#stolen dreams: the dual identity chronicles

[thunder-the-ranger-wolf]

Stolen Dreams

Summary: A traumatic event in Yagi’s childhood shapes his will to become a Hero. All Might still exists to save people with a smile, but only as a last resort. The Broker is an extremely persuasive hero, able to dismantle hostage situations and calm rivalries with a well-placed word. Few people know that the Symbol of Peace and the Broker are one and the same. Fewer still know that he has anything resembling a personal life. That just might change soon.

Toshinori was always good at talking to people. When he was younger and had the looks to back up his words, he could practically get away with murder. Not that he wanted to, or that he would. Besides, it only lasted as long as nobody knew he was Quirkless. It was easy to hide and easier to pass off as a Strength mutation when necessary. Lying about having a Quirk wasn’t exactly illegal. No one could look at your paperwork unless it was required for a background check or some other random reason. Nana saw right through him, with her truth-sensing Quirk. Gran saw right through him because he saw himself in Toshinori. That didn’t make them go any easier on him. But all these things matter for a reason.

Stolen Dreams

The first time Toshinori is aware that someone is kidnapped, it’s him and some other kids from the foster home. He was seven years old and he should have gotten a Quirk by now, but he hadn’t. Nobody cared about him, it wasn’t like he had much to offer. The Quirks among the kids were Strength Enhancer, Speedster, Screech/Echolocation, Cat’s Eyes, and his main bully, Doomer. The kid was called Doomer because anyone he didn’t like got (quite literally) crushed under his large, furry heels, including adults. He was one of the only “long-term residents” of the foster home who wasn’t Quirkless.

The nabbers weren’t so keen on giving them up because it turns out they had quite the range of Quirks. And were easy pickings. The thing that really kept them quiet was the oldest, a woman with a scar that ran from her left eye to the right side of her cheek. She took out Doomer like it was nothing. The kid with the Strength Enhancer Quirk was knocked out immediately. Every time someone used a Quirk, they were punished. In the end, Toshinori managed to get out by asking to go for a walk and heading straight to the nearest police station. They were swamped, but one look at the battered, bleeding child babbling about five other kids being held against their will and two heroes nearby were called in to figure out the situation. In the end, he crept through a vent with a Knockout-Quirk-Suppressant gas and the police gathered everyone up. They attributed the catch to a rookie cop but Toshinori was fine with that. He didn’t need Doomer going after him any worse than usual.

Stolen Dreams

The second time Toshinori is aware that someone has been kidnapped, it was because of him. He was training with Nana and Gran had been called for hero work. Toshinori would learn later that he was helping to diffuse a tense robbery-turned-standoff between the police and the armed robbers. He’d been able to get civilians out before the robbers caught on and trapped him there too.

Toshinori had received a picture to his phone of Shimura’s young boy, Kotaro. The messenger said they would be returned home as soon as he agreed to stop training with the Interrogation Hero, Soothsayer. How these villains could be so cruel as to snatch children from their homes, he’d never know. They were so vulnerable. They relied on you for everything. How could adults take advantage of that and willingly lead them into or leave them in the midst of such danger?

(He knew. His parents had done it, so had millions of others before and many more after them. It was because they didn’t care.)

When Nana asked what had him so spooked, he didn’t bother lying about the situation. She panicked, predictably enough, and would have charged off had he not slammed her into a lamp-post.

“You don’t know how to talk to people when you’re stressed.” He informed her. “No one ever does. I’ll get your child back, Shimura, but this will be the last you see of me.”

Stolen Dreams

Nana wakes up in a hospital after what she assumes is a nasty spill down a flight of stairs. No one could tell her where she’d been before the hospital, only that a young man with bright hair and a solemn smile dropped her off, claiming to be a passerby who’d seen her fall and wanted to make sure she was alright. She could taste the lie as sure as if it had come from the boy himself, but when she was discharged and went home, Kotaro babbled about his day at school as if nothing were out of the ordinary.

“Did anything… strange happen to you today? Anything I should know about?”

Her son deliberated and, with a conviction that she surely lacked, shook his head. The worst part was that since truth-related Quirks ran in the family, she had no way of telling whether he was lying.

Stolen Dreams

Despite Yagi's words, that is not the last she saw of him. He appears on her deathbed, carrying her away from the wreckage she and the villain All For One had caused. He managed to get the raging jackass to leave them be with some line about letting him have the gods-forsaken Quirk when he got Shimura as far fucking away from this as possible. She had wanted to give him the Quirk anyway, and you certainly don’t know what happens when someone dies before they’ve passed on the Quirk, do you? He takes the bait, and when Toshinori sets Shimura down, she asks why he’d lied.

“Oh yes, I’m clearly going to give the most powerful Quirk in the world to the most destructive villain of our time. I manipulate people, sure, but what kind of asshole-.”

“Eat this.” She ordered, shoving a few strands of hair into his hands. He took them, wary of the idea that he was essentially ingesting someone’s DNA, but swallowed them anyhow.

Stolen Dreams

Toshinori keeps in touch, Nana’s last will be damned, which is when he knows that Kotaru has gone into the foster care system after Nana’s death. The boy never finds out how his parents died, and Toshinori doesn’t go looking for trouble where there is none. It’s bad enough he inherited the woman's Quirk, why does he need to unravel her life as well?

“You’re coming with me.” He informed the boy.

“I’m his cousin.” He informed the foster care, giving them his papers.

“Says here that you’re his brother.” The woman behind the counter corrects scathingly.

He looks at the papers. They were legit, Asahi made sure of it before he died. But he hadn’t bothered to look over what Asahi had him sign. They were adoption papers, yes, but he’d never thought himself to be anybody’s son.

