4The Problem With Skywalkers
If you asked how the problem got started, the general consensus would be it was Todoroki Shouto's fault.
If you asked Todoroki Shouto, he would blame the start of the problem on television.
You see growing up, Todoroki didn't have much time to pursue his own interests. Endeavor much preferred that his heir spend his days training and studying to be a Hero, with short breaks for more training and studying to be a Hero, vacations for training and studying to be a Hero, and once in a while, just to change things up, studying and then training to be a Hero.
In short: Todoroki's life resembled that of Cinderella if the evil step-mother was a demented stage-mom.
So like Cinderella preparing for the ball, Todoroki, in the years prior to U.A., prepared himself for normal life. Unfortunately for him with his daylight hours booked and his social circle limited, he turned to late night television to be his guide,* studying it closely.
He applied this in various ways. He presented himself as cool and mysterious. He determined that All Might and Midoriya Izuku were father and son as it made narrative sense that Todoroki's rival would be the son of his father's rival.**
Then there was Dabi, a fire Quirk user who hated Endeavor and was the approximate age as and with a similar eye colour to his deceased elder brother Touya.
Thus, Todoroki Shouto reached out to the man who was clearly his long lost brother, and the problem took root.
*To be exact: soap operas.
**They might deny it, but obviously were just waiting for the right time for the dramatic reveal.
If you asked Midoriya Izuku, he would admit that he was the first victim of the problem - first victim because Todoroki and Dabi were having a blast.*
The night when Midoriya's life started to get weird, the U.A. staff had decided it was safe enough for him to spend a few days at home with his mother. Mum had been thrilled and prepared him katsudon. Then, when he was not even through his first mouthful, he received the message: the League of Villains had broken into Tartarus, freeing All for One and Kurogiri.
This was troublesome but not an immediate problem. The League would no doubt be busy with Heroes harrying them every step of the way. More pressing was the fact that he was choking on his katsudon and his mother wasn't very good at the Heimlich maneuver.
On the bright side, he found out he was wrong about the former when a black portal enveloped him and his mother, depositing them in the League's hideout. And Toga Himiko, who had wanted to get her hands on him for ages, was very good at the Heimlich maneuver.
Toga's actions saved Midoriya. Then, his mother's actions saved Midoriya as she used her maternal instinct-powered Quirk to pull Toga off him before the young woman demonstrated just how much she 'loved' him.
By the time Midoriya finished being terrified about the League escaping, nearly choking to death, nearly being 'loved' to death and realising that he was in the League's clutches, he was surprisingly sedate when he found Mum and All for One arguing about things like child support, proper male role models and visitation rights.
Shigaraki was considerably less sedate when he and Midoriya were taken aside by their father and sternly informed that just because they weren't blood brothers didn't mean they could go around trying to kill each other. So if they really couldn't work out their problems civilly, they ought to exercise the time-honoured family tradition of locking the other in a vault.
One way another, when Midoriya returned to U.A., a number of things had happened: All for One had custody of him every other weekend, Midoriya and Shigaraki had agreed to only come close to killing each other during their little spats, and the Heroes and Villains had been suitably freaked out by the revelation of Midoriya's parentage.**
*Literally.
**With the exception of Todoroki who - having been disappointed when he found out that, no, All Might and Midoriya were really not father and son - had been thrilled.
If you asked Yaoyorozu Momo, she would say her feelings on the problem were mixed. On one hand, Todoroki and Dabi were regularly working together to try to kill Endeavor,* and Midoriya still looked traumatized at the knowledge of his parentage. On the other hand…
A while back she and her classmates were fighting the League of Villains.** They were in the middle of the battle, when she noticed Shigaraki staring at her and, to her surprkise, she found herself staring back.
"Hana?" he said.
"Tenko?" she said.
You see, once upon a time, Yaoyorozu Momo had been Shimura Hana, elder sister to Shimura Tenko also known as Shigaraki Tomura.
Due to an extremely convoluted but perfectly logical series of events,*** Tenko had mistaken her for dead, been adopted by his grandmother's archnemesis, changed his name, and been raised to be the Symbol of Evil. Meanwhile, Hana had been mistaken for dead, saved by some far-fetched medical technology, cryogenically frozen for a number of years, adopted by millionaires, changed her name and decided to become a Hero.+
So while she wished her little/big brother wasn't a villain, without the problem, it was likely she would have never seen him again.
