Fanfic / AfO's Guide To A Peaceful Retirement

He's the emperor of the underworld. The modern Napoleon of crime. The most feared man on the face of the Earth since the Dawn of Quirks. And he's just been nailed in the face by a common street mugger trying to rob a woman at knifepoint.

Oh well. At least the would-be victim, Takahashi Inko, is pretty.

AfO's Guide To A Peaceful Retirement is a My Hero Academia Alternate Universe Fic series by ScottishSunshine beginning with All For One's relationship with the soon-to-be Midoriya Inko and following his eventual life as a husband and father. The series so far is comprised of three main stories: How Seven (7) Dead Heroes Stopped Being Bored, All For One's guide to a peaceful retirement, and All For U.A., the latter of which is active and ongoing. The series also includes fifteen companion short stories.

A currently incomplete Audio Adaptation of AFO's Guide to a Peaceful Retirement is being created by Eleanor_Elizabeth. It can be found here on Archive of Our Own and here on YouTube.

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Tropes Appearing in AfO's Guide To A Peaceful Retirement:

• Abled in the Adaptation: Eri's Quirk is used to undo Tensei's injuries, enabling him to regain his hero career.
• Abusive Parents:
  • Endeavor, as per canon—to the point that his family fled him at the first opportunity. He has a Jerkass Realization by the time Shoto is in UA but his ex-wife and children are still hesitant to interact with him again.
  • It's heavily implied Hisashi and Yoshito's parents were abusive and that Hisashi's first brush with criminality came from ending up on the streets after they fled their home, which is why he reacted so severely to Endeavor.
• Adaptation Name Change: As this series began before his name was revealed in canon, Yoichi is called Yoshito.
• Adaptational Backstory Change: As Kurogiri's identity was not revealed as of the start of this series, this Kurogiri is not Oboro Shirakumo, but instead a teenager and later young man with a bad childhood who threw his lot in with All For One for protection and stability.
• Adapted Out: Yoarashi takes Mineta's place in 1-A, and the grape boy has not made an appearance in any form.
• Anachronic Order: Downplayed. Despite chronologically starting the earliest of all the stories and thus actually being listed as the first story on the series page, How Seven (7) Dead Heroes Stopped Being Bored was released after AfO's Guide to a Peaceful Retirement, and heavily relies on its audience reading the latter first for context.
• Anti-Hero: Hisashi, eventually. He uses his remaining criminal influence and current economic power to help Endeavor's family flee from him. He also saves Captain Celebrity during the Sky Egg attack because he relates to the man's desire to return to his wife and newborn son. But Hisashi also still has no qualms using villainous tactics to get what he wants, even as what he wants becomes usually good for others.
• Bad Powers, Good People: The trope is thoroughly explored and refuted hard, as what constitutes "bad powers" is simply a cultural perception.
  • The obvious example being All For One, which is not only a powerful Quirk but whose most famous user unhelpfully used the Quirk's name as his Villain alias. Despite the fear surrounding this Quirk due to its history, the point is made that it's simply a tool like any power, with a myriad of beneficial uses—such as facilitating quick arrests without drawn-out battles and violence, aiding people with Power Incontinence or Quirks that legitimately harm their overall quality of life, and even temporarily exchanging a person's innate Quirk with a healing or regeneration Quirk to fix previously untreatable medical conditions. It also provides an unprecedented level of flexibility for Izuku's teammates. Further, Izuku's childhood proves that it also has innocent and silly uses, such as the Midoriya family's version of Capture the Flag.
  • Bakugo, of course, was given a pass on his treatment of Izuku despite his aggressive behavior, simply due to the positive perception people had of his powerful Quirk. However, his own history of behavior eventually pushes him to an identity crisis over whether he's good enough to be a hero with such an innately violent Quirk, leading to him being mentored by...
  • Shimura Tenko struggled for years to come to terms with his Disintegration Quirk, and his becoming a rescue hero was a deliberate move to prove he wasn't defined by his Quirk's destructive nature. His past struggle takes focus in the story when he witnesses his adoptive family's determination to prove that Izuku is a villain solely because of his Quirk, which feels like a personal betrayal to Tenko.
  • Endeavor, of course, inverts this, with both his fire and him being seen as heroic despite his actually abusive personality.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Veritas demands Present Mic tell him the truth regarding his feelings for Hitoshi. He gets an hours-long rant from Mic about how his beloved adorable wonderful son Hitoshi makes life better simply by existing, and all of Mic's evidence to prove it. Mic continues this even after Veritas' Quirk wears off because he's delighted someone is finally listening to him. Apparently this was very predictable to all of Mic's friends, as he also gives this rant when drunk.
