The Duality of Man

"Stop by over here," Toshinori said. "I have someone I need to talk to."

The day was partly cloudy, the rain had finally stopped, and the Sun was finally peeking from behind the clouds. It was quite poetic really. All for One was finally dead, and Toshinori saw a bright future ahead for the world. Sure, there was still a lot to do, but society's main vice was finally put to the ground.

"Do you want me to wait here, mister?" the driver asked. Toshinori shook his head and smiled at the driver.

"No, I'll be fine," he said, before paying the driver.

"No, this is too much. I haven't even driven you half the way!" he said. Toshinori waved his concerns off and insisted that he take the cash anyway.

"Okay, if you say so," he said. The driver took the cash and drove off, and Toshinori walked away from the street into the cemetery. Before walking into the cemetery, he buffed himself up. Despite the fact that he was finally getting use of his quirk, (Buffing up was new to him) he had to do this as All Might, not Toshinori Yagi. He walked past the rusty metal gate and over the overgrown grass, looking through the cracked and crumbling grave stones for a very specific name. He'd passed over Daiki Emiko, Hitoshi Hana and Hisashi Naisho before finally landing on the name he was looking for.

"Sensei," Toshinori said, as he sat at the grave of Nana Shimura. Just thinking about her made his mouth dry up and a pit form in his stomach. Despite the fact that he dreamed countless times of what he would say to his dead teacher, now that he was sitting right above her, he had no idea how to start this conversation.

"All for One is dead," he said. "That scourge has finally been put into the dirt. I tried my hardest to act like a hero and take him in the nice and clean way, but towards the end I went a little overboard and crushed his head in." Toshinori shrunk into himself at that.

"Oh god, why am I telling you that, that's only going to make this sound even worse," he said. "Do you want to know where we found him? We found him hiding in plain sight, right next to your home. Villains, always trying to make things dramatic eh?" he said. The chuckle that he was trying to get morphed into tears.

"I…I don't know what to do anymore. All for One was my life, even in America, most of the crime had some trace back to him, and now that he's dead, I have no idea what to do anymore. I don't even know why I'm here, I just…"

Toshinori stares up at the sky with a somber expression as he runs out of things to say. In truth, the reason why he was here was out of hope. Some irrational hope that she was looking down and proud of everything that he had done. It was why he had shown up as All Might, again, out of some irrational hope that she could see him. He felt lost.

Toshinori sat there for the next 20 minutes, until he heard someone sit down right next to him. All Might turned his head to see a roughly high school age girl with white hair and black eyes. The two of them sat in silence before she spoke.

"I had no idea that I'd meet All Might in a place like this," she said. All Might chuckles a little before he speaks.

"Everybody has loved ones," he says. The girl snorts at his answer, a cold and cynical sound, that makes All Might frown a little inside. He keeps up his persona on the outside though.

"I must ask, young lady, shouldn't you be in school?" he asks. The girl snorts again and starts to speak.

"Always trying to be the responsible guy, eh All Might?" she says. There's a familiarity in those words, despite the fact that All Might has never met this girl in his life. Before he can process the information though, she speaks again.

"I'm 18, high school's ended for me."

"I apologize for assuming them," he says. The girl's face stretches into a light smile this time.

"You're fine." she says. They fall into a short silence again before she speaks again.

"What are you here for?" she asks. She pauses again, embarrassment aware on her face.

"Sorry if that was rude, I just…I don't even know what I'm doing here. I just kinda feel like I need to."

"No, you're fine. I understand the feeling," he says. Toshinori pauses and thinks about his answer before he speaks again.

"A reunion, with someone I used to know." The girl peeked at Sensei's gravestone before speaking.

"Nana Shimura huh? She must've been an impressive woman to be involved with All Might."

"She was. One of the best people I ever knew."

"She must've been a really impressive woman."

"She was," he says. "Anyways, why are you here?" Toshinori asks.

"I guess it's only fair to say eh? I'm here for the same reason as you, a reunion…of sorts," she says. Her eyes darken at those last words, and Toshinori swore that he could see an ominous red glowing in the black of her eyes.

"My dad was an asshole, and he was finally incapacitated today. He put me through hell, training beyond training for these past 3 years, to the point that I don't know what to do anymore. And he's gone now. I guess I wanted to spite him. He's dead, and I'm alive, take that and all that jazz," she says. She laughs again, something bitter and maniacal, something that would make an ordinary man scared. But Toshinori understood on some level what she is going through.

