Fanfic / Accidental Successor

All Might: Mirai... I think I lost One for All.
Sir Nighteye: What do you mean you lost One for All?
All Might: I mean... I think I accidentally gave it away.
Sir Nighteye: To who?
All Might: Um... I didn't get his name...

Accidental Successor by LadyAleta (jin_roe) is a Point of Divergence story of My Hero Academia.

When Izuku is eleven, he encounters a villain and is saved by All Might. During their conversation afterwards, All Might thinks to himself Izuku would make a great successor and as a result, accidentally transfers One for All to him. It would take Izuku and his loved ones a day to notice he has an enhancement Quirk, and All Might years to realise he accidentally gave his Quirk away.

This story is restricted, requiring an Archive of Our Own account.

---

Contains examples of:

• Achievements in Ignorance: Izuku not knowing about One for All's status and background allows him to avoid the mistakes of his canon self. In canon, he accidentally sabotages himself due to treating One for All as something unique, which turns out to be counter-productive. Here, he treats it as just another Quirk and therefore, more easily assimilates it and makes it his own.
• Adaptational Badass:
  • Izuku has a far better handle of One for All compared to his canon self at a similar point in the story due to having it for longer and treating it as his own Quirk instead of All Might's, which is precisely what he needed to do to assimilate One for All more easily.
  • Eijiro's training with Izuku and Katsuki, and later being mentored by Eraserhead, makes him a smarter and more flexible combatant. Case in point, his match with Tetsutetsu in canon ends in a stalemate because of their similar Quirks and fighting styles, while in this story Eijiro outright wins by outsmarting his opponent.
• Adaptational Early Appearance:
  • Eijiro and Mina appear long before the UA Entrance Exams as Izuku and Katsuki's training partners.
  • Shoto appears before the UA Entrance Exams due to an encounter Izuku's friend group had with him when practicing Quirk Analysis at a café.
• Adaptation Name Change: Several students choose different Hero names than in canon:
  • Izuku chooses Sentinel instead of Deku.
  • Katsuki chooses Ground Zero instead of Dynamight.
  • Mina chooses Minerva instead of Pinky.
  • Iida chooses Overdrive instead of Ingenium.
  • Jiro chooses Pulse instead of Earphone Jack.
  • Hagakure chooses Prism instead of Invisible Girl.
• Adaptational Wimp: Unlike canon, where Izuku could manage 45% of One For All in short bursts and 30% constantly after less than a year, Izuku in this story can barely use 10% briefly after having the Quirk for three years.
• Adaptation Personality Change: Izuku is a lot more assertive, taking an active effort to overcome his limits before he received One for All, and not having to deal with assholes every single day after he got it. This is most clearly seen in his confrontation with Nighteye. In canon, Izuku largely remained a doormat as Nighteye breaks down his confidence. Here, Izuku is taking none of his abuse, tells him off for it, then tells him to go away.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul:
  • Izuku and Katsuki's relationship is a lot better than canon. Izuku is able to prove to Katsuki that he is actually trying to overcome his limitations by showing his self-made Support Gear, causing Katsuki to reassess everything he thought he knew about Izuku. Katsuki later sincerely apologizes for all he had done to hurt Izuku, and the two become close friends.
  • Mina and Eijiro are a lot closer to Izuku and Katsuki due to the latter two recruiting the former two as training buddies in preparation for UA. It also helps that Izuku and Mina knew each other from dance classes beforehand.
  • Downplayed example, but while Izuku's still friendly with Uraraka and Iida, having an already established friend group means that he isn't as close to them as he is in canon.
  • Izuku's relationship with All Might is a lot rockier due to a severe miscommunication and Sir Nighteye actively making it worse, and it takes active effort on All Might's part to patch it up.
• Adapted Out: Mineta is expelled following the USJ incident. He was already on thin ice for inappropriate behaviour during the Quirk Assessment tests, but groping Tsuyu during the USJ incident and putting her in danger was the final straw.
• Anti-Nepotism: UA has a lot of rules to prevent nepotism or the appearance of it:
  • Because Eraserhead mentored Izuku, Katsuki, Mina, and Eijiro after catching them illegally using their Quirks in public, they are outright barred from the Recommendation Exams.
  • All staff involved in organising UA's Entrance Exams are forbidden from contacting examinees between the exam and the release of their results, something Nedzu makes clear to All Might to stop him from reaching out to Izuku too early.
