Fanfic / Cure to Evil

Hero fanboy Midoriya Izuku just realized his dream and got into UA… by breaking into it with his League of Villains in tow. He’s not quite willing to imitate the villainous legacy of his dad, the retired supervillain All for One, but he’s going to be the best villain he can be!

Cure to Evil is a My Hero Academia fan fiction written and completed by Mirrond in 2021 on FanFiction.Net (link). Mirrond began reposting this work chapter by chapter on Archive of Our Own (link) in 2022.

Cure to Evil contains examples of:

• Academy of Evil: Villain Academy, whose principal is the villain Kurogiri and whose purpose is to teach people things like how to hack, disguise oneself, pick locks, best utilize one’s quirk, fight, etc. in an effort to be a more effective villain.
• Adaptation Decay: In-Universe, the Creature Rejection Clan is a hate group using religious aesthetics, but they don’t know which religion(s) they based their hate group off of. Their religious services end up being more like a bad parody of a Christian Mass.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: Overlaps with Related in the Adaptation.
  • If there’s any connection between Mustard and Midnight in canon, it has yet to be revealed. But in this fic, Mustard is Midnight’s nephew and adopted son.
  • If there’s any connection between All for One and Izuku in canon, it has yet to be revealed. But in this fic, Izuku is All for One’s biological son (which also makes Izuku related to the first holder of One for All).
• Adaptational Villainy: A multitude of characters are portrayed as far more morally grey or black than in canon.
  • Izuku Midoriya, Mei Hatsume, and Hitoshi Shinso are all active members of the League of Villains here, Izuku, in particular, being the leader. In general. however, the story downplays this due to the League being staunch anti-villains, with Izuku being a large reason as to why this is.
  • Izuku’s mother, Inko, is a civilian and non-villain in canon. In this fic, she’s a retired S-rank villain. It’s somewhat downplayed, as her time as a villain pre-Cure to Evil was mostly bloodless thievery, with the one exception being a kill in self-defense.
  • Shihai Kurohiro is the U.A traitor.
  • Romeo Fujimi, who is in canon a hero student from Isamu, is a member of Nine's crew here.
  • Hawks is a far more willing agent of the Commission here, having little reserves with following their orders to the point of killing Tensei Iida.
• Anyone Can Die: A good number of characters are dead by the end of this story, even if most of them are minor. The most notable character deaths include Endeavor, Eclipse, Zealot, Purity, Dabi, Re-Destro, Overhaul, Hawks, All Might, and All for One.
• Appearance Angst: Suto has “extreme issues with her own looks,” and is sensitive about her disfigurement via acid.
• Baddie Flattery: Izuku, a villain, genuinely compliments heroes on their heroic actions and asks for their autographs.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: Izuku explains the idea of a Charles Atlas Superpower In-Universe to Himiko in Chapter 18 when telling her about how people used to imagine superheroes and supervillains before the age of quirks.
• Chekhov's Gag: The UA spy emphasizes how well-defended the Training Camp is by joking that they “wouldn’t be surprised if” there was “a nuclear reactor with an explosive self-destruction option tied to Nedzu’s heartbeat in case someone killed him while inside the fortress.” Later, when Overhaul is freeing Tartarus’ prisoners, its head warden kills himself. Because there’s a nuke under Tartarus that’ll explode and destroy it, tied to the head warden’s heartbeat in case a certain emergency measure is activated and over half the wardens are dead. The joke preparation method was real, just used by someone else and with a few details changed.
• Child by Rape: Heavily implied with Suto, given the League already thought they were the product of rape before they found out one of the character’s parents is a known rapist.
• Combat Compliment: The hero Eraserhead defends someone from the villain Legion’s attack, prompting Legion to say “You really are a great hero, Eraserhead.”
• Completed Fic: in 2021.
• Criminal Found Family:
  • What else do you expect when one of the fic’s tags on Archive of Our Own is “League of Villains as Family”? Izuku explicitly calls them family multiple times in the fic.
  • Nine’s villainous crew of himself, Mummy, Slice, Chimera, and Romero are “a family” “close to each other” in this fic.
• Crying at Your Birthday Party: Inko is prone to crying, including Tears of Joy, which she sheds at her birthday party.
• Do Wrong, Right: It’s probably a joke, but Lemillion wants to hold down Overhaul while Legion murders him, and Sir Nighteye scolds him not to disapprove of his wish to be an accessory to murder, but because he needs a different method to restrain Overhaul since he can kill a person restraining him with a touch.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Even the villain Himiko Toga/Vampire wouldn’t do what Overhaul did to Eri.
  VampirePrincess: I’m ok with stabbing people if I have to, or if the boss tells me to. Or if someone pisses me off badly enough. But this? Yeah, nope, I’m drawing a line.
  • Even Mei Hatsume wouldn’t make mindlessly obedient and brain dead Noumus out of humans.