*Okay, maybe he deserved it.
**With the exception of Todoroki who was bonding with Dabi and Midoriya who for some reason was later found in a vault.
***Seriously.
+Honestly, when you said it like that, it made them seem like characters in a bad fan fiction.
If you asked Koda Koji about the problem, he would say it wasn't that big a deal. Not because he did or didn't have any villainous relatives, but because he had villainous relations. Specifically, he had relations with animals* that had villainous tendencies.
People tended to be confused when he explained this. They had a hard time thinking that Fluffy's tendency to slobber on people meant she was actually trying to drown them, and Mr. Fin was planning to grow legs and stuff those pellets people kept on feeding them up their behinds.
This in turn confused Koda, mainly because obviously, the only animals willing to attack people upon his request would be psychopathic monsters that already wanted to tear, rip and peck flesh from bone. Besides, hadn't they ever met a cat?
Then there were the mice, frighteningly intelligent beasts that surpassed all the rest put together. He had warned people about them multiple times. Those laboratory mice were especially cunning, spending their days running mazes and performing other 'experiments' were actually performing experiments on the humans who observed them. They had spent years studying homo sapiens, plotting to overthrow them and now were just waiting for the opportune moment.
But his every attempt to explain this was met with derision or laughter. So Koda had plenty of problems, it was just the human Hero-Villain relatives-thing just didn't rank that high up there.
*No, not that kind of relations, you perverts!
If you asked All Might, he would say that while, yes, the problem complicated the Heroes' lives immensely, it also provided a way to potentially redeem Villains. A view that he was vigorously applying by crashing Momo and Shigaraki's family visits.
After some initial shock, Nana's granddaughter decided that she enjoyed visits from her Uncle Toshi and had even taken to calling Gran Torino Grandpa Torino.
Nana's grandson didn't share the sentiment but practiced immense restraint by not disintegrating All Might or the old bastard. He achieved this by reminding himself that killing any of the former would upset Hana. It would also upset Midoriya which in turn would upset Sensei which in turn would lead to Shigaraki visiting the family vault.
Periodically All Might and All for One would cross paths when dealing with their respective wards.* Inevitably this would lead to arguments that went on and on,** about the merits of good and evil, why the other was a bad father figure, who was the better cook, and whether their respective wards* had given any thought to higher education and, if so, how best to support them.
This led to an odd sort of solidarity between Shigaraki and Midoriya that went something along the lines of 'while I loathe you and every aspect of your personal philosophy to a depth unplumbable by any line, I'll credit you for not being responsible for this nightmare'.
*Though whose wards were whose was a dangerous topic.
**and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on***
***and on
If you asked Iida about it, he would say he was worried that the problem would cause people to discriminate against his good and noble classmates.
If you asked him and actually got a truthful answer, he would admit to worrying about how it would affect his family.
You see, he had already slipped up once during the Heroes vs. Villains training exercise at U.A. by revealing his true self to his classmates. He was rather worried that with all the villainous relations of his classmates being revealed, someone might take a closer look at his own family. Problematic considering that the Iidas had been Villains masquerading as Heroes for generations.
On the bright side, if his family did get outed as Villains, it meant that his brother could start rampaging around the town in his gigantic mecha-wheelchair with optional rocket launcher and flamethrower attachments.*
*After all, it would be good for Tensei to get out more, and terrorizing civilians was good for the soul.
If you asked Uraraka Ochako, she would state that she didn't think it was a problem at all. She owed that viewpoint to her big sister.
Uraraka hadn't been born with a big sister. She had met her at one of her parents' construction sites when she was little; she had been a strong, fearless woman who, nonetheless, had been happy to take the time to listen and give advice to a little girl.
The woman had taught her that in construction you couldn't always choose where your building was built. Maybe the land was too wet or sandy, but that didn't mean you couldn't build. You just had to take the time to make a good foundation. Sometimes you had to dig deep; other times, you would have to drain some things and fill in others. It could be slow, frustrating work but it could be done.
Uraraka's family was poor, so she decided to become a Hero to help with money. Uraraka had lost to Bakugou at the Sports Festival, so she had learned martial arts. When Bakugou had been kidnapped, Uraraka and her friends had gotten him back. Good and bad things happened, how you dealt with them was up to you.
And while Magne and Uraraka's lives had diverged, that part of their foundations remained the same.