• Awesomeness by Analysis:
  • Izuku is good at analysing Quirks. He's good enough that Nedzu wants to tutor him in it. One highly notable achievement is figuring out a lot of how One for All functions while being in ignorance of its history.
  • When it comes to fighting villains, All Might can be analytical too. He accurately determines that Tomura is not the true leader because he noticed many things. The USJ attack itself was planned well but the actual execution was poor, he gloated about his ally's Quirks, giving free intel in the process, spouted deluded ideology in an unconvincing way, and threw a fit whenever things did not go his way. Kurogiri had to act as his nanny to keep him on task. A man-child like that could never have been the true leader.
• Bias Steamroller: Sir Nighteye, full stop. When All Might announces his intention to continue to support Izuku as his successor, Nighteye digs through Izuku's history to find reasons to consider Izuku inferior, from Izuku's "unimpressive" family history which lacks heroic relatives, to his parents' divorce and subsequent single parent household, to being born quirkless. Sir Nighteye also uses the fact that Izuku and his friends aren't willing to listen to Nighteye's own incredibly hostile demands as proof that Izuku "isn't willing to listen to sense" and thus can't be trusted, ignoring All Might turning the point on its head to demonstrate Izuku's evident qualities as a leader who doesn't give in to intimidation. It gets to the point of I Reject Your Reality, as Nighteye casually states that Izuku "is quirkless" while mentioning all of the other facts about him, as if Izuku hasn't already been the holder of One For All for years.
• Blaming the Victim: Mineta tries to blame Tsuyu for him groping her. Nedzu is having none of it.
• Brick Joke: During UA's Entrance Exams, Eijiro jokes about Izuku getting so nervous he throws up on someone. During the practical, Ochako vomits on him, and he blames Eijiro for cursing him.
• Broken Pedestal:
  • Downplayed between Izuku and All Might. Izuku gains a negative view of All Might due to a misunderstanding of All Might's poorly worded attempt to reach out to him which has since been cleared up.
  • Izuku loses all admiration for Sir Nighteye after the latter shows up at his house and proves himself a jerkass.
  • All Might stops respecting Nighteye after realising how controlling he is and how he is trying to undermine his choice of successor for One for All.
• The Bully: Mirai. His main method of influence is belittling and isolating those from whom he wants cooperation, all coached in the excuse that he wants what's best...and intimidating and threatening them if they don't comply. While he shows manipulative behaviors towards everyone, he's shown at his most threatening when interacting with children.
• Control Freak: Sir Nighteye hates it when things are not in his control. It's why he doesn't use his Quirk that often. As far as he can tell, it locks in a future he cannot change and therefore cannot control. This is partly why he wants Izuku to give up One for All so that Mirio can have it. Mirio is his choice of a wielder, and under his "guidance", while Izuku is an unexpected factor far outside of his control.
• Disabled in the Adaptation: Bakugo has to wear hearing aids due to being at least partially deaf from his Quirk, unlike canon where he can easily hear people mumbling from a distance.
• Entertainingly Wrong: Izuku believes he is merely a late bloomer when he first manifests his Quirk. He and Katsuki even come up with the theory that the reason he did not manifest it earlier is that the agility and martial arts training Izuku was doing was the wrong kind of training he needed and what he should have done was work on building muscle mass and that the only reason it manifested without meeting that condition was the adrenaline rush from getting caught in a Villain attack the previous day and him snapping at Katsuki was the final trigger. All of this sounds plausible, but the truth is All Might accidentally passed One for All on to him.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Izuku is good enough to make his own Support Gear while still in Middle School. He actually has the option of taking Support classes if he can test out of a couple of core academic classes.
• Gaslighting: Sir Nighteye has a bad habit of reframing events and circumstances to portray All Might as more in the wrong in order to make All Might second guess himself on decisions and positions Sir Nighteye doesn't like. He trivializes and even outright discards All Might's expressed opinions and desires in favor of his own and, when challenged by All Might, tries to flip the narrative of the situation by painting All Might as a dysfunctional "mess" lacking the capacity for sound judgement over his own personal matters without Sir Nighteye and Sir Nighteye as simply a good enough person to help and correct for All Might's mistakes, even when All Might doesn't realize he's making them. When All Might confronts Sir Nighteye after the latter unambiguously disregards All Might's wishes by trying to intimidate Izuku into surrendering One For All, Sir Nighteye tries to cast doubt on All Might's memory of Nana Shimura to imply she had a hidden agenda when teaching All Might so as to morally equate her decision to select All Might as her successor with Sir Nighteye's attempts to prop up Mirio and intimidate Izuku. This proves a step too far.
