Chapter Text
“Hey, Natsuo!”
Natsuo pauses in his reading at the sound of this unexpected but familiar voice. Then, with a slight frown, he looks up at the teenager slipping into the chair opposite.
“Hey, Sho-chan,” he greets his brother and hesitates a second, half-expecting a bout of Shoto’s bizarre suspicion. (It’s almost like, for some strange reason, Shoto doesn’t trust him not to give him a noogie! Or steal his dessert! Or – okay, maybe Natsuo has a long pattern of behaviour that justifies a certain amount of suspicion on Shoto’s part, but Shoto totally consented to that by choosing to be born after Natsuo.) When no protests come, Natsuo nods once and grabs his phone. “Just a sec, I need to text Fuyumi.”
Most people would not have noticed the brief wince. But Natsuo has grown up studying the face opposite him; and more than that, Natsuo is the jokester of the family. A good jokester knows his audience, and there is no one Natsuo knows better than his siblings. Their fears, their mannerisms – he knows them inside and out, perhaps even better than he knows himself. And so, as soon as his phone buzzes in reply, he feels confident in leaning forward and hissing, in a tone that promises swift and brutal vengeance if not met with a satisfactory answer, “Who are you and why are you wearing my brother’s face?!”
To give the impostor their due (even if Natsuo really doesn’t want to, because Shoto is his baby brother and therefore only Natsuo (and possibly Fuyumi) is allowed to touch him), they don’t miss a beat, instead levelling Natsuo with an unimpressed frown.
Except they’ve not quite got the brows right, Natsuo spots.
“Natsuo, you’re being weird…”
“Uh-huh,” Natsuo shoves his phone in his bag as it starts going off. “Nice try. Except first, Shoto has an upcoming test and has a study session today. If you were him, that would mean he skipped it. Which would risk Tenya’s wrath, and Shoto’s not that brave.” Fraternal loyalty necessitates he add, “Not even All Might is that brave. Second – except for exceptional circumstances, we stopped calling Shoto Sho-chan when he was eight. Plus he gets weirdly suspicious whenever I call him that. And, finally – you do not move like Shoto.”
“You’re being an idiot…”
“Aha! You’re tilting your head at the wrong angle!” Natsuo exclaims, accidentally attracting several confused glances.
At least, if this is a murder attempt, there’ll be plenty of witnesses. Although if the police brings out a sketch artist, Natsuo might accidentally finally succeed in Shoto disowning him through no fault of his own.
His bag has suspiciously stopped trying to escape, which means…
“We can soon get this sorted out,” he smiles at the impostor with the approximate confidence Izuku probably felt whenever he got to tell someone his dad was on his way. “Fuyumi should be here any minute! She’ll know.”
The impostor actually lets out a whimper.
“Aha! Shoto’s too dumb to be scared of her!”
“Alright, fine!” the impostor whispers, fear clear in their tone. “I’m here undercover – I was just instructed to pass these two letters to someone who can get them to Lit – to Ingenium and Ace! That’s it, I swear, I don’t want any trouble…”
As the impostor hurriedly pushes the envelopes across the table, Natsuo eyes them for a moment. Then he realizes he has spent his entire life unashamedly being himself and he’s not about to stop now, and promptly picks up the envelope addressed to Izuku and tears it open.
“Hey – I don’t think you should…”
“I am Izuku’s older cousin and have a duty to protect him,” Natsuo recites, because that is totally the excuse he is using if this is an attempted kidnapping or murder. Then he flashes fake-Shoto a grin and admits (because who will believe them), “Also – I’m nosy.”
It is in that moment that the colour drains from the impostor’s face, and Natsuo doesn’t need a Quirk to know what that means.
“Huh, she got here fast!” Natsuo remarks as he unfolds the note.
Then he laughs.
“What is going on?” his sister snarls as she marches up to their table, and Natsuo can practically feel her bloodlust.
(Huh. Natsuo wonders idly whether Uncle Hisashi can manage something similar when suitably pissed off.)
“Hold it, Fuyumi,” he holds out an arm to try and prevent the impending murder. “Fake Shoto comes in peace!”
