Chapter Text
Humanity is no stranger to war.
From the pre-quirk era, humans have tried to rip each other apart over a multitude of things, including race and religion, territory and politics, economics and revolution. When the first quirked individuals were born, of course, the focus shifted to those with superhuman powers. Shock, followed by mass panic over what this development would mean for society, led to scientific experimentation and ostracization.
Next came war. Two quirk wars, in fact. The effects were as devastating as they were widespread. But as quirked individuals slowly grew in number until they outnumbered those without, these ideas faded away, the wars a distant memory— a few pages out of a world history textbook, and nothing more.
Right?
To the public eye, maybe.
But if you were to look deeper, underneath the seemingly calm surface of modern society, you’d see the resentment that’s been marinating for years and years. You’d see the anger, the pride, the greed, and the product of it all:
The Esoteric Wars.
Fought behind closed doors and in alleyways and on newspaper pages and over secure telephone wires, there’s no public conflict in the Esoteric Wars. Espionage, planning, propaganda, covert assassinations… These tools are easy to hide from the citizens of Japan. The feuds are small, and private, and pass right under the noses of the public without alerting them to the fear and danger and distrust that’s constantly brewing around them, nor the subliminal messages they receive on the daily that aim to shift their views.
Izuku never had the luxury of ignorance, not since his father Hisashi had introduced him to the rest of the higher-ups in his organization.
A few months after his tenth birthday, Hisashi had told little Izuku about the people he worked with.
“We fight for a just cause,” he’d said. “We’re going to change the world. You might not get it now, but you’ll understand when you grow up.”
He didn’t. He really, really didn’t understand.
Because even by age twelve, he still couldn’t see how monitoring, conspiring against, and killing those who didn’t have a certain type of quirk was ‘just’.
‘Blades kept sharp, blades kept hidden.’
The Central Organization for Meta Emitter-Type Supremacy, commonly called METS, said this often. It was their way of referencing quirks: emitter types are the only acceptable quirks.
“Mutant quirks make you a freak,” they’d say. “Being able to transform makes you unnatural. Not having a quirk at all makes you feeble.” And thus, “the only suitable quirk is invisible but strong— able to be hidden when it’s not in use. An emitter-type. Blades kept sharp, blades kept hidden.”
Hisashi was strong. That much was for certain. Izuku had known this from a young age— his father was lean, agile, intelligent, and he could breathe fire on top of it all. He was also an excellent liar. Nobody batted an eye when he introduced Izuku as a genius with an analysis quirk. Why would they?
Hisashi was good at lying to his colleagues, yes, but it didn’t stop there. He was good at lying to his son, too. It had taken Izuku all of sixteen months to realize what was really happening; to realize what he was truly fighting for.
All of the people he’d swiftly stolen life from, all of the deleterious information he’d passed from hand to hand, all of the reports he’d given and the orders he’d followed blindly— none of it was making the world a better place. None of it was for the promised ‘greater good’.
No… Izuku turned twelve with the knowledge that he’d only caused hurt and suffering for the past two years of his life.
Indoctrination is a powerful thing.
And when he found out that Hisashi brought him into the group so readily due to the fact that he saw his own son as ‘expendable’ because of his quirklessness? When he realized that to Hisashi, he was nothing more than a pawn, a young malleable mind, capable of attaining reach the adults in the organization never could?
That hurt more than anything else.
But then, Hisashi was assassinated, and Izuku’s world shifted.
Chizome was Izuku’s anchor, or the closest thing he had to one. He worked with Izuku’s father but Izuku liked him far better than Hisashi.
Chizome was honest. He was unflinchingly brutal with his words, never holding back and saying what others wanted to hear.
Izuku liked that. It was a direct contrast from the pretty lies Hisashi filled his head with.
Chizome always told him, with a sad, crooked smile:
“If you ever get the chance to leave this hellhole, grab it with both hands and don’t let go. You have your training, and you have your brain. Don’t rot away fighting for a cause you don’t believe in. Don’t be like me.”