“Huh.” Toshinori murmured, eyes wet. “I grew up with them.”

Nana basically shoved him through her front door for dinner every other night once she realized his parents weren’t around. But that was in middle school. And later on, in high school.

“I didn’t know they felt that way.”

He briefly wondered what Gran Torino would say. He never tries to find out.

Stolen Dreams

The first time he gets angry enough to consider burning the world and everyone in it, his coworker’s child goes missing. So does Fumikou, when she goes looking for the little girl.

He works at a bakery because while gaining the title Broker of Peace is immensely more satisfying than being All Might for three years in America, it doesn’t exactly rake in the cash. When he feels like exploring One For All, he takes the odd job involving construction. Or destruction. Whichever is offered, it doesn’t matter to him.

But the coworker’s daughter goes missing. She goes to the police, of course, but they can’t do much until someone is contacted for a ransom. It turns out that someone is him.

We know who you are, All Might.

Toshinori has done his best to keep under the radar. His Quirk works just fine, thank you, Shimura, for the extra societal boost. But his dreams of becoming a hero ended abruptly when he realized what his former mentor went through to keep her family. What being All Might would mean. A family was dangerous to heroes, but he already had one in the form of Kotaru, and now Tenko. People got hurt because of him. People were kidnapped. And when it came to being taken against your will, a Strength Quirk couldn’t do a damn thing.

So he goes looking. He calls in about maybe five favors from people who owe him a million times over. The rest was all him. He found the paltry group who thought to bring down the wrath of a “former hero.” They wanted All Might… they didn’t know what they were asking for.

“I AM HERE!” He roared, eyes gleaming bright blue in the dark labs this very public search led to. “And these… pitifully down-on-their-luck fools will not trouble your family any longer.”

“It’s a trap.” Fumikou hissed warily.

“Well of course.” Toshinori grinned ferally. “They are indeed trapped. Your coworkers will be looking forward to your return.”

Suffice to say that none of those villains was anywhere close to conscious when All Might was through with them, and when they did come to, Toshinori tracked them down and swore them to secrecy under threat of… a lot of things, really. Death would be an escape compared to the Hell that the (someway somehow, Toshinori would never know) Number One Hero could rain on them.

Stolen Dreams

“Fumikou-san, welcome back.” He offered calmly. “There’s a fresh pot of tea in the back room, all yours.”

“Bless you, Yagi-san, it’s been a hell of a week.”

“Was your daughter sick?”

“She…”

Fumikou hesitated, likely wondering how much she should say about what happened to her.

“Yes, she was more than a bit under the weather.” The woman said at last.

“Well, I hope she recovers from such an ordeal.”

“Thank you, Yagi-san.” Fumikou sighed gratefully.

Stolen Dreams

It isn't often that anyone thinks to kidnap Toshinori himself. The opportunistic villain who sees him as an easy target will quickly come to regret that, one way or another. Not many believe that the mild-mannered stick-thin weed of a man has the ultimate strength Quirk at his disposal and knows how to use it. Word gets around when it comes to such situations, and eventually he is left alone entirely.

Or he would be, if the villain Nana had died fighting hadn't made a reappearance.

At any rate, when Toshinori wakes up one day, three decades after his "mentor" died, he knows this is not where he fell asleep. He checks to make sure that Kotaru and Tenko aren't with him. Easy enough, considering one of the Quirks this gods-forsaken juggernaut of a woman passed down to him was X-ray vision!

Regardless of how he felt when it came to Heroes, Shimura was a hell of an example to live up to.

There were thirty other people in similar positions to him, moving slowly and seemingly confined to the wall. Likely via chains, like his. This X-ray vision could detect heat signatures throughout the building, but not much else.

"Yagi Toshinori… such an average name for the man my master has determined to be such a threat."

The ghost before him wore a suit and apparently liked to taunt people about their situation. What villain didn't? This ghost also seemed to be taking orders from All For One, or whatever the hell this immortal creep went by. Toshinori just wanted to go home and make sure his brother and nephew were alive. Maybe he'd call Gran Torino after all this was over. But first, it had to be over.

"I'm not going to bother asking questions." Toshinori yawned. "Since this is likely the same man that killed Shimura Nana, this guy wants me dead, wants my Quirk, or both."

"Both would be nice." The ghost snorted. "If only life were always this easy. I despise the scared ones. Or worse yet, the chatterers."

"Well, I happen to like this Quirk and to my understanding, it is not gained so easily."

"You'll have to take that up with him. I'm just the guard."

"Fair enough." Toshinori grumbled. " What's your name, Guard Dog."

"Kurogiri."

"Alright, Ghastly McGhoul, do I get to see the Big Guy anytime soon? If I remember correctly, he liked to monologue when he killed heroes."

Stolen Dreams

There were at least thirty people in these cells. There could be more, he didn't know what All For One was capable of.

(Untrue, he did. He was capable of many things including bathing in the blood of another. Destruction followed wherever he went and all the skills and Quirks in the world couldn't save Toshinori now. Once again, he was helpless.)

Some paced every day for hours on end. Some had gone silent long ago, and the only reason he knew they were still alive were his heightened senses ensuring their breathing. Some told stories of a past life. Some told stories of the future. He planned. There were many ways out of this chamber of a room. There was only one way out of the facilities that anyone knew of. There were so many people to coordinate with so everyone would be on the same page that if he were any less determined he'd pass on Shimura's Quirk and charge Ghastly the Guard Dog. He still might.

Quirks were a means to an end, in this society. If you were old enough you didn't need one. If you were strong or clever or smart enough you could never hope to match up to anyone who had all of that and a superpower.

But he thought back to the first time he'd ever witnessed a kidnapping and knew that it wasn't quite true.