If you asked Bakugou Katsuki, there was definitely a problem. The problem wasn't that he had a villainous relative as he had resolved himself to finding out he had at least one as by that point all his classmates did except himself, Iida and Mineta.
When he realised it was only a matter of time, he started bugging the Hag and the Old Man, they eventually revealed he did indeed have a Villain aunt. When he bugged them some more, they fessed up to the fact that she had been part of the attack during the U.S.J. Incident. Finally, after he bugged them even more, they presented him with a small article mentioning the arrest of one Bakugou Marisu.
Apparently, she had been part of the Villain squad in the Shipwreck Zone. Unfortunately, she had overestimated her ability to swim. After the fighting had finished, she had been found clinging to a piece of flotilla and been rescued by the Heroes.
So Bakugou's problem was that his villainous relative was a fucking wimp. No fights. No murders. No horrific science experiments. She wasn't even responsible for a half-decent threat. It was a fucking embarrassment being related to the lady.
The day after, it was revealed that Iida's family was nothing but villains.* At that point, Bakugou with a surprising amount of calmness and rationality noted that the only other non-villain related member of his classmates was Mineta and decided to come clean.***
*When Four Eyes had realised he was in danger of being lumped in with Purple Balls, he had immediately spilled the beans on the Iida family conspiracy.**
**Resulting in Iida Tensei having loads of fun.
***It was still better than being associated with Purple Balls.
If you asked the other teachers at U.A. minus Aizawa, they would say the problem was all Aizawa Shouta's fault. They never had dealt with this much craziness until his current bunch had shown up. As they were his class, it was Aizawa's job to contain it; a job he had clearly failed.
Now the problem was spreading to the other classes, the faculty and even the other Hero schools.
Monoma Neito was revealed to be All for One's other long lost son, and was coming back from his visitation times with his more worrying tendencies magnified.
Half-brothers Ectoplasm and Twice were regularly found playing Doubles together.
Grandfather Moonfish and granddaughter Midnight had come to the conclusion that while they couldn't agree on small details,* they did approve of each other's fashion sense.
Hatsume Mei appeared to be related to every villainous genius there was.** She regularly visited them; after all, Villains always had the best access to various toys and doomsday machines were just so shiny.
Apparently, Vlad King the Blood King Hero and Toga Himiko the Blood Obsessed Villain were second cousins. A fact that she was delighted with, while he was considerably less so. They hadn't seen him in weeks and were starting to take bets on what happened to him.***
Yoarashi Inasa of Shiketsu High discovered that his deceased Uncle Shirakumo Oboro (formerly the Hero student Loud Cloud) had been resurrected as Kurogiri. On being reunited, Inasa felt that his uncle wasn't demonstrating suitable passion for his new lifestyle and set about changing that. This led to a number of odd encounters between Kurogiri and the Heroes.++
*Such as his tendency to eat people.
**Though to be fair to Aizawa, this surprised exactly no one.
***The options at this point were (a) dead, (b) wishing he was, (c) in hiding or (d) happily bonding with his new cousin.+
+As of yet no one had bet on option (d).
++There was nothing quite like having Kurogiri very politely and very loudly announce all the horrible things that he and his colleagues were planning to do to you.
If you asked Aizawa, he would say that you shouldn't complain about the problem. You should do something.
There was a problem. It existed… Come to think of it, saying 'problem' or even 'problems' didn't properly encapsulate the width and breadth of what was going on. He was a teacher; he should use a better description.
Laundry list of problems? Nah, nowhere near enough.
Googleplex of problems? That was closer.
Midoriya of problems? Perfect.
If you asked Aizawa about the Midoriya of problems, he would say whining about it wouldn't make it go away, only action. He had already come up with a master plan.
Unfortunately, his mother had just called to remind him about the family reunion on the weekend, sternly informing him that no, he isn't allowed to arrest Cousin Giran.
In fact, if either of them tried to bring work business home, that she and Auntie would be breaking out the baby photos and telling Hizashi, that nice Mr. Compress and Compress' newly adopted son* all the embarrassing stories that accompanied them.
He would have to fix things later.
*Shishikura Seiji of Shiketsu High School. They had bonded over a love of squeezing people into balls.**
**And oh my, wasn't that wonderful.
If you asked Eri, she would say that she already knew about the problem. She knew her grandfather was a bad person. She knew her mother was also a bad person who had given her away to an even worse one.
The problem had been very bad.