He seemed fond of Izuku; they often had late-night talks about anything and everything. Chizome rarely talked about his missions, his assassination projects, but when he did it was with a note of exhaustion. Of regret. Not that he killed, per say, but because his reasons for doing so weren’t his own and maybe never would be.
He never expanded on how he ended up with METS, so Izuku never asked.
There was a story, one he told Izuku often.
It began with a tiny child, young and ignorant to the intricacies of life. They were a pure soul, a bleeding heart, and the quirk they were born with allowed them to shift into any form they desired. They weren’t yet old enough to communicate properly, but they never needed to. They had no friends, they had no family, and they had no name.
Then, one day, they came across another child in the forest— a little girl named Jun, and her hunting dog An’nai. Jun was grateful to make a new friend, and the nameless child was glad they had someone to stay with. The child turned into a dog to play with An’nai, and turned into a bird to stretch their wings, and turned into a monkey to hug Jun when nights got cold.
But as winter came, Jun and An’nai struggled to find food. When An’nai sat on the brink of starvation, unable to find food for herself, let alone for Jun, the child did the only thing they could think of: they turned into a slab of meat.
As an inanimate, dead thing, the child would never be able to turn back into a human. Jun wept for her friend, but in the end she had no choice. She let An’nai eat the meat, but it couldn’t sustain the dog for long, and her death was quickly followed by Jun’s.
“If the child had known what was happening, they could’ve turned into many other things to help their new friends,” Chizome would remind him. “But the child had no understanding of the world around them. Always remember, Little Sun: with some communication, the child could’ve saved all three of them. This world is cruel and often nonsensical. In order to survive, you need a full understanding of any given situation, and for that, you need communication.”
Izuku clung to every last one of Chizome’s words.
Was he turning himself into a slab of meat, only to get eaten, useless in the end? What was he fighting so hard for? The more he thought about it, the more it felt like a useless cause.
He’d just die, sooner or later, without really having helped anyone at all.
And then, his anchor was lifted, and Chizome went missing in action, and Izuku was swept away by change.
It was simple, really. His father was dead, and the only person he trusted was gone. The tides were turning against the METS, due to the temporary peace treaty between the other quirk supremacy groups who aimed to take down the most dangerous of them.
It wasn’t a hard choice for Izuku to defect and join the winning side. Emitter quirks, mutant quirks, transformation quirks, no quirks at all… Izuku had long since reached the point of apathy to such conflict. Each group he traveled with ended up hurting people anyway.
At that point, one thing mattered to Izuku, and that was survival.
He’d traveled far and wide and stayed where he could, adjusting his views based on who he was around. He could never hold tightly to an ideal, not when someone around him was bound to kill him for it. He took many names for himself, and he never forgot a single one.
Sides didn’t matter to him anymore. He just followed those favored by fortune.
It didn’t last long, though. Tensions slowly subsided as the figureheads of each organization were cut down by assassins, and things fell apart slowly as if poisoned by decay.
And finally, Izuku took Chizome’s advice: he saw a way out, and he took it.
He’d settled in the abandoned bunker that had been the base of a mercenary group he used to travel with. It was surrounded by a yard filled with scrap metal, which he sold for money. Even without his makeshift and slightly-illegal job, he had no issues with food— stealing and pickpocketing had nothing on the routine espionage missions and assassinations he used to perform.
The medical supplies stored in the bunker by the mercenary group were put to good use as well: the chronic joint pain that came with his daily training with METS was held at bay by strong painkillers each morning and night, his numerous flesh wounds treated until they were nothing more than faint scars.
And when a vigilante stumbled into the scrapyard, bleeding from a stab wound, he helped her inside and patched up her wounds and let her stay the night.
What he didn’t expect was—
“Little Sun?”
She was the first to recognize him since Chizome had disappeared.
“It’s been a while since I’ve heard that name. Do you know of me?”
‘That name’, given to him by Hisashi. The man had been known as Dragon to many, and he’d bestowed the name Little Sun upon Izuku— small, but bright.
