Cover Art Drawn by Artistic Hermit at https://artistichermit.tumblr.com/post/645179775933136896/i-made-fanart-for-custody-battle-by-katydid-over
Yuuto Shigaraki, the First One for All User, gets knocked forward in time before he can pass on his quirk. Trapped in a much darker future where One for All never brought forth salvation, he rescues a young Izuku Midoriya from human traffickers. A boy with an uncanny resemblance to his older brother. Without an ID, lacking any money to feed his newly adopted child, and still determined to be a hero, Yuuto launches an exciting vigilante career stealing from organized crime.
He makes one mistake: he assumes everyone from his past would have died of old age by now, including his older brother.
So he doesn’t try particularly hard to hide his identity… or Izuku’s.
OR: A centuries-old feud between brothers is about to turn into an epic custody battle over Izuku Midoriya, the son of All for One and nephew of One for All—with the fate of Japan hanging in balance.
Custody Battle is an Alternate Universe My Hero Academia fanfic written by katydid / chibikaty.
Other TV Tropes pages for this author include Forgiveness is the Attribute of the Strong and Fear No Evil.
Custody Battle contains examples of:
- Abusive Parents: Hisashi and Yuuto had 'em. Their father was an alcoholic who drank himself to death and their mother threw them out the moment she got an excuse. This left Hisashi Promoted to Parent, and at first he did a decent job of it for an eight-year-old... until his Lack of Empathy and overprotectiveness got the better of him, leading to him also becoming abusive to Yuuto and later Izuku.
- Accidental Time Travel: The fic starts with Yuuto/The First One for All user accidentally traveling forward in time to the canon time period.
- Adaptational Heroism: Due to the butterfly effect from One for All never being passed along, Tenko Shimura never became involved with All for One and became a hero student.
- Adorably Precocious Child: Izuku is this. Despite being only 12 years old, he managed to negotiate with frickin All For One and oftentimes plays mediator between his father and uncle.
- Alternate Timeline: This story takes place in a timeline where the First One for All user traveled forward in time instead of dying.
- Always a Child to Parent: All for One/Hisashi raised his younger brother in this AU due to the eight year age difference between them, and as a result refuses to treat Yuuto as an adult.
- Annoying Younger Sibling: Yuuto exploits his ability to annoy his older brother ruthlessly and deliberately, especially during the monopoly game in chapter five.
- Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Subverted at the end of Chapter Eleven, when Yuuto confesses that he missed his brother and feels glad to see him alive, only for Hisashi to immediately betray him.
- Badass Normal: Although Toshinori Yagi didn't inherit One For All, he still became All Might, the Only Quirkless Hero. He dedicates his life to fighting against government corruption and quirk-based discrimination.
- Bad Ending: The author wrote a short alternate ending where All For One uses Rewind on Yuuto in the climax, reverting him to infanthood. On top of essentially erasing Yuuto, it permanently alienates Izuku from his father, who starts thinking about how it's a shame he missed so much of Izuku's childhood...
- Batman Gambit: Izuku fakes getting greviously harmed and ending up on the brink of death to get Hisashi to finally tone down on his possessive control freak tendencies, securing a more permanent truce between the brothers.
- Berserk Button: Izuku is Yuuto's berserk button and when Yuuto discovers that his older brother plans to vault Izuku, it drives him to decide to kill his brother.
- Big Brother Instinct: Despite their enmity, Hisashi is a very overprotective older brother. In fact, that's part of the cause of his conflict with his younger brother.
- Blatant Lies: Hisashi promised not to kill Izuku's former bully. Yuuto expected him to keep this promise but very few readers did.
- Blood from the Mouth: The First coughing up blood is canon. In this story, it's explained by quirk-related cellular degeneration.
- Bully Magnet: Izuku as a child, due to his quirklessness.
- Cain and Abel: As in canon, All for One and the First have an ancient feud inching ever closer to murderous.
- Calling the Old Man Out: After hearing about his father and uncle's past, Izuku calls Hisashi out on several points. Hisashi being Hisashi, this goes straight over his head.
- The Chain of Harm: Hisashi grew up with neglectful and abusive parents, and it horrifies him that he has a long-lost son who he inadvertently abandoned and was also abused as a child.
