The Emperor's Dragon II

Backstory

Saitsu was awake when Kurogiri's warp gate appeared, but he had been lying, fully covered in his bed to give the impression that this was just another night. For everyone else, the guards, the prisoners, it was just another night. For him...

When his parents had found out he was quirkless, they'd been horrified. It had led to what had seemed to be an endless round of visits to Doctor's who got increasingly fringe. The initial diagnosis was nothing, Saitsu remembered it somewhat fondly, compared to what happened afterwards. The number of things his parents had inflicted upon him in an effort to 'awaken' a quirk. They'd tried everything - diet, lifestyle, drugs, treatments and even an operation on his foot which removed his little toe... Nothing worked.

He hadn't really understood what was happening at the time. He just knew his parents were yelling at each other a lot... and him. He knew it was because he was quirkless but he hadn't really known what that meant. Not really, not in the way he'd seen later.

Eventually his parents hadn't thrown him out but they had then focused on his younger sister. She'd been born when he was about six, and when he was ten and she was four, right on schedule, her quirk had appeared.

At that point, his parents, who hadn't been paying much attention to him, paid absolutely no attention to him. It didn't matter what he did. He could have gotten straight As and they wouldn't have noticed. He could have just not gone to school, and they wouldn't have noticed. There was a place set for him at the table and they never said anything to begrudge his presence in the house but he was the second child.

Until he'd met All For One... Saitsu couldn't remember exactly what he'd been doing. He knew he was meant to be in school but he hadn't been bothered about going. He went a couple of times a week, enough to know what assignments were due and then he made sure to hand them in but beyond that, there was no point in going. He'd been fighting. He remembered that clearly. When his opponent didn't have a stupidly strong quirk then he was more than their match. He hadn't had any martial arts training. What he'd learned, he had learned from street scrapping and while Saitsu wasn't the toughest, he wasn't on the bottom of the pile either. His opponents said he was tenacious.

In the last fight he hadn't realised they were being watched, until a man clapped. The others, those he'd been fighting scattered. Saitsu didn't know why he'd stayed but he'd turned to look at the man and that was the first time he laid eyes on All For One. At the time, he was wearing a white, unbuttoned shirt with suit pants. His golden eyes had sparkled with mirth and his white hair was swept back.

Saitsu hadn't know anything about clothing or anything then but the way the man carried himself told him that he was rich, and that he wasn't just a mildly successful street punk or a Yakuza. He was something else, something different.

"Most impressive," All For One had said. He'd even sounded sincere. "But is this really what you want to do with your life?"

It was the first time anyone had ever asked him that question and while Saitsu knew he should have been insulted, he was actually intrigued. He'd never thought about it but the instant the question was asked he knew the answer was no. Even as he thought that his mind traced his likely future.

It didn't look good.

"Yeah, well what else am I going to do?" Saitsu had asked a bit belligerently.

Even if he wanted to change his future, it wasn't likely that he could.

"You could work for me," All For One had offered.

Saitsu knew he'd just stared, thinking that the man wanted him to be a thug.

All For One had read his thoughts. He hadn't really but Saitsu knew that the boss knew people, and knew what they thought. "Not as a thug," All For One had reassured him. "I rather thought you would be a good police officer," he suggested.