“I’m not…”
“Don’t bother lying!” Fuyumi hisses, still very much in homicidal-sister mode. (Oh dear. If Natsuo can’t talk her down, which is entirely possible if this impostor did something to Shoto, they’re going to have to somehow get rid of a body. He should have asked Uncle Hisashi for pointers, just in case – maybe Kurogiri or Izuku will know what to do…) “Natsuo, what the hell are you talking about?!”
“He…” Natsuo pauses briefly and then decides that it’s probably okay to call fake-Shoto ‘he’, “brought news. From Uncle.”
“It might be fake,” Fuyumi points out, which is a perfectly reasonable suspicion.
“Somehow I doubt it,” Natsuo mutters as he passes her the note.
It seems an awful lot of effort for a note that says,
Izuku, Papa loves you!
***
“Uuuuuuuuu-”
“Hey, Izuku!”
“-uuuuuuuuu-“
“Is this just regular teenage angst or a perfectly reasonable response to your dad?”
“Go away, Tensei,” Izuku groans and gives up on his attempts to smother himself with a pillow.
“Right, just a run of the mill bout of Hisashi-induced dramatics,” Tensei nods. “I get it. Trust me, I get it.”
“I just – why could he just once be normal?” Izuku groans as he sits up. “Is that so much to ask, that he be normal just this one time?!”
“You mean this one time he got kidnapped and decided to infiltrate an organization headed by his former right-hand man?” Tensei asks as he sits down on the bed. "This one time?"
Izuku scowls at him.
“It’s HISASHI,” the hero points out, rolling his eyes. “His sense of normal got broken sometime when he was a kid, I think, and never really recovered. We really shouldn’t expect different now.”
“…I still hate him.”
“Oh, is that why his note is propped up on your bedside, right next to that photo from your first day at U.A.?”
“Shut up, Tensei,” Izuku grouses, because he is mad at dad and doesn’t want to admit that however nice it is to read those words, it would be a million times better to hear dad say them, preferably while Izuku squeezes the life out of him in a hug. But as he eyes the hero, something occurs to him, and so he takes a deep breath and says, “…Tensei?”
“Yeah, Izuku?”
“…I think I met some of dad’s followers.”
“Do I need to arrest anyone?” Tensei checks.
“I don’t think so,” Izuku snorts and shakes his head. “I met them in the weird Quirk-dimension – you know, where I talked to mum.”
“Huh,” Tensei nods, easily accepting this new weirdness to Izuku’s Quirk, and Izuku laments his naïve hopes of any sort of normality. “Do you think your mum’s met them?”
“I don’t know,” Izuku frowns. “I don’t think so…”
“Well, were any of them holding mugs of cocoa?”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Your mum always sounded sort of like... the proto-Kurogiri. And he’s the type to somehow find a way to produce cocoa, even in a weird Quirk-dimension.”
Which… Okay, that actually sounds like something Kurogiri would do. The laws of physics wouldn't stand a chance against Kurogiri's near pathological need to make sure everyone is well taken care of.
“I think mum’s more of a hugger,” Izuku frowns as he thinks back to his encounters with his mum’s ghost. Honesty forces him to add, "...Also a crier."
“Alright, did any of them look like they recently repented their life of crime?”
Izuku levels Tensei with an unimpressed look.
“…It worked on your dad.”
“We’ve gotten off topic,” Izuku groans. “Look, this is gonna sound weird, but – I don’t think they’re all villains.”
“I’m listening.”
Izuku flashes him a suspicious look, but, when he sees Tensei is actually taking him seriously, he feels confidant enough to continue, “Dad told me a bit about what it was like back then – and I didn’t just take his word, I read up on it, and just…” He takes a deep breath. “One of them – Sora – looks my age. And I didn’t get a good look at the others, but I was thinking… Maybe… Maybe, some of them were like Kurogiri – and all they wanted was protection, and… well…”
“You’ve got a point,” Tensei nods. And then, proving he was an excellent choice to turn to, he advises Izuku, “If you stumble into the Quirk-dimension again, maybe ask them why you joined your dad. Even if they are – were – are villains, I’ll bet Hisashi didn’t give you Quirks from any dangerous weirdos like the doctor.”
“Probably not,” Izuku agrees. “…Thanks, Tensei.”
“Hey, I’m an older brother!” Tensei ruffles his hair. “Advice is what I do best!”