Work Text:
He should’ve been asleep by 8:30 p.m. Yet here he was, watching Izuku collect snacks for their currently ongoing sleepover. At 1:58 a.m. It was practically morning.
There was only one other customer in the store, and he was looking at the shelves as if he’d never seen chips before. Katsuki thought he recognised the man with white hair, but ignored it in favour of a pack of sour gummies.
He was still in Katsuki's line of sight when he picked up another bag of chips, examined it like he was taking notes about the design choices of the company, swore, and put it back on the shelves before picking up a different one.
Katsuki snorted at the thought that he’d actually never seen chips before. Frustration visibly increasing, he picked up another bag of chips, examined it, and it exploded.
Katsuki’s blood ran cold.
That was the bastard that stole his quirk.
His thoughts were all over the place. But he knew one thing for sure.
Picking up the pipe on the corner of the floor, he approached the bastard from behind. He was going to batter this bitch into the ground.
In Izuku’s defense, neither of them checked whether there were any snacks, and midnight cravings were a bitch. So really, it was both of their faults that led them to going shopping in the dead of the night.
And it was important that they choose the best flavour of popcorn.
(Usually, Katsuki smacked the back of his head and just picked one at random. But he’d been quietly smirking for a while now, while staring at someone. Weird place to go people-watching, but he wasn’t going to judge.)
In the middle of debating which flavour was going to join them in their sleepover (Izuku knew that caramel was clearly superior. But he also knew Katsuki disagreed and just ate plain old popcorn), he heard something explode. And then there were chips all over the floor.
The customer who exploded the chips continued browsing the shelves as if nothing happened. And then Katsuki passed him with a pipe in hand, nearing the customer. Right before he swung the pipe at the man’s knees at full force.
“Kacchan, what-?” The realisation hit him. That man was the reason that Katsuki lost his quirk almost as soon as he’d gotten it. His first instinct was to stop Katsuki from injuring the man further.
He shivered, feeling cold for a second.
Suddenly, he was no longer in a rush to stop Katsuki. His hands were clearly full, and he needed to carefully set down each item down one-by-one before his hands were free and he could attempt to stop Katsuki.
He heard the pipe repeatedly smacking down with each word as Katsuki yelled, “Give me back my quirk, you sick bastard.”
Life was fairly boring after death.
Yoichi was the First. And while he did have people joining him in One For All with each passing generation, there was nothing much to do beside watching the current user go through life and trash talking them with the other vestiges.
The Ninth was a child. Nobody was going to trash talk a child who was just out of middle school.
Life (technically not life) was fairly monotonous. The Eighth was training the Ninth and his friend with the explosive personality for nearly a week now.
Then things took an interesting turn.
Ninth and his friend were under the same roof as All For One. It wasn’t a surprise that nobody recognised him, most people barely knew he existed at all. And then the boy began beating All For One up with a metal pipe.
He barely took a second to process what was happening before he started wheezing. His brother. The legendary All For One. Getting beat up by a fourteen year old with a pipe.
Ninth was about to stop the boy, and he couldn’t have that. Despite knowing the Ninth couldn’t sense him, he put a hand on his shoulder and told him, “Don’t,”
And Ninth stopped, looking down at the items in his hands. Then started slowly putting them down, no longer in a hurry to stop All For One from being beat up.
Yoichi continued watching the hilarious attempts of All For One trying to stop the boy (called “Kacchan” by the Ninth, but he doubted that that was his actual name), and getting thrashed multiple times for his efforts to stop the boy instead of giving him his quirk back.
Yoichi laughed harder.
None of this would’ve happened if he didn’t go outside. None of this would’ve happened if he stayed inside and plotted the demise of All Might instead of deciding that he spontaneously needed potato chips.
Every time he thinks of potatoes, he feels like his head should look like a potato for some reason. Or perhaps an oversized thumb. But he can’t figure out where that nagging thought came from.)
He realised far too late that he knew nothing about potato chips. It took him a while to find them considering there were only images and nothing stating that they were potato chips and dear god wHY WERE THERE COLORS.
This led to him exploding a bag of potato chips out of sheer frustration, before continuing to browse the shelves.
One moment, he was looking at the light green potato chips, The next, his knees buckled and he fell to the floor. Then the pain hit him.
His screaming was accompanied by the yelling of a kid asking for his quirk back. He remembers this kid. It was the one he stole the explosion quirk from. (It was impossible to not look at the kid, considering he was right in his face while screeching at him.)
Now, he had many quirks collected over the period of his life. But he was not a strategist, and it was showing.
He wasn’t able to counterattack a child.
The last thing he remembers is losing a quirk. And then everything went black.
Meanwhile, the next morning (or later that morning, depending on how you see it), Yagi was watching the news. Every single channel was talking about the same thing: “DEADLY SUPERVILLAIN BROUGHT DOWN BY LOCAL DELINQUENT”
He recognised All For One immediately. And was that Young Bakugou? And Young Midoriya too??