Chapter Text
Izuku Midoriya was four years old when he discovered not everyone was born equal.
He was six when he discovered that he was smarter than the average person, and decided to rethink the previous statement because maybe the universe gave him intelligence to make up for his lack of quirk.
He was eight years old when he became a vigilante.
He didn't do it alone. No child, no matter how smart they were, could have done all of that alone. He needed support, training, and funding.
He had support from strangers, people he barely knew, people who were probably using him for their own gain. But he didn’t care. As long as the outcome ended up the same, they could try whatever they wanted. (They never succeeded, anyways.) He never told his mom about anything, instead choosing to let her be peacefully oblivious so that she wouldn’t worry.
He trained off of online courses, teaching himself important skills such as coding, hacking, fighting, and defense. It was hard and grueling, and sometimes felt impossible, and he could only do it while he was locked in his room or when he was at daycare and the supervisors didn’t care what he was doing. He also got advice from the strangers who chose to help him. He learned about building integrity and architecture, and how to tell if a natural disaster was coming. At first he tried to focus mostly on learning natural-disaster-based things, since that was what he had planned to do, but he’d figured that it couldn’t hurt to take some self-defense classes either.
For the money, he babysat, worked odd jobs, and helped out at stores, while he was also supposed to be in daycare. It might have been surprising that he could make almost 110,000 yen* from just that, but apparently people would pay a lot to have you babysit their kid if you said you had a mental quirk that could allow you to watch their kid and keep an eye on them.
Of course, he didn’t. In fact, he didn’t have a quirk at all. (That technically meant he couldn't really be a vigilante, but he figured the police wouldn't care much about that difference.)
But he had smarts, he was kind, and the parents liked him, even if he did look a little small.
At the age of seven, having saved enough money, he started the classes, created fake social media accounts under the name of Small_Might, and still worked seven different jobs a week.
All while still going to school.
School didn't matter so much, now. When he had first made the decision of going into "vigilantism", school had been the one place he didn't feel confident in. The one place that made him doubt himself. But as his confidence grew, so did his indifference to the taunts, threats, and attacks.
At school, he was known as Deku, the useless kid. He was consistently picked on by his former best friend, Kacchan, and his followers. He didn’t mind that much, because it helped him study their skills, but he thought Kacchan should know that quirkless didn’t mean useless. He knew Kacchan was supposed to be smart, unlike the others, who just did whatever their explosive ringleader said.
Izuku had, long ago, realised that in the age of quirks, some people really did use their intelligence less. They chose to rely on power instead, using brute force to push their way through anything. Those kinds of people, if they were heroes, tended to only become sidekicks. That was why his favorite hero was Eraser Head, who had caught his eye when browsing through an Underground Hero forum.
After watching one blurry video, he’d seen that the hero seemed to mostly rely on his capture scarf rather than his quirk. He hadn’t been able to pinpoint the hero’s quirk, if he had one, but he had noticed that the opponent hadn’t used their quirk either. But after some extensive digging, he’d found a few more videos, and that had been enough for him to piece together the quirk, which Izuku called Erasure. It allowed Eraser Head (the name suddenly made sense) to nullify the opponent’s quirk, as long as it wasn’t a Mutant-class quirk.
All that did, though, was level the playing field. Eraser Head had to rely on his own abilities and the capture scarf to win fights.
Yes- All Might was still amazing, but unattainable. His fighting style consisted mostly of punches and yelling "SMASH". Eraser Head, on the other hand… The scarf was currently too hard to get, but the idea of having a support item that you were proficient at was not a bad idea…
And that was why Izuku eventually trains himself in every weapon possible, before settling on chains that he could use in a similar fashion to Eraser Head's capture scarf. The chains had hooks on the ends, too, which would prove useful. And they could be wrapped around anything, which would help with wreckage control.
He also ended up creating his multi-purpose toolkit. It had his chains, more weapons, protective gear for any occasion, extra food, things to comfort victims, and more useful equipment that he thought might need. It all wrapped around his waist, in order to give him easy access.
The toolkit had another function. It hid away all his main weapons so his mom didn't worry. He loved his mom, and he knew she would be protective, like any decently-sane parent, so he only told her that he wanted to get a job for practice for the future. He never acted like he had given up his dream of becoming a hero, and the only indication that anything had changed was the recent domination of Eraser Head merch in his room.
When he turned eight, he was ready to start.
His birthday had passed fairly uneventfully, like every year before it, but Izuku was excited. It was the year that he was going to make his "vigilante" debut.
His birthday had come on a Saturday, and his mom had taken a day off from work to celebrate. They had eaten All Might cake (because nobody knew what Eraserhead looked like) and his mom had bought him a new All Might figurine. He knew money was tight, so he hadn't asked for anything, but his mom had still gotten him the present. And of course, she knew him best- despite the large number of figures he had, any hero merchandise, especially an action figure, made him happier than almost anything.
It made him wonder if she'd noticed the bruises that he'd used to come home from daycare with. Noticed the dull look in his eyes whenever he'd had a bad day. Noticed that he had changed, recently.
Probably. She always knew what to do to him to make him feel better when he'd needed it. Maybe she was just pretending that she didn't notice. Maybe she was just too tired to notice.
Or maybe she didn't know at all, and just got lucky occasionally. That would explain how she never questioned his late hours at night, his "shopping trips," his lies about Kacchan and his friends.
His mom was always too busy working to be at home to take care of him, but he didn't blame her. They would have been living on the streets a long time ago if it weren't for her.
Anyways, Aldera was the cheapest school he could go to, and they didn't have money to move. Besides, things had gotten better recently! He'd gotten the teacher to start noticing him and the bullying after he'd threatened to sue the school for negligence!
But why didn't his mom know that he was training all the time and working all the time? Why did she never notice that there was extra money in her purse?
Was she building up a case against the school and his bullies, so that was why she was never around? Did she believe that he could take care of himself, and decide to trust him?
Maybe he was just fooling himself, being "annoyingly hopeful and so unrealistic", as Kacchan put it.
Either way, it didn't matter to him, and it wouldn't matter to the people he saved, if he saved anyone.
He felt apprehensive. When he finally went out for the first time, would he save anyone? Would he be able to help? Or would he just get in the way? He'd have liked to believe that the training he'd done would come in handy, but what if he just froze? Couldn't do anything? What if he ran into a villain? He didn't want to hurt them. He only wanted to help.
But he wouldn't help by just doubting himself. He had to believe he could so something.
And that was what got him to start.