Chapter Text
Izuku Midoriya was 4 when he got his quirk. He was playing heroes and villains with his best friend Kacchan at the park, when he felt some force building in him. Excitedly, he pushed, but nothing happened. ‘Oh well,’ he thought sadly. ‘But I’ll get my quirk soon, and it’ll be just as cool as Kacchan’s!’ Just then, someone ran into him, and he fell roughly to the ground.
“Deku! You’re a villain, you’re supposed to be at least a little bit difficult to catch!” It turns out the person who had run into Izuku was Kacchan, and he was now pinning the little green boy to the ground.
Izuku squirmed around to look up at Kacchan, and began to stammer out an apology, “S-sorry Kacchan, I w-”
“Why are your eyes red, Deku?!” He demanded, “Did you unlock your quirk or something?”
Izuku’s eyes widened as he continued to stare at Kacchan. “Wh-what?! I didn’t think I did anything, but that feeling I had must have been me using my quirk!” He paused, as if thinking, “Kacchan, I have a quirk!”
Kacchan let out an excited yell, and got off Izuku, game forgotten in the excitement. “Well? Are you going to try using it?”
“O-oh, right!” Izuku scrunched his face in concentration, searching for that feeling again. ‘No... no... There!’ He tugged this time, but nothing happened, at least, that he could see.
Kacchan scoffed, looking disappointed. “Your eyes just turned back to green. Is your quirk just changing your eye color? What a useless quirk, I guess the name Deku really does fit!”
“K-Kacchan, that’s mean!” Izuku exclaimed, sniffling a little at the harsh words.
“I don’t care, Deku. Let’s keep playing heroes and villains, and you’ll be a civilian since you have such a weak quirk, I’ll get some other kids to be the villains this time!”
---
10 Years Later:
Izuku is idly adding details to the analysis he had started this morning when his homeroom teacher comes in and announces that today they’ll be choosing what high schools they want to apply to. Izuku just continues to ignore him, writing down his theories on what would happen if Mt. Lady were to expand in a small space, when the teacher declared how everyone wanted to be heroes, throwing the worksheets in the air as chaos descended upon the class.
Abruptly, Bakugou explodes. “Teach! Don’t lump us all in the same group. I’m not gonna be stuck at the bottom with the rest of these rejects.”
A student complains to Bakugou about his quirk use, as if he hadn’t just been doing the same, and Bakugou tells him to shut it. “oh, if I remember correctly, you want to go to UA High, right, Bakugou?” the teacher asks.
“UA? That national school?” A student whispers, voice quickly joined by others questioning Bakugou’s choice. Bakugou responds by yelling at them about how he’s better than them, and will be better than even All Might!
“Oh yeah, Midoriya wanted to go to UA, too, right?” The teacher (that bastard) says, signing his death warrant.
As other students laugh and joke at the possibility of him possibly getting into UA, Bakugou lunges back at him with a yell, blowing up Izuku’s desk as he barely skitters back out of the blast radius in time. “Deku!” Bakugou shouts, a murderous look on his face.
The teacher clears his throat, trying to catch Bakugou’s attention. “Bakugou, if you would kindly return to your desk, or I may have to write you up.”
Bakugou does so, but not without telling Izuku that he’ll never be a hero with such a weak quirk. It’s not like the teacher would actually ever write him up for more than being minorly disruptive, and everybody, Bakugou included, knew it.
---
School eventually ends, and Izuku is packing up his bag as everyone else slowly trickles out, when Katsuki Bakugou and his goons come up to him, and Bakugou grabs his notebook. “We’re not done talking, Deku.”
Izuku looks up, changing his eyes to a bright blood red, and changing the whites to black. He musters the most intimidating voice he can, low and with a slight growl. “Give it back.” He threatens.
Bakugou frowns as his subordinates laugh nervously. “Or what?” He asks, “You’ll hit me? I’d like to see you try, Deku.” With those words, Izuku lunges forwards, reaching desperately towards his notebook. Bakugou just raises it higher and smirks. “You’ll have to try harder than that if you want your shitty notebook back.” His palms crackle with tiny explosions as the cover gets scorched.
When Izuku makes another go for his property, Bakugou tosses it casually out the window, and Izuku follows it to the window, where he sees it fall lightly into the koi pond below. ‘Just splendid’ he thinks, mourning the loss of his precious analyses. Behind him, Bakugou begins to speak. “Here’s some advice, Deku. If you really want to be a hero, you need a strong quirk. The only way to get one is to die, so why don’t you take a queue from your notebook and take a quick exit. Maybe you’ll get a better quirk than changing your shitty fucking eye color.” With that, Bakugou and his goons walked out, leaving Izuku alone with his thoughts.
‘What if I actually did it Kacchan. Then you’d be in trouble.’ With that honestly worrying thought, Izuku grabs his bag, and takes the long way to go get his notebook, changing his eye color back to it’s classic green.
