family. Izuku is both Quirkless and more danger prone than most kids his age. It might have just been easier to give Izuku the Quirk over other options."
Shouta blinked before reluctantly nodding. "That just makes me wonder more what Hisashi is even doing for All for One to make the man agree to uphold a deal like that for so long."
Suddenly, Naomasa starts laughing with a strange laugh that Shouta had never heard from the man before. It takes Shouta grabbing his upper arm to keep the man from falling to the ground. Shouta couldn't help the twisting in his gut at the thought of how similar the laugh sounded to the laughs of those under the effects of Ms. Joke's Quirk. Shouta glared at a few of the passersby that gave the man strange looks as he struggled to recover.
Suddenly Naomasa went completely limp and Shouta found himself the sole thing keeping the man's head from meeting the pavement. Acting fast, Shouta shifted Naomasa to sitting propped up against the wall next to the sidewalk and met the man's completely blank gaze. He was awake still but clearly not conscious. Cursing to himself under his breath Shouta fished out his phone and called Hizashi.
"Shouta?"
"I need you to bring the car to the location I am about to send you. Naomasa just collapsed while we were walking over from his place. He is awake but unresponsive."
Shouta heard a curse on the other end of the line and the sound of Hizashi grabbing his car keys. "Are we taking him to the hospital?"
"I'm not sure that would help. I think this is一" Shouta couldn't help but fall silent as he looked up from sending his location on his phone to meet the eyes of the man in front of him. Familiar red eyes.
"Oh, um, this is awkward."
Without a word Shouta hung up the phone. "Hisashi, what did you do?"
His brother-in-law, wearing his friend's face, flinched at the cold tone of voice. "Would you believe me if I said I have no possible idea how this happened?" When Shouta flashed his Quirk in anger to no effect, the man held up Naomasa's hands in mock surrender. "Sorry, Shouta, that was a bad joke. Sorry, it is just this is not even remotely close to how I was planning on this conversation to go. Tsukauchi is fine…-ish. He needs to take a lot of time off for the sake of his health but this shouldn't be hurting him."
"Hisashi."
The man flinched. "So I guess I should start with the fact that my actual Quirk isn't actually a simple fire breathing Quirk. That one was just one of the ones I have had the longest."
"All for One has been giving you more Quirks?"
"I mean technically yes. All for One is the name of the Quirk, not the person who has it."
There was a beat of silence between the two before something clicked. "Your original Quirk is All for One."
"Yes."
Shouta groaned and began to massage his forehead. "And how did this happen?"
"I might have broken the detective slightly this morning while we were talking. I was worried about him so I tried to use an empathy Quirk that I had to try to help him calm down and it, uh, I guess broke? I am still not entirely sure what happened but I think that the Quirk liked his a bit too much and created a feedback loop. Using another Quirk to sedate him didn't sever the connection so I have been trying to untangle the connection between our minds since then. I wasn't expecting to knock him out and sort of possess him in the process."
"Can you stop?"
"Oh, uh, I think so? I'm starting to think the only way to end the connection between our minds might be to give him the problem Quirk though."
The sound of a car pulling up beside them ended the conversation. Shouta watched as panic flickered over Naomasa's face before his eyes dimmed back to their normal color and the man fully passed out. Shouta sighed and turned to face Hizashi as the blonde hurried over. "Shou is he okay? Why did you hang up like that?"
"He passed out all the way. Help me get him into the car?"
---MiM-MiM-MiM---
Hisashi was freaking out. There was no getting around it, he was a dead man if Shouta told Inko about what had just happened and who he actually was before he could tell her himself. He grabbed his phone and dialed his youngest son. The moment he heard Izuku pick up he was talking. "So you know how you gave me a deadline to tell your mother everything? Yeah that is happening now. Are you both home because I am sort of panicking and your mother might be slightly less tempted to kill me if you were there as a witness一"
"Dad what did you do?"
Hisashi let out a nervous giggle that he noted at the back of his mind as being like one that the detective had made not long before. That was concerning for multiple reasons. "What makes you think I did something?"
"Dad!"
"Shouta knows because I completely screwed up and somehow possessed his detective friend's body due to a Quirk accident that I had with him a few hours ago."
There was a sigh on the other end of the line. "Do you want us to come to you or are you coming to us?"
"If you could convince your mother to go through one of Kurogiri's Warp Gates, that would be better. I've been working on getting a helmet for my life support made but it won't be done for a few months yet."
"We'll be there soon."