Despite the fact that his life significantly improved after meeting Sensei and gaining One for All, Toshinori was still quirkless before all of that. And life was not kind to a quirkless man. Toshinori had no idea how he had gotten through the first half of his life. On multiple occasions he had felt a strong feeling of hollowness, which was the same thing doubtless she was feeling at the moment. Hell, Toshinori himself was feeling lost at the moment. But Goddamnit he was a hero, and he wasn't going to let someone fall into the same despair he had swore to bring people out of.

"Everybody has a turning point in their lives, Young…"

"Mari," she says. "Mari Naisho."

"Young Mari. I've had multiple of those in my life. And every time something like that comes, I feel a little lost. As if I don't really know what I want to do. Do you feel lost?" he asks. Mari blinks and nods slowly. Toshinori continues.

"When I'm faced with those kinds of choices, I usually ask myself what I want with my life at the moment. You seem like a nice kid, Young Mari. I trust you to make that choice for yourself."

There was a silence as Mari's sarcastic smirk slowly morphed into a light frown, as if she was trying to make her decision. After a couple minutes, she laughed lightly, a genuine smile on her face for the first time in their conversation.

"Holy shit, you really are the Number one Hero," she says. "Did your teacher ever get tired of your motivational speeches? You seem like you do them all the time." Toshinori stutters at her question.

"I…um…well"

"Oh so you do them all the time. Is that the secret to becoming the number one hero? Does Endeavor just need to learn some Talk-no-jutsu?" Toshinori couldn't help but laugh at her question. His stomach turned to lead however, when his laugh turned into a cough, and he spat out some blood. Before he could hide it though, the girl noticed it. Instead of getting surprised though, she just winced a little.

"I heard about that fight you got into earlier this week, must've been a real asshole to hurt you eh?" she asked. Toshinori couldn't help but frown a little.

"That fight wasn't publicized."

"Villain dad remember? I still have some connections."

"Any connections you'd be willing to name?" The girl started to laugh.

"It'd be useless. None of them use their actual names, only aliases."

"Of course they do."

They sat in silence for only a moment before Mari couldn't help herself.

"Do you want me to heal you?" she asked. Toshinori blinked at that.

"Is that what your quirk is?"

"Yup, Regeneration. I can regenerate as much bone and tissue as I can on other people and myself."

"It sounds powerful."

"It is. Someone should've my dad that healing doesn't help with damaging heroes though."

"Your quirk would be fine for heroics! Besides, quirks don't make a man."

"Someone should tell the hero commission that." Toshinori's eyes darkened at the mention of them.

"Yes, someone really should." The girl looked at Toshinori in silent contemplation before asking her question again.

"So, do you want me to heal you?"

"I'm fine, really. It's nothing you need to worry about."

"I mean, but you helped me and all that, so I kinda feel like I need to help you back."

"You don't need to do that, besides, someone with a really powerful healing quirk just did the best they could on me." The girl then smirked at that.

"What do you know? My quirk could be better." Toshinori looked at the girl in some thought and then conceded.

"Well, it never hurts to try right?" The girl snorted at that, as she placed her hands on his chest.

"Tell that to anyone with a drug addiction." she said, before a yellow light started emanating from her hands. Toshinori could feel his missing muscles and stitches unwind and reconnect, feel tissue growing from right underneath his body. Every second the pain around his wound was getting better and better. Toshinori then looked at the girl, who had started to sweat, and was struggling to keep it together.

"You don't have to go any furth…"

"Nah, I'm fine. Your wound is just about to close…Jesus how much did this guy destroy you, big guy?"

"A Lot…arghh"

"Ya no shit… and, there." Toshinori finally felt the rest of his wound finally stitch itself back together, and the two of them let go, panting on the weedy, overgrown grass of the cemetery.

"Thank you. Is there anything you want me to do?"

"Ehh, you already have. It doesn't matter."

"I insist." The gir - no, Mari thought about the situation for a little.

"I've got my dad's roof over my head already, so some cash would be nice," she said. All Might laughed once again, thankful to feel his stomach and diaphragm and the blood inside his veins and not out.

After a little haggling, Toshinori managed to convince her to take a check for 100,000,000 (He didn't need all of the money he had anyway), and Mari left with a confused look on her face, and her eyes glued to the credit card. After she'd left, he let One for All go, and looked at himself in his phone camera.