He’d thought only Hisashi’s co-workers knew that name.
“Nothing more than whispers, rumors. Small, green, ruthless. That kind of thing. Weren’t you with METS?”
Izuku had only blinked dully. “At one point.”
“And then?”
“I was on most sides of the war at one point in time or another.”
“...Right.”
Izuku had tilted his head. “And you?”
She’d smiled sadly. “I was part of the team that aimed for quirk equality. We were destroyed pretty quickly.”
Izuku had nodded slowly. “The big groups all believed in the superiority of someone or other. Equality… I’ve never even heard of your group.”
She’d snorted, then winced at the pain it brought. “That’s because most of us died just weeks into the tensest months. Courtesy of Dragon and his buddies.”
Izuku had hesitated. “I probably killed some of them.”
“I know.”
“You’re not angry?”
“...I am. But in war, we’ve all done things that we’re not proud of.”
Izuku had always known that better than most.
“Besides, you’re here, patching me up. May I ask why, by the way?”
“I’ve only just made my home here. And you were bleeding out, and I have medical supplies. It wasn’t a reach. Plus, my blood type is the universal donor, so I can do transfusions if needed.”
She’d given him a look like he’d completely missed the point.
“But I’m a vigilante,” she’d pointed out, looking down at the remains of her dark outfit and then to her weapons stacked in the corner of the room.
“Exactly. Villains hate you, heroes want to arrest you. You don’t have anyone on your side.”
“And you know how that feels?”
“No,” Izuku had admitted. “I changed sides many times, and had many allies. I just followed the tide. But that doesn’t mean I would wish that kind of life on anyone else. I can admire those who do what they believe in, unwaveringly, even when it may lead to their downfall. Those people have a kind of strength I never did.”
The woman had hesitated, then told him he could call her Malady.
“Like a disease?”
She’d nodded, and, well—
“Does it have to do with your quirk?” Some old habits never die.
“Bingo.” She didn’t expand, so Izuku didn’t ask.
“Hey, Little Sun. Or do you want me to call you something else? Does that name bother you?”
He’d shrugged. “No. It’s just a name.”
A nod. “If I see anyone else who doesn’t have a place to go for help, can I send them here?”
Izuku had studied her. The way she held herself in an unknown environment, her eye movements, her careful words… She was clearly intelligent. She wouldn’t send anyone untrustworthy to the boy she knows from war legends, someone she knows is skilled and could cause trouble for her if he wanted to.
“Yes.”
So, from that day on, Izuku’s bunker became something of a sanctuary, a safe haven. Criminals, refugees, outcasts, and ex-soldiers— everyone was treated humanely as long as they left their violence and hatred and hostility outside, and entered the bunker in peace.
And then, one day, a familiar man in a tattered scarf with honest, piercing eyes had knocked on his door and smiled his crooked smile when Izuku opened it.
A beat. “Chizome.”
“...I’d heard there was a ‘Little Sun’ helping people who stumbled across his place. Figured it couldn’t be anyone else.”
Izuku had just rested his head on the man’s chest, trying not to cry from relief.
Chizome had set up his things and spent the next few days telling Izuku about his time in the prison of an opposing group, and the torture and interrogation they’d performed on him in an attempt to draw out the plans of his higher-ups. In return, Izuku told him all about his escape and his days spent traveling and learning from strangers. They fell into a routine, helping each other with training and switching off sleeping and eating schedules. They had each other’s back, and they helped those who weren’t as fortunate as them, those who had nobody else.
Things were good.
And then they’d saved an underground hero brought to their doorstep by a frantic vigilante. It hadn’t seemed like a big deal at the time.
But the following week, Izuku had opened the door to hear a chirpy voice speaking in a rather polite tone.
“An acquaintance of mine sent me, so I do hope I have the right place.”
Izuku had dropped his gaze downward, eyes landing on a short white rodent, standing on both hind legs with their hands clasped behind them. The suit they’d been wearing was elegantly pressed, and their eyes gleamed with intrigue.
“Is there a ‘Little Sun’ here?”