  Sir Nighteye: You can't see it, you're too close to it, but you've always struggled when it comes to anything outside of heroics. The stress of being All Might, of never truly having a life outside of that identity, it wears on you. Your social skills are almost nonexistent. You have little common sense, almost no domestic skills, and an inability to do any basic paperwork. Basically anything outside of fighting villains you have no real-world expertise. You need me to take care of those things for you.
• Hypocrite: Sir Nighteye, in a couple ways.
  • Sir Nighteye believes the future cannot change but as All Might points out, he keeps trying to get All Might to change his mind about letting Izuku keep One for All when by his own beliefs, it literally does not matter as whatever All Might does, the future Nighteye dreads will come to pass.
  • When citing reasons why Izuku is not a good enough successor for All Might, Sir Nighteye includes the fact that Izuku doesn't listen to All Might—by which he means, Izuku is not obedient. Nighteye himself never respects what All Might wants of him, and indeed trivializes all of All Might's thoughts and concerns that Nighteye himself does not share.
  All Might: Do you even hear yourself?
• I Reject Your Reality: Mineta's mother refuses to accept the clear-cut evidence in front of her that her son is a deviant who deserves his expulsion, wanting to go to court to prove his innocence in spite of the fact that would destroy whatever future he has left. His father on the other hand is a lot more reasonable and signs the relevant paperwork before his wife could dig their own graves.
• In Spite of a Nail:
  • All Might still tells Izuku he cannot be a hero like him without a Quirk. However, he adds a lot of nuance to it by clarifying he cannot be a hero like All Might since his brand of heroism is about taking on the really powerful Villains before telling Izuku he would make a great Underground Hero even though he is Quirkless.
  • In spite of accidentally transferring One for All years early, All Might still manages to maintain his career due to the surgeries he underwent to replace his missing organs.
  • Izuku's issues with breaking himself from overusing his Quirk is still present, it is merely reduced and Izuku knows better than to push himself in counter-productive ways.
  • In spite of the villain's different movements due to not encountering Izuku and escaping All Might, Katsuki still manages to get attacked by the Sludge Villain.
  • Sir Nighteye still holds Izuku in contempt for having One for All and desires to make him give it up in favour of Mirio in spite of the fact Izuku has already had it for years, it's All Might's negligence that caused Izuku to have it in the first place, and All Might telling Nighteye in no uncertain terms he wants Izuku to be his successor and is fine with Izuku keeping One for All. If anything, it just causes Nighteye to double down on his contempt.
  • Despite being at the USJ to begin with, All Might is still not there when the League of Villains attack because Nedzu calls him to his office for a meeting with Inko.
  • Shouto still thinks Izuku is All Might's secret love child, having even more fuel for his theory than he did in canon due to him interpreting the rift between Izuku and All Might as All Might telling Izuku he was the unintentional result of a dalliance on his part and Izuku reacting poorly to the news.
  • Katsuki still takes First Place in the Sports Festival in a way he hates. It's just that this time, it's due to Recovery Girl declaring his opponent is too injured to fight and Katsuki wins by default.
• Insistent Terminology: After discovering Izuku has One for All, Sir Nighteye keeps calling it All Might's Quirk. No one else agrees, not Izuku, not his family and friends, not even All Might or One for All itself. They are all instead insistent on calling One for All Izuku's Quirk.
• Internal Reveal:
  • All Might realises he accidentally gave One for All away years prior during the Sludge Villain incident.
  • Izuku learns the truth about how he got One for All in Chapter 28.
• Know When to Fold Them: In sharp contrast to his wife, Mineta's father accepts his son's expulsion from UA with relative grace and makes his wife accept it too since the police got involved and if they did go to court as his wife threatened, they'd only dig their own graves.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Mineta groping Tsuyu in the middle of a Villain attack and later putting her in danger to save his own skin leads to his expulsion from UA and the HPSC banning him from every other Hero school.
• Mama Didn't Raise No Criminal: Mineta's mother refuses to admit her son is a degenerate regardless of the evidence in front of her. Nedzu speculates this behaviour created the very mindset that caused her son to believe he could do anything and get away with it.