But now, she had a new family filled with Daddies Shouta and Hizashi, Big Brothers Mirio and Izuku, and many, many more. All of them good.
For her, the problem was over.
If you asked Endeavor, he would say he didn't know what the problem was as he was too busy dodging murder attempts from the Villain Dabi and his clearly brainwashed son.*
*Dabi and Shouto's bonding was going well.
If you asked Nedzu, he would point out that it was a human problem. He wasn't a human; therefore, he didn't have any human relatives; thus, this particular problem had nothing to do with him.
If pushed for any other thoughts on the matter, he might say stressing about this silly problem was a sign of typical human short-sightedness. After all, this was a species who, when they first spoke to him and realised he had a Quirk, had assumed that it was an intelligence Quirk.
This might have been more understandable if when compared to a member of his Quirkless brethren, he wasn't about 26.98 times their average size and 284.3 times their average weight and didn't walk upright on two legs. But according to the humans, his Quirk had nothing to do with making him look human.* His Quirk was an intelligence one because otherwise it would mean there were whole animal species that were smarter than them.
So yes, the current problem was one of countless others for humanity, and, frankly, not the problem they should be worrying about.
*Because, noooooo… that would make too much sense.
If you asked the Hero Public Safety Division, they would say that the best thing to do was find out the scope of the problem before making any decisive action. So they ordered genetic testing on the entire student body and personnel of the various Hero schools and compared it to the D.N.A. they had on file for the Villains.
One relief was that Dabi was not in fact the long lost Todoroki Touya. A relief that was destroyed immediately when Todoroki Shouto and Dabi announced that, since they got along like a house on fire,* they were adopting each other effective immediately.
The rest of the results were 'interesting' to say the least, with thousands of links found between the two groups, but one revelation stood above them all.
It appeared that All for One had been very busy for the last two hundred years.
*Surprisingly not literally.
If you asked a chunk of the dating population at the various Hero schools, they would state the problem was that there were not enough toilets, bags, bins and other vomit friendly receptacles on their campuses.
If you asked Mineta Minoru, he would say that it wasn't a problem for him. After the genetic testing and an in-depth look at his family tree, it was revealed that he was the only person in the entire school who wasn't related to a Villain in any shape or form.
Clearly, he was of superior stock, meaning that he was destined to have women hanging off him.
And clearly, the lovely, luscious, lavish ladies of U.A. agreed. After returning from a bonding session with their new devilish relations and witnessing his latest courtship display,* he noticed they were shooting him large toothy smiles while talking extensively about hanging.**
*Involving 'borrowed' panties, chocolate and a rubber chicken.
**If you have seen Mineta, please inform the closest concerned individual.
If you asked the Villains, they would say it was a huge problem. The problem may have started at U.A., but it was steadily growing to encompass Japan and was starting to appear abroad. It had hit the U.S.A especially bad as at the Xavier Hero School, it appeared that the Summers family was related to everyone, Hero and Villain alike. Even the need for D.N.A. was no barrier as one hero spawned an evil robot son who went on to give him heroic cyborg and robot grandsons.
It complicated their lives hugely as it was hard to be suitably evil when your relatives show up at your latest nefarious do-daring, informing you that your dear old [elderly relatives]* would be so disappointed with you for trying to [do bad things],** and how you were setting a bad example for your [young and impressionable relatives].***
Even when guilt wasn't the weapon of choice, entire missions were stalled due to battles between Heroes and Villains devolving into conversations along the lines of how 'It was your turn to do the dishes!' or 'You borrowed my lawnmower four days ago and you said you only needed it for three!'
Others didn't get off the ground because it turned out that All for One had filled the hideout safe with presents for his descendants' birthdays, or covered the mission board in Christmas cards, family pictures and macaroni art.
**parents/grandparents/aunts/uncles/decrepit corpses/etc.+
**murder/kidnap/blackmail/brainwash/bribe/torture/destroy/egg/etc.+
***children/younger siblings/younger cousins/grandchildren/fetuses/etc.+
+Please note all of the former relations include in-laws, step-family, adopted family, family of choice, pets and father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommates. The Villains might periodically cause the odd genocide or two, but they like the Heroes understood that blood wasn't that important.++
++Except Toga Himiko and Vlad King that is.+++
+++Provided Vlad King was in any state to think.
On the bright side, when the mice took over, everyone's problems were replaced with a new set.