---MiM-MiM-MiM---
When Inko had been getting ready to cook dinner with Izuku that evening, her husband calling Izuku had not been high on the list of things she was expecting. It wasn't that she thought that it couldn't happen, since there had been times over the past few years when her husband had clearly forgotten that he was supposed to be on some sort of American time and called during dinner but it had not been high on the list of possibilities given that the man had been doing rather well at pretending to be in another time zone.
Inko was not stupid. She had known that Hisashi was a compulsive liar from the moment she had met the man and he stumbled over his words to introduce himself as Midori-ya. It was stupid but she had let it slide and agreed to the date the man had offered because he was a cute idiot who didn't even bat an eye when she commented on how she couldn't do a date most afternoons since she had to go home to take care of her brother that she was sole guardian of. The way the man had brightened and offered that he understood what that was like having been the sole guardian for his own ill younger brother after their parents had passed and said that her family should always come first had earned the man his desired first date.
A few years later, she stood at the altar happily taking the fake name as her own, content with the lie born from the man's smitten stumblings when he had fallen so hard for her. The lie was safer anyways. Hisashi was clearly much older than he looked or claimed from the way he spoke on historical subjects as if he had been there to witness the events himself. Which, while it was a strange thought that perhaps her new husband was old enough to at least be her grandfather, the man's mental immaturity at times was worse then Shouta's and he was barely a teenager. The man was also a great father and Inko had no doubt that whatever the man was hiding from his past, he would never let it come close to them with how he spoke of the loss of his younger brother.
It was clear after all that the man's Quirk was not just a fire breathing Quirk. Sometimes, over the years since they had met, until the day he physically vanished from their lives, the man would clearly forget that his Quirk was supposed to be just fire breath. She had caught him more than once using strength or speed beyond what was possible for someone without Quirks that boosted those physical abilities. Also, after Izuku had been born, the man had somehow always known exactly when Izuku needed someone to calm him down when he had a panic attack or nightmare.
So, with that in mind, when Hisashi had called a few days into his trip overseas for "work" and said that he was going to be delayed getting home, Inko had noted the sounds of medical equipment and how he was being very careful as to avoid saying why he wasn't coming home yet and had merely requested that he called once a week at a minimum until he came home so she would know he was still alive and so Izuku would know that Hisashi was trying to get home. It wasn't until Izuku had been wheeled away for surgery that it clicked that her husband should really have come home by now. Horrible injuries or no, he should be home at this point. So she dropped a hint to the detective when he came to sit with her and hoped that her husband would get the hint when he started poking around.
Then a month later she woke up to Izuku having a hushed phone conversation with Katsuki about his first night out as a vigilante, because of course Hisashi's son would do something like that. While that was concerning, the fact that Shouta evidently already had run into Izuku while he was out reassured her that at least her brother would keep an eye on things even if he was actually unaware Izuku was the new vigilante. The fact that Mirai had commented after Izuku's week training with him, that Izuku was more than clever enough to handle himself in a fight if need be had helped.
So it was hardly a surprise when Inko overheard Izuku mention his Quirk for the first time when completing his post patrol phone call with Katsuki. There was no question of how that was possible given what she knew of her husband but it would have been nice if Hisashi had at least consulted her before he gifted their son with a Quirk and never mentioning it.
With all that in mind, when Izuku asked her to follow him through a shadowy portal to where his father was waiting for them, she only sighed and led her son through. Her first though as she took in her husband's clearly anxious form was that at least now she knew why he hadn't come home. The idiot was trapped in the small area of this one room by the tether of his life support. It was as good as a jail cell with internet access.
"Inko, I can explain."
She sighed and shook her head. "Hisashi, you're an idiot. My idiot but still an idiot." Before he could respond she had finished crossing the room to pull his face down to kiss him.
"I told you to just tell Mom."
Inko broke off the kiss. "Izuku, Honey, why don't you go back home and eat dinner. Your father and I need to have a talk."
Hisashi, rightfully, flinched at that. "You could have your dinner with Tomura and Kurogiri if you want."
"And who are Tomura and Kurogiri?"
Inko watched her husband pale as Izuku quickly made his goodbyes and darted out the door presumably to meet with the two that Hisashi had mentioned. "It's a long story but the short version is a boy I adopted and the one who has been helping me raise him?"
Inko leveled a glare to her, clearly not as blind as his face would imply, husband. "You have been hiding one of our sons from me?"
The man waved his hands in an effort to try and calm her down. "I hadn't planned on it! It just sort of worked out that way! Tomura's Quirk is extremely dangerous and was hard for him to control at first. I had only meant to keep him away until I was certain he wouldn't accidentally use his Quirk in a way that could hurt anyone. Kurogiri's Quirk mutation protected him from ever having to worry about Tomura possibly Decaying him and I could take his Quirk away if absolutely necessary but you and Izuku would have been at risk. He lost his entire birth family due to his Quirk's initially unstable nature."
