Chapter Text
Summer has arrived, and with it, came sweltering temperatures that guaranteed heatwaves, sweat-drenched clothes, and the understandable need to turn on the air conditioner set at the lowest temperature and the fastest fan speed.
As the morning sun rose over the coastal city of Gardenia, not even the bracing sea winds did much to cool the citizens as they rushed from one place to another. In a townhouse on an unremarkable street, the air conditioning worked in overdrive to keep the residents protected from heatstroke. Upstairs in one of the bedrooms, a teenage girl slept soundly, chilled by the frigid air circulating her messy room. Her pet puppy twitched in his basket, also in deep slumber, impervious to the footsteps approaching the room.
“Bloom,” came a voice as the door opened. A steadfast woman with short brown hair entered, sighing with fond exasperation when her daughter didn’t even stir. She went over to her bed, and gently shook her sleeping form, “Bloom, it’s almost nine, time to wake up.”
This time, she got a response, “Mm…five more minutes, Mum.”
The mother tried again, “You’re going to miss breakfast. Your father is making his famous eggs benedict and it’s all going to be gone if you don’t get up.”
Just like that, Bloom was up, “Shit! No! Not again!”
It was almost comical to see the redhead stumble over her feet as she rushed out of the room, waking up the puppy in the process. Her mother huffed, heading to the door, “You better come along, Kiko. You don’t want to miss out on the fresh carrots from the garden now, do you?”
Judging from how fast the puppy bounded out of the door too, Kiko most certainly didn’t want to.
Being completely ordinary in a society that prided the extraordinary over everything else was a guaranteed death sentence.
Midoriya Izuku knew this all too well.
While 80% of the Japanese population had superpowers, known as quirks, Izuku had the terrible misfortune to be born part of the shrinking minority that didn’t have a quirk. Known as the quirkless, these were usually the elderly who were born in a time when the percentage of the quirked and quirkless was more balanced. Izuku’s diagnosis was almost unheard of in current times. Some say that he is a medical anomaly, since both of his parents had quirks. More will say that he is a defect, someone with a disability or a disease with no cure.
The bottom line is, Izuku is an outcast, and the people around him treated him as such.
“Nice wheels, where did you get it? Oh wait, don’t tell me, some garage sale?”
Bloom rolled her eyes.
“Even if I did, it’s none of your fucking business, Mitzi. You don’t see me asking where you got that new scooter. But let me guess, your sugar daddy used his illegal money to spoil you even more than you already are?”
Mitzi spluttered, “How dare you?! All of daddy’s money is perfectly legal!”
“Glad that you actually know what ‘legal’ is,” Bloom drawled, already kicking off, “Try to adhere to traffic rules, Mitzi. Just because you rule the school doesn’t mean that you rule the streets too. If you get run over by a bus, I’m not coming to your funeral.”
Leaving a steaming snob behind, Bloom cycled down the swelteringly-hot street, desperate to get to the city park where cool shade beckoned.
“Just do us all a favour and jump off a roof, quirkless freak! No one fucking cares if you died. Maybe you’ll even get a quirk in your next life!”
“And then what? I die and you get charged with abetting a suicide. You should be smarter than this, Kacchan,” Izuku muttered to himself as he fished his burnt notebook out of the koi pond and shook as much of the water out as possible.
It was already a bad day to begin with. His homeroom teacher had outed his desire to apply to Yuuei, privacy laws be damned. His entire class jeered him for it, and then Kacchan happily went to the ultimate low with no hesitation on his conscience.
It was just like a typical school day, only a hundred times worse.
Thinking how he was going to salvage his notebook, Izuku wandered off from his usual route home towards a heavily-graffitied underpass. His infamous muttering came back in full-force, so much so that he failed to hear a nearby drain cover rattle.
It burst off with a loud clang, as a monstrous being made entirely up of slime emerged like some nightmare from the depths of hell.
“A medium-sized meat sack!” it screeched in joy, rising upon a paralysed Izuku, “You’ll do just fine!”
Gardenia Park was located somewhat far from the coastline, and it was a bit of an understatement to call it a park. If anything, it resembled more like a small forest within the city, with plenty of maintained paths that were well-lit at night.
This was Bloom’s favourite place in the entire city, save for her townhouse. While many residents came here for all manner of activities, the park had plenty of quiet, obscure corners where those who fancied some peace could hide away from prying eyes.
For Bloom, hers was a tree stump some distance away from the paths. It had once been a towering oak tree, but termites and other infestations had done away with greatness, and the city decided to cut it down before it toppled onto some unsuspecting joggers. On the bright side, it did give Bloom a good place to sit down.
Setting her bicycle on the ground, Kiko hopped out of the basket and wandered around the grass. He had come to this part of the park multiple times with his owner, so it was familiar territory for him.
Meanwhile, Bloom sat down on the stump, unzipping her bag and pulled things out. First a tablet with an accompanying stylus, and then a ziplock bag containing a bunch of apples bought fresh from the farmers’ market. Her favourite fruit of all time, Bloom set the bag to her side, while she booted up her tablet. She was working on a new piece to add to her college portfolio, and the lush green around her really helped get the inspiration working.
Making strokes with her pen, Bloom fished out an apple and took a bite out of it. With a gentle breeze blowing, and Kiko off exploring the grass, this was a moment of peace she absolutely treasured.