• Big Damn Heroes: Ironically, Hisashi pulls this during the Sky Egg attack, taking out the "flying villain" and saving the tower's current main defense, Captain Celebrity, just before he is killed.
• Black-and-Grey Morality: Anytime Hisashi stands against villains, particularly against Dr. Garaki. His character moves increasingly towards anti-heroic, while it becomes clear that many forces in the criminal underworld have abandoned even All For One's few moral standards in his absence.
• Brick Joke: In "AFO's Guide to a Peaceful Retirement," Hisashi plays the villain in Izuku, Shouto, and Tenya's make-believe hero games by donning the persona "Alt Forty One," who can be defeated by hugs. In "All For UA" a decade later, Tenya is assigned to play the part of a villain. Cue him presenting himself to Shouto, one of the heroes in the assignment, as "Alt Forty One." In reply, Shouto deadpans, "...so what, you want me to hug you?" Alt Forty One quickly demands "SILENCE, PENGUIN."
• Broken Pedestal:
  • Izuku's admiration of heroes in general and All Might in particular helped him work through the trauma of his mother's death and the unkind response he received from school and his peers during that time. All Might's reaction once he knows of Izuku's Quirk wounds Izuku deeply.
  • The same incident causes a similar reaction in Tenko, All Might's adopted son. Tenko struggled for years with self-hatred due to what he saw as the inherently villainous nature of his Quirk and how it affected his earlier life, and it was only with his adoptive family's unconditional love and support that he overcame that. So to Tenko, his family treating another kid, who hasn't even harmed anyone, as inherently villainous for their Quirk, and then trying to rationalize the hypocrisy by implying Tenko was somehow inherently born better than Izuku, is a personal betrayal.
• Camera Fiend: Hisashi, who's so obsessed with taking pictures of every moment of Inko and Izuku's lives that Inko specifically tells Kurogiri not to let him buy another camera while she's out.
• Childhood Friends:
  • Because of Hisashi transferring Izuku out of the Aldera system and Hisashi's rescue of the Todoroki spouse and children, Izuku meets and befriends Tenya in preschool and Shoto and Shinsou in grade school.
  • In a twist, Bakugou grows up more familiar with Shoto than Izuku, owing to the aforementioned transfer and Hisashi filing restraining orders against the Bakugous. Downplayed, however, as Bakugou and Shoto aren't close. Mostly subverted with Izuku and Bakugou; the two haven't seen each other since pre-school and by the time they meet again, Izuku barely remembers him.
• Children Raise You: Played with. A significant portion of All For One's development into Hisashi Midoriya occurs prior to Izuku's birth, but it's his promise to look after Izuku after Inko's death, and his choice to prioritize Izuku over all other matters in his life, that solidifies Hisashi's decision to end his villainous career. As Izuku grows, caring for Izuku's needs forces Hisashi to socially engage with the world outside of villain circles, leading to the development of his Found Family.
• Conveniently Unverifiable Cover Story: Hisashi's cover story to the authorities who know about All For One is that he is All for One's son. Because hiding from his father involved forging his documents, there's no way to verify whether this is true. The authorities in the know accept it because they believe All For One is already dead.
• Death by Adaptation: Inko dies of cancer when Izuku is a toddler.
• Dream Reality Check: Played for laughs. When All For One's lackeys find out he's dating a completely normal woman because he actually loves her and has no strategic or outside motivations, a beat passes before one of the lackeys slaps another on the back of the head. When the second lackey turns to the first in outrage, the first can only mutter, "Okay, so this isn't a dream..."
• Doting Parent:
  • Hisashi. He firmly believes there is no one more perfect than his wife and son. As a teenager, Izuku is able to keep him in line by threatening to revoke hug privileges. Shoto and Tenya cite this as the reason they can't imagine Hisashi as a villain because the mental picture of some evil person interrupting his own evil schemes to act like a House Husband and dote over his infant child is comically ridiculous.
  • Captain Celebrity, who spends his time on stage excitedly showing everyone pictures of his wife and newborn son. Which is important as, after the venue is attacked, this motivates Hisashi's decision to save him.
  • Present Mic too; he can gush about Hitoshi for hours.