"And he is safe now?"
"I would never have considered letting Izuku in the same room as him otherwise, brothers or no."
Inko frowned and sighed. "So how old is Tomura then?"
"19. Just a few months over 4 years older than Izuku."
"And I presume you must have found him back when Izuku was still a baby then."
"No. Tomura got his Quirk a few years late when he was 7."
Inko felt her eyes widen at that. "Late bloomer or Stress Induced?"
"The latter. His birth father was abusive from what I have gathered from off hand comments from him to me or Kurogiri over the past few years."
"And Kurogiri?"
There was a pause and Inko noted as familiar tension appeared in Hisashi's face. "I messed up."
"Hisashi?"
"Inko, I am not a good person. I have done things over the years that many would consider unthinkable. One of those thing was funding the man who一Shit how do I even begin to explain the bastard? As much as I wanted to kill him after what he did, I am glad I didn't because he is the only reason I am even still alive but I don't trust any man would look at what he did and not be horrified. Even Mary Shelley's Doctor Frankenstein was horrified with what he had done一"
"Hisashi, should Kurogiri be dead?"
"Fuck, I don't even know anymore. He was Shirakumo. He remembers that he was Shirakumo. I don't even know why he decided to stay after his memories came back."
Inko internally balked at that. "How? They cremated him?"
Hisashi shook his head. "Apparently the Doctor has gotten rather skilled at stealing bodies over the past several decades. When he heard that a UA hero student had been killed, he jumped at the chance to get his body and Quirk."
"You mentioned his Quirk mutation protecting him from Tomura?"
"Kurogiri doesn't really have a physical body anymore. His body dissipates into a cloud like his Quirk used to create unless he really reigns in his Quirk. I am less sure it is a true mutation as a result of the stress of his body dying and being brought back over a mutation caused by the combination of it and the other Quirks the Doctor forced on him while bringing him back. Luckily they all resonated well together so they combined into one or it would have left him trapped in his own mind. There is a reason I don't just give random extra Quirks away."
"So did you have to consider something like that when you gave our son a Quirk without telling me first?" Inko leveled a glare as she crossed her arms.
"Nothing so dangerous! Quirkless people just have to worry about backlash from a Quirk if it is unsuitable for their body. For example, as fun as fire Quirks sound, without a secondary Quirk mutation for heat resistance, the welder will just burn themselves when they use it. Mental Quirks like the ones that run in your family are generally pretty safe so it was a no brainer to gift Izuku with Danger Sense. I was not expecting it to mutate the way it did into a true precognitive Quirk but all that implies is that Izuku was a carrier for the gene needed for such a Quirk to appear. Basically, the Quirk was just skipping a generation before I activated it with a resonate Quirk. Had they not resonated, he would have just had the Quirk the same as the original holder of it."
"And there was no chance of a hidden Quick gene resonating badly?"
"If the hidden Quirk didn't resonate well, it would have just stayed dormant."
Inko sighed and nodded in understanding. She hadn't really been too worried. Hisashi was nothing if not protective of Izuku. "So what made you decide this evening was the time to come clean about everything?"
"Oh, I accidentally discovered a Quirk that resonated with Tsukauchi's this morning. While I was trying to untangle them since the two of us were each holding one end of a resonate pair of Quirks, I might have accidentally hi-jacked his body while Shouta was walking with him back to Shouta's apartment. It took less than a second for him to recognize me even wearing the detective's face."
"Of course you did. Okay, is there anything else important that you are keeping from me that I don't already know but should?"
"Oh, erm, I'm not only in my 50's?"
"I said something I didn't already know, Hisashi. Honestly, Shouta's complete social obliviousness and the fact Mirai has barely been around you in person is all that kept them from realizing something was up."
"Ah." There was a pause. "I suppose there is the whole Symbol of Evil thing maybe?"
Inko snorted. "Who on earth calls you that?"
"You would be surprised at the reputation you can get over more than a century. But honestly, it wasn't until All Might that people started with that one. I was just the boogeyman of the Underworld."
"Hisashi, you are probably one of the least threatening individuals I have ever met."
He shrugged. "I can be scary if I want to."
"You scream when you see a spider."
As her husband began to protest about how completely terrifying he could be, Inko couldn't help but smile to herself. Hisashi, regardless of his years and knowledge, was an idiot. Her perfect idiot.