  Even Mei is horrified, probably due to comparing her babies with the Doctor’s. She is a villainous scientist, technically (well, more like engineer) but an ethical one. More or less. At least when she doesn’t have one of her… episodes.
  • Bearhead finds murder okay but “ha[s] to draw a line somewhere,” that somewhere being rape.
• Even the Loving Hero Has Hated Ones: Even the lawful hero Sir Nighteye (screen name SpyingEye) hates Overhaul. Downplayed, because it’s probably said in jest as hyperbole.
  TinTinCan: Honestly speaking, considering… what we know about Overhaul, I'm willing to hold that man down while Legion brutally murders him.
  SpyingEye: Mirio!
  TinTinCan: I'm sorry. Sir, but that's the truth.
  SpyingEye: No, I just wanted to remind you that Overhaul can kill with a touch, ask Eraserhead to hold him with his scarf instead.
• The Family That Slays Together: stays together! Villains Hisashi (All for One) and Inko Midoriya (Mischief) support their son Izuku (Legion) in his career as a villain, and are happy to be each others’ family. Over the course of the fic, they add more villains to the Midoriya family: Himiko (Vampire) marries Izuku, and Asa (Rabbit) gets adopted into the family. Not quite a full-villainous family, since they do adopt Eri and don’t try to encourage her towards villainy—in fact, they accept her dream to be a hero and we don’t get information on whether baby Aiko turned towards villainy or not.
• Fan-Created Offspring:
  • Canon character All for One is the biological father of the original character Asa Naoki.
  • Canon characters All for One and Inko Midoriya have a baby, the original character Aiko Midoriya.
  • Canon characters Stain and Miruko have three kids who are original characters and who we see in the fic’s epilogue.
  • Canon character Tenko Shimura has multiple babies who are original characters.
  • Canon character Gigantomachia is a biological parent of the original character Juggernaut.
  • Canon character Mr. Compress is a biological parent of the original character Non (one of Kurogiri’s villain school students).
• Fanboy: Izuku still does “standard” fanboy activities like having hero figurines and merch, but even when he’s acting as a villain he’s a card-carrying hero fanatic. He’ll genuinely compliment heroes he’s actively in conflict with on their heroic actions and ask for their autographs, and his default nickname on a communication service for villains is “SmallMight” which is a reference to the hero All Might.
• Fan of the Past: All for One likes Bond movies and uses memes contemporary to 2021 (the year of the fic’s writing and completion). It’s justified as the fic’s tags on Archive of Our Own do confirm he’s from Gen Z, the generation that used these memes growing up.
• Foreshadowing: In chapter 38, a character remarks that if a few more tragic backstories (often involving quirk discrimination) of League members get disclosed, they’ll end up trying to join the League themselves. Seems like an exaggeration meant to express sympathy, but more such backstories do get disclosed, and the character does end up joining the League: their remark actually came true.
• Fourth-Date Marriage: Tenko and Suto get married 10 hours after they first meet.
• Friendly Enemy: The hero Lemillion and villain Legion have this kind of relationship. Lemillion tries to defeat Legion, but also gives him relationship advice. Legion kidnaps Lemillion and creates lots of crime for him to stop, but also gives him advice on One for All free of charge. Lemillion scours his internet chats with Legion for anything useful he can use against the villains, but he let Legion know he was doing that right at the start of their chats. A third party calls Legion Lemillion’s “friendesis,” a portmanteau of “friend” and “nemesis.”
• Go-Karting with Bowser: The hero Lemillion and the villain Legion play video games online together like two normal friends would.
• Happily Adopted:
  • Hisashi and Inko Midoriya adopt Eri. All three are pleased with this arrangement.
  • Asa Naoki gets adopted by Hisashi and Inko as well, becoming Asa Midoriya, and again the child and their new parents are pleased to call each other family.
  • Juggernaut: adopted and sees his adopters as his cool parents regardless of how they obtained him.
• I Have Your Wife: More like I Have Your Parents. Re-Destro made Mei Hatsume produce inventions for him by telling he had kidnapped her parents and their survival depended on her output. Although unbeknownst to her, he was lying and they were already dead.
• Irony: A character named “Invincible” dies fighting another character.
• Kidnapped by an Ally: The League of Villains meet in person with someone they want to ally with. A sniper is about to shoot that desired ally, so the League has the desired ally warped to the League lair so the sniper can’t shoot them anymore.
  Izuku: We actually resorted to kidnapping because you were about to be shot dead by a sniper.
• Lethal Harmless Powers: Inko can attract small objects to her hand. Pretty useful for stealing, but not deadly, right? The in-universe quirk classification scale puts it at a 2 on a scale from 1–6. Turns out eyes and some internal organs count as small objects. Fortunately Inko was happy with bloodless theft and retired from villainy shortly after her first kill, which was in self-defense.
• Morality Chain: Eri to All for One.
  SmallMight: he adores my little sister so much that he actually started acting like a reasonable human being due to that
• Named by the Adaptation: Canon character Mustard’s real name is unknown. This fic makes his Mustard’s real name “Amaya Nemuri.”