• Mistaken for Pedophile: All Might skulking in the hallways in his civilian form looking for Izuku gets him mistaken as a creep that Izuku reports.
• Not Helping Your Case: When Nighteye tries to defend himself when All Might confronts him about antagonising Izuku, he enrages All Might when he brings up Nana's death in defence of his actions and disappoints him when he exposes himself as a hypocritical Control Freak.
• Point of Divergence: The basic premise of the story is that All Might met Izuku earlier than canon and accidentally passes on One for All to him. Most of the other changes stem from this one deviation.
  • Because Izuku thinks he is just a very late bloomer, he more easily assimilates One for All as his own unlike his canon-self who needed Gran Torino's help to do it. Him applying his analytical skills to his Quirk with Katsuki's help almost as soon as he gets it just makes it easier.
  • The Midoriyas move out of their apartment because an accidental Quirk usage on Izuku's part destroys a chunk of it and Inko felt it was safer for everyone for them to move to a place with more room.
  • Because of the surgeries he underwent, All Might's civilian form no longer looks like an emaciated walking corpse and instead, he is a lot healthier in general.
  • Eraserhead catching Izuku, Katsuki, Mina and Eijiro training their Quirks in public leads to them being forced to train under his supervision, which in turn leads to them doing far better on the UA Entrance Exams.
  • Momo is now 1-A's representative with Iida as her vice since Izuku and Katsuki decided they didn't want either job and voted for Momo, resulting in her getting a total of four votes compared to two in canon.
  • The first and second rounds of the Sports Festival are completely different. The first round is an Easter Egg hunt while the second round is Freeze Flag.
• Poor Communication Kills: All Might worded his attempt to get Izuku under his wing to personally train him so poorly that the latter misinterpreted him as wanting One for All back. Sir Nighteye's talk with Izuku where he demands Izuku give up One for All only makes things worse by validating Izuku's misunderstanding. The misunderstanding is cleared up after Inko demands a meeting and All Might explains himself and is genuinely surprised at Nighteye's actions.
• Power Incontinence: Izuku accidentally destroys his apartment in his sleep with One for All. Good thing he has paperwork marking him as a late bloomer or he would be in legal trouble.
• Power Misidentification: When Izuku first manifests One for All, he and everyone around him assume it is an ordinary, if powerful, enhancement Quirk instead of the unique transferable stockpiling Quirk it is. The Quirk itself actually appreciates this since this results in Izuku paying attention to it in its own right instead of everything else that would normally come with One for All, going as far as to sabotage the Vestiges' attempts to tell Izuku its history.
• Psycho Supporter: Sir Nighteye wants what is best for All Might, but this is tainted badly by him being a Control Freak who thinks he knows best which diverges from what All Might himself wants. It leads to Nighteye telling All Might not to ask Nedzu for help in tracking down the boy he suspects has One for All and going behind All Might's back to confront Izuku to force him to give up his Quirk. When All Might discovers what Nighteye did, he is upset and when he confronts him, he calls out his former sidekick for it.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: All Might tells Nighteye, in no uncertain terms, that he is a Control Freak whose belief in his own infallibility has caused more harm than there otherwise would be such as when Nighteye opposed All Might confronting All for One when so many others saw the need for action. He also says that his refusal to accept the opinions and decisions of others on the matter of who should wield One for All when Nighteye has absolutely no say in those decisions to begin with makes him a jerkass, especially when Nighteye's own position is questionable at best and outright wrong at worse when One for All itself accepts Izuku and refuses to leave him.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: Izuku and Katsuki correctly conclude that Izuku needs strength training to master One for All from the incorrect premise that Izuku is merely a late bloomer and that the reason he is a late bloomer is due to Izuku taking the wrong kind of training.
• Rules Lawyer: When Nighteye claims the law would stand with All Might if he asks for One for All back, Izuku points out that no, no it doesn't. Since Nighteye and All Might are treating Quirks as transferable, that means that legally, they count as property and all lost property must be reported, which Izuku did when he got it registered. All Might must also report that he lost his Quirk for the law to be able to give it back, but he didn't after he realised he lost it. And finally, after three months, reported lost property belongs to the finder, and that time limit is long past. Sir Nighteye has no leg to stand on legally speaking in demanding Izuku give up One for All.
• Senseless Sacrifice: Discussed. Gran Torino points out the problem with Izuku's excessive self-sacrificial tendencies by pointing out that hurting himself to save one life means he cannot save even more lives while recovering. There are times when sacrificing his well-being is the right call, but in most cases, he simply should not resort to it, especially while he's young and still in training.