At first, Toshinori had been horrified to note that he was nothing more than a 7 foot tall skeleton without One for All. However, with her healing ability, All Might's body had gone from the size of a skeleton, to the size of a normal man, or atleast, as normal as a 7 foot tall man could be. Perhaps he would never be as powerful as he once was, but atleast he wouldn't have anything limiting him anymore.

1 week later

Mari Shigaraki had sat on her couch staring at All Might's check for her with an immense amount of thought. No, she wasn't surprised about the check (All Might's wound was clearly incredibly debilitating, considering the amount of Quirk Energy she used to heal it, and the guy was clearly a saint), but rather All Might's words.

She had spent nearly 5 days in that man's old safehouse mindlessly going about her day, just trying to think about what she wanted. Because All Might was right about one thing. She needed to finally become her own person. But who would that person be?

All for One would always be a part of her. Those 3 years of brutal training, experimentation and quirk manipulation will always be with her. There's a part of her who knows, who understands that she'll never be able to go back to civilian life. Even as she sits in the safehouse, with her phone and her marshmallow soft bed, part of it feels wrong. She's itching to feel her blood running, to feel powerful, to feel like she can actually stand up and rebell against her destiny.

After the day she had told All for One that she wasn't comfortable watching society, All for One had tried to convince her to come back to his side. He tried every trick in the book, but Mari was nothing if not stubborn, and she had stood her ground. After that, he has so easily shoved her aside and threw her to that monster of a scientist. According to him, her destiny was simply to be a test dummy. Someone to test quirks against, until her version of All for One was powerful enough. Then he would take the quirk, and cast her aside, for her insolence.

Fuck that bitch. She would spite him. She made sure that nobody had to feel that kind of shit anymore. Maybe she couldn't become a hero anymore, but she would become powerful. She would stomp out villainy wherever she saw it. She would be a hero, legally or illegally, it didn't matter to her, she would be a hero.

And it was for that very reason, that Mari was currently in a mask, a black overcoat, a shirt and some slacks. She was balanced on the balcony of a warehouse and listening in on a couple small-time thugs talking about their latest shipment. (She had to start somewhere)

"So, what the hell is this supposed to even be?"

"I don't know, it's some new quirk drug that the Yakuza is pushing out."

"The Yakuza? Didn't most Yakuza groups die out like a couple decades ago?"

"Some of them are trying to keep it on the downlow. Just trying to push this shit in as much silence as they can until shit blows up."

"Ya, but how am I supposed to make this blow up if I don't even know what it is?"

"It's called Trigger." All of the dealers hushed up at the man's voice. Clearly whoever this guy was, he was the leader of this operation.

"It's supposed to boost your quirk, and it's supposed to be addicting. That's all we need to know," he says.

Mari opened the window and peeked in, only to see 5 people in there. Two of them had mutation quirks, one of them with purple skin and a little more muscle on him. The other one had caps on his fingers, clearly for some kind of gun quirk. The other ones just seemed normal humans, clearly they had some emitter quirks. Mari dropped a smoke bomb down below, and heard the criminals' confusion.

"What the h…"

"*cough cough* what's happening?"

"Check for heroes"

"Check for the underground ones, they're tricky as shit"

Mari smirked at their words and dropped as she dropped down into the warehouse. She looked behind her and saw the vague outline of the one with the mutated purple skin, and attacked him. The man noticed her after a couple of her punches, and simply grabbed her and threw her aside. The pressure of his attack blew the smoke away, revealing the 4 people she saw.

"Damnitt. If only I had some offensive quirks," she cursed. All for One had only allowed her to keep 2 quirks. One of them was Super Regeneration, which allowed for her to withstand the experiments that Garaki constantly did on her. The other one was Energy Transfer, which allowed for her to transfer energy from her to others in order to rejuvenate them. They were powerful quirks, but nothing offensive. Thankfully enough, she was used to fighting with the use of quirks.

She put on her brass knuckles, and put up a stance. The thin guy with a tinny spoke up, a laugh clearly on his lips.

"Aww look Genma. It's a little girl who thinks she can play the hero because she's in a cool suit." The purple guy (now known as Genma) laughed alongside him. Even the head guy and his lackey were smirking.

The man with a gun quirk pulled his quirk out and then tried shooting me to get it over with, but to his horror, the bullet simply stuck to the overcoat. On top of that, my regeneration took the brunt of the force. It was my turn to smirk.