To really describe the past few minutes, one could only point to a roller-coaster and deem it as the only suitable metaphor.
Izuku had almost died. He was overcome by the slime villain and nearly drowned amidst the folds of foul-smelling, viscous matter. There was nothing to grip onto, his fingers simply slipping through the slime. The villain had tried to take over his body, use it as nothing more than a vessel to blend in with the general populace.
Until out of the blue, All Might burst into the underpass and blew away the villain into smithereens with one overpowered punch.
Izuku had passed out, and woke up to the Symbol of Peace repeatedly slapping his face. It was almost enough for him to pass out again.
One autograph later, and All Might prepared to leave with the remnants of the slime villain in an emptied soda bottle. However, Izuku still had so many questions, and so like the foolish idiot he was, he grabbed onto the hero’s legs just as the man launched himself up into the stratosphere.
It was incredibly reckless, and All Might made it extremely clear as soon as he landed on the roof of an office building in downtown Musutafu. And things should have ended there, if not for the man coughing, and suddenly exploding in a cloud of steam, leaving behind a bony, emaciated figure.
Another set of screams and frantic explanations later, a massive secret was laid bare to a shocked Izuku. The true visage of All Might made the teen swear on his life to never tell anyone what he learned this afternoon. The risks were too great, the entire country could collapse if word got out.
Izuku was more than willing to carry this secret to his grave. But there was something he had always wanted from the Symbol of Peace, and now was the only chance he got.
So he asked the one question that had been weighing on his heart since he was a mere child.
“Can a quirkless person like me…become a hero like you?”
Izuku had to know. It was the one thing that had sustained him through ten years of pain, misery and torment. All Might had always proclaimed that anyone could be a hero on television, so that should be the answer.
It had to be.
“No, my boy, you can’t be a hero.”
The glass shattered.
“You don’t have the power or capabilities to back you up. You will only be a liability and detriment to heroes and civilians alike. You should have given up a long time ago, my boy. Real life is no dream. Be realistic.”
Izuku remained frozen, unblinking as All Might sauntered past him, saying something about letting security know about him and letting him down afterwards. The rooftop access door closed behind the emaciated man, leaving behind a teen whose very reason for living lay in pieces at his feet.
He did not cry, he was too much in shock to do that.
Time became irrelevant. It could have been hours or just minutes. The shock slowly ebbed away, but in its wake came a downward spiral. Memories of Kacchan, his mother’s tearful apologies, and All Might’s damning words screamed over one another, deafening Izuku and causing him to crumple to the concrete floor, clutching his head in phantom pain. It became a hurricane of noise and agony, growing harsher by the second. Cracks began to form, fissuring wider until the entire structure fell apart.
Just like that, the hurricane vanished. There was no more pain, no more noise. Just…
…nothing.
Izuku got up, sauntering over to the edge of the roof. A rusty railing with flaking paint separated him from the long way down.
Nothing could stop him at this point.
Slipping off his red high-top sneakers, Izuku put one foot on the railing, and lifted himself over. He stood precariously on the edge, his grip the only thing stopping him from tipping over into freefall.
He let go.
It was a surreal feeling to fall from a great height. Gravity pulled him down towards the advancing pavement, the wind howling in his ears. His body twisted, tumbled and spun like a ragdoll, it was all very disorientating.
The howling grew louder, and most people should know that it was not just the wind anymore. But Izuku didn’t know that, the freefall had dulled his senses. Everything was fading, his vision and his hearing. As darkness enveloped him, he just missed a burst of bright light that blotted out the spinning world around him.
“Hm…would this brush be better, or this one?”
Bloom’s art piece was coming along, but there were still the finer details to flesh out. The finished core of her apple sat to one side. She would have started on her second apple, but she was too engrossed in finishing her latest work.
“But this one is rather thin, at the same time, this one is quite broad. Mm…is there a-”
She was shaken out of her thoughts when Kiko rushed up to her, looking quite frantic and whining loudly.
“What’s wrong, Kiko?”
The puppy tugged at her sock with his teeth.
“You want me to follow you?”
Kiko bounced off further into the trees.
Bloom quickly stowed away her tablet and apples. Slinging her bag over her shoulders, she followed her puppy deeper into the park. Jumping over tree roots and fallen logs, Bloom came to a small clearing where Kiko had stopped, staring at something with trembling ears.
Bloom bit back a gasp. She rushed into the clearing, and knelt down, “Hey, are you alright? Can you hear me?”
It was a teenage male, probably around her age. He had messy forest-green hair with black highlights amidst the curls. Freckles dotted his pale cheeks, and he was dressed in a black school uniform Bloom vaguely remembered that male Japanese students wore. He didn’t have shoes, but he wore socks.
Bloom shook him, but no response. Remembering her basic first aid training from school, she checked for a pulse and breathing. The boy had both, much to her relief.
The redhead fumbled for her phone.
“Hello, 911. What’s your emergency?”
“Hi, I have an unconscious boy in Gardenia Park. I tried to wake him up, but he is unresponsive. He has a pulse and is breathing.”
“Alright, just stay there, miss. An ambulance is being dispatched to your location.”
The call ended, and Bloom put her phone away. Kiko came close, sniffing the prone teen curiously.
‘What a mess,’ she thought to herself, ‘How in the world did this happen?’
She had no answers.
To Be Continued.