• Sentient Phlebotinum: One for All, as in, the actual Stockpile Quirk, not the Vestiges in it, is sentient to some degree. It provides comfort, advice, and aid to Izuku when he needs it since Izuku's ignorance of the history of One for All means he is the first to pay attention to the Quirk itself in its own right instead of everything else that comes with it, something it is grateful for. It also makes clear to Izuku and All Might that it wants to stay with Izuku by acting hostile to All Might.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!:
  • Izuku lays a verbal smackdown on Sir Nighteye when he keeps saying One for All does not belong to him and that the law would stand with All Might when he asks for it back by declaring the Quirk is his and by citing those very laws to explain how it would in fact stand with Izuku and if Nighteye tries to go to court anyway, that would require him and All Might to expose a huge secret they don't want getting out.
  • After Sir Nighteye tries to maintain control of their relationship by going on a Gaslighting Motive Rant about all of the judgements All Might can't be trusted to make, All Might finally shuts Nighteye down this way.
    All Might: I don't need you to do those things for me... I thought you lo—enjoyed doing those things for me. I let you because it made you happy. You were my friend. If that is how you think of me... was I ever really yours? If I sacrificed the civilian parts of my life to be All Might, that was my choice. I'll not force that on Izuku. And if there are things I need to learn, I have time now. I'm not an infant that needs you to take charge of me. I think I've heard enough.
• Stating the Simple Solution: Toshinori invokes this when Nezu asks if the man has asked anyone to talk to Izuku in Toshinori's place. Toshinori points out that no, he wouldn't have to do that since All Might is a teacher at Izuku's school and could theoretically just pull the boy aside for a private meeting if he wished to. This convinces Nezu that Nighteye's interference in the Midoriya's lives was not sanctioned by All Might.
• Statute of Limitations: As explained by Izuku, per the Amended Lost Property Act, after discovering he lost One for All, All Might had three months to report its loss for him to have any chance for the operation of law to compel Izuku to give back the Quirk. However, on Sir Nighteye's own advice, he didn't tell anyone about it, and by the time they find Izuku, that time limit is long past, so Sir Nighteye has no legal leg to stand on.
• Toxic Friend Influence: Sir Nighteye frames it as being supportive, but in practice he sabotages people's ability to act independently of him for the sake of his Control Freak tendencies. When All Might turns to him for help searching for Izuku, Sir Nighteye quickly does his best to isolate All Might from other options for assistance by emphasizing that All Might shouldn't trust anyone else and takes control of the search himself, lashing out with intimidation at anyone who challenges his plans, including children. All Might is deeply hurt upon the realization that Sir Nighteye seems to pathologically believe All Might can't and shouldn't do anything without Sir Nighteye's approval—and, when desperately trying to get All Might to continue listening to him, Sir Nighteye goes on an incredibly toxic plea trying to convince All Might that his behavior is justified because All Might is incompetent and incapable at everything and that he needs Sir Nighteye to function.
• Unwanted Assistance: Sir Nighteye's attempts to help All Might are counter-productive to All Might's goals at best and actively undermines All Might's choices at worst. All Might finding out about his "help" causes him to confront Nighteye and he tells him to stay away from Izuku.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • Katsuki calls out the Heroes at the scene of the Sludge Villain incident for their incompetence due to their inability to come up with some way to save him when a middle-schooler is able to do it.
  • In their confrontation in Chapter 42, All Might calls out Sir Nighteye for a lot of things. First, he calls out Nighteye for going behind his back to confront Izuku after All Might said he wanted to handle it on his own. He is also frustrated with Sir Nighteye for constantly undermining his opinion that Izuku is a great successor in order to make Nighteye's choice of Mirio the wielder of One for All and is furious that Nighteye would bring up Nana's death as a defence for his deplorable actions. All Might then realises and calls Nighteye out as a Control Freak who thinks All Might needs him to take care of him. Finally, he calls out his ex-sidekick as a hypocrite for trying desperately to change a future he says is locked in, and therefore literally nothing All Might does matter since the future Nighteye fears will happen anyway by his beliefs.
• Wrong Assumption: Shigaraki assumes that the reason that All Might has been cutting back on his hero work was that he had gotten much weaker when in reality, the hero just needed to take classes so he could get his teaching license.

---