• Embarrassing Rescue: Inverted. All For One himself goes to scare a mugger out of his territory, which happens to also save the woman the mugger is menacing at the same time. The mugger then punches All For One's face so hard All For One can barely stand afterwards. The mugger flees, but the would-be victim, Inko Takahashi, is so unconvinced All For One can get up by himself that she escorts him home.
• Enemy Mine: The Vestiges hate All For One, as they dedicated their lives to fighting his criminal empire and he killed most of them. But when they see that Hitoshi is wearing a muzzle, they begin loudly and vocally declaring support for All For One—because they want him to step in and murder Hitoshi's foster family. Fourth appears to play Only Sane Man, arguing that as heroes, they shouldn't support criminal activity—only to suggest that if they call on All Might, he can legally "yeet those responsible into the sun."
  • Later, Nana is the only vestige to stay with Hisashi while the rest accompany Izuku and Hitoshi. Hisashi is busy plotting retribution on Hitoshi's caregivers, and Nana's expression is described as "gleeful."
• Entertainingly Wrong: In How Seven (7) Dead Heroes Stopped Being Bored, Nana frequently makes a variety of assumptions—Inko and All For One's relationship won't last long, Tenya's friendship with Izuku will be short-lived, Hisashi will take Izuku's Quirk, etc. She's always wrong.
• Family Man: Hisashi. He sacrificed his centuries-long career at villainy for the promise he made to his wife and for his son's happiness. He openly says he'd go to jail happily if it would improve Izuku's life in some way. He'll also go to hell and back for his adopted son, Kurogiri—though he's more Tsundere towards him—and his adopted extended family, the Yukiyamas. Importantly, it's his recognition and respect for other's devotion and love for their families that begins reawakening his capacity for empathy.
• Greek Chorus: Some vestige of the holders of One For All are evidently bound to the Quirk All For One. How Seven (7) Dead Heroes Stopped Being Bored is the story of Hisashi's and Inko's courtship and Izuku's early life framed through the vestiges acting as this.
• Hypocrite:
  • Mitsuki Bakugo initially tries to warn Inko away from dating Hisashi due to his fire breath, which she says is dangerous and villainous. Four years later, Mitsuki goes to the Midoriya apartment and demands to know why Hisashi has withdrawn Izuku from his and Katsuki's shared preschool. Hisashi pretty heavily implies it's to protect Izuku from Katsuki, and Mitsuki tries to assault him. She later has a Jerkass Realization when she learns what Katsuki was actually doing to Izuku, and blames herself for her son hurting the only child of her deceased friend.
  • All Might, Sir Nighteye, and Gran Torino spent years helping Shimura Tenko accept himself and his Quirk as not innately villainous despite its destructive potential, only to turn around and villainize Izuku for the Quirk he was born with.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: While little else in the collection of vignettes has to do with an actual guide, the chapters of All For One's guide to a peaceful retirement are all in the form of instructions and advice tips that play off the vignette's focus, such as "Pay attention to your child," "Find a fun hobby," and "Gigantomachia never counts as adult supervision."
• Irony: In a Meta-Sense: In Canon, by a titanic margin Sir Nighteye was least accepting of Izuku's status as All-Might successor out of all Izuku's mentors. In this story, out of All Might, Sir Nighteye, and Gran Torino Nighteye is the the first to feel genuine shame for his preconceived prejudice against Izuku and the first to try to make amends.
• Ironic Echo: Played for laughs. Second has a habit of sarcastically quoting Nana's Entertainingly Wrong statements whenever their wrongness is particularly blatant. He gets the most mileage out of "It'll never last" (said of Inko and All For One's relationship).
• The Lost Lenore: Inko to Hisashi.
• Love Redeems: Hisashi's love for Inko inspires him to relearn how to act like a normal person. Her dying wish, and his love for their son, motivates him to retire. It's through his relationship with them that Hisashi rediscovers his capacity for empathy, turning him from a villain to more of an Anti-Hero.
• Magnetic Hero: Mishka implies All For One was a villainous example with a proclivity for collecting "strays." Mishka isn't surprised at all when hearing about Hisashi's Found Family.
• Meaningful Rename:
  • Rei and her children change their surname from Todoroki to Yukiyama in order to hide from Endeavor.
  • Zigzagged with All For One / Hisashi. All For One makes up the name Midoriya Hisashi when introducing himself to Inko. It's significant because Hisashi was his original name before he became a villain, and his brother Yoshito thought that part of All For One was dead. When All For One fully commits to being a father and ends his villain career, he retires the name All For One and goes solely by Hisashi.