---
Hitoshi is having a lovely day. Yeah, he’s getting beat up in the alley behind the school, but this is just business as usual. No, what’s made this day exceptionally great is how he had to list the high schools he’s applying to, and one of his main tormentors saw he had put UA as his top choice. The asshole had wasted no time declaring a villain like him would never be let in, and it led to his current predicament.
One of the bullies started to say something to him. Him! He should kiss their feet, and thank them one thousand times. He dropped the idea as the bully then gave him a vicious punch right to the stomach, causing him to violently exhale all the air in his lungs.
At that moment, a gust of wind billows through the alley, accompanied by a recognizable shout. “Never fear! Why? Because I am here!” All Might shouts, before becoming a blur, and appearing in front of Hitoshi, between him and the bullies. As he did, the bullies scatter among cries of fear at the number one hero’s abrupt arrival.
After they all left, All Might turns to him, and asks if he’s alright. “I’ll be fine, I’ve had worse.” Hitoshi says, doing nothing to rid All Might’s concerned smile. “But why are you helping me?”
“Because that’s what a hero does!” All Might poses majestically, muscles rippling. Suddenly, a scream is sounds in the distance “I am sorry to leave you, citizen, but I must go now, justice awaits!” And All Might speeds off, leaving Hitoshi alone in an alley.
---
Izuku is walking home when he hears a grate moving behind him. He turns around, to see a villain that seems t have some sort of liquid body. With a yell, he tries to run away, but the villain is on him in an instant.
The slimy body of the villain begins to shove itself down his throat. “Don’t worry.” the villain says, “I’m just going to take over your body, it’ll only hurt for about 45 seconds.”
‘I can’t… breathe…’ Izuku continues to struggle, but his wild thrashing is starting to slow down. ‘I guess Kacchan was right, I am useless.’ Izuku goes limp, and closes his eyes, giving up.
“Good, that’s more like it kid, it’ll all be over soon.” About twenty seconds have passed, and Izuku is finding it harder and harder to think as his stomach fills up with the foul liquid.
‘No. I refuse to die here!’ He snaps his eyes open, and reaches for anything, everything. His finger suddenly brushes against something solid, and as if he was activating his quirk for the first time again, he feels some sort of force pulled taut inside of him, and he pushes.
The villain chuckles. “Whoa, kid, that tickled, what’d you do?” It hadn’t done anything. Izuku’s last ditch effort at survival, and it had tickled.
“Hey! What are you doing to that kid?!” A voice shouts from the end of the overpass, 30 seconds after Izuku had been first captured.
“Nothing, if you know what’s good for you!” As the last words leave the villain’s mouth, he freezes.
“Let him go immediately.” The voice commands calmly, as if Izuku isn’t about to pass out and subsequently die any second now.
Surprisingly, the sludge villain does begin to make a hasty exit of his face holes. As soon as he leaves completely, Izuku sucks in a deep breath. “Never Fear! Why? I am here!” All Might appears, and Izuku is starstruck. All Might delivers a punch strong enough to blow the villain to chunks with the wind pressure alone, so All Might can collect him.
As All Might does so, Izuku looks for his mystery savior, but it seems he disappeared. He turns back to All Might, to ask him for an autograph, and sees All Might already signing his notebook. “A-All Might! Thank you so much for signing my notebook! This’ll be a family heirloom!”
All Might sets down his notebook and strikes a pose, hands on his hips. “Of course! I love my fans! But I must go now!” He turns to leave, running away.
Izuku watches as he leaves. “Wait!” He rushes forward, hoping to catch up to him before he leaps away, but he’s just slightly too far away. He watches All Might go, and sighs. “I was going to ask him if I could be a hero with a useless quirk.”
---
Hitoshi was walking home, counting the cracks in the concrete, when a large shadow falls upon him. “I am here!”
Hitoshi looks up to see All Might, before he seems to deflate, becoming a skeleton of a man, hair drooping, clothes baggy. Hitoshi can’t stop himself from exclaiming a loud “What in the ever-loving fuck?!”
Skele-Might coughs up some blood before speaking. “Language, young man! But I guess I should explain.” He lifts up his shirt, revealing a circular scar covering his whole left side. “Pretty nasty, right?”
“That does not begin to cover it.”
“I got it in a big fight five years back. My respiratory system was basically destroyed,” He grimaces, “and I lost my whole stomach. All the surgeries have pretty much worn me out, and it can’t be fixed. I can only do hero for about 3 hours a day now. Rest of the time, I look like this.”
“So why tell me any of this? Aren’t you afraid I’ll tell people your secret?” Hitoshi eyes him skeptically, confused as to why he’d be trusted with such a monumental secret.
“Young man, when you saved that boy from the sludge villain, what were you thinking?”
Hitoshi considers this a moment, wind blowing softly through his hair. “I was thinking that nobody was around who could help him, and then I thought, maybe I could.”
Skele-Might nods, contemplating his words. “Very good. Meddling when you didn’t need to is the essence of a hero.” Skele-Might reaches forward, offering a hand as he bulks back up into All Might “Which is why I want you, young man, to be my successor and inherit my quirk!”