• Original Character:
  • Thunderbolt, the Number Three Hero who dies in Chapter 1 at the USJ as Inko’s birthday gift and is confirmed by the author in the Chapter 1 notes as a “throwaway character.”
  • Asa Naoki, villain name Rabbit and Fan-Created Offspring of All for One.
  • Aiko Midoriya, the baby of two canon characters.
  • Suto, villain name Awoo.
  • The three kids of canon characters Stain and Miruko.
  • The kids of Tenko and Suto Shimura.
  • Non, a student in Kurogiri’s villain school.
• Papa Wolf: All for One will return to villainy and rampage if his daughter Eri is harmed. Probably would have done the same for his son Izuku if Izuku didn’t talk him out of it on the grounds that Izuku took up villainy and all the risks that come with it, while Eri didn’t. He did have to be talked out of destroying Izuku’s school and its staff for letting Izuku get bullied.
• Parental Abandonment: Suto’s parents abandoned her completely by the time she was six years old.
• Parental Issues: Almost all the members of the League of Villains, to the point it’s notable In-Universe when a member doesn’t have some kind of negative history with their parents:
  SmallMight: Nice to know that we actually have a member without parental issues
• Parental Sexuality Squick: Izuku doesn’t like the idea of people lusting over his mother. Unfortunately for him, she was a famous villain with “quite a fanbase,” her costume was a “skintight catsuit,” and there’s pin-up merch of her.
• Patricide: When Himiko’s father tried to tear off her fangs, a natural part of her body, she accidentally stabbed him dead.
• Related in the Adaptation: Overlaps with Adaptation Relationship Overhaul.
  • If there’s any connection between Mustard and Midnight in canon, it has yet to be revealed. But in this fic, Mustard is Midnight’s nephew and adopted son.
  • If there’s any connection between All for One and Izuku in canon, it has yet to be revealed. But in this fic, Izuku is All for One’s biological son (which also makes Izuku related to the first holder of One for All).
• Sex–Face Turn: Discussed in banter between Izuku and Himiko, two villains in a healthy romantic relationship.
  Himiko: So if you end up becoming the postapocalyptic warlord at the ruins of modern world, can I be your sexy, stripperiffic and deadly consort?
  Izuku: Depends. Are you going to betray me in favour of some rising hero seeking to end my reign of terror after I make the mistake of sending you after him and you get hypnotized by his bulging biceps?
• Shout-Out:
  • All for One greets his son Izuku with “Are ya winning, son?” upon entering a room and seeing Izuku engaged in conflict. The fic’s tags on Archive of Our Own do say that All for One is from Gen Z…
  • Izuku’s “If I was locked in a room with him, Eclipse, Re-Destro and a gun with two bullets, I would shoot Overhaul twice” is highly reminiscent of Michael Scott’s “If I had a gun with two bullets and I was in a room with Hitler, Bin Laden and Toby, I would shoot Toby twice.”
  • Tenko plays Dark Souls and Mortal Kombat.
  • Some friendly banter:
  Insomniac: THERE IS A SPY AMONG US
  HandyMan: SmallMight is sus
  FuckSchool: I suspect that this was a reference to some antique game but I’m not a nerd so I’m not sure
  • Izuku expresses his love for his little brother Asa:
  SmallMight: I’ve known him for like three months but if something happened to him I’d kill everyone I know and then myself
• Siblings Wanted: Izuku asks his father for siblings:
  DemonLord: So of course I'm extremely proud of you and need to say that as often as I can!
  Izuku: Use all that charm on mom, I'd like another sibling.
• Spy Catsuit: When Inko was active as the thief Mischief, she wore a black skintight catsuit.
• Tears of Joy: Shed when Inko’s family coincidentally arrives simultaneously at her birthday party, and when she gets the gift of finding out her son and his friends killed the hero who paralyzed her from the waist-down and killed her sister.
• Technical Pacifist: Tenko stopped killing people because it made Suto sad. So instead he decayed most of a villain’s motor nerves, rendering them immobile for life. But they’re still alive, so it’s not killing!
• Title Drop: In the last chapter, part of someone’s dialogue includes the fic name: “Family as a cure to evil? Is it that simple?”
• Tongue Trauma: Hitoshi’s foster parents cut off part of his tongue because of his Quirk to make people who respond verbally to him obey him. He gets better thanks to Izuku regrowing it.
• Villainous Friendship: The League of Villains to each other. It’s to the point where a hero dismisses the idea of trying to sow mistrust and drive a wedge between League members on the grounds that it won’t work. Nine’s crew is this, too.
• Villains Out Shopping: Mirio’s surprised to find out about a villain shopping for groceries in chapter 28.
• Will Talk for a Price: Some heroes want to meet with Izuku in person for information about the Shie Hassaikai. Izuku is willing, on the condition he gets paid. Albeit in the form of hero autographs since he’s a hero fanboy, instead of in the form of cash.