• My God, What Have I Done?: It takes some years for Katsuki to understand what he did in preschool, but when he does, the realization that he spent the last days of Auntie Inko's life burning and abusing Izuku for crying a lot while his mother was dying completely wrecks Katsuki's perception of himself and his worth as a person, let alone a hero. This follows him all the way into UA, where it becomes personal baggage he has to deal with.
• My Greatest Failure:
  • Katsuki regards bullying Izuku while his mother was dying as his deepest shame, and it's the source from which his insecurities over his own morality began. As Word of God puts it, "there's probably little worse for a would-be hero than the knowledge that you bullied a kid for crying a lot when his mother was dying of cancer."
  • Katsuki's parents regard letting the above happen as their greatest failure. For starters, they never even explained to their son that his Auntie Inko was dying, and it was his anger and confusion over not understanding Izuku's grieving behavior that toxified into bullying. Illness may have taken Inko, but the way they see it, their own poor parenting of Katsuki is what cost them a relationship with her son.
• One-Steve Limit: In a twist, Izuku comments that he should rename All For One (the Quirk), given how confusing it is to discuss since there's also All For One (the man).
• Parents as People: A reoccurring theme.
  • Hisashi was in no way a good person in his past but is trying to be better in order to be the parent Izuku needs. His villainous tendencies can still get the better of him sometimes.
  • Aizawa loves and is very supportive of his young adopted son Hitoshi but he's so protective of Hitoshi's wellbeing that he slips into openly Victim-Blaming Izuku for the "situations" that happen to him, arguing that Izuku is a danger for Hitoshi to be around. This goes so far that he tries to separate the two children by not only actively discouraging his son from being Izuku's friend but encouraging his son to exclude Izuku from activities involving the rest of their mutual friend group. This despite the fact that Izuku is the reason Hitoshi was saved from his abusive foster family and the reason Aizawa could adopt Hitoshi in the first place. His partner Hizashi eventually talks him out of it.
  • The Bakugos prove themselves to actually be quite good at parenting a young Katsuki when they're properly focused. However, they were so overcome with grief at Inko's terminal illness that it caused them to be neglectful of some of their duties as parents, such as noticing warning signs in Katsuki's behavior or explaining to him what was going on in Izuku's family. When his confusion defaulted to anger and he began to take it out on Izuku, neither of them noticed until Hisashi withdrew Izuku from his and Katsuki's shared preschool for Izuku's own protection and cut all of the Bakugos out of Izuku's life entirely. When they do realize what has happened, however, they do their best to explain to Katsuki why his behavior towards Izuku was wrong and hold themselves responsible for failing both children.
  • All Might, Gran Torino, and Sir Nighteye rescued Tenko Shimura off the street. They provide him with unconditional love and support, but their flaws still hurt him from time to time, such as when their own personal baggage causes them to treat Izuku like a villain for his Quirk after years of Tenko struggling to overcome seeing himself like a villain for his own Quirk. All Might and Nighteye eventually have a Jerkass Realization, but despite how much he and Tenko love each other, Gran Torino never backs down.
  • Discussed with Inko; Hisashi describes her as so inhumanly perfect that Rei wants to interrogate Mitsuki since he's clearly an unreliable source.
• Parental Substitute:
  • Hisashi becomes a father figure to the Yukiyama children, to the extent that as children, they and Izuku tried to set him up with Rei to make it official. It's especially prominent with Touya, who sees Hisashi as something of a role model and source of emotional support even in adulthood.
  • Despite intending to work for All For One, Kurogiri ends up functionally adopted by Inko.
• Poke the Poodle: In lieu of more villainous behavior, Hisashi takes his petty vindictive side out on business contacts he doesn't like by forcing them to look at baby pictures.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Hisashi's specialty, when he's not letting his melodramatic streak get the best of him. He frequently derides other villains for their wasteful and irrational decisions, which he equates with amateurism.
• Prequel: How Seven (7) Ghosts Stopped Being Bored is halfway between this and an Interquel, beginning several years before AfO's Guide to a peaceful retirement and concluding sometime after Izuku has befriended Shoto.
