It started with a boy, who in his youth, was average in all that he did, all that he wanted. School, friends, family, a powerful quirk but only valuable in select cases. He didnât want to be a hero, he didnât want to be anything. He wanted to learn and to grow, and so that was what he did.
Life found him down the line, a bartender for the upper echelon, a planner, a caretaker, a caterer. He was a man with passions, passions for drinks and food and a beautiful woman he met one night, slumped against his bar with a chip the size of a boulder on her shoulder, and soft fingertips that wandered across the polished bar top to his âskinâ.
He took her home, and his passion reached something much more worldly, than food and drink, but in the arms of a woman that he merely wanted to protect from everything around them.Â
He became a father, a happy man with a happy wife and two beautiful children, and a story that he only ever thought would conclude on a solid, content ground, as the rest of his life had gone so far. Why wouldnât it?
The events that preceded his twins sixth birthday were a blur, but if he was to really think, then perhaps that would be the start of his spiral, his decline into less tasteful behavior, his neutral look on the world growing ever more darker by the day, as his world crumbled.
It came to a head with the tremor of his home, a high pitched scream that jarred him from his bed, and without thought, he could remember that very moment. Eyes flying open, body phasing through the bed as he rolled upwards, his children were screaming but why-- There was nothing beneath his feet, the floor had disappeared, their room was crumbling, the girls holding onto each other as a split cracked through their home, and he found himself falling.Â
Hands grasped, catching splintered wood and shattered flooring, he screamed their names in gasps as his mind attempted to work out what he was doing, and as he released, he fell through a new hole of his own creation. He came up on the slanted, crumbling incline that was once a bedroom floor, skidding before tumbling down into the wall below. As he looked, he stood up against the wall, coughing from dust as another rumble erupted from the area around his home.
He could remember nothing but desperation, fear, panic-- And ultimately, failure. He could remember the crumpled body, crushed between a bed frame on a dresser as he climbed through falling debris, as a wheezing voice, crying out steadily still. Daddy, Daddy... With a strength he never knew he had, he tore that bed out of the way, pulling one daughterâs broken body to his arms, as he scavenged for the other--
He never wanted to remember that face, that pain, the screeching, gouged sockets, bleeding heads, limbs twisted maliciously and mangled... Ribs breaking through skin, smashed, crushed-- His second daughter was a mess, she wouldnât survive, and the house was about to come down. He took both into his arms, out of the house, to lay them into the dust and dirt of his battered, broken home...
As he looked around, he never saw his wife, her body, any rescue workers, just a slowly gathering crowd, cheers and shouts-- Why were they cheering? It could remember the smell of dust, of broken wood and the sound of his crumbling home, were they not blind? Could they not see his children, his wife where was she... And as his vision rose, the outline of a hero, standing amidst the rubble of his broken home, Villain in hand.
That was the point of black out, of nothing but bits and scraps of throwing himself at the âheroâ, trying to pummel him, yelling and screaming until his throat threatened collapse. Scraps of an arrest, bodies taken, him taken, to calm, to escort, to offer condolences and therapy options and what would any of this do? Bring them back? Bring back his wife and children? His home he spent years on?
He was released, and he was no longer the man behind the counter, but the man slumped over the counter. Night after night of intense, heavy drinking, night after night of guilty and pain and hatred, all until that voice came to him. That voice that reverberated through his spine, that jarred him from the very darkness that had consumed him. The voice that had given him light again.
He was a man with smooth words and a clear goal, he was a man with a job for him, and he was the one to pick him up off of the ground, dust him off, and set him straight. If it had never been for that, Kurogiri would never be here, he would never have made it so far without drinking himself to death...
Palms flat against the bar top, he jars from his memories with a distant look on his face, a lack of comprehension for the life around him, just enough to know that a few of the members were chattering to themselves about what was to be done next. A light situation in the darkness, a momentary reprisal of the world heâd fell from, and why this was so important now. Keeping their rag tag family together...
Growing stronger...
A thunk caught his attention, drawing him out of his memory the rest of the way. Someone had kicked the counter, and a frame had slid to fall on itâs back against the shelving under the bar. As he crouched, he set the frames back right, the one that tipped and the other before it could. There were two pictures, one of his family, his children, his wife, an old battered picture... And one of a silver haired boy
The one that fell... He picked it up brushing his thumb against the dusty surface of the glass.
Their meeting was so simple... Such a young thing, All For One had such hopes for the boy... But he was developmentally drawn in, he was so scared of everything... Especially himself. The way those hands had looked, so bitten and mangled, scabbed and split and cracked as though the child had tried to eat away his own fingers to stop the harm he caused... Every last aspect of this boy had broken his heart, through and through, even just the first time he had met him.
All For One was busy a majority of the days that would pass, but perhaps that was with good reason, as he always left Shigaraki with him, and Kurogiri spent this time with this child on his hip, teaching him everything he could. Of course it started small, figuring out that quirk, training Tomura the basics, how to hold silverware and get dressed. It ached his heart, that youth that he had come into knowing in such a poor state.
That young life, so battered, so easily charging for him to only work harder towards AFOâs entire plan... But he treated him as his own child, bathed him, dressed him, fed him, taught him basics and everything he could, to grow the best that he could. Maybe he had babied him... Maybe he had coddled him, but even now as he stared at that photograph, a hand came to press over his heart, to suppress the ache these days had brought him...
Tomura was an adult now... But he still saw that young, scared child there, acting as tough as he can, wanting nothing more than to prove himself worthy...
âHey, Black Mist-- You alive down there?â A voice called over the counter, and so Kurogiri would rise, bringing that frame with him as he set it against the counter behind him, his gaze faltering towards the direct of Shigarakiâs room. All for one person, all for that child, that brazen idiot he had seen to for so many years... All for him, and he would see that was how this ended...
âYes, Mr. Spinner, my apologies. What can I do for you?â