- Child Prodigy: Izuku is a genius at age twelve and already using One for All.
- Children Raise You: Due to Hisashi over-coddling Yuuto, Yuuto has very little in parenting skills. He has no knowledge of nutrition, discipline or boundaries. Izuku immediately pegs Yuuto as the overpermissive parent before dialing back to enforcing bedtimes and healthy food on the both of them. Izuku honestly does more to raise his uncle than the other way around. Which is justified due to Yuuto being an overcoddled teenager and knowing this about himself, had initially refused to take in Izuku. Yuuto adopted Izuku when it became clear that despite his lack of parenting skills, Izuku's foster parents were even worse.
- Chronic Hero Syndrome: Yuuto suffers from this, to his brother's despair. Hisashi is even more upset to learn that Yuuto has been enabling Izuku to act equally recklessly.
- Conspiracy Theorist: Shouto Todoroki, as is popular fanon. In the epilogue stories, the entire Todoroki family gets in on the act, becoming convinced that Yuuto is actually Touya Todoroki.
- Death by Origin Story: Inko died before the story, murdered by human traffickers.
- Didn't See That Coming: Hisashi may be a good manipulator, but he has a blind spot a mile wide regarding his family. He never thought that Izuku would run away when he learned All for One murdered his childhood bully, nor that Yuuto really was completely ready to murder him to keep Izuku safe.
- Dysfunctional Family: Hisashi locked his younger brother inside a bank vault. What more needs to be said?
- Dystopia: Japan is a darker place as a result of the lack of One for All over the course of history. Despite this, the overall tone of the fic is light-hearted.
- Escape Artist: Yuuto is very good at escapology, as a result of having to escape his brother's repeat attempts to lock him in a Gilded Cage.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Hisashi truly loves his brother and son, though in a very controlling and possessive way.
- Everybody Hates Mathematics: Yuuto has dyscalculia.
- Even Evil Has Standards: All for One has nothing to do with quirk traffickers, due to an incident when he was a teenager and they tried to enslave him.
- Evil Is Petty: Hisashi's ability to hold grudges transcends centuries.
- Evil Overlord: As in canon, Hisashi/All for One aspires to be just like the evil overlords in his childhood comics.
- Family of Choice: Both Izuku and Yuuto form one with All Might and Nana. Hisashi is not happy.
- Food as Bribe: Hisashi attempts to win his new son's affection with six flavors of ice cream.
- For Want Of A Nail: One for All was never passed along to the Second in this AU, causing massive ripple effects.
- Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: Hisashi had an abusive childhood, but so did Yuuto, and the latter never turned to villainy.
- Friendly Enemy: Strangely enough, All Might and All for One by the end of the fic.
- Gilded Cage: Hisashi takes over Yuuto and Izuku's apartment to fill it with both luxuries and watch them. Later, Hisashi's luxurious vault is designed to be the ultimate Gilded Cage.
- Hypocritical Heartwarming: Hisashi immediately tries to spoil his newfound son with gifts, but they come with strings—and monitoring equipment—attached.
- Inevitable Mutual Betrayal: Yuuto assumes from the second chapter that his deal with his older brother will never last. In the end, Yuuto tries to keep the deal but Hisashi doesn't.
- Insane Troll Logic: Yuuto's defense against Hisashi's silver-tongued manipulations is to entirely refuse to argue with him on a logical level, since if he's refusing to listen to logic then at least neither of them are happy.
- In Spite of a Nail: All Might never received One for All, but becomes a quirkless hero instead.
- Large Ham: Hisashi/All For One is this. He knocks on the door before ripping it off the hinges as an obvious power flex.
- Long-Lost Relative: Hisashi/All for One and Izuku's father-son relationship comes as a surprise to both of them.
- Love Makes You Evil: Hisashi's familial love drives him to be overprotective to the extreme.
- Minor Living Alone: Yuuto was eighteen when he adopted Izuku but only barely. He initially struggled to live alone and also raise a child.