• Protagonist Journey to Villain: Inverted in the present, implied to have been played straight in the past. Hisashi was apparently at one point a well-intentioned person who tried to fight for justice and correct the corruption and cruelty of his own time by gaining power and control. However, the bitterness of the fight against the official authorities eventually drove him to extremes and then to legitimate villainy. In the present, this happens in reverse, as gaining a family motivates him to rediscover his capacity for empathy that had been jaded out of him.
• Replacement Goldfish: One of Tenko's insecurities is that he fears his family only adopted him because of who his grandmother was. This insecurity is agitated when All Might, Nighteye, and Gran Torino imply Izuku is innately villainous while Tenko is heroic solely because of who their respective grandparents were.
• Rescue Romance: Inko and Hisashi. All For One just intended to kick the crap out of a nobody thug who intruded upon his space. Instead he made himself look like an idiot, but his apparent chivalry earned him Inko's gratitude and friendship, which quickly developed into mutual romantic feelings.
• Self-Deprecation: When Nedzu and Hisashi discuss Hisashi's "father," All For One, Hisashi offhandedly mentions that Izuku wants to be a hero when he grows up.
  Nedzu: (laughing) "All For One’s grandson, a student at UA.”
  Hisashi: "I’m just glad it’s the grandson. It would be like the plot of some bad movie if it was the son.”
• Shout-Out: Inko's parents were professional cosplayers who created custom orders. Her old family photo albums show the family dressed in a variety of costumes. Most of them are of in-universe heroes, but a young Inko also dressed up as Conan from Case Closed.
• Sins of the Father: All Might, Gran Torino, and Sir Nighteye treat Izuku like a born villain for having All For One (the Quirk) and being related to All For One (the man). They even go so far as to use their influence with UA to install Shimura Tenko as an assistant teacher to monitor Izuku. Subverted with Tsukauchi, Nedzu, and the rest of the staff at UA, whose first reaction to learning about the Midoriyas was to provide support and protection due to the potentially difficult circumstances resulting from their relation to All For One.
• Slice of Life: While All For U.A. is more focused on Izuku and the cast maturing into adulthood, AfO's Guide to a Peaceful Retirement and How Seven (7) Dead Heroes Stopped Being Bored are more a collection of happenstance and meandering family anecdotes over the course of Izuku's childhood loosely focused on the change of All For One the villain into good dad Hisashi.
• Straight Man and Wise Guy: Hisashi's and Tensei's dynamic when together. It can verge into Gleeful and Grumpy Pairing when Hisashi's feeling particularly ornery.
• Strange Minds Think Alike: Though of very different subject matter, Izuku and Nedzu are briefly implied to have cultivated similar specific habits regarding the notation of their interests—Tenko once spotted a notebook on Nedzu's desk called "World Domination Vol. 2."
• Sure, Let's Go with That: When Tsukauchi and Nedzu realize the events of Izuku's kidnapping imply he stole his kidnappers' Quirk, they confront Hisashi... with condolences on their mishandling of the All For One case, as they'd never realized the man had family. Since they fully believe All For One is dead, they assume the Midoriyas are his descendants. Hisashi leans into their assumptions by claiming to be All For One's son, conveniently covering any holes they may find in his identity paper trail by preemptively admitting that yes, his documentation was forged so he could hide from his Villain father.
• The Thing That Would Not Leave: Iida Tensei will be Hisashi's best friend, whether Hisashi wants him to or not.
• Tsundere: Hisashi, especially towards Tensei and Kurogiri. He tends to brush them off and deny their friendship and/or family status, even commonly threatening to call the police on them when they barge into his home unannounced. However, he eventually admits that Tensei is his best friend and calls Kurogiri one of "his boys'' (the other being Izuku). After Kurogiri asks the Midoriyas to stand in as his family in his wedding to Mandalay, Hisashi is delighted and ecstatically insists on footing the entire bill for them.
• Undying Loyalty:
  • Hisashi to his wife Inko and his son Izuku, which forms the basis of the plot.
  • Kurogiri to Inko.
  • Gigantomachia to "Lord" (Hisashi) and "Little Lord" (Izuku).
  • Shoto, Tenya, and Shinsou to Izuku.
• What the Hell, Hero?: After everything they'd done to help him, Shimura Tenko can't believe his family is villainizing Izuku for the potentially dangerous Quirk he was born with.
• What Would X Do?: When challenged to play the villain in another Heroes vs. Villains exercise, Tenya decides he must go above and beyond to play the role of a villain and thinks about Hisashi, the former villain he knows best. Cue Tenya declaring himself "Alt Forty One."

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