Chapter Text
Izuku learned real quick that not all men are created equal. It was a cruel truth, but a truth nonetheless. That truth had been beaten into his head both figuratively and literally. Ever since he had turned four years old, the greenette had been bullied and ridiculed by everyone in some fashion. Sometimes, it was verbal assault; other times, it was adults dismissing his complaints or turning a blind eye, and sometimes, he was outright attacked and physically abused for being a “defective relic of the past.”
Not even home was safe anymore. While Inko Midoriya had tried to be supportive of her son, he eventually became too much of a hassle and has developed some nasty tendencies over the past year. It certainly wasn’t easy with his father Hisashi leaving when he was first diagnosed as quirkless. Still, things seemed to escalate rapidly once he entered Aldera for no discernible reason.
Izuku was left asking himself why he was treated so poorly as he scrambled out of the school’s front doors. The words of his former childhood friend still ring in his mind: “Take a swan dive off the roof and hope for a quirk in your next life, Deku.”
“I’ll show you, Kacch– Katsuki,” he mumbled as he dug around the puddle to find his analysis notebook. “I’ll get into U.A. and become a hero, quirk or no quirk.” The viridian-haired boy finally found and grabbed his notebook, but he felt something brush against his ring finger while bringing it up. Only now did he notice what looked like the corner of a thick book jutting out from under the mud at the bottom of the puddle.
Having his interest piqued, Izuku immediately returned and dug through the puddle to expose more of the odd book. How long has this thing been here for it to be buried like this? He thought to himself as he exposed the bottom corner and started to pull. A better question, I guess, is who misplaced it so long ag- “ACK!”
The boy tumbled backward onto his behind as the book came loose all at once. Regaining his train of thought, he picks up the book from his chest, stands up, and looks at the cover while walking home.
Upon examining the book further, Izuku noted how ancient it honestly looked. Weirdly enough, the language on the front was foreign to him, but he could still understand the title as the word “Necronomicon.”
A bit ominous, but there’s not much that could get worse.
It seemed to be a leather-bound tome, and that’s nothing to say about its size. It looked and felt to be a thousand pages easily. Despite its appearance giving off an ancient vibe, it was in pristine shape.
“How did something hold up for even more than a few hours submerged in the muddy water…?” Izuku questions as he finally opens the book. He couldn’t finish his thought before being blasted by a wave of purple energy, knocking him unconscious.
//
When he woke, the greenette found himself in some void. Looking around, all he could see was a vast expanse of darkness with a gray floor. Weirdly enough, despite no light or heat source, the void felt warm, almost like a welcoming hug. Shaking the minor headache away, Izuku stood up and tried to explore. Where am I? What is this place?
“Welcome to the Spirit Plane, young Izuku Midoriya,” a smooth, gentle voice calls out from behind the green-haired boy. Turning around with a start, he peers his head up to meet the gaze of a woman about a foot taller than him.
The voice continues, “My name is Libitina Varon, and I was the keeper of the Necronomicon before you. You’re okay, dear, I promise. I placed a part of my soul within the tome so that only those pure of heart may claim the relic.”
“I’m sorry, keeper? Claim?” Izuku responded, flabbergasted. His eyes blew wide open, and he was sure he’d have sweaty and shaky palms if he could feel them. Come to think of it, he couldn’t feel his body despite being able to see it and move around. He returned his attention to Libitina in front of him. “I-I haven’t made any real claim to this book; I just found it and took it w-with me to study it. B-besides, there would be way more useful people it could go to than a quirkless Deku.”
Without warning, Izuku felt a sudden surge in the warmth surrounding him. It took a second to register, but Libitina was hugging him.
She whispered in his ear, “I chose you, Izuku. I’ve been searching through the eyes of the book for thousands of years, waiting for someone who both needed this power and was worthy of it.” She pulled away and placed her soft hands on his shoulders, easing all the stress in Izuku’s mind.
“I’m sorry if this isn’t something you expected or wanted, but I can feel that you were meant to have this power, to become the next great Necromancer.”
It doesn’t take long after that declaration for a few tears of relief to drip onto the warm gray floor of what Izuku has gathered to be the Spirit Plane. “N-necromancer? D-doesn’t that involve, you know… death? Killing and bringing back the dead?”
Libitina chuckled at his question. “Technically, yes, but after my awful mentor passed and gave me the Necronomicon, I vowed to use its power for good and to be ethical and kind with it. At its core, Necromancy is communicating with the dead and using magic that can affect the living and the dead, but it is not good or evil by nature. It is a neutral power, and the wielder of said power is what determines its purpose in the world. For millennia, it was almost exclusively used by evil and corrupt individuals. I changed that.
“Though I didn’t like it, I was revered as a goddess in what you call Rome. I protected the world from evil forces and only rose the dead when necessary and with explicit consent. When I finally died, I used a fraction of my soul to enchant this book so that only one with a pure, incorruptible heart may see it and claim the power to continue my legacy.
“I can feel that within you, Izuku. You are worthy of wielding the great power of Necromancy to protect the world once again.”
Libitina swore if this child’s jaw could drop more than it already had, it would break through the ground. Those green eyes sparkled with a determination she had never seen in her entire life. Despite that, she also saw the bittersweet tears start to flow.