"Aww, someone has to actually try and fight for once," Mari says. "Dumbass." That finally got them riled up. The remaining unidentified thug stood infront of her, his tattoos glowing blue and a manic glint in his eyes.

"Let's see if you can dodge this, Asshole!"

He then shot towards her like an EMP, giving her just barely enough time to dodge. However, just as she turned, the leader was right infront of her, giving her a flurry of punches and punching her towards the other wall.

Some form of teleportation then, huh? That's gonna be an annoying quirk to deal with.

Immediately, Genma was right on her, ready to crush her, but then man was too slow. She turned around, and she cut the man neary his leg to incapacitate her, but before she could deal with him, the man had disappeared. Mari turned around only to see the leader again infront of her ready to throw his punches again. This time she was ready though. The two of them exchanged blows, and when Mari tried multiple times to reach in and cut him, the leader would simply dissapear and attack from a different place.

That doesn't seem like teleportation at all though? Maybe he can teleport other people too?

Before he could think though, a man with the strength quirk came in, glowing all the while, trying his hardest to kill her in one stroke.

Other than the guy with the bullet quirk, this man is uncoordinated, and has probably relied on his quirk his entire life. He's the man I should focus on for now.

As he ran towards her again, dodged him and caught him on the head. As the man tried to punch her though, Mari felt for the man's quirk, and let loose on her own.

Let loose. Push your influence onto him. Pull his quirk and be done with it.

Mari pulled on the All for One, and watched as red smoke came into existence. Like tendrils of the man's soul, the terrifying power of All for One ripped the man's quirk out of his body, leaving the man tired and unconscious. The other three stared at her, the man with the leader simply frowning, Genma incredibly tense, and the man with the gun quirk shaking in his pants.

"What the h…" said the man with the gun quirk, but he was cut off by the leader.

"Shut up Anbu, clearly we're dealing with worse than we thought." Mari smirked, as she pulled on the quirk she just took. Tattoos appeared on her body, and started to glow red.

"Ya, you can say that again," she said.

Mari ran at the thug with the gun quirk (now known as Anbu) and immediately knocked him out, but then she stumbled over herself. The other thugs took that as an advantage and punched her away from them.

Oh, so that's the disadvantage to this quirk. It's hard to control.

Mari tries desperately to keep the quirk in check, she lunges at the leader, only for him and Genma to switch places and Genma to be completely knocked out. It was at this moment that Mari finally understood what the leader's quirk was.

"It's a substitution quirk," she says. The leader furrows his eyebrows at her.

"What?"

"Your quirk, its substitution. You can switch anything with anything?" The man smirked.

"Oh ya? And how do you explain my teleportation?"

"Maybe you've fine tuned your quirk to the point where you can switch with air." The leader laughed at that.

"You've come very close. My quirk is called Switchpoint. I can switch any point that's within my field of vision, with a point that's anywhere else, within my field of vision or not. It manifests as a form of teleportation and substitution," she says. Mari starts to laugh, the same maniacal laugh that had slightly shaken All Might.

"You're the most stupid piece of shit I've ever met," she says. The leader scowls at that.

"Oh, why is that?"

"What kind of idiot explains his own quirk to someone who is trying to take them down?"

"Someone who's fighting someone insignificant"

"Says the man who said I was someone serious!"

Mari jumped at the man, and the leader teleported to their position. Each of them got into a serious fight, throwing a flurry of punches at each other. The leader pulled out a knife and tried his hardest to stab me. When he failed to stab, he teleported into a different place behind for more attacks. After a couple tries, Mari started to get tired of his antics.

"I'm tired of this bullshit," she said. She reached in for the man's neck, as the leader tried to cut her overcoat. The man narrowed his eyes as the knife simply slid off of the coat.

"Hmm, your overcoat can withstand even Carbon Steel? Well, It doesn't matter, I'm just going to…" But as he tried to teleport, the same red tendrils of power that characterized All for One surrounded his head.

"Teleport? Ya, not happening buddy. I'm tired of your games," she said, as she pulled on the man's quirk. The man screamed until the quirk was finally ripped from his body. The man, exhausted, stared in fear at Mari and asked.

"Who the hell are you?" Mari simply chuckled at that.

"Who am I? That doesn't matter. It's what I can do that you really care about." Mari then simply knocked the man out.