- Mirror Character: Despite how much Yuuto and Hisashi detest each other's lifestyles, they're similar in inverse ways. Hisashi's morality is entirely centered around himself and his family and is willing to sacrifice Yuuto and Izuku's freedom and personal space to keep them secure. Yuuto's morality is based purely on comic book superheroes, and he's unable to understand why anyone wouldn't want to be a hero or why they'd want to make money off of their quirk.
- Mistaken for Romance: Shouto Todoroki starts a conspiracy theory that Hisashi and All Might are dating, to their mutual disgust.
- Morality Pet: Izuku serves as one for his father... but with varying degrees of success.
- Multiple Endings: The author wrote a bad ending for the fic, as well as several alternate universes.
- Never My Fault: All for One, as always, has a terrible case of blaming others for mistakes he made that drove them away.
- Noodle Incident: Yuuto threatens to tell the story of the time Hisashi lost a fight with a pigeon in order to embarrass his older brother. Apparently this is also the reason why Hisashi hates ties.
- Not Quite Dead: Hisashi and Yuuto mutually surprise each other by being alive.
- Oh, Crap!: At the end of Chapter Eleven, Hisashi reveals that he drugged Yuuto's tea.
- He then gets a moment of this for himself when he realizes Yuuto has a bomb on him and is fully willing to kill him.
- Older Than They Look: Hisashi is an immortal from the dawn of the age of quirks.
- Papa Wolf: After Hisashi learns of Izuku's past kidnapping by human traffickers, he plots to annihilate them across Japan.
- Promotion to Parent:
- Zigzagged. When a young Izuku asks Yuuto to take him in their second meeting, Yuuto initially refuses for the justified reasons of being a teenager and homeless. However when Izuku is mistreated by his foster family to the point of being paralyzed, Yuuto steps up to raise his nephew. It's to mixed success, Yuuto deeply loves Izuku and does his best to support and raise him. However, Yuuto is a rather flawed parent being an abused and sheltered teenager/adult who doesn't really understand what he's actually supposed to do that Izuku and All Might have to do more of the actual raising.
- Deconstructed with Hisashi. Being forced to become Yuuto's parent at young age due had emotionally stunted him to become a overprotective control freak.
- Pyromaniac: Played for Laughs with Yuuto.
- Retcon: The First's canon name was reveled to be Yoichi after the fic was written. The author retconned into fic canon that the First's birth name was Yuuto, but he later changed it to Yoichi while on the run from All for One.
- Running Gag: Hisashi frequently comments that he's "almost certain" that his younger brother wasn't swapped out for another baby as a newborn.
- Skewed Priorities: Played for Laughs. While contemplating running away before Hisashi can find them, Yuuto and Izuku both agree that although food, clothing, and even medicine could be forgotten in their frantic flight, the All Might merchandise they worked very hard to collect must be saved at all costs.
- Smarter Than You Look: While Hisashi does constantly harp on about how dumb Yuuto is (at least before he learns that Yuuto has dyscalculia), the younger brother seems to have the same sharp eye for quirks as Izuku and Hisashi himself, recognizing one of Hisashi's trick questions and figuring out a passerby's quirk at the same time as Izuku.
- Snark-to-Snark Combat: Nonstop between Hisashi and Yuuto.
- Strong Family Resemblance: Yuuto suspected that Izuku was related to his brother on sight, though he believed him to be a distant descendant.
- Supreme Chef: Hisashi has a quirk that allows him to cook delicious dishes.
- Take a Third Option: When Yuuto feels like he has no choice but to kill his older brother or die a prisoner, Izuku picks a third option.
- The Thing That Would Not Leave: Hisashi buys up Yuuto and Izuku's apartment complex, throwing out all the other tenants besides them and forces himself into their home. He frequently renovates without asking what they want and complains over how lower-class their new home is.
- Traumatic Superpower Awakening: Izuku received One for All early in order to save him from grievous injuries.
- Unstoppable Rage: Yuuto goes into this state after he discovers that Hisashi plans to confine Izuku in the vault too, and Yuuto resolves to kill his brother before allowing this to happen.
- Whole Episode Flashback: Chapter Three is devoted to explaining how Yuuto and Izuku met.
- Written by the Winners: As someone who lived through the dawn of the age of quirks, Hisashi reveals that much of modern history was revised to be more palatable.
